Rethinking the decline-thesis: the diminishing position of woman in an urban context during the late middle ages

In my PhD project, titled Dismantling the Borders, I have compared women's labour opportunities in Brabant and Biscay in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Since the 1980s, scholars have debated differences in women's economic positions between premodern northern and southern Europe. Scholars arguing for such differences have often explained them based on diverging legal frameworks and family structures in the two regions. Nevertheless, more and more critiques on these hypotheses have arisen, questioning their impact on women's labour opportunities and north-south differences in general. This study offers a different explanation for geographical differences in women's economic activities. Based on a comparison of women's activities in retail and other small-scale (food) trades in Bilbao, Mechelen, and Antwerp, I suggest a renewed focus on the impact of different (institutional) organisation of work on women's labour opportunities.

It should not surprise that there is ample evidence of women active in certain market sectors in the written sources of Antwerp, Mechelen, and Bilbao. In line with earlier findings on women's market-oriented work, it is clear that they were involved in a broad set of activities. Notwithstanding, there are crucial differences between the Brabantine and Biscayan towns. In Antwerp and Mechelen, women's labour activities in the studied occupations were highly dependent on their marital status, parentage, and social status. Therefore, regulations of women's work distinguished between different groups of women. Formally, women were often excluded from participating independently in many occupations, which were organised by patriarchal craft guilds. However, within these institutions, women family members of male guild masters were incorporated in the master's workshop. Depending on their relation to a guilded man, women could thus be a recognised and accepted part of the workforce.

In Bilbao, no such dependency on marital status and their relation to men can be detected in the sources. Instead, normative sources point to a large group of independent saleswomen involved in the town's small-scale trades. Certain occupations within these market sectors, such as bread trade, fishmongering, and linen sales, were even mainly female occupations. Women of different marital statuses were engaged in these trades. The town's retail and food trades were not formally organised, but the town council of Bilbao still heavily regulated these trades and the women involved in them. This extensive regulation was the result of the importance of food distribution for the town and its inhabitants. Women involved in food trades and retail in Bilbao might not have been formally organised but still practised influence over the council and the regulations of their market sectors. Ordinances could be changed after the women asked to do so, and the council held the agreement of the groups of saleswomen into account when regulating their work. This is especially visible for the women fishmongers, and bread bakers and sellers.

Regulations of women's labour opportunities in Brabant and Biscay differed according to the different organisation of work in the two regions. However, in both regions, salespersons did not always heed the authorities' regulations. In historical records about illicit sales practices, men and women can be seen breaking regulations in both regions, most often because this would be more financially profitable for them. The urban authorities, and in the case of Brabant also the guilds, reacted against this if the illicit sales practices of urban residents would result in a substantial financial loss for the town government and guilds. When coming into conflict with these urban authorities, the salespersons involved in illicit trade could use similar arguments in both regions. In both Brabant and Biscay, economic arguments – claiming poverty or economic losses – were used by both the salespersons and institutions prosecuting them. By contrast, certain arguments – such as membership of a recognised guild or association – could only be found for the Brabantine cases, seeing as few women worked under such official recognition in Bilbao.

By involving the local contexts, particularly the institutions responsible for the organisation of (women's) work, of the towns chosen for this study from each region, this study encourages new approaches and perspectives on regional differences in women's labour opportunities. In the Brabantine case studies, craft guilds played an important role in influencing women's labour opportunities. Within these patriarchal institutions, women played limited and clearly defined roles. In Bilbao, where the same occupations were not organised in such corporations, a more diverse group of women were active players in these economic sectors. Nevertheless, as was also the case in Brabant, Bilbao's saleswomen were rarely involved in the lucrative trades.