Nineteenth Century Businesswomen: A Retrospective Glance at Women Entrepreneurship

The book examines female entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century. Economic history has long accorded women entrepreneurs a very minor place, relegating them to the status of historical anecdotes. The hypothesis of women’s withdrawal from the business sphere after the eighteenth century has long dominated. However, this view has recently been subject to a fundamental questioning. Women did in fact actively contribute to economic development by occupying key positions in the business sphere as independent workers, investors and entrepreneurs. Businesswomen were no exception in the nineteenth century. They ran businesses of all sizes and in a wide range of industrial sectors.

This book helps to bring nineteenth-century women entrepreneurs out of invisibility, by examining their entrepreneurial practices and shedding light on the role of the legal framework in which they operated. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of economic history, business history, history of law, and economics and management sciences in general, interested in a better understanding of female entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century.

Charlotte Le Chapelain is Professor of Economics at Jean Moulin Lyon III University, France and member of the Centre Lyonnais d’Histoire du Droit et de la Pensée Politique (CHLDPP). She is an associate member of the Bureau d’Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA). She holds a PhD and a Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) in economics from the University of Strasbourg, France. Le Chapelain’s research interests lie in the fields of cliometrics, economic history, history of economic thought, and business history with a focus in human capital, education, industrialization, economic growth, female entrepreneuship.