Montserrat Solsona

The second demographic transition from a gender perspective

The first part of the paper will outline the ‘second demographic transition’ in Western Europe. The second part deals with the effects of the second demographic transition on household composition,...

The Changing Role of Women in Spanish Agriculture: Analysis from the Agricultural Censuses, 1962-1982

This paper draws a general picture of womens role in Spanish agriculture through the analysis of available census statistics. The paper has three sections. The first focuses on the key concepts that lie behind most of the theoretical discussions on womens labor in agriculture and then moves on to provide a quick picture of the evolution of Spanish agriculture in the last decades. The second evaluates the data that can be gathered from the available Agrarian Censuses (1962, 1972, and 1982). The third centers on an analysis of changes in womens work in Spanish agriculture revealed by the census data, considering both paid and unpaid work. From the statistical analysis it is clear that women play an important role in regions where the family farm is predominant, whether the agricultural sector is a thriving one or a stagnant one. But the results also demonstrate that Spanish Agrarian Censuses underestimate womens work. The basic problem is that the concept of labor that they use excludes or undervalues a significant proportion of the work necessary for the production and reproduction of the family farm which is traditionally done by women.