Women’s Commitee Workshop – Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise

Call for Papers (CFP)

Annual Workshop of the Economic History Society Women’s Committee

University College London
Friday, 12 December 2025
Theme: Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise

As historical scholarship continues to expand our understanding of women’s roles in business and economic life, the 2025 workshop of the Economic History Society Women’s Committee invites new and innovative contributions on the topic of Women and Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise.

The workshop will explore how women have always acted as economic agents across a range of historical periods, geographic contexts, and social structures, but have been largely obscured from the history of business. From navigating male-dominated sectors to heading female-led ventures, women’s entrepreneurial histories offer crucial insights into gender, economy, and society.

We seek papers that investigate (from an Economic, Social and/or Women’s History perspective) the varied forms and expressions of women’s entrepreneurship, including but not limited to:

• Structures of Enterprise: Women’s participation in corporate bodies such as guilds and companies; legal and institutional conditions for female entrepreneurship; apprenticeship, training, and the transmission of commercial knowledge.
• Family, Marriage, and Inheritance: The role of familial structures in sustaining or enabling women’s economic activity; business partnerships within households; continuity of enterprise through marriage, widowhood, and generational succession.
• Finance and Investment: Female agency in financial markets; women as shareholders, creditors, and investors.
• Imperial and Colonial Contexts: Entrepreneurial opportunities for women within imperial economies.
• Charitable Enterprise and Social Economy: Women’s leadership in philanthropic institutions such as schools, orphanages, and hospitals.
• Informal and Illicit Economies: Women’s participation in unregulated, illegal, or marginal economic activity, such i.e. smuggling.
• Scientific Knowledge in Enterprise: Access to and use of scientific, medical, or artisanal expertise in women’s economic activity.

We encourage papers that explore new methodologies, archival discoveries, or conceptual frameworks, especially those that challenge traditional definitions of entrepreneurship or highlight women’s creativity in navigating constraints.

Please submit a proposal (max. 500 words) by 5^th of September 2025 to Camilla de Koning. Any queries may also be directed here.

Please note that we cannot cover accommodation, but there is limited funding available for travel expenses. If you wish to apply for travel funds, please provide a breakdown of required travel costs. We will process this on a first come first serve basis. Lunch and refreshments will be provided during the workshop.