In keeping with the meeting theme of “Reinvention,” this panel seeks to highlight new sources and methods in women’s business history. Although important, meticulous research has been done on businesswomen (broadly defined) since the 1990s, this field has yet to make a substantial impact on the overall narrative of business and economic history of the modern period. In addition, the process of drawing global comparisons is just beginning. We hope that this panel will serve a step toward exploring and analyzing the many ways in which women played an important, not peripheral, role in the economy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries around the globe. As Wendy Gamber said many years ago, it is not enough to prove that “women were there too;” if our work is to have the impact it deserves we must consider multiple aspects of their contributions and why they and their enterprises mattered.
Dr. Lewis’s paper uses popular literature and illustrations to explore female microentrepreneurship in Victorian London. Dr. Zimmerman’s study delves into evidence on female partners uncovered in real estate transactions, loan agreements and commercial court cases in turn of the century Rio de Janeiro. Using newspaper articles, Drs. Rodriguez-Satizabal and Milanés-Reyes trace the changing interpretations of women as economic actors in late twentieth century Peru. Taken together, these investigations offer fresh approaches to the history of female entrepreneurship and women’s contributions to the economies of their particular place and time, widening the interpretation of businesswomen by both geography and historical period. In our discussion period, we hope to open up the possibility of cross-cultural comparisons, moving toward a better understanding of the differences and similarities of women’s experiences and impact across time and space.