Reassessing Women’s Participation in Entrepreneurial Activities in the Nineteenth Century: A Review of the Literature

Réévaluer la participation des femmes aux activités entrepreneuriales au dix-neuvième siècle: une revue de la littérature

Sonia Baijot () and Charlotte Le Chapelain ()
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Sonia Baijot: UJML3 Droit - Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 - Faculté de Droit - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon
Charlotte Le Chapelain: UJML3 Droit - Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 - Faculté de Droit - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon, MSH LSE - Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Lyon Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - IEP Lyon - Sciences Po Lyon - Institut d'études politiques de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Nineteenth-century businesswomen were almost entirely neglected, the historiography having adopted the hypothesis of the withdrawal of women from the business sphere after the eighteenth century. A growing body of literature is challenging this view, claiming that women did in fact actively contribute to the industrialization process and occupied key positions as investors and entrepreneurs, and revealing the constant and non-negligible presence of women at the head of businesses. This article reviews recent literature on women entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, we analyze the reasons invoked by recent studies in order to explain why female entrepreneurship has so long remained ignored. The separate spheres ideology, the rise of industrialization, legal systems, the narrow definition of entrepreneurship and the issue of the sources might have contributed to maintain the idea that women would have withdrawn from business. On the other hand, we review the methods used in the recent revisionist literature in order to identify women entrepreneurs in the historical records and to assess the importance of their participation in entrepreneurial activities. Whereas some sources (tax rolls, censuses, directories, articles of association, etc.) help drawing general conclusions about female entrepreneurship supporting quantitative research, others (private family papers and objects, newspapers and advertisements, public and legal records) are particularly helpful for qualitative investigations permitting to draw in-depth portraits of these women.

Keywords: Female entrepreneurship; nineteenth century; separate spheres ideology; sources; methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-his, nep-mfd and nep-sbm
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03932307v1
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Published in Œconomia - History/Methodology/Philosophy, 2022, 12 (3), pp.405-442. ⟨10.4000/oeconomia.13358⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03932307

DOI: 10.4000/oeconomia.13358

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