Female entrepreneurship: business, marriage and motherhood in England and Wales, 1851–1911

Carry van Lieshout, Harry Smith, Piero Montebruno and Robert Bennett

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article offers a new perspective on what it meant to be a business proprietor in Victorian Britain. Based on individual census records, it provides an overview of the full population of female business proprietors in England and Wales between 1851 and 1911. These census data show that around 30% of the total business population was female, a considerably higher estimate than the current literature suggests. Female entrepreneurship was not a uniform experience. Certain demographics clustered in specific trades and within those sectors employers and own-account proprietors had strikingly different age, marital status and household profiles. A woman’s life cycle event such as marriage, motherhood and widowhood played an important role in her decision whether to work, the work available to her and the entrepreneurial choices she could make. While marriage and motherhood removed women from the labour force, they had less of an effect on their levels of entrepreneurship. Women who had young children were more entrepreneurial than those who had none, and entrepreneurship rates rose with the arrival of one child and continued to rise the more children were added to the family.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; women; gender; Victorian Britain; nineteenth century; life cycle; motherhood (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B54 D1 D91 L26 M13 N83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-his and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Social History 4.44(2019): pp. 440-468

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Related works:
Working Paper: Female entrepreneurship: business, marriage and motherhood in England and Wales, 1851–1911 (2019)
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