Literacy of Female Plaintiffs and Female Defendants

The analysis presented below tests whether there was a significant difference in the literacy of female plaintiffs and female defendants. Female plaintiffs tend to be less literate than female defendants both in civil and criminal cases. However, the difference for criminal cases is not statistically significant, which may be explained by the small number of observations. In civil cases, 16.7% of female plaintiffs and 45.8% of female defendants were literate; this is a large difference, and it is also statistically significant. One thing to keep in mind is that there are not enough observations from the prewar period to conduct a separate analysis. Practically all of the cases with female plaintiffs or defendants whose literacy was recorded by the court come from the war years. It is not possible to investigate with the available data whether the start of the World War I has changed the literacy pattern of female litigants.

This difference in literacy between female plaintiffs and defendants, observed primarily during the war years, suggests an interesting aspect of civil case litigation after the war began. Before the war, women were less likely to control property than were men. But after the war began, as discussed in chapter seven, women were frequently allocated property of their deceased husbands. One interpretation of the discrepancy in literacy between female plaintiffs and female defendants would be that it was the active, younger, and more literate cohort of females who had been allocated property during the war and thus possessed something others might sue for. Thus, literate women would be disproportionately (with respect to women generally with their low literacy rate) the defendants in civil suits. The literacy of female initiators of civil cases during the war was more representative of the low literacy rate among women in the population over all; thus these litigants probably included both older and younger women. This interpretation is consistent with the view that the township courts provided a means for adjudicating disputes over property between people of different generations and different social possibilities. During the difficult years of war and revolution, older illiterate women could be legally active as plaintiffs and younger literate women could be sued for their new possessions. Because the courts did not register age, it is impossible to investigate this hypothesis using case data.

Literacy of Female Plaintiffs and Female Defendants in Civil Cases, All Years

Two-sample t-test with equal variances

Variable	Number of Observations	Mean	Standard Error	Standard Deviation	95% Confidence Interval
Female Plaintiffs	72	16.67 %	0.0442	0.3753	0.0785 0.2549
Female Defendants	24	45.83 %	0.1039	0.5090	0.2434 0.6733
Difference		- 29.17 %	0.0971		-.4845 -.0988

Degrees of freedom: 94

Null Hypothesis: the difference is zero

Alternative Hypothesis: the difference is non zero

t = -3.0033

P > |t| = 0.0034

Literacy of Female Plaintiffs and Female Defendants in Criminal Cases, All Years

Two-sample t-test with equal variances

Variable	Number of Observations	Percent Literate	Standard Error	Standard Deviation	95% Confidence Interval
Female Plaintiffs	63	22.22 %	0.0528	0.4191	0.1167 0.3278
Female Defendants	38	36.84 %	0.0793	0.4889	0.2078 0.5291
Difference		-14.62 %	0.0917		-.3281 .0357

Degrees of freedom: 99

Null Hypothesis: the difference is zero

Alternative Hypothesis: the difference is non zero

t = -1.5944

P > |t| = 0.1140