Hemmed in by "women's work" much less than has been thought, women in the late 1800s and early 1900s were the primary entrepreneurs in the millinery and dressmaking trades.

The Female Economy explores that lost world of women's dominance, showing how independent, often ambitious businesswomen and the sometimes imperious consumers they served gradually vanished from the scene as custom production gave way to a largely unskilled modern garment industry controlled by men. Wendy Gamber helps overturn the portrait of wage-earning women as docile souls who would find fulfillment only in marriage and motherhood. She combines labor history, women's history, business history, and the history of technology while exploring topics as wide-ranging as the history of pattern-making and the relationship between entrepreneurship and marriage.

A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz, and in the series Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor Scott, Nancy A. Hewitt, and Stephanie Shaw

| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction One. Fashion and Independence: Dressmakers and Millinersin the Antebellum City PART ONE The Female Economy: Proprietors, Workers, and Consumers, ca. 1860‒1910 Two. A Precarious Independence: Female Proprietors in Gilded Age Boston Three. The Female Aristocracy of Labor: Workers in the Trades, 1860–1917 Four. The Social Relations of Consumption: Producers and Consumers in the Era of Custom Production PART TWO Gendered Transformations: Toward Mass Production,1860-1930 Five. A Feminine Skill: Work,Technology, and the Sexual Division of Labor in the Dressmaking Trade, 1860–1920 Six. Commerce over Craft: Wholesalers and Retailers in the Millinery Trade,1860–1930 Seven. Engendering Change: The Department Store and the Factory, 1890–1930 Conclusion Appendix Essay on Primary Sources Notes Bibliography Index Back Cover |"Gamber's analysis is careful and nuanced, showing at every point the mixed impact of the processes of change in the lives of tradewomen and their customers. . . . A valuable contribution to women's labor, business, and social history as well as to the emerging history of consumption."—Susan Porter Benson, author of Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores
|Wendy Gamber is a member of the Department of History at Indiana University, Bloomington.