Women and Head of Household in Early Modern Rural León, Spain
Abstract
Although women’s studies have proliferated in recent decades, this subject has been rather neglected by Early Modern Historiography as regards the province of León, in the northwest of Spain. The aim of this study is to make a contribution to this aspect of Social History, focusing on an analysis of household heads. To this end, we analysed the Family Registers (Libros de Familia) of the mid-eighteenth-century famous census known as Catastro of Ensenada, and a series of registers from a wide range of dates. Given the diversity of territories, and consequently, of economic activities in the province of León, we quantified the number of women acting as head of household by region, in order to determine the influence of the environment on this variable. Finally, we also study how this data changed over time, and the forms of co-residence among these women.
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