«Schism is maintained by women»: specificity of sex and age structure of old believed population in Kharkiv province (1825-1917)

The paper is devoted to the study of age and sex structure of Old Believed population in Kharkiv province in the period from 1815 to 1917. It is argued that the predominance of women among the registered Old Believers in the Russian Empire as a whole can be attributed to the concealment of faith among the Old Believers. Due to the features of female mentality and division of labor according to gender, women more rarely veiled their adherence to the Old Belief. The scale of the concealment of faith by the Old Believers of the Kharkiv province was less than one in the central regions of Russia. That is why the proportion of women among the Old Believers of the Kharkiv province was less than one in Russia as a whole. Sex-ratio of the registered Old Believed population in Kharkiv province during the period from 1815 to 1917 was influenced by several factors: the changes of statistics, dynamic of correlation of the quantity of secret and registered Old Believers and migrations. Based on data of Russian Imperial Census in 1897, the age pyramid of the Old Believed population in Kharkiv province is very wide in the basis, indicating high birth and death rates. It is similar to the age pyramid of the whole population of Kharkiv province and typical for traditional society.