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Historisk tidskrift 128:2 • 2008

Innehåll (Contents) 2008:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Finansiell verksamhet som ett socialt projekt. Livförsäkringsrörelsen och de gifta kvinnorna under det sena 1800-talet

Liselotte Eriksson

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Summary

Financial activities as a social project: the life insurance industry and married women in the late 19th-century

This article investigates the involvement of life insurance brokers in the fi rst Swedish organization for women’s rights: the organization for married women’s property rights. The social commitment of these men meant that the same persons were involved in idealistic movements and the pursuit of economic gain. This fact, in turn, points towards an interdependence between social and fi nancial activities during the second half of the 19th- century. Therefore, this study criticises the dominant assumptions both that 19th-century businessmen were driven by self-interest to maximize profi ts and that economic interests fostered the democratic process. Instead this study argues that social commitment was integrated with, and considered a part of, economic growth and contributed to economic and social change. This implies that 19th-century life insurance business cannot be understood by present-day assumptions of economic behaviour.