Wendy Gamber, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860–1930. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. xiii + 300 pp.

Abstract

The Female Economy is an apt title for this study because it offers a conceptual framework for understanding a neglected aspect of US economic and social history. Dressmaking and millinery formed a female economy within the business world, an enclave in which women proprietors employed women in a variety of capacities and served female customers. Gamber emphasizes that analysis of this female economy challenges much conventional wisdom about women's employment and patterns of consumption. She argues that contrary to business historians' assumptions, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the business world was not exclusively male. Not only were women “there,” but, as in wage labor markets, “hierarchies of gender” (2) as well as hierarchies of class, ethnicity, and race characterized commerce too. Moreover, social scientists who assume that mass production and large-scale retailing replaced custom work neglect proprietors, employees, and customers who participated in the creation of custom goods well into the twentieth century alongside factory production and department stores. Also, scholars who portray women as uniformly unskilled, low paid, and temporary workers overlook dressmaking and millinery, which resembled prestigious male crafts more than other female occupations. Finally, popular literature reinforced popular ideologies asserting that business was inappropriate for respectable women and inaccurately portrayed proprietors of millinery and dressmaking shops as “pathetic victims,” working-class “upstarts,” or women of ill repute (6).