Women in Business Families From Past to Present Routledge Advances in Management and Business Studies Series

For centuries, almost all economic activity was family-based. The family business rested on the division of labor among family members. Therefore the family was both socially and economically the foundation of the family business. Families were not only production units, but also education and consumption units that conveyed norm structures, values and professional identity to next generation. Although female family members have always been active participants in family businesses over the centuries, their role has often been neglected in previous studies.

Women in Business Families: From Past to Present presents both conceptual and theoretically informed empirical papers addressing three related themes relevant for family business and gender in past and in present: heroic women entrepreneurs; invisibility / visibility of women in businesses; and business succession.

The book Women in Business Families: From Past to Present balances between both historical and contemporary analyses. The chapters integrate the notions of time and gender in focusing on family businesses or business families in past and in present. This volume will be of vital reading to researchers and academics in the fields of Gender Studies, Family Business, Organizational studies, Entrepreneurship and the various related disciplines.

1. Introduction

Jarna Heinonen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen

2. Gender, Economy and Time

Kovalainen Anne

Section 1: Heroic female entrepreneurs/heroism

3. Is She That Special? The Long History of Business Women as Unlikely Heroic Entrepreneurs

Anu Lahtinen

4. The Mistress of the Iron

Veli Pekka Toropainen

5. Female Manager in the Family Firm Hackman & Co in the Nineteenth-century Russia and Finland

Ulla Ijäs

Section 2: Invisibility/Visibility

6. (In)visibility in the Family Business

Henrietta Nilson

7. ‘All the Days of Their Lives’: The Lifecycle of a Family Business

Deborah Simonton

8. Statutory Invisibility: Urban Business Women Legal and Political Rights in the 18th Century Finland

Jarkko Keskinen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen

Section 3: Succession

9. Daughters and Family Business Succession

Francesca Maria Cesaroni and Annalisa Sentuti

10. He Suddenly Died: Family Firms, Unplanned Succession and Grief

Jarna Heinonen and Elisabet Ljunggren

11. Conclusions and Moving Forward

Jarna Heinonen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen

Jarna Heinonen is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Turku, School of Economics, Finland.

Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen is Professor of Finnish History at the University of Turku, Faculty of Humanities, Finland.