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Project

Women's fortunes. Female agency, property and investment in the urban space of late medieval Brabant.

In the Late Middle Ages the social position of women underwent major transitions. However, until today historians fail to agree on the nature of these changes. On the one hand, scholars argue that possibilities for women waned, while on the other hand, others maintain that the period was a 'golden age' in terms of women's opportunities. Far too often these debates tend to revolve around women's labour, rather than around other economic activities, such as women's property investment, and the motives surrounding their actions. To grasp fully the fundamental changes in women's status, this project proposes a social analysis of gender relations and income strategies. For this purpose, the project studies how women and men invested their property and material belongings in urban society, and, most important, how this changed over the course of the fifteenth century. This will include an examination of both how gender relations influenced these patterns, and how these patterns were affected by the differences among women, in terms of their marital, social and economic status. A comparative analysis of the aldermen's registers of two cities with different characteristics, Leuven and Antwerp, will bring social and economic structures to the fore of the research. By focusing on sample years, the project will study all deeds containing information on the financial strategies of private persons, thereby contributing a new perspective on the changing status of late medieval women.
Date:1 Oct 2016 →  30 Sep 2018
Keywords:BRABANT
Disciplines:Economic history, History
Project type:Collaboration project