Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou Women and Family Capitalism in Greece, c.1780-1940 Women have been important contributors to Greek mercantilism since the time of the economic migration that occurred at the end of the eighteenth century, and they were deeply involved in Greek cap- italist development. Their role was particularly pronounced due to the predominance of the family in Greek society and business. Dia- spora women operated as "keepers" of the internationally dispersed Greek clan, while their counterparts in mainland Greece perpetu- ated and strengthened the local family network. H istorical research that uses gender as a framework for analysis has evolved slowly in Greece, emerging from social and cultural an- thropology. 1 Scholars of gender in the 1980s and 1990s approached a range of topics both theoretically and empirically, but few made connec- tions with business history. 2 Most scholarship in Greece and other Eu- ropean countries has portrayed business as belonging to a "man's world." IOANNA PEPELASIS MINOGLOU is assistant professor of economic history in the De- partment of Economics at Athens University of Economics and Business. Abbreviations used in these notes are as follows: Vasileion tis Ellados [Kingdom of Greece], Efimeris tis Kyuerniseos tou EUinikou Vassiliou (selected issues 1832-1924, 1935- 1939): Greek Government Gazette; Elliniki Dimokrateia [Hellenic Republic], EfimeristisKy- verniseos tis Ellinikis Dimokratias (selected issues: 1924-1935): Greek Government Gazette. 1 Efthimios Papataxiarchis, "Gender in Anthropology (and Historiography): A Few Cogni- tive and Methodological Prospects,"Mnimon, no. 19 (1997): 201-10 (in Greek). 2 Eleni Varikas, The Ladies' Uprising: The Genesis of a Feminist Consciousness in Greece (Athens, 1987) (in Greek); Eleni Fanouraki, "'Instructrice, Femme et Mere': Idees sur l'Edu- cation de Femmes en Grece du XlXIe siecle (1830-1880)" (Ph.D. diss., Universite de Paris 7, 1992); Efi Avdela, Civil Servants of a Female Gender: Gender Division of Labor in the Public Sector, 1908-1955 (Athens, 1990) (in Greek); and "The History of Women and Gender in Contemporary Greek Historiography: The State of the Art and Prospects," in The Historiog- raphy of Modern and Contemporary Greece (1833-2000), vol. 2, ed. Kentro Neoellinikon Erevnon (Athens, 2004), 123-38 (in Greek). Moreover, for recent writings by gender histori- ans who have contributed work primarily on Greece to the international discourse on meth- odological and other issues, see Efi Avdela, "Work, Gender, and History in the 1990s and Beyond," Gender and History 11, no. 3 (1999): 528-41; and, with Eleni Varikas, With a Dif- ferent Face: Gender, Diversity and Ecumenism (Athens, 2000) (in Greek). Business History Review 81 (Autumn 2007): 517-538. © 2007 by The Pres- ident and Fellows of Harvard College. Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680500036709 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.162.69.248, on 05 Jun 2020 at 11:34:58, subject to the