Western European Cities In The Middle Ages Ordinary Women's Labor And Occupational Status Of Research

According to the traditional division of labor, the ordinary women of the Medieval cities were the main undertaker of the housework. Cooking, cleaning, growing vegetables, serving the husbands, taking care of the children and feeding the poultry were their daily chores. It was very onerous and took up much of the women's time. Besides the housework, the ordinary women also left the house to be engaged in the social work, such as weavers, brewers, or retailers. And the relative younger women were obliged to act as the servants, even as the prostitutes.Generally speaking, the ordinary women were not permitted to take part in the social work freely. The city laws and the guild routines did not encourage women's free activities. Furthermore, they hold a strong opposition against women's participation in economy independently. The religious institution also propagated the rationalism of women's focus on house chores. But the low level of productivity and the continually natural or man-made calamities made the men's work difficult to make both ends meet. In this situation, the ordinary city women had to leave the house and take some jobs within their powers, so that they can meet the needs of both individuals and families.Under the influence of the idea that "men are superior to women", the ordinary women's work was marked heavily with sexual discrimination. It could be seen from the following aspects: that many jobs with low social status and low wages belong to the women, such as wine making, weaving industry as well as retails. Whereas, the jobs with high social status and high wages serve the men. Moreover, ordinary women's jobs differ apparently from that of men's. Firstly, the ordinary women had to take several jobs simultaneously, so it was hard to determine their work identity. Secondly, their marginal works and lack of guarantee made them supplementary to men. Thirdly, there existed the tendency of the sex-division of the work, that is to say, the women's work was regarded asthe extension of their housework. In addition, as a consequence of women's low economic status, their status in family and society is also low. Furthermore, the ordinary city women's status was even lower than that of the country women and the women of the upper class in the city. This is because country women were the important bread of the family, they could go out of the house freely to participate in field work, so they were the direct participates of the productivity. Whereas women of the upper class would get the wealth by the heritage so they could depose the wealth freely.In conclusion, regardless of various unfavorable factors, the ordinary women's work had an important role in medieval history. Firstly, it was of vital importance to the survival of the family, merely for the men's work could not meet the whole family's needs. Secondly, women's social work had an irreplaceable effect on the development of Medieval economy.At last, I reaffirms that the ordinary women were the active creator of history.