England’s Immigrants Rough Draft
The data set used was compiled by government records, such as tax forms, meaning that the data set is not entirely representative of the amount of women who immigrated during this period of 1330-1550. The very fact that women were not included in some government documents, however, supports the claim that women were afforded less opportunities during this period, specifically economically.
This visualization intends to demonstrate the difference in employment of men and women at this time. Men had the opportunity to learn a trade through apprenticeships or learn a profession, such as law or medicine, whereas a woman was more likely to become an unemployed vagabond than a doctor, lawyer or even merchant.
The purpose of the world cloud is to once again illustrate the lack of opportunity for women in terms of employment. The word cloud which represents men shows the different professions practiced, such as a smith, merchant, brewer or baker. The cloud representing women, however, features the term “servant” most prominently as it was the most commonly practiced profession by women of the period. The cloud is predominately composed of men’s names as well, the names being of the men the women were employed to. During this time, women had less autonomy and were defined by men in society as well as in the eyes of the law.
One Comment
Maeve Kane
You’re using DocumentID where you should be using Number of Records! DocumentID is just a numeric ID assigned to each person, so when you sum them up you’re throwing your numbers way, way off! (If Mary has DocumentID 20 and Bob has DocumentID 21, by using DocumentID to count them, you get 41 people instead of just 2!) Make sure you update your tooltips and all your other sheets too.
Does “unemployed” necessarily mean a vagabond, or does it mean a woman who lived with a man who had a trade? You’re conflating two things there. And why do you think women who did work were more likely to be servants than anything else?
Your word clouds need more context–what are they visualizing? How did you separate them? And what do they look like if you exclude male and female from each? It’s impossible to read anything else in them because those are so overwhelming.
Snooping in your workbook, it looks like you have interesting gendered geography–why do you think that women came from relatively closer areas like Ireland and France? Why weren’t there more women from further away areas like Italy and Turkey? (And in your maps, Residence Town/Origin should go to detail, and Number of Records should go to size). Looks like you’ve also got an interesting story about why people settle in different places–what’s going on in Northumberland that relatively attracts more women?
The color palette is great. Very eye catching without being too stereotypically gendered.