Writing Women Back into the History of French Economic Thought: The Case of Flora Tristan, Julie-Victoire Daubié and Clémence Royer

Abstract

Since the publication in 1973 of Dorothy Thomson’s seminal book Adam Smith’s Daughters, the literature on women’s contribution to the economic thought has grown exponentially. Despite these recent publications, the specificities of the French context and the historical contributions of female thinkers to French economic thought have been rarely studied. The aim of this paper is to analyze the contribution of Flora Tristan, Julie-Victoire Daubié and Clémence Royer to economic debates in nineteenth-century France. These three case studies offer insight into the neglect of female thinkers in the history of economic thought. In line with previous publications, we explore the border of the definition of economics by focusing on the nineteenth-century French context. We then propose some explanations for their exclusion from the field of economics.