From Birth to Marriage: Sex Ratios in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Urals

This article analyses sex ratios in late nineteenth – to early twentieth-century Russia focusing on the easternmost frontier of its European part – Perm Province with a population of about 3 million. High sex ratio at birth, in infancy, and childhood has been widely used to assess gender discriminatory practices in several countries, including some European ones. Russia is usually depicted as highly patriarchal with a low social status of women, always subordinated to their fathers and husbands. However, little has been done to study sex ratios. This article presents the first long-term research on sex ratio which relies on county (uyezd)-level information from the 1897 Russian census and the first Soviet 1926 census as well as the household censuses of 1887, 1900, and 1912. The authors also used local statistics based on the parish records with vital events. Additionally, they computed the sex ratios in different groups from birth to age at marriage, their dynamics over almost 40 years and their correlation with several factors including infant mortality rates, religious adherence, and occupations. They did not find signs of gender specific practices discriminating females right after their birth, during infancy or childhood. The research shows that average sex ratios at birth in Perm province were close to the biological norm 105, and its dramatic decrease in the following months was due to the high infant mortality rate combined with the girls’ biological advantage. This advantage, however, ended once they reached marriageable age.