Worthy women. Banking and feminine finances in the twentieth century
In global surveys the ownership of a bank account is an important indicator of gender equality (e.g. Global Gender Gap report by World Economic Forum). While the gender gap is still significant in large parts of the world in high-income OECD economies basically all adults, women as well as men hold accounts at financial institutions. This equal access has however a shorter history than one might think. Still, in the 1960s married women in many Western countries could not open bank accounts or sign for a credit card without their husband’s formal permission. Economic historians have studied women’s economic agency and emphasised their role in home accounting and consumption. There are also studies of women as capital owners, investors and entrepreneurs. Gendered aspects of retail banking are more seldom studied.
This session is about female financial agency and the role of gender in financial services industries in four different national settings. The participants of the panel study gendered aspects of banking in the twentieth century – by focusing on female bank employees as well as on female consumers of financial services. How did the practices and institutional frames of female financial agency shift when women increasingly entered into the labour market and when they achieved full legal economic emancipation? We are interested in gendered marketing practices and gendered financial products such as women’s bank accounts and women’s credit cards. We also ask how the career opportunities of the banks’ female workforce were related to banks’ ambition to recruit female customers.
Organizer(s)
- Sabine Effosse, Paris Nanterre University, Effosse
- Orsi Husz, Uppsala University, Husz
Session members
- Sabine Effosse, Paris Nanterre University, France, Effosse
- Orsi Husz, Uppsala University, Sweden, Husz
- Maria Rosaria de Rosa, Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", Italy, de Rosa
- Laure Quennouëlle-Corre , C.N.R.S.-C.R.H, Paris, Quennouëlle-Corre
- Mark J Crowley, Wuhan University, China, Crowley
Proposed discussant(s)
- Youssef Cassis, European University Institute, Italy, Cassis