Pioneering Swedish women on the labour market over the past two centuries

Welcome to a CEDAR seminar with Marco van Leuween, Dept. of Sociology, Utrecht University.

All interested are welcome to participate. If you want to participate digitally, please contact Mojgan Padyab to receive a meeting link.

Pioneering Swedish women on the labour market over the past two centuries

(Note: Please do not cite or quote this preliminary version)

Over the past two centuries women have gained access to top jobs, in terms of social status. Even if there are still gaps, and persistent ones indeed, between the genders in that respect as well as in earnings, the full gamut of occupations is now open to women. How was this possible?

Here we look at notable women in a biographical dictionary – a sort of who’s is who. In this case a Swedish one. We study which women were in the dictionary, which occupations and social status they had, and what determined their social status.

This paper tries to cross classic prosopographical research, first sketched by Stone, with the status-attainment of Blau and Duncan as extended by the Wisconsin model. In practice this means we have standardised socio demographic information like in historical vital registers on the respondents (women), their parents, and their spouses if any. The biographical dictionaries also provide information on place of birth, number of siblings, and number of children that also, in principle, can be obtained from (linked) vital registers. They also have information on education to a degree usually only found in detailed census data. Then they cover aspects of social and cultural history which we normally cannot observe systematically, notably having a mentor or being supported by a social movement. This type of source is thus richer than most other historical sources, but it does pertain to a top segment of society – still an important segment including many pioneering women breaking open a male dominated labour market, and without their first inroads the later ones could not have happened.