A Constant Presence: The Businesswomen of Paris, 1810–1880

Contrary to what the historical literature has long claimed, French middle-class women did not withdraw into the parlour in the nineteenth century. Beatrice Craig’s research shows that a small but overall stable proportion of businesses (retail, trades and manufactures) listed in the Paris trade directories from 1810 to 1880 were run by women, who were neither ghettoised into ‘feminine’ trades nor concentrated into low-end ones. Most were married, operating independently of their husbands, and widows did not necessarily run businesses inherited from husbands. Contemporary articles of association corroborate this, further revealing that female and male partners were treated similarly in distribution of powers and profits. Craig’s chapter convincingly argues that in nineteenth-century Paris, a woman in business was an unsurprising occurrence.