Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 8448
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Karras , Ruth Mazo.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: “This Skill in a Woman is By No Means to Be Despised”: Weaving and the Gender Division of Labor in the Middle Ages [Throughout the Middle Ages, cloth production was a respectable and even prestigious occupation for women. Women’s work was often devalued in comparison to that of men, but cloth production had great cultural importance. While women involved in other professions (like brewsters) came to be perceived negatively as their participation in urban and commercial life increased, the respectability of women weavers endured. Men eventually assumed control over the commercial production and trade of cloth in the later Middle Ages, yet the idea of women’s weaving remained an important concept in literary texts and in society as a whole. Title note supplied by Feminae.].
  • Source: Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings.  Edited by E. Jane Burns.  Palgrave, 2004.  Pages 89 - 104.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Economics Guilds Sexual Division of Labor Spinning Textiles- Production Weaving Women's Status Women's Workshops Work in Art Work in Literature
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: General
  • Century: General
  • Primary Evidence:
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  • Table:
  • Abstract:
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  • Author's Affiliation: University of Minnesota
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2004.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 1403961867