Women´s work and wages in Finland, 1600-1920 (WOWOWA)
Main funder
Funder's project number: 356274
Funds granted by main funder (€)
- 422 594,00
Funding program
Project timetable
Project start date: 01/09/2023
Project end date: 31/08/2027
Summary
Gender equality and female agency are closely related to economic development. Still, gender inequalities persist in several areas of the world today, most typically in countries with lower levels of economic development. How did some parts of the world end up rich and equal whereas other did not is one of the great debates in economic history. In recent years the status and role of women on the onset of economic growth has started to rise in the heart of the discussion. As ability to work is central to female agency, the research has directed its focus on the long-term quantitative analysis on women´s labour markets; a tool for this is wages. The most of the results have been derived from the Britain, which as the vanguard of the economic growth is a difficult benchmark for rest of the countries. This project explores female agency and economic advancement through women´s labor market participation and wages in Finland from 1600 to 1920. As a late-comer country, Finland represented a more typical case of the rest of Europe and the world. Finland also offers unique data and results from the point of view the European Marital Pattern, which has been used to understand the causes and conequences of the modern economic growth and women´s role in it. Finland was very uniquely located between the east and the west marital patterns. The main aim of the project is to produce the first historical long-term time series on Finnish unskilled women´s nominal and real wage rates. The project utilizes the quantitative methods of economic history scholarship in order to achieve a more long-term, large-scale understanding on the role of women in the development of the Finnish economy. The project uses a variety of original sources and previous literature as its sources. Though time series analysis the project seeks to find answers to the questions on how did women's pay rates develop and vary in long run, how was the level of pay for women relative to men's pay rates and how were the regional differences in pay rates in Finland. The results of this project has a high societal value. Gender inequalities and poverty persists around the world. Historical knowledge shows that things can change and that change can have beneficial effects on all sides. Understanding historical dynamics is vital when assessing today´s and future societal and economic development.
