DemoArgument

Lay Women's Communities--Women in Guilds by

 Industrious D. Student
__Argument:__

I argue that the amount of women's participation in parish and craft guilds remained at roughly the same level from the central Middle Ages to the early modern period. However, I saw a change in the type of participation in guilds that permitted both men and women. Until the fourteenth century, both married and single women could hold membership their guilds in their own names. After the fourteenth century, singlewomen rarely participated in mixed guilds, and married women participated under their husband's names. This change suggests that in guilds where both men and women practiced a craft, that women were being supplanted by men in the late medieval and early modern period.

__**Sources**:__  French, Katherine L. “Maidens' Lights and Wives' Stores: Women's Parish Guilds in Late Medieval England.” //The Sixteenth Century Journal,// 29.2 (1998): 399-425. Kowaleski, Maryanne, and Judith M. Bennett. “Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years after Marian K. Dale.” //Signs// 14.2 (1989): 474-501. Ogilvie, Sheilagh. “How Does Social Capital Affect Women? Guilds and Communities in Early Modern Germany.” //The American Historical Review// 109.2 (2004): 325-359.

__Additional Sources:__  Maybe these books and articles might have something I could use. Bennett, Judith. //Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World.// Oxford University Press, 1999. Laughlin, Mary Martin Mc. “Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406-1452.” //Signs// 14.2 (1989): 293-320. <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif;">Tarte, Kendall B. “Early Modern Literary Communities: Madeleine Des Roches's City of Women.” //The Sixteenth Century Journal// 35.3 (2004): 751-769.