Abstract
The primary objective of this research programme is to provide the missing qualitative and quantitative information and to obtain a more precise understanding of Dutch women's work in the early modern period. The programme aims to document the history of working women between c. 1500-1815, from the perspective of (1) the labour market and (2) the women themselves. We will address the following questions: 1.The labour market: what kind of work did women do, which work was divided by gender, did this gender division change during the period studied? To what extent was female participation influenced by economic specialisation, restrictive rules or a developing culture of domesticity? 2. The working women: how did women earn their living, how much money did women earn and what was their contribution to the family income (assuming that they were part of a family)? What was the influence of marital status on women's working life, how was labour divided within the family and how did the strategies of women relate to those of men, or the family as a whole? Although some recently published studies do shed some light on working women in the early modern Netherlands, they focus on just one occupation or a particular city, making it difficult to compare research results. Currently, we lack information on the labour market as a whole, and on the development of women's participation. The proposed comparative approach will offer the opportunity to systematically examine the participation of women in the labour market, to identify changes and to compare data from different regions, over a long period of time.