Economics - Faculty & Staff

My 2008 book, Gender, Work, and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain, argues that, since strength was important in many occupations, lower wages do not necessarily imply discrimination.  In the less-skilled and more competitive portions of the labor market women were sorted into occupations where strength mattered the least and were paid market wages that matched their productivity. Women did face discriminatory barriers imposed by union and professions, and these barriers appeared in less competitive portions of the labor market.  I have collected an extensive sample of English farm accounts (1740-1850), and I have used this sample to examine differences in employment and wages by gender.  I have also worked on turn-of-the-century Swedish manufacturing workers with Maria Stanfors of Lund University, and on US factory workers.  More recent work uses household accounts collected by Le Play to examine the role of unpaid work in women's work and the standard of living.