Marriage is hard work

Studies of internal migration in nineteenth-century Britain invariably model employment as the principal force of attraction, yet the male breadwinner economy of the period largely stigmatised female employment, limiting women's work to low-productivity, low-paid occupations, instead prioritising male employment. This paper therefore reassesses the determinants of female migration, and questions whether, in the absence of good employment opportunities, women instead pursed migration strategies that maximised their chances of being matched with a well-paid spouse. The analysis shows that women viewed marriage and work as substitutes for one another and therefore, if employment prospects attracted migrants, so too must marriage prospects. By adopting a spatial approach, this study finds that the drivers of migration were gendered, and that while men were almost invariably attracted by employment prospects, whether women were similarly attracted by employment opportunities was context dependent. Whereas well-paid work attracted some women to places like London, well-paid men attracted other women to mining communities. However, it is also shown that such migration flows were not necessarily evidence of an innate preference for marriage, but of an absence of alternatives. Therefore, whether female migration was a response to marriage prospects, depended on whether female migrants perceived alternative employment opportunities

Family economy · Australian History and Society · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies