Marriage and Money

For most women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, marriage involved economic dependence. What did this mean for women? For a long time, it meant women were paid much lower wages than men, since men were regarded as family ‘breadwinners’. Women were denied access to mortgages and bank loans and a married woman was regarded as her husband’s ‘purchasing agent’. Marriage meant much more than a wedding gown and a photograph: it meant an economic deal which could turn out for better or for worse.

Barbara Brookes is a social historian whose work has concentrated on womens' lives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her A History of Women in New Zealand won the 2017 Ockham award for Illustrated Non-Fiction.

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