Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620This study explores the diverse and changing ways in which English women participated in the market economy from 1300 to 1620. Using substantial new evidence it challenges both traditional views of this 'golden age' for women's work and more recent critiques. The author argues that women's engagement in the market economy fluctuated widely under the pressures of demographic, economic, social and cultural change. Although women enjoyed unprecedented opportunities following the plagues of 1348 9, these opportunities had largely been eroded once again by the late sixteenth century. |
Contents
Womens work in its social setting | |
Studying working women | 4 |
how have scholars interpreted the sources? | 18 |
3 Continuity and change | 27 |
Providing services | 33 |
Domestic and personal services | 33 |
1 Livein servants | 33 |
2 Taking in boarders | 41 |
Drink work | 114 |
1 Brewing ale | 119 |
2 Aleselling | 130 |
3 Beer wine and taverns | 137 |
were women displaced from the drink trades around 1500? | 144 |
The food trades and innkeeping | 156 |
2 Other foods | 162 |
3 Innkeeping | 174 |
3 Nonresidential household employment sex work and health care | 52 |
Financial services and real estate | 65 |
2 Lending money | 76 |
3 Pawning goods | 81 |
4 Renting out property | 88 |
Making and selling goods | 91 |
General features of womens work as producers and sellers | 93 |
1 Characteristics of production and sale | 94 |
2 Apprenticeship | 107 |
Womens participation in the skilled crafts | 182 |
2 Other crafts | 194 |
Turning the coin women as consumers | 199 |
Conclusion | 208 |
Appendices | 212 |
Bibliography | 230 |
Index | 246 |
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Common terms and phrases
Agnes alehouses alesellers aletasters Alice Anne apprentices bakers baking beer Bennett bought bread brewers brewing Brewsters cash claimed cloth common law communities Court of Requests court rolls Coventry craft daughter debt decades drink trades early modern economic activities Edward III Elizabeth England equity courts Female Labour female servants five market centers food/drink fourteenth century gender Goldberg Havering Henry Henry VI hired household hucksters husband income innkeepers involved Joan John Kowaleski labor late medieval later fourteenth later sixteenth century listed living loan male Margaret marriage married women McIntosh medieval period Minehead Northallerton not-married women occupational paid participation pawnbroker pawning percent petitions Poll Tax poor women PRO REQ probably produced purchase Ramsey records reported retailers roles Romford sellers selling Shrewsbury singlewomen sixteenth century social sold sometimes Southwark span status Tamworth Thomas towns urban widows wife William wives woman workers