ABSTRACT
How might we begin to explore the meanings of masculinity in the past? One starting-point must be the workings of business and the getting of money, the exercise central to many men’s sense of manhood and identity.1
In the early modern town, maleness and business went together: the masculine sex was held to be the more rational, and the merchant exemplified reasoned decision-making. Later writers, too, were apt to see in him the man of calculation, shrewd, forward-looking and modern. Feminist historians’ interest in economic history has tended, by contrast, to concentrate on women’s work experience and the sexual division of labour, or on the few examples of successful merchant women, leaving the mysteries of business theory, banking and exchange rates for men to master. However, what we know about women’s participation in the economy tells us about only some of the links between economic structure and gender.
