Identities – race, gender, nation, and class

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the realities of women’s work defied emerging discursive notions of “public” that undergirded the formation of a capitalist system. Women often embraced these discursive distinctions and tried to formulate their activities using the language of family and domesticity. But as this panel shows, categorizing women’s labor, investing, and entrepreneurialism as private bolstered claims that the “public” interest, as a synonym for public good, might best be served by wealthy white men.