The case study

The Republic of Venice is an intriguing case, especially from a comparative perspective. A pivotal hub of international trade since the Middle Ages, its manufacturing sector developed in both urban and rural areas. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the period most relevant to this study – the Republic experienced a reconfiguration within the European economy. Some research suggests a relative decline, while other research argues for the existence of a period of transition in which the Venetian economy retained significant dynamism.Footnote ¹²

It will be important to explore how gender division in terms of labour was influenced by these phenomena and, conversely, how it contributed to the broader economy. What we do know is that, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, numerous industries in both rural and urban settings drew women and children into the workforce: ribbon making, lace making, knitting, and silk twisting.Footnote ¹³ What remains unclear, however, is the magnitude of this phenomenon and whether and, if so, how it affected the broader dynamics of the economy.

The Padua district is one of the largest territories in the Republic of Venice. Demographically, it saw the greatest population increase in the Veneto region, with the population increasing by 195%, from 118,088 in 1548 (152,163 including the city of Padua) to 231,048 in 1766 (271,348 with Padua included). After the plague of 1575–1577, which caused minimal losses in rural areas, population growth occurred mainly in the countryside. However, the plague of the 1630s’ effects were devastating, with mortality rates between 22 and 40% (only 101,780 inhabitants were counted in 1630). Nevertheless, from the 1640s onwards, population levels increased again, reaching pre-plague levels by 1660 (167,555). After a brief period of stagnation from 1680 to 1710 due to smallpox epidemics and subsistence crises, population growth resumed at a high rate from the 1740s onwards. ^{Footnote 14}

In terms of agriculture, the Padua region became closely tied to the influx of Venetian capital from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, triggering a land rush, particularly in the southern parts of the territory, where reclamation projects led to Venetian ownership of about 45% of arable land.Footnote ¹⁵ This led to a loss of bargaining power for rural populations and the decline, if not the disappearance, of small peasant property. The preferred method of land tenure was short- to medium-term leases, with payments in kind, tributes, or cash; direct cultivation accounted for around 10% of land tenure cases, while sharecropping was rare and limited to contracts no longer than five years. Emphyteusis was paid in money rather than in kind. From the seventeenth century onwards, cereals, including maize, and industrial crops, such as hemp, flax, and mulberry, spread widely.Footnote ¹⁶ By the early eighteenth century, 84% of land was under arable cultivation, 10% was used for pasture, 5.8% was wetlands, and only 0.2% was forest. The Padua district was the main grain producer in the Republic, with its products being destined for Venice or foreign markets. Although livestock farming was well below the Republic’s average, viticulture grew during the eighteenth century, especially in the Euganean Hills, along with industrial crops such as hemp (Este and Montagnana), mulberry (Este, Monselice, and Cittadella), and flax (Piove di Sacco and Conselve).Footnote ¹⁷

While agriculture was predominant, some manufacturing activities emerged that were geographically specialised. These were often linked to the availability of raw materials or watercourses that connected rural areas with Padua and Venice. The Montagnana and Este areas specialised in hemp processing for the Venetian Arsenal,Footnote ¹⁸ the Euganean Hills and southern Padua in silk ribbon making,Footnote ¹⁹ the southeastern and eastern areas (Piove di Sacco and Oriago) in linen and cotton textiles,Footnote ²⁰ and the northern areas near the city in wool spinning and weaving.Footnote ²¹

This case study is particularly well suited to examining women’s economic activities, particularly in relation to proto-industry. It will allow us to see, for example, whether an area with a strong cereal-based economy, in which labour was concentrated between April and November, enabled the development of secondary activities and, if so, with what intensity and at what pace during the year and throughout the day this occurred. Furthermore, the demographic growth and fragmentation of small landholdings over the centuries will allow us to assess whether the population was pushed, either voluntarily or forcibly, toward non-agricultural sectors to supplement its income.

Sources and methodology

To measure the performance of an economy, all activities within well-defined production boundaries are assessed. These boundaries primarily include market production activities, largely overlooking domestic production tasks. The reason given for excluding the latter is that housework has a limited impact on the economy. However, care and housework, which are largely dominated by women, are essential for household subsistence and the reproduction of labour power. It is clear, therefore, that this oversight has significant repercussions regarding our ability to fully appreciate the structure of an economy. It means both overlooking a broad array of economic activities that contribute to overall economic performance,Footnote ²² and also underestimating women’s contributions to the workforce and impact on both the household and the broader economy.

Over the past thirty years, there has been a push to include some care work activities in economic activity measurements. Integrating these activities into economic indicators is challenging, as housework generally falls within the informal economy and is typically unpaid, making it difficult to measure using traditional tools. To address this, economists have revisited the writings of Margaret Reid, who, in 1934, suggested considering activities that could be substituted with the paid work of a third party as part of production.Footnote ²³ Essentially, if an activity crucial for household subsistence can be replaced with wage labour, then it should be fully recognised as part of production and included in economic performance assessments. Although challenging to implement, this approach allows for more accurate macroeconomic indicators and the collection of better information on the workforce, particularly regarding female participation.

Although it was developed to study the economic dynamics of contemporary economies, this approach is particularly valuable in examining pre-industrial economies. In studying these earlier economies, we encounter the same issues of underestimating housework and, notably, the role of women in the workforce. Tracking housework is not a straightforward task. It is challenging today, even though economists have access to time-use surveys specifically designed to study the amounts of time spent by women and men in care work, paid work, social life, and self-care (leisure and rest). This challenge is even greater for pre-industrial periods, for which we have no such tools.Footnote ²⁴

As a result, historians have had to rely on alternative sources to extract information about the rhythms of life for past populations. Notably, within European historiography, criminal trial records have proven to be particularly fortuitous.Footnote ²⁵ The testimonies of victims and witnesses provide us with a vivid glimpse into the daily lives of pre-industrial populations. Directly or indirectly, those questioned as witnesses inform us about their personal lives, interpersonal relationships, social lives, economic conditions, and health status. In addition, they offer numerous details regarding their work activities throughout the course of their day and, sometimes, even throughout the seasons or from one year to another.

Our work has been inspired by the methodologies mentioned in the Introduction, which have been developed in various ways by Sheilagh Ogilvie, Maria Ågren, Jane Whittle, and Mark Hailwood. In particular, we followed the ‘work-task approach’ used in the English Forms of Labour Project,Footnote ²⁶ focusing primarily on court records and collecting evidence only of specific people doing particular task.Footnote ²⁷ A few examples help illustrate how this methodology works in practice. In her deposition before the criminal court of Padua in November 1627, Pasqua Marcoccin, questioned during a homicide investigation, stated: «I was baking bread [at the time]».Footnote ²⁸ A few months later, in September 1628, Augusto Barolo, interrogated during an assault case, reported: «when the incident happened, I was […] cutting hay».Footnote ²⁹ In May 1652, Mattea di Paulo, questioned in relation to a dispute involving arquebus shots, said: «I cannot say anything about the matter […] because I was at home taking care of a sick child».Footnote ³⁰ Although none of these individuals is introduced with an occupational title, their testimonies nonetheless offer valuable insight into their daily work: food preparation in Pasqua’s case, agricultural labour in Augusto’s, and caregiving in Mattea’s. As these examples show, this approach helps overcome two major challenges: the difficulty of capturing unpaid labour and the tendency of traditional sources to overlook the work of individuals – especially women – who lacked a recognised occupational status. Rather than focusing on formal job labels or wage compensation, the method centres on the specific actions individuals were performing at a given time.

In terms of time use analysis, this method resembles modern time allocation surveys, in which respondents are asked to describe their activities at various times of the day to reconstruct their time utilisation. Although the method used in this article cannot attain the level of sample control typical of contemporary surveys, it does have greater control than other methodologies often used in other historical studies.Footnote ³¹ The range of work activities, dispersed throughout the day, can therefore be considered highly indicative of time distribution patterns.

For our study, we primarily used criminal court records. Specifically, we examined documents obtained from the Criminal Archive (Archivio Giudiziario Criminale), housed in the State Archive of Padua. These records include cases involving various crimes, such as assaults, armed robberies, the illegal possession of weapons, thefts, homicides, and rapes, committed in Padua and surrounding areas. We did not limit ourselves to criminal documentation. We found particularly valuable documentation in the archives of the Health Office (Ufficio di Sanità), specifically in reports concerning sudden deaths. Local authorities, generally community leaders or priests of the local parish, were required to report these suspicious deaths to the city’s health authorities. The purpose of this was to ensure that these deaths were not due to the plague or other infectious diseases and that they posed no risk to public health. These reports occasionally provide information about what the deceased was doing shortly before their death, which is pertinent to our analysis.

This analysis focuses on judicial records concerning crimes and sudden deaths that occurred in the rural district of Padua. More specifically, documentation has been collected for cases from villages and towns beyond the city walls, and these cases are distributed across the entire territory (Figure 1).Footnote ³² In total, the dataset includes 1,132 work tasks from 1600 to 1800. Unfortunately, a more extended analysis is not possible, as a fire in the early seventeenth century destroyed all records from the first two centuries of Venetian rule.Footnote ³³

Figure 1.

Map of the Padua district, with markers for the communities included in the study.

Table 1 presents data on the composition of our sample. As is evident, nearly 90% of the observations are derived from criminal records, with the remaining 10% being sourced from death records. It is well known that judicial sources tend to over-represent the male population given that the majority of summoned witnesses are men. The Padua sources are no exception; indeed, 77% of the collected work tasks are performed by men, with only 23% being performed by women. This proportion is aligned with what has been observed elsewhere in Europe, where women constitute between 24 and 26% of the sample.Footnote ³⁴

Table 1.

The dataset

Note: ‘Victim’ indicates that the work task is reported directly by the victim; ‘Witness’ that it is reported by a witness; ‘Third party’ that it refers to a person mentioned by someone else while performing an action; and ‘Third party and victim’ that the work task is mentioned by a third party but carried out by the victim.

In collecting the data, we decided to exclude work tasks drawn from the testimonies of the accused and their accomplices. This choice meant sacrificing a considerable number of tasks that could have been added to the database and deviating from the methodology adopted in similar studies.Footnote ³⁵ The testimonies of convicted individuals often tend to reflect the nature of the crimes for which they were tried. For instance, in cases involving cattle theft, such testimonies would disproportionately mention tasks related to livestock, such as herding, selling, or slaughtering. While this exclusion does not entirely remove the bias introduced by the ‘crime effect’,Footnote ³⁶ it significantly helps to reduce it.

For the quantitative analysis of our work tasks, we have chosen to adopt the classification system proposed by Whittle and Hailwood,Footnote ³⁷ which consists of ten overarching categories, each subdivided into a variable number of subcategories. This system was selected for its versatility and adaptability to our context, as its layered structure allows for a detailed and granular analysis while also ensuring that the results are easily comparable with those in the previous literature. The first macro-category is ‘Agriculture and Land’, encompassing all activities related to fieldwork and livestock. ‘Care work’ pertains to all caregiving activities, such as childcare, nursing, and elder care. ‘Commerce’ groups together all tasks that involve some form of exchange, including those that involve monetary transactions as well as barter. ‘Craft and Construction’ includes all manufacturing and construction-related activities. ‘Food processing’ is a category that includes all activities related to the transformation of raw materials into consumable items, but it does not encompass cooking. ‘Housework’ refers to all activities related to both house maintenance and caring for a house’s inhabitants, including cooking meals, laundry, and attending to guests. ‘Management’ is a broad category that combines both work organisation activities and financial matters, including lending/borrowing money and goods. This macro-category also includes activities related to farm management and public office roles, such as customs officials and city gatekeepers. ‘Mining and Quarrying’ pertains to all extraction activities, while ‘Transport’ encompasses all activities related to the transportation of goods and people. Finally, the ‘Other’ category includes anything that does not fit within the above-mentioned categories or represents evidence that is too general to categorise, such as ‘that morning on my way to work…’ It is worth noting that this final category contains various specific but non-trivial activities, such as those of barbers, doctors, religious figures, and gravediggers.

What women did

We begin our analysis by asking in which activities the inhabitants of the Padua area were engaged between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Table 2). If we consider the data for the entire population, we can see that, unsurprisingly, agricultural activities are the most frequently mentioned in the legal records. These accounts reveal the wide range of tasks undertaken by the rural population. We find individuals recounting being busy harvesting sorghum, maize, or millet; cutting hay; tending to fruit trees or vegetable gardens; and clearing or fertilising land. Agricultural activities dominate overall, representing more than one-third of all observations, but they do not encompass the full range of tasks performed by the population, which was active in a multitude of other occupations. Just over 17% of our database observations relate to trade and commerce activities, in which we find shopkeepers and street vendors selling a wide variety of products, men and women buying food and other consumer goods, and business owners managing diverse types of stores. Another 10% of observations pertain to crafts and construction activities. These involve individuals engaged in various types of building work, digging canals and drainage systems, and labouring in various types of artisan workshops. The remaining 40% of work tasks consists of household and family care, from preparing meals and tending to the fire to caring for children; labour management and organisation; transporting people and goods; and processing raw materials into food products, such as transforming wheat into flour, producing wine, or butchering meat. In short, the inhabitants of the district of Padua engaged in a vast array of activities in their daily lives.Footnote ³⁸

Table 2.

Work tasks by gender

A key finding that is evident from the gender-disaggregated data is that both men and women participated in a wide range of tasks. While some tasks were more frequently performed by women and others were more often performed by men, none were entirely exclusive to one gender. In the case of women, it is also clear that the variety of tasks they performed was not confined to activities within the household perimeter. Housework and care work remained significant and occupied a large portion of women’s time. These activities account for about one-third of women’s work tasks, with housework making up 21.71% and care work 12.40%, while for men, they represent just over 5% of total tasks. However, if only one-third of women’s tasks relate to care and housework, this implies that the remaining two-thirds are devoted to other activities. We observe a strong female presence in agriculture, with one-third of all their work tasks being linked to the primary sector, as well as in manufacturing and trade, which, together, account for another one-quarter of the total observations. Women were less involved in transport or food processing activities, which account for less than 2% of the total. Nonetheless, the data show women’s involvement across the entire economy.

Bearing this in mind, we now examine the proportion of tasks performed by women relative to men. This helps determine whether women’s participation across categories was sporadic or a consistent feature of the rural economy of the Padua district. One caveat is necessary: as in other studies using legal sources, our data are affected by the under-representation of women in court records. Women were called to testify far less frequently than men, and we find fewer cases in which women are the victims as compared to men, leading to fewer records of female work tasks. To address this gender bias, we applied a 50/50 multiplier. This adjustment simulates a dataset in which the number of work tasks is evenly divided between men and women.Footnote ³⁹

The results (Table 3) provide intriguing insights. The data show that care and housework activities exhibited significant gender segregation: care work was performed by women in 88.54% of cases, and housework was performed in 85.93% of cases. Women were responsible for a wide range of these tasks: cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning, and fetching water from the well. Additionally, they cared for children and attended to other family members, such as in-laws, when they were ill. However, women were not confined to these activities. They performed nearly one-third of the tasks regarding food processing and managerial duties, including actions such as threshing wheat or maize and actively pawning their belongings for credit. They carried out at least 40% of tasks in agriculture and commerce, where we find them, for example, working in the fields, managing shops, or working as street vendors. Even more remarkable is the figure for the ‘Craft and Construction’ category, which shows that women completed 56.91% of such tasks, indicating a strong female presence in the secondary sector (particularly the textile industry, as we will see in what follows).

Table 3.

Work tasks by category and gender, with multiplier

It is important to clarify that even in economic activities in which men and women were nearly equally represented, they did not necessarily perform the same tasks. This distinction is evident in the data broken down by subcategories. In Table 4, the case of activities related to agriculture and land is presented. While women accounted for 40% of tasks at an aggregate level, their involvement varied greatly across tasks. For example, fieldwork shows nearly equal participation, with records indicating that women often engaged in physically demanding labour, such as digging and harvesting. By contrast, women primarily carried out tasks such as gathering food and collecting fuel, while farm transport and wood husbandry were mostly male responsibilities.

Table 4.

Work tasks undertaken by women in comparison to men for the category ‘Agriculture and land’

Despite the classical narrative portraying pastoral work as a female activity, it was in fact male dominated. While the documents do contain instances of women feeding animals or taking them to pasture, these tasks were predominantly performed by men and boys, sometimes even by children under ten. Of the 83 work tasks related to animal husbandry, only 13 were carried out by women.Footnote ⁴⁰ The reasons behind this male dominance lie in the way livestock farming was organised, particularly sheep farming, which was extremely widespread across the Venetian Mainland, a territory less oriented toward large cattle.Footnote ⁴¹ Flocks were typically taken to pasture and tended by male shepherds or farmworkers. Male dominance was further reinforced by the frequent presence, in the Padua court records, of transhumant shepherds from the Venetian pre-Alps, who during the colder months moved with their flocks to graze on the uncultivated lowland plains. This broader pattern of male-dominated livestock management is an interesting point, as it closely mirrors the situation observed in England. There too, the management of sheep flocks was largely entrusted to male shepherds and servants, resulting in animal husbandry being a predominantly male activity, with figures remarkably similar to those found in the Republic of Venice. It should be stressed, however, that this was not a universal trend across Europe. Data from Sweden, for instance, reveal a completely opposite reality, where livestock farming (particularly sheep rearing) was almost completely managed by women, with nearly 90% of related tasks performed by them rather than men.Footnote ⁴²

Overall, the evidence presented in this section not only reinforce previous observations, namely that women were present across many economic sectors in a far-from-sporadic manner, but also suggest that women were involved in a broader range of activities than men. While men and women shared agricultural, trade, and manufacturing tasks relatively equally, women also shouldered the primary responsibility for care and housework.

When women worked

In the previous section, we observed that women were active in virtually all the economic categories analysed and that their participation in the traditional economy was neither sporadic nor occasional but, rather, constant and substantial. As mentioned above, the data paint a particularly nuanced and complex picture of women’s work, one in which engaging in various activities was the norm. When, then, did women carry out these activities? Were these tasks completed in the time remaining after fulfilling their care duties, or were these tasks intertwined with other activities?

To answer these questions, we analysed the temporal distribution of activities across the day (Table 5). Housework was performed predominantly before sunset, with over 80% of these tasks taking place during the morning and afternoon. In the evening and at night, fewer tasks were recorded, mostly related to meal preparation and tending to the hearth. Care work displays a less skewed distribution, although there is a noticeable concentration of tasks in the evening, when women were primarily occupied with looking after children. Housework and care work, however, were closely intertwined with many other activities that women performed over the course of the day. Agricultural tasks were performed overwhelmingly during daylight hours, with more than four out of five taking place in the morning and afternoon, and only a residual share recorded in the evening, as one would expect given the nature of the work. A similar pattern emerges for commerce-related activities and management tasks, which were also conducted primarily from sunrise to sunset. The distribution is slightly different for manufacturing activities: while three-quarters of these tasks occurred during the day (nearly half of them in the afternoon alone), a significant portion was still performed in the evening. What emerges overall is a significant overlap of activities, often carried out concurrently throughout the day.

Table 5.

Work tasks for part of the day, female data only

The fact that women’s participation in market-oriented economic activities was not something limited to the time left over after care work and housework is also evident from the data on work tasks broken down by season (Table 6). As can be seen, women’s involvement in agriculture increases significantly with the arrival of spring and is concentrated mainly between summer and autumn, reflecting the heightened demand for labour during the grain harvesting season. During the warmer months, we find many women harvesting wheat and digging in the soil, likely to prepare it for planting maize. With the arrival of the cooler months, they are engaged in harvesting sorghum and millet, crops characterised by late sowing. Similarly, their engagement in food processing is concentrated between June and November, the period when harvested produce must be prepared and transformed. Here, we find women threshing maize cobs, preparing chestnuts to make flour, and processing grape clusters for winemaking. This evidence shows that women actively responded to the demand for additional labour, demonstrating that their roles within the family economy and the entire economy were far from marginal.Footnote ⁴³

Table 6.

Work tasks by season, only data referring to women

Note: The year has been divided according to meteorological seasons: spring (March, April, May); summer (June, July, August); autumn (September, October, November); winter (December, January, February).

The data on manufacturing reinforce the impression that women played a crucial role in the workforce, actively contributing to the household’s capital. It has long been assumed that manufacturing production was concentrated in the winter months, when agricultural activities were on hold, allowing both men and women to invest their time in craftsmanship. The testimonies from the Padua area depict a very different situation. Manufacturing work appears to be well distributed between March and November, while slowing considerably during the winter months. Manufacturing work does not appear as an additional activity or something the household decided to take on during the months when fieldwork slowed. Women go out to the fields to harvest and then spend another portion of their day at the loom, spinning or weaving linen or hemp fabric. They join in fruit picking or hay cutting to store in the barns and then work with silk. All this happens on the same days they also care for children and tend to the household. In the end, manufacturing emerges as a constant and deeply integrated part of the household’s work dynamics.

Who the working women were

After recognising the breadth of women’s participation in the economy, we now aim to develop a more detailed profile of the women who were involved in the workforce. In other words, we ask whether and, if so, how age and marital status influenced women’s engagement in various economic activities. Let us begin by examining the data on work tasks by category and age group (Table 7). At first glance, the data reveal that the activities of young girls were limited to a narrow range. They are primarily active in agriculture, specifically in pastoral work, as well as in a few other tasks, often within their parents’ businesses. A similar pattern is observed among boys of the same age, who also appear to be predominantly engaged in herding. It is worth noting, however, that evidence involving children under fifteen years old is extremely limited, consisting of only a handful of observations. This scarcity reflects the nature of the sources used. While children frequently appear in guild and civic trials, often appearing as victims of abuse or being directly involved in the cases,Footnote ⁴⁴ criminal courts rarely called upon children to testify, as their testimony was considered less credible than that of adults. Although these observations should therefore be taken with caution, the documents suggest that certain tasks for those under fifteen, such as tending to animals, appear to have typically been assigned based on age rather than gender.

Table 7.

Work tasks by age group and by category, only data referring to women

As they grow older, the range of activities performed by women expands. Among women aged 15–24, we find activity across all the categories analysed, though the intensity of participation varies. Agriculture accounts for just under one-quarter of the work tasks recorded for this age group, followed by care work and manufacturing, each at just over 19%. Housework accounts for 16% of the observations. In the next age group, women aged 25–44, involvement in agriculture and manufacturing remains relatively stable, but housework and trade-related activities increase significantly. For women aged 45 and older, the data show a proportional increase in work tasks related to agriculture and commerce, with the former accounting for 29% of total observations and the latter approximately 24%. This is accompanied by a notable increase in the amount of time dedicated to management activities – a category absent in the previous age group but one that, here, represents just under 8% of observations. At the same time, older women almost completely withdraw from care work.

As women age, not only does their involvement in various categories of work shift, but so do the specific tasks they perform. In other words, women’s responsibilities evolve over time as experience and physical changes lead them to leave certain tasks behind and take on others. For example, in agriculture, herding is common among young girls but becomes less frequent for women aged 15–44, who focus on physically demanding fieldwork. Conversely, activities such as gathering food and collecting wood or branches for the fire, which are less strenuous but still labour-intensive, are more often carried out by older women. A similar pattern emerges regarding housework. While meal preparation is consistently shared across all age groups, cleaning is more often handled by older women, and younger women are typically tasked with more physically demanding chores, such as washing clothes and fetching water from the well. The management category also offers valuable insights, showing that organising household resources – either through overseeing others’ work or managing material assets such as lending and borrowing goods – is predominantly the domain of women over 45, likely the heads of their households.

Based on the findings presented thus far, it appears that women’s engagement in work activities significantly increases as they approach marriageable age. This trend is confirmed by the data on work tasks divided by marital status (Table 8). Married women engage in a wide and varied range of tasks, a pattern similarly observed among widows. Overall, their proportional involvement in agriculture and manufacturing decreases as their time is spread across many different tasks. Care and housework duties multiply, as does agricultural involvement, for married women. In manufacturing, married women are particularly active in textile production; in commerce, they manage shops and business ventures; and in management roles, only after marriage do we see women participating in financial activities and supervising the work of others. It is clear, therefore, that married women’s contributions to the household economy extended well beyond the domestic sphere, encompassing both internal and external activities. Their role was crucial to sustaining not only the household but also family finances.Footnote ⁴⁵

Table 8.

Work tasks by marital status, only data referring to women

The work of Paduan women within a comparative perspective

Having demonstrated that women were a constant and substantial presence in the economy of the Padua district and engaged in a broad range of activities, we now turn to a comparative analysis. In this section, we examine how the range of tasks performed by women in Padua compares with those documented in other European regions.

The data presented in the previous pages depict a scenario very similar to that shown by other studies addressing female labour engagement in preindustrial Europe. When examining the percentage of work tasks dedicated to care work and housework relative to total female work tasks (Table 9), we observe that these activities do not constitute most of the women’s work in any case. In the Padua district and southwestern Germany, they account for approximately 30% of tasks; in England, they account for 40%; and in Sweden, 12%. It is important to note that the lower percentage in the Swedish results is due to the categorisation system used, which allows for a more precise classification of housework tasks. In all instances, the effort dedicated to agricultural work was equal to or greater than that allocated to housework, sometimes significantly so. Additionally, the data on manufacturing activities and tasks involving the buying and selling of goods are particularly noteworthy, as they represent a significant share of the total work tasks performed by women. In the Paduan territory, these activities account for just under 30%, compared to roughly 25% in Germany and about 20% in England and Sweden.Footnote ⁴⁶

Table 9.

Share of selected categories in women’s total recorded work tasks (%)

Furthermore, when examining the data on work tasks undertaken by women as compared to men in Padua relative to data from other European regions (Table 10), we find that women’s involvement in agriculture, commerce, and care work is broadly aligned with the English data and is comparable to the German and Swedish data. Nevertheless, certain differences exist, such as a greater participation in care work as compared to Germany and Sweden. However, the most striking outlier is the significant participation of women in the manufacturing sector. In the rural areas of Padua, 57% of the work tasks in this sector were performed by women, compared to 41% in Sweden and 44% in Germany. Women’s involvement in manufacturing in Padua is therefore considerably higher, not just per se but even when compared to regions at the forefront of economic and industrial development at the time.Footnote ⁴⁷

Table 10.

Work tasks undertaken by women in comparison to men (%)

To explain this peculiarity, we focus on activities within the ‘Craft and Construction’ category. Table 11 offers a detailed analysis, showing that for certain tasks, such as groundwork, metalwork, and mill operation, Padua follows patterns seen elsewhere in Europe. The key difference lies in the ‘Textile Production’ sub-category, in which 94.62% of tasks were performed by women, a much higher percentage than in England, where textile work was more evenly divided between genders. This difference stems from the fact that in the Padua area, women were engaged in a wide range of tasks covering the entire textile production cycle, unlike other parts of Europe, where the gender division of labour was far more pronounced. In England, for example, women typically handled the preparatory stages of production, leaving the final stages to men. In Padua and, more broadly, across the Venetian Mainland, the use of female labour at all stages of production was a direct result of the widespread reliance on rural work in the Venetian textile industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While certain high-investment or technology-intensive operations tended to be concentrated in centralised locations, many other tasks remained rooted in the domestic sphere. Wool spinning, hemp and linen processing, weaving cotton, silk thread doubling, and various stages of raw material preparation were outsourced by Venetian textile entrepreneurs to thousands of rural households across the mainland provinces. When these production tasks entered the domestic space, they were predominantly undertaken by women, regardless of the skill level required. Although men typically maintained relationships with merchant-entrepreneurs and organised the work, the practical labour itself was largely assumed by women. In the case of the rural area of Padua, the guilds did not prevent women from carrying out these operations; indeed, silk ribbon weaving was an exclusively female activity.Footnote ⁴⁸ Even in early modern Sweden, women were employed at every stage of the production process. This was due to the domestic scale and low quality of production that made work in this sector less necessary, or desirable, for men.Footnote ⁴⁹ In our case, however, manufacturing was export-oriented and of a high standard (as with silk production). Two other main factors likely influenced our context: the absence of corporate constraints on weaving and finishing products and the presence of production specialisations even at the district level. These conditions created employment opportunities for all members of the family.

Table 11.

Work tasks undertaken by women in comparison to men for the category ‘Craft and construction’

As noted above, this type of work was far from marginal in the overall workload of women during the day. The data reveal that over 60% of textile manufacturing tasks were carried out during the morning and afternoon, while less than one-third took place in the evening or at night, when women were theoretically freer from household and agricultural duties. This demonstrates that textile production was not merely a supplementary task performed alongside other care responsibilities but, rather, a primary economic activity within the household. This work was typically carried out by the household’s most active labour force. Indeed, women aged 15–44, especially those who were married, performed nearly all such tasks, with over 85% of textile-related work being attributed to them.