Moving to major cities opened up new opportunities for women in the labour market
The period around the turn of the 20th century was marked by extensive migration. In Sweden, many women left their rural communities and moved to other parts of the country. But where they moved could have a major impact on their work and family lives, according to a new study.
Erik Prawitz, associate professor at the School of Business and Economics, studies long-term economic and political development, often using detailed historical data. He has examined how emigration can affect development in the places migrants leave behind, the role that infrastructure investments such as railway expansion can play in innovation and collaboration between inventors – and, most recently, how moving away from their rural communities shaped women’s work and family lives around the turn of the 20th century.
As industrialisation gathered pace, more and more production shifted from farms and households to factories. As a result, many of the informal, often unpaid tasks that women had previously performed in agriculture disappeared, while the industrial jobs that emerged in their place were often seen as dirty and unsuitable. This led to a sharp decline in the proportion of women in work, particularly among those who moved to smaller industrial towns. In the major cities, by contrast, the trend went in the opposite direction.
“In the major cities, the service sector began to expand in a way not yet seen in the rest of the country. This created strong demand for women in a range of service jobs. Moving to a major city therefore offered not only the prospect of new work, but of actual gainful employment – paid employment in the formal sense."
Many headed for Stockholm, and by the early 20th century more than half of the city’s population were migrants, most of them women. Compared with those who moved within rural areas or to smaller towns, these women not only saw their job prospects improve, but also gained other advantages – such as higher incomes and improvements in their occupational skills over time – without any apparent harm to their health from living in the city.
Another way in which the women who moved to major cities stood out was that they were considerably less likely to marry and have children than those who moved elsewhere. This may have been linked to many employers’ reluctance to keep women on after marriage.
“But even though many of these women may themselves have had to forgo marriage and children, they may have paved the way for the later shift towards better jobs and higher pay for women in general – married and unmarried alike.”