Why do young men born in many small villages in Spain tend, at the end of the twentieth century, to stay there to live, often remaining unmarried, while young women from the same villages tend to leave? In Gender, Work, and Property, Nancy Konvalinka explores this phenomenon using the case of one small village in northwestern Spain, and she extrapolates her findings there to understand similar processes elsewhere in Europe.

The changes in this village are analyzed and documented through long-term ethnographic research, participant observation, interviews, kinship diagrams, life-course models, and archive study in order to help bring the village alive for the reader.