This book examines property legislation and the actual position of women in receiving, holding and passing on family property as daughters, wives and as widows throughout history.
Traditionally the prevailing view has been that women have been disadvantaged in the distribution of property and therefore less interesting as objects of study. This volume challenges this view and explores the securing of property for families or for individuals through transfers in the shape of dowries, marriage contracts, wills and other arrangements, as well as how women used and distributed the property they were holding.The scope of the volume is both urban and rural, analysing the position of women in relation to family property through contributions from a wide geographic area. The chapters investigate the situation in southern and northern Europe, across the Atlantic and Africa throughout the 18th to the 20th century.
This volume will be of value to academics, undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars interested in gender and history and social history.
1. Introduction
Beatrice Moring
2. Property ownership: an indicator of French immigrant women’s empowerment process in California, 1880-1940
Marie-Pierre Arizzabalaga
3. Women, testamentary succession and property in Southern Spain in the 18th century
Raquel Tovar Pulido
4. Women, Family and Family Property in Preindustrial Urban Northern Europe
Beatrice Moring
5. Authority over the whole estate - a study of applications to remain in undivided estate, Norway 1814-1851
Hilde Sandvik
6. Ante nuptial contracts, marriage and female agency in Cape Town 1924-1961
Amy Rommelspacher
7. Women and property in pre-unification Italy: a long-term overview of norms and practices
Beatrice Zucca Micheletto
8. The Legacy Duty of 1796: windows into the wealth of widows and spinsters at death in the late 18th and the early 19th century
Lloyd Bonfield
9. Property ownership by widows, a study of nineteenth century inheritance practices on the island of Sao Jorge (Azores archipelago) Portugal
Paulo Teodoro de Matos and Ana Mafalda Lopes
Biography
Beatrice Moring joined the Cambridge Group for the History of Population in 1996. In 2007 she became associate professor in social and economic history at the University of Helsinki after some years at the University of Essex. Her research interests are women and work, household and economy, inheritance and social stratification. She had many publications, including Widows in European Economy and Society 1600-1920 ( 2017) and Female Migrants, partner choice and socio-economic destiny (2021).
