Paid work: domestic service (Spain)

Until the seventies, the most common paid jobs for young rural women were in domestic service, either in their own village or in the cities, although also, to a lesser extent, shepherding.

A contract for domestic service registered in the accounts book of Francisco Alonso, muleteer: “on 28 of June 1809, Clara Fernández is hired to serve in the house from Saint Peter’s day of this year until the same day in 1910, agreed at 80 reales and the usual clothing and one goat”.

The same book shows contracts for shepherding for two sisters in successive years, 1839 and1840. It is the girls’ father who negotiated the terms of employment. The yearly wages they receive are not significantly different from those received by men for the shepherding work, but are much higher than those in the domestic service contract, although they were also for 30 years. All the contracts include clothes as well as money, and often included livestock too.