Household budget management and women’s position in peasant families in the Polish lands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Abstract This article attempts to answer the question about the position of women in Polish peasant families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries based on the memoirs of rural women. Contrary to the claim that taking control over the household budget gave women more power on the farm, memoirs of peasant women show that it was rather an additional duty and responsibility. This problem mainly affected low-income families, where income from typically male activities was insufficient, so homemakers supported the family from the female part of the farm: gardening and dairy production. Thus, despite the decisive importance of women’s earnings for the household budget, their power in the family had only a symbolic dimension.