Female entrepreneurship: business,marriage and motherhood in England and Wales, 1851–1911

ABSTRACT

This article offers a new perspective on what it meant to be a business proprietor in Victorian Britain. Based on individual census records, it provides an overview of the full population of female business proprietors in England and Wales between 1851 and 1911. These census data show that around 30% of the total business population was female, a considerably higher estimate than the current literature suggests. Female entrepreneurship was not a uniform experience. Certain demographics clustered in specific trades and within those sectors employers and own-account proprietors had strikingly different age, marital status and household profiles. A woman’s life cycle event such as marriage, motherhood and widowhood played an important role in her decision whether to work, the work available to her and the entrepreneurial choices she could make. While marriage and motherhood removed women from the labour force, they had less of an effect on their levels of entrepreneurship. Women who had young children were more entrepreneurial than those who had none, and entrepreneurship rates rose with the arrival of one child and continued to rise the more children were added to the family.     

The social composition of plaintiffs and defendants in the Peacemaker court,Leiden, 1750–54

This article assesses the social positions of the plaintiffs and defendants who appeared before a small claims court, namely the Peacemaker court (Vredemakers) of the city of Leiden in the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century, a low threshold law court that boasted a quick and inexpensive procedure. Analysis of the social positions of the court's plaintiffs and defendants helps reveal the extent to which lower social groups actively made use of it. The article is based on linkage between a sample of users of the Peacemaker court during the years 1750–54 and a census of 1749 comprising socio-economic data for the entire Leiden population. The court clientele of the Peacemaker court was distinctively elitist. The court was thus first and foremost a forum for an inner group of more well-to-do households who were firmly established in the local community. The Peacemaker court was notably inexpensive and simple in its procedures, yet lower social groups remained markedly reticent to file complaints there, revealing a significant socio-cultural gap between these groups and the burgomasters and aldermen who staffed and maintained the courts.     

The Living–Dying Interval in Nursing Home-Based End-of-Life Care: Family Caregivers' Experiences

Guided by concepts from the living–dying interval (Pattison, 1977 Pattison, E. M. 1977. The experience of dying, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.  [Google Scholar]) this study sought to explore family members' experiences with a dying nursing home resident. In-depth interviews were conducted with 31 caregivers of residents who had died. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Themes that illuminated families' experiences on the living–dying interval were: an acute medical crisis (trigger events, accumulation of stressors, level of care crisis); the living–dying phase (advance care planning, hospitalization, end-stage decisions); and the terminal phase (beginning of the end, awareness of dying). The results illustrate critical periods for social work intervention with families of dying nursing home residents.     

From “Dependent Aged Care” to “Independent Aged Care”:An Important Transition in Aged Care in the One-child Family

Since China began to adopt the fertilitypolicy of "one couple, one child" in the1970s, many demographers have warned thatwe need to be concerned about the aging ofpopulation brought about by this policy andthe accompanying issue of social securityfor the aged. Now more than quarter of a     

Corporate collective action and the market cycle of the cloth industry in Nieuwkerke,Flanders, 1300–1600

This article addresses the connections between corporate collective action and economic development in the pre-industrial Low Countries. It focuses on a micro-historic case study: the textile industry of the village of Nieuwkerke in the county of Flanders. This rural cloth centre witnessed an exceptional industrial expansion between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Following the recent proposition by Bas van Bavel that market economies follow a fixed pattern of development, the chronology of the evolution of Nieuwkerke’s cloth industry can be discussed in terms of three phases. This article argues that the first phase of development (1358–c.1500) was characterized by limited success because of pressure from the city of Ypres. The second phase (c.1500–c.1550) was marked by an industrial boom, predicated upon successful corporate collective action intertwined with the perception of social equality among the village’s cloth entrepreneurs. The third and final phase (from c.1550) was one of stagnation and decline, caused by the breaking down of the collective and concomitant social polarization. The case study thereby closely conforms to van Bavel’s theory about market cycles. Yet, the correlation between economic decline and social polarization should in this case be understood in terms of changing perceptions of inequality, rather than increasingly unequal opportunities.     

Why Health Care Reform Now? Strategic Framing and the Passage of Obamacare

Economic reform and health care reform were both focal points outlined in President Obama's policy agenda, with increasing pressure to address economic and social insecurity given that President Obama entered office during the Great Recession (2007–09). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as ‘Obamacare’) successfully passed in March 2010 in the context of the economic crisis. We argue that the strategic framing of the economic crisis, through reasoning and arguments linking health care reform with economic downfall, is important in understanding the successful passage of Obamacare, and that this is reflected through strategic frames in speeches delivered by the President on health care reform. Health care reform has been successful not in spite of but rather because of the economic crisis of 2008, that allowed President Obama to use a strategic frame focusing on costs and economic problems. The two main frames identified are the ‘market’ and ‘rights’ frames. President Obama's strategic frames specifically surrounding the economic and cost‐containment priority of health care reform are categorized as a ‘market’ frame in this article. He used this frame until the passage of the law in 2010, when the frame shifted to ‘rights’ frames, largely portrayed through anecdotes and focused on the concept of ‘access’ to care rather than the ‘cost’ of care. This is observable through tracking speeches and statements made in support of health care reform between 2009 and 2013.