Overview

In the past, Western women inhabited a conceptual space divorced from the world of business. Historians have consequently tended to overlook the experiences of women entrepreneurs. Who were these women, and how were they able to justify their work outside the home? The Business of Women explores the world of women entrepreneurs in early twentieth-century British Columbia. Contrary to expectation, the typical businesswoman was not unmarried or particularly rebellious, but a woman who reconciled entrepreneurship with her femininity and her identity as a wife, mother, or widow. The entrepreneurial woman was the product of a frontier ethos in British Columbia that translated into higher rates of marriage for women and more married women working outside the home than in any other province in Canada. Like men, they worked to support their families.

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9780774818148

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Reviews

…Buddle offers rich insights into the characteristics of female self-employment during this period, and lays the groundwork for future explorations of gender and business in Canada…this important book is thus recommended reading for those interested in the history of gender, labour, business, and British Columbia. -- Tina Block * BC Studies, Winter 2011 *

Buddle offers a unique and important contribution to Canadian history ... She seeks not only to incorporate women into the history of business but also to reconceptualize business history itself by asking new questions about gender, business, and the family. Business history needs to undergo a gender revolution. This book will promote such rethinking of the field.<br>- Lori Chambers, author of Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario and Misconceptions: Unmarried Motherhood and the Ontario Children of Unmarried Parents Act, 1921-1969

Author Information

Melanie Buddle teaches history and works as an academic advisor at Trent University.

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