Product Description: The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed significant developments in the structure, organization, and expansion of financial markets and opportunities for investment in Britain and its empire. But very little is known about how men and women engaged with these markets and with new opportunities for money-making...read more

Product Description: Feminist scholars have long pointed out the relevance of the unpaid work that goes on within European households in sustaining the well-being of the continent's populations. However, care work and domestic labour continue to be largely unremunerated and unequally distributed by gender...read more

Looking at women, business and finance in the nineteenth century, this book challenges our traditional understanding of "separate spheres" whereby men operated in the public world of work and women in the private realm of the domestic. Drawing on case studies throughout Europe, the authors reveal that there was much greater diversity in women's economic experience across all social strata than has previously been understood. International contributors take a new look at women's roles in finance and investment, family-owned businesses, retailing, service activities, and the artisanal trades. They reveal that elite and middle-class women often manipulated financial resources in a highly sophisticated manner. We learn about women in the accommodation business in London, female entrepreneurs in Italy, prostitutes in Germany, family businesses in Sweden, women in publishing in Spain and much more.

Product Description: The history of welfare provision has generally focused on the rise of the so-called welfare state and institutional provision for the poor. Recent studies have begun to look beyond the state to other ways in which assistance, care, and support were provided in the past, but the focus remains primarily on the poor...read more

Product Description: Property is central to any historical analyses of production, reproduction and consumption. It lies at the heart of discussions of material culture, class relations and the household economy. Recent work has begun to look beyond the acquisition and possession of goods to examine what the disposal, transmission and giving of property might tell us about changing society and culture...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)