Townswomen and Work

Question 1

What advantage did townswomen have over rural women?

Answer 1

During their marriage and when they were widows, some women were recognized as femmes soles, and could work independently. Townswomen also had more options when it came to work.

Question 2

What kind of professions might a femmes soles hold?

Answer 2

Merchant, entrepreneur, craftswoman

Question 3

What was domestic service like?

Answer 3

Mostly done by the young - kids and teens, though sometimes old. Some servants stayed with a family their whole lives. If a teenage servant married she might become a governess or wet-nurse. Domestic service was often the largest women’s occupation.

Question 4

What was the state of brewing like?

Answer 4

Women in towns brewed just like in rural, and even more so. Though, as beer became more popular and regulated they were pushed out of the market.

Question 5

What were women’s relationship to inns?

Answer 5

Often wives worked with their husbands in their own inn, but sometimes a married woman operated one while her husband had another line of work. Some single or widowed women ran inns. Inns provided drink, food, lodging, but were also places to conduct trade or store and transport goods. Inns reflected a town’s reputation.

Question 6

What was a huckster?

Answer 6

Someone who sold retail goods. Husbands and wives often alternated the job of selling and producing what was sold.

Question 7

What might a huckster sell?

Answer 7

Meat, bread, ale, dairy, salt, flour oats, clothing, fuel, fruit, veg, herbs, candles.

Question 8

What did authorities think of women hucksters?

Answer 8

It was accepted by authorities as a way to make money all over Europe and continued into the modern period.

Question 9

How were women involved in long-distance trade?

Answer 9

Very few were as it took a lot of capital and expertise. You needed to be able to travel freely as well, and women often had children. Some wives took responsibility of business at home, dispatching merchandise, handling loans and investments, and keeping to books. Some took over the business as widows and handed it over when her kids came of age.

Question 10

What goods might merchants trade in?

Answer 10

metals, spices, flax, linen, woolen cloth, wine.

Question 11

Who was concerned with the craft workshop?

Answer 11

The family and household. The family, servants, apprentices, journeymen and female employees. A master craftman could teach his children the trade and the wife might assist her husband in his work. Most all crafts were practiced by women.

Question 12

Did the guilds admit women?

Answer 12

Yes, women alone or as part of her husband’s membership

Question 13

What might happen to a craftswoman if she remarried a man not of the same craft?

Answer 13

She might be forced to give up her work. In southern Europe she might only be permitted to continue on as a widow if she had sons who could take up the trade eventually.

Question 14

Which regions were focused on woolen cloth?

Answer 14

Flanders, Florence, and England.

Question 15

Which regions were focused on silken cloth?

Answer 15

Northern Italty, Paris, the Rhinelands

Question 16

What were less lucrative jobs in textiles?

Answer 16

washing fleeces and spinning

Question 17

What were more lucrative jobs in textiles?

Answer 17

weaving and dyeing

Question 18

What problems did women in less lucrative jobs of textiles face?

Answer 18

exploitation from employers and the competed against charities that put it out for free, or slave labour.

Question 19

What advantage did spinning have?

Answer 19

It could be done at home whenever one had time to get to it in between the kids and household duties - it was supplemental income.

Question 20

Where could women qualify as weavers and have their own shop?

Answer 20

Barcelona

Question 21

Where did women largely run the silk industry?

Answer 21

In London.

Question 22

What happened if a woman who ran a yarn shop died leaving her husband behind?

Answer 22

He could continue in the business so long as he didn’t marry a woman outside the yarn guild - a reversal to the situation for women in male crafts

Question 23

What was unique about the guild in Cologne for gold beaters and spinners, and silk makers?

Answer 23

They were run by BOTH men and women.

Question 24

By 1500 women’s ability to work was being taken away - what was left for them?

Answer 24

huckstering, spinning, washing and low-grade employment.

Question 25

What might explain the decline of women in the workforce bt 1500?

Answer 25

One thing is increased regulation and professionalization of some of the industries they worked in, like home brewing.

The answer is wide-ranging economic, demographic, and political factors - especially the drop in population from the Black Death and other plagues as well as economic depressions in the later Middle Ages.

Question 26

How did employment for women trend after the Black Death?

Answer 26

They had greater chances in some places like London and Cologne where demand for goods and services was high, but this wasn’t a universal thing elsewhere. There was a downturn in the economy in England in the mid 1400s and then populations started to rebound by the late 1400s and employment was more limited. Even in domestic service, men became preferred employees.

Question 27

How did war effect the work of women?

Answer 27

They might find the demand for their goods declined during wars or disrupted trade. Some benefitted if they could produce military supplies, like cloth for uniforms, canvas, and tools.

Question 28

How did changes in the organization of work affect women?

Answer 28

As the family unit of production went away towards the creation of guilds, this hurt women’s employment chances, as they brought economic and political pressure on authorities to their own benefit. An example would be trying to pass legislation that all linen weavers needed to join the guild (which charged a members’ fee)

Question 29

What medical roles were acceptable for women?

Answer 29

Nursing (poorly paid) and midwifery. Doctors, though because they were not allowed to attend university, any of these would have been trained within their families and on the job - such as by a father who was a doctor. This made them rarer. Some worked as pharmacists

Question 30

Who was the most famous woman doctor of the MIddle Ages?

Answer 30

Trotula of Salerno in the 11th to 12th centuries.

Question 31

What might happen if a doctor failed to cure someone?

Answer 31

They might be prosecuted by the Church, town, or guilds - more likely if she was a woman.

Question 32

How was the medical profession of doctor controlled?

Answer 32

University trained doctors, particularly from Paris, tried to control over doctors they though unqualified. The university legislated in 1271 against surgeons, apothecaries and herbalists from prescribing medicines. Some people were excommunicated and banned from practice.

Question 33

What kind of training did midwives have?

Answer 33

Informally through their own experience and from other midwives. Some places had apprenticeships and exams.

Question 34

Did midwives have freedom of movement?

Answer 34

Some towns banned midwives from leaving town if there were women about to give birth.

Question 35

What was the employment outlook for a wet-nurse?

Answer 35

They were in demand. In the first half of the 15th century they made about twice the wage of a female servant. A wet nurse might live with the baby’s family where she was supervised, or in her own home where she could get on with other shit. Wet nurses were also employed by towns and insitutions for orphans or abandoned kids.

Question 36

what attitude should a woman have when tending the sick?

Answer 36

She should look after, wash, and feed their patients gently and without complaint.

Question 37

What part of working in a hospital was perhaps the most labourious?

Answer 37

Washing the sheets every week - sometimes 800-900.

Question 38

What was a prioress?

Answer 38

The most important hospital official after the master. She administered property, had her own seal, responsible for all femal staff, supervised sick rooms and patients. She had worked her way from the bottom to the top. Was responsible for the linen - buying more etc.

Question 39

What was a mistress?

Answer 39

A woman of aristocratic birth who was appointed to supervise royal children and higher nobility. They oversaw the servants attachted to the nursery and raised the kids. Girls stuck with mistresses until they grew up, but boys were sent to male tutors by age 7.

Question 40

Who might be a prostitute?

Answer 40

Someone driven by need of money or food through lack of training, dowry, absence of male kindred, married women deserted by husbands. Sometimes women were forced into prostitution by pimps or even their mothers. Often a servant, brewer, textile worker, etc. would prostitute when she had to.

Question 41

What did Augustine and some Medieval thinkers ponder about prostitution?

Answer 41

That it was an essential service to control lust, keep adulterers and homesexuals in check. The women should distinguish themselves with certain clothing and not be permitted to enter certain parts of town.

Question 42

How in demand was prostitution?

Answer 42

Always. Clergy were a main source of clientele. Demand was high in university towns. Sailors and merchants often visited brothels.

Question 43

Where might prostitution take place?

Answer 43

private brothels, inns and taversn, bath-houses, lodging houses.

Question 44

How were prostitutes regulated.

Answer 44

Some places tried to charge a license, others had some regulated items of clothing: striped hood in London, gloves and bell on head in Florence. Certain streets became “red light districts.” At Avignon they were forbidden to touch food in markets because they were thought impure.

Question 45

Why were public brothels established by many towns in Southern Europe in the 14th and 15 centuries?

Answer 45

The girls married very young and the men were much older. Prostitutes were used a release for these men who might otherwise rape young girls ruining them for marriage or engage in homesexual acts. Prostitution was better. Also, and established place for prostitution kept them away from the more respectable people that might be in inns or wherever.

Question 46

How did brothel regulation do a disservice to the sex workers there?

Answer 46

They became increasingly run by men, who charged them rent, for food, selected her customers, and took a cut of her profits. Some prostitutes needed permission to leave, others could only leave certain days and wear their marked clothes. They often had to leave during “Holy Week” (before Easter).

Question 47

What might a prostitute do after they grew too old for it?

Answer 47

Get married, enter domestic service.
Some became heads of their own brothel, entered religious life in a house for repentant prostitutes. Most probably became beggars or vagabonds.