Gender and inheritance patterns in rural Europe: Women as wives, widows, daughters and sisters

The paper presents a broad historical analysis of literature on European rural societies, which started in the 1970s until the 1990s, and produced a host of information regarding kinship, the variety of inheritance patterns, and local legal systems. Those issues were all dealing with what was then called the "social division of sexes" inside domestic groups. If not addressed directly, the topic of gender, however, was present, as greatly influenced by Jack Goody's position regarding women's position in diverging devolution patterns in relation to the diversity of economic activities, should they be agriculturalists or pastoralists. When re-examined under the new scope of gender, these rich monographies yield a host of information on the possibility for women's agency, although set in a strict patriarchal context.