{"id":15721,"date":"2025-12-14T14:54:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T13:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/?p=15721"},"modified":"2025-12-14T15:43:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T14:43:54","slug":"droits-travail-activites-economiques-des-femmes-dans-les-villes-de-leurope-moderne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/droits-travail-activites-economiques-des-femmes-dans-les-villes-de-leurope-moderne\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s rights, work and economic activities in early modern European cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women’s rights, work and economic activities in early modern European cities<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Doctoral training week<\/strong>
\nANR D\u00c9FI: Droits, \u00c9conomies, Femmes, Italies<\/strong>
\nGender and Agency in Venice, Florence, Naples, Palermo<\/strong>
\nUniversity of Rouen, 7\u201310 September 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Research into women’s and gender history always engages in dialogue with current events and contemporary issues: in the field of labour history, wage discrimination, the difficult balance between work and motherhood, and various \u201cglass ceilings\u201d are long-standing realities. However, research on women’s work in pre-industrial societies has often been hampered by the silence of the archives, particularly with regard to the work of married women. This lack of documentary evidence has encouraged historians to diversify their sources, turning to \u201cqualitative\u201d sources and in particular judicial sources, especially in European regions where notarial sources and censuses are lacking (Ogilvie, 2003; Erickson, 2008; \u00c5gren, 2017). The reconstruction and quantification of women’s activities in the early modern era, a period of profound change characterised by recurring crises, has progressed thanks to the intersection of quantitative and qualitative data (Macleod, Shepard, \u00c5gren, 2023).<\/p>\n

Beyond research on proto-industrialisation and the \u201cindustrious revolution\u201d, which are thought to have created new job opportunities for women in rural areas, it is still worth emphasising the opportunities offered by cities. Cities were sources of support and work for women, who were a necessary resource for adapting urban economies in the context of early globalisation (Simonton, 2017 and 2023). It is important to analyse their contribution, at different stages of their life cycle, to the production of wealth and the economic development of cities, thereby re-evaluating, in relation to the historiographical developments of recent years, the opportunities offered by urban contexts in terms of assistance, access to markets and trades, but also as contexts in which clandestine or illicit income-generating activities could develop \u2013 on which guild archives and judicial sources can shed light (Bellavitis, 2018 and 2023).<\/p>\n

In addition to highlighting the presence of women of all ages and marital statuses in the paid labour market, research has proposed a model of their presence in the guilds that contradicts the \u201cdecline thesis\u201d according to which women were excluded from the guilds in the early modern period (Howell, 1986; Wiesner, 1986; Ogilvie, 2003). The image of the \u201caccordion movement\u201d proposed by Angela Groppi in relation to Rome (Groppi, 1990) eloquently describes the process by which the inclusion or exclusion of women workers from the guilds depends on economic conditions, even though the corporate world remains fundamentally patriarchal (Ogilvie, 2019). Finally, even if they did not participate fully in the guild, women could nevertheless constitute an important workforce, bordering on undeclared work, in a grey area that is now better studied, particularly by contemporary history research (Teseo, https:\/\/www.teseopress.com\/dictionnaire\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Recent research has reintegrated women’s economic activities into the \u201cgrand narrative\u201d of the development of capitalism and the rise of the economies of north-western Europe, placing the analysis within a broader examination of legal systems and rules governing the transfer of property, family models and women’s access to education, and by adapting the categories developed by contemporary economists to medieval and early modern Europe (Van Zanden, De Moor, Carmichael, 2019). However, this model has received well-founded criticism because it does not take into account all European research on women’s economic activities and rights, particularly in Southern Europe (Sarti, Zucca Micheletto, Lanzinger, De Rosa, 2022).<\/p>\n

At the same time, econometric reconstructions of wages over very long periods have served as the basis for the model of the \u201cLittle divergence\u201d between northern and southern Europe (Allen, 2001), a highly questionable model based on partial series that very rarely takes women’s wages into account (Humphries, Weisdorf, 2019) and, in this case too, largely ignoring research on Southern Europe (Rota, Weisdorf, 2020).<\/p>\n

Any research on women’s access to economic activities \u2013 work, business, credit, but also assistance \u2013 must take into account the legal dimension and examine their economic rights and how they exercised them (Bellavitis, Zucca Micheletto, 2019). The concepts of \u201cagency\u201d and \u201ccapabilities\u201d remain fundamental approaches in women’s history and gender history (Simonton, Montenach, 2013).<\/p>\n

The doctoral training week, organised as part of the ANR D\u00c9FI programme (https:\/\/anrdefi.hypotheses.org\/presentation-du-projet<\/a>), is aimed at PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and young doctors working on women’s economic activities in early modern European cities. Mornings will be devoted to lectures and afternoons to presentations and discussions of participants’ work. The working languages will be French and English. Work will begin on the morning of 7 September and end on the afternoon of 10 September. The organisers will cover accommodation (three or four nights) and meals, but not travel expenses.<\/p>\n

The sessions will be organised around the following main themes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Between quantification and micro-history of individual trajectories: multiple approaches to women’s work<\/li>\n
  2. Women’s rights and agency in European cities<\/li>\n
  3. Work within and outside urban guilds<\/li>\n
  4. Charity and work<\/li>\n
  5. Training and apprenticeships<\/li>\n
  6. Access to credit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Proposals for contributions (1500-character abstract in English or French + brief CV) should specify the corpus of sources used and the main bibliographical references. They should be sent jointly to the organisers before 31 March 2026:<\/p>\n

    \nanna.bellavitis@univ-rouen.fr
    \ncorine.maitte@univ-eiffel.fr\n<\/p>\n

    Short bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    • \u00c5gren, Maria (ed.), Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society<\/em>, New York, Oxford University Press, 2017<\/li>\n
    • Allen, Robert C., \u00ab The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War \u00bb, Explorations in Economic History<\/em>, vol. 38, no. 4, 2001, p. 411\u2013447<\/li>\n
    • Bellavitis, Anna, Women\u2019s Work and Rights in Early Modern Urban Europe<\/em>, London, Palgrave, 2018<\/li>\n
    • Bellavitis, Anna, \u00ab Urban Markets \u00bb, in Macleod, Shepard, \u00c5gren (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work and Gender in Early Modern Europe<\/em>, p. 136\u2013163<\/li>\n
    • Bellavitis, Anna \u2013 Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice (eds.), Gender, Law and Economic Well-Being in Europe from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. North vs South?<\/em>, London\u2013New York, Routledge, 2019<\/li>\n
    • Erickson, Amy Louise, \u00ab Married Women\u2019s Occupations in Eighteenth-Century London \u00bb, Continuity and Change<\/em>, 23, 2 (2008), p. 267\u2013307<\/li>\n
    • Groppi, Angela, \u00ab Un questionario da arricchire \u00bb, in La donna nell\u2019economia, secc. XIII\u2013XVIII<\/em>, Atti delle Settimane di studi dell\u2019Istituto internazionale di Storia economica F. Datini di Prato, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi, Florence, Le Monnier, 1990, p. 143\u2013154<\/li>\n
    • Howell, Marta C., Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities<\/em>, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986<\/li>\n
    • Humphries, Jane \u2013 Weisdorf, Jacob, \u00ab Unreal Wages? Real Income and Economic Growth in England, 1260\u20131850 \u00bb, The Economic Journal<\/em>, 129, 623 (October 2019), p. 2867\u20132887<\/li>\n
    • Macleod, Catriona \u2013 Shepard, Alexandra \u2013 \u00c5gren, Maria (eds.), The Whole Economy. Work and Gender in Early Modern Europe<\/em>, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023<\/li>\n
    • Ogilvie, Sheilagh, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany<\/em>, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003<\/li>\n
    • Ogilvie, Sheilagh, The European Guilds. An Economic Analysis<\/em>, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2019<\/li>\n
    • Rota, Mauro \u2013 Weisdorf, Jacob, \u00ab Italy and the Little Divergence in Wages and Prices: New Data, New Results \u00bb, The Journal of Economic History<\/em>, 80, 4 (December 2020), p. 931\u2013960<\/li>\n
    • Sarti, Raffaella \u2013 Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice \u2013 Lanzinger, Margareth \u2013 De Rosa, Maria Rosaria, \u00ab About \u201cCapital Women\u201d by Jan Luiten Van Zanden, Tine De Moor and Sarah Carmichael \u00bb, Quaderni storici<\/em>, 171 \/ a. LVII, no. 2, December 2022<\/li>\n
    • Simonton, Deborah \u2013 Montenach, Anne (eds.), Female Agency in the Urban Economy. Gender in European Towns, 1640\u20131830<\/em>, New York\u2013London, Routledge, 2013<\/li>\n
    • Simonton, Deborah (ed.), The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience<\/em>, London\u2013New York, Routledge, 2017<\/li>\n
    • Simonton, Deborah, Gender in the European Town. Ancien R\u00e9gime to the Modern<\/em>, London\u2013New York, Routledge, 2023<\/li>\n
    • Van Zanden, Jan Luiten \u2013 De Moor, Tine \u2013 Carmichael, Sarah, Capital Women. The European Marriage Pattern, Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe, 1300\u20131800<\/em>, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019<\/li>\n
    • Wiesner, Merry E., Working Women in Renaissance Germany<\/em>, New Brunswick (NJ), Rutgers University Press, 1986<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Women’s rights, work and economic activities in early modern European cities Doctoral training week ANR D\u00c9FI: Droits, \u00c9conomies, Femmes, Italies Gender and Agency in Venice, Florence, Naples, Palermo University of Rouen, 7\u201310 September 2026 Research into women’s and gender history always engages in dialogue with current events and contemporary issues: in the field of labour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"categorie_personnage":[],"class_list":["post-15721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-appels-contribution"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"gb","enabled_languages":["fr","gb"],"languages":{"fr":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"gb":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15721"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15726,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15721\/revisions\/15726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15721"},{"taxonomy":"categorie_personnage","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siefar.org\/gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categorie_personnage?post=15721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}