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Like father, like daughter? Intergenerational social mobility among business- and craftswomen in Sundsvall, Sweden, 1860–1893

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

LOTTA VIKSTRÖM  and
TOM ERICSSON
LOTTA VIKSTRÖM
Affiliation:
Centre for Population Studies, Umeå University.
TOM ERICSSON
Affiliation:
Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University.
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Abstract

Using multiple sources, this study identifies women's intergenerational social mobility to a greater degree than most other studies on the topic. It examines the status of the fathers of women who ran a business or craft in a Swedish town that witnessed rapid urban–industrial transformations. Whereas only 15 per cent of the businesswomen and 12 per cent of the craftswomen were the daughters of business- or craftsmen, the businesswomen in particular had through their trade been able to improve their social status. The results suggest that these women benefited from the commercial opportunities of their time and not from having a father in business.

Tel père, telle fille ? mobilité sociale intergénérationnelle parmi les femmes entrepreneurs et artisans à sundsvall, suède, 1860–1893

Reposant sur des sources historiques combinées, cette étude retrace la mobilité sociale intergénérationnelle parmi les femmes, de façon plus approfondie que ne le firent la plupart des autres études menées auparavant sur le sujet. Nous examinons le statut socio-professionnel des pères des femmes entrepreneurs ou artisans au sein d'une ville suédoise qui a connu un développement urbain et des transformations industrielles rapides. Alors que quinze pour cent des femmes chefs d'entreprise et seulement douze pour cent des femmes artisans étaient filles d'entrepreneurs ou d'artisans, ce sont tout particulièrement les femmes entrepreneurs qui ont pu améliorer leur statut social grâce à leur négoce. Ces résultats suggèrent que ces femmes ont profité surtout des opportunités commerciales de leur temps et non du fait d'avoir un père dans les affaires.

Wie der vater, so die tochter? intergenerationelle soziale mobilität von geschäftsfrauen in sundsvall, sweden, 1860–1893

Durch die Benutzung vielfältiger Quellen kann unsere Studie die intergenerationelle soziale Mobilität von Frauen genauer darstellen als viele andere Arbeiten zu diesem Thema. Am Beispiel eines schwedischen Ortes, der eine rasche städtisch-industrielle Transformation erlebte, untersuchen wir den sozialen Status der Väter von Frauen, die einen Handels- oder Gewerbebetrieb leiteten. Während nur 15 Prozent der einen Handelsbetrieb und nur 12 Prozent der einen Gewerbebetrieb leitenden Frauen Töchter von Händlern oder Gewerbetreibenden waren, gelang es besonders den Frauen, die einen Handelsbetrieb leiteten, dadurch ihren sozialen Status zu verbessern. Diese Ergebnisse legen den Schluss nahe, dass diese Frauen von den kommerziellen Möglichkeiten ihrer Zeit profitierten und nicht von der Tatsache, dass ihre Väter bereits im Handel tätig gewesen waren.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , December 2012 , pp. 409 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

ENDNOTES

1 For a recent discussion of the issues of researching social mobility, see the special issue ‘Social inequality and mobility in history’, Continuity and Change 24, 3 (2009), 395–560, guest-edited by Marco H. D. van Leeuwen. See especially his two contributions: ‘Social inequality and mobility in history: introduction’, 399–419, and ‘The next generation of historical studies on social mobility: some remarks’, 547–60; David Mitch, John Brown and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘The history of the modern career: an introduction’, in David Mitch, John Brown and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen eds., Origins of the modern career (Aldershot, 2004), 17–22.

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21 Given time constraints, we explored just one complete year (1879) in the middle of the period under study. In the late 1870s, Sundsvall's two most established newspapers were the liberal Sundsvalls Tidning and the conservative Sundsvall-Posten. Both consisted of eight pages and were published three times a week. Complete microfilm copies for the year 1879 are not available for either newspaper, but taken together they cover the entire year. The papers and periods investigated are as follows: Sundsvalls-Posten: 1 January to 31 March 1879 and Sundsvalls Tidning: 1 April to 31 December 1879. According to the latter newspaper, adverts were published at a cost of 10 ‘öre’ per line with the minimum cost for advertising stipulated to be 30 ‘öre’, or 0.3 crowns, which was not very expensive. At that time, an industrial worker earned about 1.50 crowns per day, whereas a maidservant earned about 80–90 crowns per year plus board and lodging equivalent to about 225 crowns. See Lagerqvist, Lars O. and Nathorst-Böös, Ernst, Vad kostade det? Priser och löner från medeltid till våra dagar (Borås, 2000), 99–100Google Scholar. We analyse and discuss women's adverts more thoroughly in another study, see Lotta Vikström and Tom Ericsson, ‘Women's lives and lines of business: tradeswomen in the town of Sundsvall, 1860–1893’, unpublished paper presented at the European Social Science History (ESSH) Conference (Ghent, Belgium, 2010).

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24 The sources were explored in the following order: (1) local newspapers in 1879; (2) business taxation registers 1860–90; and (3) trade directories 1860–93. The newspapers susually described the women's ventures more thoroughly (most likely because they could describe their business in their own words in their advertisements). The business taxation records were then used to add women not already described in the newspapers to the study, and the trade directories to add only those women who were not recorded in either the newspapers or the business taxation registers. As a consequence, Table 1 under-reports the number of women available in the trade directories. For a discussion on the reliability of these three sources and the advantages associated with newspapers, see Vikström, Lotta, ‘Identifying dissonant and complementary data on women through the triangulation of historical sources’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13 (2010), 211–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For a presentation of the digitised parish registers stored at the Demographic Data Base (DDB), see http://www.ddb.umu.se/ddb-english/database/the-database-popum/?languageId=1 (accessed 20 August 2012). The DDB's search engine, ‘Indiko’, makes it possible to select groups of individuals or identify unique persons, for example by entering an individual's name and year of presence in the parish under study.

26 Interestingly, the parish registers suggest that only about 15 per cent of the 156 women were engaged in retail business or handicrafts. This percentage exemplifies the gender bias inherent in past population registers as regards their flawed documentation of women's occupations. Vikström, ‘Identifying dissonant and complementary data’.

27 The censuses (folkräkningar) of 1880, 1890 and 1900 and the Swedish parish registers have been digitised by the Swedish National Archive: www.svar.ra.se (accessed 20 August 2012). In Sweden, information from the parish ministers formed the basis for the census records, but in Stockholm this system was found to be insufficient due to the heavy influx of migrants. From 1878 the capital was divided into districts (rotar) where census takers (roteman), similar to those found abroad, collected data by visiting households. As for the 1878–1926 period, information about more than one million individuals is now available in the Roote's Archive (Rotemansarkivet), digitised by Stockholm's Historical Database (Stockholms Historiska Databas): www.ssa.stockholm.se/sv/Anvand-arkiven/Sokvagar/Rotemansarkivet/ (accessed 20 August 2012).

28 van Leeuwen, ‘Social inequality and mobility’.

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32 National Archives (Riksarkivet), Kommerskollegiums arkiv, Förteckning över handlare och hantverkare, Sundsvalls stad 1865–1890; Svanberg, Företagsamhet föder framgång, 97.

33 The reasons why the women appear in these particular branches are not discussed here, as we cover these issues in another paper which also examines the demographic features of the women in more detail and the under-registration of their occupation activities in the parish register. Vikström and Ericsson, ‘Women's lives and lines of business’.

34 See a special issue on partners in business, ‘Partners in business? Spousal cooperation in trades in early modern England and the Dutch Republic’, Continuity and Change 23, 2 (2008): Danielle van den Heuvel and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, ‘Partners in business: spousal cooperation in trades in early modern England and the Dutch Republic’, 209–16; and Amy Lou Erickson, ‘Married women's occupation in eighteenth-century London’, 267–307. See also Tom Petersson, ‘The silent partner: women, capital and the development of the financial system in nineteenth-century Sweden’, in Beachy, Craig and Owens, Women, business and finance, 36–51.

35 See Gamber, Wendy, ‘A gendered enterprise: placing nineteenth-century businesswomen in history’, The Business History Review 72, 2 (1998), 188–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beatrice Craig, Robert Beachy and Alastair Owens, ‘Introduction’, in Beachy, Craig and Owens, Women, business and finance, 8–19; Lucy Murphy, Eldersveld, ‘Her own boss: businesswomen and separate spheres in the Midwest, 1850–1880’, Illinois Historical Journal 80, 3 (1987), 155–76Google Scholar.

36 Kay, ‘Small business’, 202–3; Eldersveld Murphy, ‘Business ladies’, 71.

37 Anders Brändström, Jan Sundin and Lars-Göran Tedebrand, ‘Marriage and urban adaption: Sundsvall and Linköping in XIXth century Sweden’, Annales de Démographie Historique no. 2 (1999), 97–114, see 108.

38 This legislation had little real impact on the situation of married women. If they bought things for themselves, and not for the family or household, they ran the risk of losing the right to dispose of their income. Karin Widerberg, Kvinnor, klasser och lagar 1750–1980 (Stockholm, 1980), 153–72; Anita Göransson, 'Från släkt till marknad: ägande, arbete och äktenskap på 1800-talet', in Yvonne Hirdman ed., Kvinnohistoria: om kvinnors villkor från antiken till våra dagar (Stockholm, 1992), 53–72; Petersson, ‘The silent partner’.

39 Kay, ‘Small business’, 194; Levitan, Kathrin, ‘Redundancy, the “surplus woman” problem, and the British census, 1851–1861’, Women's History Review 17 (2008), 359–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ericsson, ‘Limited opportunities’, 143; Sten Carlsson, Fröknar, mamseller, jungfrur och pigor (Stockholm, 1977), 11–14; Gunnar Qvist, ‘Ett perspektiv på den s.k. kvinnoemancipationen i Sverige’, in Gunnar Qvist, Konsten att blifva en god flicka: kvinnohistoriska uppsatser (Stockholm, 1978), 162–211.

41 Carlsson, Fröknar, mamseller; Ericsson, ‘Limited opportunities’; Piette, ‘Belgium's tradeswomen’; Qvist, ‘Ett perspektiv’.

42 Scholars emphasise the insecurity associated with running retail shops at the time, as many of them disappeared after only a few years. Svanberg, Företagsamhet föder framgång, 98–100; Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard, ‘Kleinhändler und Arbeiter in Bremen zwischen 1890 und 1914’, Archive für Sozialgeschichte 22 (1982), 95–122Google Scholar.