Rural labour, gender and social hierarchies: Peasants’ wives and female rural servants in Austria during the late 19th and the first decades of the 20th century

Abstract

The paper deals with peasants’ wives (Bäuerinnen) and female rural servants (Mägde) in Austria during the late 19th and the first decades of the 20th century), drawing mainly on autobiographical records kept at a rich documentation of the University of Vienna. Much has been written on (urban) female servants and their relation to (mostly upper) middle class women they served, but very little on peasants’ wives and female rural servants, the latter working within a completely different context and for the most part together with the peasant’s wife. The paper examines the dynamics between work, gender and social position. On austrian farms (especially in the Eastern Austrian Alps, where animal husbandry, demanding permanent labour force was crucial to the economy) rural servants usually constituted the main part of a farm’s labour force. There functioned an work hierarchy formally and essentially structured along gender and age. Peasants’ wives functioned as co-workers but also heads of the groups of female rural servants. The latter were not necessarily strangers to the peasant couple. They could be children of agricultural labourers and/or cottagers “protected” by the peasants, they could be (usually illegitimate) foster children having grown up in the farm, distant relatives and even (in fact often) close relatives of either the peasant himself or his wife – they could be their aunts, sisters or daughters. On their part peasants’ wives had usually worked as female rural servants before their marriage and had then similar experiences to the women who worked on their behalf. Questions arise as to the ways various relations and living experiences interacted with work and relations within its context.