Donne al lavoro nel medioevo: la situazione italiana

Resumen

The traditional opinion considered female labour in medieval age low paid work restricted to textile and feeding fields only and generally dependent on husband’s work, outside of guilds.

On the contrary, a considerable body of evidence resulting from researches on Italian and European documents of XIII century up to the end of XV century, shows that during XIII, XIV and XV centuries in several European countries female work was employed in almost all fields of activity, including buildings, mines, salt processing.  Women’s wages were proportional to their real capacity and were not conditioned by gender.

In many cases women succeeded in supporting the whole family (or discharging their husband’s debts) by their own work. Moreover some women sold their dresses and jewels to obtain capitals in order to establish a firm. Noblewomen were involved in very different jobs as embroidery workshops organization, mines and reclamation management, dairy establishment, hotel management.

Women showed a remarkable ability in work organization in spite of the enormous variety of their tasks and they preferred to be outside of guilds; on the other hand guilds tolerated this type of black work but tried to compel women to be registered when a special control was needed.

Female apprenticeship was often informal but in particular cases it was displaied when workers needed to demonstrate their ability in some jobs such as precious raw materials manufacture.  In other cases guilds obliged women to stipulate a written apprenticeship contract, particularly in public health fields, for example to knead bread.