Class, Gender and the
Family Business
Kate Mulholland
Class, Gender and the Family Business
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Class, Gender and the
Family Business
Kate Mulholland
© Kate Mulholland 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-79336-7
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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2003 by
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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ISBN 978-1-349-41973-9
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mulholland, Kate, 1949Class, gender, and the family business / Kate Mulholland.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Family-owned business enterprises. 2. Women-owned business
enterprises. 3. Businesswomen. 4. Entrepreneurship. 5. Wealth.
6. Social conflict. I. Title.
HD62.25.M85
338.7–dc21
2003
2003045183
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12
9
11
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09
6
08
5
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4
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Dedicated to Mike and Paul
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Contents
List of Tables
ix
Acknowledgements
x
1 Introduction
1
2 The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives
9
3 Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation:
‘His Dream and My Money’
28
4 Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation:
‘He also Wants a Pudding’
48
5 Gender and Wealth Preservation:
‘I’m Not a Member of My Husband’s Family’
70
6 Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man
89
7 The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life:
‘It’s Like Being a One-Parent Family’
111
8 Women Owners: Honorary Men?
131
9 The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies
151
10 Conclusions
180
Notes
191
References
194
Name Index
203
Subject Index
205
vii
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List of Tables
2.1
2.2
2.3
3.1
3.2
9.1
9.2
Distribution of Wealth across Generations
Distribution of Businesses among Couples
Character of Diversified Enterprise among ‘New and
‘Old’ Businesses
‘New’ Wealth Couples: Distribution of Wives’
Contribution in Addition to Domestic Work
‘Old’ Enterprise Couples: Wives’ Contribution in
Addition to Domestic Work
Distribution of Ethnic Minority and White Majority
‘New’ and ‘Old’ Businesses
Diversified Business among Ethnic Minority and
White Majority Categories
ix
10
11
13
30
31
157
159
Acknowledgements
I carried out the research for this book while I was a Research Fellow in
the Sociology Department, at the University of Leicester, when I was
working with John Scott and David Reeder. The research was supported
by an ESRC grant, ROOO 23 2711, for the study of wealth creation. The
relationship between gender, power and class relations has long interested me, and the management of the family business proved to be an
excellent opportunity to explore this question.
I thank all those who participated in the research, and especially the
business families who co-operated and generously participated in the
research, but must remain anonymous. I am also indebted to Keith Vaz
MP for his help at the initial stage of the research.
Chapter 2 is based on ideas from a conference paper, ‘The Gendering
of Research: Politics and Power in the Study of Elite Families’, which I
presented at the Researching Contemporary Elites Conference, Bank of
England Museum, London, in 1996. The ideas about gender and exclusion discussed in Chapters 3–5 have been developed from an article
titled ‘Gender Power and Property Relations within Entrepreneurial
Wealthy Families’, in Gender, Work & Organisation, 3, 2, 1996, and have
drawn on an earlier paper, ‘The Marginalisation of Women and the
Processes of Wealth Creation’, in A. Sinfield (ed.), Poverty, Inequality and
Justice (New Waverley Publications, University of Edinburgh, 1993). The
theme of enterprise, emotional labour and gender relations addressed
in Chapters 6 and 7 draws on ideas in ‘Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man’, in D. Collinson and J. Hearn (eds), Men as
Managers: Managers as Men (London, Sage Publications, 1996). An earlier
version of Chapter 9 was published in an article in Work, Employment &
Society, 11:4, 1997.
This book has been written during 2001/2002 and I wish to thank the
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford for generous access to the library
facilities. My thanks go to Jane Roberts for her careful reading of drafts
of several chapters and to Mike Mulholland for his incisive reading of
Chapters 1 and 2. I am much indebted to Mike Mulholland and Paul Mulholland for their support and encouragement whilst writing this book.
Finally, I would like to thank Jo Campling for her encouragement and
support for the idea of the book and for her constructive criticism
throughout.
x
1
Introduction
The focus of this book is the wealthy family enterprise and the manner
in which it shapes gender and class relations. There has been very little
systematic sociological inquiry into the wealthy, how they make and
conserve their wealth, and in particular the part played by women. Yet
according to the popularly held view, the wealth men own and control
is a result of their sole efforts. The role played by women is ignored, and
the wives of business leaders and family women generally are stereotyped as male trophies and consumers of such wealth. One of the main
concerns of this book is to challenge this assumption and popular
stereotype. The second concern is to explore where power lies in
business family strategies and how it affects the division of labour
and the career paths of family kin. This raises the question why
women in wealthy entrepreneurial business families, who appear to
have considerable power, are unable to exercise that power. In examining these questions, the book places its central focus on the processes
of private wealth-formation amongst wealthy families and questions
the assumption that there is a simple correlation between male
effort and dominance in the ownership and management of wealth.
Asking the question whether and in what ways family women play
an entrepreneurial role in the business suggests that it is essential
to place family women at the centre of the research gaze. This
shows that family women play a key role in the creation of family
wealth. It also demonstrates how male kin appropriate women’s
efforts, how women’s progress within the business is thwarted, and
how they are marginalised in the management of such enterprise
and excluded from ownership of private wealth. Finally, it will
explain how such patterns of exclusion, taking account of ethnic
differences, are part of a wider coherent business strategy that
1
2 Class, Gender and the Family Business
both reproduces and sustains the dominance of male management and
ownership of the family business.
Chapter 2 is organised into four sections. The first focuses on the
research and describes the character of the family businesses studied.
It includes tables that categorise the age, activity and business
sector and indicate whether the businesses were inherited or newly
established. It also defines enterprising activity according to Scott’s
(1994) notion of income. The second section reviews a range of
literature that includes business directories, entrepreneurial theories
and biographical accounts of enterprise and academic studies. It argues
that these sources are characteristically gendered and that, in failing
to question women’s absence from enterprise, they present a predominantly masculine picture of business. This is problematic, because the
silence about gender inequality and the neglect of power relations
lend a coherence to this literature, which has a powerful influence
sustaining the connections between men, enterprise and wealth. The
third section argues that a gender analysis is essential to the study of
family capitalism and that a non-gendered approach requires that
family women, like men, are the focal point of the research gaze. In
order to highlight the centrality of family women’s enterprising
activity, the chapter sets out the major tenets of a research strategy
that is capable of interrogating male accounts of enterprise, whilst
overcoming women’s silence and invisibility. The final section of this
chapter examines the theoretical perspectives adopted. The discussion
on patriarchy provides the framework in which issues of power relations, labour, emotion work and women’s marginality are debated.
The focus then shifts to male power and the manner in which male
friendship and competitiveness not only shape the masculine image of
enterprise, but are also critical to the accumulation process. Drawing on
the reformulated and non-gendered notion of enterprise, subsequent
chapters challenge gendered stereotypes of women and men in the
family business.
Chapters 3–5 illustrate that the creation of family enterprise involves
three phases – wealth creation, wealth accumulation and wealth preservation – which in practice operate in a chronological and cyclical
manner in the creation and reproduction of private capital. This process
is drawn on to demonstrate the interplay between capital and gender
power in the allocation of power and position amongst family kin in
the business enterprise. Organising the research in this way provides a
framework that reveals how the distinct phases have different career
outcomes for male and female business partners.
Introduction 3
Chapter 3 starts with the business creation phase and examines how
businesses are founded. It shows that resources such as investment
capital, skills, family heritage and, not least, family labour, and particularly wives’ labour, are key resources during start-up. It also comments
on the location and character of the businesses studied. This chapter
focuses on the manner in which gender identities influence the connections between resources, including labour, capital and business
opportunities. However, the aim in this instance is to explore how this
connection is influenced by the power allocated to the husband via marriage. It is this power that distinguishes male from female partners for
it allows them access to and potential control over women’s labour in
ways that are inconceivable in a reversed scenario, but which constitute
resources imperative to business formation. This suggests that such
mixed partnerships are double-edged for wife partners, for while they
allow them greater access and experience in a wider range of businesses,
they deny them equal partnerships and confine them to a subordinate
role that advantages the business at start-up. The chapter draws on businesses in farming, the manufacture of hygiene equipment, the hotel
business, property development, finance, clothing manufacture, textiles
and concept furniture to show how such partnerships work in practice.
In drawing on examples, it shows that wives finance business, establish
business, bring core technical expertise to the enterprise, take on the
operational management of such enterprise and, not least, offer emotional support to their husband/partners. Contrary to stereotypes of
family women, the range of tasks they undertake suggests that they are
key players in the organisation.
Chapter 4 locates the question of the systematic marginalisation of
wives and female kin from the organisation of the family enterprise
within the second phase, that of wealth accumulation. Wealth accumulation is equated with the establishment of the business in organisation form manifested in bureaucracy, the formulation of managerial
structures, hierarchies and the specialisation and professionalisation of
function. The research suggests that this development marks a breaking
point for the careers of family women and of wife/managers in particular. Drawing on businesses in clothing manufacture, the manufacture
of hygiene products, the hotel business, finance, office furniture, niche
clothing and food manufacture, the chapter traces the careers of
husband and wife partnerships within the dynamics of the particular
organisational politics, and suggests that while husbands follow a destined career path, wives struggle against a process of exclusion. What
emerges is a pattern of systematic marginalisation that can be accounted
4 Class, Gender and the Family Business
for, first, in the power men have as husbands, and second, in the logic
of men’s interests in their capacities as husbands, men and entrepreneurs. However, the range of managerial competencies that such
women bring to the partnership challenges human capital-based theories of exclusion, typical of Becker’s (1985) account. This includes the
women’s technical skill upon which clothing manufacture depends, personnel management skills in culturally specific contexts and, generally,
their financial expertise demonstrated in the concept furniture business.
In addition, ideologies of domesticity and femininity associated with
women benefit some enterprises, such as the hotel business, when some
businesses are marketed around homely cosiness and the family. In
highlighting the range of wives’ managerial roles, Chapter 4 argues that
these wives make a huge investment in the development of both their
managerial competence and their businesses. Although they generously give their labour and finance, they are unable to withstand the
challenge from their husband/partners in the management of such
enterprise.
Framed within the phase of wealth preservation, Chapter 5 addresses
the question of business ownership, the conservation of wealth and its
relationship to the gendered character of family power and authority.
In particular, it examines the processes that lead to the bypassing and
exclusion of wife partners from the ownership of core wealth. This
chapter argues that primogeniture1 and the influence it exerts in terms
of capitalist survival and lineal preservation provide the principal explanation for the exclusion of wives and women generally from the ownership of business, which in turn suggests unquestioned and automatic
ownership. Focusing on the manner in which enterprise is transferred
strongly suggests that primogeniture transcends the link between wifely
enterprise and direct ownership in favour of the eldest son and the male
line. This pattern of wealth transfer is observed in a very wide range
of enterprises, including garment manufacture, the manufacture of
hygiene products, retail furnishing business, manufacturing, construction and property businesses, niche clothing, the restaurant trade, the
hotel business, brewing, food manufacture, machine-tool manufacture,
land ownership and property development. The chapter also provides
tentative insights into how the legacy of coverture,2 the transcendence
of class over gender interests and natal bonding lead to the severing of
the relationship between wifely entreprise and ownership, but in turn
contribute to the perpetuation of primogeniture. While the family
enterprise has been conceptualised as a chronological process, these
three chapters focus on the dynamics in which wives engage in the
Introduction 5
establishment of enterprise, are ultimately undermined, are rendered
peripheral in the management of such enterprise and, finally, are
excluded from ownership. At the same time, by conceptualising the
family enterprise as a cyclical process, this chapter puts into context
how wife/partners continue to contribute to patterns of socio-economic
activity in the reproduction and perpetuation of such enterprise. The
chapter also draws attention to the issue of reward and recognition for
the family women for, as these chapters show, many such women continue to work in the enterprise well after business set-up.
Chapters 6 and 7 explore the question of male emotion, the work
ethic and enterprise, and locate the debate within the theme of presence and absence. These chapters argue that emotion work is critical to
enterprise, but so far, with the exception of Davidoff and Hall’s (1987)
work, such questions have been largely neglected. Chapters 6 and 7
argue that emotion work is a central business resource and is articulated
in distinct ways. For instance, Chapter 6 suggests that male emotion
is disguised as creativity, passion, drive, dedication and commitment.
However, it also argues that although the act of enterprise is played out
in the arena of emotional display, other aspects of entrepreneurial discourse, such as rationality, a key feature of ‘hard’ masculinity, represents
an ideology that conceals the appropriation and consumption of male
emotion in the service of enterprise.
The theme of emotion work is also explored in Chapter 7 with specific emphasis on the notion of absence. This suggests that the male
work ethic is dependent on the role of male emotion as absence from
domesticity, on the sexual division of labour and on the conventional
organisation of domesticity. In this sense, the chapter argues that entrepreneurial ideologies tend to prescribe male emotion for the preserve of
the enterprise. These arguments are explored within the context of
Ochberg’s (1987) study, which insists that men limit their emotion work
in the private arena.
Finally, the purpose of these chapters is to show that emotion work,
men’s absence from the household and women’s work are resources that
contribute to the creation of wealth. By unravelling the notion of the
‘self-made man’, Chapter 6 reveals the connection between emotionality, domesticity, masculinities and enterprise. In developing this
argument, Chapter 6 constructs two typologies of entrepreneurial
masculinity, the company man and the takeover man, showing that,
despite the appearance of difference, they share a relation that is similar
to the domestic sphere. Contextualised in themes of absence and presence, the notions of male sacrifice and workaholism are debated to
6 Class, Gender and the Family Business
suggest that male partners absent themselves emotionally from the
domestic sphere in order to transform their emotional energy into creativity and business formation, and whilst simultaneously abdicating
their patriarchal responsibilities to their partners, draw on wifely emotional labour. The themes of absence and presence are used to convey
the manner in which such men engage in sets of relationships that are
mutually reproducing, whilst constructing masculine configurations
through engagement in public sphere activities and non-engagement
with private sphere emotion work.
There is a shift of emphasis in Chapter 7, which explores the dynamics of the sexual division of labour and the relationship between home
and work. In particular, it draws attention to a neglected dimension –
the issue of male emotional investment in the domestic sphere. It asserts
that the impact of male entrepreneurs’ work activity is so pervasive that
it invades and colonises the household, with the subsequent effect of
introducing a particular order to domestic life. Such ordering of domestic activity appears as a contradiction, for, on the one hand, as the earlier
chapters reveal, most enterprising men argue that they draw a very
sharp distinction between work and home activity. In this sense, the
control of the household seems to be the responsibility of their wives.
On the other hand, as this chapter will reveal, such ordering is in itself
prescriptive and appears to extend a permutation of capitalist logic to
the household. Of course, such men’s absence from the household, and
their preference for a disengagement from the messy arena of emotional
work, obscures the extent to which they attempt to regulate, not least
wives’ physical labour, but also the whole remit of emotional management in the service of the enterprise. The sharp separation between
work and home seems to be validated by men’s absence, but this neat
division conceals many ambiguities. Chapter 7 argues that the demands
of the enterprise may reduce men to breadwinners, but it also rationalises the organisation of the household in a variety of ways, particularly the manner in which husbands and wives utilise their emotional
labour. It suggests that such men reserve their emotion for activity
within the enterprise and that the energies (physical and emotional) of
the wives via their spouses are also consumed by the same activity.
The focus of Chapter 8 is five independent female business owners,
the proprietors of four businesses. Two of their businesses are newly
created and two are inherited. They are in a range of economic sectors
– plastics manufacturing, organic cosmetics, livery and estate ownership
combined with corporate entertainment. In contrast to Goffee and
Scase’s (1985) and Allen’s (1991) findings, it is argued that similarity, as
Introduction 7
opposed to difference, with male-headed business characterises femaleowned enterprise. In examining their approach to business, it is argued
that these five female entrepreneurs establish, manage and preserve the
ownership and survival of their enterprise in ways that are similar to
their male counterparts. The five women are unique, for they seem to
have ignored or circumvented their gender constraints in the masculine
business world. For instance, out of a total of 54 ‘new’ businesses, only
two first-generation businesses, the livery and the cosmetics enterprise,
have been established by women, and continue to be managed and
owned by them. These two women are remarkable, for they have, of
their own volition and against all odds, defied convention and entered
the male world of business. The third female-owned enterprise, a ‘new’
business in plastics manufacturing, a recent acquisition, had been
bequeathed by the male founder to two of his daughters, who have
undergone training and socialisation typical of men. The fifth woman,
in the absence of a suitable male heir, inherited a title, a large country
house and land, and is the only female landowner.
This chapter suggests that the notion of a shared business culture
(Mulholland, 1997) is appropriate in examining women’s entry into
business. Like their male counterparts they benefit from the material
attributes of a middle-class background, which in a distant but important way helps them to cross conventional gendered class boundaries.
They also acquired particular kinds of knowledge and skill specific to
the business they subsequently entered. In this sense, their business
entry is pre-empted by their cultural capital and training. It is also
argued that female entrepreneurs are similar to men in a second major
respect, and this concerns the management of business finance. They
are risk-alert and, like their male counterparts, enter businesses that
require little capital outlay at start-up and rely on family resources, particular kinds of personal expertise and access to cheap labour.
Chapter 9 explores the ways in which the family business is largely
driven by and dependent upon a shared business culture (Mulholland,
1997). Contrary to cultural accounts, it is argued that business stems
from the similarity in the class background of the actors concerned, a
shared value system and common business strategies that take account
of ethnicity. It also explores the role that the family institution plays as
a socialisation agent and purveyor of such business culture. Bourdieu’s
(1976) notion of habitus3 puts into context how a shared culture operates in practice and as experience. Roberts and Holyroyd’s (1992) discussion of substantive rationality conveys the sense in which such family
socialisation practices underpin a class strategy or best way of manag-
8 Class, Gender and the Family Business
ing the succession and financial management of businesses. Chapter 9
also demonstrates how substantive rationality, characteristic of gendered kinship relations, interweaves with modern rationality. This is
highlighted in male apprenticeship and the acquisition of financial
competence, one of the key principles of a shared business culture, the
logic of which is to ensure the survival of the enterprise and the regeneration of the family and their class position. In this sense, it also argues
that the shared business culture (habitus) serves as a class strategy and is
embedded in, and is an elaboration of, culture as the reproduction of
patterns of rational socio-economic behaviour over time. In shifting
the focus to family men, this chapter also identifies the connections
between primogeniture, business leadership and class survival.
Finally, Chapter 9 questions the cultural approach to enterprise characteristic of Werbner (1984) and the idea that there is necessarily an
exclusive link between specific cultures and enterprise to the exclusion
of others. Taking account of the ethnic identities of the entrepreneurs
concerned, Chapter 9 makes two important points. First, it draws on
data that explain that all the families concerned pursue particular practices that can be regarded as a shared business culture. Second, it argues
that that such practices are rooted in class resources and are manifested
in the practice of creating, managing and sustaining the family enterprise. It will be shown that particular families adopt a very particular
approach to leadership, succession and the production of specific
human capital and entrepreneurial expertise. In focusing on business
growth and business investment, this chapter provides other insights
into the financial management of family enterprise. Boissevain’s (1974)
notion of social capital puts into context the manner in which all entrepreneurs draw on their cultural practices in the development and
management of their enterprise and that such cultural practices are
embedded in class relations and are thus aspects of a wider business
strategy for all businesses concerned.
2
The Study, Theoretical and
Methodological Perspectives
The research for this book was conducted in one of the Midland
counties of England and is based on an extensive study of 70 wealthy
business families involving over 100 family members, categorised as
‘new’ and ‘old’ enterprises. In the ‘old’ wealth category are 26 secondgeneration or inherited businesses, which have survived several generations of family management. Forty-four of the businesses are newly
established and constitute first-generation enterprise. ‘New’ business
refers to instances where the founding member is still in control. In
respect of ethnic composition, the study consists of 52 white majorityowned businesses and 18 ethnic minority businesses. The ethnic minority enterprises consist of East African Asians, Asians, Anglo-Jews and
one Irish, and are ‘new’, first-generation businesses established in this
country.
The 70 businesses consist of approximately 30 women and 70 men.
There are 58 married couples and, as Chapters 3–5 reveal, many are also
business partners and will be referred as husband and wife partnerships.
Of the twelve remaining businesses, there are seven single men and five
female owners. It is noteworthy that only two of the women are firstgeneration entrepreneurs who had set up their businesses in partnership with their husbands; two of the other women inherited their
second-generation business and the fifth inherited a small estate, a large
house and associated enterprise. The dominance of husband and wife
business partnerships alongside the dominance of male ownership raises
important questions about how the dynamics of gender and class power
affect the processes of wealth accumulation and the management and
distribution of property.
9
10
Class, Gender and the Family Business
Concept of wealth and wealthy businesses
In order to explore this question it is important to start with an interrogation of the notion of wealth. According to Scott (1994), wealth must
be understood in relative terms. He argues that it refers to the advantaged possession of personal assets. In this sense the wealthy are those
who are materially advantaged. This departs from the conventional idea
that wealth refers exclusively to those with unearned income. For the
purposes of this study wealth refers to units of private business with
earned and/or unearned assets. The criterion for inclusion in the study
was that participants had assets of at least £1 million. The size of wealthholdings of those studied varied; most have assets far exceeding the
£1 million cut-off.1 However, it is difficult to make a valuation of any
of the businesses studied, not least because this is dependent on the
character of the enterprise, the location and market conditions. Assets
included businesses, investments, trusts and personal property such as
private dwellings, as well as other valuables, including paintings,
antiques, jewellery, cars, planes and yachts. Interestingly, the most
recent edition of The Sunday Times’ Book of the Rich (2003) confirms that
the largest wealthholders have not only sustained but have also
increased their wealthholding.
Table 2.1 shows the distribution of wealth across the generations and
the general area of economic activity of the 70 businesses studied. Table
Table 2.1
Distribution of wealth across generations
Category of
Business
‘New’ Wealth, First and
Second Generation
‘Old’ Wealth, Third
Generation and Later
Total
Land
Civil Engineering,
Quarries &
Construction
Manufacturinga
Textiles
Property
Finance
Food/Drink
Service Sectorb
Diversified
6
15
21
2
5
5
2
3
0
9
12
1
3
1
1
0
2
2
1
3
8
6
3
3
2
11
13
Total
44
26
70
a. Machine tools, plastics and motor cycles.
b. A variety of businesses, including printing, hairdressing, travel and computer software.
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 11
2.2 shows the sectoral spread of the businesses and their distribution
amongst the ‘new’ and ‘old’ business couples (58 couples and twelve
[seven male and five female] single-headed families). Tables 2.1 and 2.2
show that the businesses are distributed across a wide range of economic
sectors, including land, quarrying, construction, manufacturing (textiles
and engineering), and the service sector (finance, property, computing
and food).
The tables show that the businesses are divided into two categories:
‘new’ and ‘old’. ‘New’ wealthy businesses are those set up between 1930
and 1990, but most of the newly wealthy went into business in the
1970s and earlier. Contrary to the claims made by the pundits of
the enterprise culture, only a minority of the 70 businesses started in
the 1980s, and certainly are not drawn from redundant workers or
coalminers. As Table 2.1 shows, there are 44 ‘new’, or first-generation,
businesses. These are still managed by their founders, and/or are in the
process of being passed to the second generation. Table 2.2 shows that
39 of these are run by husband and wife business partnerships, with
the greatest number of businesses concentrated in the diversified sector,
followed by the service, textiles and landed sectors.
In contrast, ‘old’ or inherited businesses refer to those businesses
established some time in the past, and handed down to the present generation through the family. Table 2.1 indicates there are 26 in this category, and Table 2.2 shows that 19 of these are also managed by husband
and wife partnerships. The tables show that land-based businesses are
Table 2.2
Distribution of businesses among couples
Category of
Business
‘New’ Wealth, First and
Second Generation
‘Old’ Wealth, Third
Generation and Later
Total
Land
Civil Engineering,
Quarries &
Construction
Manufacturing
Textiles
Property
Finance
Food and Drink
Service Sector
Diversified
4
9
13
2
3
5
2
3
0
8
12
0
3
1
1
0
2
2
1
2
6
6
3
3
2
10
13
Total
39
19
58
12
Class, Gender and the Family Business
numerically dominant in the ‘old’ wealth category and, surprisingly,
constitute a significant number in the ‘new’ wealth category. The
remaining businesses are distributed among subsets of the latter, while
a few are in manufacturing. It is very significant that nearly half of the
couples in the ‘old’ category have land-based businesses (Table 2.2,
column 3) and this trend towards particular sectoral concentrations
would seem to have important implications for the issue of gender and
the ownership and management of the businesses. Fifty-seven of the
businesses derive their wealth from one sector only, while thirteen are
diversified.
Table 2.3 shows that 13 of the ‘new’ wealthy families and one ‘old’
wealthy family have businesses in more than one sector. Two aspects of
a wider accumulation strategy can be observed from this table: the first
is the sectoral shift from one area of business to another; the second is
the apparent concentration of business activity in particular sectors such
as property and land.2
This trend suggests that the ‘newly’ wealthy emulate the accumulation strategies of the ‘old’ wealthy in the acquisition of land and real
estate. These are particularly valuable forms of property. Depending on
the location, commercial building has the potential of yielding considerable income from rents; the other advantage is that they are considered stable accumulative assets, which were at the time of the research
regarded as safe investments. The shift to these sectors from more
labour-intensive sectors such as textiles may also represent a reduction
in labour costs. For the purposes of this study it is important to inquire
whether and in what ways these shifts have implications for the positions of male and female kin within these enterprises.
The gendering of the business and
the gendering of the research
This section argues that sources such as business directories, entrepreneurial theories and much of the biographical literature require a gender
analysis, because the definition of ownership rooted solely in male
enterprise is at most a partial and distorted account of how the family
business is actually established. Characteristically, there is a silence
about women’s absence. However, Pateman’s (1988) philosophical
notion of the ‘unity’ of the marital relationship suggests the ways in
which wives are rendered invisible in business partnerships, for they
‘disappear’ in the person of the husband in the public sphere. As this
section demonstrates, the disappearance of wives as business partners is
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 13
Table 2.3 Character of diversified enterprise among ‘new’ and ‘old’
businesses
‘New’ Business Couples
Couple Number
Source of Wealth
‘New’ Diversified Wealth
N28/N29
Trade in East Africa
N30
Speculative building
N31
N32
Printing
Plant hire
N33
Textile manufacturing
N34
N35
N36
Manufacturing &
distribution
Finance
Retail/Food
N37
Property
N38
Food manufacturing
N40
Textile manufacturing
Textiles export
Pharmaceuticals & textiles
Speculative building
Vehicle manufacture
Farming
Hairdressing & property
Civil enginering
Estate Farming
Open cast mining
Property development
Wholesale textiles
Property development
Manufacturing
Property development
Finance/hotels
Travel/insurance &
estate agencies
Advertising
Employment agency
Asset stripping
Playing the Stock Market
Property
Food manufacturing
Estate farming
Rare books
Property
development
Art galleries
Total = 12
‘Old’ Business Couples
Couple Number
Source of Wealth
‘Old’ Business Couples
O 19
Land estate
Estate
Stockbroking
Total = 1
N = ‘New’ wealth, O = ‘Old’ wealth.
Couples N28 and N29 are members of an extended family and share one business
portfolio.
This table shows that thirteen of the ‘new’ wealthy families had derived their wealth at
the time of the interview from more than one sector, while this was the case for only one
of the ‘old’ wealthy families. Column 2 indicates the character of business at start-up,
while column 3 indicates the shifts between sectors and the spread of investment.
14
Class, Gender and the Family Business
the articulation of the gender effect of this convention and underpins
a very broad range of documentation of a highly influential character.
Although business directories and other documentary sources such as
Burke’s Peerage, local histories and newspaper business sections are indispensable in tracking patterns of ownership, they say nothing about the
process of wealth accumulation. Another example is the Doomsday Book,
which is based on the Land Valuation Act 1911, a survey listing the
acreage assessed for the valuation of individual owners in each parish
across the counties studied. Although this important source made it
possible to examine patterns of land ownership among men from 1873
to 1911, and despite historical studies (Thompson, 1976) showing that
dowries and marriage settlements typically contribute to such wealthholding, this is not mentioned. Kelly’s directories, another source identifying male ownership in other business sectors for the period 1936–46,
a period when women increasingly entered paid work, reveal the same
rigidities. However, these sources identified the principal landowner and
size of acreage, and as such provided some of the background data complementing the fieldwork. The importance of Burke’s Peerage as a data
source is that it confirmed the ancestral roots and the age of the wealthholding, as well as identifying businesses in the landowning sector. The
economic role that female kin are likely to have played in the building
of wealth is also ignored in historical editions of Who’s Who, which
identified rich families in other areas of business such as brewing. Characteristically, by focusing exclusively on male wealthholders, these
sources endorse the tradition of identifying wealth with the male line.
Of course, these sources are useful, for they enable the descendants or
the present owners of ‘old’ wealth to be traced through contemporary
sources such as business directories, press reports, consultation with
community leaders and personal recommendation.
The ‘new’ business sources reveal the same absences. These include
business directories, The Sunday Times’ Book of the Rich, the business
section of national and local newspapers, and reputation. Some of the
ethnic minority business leaders are also drawn from a separate business directory. An entrepreneurial reputation and a flair for publicity
proved especially effective in the identification of entrepreneurial men.
Entrepreneurs in speculative building, farming, quarrying and food
manufacture were identified by The Sunday Times’ Book of the Rich and
were major wealthholders. National and local newspapers identified
others in textiles. The remainder were identified through consultations
with community leaders, local notables, as well as personal recommendation, to reveal the dominance of male ownership. For instance,
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 15
these sources confirmed that men were major shareholders and senior
executives within their enterprise. However, there were some exceptions
and the research uncovered five businesses headed by women that were
independent of men.
Current entrepreneurial theory represents a shift away from structure,
and the embrace of neoclassical economics means a sharper emphasis
on theories of human capital and individualism, exemplary in notions
of the ‘self-made’ man. The significance of this is that it ignores the
question of the wider ‘resources’ that determine the fate of business
activity, while lending credibility to the essentialism that characterises
human capital theory. This is evident in the assumption that it is
possible to correlate personality types with business activity. This
means identifying individuals with the ‘right’ qualities, which include
risk-taking, innovation, decision-making, leadership, courage, perception,
opportunism and dynamism in the manipulation and management
of market activities (Kets de Vries, 1977; Hebert and Link, 1989). This
is problematic for women in business, for these attributes have a long
association with masculinity, and, reflecting Elson and Pearson’s (1981)
and Cockburn’s (1983) convincing arguments concerned with skill constructions, suggest that they are embedded in particular class/gender
identities.
The currency of the self-made image of business leaders is illuminated
in the biographical literature (Lynn, 1974; Kennedy, 1980). This suggests that the wealth and success enjoyed by particular businessmen can
be accounted for in their unique talents and personal ambition, relying
on modern variants of Samuel Smiles’ self-help, which, during the
1980s, became the hallmark of Sir Keith Joseph, and later Norman
Tebbit’s recipe for enterprise. Individual male effort is extolled around
the discourses of the ‘self-made’ man and stories of ‘rags to riches’
business success. No mention is made of the links between individual
activity and resources, such as the availability of capital for investment,
skills, economic climate and other forms of help, such as family
labour – women’s labour in particular.
It is not surprising then that sections of popular literature and the
quality press present female kin in entrepreneurial families in a traditional and stereotypical manner. For instance, an article in Business Week
(October 1992) typifies the way in which wives in particular are presented. They are cast as conspicuous ‘trophies’, the adornments of very
successful men, or are more subtly portrayed as dutiful companions
playing the traditional supportive role, not overshadowing the central
figurehead, the entrepreneurial man. The manner in which each of
16
Class, Gender and the Family Business
these strands of popular discourse assumes that such men carve out fortunes for the benefit and consumption of female kin serves to reproduce the gendered, stereotyped interconnection between business and
the family head. Entrepreneurial discourse is problematic for women
in other ways. It takes no account of how power structures relate to
class and gender, and parodies neutrality whilst addressing a male
audience.
However, other research, such as that by Chell et al. (1991), whilst
claiming to take account of agency and structure, fails to see the significance of gender relations, and is illustrative of the manner in which
different discourses lend potency to contemporary, ‘self-made’ entrepreneurial ideologies. Whilst this conceals women’s financial investments, what also tends to be hidden are the ways in which men’s
absence from domesticity contributes to the build-up of both the business and the particular masculine image (Mulholland, 1996a). In some
ways there is little that is new about these representations because they
mirror nineteenth-century entrepreneurial paternalism (Davidoff and
Hall, 1987).
At the same time, this literature conspires with market logic,
exemplified in human capital theory, where women’s absence from
most mainstream business activities can be explained by the inadequacy
of their labour power and poor comparisons with men in aptitude
and skills. But even if skill and aptitude were all that was required, they
do not operate in a disconnected way, but rather are contingent on
structure. The problem with this literature is that it ignores ‘structure’
and fails to take account of the relationship between material resources
and personal skill, and is a repercussion of the disappearance of a
class-focused approach.
Major ethnographic studies, such as Scase and Goffee’s (1982) account
of the business classes where wives’ contributions are considered, and
Ram’s (1994) semi-autobiographical study of the clothing industry,
are a significant advance, but they uncritically perpetuate the idea of
women as helpers. While they seem to account for gender in that they
acknowledge that female kin are involved in the enterprise, they are
sanguine about the hierarchy and the inequality they observe. Very
often female kin undertake positions of responsibility, such as managers, which are also often unpaid. Describing them as ‘de facto’ managers and the positions they hold as ‘informal’ may be an apt and valid
image, but it makes little attempt to evaluate such women’s work as
enterprising activity within the boundaries of power relations. Ram calls
this form of organisation a characteristic of authentic Asian ethnicity
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 17
and culture. In such instances the scope and value of female kin contributions are taken for granted. The impact of the apparent genderneutral (Kets de Vries) and gender-blind (Ram) approaches adopted by
this literature allows the link between enterprise and men to continue.
The failure to question and theorise the relationship between women
and men and capital merely perpetuates conventional gendered stereotypes. At the same time, Ram’s work suggests that some of the ways in
which discourses are packaged as culture are a fig leaf for gender inequality. It has been argued that the combined effect of different strands
of literature has been to lose sight of the role of family women and
enterprise.
A non-gendered approach to research
A non-gendered approach to the study of family enterprise requires that
family women, like men, are the focal point of research. By focusing on
the dynamics of the husband and wife business partnership, this book
will show that the idea of the wife as the ‘helpmeet’,3 first introduced
in Davidoff and Hall’s (1987) path-breaking study exploring the
gendered character of nineteenth-century British industrial enterprise,
continues to have potency. In adopting a non-gendered approach, this
book will compare and evaluate wives’ contributions in establishing
and managing enterprise, with the notion of the wife as helper.
In taking on board earlier criticisms, a non-gendered notion of enterprise refers to both economic and ‘non-economic’ activities, dispersed
among family members, consisting of female and male kin, who express
a shared intention to expand their business during their lifetimes and
to pass this wealth on intact to their heirs. This is inclusive of women
and as such departs from the spirit of much of the theoretical and entrepreneurial discourse and empirical studies which eclipse and conceal
women’s contribution to the creation of wealth.
The highlighting of family women business partners entails going
beyond formal structures and the largely male accounts of the rise of
enterprise and wealth. Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) grounded theory, the
life history approach and Harding’s (1987) standpoint theory provide
the organising tenets for a research strategy that is capable of overcoming problems of women’s silence and invisibility. For instance,
comparisons of male partners’ accounts of wifely help with women’s
deconstruction of the male claim of sacrifice and effort expose the
manner in which positions of power are competed for, contested and
eventually negotiated in the family business. They also show that the
18
Class, Gender and the Family Business
contradictions between domesticity and enterprise become points of
tension in such husband and wife partnerships.
The life history approach shows that, for some men, marriage is
the precursor to business entry. This ties in to the idea that business
improves the male role of economic provider. In such cases, entrepreneurial men make great play of their new roles as wealth creators and
economic providers, and embellish notions of masculinity. However,
the research also shows that marriage can be an opportunity to enhance
enterprise through the resources wives bring to the business. In effect,
the life history approach reveals how the private and the social
interweave with economic activity in both male and female accounts
of business formation.
Since documentary sources name men as wealthholder they were the
first points of contact. The study of the family business is an example
of how coalitions of interests initiate alliances between capital and masculinity in a bid to protect common interests that pertain to the business and the family. For instance, as business heads, these men act as
gatekeepers to both the business and to female kin. For example, access
had to be negotiated through the business heads, who were initially
contacted by a letter that briefly explained the purpose of the research.
This was followed by a telephone call during which the terms and the
location of the interview were agreed.
Echoing Roper (1994), what is striking about the interviews with the
male entrepreneurs is the consistency with which men invariably take
the credit for their success, and in ways that justify their dominance in
the management and ownership of such enterprise. In some cases the
ambience and formality of plush business headquarters complement
their images as powerful and self-made business leaders. This use of
surroundings as a power accessory has a gender dimension, but is not
one that is restricted to men, for two of the women entrepreneurs were
prone to such power-play. The displays of power as confirmation of leadership stand juxtaposed to the manner in which such entrepreneurial
men portray their wives’ roles. For although these family women are
their business partners and have formal job titles, the men rarely portray
them as such and continually refer to them in personal terms as their
wives, whose place in the business is marginal. Typically, speaking of
his wife’s business role, one entrepreneur commented: ‘She will be able
to tell you about her invisible contribution.’
In so far as women are invisible in much of the business documentation, are portrayed in the media as male ‘trophies’ and accessories,
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 19
and are perceived to be informally occupied in the family business
by academic reporters, this made the separate interviewing of family
women critical. The interview offered a deeper insight into how family
businesses are managed and allowed the women to tell their stories
unhindered. However, access to the partner/wives had in most cases to
be negotiated through the men. The research focus on the wives highlights the peculiarity of the family business in that it enables men to
sustain patriarchal power by interchanging and conflating the role of
formal business head and the role of family head. For instance, in their
role of family head they drew widely on different aspects of domestic
ideology. In some instances the role of protector is mirrored in the tendency to regard requests to interview wife/partners as an intrusion into
the family sphere despite the women’s involvement in the business. In
these cases, the fusion between home and business, and particularly the
notion of the male protector, legitimises the male as the representative
voice of the family and serves to overshadow and silence women/
partners.
The formal power of the business head to control access was especially evident in cases such as the landed sector where the business is
managed from the family home. However, such business heads gave
guided tours of their private houses providing extensive comments on
the artefacts of their affluence such as collections of paintings. This provided an interesting gaze into the meaning, symbolism and expression
of business success, while saying something about lifestyles, consumption patterns and class aspirations. However symbolic of ‘success’, such
displays of affluence endorse notions of effort and sacrifice. The manner
in which such men manipulated the public/private split serves as a
sharp reminder that men in contemporary economies can still draw
effective support from domestic ideologies.
The importance of the interviews with the entrepreneurial wives is
that the women frequently challenged their husbands’ embellished
accounts and the marginality of their own work in the enterprise. Many
of the wives held jobs in the business, while others had worked in the
business in the past. The informality of the conditions in which this
work is performed spills over into the research and is articulated in the
manner in which wives present their work in the business.
The interviews with the women and the men also show how the material symbols of wealth become signals for class aspirations and class
mobility. Like the business heads, the women in both ‘new’ and ‘old’
businesses view property such as houses as symbols of success and afflu-
20
Class, Gender and the Family Business
ence. Since some of the interviews with the women were undertaken at
home, questions about how such houses were acquired, their history
and the meaning they had for the entrepreneurial family, seemed a
natural and unobtrusive inquiry. Some of the ‘newly’ aspiring wealthy
women were very concerned with class divisions and talked about the
rigidity and subtlety of class boundaries, suggesting that material affluence was not a sufficient criterion for acceptance into certain social and
cultural milieux. Power is also important to such women. Indicative of
this is their resentment at social divisions that bar them from some
social circles, while they are sanguine about other social divisions that
enable them to hire domestic help.
The informality of the family home was quite important, for the
setting seemed to encourage the wives to discuss more openly their
‘invisible’ role in the business. This provided insights into the manner
in which emotion work and wives’ labour are contested resources
between entrepreneurial wives and their husbands.
In order to explain the way gender divisions shape the enterprise of
men and women within wealthy families, the book separates analytically the process of wealthholding into three constituent phases: wealth
creation, wealth accumulation and wealth conservation.
Wealth creation refers to business entry and start-up. Wealth accumulation is equated with the growth of the business, when the unit of
capital takes on a particular identity. Formal managerial structures are
put into place, accompanied by the specialisation and the professionalisation of function. At this point also hierarchy and power are symbolised in the management teams and boards of directors. Wealth
conservation refers to strategies that safeguard and preserve wealth from
fragmentation. The act of conservation, whilst involving wealth creating or re-creating tactics, also refers to inheritance patterns such as primogeniture, the heritage of coverture, gendered socialisation practices,
male leadership ‘apprenticeships’ and the use of trusts, and is part of
the strategic management of private wealth.
While these must not be treated as sharply separated chronological
stages, they do indicate distinct aspects and phases of wealthholding.
In this sense they provide an indication of the way a new unit of capital
develops, while they can also be understood as a cyclical process in the
reproduction of units of newly created and inherited wealth. In order
to demonstrate the manner in which power relations operate within the
family enterprise the roles of men and women will be traced through
the phases. Before doing this, it is important to locate the discussion
within a theoretical framework.
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 21
Theoretical and methodological perspectives
The broader debates that examine the relationship between social class
relations and gender relations, such as Hartmann (1979) and Walby
(1986), and Brod (1987) and Collinson and Hearn’s (1994) emphasis on
masculinity, provide critical insights into the study of the family enterprise. Hartmann (1979) and Walby (1986) make a number of points that
are central to understanding the dynamics of the husband and wife
business partnerships. They assert that although men and capital are
engaged in a contradictory power relationship, they have an interest
in controlling women’s sexuality and labour, whilst their exclusionary
theories suggest that men’s relationship to capital is highly contingent.
However, in the case of family business strategies, issues of women’s
labour and sexuality become critical resources at points in the evolution and perpetuation of the enterprise. Arguably, these questions are
the centre-piece of the power-play that characterises the husband and
wife partnerships through the different phases of the development of
family capitalism. The importance of women’s sexuality and labour
cannot be overstated, for they constitute resources that are essential to
capital’s project and to sustaining what is essentially a changing pattern
of male dominance. The limitation of the dual theorists’ notion of
exclusion is that it cannot necessarily explain why distinct strategies
such as primogeniture and the legacy of coverture, ‘cultural practices’
that are conventionally associated with the private sphere, the family
and reproduction, effectively deny ownership to women.
Other theorists (including Engels, 1972; Bourdieu, 1976; and
Pateman, 1988) contribute to the debate on female sexuality and the
wider issue of property relations and offer important insights into
understanding the management of family capitalism. Engels’ (1972)
materialist analysis of sexuality is sensitive to the character of gender
relations within marriage. His discussion of ‘father right’ makes clear
the logic of the materially rooted character of primogeniture, arguing
that the reason men need to know their biological children is in order
to transfer accumulated wealth across the male line; hence their need
to control female sexuality.
Pateman’s (1988) theory of female sexuality hinges more on why men
as men have interests in controlling female sexuality and indeed introduces a subtle shift in the debate. One interpretation of her analysis of
the sexual contract is that it is an argument about the institutionalisation of the regulation of female sexuality. It is thus a negotiation sensitive to male needs that very cleverly draws together the public (civil
22
Class, Gender and the Family Business
society) and private spheres (domesticity) while appearing to make a
distinction. This sleight of hand is replicated at the heart of the civil
contact, which simultaneously says that women are and are not equal
partners. This is demonstrated when the wife as an individual disappears in the notion of the unity of the couple personified in the
husband. The husband represents the wife, who stands in the shadow
of the figurehead. This is the philosophy that underpins coverture and
Holcombe’s (1983) account of the extent it has been reformed properly
raises some important questions. These relate to the status of wives and
whether they can be regarded as autonomous individuals. If the person
of the wife is no longer the spouse’s property, it begs the question why
women business partners, in contrast to their male partners, have so
little control over their careers within the business. However, it is spurious to argue that female sexuality and labour can be separated from
the person, yet for wives in business partnerships with their husbands,
it seems that the institution of marriage, in comparison with the conditions of an employment relationship, gives husbands far more control
over how and where wives use their labour.
In the context of the middle-class family business, coverture and primogeniture have a key influence in the regulation of female sexuality,
biological and social reproduction within the institution of marriage
lending support to the maintenance of enterprise and family social
status. The fact that a significant number of the family enterprises are
inherited raises the matter of how such cultural practices are perpetuated and reproduced. This poses an important methodological question,
for the family enterprise compresses time by bringing together the
past and present in the context of the newly created and inherited
businesses.
Bourdieu’s (1976) concept of habitus is a useful way of thinking about
the ways practices sustaining such organisational forms are reproduced.
Habitus conveys the sense in which social and cultural reproduction
takes place over time, the underlying logic of which is to ensure material and class reproduction. Accordingly, habitus, or the best way of
doing things, is neither structurally imposed nor voluntarily initiated.
Individuals engage and co-operate in a set of practices and thought
processes internalised through education and upbringing that culminate in a set of life strategies which perpetuate a particular kind of capitalist enterprise, the family business. The importance of Bourdieu is
that he offers an insight into how class is experienced and reproduced
at the level of everyday life. However, there are problems with his work.
First, whilst habitus, or culture, is a useful methodological device in
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 23
helping to explain the resilience of such archaic practices as primogeniture, arguably it obscures the vitality of structure in the form of material resources in the perpetuation of this institutional form. Equally,
it conceals the notion of interests, and particularly the interests the
key players, capital and men, have in perpetuating such formation.
Bourdieu’s (1976) main concern is to show how class configured as
culture and convention places limits on the personal freedom of male
heirs. At the same time, he takes for granted the assumed passivity of
women as mere pawns in the patriarchal marriage and inheritance
strategies, ignoring how men have a priori an interest in continuing this
practice. Since the centre-piece of this book is the relationships between
husbands and wives in business partnerships, a feminist approach is
incisive in exposing that this relationship is based in hierarchy and
power and is problematic for the women concerned. Ontologically, the
effect of making women the focus of debate, as this discussion has done,
is to portray them as victims, while there is also an assumption that the
alliance between men and capital, however problematic, makes masculinity invincible.
The discussion now turns to gender studies which emerged especially
in the 1980s under the rubric of men’s studies and masculinity. This
shifts attention away from the centrality of the relationship between
men and women to a concern with the relationship between men.
Collinson and Hearn (1994) succinctly articulated the problem when
they pointed out that although men are the focus of attention, they are
rarely the objects of scrutiny. By advocating the interrogation of patriarchy, such work challenges ahistorical and monolithic representations
of male power and exposes divisions between men. Hearn (1987) uses
a materialist analysis to map out the changing contours of male power
that runs parallel with transformations in the character of production,
whilst linking these developments with men’s appropriation of women’s
labour. In portraying the resilient nature of male power, the thrust of
the argument suggests that it is adaptable and changes in form. He
argues that modern patriarchy is impersonal and complex, but operates
by harnessing a structured web of relations amongst men which
manages the exploitation of women, and thus represents a dramatic
shift away from the personal power of the father. The question is, do
studies such as this illuminate the power-play that entrepreneurial men
engage in?
Arguably, several aspects of this general theory have resonance for the
study of enterprise. Although, the institutionalised configuration of
father power has certainly diminished, it has not disappeared in the
24
Class, Gender and the Family Business
context of family enterprise. There are significant parallels between historical configurations of father power and contemporary male wealthholders. In each case the entrepreneurs concerned have considerable
power, which of course hinges in the contemporary world, just as it did
historically, on a web of social relationships that at historical moments
drew and continue to draw support from kin relations, through patronage and emotionally recognised bonds of love. The next section
addresses three questions that are critical to entrepreneurial men and
include friendships, competition and emotion.
The conclusion that can be drawn from Brod’s (1987) studies on masculinity is that expediency underpins bonds of love and friendship
between men. The kinds of major public projects that men have historically been engaged in have been acquisitive, expansionist and
invariably dangerous, and have usually been on behalf of a figurehead.
The poem Beowulf (Heaney, 1999) brilliantly depicts the manner in
which success depends on the strength of male alliances, trust and fraternalism. However, tainted with competitiveness, history tells us that
violence and betrayal often characterised this web of social relationships. In this sense, the persuasive forces that encouraged male bonding
such as heroism and honour were also a social process that was divisive, and arguably has its parallels in the contemporary entrepreneurial
process.
Hammond and Jablow (1987) challenge the pure altruism that is
claimed to characterise male friendship. They argue that famous heroic
male friendships, starting with the earliest recorded versions – the
Gilgamesh epic, David and Jonathan in the Bible, Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – exist at the
level of myth only. Although classical Greek and Roman literature glorified notions of male friendship, Artistotle wisely noted that even
perfect friendship retains some element of the useful and that the moral
imperative of sentiment colours even highly expedient friendship. In
this sense, sentiment merely masks what it essentially instrumental,
implying that male friendships can be a fig-leaf for an ulterior motive
that can involve incredible gain. Nevertheless, what seems clear is that,
prior to the Industrial Revolution in some European cultures, male
emotion, for whatever reason, played a recognisable and significant
public role in the organisation of society and rather enhanced notions
of masculinity.
Whilst recognising that two major historical events, the Enlightenment (Seidler, 1989) and the Industrial Revolution (Kimmel, 1987), were
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 25
experienced at different moments across Europe, they brought changes
to notions of masculinity in ways that still have resonance for contemporary notions of what it means to be a man. The issue of male
emotion is a central theme in Seidler’s exploration of masculinity. In
contrast to earlier European culture, where male emotion seems to have
been an important aspect of male public life, he notes how the transcendence of abstract reasoning over intuition and emotion, the distinguishing characteristic of Western intellectual culture, negatively
changed the role that emotion played in the construction of masculinities. Seidler’s experiential approach allows him to locate emotion as a
feature of the way men live their lives, showing that they control their
emotions and deny particular expressions of sexuality. The process of
concealing male emotion and the exaltation of male sexuality as conquest are tendencies that set up new constructions of masculinity as
‘strong’ and ‘soft’ and as such create deep fissures between contemporary men. Chapter 6 shows how the theme of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ masculinity divides enterprising men from one another, and has particular
resonance for the power-play that characterises competitive relations
between entrepreneurial men.
Kimmel (1987) argues that the advent of capitalism and economic
transformation has highlighted differences between men. Approaching
the question from a cultural perspective, Sherrod (1987) argues it was
the competition generated by industrial capitalism that led to the breakdown of male friendships. The exigencies of the new economic system
brought about a series of changes that had implications not only for
male friendship, but also for gender relations. The emergence of capitalism, the market and waged labour fostered competitiveness amongst
men of different classes and between men in each class. Waged labour,
the distinguishing feature of capitalism, geographically separated home
and work and forced working-class men to compete with each other for
work. Equally, the material concomitant, the laissez-faire logic of liberal
economic theory, glorified aggressive competitiveness amongst entrepreneurial men, undermining the whole notion of male friendships.
According to Sherrod (1987), the issues of emotion, sexual identity and
male friendship became key considerations in defining masculinity,
causing deep divisions between men. Sexual orientation took on a new
significance and differentiated ‘soft’ or effeminate men and ‘strong’
heterosexual men.
The breakdown of male intimacy also changed the relationship
between men and women, particularly within marriage, when men
26
Class, Gender and the Family Business
began to look for affection and friendship in marriage. Alienated from
each other, men sought intimacy and emotional support from women
and marriage. However, Sherrod (1987) argues that the balance of
gender power within marriage is not equalised, and this may suggest
why men seem reluctant to reciprocate affection. This raises the question of how and where men channel their emotions. Arguably, the
notion of romantic love encouraged love between men and women, but
Davidoff and Hall’s (1987) analysis of nineteenth-century British capitalism suggest that the capitalist ethic and its ideological concomitant,
puritanical Christianity, discouraged this within marriage. One interpretation of this study is that there was an attempt to rationalise marital sexuality and emotionality. Unfettered from the entanglements of
domesticity, such entrepreneurial men would be free to pursue enterprise. Alongside this, the elevation of the values of the Enlightenment,
principally, reason and objectivity, as Weber’s account of bureaucracy
shows, were diffused in the administration of enterprise and increasingly shaped models of masculinity (Brod, 1987). This argument tentatively conveys the sense in which male emotion disappeared from the
public sphere whilst still remaining submerged there. This is an important point, for Chapter 6 shows that male emotion, articulated as devotion, passion and drive, is critical to enterprise.
Sherrod (1987) provides the most subtle account of how men conduct
friendship in ways that are compatible with the primacy of their economic role, whether they occupy positions as workers, managers or
entrepreneurs. Although his depiction of the distinctions between intermale and inter-female relationship is overstated, he argues that male
friendships are essentially defined by competitiveness, and this is the
case for entrepreneurial men. In essence, the gist of his argument is
that male friendships are nurtured around ‘having fun’, or camaraderie.
There is an expectation of companionship and commitment, balanced
by unquestioned acceptance of non-intrusiveness, which avoids emotional display and does not challenge ‘strong’ masculinity. The sites for
the construction for such friendships are often exclusive male clubs,
which as the example of the business men’s dinner club (mentioned in
a future chapter) suggests, while not intentionally serving individual
enterprise, often can open up further opportunities. Friendships of this
sort have resonance for Boissevain’s (1974) notion of ‘social capital’, the
ideas embodied in Burt’s (1992) concept of ‘structural holes’ and, not
least, Werbner’s (1984) discussion of the place of social events such as
weddings in the context of particular ethnicities. The similarity is that
these rather wider social networks which are cultural in character essen-
The Study, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 27
tially facilitate co-operation and the formation of allegiances, which in
the case of enterprise can yield future enterprise. Friendship and
competition underpin the entrepreneurial relationship, as men struggle
against women and other men for success and dominance.
3
Business Partnership and the
Gendering of Wealth Creation:
‘His Dream and My Money’
This chapter focuses on enterprise in different economic sectors and
draws on examples of female enterprise to argue that women’s efforts
and particularly wives’ contributions are crucial in the initial phase of
wealth creation, during start-up. It examines how businesses are started,
seeking to show that resources such as investment capital, skills, family
heritage and, not least, family labour and particularly wives’ labour
are key resources during start-up. In reporting considerable diversity
amongst the husband and wife partnerships across very different sectors
of the economy, the findings are in contrast to Allen and Truman’s
(1991) pioneering work on independent women entrepreneurs, which
suggests that women entrepreneurs are restricted to particular economic
sectors. This finding draws attention to the question of gender identity
and the gendered character of resources at the phase of business startup, for the research upon which this book is based suggests that men
have more resources to access market opportunities, and that the market
is more open to men.
This chapter also illustrates that, aside from the structural disadvantages that women face in the phase of business start-up, the wifely role
distinguishes them from their male counterparts. This difference and its
impact for the division of labour in the management of the enterprise
are illustrated by focusing on the interplay between partners during
start-up, which convincingly shows that husbands have access to wives’
labour in ways that are inconceivable in a reversed scenario. In this
sense then, such mixed partnerships are double-edged for wife/partners,
for while it allows them wider access and experience in a bigger range
of businesses, it confines them to a subordinate role which seems necessary to the enterprise at start-up. Tables 3.1 and 3.2 are intended to
convey the range and character of wifely entrepreneurial contribution.
28
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation
29
Tables 3.1 and 3.2 refer to the activities of wives in business partnerships across wealth generations. Wives bring to the business partnership
a range of resources, which include finance, labour and ‘non-economic’
or emotional support. Eleven wives (27.5 per cent) in ‘new’ businesses
and four wives (21 per cent) in ‘old’ businesses invested in the family
business and this often led to other kin members investing in the business. For the ‘new’ businesses twelve women (30 per cent), and for the
‘old’ businesses, one woman, made indirect contributions which were
beneficial to the business. For example, in one case of ‘new’ wealth a
wife was able to obtain machinery from her family. ‘Indirect investments’ include situations when the wife uses her salary to meet family
commitments, freeing the husband’s earnings for the business. It was
not unusual for such women to work in the business too, and despite
the diversity of enterprise characteristic of the ‘new’ enterprises 20 wives
(50 per cent) worked. Fewer worked in the ‘old’ businesses with seven
wives (36.8 per cent) directly working in the business, most of which
were in the landed sector. In one case, the husband, a stockbroker, had
responsibility for the long-term strategic management of the estate,
whilst his wife was involved in the day-to-day management (Table 3.2,
couple O19). The reason women continued to work is directly related
to the character and organisation of landed businesses where the domestic and market activities share the same location, and where the
complexities of organising these duties can be more easily reconciled.
However, women in this sector are less likely to have a formal job title
and are therefore more likely to remain hidden. The only other formally
recognised working wife is in charge of marketing and sales in a small
food business (Table 3.2, couple O17). Symptomatic of this is that,
despite women’s participation, none of the wives in the ‘old’ business
sectors held a directorship. Yet the research with the women showed
that in both ‘new’ and ‘old’ businesses, some of the women have sacrificed independent careers and incomes and take on the double burden
of unpaid work in the business and housework.
In contrast to the literature on enterprise, I want to emphasise the
importance that structural circumstances have for individual men entering business. First, all the 44 ‘newly’ rich who entered business did so
with the backing of resources of some kind. In terms of skill, the majority of the ‘newly’ wealthy came from a family with a business background, or had gained long experience by working in their particular
business area before setting up independently. Some had the benefit
of a background in business together with personal capital and
some knowledge of the business world. The ‘self-made man’ was the
Table 3.1 ‘New’ wealth couples: Distribution of wives’ contribution in
addition to domestic work
Category of
Business
Couple
Land
N01
N02
N03
N04
N05
N06
Civil Engineering
Quarry
Construction
Manufacturing
Textiles
Property
Finance
Food/Drink
Service Sector
Diversified
Total
N07
N08
N09
N10
N11
N12
N13
N14
N15
N16
N17
N18
N19
N20
N21
N22
N23
N24
N25
N26
N27
N28
N29
N30
N31
N32
N33
N34
N35
N36
N37
N38
N39
N40
Wife’s Direct
Investment
in Business
Wife’s Indirect
Investment
in Business
Wife Works
Directly
in Business
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
11 (27.5%)
12 (30%)
20 (50%)
N = New.
Couples N28 and N29 are members of an extended family and count as one unit of
wealth in Table 2.3.
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 31
Table 3.2 ‘Old’ enterprise business couples: Wives’ contribution in
addition to domestic work
Category of
Business
Couple
Land
O01
O02
O03
O04
O05
O06
O07
O08
O09
O10
O11
O12
O13
O14
O15
O16
O17
O18
O19
Manufacturing
Textiles
Service Sector
Property
Food/Drink
Diversified
Totals
Wife’s Direct
Investment
in Business
Wife’s Indirect
Investment
in Business
Wife Works
Directly
in Business
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
4 (21%)
1 (5.3%)
7 (36.8%)
O = Old.
exception, and even then the experience of work was the prelude and
often the training ground. However, with few exceptions, wives’ contribution played a key role during the phase of business start-up.
In focusing on a range of businesses – farming, the manufacture of
hygiene equipment, the hotel business, property development, finance,
clothing manufacture, textiles and concept furniture – the chapter
explores the character of such partnerships with an emphasis on the
wifely contribution. One of the most important ways female kin contributed to the setting up of the family enterprise was by working
directly in the business. What is interesting about the next two examples, both first-generation businesses, one in the landed sector, the other
in the manufacturing sector, is that the start-up coincided with the
couples’ marriages. What is at issue is the manner in which gender politics subsequently have a major influence in the contest over the
32
Class, Gender and the Family Business
symbols of business success such as prestige and recognition. In both
cases, it seems that the enterprises started off as a joint effort. In the
case of the landed business it is the female partner rather than the
husband who emphasises the theme of sacrifice and hard work, thus
claiming the ‘self-made’ entrepreneurial profile. This business couple
now farm 1,000 acres, producing a wide variety of cash crops, mainly
cereals.
The significance of the wider notion of resources cannot be overstated
in this example, not least the benefits afforded to the starting entrepreneurs through the social advantages characteristic of a middle-class
background. The husband is from a farming background, attended a
prestigious public school and pursued a career in the Army. The wife
was born in India into a well-known medical family with strong historical connections with one of London’s teaching hospitals. They had
some ready capital for investment, but after they married the husband
inherited 600 acres of arable land and they have farmed this as a profitable enterprise for the last 30 years. The wife played a key role in the
partnership, contributing to the establishment of the business. Yet, the
effect of gender power brings to the surface the tensions in the partnership over the division of labour. Keen to emphasise her role in the
business, she insists:
‘I mean, when we got married, we just had a bed, and that is all we had
in the house. We had to paint it, decorate it and take the washing to the
launderette. I have been a farm worker, a farm labourer, tractor driver and
gardener. You name it, I can do it. I gave up my nursing career when I got
married and ended up doing this.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
The husband was quite uncomfortable with his wife’s explicit description of the hard physical labour that was a key part of her work and
reminded her of her more feminine skills: ‘And of course you are a wonderful cook.’ And turning to the researcher, he insisted, ‘By Jove, she is’
(Table 3.1, N01).
Substituting as a farm worker, the wife’s labour was very important
during the initial phase as it saved costs. They argued that a prudent
approach to financial management and taking advantage of the economic strength of the farming sector in the 1970s enabled them to
expand their business. They rented an additional 400 acres and were
able to increase their output. The husband went into partnership with
a colleague, taking on a third farm in a different county. During a
twenty-year period they employed eight full-time staff and invested in
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 33
a variety of cash crops. The current business consists of crop production
in potatoes for a large food manufacturer. They also produce sugar beet,
wheat, barley, beans and rape seed on a fairly extensive scale. In addition, they rear turkeys for a large food manufacturer and other livestock.
They are also involved in a seasonal business, a ‘Pick Your Own Enterprise’, which involves the production of soft fruits such as strawberries,
raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants, as well as
asparagus and peas. The ebbs and flows in the need for additional labour
are accommodated by drawing on other family members. For instance,
in reference to the fruit business, the husband outlines their strategy for
coping with peaks in activity:
‘My mother-in-law looks after the sales. She weighs the fruit and takes the
money for two months of the year. And we get on with the more serious
side of the business.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
The sense in which the routine management of this enterprise is
described suggests that women’s labour is taken for granted. The affective relations that characterise kin relations, and in this case women’s
labour, are exploited to service the needs of the enterprise (Baines and
Wheelock, 1998). The advantage of this employment strategy is that
family labour offers flexibility whilst not being constrained by the
formality of the employment contract. Combining this strategy with
capital investment in state-of-the-art farming technologies and a sensitivity to changing market conditions allowed them to expand their
enterprise whilst cutting the number of direct employees to two fulltime workers. Despite the long working partnership, Mr B. still does not
count his wife in the organisation:
‘Well, like every other business I have retrenched and I employ two fulltime hands and there is myself and my son. Yes the four of us do it all. I
have a contractor in to harvest the sugar beet and I get the hedges done
once a year by a contractor.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
Following the downturn in farming, the enterprise has diversified into
real estate development. One of their most important business investments has been the acquisition of valuable urban development land and
they are currently seeking planning permission to build commercial
premises.
One of the most interesting aspects of this enterprise is the manner
in which this business partnership used a dimension of their enterprise,
34
Class, Gender and the Family Business
their interest in horses, to make new social connections. This eventually led them to enter a privileged social milieu, a manifestation and an
affirmation of their social status. This initially involved running a livery
business. This was a modest business, and although they limited the
number of horses they stabled, it introduced them to the local gentry
and a very prestigious hunting fraternity. As Mr B. explains:
‘We got very involved in the horse business and would have at the peak of
the thing a couple of grooms here over the entire winter and maybe have
a dozen horses for the family to ride, and you know it was costing us a lot
of money. But we came into this hunting thing half way through our lives.
This was a great advantage to the children and they made really nice
friends. The people who were masters of the hunt, who by tradition were
often titled and owned vast fortunes.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
This conveys the sense in which business connections pave the way for
social recognition. Symbolic of this was when Mr B. was made master
of the local hunt. This example again raises the question of social recognition and, although Mrs B. points out, ‘And naturally J. made the most
popular master they had for a long time’ (Table 3.1, N01), his involvement
led to tensions in the partnership, which will be explored later.
However, for him it symbolises material success, respectability and
social esteem:
‘Yes, I think I can say that we raised our standards purely by leading the
life we lead and the people we turned out to be. But, of course, we were
fortunate enough in that we had enough money to lead that sort of life.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
This comment suggests that the manner in which business wealth
is spent is inextricably bound up with the social aspirations of such
entrepreneurs, broadening the notion of investment, which in any
case claims that such strategies are employed for the benefit of wider
family interests. As opposed to reinvesting returns into the enterprise,
this entrepreneur suggests that expenditure in conspicuous consumption was a rational choice, because it opened up social opportunities for
the wider family members. Involvement in such a time-consuming
leisure pursuit as hunting is intended to signal the affluence of the
family. In Chapter 6 the issue of recognition and the manner in
which this process is underpinned by sacrifice and gender politics will
be explicated.
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 35
The next couple also started a business following their marriage.
The principal activity of the company is the manufacture of specialist
hygiene equipment and barrier protection products which are marketed
on a global basis. In addition, the company has several European subsidiaries, two of which were acquired in the early 1990s. Like his peers,
this entrepreneur started out with some advantages. First, his parents
owned a second-generation business in the restaurant trade, which was
inherited by his oldest brother. After his marriage he was given a fledgling business which consisted of a small plant and some machinery.
Trained as a chartered accountant, he had knowledge about the financial aspects of running an enterprise.
Although his wife played a key role in the establishment of the enterprise, she remains ambivalent about the value of her contribution. This
woman is a graduate and completed graduate management training
with a large high street bank, through which she acquired important
skills. However, at the start-up of the business, in order to save money,
she worked as a sewing machinist for a short time and began the production of goods:
‘The job that I did entailed a very, very simple sewing technique. It involved
sewing a ‘mop cap’ where you zoom around the edges and you make a
hundred of them and put them in a box. I did the first orders and got them
out. I did that job for a short while.’
(Table, 3.1, N07)
Unlike their spouses, wives typically give a very different account of
their experiences of business start-up. This essential work is concerned
with the operational aspects of the enterprise. For instance, it is the
routine and practical features of managing the fledgling business, a
crucial phase of the enterprise, that concern wives:
‘Yes I helped him in the beginning. I did a range of odd jobs like the
banking, paying the wages. In fact, I seem to remember that I worked the
first sewing machine that we had. This was before we employed anybody.
After some time I had enough and I then started to recruit people. So recruitment became my responsibility. As the firm got bigger and bigger I took on
more and more jobs.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
This comment conveys the sense in which such women underestimate
their own efforts. In this case it is clear that the wife was undertaking
four very important functions: administrative tasks such as the banking,
payment of wages, and staff recruitment, whilst also undertaking pro-
36
Class, Gender and the Family Business
duction responsibilities. This suggests that the work that she was doing
constituted the core operation. Such women often describe this range
of functions as merely ‘helping out’ or doing ‘odd jobs’, which then can
easily be construed as peripheral.
By contrast, male partners in a similar situation draw on a different
discourse to describe such activity. They rightly claim extensive knowledge of the business and emphasise the notion of sacrifice, which then
signals commitment to the business and the family. The wives, on
the other hand, in talking about the manner in which such critical
times are managed, draw attention to the interplay with their domestic responsibilities. However, as this example illustrates, despite the
organisation’s dependence on wifely labour, such entrepreneurial wives
articulate a strong sense that necessity sustains them in such enterprise
as opposed to any grander notion of partnership:
‘Well, the children all went to play school. When our last child was born
it coincided with the wages and salaries being put on computer. Rather
than be out of a job I got M. [spouse] to stay at home one day a week so
that I could go and train to do the wages on the computer. And after a few
weeks I knew how to do it, and I found someone else to look after the baby.
But M. took a day off each week for a long time to enable me to do that.
But then they had no one else to pay the wages so he had a vested interest. There were over a hundred people to pay. And if I was ill or something
it was very scary because we just had to pay our people. I remember sitting
up in bed having my last child with all the papers and pay envelopes all
over my bed putting the money in. We just had to manage.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
This comment illustrates the ambivalence and tensions that underpin
the husband and wife business partnership. By insisting that she undertakes training, this woman is not only concerned with the functioning
of the organisation; there is also a sense in which the new skill will safeguard her job and continue to make her services non-expendable. The
husband’s co-operation is then rationalised as vested interest and business survival, as opposed to any ideal about partnership. These issues
will be returned to in Chapters 4 and 5.
Some of the ‘newly’ rich men benefited financially and very substantially through marriage. As a result, in some cases they were able to
upgrade and expand their businesses, a tendency showing some parallels with the dowry1 system consistent with earlier capitalist development (Clemenson, 1982; Davidoff and Hall, 1987; Goransson, 1993).
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 37
Epitomising the stereotype of the self-made man, a flamboyant owner
of a chain of 26 fast-food restaurants was able to extend and upgrade
his business through marriage. He had started in the restaurant trade 20
years earlier with the aim of ‘modernising’ the British restaurant trade.
He came from a poor American-Jewish family and, working as a doorto-door salesman, developed entrepreneurial skills at an early age and
used these resources to finance his university education. He came to
London with a clear vision of a market niche and managed to raise
enough capital to open an upmarket pizza restaurant. Later, he
expanded the business to a small chain of restaurants. The notion of
status and class as a statement of material success is demonstrated for
this particular entrepreneur when he took an interest in the life-style of
the rural gentry. Having entered and built a social network amongst the
local gentry in one of the Midland counties he set about creating the
persona of a country squire. He rented a country cottage in the grounds
of a country house, became acquainted with the owner, joined the local
hunt and developed an interest in shooting.
In the early 1980s his marriage to a wealthy heiress paralleled the
expansion and upgrading of his business interests. Although he was a
seeker of publicity and self-promotion, press reports failed to reveal the
source of his financial backing when he purchased a sixteenth-century
stately home for £3 million. The idea was to restore the house, which
had 65 bedrooms, and reopen it as a country-style hotel. The wife’s role
mirrored the invisibility and immobility of the sexual division of labour,
because she stayed at the house and supervised the restoration work,
leaving the husband free to manage his growing business empire. This
project was near completion at the time of the research and failure to
secure an interview with him accidentally led to the discovery of a business partner, his wife. She explained:
‘We met in one of the restaurants that he owned in London. I was there
on a business trip and we discovered we had mutual friends. He phoned
me later and we started dating. Anyway, he had seen the house while he
was out hunting one day and thought of the idea for the hotel.’
(Table 3.1, N39)
She became a major investor in this enterprise, and took on the responsibility for the restoration of the property. She is also a substantial shareholder in a civil engineering business, and in addition currently owns
several farms in America. A graduate in business administration, on the
death of her first husband she inherited the business and attempted to
38
Class, Gender and the Family Business
manage it. Her understanding and explanations of the many difficulties she faced are based on male hostility to women in ‘their’ businesses.
Remarking on her first husband she said: ‘A wife in a business was as
welcome as a pirate on a ship. K. guarded his business like a pirate guards
his loot’ (Table 3.1, N39). Leadership change is very problematic, but in
these circumstances was made doubly difficult by her lack of preparation. The difficulty stemmed from her earlier non-involvement and lack
of experience and knowledge. However, she stepped into her husband’s
position and depended on the advice of her husband’s former advisers,
whose loyalties could not be taken for granted. She argued that she
adopted a new and more open management style, but found that this
destroyed the trust that had hitherto existed amongst the senior management team. The company was later sold, but she retained 5 per cent
of the shareholding, which made her a bigger entrepreneur than the
‘great man’ she is currently married to. As a result of this experience
she has established an organisation encouraging the wives of ‘big business’ to become more directly involved. Her current business activities
include commuting between the UK and America to manage her farms.
Although her role as a major investor and senior manager in her new
business partnership ought to reduce difficulties of access and acceptance, she argues that she faces the undermining effects of the lack
of recognition as a proprietor and manager. Overshadowed by her
husband, this woman was very surprised when an interview was
requested with her. As she tartly commented:
‘Nobody knows I exist, I was most surprised you wanted to talk to me.
He gets invitations addressed to Mr J. and guest. The hotel was distinctly
his idea, he said, he did not want to do it without me. We were engaged
at the time, and he took me to see the house and gardens, and he had to
have the house. But of course, honey, it is his dream and my money.’
(Table 3.1, N39)
Although this wife provided the capital for the business, this is
obscured by her husband’s public image of swashbuckling businessman.
This point is again somewhat bitterly articulated in the following
comment:
‘Most of the people you ever see anything written about are, of course, the
more flamboyant ones, and N. is certainly one of those. He is in the press
all the time and so very often obviously people pick up on that. So really
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 39
in business it’s those kinds of people versus the quiet little wonders, the
wives.’
(Table 3.1, N39)
This example conveys some sense of the way the combination of entrepreneurial and domestic ideologies legitimise men as business innovators, whilst concealing a wife’s efforts.
The route to business start-up is often very similar for entrepreneurial ethnic minority men, and they too can benefit financially from their
marriages. In fact, marriages can sometimes be negotiated that promise
opportunities of business based on notions of effort and worth. In this
case, an Asian man of South African origin, having proved that he had
entrepreneurial skills, was able to upgrade his business substantially
and diversified into a much stronger economic sector. However, he also
came from a trading family and had intended to go into business
independently:
‘I came to this country in 1974 and I got a factory job to earn money. I
had always helped my father with his business, so I was trained by him
in buying and trading. Education was not for me. At the weekends I did
some market research amongst the market traders and noticed that they
needed bags. I also looked at the shops and found the same thing. My next
step was to find a manufacturer who would supply me. I had £3,000 for
investment and I used some of that to buy a van to deliver the bags. My
outlay was not big. I needed only a space to store my supplies and then
my own labour. My prices were very competitive. Gradually I gained
customers, got bigger and better orders and built up a customer base.’
(Table 3.1, N36)
Having built up a small but successful business, he explains how the
intertwining of kin relations and enterprise led him to negotiate substantial investment capital with his family of marriage in a portfolio
that included expansion into real estate:
‘After three years I wanted to go into manufacturing, so I sold the paper
bag business, and I came to realise that packaging was important. So I
decided to manufacture polythene and paper bags for a range of clients.
But I left for a holiday in South Africa. I met my wife’s uncle and I
explained that I was about to go into manufacture, but he began to
talk about property. My response was, “For that you need a lot of money,”
and he said, “Do something and we will see what we can do for you”.’
(Table 3.1, N36)
40
Class, Gender and the Family Business
This clearly demonstrates that marriage and wifely connections can
lead to business networks incorporating wider kin relations. Subsequently, he opened a manufacturing plant for the production of fashion
packaging and appointed his wife as manager. Although he argued that
his entrepreneurial wife had complete autonomy over the management
of this enterprise, acting as ‘family head’, he blocked attempts made to
interview her. She colluded in this, explaining that her spouse managed
public relations on behalf of the overall enterprise. Symbolising business success, he also manages an ‘international investment portfolio’
including real estate from large and beautifully furnished premises,
while his wife works as operations manager in the manufacturing unit,
mirroring the stereotypical and gendered front-of-house versus backroom organisational structure.
For some of the respondents the moment of business entry paralleled
a crisis. Many of the newcomers were in business in East Africa and were
forced to leave because of political instability there. Although they
intended to go into business as soon as possible, their need to survive,
coupled with labour market discrimination, meant they often took lowpaid, menial jobs. Other business entrants were studying in Britain and
were forced to remain, often experiencing labour market discrimination.
Despite this, some graduated from university and also completed management training schemes in the commercial sector, before going into
business independently. Other newcomers benefiting from neither a
business background, nor the advantage of education were more likely
to have been longer in employment, and saw business as a way of escaping the disadvantages of low-paid work. Very often their entry into business was precipitated by a desire for independence and financial stability
and security. What is interesting is that despite the presumptions of the
Thatcher government and market economics, restructuring does not
appear to have produced many new business entrants, for only one
respondent, a former production manager with a large textile company,
reported going into business after involuntary job loss during the 1980s.
A second group, those motivated to make a change of life-style, often
left the security of professional and well-paid careers lured by the
challenge of succeeding in a business venture of their choice.
There are marked class differences between these two groups. Most of
the ‘newly’ wealthy on entering business had a link with their former
area of business, or had a business background and/or appropriate skills.
As I have argued earlier, this sits very uneasily with the theoretical
literature on enterprise, which tends to neglect structural factors such as
the economic climate and the availability of resources, such as the range
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 41
of inputs made by family women. There is another aspect to this which
involves emotional support and the manner in which the dynamics of
gender politics influence couples’ relationships in business partnerships.
For both ethnic minority and white majority entrepreneurs wives very
often were the catalyst and driving-force behind business entry. The
entrepreneurial literature rightly highlights that entering business can
involve an element of risk, but assumes that men are the natural risktakers. In contrast, the research suggests that wives risk the closure of
their careers and make considerable direct financial investment in a
fledgling business. It seems that wifely ambition can take precedence
over family security:
‘I said to him, “People are like that, if you are doing them good . . . You
are working so hard, putting in so many hours, and at the end of the day,
you get a pat on the back. That’s your salary.” But if he went on his own,
you know, whatever he put in, he’d get more out of it. I was in London
working very hard, and my company offered me this Hong Kong posting.
This was a big opportunity for me. He wasn’t keen on this, so I said I’d
put my money with his and we would try to make a “go” of business.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
Whereas the entrepreneurial and domestic ideologies suggest that
‘strong’ men take sole responsibility in the making of such major decisions, in this case there is little equivocation about the merits of business on the part of the wife and business partner of a rapidly expanding
insurance business. The decision to go into business was precipitated by
the wife’s improved career opportunity, which she drew on as a bargaining tool in persuading her husband to go into business. But even
with his wife’s financial investment the husband recalls that he was
much more doubtful:
‘In fact, she [wife] was instrumental in making the suggestion . . . and
moral support is very vital . . . because if she had not accepted the idea of
. . . because I had a very lucrative position. I was getting free pensions, free
sickness scheme, a very cheap mortgage and absolute security. I was rather
dubious when I left, but without the moral support I wouldn’t have been
able to get through.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
Both partners gave up their jobs. The husband had a business degree
and was professionally qualified in the insurance business, had gained
knowledge of the market and had access to clients whilst working with
42
Class, Gender and the Family Business
a large national company. As a senior executive he was able to poach
some of his former employer’s clients. These proved to be advantages
in the earlier development of the business. The wife had many skills to
bring to the business. She was trained in accountancy but failed to find
a job. She then trained in computer software and found employment
as a software engineer. She had been very successful in this, and her
company had offered her a prestigious posting to Hong Kong. It was at
this moment that her husband decided to make the break and give up
the security of a professional career. But the husband does not say this
in his interview, and compliments his wife only for lending ‘moral’
support. While wifely encouragement was important, to present his wife
and partner’s efforts in this manner understates her contribution, for
she became his business partner, investing her savings, abandoning her
career, whilst offering her unpaid skills to their business. Using their
savings they bought a larger house, a computer and other additional
equipment. The mix of skills they brought to the business greatly helped
them to succeed. Her tasks in the business partnership included administration, general management and dealing with clients. The arrangement of managing a business from home placed disproportionate
burdens on the wife:
‘To run a business at home, yes, it was like a cattle market. The phone
rang all times of the day and night. I had to deal with clients calling, whilst
cramming in more and more work. Then, he’d have to go somewhere at a
moment’s notice, which meant that I’d have to reorganise around that. He
was out all the time.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
At the same time it is evident that this joint venture exhibits an
entrenched sexual division of labour, where gender defines mobility. Yet
this form of organisation was conducive to early accumulation. They
were able to keep operational costs to a minimum by using them home
as an office, while the combined unpaid labour of both partners served
as a mainstay until income was generated. The husband’s task was to
secure clients and markets for their financial services. At this phase it
would be fair to claim that each partner contributed different but
equally important tasks in building the business. But it seems that the
partners’ expectations of each other’s career development differs. This
is intimated in the husband’s definition of his wife’s contribution as
‘moral support’. It is already evident that such distinct task allocation
ties the partners into unequal career trajectories, a factor that creates
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 43
considerable tension in the partnership. This will be discussed in
Chapters 4 and 7.
Sentiment can sometimes be aligned to risk, as this respondent, the
personnel director in a middle-sized textile business, suggests:
‘C. had worked for years with ABL, he was their production director, there
is nothing he doesn’t know about that. Anyway the company decided to
sell out, and he was made redundant and he got a sum of money. He then
got a similar job in London and commuted daily. He lives and breathes
work and I could tell that his partners were not pulling their weight, so
just for him, I suggested we have a go ourselves. Personally, I wasn’t interested, I wasn’t career-minded, but I enjoyed my job. I had been the sort of
wife who followed C.’s career around. Anyway, I said, “Let’s put our money
together and make a 100 per cent commitment and go from there.” I am
doing it for him, you see.’
(Table 3.1, N10)
In this example the wife persuaded her husband to set up in business
on condition that she became part of the process. But she sees the business as a way of compensating for the sense of loss her husband experienced through redundancy. She is currently personnel director, and
whilst also acting as ‘welfare officer’, imposes a regime of strict patriarchal control on the mainly female factory floor. Her formal position
within the business is director, and the way this is negotiated will be
discussed in the next section.
Some businesses were initially established on the strength of a wife’s
technical skills and experience. It was on this basis that many clothing
businesses were established:
‘We got married in 1968. I was working with my brothers. They ran a
business and my mother had started it. We made shirts and blouses. Even
my husband learned from them, I mean the cutting and other skills as he
had worked in another place.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
In this case the husband ‘fronted’ the new business. The wife’s family’s
business had been in London and their marriage paralleled the couple’s
business start-up. The manner in which this couple use their capital
signals that women too make sacrifices in the interest of the business
and is particularly evident during the start-up when enterprise has repercussions for the quality of life. In this case they used their capital to buy
a house and converted one of the rooms into a workshop. They bought
some sewing machines and other equipment, and, utilising the wife’s
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
skills, went into clothing manufacture from home. The geographical
move from London to a Midland town facilitated a robust supply of
cheaper ethnic female labour. Gender relations play a critical role in
easing the difficulties in staff recruitment and the operational management of such enterprise, because all-women workgroups may be culturally more acceptable for some ethnic groups (Ram, 1994). In this case,
the wife worked on the sewing machines and as soon as the couple
accumulated some capital they used it to acquire commercial premises
and were able to recruit local female labour. As the husband recognises,
his wife became production and personnel manager:
‘I relied a lot on my wife. She was a skilled machinist and I had some
experience in cutting and making, so we were able to start making women’s
blouses and men’s shirts. As labour was cheap in the area we were able to
offer women jobs. My wife taught them the skills and also supervised
them.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
The way tasks and responsibilities are divided between the partners
emulates the examples in other sectors, for in this case the husband
took the responsibility for marketing and selling their products and
financial management. Yet there is a sense in which, perhaps unconsciously, the husband places himself as the nucleus of the activity and
his wife’s contribution, however necessary, is still understood to be
marginal.
The apparent paradox of the centrality and marginalisation of female
partners to the business is not specific to any particular ethnic group or
business sector, but constitutes a pattern common across all groups and
sectors. For example, franchising, a recent capitalist innovation in the
service sector, reveals the same pattern. This example refers to a supplier of designer furniture and fittings to the retail sector. The idea for
the business is based on a theme or image connected to a brand name.
In this instance, the idea for the business was initiated by the female
partner and she took responsibility for the initial start-up:
‘We were working for a manufacturing company in . . . AZ. We found it a
little limiting. But we felt that it was appropriate to start a business. So
on a new footing, and rather than put all our eggs in one basket, myself
and Tom’s [spouse] two brothers started the business. We didn’t pay
ourselves any salary and they lived at home. Tom stayed on with the
manufacturer. We rented a very small office from our accountant with a
desk and telephone and went on from there.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 45
This clearly demonstrates the significance of the invisible resources
provided by the institution of the family in setting up this business, and
in particular the role of wives in business formation. The ideology of
dependency (Barrett and McIntosh, 1980) underpins such accommodation and is demonstrated in the manner in which the aspiring entrepreneurs drew on the ‘family’ as a material resource. The two single men
continued to live at home and depended on their parents, while the
woman relied on her savings and her husband’s salary. At the same time
the ideology of dependency justified the eschewing of their need for an
independent wage, and they were able to reduce costs by not paying
themselves a salary. This and the other examples discussed suggests an
emerging pattern of low entry requirement, with initial start-up outlay
needing a small capital investment in office space, a telephone and two
leased cars, which were used for the acquisition of markets. The availability of family labour is an important factor favouring the granting of
a franchise (Felstead, 1991), and in this case several other family
members, including the husband and father-in-law, later assumed senior
positions with the company.
Gender begins to have an important influence on the organisation of
the business start-up, and the roles the partners played laid the foundation for the future division of labour. Most notably, the sexual division of labour is configured so that the male partners took responsibility
for the marketing of the product. Ostensibly mobile and public, the men
travelled, while the female partner assumed a sedentary, but crucial role,
when she took charge of the administration of the business. Although
this respondent questions her increasing marginalisation from the
decision-making process, she draws on a discourse that assumes the
transcendence of her spouse as head of the enterprise:
‘In some ways, I suppose, I represented Tom. I symbolised the business
head. I had a career in marketing and sales and, I mean, I didn’t think it
was a good idea to work alongside Tom. I wasn’t going to necessarily stay
there. I was going to come in, sort out whatever needing organising. But I
stayed on and then it became my project. It was just the right time. It
started off with shelving and storage units and grew from there. Interiors
became a designer thing. The next thing it was floors, partitioning, carpets,
ceilings, the lighting and furniture. The idea is that you are presented with
a shell and you kit it out.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
Like many male entrepreneurs this woman describes the experience
of her involvement with the early growth of the business. As soon as
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
income was generated they hired support staff. This example is distinct
from the others, because it was not until after the business was successfully running that the husband and his father joined the business,
the former as managing director, the latter as chairman. This event
greatly changed the female founder’s position, casting her from a pivotal
and vital role to one of marginalisation and disappointment. Although
she had taken the risks and broken new ground, the husband moved in
and took control once the preliminary work was completed.
It should be noted that there is limited information about women’s
contribution to the earlier phases of wealth formation for the category
of ‘old’ or inherited wealth. However, other studies suggest that women
were not just beneficiaries and consumers of their husbands’ wealth and
contributed through the dowry system (Bourdieu, 1976; Clemenson,
1982; Davidoff and Hall, 1987; Goransson, 1993) and through their
labour (Middleton, 1979).2
Conclusions
This chapter argues that women’s contributions constitute an unquantified invisible asset behind many successful businesses, but that this is
characterised in the traditional context as ‘helpmeet’ and ‘support’. The
acceptance of this image reflects the gender stereotyping of wives in
business partnerships, and as such both misrepresents and undervalues
their contributions. In focusing on the different ways in which wives
participated in the business start-up, through direct and indirect financial investment, the significance of their skills in specific cases and the
variety of their labour inputs suggest that they constituted core elements
of the business partnerships. During the first phase of wealth formation,
the initial creating period, women’s inputs are both necessary and indispensable, for they are a source of cheap capital and free labour, both of
which are presented in a manner that conspires in the construction of
‘his’ business. Male partners’ understanding of their wives’ contribution
is contradictory, for even when they accept the importance of their
wives’ efforts, this is overshadowed by a deeply entrenched sexual
stereotyping, whereby they claim centre-stage and push their wives into
the margins.
This raises the question of women’s consciousness and indeed why
resistance was not more generally spread. The position of wives in the
family business is inherently contradictory. As the cases discussed illustrates, wives willingly and enthusiastically entered the business venture.
But as Pateman (1988) argues, the discourse surrounding marriage
Business Partnership and the Gendering of Wealth Creation 47
encourages notions of unity and partnership between marriage partners,
and it should not be surprising that wives fulfil what they perceive to
be conventional expectations. On the other hand, such women have an
immediate economic interest in their husbands’ business activities.
Husbands at this point also welcome their wives to the business. The
issue for the wives is not that they contributed, but rather why they are
not given recognition. This position circumscribes the character of resistance, because the pursuit of capitalist activity may well compromise
their positions as wives. Given the contradictory circumstances they
face, it is rational if they do not want to usurp their male counterparts,
but rather want to be recognised for their own work.
4
Gender and the Management of
Wealth Accumulation:
‘He also Wants a Pudding’
This chapter explores the career paths of husband and wife partnerships
in the family firm. It examines the processes that characterise a general
pattern of female kin subordination and male kin domination as wealth
is accumulated in the family business. It argues that business growth
has very different outcomes for wives and husbands in business partnerships. It will argue that male partners in parallel with the growth of
the business are able to carve out careers as business heads and chief
executives. By contrast, it will show that female partners are unable to
make the transition from the stereotypical image of ‘helpmeet’ to
company professional. The argument developed suggests that such
women are systematically marginalised from the nucleus of organisational power and finally excluded from the family business. This is first
evident when the business takes shape in organisation form with the
introduction of bureaucracy, the formalisation of managerial structures
and the specialisation of function. It will be suggested that it is at this
point that the unequal character of the marriage business partnership
magnifies the contradictions of the class gender nexus when attempts
are made to co-ordinate the role of wife and business partner in the
family enterprise.
In highlighting the relationship between gender power and organisational power the chapter focuses on a number of partnerships in both
‘new’ and ‘old’ wealth categories. It shows that whilst not all wives are
excluded from senior positions, women’s authority is neutralised in
formal decision-making processes. Although eleven of the wives in
‘new’ business partnerships held directorships, they appear to tacitly
surrender their influence over the strategic management of the enterprise and issues of inheritance. Illustrative of the women’s weakness is
the finding that none of the seven working wives in the ‘old’ businesses,
48
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 49
irrespective of the sector position, occupy a formal managerial position.
This is most surprising since many of wives work in the landed sector
where integration between home and the workplace may suggest an
easier accommodation for the restructuring of the sexual division of
labour in such partnerships on a more democratic basis. Yet the old
hierarchies were, if anything, more rigidly intact. Turning to the ‘new’
businesses, for the eleven director wives this job proves to be a paradoxical experience, when such appointments parallel another pattern,
the demise of women’s organisation power. One of the consequences of
this is that the business in this phase of development means very different and unequal career trajectories for female and male kin.
The debate about women and organisational power has very largely
centred on the corporate sector. Of prominence is Davidson (1992)
concern with the problems women managers encounter when
attempting to enter the male world of the boardroom. The difficulties
women face as career managers is also illustrated by Coyle (1989).
She argues that they are in segregated sectors, such as local government
and the hotel industry, where only 10 per cent of them succeed to
senior posts. Grant and Porter’s (1994) study of the medium-sized
business sector is also indicative of the limitations of women managers’ organisational power, because characteristically such enterprises
have fewer employees. These studies convey the sense in which
structured inequality creates conditions that limit women’s organisational power, but Grant and Porter (1994) interestingly observe
that there is an incompatibility between women’s managerial approach
and organisational structures. Women managers, they argue, lack
authority. One of the themes that emerges from this literature is
the notion of a separation between women’s power and authority in
organisations.
Wajcman (1998) examines women career managers’ organisational
power. She argues that resistance to senior women managers is ubiquitous within organisations and that it stems from the uncertainty that
their presence generates amongst organisational men and women. The
effect of such ambivalence to women in power is that their organisational authority is considerably compromised. This argument has resonance with Savage’s (1992) earlier work, where he argues that although
women have increasingly moved into managerial and professional
posts, they have been channelled into niches requiring high levels of
skill and expertise, but with very little organisational discretion. This
raises the question: Why doesn’t expertise enhance female managers’
organisational power?
50
Class, Gender and the Family Business
The acquisition of skill (Cockburn, 1983), credentials and professional
status (Witz, 1992) has, until the restructuring of labour markets in the
1980s, been a rite of passage for men in organisational power, but in
the last two decades appears to be less effective for women managers.
This argument challenges human capital theorists such as Becker (1985),
who eulogise women’s participation in domesticity. Becker, for instance,
argues that women fail to make adequate investments in their labour
power and so cannot withstand the competitiveness of the organisational arena.
On the other hand, some studies show that theories of human capital
cannot withstand closer scrutiny and that other factors come into play.
Reflecting the tenets of dual theory (Walby, 1997), Witz (1992) shows
that women’s attempts to improve their stock of human capital through
credentials is often fiercely resisted. Similarly, Roberts and Coutts (1992)
demonstrate that, historically, women’s entry into accounting has been
resisted, and arguably there is a legacy to this, which is reflected in the
stereotyping of women managers as incompetent in such areas as financial management.
These arguments have a resonance in understanding women
manager’s roles in the family firm. The chapter focuses on two women
managers in the manufacturing sector, and suggests that the technical
skill, tacit skills and entrepreneurial experience they had gained had
little salience for career development. In the first instance, the success
of the clothing enterprise hinged on the wife’s technical skills and managerial competence, and in the second case the production of hygiene
products depended on the range of functions performed by the wife. In
each case the women/partners worked full-time and managed shop floor
operations that involved over 200 employees. In gaining such comprehensive experience these entrepreneurial wives typically gained many
new skills, yet appeared to have not improved their status within the
business. Expertise is used in the loosest sense to suggest that women
managers cope by tapping into their own skill portfolio and a wide
range of managerial competencies similar to those gained via a career
profile comparable to their male counterparts. In this sense, as the enterprises develop and acquire new functions, such wife managers succeed
in finding solutions simply by drawing on their reservoir of tacit skills
and through the experience of doing the job. Whilst the first one
remained a middle manager, the second eventually acquired the title of
director. Savage’s (1992) argument has some salience in the examples
illustrated, in that their expertise failed to expand decision-making
boundaries for them.
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 51
Typically, such enterprise depends on women’s technical skills in
machining and sewing, technical competence that is often inherited
and handed down from mothers to daughters:
‘I was working in my mother’s factory in London. She started it and my
brothers and I joined her. I then got married. We decided to expand the
business and we moved here [Midlands]. I started the machining and after
the factory got going I spent all day there, from nine o’clock in the morning
until seven o’clock in the evening. When we first opened we realised
that there were very many ladies sitting home doing nothing. Given that
they couldn’t speak English, they didn’t work. Myself and a friend
went out there and recruited them. It was easier for them to work for
us as we spoke the same language. I trained them in the machining and
made sure the orders were done on time, and they were properly finished.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
This pattern of work organisation rests on the informality and
inequality characteristic of affective relations, when such enterprising
wives constitute the core of the production operations that accommodates the accumulation of profit and business growth. In this case, the
wife organised the training of new workers and became a general
manager. The second important dimension of such managerial roles
relates to the question of human resources. The medium-sized businesses they managed were labour-intensive and drew on large numbers
of female workers, many of whom came from ethnic minority backgrounds. Subsequently, the presence of female management proved to
be an important recruiting incentive. Gender symmetry between managers and employees helped to smooth out difficult industrial relations
issues that are partly cultural and patriarchal in origin in the routine
management of the virtually all-female shop floor. Typically, one
husband/partner pensively commented:
‘Well, my wife looks after the staff. As you can see many of our staff come
from very different backgrounds and cultures. Having a woman in charge
makes being here more acceptable to them. I mean she takes good care of
them and will send them home if they are sick. She undertakes all of that
in a way that I couldn’t.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
This is a role befitting woman managers in the family enterprise.
Drawing on female stereotypes women are assumed to have domestic
skills that can be easily transformed into managerial competence in
52
Class, Gender and the Family Business
specific contexts. This common-sense approach to wife/managers is part
of a business strategy that cuts across ethnic divisions:
‘Well, I see my role on the very much on the personnel side of the business. In a factory situation like the one we manage here, it is quite important to have a woman on board. Aside from the recruitment role that I
play I see my role very much from a welfare angle. Our girls have problems from time to time they need to be addressed quite promptly as this
has implications for our output. I see myself as a hands on people person.’
(Table 3.1, N10)
However, whether such women managers survive depends on the phase
of wealth creation, which seems to be strategically determined and thus
beyond the boundaries of female decision-making. For the restructuring of such businesses parallels the demise of the wife/manager’s job.
For instance, in the case of business N33 the clothing manufacturing
operation was sold and the money reinvested in property development
and wholesale clothing. The move into more capital-intensive business
led to a dramatic rationalisation of employee numbers and this rendered
the manager and her niche skills dispensable and disposable. However,
as the next chapter will highlight, the exit of the wife/manager and such
sectoral shifting also witnessed two other events: the accumulation and
stabilisation of family wealth and the son’s entry into the business.
By contrast the hygiene company (N07) both upgraded and expanded
its product range and increased market share, whilst opening international subsidiaries. Consequently, the business acquired more sophisticated bureaucratic structures with divisional functions. From the start
the management of the business exhibited a sharp sexual division of
labour. The husband, a trained accountant, took responsibility for the
strategic and financial aspects of the business, while the wife took on
the operational management of the enterprise, facilitating growth in the
evolving structure. For instance, she coped with the rather ad hoc
manner in which new functions emerged parallel with organic business
growth. Adopting a hands-on approach, she assumed responsibilities as
diverse as selection and recruitment of different staff categories, the
development of payment systems in addition to implementing appraisal
schemes.
This rather all-embracing, hands-on role mirrored the entrepreneurial male model where, characteristically, male entrepreneurs and business heads are able to valorise their experience in ways that women are
not. Consonant with Reed (1996), the research shows that men draw
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 53
on notions of effort, sacrifice and achievement to enhance their images
and reputations as entrepreneurial men. By contrast, this particular
wife/partner is uncertain about the value of her contribution:
‘By the time I was made a director of the company I had withdrawn and
I wasn’t working there so much. I guess by this stage I was doing the personnel work. But then it got to the stage where I wasn’t viable anymore.
The company had got quite big. It got divided into departments and each
one had a manager. All that I was doing was of a very “hotch potch”
nature. For instance, writing out a newsletter, and working out the profit
shares, and holiday arrangements, and interviewing people and doing bits
of public relations work. It got to the stage where each manager had his
own department and preferred to do the job for his department that I was
doing for it.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
At a superficial level this comment might suggest that such entrepreneurial wives find it difficult to manage power and prefer the hands-on
approach to tasks that are now delegated to functional managers.
However, it might be expected that the position of director would of
necessity require a closer involvement in the strategic management of
the expanding enterprise, but this is the husband’s niche. It seems that
although this woman acquired a new job title, the content of the job
was unchanged and she tried to continue doing her old job:
‘So each manager wanted to interview his own staff and provide his own
form of application or whatever. The computer department computerised
the wages and salaries, so although for a while I worked on the computer
I had to learn how to pay the wages and salaries using the computer. It
became obvious that the computer manager – well, he was running the rest
of the service and it was really only right for him to do that also. I became
more and more dissatisfied because I felt that I’d got little bits of everybody’s job. I sat down one day and divided my job into twelve bits and
gave it all away. I was left with an empty desk and I left. It was difficult
for me to know exactly when to withdraw. But my skills were not particularly sophisticated and each manager developed a policy in his own
department, and I didn’t feel that I fitted anywhere.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
On the one hand, the lack of formal credentials seems to be the
problem. Lacking qualifications she feels less professional compared to
the new management team. However, it is rather ironic that wife/managers view their efforts and enterprise in such negative terms, for some
54
Class, Gender and the Family Business
husband/partners, as the discussion in Chapter 6 illustrates, take
immense pride in being ‘self-made’. Endorsed by masculine ideologies
they confidently denigrate their formally qualified counterparts. With
her old job distributed amongst a new team of managers she was unable
to carve out a new role for herself. Comparing her skills with the new
managers, she argued that she lacked a professional training and did
not value the knowledge she had gained through experience. At this
phase of wealth creation and business development that wife/managers
begin to be marginalised. Not wanting to encroach on the functional
managers’ work, she feels superfluous:
‘The biggest problem was that I was a director and yet in each area that
I worked I tried to work underneath the manager. It was not viable to be
a shareholder, a director and working underneath. They didn’t know if they
could go against my decisions or not. I, on the other hand didn’t want to
be making decisions which other people felt they should be making. So I
felt uneasy. And anyway I though, “It’s his company”. I just wanted to do
something on my own.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
What is distinctive about this comment is that, echoing Grant and
Porter (1994), there is a ‘lack of fit’ between her management style and
the organisational hierarchy. What is not at all clear is why an organisation of the size and complexity of an international medium-sized
firm is unable to find the founding partner a place within the strategic
management team. However, one of the guiding principles of the
husband/partner’s approach to the management of the enterprise is that
family members should not be involved. For instance:
‘You have a choice in business and in the way you can run a company.
You either keep it within the family which I think has severe constraints
on growth. Or you can say, “I will develop the business and bring in professional managers”.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
Whilst the thrust of this point has considerable validity, it is quite clear
that this entrepreneur is happier with hired managers. This example is
illustrative of the manner in which arenas of organisational power that
involve husband and wife business partnerships are infused with gender
politics in ways that are undermining for wife/partners.
Very many wives, despite their inputs, feel that the business they have
built together is ‘his business’. In such cases, wife/partners will find it
very difficult to transcend the ‘helpmeet’ image of their managerial
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 55
inputs and to construct professional profiles. The example discussed
above suggests that wife/managers in the family business face obstacles
when they attempt to gain recognition as professional managers and to
formalise their organisational power.
The salience of Ram’s (1994) characterisation of working wives as de
facto managers is that it aptly depicts the kinds of roles such women
are expected to play. Although Ram fails to detect any gender conflict
within the familial business arena, as the next example of a wife/
husband partnership in the hotel sector illustrates, the issue of lack
of recognition and the formalisation of women’s managerial power
remain highly contentious. Returning to the husband/wife partnership
(Table 3.1, couple N39), as the previous chapter illustrates, this entrepreneurial couple used the wife’s capital to establish a ‘concept’ hotel,
an investment that involved the buying and restoration of a dilapidated
country house. The idea for the hotel incorporated much of her
American spouse’s business and social aspirations. The husband had
admired the lifestyle of the English gentry and had developed many
connections with local families. The acquisition of the large house suggests inclusion within a particular class, whilst also being a symbol of
considerable affluence. Modelled on domesticity, the management of
this enterprise easily incorporates the idea of the ‘idle’ wife amidst generous hospitality. The intention is to disguise the commercialisation of
the family home and the paying guests through the informality of the
management system that so readily characterises the de facto role of
such wife/partners. Unlike many of the other wives, this woman had
organisational power and managed a separate aspect of the enterprise,
the hotel, while her husband’s interests included the development of a
chain of ‘theme’ restaurants in London and elsewhere. This may infer
that the business partnership reflected a more equitable distribution of
power, but the ideology of domesticity emphasised the traditional
gender division of labour. The wife, now ‘lady of the manor’, stayed at
home, whilst the spouse went into the marketplace to earn the money.
A very flamboyant personality, the spouse attracted great publicity and
credit, overshadowing his wife’s role. She argued:
‘I think with the hotel business the smaller ones are run by husbands and
wives that have been started by themselves, but it is only the husband you
see in the press. I mean it is never the women and they are quietly at home
keeping the show on the road. I am here seven days a week doing just that.
I just make the house run. I mean whether it’s the florist, I have to do 65
flower arrangements a day. I have meetings in the morning. I work with the
56
Class, Gender and the Family Business
chef most days preparing for the special functions. Each day I do an audit,
I make a list of things that are not quite right. In the evenings I’m up in the
bar when I like to speak to the guests. It’s our approach to the business that
we make the guests feel at home. You need a sense of flair and to be able to
take care of people. The only thing I can say is that it is like having sixtyfive house guests in your home every day.’
(Table 3.1, N39)
However, the balance of power for this wife/husband partnership was a
contentious issue. This woman had business interests in the United
States, was accustomed to transatlantic travel and high-powered meetings, but was ignored. The issue for this wife was the manner in which
entrepreneurial ideologies link male effort with business activity in ways
that overshadow the work that such wives do on an informal basis,
while her money and success brought her no such acclaim. The problem
is one of image management, where the claims for the husband’s role
are exaggerated, while the wife’s efforts remain understated and in the
shadows. But the whole idea of the enterprise rested on the husband’s
self-promotion as a swashbuckling, shrewd and innovative entrepreneur, while the concept of the hotel with connotations of wholesome
and rural homely pleasures, hinged on the ideal of wifely domesticity.
And as the comment above illustrates, typically such manager/wives
engrossed in day-to-day operations also perpetuate a culture of
under-recognition.
Neither credentials nor the successful financial management of the
enterprise are accepted as sufficient evidence of competence for some
husbands. Wives’ proven expertise in the financial management of the
enterprise does little to save women’s jobs and careers. Some of the
women who held financial directorships and demonstrated a sense of
business awareness posed a threat to their roles in business partnerships.
Referring to the franchise business discussed earlier, once it was operational, the wife became financial director. The management team also
consisted of her husband as managing director and his father as chair
man; his brothers were given directorships in sales. This seemed to work
well:
‘Yes, it was great fun. We tried to keep tight control of the finance, and
would only spend what we could afford, and we didn’t use our overdraft
facility. We were very profitable on that basis.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
Her approach to finance is cautious and this is incorporated into the
system of credit control:
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 57
‘This is partly due to the way we organise payment for orders. On placing
an order the customer pays 40 per cent, another 40 per cent on delivery
and 20 per cent on completion of the project.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
On the one hand, this example typifies the management of finance
at the operational level of the business. It is a relatively low-key but critical dimension of running a business, but is also indicative of a particular approach that has implications for the strategic management of the
enterprise. On the other hand, as the discussion of the self-made man
in Chapter 6 suggests, it bears little resemblance to the way such entrepreneurial men discuss the financial management of the business,
which is often portrayed in a series of manoeuvres between players reminiscent of a chess game. However, her expertise was not enough to
sustain her in the business, and through a rather tangled series of events,
she found herself ‘eased out of a job’:
‘There is Tom, the managing director, and although the two brothers are
directors they are basically salesmen and each has his own area to control.
I mean, they can sell anything from £100 worth of storage containers to
£300,000 of shelving and partitioning in an afternoon. That is the buzz
for them. Then, of course, it is up to them to control their own area and
they have to make sure that it is profitable, that they service customers and
get new business. Quite challenging and interesting [pause] I’d say my job
was more unit based. I made sure we were getting paid and keeping enough
of money floating around without going into debt.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
When the company was on a firm footing she became pregnant and
took some leave. This example bears some comparison with business
partners N07, in the sense that she was replaced by a newly recruited
professional manager, but was called back to work earlier than anticipated when the new financial manager became ill:
‘My husband runs the company so the directors start with him. He is in
overall control of everything that goes on and then beneath him there is
Ray, the financial manager, and that was the job that I was doing prior to
going for maternity leave. His job is really one of the most important in
the company. He was ill and I literally came back at the drop of a hat. Of
course, he got better, and that created a muddle, well there were two of us
. . . Well, I have taken over the ledger, sort of a clerk’s job really. I do a bit
of everything. I find myself perhaps involving myself where I am not
wanted.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
Whilst this is consistent with Oakley’s (1987) argument that women
on returning to work after childbirth experience a depreciation in their
labour market position, other factors came into play, particularly the
senior partner’s attitude. Summing up her situation, she felt that the
substance had been removed from her directorship. Formally she had
the senior position of director, but none of the status and power that
accompany such a role. The role she had prepared for herself was allocated to another manager and there was no clear role for her. Moreover,
her skills were underutilised and this may be in order not to appear to
offer a threat to the financial manager, the husband’s ‘man’. This loss
of power had wider repercussions, which became evident in management meetings when colleagues did not expect her to have opinions
different from her husband’s, who demanded deference from her and
the team. However, she contested his ‘autocratic’ management style,
often openly disagreeing with him. But it was proving difficult to sustain
the challenge, since she argued her allocation to more menial tasks
undermined her authority. These changes were to have very negative
implications for her self-worth. At the same time, her husband (the
managing director) began to insist that she undertook a more thoroughgoing involvement in domestic tasks. She explained:
‘I need to be home by 5.10 now. S. not only demands his dinner on the
table, but also wants a pudding.’
(Table 3.1, N27)
This is an interesting example, for this woman had been the core
founder of the business. Instead of basking in the glory and the
construction of an identity, she was ousted by her husband who has
replaced her as ‘head’ of the business and appointed a manager to compensate for the work she did. Her sense of alienation was also reflected
in the ownership. It was divided between the three brothers, but the
majority and controlling share lay with her husband, eldest son and
managing director. According to this example, women’s display of professionalism cannot be but a poor competitor when faced with male
kinship derived power and prejudice, anchored in a rigid adherence to
traditional values. She explained that her husband deployed other
home-based tactics; for instance, his refusal to participate in any child
care led to her doubting whether their partnership – either business or
marital – would survive. Double jeopardy best illuminates the dilemma
such women face, and these examples give little currency to neoliberal
theorists, such as Becker (1985), who neglects the question of gender
power and the manner in which men insist their partners engage in the
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 59
‘labour of love’. This example shows that wife/partners face two intertwined sets of oppositions. The first comes from organisational and class
power embedded in systems of control; the second from the authority
that marriage and domestic ideologies afford to male kin.
In the contest over the division of labour, male/partners gain considerable leverage over their wife/partners by drawing on the plethora
of domestic ideologies that underpin the prescriptive management of
child care. Geared to the varying needs for labour and expertise in the
family enterprise male/partners manipulate such domestic ideology to
include or exclude their wives. An example discussed in Chapter 3, from
the financial sector, where a couple established their business in insurance, illustrates the difficulties such wives face whilst seeking a professional role in the family business:
‘Yes, going into the office is great. But I can see after me doing all this . . .
he is against me being there. At times I can see him thinking, “Oh no, I
don’t need you now, you know, I have got my staff, and I have a partner
working with me.” And I can see what he is thinking, “Go and attend to
your kids.” So I’m there in the morning, and then I have got to run back
home at two o’clock to pick up the kids.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
Typically, this woman was formally a director, but in effect worked as
a general manager. Her role in the company is being contested around
the issue of child care. In safeguarding her place in the business this
wife has drawn on the normative strategy of part-time work. But such
a compromise reflects a diminution of organisational power, an arrangement which is accompanied by tensions and differences between the
partners, for her husband adamantly stated:
‘I would love her to work full-time with me, but my children would suffer,
and one of us has to be at home. I think she doesn’t need to work here,
she has a property [very large house] to look after. So it is up to her to
look after the invisible side of the family, and there she has got her own
contributions to make.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
This comment is a succinct illustration of the way in which men’s
interests in the family and the business become difficult to reconcile
with notions of enterprise, masculinity and inheritance requirements.
The establishment of the business means a restructuring of the partners’
tasks; the wife must now engage in the recomposition of the domestic
sphere, move to the backroom and ensure that the next generation of
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
potential heirs are suitably socialised, while the husband goes ahead in
the business. This neatly conveys one sense of Hartmann’s theory in
which there are contradictions between male interests and those of
capitalism. The wife’s contribution, so necessary hitherto, is now dispensable, for the company has resources to hire professional labour. In
this case, it is not the lack of professionalism on the part of the wife
that is the problem, but rather the husband’s resistance to his wife
devoting her time to work and his insistence that she should return to
domesticity. Laying claim to the moral high ground and reminding
wives of their domestic duties is a tactic in the quest for male recognition and the establishment of a power base at the head of the family
business. It is the immediate result of men as husbands being able to
channel their wives’ efforts elsewhere. This example shows the importance of the interplay between the politics of domesticity and capitalist activity giving credence to Delphy and Leonard (1992) who
emphasise domesticity as the site for women’s subordination.
On the other hand, several writers argue that this is part of the accumulation process (Veblen, 1949; Davidoff and Hall, 1987; Marcus and
Dobkin Hall 1993), in that ‘idle’ wives reproduce the next generation
of heirs. Such women are expected to engage in cultural practices that
generate and reproduce an image of family bliss in keeping with the
bountiful entrepreneur and euphemistically described by their partners
as ‘invisible’ workers. The problem from the women’s perspective is
inherent in their husbands’ perception of them as subordinate ‘helpmeet’ and the obstacles this poses to their developing an identity as a
powerful professional and entrepreneur, and an equal colleague and
business partner. At the same time, it shows the strength of female resistance, for, by glossing over the tensions and by going along with the
part-time compromise, some women remain active in the business
despite the hostility. However, less generously, this might also be interpreted as female collusion for such women, and the women studied had
a clear advantage over most working women, since they could afford to
buy child care and domestic labour, including cooks and nannies. In
the cases discussed, the husbands’ manipulation of the politics of
domesticity largely account for the exclusion of their wives.
Another dimension in the process of female marginalisation and exclusion from senior managerial roles in the family business is the manner
in which ‘new’ managerialism is gendered and serves to perpetuate gendered perceptions of skill. For instance, the normative pattern of the
female managerial role is in middle and lower managerial jobs, when
women/managers engage in a series of tasks that require a ‘hands-on’
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 61
practical approach. This also reflects a division between intellectual and
manual labour, when driven by business imperatives female kin are
valued at particular intervals for bringing in the ‘visual angle’ as in the
hotel business, ‘or the human angle’ in the management of other subordinate females. Placed in a hierarchy, such gendered competencies
pale into insignificance when compared with the stereotypical male
competence, the financial management of the enterprise.
For instance, in the 1980s a husband and wife partnership established
a successful fashion chain that supplies a niche market. This business is
undoubtedly based on a concept and quite a particular approach to
dressing professional men and women. The concept in this case cleverly
manipulated consumer appeal for without the idea there would be no
business. Combining ideas with finance suggests a complementary partnership. Yet speaking of his wife and business partner, a designer, and her
input to building the financial side of the business, the husband said:
‘I look on money as something I have made. I don’t sort of say, “Oh I have
invested X amount”, but I suppose it is part of the business. What I do
with my money is to do with my expertise, my professionalism. I make
mistakes and I get it right, and I think in a sense I try not to worry people
around me. But if you can get me a better deal on the money, which if you
were my wife, and you could do this, well I’d be talking to you. But I think
it’s sometimes the scale of things, and is beyond their comprehension, when
you take the sort of money I risk.’
(Table 3.1, N14)
This suggests that such men emphasise the division of labour in
husband and wife partnerships and will always claim financial leadership, which they insist is the most important input to a business. Claiming the credit for accumulating capital through prudent investment
qualifies executive decision-making. However, at the beginning of his
business career, this respondent placed his first wife’s and family’s security at risk by raising capital using the domestic residence as equity, so
his wife was involved. The point he wants to make is that women lack
any understanding of the financial aspects of business, and the strategies and negotiations that are involved in investment planning are well
beyond their scope. Continuing to insist that financial management is
a male prerogative, he grudgingly claimed that his resources accommodated his wife’s career:
‘By the time she became my [second] wife, she had been a designer in the
business, and I’d built up substantial assets. So if you like she got on the
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bus four stops down the road, therefore there was money available she never
dreamed of.’
(Table 3.1, N14)
Couched in paternal discourse he argues that her achievements are
based on ‘his’ capital, which facilitated her progress. This shows how
the entrepreneurial ideologies have become a resource to such men by
suggesting that entrepreneurialism (the earner of capital) is to be more
valued than creative skills. Financial leadership constitutes the hard core
of business activity; all the rest is incidental. However, at the heart of
the problem is the difficulty the husband found in having to work
alongside a wife, who in the public eye earned equal prestige. It is at
this point that husbands may come to perceive their wives as competitors and rivals. Interestingly, at the time of interview, his wife had
resigned from the partnership and was appointed to a senior post in a
large company, she was also in the process of divorcing the respondent.
There is considerable rivalry within husband and wife teams as they
both vie for power and recognition as entrepreneurial managers.
Turning next to the farming sector business partnership (Table 3.1,
N01), this resonates with the logic of the notion of ‘habitus’ and highlights the way in which men tacitly accept practices that render wives
unequal in such business partnerships. This inequality is articulated in
very many different ways, and the degree of wives’ participation in the
enterprise simply reconfigures such relations of power during the phases
of enterprise development. In this case, the couple established a large
business in crop production which requires sensitivity to changing
market trends and involves on-going and careful strategic decisionmaking in terms of choice of product. This working partnership implies
little formality and absence of bureaucracy suggests a more equitable
division of labour. For instance, this was the only interview where the
spouse explained that his wife played a ‘very significant role’ in the
business.
However, the research revealed that the issues of recognition and
effort are bitterly contested. In a comment over recognition she argued:
‘That was the same with the hunting job. G. [spouse] was Master all the
time and I did the donkey work at home. I didn’t get any recognition. Yet,
I got all his horses ready and prepared them and did the hard graft. Yes,
you do resent it.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
This couple are very involved with racing and hunting, and the significance of these activities are that they are statements about business
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 63
success and social status. Fraternising with the local and national gentry
through their leisure activities in racing and hunting are both the
rewards and recognition of hard work and success. Characteristic of the
entrepreneurial man, this farmer is the focus of media attention as a
successful farmer and hunt master. The former leisure activity has,
according to Veblen (1994), an honorific status in addition to being an
insignia of consumption. However, the idea of leisure was forcefully
challenged by his wife who resentfully conveys that she does the hard
work. The husband had much more leisure time than his wife even
during busy periods. The wife’s anger stems from the lack of recognition as a hard-working partner. Nevertheless, she continues to labour at
home in order to free her husband’s time to hunt, because this signals
‘their’ affluence and sustains their social status in the community. This
shows that wives compromise their autonomy within such partnerships
in the interests of their class and status, whilst such aspiring men and
their affectations of grandeur are part of a social process that suggests
upward mobility and hints at membership of the gentry.
Arguably, private enterprise and in particular family farms can be conceptualised within the notion of uneven development, and are thus a
direct legacy of domestic production. It is sometimes argued that the
unity between home and work afforded a more democratic division of
labour within domestic production. On the other hand, Middleton
(1979) suggests that the participation of female kin in the production
of use-values simply reconfigured domestic power hierarchies and
decision-making structures. This argument has significant resonance
for this study for it appears that the scope of wifely involvement in
management tasks and apparently nominal director positions cannot
be read as indicative of organisational authority. The exploration of
such an unequal partnership raises questions about the character of
decision-making. For instance:
Q. ‘Would you say you make decisions jointly?’
Husband: ‘Yes, we discuss anything of importance. Yes, that’s right.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
Although the husband does not claim that decisions are made jointly,
he qualifies it by saying that anything of importance is discussed jointly.
His wife and business partner disagrees:
Wife: ‘Well, not particularly. I suppose I have always had this niggling
regret that I have never had my own life and you never get recognition for
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
yourself which I have resented. You get things like the stewarding, G. got
made a steward ten years before I did. And that was because he was a
man, I was doing more with the race horses and other things. So you know
you are not your own person.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
As Chapter 3 explains, this woman works on the farm undertaking a
wide range of activities that includes domestic work. She argues that her
duties in an uneventful typical day incorporate anything from tractor
driving to cooking dinner for guests. Listening to his wife’s comment,
the husband tellingly inquired:
‘You mean the fact that you are married, you are not your own person?’
(Table 3.1, N01)
Typical of many other business wives, this one also envisaged greater
autonomy in a career outside the family business. This implies that free
from the constraints of the marriage institution, such women would
ideally pursue a career of their choice:
Wife: ‘Well, if you are married and got your own job, you will see a difference because you are recognised for what you are doing yourself, whereas
things that are probably done here, it’s always the man who gets the
credit.’
(Table 3.1, N01)
This comment implies that it is the institution of marriage that
rewards men for the effort they have appropriated from their wives.
The sense in which the effects of the nature of power within the
marriage and subsequent inequalities remain contested but essentially intact is explained in the notion of habitus. In this sense, both
partners have internalised a common-sense approach to the way
social structure relates to them as wives and husbands. In this case,
it is not the husband’s power of decision-making over who should
go hunting, but rather society’s preordained role for men and for
women as husbands and wives, and the manner in which they
subsequently engage in discursive practices that appear to confirm such
expectations.
There were seven husband and wife partnerships in the ‘old’ or inherited business sector, six of which were land-based, whilst one wife was
a senior partner in a medium-sized food manufacturing enterprise. From
the working wives’ perspective the difference between these businesses
and the ‘new’ sector is that such enterprises were already established
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 65
and in some cases other family members were appointed to senior managerial roles. Aside from the farming sector, the fact that only one wife
in twelve businesses managed to secure a job within the firm is suggestive of the difficulties the women encounter when attempting to enter
such arenas of organisational power. Wives’ absence from the ‘old’ businesses is consistent with the patterns of female exclusion characteristic
of ‘new’ enterprise.
Exceptionally, in one case a wife became head of sales and her responsibility is to increase market share and sustain existing business contracts. She is also responsible for public relations. Prior to joining the
family enterprise she had independent experience in the business world
when she set up and managed her own enterprise. She argues that this
experience is of paramount importance since it helped her gain confidence and self-esteem. Whilst working as a sales manager, her position
within the enterprise appears to be secure, yet like other wife partners,
she thinks that her achievements are taken for granted by her business
partner:
‘Officially I am sales executive but I can’t make any major decisions.
I recently won us a large order with an important new client. I came
back to report to J., and he left the project entirely in my hands. Although
he seemed pleased that I got such a big order, he never said so.’
(Table 3.2, O18)
Women who have married into the family business and who have subsequently joined the business as managers feel isolated; indeed most
wives were not at all involved with the business. Regarded as outsiders,
such women report disapproval and resentment from other family
members.
‘This year there has been a huge growth that I feel I am responsible for. I
don’t get any recognition at all for this from J.’s brothers and the small
amount I get from J. I have to cope with in my own way. My mother-inlaw knows nothing of the business and feels threatened by me. My aim is
to stay in the business for a few more years and then move on to do
something for myself, because there are too many family who do not
appreciate what I do here.’
(Table 3.2, O18)
Wajcman’s (1998) finding that the presence of senior women managers
causes uncertainty in the corporate sector has some resonance for this
example. Having gained a responsible role in the family enterprise, this
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
wife is regarded with suspicion and disapproval by other male and
female family members. That such wives are misunderstood and isolated in managerial roles can be understood in the context of this
comment, which shows that the business is not the enterprise anticipated for wives. In keeping with tradition, such wives should remain
outside the business and, in the words of an earlier male respondent,
are obliged to take responsibility for the ‘invisible side of the business’ –
bringing up the family. In Kanter’s (1977) much venerated study, it is
suggested that the problem is one of inadequate socialisation, in that
corporate men have not accepted women as their equals and peers. She
argues:
‘Men at the top, who may have never thought about a woman as a peer
and feel vaguely uneasy about it, are not necessarily part of a conspiratorial plot to keep women from power. The dynamics of tokenism – the effects
of limited numbers of women – make the women who enter ‘men’s worlds’
operate at a disadvantage. And what men think about women’s potential
as workers and leaders may be honestly based on the women they know
best: their secretaries and their wives.’
(Kanter, 1977: 264)
This suggests that corporate men need to think about women managers
differently. Certainly, this is the case, but Kanter’s rather sanguine
approach ignores the crux of the problem, which echoes Collinson and
Hearn’s (1994) argument. As the evidence in this study strongly asserts,
men as men have an interest in the exclusion of women from organisational power. For such entrepreneurial men it is a concern with the
proper socialisation of children, the potential heirs of their businesses,
their reputations and their mortality.
None of the six women in the land-based businesses held a formal
position, and were therefore less likely to be included in the financial
management. Typically, the proprietor of a large estate justifying the
fact that the management was the exclusive responsibility of himself and
his son and heir said:
‘Money and business matters I only ever discuss with A., the others [wife
and three daughters] only come to me when they want money, or to borrow
some. But with A. I discuss everything.’
Interviewer: ‘But I understand that your wife takes responsibility for
opening the house to the public. Is that not part of your total enterprise,
and does it not involve a financial input?’
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 67
‘Yes, I suppose it does really. Yes, and she does a lot, so I guess she
ought to be here to talk to you today, and she’d have something different
to say.’
(Table 3.2, O04)
On the one hand, this conveys the sense in which wives and their
contributions are taken for granted – wives are still perceived to be
merely ‘helpmeets’. Teasing out the fate of such managers suggests that
their survival is largely contingent on the strategic direction of the
enterprise, the phase of wealth development and the sophistication of
the organisational structure, in addition to the women’s aspirations and
visions of the tasks in hand. In providing management skills appropriate to predominant female, labour-intensive shop-floor operations, such
women are pigeon-holed into particular niche areas of expertise within
the family enterprise and this has a certain resonance for Coyle’s (1989)
argument.
Conclusions
This chapter argues that gender power plays a critical role in influencing the dynamics of organisational growth and the career opportunities
within the family enterprise. As income increases it is invested in commercial premises, and in the hiring of support and professional staff.
The phase of establishing the business as an operating unit of capital,
an employer of labour and the formalisation and professionalisation of
positions has implications for the wives. The problem for the wives in
such organisations is that they experience great difficulties in making
this transition from being seen as merely ‘the wife helping out’ to
gaining recognition as a professional.
The cases outlined above constitute the dominant patterns for
working wives within the family business, when their expertise is devalued and their career progress is blighted by the dynamics of organisational power. Illustrative of this trend is that when wives do enter the
boardroom they not infrequently face coups, sometimes engineered by
their own husbands. While working women regularly encounter gender
discrimination in the workplace, these women face additional gender
obstacles, for the position of a working wife within the family structure
brings in kinship structures, which very much circumscribe the character of resistance.
The wives resist, using two distinct patterns that includes resignation
and exit, and the manipulation of organisation power. First, as in the
case of N07 (Table 3.1), such wives valuing a career anticipate male hos-
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
tility and leave the business of their own accord, to establish themselves
in separate careers. In this instance, the wife resigned from her position
as director, and, having trained in law, drew on her business contacts
and took up practice with a local firm. The second pattern to emerge is
one where women appear to survive in senior positions working alongside their husbands by fostering a public image which grants the
husband the pivotal role (Table 3.1, N10). On the other hand, it is no
small coincidence that the couple’s business is in textiles, where female
management is almost indispensable. Whilst adopting this strategy it is
likely that such wife/managers will be tolerated for as long as they are
deemed to be needed, and there are no major changes such as expansion and/or sector shifting. In these cases, depending on the type of
business, they take on managerial roles that are said to bring in ‘the
female angle’. For instance, in the hotel businesses they have responsibility for the ‘visual aspects’, or in textile manufacture, where they take
on supervisory and personnel tasks. Another important dimension to
this pattern is where the wives acquiesce in the traditional supporting
role, but this is perhaps more evident in the landed sector (Table 3.2,
O03–O09). In a few cases in the ‘new’ businesses female kin take on
stereotypical female roles such as secretaries, when some of the older
first-generation entrepreneurs employ their daughters as personal assistants in the construction business (Table 3.1, N32). However, as this particular enterprise reveals, even such traditional bastions of male power
relent under pressure. In this case the younger daughter, with the help
of her eldest brother and against other male kin opposition, became the
director of property investment (Table 3.1, N32). Generally, the sense
in which the work that wives do as managers in family businesses is
portrayed as peripheral is consistent with Ghillone’s (1984) analysis of
the gender relations in the corporate sector. She argued that the largely
female public relations department was perceived to be marginal. Subsequently, management refusal to upgrade and promote the women
employees.
On the other hand, the cases discussed are examples of contests about
who gains power in the family business. The problem for the male partners is that they are unable to resolve the contradiction of accepting
their wives as equals in the workplace. At the same time, the transformation of the wife as a professional is antagonistic to entrepreneurial
masculinity which is rooted in both the business and the family. Wives
must remain wives, either as ‘trophies’ or as ‘supports’, playing an essential but non-threatening or invisible role. Kanter’s (1977) study of corporate gender relations is a striking example of how the male executive
Gender and the Management of Wealth Accumulation 69
career rests and is embedded in particular permutations of wifely
support. Kanter (1977) argues that although the wives are not directly
employed by the corporation, their social activities, behaviour and
image are still bound by corporate culture and duty, and they are obliged
publicly to demonstrate appropriate support for their husbands. Finch’s
(1983) detailed work on the careers of professional men offers another
interesting perspective on what might constitute wifely support. Finch
(1983) argues that professionals in the public sector depend and draw
on their wives’ unpaid services in the performance of their duties.
Drawing on Pateman’s (1988) premise on marriage as the framework
for male control of female labour and sexuality, the cases studied suggest
that husbands do attempt to direct the course of their wives’ labour. The
legacy of coverture (Holcombe, 1983), and the insidious idea that the
person of the married woman in some senses belongs to the husband,
continues to have resonance. It is this factor which enables husbands
to attempt the regulation of their wives’ labour, accepting them out of
necessity, as in the traditional context of ‘helpmeet’ during the phase
of wealth creation, later attempting to push them back to wifely concerns. As this chapter has shown, during the second phase of wealth
accumulation, the growth of the business accompanied by management
boards, symbols of power, marks a potential change in the status of
wives in the organisation. It offers them an opportunity to become professionals in the public world, the arena of power, but they are stymied
by male hostility. The women are either marginalised from decisionmaking or excluded from the business, and this has implications for the
issue of female ownership, since they are unlikely to have much influence in decisions about inheritance. The important question to ask is,
does this also explain their scarcity as owners of capital?
5
Gender and Wealth Preservation:
‘I’m Not a Member of My
Husband’s Family’
This chapter examines questions of business ownership, the conservation of wealth and gender power in the family firm. In particular, it
focuses on the relationship between primogeniture, the conservation of
established wealth and women’s exclusion from ownership. It argues
that primogeniture accounts for the exclusion of female kin from ownership. The culture of primogeniture (Thompson, 1976; Clemenson,
1982) refers to the practice of impartible1 inheritance and is characterised in the practice of passing on the core unit of productive capital,
the family firm, or estate intact along the male line to the eldest son.
This chapter suggests that although it is rooted in and is a legacy of the
landed sector, it is part of a wider class strategy that is principally concerned with transferring and safeguarding wealth. Exclusionary in character, it circumscribes women’s rights to property and is widely practised
by the families studied, regardless of sector. Engels (1972) argues that
this feature of female subordination is also manifest in the different class
positions of the spouses, husbands being in the ruling class, while wives
are more properly located within the working class. Whilst recognising
that there are some important material differences between workingand middle-class women, nevertheless, like working-class women,
female kin too work in the family enterprise and rarely acquire ownership. The concern of this chapter is to challenge women’s invisibility in
patterns of ownership characteristic of wife and husband business partnerships, and to suggest some of the ways wives are bypassed by inheritance practices. This argument has some resonance with Delphy (1984),
who locates female subordination within the household.
This study found a persistently disproportionate distribution of business ownership amongst women and men. Consistent with convention
65 (93 per cent) of the businesses were registered under a male head,
70
Gender and Wealth Preservation 71
whilst five (7 per cent) were registered under a female head. The research
found that for the future, regardless of the age of the business and sector
location, in most cases owners will continue to be bound by convention, making sons the principal beneficiaries of such wealth. The persistence of such gender inequality through ownership was confirmed
earlier by Wedgewood (1929), who examined inheritance patterns for
99 estates, and found that only six businesses were inherited by women
(Wedgewood, 1929: 132).
In the case of privately owned businesses the dominance of men in
patterns of ownership suggests that a particular strand of masculinity
and capital are two sides of the same coin. The tendency is towards
impartable ownership exemplified in the male dual role of business and
family head, when such men are either sole owners or the major shareholders. This embodiment of capital and male power places the destiny
of family members within the parameters of male discretion, because
families, like other institutions, are hierarchically structured, and
although the ‘places’ in such configurations are sometimes contested
amongst kin members there is a strong tendency towards conventional
ordering.
In this context, an uncritical acceptance of such patterns of male
ownership conceals the convention that inheritance strategies traditionally have been used to prevent female kin from inheriting the productive portions of units of family wealth, except where there are no
suitable male heirs (Thompson, 1976; Clemenson, 1982). Although,
these writers appear to assume that such gendered exclusionary practice can be accounted for in the logic of male power, it would be equally
valid to argue that it stems from the logic of particular capitalist formations. In this sense, the family business is a coalition between men
and enterprise and is one of the most effective institutions for the initiation and preservation of wealth, for it combines the particularistic
interests of the ‘private sphere’ with the ‘rationalist’ logic of the wider
economy. Owners using the same strategies continue to reproduce the
same conventions by excluding wives and female blood relations, i.e.
daughters, from the core wealthholding. In this sense, the majority of
business heads said they would not consider making their daughters the
major beneficiaries of core productive capital unless there were no sons.
Although girls born into such business families benefit through their
class status in terms of education and life-style, and therefore are not
entirely disinherited, the general expectation is that their life destinies
are most likely to be experienced outside the business. By contrast,
although wives’ destinies are defined within the parameters of the busi-
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
ness, they are similarly excluded from inheritance. For instance, there
was not a single instance where a husband/partner said that in the event
of their death, they would transfer their business interests to the wife.
However, Thompson (1976) shows that, historically, wives, in some circumstances, were the ‘beneficiaries’ of core property, and were protected
by the manorial law of freebench2 which gave a widow rights of access
to her husband’s lands.
By contrast, the research found no wife heirs, except in one case where
the wife had begun an equine business and developed it into bigger
enterprise after the couple’s marriage. In this case there were no sons
and the husband predeceased his wife/partner and thus she became the
sole owner of the business she had created. In nearly all other cases primogeniture seemed to be a convenient instrument for the exclusion of
wife/partners from ownership. This is despite the fact, that, of the cases
we know, and in addition to their labour contribution, eleven wives of
the 44 ‘new’ businesses (Table 3.1) and four wives of the 19 ‘old’ wealth
couples (Table 3.2), brought capital into the marriage and thus into the
business:
‘I came into this marriage financially independent of Bob and I have maintained total independence and maybe too much so. He had already started
the restaurant chain that was his business. As far as Swallow Hall is concerned, we certainly did it hand in hand right from the start. I have been
financially involved with all his businesses, in terms of my investment.
Since I am involved in a monetary way, I feel I have a bigger role, and at
least as many rights as any other investor, but being the wife, you know
it’s “I’ll take care of it for you”.’
(Table 3.1, N39)
This comment is illustrative of the ambiguity and informality
surrounding wives’ sense of ownership and the rights accorded to
them as major investors. Such wives view ownership through their
spouses, but the sustaining concern is that their investments in the
family enterprise do not necessarily guarantee them equality in the
management of the business. Typically, the paternalism that stems
from the marriage relationship sullies what is also fundamentally a
business arrangement, for as Chapter 4 shows, this wife assumes a subordinate role, acting as a middle manager of the enterprise. However,
she is apparently reluctant to challenge the limitations of the status of
nominal ownership.
In the case of the ‘old’ business sector, where wives were not directly
involved in the business, two wives had a minority shareholding. One
Gender and Wealth Preservation 73
wife, who married into a fourth-generation manufacturing business, was
given a gift of 10 per cent of the shares at the time of the couple’s marriage, but, as we shall see, this has strategic implications for the financial management of the business. ‘New’ business reveals the same
exclusionary pattern, because although women contribute to the creation of the business, they are denied ownership and control. For
married women generally there is a sense in which ownership is in name
only and is mediated by their spouses, thus curtailing possession rights
unless a nuptial contract states otherwise. However, the research found
that, according to the character of the property, the pre-nuptial agreement is more likely to safeguard the valuables the wives bring to the
marriage (Erikson, 1993). The problem with nominal ownership is that
it discourages the active participation of wives in the management and
the disposal of such business wealth. Of course, the meaning of nominal
ownership can be explicated in the ideology underpinning the notion
of ‘oneness’ of the married couple (Pateman, 1988), where the role of
the wife disappears in the representative role played by the executive
husband.
The first strand in the exclusion of wives from the ownership of core
wealth lies with the issues of male lineage and primogeniture. Thirsk
(1976) argues that since the sixteenth century male primogeniture has
been widely practised, particularly by the English aristocracy and began
to be emulated by the middle classes in the nineteenth century. The
emergence of industrial capitalism facilitated rather than impeded the
practice, for the rationale was that younger sons would have other
opportunities, whilst daughters would be endowed with moveable
property and transferable wealth. With these kinds of reservations
it bestowed outright ownership preferably to the eldest son, and was
intended to safeguard the core family wealth. Nevertheless, where
applicable, the law of freebench generated some opposition, since it
granted at least one-third of an estate to the widow and thus was seen
to endanger the survival of the unit of capital, and the particular
lineage. Aside from the alleged financial risks associated with widow
ownership, it was also disliked, presumably because it could lead to the
transfer of the property to a different lineage via a second marriage. The
advantage of primogeniture to both aspiring and established powerful
male dynasties is that, as Goody (1976) argues, it ensures the survival
of the lineage, in addition to safeguarding the business.
The owners of the inherited businesses believe that primogeniture
accounts in part for the survival of the family’s wealth. For instance,
one of the landholders argued: ‘I mean, another reason a lot of these
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
families have survived is that the eldest son has inherited everything.’ In this
case, a landowner with 3,000 acres, a country house, family homes in
London and France, and a developing property business suggested that
primogeniture is one of the principal means of sustaining family wealth
and is a ubiquitous practice amongst such business owners. The responsibilities of such beneficiaries are at least to pass the unit of capital on
to the next generation of the lineage, preferably having enlarged it. This
point appears to be borne out by Wedgewood (1929: 164) who writes
with reference to an industrial enterprise:
‘There is no doubt that, in the course of a few generations, the institution
of inheritance has frequently enabled a reasonably thrifty and industrious
family to turn a small original capital into a large fortune.’
This used to rest on skilful estate management, but such enterprise
now needs to be managed with a similar degree of entrepreneurial
acumen and astute financial management as any other business. This
entrepreneur is professionally trained in estate management and is also
a chartered surveyor, work that he continues alongside the management
of his own business. In this case, the estate dates back to the sixteenth
century when the family bought a landholding that they expanded with
profits made in the wool trade. Some of his ancestors extended the
family wealth by entering politics and by making judicious marriages.
Since then the landholding has diminished in size but this can be
accounted for by the poor management skills of one of his more recent
ancestors. This suggests that primogeniture is accompanied by considerable risk, since it places enormous power in the hands of one person.
Without the constraints of trusts irresponsible beneficiaries can squander large amounts of capital. In the case of this family, it is part of the
duty of the current heir to resist profligacy and to make good the losses
incurred by earlier generations. The survival of such a business in the
current climate largely depends on the entrepreneurial ability of the
beneficiary to adapt the business to market conditions. This means that
new uses need to be found for the estate’s considerable assets. For
instance, the estate consists of several properties, including a manor
house and various cottages which define the parameters of the local
village. These are being invested in and developed with a view to entering the luxury rental market. Other aspects of the estate are being commercialised, such as the woodlands which offers game shooting. The
diversification of the enterprise into property development is considered a good investment and is more likely to generate income to help
Gender and Wealth Preservation 75
sustain the enterprise. Shifting what were previously private leisure
activities into the public market typifies the way in which the financial
management of landholding has changed. Yet although such businessmen are willing and able to accommodate the economic and financial
transformations consistent with the wider economy, they rigidly adhere
to tradition in relation to domestic matters. For instance, the continuance of lineage remains important, and this landholding entrepreneur
envisaged that one of his sons would become the major beneficiary. The
importance of this example is that it provides the context in which to
convey some sense of the way partner/wives who are also directors can
be excluded from ownership.
The title of director resonates with organisational power, yet female
directors who have been the backbone of the family enterprise can be
overlooked when wealth is transferred across generations. Referring to
Table 3.1, couple N33, we see that despite the fact that this mediumsized business was largely established on the wife’s expertise in garment
manufacture and on her competence in plant management, she lost her
position in the business. After the company became profitable, its activities were switched from clothing to commercial property, which now
constitutes the core of the business. This had repercussions for the partners and, as the wife explained, it paralleled another event:
‘The property is a completely new company. I leave that to him. My son
has finished college. He doesn’t want to go to university. He is going into
the business, and he will take over.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
The shift from clothing manufacture, a principal area of ethnic minority business, into property development marks an important phase in
the development of this enterprise. The logic of this move is twofold
and has gender repercussions for the question of inheritance. First, it
excludes the wife from ownership, except in a nominal sense. Second,
the transfer of capital establishes, in instances such as this, the male line
of inheritance by including the son in the ownership and management
of the new business. What seems unfair from a gender perspective is
that the wife, having contributed to the accumulation of a sum of
capital, loses possession apparently through a business decision that
involves investment in a different kind of enterprise. The implications
of this would become explicit only if the wife director were to contest
the decision or in the event of a divorce.
However, domestic ideologies suggest that in any case such business
tactics are conducted in the wider ‘family interests’ which are assumed
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
to incorporate the wife/partner’s interests. Indeed, from a business perspective and subject to the contingencies of the wider market, investments such as this into a more capital-intensive sector of the economy
are considered to be more judicious, secure and to offer greater returns.
However, shifts of this sort dramatically affect work organisation. In this
case, the shift into commercial property means that the new enterprise
will require fewer employees with different skills that are incompatible
with the kind of management role played by the wife/manager.
Although this represents upward mobility for the business family, it
essentially marks the wife’s departure from the new business activity.
Typically, examples such as this show that gendered kin relations are
highly influential in the transmission of ownership, when the mother,
a partner in the family enterprise, agrees that the chosen heir will
become the major beneficiary of the new and better business. By ensuring lineal survival, primogeniture smoothly transcends the link between
wifely entrepreneurialism and direct ownership in favour of the eldest
son.
In both ‘old’ and ‘new’ business sectors, although wife directors
offered little resistance to conventions over the pattern of ownership,
they nevertheless found ways to eschew the limitations of their lack of
control. In a minority of cases, such women chose to resign from their
positions in the family business and pursue a separate career. Turning
to the hygiene company discussed earlier, the wife/partner played a
major role in the early phases of business formation and became a director, which suggests that she may have a considerable stake in the enterprise. However, her reason for leaving the business is complex:
‘Well yes, I have a 10 per cent share, but really I have never sat down and
thought about it or what it means. You see, I always saw the business as
Richard’s. That’s his baby through and through. I have a career outside of
that.’
(Table 3.1, N07)
Ownership appears to mean very little to her. Like other wife shareholders it seems unlikely that she will seek possession of her shares. Her
comment also implies that the business has more meaning and depth
for her husband and extends beyond material possession. The issue for
this woman is independence and the satisfaction of working towards a
successful career external to her husband’s enterprise. Working as a
lawyer she is able to earn a considerable salary, but has benefited from
her close association with the business, for it is a client of the law firm
of which she is a partner. In cases such as this, female kin are able to
Gender and Wealth Preservation 77
draw on their family’s business networks in ways that benefit their
careers. It has been shown earlier that many of the ‘new’ businesses are
more likely to diversify, suggesting that the logic is to create wealth as
opposed to establishing a particular kind of enterprise. This business,
on the other hand, has witnessed considerable growth and has established international outlets and may, therefore, depending on the
vagaries of the market, survive in its current form for a considerable
time – a development that may encourage the founding entrepreneur
to emulate the Penrose (1980) model of entrepreneurship. Emulating
the ‘company man’ and the idea of establishing the business based on
a particular product also contains the seeds for the development of the
lineage embedding a purpose, and an identity and place in the world
that symbolically guarantees the mortality of such founding entrepreneurs in industrial societies.
The manner in which gender power stealthily pervades ownership
within the family business is explicit in the case of the shop furnishing
business (Table 3.1, N37). The wife, with the help of her husband’s
brothers, had started this. As Chapters 3 and 4 illustrate, she became a
director, but is finding difficulty in negotiating a meaningful role within
the management team. Increasingly marginalised from the management of the business, this female founder has no share in the ownership. Ownership is reflected in the traditional structure of the family
firm and is divided between three brothers, one of whom is her husband
and ‘business partner’:
‘The ownership is divided between the three brothers. Obviously Tom has
got 34 per cent which really works out at a third each. And then Tom’s
father is the chair and he on the board of other companies, and is winding
down a little and has no shares obviously.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
This clearly demonstrates one way in which male kin benefit from
the labour of female kin within systems of private ownership, for the
ownership of the newly accumulated capital has bypassed the wife. This
structure contains the strategy for the future development of the business. Each of the brothers has responsibility for particular geographical
areas and it is anticipated that each will independently take ownership
and control of their respective regions whilst simultaneously growing
the business. The wife/partner does not question this arrangement and
seems ambivalent about the issue of ownership. This is surprising given
that she feels uncertain about her role in the business and indeed her
marriage.
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
Another interesting permutation on the question of ownership is provided by a business (Table 3.1, N36) that consists of a number of companies including manufacturing, construction, property development
and an overseas investment portfolio. The entrepreneur on behalf of the
family strategically manages them, but on a routine basis the property
development enterprise is managed by him, while his wife/partner
manages the manufacturing plant. The idea is that each partner takes
responsibility for a project, whilst in addition he takes overall responsibility, thus retaining control of the strategic management of the businesses. This man, like his historical counterparts, married into an
affluent business family and was thus able to enhance his business portfolio. He appointed his wife as plant manager of the manufacturing
enterprise and while he claims that she has complete autonomy over
the organisation of this enterprise, he actively obstructed attempts to
interview her. On the question of inheritance, although he has two
daughters and a son, he takes it as a given that his son will inherit and
manage ‘his wealth’. Typical of the portfolio entrepreneurs, this business owner believes in the fluidity of capital assets and is not committed to retaining any of his current enterprise, but is committed to
staying in business, which means that his son is likely to inherit considerable assets in the future. Typically, although he argues that his
wife’s business is a separately run concern, he does not envisage any
challenge from her with regard to his decision on the question of the
‘disposal’ of ‘her’ business and the issue of inheritance. This indeed
seems at odds with his wife’s natal family background, for she went
through a type of male apprenticeship and was helped by her father
into business prior to her marriage.
Splits in husband and wife partnerships through divorce do not
necessarily lead to the break-up of the business. In the ‘newly’ created
business sector two of the couples divorced during the course of the
research. What is significant is that in both cases the breakdown of the
marriage did not immediately, as far as we know, affect the strategic
direction of the business. In both cases the wives left the business partnership. What this suggests is that, ostensibly, divorce settlements do
not destabilise core business interests. However, in both cases the partners had considerable wealthholding aside from their core business
interests. In the first case, the concept clothing chain business (Table
3.1, N14), the husband continued in the business, and later sold his
interests. He then used the investment to re-establish a previous and
arguably less innovative enterprise in terms of the product, but secured
a rather clever financial deal with a large supermarket which provided
Gender and Wealth Preservation 79
a retail outlet for his clothing brand. The wife/partner moved on to an
executive post with a major retail chain and as a result of the divorce
settlement secured a smart house in a fashionable area in London. This
entrepreneur brought one of his daughters from his first marriage into
the business and she worked as one of his line managers. However, the
baby son he had with his third wife he envisaged as the principal heir.
Although the child was only a few months old the father had secured
a place for him at a top public school in anticipation and in preparation for his future role.
Couple N39 (Table 3.1) had businesses in the restaurant and hotel
trade. The wife had considerable wealth independent of her husband,
and as earlier chapters show, she had made a large financial investment
in the hotel that she routinely managed. As a result of the divorce she
abstained from the active management of the business and as part of
the divorce settlement secured a large house in a fashionable area in
London, while contemplating new business plans. Although the hotel
business was subsequently sold, it is not clear whether this was a result
of her calling in her investment. However, her withdrawal from the
active management of the business undermined the whole concept
behind the hotel, since the status of wife in this case gave meaning and
identity to the business. This example may suggest that divorce and
remarriage may alter the form of the business, but does not change the
intentions and strategies for the conservation of wealth and lineage.
The landed sector demonstrates that there is a similar process of wifely
exclusion from wealth possession in the event of divorce. For instance,
an entrepreneur inherited a small farm and, with his wife, built it up to
a holding of 4,000 acres of arable farming, an engineering plant and
property development. This business has remained profitable through
the adoption of mass production methods in the farming of cash crops.
Typically, the property development came as a result of land purchase
and consists of the restoration of several derelict domestic and farm
buildings which appreciated in value during the 1980s when rural living
became desirable. Although he claimed that he worked in partnership
with his ex-wife, this wealthholding is intact despite her departure from
the business organisation and their subsequent divorce. He points out:
‘I divorced my wife. She lives in the family house in L. She settled for that
and some money.’
In the few cases observed, this kind of settlement is typical of divorce
outcomes. The wife lives in the family home, whilst he lives in another
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
of his properties in a different county. His wife no longer has any connection with the business and like earlier examples, ownership has
bypassed her as a result of the manner in which the inheritance question has been resolved. He has already given two-thirds of the property
to his two daughters:
‘We have divided the shares between the three of us. I have worked hard
all my life trying to create something that will keep going. I don’t want the
thing dissipating when I die and all sold. I don’t want the family getting
hold of the cash and just spending it.’
Characteristically, his concern is that the business, or at least its
product, the wealth, will survive after his death. With this in mind
and not having a son he has introduced his daughters to the business and like other anticipant heirs they have experienced a form of
apprentice training. Whilst not strictly adhering to the principle of
primogeniture, he stresses the importance of business knowledge and
points out:
‘I have always discussed business with my girls. When they were coming
back from school we’d stop in at the “LC” and I would talk to them about
the business. They were shareholders then. They would have to sign the
accounts so, whilst they didn’t really understand them, I wanted to instil
in them some business principles. For instance, that to borrow money costs
money, and if you are going to borrow, then it has got to be repaid. I wanted
them to understand that when something is yours, it can so easily be taken
from you.’
To this end his eldest daughter, having completed a degree in architecture, has a career in the City with the aim of learning about investment
and finance. She very obviously has been bestowed with the role of honorary male, for he considers that she also has the strength of character
to strategically manage ‘his’ business. His second daughter works on the
farm, but has had to develop her own enterprise in market gardening
in order to prove worthy of her inheritance. The question of lineage
also underpins the logic of this strategy, for he argues:
‘Because, long term, history tells us that land is re-cyclable on a very
long cycle over thirty or forty years. So from my grandchildren’s point of
view any land we buy now in thirty years’ time will prove to be a good
investment.’
Gender and Wealth Preservation 81
This example demonstrates the clear links between capital accumulation and patriarchy sustained through lineage. These discussions also
convey the sense in which future descendants are being provided for.
Typically, such intentions and accompanying strategies bode inauspiciously for his wives who are peripheral considerations in matters
of inheritance. He is married a second time, but his current wife takes
no part in the enterprise. Again, this thinking has resonance with
Pateman’s (1988) argument and the manner in which the person of the
wife disappears behind the husband. The assumption here is that such
wives will be taken care of. In the absence of sons this entrepreneur had
prepared his daughters for ownership. Indeed, as Chapter 8 on independent women owners shows, in the relevant cases such women resort
to convention, and despite marrying outside their lineage, transfer ownership to their sons. This finding is consonant with Thompson et al.
(1976), who argue that, historically, in times of necessity the transference of wealth to daughters does not necessarily damage natal lineage.
The question of lineage seems to have almost equal importance to the
survival of the property for many of the male partners regardless of their
class status. The next example involves a farmer who owns 600 acres of
land and rents and farms a further 3,000 acres for the cultivation of
commercial crops. He has recently reduced his business portfolio and
has given his son responsibility for the management of the rented enterprise. The son is a working farmer and works on the land whilst he also
manages the business. The benefits of this enterprise are that he is the
beneficiary of the profits from the arable farm. The future plan is to buy
this land, for land as a form of investment is regarded as more enduring and stable:
‘Any of the decisions that I have made have been with Richard in mind
and with the view that he is going to take over. Well, there are still huge
profits to be made in land, but it is not agricultural money. The money
made is through inflation in land prices. It is just paper money. Land can
only be invested in not for the return on capital but maybe with the hope
of long-term growth, or the fact that it does not blow away in the same
way as stocks and shares. You then see companies collapse which isn’t
quite the same with land. People in industry see that. The tendency for
those who have been successful in industry is that they will hive off money
into land. It is seen as a good solid investment.’
Despite poor economic performance in the agricultural sector this
farmer appreciates the longer-term value of land, which he wants to
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
acquire for his son. Passing on the rented farm and its subsequent purchase is the preamble to his succession. The son will eventually inherit
the 600 acre farm, which has been diversified into an equine and leisure
enterprise. However, reflecting earlier examples of wifely exclusion, this
partial transfer of business interests to the son appears to have been precipitated by the divorce from the entrepreneur’s previous partner and
first wife and his subsequent remarriage. He pointed out:
‘Originally it was the three of us. Before I divorced my first wife we were
a partnership and then she transferred her share to Richard.’
This is a first-generation business and from a gender perspective suggests that wives in such businesses work in the business largely for the
future benefit of their sons. On the other hand, it also seems that,
according to the cases discussed, the circumstances in which second
wives marry into first-generation family businesses with expectations of
inheriting the core wealth seem unlikely. In the cases illustrated second
wives marrying into such family enterprise are not part of the decisionmaking process with respect to inheritance, when it seems the clear
intention behind inheritance is to pass on the core wealthholding from
father to son.
The ‘old’ business families reveal the same pattern and suggest that
wifely exclusion is an aspect of the financial management of such business. This is how a 37-year-old heir to a brewing empire saw it:
‘Well, we don’t have a strict system of primogeniture within the family.
But what we do try to do is to make sure that the shares go down one line
in the majority of shares. I hold considerably more shares than my sister
does (90 per cent). What we will try to do is to hand down those shares
to one of the five children. My sister has three and I have got two. The first
opportunity open will be for my son, but if that does not appear to be
working out, then we will look at one of the others.’
(Table 3.2, O17)
This discussion refers to the respondent’s own lineage, his children,
his sister and her three children, members of the family connected
through blood relations, suggesting that natal lineage is perhaps the
only gateway to the family wealth. This is conveyed in the manner in
which he fails to mention his wife, who is conspicuous by her absence.
This business specialises in beers for market niches and has survived five
generations of family management. He is both chair and chief executive of the business, taking full control of the family empire. Notably,
Gender and Wealth Preservation 83
his wife does not own shares, while his sister’s involvement is as a
minority shareholder. Typically, her role in the business is limited to
attending the annual general meeting and acting as monitor to a family
trust, while her primary responsibility would seem to be providing
suitable substitute heirs.
This evidence suggests that the marriage of the male heir does
not endanger or lead to the dissipation of the core unit of wealth. The
age of the business varies within this category and includes thirdgeneration ownership to landholding families that date back hundreds
of years. According to the wives interviewed, with the exception of landholding, it is quite unusual for them to have secured a position in the
business. In the case of the food manufacturing business, which is a
third-generation enterprise, the organisational structure is consistent
with the owner executive model (Goffee and Scase, 1985). Typical of
the traditional family business there are several of the entrepreneur’s
brothers employed in a variety of managerial roles in the company. The
wife/partner is a sales director, and indeed this role is carried over into
her domestic life. Yet, she still regards herself as an outsider in relation
to the business. It is also noteworthy that she does not convey a sense
of partnership, but rather sees herself as an employee. She is not
included in the ownership, has no shareholding and cannot envisage
this occurring. Her ambition is to resign from her post in the longer
term and establish a career elsewhere. The interviews with these wives
suggest that the dominant trend is for them not to get involved and
generally they remain very peripheral to the management and ownership of such family wealth.
Even in instances such as O10 (Table 3.2), where the wife is a shareholder, she assumes only a very tenuous sense of ownership of her
husband’s core wealth, and this cuts across the industrial and landed
sector, and ‘old’ and ‘new’ wealth. Typically, the wife of the heir to a
medium-sized traditional engineering business in the ‘old’ business
category said:
‘I don’t feel it is my place; again I’m not a member of my husband’s family.
I’m probably too submissive on this, I don’t know how much I can say to
you really. I feel he has given those [shares] to me, or because I have been
given those shares it does not mean that I should have any say in the
running of it. I trust them to do all that.’
(Table 3.2, O10)
The respondent held a nominal 10 per cent stake in her husband’s
toolmaking business, set up by his grandfather. In these instances a wife
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is given shares for reasons of financial expediency, which does not
encourage the possession of these assets. Her sense of ownership is
purely passive and mediated through her husband. She sees herself as
an ‘outsider’ without power or influence in business matters, and as
such represents the traditional pattern. However, she has some personal
wealth, which she inherited from her parents and this may be protected
by a pre-nuptial agreement. The future survival of this particular
business is uncertain, because the heir apparent, the eldest son, has a
successful career in the City and sees little advantage in running an
engineering business. The likelihood is that the business will be sold
when the present owner retires.
Despite these illustrative examples, which serve to highlight wives’
business roles, it is likely that wives’ efforts are not wholly accounted
for because the men sometimes obstructed access and frequently underestimated the extent of wifely involvement. Moreover, given that, occasionally, during interview such entrepreneurs began to realise the extent
of their wives’ efforts much wifely work may still remain hidden. This
tendency is likely to continue, for the recent diversification of investment in such business can sometimes initiate types of enterprise that
are stereotyped as being more appropriate for women, particularly in
the landed sector, where there is greater unity between home and work.
The irony here is that although such women are more likely to be
involved in the business, their sense of ownership and access to their
husband’s assets are perceived to be transient and remote. This view is
concisely conveyed in the next example. Speaking of her relationship
to her husband’s wealth one wife said:
‘I haven’t got anything. That’s his. It’s ours but not mine. Not really. While
I’m around I can use it. I have the advantage of it, but I don’t own it.’
(Table 3.2, O08)
This woman, from a rural working-class background, has married into
the landed gentry. Her husband is heir to an estate, which has diminished to about 600 acres. Although still wealthy, the family is in decline
but was in the past a large and politically powerful landowner in the
area. His parents live close by in a modern residence and have vacated
the country manor that overlooks their garden. This has been sold to
and restored by a 1980s entrepreneur who both resents and emulates
their class. Regarding the couple’s enterprise, there is a clear division of
labour: the husband farms, while the wife/partner looks after the rental
Gender and Wealth Preservation 85
properties. He is a working farmer and does most of the work. The wife’s
role in the partnership involves the management of the properties that
had earlier constituted part of the estate. This consists of a row of small
properties which, in effect, comprise the village. The cottages had been
used to house the farm hands and estate workers and are now kept as
weekend homes and lifestyle dwellings. The wife/partner organises the
improvement and maintenance of these properties. In addition, she
selects new tenants and manages the collection of rents. Despite her
involvement and interest in the management of the enterprise she
makes no claim to ownership. Acting as custodian, she maintains and
safeguards the property so that it can be transferred to their son.
The tendency then is to safeguard core wealth, and this is again
evident in cases where respondents are divorced. Three of those in the
‘old’ landed sector were divorced, and the following arrangement was
considered to be fairly typical.
S. was a particularly hardworking and successful entrepreneurial
landowner, and produced cash crops for a well-known food manufacturer. The estate includes a very large house, part of which is run on a
commercial basis to accommodate corporate entertainment. It also
holds weddings and other social events. In addition, there is property
on the estate, which was being turned into commercial enterprise. Other
major assets include a collection of paintings, which, he argued, are all
tied up in trusts. The estate is to be passed on to his son who has a
career in economic journalism with a national newspaper. Thus the
estate is left intact despite the fact that he is divorced from his wife who
is a member of another local landed family. The divorce settlement
includes a sum of money and some valuable paintings. She has returned
to live in a property on her brother’s estate (Table 3.2, O05), a facility
that is part of her inheritance from her natal family. However, the paintings are to go back to the original estate after her death as she had
already bequeathed them to her eldest son who is heir-in-waiting.
On discussing the issue of the potential power of female kin to break
up the core wealth, one respondent, drawing on his own situation, said:
‘Well H. brought money into the marriage and in many ways it is all tied
up.’
Interviewer: ‘Say, for example, you were to get divorced, could she not
claim her share despite the fact that it may well endanger the survival of
the estate?’
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
Husband: ‘She certainly could, but I would expect that she wouldn’t want
this either, and this would influence the settlement. And anyway it would
not be in her interests.’
(Table 3.2, O05)
These comments offer some tentative explanations which may
suggest that such women, constrained by the practice of primogeniture
and the legacy of coverture, behave according to their social class interests, even if this means that they remain ‘outsiders’ in their families of
marriage. In this case, natal kin relations play a paternal role for in some
exceptional cases, consistent with Erickson’s (1993) study, pre-nuptial
contracts safeguard the personal wealth wives bring into the marriage.
Wives thus appear to safeguard their own interests through their connections with their natal families. Some of the wives had considerable
business interests prior to their marriages and have independent
incomes, but there is some tentative evidence that these are often safeguarded by the terms of pre-nuptial agreements within such partnerships. For instance, the wife in the business partnership couple O03
(Table 3.2) is a member of an auctioneering family who manages her
investment portfolio independent of her husband. Other prominent
examples in the ‘new’ wealth category include the wife/partner in the
hotel and restaurant business, (N39, Table 3.1) who has investments in
the USA, and manages these independently of her husband. While the
research suggests that wives often invest in their husbands’ businesses,
there are cases where wives also have considerable wealth. When this
is considered to be personal wealth it is not accessible for the benefit of
the core business or for the husband/partner. The logic and function of
personal wealth are that it challenges the whole notion of dependency,
whilst it may also be a form of insurance against future hard times, as
in the cases of divorce.
Gendered socialisation practices that are embedded primarily in the
culture of primogeniture account in part for the imbalances in patterns
of wealthholding between female and male kin, and are a key cultural
practice amongst business families. This means that children are prepared for different roles in the enterprise according to their gender and
age. As Chapter 9 reveals, socialisation guarantees that male kin are perceived to be the inevitable and natural managers and leaders in both
the industrial and landed sector, amongst the ‘new’ and ‘old’ wealth,
and among majority and ethnic minority enterprises. Boys are encouraged to see themselves as heirs-apparent and this notion is fostered in
the kind of education and training they receive prior to entering the
business. Therefore, it is sons who are uniquely well prepared to take
Gender and Wealth Preservation 87
on the role of chairmen and/or majority shareholders, and it is therefore not surprising that they later exclude their wives from the active
management and ownership of the enterprise. However, as Chapter 8
suggests, where there are no sons, rather than jeopardise the survival of
the property and lineage, girls receive a training similar to boys’, and
are regarded as honorary males with regard to ownership.
The importance of decision-making in choices concerning inheritance is that it is intricately tied into the survival of the business. On
the one hand, heirs are not selected with great care, since the eldest son
is given preference, and thereafter the assumption is that appropriate
qualities suited to the job can be produced through socialisation. On
the other hand, there is some recognition of the need to allow children
to choose their own careers and for the prospective heirs to demonstrate
that they ‘deserve’ their inheritance and are capable of taking it on.
However, as Chapter 9 shows, once a son or, exceptionally, a daughter
is chosen, their life-style and training are structured to lead to their
responsibilities, which for the potential heir constitutes a type of ‘male’
apprenticeship.
The wealthholders interviewed indicated that, with few exceptions,
they would adhere to this practice in the future, and there is no reason
to envisage any dramatic change in this pattern of ownership. As noted
earlier, those who did intend to make their daughters their heirs are
families without sons, a pattern consistent with historical studies.
Daughters became heirs of the core productive wealth unit only as a last
resort, a trend observed for all property-owning classes (Cooper, 1976;
Thompson, 1976; Middleton, 1979; Erickson, 1993). Goody (1976)
points out:
Indeed, Yver sees the exclusion of endowed daughters from land as the dispensable means of keeping the patrimony in the lineage.
The use of trusts are another important way to transfer and preserve
wealth over generations. Over a third of the families interviewed use
some form of trust to manage their wealth. A second pattern of
entrusted wealth occurs when grandparents place money in a trust for
the purpose of educating grandchildren. This type of trust is a very
important resource, for it enables many of those interviewed to educate
their children at top public schools. Even the use of such trusts is predisposed to favour boys. For instance, families insist in the most surprising of cases that boys want to attend public school, and it appears
that there is far less pressure on girls to do so. For some families the
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
‘finishing school’ is the distinctive mark of girls’ education, and, unlike
their brothers who are trained to assume an active economic role in the
business, they are groomed in social etiquette and wifely competence.
Utilising trusts in this manner also preserves gender inequality within
such families, whilst it sustains the family’s social and class position. In
many ways these strategies convey the sense in which ‘new’ and ‘old’
businesses are managed, thus ensuring the preservation of family enterprise. The unequal inheritance patterns and unfair management practices are bound by an internal logic, that is, by a convention of cultural
practices that are believed to the best way of preserving the business in
the interests of the family.
Conclusions
This chapter has argued that wives in business partnerships with their
husbands are bypassed when it comes to the strategic management of
the enterprise and particularly when business wealth is transferred. This
involves a set of cultural practices that shape the careers of family kin
according to their gender identity. Primogeniture is a principal strand
of this strategy and more or less guarantees a preference for the eldest
son, who then takes control of the business at the expense of other kin
members and particularly wives/partners. However, the logic of this
strategy is that it safeguards the male lineage, the wealthholding and
the class position of the business families concerned.
6
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities
and the Self-Made Man
This aim of this chapter is to interrogate the notion of the ‘self-made
man’ and to show the connection between emotionality, domesticity,
masculinities and enterprise. Contrary to Seidler’s (1989) argument, this
chapter suggests that male emotion, particularly for entrepreneurial
men, is not repressed in the public sphere, but is disguised in different
forms and is expended in the pursuit of enterprise mirroring Victorian
prescriptions of the capitalist ethic. In highlighting two typologies of
entrepreneurial men, Ochberg’s (1987) notion of ‘men’s disengagement
from the emotional’ arena is drawn on to show that entrepreneurial
men free themselves for emotional expression in the business world.
Men’s creative energy and emotional expression are additional resources
that are consumed in the act of enterprise, and are contingent on men’s
relationship to domesticity. At the same time, men retain their bonds
in domesticity through the discourses of sacrifice and effort on behalf
of the family, simultaneously elevating their economic role over other
concerns.
In describing the art of managing business as ‘emotional economy’,
Roper’s (1994) work questions the exclusivity of rules as the sole source
of managerial power. His colourful illustration of managers acting out
their emotions and passions within the workplace signals that managerial power is rooted in more than a configuration of Weber’s bureaucracy. By focusing on relationships between men within the managerial
hierarchy, Roper shows that emotion and sexuality are critical parts of
the repertoire of resources that such men use in competition for positions of power within the hierarchy. While this is a laudable project,
the easy manner in which he imagines that the structure of the
heterosexual gender power relationship can be used as a heuristic device
in explaining competition between male is problematic. This is because
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the power relationship between male managers is very different from
the power relationship between men and women, and particularly
between husbands and wives in business partnerships. What is interesting about Roper’s work is that it provides a valuable insight into how
such men, in mimicking the playfulness of heterosexual power, attempt
to disguise male competitiveness. Whilst Roper asserts that management is an emotional game, Hearn’s (1993) concern is with the kinds
of emotion that men use to retain their organisational dominance. The
connecting thread between this argument and Ochberg’s (1987) views
about men and intimacy, and Davidoff and Hall’s (1987) debate about
the repression of male sexuality, is that from different perspectives
they all point to emotion as a feature in men’s work. Roper suggests
that postwar management men calculatedly limit the expenditure of
emotion in domestic and wifely concerns, when such commitment to
work is explained in organisational imperatives. Indeed, his joint interviews conducted with the managers and their wives convey only mild
ambivalence amongst deferring wives. My own research suggests that
wives and husbands both feel inhibited in the presence of each other,
and that interviewing them separately may reveal differences in
accounts. However, the men managers in Roper’s study, when talking
about their careers, absentmindedly hint at the rancour caused by their
lack of involvement with domestic concerns and the discomfort caused
by rebellious wives. Scase and Goffee (1982) too are interested in the
separation between home and work and on the impact this has on
managerial careers and lifestyles. They found senior managers to be
more involved with work, whilst men in middle management tiers,
disappointed with the lack of career opportunity, disengage in part
from the workplace and compensate through leisure, suggesting that,
conventionally, men expect work to be emotionally involving.
The naturalisation of male entrepreneurialism
Although critical studies of managers are beginning to assert that
emotion plays a major role in the managerial function, the literature
addressing enterprise is characteristically premised on the superiority of
rationality and particular kinds of human capital. It routinely speaks to
a male audience and assumes that business is a distinctive male endeavour that involves particular types of men. Chell et al. (1991), Hebert and
Link (1989) and Drucker (1985) typify an approach that stresses the connection between distinctive kinds of human capital and business activity. Typical of the more prosaic version of human capital theory is
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 91
Kennedy’s (1980) study of male business leaders, which suggests that
entrepreneurial men can be distinguished by their management potential, long-term strategic orientations, ruthlessness, financial acumen,
risk-taking and rationality. There are a number of problems with such
an analysis. The first is that it elevates rationality and does not take
account of power, or the importance of emotion in the act of managing. As this book reveals, emotionality is also critical to entrepreneurial
men and they jealously reserve it as a resource to be consumed in business activity. However, this depends on men’s ability to access, allocate
and direct the labour of female kin.
Of course, emotion as a resource has a material context that is often
the key to male business success. Male emotion as a resource to business is two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, male emotion is
expressed as creativity, devotion, sacrifice and workaholism, but is
disguised by rationality. On the other hand, it is absence from domesticity. Indeed, the euphemisms ‘family labour’ and the ‘family firm’
conceal the extent to which female kin, and particularly wives, are substitutes for lost male emotion work within domesticity. The reluctance
to interrogate the notion of ‘family labour’ and the absence of women
in entrepreneurial discourse reinforce the invisibility of women as a
business resource in this context in addition to others. However, the different discourses on enterprise fosters the link between masculinity and
rationality, whilst the absence of a gender analysis reinforces the myopia
that exists in relation to male emotion work and enterprise. The point
made is that male emotion resides in the public sphere and is increasingly there in competitive conditions, but is hidden. Whilst feminist
literature has said very little about enterprising activity directly, it has
questioned gendered assumptions in a wide variety of workplace analyses, as the following section shows.
Entrepreneurialism and patriarchy
Hearn’s (1992) notion of public patriarchy is a useful way of thinking
about the manner in which male power historically shifted from the
private sphere into all public sphere activities. The adaptability of patriarchy is continually demonstrated by the manner in which men have
been able to maintain their dominance despite the changing material
conditions characteristic of the capitalist relations of production.
Indeed, the recent entry of women into important areas of political and
economic life has had little demonstrable effect in changing the culture.
As capitalist relations have expanded, the configuration of male power
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
has gained territorially from the narrow confines of the private sphere
and the power of the father to the more diffuse yet pervasive power of
men in the control of public sphere activity.
However, at particular points, men make alliances with capital that
serve mutual interests. Typically, as Chapters 3–5 reveal, although some
business are established by wife/partners, and although they play a
major role in the management of such enterprise, they are unable to
establish an enterprising reputation. The lack of women’s reputation in
enterprise simply confirms men’s well-established place as business
leaders. Compared to women they are better placed to play the entrepreneurial game, for as Burt’s notion of structural holes and Boissevain’s
notion of cultural capital suggest, men have created a playground of
exclusive male clubs, where business links are forged and opportunities
identified. Men are able to participate in cultural and social settings that
encourages male allegiance and this is very important in enterprise.
On the other hand, male allegiances are tainted by competitiveness,
and this magnifies divisions amongst men. Theories of patriarchy that
address the question of difference between men also suggest how such
differences accommodate enterprise. Brod and Kaufman (1994) and
Collinson and Hearn’s (1994) notions of masculinity denote a subtle
move away from the repercussions of male power on women, to a more
central focus on men and power, and men and masculinity, while still
retaining a concern with men’s asymmetrical relationship to women.
Their approach suggests that masculinities are a shifting constellation
of diversity, difference and unity, anchored historically, culturally and
materially. Enterprise provides an illustration of how such differences
can become resources for some men. In this sense the act of enterprise enables business leaders to manipulate class/gender relations
(Collinson, 1992), ethnic identities (Mac an Ghaill, 1994) and sexuality
(Mac an Ghaill, 1993). Additionally, fitness, age, emotional labour and
distance from domesticity influence how men compete with or make
alignments with each other in the process of creating a business. As the
following discussion will reveal, such entrepreneurial men emphasise
co-class/ethnic identities to access reservoirs of labour, while notions of
fitness and ‘cold’ rationality help them to distinguish themselves from
other, ‘lesser’ men in the making of masculinities. At the same time,
male emotionality, in the guise of passion, drive, enthusiasm, sacrifice
and workaholism, serves the logic of enterprising rationality amongst
striving men.
In this chapter I draw on the life histories of first-generation entrepreneurs and their families. These cases are typical of particular types
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 93
of entrepreneurial masculinity, although the men in question began
their businesses in very different economic conditions. The aim is to
explore what kind of entrepreneurial men they are becoming (Kerfoot
and Knights, 1996) and whether, and in what ways, they differ in their
approach to wealth creation. The first model is embodied in the notion
of ‘the company man’ and comprises a belief in internal growth and a
risk-averse approach to financial management, while technical expertise and pride in the product and company take priority over short-term
profitability. The second model, embraced in the notion of ‘the takeover
man’, is very different because it is moulded by quick profits achieved
through financial manipulation, where growth is facilitated by takeover.
What distinguishes types is the approach and form of accumulation. For
instance, the ‘company man’ embodies an identity and commitment in
the idea of a recognisable product, something stable, secure and established. By contrast ‘the takeover man’ is single-minded about making
money and promiscuous in the manner he enters different sectors, with
no commitment to creating a product, but rather with a destructive urge
to extract profit. The men in the following study came from workingclass backgrounds and had made good. In this sense I want to highlight
their similarities and differences and how these embody a strategy, or
strategies, for success in business. Are their shared backgrounds important in the construction of their masculinities? Do their different
nationalities, education and age impinge upon the kind of men they
become, and how does this influence their approach to business? How
are masculinities shaped by specific material conditions such as migration, work activities, male working-class discourses and domesticity?
Has difference between entrepreneurial men any relevance for the
politics of domesticity?
The company man
Aged 76, Mr M. was still active as chairman of a multi-million-pound,
privately owned and run, civil engineering business he founded in 1952.
His vision of successful enterprise is in building up a business identified
by the product and service it provides, something substantial which can
be transferred to his children. His eldest son is managing director, his
daughter is a director and a younger son is training for a senior position. His manhood and patriarchal identity are all bound up in the
original business and its ethos, for its activities are still in the
characteristically Irish sector of heavy plant machinery, lately diversifying into construction, open cast mining and speculation in industrial
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
land. Such diversification is not merely opportunistic, but a rather
gradual development of the founding venture. In some ways Mr M. conforms to the model of the ‘self-made’, self-educated, ‘hands-on’ practical man of the postwar industrial sector, whose prior commitment
is to product development as opposed to quick profits (see also Roper,
1994).
There is a sense in which he couches his achievement in a language
which conspires to the ideology of the self-made man. One of the most
striking features about interviewing rich and successful men and women
is the sense of power and confidence they convey. This, of course, is
stage-managed in the ambience of a plush office and similarly grand
domestic settings. By contrast, the office suites of Mr M. and members
of his family are fairly modest. Discreet about his private wealth, this
setting is very much tied to the image he wishes to convey. Although
he is chairman, he wants to be recognised as a ‘working man’, someone
who earns a living through hard work. Work and ‘his’ business remain
the centre of his life, and he exudes an unrelenting energy and enthusiasm in telling the story of the company success – his success, based
exclusively on his efforts. He relives the key moments of the business
formation, filling out the contours of each stage with impressive detail,
remembering others’ help only when prompted. With regard to his
wife’s participation, there is an emphasis on a rigid division of labour
and a denial of any contribution on her part to the business.
Sennett and Cobb (1977) draw attention to the double-edged notion
of toughness and the meanings it has for working-class migrant
men. In debating class as ‘injury’, these authors challenge notions of
machismo and show them to be ideologies that conceal personal pain,
the denial of weakness, while serving to legitimise conditions of
exploitation. This is consistent with Hearn (1992), who makes a connection with forms of alienation and particular masculine behaviour.
Toughness embodies a belief in the power of the body and equally
importantly in the strength of the mind. However, it is strength of mind
that separates such men from their peers. Typically, toughness is the
touchstone of Mr M.’s vision of masculinity, an image which may be at
odds with this small, slim man, conventionally but immaculately
dressed in a pin-striped suit. But the stress on physical toughness is
partly linked to his earlier occupation and lifestyle.
Beginning his career at the age of 17, when his father died, he
migrated from Ireland to Britain. As the eldest of eleven children he saw
few prospects on the family’s small farm. Assuming the role of breadwinner for his mother and ten dependent siblings, he worked initially
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 95
as a farm labourer. Constrained by his lack of formal education and Irish
migrant background, he, like many other Irishmen over the next twenty
years, worked in the construction industry in a variety of manual jobs,
moving to a different location with each new job. This job market has
long been the ghetto for rural male Irish labour. Indeed there is a
dynamic relationship between the characteristics of this kind of occupation and the rootlessness, isolation, alienation and the ‘macho’
culture that it nurtures. Although the image of the Irish construction
worker as a drunken, brawling and tough ‘navvy’ conforms to a
racialised stereotype, like other stereotypes, it has some validity.
The reality is that such work requires physical stamina, and men,
finding themselves in these circumstances, are forced to act out ‘macho’
behaviour and do internalise some of its values. But this can be
explained by the alienation associated with migration and the conditions in which these men were forced to labour, and very often the poor
domestic conditions they endured. This arduous work experience calls
for physical strength and is a necessary socialising ritual in the construction of a particular masculinity. It is the rite of passage to this particular male club. Social rootlessness fosters a camaraderie between men
in which displays of muscle power, personal spending and drinking are
seen as virtues, which suggest a lack of control, but may be a compensation for the absence of family and wives. The whole emphasis on the
power of the body and the experience of social rootlessness generates
the need for self-reliance and independence from these constraining
and destructive circumstances.
However, such men argue that the transformation of their class position is contingent on ‘keeping your head’ and staying in control through
strength of mind. Notions of sacrifice and endurance are intertwined
with economic duty and paternal responsibility. Ideas about independence and breadwinning form dynamic themes in this version of
manhood, for the boy acquired a man’s responsibilities, a factor not
unconnected with the theme of thrift. With his starting pay of £l 17s
6d in 1932, and after a stretch of twenty years’ work, he explains: ‘I
had fourteen hundred pounds in the bank. I’d saved that. I’d earned good
money during the war.’ This challenges the racial stereotyping of Irish
Catholicism, and conforms to Weber’s model of the Protestant ethic of
hard work, thrift and the Victorian habit of rationalising the self
through discipline. During this time, Mr M. gained an insight into business and acquired some technical and managerial skills. He learned to
drive and maintain plant and machinery, and had worked as foreman
for a number of years in his friend’s contracting company. This was a
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Class, Gender and the Family Business
key moment in his life, for he got married and simultaneously resigned
from his job and became self-employed. Spending £200 of his savings,
he invested in his first piece of machinery, a second-hand tractor. This
event is clearly linked to financial independence and is an acknowledgement of the dependence of others on him. Increasingly he became
a workaholic and made £8,000 profit in the first year:
‘I went out on my own driving the machine, getting the jobs and doing
them. I “broke” that machine. I worked seven days a week, sometimes fourteen hours a day. I was always going down the garden path by 6.30 am.
That’s how I did it.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
The emphasis is on successful profit-making, whilst the premium is on
individual effort, this time measured in physical power that not only
controls but also defeats the durability of inanimate objects, thus
conveying the superiority of human mastery over machinery, for, he
explains, he ‘broke the machine’. In other words, he worked the machine
to its destruction, and beating it, he relishes its demise. The central issue
here is the power of the body over the machine, another manifestation
of the theme of physical toughness. The ideology of masculinity both
masks the limits of this particular masculinity and its class basis, and
also underplays his other possible skills. It is partly an accommodation
to the racial stereotype of Irish male labour, where ‘unskilled’ labour
alternatively relied on the power of the body, yet it is also a way of living
with the indignity of a poor education, although clearly he had by this
time acquired sophisticated managerial and business skills. Willis (1977)
observes a similar vision of toughness among working-class men.
During the interview the sense of indignity fostered by his poor education was continually replayed in self-mockery. In recalling this painful
biography, Mr M. also wants to convey his strength of character and the
power to transcend the indignities of such constraints.
Like the men in Sennett and Cobb’s (1977) study, Mr M.’s apparent
ambivalence about the merits of formal education may cloak the pain
he has endured. Paradoxically, during his earlier career he learned
several skills essential to becoming self-employed – how to cost jobs and
rudimentary accounting. Describing these coping strategies also allows
him to demonstrate his intelligence:
‘And I used to have my balance sheet in my pocket. When I looked at a
job in those days I’d have to estimate how much I’d get for doing it. Against
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 97
that I’d have to calculate my wages and the fuel, whether I’d be able to
do the job, and how long it would take. I had no degree or anything, but
I rarely made a mistake. Nowadays they have degrees and they’d be there
measuring up and so. They still don’t get it right. And me, I could tell by
looking.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
His denigration of formally skilled engineers has parallels with the
workers in Collinson’s (1992) study, who knew that formal education
was one possible route out of one’s class, but to admit to this is to
devalue one’s version of manhood. At the same time, formal education
acts in opposition to working-class masculinities, for in one sense it
feminises ‘real’ men (Sennett and Cobb, 1977; Collinson, 1992; Roper,
1994). These contradictions are again reflected in Mr M.’s approach to
his children’s education:
‘Well they all went to university and got their degrees. Michael got his in
civil engineering, but all of them, including Pauline, had to go on site and
work. And I insisted, much to his mother’s disgust, that he did the hardest
jobs for my most cantankerous foremen. Michael had to prove himself,
learning to drive every machine and by being willing to do any job. And
I mean Pauline did jobs in the yard. Their mother thought that they
shouldn’t get their hands dirty. But you see they did that and got their
degrees.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
The rite of passage to supposedly authentic masculinity is the test to
survive the demands of manual labour. His children, including his
daughter, proved they were ‘real’ men. The logic of this is that it is a
preparation for possible future ‘hard times’, whilst acting as a warning
against profligacy in the face of future temptation. At the same time,
by insisting on manual labour and formal education for his children,
Mr M. has upheld the value of his version of masculinity whilst also
transferring and fulfilling his wish that his children be well educated.
To admit or to dwell upon the limitation of his own poor education
would be to highlight the limits of his power and masculinity. This went
against the grain of ‘getting ahead’ and setting himself apart from his
peers and rivals:
‘There was a big job out at Company X. There were many problems with
it. The experts saw it and wouldn’t touch it. And I suppose if I had seen
the dangers I wouldn’t, but I hadn’t. But as I went along doing the job, I
98
Class, Gender and the Family Business
got better and better. They [colleagues and friends] all said, “It will be
the last of him, it’ll kill P.” But that is where I made the money – on the
jobs that other contractors wouldn’t want.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
This sense of independence and the need to distinguish oneself from
other men underline his comments, and are consistent with aspects of
the rugged individualism espoused in conventional entrepreneurial
theories discussed earlier, such as risk-taking. Whilst physical endurance
and technical superiority are some of the hallmarks in his version of
successful entrepreneurial masculinity, they are also part of workingclass ideologies and discourses. Essentially for men like Mr M., the
emphasis on toughness of the body and mind became the means by
which to transcend the alienating conditions associated with one’s class.
In class terms ideas about toughness are very important in the construction of mechanisms that both create and safeguard business. In the
case of Mr M., arguably toughness encourages self-sacrifice where ‘real
men’ have the strength of mind to endure such trials. The idea of the
‘strength of mind’ has other parallels and is tied to ‘hard masculinity’
when affluent men of other classes are trained to resist the temptations
of profligacy associated with affluence and privilege. As the notion of
‘apprenticeship’ (Mulholland, 1997), shows, this is acutely evident in
the tough public school system that initiates the early separation of children from their parents and is a part of character-building that features
in the preparation for the responsibilities of inheritance.
This brand of individualism stands juxtaposed to the family, class and
ethnic solidarities which had been so central to Mr M.’s survival. Sustaining these loyalties is also limiting, and attempts to transcend such
limits invite some risks:
‘I had been with the G. [a very large private company] since 1948, and
they were my friends. But I had done a lot for them, worked hard all hours
of the day and night. In 1952 we had a big difference and I jacked the job
in [resigned]. And my four years of high class college [ironically] with
the S.s. I had done everything with them, I knew all my plant, machinery,
the maintenance, and above all, I could do evaluations. Anyway, what I
really wanted was to do something on my own.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
This comment reveals several tensions. On the one hand, it resonates
with a strong emphasis on independence, as an integral part of certain
forms of working-class masculinity. On the other hand, the conditions
of becoming an entrepreneur involve the interplay of class, ethnicity
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 99
and working-class masculinity. At one level, moving into selfemployment entails disloyalty to one’s group, when identities and loyalties are subordinated to the needs of capital. In this case the respondent set up in competition with his former employer, gaining direct
access to markets. At a second level this reveals the contradictory
character of masculine solidarity, when friendships between men are
challenged by the capitalist impulse. At a third level, unravelling the
racialised stereotype of their rational and untamed ‘Irish navvy’ revealed
a regular saver, a cautious investor, a disciplined worker and an astute
businessman. Setting oneself apart through transforming one’s class
position creates another set of tensions between class and ethnic solidarity. A discrete notion of ethnicity may gloss over class contradictions
(see Ram, 1994, who is reluctant to notice this) and partly conceals the
tensions and conflicts, the capitalist essence of the wage-labour relationship. Instead of being a worker employed under the conditions of
‘lump labour’1 drawing on his own ethnic group, he became an
employer of such labour. Together with a climate of economic growth
characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s and astute financial management,
there were the essential elements in his model of entrepreneurial
achievement. In this sense aspiring working-class ethnic masculinity
reflects and reinforces middle-class entrepreneurial competitive values.
The same lack of sentiment and rationalising is adopted in relation
to the employment of his brothers in the business:
‘When it came to the business, there was no favouritism, and even now
this applies to my children. They have earned their places. Now I had
several brothers, two were great men and became directors, but some of the
others, well – some swept the yard. What divides us is “keeping your head”.
I mean one went on the bottle and killed himself. And I can tell you so
many hard men end in the sewer down and out. Then there are others –
and they become gangsters – look at some of the Irish in America. Others
never pay their taxes. I have always operated by the book, clean. That’s
why I have a good solid business. We are known for our reliability and
service – that’s better than dirty money.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
The process of setting oneself apart can be physical/geographical or
social/psychological, which means rejecting some of the destructive
values associated with masculinity and community. It entails personal
self-denial and refusing the camaraderie of hard drinking and the seduction of making easy money. Mr M.’s honesty and hard work separate
him from his fellow countrymen and some male kin, and justify his
100 Class, Gender and the Family Business
business achievements. At the same time, this shows how the suppression of sentiment and emotion is consistent with ‘rational’ decisionmaking and control – the prerequisites of managerial professionalism
(Hearn, 1987).
Financial acumen ran parallel with profitable capitalist activity and
continued to be the hallmark of Mr M.’s business progress, themes that
strongly feature in images of middle-class entrepreneurial success. For
instance, selling and re-buying his company is the nadir of his career.
He sold 65 per cent of his company in 1965. Having negotiated a very
good price he used the money to buy a 500-acre estate in Ireland with
the intention of farming. However, during the following seven years he
became unhappy with the manner in which the company was managed
and organised a meeting with his partner, intending to sell his remaining 35 per cent of the company, which was under-performing. The
meeting resulted in him buying back his company. Mr M. recalls the
high points of his financial wizardry:
‘They offered us a poor price, so we decided we’d try and buy back our
65 per cent at the price offered to us for the 35 per cent. They finally
agreed. Of course I had to sell my estate, but within six months
I’d paid for my company, and then started it as a family company.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
Once the initial wealth is established, the emphasis shifts from muscle
power to the financial wit of the entrepreneur in the art of boardroom
negotiation. The process of creating a business and accumulating visible
structures of wealth is also a sign of intra-generational class mobility,
and to admit ignorance of such significant matters as finance at this
stage would be to point to a chink in the armour of the invincible selfmade entrepreneur. In the case of Mr M., aside from recruiting professionally trained financial advisers in the administration of his business,
he learned accounting and acquainted himself with the broader issues
relating to business. Attempting to emulate his perception of middleclass behaviour, he regularly reads the Financial Times and economic
periodicals. For him, a sound business is independent of the shackles
of borrowing, and Mr M. gave a detailed account of how his bigger
ventures were financed.
The masculine discourse surrounding the triumph of financial wheeling and dealing often belies caution, but it engenders the feel for power.
It makes men feel powerful, and it is the guile of power which they find
so seductive. Indeed this is not unconnected to workaholism:
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 101
‘I don’t take holidays, or days off. My leisure is the occasional meal in a
hotel, and a rest on Sunday afternoon. Mind you, later I go out to survey
some sites, my work is my pleasure.’
(Table 3.1, N30)
In this case the proprietor of a multi-million-pound business in speculative house-building, motorcycle manufacturing and estate farming
typifies the cult of workaholism. The emphasis such enterprising men
place on workaholism has an additional explanation anchored in both
the public and private spheres, and is contingent upon the question of
emotional labour. The discourses of self-denial, sacrifice and punishing
work schedules may well be rooted in the market. In other words, the
competitiveness in such markets calls for extraordinary effort endorsed
by the ideologies of the breadwinning role. But for such men work is
the site for emotional expression and rejuvenation. Work is without a
doubt their first love. The experience of building a business, the ‘lows’
and ‘highs’, are seductive and part of the creative process, which is
felt intensely and personally. The wife and ex-working director of a
very successful hygiene firm explained why she opted out of active
management:
‘Well, I’d done all these things, but the business was his idea, his baby,
he lives for it.’
(Table 3.1, N7)
Roper (1994) captures this sense and meaning when he draws an
analogy between entrepreneurial success and giving birth. Workaholism
also endorses masculine independence and strongly upholds the male
breadwinner’s role, thus sustaining the very mechanisms that reconstitute male dominance.
Mr M.’s success, power and wealth are reflected in a lifestyle of tasteful affluence. He lives with his wife in a period manor house, complete
with swimming pool, fitness and games rooms. Adjoining cottages
provide separate accommodation for one of his six children. He has an
interest in art and has bought some minor paintings, has owned a yacht
in the Mediterranean, a 500-acre estate, likes horses and regularly
attends Ascot – interests and consumption patterns consistent with the
upper middle classes.
This particular vision of entrepreneurial masculinity has been
founded upon changing class identities, ideologies and discourses. The
contradictory character of a masculine identity is founded upon the
notion of manual labour. It both elevates and denigrates working-class
masculinity. However, this cloak for class and self-exploitation, spurred
102 Class, Gender and the Family Business
on by gain through favourable economic conditions and a belief in
competitive values, driven by the seduction of power, has the capacity
to transform and reconstitute working-class manhood in the realm of
middle-class enterprise. These combinations of entrepreneurial masculine identity are embodied by the manly act of creating a business,
something durable, solid, useful and productive. Equally, this masculinity has a hidden dimension: absence from family duties and the
control and rationalisation of the self. Male emotion has been consumed in the construction of the business and in the making of money,
powerful embellishments to masculinity. Yet, for all this, while Mr M.
can, in material terms, be objectively categorised as belonging to the
property-owning class at heart, subjectively he is a man among men
only in relation to his earlier ethnic identity and class.
The takeover man
The resurrection of neoliberal economics promoting the virtues of the
free market underlines the discourses and ideologies of recent popular
managerial literature. When translated into notions of enterprise these
advocate rugged individualism and the power of human capital and are
presented as a panacea for the negative effect of the economic restructuring characteristic of the 1980s. New breeds of entrepreneurs have
emerged who espouse these principles. Aged 38, Mr A. belongs to the
new generation of opportunistic, profit-oriented free marketeers. Paradoxically, his business ethos is founded in the aftermath of dramatic
structural change, the shift from public to private ownership, the shedding and the casualisation of labour and the legacy of boom-and-bust
fostered by credit. When translated into notions of entrepreneurialism
these advocate rugged individualism and the power of human capital
and are presented as a panacea for the negative effects of the economic
restructuring characteristic of the 1980s economy. His prime business
interests stem from company failure and the casualisation of labour
markets, hallmarks of the l980s economy. He is chairman with a 10 per
cent share in a public company of which he is the founder, with a £40
million annual turnover, specialising in contract labour, employment
services and in the rescue of small and medium-sized private businesses
threatened with liquidation. Additionally, he runs three private companies in London.
Conducted in his home, this interview was intended to explore his
lifestyle, patterns of consumption, class aspirations and sense of
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 103
achievement, all of which embody a very different entrepreneurial masculinity in the making. This is indeed class-bound, for his most cherished personal possession is a recently acquired manor house in a
Midlands county, for which he paid £1 million. Since he purchased the
house he has spent £200,000 in restoring it to its original style. This is
not the tasteless grandeur of the nouveaux riches, for that would betray
his class background. A life-size portrait of his wife hangs above the huge
mantelpiece, and the image conveyed is that of a country squire with
an upper-class background. This sense of class and social status is very
much endorsed by the fact that he lives in the ‘big house’ overlooking
a small village of approximately ten cottages in which the previous
patrician owners and their tenants now live. Highly critical of privilege,
he described the patrician family as ‘wastrels’, who had allowed the
house to deteriorate and a 13,000-acre estate to be frittered away in
financial profligacy. He clearly felt that despite his underprivileged background his talents and hard work had triumphed over the privileges
associated with breeding and class. The former lady of the manor held
him in equal contempt. In an earlier interview she suggested that
the sources of his wealth and nature of his business remained an
unfathomable mystery. But all of these threads are constituting
embellishments to an image of traditional upper-class masculinity to
which he aspired.
Beautifully dressed in expensive and perfectly matched tweeds, he
displays impeccable manners which are intended to complement the
image of the country gentleman, a standard of dress that such men did
not match. The location of this interview also conveys the idea of a
leisured lifestyle associated with the moneyed classes, while also portraying him as a family man. This is both in the traditional sense as a
family patriarch and head of the family, and the ‘new man’ who happily
participates in child care and family life. As Davidoff and Hall (1987)
and Veblen (1949) have argued, the family is part of the build-up of the
successful capitalist, which also endorses paternalism, part of the construction of a specific and aspiring middle-class masculinity. In contrast
to Mr M., who portrays himself as a workaholic, Mr A. draws on ‘soft’
masculine images that are woven around the ‘new man’ who takes an
interest in domesticity with the seeming effortless grace of the traditional patriarch. At the same time, this seems to be intended to convey
a sense of relaxed elegance, which in turn gives the sense of a man in
control. Marriage and having a family form the crucial rite of passage
to this particular masculinity. Family and leisure are used to convey a
sense of wealth and status. In fact, Mr A. has three children, one of
104 Class, Gender and the Family Business
whom lives with his first wife, while Mr M. has six children and is
surrounded by them.
However, Mr A.’s class background belies this image. He was born in
south London to working class-parents who were
‘. . . very, very working-class, and very left-wing. My father worked for
a London Council on the manual side. My mother was a Geordie, and
there were five kids. She was brought up washing floors, and she was still
cleaning when I was fifteen, or sixteen.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
Whilst for Mr M. association with one’s class of birth and ethnicity
proved to be a springboard to enterprise, Mr A.’s strategy is to distance
himself from his roots, his class and his family. The sense of distance is
strongly conveyed in the significance he gives to the house, which he
explained was ‘the roots and heart’ of his family. Psychologically and geographically he left his natal family when a new identity was being
formed, assisted by education. This helped him to acquire social skills,
grace and sense of relaxed superiority, self-confidence and being in
control, attributes long associated with the upper class. As he explained:
‘I got an exceptionally good education because I was fairly musical, so I
got several musical scholarships and various bits and pieces. I did a
season on tour with the orchestra. I had various other opportunities in that
line. So that got me a better education than I would have had otherwise.
And it got me away from home, which was a good thing.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
By leaving home, socialisation within a working-class culture was
avoided and a middle-class value system and speech codes were
acquired, skills essential to upward mobility. Yet having acquired this
demeanour, Mr A. still endures the pain of his poor background. It is
not that men like Mr A. are ashamed of their background; rather, they
fear the repercussions and degradation of the harshness of working-class
life. This theme forms a continuous strand in Mr A.’s career and
personal development.
For instance, in the early 1970s he read politics and economics at a
London university, a route to upward mobility. Untypically perhaps, he
did not enjoy student life or the political atmosphere there, preferring
to abandon his degree to embark on a career in catering. Starting and
soon tiring of work as a ‘redcoat’ at Butlin’s, he went to work in a Paris
hotel. In many ways this move can be accounted for by his class back-
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 105
ground and working-class values. Some working people see little benefit
in attending university and reading something as esoteric as economics
and politics. Of course, very often there is a real need to earn money.
However, Mr A. had a specific goal, which was to save money to buy a
hotel. Using his savings of £5,000, he entered the property market,
buying two houses in need of refurbishment. He then got a job as
an interviewer with an employment agency, while his leisure time
was spent restoring his property. These houses were later sold at a
substantial profit.
The cultivated image of leisurely affluence betrays the strategies
involving thrift and the celebration of the work ethic. Most young
people would at least relish the experience of three years of student life.
But Mr A. left and this reveals a working-class masculine ambivalence
to studying, partly conforming to another version of the cult of toughness so strongly exhibited in Mr M.’s account. There is a sense in which
this is not the real work of a man. This thrusting young man preferred
the sense of purpose manifested in the frantic activity, risk and insecurity of moving between low-paid jobs and the early penny-pinching.
Unable to cast aside his working-class upbringing he had by this stage
married and had a child. These critical points in his early life acted
as part of the rite of passage to manhood and a very contradictory
masculinity. Driven by an acquisitive, highly individual ethos, Mr A.
explains that in the early l980s he
‘. . . canvassed a job with a London company. I went in there as a site negotiator, finding new sites for them. And they were turning over £200,000
and I found that I was fairly good at negotiating. After three years of doing
that I was made managing director of the company. I took the turnover to
several million, of which £2 million was just profit. They wouldn’t give
me any equity, I was a paid managing director, I was paid very well.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
The need for independence is a feature of male working-class
values, but the means of achieving this through managerial enterprise is more consistent with middle-class values and perceptions
of money. Accumulating wealth is one aspect of a parallel process,
while men gain control over money, they also enhance their masculinity. The power over money is what distinguishes them from other
men in other classes and lesser men in their own class. However, such
drive and competitiveness is only achieved even by their standards at a
price:
106 Class, Gender and the Family Business
‘If someone were to ask me “What is it that makes anyone successful?”
I’d say three words, fear, greed and creativity, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in that. Well, with fear I’d put insecurity until you reach a
level of wealth where you decide, “Well, hang on a minute, what is it all
for?” People are afraid of failure, the insecurity breeds a fear, a fear that
you are not quite as good, or you should he better. With that fear you have
got loneliness. It’s a sense of urgency.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
Unlike the ‘macho’, invincible mask presented by Mr M., this respondent admits to self-doubt and human frailty, which is consistent with
the ideologies of the ‘new man’. He talks about his vulnerabilities, motivations and fears. This comment exemplifies some of the contradictions
associated with masculinity and entrepreneurial activity. Pursuing the
capitalist impulse creates a sense of loneliness, alienation and a lack of
solidarity and intimacy (Sennett and Cobb, 1977; Fromm, 1978; Brod
and Kaufman, 1994). Unlike Mr M., who appears to have found the
process of building a business and creating wealth emotionally satisfying and fulfilling, Mr A. continues to feel insecure despite his wealth.
This difference may be partly explained by the difference in goals
between the two men: Mr M. wants to embody his self in a tangible
business, while Mr A.’s energy evaporates in the manipulation of financial deals.
Sherrod (1987) suggests that friendships between men, and the relationships between men and women, are transformed by the nature of
work, noting that capitalism fosters competitiveness between men,
which compromises their friendships with other men. Consequently,
men transfer their emotional needs to women, whilst refusing to reciprocate affection. This has some resonance in the manner in which Mr
A. evaluates his personal life against his entrepreneurial achievements:
‘Well, you see, within two years I’d made £12,000, and I was made MD
in that company, but I’d ruined a marriage. You get inside and you feel –
I was married at nineteen. You grow together or you grow apart. It is a
question of whether your personality and interests take a parallel course.
If you go through a few outside wars together, you grow together. It was
not the pressure of work, because I didn’t feel that I was working very hard.
Well, you see, it didn’t seem at all like work. You see it was the fact that
I came home on quite a lot of occasions and I realised that we couldn’t
actually talk to each other. Yep, it was a very hard decision, because there
was a child involved. That dragged on, but it was an uncomfortable period,
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 107
and you have to make decisions and do things that are correct. As I say,
you grow together or you grow apart.’
Interviewer: ‘Did all that affect your business?’
‘Not at all, not in the slightest, there was an enormous amount of luck
involved at that stage. It was the height of the eighties boom.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
On the one hand, individualism, single-mindedness, instrumentalism, the basis tenets of the acquisitive enterprise culture, rationalised
the tensions between the obsessive pursuit of material gain and personal
loss. On the other, and resonant of Ochberg’s (1987) argument, this
comment again emphasises the inseparability of home and work, and
the manner in which men are able to channel the direction and consumption of their emotional energy. While this comment stands in stark
contrast to his attitude and practice to his current family, it also demonstrates the way in which market-based activities mediate and shape
the construction of a certain kind of entrepreneurial masculinity. A wife
and family were not so essential to an aspiring businessman, but are
considered very necessary to a rich and leisured aspiring ‘gentleman’.
Talking about his failed marriage, Mr A. appears more open about the
repercussions of workaholism than the earlier respondent, but in a way
it is retold in the same tone one might use when recalling a moment
of business failure. Ochberg (1987) embraces the essence of such rationalising when he argues that men have internalised a personal
demeanour rooted in their external and public role. In this sense, one
suspects that Mr A. does not address the real reasons for his marriage
breakdown. He suggests that it resulted from a difference in personalities and an inability to grow together. But growing together would have
been difficult because of his absence from home and obsession with
work. Yet responsibility for the breakdown of the relationship is
transferred to the partner, who apparently was unable to adapt to the
changing situation. Instead of dealing with this loss, his emotions
and energies have been harnessed to the momentum of the casino
economy which leaves little time for life review or self-reflection. Emotions are consumed in the ‘buzz’ of profit pursuit. There is no recognition that work has become an obsession. The separation of home and
work masks the repercussions on men’s personal lives but it is upon
this façade that masculinities rest and thrive. Personal loss did not stand
in the way of the pursuit of money, for he soon set up an advertising
business.
108 Class, Gender and the Family Business
On the one hand, themes of instrumentality and quick return inform
his approach to business. Opportunism remains the underlying ethos,
for by 1987 he had merged the company with another business, floating it to a £7 million capitalistion on the stock market before selling it.
Unlike Mr M., whose personal constructions of masculinity were built
over time around a particular unit of capital, rooted in a specific activity, this respondent’s activities are transient, ephemeral and difficult to
quantify. On the other hand, it is an activity which he distrusts, for it
is tinged with anxiety and uncertainty. There is almost a sense of disrespect for the process and this is manifested in low commitment to
sustaining capital in any one activity. As he explained: ‘My motto is: to
buy, float and sell.’ Mr A. has now started another business in asset stripping. The rapid expansion of his business empire began in 1989 with
the accelerated collapse of small businesses. Since then he has bought
ten companies, which had been firmly established but were undergoing
some difficulty. Benefiting from the failure of others, he draws on bodily
metaphors to describe the strategies in rationalising such businesses,
for instance ‘picking off the heart of a business’ means retaining its
profitable elements.
The theme of financial machismo characteristic of a harder masculinity intertwines with a ‘softer’ masculinity more associated with the ‘new
man’. These contradictions are played out in individualism and selfinterest in the pursuit of a quick return, which are the hallmarks of his
business style. Yet the emphasis on his immediate family and the manner
in which he exudes a sense of loss suggests a sensitivity which he continually strives to control. Driven by fear of poverty he seeks to transcend his natal working-class background and adopts a highly detached
relationship to business activities. Unlike Mr M., he does not identify
with a specific product or indeed with any capitalist competitor. He does
not conform to Penrose’s (1980) model of the business manager for he
is not interested in the notion of company expansion. His capital is kept
liquid, accommodating and celebrating opportunism, which perhaps
typifies the unregulated marketeer. He is more interested in accumulation. This model ties in very well with the point made earlier, his identity, unlike that of Mr M., is less embodied in the business and more in
the idea of the family, which is symbolised by the grand house. Arguably,
since identities are socially constructed in the public and private spheres
and therefore transient, building an identity around the family and conveying a sense of 1ifestyle seems all the more important.
Most entrepreneurial men see virtue in sustaining punishing work
schedules, suggesting that their established businesses embody their
Entrepreneurialism, Masculinities and the Self-Made Man 109
earlier struggles. But Mr A. wants to convey something quite different
– not the solid unit of productive capital sustained over time, but a
lifestyle stemming from the private sphere which resonates with consumerism, a grand house and latest cars, and where the source of wealth
is remote, apparently unconnected and appears very detached from his
working-class roots. Even Mr A.’s second wife complemented his brand
of success. As he explained:
‘No, my wife does not have a career now. I can afford her not to have one.
Except, of course, she has a very important career as my wife and mother
of my children. She is a wonderful, talented, intellectual woman. She is a
graduate with a degree in Slavonic studies and speaks several European
languages, including Russian. She, of course, has interests, she is secretary
of the local English Speaking Society, is chair of the local branch of the
Conservation Society in the village.’
(Table 3.1, N37)
Appropriate concerns for the ‘helpmeet’ of a gentleman in the
making. Part of her duty is to foster an image of the dependent and
indulged wife, the essential accessory for an aspiring gentleman. At the
same time, her involvement with worthy causes and her interests in a
cultural high ground transmit an upper-middle-class image essential to
the construction of his particular masculinity.
Like those on the New Right, although Mr A. claims to despise and
oppose the traditional upper classes, and the landowning classes in particular, he desires the status associated with their breeding and the superiority it exudes, and aspires to their ideal of power and lifestyle. The
contradiction is that their political and financial power is now largely
illusory. However, drawing upon a range of masculine working-class and
middle-class entrepreneurial discourses and values, most of which hinge
upon the role of breadwinner, he thereby reproduces a contradiction
not only with the image he wants to foster, but with the lifestyle he
wants to lead. The men and the class to which he grudgingly aspires
reveal a much ‘softer’ and more feminine masculinity which he admires.
The contradiction is that they fail to display the rugged individualism
so central to his financial strategies, yet which he appears to despise.
Conclusions
I have argued that the mainstream literature on enterprise assumes a
natural interchange between the men and their business. This is also
mirrored in the foregoing case studies where entrepreneurial men tell
110 Class, Gender and the Family Business
their stories in ways that conceal several important features about the
separation of home and work and the kinds of repercussion this has for
both spheres. These respondents deny male emotion, and yet their energies and passions are channelled into the creative process of accumulating capital, rationalised in building a business and reconstituting
their masculine identities. These men, who are also husbands, regard
their unlimited claim to the space and time away from home as their
undisputed right. Workaholism is simply the means to pursue the breadwinning role, the accumulation of capital and the construction of identities. But the impact of this is to free such men from all but the most
perfunctory domestic duties, leaving them free to build their empires
and embellish their masculinities. Paradoxically, entrepreneurial masculinity hinges upon paternalism symbolised in the patriarchal image
of the ‘family man’. It is merely symbolic, for the whole panoply of
domestic duties, especially the very demanding business of child
rearing, is left to the wife. The men’s patronising (Harvey Jones, 1992)
accolades to their wives for giving ‘emotional support’ merely conceal
the value and scope of wifely labour, but importantly fail to scrutinise
the male claim to be ‘family men’. It is this issue that I now wish to
explore in the next chapter.
7
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and
Family Life:
‘It’s Like Being a One-Parent Family’
This chapter examines the relationship between domesticity, emotion
as absence and enterprise. Drawing on Ochberg’s (1987) argument that
contemporary men merely act out their emotional family role, this
chapter explores the dynamics of the sexual division of labour and the
relationship between home and work. In particular, it draws attention
to a neglected dimension, the issue of male emotional investment in
the domestic sphere. It is suggested that the male entrepreneurs’ work
activity is so pervasive that it invades and colonises, with the subsequent effect of introducing a particular order to domestic life. Such
ordering of domestic activity appears as a contradiction for, on the one
hand, as the earlier chapters reveal, most enterprising men argue that
they draw a very sharp distinction between work and home activity. In
this sense, the control of the household seems the responsibility of their
wives. On the other hand, as this chapter reveals, such ordering is in
itself prescriptive and appears to extend a permutation of capitalist logic
to the household. Of course, such men’s absence from the household
and their preference for disengagement from the messy arena of emotional work obscure the extent to which they attempt to regulate not
least wives’ physical labour, but also the whole remit of emotional management in the service of the enterprise. The sharp separation between
work and home seems validated by men’s absence, but this neat division conceals many ambiguities. The demands of the enterprise may
reduce men to breadwinners, but it also rationalises the organisation of
the household in a variety of ways, particularly the manner in which
husbands and wives utilise their emotional labour within the household. As Chapter 6 suggests, men reserve their emotion for activity
within the enterprise, but here it is argued that wives’ energies (physical and emotional) are also consumed by the same activity.
111
112 Class, Gender and the Family Business
Emotional labouring refers to work done by wives in the private
sphere. This includes shielding spouses from domestic problems, acting
as counsellors, nurturing spouses’ confidence and relieving them of
conventional responsibilities. (The recent proliferation of professional
counselling amongst the middle classes is an indication of the economic
significance of this work.) The case studies presented demonstrate that
wives’ emotional labour is consumed by their husbands/entrepreneurs
in the pursuit of business. Such men’s conventional paternal duties as
husbands and fathers are largely reduced to that of breadwinner, apparently exonerating them from expending emotional labour within the
family. Of course, the breadwinning role is primarily seen as an economic task, characteristically associated with rationality; it dissociates
men from emotion and denies that emotion is part of their labour. The
control of emotions is part of the construction of masculinity, and
middle-class men are often involved in the control of the emotions
of others such as their employees. This denial reinforces notions of
personal strength, integrity, dependence and personal independence
characteristic of masculinity generally.
The importance of domestic labour as emotion work to the enterprise
has been addressed by a number of writers. For instance, the essence of
Davidoff and Hall’s (1987) study is that the Victorian configuration
of the capitalist ethos sought through denial and abstinence to shape
the conduct of married sexuality and emotionality within the business
family household. The consistency of the wife giving support is demonstrated by Kanter (1977), who argues that there is an expectation that
the wives of corporate men will create the conditions, through good
homemaking and emotional nurturing, for the advancement of their
husbands’ careers. In supporting their husbands as organisational men,
wives are also required to adopt corporate codes of prescriptive wifely
behaviour and modes of appearance, thus allowing the values of the
corporation to infiltrate what is conventionally projected as the remit
of personal judgement and choice. Roper (1994) signals similar influences when he highlights the significance a wife’s appearance has in
influencing the fate of aspiring postwar organisational men, whose
careers partly depend on idealised wifely behaviour and the regulation
of wifely labour. Finch (1983) conveys the importance of homely tranquillity and wives’ comely deportment amongst public sector professional men.
The importance of the wife’s image is illustrated in the previous
chapter where the focus on Mr A. shows how the construction of
entrepreneurial masculinity, susceptible to change and reconfiguration,
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 113
depends not on only a wife’s support, but also on her appearance and
status. To some degree, this is a version of Veblen’s (1925) controversial
notion of the ‘idle wife’. The ‘idle wife’ became a symbol of early
twentieth-century American affluence and new consumption patterns
amongst newly rich industrialists. Indeed, the contemporary parallel of
the ‘idle wife’ is the ‘trophy wife’ so dearly beloved by media pundits.
These stereotypes portray women as the accessories of rich men.
As argued earlier, this stereotyping is problematic for women in
various ways, because it denies the extent of the services wives provide
in the home. Wives generally carry out a wide range of use-values undertaken in a sphere of consumption (family/domestic/private) seemingly
distinct from the enterprise. However, as this chapter insists, the work
they undertake, the child care and the maintenance of the household
are critical to enterprise. Few of the men interviewed for this study
would support the notion of the ‘idle’ wife; rather, they more or less
conform to the nineteenth-century image suggested by Davidoff and
Hall (1987), who dub the whole range of services provided by their
wives the ‘invisible contribution’. These men have very precise ideas about
wifely roles and about how they should be conducted.
Theoretically, this chapter subscribes to Delphy and Leonard’s (1992)
argument that the family is a unit of production organised along patriarchal, hierarchical lines. There are different permutations of this organisational hierarchy, but the husband and wife constitute one. Men as
husbands are able to appropriate their wives’ labour because the rules
of patriarchal marriage make husbands the virtual owners and controllers of their wives’ labour. This enables them directly to appropriate
wives’ labour as their own in what is conventionally regarded as productive work and, as earlier chapters illuminate, transform their wives’
careers from housewives to company directors whilst reversing this
pattern with even greater speed. Defined by relations of domination and
subordination, the importance of the domestic arena is that it produces
and reproduces the conditions and the resources essential for the perpetuation of entreprenuerialism, producing suitable enterprising men
and supporting flexible female labour. Insights drawn from Pateman’s
(1988) work again highlight the manner in which the marriage institution provides the conditions for these relations and interconnections to
recur. The male sex right, cloaked in the duplicity of the marriage contract, provides the mechanisms and is a prime site for male control
of female sexuality and indeed labour (see also Engels, 1884, 1972;
Erickson, 1993). The foregoing arguments serve to highlight men’s common interest in the control of women’s sexuality and labour, and
114 Class, Gender and the Family Business
provide useful theoretical insights into the dynamics of the relationships between the male entrepreneurs and their wives. Of particular
concern here are the ways in which the women’s emotional labour has
been consumed.
Any explanation of the manner in which wifely emotion is consumed
by the enterprise must begin with the question of enterprising men and
their own emotions. Fineman (1993), Hearn (1993) and Roper (1994)
overturn the Weberian image of the organisation as non-emotional.
Contrary to conventional accounts of entrepreneurialism, this growing
body of literature removes any doubt that emotional labour is part of
modern organisations. Indeed, Roper’s (1996) study of male managerial
relationships mirrors the basic tenets of D. H. Lawrence’s thinking and
the classical vision of the male relationship in that it suggests that male
camaraderie clouds the emotional relationship that exists between men.
However, the combination of capitalist logic and the contradictions that
characterise the managerial agency role constrains the potential of any
such cordiality, and in equal measure nurtures division and competitiveness amongst such men. What is really happening is that emotion
is put to the service of capitalist rationality, and thus enterprise. But the
manner in which this occurs very much depends on position and rank
according to the hierarchy as defined by the social relations of production. The entrepreneurial men portrayed in this chapter voluntarily
engage and express their emotions in the dialectical process of wealth
creation and in the construction of particular masculinities, but, contrary to Roper’s cordiality, are pitted against each other in a competitive process.
As Chapter 6 suggests, the entrepreneurial process both necessitates
and generates the expression of emotion from such men. However, the
question of control separates out such men from alienated workers for
they gleefully extol the virtues of being engrossed in ‘their’ world of
work. This quest for wealth, and the power that it brings, are seductive,
but conveyed in notions of sacrifice and workaholism suggest selfimposed deprivation endured on behalf of family and business. The
contradiction is that building a business, whilst being a competitive
process, is also an invigorating outlet for men’s intuition, selfexpression, energies and passions. The highly charged emotional games
of boardroom coups, business deals and company acquisitions are
evidence of male emotion. Yet, while such men clearly show they can
be emotional beings they are reluctant to talk at any length about how
much they are involved in activities in the home, other than in the role
of provider, and respond defensively to any further probing.
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 115
But I want to make a rather different point: that these entrepreneurial men’s relationship to emotional labouring in the private sphere is
one of consumption; they are in effect the recipients of nurturing.
Kanter (1977), Pahl and Pahl (1971), Pahl (1980, 1983), Scase and Goffee
(1989) and Roper (1994) focus on the impact of the separation of home
and work and managerial careers, and draw attention to the importance
of domesticity and wifely roles in shaping entrepreneurial careers.
Kanter (197) and Roper (1994) both illustrate how wives are incorporated into the careers of managerial spouses and the manner in which
such women become the unpaid but necessary employees of the corporation. Such wifely support largely involves the extension of the traditional supporting role, when corporate wives uphold male largesse
through charitable work, socialising, demeanour and behaviour in line
with the corporation’s definition of the wifely role.
By contrast, Pahl and Pahl (1971) found that wives were no longer
required to share their husbands’ work-related problems extensively or
to be socially involved in different aspects of corporate life. Similarly,
Scase and Goffee (1989) question the extent to which wives are psychologically immersed in their husbands’ jobs and argue: ‘Instead they
are encouraged by their husbands to maintain a ‘safe distance’ from the
demands of the job’ (Scase and Goffee, 1989: 153). In their study of corporate managers they found that senior managers were less likely to be
home-oriented and that they had invested more of themselves in the
business. Roper (1994) argues that managerial men reduced the time
they spent with their families in mid-career. Viewed together, Kanter
(1977) and Scase and Goffee (1989) suggest that the relationship
between home and work is fluid and changing, when in this instance
managerial men modify the form of wifely involvement.
However, it is important to look at the question from the opposite
perspective, for example, how managerial and entrepreneurial men
engage with the household and whether this has any relevance for the
enterprise. Indeed, Scase and Goffee (1989) and Roper (1994) suggest
that such men are increasingly absent from the home. The research presented in this chapter conforms to the notion of absence, but it shows
that although such men withhold their emotional labour, they nevertheless draw nurture from the household. In other words, entrepreneurial men are the recipients of nurturing but appear not to reciprocate
the process. They depend on their wives to bring about the ordering of
emotion work which ought not to impinge on their emotional arena.
Ochberg (1987) argues that even when men engage in the domestic
sphere, they make little emotional investment. Drawing on role theory,
116 Class, Gender and the Family Business
he argues that men are merely ‘acting out’ their conventional economic
role:
We have left unexplored the possibility suggested here; that men attempt
to escape their private troubles by migrating – like souls fleeing diseased
bodies – from their private lives into public ones.
(1987: 190)
Ochberg’s argument is that men’s public role provides them with a route
by which to escape displays of emotion. When the logic of acting in
role is extended to domesticity, it seems that men are emotionally
disconnected.
On the other hand, as Connell (1995) observes, power is a feature of
role-play and in this case facilitates the extension of rationalisation
characteristic of the exchange sphere. Arguably, there is often an
attempt to introduce a kind of capitalist rationality to the organisation
of emotion work within the household. First, as wifely labour is concerned, there is the expectation that the ideal wife will run the home
efficiently, which means taking on the whole remit of domestic responsibilities. Second, it glosses over men’s refusal to confront and find solutions for familial problems. Their work provides the excuse to avoid
deeper involvement with problems associated with family life. While
workaholism does emanate from the demands of enterprise, it is also
endorsed by men’s perceptions of and the boundaries they draw around
their domestic roles as family men.
This study found that, despite two typologies of entrepreneurial men,
‘the company man’ and the ‘takeover man’, all the men conformed
more or less to the spirit of Ochberg’s argument. In this sense, despite
a difference in approach to building a business, they all managed their
emotional labour in a very similar way: they withheld emotional expenditure from the domestic arena so that it could be consumed in the art
of business, but at the same time benefited from wifely support, whilst
relying on their wives to compensate for their poor emotional performance as ‘family men’.
Absence and entrepreneurial men
There is indeed a link between avoidance of emotional involvement and
physical absence from the home and workaholism. That such men are
able to devote much of their time in the pursuit of enterprise is a result
of the power and authority they enjoy as men, but particularly as husbands, in being able to direct and control their wives’ labour. That this
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 117
escapes question is related to the ways in which such men draw on
heroic themes of self-sacrifice, which when hinged to their conventional
breadwinning role, acts as a powerful defence.
The manner in which men come to terms with this is conveyed by
Mr M.:
‘Well I used to start work at six in the morning, and I’d work till ten o’clock
at night, weather permitting. At other times I’d be away from home for
weeks on end. If I wanted to finish a job and couldn’t afford to take time,
well I wouldn’t be home. There were times when I didn’t see my kids for
weeks on, they were not up before I left in the morning, and were in bed
by the time I got home. But my colleagues used to say what a great woman
P. was. You could never tell there was a child in the house. It was spick
and span and she took charge of everything.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
The underlying theme reflected in this comment is the idea of discipline and order which runs through the organisation of his work and
home life. Self-denial, discipline and physical endurance are the hallmarks of his sacrifice. This has involved long hours of work and separation from his children. However, the rationalisation of his working
life is extended to the organisation of domesticity and there is a sense
in which being ‘a good wife’1 too becomes a sacrifice on behalf of her
husband’s goals, which means imposing a regulated and disciplined
regime upon the family. A good wife must also become ‘hard’, that is,
be independent of the need for displays of spouse devotion, but must
carefully spare the children disappointment. Since work commitments
take priority over social arrangements, wifely skills and co-operation
become critical to such men as they attempt to maintain some semblance of being a ‘family man’:
‘I was supposed to take the family to the seaside one Easter. Anyway, I got
an offer of a job that had to be done over the break. It was in a beautiful
part of the country, in a lovely rural spot and had a river running through
it. Well, we had to cancel the seaside and instead I booked P. and the children into a nearby hotel. P. occupied them by taking them walking and
learning about wild flowers and plants. They were quite happy with that,
they had a holiday and I did my work.’
(Table 3.1, N32)
The reality of the ‘family man’ is that such men spent little time with
their families, but such absence is a sacrifice for their efforts are
expended on behalf of the family. In this context the ‘good’ wife is the
118 Class, Gender and the Family Business
husband’s faithful agent and unquestioningly accepts his plan, concealing her feelings and pursuing her duty in his absence. A good wife
relieves her husband from the demands of fathering, and in this case
negotiated the acceptance of a face-saving compromise between the
entrepreneurial father and his children. Typically, the burden of
emotion work falls on such women when disappointments can be swept
away by the soothing words of the caring wives and mothers, the hallmark of the effective management of emotion work. Of course, men like
Mr M. are happy to recall such compromises because they contribute to
the rich tapestry of sacrifice. I consider this to be one of the most crucial
inputs not only to business development, but also to the construction
of self-image, for it allows men to construct not only their businesses,
but also their own masculine self-images.
Absence from home is a central part of the construction of masculinity and business for the men in each of the entrepreneurial models
described earlier. Absence at some point during business development
is part of the repertoire of strategies for all the men. Even those who
aspire to the caring façade of the ‘new’ man imagery see this as their
unchallenged right:
‘I have always been on the move and I used to do a lot of work in Europe
and since 1983 I have been involved with this [management buyout], and
my preference is to commute with an emphasis on the quality of life. The
best arrangement is for me to stay away and be home at weekends. So I
don’t involve my wife in business matters. And I’m not chauvinistic at all.
It is just that I can only work so long. I am usually in the office about 7.30
in the morning till seven at night. So that is an eleven-hour day and it’s
enough. I don’t want to go my back on a Saturday afternoon and feel that
I have got to mow the lawn or I have to do this or that. My preference is
that I don’t like getting involved in domestic things, housework, gardening, repairs, you know, whatever. My wife looks after the domestic side, she
will arrange everything for me. My free time is valuable to me and I want
to play a round of golf or have a game of tennis or go to my home in
Portugal.’
(Table 3.1, N23)
This respondent (an entrepreneur with a Master’s degree in business
administration and in the mould of the 1980s free marketeer, with a
share in a recent management buyout of a large retail business) differs
little from men such as Mr M. Both types adopt a very traditional
approach to the division of labour and expect their wives to provide a
tranquil home environment, a haven where they refuse to discuss work,
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 119
while they recover from outside stresses. This is reflected in another
comment:
‘My wife does not have the experience, exposure or education to understand
the business. My education is a specific education. I am an accountant and
she is not.’
Typically, this entrepreneur, in his late thirties, is one of three partners
in the management buyout of a large manufacturer, and was part of the
senior management team prior to buying the business. His adherence
to a rigid separation between home and work is justified in his claim
that his wife has no knowledge of his enterprise.
Another entrepreneur in the mould of ‘takeover man’ elaborates on
the reasons he prefers to exclude his wife from work concerns:
‘One major reason is that my wife knows very little about the business and
few of the people involved, and that is dangerous. It becomes emotional or
emotive if I start talking to her about things she knows little about. The
second reason is that if I involve her, she would expect me to act on what
she advises. She does not realise that decisions are not made in that way.
There are other reasons also, if I start to get her involved that is hard work
and, working here all day and then having to keep her informed.’
(Table 3.1, N9)
These comments confirm Scase and Goffee’s (1989) arguments and
mirror the attitudes of male shopfloor workers (Collinson, 1992). By
drawing sharp distinctions between work and home both middle-class
and working-class men preserve their right to leisure time. Entrepreneurial men absent themselves again when they come home, as they
are members of clubs and societies that do not always accommodate
women members. But this demand and claim to domestic tranquillity
are also ways of not discussing domestic matters. To admit that the
organisation of domestic tasks such as gardening is a wifely duty masquerades as consideration and compensates for the lack of a discussion
of men’s emotional work and about what constitutes fathering in conventional terms, and the mundane difficulties associated with bringing
up children. It is to trivialise and overshadow real domestic concerns.
Insisting that they are the material providers excludes men from emotional work, while also facilitating their access to emotional labour. It
is important to question whether the ideology of role differentiation,
characterised as it is by a rigid sexual division of labour, undervalues
120 Class, Gender and the Family Business
the significance of emotional labour in the processes of masculine entrepreneurialism and capital accumulation. Presenting effort as sacrifice is
not only embedded in the breadwinning role, it is also the way for ‘their’
goals to be imposed upon their wives (see also Sennett and Cobb, 1977).
The argument that there is a tendency amongst entrepreneurial men
to expect their wives to rationalise domesticity is very evident in the
idea of the ‘hard’ wife – another defence against absence. A ‘hard’ wife
is one who understands and accepts male absence from the home and
does not resist by ‘acting emotionally’. For instance, Mr F. in his midforties, owns a large business located in speculative construction, estate
farming and motor cycle manufacture. In the mould of the ‘takeover
man’, he is representative of working-class masculine entrepreneurialism. He entered the construction business when he was seventeen,
because amongst other reasons he wanted to prove to himself that he
was physically fit. His concern with fitness and the power of the body
stemmed from a childhood illness and long periods in hospital. This
also had damaging repercussions on his education and he did not
achieve academic success at school. As he explains:
‘I started work as a plasterer when I was seventeen and learned the skills.
I did that for two years and then decided to build one house. Having done
that I went on to build two and took it from there. I work hard. I don’t
believe anyone needs to starve, there is work there. Of course, my wife
thinks I should be home at five. This is what she was brought up with.’
Interviewer: ‘So you married before you entered business?’
‘No not at all. I had that up and running for ten years before I got married.’
Interviewer: ‘So what is the difficulty?’
‘Her father was home every evening. But I have a business to run. She has
the house to run. She should understand that. A business in today’s climate
cannot be neglected.’
(Table 3.1, N30)
Workaholics pursue their work with such tenacity that it desensitises
them, so that other aspects of their life are taken for granted. Wifely
complaints are explained as the result of inappropriate socialisation
and the ‘soft’ masculinities of fathers. Claims to workaholism, which is
essentially activity outside the home, have long been associated with
authentic masculinity. But the underlying issue is about the dynamics
of the power relationship between the spouses and the ownership and
control of wives’ labour. By refusing to meet the five o’clock deadline
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 121
men create time and energy for themselves. The claims that ‘real’ men
do not leave work at five o’clock are ideologies masking the exploitation of wifely labour and the construction of masculinity. Men’s absence
from domesticity reveals how capitalist logic creates divisions between
‘hard’, unsentimental, rational men who strive to succeed and ‘soft’
masculine creed men who do not. This is illustrated in Mr K.’s criticism
of his wife’s father, who he thinks lacks ambition and drive. The underlying bitterness in this comment stems from Mr K.’s dissenting wife and
her refusal to understand and appreciate his efforts. She does not offer
the support and nurture that he feels he deserves and fails to understand the reason for his absence.
Keen to portray himself as a man amongst men, Mr K. emphasised
that the obstacles of childhood ill-health and limited education were
overcome by his personal strategies of relentless hard work, physical
fitness and strength of mind, achievements that his wife does not appreciate. These values and practices are also intended to be reflected in his
dispassionate and unsentimental approach to safeguarding his business.
If this means time away from home, then so be it. Again, the theme of
sacrifice resonates through his argument. On the surface, the logic of
his view of his wife’s contribution is that she undertakes the management of the household with seeming equal dispassion. In this sense, a
‘hard’, sensible and ‘rationalised’ wife makes her contribution to his
sacrifice and uncomplainingly carries out her duties, whilst offering
support and concern. The importance of comments such as these is that
they offer some tentative insights into the extent in which the enterprise shapes the conduct of family lives. Entrepreneurial men are driven
by the competitiveness of the market and the need to sustain their
enterprise. On the other hand, the household as a sphere of male power
accommodates such men’s control over the allocation of their own
labour and the labour of their wives. This in turn enables them to reason
that a wife’s job is to look after the household. As another entrepreneur
put it:
‘When we met my wife was a sister [senior nurse] and had a busy and
interesting job. But my preference at the time was that she stayed at home.
I see myself as the provider and the one that needs to take responsibility
for financial matters and forward planning. I guess that is about it.’
(Table 3.1, N14)
This comment suggests that such men limit their input into the domestic area and echo Scase and Goffee’s (1989) and Roper’s (1994) studies
122 Class, Gender and the Family Business
of senior managers who confine their domestic role to one of breadwinning. The prominence that such men give to wifely work is sharpened by their own absence, when home-making, child rearing and
the image of the family enterprise are strategies intended to increase
profitability and ensure the preservation of such enterprise.
Entrepeneurial men and rights to nurturing
One of the more interesting themes to emerge from the study is
that first-generation entrepreneurial men see the receipt of nurturing
as their right, claiming time for themselves as opposed to giving
time to the family. In exploring the question of whether time was
allocated to his family, one respondent, the partner in a management
buyout, said:
‘Not consciously. They ignore me when I walk in.’
This typifies the defensiveness of many of the younger entrepreneurial
men when challenged with the question of emotion work. On the face
of it, this comment suggests that the respondent is ignored and isolated
by his family, and is in some ways a victim of his absence. In trying to
turn round a pattern of relationships that, on balance, suggests that
male partners have more leeway to define, there is an attempt to relocate the issue of interests. Undoubtedly exhausted by the stresses and
strains of work, such men see home as a space in which to take work
concerns on to another plane. In other words, home separated from
work is most desirable when it provides an uncluttered environment
and a space ‘for thinking time’:
‘But also the mind freewheels, sometimes and it is nice to go home and
have the time and space to let the mind work out a problem.’
(Table 3.1, N9)
In this sense entrepreneurial men have a particular interest in the
way wifely work is performed. Home time needs to be free of fatherly
demands so that such men can engage in thinking time and problemsolving. Another entrepreneur said:
‘No, no, I don’t work all the time, but I guess I’m thinking about work
things all the time. I don’t class it as work.’
(Table 3.1, N14)
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 123
But further probing reveals that a thinking time environment can be
achieved only by insisting that wifely work remains an exclusive female
concern:
‘I see my wife as a mother and housewife. That’s her job. That’s probably
not satisfactory to her. And she is trying to find things to do to occupy
her, well no . . . she’s busy with the children, I mean something to interest
her.’
(Table 3.1, N9)
However, the imposition of a rigid division of labour is a source of conflict and wifely contest, for, as the comment shows, such men resort to
traditional stereotypes of the complaining wife. Typically, such men
argue that each spouse has a separate job to do, and there is little
reciprocity concerning the work pressures generated. This respondent
implies that he does not expect emotional labour to be expended on
him personally and is quite unprepared to engage in the emotional
labour essential in the reproduction of domesticity, yet he is the
recipient of emotion work.
One of the central dynamics of such partnerships is the potential
conflict and contest about the allocation of emotional labour. It is
a rather subtle demonstration of the way a husband’s goals can be
mediated to control a wife’s labour within marriage. Of course, the
withdrawal from emotion work and such men’s insistence that their
wives confine themselves to motherhood and wifely careers is the
other side of workaholism. It goes beyond Ochberg’s argument to
suggest that such men simply slip into another role, for it seems that
they make little pretence of trying to share their wives’ concerns, but
rather want freedom in the domestic space to extend their working
hours or enjoy leisure.
Entrepreneurial wives and emotion work
Entrepreneurs are not always prepared to admit the cost of their
absences from home and their emotional withdrawal and the repercussions of their imposed expectations and goals on their wives. Women,
regardless of whether they are business partners in the enterprise or not,
bear the burden of domestic organisation, housework and emotion
management. Despite claims to workaholism most men have leisure
time and are more likely than women to belong to clubs and societies.
As Burt’s (1992) notion of structural ‘holes’ illustrates, some of this is
work-related and afternoons on the golf course often enable a social
124 Class, Gender and the Family Business
occasion to be transformed into business opportunity. In contrast, there
is no similar pattern of duties for the wives who are directly involved
in the business. The operational character of wives’ work confine them
to the workplace. For instance, this wife is an operational manager in
businesses that comprise enterprise in the financial sector and estate
agency, and as this involves client entertainment:
‘It’s like I stay home [in the office]. There is a lot of entertaining to do
and my husband enjoys that. He has lunch appointments nearly every day.
Of course, he has little to worry him because I like him to see to our clients
and I sort things out here.’
(Table 3.1, N25)
Entertaining business clients can be a combination of work and pleasure but is largely a husband’s responsibility. In instances such as this
it seems that wives have drawn on the issue of business entertainment
as a means of negotiating a sustaining role in the enterprise. Similar to
the division of labour characteristic of the business partnership, by
taking on a backroom role, however ruefully and resentfully, such wifely
compromises create opportunities for quasi-leisure time for the partners,
and are another manifestation of seeking to protect and shield their
spouses. In some ways, examples such as this are tentative illustrations
of the ways in which wife/partners extend emotion management into
the business arena.
Women in business partnerships have relinquished their leisure time.
Correspondingly, the most cherished wish of such women is a little free
time to devote entirely to themselves. A wife with a directorship in
clothing manufacture said:
‘I love to read, and there is nothing that I like better than to take a book
into the bathroom and have a really hot bath and a good read. I know that
sounds boring, but it is my greatest luxury at the moment.’
(Table 3.1, N10)
Although the wives at no point made claims to notions of sacrifice or
workaholism, often what passes for leisure is really work:
‘The only day that I reserve as a leisure day is Sunday. I sort out the household bills and F. likes a game of golf or to go fishing. On a Sunday I do
bits of gardening and, of course, I do all the meal planning and the cooking
for the week. In the morning I do casseroles and curries and freeze them
in preparation for the week ahead. But I don’t think of this as work, because
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 125
it is just a case of getting it all ready in the morning and popping it in the
various ovens and it looks after itself.’
(Table 3.1, N7)
This shows that the ideology of housework as non-work influences the
way women think about and define the work they do. Examples such
as this also show the extent to which domesticity has been rationalised,
when family evening meals are planned and cooked in advance at the
beginning of each week. Even the rationalisation of cooking for the
family does not extend wifely leisure time but rather enables such wives
to manage the double burden of home and work. While Segal’s (1990)
study amongst double-income professional couples suggests that male
partners recognise the demands of their partner’s careers, it is telling,
perhaps, that she also reports that such women obviously substituted
their own labour by hiring cleaners, nannies and cooks, as opposed to
achieving a more equitable redistribution of domestic work between
such couples. What this suggests is that professional women with equal
and independent earning power are able to wield more influence over
the organisation of domesticity. By contrast, whilst most of the entrepreneurial wives interviewed hired cleaning help they were responsible
for cooking family meals:
‘The most exhausting thing for me is to have to cook the family meal at
seven o’clock in the evening. I had a cook at one point but no one liked
her cooking and there were so many complaints that I decided I’d do it
myself.’
(Table 3.1, N33)
It could be argued that this is an example of workaholism amongst such
women, but as it reflects a standard pattern of working, it is taken
entirely for granted. However, it is not the lack of leisure time that is a
matter of concern for such women but the recognition of the need for
some degree of reciprocity in emotional support.
For instance, Mr M.’s accolades to his wife’s virtues as his domestic
ambassador conceal the hurt inflicted upon his wife. In a discussion
about the problems of adapting to great wealth and success, Mr M., and
indeed his children, revealed that ‘Mother couldn’t take it’. As a result
of this pressure she had become overweight and ill. It is not difficult to
see that Mr M. correlated his version of successful masculine enterprise
with personal fitness and good health, a precedent his wife failed to
meet. In a paradoxical way it parallels the feelings of some of the wives
who complained that they are expected to retain their sexual attractiveness while also being exhausted by work. The men interviewed here
126 Class, Gender and the Family Business
conformed to the very traditional pattern of seeing their wives in the
conventional setting as their wives and the mothers of their children,
engaged in caring and nurturing work. This raises many questions about
femininity and the notion of the male as the family patriarch and the
protector of women.
The wives’ experience of emotion work is contradictory and doubleedged. On the one hand, women are aware that they are transformed
into a ‘sacrificial lamb’, and, on the other, they collude in this for
they continually shield their husbands from domestic troubles on the
grounds that they want to save them from further stress. The wife,
partner and founder in an expanding insurance and property business
recognised this:
‘Well of course, behind every great man there is even a greater woman, you
know, the “little woman”. You are the one to do all the backroom work. I
mean here at home, I am behind him. Because even if they don’t bring
their work home, they bring their worries home, and they don’t even have
to tell you. You know and of course then you have to make allowances for
that. And if there is something you need to talk about – well you don’t
because you think, “I don’t want to bother him”.’
(Table 3.2, N36)
This may represent the other side of ‘male thinking time’, when entrepreneurial men seek refuge in the security of domesticity from worldly
pressures. However, the comment demonstrates how the public sphere
gradually invades the private sphere. This does not need to take the
form of sweated manual labour. It is much more subtle. Acting on the
capitalist impulse consumes the entrepreneur’s own capacities, space
and time. The wives of men in this situation consider it unreasonable
to insist on reciprocating conjugal support. Seeing their spouses under
pressure through what are their legitimate breadwinning activities,
wives are forced to relieve their husbands of the burden of domestic
matters. The wife and co-founder of a men’s clothing and more recently
property speculation business explains:
‘I found it very, very difficult and there are times when I have got very upset
and resentful. I don’t think you can avoid it. At one point the youngest boy
became very difficult. He had tantrums each morning before school. It
wasn’t that he had problems at school. He was perfect there. I went out of
my way to please him, and I used to take him fishing, even on the coldest
days. But I think a lot of C.’s problems are in his personality and the way
I’ve handled him. Anyway, I got to such a low ebb I had to find someone
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 127
to talk to, because when I tried to tell T. [spouse] he’d say, “Oh, do come
on, you really must put your foot down, and make him do as he is told,”
and off he’d go to work. In the end I had to tell C.’s form teacher, and it
was agreed that T. would get involved and try and sort the problem out.
When we left the school, T. said, “I’m sorry, I hadn’t the slightest idea
what you had been going through”.’
(Table 3.1, N9)
This comment conveys some sense of the extent of the entrepreneur’s
investment in emotional work. Emotionally shut off in his world of
work, and despite his wife’s constant pleas for help, it was not until the
problem was presented to him by an outside agency that it gained his
attention. This example gives credence to the arguments debated earlier
– the extent of the power husbands have over their wives’ labour. The
kinds of sanction open to wives in such situations are fairly limited if
they are to maintain the semblance of a cordial and happy marriage,
set against the institutional powers and privileges granted by marriage
to husbands and the conventional duties it imposes on wives. This is a
most interesting example, because this spouse telephones his wife very
frequently and appears attuned to his family’s needs, thus reconstituting the notion of the family man. However, much of the communication is business-related. So not only does the wife take on what might
reasonably be regarded as the husband’s share in domestic matters, she
is also involved in the business. Acting as his personal assistant she
carries out a series of tasks, some of which are secretarial and others can
be categorised as public relations duties. In addition, she does a lot of
business-related entertaining at home, including having her spouse’s
business partners and clients to dinner. What is interesting is the
manner in which she trivialises the significance of this, passing it off as
‘merely cooking a bite of supper’, since such gatherings are informal. At
the same time, this creates the cosy image of the dedicated and involved
family man. This example mirrors Ochberg’s (1987) professional men
‘acting’ in their domestic role, who were not contributing as much as
they might. But wives do not necessarily see it like this:
‘I think in a way, I mean part of it is not T.’s fault, because part of it is
down to me wanting to protect him from it, not wanting to bother him
with it, because he has got so many other things to worry about.’
(Table 3.1, N9)
Frequently, such women feel guilty and a failure, if they are unable
to meet the expectations of being a good wife and mother. Yet
128 Class, Gender and the Family Business
interviews with wives also repeatedly demonstrate that discourses about
‘protecting’ men run alongside resentment. This discourse emanates
from the conventional expectations and duties a marriage imposes upon
a wife, and especially the tacit manner in which a husband can impose
his expectation of the ‘good’ wife.
But the other side of not complaining is sometimes interpreted as an
act of wifely rebellion. This respondent, the partner and founder of the
insurance and property business, said:
‘So, I’m sort of rebelling with the two people, my daughter and my husband.
But with him I don’t tell him now, because unless he makes an effort, there
is no point.’
The rebellious wife refuses to inform her husband, thus depriving him
of information essential to maintaining his role as patriarchal controller
within the family. The wife takes on the responsibility of disciplining
their daughter, and thereby undermines his authority. Despite the
husband’s ambivalence about sharing emotional work, this comment
also expresses guilt, for the refusal to consult is seen as subversive and
inappropriate behaviour according to the ideal of the ‘good wife’. Acting
out the prescribed role of the ‘good wife’ is characterised by many contradictions. For instance, she feels guilty because she recognises that this
is a challenge to his authority. But the pressures to conform are strong,
for during further rationalising of the situation, she finally exonerates
her husband:
‘But you see, I know he works hard and on top of that he’s interested in
various types of sport and other activities.’
In part, this comment corresponds to Hochschild’s (1983) study of
flight attendants where it is suggested that women’s greater tolerance
of passenger abuse is the result of their powerlessness and inferior
economic status relative to men. It is important to distinguish between
women workers and wives, for the latter experience restrictions associated with status and duties unparalleled in the experience of women
workers or indeed single women. Regardless of whether wives attain economic independence, wifely status assumes an unparalleled subordination to a man in exchange for nurturing duties, which takes precedence
over other considerations. The institution of marriage give husbands
enormous power over their wives should they wish to exercise it, a
point convincingly made by Pateman (1988) and Erickson (1993) among
The Entrepreneur’s Wife and Family Life 129
others. But, of course, the means by which wives’ labour is directed by
husbands takes a more subtle form than mere coercion. Husbands’
investment in workaholism can often be a smokescreen for their refusal
to engage in emotional work and family responsibilities while they still
manage to have leisure time. Exclusive male clubs and male-dominated
sports activities constitute the playground for many entrepreneurial
men. What seems clear is that the question of leisure time separates
wives from husbands, while ambivalence amongst women stems from
normative expectations about the sexual division of labour. However,
such ambivalence is often articulated as resentment, when wives question their own sacrifice in the pursuit of male material success:
‘That’s what I fear most. My husband keeps telling me, “All right, after I
have done this, we’ll settle down and do things together.” But to be realistic, I can’t see that happening. He’s a workaholic, he just can’t keep away
from work. It’s addictive. It gets in deeper and deeper. I don’t want that in
my life, because no matter how important the sacrifices I have made, they
are not living inside it.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
There is indeed a clear-eyed recognition that they have given up
personal goals so that their spouses can pursue their life-chances as
capitalists. However, as the businesses grow, so does the polarisation
of labour, with the women taking on more and more emotional
labouring while male breadwinning is rationalised as an obsession, but
yet becomes acceptable, particularly when tied to the discourses and
ideologies of sacrifice. Women then question the pursuit of material
goals, if the quality of family life is undermined. This emerged as a
dominant theme among the women interviewed. The price is often too
great:
‘Yes, as the family grow up, and the children are very small and your
husband is building up a business it is very hard on the wife, it is like
being in a one-parent family.’
(Table 3.1, N17)
The result of this is to reinforce a rigid sexual division of labour,
whereby men’s increasing involvement with entrepreneurial activity
greatly overshadows domestic involvement with their families, except
in an extremely narrow sense as economic providers. Wives take on disproportionate responsibility for the emotional and reproductive work
which is essential to the processes of wealth formation and to the construction of entrepreneurial masculinities.
130 Class, Gender and the Family Business
Conclusions
This chapter has drawn attention to the significance of emotional labour
in the domestic setting and argued that, although it remains largely
invisible, it constitutes a major resource for the enterprise. Emotional
labour as a resource frees male energy for the enterprise, whilst sustaining a pool of energy via wifely support. Emotional labouring is in
itself a gendered process whereby male entrepreneurs are able to exclude
themselves even from conventional emotional tasks associated with
fathering. In looking at two types of entrepreneurial masculinity, despite
the differences between such men, it is argued they had equally drawn
upon and largely benefited from the domestic exclusionary practices
they operated, while still benefiting from the processes of family production and reproduction. The men benefit from continuous personal
nurturing, which in itself is a direct contribution to the enterprise, and
although it is an essential part of the broader business strategy, it
remains invisible. The discourses of workaholism, ‘family man’, and so
on, both conceal and amplify the significance of the wives’ emotional
labour, enabling such men to prioritise business activity in the public
sphere. The men are invariably psychologically separated from what
happens in the household. This may not be an intentional strategy
operated by such men, and should be understood in the context of an
entrepreneurial culture when the competitiveness and the gains of the
market become too hard to resist. It seems that the process inevitably
captures such men making their separation from domesticity inevitable.
Although the men differed in terms of class, ethnicity, age and education, they all engaged in the same gendered strategies in their relations
with their wives and the household.
8
Women Owners: Honorary Men?
This chapter focuses on the five independent female business owners
who between them are the principal proprietors of four businesses. Two
of the women were sisters and owned one of the businesses; the other
three are single proprietors. These businesses are distributed across categories of ‘new’ and ‘old’ wealth and are in a range of economic sectors
including plastics manufacturing, organic cosmetics, livery and estate
ownership, combined with corporate entertainment. In contrast to the
mainstream literature, the importance of Goffee and Scase (1985) and
Allen and Truman’s (1991) pathbreaking work is that they begin to
address the issue of women in business. However, both studies convey
the sense in which female businesses are separate and distinguishable
from mainstream (male) enterprise. Goffee and Scase (1985) report that
women in business operate somewhat differently from their male counterparts, whilst Allen and Truman (1991) suggest that female enterprise
is predominantly in the service sector. In contrast to these findings, it
is argued that similarity as opposed to difference with male-headed business describes female-owned enterprise in terms of business type and
managerial approach.
In examining their approach to business it is argued that these five
female entrepreneurs adopt the male middle-class entrepreneurial
model to successfully establish, manage and preserve the ownership and
survival of their enterprise. Amongst the 70 owners the five women are
unique for they seem to have ignored or overcome their gender
constraints in the masculine business world. For instance, out of a
total of 44 ‘new’ businesses, only two first-generation businesses, the
livery and the cosmetics enterprise, have been established by women
and continue to be managed and owned by them. These two women
are remarkable for they have of their own volition, and against all the
131
132 Class, Gender and the Family Business
odds, defied convention and entered the male world of business.
The third female-owned enterprise, a ‘new’ business in plastics
manufacturing, was bequeathed by the male founder to two of his
daughters, who have undergone a training and socialisation typical of
the male apprenticeship model. The fifth woman, in the absence of a
suitable male heir, inherited a title, a large country house and land, constituting the only female owner amongst the 15 landed sector businesses
in the ‘old’ wealth category. Despite the central role played by female
kin, apart from one woman who had a senior managerial position
in the Irish business, there are no female owners amongst the 15
ethnic minority businesses, and the five women proprietors are
majority white.
Women and the entrepreneurial model
In this section it is argued that the notion of a shared business culture
(Mulholland, 1997) is appropriate in the examination of women’s entry
into business. In this sense it is suggested that like their male counterparts such women benefit from the material attributes of a middle-class
background, which, in a rather distant but important way, helps them
to cross conventional gendered class boundaries. Like men they also
acquired particular kinds of knowledge and skill specific to the business
they subsequently entered. In this sense, their business entry is preempted by their cultural capital and training. The female entrepreneurs
are similar to men in a second respect: the management of business
finance. Risk-alert, the women entered businesses that required little
initial capital outlay, or drew on family resources, but necessitated particular kinds of expertise and access to cheap labour. However, it was
personal interests combined with entrepreneurial flair that stimulated
the initial business start-up in the case of the two independent women
wealth creators discussed next.
Born in one of the Midland counties, Mrs B. spent her childhood in
Northern Ireland. During her time there she developed an interest in
horses:
‘Well, I have always been dealing with horses. It all started when I was
at school and my friends at school had different horses. I used to go to
Ireland on holidays and realised that every summer when I went back they
had different horses. They raised them and sold them. They were all starting new ones and I thought this was fun. When I was seventeen I asked
my father if I could try it and do it once with one horse. I made a lot of
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 133
friends in Ireland, so we went to Wexford and bought my first horse for
£70 and sold it for £120. I went on from there. I was lucky with my first
horse and got the taste for it.’
The importance of this is that it replicates the pre-entry experience, or
apprenticeship, characteristic of the male entrepreneurs. This initial
interest in breeding and trading in horses is a learning process, which
is slowly and cautiously developed. At the same time business growth
is facilitated organically, behaviour which shows a marked similarity
with male entrepreneurial behaviour characteristic of the company man
typology.
Marriage is an important turning point for such enterprising women.
Unlike the wives in male-headed businesses and similar to male business heads, such women benefit from emotional support from their
spouses and the complementary role played by such men, first, in providing a business partner marriage facilitates business expansion. For
instance, marriage helped Mrs B. to transform an interest into a growing
business concern:
‘My husband was a soldier but his father had been involved with the polo
world and bred horses. We bought around 100 acres of land, the house,
the stable yard and diversified. We started a riding school, and we raised
and schooled horses. We trained hunters and jumpers. We also boarded
horses. We had that interest which was just great.’
In this case, the importance of marriage is that it provides a business
partner who shares an understanding and interest in horses. What separates this woman from other business wives is the ease with which she
assumes the centrality of her role in the business and unquestioningly
sustains it through subsequent phases in business development.
However, whilst the business hinges on her technical and financial
skills, her role is sustained by her passionate interest in horses and entrepreneurial flair.
Mrs M. is chair of a skin care cosmetic business serving a niche market,
but has been a dairy farmer, a property developer and high fashion
designer and retailer in the 1960s. However, she started out in clothing
manufacturing in the 1930s and has over 60 years successfully diversified into other business sectors. Similarly, it was Mrs M.’s class background, training, creative flair and the need to articulate these that seem
to have precipitated business entry. However, her training appears to
correspond closely with the notion of the male apprenticeship:
134 Class, Gender and the Family Business
‘I suppose I was the product of the College of Arts and Crafts. I got a
scholarship and while I was there, I was sent off to be interviewed by
a textile company for a job in design. I got on well and saw different
sides of the business. I was designing clothes. At the time no one thought
that L. could do anything but socks and stockings, but I showed them
an alternative. I designed such amazing clothes and applied that
design. But what I really wanted was to start out on my own. I suppose I
inherited my creativity from my father. . . . We are all very artistic. I was
itching to go.’
However, the transition from employment to business entry was facilitated when Mrs M. married:
‘I broke away from P. when I got married and we formed our own company
together. I was the designer and I hired staff. They all wanted to work for
me. I set up a crèche at the company and women came in and worked contentedly knowing their children were close at hand and cared for. Yes, I
must have been one of the first to do this. He [husband] was the salesman and sold the products and it worked out very well.’
This pattern of organisation and management of this business replicates
male-headed businesses, except that the woman casts herself in the
pivotal role of managing director in a way that is similar to the selfmade man model. Yet, this structure is also a configuration of the conventional sexual division of labour, for despite remaining head of
the business, stereotypically she took control of the creative side, the
product design and the day-to-day management of the business, while
her partner/husband met the challenge of the market. In order to alleviate problems with the recruitment of women, she took what seems a
revolutionary step and set up a company nursery. Other womanfriendly projects included a grocery-ordering service and a hairdressing
outlet.
Characteristic of their male counterparts both women take for granted
the resourcefulness of their social class attributes. First, they both benefited from a middle-class education and socialisation, which seems to
have given them self-confidence. What is remarkable about these
women is that they seem oblivious to the obstacles they faced and rather
utilised the material resources available to them to best advantage. Of
particular significance has been the family, which has been the key
funding source for the initial enterprise. In the case of Mrs B., the investment her father made in the purchase of her first horse facilitated her
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 135
entrepreneurial flair. Similarly, Mrs M.’s family provided the finance for
her clothing factory:
‘Well, my family were artists and liberals and owned a lot property in L.
and my grandfather had land. I don’t remember borrowing any money from
the banks. No. We just built up. I have never really believed in that. I
always felt that was the sort of thing hung around your neck and you could
not get rid of, so it was something we never did. We went along creating
our own money and spending it when we had it.’
Risk-aversion, with a preference for organic growth, again demonstrates
similarities with her male counterparts in retaining the autonomy of
the enterprise. This allowed leverage in decisions about the direction of
the business and is reflected in product innovations and subsequent
shifts into new products.
In the Second World War Mrs M.’s business partner/husband joined
the RAF as a pilot and subsequently was killed. Such a momentous event
might have had consequences for the fate of the clothing business, but
Mrs M. took on new staff and carried on. Eventually she sold the business and moved to London, but retained the company name. This astute
move shows her sensitivity to changing tastes and business acumen.
Passionate about fashion, she continued to work on design and in the
1960s sold them on for mass markets. However, she also opened several
boutiques in London which retailed more exclusive clothing. Emblematic of her success was when, in 1965, her daughter, a model, wore one
of her op-art, diamond-patterned suits to Ascot. She also regularly travelled to America marketing her designs and products.
Female entrepreneurs and business development
In developing the livery enterprise, Mrs B. has combined her passion
for livestock with the growth in rural leisure. She has developed business networks in Poland and Ireland seeking out the best horses for the
different aspects of her enterprise which includes an equestrian centre,
a livery service and a substantial landholding. The 1980s affluence
marked a temporary period of business expansion for this enterprise,
witnessed by the entry of the socially aspiring and newly affluent classes
which reshaped the rural leisure industry. Sensitive to the fragility in
constructing an enterprise on such a precarious economy, Mrs B. said:
‘People think I have been doing well. You know everyone now owns a horse,
wants to go riding and be seen having a day out at Ascot. But for these
136 Class, Gender and the Family Business
people it is something new. I mean, they said anyone can be a member of
Lloyds and they had the butcher, the baker and the candle-maker. With
the recession these people just disappear.’
Undoubtedly the volatility of the market raises questions about the continued buoyancy of the enterprise, but Mrs B. has already made considerable budget adjustments through staff reduction. Nevertheless, her
capital assets remain considerable and it seems that she has offset such
income reductions through her international networks which has
helped her with the breeding, trading and training of horses.
In the early 1970s, Mrs M. sold her fashion business and moved to
the countryside. She bought an old, run-down vicarage, an adjoining
holding of land and herd of dairy cows. Again in tune with changing
market tastes, she was able to combine her business acumen with her
creative drive:
‘People began to want better and more natural skin care products. They
were anxious about their skin and I have been interested in seeing how
beauty products could be made using more natural ingredients.’
Mrs M. is quite innovative and simply channelled her creative energy
in another direction. With a keen commitment to the environment and
green issues her aim was to make beauty products that were not tested
on animals. Having experimented with milk she soon realised that it
formed a good basis for a range of skin products. The project spiralled
from there:
‘I eventually found a Swiss chemist who was prepared to work with me on
my recipes.’
Over the last twenty years she has vastly developed the product range,
which now includes 70 different skin care preparations. They are manufactured and distributed through mail order from her home to 60,000
customers in the UK and elsewhere. In terms of the three phases of business formation, what distinguishes both women from the wives in maleowned businesses is that once they have created the business, they easily
assume professional and entrepreneurial roles. In the case of Mrs M. she
has combined her technical skill with her creativity and has taken the
name forward under different business configurations. In contrast to
the other wives in the study, these two women appear to have averted
the negative impact of gender power within the marriage and have
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 137
managed to retain their ‘public’ sphere positions. Nock (1998) argues
that marriage constitutes part of the rite of passage to masculinity for
men, who as the earlier chapters have shown have benefited from the
inequalities that stem from marriage. In these two instances, the women
appear to have reshaped the balance of power within marriage in ways
that facilitated their entrepreneurial roles as business heads.
Women and management: stepping into your father’s shoes
Two of the women inherited one of the businesses in the ‘new’ wealth
category, the plastics manufacturing concern in the early 1990s. Their
father had set up the medium-sized business in 1946 in a tiny workshop and with very little capital and much zeal, drive and the help of
family labour developed it into a medium-sized concern with international subsidiaries. It employs 200 people and had an annual turnover
of £8 million in the early 1990s. He started by producing industrial
mouldings then, with experience innovated in design and diversified
highly successfully into toys and games, and sold in global markets’.
However, the management structure and style typified the family firm
with the founder holding executive roles. The second feature characteristic of the family firm was the heavy dependence on family labour.
Like the contemporary ethnic minority small business sector, Mr X.
hired aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters and positioned them vertically and horizontally in jobs across the company.
As Chapter 9 explains, the effects of the privileging of male kin in the
family enterprise via a gendered male apprenticeship, the key characteristic of the notion of a shared business strategy, is to exclude female
kin. However, in exceptional circumstances, family women are invited
into the business for strategic roles in leadership and eventual ownership and they undergo a training that appears identical to their male
counterparts. However, the central question is whether this prepares
them for such leadership roles.
The next example focuses on how two family women became owners
of a plastic manufacturing business. In this case, and similar to their
male counterparts, both women went to a leading public school for
girls. However, they were doubtful that it had any advantages for them.
As S. explains:
‘Yes we both went to A. College. I had started on ten ‘O’ levels and thought
that I’d get them and maybe two ‘A’ levels. At the time I was thinking
about being a vet, and my strongest subjects were in the sciences and I
138 Class, Gender and the Family Business
went to my science teacher and mooted the idea. I remember being told
that A. ladies did not become veterinary surgeons. After that I got a little
bored. So this school didn’t work out for me and I left and did my GCEs
elsewhere.’
While it is not unusual to find that a school’s values are often at odds
with pupils’ desire for personal freedom and sense of space, in this case
the developing cleavage was rooted in a more rational dimension. As
her sister, J., elaborates:
‘Well, the discipline was tremendous, we weren’t allowed to be independent for one thing. We had been brought up by my father and although he
was miserably strict, it was balanced. I mean very importantly we were
given responsibility. My very first task for E. [the company] was to take
care of the fridge. I never liked my school. I was always interested in industry and I have always perceived myself either running my own business or
heading up a large company. But that comes from having a parent whose
life wholly and solely circulates around running the business. It rubs off
on you from an early age.’
This comment suggests that the socialisation of business
values, which began for these women quite early with the nurturing
of a sense of responsibility and independence, when pitted against
the values of the school, produced profound contradictions. It is clear
that these women’s values were already formed by the time they
entered the school. They had both internalised the importance of
responsibility and independence which seems incompatible with the
school ethos.
Implying disapproval, the disappointment over career advice suggests
a rather restrictive outlook in terms of career choices for women. In stifling the progress of their anticipated development, this rather limited
evidence suggests that some leading single-sex public schools are not
necessarily the best education route for women with ambitions to take
senior and entrepreneurial roles. Gender difference seems critical in this
instance, since, as Chapter 9 reveals, the public school system, when
aligned with other practices, significantly contributes to the rite of
passage for men with similar ambitions. This shows that even when
families implement equitable opportunity systems for female kin in
leadership roles within the family enterprise, the gendered opportunity
structure characterising the male rite of passage to leadership can, at
critical junctures, present difficulties for women.
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 139
In other ways the women’s experience mirrors their male counterparts’ and they insist that the learning process is an all-consuming
experience:
‘Well, you see, if you were to look at S. and me, we are not domesticated
in any way, shape or form. I would have thought that women in business
would have gone through the role of working for other people and would
have to look after themselves and would have to run their own households.
Well it’s a strange thing that you have got two girls who couldn’t look after
themselves. All we know is work and work and our roles within the family
business.’
Distancing themselves from domesticity and emulating the male role
model on leaving school they both joined the company to work fulltime. Like men in the family business they were trained by their father:
‘After leaving college we were both invited to go in with my father. He
started the company in 1946 and he had no sons, so he asked his two
eldest daughters to come into the company.’
The training was quite strategic and they were prepared for different
roles within the enterprise. The elder sister, aged 33, was expected to
take responsibility for the direction of the enterprise, while the younger
sister, aged 31, had a more technical training, managing the operational
and manufacturing elements of the enterprise.
In order to prove worthy of such a challenge, the elder sister set up
two independent businesses and managed these alongside her executive duties in the family enterprise:
‘I am slightly different to J. and when I left school I came to work for the
company, but not full-time. I was interested in rural businesses and I
wanted more involvement in running the family farm. I separated some
land from the family farm and set up a training establishment for young
people. Instead of going to agricultural college they came to me for six
months and had hands-on experience.’
The significance of social class attributes cannot be overstated in this
instance. Privileged by being able to draw on considerable family
resources, this woman avoided many of the difficulties women face
when attempting to fund their own enterprise. As she required a high
capital investment, of particular importance was the availability of a
140 Class, Gender and the Family Business
portion of land from the family farm, the essential component in such
a business. This tremendous resource facilitated an easy entry and startup. This meant that the main financial imperative was to ensure that
the turnover was sufficiently robust to cover running costs since there
was no capital outlay to recover. Moreover, privilege is reflected in the
character of the business which resonates of a life-style enterprise
enabling her to incorporate her love of horses and livestock with financial interests. Access to material resources separates those women who
succeed from those who fail, for women with few resources were repeatedly unsuccessful in their attempts to raise investment capital. However,
the particular advantage of setting up and managing a separate business
for this woman was that it acted as the precursor for a position of leadership and decision-making.
By contrast the second sister’s training was concentrated in the
routine management of the operational enterprise. At the behest of their
father, both women and especially the second daughter learned about
the technical and operational dimensions of plastic manufacture:
‘It was very important, especially a woman working within the company,
that you have experience of things like the tooling and the drawing office.
I actually made it the hard way, as a teenager moving through the different divisions, the tool-room, drawing office, the studio and all the different in-house functions. I think that was good. I mean my father wouldn’t
have accepted S. as his right-hand man if she hadn’t gone this route also.’
Typically, entrepreneurs in the ‘new’ wealth category who intend to
include their female kin in strategic managerial positions ensure that
they experience the more unpleasant and arduous tasks. Equally, such
women must demonstrate their endurance, commitment and appreciation of both the privilege and responsibility of running a business.
However, like their male counterparts, they reject the silver spoon syndrome and insist that merit and hard work account for their positions
of power.
Despite their inclusion in the male apprentice formula the actual
takeover of the business was precipitated by a crisis, with the sudden
illness and early death of the founding entrepreneur. The management
changeover presented a challenge for both women. They had the choice
of selling on their share in the enterprise or attempt to replace their father.
‘We never had any thoughts about selling the business. We have always
known that we would continue. Where are you going to put the money?
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 141
We could invest in something else but that would be untried and untested.
We’re not the kind who’ll sit at home with two labradors and get married
and have 2.2 children. We’re just not that sort of people.’
Although taken by surprise, they are quite certain that they intend to
continue with their father’s work, but with some changes. However, his
death deprived the business of unsurpassed technical expertise and tacit
knowledge about the way the company operated and about its products. Nevertheless, they disagreed with his autocratic managerial style
and his vision of the enterprise as a family concern and began to initiate some changes in management style. Justifying this they pointed to
the flaws in his style:
‘I feel sorry for anybody who goes through the traumatic moment when
they actually have to step into the shoes of the founder. I was on the board
of directors since 1982. But I was still wet behind the ears because my
father was the type of entrepreneur who controlled everything. I went to
board meetings and was told by my father, “You don’t say a thing and you
kick if I kick you”.’
This was a watershed for them both as they realised that his very distinctive managerial style had rendered them dependent on him for
direction. They also realised that even if they wished it, combined they
were not the reincarnation of their father’s embodied knowledge. As a
result they made several changes, including a restructuring, the recruitment of senior managers, the initiation of a new multi-divisional
product and marketing/sales policy, a change in management style and
extensive capital investments.
Attuned to the decline in the manufacturing sector the sisters
brought about a policy shift with a restructuring and the closure of
some of the international subsidiaries, accompanied by redundancies.
They also initiated a new marketing strategy with five divisions, arguing
that:
‘This means that the products compensate for each other. It has held us in
good stead really.’
This contrasts with the stereotypical view espoused especially by the
male entrepreneurs that women have no strategic view of the business
or of financial management.
142 Class, Gender and the Family Business
Their entrepreneurial sense is again conveyed in the manner in which
they changed the management structure and style. Pointing to the key
problem characterising succession they argue:
‘Well, things have changed a great deal since my father started out and
this made a change of approach necessary. If you lose a head of the
company like we did, you have no option but to delegate. In fact, the quality
of the management that we have now brought in is far better than we had
with the entrepreneur sitting at the top of the table who had his hands on
everything.’
Whilst retaining a hierarchical structure, they have replaced the entrepreneurial head with new appointments in both the operational and
strategic dimensions of the enterprise and have delegated some of the
decision-making powers. The notion of the family business had considerable potency until ownership succession. Indeed, during the phase
of wealth creation characteristically this business drew on extended
family members. While this may have made good business, the women
owners argued that the changing economic climate necessitated a shift
from such paternalism. The family could no longer supply the range of
skills necessary in the restructured enterprise. They also argued that the
authoritarian patriarchal managerial style and the concentration of
power in a single head was outdated and inappropriate in the new environment. Summing this up, they mused:
‘And I am not sure how my father would have fared in the current economic environment, being the true entrepreneur that he was. You couldn’t
have found a more dedicated person. The trouble was, he couldn’t let go.’
Nevertheless, like their male counterparts, they appreciate that they
have gained valuable skills from their father’s managerial style:
‘My father has given us a very good company and it is our duty now to
develop the foundations that he created. It is a very different company now.
We have invested £2 million on machinery. My father had a lot of reserves.
Right now we are in a very strong position. We didn’t take any risk at all.
I mean we’re now the most modern moulding shop in Europe. My father
being the true entrepreneur saved and spent. He made a few big investments in property which turned out OK. Otherwise the money went back
into the business.’
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 143
This example endorses the effectiveness of the apprenticeship model as
a knowledge source for women owner-managers also. In this sense their
approach to financial direction of the business is largely influenced by
organic growth and careful investments.
The fifth female business owner inherited a 500-year-old family estate
in the mid-1980s. Out of a total of fifteen businesses in the landed
sector, this is the only one that is female-owned. In the ‘old’ wealth
category, it consists of a small holding of land, a country house, a title,
a collection of paintings, valuable furniture and various new businesses
that stem directly from the property. The present owner’s family bought
the estate from Henry VIII in 1540 when the landholding was probably
much greater. Interestingly, this family changed their religious affiliation three times over the centuries in order to gain political favours and
to safeguard their wealthholding. The property has remained within the
family through the male line and historically female kin have at various
intervals inherited the property and have made considerable contributions towards its growth and preservation. For instance, the present
owner’s great grandmother bought several of the paintings:
‘Yes, she bought what we call the Stuart Collection which is great asset.’
Clearly, this woman had considerable wealth and influence and bought
the collection of paintings from the Pope. It seems that the ownership
of the property changed to the female line through politically contrived
marriages. However, this did not mean that it represented any challenge
to primogeniture, rather the family women implemented this practice
with the aim of enhancing the social status of their male kin, at the
expense of the male members of their marriage family.
The present owner’s father inherited the property in 1958 and, in the
absence of male heirs, this witnessed the beginning of her apprenticeship for eventual ownership. Like other heirs she went to public school
and then to university to read for a degree in art history. Meanwhile
she was involved with her parents in the restoration and refurbishment
of the house. Unlike her male counterparts this was not followed by a
period of work experience in the City, because on completion of her
education, she returned home and worked alongside her parents. In this
sense the women are disadvantaged, for they are stereotypically portrayed as being poor at finance, which is essential in the management
of such enterprise. This, of course, does not mean that such women
make poor financial managers, but it makes marriage an inevitability if
they are to assume formal ownership. The marriage then upholds the
144 Class, Gender and the Family Business
notion of the family business with the inclusion of the male spouse in
the management of the enterprise. Regardless of what configuration the
actual sex division of labour takes, the effect is to endorse gender stereotyping, with the male as de facto head while the woman partner is the
de jure owner. The woman’s role is perceived to be best articulated in
some kind of creative project and as the interviews suggests this is
intentional:
‘Well, I came home and worked with my parents. The restoration was an
enormous task and in a business which this is, it has to be run as such.
But of course, it was something that I had to do. I spent so much time
working on the restoration.’
However, such women are equally concerned and knowledgeable about
the strategic and financial direction of the business and with the
creative input. This case suggests that women do both things. For
instance, in addition to restoring the house, since the present owner
inherited the business, she has developed lucrative corporate entertainment and the commercialisation of the parklands. Typically, and similar
to her class peers, she has recognised that the considerable capital assets
which they own do not generate income, except from the land. In turning
over some of the accommodation for business purposes, she has been able
to transform a fixed asset into a viable, income-generating project:
‘I mean, this has worked out very well. Only 20 per cent of our visitors
ever come to the house. My idea was that we had all these quite beautiful
rooms and they were very little used. So now we run a business that can
be loosely described as corporate hospitality. This means a company will
hire out the ballroom for a day, or a weekend and even maybe the park.
They hold events in the park and organise parties in the ballroom. This is
a very profitable dimension of our business.’
Other income is generated by opening the house and gardens to the
public on a seasonal basis. The whole enterprise is managed by herself
and her husband, who since his retirement from the army has worked
full-time in the business. They employ a half dozen people on a fulltime basis and a fluctuating number of seasonal employees, and
minimise labour costs by contracting out most of the farm work. But
unquestioningly seeing herself as the driving force behind the direction
of the enterprise raises some important questions about women and
decision-making. Resembling male owners, this woman conveys a
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 145
strong sense of ownership and assured sense of power and hierarchy,
which is all the more surprising given that her husband works alongside her, but in a rather complementary and subordinate way. This
example is illustrative of the manner in which the hierarchy underpinning gender relations can be overturned by the power of social class
relations.
Managing inheritance
Female wealthholders are very similar to their male counterparts in the
sense that their approach to business development closely emulates
male strategies. For instance, the female business owners follow
Penrose’s (1980) business model, where the primary intention is to
create wealth based on the firm’s identity, brand and product. At the
same time, as the example of the plastic manufacturing business shows,
where necessary, women entrepreneurs also draw on market principles,
such as the rationalisation of management style, in order to preserve
the product and the business. There is a second sense in which women
owners mirror the behaviour of their male counterparts and this refers
to the question of inheritance. Three of the women owners had no children, but the cosmetics entrepreneur had a son and a daughter and the
livery owner had a daughter. Like male owners they also intend to
adopt the practice of primogeniture and give preference to male family
members with regard to inheritance.
For instance, the owner of the cosmetic firm, now aged 81, had
already delegated the management of the enterprise to her son, but she
intends to make him the majority shareholder within the family enterprise. Whilst the ownership is shared between herself, her son/manager
and her daughter, it seems illogical not to pass on the business to her
daughter for a numbers of reasons. The first is that her daughter was
much more involved with the fashion design enterprise and the promotion of the company brand name. Of particular significance was her
career as a fashion model, which provided a unique opportunity to
promote her mother’s business. Fashion and pop celebrities frequented
her retail outlets partly as a result of her daughter’s networking. She also
explained that her daughter was often involved in some of the early
experiments for the cosmetic business, making her a more likely candidate for eventual ownership. Moreover, her son had a separate career
and appears to have taken little interest in the business. Second, given
that Mrs M. considers that she has cast aside conventional social norms
in the manner in which she challenged a male-dominated business
146 Class, Gender and the Family Business
world and her apparent pro-feminist politics and managerial approach,
this might suggest a rejection of conventional thinking on the question
of succession and inheritance. Yet, in line with her class norms, Mrs M.’s
daughter married an architect entrepreneur and is not involved in his
business. However, Mrs M.’s has not totally relinquished her position as
business head, and indeed by continuing to promote the business
around her reputation as an entrepreneur, she greatly overshadows her
son’s role as chief executive. Nevertheless, it seems that there was never
any doubt about his inheritance:
‘R. always loved the countryside and, I mean, one of my reasons for moving
to London was so that he could go to Harrow and be near home. I mean
he always hated London and when I changed course I knew he would love
the countryside. My daughter married K. and breeds Shetland ponies down
in N. and, of course, R. is here with his family running the whole thing.
And that is the way it should be as far as I’m concerned.’
Bourdieu’s notion of habitus helps to explain the apparent contradiction in Mrs’ M. decision. For instance, when she entered business in
the 1930s she manipulated the dynamics of her gender identity with
her social class resources to gain entry into the business world and in
so doing the choices she made concerned only herself. However, the
succession involves a wider set of social actors, her kin, when she drew
comfort from social convention and passed the enterprise to her son.
This has connotations of ‘doing the right thing’ in the context of
dominant social values. The logic of such a decision can be explained
in Bourdieu’s notion of habitus when social actors draw on internalised
values that stem from their interaction, mediation and interpretation
of convention in making sense of the social world. However, in reaffirming the alliance between capital and patriarchy, decisions such as
this serve to perpetuate the current configuration in the social relations
of production and the relationship between entrepreneurial men and
capital, and between women, men and capital.
The question of inheritance was not of immediate concern to the
owner of the livery business. In describing her business as lifestyle she
envisaged that she would continue working until, like many of her male
contemporaries, circumstances forced her to give up. She has one
daughter, aged 19, who is working towards a separate career away from
the family enterprise. Nevertheless, the livery business has always been
of pivotal importance to the daughter who was also encouraged to learn
the business.
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 147
‘Right from when she was a little girl she has been with horses and had
numerous ones of her own. I mean she worked as a stable girl and knows
how to groom and so on. So, of course, if she wants to continue that is
fine. But whether people will have the money any more is the big question.
In the 1980s there was a lot of money floating about. Everyone bought a
horse and wanted a slice of the country life. But that’s very much over now.
And our local farmers are having a really bad time.’
Whilst this business is asset-rich, as part of the rural leisure industry
its vitality is very much influenced by economic conditions. This point
is exemplified in the change in the business cycle characteristic of this
business. Whilst the conspicuous affluence of the 1980s generated more
new business, the recession that followed in the 1990s witnessed the
disappearance of such market expansion. The respondent’s pessimism
stems also from the crisis in farming which, it is anticipated, will have
negative repercussions for the business. By encouraging her daughter to
train for an unrelated career, this entrepreneur is managing the crisis
and safeguarding the business for the future. Emotionally attached to
their businesses and, in this case, way of life, the desire on the part of
founding entrepreneurs to see their businesses survive them is very
strong, and the intention is that the daughter will inherit the business
in due course.
The desire to hand the business on to the next generation extends
beyond the founding entrepreneur. The issue of inheritance poses some
problems for the women owners of the plastics manufacturing and is
rooted in the dilemma women face over the contradictions in attempting to strike a balance between the demands of home and work.
Wajcman (1998) discovered that women in the corporate sector who
succeeded to senior managerial roles had to forgo having children.
Whether these two women will emulate this pattern is an open question. However, what this example yet again illuminates is the deepseated contradictions that powerful public sphere positions still pose for
women. The two female owners of this company see themselves as professionals dedicated to the business, and they intend to grow it and to
hand it on:
‘It is just not common sense in my opinion to think of selling something
when it’s going well. I mean we don’t just look at the business as security
just for us as a family. I look on it as something we can hand on in good
shape.’
148 Class, Gender and the Family Business
As argued in earlier chapters the business and the family are intertwined in a number of ways. The family business as a source of wealth
ensures security for kin and is tied up with status-building and social
identity. Sharing their father’s values they seek to invest in the business
and preserve it through inheritance, which in some ways guarantees a
certain degree of immortality for the family name. But to do this they
need to emulate patriarchal practices and have children, but this contravenes their notion of personal freedom and life choices:
‘We have a commitment to the business and we would like to see it thrive
and survive and we are working towards that goal. No, we don’t see ourselves waiting at home. You know being the wife. We want to achieve out
there in that world, which is what our father did.’
This comment shows that the women clearly understand that their
primary duty is to sustain the business in its present form and are prepared to relinquish conventional childbearing and child-rearing roles in
order to bring this ambition to fruition. By insisting that the business
takes precedence, the comment demonstrates how problematic gender
relations are for such women. The women feel compelled to distance
themselves from domesticity, yet this confronts their longer-term duty
to protect the business by passing it on to a suitable heir.
By contrast, the class system has generated extended rules governing
the perpetuation of wealth in the case of childless upper class female
wealthholders. In the case of ‘old’ wealth very often the core wealthholding is held in trust, which means that an owner’s decisions are often
circumscribed by rules of the trust, which is in any case skewed towards
male ownership.
‘Well, the ownership thing is quite complex. This place was put in a trust
in the very late nineteenth century. I don’t have any children, so after me
this goes to a cousin. He is a cousin on two sides, which is nice. His mother
was my father’s first cousin once removed, and his father was my father’s
first cousin on the other side. He will eventually own this and if I die tomorrow my two female cousins are the joint heirs to the A. peerage, but as one
has no children, and as my other cousin’s eldest son is going to inherit this
place, he is likely to inherit the A. peerage also. He seems the ideal person.
He is a Ghurka and is leaving at the end of the year. He is then going into
the City and I guess will make some money. There is a cottage on the estate
which will be his weekend base. He is beginning to take an interest. He is
twenty-six years old. Can’t be bad, can it?’
Women Owners: Honorary Men? 149
This suggests that it is only in rather exceptional circumstances that
female kin are able to inherit ‘old’ wealth within aristocratic family
structures. It also seems that in this case the woman is a nominal owner
as the property is held in trust and the only leverage she appears to have
is over the title, which in this case is going to the heir of the core wealth.
Undoubtedly, this practice is tribal in character for it excludes all but
blood male kin. Of course, as Chapter 5 suggests, there are provisions
made for female kin. However, these are gendered practices in that
female kin are expected to marry and thereafter are dependent on their
husbands. The limited evidence of the safeguarding of a wife’s interests
through pre-nuptial agreements suggests that in some families consideration is given to the possibility of failure. Nevertheless, as this example
shows, women with powers of decision-making give primacy to their
class identity and adopt conventional practice. Having internalised the
dominant values characteristic of their social class typically they argue:
‘I think it is important for various reasons. One of them is that this is a
beautiful house, and the fact that it has been with the family for 500 years,
one does not want to be the one who is going to throw in the sponge. It is
tremendously important to preserve the thing and hand it on in a little
better condition than you found it. The only thing I ever sold was a picture
I didn’t like. It was one of William of Orange being triumphant at the
Battle of the Boyne.’
This sentiment, emphasising the importance of duty and of sustaining
and safeguarding the family wealth, suggests that when women occupy
the position of wealthholder they are reluctant to challenge convention. There is a sense in which this comment is consonant with research
reported by Rosener (1990) which suggests that the first wave of female
executives adopted male managerial styles.
Conclusions
In focusing on the five women proprietors this chapter has argued that
they differ very little from their male counterparts in their approach to
business formation, and the management and preservation of their
enterprise. Like their male counterparts, the first-generation wealthholders began their businesses advantaged by the resources associated
with their social class. In one case, the livery entrepreneur had been
able to transform her hobby, an interest in breeding and training horses,
into a viable enterprise. In the second, like many of her male counter-
150 Class, Gender and the Family Business
parts, the fashion and cosmetic entrepreneur utilised her employment
experience as a designer as the preamble to her own enterprise. With
regard to finance, it is clear that the fashion entrepreneur and the lively
entrepreneur had been able to draw on some family money to develop
what had been interests and expertise on a business footing. Like the
male entrepreneurs, they negotiated the support of their spouses, and
therefore seem to have overturned the conventions characterising
gender relations. In looking at the inherited businesses it is clear that,
like their male entrepreneurs, the women owners underwent a business
apprenticeship prior to their inheritance, and thereafter adopted the
conventional approach on the issue of inheritance, indicating that they
will pass their wealth on via the male line. Whether such women are
‘honorary men’ is an open question, because it seems that their business success lies in the peculiarity of a shared management strategy. On
the other hand, the importance of this strategy is that it prevents the
disintegration of the core productive wealth, whilst it also sustains the
social class position of the families concerned. What this implies is that
both men and women occupy ‘places’, that result in the survival of the
enterprise and social status of the family.
9
The Family Enterprise and
Business Strategies
This chapter argues that the preservation of family enterprise hinges on
a family business strategy that places its key emphasis on leadership
training and particular inheritance practices. It also questions the convention of studying majority and ethnic minority business separately
and argues that it is difference that is exaggerated. This creates the
impression that each business category is engaged in discrete economic
activities, driven in very different ways, producing different types of
goods and services for different markets. There is also a silence about
the class roots, the ethnicity and the gendered character of majority
business. On the other hand, gender and class identities, and the
dynamics of this relationship, are completely overshadowed by the elevation of ethnicity in studies on ethnic minority entrepreneurship. For
instance, Werbner (1984), who is a very influential writer, thinks that
ethnicity is the primary driving force behind ethnic minority enterprise.
Typically, this work also assumes that the utilisation of kinship relations
as a business resource is unique to ethnic minority enterprise. The result
is that the importance of the class identity of ethnic minority business
leaders and the significance that social class relations has for such enterprise is lost in discourses that exclusively address kinship relations and
ethnicity. Such silences and myopia result in a failure to identify that
ethnic identities are shaped by the power of class/gender systems in
family capitalism. This chapter addresses this question showing that
social class identities are important when considering enterprise.
This chapter also questions Bonacich and Modell’s (1980) notion of
middleman1 theory and Aldrich’s (1980) enclave2 theory, both of which
argue that ethnic minority business cannot be seen as a key player in
the economy. They argue that such businesses are forced by circumstance into less vibrant and marginal economic sectors where returns
151
152 Class, Gender and the Family Business
are low. Undoubtedly, this argument has some validity, but the problem
is that it paints a rather static image of such business, for it cannot be
assumed that every ethnic entrepreneur enters a peripheral sector and
then remains there. Finally, in exploring these questions, this chapter
demonstrates that the family business is largely driven by and is dependent upon a shared business culture. It is argued that this culture stems
from a similarity in the class background of the actors concerned, a
shared value system and common business strategies, which transcend
but does not subsume ethnicity, while reinstating the patriarchal family
as the key agent in the generation of family capitalism.
The notion of shared business culture
The argument about similarity is embodied in the notion of a shared
business culture and emerges from the practice of creating, managing and
sustaining family enterprise. The idea of a business culture refers to particular practices with reference to managing and financing the business.
The first aspect of this culture is a concern with business leadership,
approaches to succession, the production of specific human capital and
entrepreneurial expertise. Equally important is the second aspect, when
there is preference for the private sourcing of investment capital, riskavoidance in relation to business growth, a reliance on family labour
and the nurturing and utilisation of social capital (Boissevain, 1974) or
structural holes (Burt, 1992). In this context, the structure comprises
instrumentally determined social networks of friends which duly
provide assistance in the pursuit of business goals.
Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that there are differences
between ethnic minority and white majority enterprise. It is, of course,
important to acknowledge that differences exist between the business
groups. For instance, racial discrimination, access to cheap ethnic
minority labour and an entrepreneurial reputation distinguish ethnic
minority businesses from their white majority counterparts. However,
it will be argued that the structural position of ethnic minority business
is more complex than the peripheral account offered by enclave
(Werbner, 1990) and middleman theories (Bonacich and Modell, 1980).
It will be demonstrated that such businesses are in a transitional phase,
are making inroads into most economic sectors, and provide goods and
services to the wider society.
Theoretically, Bourdieu’s (1976) notion of habitus and Roberts and
Holyroyd’s (1992: 159) definition of substantive rationality will be drawn
on to make sense of the notion shared business culture. First, habitus at
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 153
the level of culture can be understood as a particular form of class strategy. Habitus as culture conveys a sense of best practice, or way of doing
things, that is unconsciously internalised, and as a practice is unquestioned. For instance, patterns of female exclusion, and the manner in
which gender difference influences leadership and training, are regarded
as common sense by family decision-makers, because they see it as a
way of producing effective managers and future heirs for the businesses.
The preservation of such business wealth, the male line and the wider
family status and identity are powerful endorsements that such action
is rational, meaningful, legitimate and purposeful. The notion of
habitus serving as a class strategy is embedded in, and is an elaboration
of, culture as the reproduction of patterns of rational socio-economic
behaviour over time. This argument is transparent in respect of business succession, when the practice of seeking business leaders within
the family seems contrary to market values. The validity of Robert and
Holyroyd’s (1992) notion of substantive rationality is borne out, because
it places in context why particularistic values, a legacy from kinship
systems and an earlier form of class society have a rationality of their
own, which can be compatible with modern rationality, in that calculation underlines kinship relations in order to further the business.
Theoretical perspectives and perceptions of
minority business
It is necessary to locate this argument within the ongoing debates about
the processes of business formation, and also to say something about
the way in which the literature is organised. The segregated presentation of business formation arises out of particular traditions and interests. For instance, the study of ethnic minority entrepreneurship has
been confined to academic disciplines dealing with questions of social
concern such as migration, race and ethnicity. Theoretically, this
constitutes a large body of literature which can be divided into three
main approaches, the materialist structuralist (Anwar, 1979; Aldrich,
1980; Bonacich and Modell, 1980; Hoel, 1982; Aldrich et al., 1984;
Morokvasic, 1987; Phizacklea, 1988; Morokvasic et al., 1990; Scully,
1994); the interactionist approach (Waldinger, 1984; Bun and Hui,
1995); and the cultural approach (Boissevain, 1990; Clark, Peach and
Vertovec, 1990; Werbner, 1990). The first two begin from a demand-side
perspective and focus on the material constraints and the limited opportunities open to working-class minority entrepreneurs, arguing that it
is blocked opportunities through racial discrimination (Phizacklea, 1990;
154 Class, Gender and the Family Business
Bun and Hui, 1995) as opposed to the specificity of ethnic minority
culture (Werbner, 1990) that act as the push factor in the rise of minority ethnic entrepreneurship. This evaluation reveals that the claimed
advantages associated with ethnicity are undoubtedly double-edged.
Although such entrepreneurs find within their own communities more
favourable terms in the sourcing of capital, labour and markets for their
goods and services, the socio-economic costs are also borne within
their own communities, some of which in gender terms. For instance,
Phizacklea (1990) and Morokvasic (1987) argue that so-called ethnic
advantage means that unpaid female family members work long hours
running small enterprises in marginal markets.
This literature clearly shows that rates of entrepreneurial activity are
not synonymous with business strength, for such enterprise is predominantly an alternative to unemployment, is small-scale and structurally
peripheral, remaining vibrant only through cost-cutting strategies
(Phizacklea, 1990). The structural expression of this is the enclave
economy particularly evident in the small retail outlets serving only
ethnic minority and working-class communities. Ram’s (1994) ethnographic study of the clothing industry and his description of ethnic
minority enterprise as a series of coping strategies show the wider significance of this model. Other very influential writers, such as Aldrich
et al. (1984), suggest that this model remains the reality for the majority of working-class minority entrepreneurs, suggesting that enterprise
does not produce the upward mobility so vigorously espoused by advocates of the enterprise culture.
The cultural approach is essentially a supply-side explanation and
ignores social class relations and equally takes for granted the enabling effect of social class attributes (Werbner, 1984; Clark, Peach and
Vetrovec, 1990; Rubeinstein, 1990). This is a very important point in
respect of this study for most of the ethnic minority entrepreneurs as
well as their white majority counterparts are middle-class and are advantaged relative to their co-minority ethnic counterparts. At the heart of
the cultural approach is the notion that particular cultural (ethnic)
attributes such as a group’s beliefs, values and resources have the
empowering effect of being able to transform social disadvantage into
material advantage, suggesting that their distinctiveness and essence lies
in the specificity of ethnicity. Accordingly, the particular belief system
is predisposed towards enterprise which embodies a set of interacting
principles, such as the moral good of self-reliance, discipline, the rigours
of hard work, frugality and wealth accumulation. More seriously, the
primacy given to ethnicity leads to, or reproduces, racial stereotyping
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 155
and the notion of flawed cultures (Rubeinstein, 1990; Peach, quoted in
The Independent, 12 June 1996), when one set of values is privileged over
another (Lessnoff, 1994). For instance, Peach’s (1996) work draws a distinction between a perception of the entrepreneurial, resourceful and
upwardly mobile Anglo-Jews and Asians and the allegedly less enterprising Afro-Caribbeans and Irish. This thinking lends itself to the
notion of a hierarchy of cultures and the reinvigoration of the negative
racial stereotyping of some groups (The Independent, 21 June 1996: 3).
Conveniently, it shifts attention away from the opportunity structure
and the importance of class relations and class identity.
It is at this point that cultural explanations coincide with the birth
of neoliberalism during the 1980s when policy-makers and politicians
promoted the notion of the enterprise culture (Keat and Abercrombie,
1991). There are variants of this discourse, which indicates that the
neoliberal message is selective and has reached white entrepreneurs and
Asian communities only. In the first instance, the biographic literature
(Lynn, 1974; Kennedy, 1980) recounts stories of ‘rags to riches’ business
success, a claim which has been repudiated by Davidoff and Hall (1987)
and Mulholland (1996a, 1996b).
In the case of the Asian communities, their entrepreneurial reputation has been promoted by Conservative politicians and the broadsheet
newspapers. For instance, stories of the rising number of Asian millionaires appeared in the Daily Telegraph (21 August 1984), Management
Today (1990) and The Independent (12 June 1996). These and similar
accounts portray an image of Asian business as high-powered and glamorous, another variant of ‘the rags to riches’ theme. On the one hand,
these accounts enhance the Asian entrepreneurial reputation, while, on
the other hand, it greatly exaggerates the strength of most ethnic minority businesses.
Both strands of literature make similar claims about the merits of
enterprise in that they promote what can be described as the workingclass entrepreneurial model: disadvantaged groups such as working-class
people and migrant labourers, provided they choose business, can be
transformed into international business magnates. In a tacit way it fuels
what Ward and Jenkins (1984) might describe as a blame culture because
it implies that poverty and racism can be cordoned off as supply-side
problems.
The achievements of the working-class entrepreneurial model is overstated, because a few businesses correspond to this model. The present
study failed to identify any redundant coalminers or former factory
workers-turned-successful business people. For the most part, the busi-
156 Class, Gender and the Family Business
ness families were middle-class in terms of their family background,
formal education, training and former occupation. Nevertheless, it is
important to recognise that in exceptional cases the labouring entrepreneurial model and the working-class entrepreneurial counterpart has
a certain validity, when individuals succeed in intra-generational mobility through enterprise. In the American context, Bun and Hui (1995)
and Bonacich (1988) lend some support to this view.
Two entrepreneurial models are identified, the first and dominant one
is the middle-class entrepreneurial model which includes most white
majority businesses and in the case of the minority business refers to
the Asian businesses of East African origin and Anglo-Jewish businesses.
The second model, the migrant labouring/working-class model, refers
to incomers from India and Ireland and entrepreneurs from a workingclass background. Members of these groups are very different because
they lack the business background and education characterising their
middle-class counterparts and spend many years working as labourers
prior to business start-up.
Questions of ethnicity
In order to examine these arguments it is important to comment on the
ethnic identities of the 70 businesses whilst taking account of the age
of the enterprise and their location in the economy. It was shown earlier
that 26 of the businesses were inherited and managed by secondgeneration owners, whilst 44 businesses were newly established, or firstgeneration businesses. Showing that there are fewer inherited businesses
raises interesting questions about the character of managerial strategies
and why some families managed to preserve their business through different generations of ownership. In turning to the question of the ethnic
identity of the business owners, 52 are white majority owners and 18
are members of ethnic minority groups. It should be noted that one of
the primary aims of the study was to convey some sense of the way
‘millionaire business families’ managed their wealth, and this led to a
bias in the ethnic composition of the sample.
The 18 minority ethnic businesses consist of one Irish, three AngloJewish, three Indian origin and eleven East African Asian origin. The
over-representation of East African businesses needs some comment.
They are a very distinctive group in that they have a very different
migration pattern. When they first migrated to East Africa they occupied a middle position in the economy as traders and merchants (Clark,
Peach and Vertovec, 1990; Twaddle, 1990) before setting up in business
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 157
in the 1970s and 1980s in Britain. They were educated in the tradition
of the British system, spoke fluent English and had established links
with the United Kingdom. The issue of the generational phase of the
businesses is blurred, because they had owned business in Kenya and
Uganda until they became victims of abrupt mass deportations. Others
were students in Britain and later set up businesses. Although they
were placed in unenviable circumstances, they were essentially aspiring
middle-class business people looking for entrepreneurial opportunities
as opposed to employment. Another factor explaining their overrepresentation relates to the manner in which they settled in cities in
the Midlands and in the North, where they were able to obtain labour
at more competitive prices. The other attraction of these regions is that
they had small and medium-sized businesses in textiles and knitting
that were available to incoming entrepreneurs. It was often these
restructured business that were sold to the incomers.
Ethnicities and market position
Table 9.1 shows the spread of the business categories across different
economic sectors. Distribution is fairly even, except that over half of
Table 9.1 Distribution of ethnic minority and white majority ‘new’ and
‘old’ businesses
Business sector
‘New’ Ethnic
Minority
Businesses
‘New’ White
Majority
Businesses
Old’ White
Businesses
Total
–
6
15
21
1
–
1
5
1
3
3
8
Land
Civil Engineering,
Quarries &
Construction
Manufacturing
Textiles
(non-specific)
Property
Finance
Food & Drink
Service Sector
(non-specific)
Diversified
2
1
3
–
2
1
–
–
1
1
–
2
5
3
3
2
1
10
7
4
2
1
10
15
Totals
18
26
26
70
158 Class, Gender and the Family Business
the inherited businesses are in land, and proportionately more of the
‘new’ business are diversified and have investments in more that one
economic sector. First, the concentration of the ‘old’ businesses in land
is an important finding, for it identifies one of the key strategies in
which wealtholding is preserved across generations. Interestingly, as
Table 9.2 indicates, there is a tendency amongst the ‘new’ business, and
particularly for the ethnic minority enterprises, to buy into property
while white businesses have made considerable investments in land,
simultaneously running businesses in different sectors. The logic of the
spreading of business assets is explained by Wedgewood (1929), who
argues that, following land, property is the second most stable capital
investment. However, diversification can also be accounted for in patterns of economic restructuring. Anwar (1979) observes that newcomers often enter declining sectors where there is less competition and
entry requirements are lower. For instance, the Asians in some of the
northern cities entered the jewellery business vacated by increasingly
socially mobile Anglo-Jews. A similar pattern has been observed for this
study when ethnic minority business at point of entry went into retail,
textiles and the clothing industries. This has an opportunistic aspect for
it is regarded as a temporary measure while planning and seeking better
business ventures, but it is important to locate this trend within the
wider precursors of business entry.
Business start-up and entrepreneurial models
The precursors to business entry for both entrepreneurial models and
majority and minority categories are the same. These include low entry
requirements, low capital investment privately sourced, low-level technology, a background in business, high educational attainment, business expertise or knowledge of the entry sector at start-up either through
work experience or professional training and access to family labour.
The next example discusses how an East African business family overcame the limitations of entry into the depressed retail sector. They used
a combination of resources – for instance, market awareness, the use
of social (Boissevain, 1974; Burt, 1992) and ethnic (Werbner, 1984) networks, cautious financing, opportunism and skilled family labour – in
the build-up of a medium-sized international exporting business:
‘We were Ugandan refugees and we came in 1972 when I was seven. My
father had businesses there, several petrol stations and other trading businesses, which was quite similar to what we are doing now. But we had to
Date of entry
1968
1964
1979
1970s
1972
1970s
1971
1977
1974
1972
Business number
E1 (Indian origin)
E2 (Indian origin)
E3 (Anglo-Jewish)
E4 (Anglo-Jewish)
E6 (East African origin)
E9 (East African origin)
E11 (East African origin)
E12 (East African origin)
E13 (East African origin)
E14 (East African origin)
Manufacture of clothing
Grocery/Car dealership/Knitwear
manufacturer
Partnership in accountancy
Supermarket/Cinema
Printing
Manufacture
Tie manufacturer
Tie manufacturing
Market stall
Clothing manufacture
Start-up business
Table 9.2 Diversified business among ethnic minority and majority categories
Accountancy and hotels
Estate agency/Insurance/Travel property
Hairdressing/Property
Manufacture/Property development/
Manages overseas portfolio for family
International business/Exports
pharmaceuticals and textiles
Wholesale/Export/Property
development
Wholesale/Export/Property
development
Tie manufacturing/Property
development
Art gallery/Property
development/Bookshops
Fabric dyeing/Export
Business shift
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 159
1954
1952
1970s
1979
1960s
1960s
E16 (Indian origin)
E18 (Irish origin)
NI.23
NI 24
NI.25
NI.26
E refers to ethnic.
NI refers to ‘new’ ‘non-ethnic’.
OI refers to ‘old’ ‘non-ethnic’.
Total = 17
OI.16
Date of entry
Business number
Table 9.2 Continued
Estate
Restaurant
Food manufacture
Property
Self-employed building trade
Landlord
Self-employed plant hire
Start-up business
Estate agency/Property development
Plant maintenance/
International client/Open cast
mining/Land for exploration
Speculative building/Motor cycle
manufacture/Estate farming
Advertising/Employment agencies/
Asset-stripping/Playing stock market/
Property
Food manufacture/
Estate farming
Restaurant chain/Farming and civil
engineering businesses in
USA/Niche hotel
Estate/Stockbroking
Business shift
160 Class, Gender and the Family Business
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 161
leave that. The first thing he did was to operate a market stall selling shoes.
He wanted to do something on his own. Off his own back, yes. He then
found a partner and they gradually built the business to seven or eight
shops. He later bought his partner out and gradually built up his small
empire. My father was always the father figure, because my grandfather
died young, and he had to take on the responsibility for his five brothers
studying here, some were at university, and others were doing accountancy
and so on.’
The next step was to relocate the family and business from London
to the Midlands where the cost of labour was more competitive and
co-ethnic labour was available. The retail businesses were sold and the
capital reinvested in a former hosiery plant for the manufacture of
fashion clothing, initially supplying the domestic market. It is the character of the next move that separates this entrepreneur from ethnic
minority migrant and white working-class counterparts:
‘My father then with a colleague set up another factory in Nigeria, which
was booming at the time. The reason my father chose Africa is he has got
it in his blood all the time. He can work with the people there, he understands them. He was interested in trading and saw an opportunity there.
There was a market there also for industrial machinery, petro-chemicals,
pharmaceuticals, computers, and so on.’
In this example the importance of experience and background cannot
be overstated, for this entrepreneur drew on international business connections and business skills to develop the business into an export
concern. Yet the family argue that this move into new commodities and
new markets is an extension of the earlier business, which indicates the
sense in which continuity is regarded as important. It could also be
argued at a substantive level that knowledge about business processes
influenced the direction of this enterprise:
‘Really, we have not changed since my grandfather began the company. We
were then a trading company and we are now a trading company, but we
have many international clients. We are interested in buying and selling,
in sourcing a good product at a reasonable price and then selling it on to
a client with a good commission.’
The expansion of the business coincided with the incorporation of
the founder’s five siblings into the business: ‘As my uncles finished their
162 Class, Gender and the Family Business
education they began to join the business.’ At the time of interview this
family had established two branches in Nigeria, two in East Africa, one
in Hong Kong and a branch in Dubai. The business was run by two generations of the same family, and each of the six brothers had responsibility for a branch of the business, while the local businesses were
managed by a combination of recruited professionals and the son of the
founding member. The founding member was chief executive and chair
of the entire enterprise.
In terms of the source of capital for this business, characteristically
the phase of restart required very little money, and the family claim to
have had no reserves and typically argue that growth is organic, supplemented by family labour and short-term borrowing within the business community. Employing several male siblings in the management
of the business is consistent with the management practices characteristic of industrial family capitalism, providing career paths, while also
safeguarding against labour market discrimination. Middle-class ethnic
minority entrepreneurs are reluctant to admit that the family business
shields them from labour market discrimination, but this is implicitly
acknowledged in the ethos of paternalism characteristic of family
capitalism:
‘My father was interested in building something for us as a family, to be
independent and to provide for us. To that goal he committed himself 100
per cent.’
What seems important in explaining the growth of this particular
business is knowledge of markets combined with business connections and entrepreneurial expertise. Arguably, what differentiates this
example has been the range and quality of enabling resources, which
are middle-class attributes such as the former business background, business expertise, business connections aligned with market awareness and
the strategic incorporation of well-educated male family members into
the enterprise. The overall point is that this case is not representative
of the Asian business community for, as Phizacklea (1990) would argue,
most of those entering marginal sectors remain there. As a departure
from the migrant labouring model, this is one version of the middleclass entrepreneurial model discussed by Bonacich (1988) and Bun and
Hui (1995).
Similarly, the following are examples of white majority and other
ethnic minority entrepreneurs whose businesses reflect the low entry
requirement, but nevertheless who have succeeded in building up sub-
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 163
stantial businesses. However, what seems to be the key to their progress
is the expertise of the business heads and their connections. These
strengths are very often gained through the accountancy profession,
which are then used as the spring-board to business. In discussing two
such examples similarities and differences are explored.
In the case of an East African entrepreneur an accountancy business
acted as the foundation from which to reinvest into upmarket hotels
and property. Mirroring the typical start-up profile, this entrepreneur
was motivated by the lack of prospects as an employee and became a
self-employed accountant. A business of this sort needed only a nominal
capital outlay, the crucial issue at this stage being access to clients whom
he was able to poach from his former employer, while also developing
a client base from within the nascent Asian business community:
‘My father was in a managerial position with the M. Group who owned
sugar plantations, glass factories, that sort of thing. My elder brother is in
business in Kenya and I was sent off to England to study accountancy. In
1973 I had just trained as a Chartered Accountant, and because of the difficult political situation back in Kenya I saw no possibility of going back.
I joined a local firm, where, whilst I was working reasonably hard, I didn’t
see any prospect of a partnership or a reward for hard work. So I decided
to start out on my own.’
Business growth was initially limited through restrictions on advertising and in having to rely largely on small jobs from minority co-ethnic
clients. After building up a client base over a period of five years, the
next step was to relocate to prestigious high street premises among the
white majority business sector. Although this opened the business to
the white client market, which now accounts for about a quarter of the
income, and while the aim was to increase this market share, it was also
to maintain the Asian clients:
‘Well, you see our East African clients are as important as ever, because
over the years they have grown considerably and we have grown with them.’
This poses a challenge to cultural explanation of the enclave (Werbner,
1990), which suggests that the periphery reproduces itself over time and
indicates some degree of organic growth and business interaction well
beyond ethnic boundaries. In 1980 this entrepreneur took the decisive
step of taking on a partner with a view to making investments in the
property market, because accountancy was also seen to have limitations:
164 Class, Gender and the Family Business
‘Well, you see, while accountancy is a good business and is a good training in knowing about money and finance, but it is too time-oriented. You
charge for the time you spend on a job, and I wanted to do something more.
So around 1980 I started looking for investment property, hotels, that sort
of thing. I bought a number of hotels, brought my brother in on the business, refurbished the hotels and gave them a corporate identity. One of my
brothers is Operations Director.’
Nevertheless the advantage of running a professional business of this
kind is that it is a learning environment which provides the opportunity to evaluate business strategies, and offers a unique insight into
possible markets. Such knowledge helped to identify and assess the
potential of such a venture which required considerable capital investment. This was raised through a variety of sources (organic growth in
the other business, within the family, business colleagues and the
banks), which again demonstrates the resourcefulness of such middle
class families. This entrepreneur was also able to tap into family capital
and expertise when another brother, a hotelier, was able to make a substantial investment:
‘My brother, who had come a bit later on to this country, had quite a bit
of capital of his own and he had his own businesses here in hotels and
property, so he provided some capital, and a few other friends, so they are
shareholders.’
The argument that Asians are finding it easier to raise business capital
through the banks is borne out with some qualification in the following comment:
‘Because of my professional background, I have got contacts with all the
major clearing banks, and, you know, other banks coming into the area. I
think if I wasn’t a professional man then, yes, I probably would have found
it a bit more difficult in raising finance. Our policy is to keep gearing low
and to conserve and invest. And of course, because of what we wanted to
achieve we did borrow, but carefully.’
This is important and shows the significance of social class attributes,
and is a convincing example of the influence of professional status.
Contrary to the cultural analysis, this comment illustrates the ways in
which business networks built around social class identity transcend
ethnic boundaries. While there is considerable debate among writers
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 165
about the availability of finance capital for the small and the ethnic
minority business sector, what has become clear from this study is that
when migrant labouring entrepreneurs first attempted to secure startup capital from the banks they were refused. However, once they established their businesses and they had proved themselves, they were
welcomed as banking customers. Nevertheless, though family capitalists are not averse to borrowing in the formal sector, there is a tendency
to want to keep it to a minimum, the logic of which seems to be to
avoid undue dependence on the banking institutions.
Similarly it was professional training in accountancy alongside work
experience in a manufacturing company that led a white majority entrepreneur to establish an international, medium-sized multi-plant manufacturing company in adhesives with sales and distribution branches in
France, Germany and Holland:
‘My business started back in 1964 with two of my colleagues. We worked
for a company which was principally engaged in making surgical selfadhesive applications. We realised that there was more of a market in the
commercial adhesive tape field than in surgical plaster. And we were thinking of taking the plunge, and going for that on our own. Then things were
rather precipitated because suddenly our company was taken over and
moved away from the area. I had a financial background and was a trained
cost accountant and we decided at that point to have a go at making commercial tapes ourselves.’
The characteristic pattern – a professional background, experience in
the production processes and knowledge of the market environment –
shows the consistency between professional paid employment and
enterprise. Consistent with their ethnic minority counterparts, it was
increasingly towards the family that this entrepreneur looked for investment capital:
‘We had very little money to start with. We had a few hundred pounds,
and we raised around the same amount from parents and the in-laws. We
are not talking of big sums. And of course, the banks. But we didn’t need
a lot.’
With this money they found a plant, bought some of their former
employer’s machinery and began production on a very small scale. This
business, like the others, conforms to the low entry requirement and is
characteristically low-level technology, but what seems crucial is the
166 Class, Gender and the Family Business
reliance on different kinds of expertise shared between this entrepreneur and his partners, which was a mix of costing competencies, knowledge of markets and production processes. Like the ethnic minority
counterparts, this entrepreneur emphasises product development,
market expansion, organic growth and short-term borrowing:
‘We expanded only incrementally with our sales as the driving force and
we did this principally by concentrating on a fairly narrow sector of the
business and putting an emphasis on the quality of the product and managing it as effectively as possible. We financed this by simply ploughing
our profits that we made back into the company and by using our normal
bank overdraft.’
Over a period of twenty years this business bought three plants, two
for production on green-field sites and one for distribution, while also
establishing overseas sales and distribution units. This whole approach
is risk-averse, the logic of which is to ensure internal entrepreneurial
control over the financial direction of the business whilst accommodating rationally influenced kinship interests:
‘Our sons, my son and my colleague’s son, have now joined us. It was
always on the cards. They joined us in their late twenties, they already
have work experience, professional qualifications and degrees. The aim was
to accommodate them, and we have. For instance, take my son. He is now
running the French company. He is a French speaker. Likewise, my colleague’s son got a degree, joined ICI computers as a graduate trainee, was
actually running their service support operation. We have now appointed
him and he is responsible for the materials acquisition. Our hope is they
eventually take over and take the company forward. We are looking to keep
the business independent; we think the prospects for the company are better
served that way. We employ over 300 people and, of course, we have a
responsibility to them. We spend quite a lot of time thinking about where
the company is going. We are a bit different in that we are probably the
only independent company in the trade of any size with our turnover as
opposed to ones that are part of a larger group.’
This comment is illustrative of the views of both majority and ethnic
minority founding entrepreneurs and resonates of Penrose’s (1980)
notion of the company man, illustrated in Chapter 6. Company identity
is based on the reputation of the product, which is also embedded in
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 167
family identity. At the same time, the belief is that the business should
be preserved in its present form because it accommodates a constellation of interests, serving the market, creating a surplus whilst
addressing kinship interests which means the incorporation of the
entrepreneurs’ sons.
As the earlier chapters have shown, the arbitrary character of gender
exclusion becomes transparent when the event of business foundation
and growth is linked to the distribution of senior managerial positions
and business inheritance. For instance, in over half the ‘new’ white
majority and ethnic minority businesses, wives were invisible business
partners and were denied formal recognition (Mulholland, 1996a).
Wives in both categories contributed in a variety of ways, by working
directly in the business in a wide range of tasks (which were rarely
credited) and through financial investment. In some cases their marriages led their husbands to expand and upgrade their businesses considerably. In essence, they provide core resources to the business
partnership (Mulholland, 1996a). While supporting Hoel (1982),
Morokvasic (1987) and Phizacklea (1990), who argue for the centrality
women’s labour in textiles and clothing-related businesses, with women
providing key components of the labour process, such as technical skill
and managerial competencies, this study offers evidence suggesting that
this model of women’s and wifely contributions can be extended to a
far wider range of business sectors (see also Phizacklea and Ram, 1996).
However, paradoxically, the centrality of female kin as business partners
runs parallel with their marginalisation in favour of male kin. For
instance, as earlier chapters suggest, when male heirs are ready to
assume their places in the ‘new’ business this can often be at the wife’s
expense – she steps down as invisible manager or director and partner,
and the son steps in as highly visible and much enhanced de jure
partner to his father/owner/chief executive and as heir-in-waiting to
complete the last phase of the apprenticeship training.
Ethnicities and human capital, cultural or
class practices
The first key feature of a shared business strategy for both ethnic minority and majority categories, which involves the family in the production and the reproduction of a particular form of human capital, is the
emphasis on formal education. This is to ensure that there is an elite
168 Class, Gender and the Family Business
pool from which to select suitable heirs and managers for the family
business. Marceau (1989) observes the same trend amongst European
business families. The business families share a strong belief in the value
of education, and like the majority families, those originating from East
Africa received an education based on the British model. There are, of
course, some important differences – some of the white majority and
Anglo-Jewish entrepreneurs attended top public schools. On the other
hand, some of the ethnic minority entrepreneurs were educated in the
independent sector and intend to educate their own children there.
Moreover, the East African Asians in particular made considerable financial investment and sent their children to England to study in the independent school sector, followed by professional training in accountancy
or university. As part of their training, some joined large companies
seeking experience before joining the family business.
Two of the three Anglo-Jewish entrepreneurs attended a top public
school or an independent school. The belief in education is again
demonstrated by the fact that as many ethnic minority heads possessed
qualifications as did their white majority counterparts. For instance,
twelve (66 per cent) of the minority ethnic business heads as opposed
to 61 per cent of the white majority business heads had an academic
qualification. In terms of achievement, three of the ethnic minority
heads had a degree, two had ‘A’ levels, one had eight ‘O’ levels and three
were chartered accountants.
By contrast there was a higher incidence of public and independent
school attendance among the majority business heads, and twelve were
educated at independent or top public schools. Given that private
education is more valued, some white majority business heads were
relatively advantaged and possessed a ‘desirable’ class identity which
constituted a form of social capital not afforded to their ethnic counterparts (with the exceptions of the Anglo-Jewish heads), an advantage
which often led to business opportunities closed to their working-class
and migrant ethnic minority counterparts. Additionally, 61 per cent (16)
of the white majority business leaders were formally qualified. Six had
a degree, one of whom also had an MBA, three others were educated to
‘A’ levels and one had eight ‘O’ levels. Two were accountants, others
were RAF officers, and three were craft-trained. The high incidence of
educational attainment was part of a wider socialisation and wealth
accumulation strategy, often constituting the first stage of a type of male
apprenticeship and preparation for leadership and part of patriarchal
exclusionary practices which circumscribed the kinds of roles and positions female kin could play in the business.
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 169
Succession and leadership training
‘The silverspoon syndrome’
The notion of the shared business strategy includes a long preparation
which can be described as a gendered male apprenticeship which is
focused, selective and geared to business management, but which
excludes family women. This is essentially a male career path, in that
all the business heads, regardless of ethnicity or phase of business development, experience a very similar trajectory. This results in the sharing
of a strong belief in the inculcation of particular values and achieving
high standards of education appropriate to business management. For
instance the chairperson of a majority, fifth-generation, brewing company explained:
‘I was sent to Eton, this was followed by the Guards, the shop floor and
then joining the brewery. After Sandhurst and a year in the City it was
important that I was brought down to earth, so I joined another brewing
house as a trainee on the retailing side.’
A newly appointed ethnic minority director of a design and dyeing
export ‘new’ business followed a broadly similar career path:
‘I got a BSC in management science from Bradford University. This gave
me a very good view of the marketing and the financial side of the business. I then did a short course to learn about the technical aspects of the
dyeing business. When I left university I though it is a good idea to go and
see how other industries are run, so I joined the insurance industry purely
to learn something about sales techniques.’
Another ethnic minority respondent and heir to the international
export ‘new’ business traces a familiar pattern:
‘I got good “A” Levels and went up to the LSE and got a degree in economics and management science. I was quite interested in the Stock Exchange
and the stock market, and I did the various examinations for the Securities Association. My intention was to try and get some outside experience
and bring something new into the company, possibly some new ideas of
what is happening in the City, and ideas about finance and see how we
could use it here.’
170 Class, Gender and the Family Business
This very entrenched practice with some modification also applies to
working class migrant business families. The heir to a civil engineering
‘new’ business explains:
‘My Dad believed in education, and as the eldest child there was a lot of
pressure on me. I went to . . . a public school, and did fairly well there
academically, as did my other brothers. My father was keen for me to
join him, but my mother persuaded him that I should be allowed to go
to university. I then studied civil engineering . . . It was an opportunity
to delay coming into the company. As the eldest son, I knew that was
expected of me.’
While this educational regime is intended to imbue essential social
and technical skills, character-building forms another aspect of it. This
requires prospective heads to show that they deserve their privileged
status, and that they appreciate and value the businesses they are to
inherit and manage. It is a means by which to counteract ‘the silver spoon
syndrome’. When they join the family business, their first jobs are lowstatus and unpleasant. This is part of the training and socialisation
process and is a reminder of the importance of sobriety and possible
bad times ahead in the case of poor leadership. The link between
sobriety, responsibility and business as the symbol of achievement is a
value which is shared by all the business heads. The chair of the ‘old’
brewing business explained:
‘Part of that involved working as a barman in one of the toughest pubs in
S. For a start, it helped me to get to know our business and to also appreciate what I have been given. I became chair at the age of thirty-three, and
I own most of the shares, well 90 per cent, so I have the power if I wanted
to sell up everything tomorrow and not work another day. But my first duty
is to further grow the value of this family business and to pass it on in
better condition to the next generation. This can only be through business
growth and not just profit.’
Typically, this example is illustrative of the manner in which the heirs
of inherited businesses beneficiaries draw on the less pleasant aspects of
their apprenticeship in order to rationalise their privileged positions.
Similarly, the 27-year-old director and sole heir of the ‘new’ design and
dyeing company points out:
‘I worked in the warehouse and on the dyeing machines on the shop floor.
That’s where I started in the company. This was to remind me where my
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 171
family started. It is only over the last year that my father has made me a
director. My objective is to build wealth. My father looked out for opportunities, I have to build on that. I’m in the business because I chose to
join. On the other hand, I’m the eldest son and I feel very responsible both
for the business and for the family and to my father for having achieved
so much.’
However, the idea of hardship is one means of linking two generations of family entrepreneurs. As Chapters 6 and 7 illustrate, successful
businesses are built through the effort and sacrifice of the founding
entrepreneurs. In this context parental sacrifice (which, as Chapter 6
reveals, men claim for themselves) is exchanged for a son’s loyalties to
the founder, the family and the business. The financial director of the
‘new’ international export business elaborates:
‘My friends thought I’d go straight into a directorship, you know the silver
spoon syndrome. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. As soon as I graduated and came up from London I ended up sweeping the floors and driving
vans, labouring, and working my way up. My father didn’t just hand me this.’
Similarly, the heir to the civil engineering business pitted the establishment of the business against his father’s efforts, a timely reminder
of what is expected from him:
‘We were, very fortunately, born into this family and have got a lot of
things that other people haven’t got. But what we were given was an appreciation of how hard my father had to work to get us here. The point to
appreciate is that other people are striving to get as far as he has. The
reason my father has survived is that he is very professional about the
service he provides and the quality of the work he does. And although I
have made major changes in steering the business away from the kind of
work Dad did, nevertheless I work on the same principle.’
The prevailing theme running through these comments is the
dialectic between privilege and hardship, and privilege and responsibility, suggesting the repercussions of profligacy among business successors. This shows another aspect of the logic of substantive rationality
(Roberts and Holyroyd, 1992) when particular values are encouraged in
order to preserve the processes of wealth creation.
Daughters are excluded from this process and receive a different type
of education. Even when they demonstrate an interest and acquire
172 Class, Gender and the Family Business
appropriate skills, the assumption is that they lack that mysterious but
most definitely male quality called leadership, something which wives
also apparently lack. This gendered and exclusionary practice constitutes part of the shared business culture, which can be made sense of
when again drawing on Robert’s and Holyroyd’s (1992: 159) notion of
substantive rationality. What is seemingly a particularistic practice is
underlined by a version of modern rationality, when senior male kin
calculate the potential in what is also a familial relationship to develop
the growing empire, by choosing a son imbued with the appropriate
qualities who will succeed as future leader. Whilst the purpose of this
virtual apprenticeship is to identify and train suitable managerial leaders
and heirs for the family business, it is strongly tied in with primogeniture, a practice long associated with the propertied classes, when the
core property is passed along the male line, and where the eldest son is
given first choice (Thompson, 1976). At the appropriate moment the
carefully chosen and trained heir assumes his rightful inheritance,
repeating the long-established practice of primogeniture. The belief is
that the heir should also be the sole owner, or is the majority shareholder giving him the power to control the business. However, in
vertically integrated businesses, male siblings who demonstrate worth
and appropriate skill may be appointed to senior positions within the
business.
The negative side of such management practices is that they bar
female siblings from effective participation within the family business.
The dyeing and textile manufacturing and export business highlights the
ways in which girls are discriminated against within the family firm.
The son had inherited the dyeing business, whilst the daughter had a
temporary post in his business. Although they are equally qualified,
their positions, status, authority and sense of involvement are very
unequal. The son, aged 28, is director and heir, and has responsibility
for one of the plants. After university, he spent a year with another
company in sales insurance prior to joining the business, and claims to
have ‘worked his way up from the shop floor’ where he learned the practical side of the business. Typically, such a meteoric rise within the
family business is not an experience that is shared by daughters unless
they are the chosen heirs.
His sister is two years younger. She has a degree in fashion design.
She is also interested in dyeing and wants to work in the business.
However, she described herself as a freelance fashion designer whilst
‘helping out’ on a temporary basis. Her career ambitions are, nevertheless, firmly located within the business, and she intends to do further
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 173
training in dyeing with a view to greater involvement. The next
comment illustrates the rivalry between the siblings and the manner in
which the principal heir in this case thwarts his sister’s ambitions.
During the interview and unprompted, he interrupts to illuminate his
plans for his sister:
‘Well, you see, we don’t expect too much from A. It’s nice to have her
around while we can. And although we would like her to be involved, we
know there will be a stage when she won’t be with us. She’ll get married
one day.’
(Heir to Table 3.1, N11)
To which she ruefully replied:
‘Yes, you will be influential. I’ll be married off .’
(Daughter of couple N11, Table 3.1)
This comment is illustrative of the manner in which beneficiaries
draw on domestic ideologies to undermine the organisational effectiveness of female kin.
Rivalry between brothers and sisters of this sort is not uncommon,
and like the wives, female siblings do not always acquiesce to male
domination. Despite the brother’s disclaimer, this woman has very clear
ambitions within the business, but her job gives her very little authority. The brother’s position, by contrast, gives him much more authority. In such situations, female kin are often constrained not only by their
lack of power, but also in ideas of family loyalty (Cohen, 1974). To
protest would be to break rank. It is not the lack of appropriate skills
amongst women as the male partners argued in the earlier chapters, but
rather male dominance which accounts for female ambivalence. As
these examples of ‘new’ business families demonstrate, the senior positions men hold are due to the differential treatment of sons and
daughters. As such, this activity represents yet another strand in an
overall strategy of female exclusion.
There are two levels in which Bourdieu’s (1976) notion of habitus
explains this. First, decisions are made according to tradition, where
customs define the relationship between the business and the family in
the expectation that the particular managerial approach will safeguard
the business and the social status of the family. At a second level, it
reveals the manner in which the actions of middle-class business families are socially and economically embedded class practices, because, by
174 Class, Gender and the Family Business
developing and protecting the business, they also maintain their social
class status.
Business opportunism, social capital and ethnicity
The third dimension of the notion of a shared business culture refers to
the idea of business opportunism. Business opportunism is best
described as a business practice which extends beyond the formal
boundaries of business activity and engages forms of social relationships
which are instrumental in intent. The value of social relationships is
that they either create or access business opportunities, a feature of
majority and ethnic minority business. In this sense, exchange and
value underlie different permutations of social relations. Exchange
underpins Burt’s (1992) notion of social networks, Boissevain’s (1974)
social entrepreneurs, Yancey et al.’s (1976) notion of manufactured ethnicity and Werbner’s (1990) discussion of the cultural meaning attributed
to gift-giving and wedding attendance among Pakistani Muslims.
Although they are rooted in different cultural settings and their outward
expression is social in form, they are in essence instrumental and opportunistic, and create what Burt (1992) calls social capital. The value in
these relationships is that they are an information resource to the
business.
There are different expressions of how social capital operates. For
instance, Boissevain’s (1974) notion of the social entrepreneur in which
the individual through family and friends builds up a system of credits
in which s/he is owed favours best describes the manner in which a
migrant entrepreneur from India first entered the property market and
built up a markedly successful business in estate agency and property
development. At first the banks refused him a mortgage and he was
forced to seek funds amongst friends:
‘I saw this house, it was £1,200; the problem was money. I borrowed £400
from each of three friends and told them I’d pay them back within the year.
I then rented that house as well as doing all the overtime I could. I paid
back the first £50 to each of them within three months, and I kept my
word. Then some were bringing their families from India and I helped with
that and getting them a house.’
He bought a cheap house, and became a landlord to his co-ethnic
friends and other incomers. They pooled their earnings and savings in
order to finance individual family commitments providing housing and
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 175
family support, but the quid pro quo was that this arrangement also
facilitated his ambitions as a landlord for he bought additional
property, which he then financed and managed on the basis of rental
purchase (Dahya, 1974). This was a temporary measure for he secured
co-operation from the banking institutions by being able to demonstrate the viability of his business plans.
On the other hand, being a member of a particular group, or social
network, can be used to create what Burt (1992) defines as structural
holes. For instance, an Asian business head wanted a business partner
he could trust in order to implement his plan, which was to purchase
and operate a knitwear and a dyeing plant, both of which were expected
to go into receivership:
‘I came from Uganda in 1972 and I opened some retail shops, then in 1974
I started another business buying and selling second-hand cars. I wanted
to go into something bigger and was interested in a knitting factory. It was
very difficult to raise money from the banks, but in my case it was OK. I
only wanted to borrow a small amount which I did successfully because I
knew this particular bank beforehand. I mean in Uganda I was the distributor for Citroën cars, so I had a big account and international connections. At this point I really wanted a business partner to come in with me.
I put my proposal to a business colleague and with his help I got the factory.
Since then I have bought him out.’
First, through his circle of friends he was able to find a business partner,
while this group also acted as a source of essential information which
enabled him to act at key moments, thus ensuring he secured the businesses at the best possible price.
Social class identity through an informal social network of friends was
a very important factor in the creation of a business opportunity when
an Anglo-Jewish merchant banker secured a much desired house, which
he subsequently developed into a hotel:
‘I had a job in the City in merchant banking and while it was interesting
and rewarding, it wasn’t everything. I wanted to run my own business and
didn’t really want to work for someone else. I wanted to combine this with
living in the country, and I was interested in fine food and wines. I used
to come down to the country at weekends. I rented a cottage on E. estate
and used to do a bit of riding and golf, got to know a few locals [rural
gentry]. One of the families had this rather nice house to sell, and heard
that I was interested in a business. It all gelled, it was the beginning of
176 Class, Gender and the Family Business
the 1980s, there was a lot of new money around, and a new interest in
haute cuisine, and this local family had this wonderful house, which
would be ideal for a top class country hotel. Lady L. didn’t want to just
sell the house and through some other friends she contacted me, we made
a deal, well she knew that I’d restore it. I bought it, and it is the hotel at
O. We opened it in 1980. It was just perfect.’
In this case it was the respondent’s shared social class identity that
led to his notion of the ideal business opportunity which would
combine earning a living with a particular lifestyle. It was this loose
network of social connections, weekend visiting, membership of the
hunt, playing golf and through visiting the local pub that fostered a
communication network which led to the creation of a business
opportunity.
Equally, it was by being privy to crucial information though social
connections that another majority entrepreneur was able to buy back
very valuable property at a vastly reduced price, from a 1980s highflying entrepreneur, just prior to the latter’s fall from grace at the beginning of the 1990s:
‘I had this huge house and really it wasn’t feasible to open it up to the
public, it hadn’t enough of nice things in it . . . It was very difficult to maintain, needed a new roof, was cold and draughty. A business friend said,
“MM is looking for a property”. The idea was a country hotel. In a throwaway line, I said, “He can have my house – A. Hall”. This was how it
started. Anyway they saw the house and finally decided the’d buy it, but
only if I also sold them the 400 acres of woodland. I had their heads over
a barrel and asked for more money. I was happy with what they offered,
but they wanted me to accept payment in equity in their electronics and
fruit business. I was well advised by another friend who knew my buyer
not to. I took the cash. Then, very early on, before the whole thing erupted
and the rising debt and so on, I decided to buy my land back and made
an offer but was obliged to take the house as well, but I bought them
cheaply. By this time I knew L. was interested in buying and restoring the
house.’
Another respondent explained that it was information from another
friend that led this particular respondent to put in an early bid to repurchase the property. The advantage of social connections to these individuals was that they were the first to access important items of business
information which were tactically crucial. The importance of these
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 177
networks is that they are not explicitly exclusive, but they are implicitly
inclusive. Essentially, they provide informal settings in which business
opportunities can be explored while participants engage in activities
which are ostensibly social in character and reputation-enhancing, but
are instrumental in essence.
Aside from the loose networks described above, some members of all
categories of business heads belong to exclusive social organisations.
Some of the business heads, regardless of ethnicity, are members of the
same clubs, particularly Masonic Lodges and The Lions Club. On the
other hand, each category belongs to exclusive clubs. For instance,
many of the ethnic minority heads belong to a Business Dinner Club.
A few of the white majority entrepreneurs are members of gentlemen’s
clubs. Many of the ethnic minority as well as white majority entrepreneurs give generously to sports and charitable societies, and this has the
effect of enhancing their social status and reputation among the wider
community. The fact that the most affluent ethnic minority business
heads are increasingly members of white majority clubs may signal a
tentative departure from social inclusion based on ethnicity to one
embedded in a social class identity. However, what is also clear is that
such heads draw a distinction between public and private activity, and
are keen to maintain the regulation of domestic activity within very
narrow ethnic boundaries.
Conclusions
This chapter has attempted to transcend conventional accounts of business behaviour among different ethnic groups, in which ethnic identity
appears to heighten assumed differences. It has been argued that
similarity also describes ethnic minority and white majority business
behaviour within family firms, and that it has kinship and class roots.
A number of key shared business strategies and beliefs were identified
which are bounded by a fusion of particularistic and universal rationality that is embedded in the material reality of the family and the
business. The businesses are generated and perpetuated by the family,
primarily to ensure the survival and well-being of the family, and also
for the good of the community. The family business as an institution
provides the conditions for self-realisation for a few privileged male kin,
but it is perceived to be a mechanism of protection for wider kin
members in a hostile and predatory economic environment.
On the other hand, ownership and the rights and responsibilities
traditionally associated with it can be preserved and incorporate a
178 Class, Gender and the Family Business
commitment to local employment, and in some instances to the preservation of a specifically British industry. For instance, in one case a very
successful speculative builder and estate farmer argued that British
manufacturing could be restored only through indigenous ownership
recapture. At the time of the interview he had bought the last remnant
of the British motor cycle business and had returned it to profitability.
It has been argued that while ethnic minority capital may appear
more fluid, this is a way of shifting out of peripheral sectors and embodies an accumulating strategy, which leads to more stable and prosperous economic environments. This search for stability and continuity
is also linked to the desire to retain personal ownership, control and
contingent advantages. Private owners appreciate the value of trust and
commitment, and they fear that it will be lost if their companies are
floated. There is a strong commitment to private ownership and there
is disinclination to float their businesses based on the belief that it
would be unlikely to lead to greater growth. The discerning external
shareholder and city institution were viewed as poor business partners
and were perceived to be more interested in fast returns than in
company development.
The focus of the chapter was on a number of successful businesses
which included ethnic minority businesses who compare favourably
with their white majority counterparts. Although they can be described
in Jones’s (1976) terms as an exceptional minority, most of them began
from the vantage point of being largely middle-class with its attendant
advantages, which released opportunities. Although these entrepreneurs
appear to represent a growing group, they are not representative of their
communities. While the call to enterprise may well have been heard,
when as Werbner (1990) notes that redundant ethnic minority workers
took on the entrepreneurial challenge, the absence of redundant
workers-turned-successful entrepreneurs in this regional study seems to
confirm the view that enterprise within the white majority (Rainbird,
1991) and ethnic minority communities is little more than an alternative to unemployment for most entrants (Aldrich, 1975, 1980; Anwar,
1979; Bonacich and Modell, 1980; Hoel, 1982; Morokvasic, 1987;
Bonacich, 1988; Phizacklea, 1990; Scully, 1994). This study acknowledges and provides some examples of exceptional success for a very
small number of white and migrant labourers, who have built large and
successful businesses, yet it does not support the rags to riches message,
the essence of neoliberal entrepreneurial theories and cultural explanations. Rather, it suggests that, despite racial discrimination, most of the
ethnic minority entrepreneurs, and in particular those from East Africa
The Family Enterprise and Business Strategies 179
and Anglo-Jewry, built on their strengths and started or re-established
their businesses from a material, or social class vantage point which is
strategically significant. These particular heads have been able draw on
good educational credentials, business skills and social and financial
capital, credentials which are easily comparable with those of their
ethnic majority counterparts, who were also significantly advantaged.
10
Conclusions
In exploring the interplay between the configuration of class and gender
relations that characterises the family enterprise this book has challenged popular stereotypes of family women as marginal helpers in the
family enterprise. Alternatively, it has demonstrated the centrality of
female kin in the family enterprise and in this sense the contribution
this book makes is that it establishes that they are critical to the formation of wealth within the boundaries of the family enterprise. In
arguing this point, masculine ownership has been questioned to reveal
a complex and close but changing relationship based on a constellation
of vested and shifting interests between men and capital suggestive of
Hartmann (1979) and Walby’s (1986) dual theory approach. Illustrative
of Pateman’s (1988) argument, correspondingly it has been argued that
the relationship between family women and capital is mediated by the
dynamics of the power relationship between men as husbands and
women as wives and leads to women’s systematic exclusion. In this
sense masculine ownership symbolises two sides of the same coin, with
men on the one side and capital on the other, whereby the unity of
married partners represented in male ownership conceals the embodiment of women’s efforts. It has been argued that this is a problem for
the entrepreneurial wives in business partnerships with their husbands
for it is difficult for them to gain recognition as entrepreneurs, and this
perpetuates gendered stereotypes. In this sense, then, it is suggested that
family men define women’s relationship to the particular capital formation in respect of their actual contribution to capital accumulation,
terms of reward and the appearance of this relationship.
By exploring the different ways in which such wives have contributed
to the business it is argued that family women’s labour and capital forms
a key strand in a business strategy that maintains and sustains the family
180
Conclusins 181
enterprise. However, the women partners are not appropriately
rewarded and are not recognised for their contributions, while at
another level the manipulation of domestic ideologies rather emphasise
their domestic role and overshadows their role in the business. In Chapters 6 and 7 it was shown that the perpetuation of such enterprise rests
on women’s domestic role and on the rearing of the next generation
of entrepreneurs and the maintenance of the emotional and physical
well-being of husband partners, the current entrepreneurs. The issue of
women’s recognition lies with entrepreneurial men’s view of the wifely
role and is influenced by what are deemed to be the priorities of the
time. Whilst not intending to suggest economic determinism it is clear
that the male owners of considerable capital attempt to regulate
women’s points of entry and exit according to the exigencies of the
accumulation process, which for the women is mediated by cycles of
productive labour and reproductive work. In this instance, men’s interest is to retain their dominance over the regulation of the female kin so
that the needs of the business are taken account of from an immediate
and strategic perspective. Such entrepreneurial men also rely on a
network of relationships closely aligned with capital to achieve this.
This involves a process, which culminates in the exclusion of female
kin from the family firm and is explained by the specific nature of the
research sample that includes newly created and inherited businesses.
This particular research approach facilitated the emergence of data
that have suggested that the family enterprise can be conceptualised as
a process that involves three distinct phases, the phases of wealth creation, accumulation and preservation, and can be imagined from a
lineal and a cyclical perspective. This conceptualisation has provided
the framework in which it has been possible to trace the business partners’ careers through the organisational structure and the evolution of
the enterprise. This question has been examined in Chapters 3–5 and
aligns each of the phases with the evolution of the wives’ careers within
the family enterprise. First, it is argued that, in times of necessity,
such as the phase of business start-up and the operational management
of established enterprise, men enthusiastically draw their wives into
the enterprise where they perform a variety of functions. During the
second phase, when the business is organised hierarchically exhibiting
divisional functions that require professional and executive personnel,
professional staff are substituted for the wife/partners, who often at
this point are placed under increasing pressure to return to domesticity. It is at this point, when such wife/partners have made
significant contributions to the enterprise, have gained considerable
182 Class, Gender and the Family Business
experience and not unreasonably expect to continue to play a significance role within the enterprise, that their husband/partners are concerned with the question of reproducing the future heirs and managers
for their businesses. Despite these expectations and the knowledge and
experience they bring to the enterprise, they are not perceived to be
contenders for such posts. In fact, the very existence of such formal
structures, processes and procedures parallel the expendability of such
wife partners. This makes some important points about the question of
gender equality. The organisation characterising the family firm fails to
treat husbands and wives in business partnerships as like with like in
respect of the value of credentials and experience.
In very many cases both male and female entrepreneurs have broader
skills and specific credentials that almost perfectly match or can be
transferred to useful and applicable knowledge in the management of
the family business. However, mirroring Savage (1992), it is clear that
for these women credentials are not effective in helping them progress
into senior managerial roles. Even where such women succeed to the
role of director they seem to lack sufficient discretion and authority, and
are excluded or leave the business. Arguably, the boundaries in which
the question of choice operates and the opportunities for family women
to enter senior managerial distinguish the family enterprise from corporate business.
Family women find it very difficult to develop a career within the
family enterprise and arguably have fewer opportunities and face additional constraints than their counterparts in the corporate sector.
Notwithstanding the problems such professional women encounter,
exemplified in Davidson (1992) ‘glass ceiling’ syndrome, the entry of
family women into directorships does not necessarily enhance their
organisational power. Paradoxically, the segregation of women managers into specific sectors, reported by Coyle (1989) and Grant and
Porter (1994), has resonance for family women managers. For instance,
their work as operational managers both protects and limits their career
opportunities. Comparing the family women managers with Wajcman’s
(1998) corporate women managers suggests that family women in
private enterprise are constrained in a particular way through the conflation of their professional and private roles. In this instance, husbands
acting as principal decision-makers draw the boundaries around family
women’s and particularly wives’ career options. This limits family
women’s power to control their careers and career progression within
the family firm. By contrast, Wajcman’s (1998) study suggests that
corporate women are better able to utilise a strategy. The women who
Conclusins 183
succeeded to senior posts adopted a male approach to work, which suggests some idea of choice between possible options. In order to succeed,
corporate women may have acted strategically and have chosen options
that were more likely to accommodate career progression. Grant and
Porter’s (1994) work implies the importance of a career strategy when
they argue that the women managers they studied adopted a management style that was different from the characteristic organisational style.
These studies indicate that, despite the difficulties, there are possibilities for women’s careers in the corporate sector, whereas the research on
which this book is based suggests that the idea of wife/partner pursuing a career comparable with her partner within the family business for
the immediate future is limited. Undoubtedly, this will depend on a
reorganisation of the relationship between domesticity and capital,
because presently the onus is on the women to negotiate around the
twin powers that arise from the dual power of men and capital. Of
course, this does not rule out that there may be some change in the
longer term, but this would also involve critical changes to an overall,
highly coherent and established strategy that appears to have offered
a sustaining formula for the male management of private enterprise.
Echoing Witz (1992), this book suggests that credentials and professionalism have little influence for the wife/partners, while for the entrepreneurial men they have proved to be a sustaining resource guiding
the male partners through the phases of business development.
The question of the relationship between experience and practical
knowledge and business management makes clear the importance that
gender difference has for career progression in the family enterprise.
Chapter 6 shows that entrepreneurial men rely on their experience of
establishing an enterprise as knowledge for the further development of
that enterprise and simultaneously establish their reputation and image.
In the case of the entrepreneurial working-class model, and suggestive
of Sennett and Cobb’s (1977) study, this book demonstrates that such
men are also able to compensate for the lack of formal education by
building identities around notions of thrift, effort and sacrifice in ways
that tie into, and are compatible with, human capital theories, entrepreneurial ideologies and popular stereotypes. By contrast, women
entrepreneurs have no such anchor. Rather, this book emphasises that
resources such as education, skill, labour and capital in co-ordination
with the institution of the family enable some men to transcend structural constraints. By contrast, and while acknowledging that there are
exceptions, wife/partners find it almost impossible to establish themselves as credible professionals within the family enterprise. Unlike their
184 Class, Gender and the Family Business
male partners, family women are unlikely in the longer term to remain
within the enterprise or develop very successful careers, although they
have by this time gained considerable expertise. Indeed, as the discussion about emotion work in Chapter 7 reveals, it is women’s exclusion
from a professional role and their return to domesticity that allows such
men to carry out their economic role and sustain the image of the
‘family man’ on which such enterprise is based. This chapter also shows
that the form and content of the women’s role is contested between
husbands and wives.
The book has also shown that the phase of wealth preservation culminates with the exclusion of women from ownership. As the discussion in Chapter 5 reveals, primogeniture is the key mechanism that
sustains the dominance of men’s relationship with capital thus endorsing Engels’ (1972) argument, which shows the link between the logic
of father right and ownership and the maintenance of the male line.
Chapters 3–5 show that husbands enjoy the power endowed with ownership, such as combined senior managerial roles and decision-making
which equate with a career, power, affluence, independence and fulfilment, while their wives formally fail to move beyond their stereotypes.
Resonant of the Pateman’s (1988) analysis of the marriage contract,
this book has argued that explanations for this lay with the power
that husbands have over their wives and their ability to bring
pressure on them in terms of balancing career choices with domestic
responsibilities.
In turning to men’s relationship with enterprise in Chapter 9 it is
argued that business families pursue a set of practices that, over time,
can be understood as a strategy. As Chapters 3–5 illustrate, the first
strand of this strategy involves the utilisation of women’s labour in the
creation and management of enterprise and their eventual exclusion
from ownership. Second, Chapter 6 argues that the second feature of
such business strategy is the tendency for male emotion to be reserved
for business activity. Ochberg’s (1987) analysis of the manner in which
men seek to control and regulate their own emotions has been drawn
on to illustrate how this occurs. In this context, it has been argued
that contemporary capitalism has witnessed the concealment of male
emotion in the public sphere and the elevation of ‘hard’ masculinity
(Brod, 1987; Hearn, 1987; 1994; Seidler, 1989; Brod and Kaufman,
1994), and that both are critical attributes of a family business strategy.
In examining popular discourses that portray business leaders as ‘selfmade’ men, and based on the differential availability of resources such
as capital, labour and education, this book has revealed two entrepre-
Conclusins 185
neurial models, a migrant labouring/working-class model and a middleclass model, and different kinds of entrepreneurial men. Whilst it is
acknowledged that there are some important differences between the
men that represent the different models, it is argued without reservation that all entrepreneurial types privilege their economic role and conserve their creativity by withdrawing from emotion work within the
household. Equally, they all have normative expectations that female
kin will fulfil their emotional work.
Also notions such as ‘self-made’ and sacrifice are intimately connected
and bridge the gap between the men’s corresponding roles as capitalists
and family men. A good example of this, illustrated in Chapter 6, shows
that, while men devote their lives and their energies to enterprise, they
almost all see their leadership training and privilege as a ‘sacrifice’ of
the self in the interests of the family and the survival of the business.
Whilst accepting that these stereotypes have some reality, especially for
the migrant labouring/working-class men, the research found with some
ambivalence that all entrepreneurial claim they have been sacrificed.
The other point to note is that, similar to their middle-class counterparts, working-class entrepreneurs make huge demands on their wives.
In some instances the organisation of the household accommodates the
arduous physical work and working patterns that become one of the
hallmarks of the way in which such men compete in the market. On
the other hand, the women ultimately resent and challenge their husbands’ dedication to the business and absence from home.
It should also be noted that this book does not concur or support the
neoliberal idea that poverty and disadvantage can be overcome by the
adoption of the prescriptive human capital approach. The small number
of migrant labouring/working-class entrepreneurs who established
‘new’ businesses were well served, not least by the financial management of the enterprise, a skill they often had already acquired, and by
the economic exigencies of the particular period that afforded them not
only business opportunities, but also access to niche labour markets and
configurations of class relations upon which their fortunes were built.
Perhaps in the context of white majority entrepreneurs, Jones’s (1976)
notion of ‘exceptional minority’ aptly describes them.
In Chapter 9 it is argued that family capitalism is characterised by
a shared business culture rooted in the experience (Bourdieu, 1976) of
the cyclical process of re-creating, managing and preserving business.
Culture in this context refers to the manner in which leadership and
questions of succession are approached and the financial management
of such enterprise. Of special significance to this overall strategy is the
186 Class, Gender and the Family Business
question of primogeniture or the tendency for established business families to favour male children as the future owners and managers of the
enterprise. Tied into these features, it has also been shown that other
major aspects of this strategy are a particular approach for the production of specific kinds of human capital and entrepreneurial expertise.
Part of this strategy also encompasses a preference for the internal sourcing of investment capital, risk avoidance in respect of business growth
and a reliance on family labour and the nurturing and utilisation of
social capital (Boissevain, 1974) or structural holes (Burt, 1992).
The rigidity and continuity in patterns of economic behaviour, and
especially the repetitive character of the creation, management and
preservation of the family enterprise, put into context the notion of
habitus (Bourdieu, 1976). This raises the thorny question of how change
and the scope for agency are accommodated within such a seemingly
rigid framework. For instance, patterns of ownership underpinned by a
particular configuration of gender relationships and gender power also
reveal remarkable continuity. Roberts and Holyroyd’s (1992) notion of
substantive rationality explains this and another important manifestation of continuity. These refer to the primacy given to primogeniture
and a patriarchal family culture that presides over the organised privileging of male children over their female siblings in education, training
and career expectation, resulting in substantive gendered differences
between male and female kin. The ideal is that family men and women
follow tradition and the rigidities of the sexual division of labour, which
means that female kin will find difficulties when trying to carve out a
professional role. Second, such discriminatory practices serve the interests of the male line and, rooted in earlier class gender systems, they
insist that women’s first duty is to provide the generations of entrepreneurs and managers. This is a critical part of the family business strategy for it aims to produce business heirs and managers from within the
family. However, this kin-based strategy does not contradict modern
rationality, but is rather compatible with and borrows from contemporary capitalist configurations. The book has shown that such instances
of collaboration hinge on an education and a socialisation that endows
boys with the kind of financial knowledge and leadership qualities (real
and perceived) that equip them with sufficient skill appropriate for business management. As the examples of the women owners in Chapter 8
show, unless they are critical to enterprising activity, women are not
considered as future heirs and are largely excluded from training. The
experiences of the working wives show that these practices generate a
Conclusins 187
system of values and beliefs that, when combined with gendered
kinship power, are very difficult to challenge in bids for the financial
management of such enterprise.
Moreover, as the earlier chapters show, the husband/partners refused
to see their wives as business leaders, but drew on rigid gendered stereotypes to suggest women’s incompetence with regard to financial
management. This does not suggest that the men did not view their
wives as business partners; however, continually suggesting that such
women’s competence lay in creativity (fashion design) or nurture
(various personnel posts) indicates that they saw this work as complementing the key role of financial management. What the evidence suggests is that such entrepreneurial men drew in this case on patriarchal
power to differentiate between themselves and their wife partners.
However, Brod’s (1994) illuminating arguments surrounding masculinities would suggest that this is simply another manifestation of how
competitiveness is used in the quest for capitalist power. In this
instance, men and capital are two sides of the same coin, when individuals are driven by compatible interests, the logic of capitalist competitiveness and male supremacy. Although the research has reported
some resistance from female kin, it did not necessarily endanger business survival. This limited resistance must be understood in terms of
interests, for the ‘successful’ family enterprise enhances and safeguards
the class location of family members, and female kin and children born
into such families are relatively advantaged and benefit materially. This
discussion portrays a pattern of consistency manifested in the manner
in which heirs and managers are selected and subsequently compete for
power within the family enterprise.
However, the scope for autonomy and agency within the family business lies with financial strategy and is particularly evident in the diversification of such enterprise and the peculiarity of capital investment.
Characteristically risk-averse, it is argued that such enterprise shifted
investment to safe sectors of the economy such as property and land,
which, according to Wedgewood (1929), is a long-established way of
safeguarding private wealth. Reflecting particularistic values and in relatively safe economic environments these businesses studied survived
by selectively borrowing from market capitalism to safeguard and
expand their business assets on behalf of the wider family interests, thus
securing their class location, status and lineage.
In arguing that family business strategy is located in class identity,
this book has challenged cultural explanations that reflect supply-side
188 Class, Gender and the Family Business
economics and align business activity with the assumed supremacy of
specific ethnic identities in the field of entrepreneurship and their sectoral segregation on the basis of ethnicity (Werbner, 1990). Starting from
the premise of capital assets and taking account of the ethnic identities
of the entrepreneurs involved, this study found that all the entrepreneurs pursued a similar business strategy, including Asian, Anglo-Jewish,
Irish and white majority entrepreneurs, who share a common business
culture. It is also argued that an important dimension of this culture
is the manner in which social relationships create or access business
opportunities, and this is a feature of business strategy for white majority and ethnic minority business and for men and women business
heads. In this sense, it has been shown that exchange and value underlie the different permutations of social relations, characteristic of Burt’s
(1992) social networks, Boissevain’s (1974) social entrepreneurs,
Yancey’s manufactured ethnicity and Werbner’s (1990) gift-giving and
wedding attendance. This does not dispute that these groups are culturally different, yet the logic, meaning and intention of their business
cultures are similar, for they are rooted in the cultural settings of their
class location, and although their outward expression is social in form,
they are in essence instrumental and opportunistic, and create what
Burt (1992) calls social capital. As shown in Chapter 9, social capital
serves the interests of the enterprise through family friendships and
connections, while it introduces a legitimacy to the instrumentality and
competitiveness associated with business friendships. Reminiscent of
the argument concerned with the contradictions of male friendships,
all groups engage in business opportunism when they extend the
boundaries of business beyond the formal settings, and participate in
networks of friendships that are, or subsequently have, an instrumental dimension. At the same time, social networking masks the divisiveness of male competitiveness (Brod, 1994) characteristic of business
opportunism, which is a major feature of business strategy.
It is suggested that ethnic minority capital is more fluid and there
is greater diversification amongst ethnic minority entrepreneurs.
However, this is a way of shifting out of vulnerable and peripheral
sectors, and replicates a broader accumulation strategy that leads to
more stable and prosperous sectors of the economy, such as property
and land. In finding that ethnic minority business compares favourably
with that of their majority counterparts, the research has drawn on
Jones’s (1976) notion of exceptional minority to describe this group. It
has been argued that, with two exceptions, the ethnic minority entrepreneurs like their white majority counterparts started business from a
Conclusins 189
considerable vantage point of being middle-class with its attendant
advantages, which released opportunities. It is their very real resources
that include capital, appropriate skills, knowledge of the business world
and their networks that explain their success as business leaders as
opposed to reference to culture or rags-to-riches stereotyping.
There are two models of entrepreneurial behaviour – the migrant
labour/working-class model and the middle-class model – a typology
that is intended to show how the differential availability of resources
affect working-class and middle-class business leaders at the phase of
wealth creation. The difference is that without resources, working-class
entrepreneurs work for long periods and save investment capital prior
to business entry, although Chapter 6 shows that there are differences
in their approach to wealth accumulation, a difference exemplified in
the two entrepreneurial types, the company man and the takeover man.
Arguably, these differences to some degree are products of the economic
exigencies of the time, and having reached the accumulation phase,
the second phase in business development, regardless of initial market
approach in the phase of creation, both typologies of business leader
adopt similar conservation strategies. They also engage in ostentatious
intra-generational class mobility and emulate middle-class social norms
exemplified in the provision of private education for children and the
acquisition of palatial private dwellings.
The evidence discussed in this book might suggest that there is a particular approach to business that is likely to result in business survival
and renewal. However, this is not the intention, for the results reported
merely reflect the outcomes from the combination of the particular
research approach, findings, interpretation and analysis. However, the
findings strongly suggest that frugality, prudence, caution and a commitment to long-term investment characterise the management of such
family enterprise.
In examining the management of the family business, this book has
argued that such enterprise is organised around a family strategy that,
taking into account the interests and the survival of the businesses into
consideration, also succeeds in safeguarding the social and class status
of the family concerned. At the same time, this book has shown that
the firm provides a very solid foundation for the reproduction of social
class relations. In exploring the relationship between enterprise, gender
power and class relations, this book has revealed a network of power
relations that sustains the rigidity of patterns of inequality within
capitalist families. In drawing attention to the relationship between
women, men and capital and private enterprise, this book has
190 Class, Gender and the Family Business
contributed to the debate on gender inequality by highlighting the
ambiguous class position of female kin, particularly the wives of wealth
owners, a position that both ensures their subordination and their relative advantages.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 Primogeniture is the practice of giving the eldest son the core unit of wealth
– the ‘business’, the ‘family estate’ – and constitutes the single most important strategy in the transference of wealth and property across generations,
for it safeguards against the disintegration of core unit of wealth (Clemenson,
1982), whilst also serving ruling-class interests. It is only in cases where there
is no suitable male heir that women are considered.
2 Under coverture a wife had no independent legal existence, and therefore
could not own immovable property such as land, could not make a will, nor
present herself in court, while she herself was under the ‘protection’ of her
husband. This combination has two effects for the preservation of wealth. By
denying wives ownership rights, it safeguards the fragmentation of wealth,
and by entrusting guardianship of the wife to the husband, it ensures the
control of her sexuality and labour, protecting paternity and the male line.
To become a wife was to become disinherited, for the property women
brought to the marriage became the property of the husband under coverture. This monstrous institution systematised wives’ subordination, and survived from the 1250s until 1925, having undergone a series of reforms in the
passing of the Married Woman’s Property Act of 1882 extending women’s
right to property.
3 ‘In reality the generating and unifying principle of practices is constituted by
a whole system of predisposition’s inculcated by the material circumstances
of life and by family upbringing, i.e. by habitus. This system is the end
product of structures in which practices tend to reproduce in such a way consciously by re-inventing or by subconsciously imitating a ready proven strategy as the accepted, most respectable, or even simplest course to follow’
Bourdieu (1976: 118).
Chapter 2
1 The nineteenth-century perception of landowners living off rents and
unearned income has little validity today. Only one landholding with an
extremely large acreage of 20,000 acres and a vast commercial property portfolio, bore much resemblance to the activities of the nineteenth-century
rentier class.
2 This means that those who inherit a business as well as those who create a
business adopt similar business strategies. For instance, those who create a
new business will want to expand it and make it secure. On the other hand,
those who inherit a business may need to seek out new ways of surviving in
a changing economic environment and may diversify.
191
192 Class, Gender and the Family Business
3 This refers to the nineteenth-century idea of the wife of the aspiring enterprising man. The role of the wife was to offer unquestioning support to her
husband, whilst carrying out her domestic role with both emotional and
financial efficiency invisibly in the shadows of her spouse (See Davidoff and
Hall, 1987.)
Chapter 3
1 The research in a limited way found that the dowry system was also important. In one of the ‘old’ families studied, family wealth was established, followed by their ascendancy to political power through the marriage of an
ancestor to a European heiress with a large dowry. In another case (descendant not interviewed) the ancestors of an extremely rich aristocrat had
acquired their wealth in a similar way. Sometimes women were valued for
their breeding and status attracting money and in such cases men married
upwards. For example, in another of the ‘old’ families the respondent’s ancestor had made a lot of (industrial) money in brewing and was able to marry
into the landed aristocracy.
2 Turning to the issue of women’s labour prior to the capitalist era when
the line between use-values and exchange-values remained blurred within
the mode of production, it can be assumed that women from all classes
were engaged in some way in economic activity. In discussing the feudal
era, Middleton argues that women amongst the peasant classes played a
direct economic role in the production of exchange-values, whilst wisely
acknowledging the sexual division of labour, the dominance of housework
and servicing of men as women’s key role. However, what is much more in
doubt is the extent that they managed their income (Erickson, 1993). But as
I later argue, the law of coverture very much favoured male control over
women and their products, thus severely compromising female autonomy in
such matters, as the management and ownership of income and wealth.
Chapter 5
1 This a legal term stating that an estate or property cannot be divided. Partition of the property must not take place. See Collins English Dictionary, second
edition.
2 ‘Widow’s right by custom of the manor, to continue in possession of the
whole or portion of husband’s lands during her life’ (Thompson, 1976). See
also Erickson (1993: 24).
Chapter 6
1 A system of casualised employment conditions that has a very poor health
and safety record, long associated with the construction industry. (See Austrin
in Nichols, 1980.)
Notes 193
Chapter 7
1 A ‘good wife’ in the mould of Sennett and Cobb’s (1977) Mrs O’Malley
uncomplainingly takes on the burden of family stresses and strains.
Chapter 9
1 A structural explanation of the development and growth of ethnic business
that considers the constraints and the opportunities. An example of middleman minority (Bonacich and Modell, 1980) is the Indian immigrant business
sector in East Africa, which consisted of traders and merchants. From a social
class perspective they were located between the Europeans and the indigenous Africans. According to Bonacich they filled in a status gap that was
created by the dominant and subordinate classes who did not wish to interact, but who relied on each other.
2 Refers to a structurally peripheral economic sector, where businesses are characteristically small-scale. An example is the small retail business that is largely
owned by ethnic minority owners. A second feature of enclave theory is that
such businesses are restricted to enterprise in their localities serving ethnic
minority and working class customers.
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Name Index
Aldrich, H. et al., 151, 153, 178
Allen, S., 6
Allen, S. and Truman, C., 28, 131
Anwar, M., 153, 158, 178
Barrett, M. and McIntosh, M., 45
Becker, G., 4, 50, 58
Boissevain, J., 8, 152, 158, 174, 186,
188
Bonacich, E., 156, 162, 178
Bonacich, E. and Modell, J., 151, 152,
178
Bourdieu, P., 7, 21, 22, 23, 46, 152,
173, 185
Brod, H., 21, 24, 26
Brod, H. and Kaufman, M., 106, 184,
187
Bun, C. K. and Hui, O. J., 153–4, 156,
162, 184
Burke’s Peerage, 14
Burt, R., 26, 92, 123, 152, 158, 174–5,
186, 188
Business Week, 15
Chell, E., 16, 90
Clark, C. et al., 153–4, 156
Clemenson, H., 36, 46, 71
Cockburn, C., 15, 50
Cohen, A., 173
Collinson, D., 92, 97, 119
Collinson, D. and Hearn, J., 21, 23,
66, 92
Connell, R. W., 116
Cooper, J. P., 87
Coyle, A., 49, 67, 182
Dahya, B., 175
Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., 5, 17, 26,
36, 46, 90, 103, 112
Davidson, M., 49, 182
Delphy, C., 70
Delphy, C. and Leonard, D., 60, 113
Doomsday Book, 14
Drucker, P., 90
Elson, D. and Pearson, R., 15
Engels, F., 21, 70, 113, 184
Erikson, A. L., 73, 86, 87, 113, 128
Felstead, A., 45
Finch, J., 69, 112
Fineman, S., 114
Fromm, E., 106
Ghillone, B., 68
Glaser, B. and Strauss, R., 17
Goffee, R. and Scase, R., 5, 83, 131
Goody, J., 73, 87
Goransson, A., 36, 46
Grant, J. and Porter, P., 49, 54, 182
Hammond, D. and Jablow, A., 24
Harding, S., 17
Hartmann, H., 21, 60, 180
Harvey Jones, J., 110
Heaney, S., 24
Hearn, J., 23, 90, 91, 94, 100, 114,
184
Hebert, R. K. and Link, A., 15, 90
Hochschild, A., 128
Hoel, B., 153, 178
Holcombe, L., 22, 69
Jones, T. P., 178, 185, 188
Joseph, Sir Keith, 15
Kanter, R., 66, 68, 69, 112, 115
Kelly’s directories, 14
Kennedy, C., 15, 91
Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D., 93
Kets de Vrie, M. R. F., 15, 17
Kimmel, M., 24, 25
Lessnoff, M. H., 155
Lynn, R., 15
Mac an Ghail, M., 92
Marceau, J., 168
203
204 Name Index
Marcus, G. E. and Dobkin Hall, P., 60
Middleton, C., 46, 63, 87
Morokvasic, M. et al., 153–4, 167,
178
Mulholland, K., 7, 16, 98, 132, 167
Oakley, A., 58
Ochberg, R., 5, 89, 90, 107, 111, 115,
127, 184
Pahl, J. M. and Pahl, R. E., 115
Pateman, C., 12, 21, 46, 69, 73, 113,
128, 180, 184
Penrose, E., 77, 108, 145, 166
Phizacklea, A., 153–4, 162, 167, 178
Scott, J., 2, 10
Scully, J., 153, 178
Segal, L., 125
Seilder, V. J., 25, 89, 184
Sennet, R. and Cobb, J., 94, 96, 97,
106, 120, 183
Sherrod, D., 25, 25, 106
The Sunday Times Book of the Rich, 10,
14
Tebbit, Norman, 15
Thirsk, J., 73
Thompson, 70, 71, 72, 81, 87, 172
Twaddle, C., 156
Veblen, T., 60, 63, 103, 113
Rainbird, H., 178
Ram, M., 16, 17, 44, 55, 99, 154
Reed, R., 52
Roberts, I. and Holyroyd, G., 7, 152,
171–2, 186
Roberts, J. and Coutts, A. J., 50
Roper, M., 18, 89, 90, 97, 114, 115
Rosener, J. B., 149
Rubeinstein, W. D. 154–5
Savage, M., 49, 50, 182
Scase, R. and Goffee, R., 16, 90, 115,
119
Wajcman, J., 49, 65, 147
Walby, S., 21, 50, 180, 182
Waldinger, R., 153
Weber, M., 26
Wedgewood, J., 71, 187
Werbner, P., 8, 26, 151, 152, 153–4,
158, 163
Willis, P., 96
Witz, A., 50, 183
Who’s Who, 14
Yancey, W. L. et al., 174, 188
Subject Index
accumulation strategies, 12
Anglo-Jews, 9, 156, 158
Asians, 9, 17, ch. 9
Beowulf, 24
beneficiaries, 72
career paths, 48–67
company man, 5, 77, 93–102, 166
coverture, 4, 20, 22
cyclical process, 5
de facto, 16, 55
dowry, 36
East African Asians, 9
emotional economy, 89–91
enclave economy, 151
England, 9
Enlightenment, 24
entrepreneurial ideologies, 5
entrepreneurial theory, 15–17
ethnic minority enterprise, 9, ch. 9
ethnic advantage, 154–6
family man, 117–29
father right, 21
female marginalisation, 60–7
flawed cultures, 154–5
freebench, 72
habitus, 7, 62
‘hard wife’, 120
helpmeet, 17, 46, 48, 60
ideologies of domesticity, 4
idle wife, 55, 113
impartible inheritance, 70
Industrial Revolution, 24
Irish, 9, 156
laissez-faire, 25
Land Valuation Act 1911, 14
lineal preservation, 4
middle-class attributes, 162
Midlands, 9
‘new’ business couples, 11–12
notion of wealth, 10
old business couples, 11–12
patriarchy, 2
primogeniture, 4, 8, 20, 22, 72, 81,
88
resources, 15
‘self-made man’, 5, 15, 29
shared business culture, 7, 8, 152,
167, 174
social capital, 26
structural holes, 26, 123, 186
substantive rationality, 7, 152–3,
171–2
support, 46
systematic marginalisation, 3–5
takeover man, 5, 93, 102–9
transcendence, 4
wealth
wealth
wealth
wealth
205
accumulation, 20
conservation, 20
creation, 20
preservation, 4