Abstract

CERVANTES-CORTES, José-Luis. No Record of Occupation: The Omission of Employment of Single Women in Mexico City, 1790. Hist. Soc. [online]. 2021, n.41, pp.235-268.  Epub July 29, 2021. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n41.87226.

Demographic sources present some information gaps regarding the registration of female work because the occupations of many women were omitted in the population censuses. Several authors have explained this phenomenon as an oversight on the part of the census-takers, who privileged the activities of male heads of households. Due to the silences presented by these documents, we used the triangulation of sources, to corroborate whether these women were unemployed or hid their jobs for some reason. In this article we propose an alternative to address the problem of the omission of employment of single women, based on the Census of Mexico City of 1790. For this, we identify five aspects that highlight the reason their occupations were omitted: domestic situation, hidden jobs, subsistence strategies, health conditions, and criminal behaviors. We argue that female employment was not randomly omitted by the census-takers, but rather is the reflection of the perception of women in colonial society, since many of them worked and their employment guaranteed their economic independence. For this reason, we emphasize that the conditions of unregistered occupations should be explored, because the image of female work will be incomplete if we do not take note of this phenomenon.

Keywords : female work; omission of employment; unmarried women; population census; life conditions; Mexico City; 18^th century.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )