Dent, Trisha K. and McRee, Benjamin R. Working Women in the Medieval City. Women in Medieval Western European Culture, Garland Publishing Inc. New York, 1999 – Article. pp. 241-256
In the most commonly held concept of the medieval city, it’s the men who do the buying and selling, the working and crafting, and participate in the commotion of every day life. Women tend to occupy the margins, tending to children, housework, or cooking. However, the article states that “women were, in fact, active participants in the economic life of medieval cities” (141). If this is so, how can it be that history has forgotten the economic participation of working class medieval women? As Trisha K. Dent and Benjamin R. McRee explain in their article, “Working Women in the Medieval City,” the visibility of women’s work was determined by the types of occupations they held.
According to this article, women participated mainly in five different areas of work: domestic service, petty retail, textiles, healing, and prostitution. The first of these was the most common. A woman of each of the social classes except the very highest “typically began her work life as a servant” (244). At twelve or so, women left their family homes to find a job in this line of work. Since so many women engaged in domestic service, it was not considered degrading, and urban women “could expect to find work in their own neighborhoods” (244). A servant’s tasks would include domestic chores, and perhaps if her master was involved in a trade, “masters could easily involve servants in their trade” by requesting help with early preparation of goods (244).
Petty retail was the next most common occupation for women. These women “took… products door to door or sold them on the street” (245). In European medieval cities, these women were known as “hucksters” or “regrators” and these were not compliments (245). Women who were involved in these less than respected jobs “were often recent immigrants who were poor and lacked the capital and connections to secure other kinds of work” (246). Petty retailers who were slightly better off could purchase stalls on the street from which to display their wares. Though this occupation was considered “petty” as one can tell from the title the article gives, “in most urban markets, women were the principle vendors of fruits and vegetables” (246).
Women were also involved in “the largest and most complex industry in the Middle Ages- the production of textiles” (246). There were many steps to this industry- carding wool, spinning it into thread, weaving thread into cloth, then washing, dying, fulling, and tailoring to create a finished product. Although in the early medieval period, “production of cloth and clothing had been almost entirely in the hands of women,” with the rise of towns, men took over the later stages of production, which made more of a profit (246-247). However, the early stages required less training and could be done in one’s spare time, which made them ideal occupations for many urban women.
Medieval women were also involved in health care. There were female physicians trained by other female doctors, since they weren’t allowed to attend universities. Male university trained doctors “often challenged the right of these women to practice medicine” since they did not have university training, thus completing the Catch-22 (247). However, no man ever contested the right of a midwife to continue delivering babies. In fact, since “men were generally banned from obstetrics in the Middle Ages,” they were the only ones capable of the task (247). Midwives were generally considered knowledgeable by the male population and “were sometimes asked to provide expert testimony in cases where rape or abortion was suspected” (247). Women also worked in health care as “barbers, nurses, apothecaries, and hospital managers” until the fifteenth century when “male barbers [etc.] began to form guilds excluding them” (248).
Finally, urban women also worked as prostitutes. While this occupation was regulated heavily by cities, prostitutes did not consider their jobs as shameful, since “a substantial number of women [in a 1471 survey] identified themselves freely as prostitutes” (249). However, it was a dangerous occupation since “prostitutes were vulnerable to abuse by customers and pimps or to punishment by the authorities” (249). However, the church, the biggest medieval authority of all, never tried to be rid of it. In fact, “clergymen were often the chief customers of medieval prostitutes, and churchmen sometimes owned brothels” (248). Furthermore, the church thought that “the presence of prostitutes helped prevent fornication, rape, and sodomy” therefore canceling out other sins (248). Therefore, in the eyes of the church, the job of the prostitute was incredibly important to the health of the medieval city.
These occupations in domestic service, petty retail, textiles, health, and prostitution all have one thing in common that may demonstrate why women became a forgotten part of economic life in the medieval city: they are all behind the scenes. Servants, while they performed critical functions in households and even in preparation for craftsmanship, were confined to the sphere of their masters’ homes. Petty retailers were an important part of the food market, but were called names and disrespected. Women involved in textiles were confined to the early stages of cloth making, and the male dyers, fullers, and tailors took all the credit. Healers were either criticized for their credibility, like physicians, or involved in something intimate that left them behind the scenes, like midwives. And of course, the very nature of prostitution went against the biggest influence in the medieval world- the church. Visibly, women were indeed in the margins of the medieval city. But, as shown in “Working Women in the Medieval City,” urban women in the Middle Ages made a big impact.
Lauren Orsini, University of Mary Washington
