Las mujeres y el patrimonio en dos comunidades costeras de las Rías Baixas

Abstract

In peasant fishing societies of western Atlantic Galicia women played an essential role in the whole process of transmission of patrimony. The inheritance system, potentially equalitarian, privileged in fact the famale heirs. The specific model of social reproduction was closely related with the productive function of women, with their position in the care of the elderly and with the high female surplus owing to the migration of men, to the overmortality connected with fishing and to the restricted nuptiality and the very high female celibacy ratios that follow. Therefore, gendered roles and women's subordinate position were, necessarily, reformulated.