Self-Employed Women as Small Traders: Manufacturers and Retailers in the City of Bologna in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

The 1861 unification of Italy found the country in a condition of widespread backwardness; yet streams of economic, entrepreneurial, and commercial activity soon began to flow. Were the Italian women of the nineteenth century able to make any significant contribution to this new spirit of development? Let us observe them while they toil in the trades and industries of Bologna, a city well positioned geographically, and neither too small to lack significance, nor so large as to present a quantity of data that would be too difficult to manage. The present contribution takes into consideration the commercial and productive activities led by women recorded in the tax registry of the Chamber of Commerce from 1865 to 1895, sampling 1 year out of every 5. The overview of data introduces us to several of these unrecognised female economic actors.