Women leaders in industry in nineteenth-century France: The case of Amélie de Dietrich

Herrade Igersheim and Charlotte Le Chapelain ()
Additional contact information
Charlotte Le Chapelain: CLHDPP - Centre lyonnais d'Histoire du droit et de la pensée politique - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This article traces the history of Amélie de Dietrich in her role (1806 to 1855) as the head of one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Europe: the De Dietrich Company. Economic history has long given a very minor place to women entrepreneurs. Recent analyses nevertheless tend to show that women business leaders were not exceptions in the nineteenth century. This paper is a further attempt to bring women entrepreneurs – and their contribution to the industrial take-off – out of invisibility. Amélie de Dietrich took important strategic decisions to adapt the company to the new economic opportunities which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her choices were decisive for the future of the company; what is more, she succeeded in restoring the familial ownership. Drawing on Amélie de Dietrich's own unpublished correspondence, this contribution examines the factors that explain her success in imposing herself as a Maître des Forges.

Keywords: French industrial revolution; Entrepreneurship; Invisible women; De Dietrich Company (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Business History, 2024, 66 (5), pp.1214-1237. ⟨10.1080/00076791.2022.2098951⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03932370

DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2022.2098951

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().