The proposed session will focus on early examples of economically active women who may be said to have anticipated, in one way or another, modern professional women. The women discussed in the session papers were professionally ambitious, invested in developing thir professional skills and qualifications, had careers, and took economic risks in order to advance professionally. Socially they range from ladies of high nobility to women with burgher and civilservant family background.
The aim of the session papers is to enrich ad complete the received image of economically active women in Europe in the past. Today the image appears slightly biased in two ways. First, it is dominated by women of popular classes who worked because they had to work in order to make ends meet, but who cannot be said to have been professionally ambitious in the present-day sense of the word. Secondly, research on professional women usually deals with the period after the mid-19th century when women's professional opportunities started to multiply, yet the story of women's professionalism is older than that.
Chair and commentator: Deborah Simonton
Speakers:
Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, Bold and unbashed: Educated urban midwives in 18th-century Scandinavia
Johanna Ilmakunnas, Career at court: Noble ladies in the service of Scandinavian royals
Åsa Karlsson Sjögren, Early Swedish female teachers: Good-tempered and modest mistresses – or?
Marjatta Rahikainen, Headmistresses of elite girls' schools: Turning cultural capital into a livelihood