The under-reporting of women’s employment in nineteenth century censuses is a well-documented problem. There are additional challenges to establishing women’s business activity.
In the censuses before 1891, we only know for sure that a woman led a business if she declared herself a master or mistress, usually with employees. The British Business Census of Entrepreneurs database uses later censuses to make inferences about how common business ownership was. But this does not tell us with certainty which individual women were business owners.
Trade directories like the Post Office Directories do list many women in business, but societal prejudice led some women to obscure the fact of their business proprietorship by advertising under their initials and not forename (e.g. J. Smith rather than Janet Smith). The legal status of married women meant that they could not enter a contract in their own right, which has left some records of rental agreements in the husband’s name, whatever the reality of the business operation.
The small size of many women’s businesses – and the fact that they are often found in the provision of basic services – also makes it difficult to find all types of women’s businesses through trade directories.
By looking at Glasgow’s Valuation Rolls, which give the occupiers and rental values of property on which city taxes were based, we can find many more businesses owned and operated by women. This augments what can be discovered through trade directories and census records, doubling the number of businesswomen that we can identify.
There is, of course, still the question of how many married women still evade the historical record, but using rental data has other advantages. It puts a value on women’s businesses through the rents they could afford and allows us to ask (and answer) different economic questions.
For example, we can see where women are paying higher rents comparable to men. The pattern of mean rent shown below is suggestive of women mainly operating out of lower rent/lower risk premises across much of the city but – where they are paying higher rent – opting to do so in the Central Business District that RD 7 represents and in the more prosperous suburbs to the west in RD 9.
1881 Commercial rents per RD – women and men (Sole Traders) compared
