Women's work in Japan's early industrial age -- Keeping "idle youngsters" out of trouble: the 1929 abolition of night work and the problem of free time -- Cultivation groups and the Japanese factory: producing workers, gendering subjects -- Sex, strikes, and solidarity: Tōyō Muslin and the...

The American creed -- The women of the new nation -- Enterprise : commercial and social -- Republican mothers in action -- Social enterprise and the founding of American religious orders -- A market-based social enterprise solution -- The agonizing issue of slavery -- Individualism and social...

Introduction -- Chapter 1: Locating Female Business Owners in the Historiography -- Chapter 2: Women and their Businesses -- Chapter 3: Who was the Victorian Businesswoman? -- Chapter 4: The Social Network -- Chapter 5: Life After Death -- Conclusion.

"This volume surveys the role women have played in various types of business as owners, co-owners and decision-making managers in European and North American societies since the sixteenth century. Drawing on up-to-date scholarship, it identifies the economic, social, legal and cultural factors...