Humanity’s journey from poverty to prosperity is filled with men who have become household names, but howmany female entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none. After all, even today, if we gathered in one room all those who have gonefrom rags to riches, it would be a room full to the brim with men: less than three per cent of the world's self-madebillionaires are women.
But what about Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebesafter the city was razed to the ground by Alexander the Great? Or the canny businesswoman Khadijah, betterknown as the first wife of Muhammad, who employed him to look after her troop of trading caravans? Or Ching Shih, a sex-worker turned pirate who amassed a fleet of ships that controlled trade in the South China Sea?
And, just as importantly, what about the everyday women who laboured for the profit of others - the bare-breasted female coal miners of the British Industrial Revolution, the 'convict maids' who laid the foundations ofmodern-day Australia, the female market-traders of Senegal, and the women who have toiled in many asweatshop or paddy-field in South and East Asia?
Women have never been 'missing' from economic life - they were simply hidden from view by those writing thehistory books. In ECONOMICA, historian Victoria Bateman rescues them from obscurity, charting the vital rolewomen have played, from hunter-gatherers to AI engineers, in a thrilling, globe-spanning narrative that rewritesour understanding of economic history.
Victoria Bateman is author of the critically acclaimed Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty (Polity, 2023) and The Sex Factor: How Women Madethe West Rich (Polity, 2019). She is resident economic historian on the BBC Radio 4series Understand: The Economy and acts as a historical consultant to a major television production company. She has taught at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, including as Director of Studies in Economics and Lecturer in EconomicHistory. Victoria has been profiled by The Times and Daily Mail, has written fornational and international press, including the Guardian, i, Telegraph and Bloomberg, and has appeared on numerous occasions on radio and television.
