ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the strategies, the organisational capabilities and the roles of women in the incorporate world of shopkeeping in sixteenth-century Venice. It focuses on the case of several widows of shopkeepers–sometimes anonymous and sometimes very well known by their male counterparts–and on their different activities and varied methods of practising their trades. The census of shopkeepers carried out by the judiciary of the Milizia da Mar between 1567 and 1568 names the shopkeepers from various professions present in all of the Southern European towntown's neighbourhoods. A regulation of states that women and young people paid the same annual contribution to the scuola. Known female business managers are the subjects of two or three statements provided by men who administered or had administered the guild and were supposedly informed on the affairs of their co-workers. The chapter concentrates on widows who provided financial or material capital in the constitution of business partnerships.
