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Measuring the Past: Gender, Health and Welfare in Europe Since c. 1800

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Family Well-Being

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 49))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between economic and social disadvantage, gender and health. The first section summarises existing knowledge about inequalities in the treatment of males and females in Europe from medieval times onwards. The following section discusses the background to the use of height and other anthropometric indicators as ways of measuring gendered disadvantage. Section three examines the results obtained from a number of different studies of the heights and weights of males and females who were born in different parts of Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final section examines the relationship between gender and mortality, with particular reference to nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. The chapter concludes that there is little evidence to show that differences in the upbringing of girls and boys had a direct effect on either height or mortality, but inequalities in adult lives did have an effect on gender-specific health statistics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There is some evidence which suggests that fathers were more likely to sacrifice some of their resources with their sons, but mothers were more likely to share their resources with their daughters (see Klasen 1998: 455–6).

  2. 2.

    According to Baten and Murray (1997: 52), their sample comprised 1,672 legitimately born women and 829 illegitimately born. In their later paper, they said that the number of women was 2,546 (Baten and Murray 2000: 354) or 2,549 (ibid.: 357–8).

  3. 3.

    For more information, see Harris 2008: 185.

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  1. Division of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Bernard Harris

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    Almudena Moreno Minguez

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Harris, B. (2013). Measuring the Past: Gender, Health and Welfare in Europe Since c. 1800. In: Moreno Minguez, A. (eds) Family Well-Being. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4354-0_10

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