Female Enterprise Behind the Discursive Veil in Nineteenth-Century Northern France by Béatrice Craig

Author:Béatrice Craig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

2.3 Retail as a Family Economic Strategy

Tax lists, of course, do not tell us why female-run stores were shorter lived than men’s. It may have been because they were less capitalized and less profitable, but the other indicators we have used do not suggest this really was the case. More likely, women operated stores when they—or their family—thought an additional income was desirable, and when the need passed women closed the shop. What those needs were is of course difficult to ascertain. At mid-century, Tourcoing female retailers were no more likely to have children too young to work than working or stay-at-home mothers, and they were no less likely than other women to have children of working age. 29 By 1886 most either had young children—or had none at all. 30 By then, there were much fewer jobs that could be done at home for pay than in the first half of the century. Most activities reported by working-class women in the 1821 census could be done at home, like bobbin-winding, twisting yarn and the like. Only 20 % declared an activity which had to take place outside the home. 31 In 1886 and 1911, on the other hand, the tasks which could be done at home were scarce. 32 Some of the wage-earners’ wives went to the factory (if they had no young children, or older children who could take care of their younger siblings), and some—the wives of the better paid workers—became self-employed.

Wool-sorters’ wives are a very good example of this situation. The wool-sorters, whose work could not be mechanized, and required a three-year apprenticeship, were among the better-paid manual workers. And yet, in 1886, 60 % of the wool-sorters’ wives worked—and almost all were self-employed, as retailers, seamstresses or tailoresses. Those women did not “need” to work, in the way the wives of unskilled workers with young children needed to work. By 1911, the proportions were reversed and two-thirds no longer reported an occupation—but the reported occupations remained the same. By 1911, two-thirds of the wives of unskilled or low-skilled workers did not report an occupation either (but when they did, they were most likely to be factory workers). Women of the “labor aristocracy” worked when an additional income was needed to feed young children, and when they had no young children to improve their family’s standard of living and finance the sons’ training or education. But as they were more likely to have some capital (savings, skills at needlework, connections), they could shun the factory or the day labor which was the lot of their poorer sisters. The increase in workers’ real wages at the end of the nineteenth-century may have relieved women from some of the pressure to generate a supplementary income. More and more men could support a family, especially as families were also getting smaller. If women’s small businesses were meant to be a solution to a temporary problem, not a career, this could account for the decline of female store-keeping in the twentieth century.

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