Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens

Nena Vandeweerdt is a postdoctoral researcher who studies gendered socioeconomic interactions in late medieval and early modern towns. She holds a PhD in History from the KU Leuven and the University of Cantabria. Her work focuses on urban labor markets, everyday life, and the use of digital humanities in historical research.

The book’s strength is its careful examination of the institutional structures that allowed or restricted women’s access to trade in each setting; in particular, the author exposes how guilds in the southern Netherlands helped determine women’s roles as distributors and producers, thus providing a clear contrast with the situation in Bilbao. This is a valuable contribution to the growing empirical literature concerning women’s work in premodern Europe. - Martha C. Howell, Columbia University

• List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations A Note on NumbersIntroduction. Comparing Women’s Work 1. Institutions and Their Impact: The Guild Debate 2. “How Society Worked” 3. A North-South Comparison 4. Mapping the Terrain: Biscay and BrabantBilbao Antwerp Mechelen 5. Sources 6. Chapter OrganizationChapter 1. Tracing Women’s Work 1. Female Labor Sectors, Women’s Work, and Town Ordinances Bread Trade Fish Trade Itinerant Informal Traders Merchants Artisan Workers The Hidden Workforce 2. Women’s Financial Status 3. ConclusionChapter 2. Shaping the Framework 1. The Household Economy in Brabant and Biscay Widows Spousal Cooperation Never-Married Household Members Shifting Away from the Household Paradigm 2. Craft Guilds: The Stronghold of the Brabantine Urban Economy 3. Operating Informally: Main Street or Margins? 4. ConclusionChapter 3. Limiting Women’s Work 1. Bilbao’s Council and the “Protection of the Consumer” 2. Brabantine Guilds and Town Councils Economic Motivations, Gendered Outcomes The ‘Guild Effect’ 3. Growing Restrictions? 4. ConclusionChapter 4. Wielding the Framework 1. Influencing Regulation Wielding Authority Direct Influence Consent, Bargaining, and Leverage 2. Going to Court Biscayan Tradeswomen in Court Risk-Taking and Forum Shopping The ‘Poverty Argument’ Group Recognition 3. ConclusionUnderstanding Women’s WorkBibliography 1. Archival sources Biscay Brabant 2. Printed sources Brabant Biscay 3. Secondary sources 4. Digital sourcesIndex