Women Mean Business: Colonial businesswomen in New Zealand

by Catherine Bishop

Overview

New Zealand’s nineteenth-century towns were full of entrepreneurial women. Contrary to what we might expect, colonial women were not only wives and mothers or domestic servants. A surprising number ran their own businesses, supporting themselves and their families, sometimes in productive partnership with husbands, but in other cases compensating for a spouse’s incompetence, intemperance, or absence. The pages of this book overflow with the stories of hard-working milliners and dressmakers, teachers, boarding-house keepers, and more. Then, as now, there was no "typical" businesswoman. Their businesses could be wild successes or dismal failures, lasting just a few months or a lifetime. In this fascinating and entertaining book, Dr. Catherine Bishop showcases many of the individual businesswomen whose efforts, collectively, contributed so much to the making of urban life in New Zealand.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781988531762
Publisher:	Otago University Press
Publication date:	02/01/2020
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.75(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Dr. Catherine Bishop's first book, Minding Her Own Business: Colonial businesswomen in Sydney, won the prestigious Ashurst Business Literature Prize in 2016. 

Table of Contents

1 Don't Assume It's a Man: Finding colonial businesswomen 8

2 Women's Place and Men's Responsibility 34

3 'This Outlandish Place at the End of the Earth' 48

4 One Ring to Bind Them All: Marriage and the law 57

5 'Good Morning, Miss': The business of education 71

6 A Stitch in Time: Dresses and drapery 111

7 'Personal Offices for Man': Beds, booze and bodies 162

8 'Personal Offices for Woman': A female economy 205

9 The Corner Shop: For better or for worse 226

10 Butchers and Bakers and Cordial Makers 236

11 Pushing Boundaries: Exploiting 'accomplishments' 261

12 Globetrotting 275

13 Forgetting and Remembering 293

Abbreviations 303

Notes 305

Bibliography 363

Index 383