The position of women today is way different than in the 15th to 19th centuries. Nowadays, women are able to get jobs that they are longing for, without discrimination on ethnicity, gender, or age. Women are now allowed to perform job like men do. They have positions in the government, in which they could not participate in early centuries. Unlike before, men were getting paid higher than women, but that is not the case anymore. Sometimes, women have higher paying jobs than men. In addition, women have free will to do anything they want. In the 15th century, women were accused with witchcraft practices. They were executed if proved to be guilty. In worst cases, innocent women were killed if they were thought to be witches. Women in 15th to 19th centuries experienced hardships including the accusation and execution of women who were believed to be practicing witchcraft and the discrimination in the workforce getting paid less and, most of the time, unemployed.
In 15th century, women in Europe who committed often united sexuality with crimes. The prostitutes, thieves, murderers, and witches practiced trades either directly exercised their own genitalia or deceived men’s desires. They performed witchcrafts as their business.[1] The unlawful acts of women were considered as an achievement because they provide sexual pleasure for men. Some men and women were accused of practicing witchcraft including women doctors, pharmacists, and medical personnel. When doctors cured someone with disease, they were thought of as witches. They also believed that their success in helping the sick was influenced by devils. Their hands of healing were thought to have touched the devil’s external organs and the devil was tied behind her back. Noble, wealthy women underwent an ordeal either by water or burning coals to prove that they were innocents. On the other hand, lower-class women and some men were punished for practicing magic because they believed that this led to witchery. Magicians and witches can see the future by using supernatural instincts. They usually used crystal globes, bowls of water, hand lines, etc. to predict the future. [2]
Witches were believed to possess foreknowledge that could affect the person causing distress, hardships, and even death.[3] In the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a seldom a sustained effort in exterminating witches. There were multiple trials and they occurred in many separate towns. This period was intense in witch hunting.[4] The new obsession about diabolism, a belief in devils, was believed that it was related to developments of theological literature in early 15th century.[5] During the early 15th century, there was a fact evidence found that witchcraft was learned. An example of this act was found in the records of interrogations where judges asked suspects if they knew about witchcraft. Many people witnessed a woman who practiced witchcraft in Lucerne. When the woman had an argument with a man, his “cows gave nothing but blood.” Another fact was when a man moved in the community, and planted a garden better that hers; she went on and cursed the plants, and all his crops withered.[6] Both men and women who practiced witchcrafts and believed to be witches really had difficult times during the early 15th to 16th centuries. Their involvement in doing such devilish acts had serious punishment, which led to death. This shows that even if one was innocent, he or she was still executed because of other people’s instincts.
Another important topic during the 16th to 19th centuries that historians uncovered was the experiences of women in the workforce. Women were liberated by earning power they got through industrialization. Women’s employment remained significant in sectors such as pottery, cotton, and hosiery and silk, boot and shoe manufacture and dairying work in agriculture. Women were also offered little work during the growth of heavy industries of Victoria England, which included mining, metalworking, shipbuilding, etc. However, starting in the 18th century, eastern and southern England women’s work have undergone some decline in some areas.[7]
Some historians have seen that female employment was diminished because of demographic growth, technology changes, and rural structural changes. However, in the late 19th century, a boot and shoe trades in Northamptonshire, women were employed in the processes of either shoe closing or finishing. Nevertheless, over a hundred different prices paid to women in respect of the work in which men were involved; for example, rounding the clump soles, ironing studs, stitching foreparts, and cutting materials.[8] During their finishing operations, polishing, filling, and pairing were involved. Their wages were based on the types and equivalent of work they did, but for men they had their own pay rates. This example is an example that labor dealt with gendered work and the experiences of women in their workforce. Women servants who worked in the farms usually received 80 percent of their pay; this varied by region, types of agricultural work, and expectations and their customs. The pay rates also varied by age, marital status, and number of children in the family.[9]
The study of the wage of women shed light on uncovering the more about gendered wage payments. Women had the lowest pay, their job were less stable and they had unrewarding occupations.[10] Job skilled men were usually rewarded both financially and non-monetary rewards, but not much in women.[11] Unskilled women were offered with low paying job, seasonal, and irregular. Women working in a limited range of occupations, they were usually unemployed to longer periods than men. In industrial jobs, women were dependent upon the wages of the men.[12] Because men were mostly employed than women, men became “alien” and separated from home and their family. Their ‘home’ was redefined basing on the Victorian literature and art.[13] The problem in the history of women in the workforce explained the gender division of labor.
The situation of women in the 16th to 19th centuries shows that they are were not treated with respect and equality. Women’s position today had undergone a long process before getting the full freedom and security they longed for. Unlike women before, today women are considered as important in society. Their contribution in their home, economy, and business are acknowledged. Women’s experience in the 16th to 19th centuries will always be a hallmark in the history.
Bibliography
Cosman, Madeleine. Women at Work in Medieval Europe (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2000).
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch (New York: Autonomedia, 2004).
Honeyman, Katrina, and Jordan Goodman. “Women’s Work, Gender Conflict, and Labour Markets in Europe, 1500-1900,” The Economic History (1991): 608-609.
Kieckherfer, Richard. European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture (Routledge Library Edition, 2011).
Lane, Penelope, Neil Raven, and K.D.M Snell. Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600-1850. (New York: The Boydell Press, 2004).
Laurence, “Women in England, 1500-1760: A Social History,”
Renaissance Quarterly (1997): 654-655.
[1] Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Women at Work in Medieval Europe (New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2000), 121.
[2] Richard Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture (Routledge Library Edition, 2011), 125.
[3] Ibid., 125.
[4] Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (NY: Autonomedia, 2004), 35.
[5] Ibid., 40.
[6] Ibid., 99.
[7] Penelope Hunt et al., Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600-1850. ( NY: The Boydell Press, 2004), 3.
[8] Ibid., 4.
[9] Ibid., 5.
[10] Katrina Honeyman and Jordan Goodman, “Women’s Work, Gender Conflict, and Labour Markets in Europe, 1500-1900,” The Economic History Review 44, no. 4 (1991): 608.
[11] Ibid., 609.
[12] Anne Laurence, “Women in England, 1500-1760: A Social History,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1997): 654.
[13] Ibid., 655.
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