The Employment of Women and Firm Survival
Björn Eriksson & Maria Stanfors
Dept of Economic History, Lund University
Very preliminary results, please do not cite.
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is too present preliminary evidence on the determinants of
firm survival in the Swedish tobacco industry in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The focus is on firms‟ decisions about the composition of their work force and how the
resulting cost structure may have affected survival prospects. More specifically we consider
the employment of women as an important strategy employed by firms. The scope of the
paper straddles two different branches of the literature. The methodology used has been
borrowed from the Industrial Organisation literature that seeks to determine why some firms
fail while others prosper, while our interest in the work force composition and resulting cost
structure of individual firms is inspired by the theory behind, and empirical studies of, wage
differences between men and women.
There is a large body of anecdotal evidence supporting the notion that firms during
industrialisation actively attempted to reduce costs by changing the composition of their work
force by increasingly employing women instead of men. Rose (1987:170-171) remarks in a
study of the late nineteenth-century English hosiery industry that: „It was clearly to an
employer‟s advantage to hire women in place of men if they could be paid less for about the
same amount and quality of work […] As early as 1861, employers attempted to hire women
workers in place of men‟. The process of substituting women for men was not limited to
hosiery factories but seems to have been common in a number of diverse manufacturing
industries. In both umbrella making and the manufacturing of tins for preserved food did
lower paid women take the place of higher paid men (Webb 1891:647-648). In Glasgow, a
cotton mill decided in 1833 to hire women mule spinners with the motivation that „the
company engaged these females in the expectation that they [the company] would be able to
reduce their wages lower than the rates paid to male spinners‟ (quoted in Valverde 1988, from
the First Report of the Central Board, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833. Vol. XX: 84-85).
1
Burnette (1997:267) quotes Anthony Austin (reporting in the Handloom Weavers
Commission, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840. Vol. XXIII: 282) whom observed that
„women are employed, who will readily undertake it, at a lower wage then men receive [...]
indeed, it appears to be a custom in every trade to pay women at a lower rate than men for the
same article. I have found it in broad-cloth trade, in the blanket trade, and in the silk velvet
trade. By this process (unless the men consent to take the lower rate of wage) the whole of the
weaving is gradually put into the hands of women [...] and the men are compelled to seek
other work‟. Burnette concludes that what Austin described was a well-functioning market in
which firms based their choice of labour inputs on market prices. The result, given increasing
demand and an upward sloping labour supply curve, was that discrimination was eroded away
under pressure from market forces. In contrast to an explanation based on rational agents and
efficient markets working to eliminate wage discrimination, deficient markets, structural
barriers and ideology have been invoked as reasons why wage discrimination may persist,
although quantitative evidence regarding the real effect of such practices is generally lacking
(see Humphries 1987 and Ellen 1989).
An alternative but not necessarily competing explanation for the increasing employment
of women during the industrialization is that female labour was complementary to
mechanization and division of labour. Marx (1867: 420) explained the onset of feminisation
of the workforce in some industries to start when „machinery dispenses with muscular power,
[at which point] it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and
those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple, The
labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used
machinery.‟ Goldin and Sokoloff (1982) provide a not dissimilar explanation, but emphasizes
that the growth of the manufacturing sector and its new production methods led to the
substitution of unskilled women and children for skilled men. Women‟s and children‟s labour
were complimentary to the ever increasing division of labour associated with the transition
from artisan shops to factory production that took place during industrialisation (Goldin and
Sokoloff 1984:476).
Certain features of the Swedish tobacco industry in the middle of the 19th century allows
us to discount some possible reasons as to why feminisation may have been associated with
firm survival through cost saving mechanization and division of labour, rather than through
wage differences. Firms that used machines powered by animals, water or steam were
exclusively used for powering tobacco mills. Furthermore, the first cigarette machine was not
2
patented until 1881 (Bonsack 1881) and it took several years before it was introduced in
Sweden. Mechanization did thus not contribute to deskilling. Rather machines were used to
perform the most unskilled and basic kind of labour (i.e. milling tobacco). Prus (1990) has
advanced the argument that women were increasingly employed in the U.S. tobacco industry
following the introduction of the cigar mould. The cigar mould enabled more complete
division of labour and reduced the demand for skilled labour, resulting in increasing
employment of women. In reality, the use of the cigar mould was limited in the Swedish
industry, and was only used by a minority of workers (see Elmquist 1899).
2. Discrimination and firm survival
The central idea of this paper builds upon the argument that if women faced wage
discrimination, that is, were paid a wage that did not fully reflect productivity, women‟s
labour traded at a discount to that of men. If so, women were a low cost input alternative to
men. In line with basic theory, given that markets are sufficiently efficient, we expect firms
that employ low cost inputs to be more successful than their competitors. More specifically, in
this paper we define successful firms as those that survived while the unsuccessful ones are
those that did not.
The cost of discrimination
In Becker‟s (1957:39) model of discrimination a firm discriminates if it refuses to hire
an employee with a marginal value product that exceeds marginal cost. Firms that
discriminate therefore, everything else held constant, have a higher unit cost than nondiscriminating firms. To what extent non-discriminating (and therefore low unit cost) firms
will expand relative to discriminating (high unit cost) firms is determined by the general
shape of the industry‟s production function. Increasing or constant returns to scale facilitates
faster and sustainable expansion of non-discriminating firms while decreasing returns to scale
hampers it. Discriminating firms on the other hand are likely to find their position untenable
over time due to the cost differential (and more so when production is characterized by
increasing returns to scale) and is expected to exit the industry.
In practice there are reasons as to why discriminating firms might stay in business even
when production is subject to constant or increasing returns to scale. Barriers to entry are an
important factor that prohibits non-discriminating firms from entering the market. Although
the guild system was abolished in Sweden in 1846, in its place requirements for being granted
3
the right to operate a workshop with employees was introduced. The requirements included
prior experience of the craft in question, being literate and a person “of good standing” and if
business were to be conducted in a city or within a 5 kilometre thereof, burghership had to be
acquired by the proprietor. It was not until 1864 that legislation was passed that granted all
citizens the freedom to trade as long as the principal was a major and had registered the
business with the relevant authority (Rabenius 1888).
Transportation costs are another factor that prevents input and output prices from
converging in different locations. When transportation costs are high firms may remain viable
even when their employment decisions are not cost minimizing due to segmentation of the
market. At the end of 1863, the first year covered in the sample of firms under investigation,
the Swedish rail network covered 1020 km, and Stockholm and Malmö were not yet
connected by rail.From 1872 railroad construction accelerated and by the end of 1877, the last
year covered in our sample of firms, the rail network had grown to 4986 km (see
Trafikstyrelsen (1878) Diagram: Längd i kilometer av Statens järnvägar, Enskilda järnvägar
och samtliga svenska järnvägar i trafik vid slutet av åren 1857-1877).
Since the test of the hypothesis of female labour as a low cost input is dependent on
market efficiency, we expect the effect of employing women in favour of men to be stronger
when market are more efficient. The liberalization following the 1864 freedom to trade
legislation and the growth of the transport sector throughout the period suggests that the effect
of employing women in favour of men ought to be stronger as we approach the end of the
period under study. Moreover, we expect markets to be less efficient in the countryside and
more efficient within cities (i.e. Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm) throughout the period as
it is it‟s reasonable to assume that labour and basic costs were similar for firms operating in
cities. Because Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm are coastal cities with substantial harbours
and almost all tobacco used in manufacturing was imported, differences in the cost of raw
material due to transport is likely to have been small, or at least considerably less than
between more distant rural locations.
Before proceeding, it is important to note that a firm which appears to act in a
discriminating way by not hiring women may do so for a variety of reasons, only one which is
Beckerian “taste based” discriminatory behaviour on behalf of the firm‟s owner. First,
changing a workforce from male to female is not costless. Skills gained through on the job
training are often acquired from more experienced co-workers. Simply firing existing older
4
and more experienced men and replacing them with younger inexperienced women is thus not
optimal. Rather, a gradual replacement is to be expected in which low cost women are
preferred when hiring in order to expand production or replace retiring workers. Second, it
would be unreasonable to believe that an existing high-cost work force (read men) would
have sat idly by as it was being replaced by a low-cost alternative (i.e. women). Exclusionary
practices against women and collective action or the threat thereof against firm owners that
attempted to feminise their workforce are examples of actions that male employees may have
undertaken in order to maintain the status quo. Hence, for the purpose of this paper, a firm is
termed as discriminatory if it for whatever reason fails to feminise its workforce when the
price of female labour relative to male labour signals that doing so is profit maximizing. The
absolute cause of the failure to feminise is however unobservable and therefore less clear. It
may be the result of the firm‟s owner‟s preference for employing male labour, the ability of
labour to organise and protect their interest, or a combination of both.
Firm Survival
The Industrial Organization literature on firm survival in a modern setting is extensive
(see Manjón-Antolín and Arauzo-Carod 2008 for a survey of the literature and methods used).
Not surprisingly, due to data limitations, little is known about firm survival and its
determinants prior to 1970 (for some exceptions, see Thompson‟s (2005) article studying the
survival of firms in the shipbuilding industry from 1825-1914, Box‟s (2008) exploration of
the effects of the economic environment on survival among seven birth cohorts of firms
during the first half of the 20th century, and Mackie‟s (2001) study of family firm‟s survival
prospects in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, from 1870-1970).
The general empirically observed pattern of firm survival is characterized by high rates
of exit soon after establishment followed by a declining trend in the following periods (see for
example Dunne, Roberts and Samuelson 1989; Mata and Portugal 1994). While the pattern is
intuitively attractive, the underlying mechanism that determines the survival of firms is less
obvious. Some firms are of inherently better quality due to superior management abilities
possessed by the founder, or because of other unobserved factors that are pre-determined at
the time of establishment. On the other hand, firms that make it to a certain age will arguably
be more likely to survive in future periods due to accumulated experience, irrespective of
being of inferior or superior quality to begin with.
5
To fix ideas and stylize the discussion so far we conclude that a failure to reject the
hypothesis of female labour as a low cost input supports two results: (i) female labour was a
low cost input relative to male labour and hence women‟s wages did not an accurately reflect
productivity, and (ii) market efficiency was sufficient for the employment of women to have
an effect on firm survival. A rejection of the hypothesis will however allow us to infer little
since it may be due to either woman‟s labour not having traded at a discount to that of men, or
alternatively because of insufficient market efficiency leading to the survival of non-optimal
firms, or a combination of both.
3. Data, model and results
The data set used in this paper is entirely new and consists of all firms registered as
active in the Swedish tobacco industry between the years 1863 and 1877. The panel has been
constructed by collecting data on firms appearing in the yearly summary compiled by The
Swedish Board of Commerce1as an intermittent step in the production of the aggregated
annual official statistics covering factories and manufacturers2. The detailed source material
includes annual information on a firm level about the workforce (number of women, men,
girls, boys and managers employed) the legal form of the business, the types of machinery
used and their power output measured in horse powers, output for each product category
(cigars, snuff, chewing tobacco and smoking tobacco by weight and value) and geographical
location. The firms range from small owner operated firms to large factories employing
hundreds of workers. The source material even includes firms that were only registered with
the local authorities but never operated. For firms founded prior to 1862 the year of
establishment has been added from Angelin (1950). All in all, the dataset contains 225 firms
registered as active in the Swedish tobacco industry throughout or sometime in the period
from the beginning of 1863 to the end of 1877.
Due to the increasing popularity of tobacco during the 1860‟s and 1870‟s the industry
experienced an expansion in output and an increase in workers employed as shown in Figure
1 and Figure 2. In 1863, 2193 workers produced 6 456 728 kronor worth of tobacco. By 1877,
the industry employed 3626 workers and output had increased to 10 873 010 kronor. For the
purpose of this paper; the trend of interest is the gradual increase in the employment of
women during the period: in 1863, 14% of the industry workforce was made up of women; by
1Kommerskollegium
2Bidrag
till Sveriges officiella statistik. D, Fabriker och manufakturer
6
1877 this number had risen to 30%. The Swedish tobacco industry thus conform to a trend
which is consistent with the existence of a discriminatory wage-gap and a resulting increase in
the employment of women as a profit maximizing strategy by non-discriminating firms on
one hand, and a replacement of men by women as part of a deskilling process on the other.
Figure 1 Women as share of industry work force, 1863-1876
4500
Number of workers
4000
Workers
3500
Women
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Year
Figure 2 Industry output in '000 kronor, 1863-1867
Industry output, '000 kronor
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
Year
Our evidence is limited, but wage data collected by The Swedish Customs Committee3
indicates that women were paid considerably less than men in the Swedish tobacco industry
The information was collected by the Customs Committee in order to evaluate tariff rates on raw
and processed tobacco. At W.M. Hellgren, one of the largest factories, the male/female wages were
reported as follows: 1865-1869, 2/1 SEK; 1870-1874, 2.5/1.5 SEK; 1874-1879, 2.75/1.75 SEK.
3
7
between 1865 and 1879 and that the wage gap declined throughout the period. Although raw
wage figures are hardly enough to infer pure wage discrimination followed by convergence,
the wage data is at least not inconsistent with women initially having been a low cost
alternative to men, and the difference gradually eroding away as proposed by Burnette (1997).
The period of establishment and the firms‟ survival rates by cohort is presented in Table
1. Of the firms established between 1863 and 1867, less than a third was still active in 1877.
Around 40 per cent of the firms established in the following five years and about 70 per cent
of the firms established between 1873 and 1877 survived past 1877. It is important to note the
survival rate among the pre 1863 entrants, in this group we find some of the most successful
and old firms, including one dating back to 1688. We do not observe the entire spell for these
firms until demise or right hand censoring in 1877, but since information about the year of
establishment exists we are able to discriminate between time at risk and time under
observation. Hence our panel is subject to left truncation but not left censoring. This is crucial
when we turn to formal modelling as it allows us to model survival past t conditional upon
survival until t.
Table 1 Firm establishment and survival by cohort
Status in 1877
Period of
establishment
prior to 1863
1863-1867
1868-1872
1873-1877
Total
Number of
firms
established
94
48
42
41
Number
active
47
15
17
29
Survival
(%)
50.0%
31.3%
40.5%
70.7%
225
108
48.0%
Although, as shown in Table 1, exit rates among new firms was high, entrants more or
less equalled exits during the period studied, keeping the total number of firms active in
the industry almost constant at around 100. Since output expanded throughout the
period, the firms grew from employing on average 24 workers (median= 6) to 33
workers (median = 10.5).
8
Figure 3 Active firms and entrants and exits, 1863-1876
120
Number of firms
100
80
Exits
60
Entrants
40
Active Firms
20
0
Year
For the purpose of modelling, our set of firms is restricted to those with known dates of
establishment that have at least one employee. A firm is defined to have failed once it
disappears from the Swedish Board of Commerce„s register or if the firm remains recorded in
the register but is noted as inactive. At this point in time we do not have information about the
circumstances of exit. Any possible voluntary closure, forced bankruptcy or failure of a firm
for any other reason is therefore treated simply as a failure.
We model firm survival using both semi-parametric and parametric specifications. More
specifically and in line with previous work (see Thompson 2005, Esteve-Peréz and ManezCastillejo 2008, Mata and Portugal 1994), we utilise the Cox (1972) proportional hazards
model for semi-parametric estimations. The Cox proportional hazards model is given by
λ(t,Xit) = λ0(t)exp(βiXit),
in which λ0(t) denotes the unspecified baseline hazard.
The parametric model that we utilise is the Weibull model
λ(t,Xit) =ptp-1exp(β0)exp(βiXit),
which includes the shape parameter p. If p>1 the risk of failure is monotonically increasing, a
pattern consistent with an industry in which new innovative firms have an advantage over old
stagnant competitors. On the other hand, if p<1 the risk of failure is monotonically
decreasing, a result expected when industry experience gained with age is beneficial to the
9
firm. If p=1, t cancels out and the model reduces to the Exponential model. The interpretation
of the exponential model is not that the survival of firms does not vary as the firm ages but
rather that age itself does not determine the hazard facing the firm. What matters is rather how
βiXit is realised over time, which in turn affects survival.
The sample is restricted to firms with known dates of establishment that have recorded
at least some output and have at least one employee. A firm is defined as having failed once it
disappears from the Swedish Board of Commerce„s register or if the firm remains recorded in
the register but is noted as inactive. All firms that have not failed are censored in 1977. Table
2 presents some descriptive statistics. As can be seen, the size of firms varies considerably,
the biggest firm employing 389 workers and producing over 1 million kronor worth of
tobacco. The most popular branch that firms operated in was cigar making, followed by snuff,
chewing tobacco and lastly smoking tobacco4. The statistics limited to describing firms during
the year of entry and the year prior to exit is also displayed. While firms at the beginning and
end of their existence naturally tend to be smaller than other firms, the descriptive statistics
clearly show that both the firms that entered the industry and those failed to survive included
some large firms. Entry and exit was clearly not confined to only small firms.
4
Please note that many firms were active in more than one branch.
10
Table 2 Descriptive statistics
All firms, all years
Output ('000 SEK)
Employees
Horse powers
Share women
Share children
Branch
Cigars
Snuff
Smoking
Chewing
N
1245
1256
1262
1256
1256
Mean
80.353
29.801
1.983
0.163
0.282
1265
1265
1265
1265
0.640
0.481
0.170
0.328
Standard
deviation
Min Max
150.680 0.054 1316
58.058
1 389
4.900
0
40
0.236
0
1
0.276
0
1
0.480
0.500
0.376
0.470
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
Standard
deviation
Min
27.977 0.054
14.992
1
0.927
0
0.254
0
0.311
0
Max
200
98
7
1
1
Firms in year of entry
Output ('000 SEK)
Employees
Horse powers
Share women
Share children
Branch
Cigars
Snuff
Smoking
Chewing
N
110
109
110
109
109
Mean
13.941
9.835
0.200
0.150
0.317
110
110
110
110
0.709
0.164
0.045
0.118
0.456
0.372
0.209
0.324
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
Standard
deviation
Min
25.981 0.078
11.573
1
2.004
0
0.250
0
0.319
0
Max
125
58
10
1
1
Firms in year prior to exit
Output ('000 SEK)
Employees
Horse powers
Share women
Share children
Branch
Cigars
Snuff
Smoking
Chewing
N
87
88
88
88
88
Mean
14.493
7.591
0.670
0.138
0.257
88
88
88
88
0.705
0.284
0.091
0.148
11
0.459
0.454
0.289
0.357
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
The main firm characteristic of interest is the composition of the workforce. We
measure to what extent a firm has feminised their workforce by considering the ratio of
women to total number of employees. Since the Goldin-Sokoloff model, in which female
labour is complimentary to mechanization and ever increasing division of labour, predicts the
employment of children to be a parallel trend, we also control for the share of each firms
workforce that is made up of children5. In order to avoid any spurious relationships that may
arise as a result of using ratios as independent variables (see Kronmal 1993) we add the
numerator (number of women/children) and denominator (1/total number of workers) as
controls, although for the sake of brevity we don‟t report them in the regression outputs. As
further controls we include the natural logarithm of output in „000 kronor, a dummy variable
for each branch of tobacco manufacturing that the firm was active in (cigars, snuff, chewing
tobacco and smoking tobacco) and the number of horse powers employed per worker (again
controlling for the numerator and denominator). Table 3 displays hazard ratios calculated
using the Cox proportional hazards model.
5 Workers were recorded in the original source documentation as belonging to one of four
categories: men above the age of 18, women above the age of 18, men under the age of 18 and women
under the age of 18. While it can be argued that a boy or girl aged 16 or 17 can hardly be considered a
child, it is what we have. Moreover, since it is the skill level of the worker that is of importance when
testing if increasing female employment was synonymous with wage discrimination or a work process
associated with large scale manufacturing and increasing division of labour, the classification of men and
women into above and under 18 will serve us well.
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Table 3 Hazard ratios from Cox proportional hazards model
(1)
1863-1877
ln(Output)
Women/workers
Children/workers
Cigar
Snuff
Smoking tobacco
Chewing tobacco
(2)
1863-1877
0.790 *
(0.097)
0.805
(0.335)
0.835
(0.325)
1.243
(0.425)
1.408
(0.484)
2.417 *
(1.201)
1.692
(0.724)
0.771 **
(0.093)
0.789
(0.327)
0.835
(0.329)
1.273
(0.454)
1.219
(0.437)
2.605 *
(1.368)
1.706
(0.746)
1.392 ***
(0.147)
Horsepower/worker
Number of firms
Number of failures
Time at risk
χ2
p
(3)α
1863-1877
(4)
1870-1877
0.888
(0.159)
0.290 *
(0.213)
0.52
(0.321)
1.991
(0.863)
1.157
(0.533)
1.230
(0.972)
1.727
(1.066)
0.348
(0.341)
0.938
(0.150)
0.643
(0.310)
0.711
(0.331)
0.937
(0.487)
1.211
(1.018)
1.622
(1.080)
1.643
(1.088)
1.122
(0.173)
192
83
1203
192
83
1203
138
39
628
115
54
644
27.659
0.002
58.018
0.000
16.916
0.153
45.94
0.000
Standard errors in parenthesis. Significance levels: *10%, ** 5%, ***1%. a: only firms active in Stockholm, Malmö or
Gothenburg. Also included as controls but not displayed: number of women, number of children, number of workers -1 and
number of horse powers.
The first two models, (1) and (2), display the classical pattern in which a firm‟s size is
negatively related to the hazard of exit. Being active in the smoking tobacco branch on the
other hand increases the hazard substantially. Somewhat surprising is that the level of
mechanization (measured by horse powers/worker) increases the hazard of exit. The two final
models (3) and (4), uses a specification identical to (2) but restricts the sample by first
considering only firms active in Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg, and then only
considering the time period from 1870 to 1877. In model (3) the share of female workers is
negatively related to the hazard of exiting, although the overall model lacks statistical
significance. In neither of the specified models does the employment of children appear to
have an effect on survival. Table 3 display models specified using corresponding variables to
those used in Table 4 but this time using a parametric model based on the Weibull
distribution.
13
Table 4 Hazard ratios from Weibull hazard model
ln(Output)
Women/workers
Children/workers
Cigar
Snuff
Smoking tobacco
Chewing tobacco
(5)
1863-1877
0.697 ***
(0.089)
0.625
(0.281)
0.866
(0.317)
0.954
(0.298)
0.987
(0.377)
2.239 *
(1.031)
1.144
(0.439)
Horsepower/worker
Constant
/ln_p
2.395
(2.850)
(6)
1863-1877
0.689 ***
(0.087)
0.611
(0.274)
0.858
(0.317)
1.011
(0.325)
0.898
(0.342)
2.34 *
(1.081)
1.244
(0.479)
1.604 ***
(0.113)
(2.548)
(2.967)
(7)α
1863-1877
0.753
(0.132)
0.226 **
(0.168)
0.538
(0.306)
1.452
(0.637)
1.013
(0.562)
1.611
(1.052)
1.346
(0.744)
1.089
(1.359)
1.901
(3.110)
(8)
1870-1877
0.83
(0.123)
0.397 *
(0.221)
0.646
(0.285)
0.734
(0.312)
2.079
(1.173)
2.778 *
(1.659)
0.562
(0.330)
1.157
(0.122)
0.619
(0.851)
0.934
0.939
(0.061)
(0.060)
(0.073)
(0.082)
Number of firms
Number of failures
Time at risk
192
83
1203
192
83
1203
138
39
628
115
54
644
χ2
p
41.38
0.000 ***
186.041
0.000 ***
0.835 **
20.203
0.063 *
1.033
236.478
0.000 ***
Standard errors in parenthesis. Significance levels: *10%, ** 5%, ***1%. Not reported are hazard ratios for the numerator and
denominator used to compute each ratio. a: only firms active in Stockholm, Malmö or Gothenburg.
To a large extent the result corresponds to those obtained using the Cox proportional
hazards model, although the fit is improved. Once again there is no evidence that the
employment of children affects the hazard of exiting. The employment of women does
however seem to have a relatively large negative effect. Model (8) suggests that an imaginary
firm employing only women would face a hazard of exiting that would be more than 60% less
than a comparable firm employing only men, while model (7) estimates the hazard of an allfemale firm to be as low as 77% less than an all-male firm.
14
4. Concluding remarks
The evidence presented in this paper lends some tentative support to the possibility that
the employment of women was a competitive strategy which is consistent with women‟s
labour trading at a discount relative to men‟s. Furthermore, markets seem to have been
sufficiently efficient to favour non-discriminating above discriminating firms. We find no
evidence supporting the employment of women to be a result of a process consistent with
mechanization, the furthering of division of labour or deskilling. There are some caveats: the
results are only significant for firms operating in what has been argued to be a more
competitive environment (i.e. in a city or in the period from 1870 and onwards). The analysis
is at the present limited by the extent of the data. By collecting more information about firms
founded prior to 1863, which we currently only have partial information on, conditions at
time of establishment may be considered. Finally, an extension of the data towards the present
will allow a more precise study of change over time.
15
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