How Women Worked? : Changing Local Labor Market and Women's Labor Supply in Pre-Modern Japan

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how the pattern of women's labor supply responded to the changing local labor market. I also argue that the shift in the pattern of women's labor supply has led to the changes of some population variables in Asako County. By applying the method of historical demography and using the idea of 'gender' in a broad sense I examine these issues. In recent years, the study of 'gender' is popular in the field of history. But usually historians' main point of view is how to introduce suppressed sex to the main stage. Here, I use the concept of 'gender' because women's labor supply was affected by their status at home, especially when they were married and had their children. The decision for their labor supply was not made by themselves but their whole family or sometimes by household head. My main point is, when married women were forced to work for maintaining their house economy, they preferred the job they could do without leaving their home for a long time, say a year. To prove it, I will use the data from Nimbetsu-Aratame-Cho (NAC), the population register of pre-modern Japan, at Koriyama-Kami-Machi Town from 1729 to 1870. I divide the data into two periods. The first one is from 1729 to 1799 and the second is from 1800 to 1870. In the first period, there were few wage jobs for women in their home village, so they must leave home to work at the nearby town, Koriyama-Kami-Machi. But in the second period, the local wage labor market for women, such as spinning developed at their hometown as well as Koriyama-Kami-Machi, and they preferred staying at their own houses and worked as day laborers. The change was confirmed by multiple regression. To clarify the situation, I also introduce and explain some examples from documents other than NAC. These changes may cause the rise of the birth rate at their home village. On the other hand, the local town, Koriyama-Kami-Machi, gathered work force from farther area. Many migrants came to Koriyama-Kami-Machi together with their family. Some female migrants married after they came. As they bore their own children, the population pyramid of the town changed to have gentle slope (namely 'pyramid'). Moreover, an increase in wage jobs for women may lead to decreasing marriage rates at the town and villages in the Asaka County, through the rise in the mean age at first marriage and delay of entering re-marriage market.