Invisibility, Presence and Absence: Scottish Businesswomen in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

Industrialists, businesswomen and entrepreneurs worked in, managed and financed commercial concerns from the smallest to the largest inflecting the economies of towns and villages across Scotland and indeed Europe. Despite the research of numerous historians in Scotland and elsewhere, however, several factors have led to these women being virtually invisible to modern eyes. Gender-blindness from many business historians, with notable exceptions, has created a narrative of the heroic male entrepreneur. Historically also, recording practices informed by an acceptance that men’s role was to support the family and women’s was to create and maintain it often assigned the role in business to the presiding male. And yet women were present and active in business as wives, widows and singletons. They were not always ‘holding the fort’ until a suitable male arrived on the scene. This article therefore challenges this narrative making the case that Scottish women were not only involved in business but also dominated certain sectors and that they did not necessarily withdraw from business on marriage and motherhood. These were not isolated women but part of a much larger scene. The article begins by untangling the reasons for apparent invisibility of these women, moves to a discussion of the Scottish context and how women operated within it claiming spaces as businesswomen. It then considers the lifecycle of women and how this related to their business activities and opportunities. While the focus is on Aberdeen women, and on printing and textiles especially, there were many other women running small and large businesses across Scotland. There is no doubt that using all the tools at hand and applying their acumen and building trust in the community, Scottish businesswomen were active, not especially hidden, nor invisible in the urban setting.