Table 26
Female Sellers of Foodstuffs and Allied Trades, 1911 and 1921
Occupation Northern District: 1911 Northern District: 1921 Southern District: 1911* Grocers 4 19.0% 21 34.4% Vegetable dealers 7 15% Fruit sellers 16 26.2% Rice dealers 4 6.6% 1 5.0% Fishmongers 1 4.8% 6 9.8% 1 5.0% Oil sellers 1 4.8% Rice ginders 2 3.3% Wine sellers 7 33.3% 1 1.6% Tea sellers 2 9.5% 3 4.9% General food hawkers 5 23.8% 3 4.9% 1 5.0% Bean curd sellers etc 3 14.2% 5 8.2% 1 5.0% Fish curers 1 1.6% Congee seller 1 1.6% Meat hawkers 3 4.9% TOTAL 21 100% 61 100% 2 100%*Includes New Kowloon
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The 1921 figures for the occupation of women in the Northern District are easier to use than those for men. Women seem only to have been recorded in 1921 if the enumerators felt they were in full-time employment other than as housewives. In 1921 the enumerators were less inclined to class women as agricultural labourers because of their part-time help in the fields, and more inclined to accept fisherwomen as being in full-time employment, even if they worked from a boat that was also their home, but, in both cases, the same biases still appear as in 1911, even if less strongly. More significantly, the 1921 enumerators were more willing to accept as being in full-time employment women who worked at handicrafts from their home, or who helped their husbands in shops or workshops. Even so, the figures are without doubt flawed, and still doubtless under-represent the contribution women made to the traditional economy. The 1921 Census records the occupations of 12,320 women in the Northern District, 35.3% of all women recorded there; the 1911 Census recorded the occupations of 14,386 women, 41.4% of all women recorded.
Since the 1911 Census seems to ignore those women who worked from home, or assisted in their husband's shop, those women in the 1911