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Dissertation Information for Edith Eleanor Sparks

NAME:
- Edith Eleanor Sparks

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1999)

ADVISORS:
- Gary B. Nash

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Ellen Carol DuBois
- Karen E. Rowe

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Capital instincts: The economics of female proprietorship in San Francisco, 1850--1920

Abstract: Because women's historians have focused so much on domesticity, female small business ownership has been portrayed as an outgrowth of household labor rather than an expression of women's intrinsic commercial values and abilities. In this framework, female proprietors are portrayed as essentially domestic creatures--women who simply transferred their domestic skills to the marketplace--rather than economic actors.

Yet an examination of the advertisements, credit reports, bankruptcy records, letters and diaries of San Francisco's female proprietors between 1850 and 1920 demonstrates that women had capital instincts. For in the simplest or most basic act as business people, women had to employ an understanding of the marketplace, their competitors, creditors, and customers. Even businesswomen who marketed cooking, sewing, laundering, and home-making skills, long associated with "women's work," relied on commercial "know-how" and economic saavy, not home-spun proficiency. In short, operating a business required capital instincts, not domestic ones.

Understanding female proprietors' qualities and abilities and studying their commercial behavior, provides us with new insights into the private and public lives of nineteenth-century women. It shows us, for example, that women responded to heightened demand in certain segments of the economy and that their businesses were often commercial responses to family needs and spousal deficiencies. Tracking female enterprise also demonstrates that their fortunes were intimately tied to economic cycles, to the development of national markets, and to the emergence of commercial transformations such as the department store. San Francisco women responded to such challenges with astute defensive commercial strategies. Finally, researching female proprietorship demonstrates that management skills were the bottom line in which businesses persisted and which did not. While only some businesswomen became good managers, historical records indicate that managing debts and credits, protecting inventory and assets, and making difficult commercial decisions was something that all of them did on a daily basis. Individually these insights tell us a lot about why and how women operated their small businesses in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century San Francisco. Collectively they reveal that, in spite of commonly held assumptions, women could be astute economic actors, exercising real business acumen and relying on definitively capitalistic instincts.

MPACT Scores for Edith Eleanor Sparks

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-09-22 11:11:16

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Students under Edith Eleanor Sparks

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None