Les femmes économistes: the place of women in the physiocratic community

Abstract

This article discusses the participation of women in the development of eighteenth-century French political economy and, more specifically, their role in the network of a prominent group of French economic authors of this period, known as the physiocrats. Our argument is that women played a significant, if seldom visible, role in the creation and dissemination of the ‘new science’ of physiocratic political economy. First, they acted as cultural mediators of the science nouvelle. It explains why the major physiocrats created a model of scientific institution that mixed academic life with salon sociability, and that was therefore open to women unlike the main European academies of the period. Second, we underline the importance of the domestic sphere in the making of physiocratic political economy. The case study of Marie Le Dée, the spouse of a prominent physiocrat, informed us on the invisible though important agency of women in the production of physiocratic knowledge.