1450-1750
Early Modern Period
- Role of Gender in Empire
- Women secondary status most parts of globe – patriarchal
- social roles, economic opportunities, political influence
- Marriage remained primarily economic arrangement
- Method of gaining/transferring wealth and property
- Ensured inheritance of goods/assets by legitimate heirs
- With Protestant Reformation gained more marriages based on love
- Europe gained limited awareness of injustices toward women
- Europe – limited access to small # of women
- Noble/aristocratic women
- From emerging middle class
- Gained education
- Active in business
- Make scientific discoveries
- Become artists/writers
- Women discovered/developed ways to gain influence/advance desires
- Advising husbands/sons
- Educating children
- Running/help running business
- Managing household finances
- Generalizations
- Higher up in social class – more freedom to be involved in education/arts – servants did work
- Lower down social scale – more time spent w/ family, in fields, tending livestock
- Cities opened up opportunities for women for crafts/engage in commerce
- Higher status of women negatives
- Less value to contribution
- More need to be protected
- Women more valued in lower class – contribution more needed
- Urban/commercial vs. rural/agricultural vs. hierarchical/decentralized
- China
- Confucianism governed relationship of women to families
- Obey fathers and brothers and then husbands
- Always of subservience
- Influenced Japan
- Women obeyed fathers, husbands, and if widowed, sons
- Confucianism governed relationship of women to families
- Muslim world
- Harem shows how culture defines roles
- Initially Arabic women had freedom/rights
- Eventually adopted new ideologies
- Veiling from non-Arab converts
- Wealthy Muslims separated women in their households by placing in harems
- Special sections of house for all female members, young sons, servants
- Harem shows how culture defines roles
- Women secondary status most parts of globe – patriarchal