Female networking in Antwerp during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, "hidden" social capital?

The research project that Ellen Decraene is currently working on is entitled "Female networking in Antwerp during the 17th and 18th centuries" and has as main aim is to integrate the gender perspective in studies of social capital. It will try to trace the impact of social, economic and religious evolutions on the normative and practical access to women's networks, both formal and informal. More specifically, the way female social relations responded to changes in women's labour possibilities, changes in social status and the supposed rise of the ideal of domesticity, will be examined. Until recently, historians often tended to maintain the dichotomy of the female private sphere as opposed to the male public sphere. In contrast, this research covers female as well as male networks. By incorporating questions about the role of marriage on female networks and about the boundaries between male and female networks the male-female dichotomy is transcended, which opens the way for new insights into the role of gender in the production of social capital.

Keywords:WOMEN, ANTWERP, NETWORKING

Disciplines:Economic history, History