Código JEL: N65

Textile Wages, Women’s Earning Power, and Household Living Standards in the Yangtze Delta, 1756–c.1930.

1. Introduction In his seminal book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen (2000) distinguishes two definitions of women’s agency and equality: “intrinsic” (for the good of a woman’s position itself) and “instrumental” (for the benefit of the economy and society as a whole). Studying the instrumental as well as the intrinsic aspects of women’s economic activities in […]