Medieval Frankish law priced women according to their reproductive capacity

Evidence

Reproduction outside of marriage was also tied with rank and wealth. To an extraordinary degree, powerful lords sequestered young women inside the walls of their castles, plucking them from their homesteads to work as maids and attendants. There is abundant evidence that these lords mated prolifically with harems of these women, often siring dozens of illegitimate children. In some cases, they prevented these women from marrying other men; in others, they sequestered them as virgins, and then married them off after they had had a child with the castle lord. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 699 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Once woman is dethroned by the advent of private property, her fate is linked to it for centuries: in large part, her history is intertwined with the history of inheritance. The fundamental importance of this institution becomes clear if we keep in mind that the owner alienated his existence in property; it was more important to him than life itself; it goes beyond the strict limits of a mortal lifetime, it lives on after the body is gone, an earthly and tangible incarnation of the immortal soul; but this continued survival can occur only if property remains in the owner’s hands: it can remain his after death only if it belongs to individuals who are extensions of himself and recognized, who are his own. Cultivating paternal lands and worshipping the father’s spirit are one and the same obligation for the heir: to ensure the survival of ancestors on earth and in the underworld. Man will not, therefore, agree to share his property or his children with woman. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Of course, surpluses of pugnacious young males compete for the attention of females in human societies, too (the reason automobile insurance costs so much more for adolescent men than it does for women), and nowhere was this more apparent than in the European knights of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when there was a severe limitation of eligible, reproductively ready women, and an excess of battling rival males. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 169 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Medieval lords sequestered women to monopolize reproduction — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 699; Excess rival males over scarce fertile females drove knightly combat in medieval Europe — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 169; In feudalism woman functioned as property transmitting land to men — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 207 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Medieval lords sequestered women to monopolize reproduction #corroborates (0.82) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 699
• The institution of inheritance causally produced woman’s subordination to man’s property #corroborates (0.78) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 182
• Excess rival males over scarce fertile females drove knightly combat in medieval Europe #expands (0.75) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 169
• In feudalism woman functioned as property transmitting land to men #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 207
• Medieval polemic framed Muslim polygamy as a breeding strategy against Christendom #expands (0.72) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2185
• Demographic scarcity of European women drove enslavement of African women as concubines #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1081