In the book Medieval Women by Eileen Power, we see a large change in women’s roles from the Greco-Roman society in the Invisible Romans book and the Middle Ages. Women, like men, were able to work for a living. This is similar to women today, just like how your mom might have a job, which had been almost non-existent in the past. Women were not only allowed to have jobs, but it was important for married women to make money. A passage from The Working Woman in Town and Country says, “Like men, they were driven to offer themselves for hire, or otherwise to work for their living.” Some women were single, so they needed to make money to support themselves. We can see a culture change in society because women only wanted to be wives in Greco-Roman society. You can say that it was their purpose. However, in the Middle Ages, single working women were normalized.
In the image above we can see two instances from the book Medieval Woman of women working in society. The first shows working to shear and weave wool and the other shows women working in the fishmonger's shop
In most cases, women did not work for money. Some women worked to help their husbands and fathers in their trade. Typically, women who only helped their husbands in trade were more commonly seen than women with jobs that made money. It had been common for women to help their husbands with their work so that when the husbands died, the wives could take over. This is a completely different understanding than in Invisible Romans and Christin de Pisan’s “The Book with the City of Lady’s.” These two writings show women as not having any value to men. But here, these men want their wives to be the ones to handle the business when they die. “No small amount of knowledge and ability was required to manage a large and important business; widows doing so much have been competent folk, well able to hold their own even in the complications of foreign commerce.” The book continues to acknowledge how women have the potential to be intelligent instead of supporting the idea that all women are dumb and not skilled. In some cases, women did not only work for their husbands, but they had personal jobs as well. This shows how women did not have to be fully connected to their husbands in the Middle Ages. Similarly, if women went on their own with jobs and trades that were not connected to their husbands, they were fully to blame if something went wrong, and it was unable to fall on their husbands. This shows how women have gained more responsibility in society.
Similarly, if women went on their own with jobs and trades that were not connected to their husbands, they were fully to blame if something went wrong, and it was unable to fall on their husbands. This shows how women have gained more responsibility in society.
The book also mentions girls had the same opportunities to be apprenticed in trade as boys. It can be interpreted as women having equal rights as men. In London, when people wrote their wills (These are like special papers where people write down what should happen to their stuff, like their house and things, after they die), it was common for parents then to make sure that their son and/or daughters learned a skill or trade, which means that they wanted to give their kids opportunities for education and training so they could support themselves in the future, which can show shows that parents wanted to give their children equal chances regardless of whether they were girls or boys.
In the Medieval Industry, we can see women playing major roles in a variety of different crafts. For example, they were butchers, chandlers, ironmongers, net-makers, show-makers, glovers, purse-makers, etc. It seems almost as if women began working more “manly” jobs than seen in the past.
However, the book questions men's attitude towards the competition of these working women and what jobs women took in crafts that men mainly did. Men working along with women caused the rise of jealousy of the competition women. Women made way less money than men did, so men were also afraid of cheap labor being chosen over them. In London, this caused a rule to be put into place that a man could not hire a woman in his trade unless it was his wife or daughter.
At the same time, in France, many women were employed along with men in crafts. Crafts done by women had been organized the same as those done by men. Similarly, women's jobs were set up the same way as the ones done by men. Women were treated the same in jobs as men, and women were treated the same as workers. They followed the same rules and had the same opportunities. It was not uncommon, however, to see women working in two or three industries and men working in only one. It could be a possibility that men were threatened by how hard women work, which may have also led to people being against women in jobs
Overall, we can see a large increase in women's abilities in society from the Early Middle Ages. However, with the increase, we can also see a decrease as men became more afraid and jealous of these women.