Risk, success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England

Jennifer Aston, Paolo Di Martino

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)
32 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article analyses female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Traditional views on female entrepreneurship in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England point towards a decline in the number and relevance of women as business owners in comparison to the eighteenth century, and their retreat into a ‘separate sphere’ away from the world of trade and production. Recent studies, however, have deeply challenged this view, suggesting that women still played an important role as entrepreneurs during industrialization and beyond. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain unanswered with regard to the features of female entrepreneurship during these phases of British history, and issues such as scale of operation, attitude to risk, credit structure, and managerial styles are still widely debated. Using original sources, this article provides a novel view on these issues, analysing female entrepreneurship from the perspective of bankruptcy. Analysing statistics on women's bankruptcy derived from Board of Trade reports, as well as a sample of archival cases, this article argues that overall female business owners traded in ways similar to their male counterparts in terms of business size, risk-taking, and, eventually, success.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)837-858
Number of pages22
JournalEconomic History Review
Volume70
Issue number3
Early online date30 Mar 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2017
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Risk, success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this