Gender and Economic History. The Story of a Complicated Marriage

This chapter explores the complicated marriage between economic history and history of women and gender – disciplines that have not optimally reaped the benefi ts of each other's results. This overview of developments in women's and gender history over the past century analyses the relationship and offers suggestions for intensifying it. Although international in outlook, the focus lies on Dutch historiography. Recently, Dutch economic and gender historians have contributed greatly to international debates on economic development since the Middle Ages, especially in Western Europe. In this chapter, it is proposed that studying historical economic development on a global scale from a gender perspective can benefi t both economic and gender history. Although still relatively unexplored territory, many Dutch scholars are increasingly engaging in relevant research questions, hopefully providing the empirical foundations for long-term global socioeconomic histories that are gender sensitive.