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Building a business in the Bayou City: Houston and womens entrepreneurship, 1945-1977
May, Meredith Lee
May, Meredith Lee
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Date
2017
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Abstract
The history of women in post-World War II America often focuses on conformity and a retrenchment of gender roles. Recent histories have complicated the portrait of women in postwar America, noting their participation in labor and civil rights. In order to add to the understanding of the opportunities and limits on women in the latter-half of the twentieth-century, this dissertation analyzes female business owners in Houston from 1945 to 1977. I contend that business ownership allowed post-World War II American women another option to the traditional choices of working in a low-paying pink-collar job or attending solely to domestic responsibilities. I also highlight the overlapping limitations placed on women from differing racial, social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. I argue that due to early efforts at self-help and organization spearheaded by business owners, by the time the mainstream feminist movement reached Houston in the late 1960s, Houstonian women proved among the most active and most organized in the nation. For that reason, organizers chose Houston as the site for the National Womens Conference in 1977. Thus, a study of Houstons female business population has broader implications for the history of the womens rights movement.
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Women-owned business enterprises Texas Houston.
Entrepreneurship.
Businesswomen Texas Houston.
Feminism United States History.
Entrepreneurship.
Businesswomen Texas Houston.
Feminism United States History.
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Dissertation
Description
Format
1 online resource (iv, 266 pages).
Department
History