The Business of Women- a Book Review

Literature pertaining to entrepreneurial women is very limited. There are numerous books that depict the lives of wage-earning women in Canada; however works on self-employed women are uncommon. The Business of Women- Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901-1951, was written by Melanie Buddle in 2010, under UBC Press. In The Business of Women, Buddle attempts to highlight the key features of entrepreneurial women in the 1900’s in Western Canada, exploring how and why women entered the business world. In this book, Buddle examines case studies and primary documents in order to expose the world of female entrepreneurs. Buddle focuses on issues of gender and class relations that influenced the ability of women to become self-employed. Although the information presented in this book represent the period of 1901 to 1951, I will attempt to draw connections, through the use of a summary and analysis, between the materials presented in this book to 21st century businesswomen.
In the first part of The Business of Women, Buddle addresses reasons why women were more likely to be self-employed in British Columbia. Buddle highlights frontier characteristics that depict why a larger proportion of women in British Columbia were married and were self-employed. In British Columbia, women married in higher proportion, compared to the rest of Canada. Many males arrived in British Columbia in the 1850’s during the gold rush and many men settled in Western Canada in order to work in the logging, fishing, and mining industry. These influxes of male wage-earners lead to an overabundance of men in the province (26). The gender imbalance resulted in women finding it easier to marry, while men found it much more difficult.
Women worked during their marriage when their spouses could not provide sufficient financial support. While women in British Columbia married in higher proportions, there were also a greater number of women who were living without a spouse.