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Quantifying patriarchy: an explorative comparison of two joint family societies

Author

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  • Siegfried Gruber

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

  • Mikołaj Szołtysek

    (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

Abstract

The notion of ‘patriarchy’ has pervaded the scholarly descriptions of peasant families in historical Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The term has often included many different elements, such as the dominance of patrilineal descent, patrilocal or patrivirilocal residence after marriage, power relations that favour the domination of men over women and of the older generation over the younger generation, customary laws that sanctioned these patterns, the absence of an interfering state that could mitigate their influence, and an inert traditional society that emanated from these conditions. Combinations of these elements have been used to explain the peculiarity of the residence patterns in the East and South-East of Europe relative to the West, but in a manner that generally does not allow researchers to measure comparatively the ‘intensity’ of patriarchy across time and space. In this paper, we propose a handy tool for comparative studies of joint families, and argue that ‘patriarchy’ can be meaningfully measured in quantitative terms. We also suggest approaches for measuring patriarchy, and provide a list of numerical variables easily derived from census microdata that can be used for measurement purposes. To illustrate how these comparative studies can be conducted, we use census and census-like materials for two historical joint family societies from the European East (Poland-Lithuania and Albania). For both datasets, we compute a list of well-specified variables and investigate how they correlate with each other. Finally, based on these variables, an index of patriarchy is proposed, allowing us to identify regions with different degrees of patriarchy within one country.

Suggested Citation

  • Siegfried Gruber & Mikołaj Szołtysek, 2012. "Quantifying patriarchy: an explorative comparison of two joint family societies," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2012-017, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2012-017
    DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2012-017
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tine De Moor & Jan Luiten Van Zanden, 2010. "Girl power: the European marriage pattern and labour markets in the North Sea region in the late medieval and early modern period1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(1), pages 1-33, February.
    2. Miko³aj Szo³tysek & Barbara Zuber-Goldstein, 2009. "Historical family systems and the great european divide: The invention of the slavic east," Demográfia, Hungarian Demographic Research Institute, vol. 52(5), pages 5-47.
    3. Mikołaj Szołtysek & Barbara Zuber Goldstein, 2009. "Historical family systems and the great European divide: the invention of the Slavic East," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-041, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    4. Steven Ruggles, 2010. "Stem Families and Joint Families in Comparative Historical Perspective," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(3), pages 563-577, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Konstantin Kazenin & Vladimir Kozlov, 2023. "Ethnicity and fertility of descendants of rural-to-urban migrants: the case of Daghestan (North Caucasus)," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 69-93, March.
    2. Mathias Lerch, 2013. "Patriarchy and fertility in Albania," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(6), pages 133-166.
    3. Hilde Bras, 2014. "Structural and diffusion effects in the Dutch fertility transition, 1870-1940," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 30(5), pages 151-186.

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    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

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