2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This “lightening” session proposal engages debates about women’s investments in the proto-capitalist economies of late medieval and early modern Europe.  Earlier scholars of women and work in this era found stark contrasts between north-western Europe, where women owned and controlled more wealth, and southern Europe, where men tightly controlled women’s wealth.  Debates have continued to rage over the characterization of women’s activity (significant, minimal, exceptional, or merely hidden?), the extent to which women’s access to capital and investment varied over time, particularly between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, and the causes of these geographical and chronological variations (institutional differences, demographic patterns, economic development?).  The five papers of this session will show that research into records of actual practice undermines the north-south divide theory, because the balance between limitations and opportunities varied widely between regions (even quite small areas, such as towns, or village districts) and over time.   While each area had patriarchal legal and social limitations on women’s activities and access to investments, women with capital to invest sometimes negotiated around those limitations. They mobilized inherited or earned wealth and talent to manage businesses and make investments in property, businesses, and credit markets.  Following the New Economics focus on the importance of structures, this panel will discuss how inheritance customs, law, economic systems, industries, and gender roles in specific areas – Venice, Girona (in Catalonia), Ghent, Antwerp, and Leuven - affected women’s investment opportunities across the north-south divide.  

Andrea Bardyn is a co-organizer.