What Is Work?: Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present - Paperback

by Raffaella Sarti (Editor), Anna Bellavitis (Editor), Manuela Martini (Editor)

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn't. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Author Biography

Anna Bellavitis is Professor of Early Modern History, Director of the Groupe de Recherche d'Histoire at Université de Rouen-Normandie, and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She has led numerous international research projects on family history, gender history, and labor history in Early Modern Europe in collaboration with European universities and institutions.