Women’s Trade-Offs between Fertility and Employment during Industrialisation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Great study

I would like to see in the conclusion chapters the relevance of this study to current day regions where data is only becoming available on implications of women's ability to work.

When did fertility data start to be recorded in UK?

Anthropologists have shown that in more religious patriarchal societies education has increased awareness of fertility and permitted more women into the labour market. This is especially in MENA and Africa where often not only are contraceptives not encouraged, and not used due to cultural practice (African men do not use them as it undermines his manhood) , they are also not used due to lack of awareness (limited education), not used due to cost, as well as support for having large families.

So knowledge of fertility practices are relevant still in many regions

Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your paper. The work is interesting, and the interconnection of the historical content, labour market, and fertility is undoubtedly unique.

However, there are several shortcomings in the article that reduce its scientific quality. I made some notes while reading:

• The aim of the article is not specified, neither the research questions nor hypothesis. The aim of the article could be guessed only intuitively from the logic of the data analysis, what is, however, insufficient.
• From the analysed data, there is no visible interconnection between the general way of understanding the concept of fertility (as an ability to conceive a biological child) and employment of women. I suggest either to change the main idea of the article (not the influence of women ‘employment on fertility, but effect of women ‘employment on family size (it is evident that employment is not influencing fertility, but the willingness of women to have children, their time dedicated to family, double burden of women, …. ), or to describe carefully and in details link between fertility and family size (and consequently also with employment).
• It is not clear, what is the added value of the article for the current situation in Scotland, eventually in Dundee.
• I recommend explaining in more details interconnection and relevance of presenting both Study 1 and Study 2. It seams that Study 2 is independent from Study 1 and it is questionable why both studies are presented together.

There are also few formal imperfections:

• Add comments to numbers in parentheses in Table 1 (the reader can only assume that it is a standard deviation),
• There is a numerical mistake in Table 1 (marital status, number of employed and consequently number of all women is not equal to total number (n= 305, even. n=815)
• Format of tables must be revised

Overall, the topic of the article is interesting and after the revision of the link between the fertility – family size – employment it is suitable for publication in a journal Humans.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf