Discussion forum Women breadwinners in Gypsy socio-professional groups of pre-industrial Wallachia

Abstract

In Wallachia, the first preserved population census was completed in 1838. It contains a detailed portrait of the Gypsy population (over 48,000 people living in 12,280 households), the largest slave population in Europe at the time. In the census, the labour of Gypsy women was largely under-registered. Occupations and skills appear mostly when women are listed as heads of a household, in about 5 percent of all cases. Overwhelmingly, these women were listed as widows, but that category may hide a variety of conditions of the affected women. The analysis of the women registered as breadwinners reveals a diversity of skills, occupations, and labours, many of them restricted to the different Romani groups. A case study of a community of domestic servants belonging to a large estate landowner shows how the life events of young Gypsy females, including migration, intersected with their slave status and their work as domestic servants.