“The Widow, the Clergyman and the Reckless”: 1 Women Investors in England, 1830—1914

Rutterford, Janette; Maltby, Josephine

doi:10.1080/13545700500508288

Cited by 64 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Nevertheless, women have been playing an active role in financial investment for centuries. In the UK, for example, in the year 1840, women held 40% of governments stocks (Rutterford and Maltby, 2006). This gender segmentation of the financial sector follows the stereotype gender segregation lines in other sectors of the economy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The Lehman Sisters hypothesis

Staveren¹

2014

Cambridge Journal of Economics

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This article explores the Lehman Sisters Hypothesis. It reviews empirical literature about gender differences in behavioral, experimental, and neuro-economics as well as in other fields of behavioral research. It discusses gender differences along three dimensions of financial behavior: risk aversion and response to uncertainty, ethics and moral attitude, and leadership. The article argues that gender stereotypes are influential in finance, constraining women to achieve top positions in banking and sustaining a strong masculine culture. At the same time, the analysis indicates that the few women who make it to the top tend to perform on average better than men, in particular under uncertainty. This is explained by a combination of gender beliefs, gender stereotypes, gender identity, and flexible biological processes. Although further research is necessary, the existing empirical literature would support a plea for having more rather than less women in financial trade, risk management, and at the top of the financial sector.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The Lehman Sisters hypothesis

Staveren¹

2014

Cambridge Journal of Economics

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“…16 16 Rutterford and Maltby, ‘Nesting instinct’. On attitudes to risk in relation to female investors, see Rutterford and Maltby, ‘ “The widow, the clergyman and the reckless” ’. …”

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confidence: 99%

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935

Rutterford

Green

Maltby

et al. 2011

The Economic History Review

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This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risky types of investments, and legal changes relating to married women's property. We examine the 'deepening' importance of stocks and shares for wealth holders, arguing that the growing significance of these kinds of financial assets was as important as the growth in the investor population.e hr_539 157..187 B y 1870, as Jenks noted, England had become a 'stock-and-bondholding aristocracy, measuring income in dividends and wealth in the quotations of the Stock Exchange'. 2 In the remaining decades of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, a striking change took place in the shareholding population. A growing number of individuals in Britain from a widening social spectrum, including the less affluent, began to own stocks and shares. Gentlemen, solicitors, and peers of the realm were joined by 'retailers, professional men, skilled workers and women'. 3 By the late nineteenth century, as Robb has remarked, 'middle and upper-class Britain truly had become a nation of shareholders'. 4 Buoyed by rising real wealth and enticed by the promise of higher returns and lower risk, individuals with relatively modest amounts of personal wealth began to invest in the stock market. In turn, the ability to tap into these swelling reservoirs of individual savings, eased by the development of the banking system and the spread of provincial stock exchanges, allowed British-registered firms, as well as the UK and foreign governments, to mobilize large amounts of capital from across the country. Indeed, the rise to prominence of these investors underpinned not just the expansion of industry at home but the march of British capital abroad.

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“…Burnette (2008) found that firms run by women represented 5 percent of businesses in the late eighteenth century in some cities and up to 12 percent in the mid nineteenth century, according to the commercial directories of several cities. Rutterford and Maltby (2007) summarize the literature on English women as investors in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries while providing evidence that women held between 1 to 27 percent of shares of several English companies and accounted for 8 to 67 percent of their shareholders between 1870 and 1900. Laurence (2009) examined British insurance policies and found that women accounted for up to 12 percent of Hoarse Bank investor customers and up to 52 percent of the most active ones in the early eighteenth century.…”

Section: Bernardita Escobar Andrae Is Lecturer At Universidad De Talcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women in Business in Late Nineteenth-Century Chile: Class, Marital Status, and Economic Autonomy

Andrae¹

2016

Feminist Economics

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This article analyzes Chilean women's entrepreneurial activity in the 1877-1908 period examining two official data sources representing different socioeconomic business niches -the national trademark registry, which represents the elite among business people, and the Santiago business license registry, which includes the non-elite. The analysis reveals an economy with women engaging increasingly in business in an expanding range of sectors. By the 1890s, women managed nearly a quarter of Santiago's firms and 5 percent of elite firms nationally. Widows appeared overrepresented among elite businesses and underrepresented among those of the non-elite. These results suggest that institutions constraining entrepreneurship among married women were more strongly enforced among the elite than among other social classes. The evidence thus suggests that during late nineteenth century there was an increase in the economic autonomy exercised by unmarried women and widows of all socioeconomic strata, but also by married women among the non-elite.

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“The Widow, the Clergyman and the Reckless”: 1 Women Investors in England, 1830—1914

Cited by 64 publications

References 24 publications

The Lehman Sisters hypothesis

The Lehman Sisters hypothesis

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935

Women in Business in Late Nineteenth-Century Chile: Class, Marital Status, and Economic Autonomy

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