On Wednesday 22 October 2014 the book launch of Labouring Lives. Women, work and the demographic transition in the Netherlands, 1880-1960 written by Angélique Janssens took place at Radboud University Nijmegen. Speakers were prof. Jane Humphries (Oxford) and prof. Paul Klep (Nijmegen).

Labouring Lives unravels the huge changes which have so fundamentally altered the life courses of ordinary women over the past one hundred and fifty years, namely the changes in marriage and fertility patterns. Using dynamic data from Dutch population registers and analytical techniques from the life course approach, the book offers new evidence on women’s changing position in the labour market, their role in pre-nuptial sexuality, and their contribution to marriage and fertility change in the Netherlands between 1880 and 1960.

The author reconstructs the socio-economic and demographic worlds of different groups of working and non-working women, and by doing so she is able to locate the various groups driving the changes. Advanced statistical tools enable the author to analyse differences in fertility strategies, stopping versus spacing, employed by various social and cultural groups in the Netherlands. This book leads to conclusions which challenge a number of orthodoxies in the field.

Angélique Janssens is an associate professor in social and economic history at the History Department of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

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