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Mirror, Bridge or Stone? Female Owners of Firms in Spain During the Second Half of the Long Nineteenth Century

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Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

This chapter investigates the roles played by female partners in Spanish firms during the past decades of the long nineteenth century and how legal structures and business survival strategies affected the participation of women in firms. It uses data sets created from the Book of Firms of the Mercantile Register, which contains descriptions of founding owners of all registered firms from 1886. Hernández Nicolás and Martínez-Rodríguez statistically analyse the characteristics of female partners, finding that many of them were widows. They discuss the range of roles played by these women by dividing them into three metaphorical categories: mirror, stone or bridge.

This research was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Research, Science and Universities (RTI2018-093884-B-I00). The original database used in the study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (HAR2013-42013-R) and Fundación Séneca-Regional Agency of R&D (15147/PHCS/10). We thank Timothy Guinnane for his generosity, allowing us the use of the original data for this chapter. The comments and suggestions received during the Global Female Entrepreneurs Workshop Program (Northumbria University, 16–17 April 2019) have substantially improved the first draft. The authors thank Jennifer Aston and Catherine Bishop for all their editing work and, above all, for their invaluable support in this project.

Authors listed in alphabetical order. Portions of this chapter draw on research conducted by Susana Martínez-Rodríguez.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Timothy Guinnane and Susana Martínez-Rodríguez, ‘Choice of Enterprise Form: Spain, 1886–1936’, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 34, no. 1 (2018): pp. 1–26.

  2. 2.

    Susana Martínez-Rodríguez, ‘Mistresses of company capital: Female partners in multi-owner firms, Spain (1886–1936)’, Business History (2019): pp. 1–27 (accepted).

  3. 3.

    Pilar Calvo Caballero, Política, sociedad y cultura en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Actas Editorial, 2002).

  4. 4.

    Without being exhaustive, regarding the studies on women and their businesses in the urban area of Catalonia: Àngels Solà, ‘Negocis i identitat laboral de les dones’, Recerques: història, economia, cultura 56 (2007): pp. 5–18; Juanjo Romero, ‘Artisan Women and Management in Nineteenth-century Barcelona’, in Richard Beachy, Béatrice Craig and Alastair Owens (eds), Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres (Oxford: Berghahn, 2006): pp. 81–95. And regarding the business fabric in Bilbao: Arantxa Pareja, ‘Las mujeres y sus negocios en la gran ciudad contemporánea. Bilbao a principios del siglo XX’, Historia contemporánea 44 (2012): pp. 145–181. On the urban areas of Galicia: Luisa Muñoz Abeledo, ‘La participación de la mujer en los negocios del mundo urbano en Galicia (1857–1900)’, in Pilar Folguera (coord.), XIII Jornadas de Historia del trabajo-Barcelona (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2015): pp. 2215–2232. The next work analyses the sales positions in the Barcelona (hall) market: Montserrat Miller, Feeding Barcelona, 1714–1975: Public Market Halls, Social Networks, and Consumer Culture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015). Analysing the female side of the service sector in Vizcaya: José María Beascoechea and Arantza Pareja, ‘Tiendas y tenderos de Bilbao a finales del ochocientos’, Bidebarrieta 17 (2006): pp. 249–265. On the participation of widows in trade with the Philippines and the monopoly of the Manila galleon: Inmaculada Alva, ‘Redes comerciales y estrategias matrimoniales. Las mujeres en el comercio del Galeón de Manila (siglos XVII–XVIII)’, Revista Complutense de Historia de América 46 (2016): pp. 203–220.

  5. 5.

    Among the studies on British female shareholders and women proprietors of financial products: George Robb, ‘Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud in England and America, 1850–1930’, in Nancy Henry and Cannot Schmitt (eds), Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2009): pp. 120–140; Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, ‘“The Widow, the Clergyman and the Reckless”: Women Investors in England, 1830–1914’, Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): pp. 111–138; Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, ‘“She possessed her own fortune”: Women investors from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century’, Business History 48, no. 2 (2006): pp. 220–253; Nancy Henry, ‘“Ladies do it?”: Victorian Women Investors in Fact and Fiction’, in Francis O’Gorman, Victorian Literature and Finance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): pp. 111–31; and Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson, and James Taylor, ‘“A doe in the city”: Women shareholders in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain’, Accounting, Business & Financial History 16, no. 2 (2006): pp. 265–291.

  6. 6.

    Llorenç Ferrer-Alòs, ‘Segundones y actividad económica en Cataluña (siglos XVIII–XIX): reflexiones a partir de la familia Berenguer de Artés’, Revista de Demografía Histórica 21, no. 2 (2003): pp. 93–126.

  7. 7.

    David Martínez López, ‘Sobre familias, elites y herencias en el siglo XIX’, Historia contemporánea, 31 (2005): pp. 457–480, pp. 473–474.

  8. 8.

    Martínez Rodríguez, ‘Mistresses’.

  9. 9.

    Béatrice Craig, Women and Business since 1500: Invisible presences in Europe and North America? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

  10. 10.

    Pareja, ‘Las mujeres’.

  11. 11.

    For Madrid: Gloria Nielfa, ‘Las mujeres en el comercio madrileño del primer tercio del siglo XIX’, in María Ángeles Durán and Rosa María Capel Martínez (eds), Mujer y sociedad en España, 1700–1975 (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1982). For Barcelona: Juanjo Romero, ‘Artisan women’.

  12. 12.

    Aurora Gámez, ‘La Mujer y el Crédito Privado en Andalucía en el siglo XIX’ in Ramos Palomo, Dolores and María Teresa Vera Balanza (coords), El trabajo de las mujeres, Pasado y presente (Málaga: Diputación de Málaga, 1996): pp. 323–336; Paloma Fernández Pérez, El rostro familiar de la metrópoli: redes de parentesco y lazos mercantiles en Cádiz, 1700–1812 (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1997).

  13. 13.

    Muriel Nazzari, ‘Widows as Obstacles to Business: British Objections to Brazilian Marriage and Inheritance Laws’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 4 (1995): pp. 781–802.

  14. 14.

    Zorina B. Khan, Related Investing: Corporate Ownership and Capital Mobilization During Early Industrialization, no. w23052, National Bureau of Economic Research (2017), https://www.nber.org/papers/w23052; Zorina B. Khan, ‘Invisible Women: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Family Firms in Nineteenth-Century France’, The Journal of Economic History 76, no. 1 (2016): pp. 163–195.

  15. 15.

    Article 745 of the French Civil Code: ‘The children or their descendants succeed in the first degree to their parents, mothers, grandparents, without distinction of sex or primogeniture, and even if they arise from different marriages. They will be successors in equal parts and per head’.

  16. 16.

    3The norm contained in the Laws of Toro, previously incorporated into the Reign of Castile, became the Liber Iudiciorum (Visigothic Law), compiled in the Fuero Real and also in the edicts of Alfonso X. (Enrique Gacto, ‘El grupo familiar de la Edad Moderna en los territorios del Mediterráneo hispánico: una visión jurídica’, in D.D.A.A., La familia en la España Mediterránea (s. XV–XIX) (Barcelona, Crítica, 1987): pp. 36–64.

  17. 17.

    Juan Manuel Bartolomé, Vino y viticultores en El Bierzo (León: Universidad de León, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1996), p. 161.

  18. 18.

    Pilar Muñoz López, Sangre, amor e interés: la familia en la España de la Restauración (Madrid: Marcial Pons-Historia Estudios, 2001), p. 365.

  19. 19.

    Ferrer-Alòs, ‘Segundones y actividad económica en Cataluña (siglos XVIII–XIX): reflexiones a partir de la familia Berenguer de Artés’, p. 37.

  20. 20.

    Muñoz López, Sangre, pp. 148–151.

  21. 21.

    Muñoz López, Sangre, pp. 253, 378.

  22. 22.

    Mª Dolores Álamo Martell, ‘La discriminación legal de la mujer en el siglo XIX’, Revista Aequitas, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 1 (2011): pp. 11–24.

  23. 23.

    Article 61 Spanish Civil Code.

  24. 24.

    Article 62 Spanish Civil Code. Also, article 59 pointed to the husband as the ‘administrator of the property of the conjugal society’; article 60 imposed the husband as the woman’s representative, and she was not allowed to appear in court without him. As for inheritances, article 995 only allowed women to accept or reject them with the husband’s consent; article 1263 forbade women to provide consent; article 1387 prevented women from alienating or mortgaging the ‘paraphernalia’ without the husband’s license. Following article 62, all the actions that women carried out without marital authorisation, when it was required, would be null.

  25. 25.

    Article 59 of the Spanish Civil Code.

  26. 26.

    Martínez-Rodríguez, ‘Mistresses’.

  27. 27.

    Using a cost-of-living index, in 1900, 1 peseta was worth €3.67 in 2017 (information last accessed on 25 May 2019 at www.measuringworth.com).

  28. 28.

    Martínez-Rodríguez, ‘Mistresses’, p. 6.

  29. 29.

    Melanie Buddle, The Business of Women: Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901–51 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010); Susan Coleman, ‘The role of human and financial capital in the profitability and growth of women-owned small firms.’, Journal of Small Business Management 45, no. 3 (2007): pp. 303–319; Alison C. Kay, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship: Enterprise, Home and Household in London, 1800–1870 (London: Routledge, 2009).

  30. 30.

    Jennifer Aston and Paolo Di Martino, ‘Risk, success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England’, The Economic History Review 70, no. 3 (2017): pp. 837–858.

  31. 31.

    Roser Nicolau, ‘Población, salud y actividad’, in Albert Carreras and Xavier Tafunell (coords.), Estadísticas Históricas de España, siglo XIX y XX (Bilbao: Fundación BBVA, 2005): pp. 77–153, p. 86.

  32. 32.

    Khan, Related Investing, p. 20.

  33. 33.

    His oldest daughter was replaced—not represented—by her husband, Marcelino Blanco de la Peña, already a significant figure in the business (López Facal 2014, 97).

  34. 34.

    Each example of firm is accompanied by a table, in this case, Table 14.2.

  35. 35.

    Lacavé y Compañía, Mercantile Registry of Sevilla. Book of Firms, 1889, n. 143.

  36. 36.

    Oyarzún y Compañía Compañía en Comandita, Mercantile Registry of Navarra. Book of Firms, 1909, n. 291.

  37. 37.

    Àngels Solà, ‘Independent or in Partnerships Female Entrepreneurs in Spain, 1750–1930’, Boletín Historia y Empresariado 5, no. 8 (2014): pp. 27–33; Juanjo Romero, ‘Artisan women’.

  38. 38.

    Nicolau, ‘Población’, p. 84.

  39. 39.

    Pérez Hermanos. Mercantile Registry of Albacete. Book of Firms, 1917, n. 194.

  40. 40.

    In the Financial and Commercial Companies Yearbook of 1921, we could not find those financial companies: all of them vanished! They were other firms—less—with female names in the name of the business. How to explain this? Maybe the authors of the yearbook changed the selection criteria because it is not possible that in only two years all that private banks named ‘Widow of’ disappeared, even though assuming that the firms were provisional, and the widows acted as ‘bridges’ between two generations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Carmen María Hernández-Nicolás & Susana Martínez-Rodríguez

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  1. Carmen María Hernández-Nicolás
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Correspondence to Susana Martínez-Rodríguez .

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  1. Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Jennifer Aston

  2. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Catherine Bishop

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Hernández-Nicolás, C.M., Martínez-Rodríguez, S. (2020). Mirror, Bridge or Stone? Female Owners of Firms in Spain During the Second Half of the Long Nineteenth Century. In: Aston, J., Bishop, C. (eds) Female Entrepreneurs in the Long Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33412-3_14

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