The project seeks to analyze, over the long term (17th -21st), in France, the place and role of women in business management activities, from economic sectors currently feminized. It starts from the observation that, despite the increase in gender diversity at work and the feminization of many professional activities, the world of business elites, whether they are top-managers, directors of boards or chairman and CEO of small or large firms, remains predominantly male. The long-term perspective aims to study the historical variation of gender norms and gender regimes and their effects in the context of changing economic and legal contexts. It investigates the legal constraints on women’s business leadership and their évolution from the late XVIIth to the XXIst century.By articulating economic sociology, sociology of elites, sociology of management work taken from the angle of the history of firms, the history of law (business law and civil law) and the history of gender, it contributes in an original way to the revival of the history of the presence of women in the top-managerial positions in firms and to the re-examination of gender differences in the control of capital. It develops an unprecedented hypothesis consisting in analysing the value of the business leaders, in the sense of credit and trust given to an economic agent allowing him to obtain a position and a status in economic relationships, at the prism of gender. For this reason, it articulates value built by law, by conjugal and family arrangements and by the symbolic dimensions of gender. It participates in the analysis of social and economic inequalities related to gender, of the process of inclusion and exclusion of women from the control of business, and of the identification of difficulties in accessing the rights for women.