Careers of men and women in the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

This thesis studies the process of status attainment during the careers of men and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the influence of modernization processes on that process of status attainment. During the decades following World War II, the Western world saw an increasing confidence among the working population and social scientists alike that most people would have occupational careers characterized by upward mobility and by ‘good jobs’. The breeding ground for this idea is commonly dated to the mid- to late nineteenth century, a period characterized by tremendous economic, social and institutional change, including industrialization, mass communication and educational expansion. These modernization processes are expected to have caused changes in status attainment over the course of people’s careers. Across the social spectrum, the population at large is predicted to have had more successful careers. I study the development of occupational status over people’s careers in the period 1865 to 1940. I explain career success by studying the effects of individual characteristics, such as experience and social background, and the influence of regional modernization processes, such as educational expansion and industrialization. Moreover, I assess whether the effects of individual characteristics on career attainment changed over time and according to regional modernization processes. Unlike research focusing on specific occupational groups and localities, this dissertation uses data on the careers of a random sample of the male and female population nationwide. The Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) contains information on the occupational careers of 8,291 men and 4,611 women who were present on the labour market between 1865 and 1940. The HSN is an excellent new database for the longitudinal study of male and female careers, covering the whole of the Netherlands. To include modernization processes at a regional level we have consulted several sources to collect data on regional modernization processes, such as industrialization, educational expansion and mass transport. The sources generally comprise official statistics or registers, and include the annual reviews on educational participation (Verslagen voor het hoger, middelbaar en lager onderwijs) and safety reports on steam engines drawn from the ‘Registers of the Dutch Department for Steam Engineering’. In addition to studying the careers of individuals, I study one of the mechanisms expected to have brought about changes in individual mobility outcomes: the hiring behaviour of employers. According to theories of industrialism, modernization processes caused employers to recruit employees increasingly on the basis of achieved characteristics, such as qualifications and experience, rather than ascribed characteristics, such as religious affiliation and social background. I study ascription- and achievement-based hiring by analysing the requirements stipulated by employers in job advertisements in Dutch newspapers in the period 1870 to 1939. One main conclusion is that individual differences in resources e.g., experience and schooling were clearly important for status attainment of men and women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Another is that while the classic expectation of increasing career success due to modernization processes was supported, no indication was found that the mechanisms of status attainment changed in response to modernization processes