History as a Woman’s World

By Bart van Holsteijn & Claudia Hacke

Dr. Sarah Carmichael is assistant professor at Utrecht University and is part of the Economic and Social History research group. Dr. Carmichael obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences and two Master’s degrees in Comparative History and Law and Economics, respectively. In 2011, she started as a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tine de Moor and Prof. Dr. Jan Luiten van Zanden, focussing on the role of women in economic development. She successfully defended her thesis in 2016.

Dr. Carmichael describes herself as somebody who is interested in cultural institutions and how these institutions affect economic development. Up until now, the institutions that she has focused on have been those surrounding women, marriage and the family. Aristotle already suggested in his writings that family and its organization is directly reflected in how the state is organized, an idea that she finds extremely interesting. The work that came out of her PhD included the edited volume Capital Women: The European Marriage Pattern, Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe 1300-1800 (2019), co-authored by Prof. Dr. de Moor and Prof. Dr. Van Zanden. Furthermore, she used her expertise gained by working on her PhD to contribute to a report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on various aspects of the quality of life from the 1820s onwards, aptly titled How was life? (2014).

Currently, Dr. Carmichael is preoccupied with a variety of projects, both for academic and broader audiences. Besides teaching university courses, she is working on a second version of the OECD report, a popular science book and, together with Dr. Corinne Boter, a dataset and a paper about the gender wage gap and how that has been influenced by the changing gender balance in a profession.

She considers the relevancy of her subject of major importance. She is convinced that it should not be assumed that discrimination against women is the result of biological differences, but there are differences between men and women that are rooted in longterm historical processes. This leads her to consider whether we can find historical cases where concurrently marginalized groups of people, particularly women, have been less structurally disadvantaged or more empowered, which could be applied today. In addition, she wishes to challenge numerous myths about women in history having little to no agency.

For students aspiring to pursue a PhD, she has four pieces of advice. Firstly, and most obviously, find a subject that you are interested in. Secondly, ask yourself whether you enjoyed writing your MA thesis; if you did not, she would not recommend a PhD project. Thirdly, as your relationship with your PhD supervisor is of vital importance, do not blindly apply to a position without knowing who the supervisor is. Instead, ask someone with a trustworthy opinion who the supervisor as a person is, to see whether you would suit each other. Finally, when you are actually working on your PhD research, try to get the most out of your time and appreciate it, because while working on your research you have little other obligations, in contrast to when you are actually working in academia.