ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how women contributed to the running of family businesses in eighteenth-century Paris, and speculates as to how and why women were able to occupy key roles in family businesses even while their contributions were largely unacknowledged. It argues that women were indispensable to the success of many family businesses, providing labour, support and acumen not available to guild masters from other workers. The chapter shows how the financial assets women contributed to their marital partnerships provided both crucial resources for these new families as well as a validation for wives' voices in the family business. Historians have described the wide array of female economic activity in early modern France. The economic landscape of early modern Paris provided space for women to participate in and run businesses, and, in fact, many businesses relied on female investment, labour and management to survive and flourish.
