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2021
Feminist frustrations: The enduring
neglect of a women's business history and the opportunity for radical change
Mills, Albert J
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Feminist frustrations: The enduring neglect of a women’s business history and the opportunity for radical change
Albert J. Mills & Kristin S. Williams
To cite this article: Albert J. Mills & Kristin S. Williams (2021): Feminist frustrations: The enduring neglect of a women’s business history and the opportunity for radical change, Business History, DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2021.1896706
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2021.1896706
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Published online: 29 Mar 2021.
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Feminist frustrations: The enduring neglect of a women’s business history and the opportunity for radical change
Albert J. Mills and Kristin S. Williams
Department: innovation Management, Faculty of social sciences and Business studies, ueF Business school, university of eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
ABSTRACT
In response to a special call of ‘bringing gender and feminism from the periphery to the centre of business history’, the authors undertake an in-depth appraisal of Business History’s own record, as a key signifier of the field. The scope includes articles and reviews published between 2000 and 2020 and find 17 articles out of 918 (1.85%) and 99 reviews out of 2,217 (4.46%), with a downward trend from 2010 to 2020. To start, the authors engage with a critical question as to the definition of the field itself and explore what those internal to the journal have had to say about its definition. The authors then take a critical look at how women have been socially constructed as (a) historical actors, as (b) gendered roles and as (c) authors of history. To understand what has been included and neglected, the authors investigate and reveal clues as to the barriers and possible entry points.
Introduction
It is fair to say that as feminist scholars engaged in critical historiography, we were more than inspired by the call to critically look at bringing a focus on gender and feminism to the fore of consideration in the field of business history. As scholars, we have often had to nego- tiate our place in literature and venues of scholarship, never fully satisfied or feeling a true sense of belonging (as feminists who study both gender and history). Collectively, our work has played a part in bridging these two fields of inquiry, but considerable ‘blue ocean’
remains. Our typical approach is one where we not only focus on the practices of making history (as sociology of knowledge), but also who is privileged or neglected in that process (as subjects and authors). Thus, we bring to this call a critical appraisal of a key signifier of the field of business history – namely the journal Business History. We have adopted this approach because the journal is an important gatekeeper in the ongoing processes of defin- ing business history. According to the journal’s aims and scope, Business History promotes business history as a scholarly discipline so that it may be considered equal in status to mainstream history and social studies. Business History represents an ongoing scholarly con- versation of the field itself, including favoured approaches and favoured subjects.
© 2021 the Author(s). Published by informa uK Limited, trading as taylor & Francis Group.
CONTACT Kristin s. Williams kristin.williams@uef.fi
this is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-nonCommercial-noDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
KEYWORDS Feminism; business history; gender; women’s history; management and organisational studies
Business History’s role in creating history
To consider a starting place for this article, we examined Business History’s own record in bridging these areas of scholarship together and conducted a critical review of articles, article reviews and book reviews published in Business History (BH) between 2000 and 2020.
We chose to focus on the past two decades of BH to allow us to sufficiently gain a sense of the role played by women, gender dynamics, and feminism in the journal. We also wished to keep our inquiry fairly current and including the present year of publication.
As a result of our analysis of these two decades, our objectives for this study developed as follows: we begin by defining the field of inquiry, which necessarily requires an under- standing of ‘what is business history’. We then look at the work that Business History has done in supporting/reporting women, feminism, and gender work in business history. This includes sharing insight into the key players involved and how women have been socially constructed as (a) historical actors, as (b) gendered roles and as (c) authors of history. We also highlight what has been included and what has been neglected. We then briefly explore what other management history journals have accomplished and neglected at this critical intersection of feminism/gender and business history. In conclusion, we offer insights into barriers and potential entry points to contributions.
Field of inquiry – what is business history?
What has Business History had to say about History? Amatori (2009) defines business history as a combination of ‘substantive’ history of the ‘firm’ and argues that the call for a business history originates from the business school. Amatori (2009), from his economist’s perspective, views business history as a pragmatic tool for uncovering relevant learnings for practitioners.
He argues that having a history, strengthens the identity of the business leader and by exten- sion, the firm (Amatori, 2009). Counter to his suggested approach, Amatori (2009) also cites Tosh (1984) who describes history more broadly and as including ‘collective memory, a ware- house of experiences through which men [and women] develop a sense of social identity so as to cope with the challenges that will appear in the future’ (p. 4). This tension between pragmatism and inclusiveness, facts and process point to some of the age-old arguments which exist towards the theoretical practices of the critical historiographer (concerned with how history is made – see, for example, Durepos et al., 2017) and the atheoretical practices of the historian (concerned with fact-collecting and with adding to the ‘official’ record – see, for example, Goldman, 1994). The field itself is very difficult to define and varies dramatically along onto-epistemological lines.
Kobrak and Schneider (2011) expand on this argument by engaging in a discussion about the different approaches to business history and argue in favour of enriching the discipline with new methods. However, their critique remains in service to the pragmatic objectives of improving the firm’s function. With that said, their critique offers important clues about what gets in the way of producing a more broadly inclusive (and consumable) business history. They offer some solace in that the debates within business history are similar to those outside the discipline, in that it is a conflict of approaches between a quest for rigour or a quest for relevance (Kobrak & Wilkins, 2011). They further define the field as holding potential for a ‘variety of styles, foci, and forms of history’ and that all such potentials repre- sent ‘legitimate form[s] of business history’ (Kobrak & Wilkins, 2011, p. 402).
Harvey and Wilson (2007) as editors of BH offer a compelling redressing of the field and suggest that the field has flourished since the 1990s (speaking to a considerable develop- ment in conferences and research groups and business history journals), though they main- tain that the historian still represents a small group relative to other specialists within business. This latter point is elaborated on and BH is outlined as a venue to add credibility to the field and thus the activities of historian. A specific call is made to encourage collabo- ration with other social scientists and to bring to the fore for consideration highly topical issues that move beyond the study of primary sources to address interests and concerns of a ‘wider constituency of potential readers’ (Harvey & Wilson, 2007, p. 5). Despite this call by the editors of BH, gender and feminism remain at the margins of inquiry and outside the journal, which hoped to offer a sense of the broader domain of business history.
Whittle and Wilson (2015) present some refreshing arguments in favour of alternative approaches and focus on ethnomethodology or ‘history in action’ (p. 41). They repeat the call for more collaboration with social scientists and even argue that history has to become more than description, chronology and the objective practices which mimic approaches to natural science (i.e. scientificity which ignores ‘social, cultural and political systems’ p. 42).
We think this is significant, because this is where a great degree of critical feminist work has operated and illustrates a potential entry point for feminist work in recent years. And though their arguments do not directly engage with gender or feminism, they do critique what constitutes evidence and the objective disposition of the positivist historian (in contrast to the subjective position of the critical historiographer) by calling for a more pluralistic and less linear view of history (Whittle & Wilson, 2015).
More recently (Holt, 2016) offers a fascinating critique in a book review of Reimagining Business History (Scranton, 2013) which gives us a sense of the marginalisation of such debates and which asks for a broadening of the field. We argue that such broadening is very necessary to ultimately include gender and feminism in the foreground. Holt’s review reveals that the ‘work of broadening the field’ is happening outside the more conventional environ- ments (i.e. business journals) which have been sticking to institutional archives, looking at
‘drivers of and pitfalls’ to material and economic growth and ‘flirt[ing] with hagiographic accounts of great business(men)’ (Holt, 2016, pp. 149–150). It is hard to imagine gender and feminism finding its way to the fore when such critiques remain at the margins and do not form part of the active debates within the journal itself. The curious nature of book reviews in BH is something we will address in more detail later on, as it was for us, an unexpected venue to find both broader debates and women in authorial roles. With a progressively forward thinking mandate for business history within BH as outlined by some of its more significant internal critics, we are even more troubled as to why gender and feminism never found its way to the fore.
Gender and feminism in business history
There have been some interesting contributions to gender, women, feminism and business history over the years. For instance, 1999 saw the publication of Mary yeager’s wide-ranging edited collection of papers on women in business. The book covers twenty centuries – from the eleventh to the twentieth – and explores such issues as ‘imaging women in business’
(e.g. the relationship between women’s identities and business practices); comparisons
between ‘male managers and female employees’ (e.g. examining gender and the division of labour), and an intriguing focus on ‘making the businesswoman a feminist’ (e.g. revisiting the relationship between the notion of business and female identity).
In an article-length review of yeager’s book, Honeyman (2001) uses the opportunity to bring feminist insights into the centre of BH, opening her review thus: ‘despite the consid- erable progress of the last 20 years in recovering the lost history of women, their neglect in historical investigation is still palpable’ (p. 119). She goes on to contend that ‘business history, even more than business itself, is man-made. Women have participated in the business world but have been absent from the dominant narratives of its history’ (p. 119). It would be sixteen more years before a focus on gender and narratives was taken up in the pages of BH (Durepos et al., 2017) but only fleetingly so.
Moving into the body of the collected work, Honeyman identifies three major themes that emerge: (1) women’s marginality in business theory and practices; (2) contributions to
‘a wider debate in women’s history’ (p. 121); and (3) a focus on ‘women’s distinctive historical place in commerce’ (p. 122). examples of these three themes appear, respectively, in Hunter (2010), Haggerty (2007), and Barker (2010).
In addition to these themes, Honeyman provides further clues to the type of work that is included and what is excluded in her an overall assessment of yeager’s book. Her conclu- sions point to paradox rather than progress. On the one hand she congratulates yeager for
‘a remarkable job in assembling such a significant collection of the historical research on women in a wide range of businesses’ (Honeyman, 2001, p. 123). On the other hand, Honeyman (2001, p. 124) views it as paradoxical in its highlighting of ‘the maleness of the business world […revealing] the persistent social and ideological barriers to the activity of women in general and of businesswomen in particular’ (p. 124). Honeyman views it as prob- lematic that the edited collection ‘emphasizes the inequality of opportunity of women and men in the context of business enterprise’ (p. 124). While concluding that yeager’s book
‘draws together the most representative work, published mainly in the last 20 years, on the subject of women in business’ Honeyman (2001, p. 120), she nonetheless, views the objec- tives of the collection as ‘modest’, constituting ‘a women’s history rather than a gender history’
(p. 124). Honeyman (2001) ends with three major observations: (1) that yeager’s work ‘con- firms how much more research is necessary before a full understanding’ of women in business is reached (p. 124); (2) that it nonetheless marks ‘a necessary stage in the process of gendering business history’ (p. 125); and (3) it ‘represents a subject at the crossroads’ (p. 125). Honeyman (2001) saw herself as writing in a context where ‘business history is poised to progress from a situation in which a long-standing imbalance is redressed or rectified, to a position where its transformation into a gendered discipline can be envisaged’ (p. 125). yet, as we shall see below, that level of optimism was largely unfounded. If anything, the ‘lost history’ (Honeyman, 2001, p. 119) continued to take a backward step in BH. Our word search for ‘women,’ ‘gender’, and ‘feminism’ in the abstracts of articles, review articles and book reviews of BH indicated that these terms and foci were less referenced in the current (2010–2020) than the earlier decade (2000–2009).
Though a single journal (nor a collection of management history journals) can be accepted as a proxy for the field of business history, such journals do give insight into the sociology of knowledge process (Latour, 2005) through the nature of scholarly conversations, the participants involved, and the scope of investigation (including theoretical and
methodological breadth and scope). For this special call, we felt that a look at Business History’s own history would be a critical place to begin ethnographic inquiry (Coller et al., 2016) and we hope such analysis inspires further participation.
Now we will take you through some of what BH has had to say about women, gender and feminism. In our analysis, we investigated the publishing of articles, review articles and book reviews which spanned 2000 to 2020. In that time, we found 17 articles (out of 918 or 1.85%) which directly engage with gender (or women), though very few engaged with feminist onto-epistemology. There are also 3 review articles and 79 book reviews (out of 1328 or 1.51%), leaving a total of 99 out of 2,217 (4.46%) total contributions. Surprisingly, the trend towards including gender has significantly declined over these 20 years, with 74 of those 99 contributions appearing in the first decade. Here, we make sense of these con- tributions in Business History and how women have been socially constructed as (a) historical actors, (b) as authors of history and (c) as gendered roles.
Women as subjects under study
Da Silva Lopes (2002) is one of the earliest contributors relevant to our inquiry. Women are introduced as a subject of study in a broader examination of how brands have intersected with the evolution of multinationals in the industry of alcoholic beverages. Women are described as a subset of a consumer group that behaves a certain way in a broader fashion of consumerism and consumption (Da Silva Lopes, 2002). Such studies point to the unin- tentional ways that gender enters the fore as subject/object, operating without agency and voice. Another article, by Pilbeam (2003), examines Madame Tussaud’s career as an example of a successful woman in business in a specific subsect of the economy; namely making models and running wax businesses (Pilbeam, 2003). Tussaud is presented as extraordinary, but also operating in the confines of a specific marketplace. A number of similar articles appear throughout BH and attempt to introduce specific leading women into the historical record in an additive manner to address the lack of representation of specific extraordinary women actors (e.g. Mary Parker Follett in Gibson et al., 2013). This is in contrast to engaging in the critique of the practices of history in such exclusions or the missed opportunity to surface agency and voice of neglected female leaders in fields outside of the taken-for- granted corporatist environments (Williams & Mills, 2017, 2018).
There is a similar example speaking more broadly to women in general (Maltby &
rutterford, 2006) which argues for the inclusion of women in history as playing a key role as an investor group in early Britain as shareholders, property owners and other financial securities. And again, Martínez-rodríguez (2020) cites the work of women as owners of business in Spain (1886–1936). We feel that these works are more in favour of what has been missed than a critique of the exclusionary practices of the field itself. So, while they offer an engagement of gender and pro-woman writing, they follow a more liberal feminist approach in doing so (Calas & Smircich, 1996), treating the notion of women as more or less fixed categories. Perriton and and others (2017) offer a bridge between this approach and those articles and book reviews that specifically engage with gender as a dynamic activity. She notes that ‘gender is a useful category within business history but …. it is no easy matter. It is clear that the management histories of women in business supplement existing business history, less clear is how a focus on gender substantially changes it’ (p. 203).
Women as authors of history
Mira Wilkins is a dominant actor within busines history and in BH as an author and as a subject of study. It would be easy to miss her broader contribution if we ignored the book reviews where she is mentioned several times in relation to her contributions to our understanding of multinationals (see Corley, 2006; DeGeer, 2000; Hunter, 2003; Majima, 2008; Walsh, 2009).
In a similar vein, we can see that Honeyman was an active contributor to book reviews before her death in 2011 at the age of 61 (Honeyman, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2004, 2007, 2010;
Jones, 2001). Honeyman also wrote two books that were reviewed in BH (Jones, 2001;
Singleton, 2001). Margaret Walsh was a similarly active reviewer in this period (Walsh, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2009). We are not quite sure what to make of this pattern, but it could speak to three possible points: (1) women are writing more book reviews and books than journal articles in business history; (2) and/or women are more comfortable in making contributions in these venues, and/or (3) as we suggested earlier, the work of broadening the field is not part of the active debates within the journal itself, to any great degree. However at least Mira Wilkins did pen an article with Kobrak (Kobrak & Wilkins, 2011) and Liseloitte eriksson penned two (Andersson & eriksson, 2019; eriksson, 2014). Of the 17 articles which did engage with gender, only two did not feature women writers. This made us wonder if these different categories (articles vs. book reviews) speak to potential gendering of roles within the confines of the journal itself, in addition to the limited nature of the overall contributions.
Women in gendered roles
A more recent example of gendered roles of historical actors is offered up by Crowley (2016) and engages in a discussion of historical women workers within the civil service and specif- ically women’s contribution of labour during war time to the Post Office in Britain. Women are presented as a special group, offering a specific kind of labour and constrained by the socio-politics of wartime life. We have seen similar efforts to constrain our understanding of the potential of women workers in management textbooks which supports a hegemonic exclusionary discourse of women in working life (Prieto et al.; Williams & Mills, 2019).
Nordlund edvinsson (2016) has a study which examines the role of married women to CeOs and family-owned business and the specific tasks that women were expected to provide in support of their husbands. In taking a slightly different approach both reed (2017) and eriksson and Stanfors (2015) investigate the value of diverse employment as instrumental to business success. These investigations fit within a larger discourse promoting diversity and inclusion as being ‘good for business’, which fits with a broad scholarly conversation happening across non-history business journals (e.g. Marshawn, 2020). However, here, the scholarly conversation is quite anaemic and fails to take a critical perspective. A critical perspective on gender is offered up by Andersson and eriksson (2019) who investigate the neglect of women in health care coverage despite women comprising a significant percent- age of workforce historically. Their findings point to systematic neglect which they posit is due to economic objectives which sought to exclude women.
What is happening in other business history journals?
We would be remiss if we did not take an opportunity to share what is happening in other history journals in the field of management and organisations, namely Management and
Organisational History (MOH)1 and the Journal of Management History (JMH).2 It is our view that all three journals in question have limitations, despite some promising strategies and examples. We believe that each journal has broadly struggled with gender and feminist approaches. While both journals include several articles on gender from a range of historical perspectives only JMH specifically refers to gender. The other important difference between the two journals was MOH’s predominance of critical approaches to history, while JMH is more noted for its prominently dominant positivist approaches to history. The following is not an exhaustive analysis,3 but rather a selection of novel approaches seen elsewhere that can be drawn on to supplement our understanding of the potential barriers and clues to entry points. We preface our remarks with the observation that business history journals generally neglect women, engagement with gender, and feminist inquiry (Mills & Novicevic, 2020).
In developing her critique of gender and business history Katrina Honeyman (2001) argues that the absence of women ‘from the dominant narratives of its history … does not distin- guish business history from other fields of historical endeavour’ (p. 119). Indeed, almost a decade later there appeared a Special Issue of MOH on Women in Management and Organisational History, where the editors – Mary Phillips and Ann rippin (2010) – noted the neglect of gender and feminist studies in the field of business and management. They prof- fered the hope that the Special Issue would encourage further dialogue and contributions.
Again, if the current BH Call for Papers on gender and business history, is something to go by, the aims of the earlier Special Issue have yet to make an impact. Indeed, as the editors of the BH Special Issue note, it is ‘the first in this field for almost a decade to be dedicated to gender and business and/or organizational history’ (Dean et al., 2019).
To start with the 2010 MOH Special Issue, Philips and rippin contend that language use is an important barrier to including women in business history. Drawing on feminist theory, they go on to argue for an approach to the past that speaks ‘in the name of women; of women’s experiences, subjectivities and sexualities, claiming “a language of our own” and
“a history of our own”’ (p. 283). An echo of this approach can be found in Phipps (2011) who, publishing in JMH, sought to recover women’s voice in a ‘male dominated field’ (p. 270).
Phipps own contribution to this focus was to encourage a revisiting of the impact of Mary Parker Follet and Mary Barnett Gilson on the field of management and business studies.
undeniably, over the past decade, the ‘revisiting’ of women in business has been one of the most popular approaches across MOH, JMH, and BH (Damart, 2013; Gibson et al., 2013;
Jensen, 2001; Levicki, 2004; Novicevic et al., 2013; Perriton & others, 2017; Prieto et al., 2016;
Williams & Mills, 2017, 2018).
An interesting observation here is that almost all of these articles focus on revisiting either Mary Parker Follett or Francis Perkins – visiting and revisiting the same women but from different perspectives. This leads us to the role of methodology. For example, Levicki’s (2004) review of James Hoopes largely reproduces the author’s purely descriptive account of the life of Mary Parker Follett. Williams and Mills (2017, 2018), on the other hand, offer feminist post- structural analysis as an approach which both reveals overlooked women, their voice and accomplishments (Frances Perkins and Hallie Flanagan), while also offering plausible reasons as to why such figures were overlooked by business history (a critique of the field itself).
elsewhere, Williams and Mills (2019), writing in MOH, conduct a feminist poststructuralist
‘interrogation’ of management textbooks to reveal over time the discursive ways women have been socially constructed in organisational environments, including gendered roles and exclusionary practices which have been replicated and taken for granted over the span
of 50 years. The sole poststructuralist account on discourse analysis and feminism, did not appear in BH until 2017 (Durepos et al. 2017) around the same time as the Williams and Mills (2017) article appeared in JMH.
More recent work in JMH, MOS, and BH on gender, feminism, and management history has largely argued for more attention to multiple methodologies and the ‘the importance of feminist epistemologies in the history of organization and management studies’ (Calas &
Smircich, 2021). This work includes examinations of the potential of intersectional history as an opportunity to bring both gender and diversity to the fore of consideration (Shaffner et al., 2019); the use of a autoethnography as a means to make history more pluralist (ruel et al. 2019); critical hermeneutic analysis (McLaren & Helms Mills, 2010) which requires the historian to seek to reveal the role that gender dynamics plays at a given time in the past and to balance this with the current context in which the historian is writing; and oral history as a way of gaining insights into women’s work experiences (Wall, 2010).
While this collection of articles provides the impression that there is considerable work on gender and business across Business History, Management & Organisational History and the Journal of Management History, they are but a fraction of the total number of journal articles and book reviews that appeared in those three journals over two decades. For exam- ple, Mills and Novicevic’s (2020) analysis of the number of articles on gender and business to appear in BH, MOH and JMH during the period 2006–2018 discovered only 29 of a total of 1600 (under two percent).
It is regrettable, but some of the most novel approaches which fuse women, gender and feminism with business history, are not in business journals. As we have mentioned above, much of this debate and scholarly discussion is happening in books and some of that was visible in BH’s book reviews. However, there are many journals which favour feminist approaches and by extension, are adopting interests in history. We believe that this may be what editors and critics of BH were suggesting this issue could be remedied by collab- oration with other social scientists, such as feminists writing in management and organi- sational studies. For example, in Culture and Organisation, Williams (2020) combines autoethnography with feminist polemics and fictional strategies to introduce Viola Desmond’s overlooked identity as a pioneering African Nova Scotian entrepreneur oper- ating in segregated society, in Canada.
Clues to barriers
There are several entry points that have been well established in the literature for feminism and historiography. Mills (2006) suggests two approaches to the study and writing of history, which both include limitations. The first approach is writing history which is exclusively about women and for women and is meant to create an understanding of women in management and their impact on organisations. regrettably, these efforts remain on the fringe of scholarly debates and would appear to not have the power to achieve more significance. The second approach is some of what we see in BH, an additive approach to include women in the historical record. This method is also challenged because it fails to ‘transform and enrich the mainstream historical tradition which it accuses of bias’ (Mills, 2006, p. 9). In other words, we have to view history as a package of past politics, as well as a record of certain events, times and individuals (Wallach Scott, 1989). Such politics need to be investigated and challenged for the practices which replicate a narrow and limited view of business history.
early on, Joan Wallach Scott advocated for gender to be considered a useful category for historical analysis (Wallach Scott, 1986). She also outlined three basic theoretical approaches for feminist historians: (1) explain the origins and functions of patriarchy in the objectification and subordination of women, (2) offer critiques in the Marxist tradition (the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy) and (3) offer poststructural or psychoanalytical approaches (Wallach Scott, 1986). years later, she revisited what had come from that rhetor- ical call and suggests that there has been some rich examples from historical writing by feminists and women historians, including the notion of using gender as a way to interrogate history and that such approaches cannot be separated from understanding context, and socio-political considerations which shape women as gendered subjects temporally (Wallach Scott, 2008). These ideas fuse the endeavour with an appreciation for onto-epistemological and political considerations which are central to feminism. However, bringing gender to the fore is entirely different from bringing feminism to the fore: Gender will ‘historicize and relativize women and […] conceive them as integral to history’ whereas feminist practice is rich theoretically, methodologically and involves actively: ‘protesting collectively, asserting their [sic] rights, seeking emancipation from oppression’ (Wallach Scott, 2008, p. 1427).
Feminism is necessarily critical. And feminism (in addition to gender) has a history (rose, 2010, p. 1). And according to Scott, feminism and its close connection to politics was not acknowledged as knowledge producing until the 1970s and 1980s (Wallach Scott, 2004) and is considered one of the products of second wave feminism (rose, 2010). Thus, both business history and feminism as intellectual and academic pursuits are relatively young.
As these debates have surged on outside of BH, they none-the-less offer important clues as to what BH is missing and where scholars can make contributions which broaden the journal’s engagement in gender and feminism. Over the last decade, there have been some interesting observations about why gender history and feminist history is marginalised.
Such critiques include an understanding that the practices of historians: (1) assume a uni- versal woman’s experience, (2) do not appreciate material experience, (3), have a tendency to overly focus on the sexual division of labour activity, and (4) do not engage in an appre- ciation for women’s deliberate oppression by patriarchy (rose, 2010). In environments where agency is constrained, such as the field of business history, a feminist disposition requires (1) women’s voices being heard, (2) women achieving influence, (3) women authoring their own self-concept, and (4) women creating contextualised opportunities for individual action, and such considerations go hand in hand with power and authority (Morabito & Shelley, 2018).
Clues to entry points
Our first suggested entry point is two-fold: First we must locate the women who have been overlooked by the field. Clues might exist in fields which have been undervalued by business history and sit outside of patriarchal and capitalist modes of production (e.g. social work, labour programs, the arts, see Williams & Mills, 2017, 2018). The second opportunity is to not only reveal the figures and what contributions have been lost (what we have missed in the development of business history and associated early theorists), but also to reveal the ways they have been lost, or rather, how have they been lost (the discursive limits we have set on the field’s development). Therefore, applying not only different theory, but also novel meth- ods would be a significant opportunity for development of the bridging of feminist inquiry into gender and business history.
Second, we must require not only writers coming forward, but editors and journals, like BH to adopt intentional approaches which invite not just the feminist, but the feminine. For example, Pullen (2018) combines activist writing approaches with embodied writing to offer critique for the various repressive devices, actors and structures within scholarship. Weatherall (2019) proposes a means to write differently (reflexively) and ‘expand the boundaries of thought in management’ (p. 100). In so doing, Weatherall illustrates the important emic insights which writing might offer. Gibbs (2003) proposes that writers should consider enliv- ening writing by connecting the real with the imaginary and that such attempts can result in ‘gendered dimensions of passionate intertextuality’ (p. 309). Such approaches not only expand theorising, but also ‘dramatize the nature of the relationships between women and philosophy, or between women and theory or women and writing’ (p. 309).
Third, we see that some practical and pragmatic challenges that exist in the bridging of two fields, which are already separated by (1) favouring different subjects; (2) favouring different philosophical approaches, and (3) favouring different ways of writing. We therefore offer that scholars need to find inventive ways to make this connection and we suggest two different ways to do so. The first is for the author to be in the foreground and to be the con- nective tissue between fields (Williams, 2020). This is an openly subjective approach vs. the often favoured objective approach and this may present as a different way to write as herein suggested. The second is to adopt a method which intentionally supports such linkages.
Intersectionality is an example which ‘considers the potential spaces of intellectual co-exis- tence’ (Falcón & Nash, 2015, p. 1; Shaffner et al. (2019). This requires a rethink of the disci- plinary borders of theory, pedagogy and praxis which is already broadly adopted in other feminist work.
All of these examples point to an enduring phenomenon within gender history, namely the frustrating persistence of patriarchal conventions and the untenable placement of a few feminist scholars to somehow ‘fix’ everything. each of these efforts attack the same general durable refrain: she must be exceptional to be noticed, she must conform to be validated, and we must be superb in serving up her story. Whereas for the rest of history, there are a myriad of masculine stories that sit in the foreground, middle ground and background, as well as masculine theorists who reside within and beyond the field. There is also a depth of positive architypes and heroes. Therefore, our last suggested entry point is anywhere and everywhere. Start wherever you are. There is simply so much work to do.
We cannot simply add ‘women to an existing body of stories’ (Wallach Scott, 2004, p. 10) because we will never catch up. As Wallach Scott (2004) suggests, we must change the ways the stories are told (see also Durepos et al., 2017). This requires women to take their rightful place as worthy subjects and feminist historians, on par and en masse. The challenge is that it has been 16 years since Wallach Scott reflected that women historians and women’s history were not fully equal players in the discipline, nor are we reaching the capacity to re-write all the stories. efforts have been irregular globally and temporally. So how do we achieve the capacity and inspiration necessary for the work ahead? Wallach Scott (2004) offers this star- tling observation:
This is difficult for feminists who, despite all the derision cast upon them by socialists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have been revolutionaries dedicated to overturning patri- archy, breaking the oppressive chains of sexism, liberating women from the stereotypes that confine them, and bringing them onto the stage of history. The realization of at least some
positive change over the past decade – which I have just characterized for historians as gaining ownership of a piece of the field – has produced some ambivalence and uncertainty about the future. Have we won or lost? Have we been changed by our success? What does the move from embattled outsider to recognized insider portend for our sense of self? Has our presence trans- formed the discipline, or have we simply been absorbed into it? Ought we to be content with maintaining and reproducing what we have gained? Or should we be responding to new chal- lenges that may threaten our proprietary standing? Does women’s history have a future, or is it history? And how might we imagine that future? (p. 11).
A future for a business history which adequately serves women’s history will require the engagement of more feminists and feminist collaborations. It requires the activation of jour- nals and editorial staff to invite these efforts and support them. It also requires a return to the political roots of feminism, which have arguably become de-politized while being the- orised (Hoff, 1994). Change requires political will.
Conclusion
In this article, we have responded to the call which asks: how do we bring feminism and women’s history from the periphery to the centre in business history? We chose to examine Business History’s own history as a starting point. In so doing, we shared a critical view of the work that the journal has done over the last two decades, sharing insights from key players and illustrating how the journal and its authors and editors have engaged with women, gender and feminism. This analysis revealed challenging barriers, but also entry points for scholarship. In so doing, we have identified theoretical, methodological and modes of writing which can be explored. essentially, the effort can be served in a variety of ways and one simply needs to try. Scholarship usually requires the carefully negotiation of a place to enter the scholarly conversation. The current conversation involves relatively few players, all doing idiosyncratic work. To echo the words of Calas and Smircich (2020) our findings in this article
‘are discursive – if they can be called so, but the main motivation behind this writing is to go beyond discourse in the written sense, and to mobilise other activities, still in the realm of epistemological and scholarly work’ (Calas & Smircich, 2020). In parting, we ask that you come play with us and bring your imagination, thoughts, and opinions. Bring your passion, politics, and personal power. All hands on deck. The time is now.
Notes
1. The journal of Management & Organizational History focuses on academic research concern- ing historical approaches to the study of management, organizations and organizing. The jour- nal accepts empirical and theoretical contributions and favours innovative historical methods, interdisciplinary approaches, and the broadest possible consideration of interests relevant to the field.
2. Similarly, the Journal of Management History also favours interdisciplinary approaches, diverse methodologies and theories and accepts empirical and theoretical contributions that consider issues within business, broadly defined.
3. We initially included two points of comparison for this article with the journal of Business History that would draw a reasonably similar set of contributors in terms of their focus on history and business, management and/or organization. One of the journals was the C-ranked uK-based Management & Organizational History. The other was the A-ranked Australian-based
Journal of Management History. Both journals made an appearance over the period 2006–
2020, with MOH being established in 2006 and JMH being revised as an independent journal in 2006. (It was earlier subsumed under the journal Management Decision). JMH offers a com- parative to BH in terms of predominant positive approaches, a journal ranking closer to BH than MOS; the fact that JMH operated – in one form or another – for the two decades (2000–
2020) under study; and JMH’s specific mention of gender and history in its aims also offers options for comparisons.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Albert J. Mills, PhD is the co-editor at Qualitative research in Organisations and Management:
An International Journal, an 02 Professor of Innovation Management at the university of eastern Finland and Professor emeritus at Saint Mary’s university. He is the author of 45 books and edited collections, as well as over 200 book chapters and journal articles.
Kristin S. Williams, PhD is a Visiting researcher at the university of eastern Finland. She is a polemical feminist engaged in critical historiography through activist writing and narrative methods. Much of her work has focussed on uncovering neglected historical female figures in management and business history.
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