Premodern European women of all classes performed substantial productive economic labor

Evidence

In hierarchical society, women’s economic and social roles were defined by the class to which they belonged through birth or marriage. In the lower orders of society, peasant and farm wives were integral parts of a productive family unit. Married women carried a heavy burden of labor—childbearing and childrearing, gardening, cooking, cheese and soap making, spinning and weaving, beer brewing, and healing. Unmarried women worked as servants in another household, as unskilled labor in mowing, reaping, and sheepshearing, or at spinning and weaving. Urban women worked in the crafts or trades, owned shops, were members of craft guilds, and even occasionally worked at construction and ditch digging. At the upper levels of society, noblewomen were busy supervising the economic activities of the estate, owning and managing property, and keeping accounts. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 605

Categorization

• SHARE: The detail that urban women worked in construction and ditch digging would delight a labor-historian friend.
• XREF: connects to: Women have mostly produced history through productive labor, not suffered madness — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 260; Pioneer women routinely performed heavy agricultural field labor. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 195

Broader Connections

• Women have mostly produced history through productive labor, not suffered madness #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 260
• Pioneer women routinely performed heavy agricultural field labor. #exemplifies (0.78) — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 195