Women Entrepreneurs in Kazan Governorate during Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries

This study investigates the history of entrepreneurship among women from various social strata in the Kazan Governorate between the 1860s and early 1900s. It identifies the number of trading houses established by women, their founding dates, founders' names, and areas of commercial activity within the city of Kazan. The analysis focuses on key directions, forms, and scales of economic engagement across different female groups including merchants’ wives, townspeople’s daughters, noblewomen, peasant women, and other titled females. Special attention is given to the ethnoreligious diversity characteristic of the region, highlighting that business activities were also pursued by Muslim Tatar families, Old Believers, and members of other social groups. The research demonstrates how socioeconomic standing influenced occupational choices. It emphasizes that most female entrepreneurs concentrated primarily in food production, retail trade, clothing manufacture, and service industries such as lodging houses and laundries. However, it is noted that many women became proprietors even in traditionally male-dominated sectors like leather tanning, brick-making, distilling, etc. Furthermore, post-reform periods saw an increasing trend towards women's involvement in novel entrepreneurial domains such as bookselling, publishing, banking services, dentistry, and photography businesses.

Kazan Governorate, commerce, female entrepreneurship, partnership trading firms, industrial enterprises, service sector