Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent

Hutton, Shennan

doi:10.1057/9780230118706

Cited by 25 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Rather, women in the Low Countries were regularly identified without marital status: Shennan Hutton found that 45 per cent of the women in the aldermen's registers of fourteenth-century Ghent were identified without a marital status. 32 While there were likely many widows in this group, there were undoubtedly many unmarried women as well. Ninety of these women were identified by male family members, such as a father or brother, which suggests that they were not (yet) married.…”

Section: M E N a N D W O M E N A S L A N D O W N E R S I N L A T E mentioning

confidence: 96%

The gender distribution of real property ownership in late medieval Brussels (1356–1460)

Bardyn

2018

Cont. Change

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Although ownership of real property was crucial to the economic opportunities of medieval urban women, few studies systematically investigate the gender distribution of medieval real property over time. Using censiers (rarely used sources), this article approaches this question through a socio-geographical analysis of Brussels. The study finds that, despite the region's egalitarian inheritance laws, female ownership of real property was relatively limited, and it declined during the late Middle Ages. This decrease accelerated during economic crises, and especially affected the property of non-elite women. Further research on the changing economic opportunities of medieval women would benefit from a more explicit discussion of non-labour income sources and social status.

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Section: M E N a N D W O M E N A S L A N D O W N E R S I N L A T E mentioning

confidence: 96%

The gender distribution of real property ownership in late medieval Brussels (1356–1460)

Bardyn

2018

Cont. Change

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“…Continental women traders also seem to have concentrated upon the redistribution of these imports in their home markets. 122 The women who imported goods into London in the late fifteenth century also seem to have been specialists, concentrating in household items. Antonia Jamys (or James) was an alien importer whose goods were landed in London from two Flemish ships in July 1481.…”

Section: Female Merchants and International Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Female Merchants? Women, Debt, and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1266–1532

Goddard¹

2019

J. Br. Stud.

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This article examines English women who were engaged in wholesale long-distance or international trade in the later Middle Ages. These women made up only a small proportion of English merchants, averaging about 3 to 4 percent of the mercantile population, often working in partnership with their husbands. The article systematically quantifies, for the first time, women's penetration into this male-dominated trade and adds new perspectives to our understanding of women and trade in the Middle Ages by using both debt and customs records. It poses important questions about women's economic roles, the nature or distinctiveness of their businesses, and the ways that their actions fitted within mercantile activity more broadly. It examines the extent to which wives acted as equal economic partners with their husbands and also assesses the extent to which women's economic potential or agency in wholesale trade was shaped, or indeed constrained, by economic and patriarchal forces. It concludes by arguing that patriarchy certainly limited female access to wholesale markets, particularly after 1300, along with other linked features that also shaped women's economic trading endeavors. These features included status, access to capital, and the advantages to working within dynamic, extensive, and busy markets such as those found in later medieval London.

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“…Hutton found that 'single women investing their own property not only made far more loans than widows did, but their loans were also just as large'. 52 Having established the probable affluence of never-married maidens, the question remains: Why did widows acting alone as creditor-plaintiffs appoint attorneys considerably more often than never-married maidens, despite presumably having less ready money and being less able to afford them? Likewise, one might question why an equal proportion of never-married and widowed female debtor-defendants acting alone appointed an attorney, despite widows, who comprised the lion's share of debtors, presumably being poorer and less able to afford the expense.…”

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confidence: 99%

Women, Attorneys, and Credit in Late Medieval England

Stevens¹

2018

Early European Research

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This article is a path-breaking attempt to assess systematically women's use of attorneys in English royal common law courts c.1400-c.1500, comprising a case study of women's litigation before the king's national Court of Common Pleas, at Westminster. It focuses on credit-and debt-litigation, the most common type of litigation before the court. First, it assesses the availability of lawyers to women. Second, it establishes which women (that is, by condition or marital status) employed attorneys in credit-and debt-related lawsuits as plaintiffs or defendants, and explores the extent to which records of women's use of attorneys can serve as a proxy measure of women's confidence in their ability to interact with the legal system. Third, it examines the attorneys who served women, asking if lawyers either specialized in representing women or discriminated against them, and whether they typically had geographical associations with the women they represented. It is concluded that women capitalized on the wide availability of lawyers, whose representation would have bolstered their confidence in using the courts and thereby helped to keep them engaged in lending and borrowing irrespective of the perceived declining social position of women at the close of the Middle Ages. 2 cent of pleaded 'London-related' litigation, 1399-1500 (see below). 3 Likewise, in manor courts, peasant debt litigation was often the main form of interpersonal litigation. 4 Debtrelated lawsuits were so much more numerous than lawsuits over land that, even though women were involved in a smaller proportion of debt lawsuits than land lawsuits, the largest number lawsuits involving women were credit-and debt-related. The dominance of credit-and debt-related pleas among women's litigation is amply demonstrated by the records of England's royal Court of Common Pleas. In the fifteenth century the Court of Common Pleas, which sat at Westminster, just west of London, was the principal national venue for civil litigation in the English realm. At any given time, there were four to nine thousand cases in progress at Common Pleas. This was several hundred times as many cases as the realm's second busiest central common law court, the Court of King's Bench, which heard a mixture of civil and criminal pleas. 5 Additionally, Chancery, which increasingly exercised jurisdiction in conscience (and eventually equity) towards the close of the Middle Ages, later to be associated with disadvantaged female petitioners in the early modern period, handled only a small volume of business in the fifteenth century, probably less than two hundred cases per year. 6 It is important to remember, however, that few lawsuits brought before any of these courts were pursued to the point of receiving a judgement before the courts. Like litigation today, medieval litigation was as likely intended to encourage an out-of-court settlement or simply to harry an adversary as it was to extract a final judgement. Considerably less than one fifth of lawsuits initiated at Common Pleas were ever...

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Women and Economic Activities in Late Medieval Ghent

Cited by 25 publications

References 0 publications

The gender distribution of real property ownership in late medieval Brussels (1356–1460)

The gender distribution of real property ownership in late medieval Brussels (1356–1460)

Female Merchants? Women, Debt, and Trade in Later Medieval England, 1266–1532

Women, Attorneys, and Credit in Late Medieval England

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