Daily life

Women in the Renaissance

omen were primarily bearers and rearers of kids, keeping domestic hearth, subordinate inferiors of men; custom and prejudice kept them at home. Duties of women were varied and arduous. Only a few wealthy women escaped these tasks which included making clothes from scratch and administrating most of the food production. After the 13th century, women were no longer responsibly for as much of the production of basic supplies because each of these productions became individual male trades. In the Renaissance, women remained active only in carding and spinning wool. Small shops in master craftsman's home were moved to larger shops in a different location, removing the wife from participation in the business while keeping the house. Historians believe women filled a greater variety of professional roles, had more responsibilities, and had more economic contribution during the Middle Ages rather than the Renaissance. This is because capitalism made production of goods more efficient , reducing women's economic significance. Women were paid less for same jobs which meant that more women were unemployed.

Women who could not marry or lacked the dowry required to become nuns had to find work. Before the 15th century women could join craft guilds, but after that point craft guilds began to exclude women. Women could be wool merchants, cutlers, leatherworkers, butchers, ironmongers, glovers, bookbinders, or goldsmiths. Sometimes, the wife of craftsman was good enough to supervise the shop or take it over when her husband was dead. Sometimes guild regulations, particularly in northern Europe, treated a wife as business partner with the right to inherit and continue the business. Wives of highly skilled professions such as painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths rarely took over the business because the jobs required long apprenticeship and a high degree of technical accomplishment.

Paolo da Certaldo, ca. 1320 said, "If the child be a girl she should be put to sew and not to read, for it is not good that a woman should know how to read, unless you wish her to become a nun." The role of women, mostly upper class, placed crippling limitations one developing artistic or intellectual skills a woman might possess. Women had less freedom of movement in lower classes, they were always handicapped by the physical strains and dangers of constant childbearing and by endless hard labor to provide for family.

However, fathers and husbands who stood to profit from the careers of their daughters and wives were not likely to oppose them. However, this was not a very common situation.

Women- Information from Women Artists: 1550-1950 by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977, Random House