This collection of essays looks at the various ways in which women have coped financially in a male-dominated world. Chapters focus on Europe and Latin America, and cover the whole of the modern period.

Introduction, Beatrice Moring; Chapter 1 Widows, Family and Poor Relief in England from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, Richard Wall; Chapter 2 Survival Strategies of Poor Women in Two Localities in Guipuzcoa (Northern Spain) in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Lola Valverde Lamfus; Chapter 3 Women, Work and Survival Strategies in Urban Northern Europe Before the First World War, Beatrice Moring; Chapter 4 Women, Households and Independence Under the Old English Poor Laws, Susannah Ottaway; Chapter 5 The Economic Strategies of Widows in Switzerland from the Midnineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century, Anne-Lise Head-König; Chapter 6 Mexico: Women and Poverty (1994–2004): Progresa-Oportunidades Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, Verónica Villarespe Reyes, Ana Patricia Sosa Ferreira; Chapter 7 Gender and Migration in the Pyrenees in the Nineteenth Century: Genderdifferentiated Patterns and Destinies, Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga; Chapter 8 Women and Property in Eighteenth-Century Austria: Separate Property, Usufruct and Ownership in Different Family Configurations, Margareth Lanzinger;