A groundbreaking economic history of the world told through stories of the forgotten women who powered it.
24th November 2025
Hardcover
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Summary
A groundbreaking economic history of the world told through stories of the forgotten women who powered it.
Description
The untold story of how women made the world rich from historian Victoria Bateman
Humanity's journey from poverty to prosperity is filled with men who have become household names, but how many female entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none. But what about Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed to the ground by Alexander the Great? Or the canny businesswoman Khadijah, better known 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 of modern-day Australia, the female market-traders of Senegal, and the women who have toiled in many a sweatshop 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 the history books. In ECONOMICA Victoria Bateman rescues them from obscurity, charting the vital role women have played, from hunter-gatherers to AI engineers, in a thrilling, globe-spanning narrative that rewrites our understanding of economic history.ECONOMICA isn't simply a history of women; it is a more accurate history of us all.About the Author
Victoria Bateman is author of the critically acclaimed Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty (Polity, 2023) and The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich (Polity, 2019). She is resident economic historian on the BBC Radio 4 series 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 Economic History. Victoria has been profiled by The Times and Daily Mail, has written for national and international press, including the Guardian, i, Telegraph and Bloomberg, and has appeared on numerous occasions on radio and television.
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24th November 2025
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