European World - Gender- Lecture outline
4 broad themes: 1) position of women in a male, patriarchal society
2) why women accepted it- or put up with it
3) how they adapted themselves to a subordinate role- ‘negotiated’ patriarchy.
4) whether women’s position was getting better or worse overall between 1500 and
1700.
1 Position of women. Society hierarchical. Gender one of its basic principles. Women’s
subordinate role is evident in law and custom.
Government (local & central)- women excluded from office. Law: judges, lawmakers all
male. Women’s evidence in courts counted less than men’s.
Law on property: men had control over women’s moveable property (money & goods).
Inheritance law usually favoured sons. Widows had limited rights, often only a life
interest in a share.
Within family: husbands had authority over all members- could beat a disobedient wife,
‘within reason’. .
Education: girls barred from schools in most countries and from univs everywhere (till
mod times- end 19th c). Basic literacy much lower among women.
Professions: excluded from law, church, medicine.
Business: excluded from most urban trades and crafts. Guild regulations barred women
from trading independently.
Female labouring jobs, e.g. helping with harvest, or spinning, charring, brought low
wages. When women and men did the same job, the woman’s wage was only 2/3 of the
male wage.
Double standard of morality. Sexual lapses- more serious for women.
2 Why were gender roles so extreme? Why did women apparently accept them
without protest?
1 Physical strength. Cf Mary Astell- ‘men have all the strongest argument, such as guns,
pikes, blunderbusses…’ Strength a factor in work; and physical protection- man more
likely to protect rest of family members than woman. No police force…
2 Biological facts- and theories. Nature of female body and constitution made woman
different from men and ‘inferior’ Aristotle, Galen: 4 humours- women cold/moistweaker (physically, mentally, morally), more passionate, emotional.
3 Religion & Church. Laid down in Bible that God intended men to be superior, God
created Adam in own image; Fall of Mankind- Eve’s story. Message repeated in
sermons, books right across Europe, Catholic & Protestant.
4 Custom and tradition. Gender inequality not new - similar throughout Europe and
Middle East, back to ancient times; and Asian & African societies too. So universal,
timeless.
A few intelligent women broke out of the mental straitjacket- Christine de Pisan 1400,
Mary Astell 1700: shrewd, incisive-‘modern’. But neither could suggest any way to
change gendered order of society.
3 Negotiating patriarchy- ‘Making the best of it.’
Social realities less extreme than the law would suggest. Social pressures that moderated
position- practical, pragmatic, rather than ideological.
Family life- parenting as a joint responsibility, required willing co-operation and
consideration. Many poor families also depended on the wife’s earnings to get by. Family
farms run jointly.
Business: many towns in Germany and France (and London) allowed a legal fiction- wife
could register as ‘feme sole’- single woman- for business purposes, and was then allowed
to practice a trade independently.
Other women found opportunities in the margins:
Medicine-as midwives, bonesetters, nurses. Textiles- in lacemaking. Money-lending. Cf
Gluckel of Hameln- rich Jewish widow, late 17th century. Lower level- as pawnbrokers.
Occupations not covered by gilds- e.g. food and drink outlets (alehouses, inns, later
coffee-houses; lodging houses)
Politics- informal roles- at the royal court. Women as petitioners. Women in riots- bread
riots, tax riots- partly because magistrates looked on them more leniently.
4 Did women’s position improve or worsen, 1500-1700? Evidence both ways.
Worsening? Religion- Protestantism marginalised women. Convents closed, female saints
swept away.
Witchcraft. Most ‘witches’ women- often 80-90%- thousands burnt in late 16th/early 17th
centuries.
Tightening up of laws: Roman law replaced customary law- favoured men. Tougher laws
on sexual offences. Infanticide- single mothers deemed guilty unless could prove
innocence (1556 France, England 1624). Harsher laws on adultery- carries death penalty
in Germany, Scotland, Sweden, and England 1650-60; and weighted against women.
Harsher punishment of unmarried mothers.
More restrictions over work. Fewer occupations open to women. Reinforced by greater
commercialization, e.g. brewing industry, and by cultural shifts- genteel, leisured lifestyle
of merchant’s wife as a new ideal.
Improving?:
A higher valuation of marriage. Marriage now the ideal, rather than the celibate religious
life. Preachers urged companionship, condemned wife-beating as barbaric.
Education. Girls’ schools in some Protestant countries, esp. Germany; Augsburg, 1623:
1500 children at school, 800 boys, 700 girls. Mid-17th c schools for girls in England.
Women venturing into print & numerous publications now aimed at women- protomagazines. (Ladies Diary by John Tipper, Coventry schoolteacher, c1700)
End of witchcraft persecution by 1700. A new culture of ‘civility and politeness’ among
elites in NW Europe.
No simple verdict. Fluctuations -gains and losses- and regional variations, esp.
North/Southern Europe.