What Kind of Occupational Illnesses Could Be Expected Among Medieval European Women?

by Zeuvembie

There are a lot of occupational illnesses associated with medieval trades - mad hatter disease, shoemaker's femur, etc. - but women were largely barred from many trades. Were there trades and occupational illnesses particularly associated with women in medieval Europe?

Rogleson

Medieval women in lower classes were actually heavily involved in family production. In some cases, they could even be granted the same membership to guilds as men if they were femme solle (ie, learned the trade but male family members had passed away)/ Especially in trades where the work was done in the home, these women would have been exposed to the same chemicals that their husbands and fathers would have been and thus the same hazards and often would have also been performing that same tasks that might have resulted in repetitive stress injuries.

The gendered division of labor is wider the higher up in social status you go and also the later you go in industrial development. Certainly there still IS a division in the lower classes in the medieval period, but it's just not as stark as people think.

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Check out the following:

The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London [Barbara Hanawalt 2007]

“Crafts, Gilds, and Women in the Middle Ages: Fifty Years After Marian K. Dale” [Kowaleski and Bennett 1989]

Women and Work in PreIndustrial Europe, Barbara Hanawalt

From Workshop to Warfare: The Lives of Medieval Women, Adams and Barkely

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