Women in the trade of the middle ages?

Answer 1

1st AnswerNo rank. Women were considered to have no rights or standing and to be chattel. 2nd AnswerWomen were ranked identically as men were except that they could not be secular clergy (priests, bishops, or popes), and in many countries were not permitted to be monarchs. Even in most of the countries where they could not be monarchs, they were able to be owners of titled estates. Eleanor of Aquitaine is an example of a woman who had a duchy in her own right, in a country where women could not be monarchs.

There were a number of countries that allowed female monarchs, and of these many had queens regnant. Some that technically allowed female monarchs never had one in the Middle Ages, Scotland being an example. In Denmark, where it was technically illegal for a woman to rule, Margaret I ruled anyway, for over twenty years and with great success. There is an article in Wikipedia listing queens regnant, and a link is provided below.

The following countries had female monarchs: Greece (The Byzantine Empire)

Bosnia

Poland

Hungary

England

Denmark

Italy (Naples and Sicily)

Spain (Navarre, Leon, Castile, and Aragon)

Portugal

The ranks of women in the nobility, from highest to lowest (and excluding a few that came after the Middle Ages), included: Empress

Queen

Duchess

Marchioness

Countess

Baroness

Dame

I was able to find several different orders of knights that had women in them with the rank of knight. One was made up exclusively of women who had fought with distinction in one battle, and this was the Order of the Hatchet. The other was the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose papal charter explicitly allowed women to be knights in the order. The Order of the Garter had women in it with rank equivalent to knight, but this practice stopped with the end of the Middle Ages.

Women often ran businesses or crafts shops. Some guilds, but nowhere near all, allowed women to be members. Some guilds, in fact, excluded men, and the silk guilds of some cities were among these. Women began to lose their ability to be guild members about the time the Renaissance began.

Many women were peasants, and they worked on the farms with their families.

There are links below.

Answer 2

Women in trade were usually, but not always, in the same line of work as their husbands. Merchant's wives had to be prepared to take over the business when the husband was away, ill, or died, and so these women were often educated to be able to read and write and do math. In fact, the abacus schools, which were set up beginning in the High Middle Ages, were often coeducational.

Women who were married to craftsmen often were also in the craft, and if the husband died, the wife was often given the place of the husband in the crafts guild. Guild participation by women declined in the Late Middle Ages when it became common for the guilds to have pensions for widows.

Some women in crafts or trade worked on their own, and we have numerous records of such people. There were even guilds for certain lines of work, such as the silk workers, that were closed to men.

There is a link below to a related question, where there is more information.

Answer 3

held social positions determined by the status of their husbands or fathers