Historical slavery: Predominantly female?

Alkahest

Banned
The slaves imported via the trans-Atlantic slave trade were mostly male, as strong men were in high demand for physically straining plantation labor. Based on this, it would seem sensible to assume that earlier cultures would also have preferred male slaves.

However, that's not the impression I get from reading about those societies. The Arab slave trade mostly involved female slaves. Reading Homer, we learn that the women of Troy were enslaved while the men were killed. In Ireland, the main unit of currency before money was the cumal, or female slave, not the mug.

Would it be accurate to say that most slave-owning societies before the New World plantation economies preferred female slaves to males? In which cultures were most slaves men, and in which were most women? And why?
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Slaves were usually used for domestic work. Thus women and children were the best slaves. Both the Romans and the Arabs tested mass male slavery for agriculture work, it ended with mass revolts. Even the soldiers in slave armies were bought as young boys. But before the Caribbean plantation economy I'd say that most slaves were female.
 
However, that's not the impression I get from reading about those societies. The Arab slave trade mostly involved female slaves.
Not really, male slaves were also researched by Islamic slavers : for the same kind of work than in european Americas (plantations, farming), or domesticity (workers, private armies). In fact you may had a more important traffic due to the arabic custom to castrate male slaves.

Reading Homer, we learn that the women of Troy were enslaved while the men were killed.
Well, considering it's an epic poem and cautions taken, there's a difference there : it wasn't a raid but a full war. You don't want former, experienced, warrior as slaves.

Durthermore, Greek Dark Ages didn't used slavery as intensively than later period but more in a domestic fashion (as in, pre-roman Gaul)

In Ireland, the main unit of currency before money was the cumal, or female slave, not the mug.
There's a difference between currency, and from exchange mesure : for instance, cumal was a value mesure, but not used for payment when mug was.
A female slave, in age to procreate had more value, for obvious reasons.
 
The answer is liable to partly depend on what you define as a slave, but unfree labour has historically been a female lot more than a male one. Only under certain circumstances can a society emerge that *can* keep adult male slaves in large numbers. You need strong institutions to maintain them in bondage. An individual adult man can probably control a woman through physical intimidation, but not a man, and you had to ensure runaways do not blend into the general population, which unattached women found much harder than unattached men historically. Then there needs to be demand for their labour, which has usually been much more acute in low-status household jobs. Most societies globally are also well suited to keeping women subservient because basically, it was the ideal anyway.

On the other hand, the lot of women in many historical societies was such that it is hard to distinguish it from actual slavery. Is an epouse militaire in a nineteenth-century colonial campaign a slave? The French authorities didn't think so, but it certainly matches most established definitions. I'd say that if you use a narrow, prototypical definition of slave, you will find more men than women, but that is going to be largely because the prototypical definition was created with men in mind. Women in subservience were so normal they didn't register in most cases, and they most likely outnumbered men in most slaveowning societies.
 
A large minority of field workers in the plantations were female

Sorry, but I found this kinda funny (maybe it's the way my mind works).

Wouldn't anything between 1%-49.9% of females in a group be a 'large minority' - i.e. with options being 'male' or 'female' one has to be the majority and the rest 'the large minority' (no matter how big).

Yes, I'm being pedantic :)
 
Sorry, but I found this kinda funny (maybe it's the way my mind works).

Wouldn't anything between 1%-49.9% of females in a group be a 'large minority' - i.e. with options being 'male' or 'female' one has to be the majority and the rest 'the large minority' (no matter how big).

Yes, I'm being pedantic :)

sigh...........:p

Some islands had over 50% of field workers as female in the sugar plantations. Some slave owners prefered women to men in the fields as they were seen to be more conscientious workers. I don't believe this was true across all plantations thats why it was a "large minority" (25-50% by my guess)
 
I would not be surprised if historical slave populations favored females over males. That would be because large number of slaves were only captured after armies had killed a lot of the adult male population in war.

Any large group of adult males, especially any defeated in war, would need to be watched very closely. Hard work in the mines or other physically exhausting activity would be necessary to burn off excess energy.

However, male children raised as slaves would be less likely to revolt when they grew up. At that point, the male to female ratio would likely begin to normalize.
 
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