Invisible Women: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Family Firms in Nineteenth-Century France
利用专利和展览记录样本，研究发现19世纪法国中产阶级女性广泛参与创业和创新，且家族企业显著增强了她们的商业活动，揭示了家族企业作为弱势群体融入市场经济的有效途径。
The French economy has been criticized for a lack of integration of women in business and for the prevalence of inefficient family firms. A sample drawn from patent and exhibition records is used to examine the role of women in enterprise and invention in France. Middle-class women were extensively engaged in entrepreneurship and innovation, and the empirical analysis indicates that their commercial efforts were significantly enhanced by association with family firms. Such formerly invisible achievements suggest a more productive role for family-based enterprises, as a means of incorporating relatively disadvantaged groups into the market economy as managers and entrepreneurs. “This business model … melds entrepreneurial passion with a long family tradition.” —Wendel Company (1704–2014) 1