Paula de la Cruz-Fernández
Manager University of Florida
- Gainesville FL
Paula de la Cruz-Fernández is a historian of business and gender and a digital archives and oral history expert.
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
Florida’s immigrant entrepreneurs are creating jobs and prosperity in their communities
The Conversation online
2026-02-18
Immigration to the U.S. is often framed as a problem to be managed, controlled or punished. Immigrants are often derided for crossing the border without authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. citizens. But research on immigrants tells a different story.
Pizza With a “Sense of Place”
Slate online
2025-07-29
Earlier this month, two researchers at the University of Florida unveiled welcome news for pizza lovers: Despite the rise and seeming domination of corporate chain restaurants across the country, in some areas, local pizzerias are actually thriving thanks to the quirks that make them and their pies distinctive—and delicious.
3 basic ingredients, a million possibilities: How small pizzerias succeed with uniqueness in an age of chain restaurants
The Conversation online
2025-07-08
At its heart, pizza is deceptively simple. Made from just a few humble ingredients – baked dough, tangy sauce, melted cheese and maybe a few toppings – it might seem like a perfect candidate for the kind of mass-produced standardization that defines many global food chains, where predictable menus reign supreme. Yet, visit two pizzerias in different towns – or even on different blocks of the same town – and you’ll find that pizza stubbornly refuses to be homogenized.
Social
Articles
Multinationals and Gender
The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and SocietyPaula de la Cruz-Fernández
2026-02-21
This chapter explores how multinationals were both embedded in gender norms and actively shaped representations of masculinity, femininity, and domesticity. Multinationals influenced gender roles through the products they marketed to male and female consumers, their gendered labor organization in production sites and company towns, and their hiring practices, which either expanded or restricted opportunities for women. Rather than following a single pattern, multinationals often created hybrid systems, adapting to local gender norms.
Singer’s embroidery department as an enterprise of beauty
Enterprises et histoireDe la Cruz-Fernández
2023-09-14
The role of businesses and organizations in shaping aesthetic trends and consumer preferences extends beyond the beauty industry. The history of Singer Sewing Machine’s predominantly female-staffed business unit, the Art Department, highlights the crucial role consumers and markets often play in product design.
Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850-1940
RoutledgeDe La Cruz-Fernández
2021-05-06
Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940 is a history of the gendered corporation, a study that examines how ideas and ideals about domesticity and the cultures of sewing and embroidery, being gender-specific, shaped the US-headquartered Singer Sewing Machine Company’s operations around the world.
Multinationals and Gender: Singer Sewing Machine and Marketing in Mexico, 1890–1930
Business History ReviewDe La Cruz-Fernández
2015-09-28
Headquartered in the United States, the Singer Sewing Machine Co. did business all around the world in the early twentieth century. By revealing Singer's marketing strategies and focusing on gender, this article shows that multinational corporations and Latin American governments were not always at odds and could sometimes forge a profitable relationship.
Media
