Condiția femeii reflectată în registrele parohiale de stare civilă. Studiu de caz: registrele de decedați din Ocna Mureș
Women's Condition Reflected in Parish Registers. Case Study: Burial Records from Ocna Mureș

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyse some aspects regarding the condition of women in Transylvania in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, based on a case study: the Greek-Catholic and Reformed parish registers of death from Ocna Mureș. Given the specifics of the chosen source, the issues pursued were the social status of women, age at death and causes of death, and the data processed belonged to females over 14 years of age. The economic progress of the mining locality Ocna-Mureș determined the gradual diversification of the trades practiced by women, but few of them held a paid job at the turn of the 20th century. The registers continue to largely designate a woman's social status through the occupation/condition of her husband or father, suggesting the presence of a traditional society, in which the woman's purpose was marriage and reproduction. The effects of modernization are beginning to be felt in the length of women's life, the average age at death (of females over 14 years) increases slightly towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century (from 47.56 to 50.5 years), and the diversification of the causes of death mentioned towards the end of the studied period and the increasing presence of scientific terms to designate the diseases suggest a slight improvement of the access to medical care. Until the end of the analysed period, infectious diseases continue to cause the most deaths (especially tuberculosis and pneumonia), and deaths from childbirth complications continue to be present in a significant percentage.

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