The Rights of Women in the Middle Ages

By any metric, the middle ages in Europe was not an egalitarian society. Gender roles were heavily ingrained in the culture, with men meant to have aggressive masculine traits, and women to have fragile feminine traits.The practice of minting coins was perfected by Roman Emperors such as Augustus, Vespasian, and Diocletian, and as many Roman customs did, it became adopted by medieval kings, particularly Anglo-Saxons ones. The minting of coins not only served as a way to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, but they also were political tools utilised by leaders. Cynethryth, Queen of Mercia and Wife of Offa the Great, was the only Anglo-Saxon Queen we know of who issued her own coinage1. This not only has implications for the political eptitude of Cynethryth, but also has significance to understanding of medieval gender roles and how women in power operated and exercised authority.

Women’s rights have improved drastically since that time but there still is a stigma that men are better than women. This type of view is wrong and shouldn’t even be thought about in the world we live into today. Woman server a great purpose in the world we live in and should be considered equal in all aspects of life. If one were to ponder this idea seriously we can see without out women no children are born. The sad truth is that women still have to fight for their rights in every aspect of their daily lives. The typical women in society makes only .70 cents for every dollar that a man would make doing the same job. One would think that one hundred and fifty years later women would be considered equal counterparts to men. “There has been progress toward greater workplace equality, but we still have a long ways to

The history of the Middle Ages typically places women in one of two roles; they are either placed upon a pedestal of holiness or reviled as whores and allies of Satan. Historians, Marty Williams and Anne Echols, attempt to combat that idea with their text Between Pit and Pedestal: Women in the Middle Ages. Williams and Echols succeed in showing that the traditional female role did fall somewhere in between, but there was a lot of variety in what was in between. Women were wives, merchants, land owners, and doctors, but where does the "traditional" female fall in this picture? As scholars and historians, we are fortunate to have documents written by a woman in the Middle Ages: the letters of Heloise to her husband, renowned teacher and philosopher, Peter Abelard (referred to as Abelard).

In the Middle Ages from 476 CE- 14th century almost all of the power of women was determined by biblical references. The average woman in a rural area had the duty of making clothes from wool, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of children. The women in town often were tasked in purchasing and trading goods and the normal housekeeping. In extreme cases women were known as witches. Other women became nuns and got involved in spiritual matters. In the year 1000 traditional marriage that involved getting married for financial reasons became less common. Although the parents still assisted in choosing the spouse it was becoming freer to choose who to marry. The woman was essentially owned by a male guardian almost like a child. However, if a rich widowed woman decided she did not want or have another guardian available, she was able to have her own name. During the Middle Ages many rich women were able to participate in things such as art, music or writing. It was rare for a woman not that well off to be able to purchase the tools or have the education to do art, music, or writing. All the rules developed depended on how

Although women now have many more rights and freedoms than what they used to, it didn’t simply happen over night. Throughout the course of history men have always had a superior role to women in our society. White Men could own land, earn a wage, get an education, and state their political ideas much before women ever could. Women have earned their way closer to being equivalent to men by fighting for a higher position in law, receiving education, and advancing to wage labor in the work force.

One example is the experiences women had with education. Beforehand, women had stayed at home doing housework, and did not need education. However many more women during this time strived for better education. In this time period, women began to become more educated. An example of this is Madame du Chatelet, who decided to take a well educated life in mathematics during the Enlightenment, instead of being uneducated.. However women like Madame du Chatelet were rare in society, and most decided to stay home and stay uneducated. Also women like Madame du Chatelet, were only wealthy, so once again most poor women did not change experiences with their education. Another change of experiences the women went through was the acceptance by some into guilds, which created high craftsmanship goods and were very selective. At this time, guilds had banned women from working but slowly guilds had started to break those rules and let women work. This is a major step from what women were doing previously, however it did not widely change how all women had worked. Guilds were limited to more wealthy people, so only the wealthy women were allowed into guilds. Also even to wealthy women, working at guilds was limited. Overall most women did not change how they worked from previous generations, as many still stayed at home only doing housework and teaching their

Women Living the life of a female in the medieval times was difficult and women had no right and no say in their future because it was already planned out for them. For women who were born poor, they had to start working as soon as they were physically able to. They would keep on working till there twenties till they would finally get married and start a family. This is because there family needed them to keep on working for as long as possible before they started their own new family. For the women born into wealth they were married off at the age of 14 and would be forced into any relationship (preferably to a rich man).

Women withstood a multitude of limitations in the medieval era. Due to the political, social, and religious restrictions women encountered, historians neglected to realize that they demonstrated agency. The female experience is something that has been overlooked until recently. Unfortunately, without the knowledge of how women found ways to exert their power, we are experiencing a deficit of knowledge in this period. Through the close examination of the primary sources: The Gospel of Mary, Dhouda’s Liber Manualis, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the creative means of female force are displayed.

Since human civilization, women never had equality with men. Even in 2018, women are still fighting for their rights. Women’s freedom has always depended on the time period that a women was raised, their culture, their religion and their society that they are apart of. A prime example that illustrates this is comparing the women that lived in Athens during the classical age and women in North America before they were given the right to vote.

The women in medieval society were treated more like property and were thought as of nothing more then servants for their husbands or fathers. Women in this time period were seen as being less important than men, weaker, and less intelligent too (Newman “Women in the Middle Ages”). In medieval society, the people believed that

Dating back to ancient times, the role of women has never reached true equality with men. We can trace this inequality back to as early as the great Athenian society, where life as we know it today started taking form. On the other side of the inequality, throughout the ancient history of the world, the roles and positions that women have had have improved over time. We can see this tracing time from Athens, to Sparta, the Roman Republic, it's Empire and the rise of Christianity. Although some of theses societies lived parallel in time, each one shows a difference in the way they treat women. Each one did not treat women the same, but the end result compared to the beginning is positive for women.

This gender inequality was harmful throughout history, and continues to be. Its astonishing how much of an impact the Renaissance has on us, in gender depiction but also looking at art and and religion. The world has changed, women now have a sense of independence, and ability to vote, to speak up, but there are still so many things wrong with how we are treated, things which people find hard to believe considering how far we have come. Although watching TV, reading a book, even walking down the street, it becomes clear that women are depicted in a certain way that fits our “stereotype” of maybe weak, bossy, or slutty. It is this that puts us on a different pedestal to men, and goes to show that the world isnt quite equal after

Throughout time, women have been treated differently than men. History teaches us that in the past, women could not own property, women could not vote and women were often denied the opportunity to work at paying jobs and were often expected to stay home to raise and care for their families. One would think that now in the year 2014, the inequality and inequity between men and women would be a thing of the past; something we would be learning about only in history.

The grey skies of a society completely dominated by men, left equality a fleeting vision for women in the Dark Ages. That being said, women were subservient objects simply used for the benefit of men,with roles and position defined by the morality and social expectations of the church. The biblical depiction of Eve convinced the people that women were inherently weaker and inferior to men. This became the basis for all

Society in the medieval ages was completely dominated by men, leaving women with little leeway to acquire equal rights. Women were objects, resources, simply to be used for the benefit of men. Religion controlled the era and the biblical depiction of Eve was enough to convince the people that women were inherently weaker and inferior to men. This became the basis for all laws, expectations and duties