This book examines property legislation and the actual position of women in receiving, holding and passing on family property as daughters, wives and as widows throughout history.

Beatrice Moring joined the Cambridge Group for the History of Population in 1996. In 2007 she became associate professor in social and economic history at the University of Helsinki after some years at the University of Essex. Her research interests are women and work, household and economy, inheritance and social stratification. She had many publications, including Widows in European Economy and Society 1600-1920 ( 2017) and Female Migrants, partner choice and socio-economic destiny (2021).

1. Introduction

Beatrice Moring

2. Property ownership: an indicator of French immigrant women's empowerment process in California, 1880-1940

Marie-Pierre Arizzabalaga

3. Women, testamentary succession and property in Southern Spain in the 18th century

Raquel Tovar Pulido

4. Women, Family and Family Property in Preindustrial Urban Northern Europe

Beatrice Moring

5. Authority over the whole estate - a study of applications to remain in undivided estate, Norway 1814-1851

Hilde Sandvik

6. Ante nuptial contracts, marriage and female agency in Cape Town 1924-1961

Amy Rommelspacher

7. Women and property in pre-unification Italy: a long-term overview of norms and practices

Beatrice Zucca Micheletto

8. The Legacy Duty of 1796: windows into the wealth of widows and spinsters at death in the late 18th and the early 19th century

Lloyd Bonfield

9. Property ownership by widows, a study of nineteenth century inheritance practices on the island of Sao Jorge (Azores archipelago) Portugal

Paulo Teodoro de Matos and Ana Mafalda Lopes