Paula De La Cruz-Fernández, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940. Routledge, New York, 2021. xi þ 189 pp., 12 b/w illus. ISBN: 9780367770433(pbk)

Book Review: Paula De La Cruz-Fernández, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940

An 1890 Spanish postcard depicting a woman in folkloric Spanish dress read: ‘In the humblest corner of the world: where there is a woman, there will be a Singer machine!’ (p. 17). The postcard examined by de la Cruz-Fernandez in the introduction of Gendered Capitalism perfectly condenses the aim and research methods of the book, which is the result of de la Cruz-Fernandez’s doctoral research. Gendered Capitalism reconsiders the unilateral prowess of the American multinational company through the peripheral voices of local sellers and consumers in Singer’s host economies by combining business history with material culture and gender studies. Whilst such a multidisciplinary approach is familiar to Textile History readers, the addition of everyday objects to business records reflects an ongoing disciplinary turn in business history. Gendered Capitalism brings together sewing manuals with visual records and Spanish, Mexican and American archival sources to create an interesting examination of the interchangeable roles between consumers and producers. For de la Cruz-Fernández, this in-between area can be understood by focusing on women’s domestic sewing and embroidery practices in the context of the multinational Singer. Gendered Capitalism aims to incorporate both women and ideas of domesticity into theories of business internationalisation. It builds upon gendered histories of consumption to address a paucity of literature on women’s agency within histories of modern corporations. Gendered Capitalism departs from a discussion of women’s productive consumption of Singer sewing machines to examine how women became marketing experts who shaped, bottom-up, the management and business culture of the American company. Singer grounded its sales strategies in the domestic sphere, which de la Cruz-Fernández theorises as the household’s system of meanings that were culturally constructed at a community level. De la Cruz-Fernández argues that Singer expanded globally through local engagement with consumers and markets. This was most evident in Singer’s first Spanish-speaking markets, Spain and Mexico, where local selling agents and customers interwove Singer’s technology with local customs. In doing so, Gendered Capitalism nuances assumptions around the Americanisation of global culture to reveal how Singer became, in Spain and Mexico, an aspirational national symbol of modernisation. The chronological framework, from 1850 to 1940, allows the author to track from the foundation of the company in 1851, the establishment of operations in Spain (1873) and Mexico (the 1880s), to Singer’s evolving practices through moments of national economic and political turmoil (the Mexican Revolution in 1910–1917 and Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939).