A silent revolution? : gender and wealth in English Canada, 1860-1930 / Peter Baskerville.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baskerville, Peter A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Canada--Economic conditions--19th century.

Women.

Women--Canada--Economic conditions--20th century.

Women--Employment--Canada--History--19th century.

Women--Employment--Canada--History--20th century.

Marital property--Canada--History.

Marital property.

Women--British Columbia--Victoria--Economic conditions--19th century--Case studies.

Women--British Columbia--Victoria--Economic conditions--20th century--Case studies.

Women--Ontario--Hamilton--Economic conditions--19th century--Case studies.

Women--Ontario--Hamilton--Economic conditions--20th century--Case studies.

Economic conditions.

History.

Women--Employment.

Ontario--Hamilton.

British Columbia--Victoria.

Canada.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

viii, 375 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Montréal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2008]

Summary:

A Silent Revolution? explores how urban women managed wealth in the period from 1860 to 1930 - a time when they were thought to have little independence - and shows that women were in fact important players in the world of capital.

Peter Baskerville situates women in their immediate gendered and familial environments as well as within broader legal, financial, spatial, temporal, and historiographic contexts. He analyses women's probates, wills, land ownership, holdings of real and chattel mortgages, investment in stocks and bonds, and self employment, revealing that women controlled wealth to an extent similar to that of most men and invested and managed wealth in increasingly similar, and in some cases more aggressive, ways.

Traditional historiography has highlighted women's fight to acquire cultural and political rights during this period, but it is less well known that women acquired and exercised many economic rights as well. In doing so they put pressure on men to reconceptualize the notion of middle class and women's proper place.

Contents:

Introduction 3

1 Gender, Wealth, and Investment: Victoria and Hamilton, 1869-1931 17

2 Inheriting and Bequeathing: Women and Men in Victoria and Hamilton, 1880-1930 55

3 The Gender of Shareholders: Investment in Banking and Insurance Stocks in Ontario, 1860-1911 76

4 The "fountain-head of all production": Land and Gender in Victoria and Hamilton, 1881-1901 93

5 Stretching the Liberal State: Legal Regimes, Gender, and Mortgage Markets in Victoria and Hamilton, 1881-1921 122

6 Gender, Credit, and Consumption: The Market for Chattels in Victoria, 1861-1902 163

7 Canadian Urban Women in Business 190

8 "A Retail Dry Goods Merchant on My Own Separate Account": Gender and Family Enterprise in Urban Canada at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 222.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references: pages [345]-368.

ISBN:

9780773534117

0773534113

9780773534704

0773534709

OCLC:

191889786