HHB Working Paper no. 8 explores a new facet of historical household budgets: their potential as a source of information on women’s lives, experiences and economic activities throughout history. 

The paper focuses on women’s labor force participation in Italy’s last 150 years: despite its significance for the economic history of women, long-run evidence for this indicator is still uncertain, because official statistics fail to capture the full extent of women’s labor force participation as we go back in time.

This paper offers a first-time empirical assessment of the existing historical evidence on Italian women’s work, and constructs a new, adjusted series of female labor force participation, drawing from an eclectic collection of sources which includes historical household budgets.