ABSTRACT

This chapter continues the analysis of the importance of gender to entrepreneurship begun in Chapter 7. It establishes that previous studies have significantly underestimated the number of female business proprietors in Victorian and Edwardian England and Wales. It discusses the relation between gendered occupations and male and female entrepreneurship rates. The analysis shows the high rate of entrepreneurship among women, especially for married women, and single women in specific business sectors, and demonstrates how marital status, age and the life cycle interacted with business sector in key occupations for female entrepreneurship. The chapter considerably extends the scale and scope of female entrepreneurship studies.