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This essay examines to what extend illegitimacy was linked and even determined by rules of non-egalitarian transmission of family assets and values, as single-heir norm, in past Europe. Family transmission systems and mating strategies could explain why some regions, together with a high age at first marriage, used to present an important rate of illegitimacy: high frequency of births out of wedlock was observed in connexion with premarital work for young people, mostly non-inheriting daughters and sons being employed in domestic service. In rural context, this went with late marriage and/or impediments to regular unions, particularly in mountainous areas, that favoured "bastardy" and celibacy. The analyse of family transmission systems allows a better understanding of extramarital fertility. It is argued that the rural stem family was a main determinant of illegitimacy and marital nonconformism in past Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay intends to revisit the path-breaking lines initiated in England, at the same time, by John Hajnal and Peter Laslett in 1965, particularly the question of "life-cycle service" as a pre-marital labour for women and men in past Europe. Many were the young ones who decided to live for some time as domestic servants under the authority of a master, far from home. Was this occupation a simple temporary job before marriage or a real work? To what extend was this labour "productive"? Was this occupation bringing some added value? Finally to what extend has this activity - that a serious proportion of servants, males and females, kept as they advanced in age - contributed to socio-economic and demographic changes, by producing care and well-being? Given major progresses in historical demography and family models, the state of the art is presented in the first section. The second part stresses the characteristics of living-in domestic service occupation in historical gender perspective, and related theoretical scholarly debates of major consequences at the global level. The third section, based on case studies, shows examples of the proportion of servants in past Europe, with the contrasts between urban and rural populations and the variations observed historically, mostly due to the development of labour markets, since servants' tasks as helpers were, by definition, fully flexible, in the frame of private families and households, in spite of many official regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supranational and cross-national research funding structures bring to the fore the differential importance of national location and gender in such decision-making fora. It shows how gender bias persists in an institutional context supportive of gender equality. The data is drawn from a case study of research funding (€3 million), in a Swedish led, Nordic research consortium. Using documentary research, questionnaires and interviews, it shows that although 45 per cent of all research applications and roughly 40 per cent of those assessed as excellent were led by women, only 22 per cent were funded. Two critical intervention points are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increase in illegitimacy ratios happened all over Europe in the middle of the 17th century and kept on, at least until 1850. A decrease followed up to the 1960s, when a "second demographic transition" appeared. In previous studies, the author suggested that non egalitarian family transmission systems could explain why some European regions, together with a high age at first marriage, used to present particularly high rate of illegitimacy in the past, when non-inheriting young people, males and females were often employed in domestic service and faced impediments or delays to establish an independent household and get married. Further in this line, taking account of family systems and socio-demographic and economic changes, the paper strongly suggests that the long trend in European illegitimacy figures should be considered in connection with a parallel dropping tendency in the frequency of domestic service: the innovating argument that the post-1850 decline in illegitimacy should be considered as linked to the declining attraction of traditional European models of domestic service brings a kind of missing key to a 40 year-old problem (Shorter, Knodel and Van de Walle 1971). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Many were the European towns where remarriage frequency declined, especially for widows, in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article investigates how remarriage models evolved in France, basing our analysis on vital events collected for the fourteen parishes of the town of Rheims in Champagne. A large set of Family Reconstitution Forms for the period 1668-1802 allows the study of remarriage among urban widows and widowers. Through four successive periods of time, we observe changes in remarriage behaviour in this preindustrial center as a case study, in a gender comparative perspective. In urban surroundings, in the late 18th century, strategies of remarriage may have been more flexible than in rural areas. Women were less exposed to family and social pressure preventing them to remarry, discouraging or delaying a new union. The presence of dependent children was always a problem when a widow tried to choose a new partner. It was easier for a man to remarry. A widower used to take a new wife quickly and a younger one, if possible without children at charge. A specific aspect of the urban context was population geographical turn-over and changing labour markets. It would explain, at least partly, the decreasing proportion of remarriages in Rheims. Female urban surplus was a constant, affecting the chances for remarriage, particularly in large European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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