Economica

The untold story of how women made the world rich from historian Victoria Bateman

Humanity's journey from poverty to prosperity is filled with men who have become household names, but how many female entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists can you name? You would be forgiven for thinking that, until very recently, there were none.

But what about Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, who offered to pay to rebuild the walls of Thebes after the city was razed to the ground by Alexander the Great? Or the canny businesswoman Khadijah, better known as the first wife of Muhammad, who employed him to look after her troop of trading caravans? Or Ching Shih, a sex-worker turned pirate who amassed a fleet of ships that controlled trade in the South China Sea?

And, just as importantly, what about the everyday women who laboured for the profit of others - the bare-breasted female coal miners of the British Industrial Revolution, the 'convict maids' who laid the foundations of modern-day Australia, the female market-traders of Senegal, and the women who have toiled in many a sweatshop or paddy-field in South and East Asia?

Women have never been 'missing' from economic life - they were simply hidden from view by those writing the history books. In ECONOMICA Victoria Bateman rescues them from obscurity, charting the vital role women have played, from hunter-gatherers to AI engineers, in a thrilling, globe-spanning narrative that rewrites our understanding of economic history.

ECONOMICA isn't simply a history of women; it is a more accurate history of us all.