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The role of women in Judaism has been influenced by its patriarchal nature. Halakhah (Jewish law) has also shaped the Jewish attitude toward women. The rabbis displayed a certain ambivalence between appreciation and the retention of stereotyped notions. In the contemporary period, women have challenged traditional attitudes. especially within non-Orthodox frameworks.

In the Biblical World There are two biblical accounts of the creation of woman. In the first (Gen. 1:27), woman was placed on a par with man, both being created in the image of God. Together they were given domination over the animal world and the task of procreation. In the second (Gen. 2:21-25), woman was created from man's rib to be his helper; man is told to leave his parents and cling to his wife. These two accounts are understood as prescribing Marriage between man and woman, both for reproduction and for mutual interdependence and happiness. Later, in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:16), woman was told that for her disobedience, she would be subservient to man.

In ancient times, Judaism was clearly a patriarchal religion, within the context of the general patriarchal society of the Near East. Social roles were usually prescribed according to one's sex. Following biblical prescription, the ruling class in Israelite society, such as the priesthood and (with exceptions) the monarchy, were male. A woman's primary role and means of self-expression were childbearing and homemaking. As Israelite society became more institutionalized, women were increasingly excluded from the public sphere and positions of power. On the other hand, women did play prominent roles, such as the Matriarchs, Miriam, Deborah the judge, and Huldah the prophetess, Ruth, Jael, and Esther, and Salome Alexandra, who ruled the country in the Maccabean period.

At the same time, Israelite women in some ways fared better under biblical law than women in surrounding cultures. Many of their rights were safeguarded and their freedom preserved. For example, a woman had to be properly provided for by her husband. However, she was, in some sense, her husband's property, and although Monogamy was the ideal, biblical law sanctioned polygamy.

The prevailing sentiment was that women belonged in the home. Women bore children and were responsible for family life. The panegyric to the "woman of valor" in Proverbs (31:10-31) refers to "buying and selling" as part of the woman's role. However, she was not considered morally or emotionally mature enough to occupy positions of power in Israelite society.

Rabbinic Attitudes During the rabbinic period, although women were often appreciated and even protected by rabbinic law, negative statements were made about women. On the one hand, the Talmud states that man is incomplete without woman. A man without a wife lives without joy and blessing and a man should love his wife as himself and respect her more than himself. The rabbis also maintained that each generation would be redeemed because of the righteous women of that generation. On the other hand, various rabbinic statements refer to women as being frivolous, greedy, and gossipers, and a source of temptation.

As in the biblical period, Jewish women fared better under Jewish law than their non-Jewish counterparts. The Jewish woman could not be married without her consent. The Ketubbah (Jewish marriage contract) was a legally binding document that provided for her and guaranteed her a monetary settlement in the event of a divorce. A woman's husband was not allowed to deny her sex for long periods of time.

According to halakhah, womanhood is held to involve a separate juridical status with its own specific sets of rights, obligations, and restrictions. In terms of religious obligation, women were classed with slaves and children, disqualified as witnesses, excluded from the study of Torah, and possibly segregated in Temple and synagogue. For biological reasons, they were regarded as ritually impure for long periods (see Niddah). On the other hand, within the family and home, they enjoyed respect, admiration, and considerable authority. Three positive commandments are specifically assigned to women. They must separate a piece of dough from the kneading bowl to give to the priests as ḥallah. They must light the Sabbath Candles. And they must uphold the laws of Family Purity. As a general principle, the halakhah exempts women from positive time-bound commandments.

Consequently, they are not obliged to perform those that must be performed at a specific time such as blowing the Shofar (ram's horn), sitting in the Sukkah, wearing a fringed garment (Tallit or Tsitsit) and fixed Prayer, although there were exceptions to this principle, e.g., Hanukkah lights and the Purim<megillah, Which Were Obligatory for Women. the Purpose of This Seems to Have Been to Exempt Women from Those Commandments That Might Require Them to Forgo Their Household Responsibilities to Perform a mitsvah. There Developed an Ambivalence Between Their Generally Inferior Role in Ritual and Other Matters and an Idealization Running from the Feminine Personification of wisdom in late Bible times to the projection of the feminine into the Godhead in medieval Kabbalah.

The Modern Period The exemption of women from time-related commandments has presented a problem in the modern period as women sought an equal status in the observance of Jewish law. In general, the halakhah seems to suggest that a woman may voluntarily choose to perform a mitsvah even if not so obliged. However, traditional principles are no longer being accepted by many Jewish women, especially in non-Orthodox circles. Contemporary Western society is increasingly granting equality to women and recognizing that even the "separate but equal" principle is inherently unequal. Hence, many Jewish men and women are calling upon the Jewish community to reexamine its attitudes regarding women.

Because of its halakhic framework, Orthodoxy has been unwilling or unable to make basic changes. As stated by one authority, Rabbi J. David Bleich, halakhah is a self-contained system which follows its own internal logic. It has created its own ideal values for women and the values of the non-Jewish world constitute no cause for change. Certain Orthodox circles have increased women's involvement in worship and study and have restructured the synagogue partition (meḥitsah) so that women are no longer confined to the back of the hall. Several modern Orthodox synagogues in the United States have even welcomed women's prayer quorums in which women act as readers and are called to the Torah. However, such changes remain within the traditional male-female roles, with no major alteration in halakhah or ritual. There is no suggestion of calling women to the Reading of the Law or being counted in a prayer quorum at a regular service, and certainly not of ordaining women as rabbis. In Israel, women have been selected to boards responsible for the appointment of rabbis and to religious councils, despite strong objections in many Orthodox quarters.

Non-Orthodox movements have been more responsive to the new demands and to the influence of feminism. Women have gained increasing status in Jewish ritual in Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist congregations. The Hebrew Union College (Reform) ordained the first American woman rabbi in 1972. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College has accepted women to its rabbinical program since its inception in 1967. In 1983, the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) voted to admit women to its rabbinical program (although its Cantors' Assembly declined to admit women cantors). In all three groups women are counted in a Minyan (although among Conservatives, this is left to the decision of the individual congregation). Under the impact of feminism, some liturgies have been altered in the non-Orthodox movements (e.g., by defining God in neutral rather than masculine terms and by mentioning the Matriarchs along with the Patriarchs). The Bat Mitzvah ceremony has taken its place alongside the Bar Mitzvah (also in Orthodox circles but not as part of the regular synagogue service) and new rituals have been developed to welcome baby girls into Judaism (see Simḥat Bat, Feminism)..

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According to the law in biblical times, an unmarried woman was subordinate to her father or, in his absence, to her elder brother. Thus, her father could sell her as a maidservant in the hope of having her master take her as a wife or assign her as a wife to one of his sons (Ex 21:7-9). It was her father or elder brother who gave her in marriage (Gen 24:50-51; Deut 22:16). Though marriage at times required her consent (Gen 24:57-58; cf Num 36:6), her husband could divorce her freely (Deut 24:1).

Upon being divorced or widowed, she returned to the home and authority of her father (Lev 22:13). As long as she was unmarried, her father could annual her vows (Num 30:5); if married, her vows could be annulled by her husband (Num 30:8). Her inferior economic status is indicated by her paying 30 shekels for the purpose of vows whereas a man paid 50 shekels (Lev 15:19-24). After childbirth, if the child were female, the mother's period of impurity was doubled (Lev 12:1-5).

Her subordinate legal status did not preclude the Hebrew woman from taking an active part in religious life as well as in social, political and even military affairs. In the sphere of religion, she could fulfill the role of prophet, the highest spiritual order in ancient Hebrew society. At least four women prophets are known by name: Miriam (Ex 15:20-21), Deborah (Judg 4:4-9), Huldah (II Kgs 22:14-20) and Noadiah (Neh 6:14). But within the sanctuary, she held no official position. Priestesses, while common in the religious life of the ancient Near East, were unknown in Hebrew society. Their deliberate exclusion from this sphere was probably due to the role of sacred prostitute which women played in ancient Canaanite sanctuaries.

Women appear to have been particularly susceptible to idolatrous practices, soothsaying and witchcraft. King Saul, when troubled, sought the services of a woman in En Dor who called up the spirit of the prophet Samuel from the grave (I Sam chap. 28). Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel refer to women as involved in these practices (cf Jer 44:15-19; Ezek 8:14; 13:17-23).

An Israelite woman, together with her husband, could visit and pray at a sanctuary on stated occasions (I Sam 1:4-5). She was commanded together with all Israel to be present at the reading of the Torah at the end of every Sabbatical year (Deut 31:12; cf Josh 8:35), as she was at the rejoicing of the Festival of Tabernacles (Deut 16:14). Unmarried girls observed an annual vintage festival by dancing in the vineyards (Judg 21:19-21).

The woman as mother was to be honored and respected no less than one's father (Ex 20:12; Deut 5:16). Disobedience of one's mother was as severely punished as disrespect of one's father (Lev 20:9; Deut 21:18-21; 27:16). The middle passage assigns to the mother a role equal to that of the father in the punishment of a rebellious son. On the level of legal status and rights, biblical legislation granted the right of inheritance to daughters in cases where there were no surviving sons (Num 36:1-8). As mother, the woman was responsible for caring for her children and household. She made clothing (Prov 31:19), backed bread for visitors (Gen 18:6) and prepared food (Gen 27:9, 14). The mother's economic activity would take her well beyond the limits of her home. According to the Book of Proverbs, she "brings her food from afar" and engaged in the purchase of real estate (Prov 31:14, 16).

The two significant occasions in the social life of ancient Hebrew society were weddings and funerals. Women fulfilled leading roles on both occasions. At weddings, they would sing love songs. Women also served as professional mourners and chanted dirges (Jer 9:17). On learning of the death of Saul and Jonathan, David in his lament, called upon the daughters of Israel to weep for their fallen king (II Sam 1:24).

Another role occupied by certain women was that of the "wise woman". The town of Abel Beth Maacah was saved from destruction by such a woman (II Sam 20:14-22). A "wise woman" of Tekoa was also employed by Joab in order to persuade King David to lift the banishment imposed upon his son Absalom (II Sam chap. 14).

The title "mother in Israel" (Judg 5:7) bestowed upon Deborah, reflects the leadership role certain women played. The OT records a number of instances in which women turned the tide of battle by their exploits. The outstanding example is that of Deborah who roused Barak and the troops of Naphtali and Zebulun to march against Sisera (Judg 4:4, 6). In the end, Sisera met his death at the hands of a woman, Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (Judg 4:17-21). When Abimelech threatened to burn the tower in which the men and women of Thebez had taken refuge, a woman in the tower threw down an upper millstone that crushed his skull (Judg 9:53). Two powerful royal women were Jezebel (I Kgs chaps. 18-19) and Athaliah (II Kgs chap. 11). Although Judith was regarded as a pious women, she is portrayed as having seduced and then beheaded Holofernes, which is probably why the Book of Judith was deemed unsuitable to be included in the Canon.

Women traditionally greeted men when they returned victorious from battle; they would welcome the returning heroes with song and dance in praise of their exploits (I Sam 18:6-7). This role is reflected in David's lament over the death of Saul and Jonathan "Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines" rejoice (II Sam 1:20). Songs of derision and scorn were also the province of women (Jer 38:22).

In its estimate and characterization of women, the OT is patently ambivalent. On the one hand, there is Ecclesiastes' misogynic "One (true) man among a thousand I have found but a (true) woman among all these I have not found" (Ecc 7:28), or the no less caustic "And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets" (Ecc 7:26). A negative portrait of the woman emerges from Proverbs 9:13; 11:22, a portrait in which the woman is characterized as noisy, contentious and indiscreet. Against this is juxtaposed the saying in Proverbs, "He who finds a wife, finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord" (18:22). The final verses of Proverbs are a paean of praise for the "virtuous wife" (31:10-31) lauded both by her husband and her children for her industriousness, her kindness, her wisdom and her ability to manage the affairs of her household.

At the heart of the NT stands the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus to which the primary witnesses are women (Matt 27:55-56; 28:1-10; Mark 15:40-41; 16:1-11; Luke 23:49; 24:1-11; John 19:25-27; 20:1-18). The preservation of this memory together with that of the woman who anointed Jesus within each of the early church traditions represented by the evangelists (Matt 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50; John 12:1-8) and in the face of the dominant patriarchal religious and social culture, points to a strong historical basis for the tradition. It also indicates the significant presence of women within early Christianity. The earliest traditions include women among the beneficiaries of the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed and effected (cf Matt 8:14-15; Mark 5:21-43; 7:24-30).

This equality of women with men in the kingdom of Jesus continued to be effective and to be proclaimed in the course of the Pauline mission. Philippians 4:2-3 and Romans 16:1-15 point to shared ministerial roles within the early communities and associate the language of ministry with both men and women. This suggests that women shared not only in the missionary activity of the early church but also in its leadership roles. Paul's theological basis for this activity finds expression in Galatians 3:28: "there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, he tries to give the pastoral application of this principle in the face of difficulties arising in the Corinthian community. His response to the Corinthian belief that their new-found freedom allowed them to blur the natural distinction between the sexes is found in I Corinthians chapter 11. Paul argues from the contrast between male and female in the first creation (I Cor 11:3) and from the authority which woman shares with man in the new creation (I Cor 11:10-12) to the position that men should appear to be men and women appear to be women in order to preserve the natural distinction between the sexes (I Cor 11:14-16). Their new-found freedom is to lie in their shared authority within the Christian community. This was challenged by certain groups within the community, possibly the Judaizers (cf I Cor 14:34-35), and drew a strong reaction from Paul (I Cor 14:36). Thus, at the earliest stages of its development, the radical nature of the kingdom of Jesus, especially as regards women, came into conflict with established beliefs and practices.

The tension created by such conflicts is reflected in the Gospel of Matthew which opens with the patrilineage of Jesus (Matt 1:1-17) and closes with the commissioning of the 11 male disciples to a universal mission (Matt 28:16-20). Matthew introduces significant references to women at key positions within the narrative. Four OT women and Mary break the dominant patriarchal pattern of the genealogy (Matt 1:3, 5-6, 16) and two of the women who remained faithful to Jesus, even to the foot of the cross, witness the empty tomb, encounter the risen Jesus, and are given the mission of proclaiming the resurrection to the disciples (Matt 27:55-56; 28:1-10). In the body of the narrative, not only are women healed and restored to the religious community of Israel (Matt 8:14-15; 9:18-26), but a Canaanite woman enters into a dialogue with Jesus which results in his extending his mission beyond the confines of Israel in prophetic expectation of the mission which he will entrust to his disciples beyond the resurrection (Matt 15:21-28; cf Matt 28:16-20). Finally, the prophetic action of the woman who anoints Jesus as he enters his passion is interpreted by Jesus: her act of recognition of Jesus in his climactic hour will be told in her memory just as the actions of Jesus are to be told in his memory (cf Matt 26:6-13, especially v. 13).

Both Luke and John preserve unique traditions regarding women. In Luke's infancy narrative, Mary's faithful response to the invitation of the angel stands in contrast to Zechariah's hesitation in the face of the role offered to himself and Elizabeth (Luke 1:26-38; cf 1:5-20), while the prophetic voices of Mary, Elizabeth and Anna (Luke 1:39-56; 2:36-38) parallel those of Zechariah (Luke 1:67-79) and Simeon (Luke 2:25-35). Twice within the Gospel of Luke, Jesus reaches out in compassion to a woman in need beyond traditional religious and social boundaries, and without the usual request from the one in need (Luke 7:11-17; 13:10-17); and twice Luke specifically mentions women ministering to Jesus as well as listening to his words of teaching (Luke 8:1-3; 10:38-42).

The NT also preserves, however, evidence of the later tendency to domesticate and patriarchalize the initial vision. The household codes of Ephesians and Colossians call for the submission of women to their husbands according to the model of the ancient patriarchal household (cf Eph 5:22-24; Col 3:18); and I Timothy reflects the loss of the community model of shared authority which Paul presented in I Corinthians 11:10-12 – a result of the church's acceptance of the dominant social patriarchal model (cf I Tim 2:12). Women are now to be under the control of male leaders (cf I Tim 5:3-16).

Thus, within the NT, we see reflected the struggle which ensued when the vision of Jesus regarding women met powerful religious and cultural forces arrayed against it. It preserves both the roots of liberation and also the roots of patriarchal domination and submission of women.

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The Buddha's attitude towards women was not radically different from that of his contemporaries. For male renunciates pursuing the religious life, women were seen as a temptation and a snare. The Buddha frequently cautioned monks to be on their guard when dealing with women lest they be overcome by lust and longing (tṛṣṇā). The following interchange between the Buddha and Ānanda from the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta illustrates this attitude:

—Lord, how should we conduct ourselves with regard to women?
—Don't see them, Ānanda.
—But if we should see them?
—Don't talk to them.
—But if they should talk to us?
—Keep wide awake, Ānanda.

(It should be noted that similar warnings were given to women about the dangers of men.) It was following the intervention of Ānanda that the Buddha was reluctantly persuaded to allow women to join the Saṃgha as nuns (bhikṣunī). In the context of the time, this was something of a radical step, since only one other group in India, the Jains (see Jainism), appears to have allowed women to become nuns. In contrast to the role of women in the religious life, in the context of lay society the role of woman as wife and mother was seen as crucial to the stability of the social order. Regarding the role of women in lay life, the Buddha upheld the traditional values of his time, describing the relationship between husband and wife in the following terms: ‘In five ways should a wife…be ministered to by her husband: by respect, by courtesy, by faithfulness, by handing over authority to her, by providing her with adornments. In these five ways does the wife ministered to by her husband love him: her duties are well performed; by hospitality to the kin of both; by faithfulness; by watching over the goods he brings; and by skill and industry in discharging all her business’ ( Sigālovāda Sutta). In modern times the Sakyadhita organization has been founded to further the participation of women in the religious life. See also dasa-silmātā; sikkhamat; thilashin.

As they have in all the world's cultures, women made up about half the population in early modern Europe, and their experiences were thus nearly as varied as those of men. Like those of men, women's experiences differed according to social class, geographic location, religious affiliation, ethnicity, and rural or urban setting. The life of Queen Elizabeth of England—probably the most powerful and famous woman from this period—was far more like that of her male relatives than like that of a peasant woman in Poland or the Ottoman Empire, or even a peasant woman on one of Elizabeth's own estates. She was highly educated, spoke many languages, held legitimate authority over many people, ate well, and lived quite comfortably, while peasant women—and men—had none of these advantages.

The great changes of the period had widely varying effects on women, creating greater opportunities for some women in some places while lessening opportunities for other women elsewhere. The expansion of rural cloth production, for example, created better-paying work for single women in parts of France, but lessened the demand for cloth made by married Irish women. Leaders of the Protestant Reformation supported teaching girls to read the Bible, but also advocated the closing of convents that provided a place where learned women could study and teach. Urban women in western Europe were increasingly able to obtain cheaper and more diverse consumer goods, but these were often produced in Europe's overseas colonies by men and women working in horrific conditions.

Despite this variety, however, all women in Europe lived in a society that regarded women as inferior to men. This idea undergirded and shaped legal systems, family relationships, inheritance patterns, religious doctrine and institutions, educational opportunities, and structures of work throughout all of Europe. Even Queen Elizabeth was not excluded from this, for her life—and the course of English history—would have been very different had she been a man. Many women, from Queen Elizabeth on down, were able to shape their lives to a great extent despite restrictive ideas and systems, but their actions did not upset the underlying hierarchy of gender. This essay will first examine trends in the way that women's history of the early modern period has been conceptualized and studied, and then explore three realms of life that were especially important in shaping early modern women's situation and experiences: legal systems, work, and religious life.

Early Modern Women's History

Intensive study of women in the early modern period, as in most periods, began in the 1970s by asking what women contributed to developments regarded as central to the period, such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, the development of capitalism, the creation of colonial empires, or the rise of the centralized state: Who were the great women artists/musicians/scientists/rulers? How did women's work serve capitalist expansion? What was women's role in political movements such as the English Civil War or other seventeenth-century revolts? Along with this, historians investigated what effects the developments of the early modern period had on women: What was the impact of the Reformation on women's lives? How did the scientific revolution or the Enlightenment shape ideas about women's place? What new products or opportunities were offered to women because of overseas empires?

Both these original lines of questioning continue, particularly for parts of Europe or groups of women that were slower to be studied, such as eastern Europe, Jewish women, or peasant women. They have been augmented more recently by quite different types of questions, as historians have realized the limitations of simply trying to fit women into historical developments largely derived from the male experience (an approach rather sarcastically described as "add women and stir"). Such questions often center on women's physical experiences—menstruation, pregnancy, motherhood—and the ways in which women gave meaning to these experiences, and on private or domestic matters, such as friendship networks, family devotional practices, or unpaid household labor. Because so little of this was documented in public sources during the early modern period, this research has required a great amount of archival digging and the use of literary and artistic sources.

To these older and newer lines of inquiry historians have also added questions about the symbolic role of gender, that is, how qualities judged masculine and feminine are differently valued and then used in discussions that do not explicitly relate to men and women, but that still reinforce women's secondary status. Investigations of the real and symbolic relations between gender and power have usually not been based on new types of sources, but have approached some of the most traditional types of historical sources—political treatises, public speeches by monarchs, state documents, religious tracts, and sermons—with new questions.

Taken together, these investigations have resulted in hundreds of books and thousands of articles on many aspects of the lives of early modern women. This is still far less, of course, than the number of books and articles on men, but it has created a much more complex—and interesting—picture than historians of women could have imagined thirty years ago and has changed the way we view many features of early modern life.

Law and Legal Systems

Traditional medieval law codes in Europe accorded women a secondary legal status, based generally on their inability to perform feudal military service; the oldest legal codes required every woman who was not married to have a male legal guardian who could undergo such procedures as trial by combat or trial by ordeal for her. This gender-based guardianship gradually died out in the later Middle Ages as court proceedings replaced physical trials, and unmarried women and widows generally gained the right to hold land on their own and to appear in court on their own behalf. In most parts of Europe, unmarried women and widows could make wills, serve as executors for the wills of others, and serve as witnesses in civil and criminal cases, though they could not serve as witnesses to a will.

Limitations on women's legal rights because of feudal obligations thus lessened in the late Middle Ages, but marriage provided another reason for restricting women's legal role. Marriage was cited as the key reason for excluding women from public offices and duties, for their duty to obey their husbands prevented them from acting as independent persons; the fact that an unmarried woman or widow might possibly get married meant that they, too, were included in this exclusion. A married woman was legally subject to her husband in all things; she could not sue, make contracts, or go to court for any reason without his approval, and in many areas of Europe could not be sued or charged with any civil crime on her own. However, Russian law codes and Islamic law in the Ottoman Empire recognized women's right to sue and be sued as well as certain property and inheritance rights. In many parts of Europe, all goods or property that a wife brought into a marriage and all wages she earned during the marriage were considered the property of her husband, a situation that did not change legally until the nineteenth century.

The husband's control of his wife's property could be modified somewhat by a marriage contract that gave her legal ownership of the dowry she brought into the marriage, or, in some cities, by her declaring herself unmarried (femme sole) for legal purposes, such as borrowing and loaning money or making contracts. In the sixteenth century, wives were also gradually allowed to retain control over some family property if they could prove that their husbands were squandering everything through drink, gambling, or bad investments. In addition to these exceptions provided through law codes, it is clear from court records that women often actively managed their dowry property and carried out legal transactions without getting special approval. The proliferation of exceptions and the fact that women were often able to slip through the cracks of urban law codes began to bother jurists who were becoming educated in Roman law with its goals of comprehensiveness and uniformity. Roman law also gave them additional grounds for women's secondary legal status, for it based this not on feudal obligations or a wife's duty to obey her husband but on women's alleged physical and mental weaknesses, their "fragility, imbecility, irresponsibility, and ignorance," in the words of Justinian's sixth-century code. Along with peasants and the simpleminded, women were regarded as not legally responsible for all of their own actions and could not be compelled to appear before a court; in all cases their testimony was regarded as less credible than a man's. These ideas led jurists in many parts of Europe to recommend, and in some cases implement, the reintroduction of gender-based guardianship; unmarried adult women and widows were again given male guardians and were prohibited from making any financial decisions, even donations to religious institutions, without their approval. In many parts of Europe, women lost the right of guardianship over their own children if they remarried.

Increasing restrictions on unmarried and married women continued throughout the early modern period. In 1731, for example, the Paris Parlement passed the Ordonnance des donations, which reemphasized the power of the husband over the wife; its provisions limiting women's legal rights later became part of the Code Napoléon of the early nineteenth century. The fact that court records show that fewer and fewer women appeared on their own behalf indicates that male guardianship was enforced. Governments generally became less willing to make exceptions in the case of women, as they felt any laxness might disrupt public order.

The spread of Roman law thus had a largely negative effect on women's civil legal status in the early modern period because of both the views of women that jurists chose to adopt from it and the stricter enforcement of existing laws to which it gave rise. Its impact on criminal law was less gender-specific, as was criminal law itself. In general, women throughout Europe were responsible for their own criminal actions and could be tortured and executed just like men. Women were often executed in a manner different from men, buried alive or drowned instead of being beheaded, largely because city executioners thought women would faint at the sight of the sword or ax and make their job more difficult. In Germany, a wife was often included in her husband's banishment for criminal actions—including banishment for adultery!—while the opposite was not the case. In Russia under Ivan the Terrible (ruled 1547–1584), the execution of a husband or father usually meant death for the victim's wife and children as well.

Along with concepts of feudal obligation, wifely obedience, and Roman law, one additional idea was essential in shaping women's legal rights in early modern Europe—the notion of honor. Honor in this period was highly gender-specific, and for women, honor was largely a sexual matter. In most parts of Europe, women of all classes were allowed to bring defamation suits to court for insults to their honor, and it is clear from court records that they did this. Because of ideas of female sinfulness, irrationality, and weakness, however, women, particularly those in the middle and upper classes, were never regarded as able to defend their own honor completely without male assistance. Lower-class women might trade insults or physically fight one another, but middle- and upper-class women were expected to internalize notions of honor and shame and shape their behavior accordingly, depending on male relatives to carry out any public defense of their honor.

Work

Though the actual work that men and women performed in the early modern economy was often very similar or the same, their relationships to work and their work identities were very different. Male work rhythms and a man's position in the economy were to a large degree determined by age, class, and training, with boys and men often moving as a group from one level of employment to the next. Female work rhythms were also determined by age and class, but even more so by individual biological and social events such as marriage, motherhood, and widowhood, all of which were experienced by women individually and over which they might have little control. Women often changed occupations several times during their lives or performed many different types of jobs at once, so that their identification with any one occupation was not strong.

Women rarely received formal training in a trade, and during the early modern period many occupations were professionalized, setting up required amounts of formal training and a licensing procedure before one could claim an occupational title. Thus in the Middle Ages both male and female practitioners of medicine were often called "physicians," but by the sixteenth century, although women still healed people, only men who had attended university medical school could be called "physicians." This professionalism trickled down to occupations that did not require university training; women might brew herbal remedies, but only men could use the title "apothecary." Professionalization did not simply affect titles, but also the fees people could charge for their services; a university-trained physician, for example, could easily make ten times the annual salary of a female medical practitioner.

During the early modern period, gender also became an important factor in separating what was considered skilled from what was considered unskilled work. Women were judged to be unfit for certain tasks, such as glass cutting, because they were too clumsy and "unskilled," yet those same women made lace or silk thread, jobs that required an even higher level of dexterity than glass cutting. The gendered notion of work meant that women's work was always valued less and generally paid less than men's. All economies need both structure and flexibility, and during the early modern period these qualities became gender-identified: male labor provided the structure, so that it was regulated, tied to a training process, and lifelong; female labor provided the flexibility, so that it was discontinuous, alternately encouraged or suppressed, not linked to formal training, and generally badly paid. Women's work was thus both marginal and irreplaceable.

Despite enormous economic changes during the early modern period, the vast majority of people in almost all parts of Europe continued to live in the countryside, producing agricultural products for their own use and for the use of their landlords. Agricultural tasks were highly, though not completely, gender-specific, though exactly which tasks were regarded as female and which as male varied widely throughout Europe. These gender divisions were partly the result of physical differences, with men generally doing tasks that required a great deal of upper-body strength, such as cutting grain with a scythe; they were partly the result of women's greater responsibility for child care, so that women carried out tasks closer to the house that could be more easily interrupted for nursing or tending children; they were partly the result of cultural beliefs, so that women in parts of Norway, for example, sowed all grain because people felt this would ensure a bigger harvest. Whatever their source, gender divisions meant that the proper functioning of a rural household required at least one adult male and one adult female; remarriage after the death of a spouse was much faster in the countryside than in the cities. Women's labor changed as new types of crops and agricultural products were introduced and as agriculture became more specialized. Women in parts of Italy, for example, tended and harvested olive trees and grape vines, and carried out most of the tasks associated with the production of silk: gathering leaves from mulberry trees, raising the silk cocoons, and processing cocoons into raw silk by reeling and spinning. Women also worked as day laborers in agriculture; from wage regulations, we can see that female agricultural laborers were to be paid about half of what men were, and were also to be given less and poorer quality food.

Women also found work in rural areas in nonagricultural tasks, particularly in mining in central Europe and by the sixteenth century in domestic industry. In mining, women carried ore, wood, and salt, sorted and washed ore, and prepared charcoal briquets for use in smelting. In domestic industry, they produced wool, linen, and later cotton thread or cloth (or cloth that was a mixture of these), and were hired by capitalist investors, especially in parts of France, southern Germany, and northern Italy, as part of a household or as an individual. In areas of Europe where whole households were hired, domestic industry often broke down gender divisions, for men, women, and children who were old enough all worked at the same tasks; labor became a more important economic commodity than property, which led to earlier marriage, weaker parental control over children, and more power to women in family decision making. In parts of Europe where women were hired as individuals, men's agricultural tasks were more highly paid, so men continued to make most of the decisions in the family, and there was little change in women's status.

In the cities, domestic service was probably the largest employer of women throughout the period. Girls might begin service as young as seven or eight, traveling from their home village to a nearby town. Cities also offered other types of service employment on a daily or short-term basis. Many of these jobs were viewed as extensions of a woman's functions and tasks in the home—cleaning, cooking, laundering, caring for children and old people, nursing the sick, preparing bodies for burial, mourning the dead. The hospitals, orphanages, and infirmaries run by the Catholic Church were largely staffed by women, as were similar secular institutions that many cities set up beginning in the fifteenth century. In most parts of Europe, women continued to dominate midwifery, the one female occupation whose practitioners developed a sense of work identity nearly as strong as that of men.

The city marketplace, the economic as well as geographic center of most cities, was filled with women; along with rural women with their agricultural and animal products there were city women with sausage, pretzels, meat pies, cookies, candles, soap, and wooden implements they had made. Women sold fresh and salted fish that their husbands had caught or that they had purchased from fishermen, game and fowl they had bought from hunters, and imported food items such as oranges, and, in the eighteenth century, tea and coffee bought from international merchants. Women also ran small retail establishments throughout the city. They made beer, mead, and hard cider, and ran taverns and inns to dispense their beverages and provide sleeping quarters for those too poor to stay in the more established inns. Among Muslim populations in Ottoman urban centers, a number of women vendors, many of them Christians and Jews, catered to upper-class harem women.

Domestic industry provided employment for increasing numbers of urban as well as rural women, particularly in spinning. Early modern techniques of cloth production necessitated up to twenty carders and spinners per weaver, so that cloth centers like Florence, Augsburg, or Antwerp could keep many people employed. The identification of women and spinning became very strong in the early modern period, and by the seventeenth century unmarried women in England came to be called "spinsters."

Women increasingly turned to spinning as other employment avenues were closed to them, particularly in craft guilds, which continued to dominate the production and distribution of most products throughout the early modern period. There were a few all-female guilds in cities with highly specialized economies such as Cologne, Paris, and Rouen, but in general the guilds were male organizations and followed the male life cycle. One became an apprentice at puberty, became a journeyman four to ten years later, traveled around learning from a number of masters, then settled down, married, opened one's own shop, and worked at the same craft full-time until one died or got too old to work any longer. Women fit into guilds much more informally, largely through their relationship to a master as his wife, daughter, or domestic servant. Masters' widows ran shops after the death of their husbands, and were expected to pay all guild fees, though they could not participate in running the guild. As the result of economic decline, the competition of rural and urban proto-industrial development, the increasingly political nature of the guilds, and notions of guild honor, even this informal participation began to be restricted in the fifteenth century on the Continent, however, and women largely lost this relatively high-status work opportunity.

Religion

In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the early modern period was a time when the domestic nature of women's acceptable religious activities was reinforced. The proper sphere for the expression of women's religious ideas was a household, whether the secular household of a Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim marriage, or the spiritual household of an enclosed Catholic or Orthodox convent. Times of emergency and instability, such as the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain, the first years of the Protestant Reformation, the English Civil War, or the Schism Crisis in Russia, offered women opportunities to play a public religious role, but these were clearly regarded as extraordinary by male religious thinkers and by many of the women who wrote or spoke publicly during these times. Women who were too assertive in expressing themselves during more stable times, or who were too individualistic in their ideas, risked being termed insane or being imprisoned by religious or secular courts.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all contain strong streaks of misogyny and were in the early modern period totally controlled by male hierarchies with the highest (or all) levels of the clergy reserved for men. In all three, God is thought of as male, the account of Creation appears to ascribe or ordain a secondary status for women, and women are instructed to be obedient and subservient; all three religious traditions were used by men as buttresses for male authority in all realms of life, not simply religion. Nevertheless, it was the language of religious texts, and the examples of pious women who preceded them, that were used most often by women to subvert or directly oppose male directives.

Before the Reformation in western Europe and throughout the early modern period in eastern Europe, the most powerful and in many ways independent women in Christianity were the abbesses of certain convents, who controlled large amounts of property and often had jurisdiction over many subjects. Convents had widely varying levels of religious devotion and intellectual life; many were little more than dumping grounds for unmarriagable daughters, while others were important centers of piety and learning. In the fifteenth century many underwent a process of reform designed to enforce strict rules of conduct and higher standards of spirituality. These reforms put convents more closely under the control of a local male bishop, taking away some of the abbess's independent power, but also built up a strong sense of group cohesion among the nuns and gave them a greater sense of the spiritual worth of their lives. In addition to living in convents, a number of women in the late Middle Ages lived in less structured religious communities, supporting themselves by weaving, sewing, or caring for the sick.

Like Christianity itself, the Protestant Reformation both expanded and diminished women's opportunities. The period in which women were most active was the decade or so immediately following an area's decision to break with the Catholic Church, or while this decision was being made. In Germany and many other parts of Europe, that decision was made by a political leader—a prince, duke, king, or city council—who then had to create an alternative religious structure. During this period, many groups and individuals tried to shape the new religious institutions. Sometimes this popular pressure took the form of religious riots, in which women and men destroyed paintings, statues, stained-glass windows, or other objects that symbolized the old religion, or protected such objects from destruction at the hands of government officials; in 1536 at Exeter in England, for example, a group of women armed with shovels and pikes attacked workers who had been hired by the government to dismantle a monastery. Sometimes this popular pressure took the form of writing, when women and men who did not have formal theological training took the notion of the "priesthood of all believers" literally and preached or published polemical religious literature explaining their own ideas.

Women's preaching or publishing religious material stood in direct opposition to the words ascribed to St. Paul (1 Timothy 2:11–15), which ordered women not to teach or preach, so that all women who published felt it necessary to justify their actions. Once Protestant churches were institutionalized, polemical writings by women (and untrained men) largely stopped. Women continued to write hymns and devotional literature, but these were often published posthumously or were designed for private use. Women's actions as well as their writings in the first years of the Reformation upset political and religious authorities. Many cities prohibited women from even getting together to discuss religious matters, and in 1543 an act of Parliament in England banned all women except those of the gentry and nobility from reading the Bible; upper-class women were also prohibited from reading the Bible aloud to others.

Once the Reformation was established, most women expressed their religious convictions in a domestic, rather than public, setting. They prayed and recited the catechism with children and servants, attended sermons, read the Bible or other devotional literature if they were literate, served meals that no longer followed Catholic fast prescriptions, and provided religious instruction for their children. Women's domestic religion frequently took them beyond the household, however, for they gave charitable donations to the needy and often assisted in caring for the ill and indigent. Such domestic and charitable activities were widely praised by Protestant reformers as long as husband and wife agreed in their religious opinions. If there was disagreement, however, most Protestants generally urged the wife to obey her husband rather than what she perceived as God's will.

The Protestant rejection of celibacy had a great impact on female religious, both cloistered nuns and women who lived in less formal religious communities. In most areas becoming Protestant, monasteries and convents were closed; nuns got very small pensions and were expected to return to their families. In parts of Germany where convents had long been powerful, nuns became the most vocal and resolute opponents of the Protestant Reformation; the nuns' firmness combined with other religious and political factors to allow many convents to survive for centuries as Catholic establishments within Protestant territories or even as Lutheran institutions, redefined as educational centers for young women.

The response of the Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation is often described as two interrelated movements, a Counter-Reformation that attempted to win territory and people back to loyalty to Rome and prevent further spread of Protestant ideas, and a reform of abuses and problems within the Catholic Church that had been recognized as problems by many long before the Protestant Reformation. Women were actively involved in both movements, but their actions were generally judged more acceptable when they were part of a reform drive; even more than the medieval crusades, the fight against Protestants, which was generally couched in very military language and could involve secret missions into "enemy" territory, was to be a masculine affair. Women who felt God had called them to oppose Protestants directly through missionary work, or to carry out the type of active service to the world in schools and hospitals that the Franciscans, Dominicans, and the new orders like the Jesuits were making increasingly popular with men, were largely opposed by the church hierarchy. The Council of Trent, the church council that met between 1545 and 1563 to define what Catholic positions would be on matters of doctrine and discipline, reaffirmed the necessity of cloister for all women religious, though enforcement of this decree came slowly. The only active apostolate left open to religious women was the instruction of girls, and that only within the convent. No nuns were sent to the foreign missions for any public duties, though once colonies were established in the New World and Asia cloistered convents quickly followed.

Some analysts see the period of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a time when western European religion was feminized, as large numbers of people turned to groups that emphasized personal conversion, direct communication with God, and moral regeneration. Many of these groups were inspired by or even founded by women, and had a disproportionate number of women among their followers. Women prophesied, published religious works, and even occasionally preached during the English Civil War, and also organized prayer meetings and conventicles in their houses. Quaker women preached throughout England and the English colonies in the New World, and were active as missionaries also in Ireland and Continental Europe well into the eighteenth century. Jansenism, a movement primarily within the French Catholic Church that emphasized personal holiness and spiritual renewal, attracted many women, and the convent of Port-Royal in Paris became the movement's spiritual center. In Germany, Pietism developed as a grass-roots movement of lay people who met in prayer circles and conventicles, among which were many women.

Judaism and Islam were minority religions in western Europe and Russia in the early modern period, and Jewish and Muslim women, along with men, were often the targets of persecution. Jewish women as well as men were questioned, tortured, physically punished, and in some cases executed by the Inquisition in Spain, leading Jews in other parts of Europe to make special efforts to help women of Jewish ancestry leave Spain and Portugal. Jewish women were excluded from public religious life, but they did have specific religious duties relating to the household and special prayers to say when they carried out these duties. Like Jewish women, Spanish Muslim women (termed "Moriscas") carried out religious rituals in their homes and taught them to their children. According to the records of the Inquisition, Moriscas observed the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, performed daily prayers, hid religious books and amulets written in Arabic in their clothing and furniture, taught Muslim ideas and practices to Christian women who married Muslim men, and organized funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies.

Women's lives involved much more than legal systems, work, and religious life, of course, but it is as impossible to cover all aspects of their lives in a relatively brief article as it would be those of men's lives. In fact, including a separate article on women—without a corresponding article on men—goes to some degree against recent research, which has emphasized the diversity more than the commonalities in women's experience across Europe. Even the experience of the relatively small group of women who held political power was diverse. Elizabeth I's situation was very different from that of queen mothers in France such as Marie de Médicis, female rulers of eastern Europe such as Maria Theresa, tsarinas such as Catherine the Great, or mothers of the sultans (known as the valide-sultan) in the Ottoman Empire. Thus perhaps the only generalization safe to make is that gender shaped the lives of all early modern Europeans in complex ways, and that every development of the period was shaped by, and in turn shaped, ideas about or structures of gender.

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—MERRY WIESNER-HANKS

Quotes:

"These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them." - Aristophanes

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony." - Jane Austen

"To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive." - Jane Austen

"When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even out virtues." - Honore De Balzac

".. it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have." - Sir James M. Barrie

"What Women Want: To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just to be held. What Men Want: Tickets for the world series." - Dave Barry

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