Female Workers and Heads of Households in Buenos Aires Countryside During the Nineteenth Century (San Vicente,Buenos Aires,Argentina,1815–1895)

Abstract

Rural Buenos Aires, as many other regions of what constitutes Argentina today, underwent some radical transformations during the course of the nineteenth century. We here study San Vicente, a rural area where micro-family households were predominant, in order to explore two complementary aspects of the changing social environment. First, the possibilities women had of being the heads of households as well as the resources available to them to earn their living by different means. Secondly, how their position in society evolved during this period. Our main sources are data gathered from the register of inhabitants of 1815 and the National Population Censuses of 1869 and 1895, which we will complement with data from the economic census carried out in 1895. We will see that when competition intensified, there came to be fewer opportunities for women to head households or businesses.