Off the Record: Reconstructing Women's Labor Force Participation in the European Past

@article{Humphries2012OffTR,
  title={Off the Record: Reconstructing Women's Labor Force Participation in the European Past},
  author={Jane Humphries and Carmen Saras{\'u}a},
  journal={Feminist Economics},
  year={2012},
  volume={18},
  pages={39 - 67}
}
Abstract Conventional histories of women's labor force participation in Europe conceptualize the trends in terms of a U-shaped pattern. This contribution draws on historical research to challenge such an account. First, it demonstrates that the trough in participation is in part statistically manufactured by uncritical reliance on official sources that systematically undercount women workers. Second, it exploits nonstandard sources to construct alternative estimates of women's participation… 
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