Description: Advocating a gender-inclusive approach to the history of work, this book both counts and accounts for women's as well as men's economic activity. Showcasing novel conceptual, methodological and empirical perspectives, it highlights the transformative potential of including women's work in wider assessments of continuity and change in economic performance. Focusing on the period of European history (1500-1800) that generated unprecedented growth in the northwest - which, in turn, was linked to the global redistribution of resources and upon which industrialisation depended - the book spans key arenas in which women produced change: households, care, agriculture, rural manufacture, urban markets, migration, and war. The analysis refutes the stubborn contention of mainstream economic history that we can generalise about economic performance by focusing solely on the work of adult men and demonstrates that women were active agents in the early modern economy rather than passively affected by changes wrought upon them.
Brief description: Catriona Macleod is Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of Women and Enterprise in Glasgow, c.1740-1830 (forthcoming 2023) and is currently researching women's financial management, and the links between gender, poverty and work in eighteenth-century Scotland.
Review Quotes: 'A holistic treatment of the early modern European economy.' Tim Reinke-Williams, Cultural and Social History