Women in economic history

There is a common understanding in much of the Western world that, before the advent of second-wave feminism in the late twentieth century, women were restricted to a ‘private’ sphere of home and family, and the ‘public’ sphere of politics, economics, business, war, education and culture was predominantly the domain of men. Feminist historians hoping to chart the move by women from the private to the public sphere have, however, complicated any clear binary between the public and private spheres, redefining concepts such as ‘work’ and ‘politics’ in the process. Recent feminist work in economic history shows that women have always had many roles in the ‘public’ sphere,
particularly in the world of commerce.