Though this varied considerably across cultures and centuries, women in medieval cities benefited from a relatively large spectrum of work opportunities. In England, even single women, the femes soles, were able to take up a trade and earn a living. However, while this situation was once described as a "golden age" by historians, later studies have shown a "pattern of poorly paid, low-skilled, low-status work that conferred little if any occupational identity" (McIntosh, 2005). Medieval urban women were allowed to work, but under serious social limitations. In addition, they were not granted positions of political power in trade organizations. Restrictions introduced in the late medieval period increasingly curtailed the access of women to skilled jobs.

One place where married women could work in relatively good conditions were the craft workshops, which were household units of several people: the master, his wife, other family members, apprentices, journeymen, and servants. Sometimes, a craftsman's wife ran a separate business, but she would be usually involved in her husband's trade: she could be a craftswoman herself, or sell products to customers, or supervise the employees, or do back office work, such as purchasing materials. And if the master died, it was not uncommon for his widow to continue to operate the workshop.

Guilds were a fundamental part of urban medieval economies, and it was not in the interest of the guild and of the city to have a business disappear because the master died. Procedures for ensuring the continuity of workshops were sometimes delineated in guild ordinances or letters of patent, though it is always difficult to say how they were implemented in practice. The way a master's legacy was handled varied a lot. Widows could continue to run the business - a possibility often mentioned in guild ordinances -, but other strategies to generate income existed for the widow. In Northern Europe, widows received a "dower" consisting of a part of her husband's holdings (one third in England). Others received legacies in addition to the dower, and some already owned property. In her study of the widows of tanners in medieval London, Barron (2003) mentions widows who inherited breweries and rental properties:

When an estate was to be divided between the tanner's widow and his children, she was provided with the property which might enable her most readily to make money on her own account.

When widows were able to continue their husband's business, there is a general notion that they had a "temporary guardianship role" (Barron, 2003): the widow operated the workshop until a man became its guild-affiliated master: this could be one of her sons who had completed his apprenticeship, a journeyman who had been an apprentice in the shop (or elsewhere), or the widow, or her daughter, could marry a journeyman in the same trade. This could be a long-term strategy: Barron cites tanners' widows who kept a tannery business running for decades through consecutive marriages. But some statues made sure that a widow had to quit her late husband's business if she remarried to someone outside the trade.

Guilds had generally mostly male memberships, though some were mixed-gender (small objects manufacturers, textile workers, poulterers, fishmongers...) and some primarily women-based (in Paris: silk workers, gold-thread workers, and other "fashion" workers such as makers of embroidered hats). Access to the men-dominated guilds and apprenticeship was not totally forbidden to women but remained uncommon. In London, female apprenticeship in London had disappeared by the mid-sixteenth century, due to a decreasing labour market (Hubbard, 2012). The question of whether or not a craftsman's wife, daughter, or widow may have been qualified to become a guild member is not an easy one to answer, as arrangements varied. It did happen, as in the case of the trader Marion Kent, member of the council of the York mercers’ guild in 1474–1475. Usually, however, craftswomen acquired their skills at home rather than through formal apprenticeship (McRee and Dent, 2007; Ward, 2017). In 1264, the bakers of Pontoise protested when the widow of a fellow baker resumed her late husband's trade after she had married a man who was not a baker: the Parliament of Paris ruled in favour of the widow (Boutaric, 1863). There are few mentions of trades explicitly forbidden to women: the Parisian Livre des métiers (1268) states that women should not work in "Saracen" carpet-making because "it is too difficult".

What about our shoemaker's widow in London? Two crafts were associated to the modern concept of "shoemaker": the cordwainer, who made shoes from new material, and the less valued cobbler, who fixed shoes or made shoes from recycled material. Conflicts arose, as it happened in London between cordwainers and cobblers (1395, 1410). Unfortunately, I don't have full access to the Descriptive and Historical Account of the Guild of Cordwainers of the City of London (1931) but it cites another peace agreement between cordwainers and cobblers, signed in 1504, which included the following:

It also allows a Cobbler's widow to take her deceased husband's place in his shop, and enjoy all the privileges he enjoyed, unless she should happen to marry again.

We can also cite the statues of the Guild of Saddlers here, though this is from the 17th century:

If it happened that the master died before the apprentice was out of his term, the Wardens of the Company were empowered to remove the apprentice after compensating the widow, and to set him over to finish his term with another member. If, however, the widow of the deceased member remained single and carried on her husband's craft, or if she married another member of the Company, she was at liberty to retain the apprentice.

In Paris, the Livre des métiers, a list of guild regulations established by Prefect Etienne Boileau in 1268, includes the ordinances of the three shoe-making guilds: the cordonniers (cordwainers who worked with cordouan leather), the savetonniers (cordwainers who worked with the cheaper basane leather) and the shoe-fixing savetiers (cobblers). Only the savetonniers' ordinance includes provisions for widows:

The wife of a savetonnier who has bought the right to the trade may exercise the trade after the death of her husband without buying the right, as long as she does not remarry, and provided she pays the taxes.

If a savetonnier's wife remarries a man of another trade, her husband must buy the right to the trade from the King in the manner explained above, before she can work and have work done, because she is remarried.

The widow, exercising the aforementioned profession, as well as the man who will have passed 60 years, are not on watch duty.

This ordinance makes clear that the widow exercised the trade herself, either as a worker or as someone supervising workers. In the Livre des métiers, gender is only mentioned for the mixed-gender jobs and a few cases of widowhood: widows may not have been guild members in Paris, but authorities considered them to bona fide masters nevertheless - as long as they pay their taxes, of course.

Regarding morality, there is an amusing tidbit concerning another leather-related and gender-mixed trade, the belt-makers (called here corroiers, curriers). A few decades earlier, some corroiers' daughters had left Paris to set up their own belt-making workshops in the province, taking apprentices, and living a "debauched" life. These women had eventually spent all their money and had come back to their parents, who could only welcome them again. The ordinance included provisions allowing corroiers' daughters to work outside Paris only if they were married. They could teach the trade to their husband, but could not become masters or take apprentices unless their husband was a corroier.

Three hundred years later, royal letters patent of 1573 stated that the widow of a cordonnier could "continue to run her late husband's shop" and train the apprentices already present in the shop, but that she would not take new ones - and here we see restrictions on the widow's trade. It was also specified that a journeyman having worked for a master for five years could become a master after marrying a master's widow or his daughter. Almost a century later, letters patent of 1659 more or less stated the same for the savetiers, adding that "widows will enjoy the same privileges as their deceased husbands": this is almost the same phrasing ("privileges") as in the London ruling about cobblers in 1504!

So: a cordwainer's or a cobbler's widow was allowed to continue the trade of her husband. This situation seems to have been rather common, as it was for other trades. We can speculate that the workshop could keep on running if its late master and his wife had been well appreciated and respected by the community, and if the widow was able to retain her husband's journeymen and find new apprentices to work with her - if the rules allowed it. It's unlikely that she would be allowed to join the guild herself. If this actually happened, her influence would have been limited anyway. A long-term strategy consisted in associating herself with a man - a son, a stepson, a new husband - who would take up the title of master.

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