History

This context discusses the position of women in England from the years 1500 to 1700. Its focus is mainly on the economic concerns affecting women in this age and also confronts the religious and legal aspects of womens lives that were liberated or constrained under the changes that came about in this era (Prior 15).

Women and the economy
Economy life in England between 1500 and 1800 included aspects of productive activities as well as reproductive activities which encompass childbearing, care and nurture of all the family remembers allowing them to partake in productive labor. During the pre- industrial era, all family members took part in reproductive and productive labor. Primary economic activities can during this period were mainly control of property and work. Womens activities range from their role in countryside and city labor and their manipulation and management of property through purchasing, bequests, investments and money-lending. Based on the fact that economic activities and especially work were not detached from the family, womens role as child bearers was considered an economic activity (Wiesner 103).

Though the nature of work that women and men performed was similar, their work identities and relationships to work were very different. Womens work rhythms were determined by age and class just like for men. However, factors that had more impact on it included individual biology and social event such as motherhood, marriage and widowhood of which they had no control over and were unique from one individual to another. Women were also known to change jobs frequently and to hold several jobs at once and therefore there was never one job strongly identifiable with the sex. This was compounded further by not having rituals similar to those that men had to mark their solidarity with others that performed the same type of work. Their rituals were more of family and neighborhood events such as funerals and births. The only exception to this was midwives and a few all-female guilds that held rituals to identify their members (Wiesner 103).

According to Wiesner (2000), many occupations were professionalized in the early modern period. This meant that one was required to undergo a certain level of formal training and licensing procedures to be accorded an occupational title. For women, who rarely received any training, were now considered inferior to their formally educated male counterparts who could now charge more money (up to ten times more) for their services and be referred to by their professional titles (Wiesner 104).

Religion and the law also made it harder for women to identify with any particular profession. The protestants describe all works as vocations for men (activities that God has called upon man, to bless him through his labor). The only vocation possible for women under this description was wife and motherhood. Productive labor performed by a woman was viewed by the church as part of her domestic role in order to help her husband and be a good example to her children. These religious ideas were passed on into secular law, tax records and ordinances passed by guilds in the fifteenth century. Womens economic activities similar to those performed by men were referred to as housekeeping or domestic work while mens were termed as production.  The government often encouraged occupational groups and guilds to overlook production of small items by poor women and widows as support and not as work. For instance, economic activities for women included selling products and selling labor (agriculture, domestic). Following this, the earnings were considerably lesser than for men in similar positions and the working conditions were deplorable (Wiener104).

Women and religion
Eales (1998) argues that the functions of priesthood, which involve administration of sacrament and preaching, were exclusively regarded as preserves for men throughout the years from 1500 to 1700. Consequently, the clergy in particular emphasized the division of the private domain as womens and the public domain as mens. This was further justified by quotations from the bible stating that, women were not to speak in congregations but only in their homes and to their husbands (Eales 86).

Nevertheless, religious belief managed to provide women with some measure of public influence and ways in which they could enhance their personal authority in the community and in their homes.

Women were involved in the protestant underground circles during the reign of Henry VIII. They also helped Catholism to survive as a minority religion after it was outlawed by the Elizabethan settlement of 1559. The prosecuted religious minorities that sprung up after 1560 provided more religious freedom for women than could the established church as they did not have strict hierarchies. The civil war sects in 1640s and 1650s stated that women had as much freedom to speak and answer as any man in any assembly. This however remained in the radicalism domain and was not adopted by the more orthodox believers (Eales 87).

Women were also pivotal in the role of transmitting and preserving religion from one generation to the next. This involvement explains the geographical concentration of such religious groups such as recusant Catholics along the EnglishWelsh border, southern western and northern England and the lowlands in the south and midlands of England. This can be further strengthened by the fact that women exhibited more religiosity than men. This is not because of a natural difference between both sexes but stems from social constructs. Some women successfully used this to contest the restrictions presented by early modern patriarchy. However, official documents such as churchwardens accounts and wills in pre-reformation Catholic Church show that, lay women were in fact actively involved in official religious culture of the late middle ages (Eales 87).

Women and the law
Laws relating to women were specifically detailed in four early modern treaties. The 1662 published theLawes provision of woe men or the Lawes Resolution of womens rights, provided a practical manual for women readers and lawyers as opposed to the deep learned. Its title also implied that women were the woe of men.  In 1700, the ladys law was published containing dry, straightforward manuals designed to be used for reference primarily by lawyers and possibly women and gentlemen. 1735 saw the only volume written by a woman, the hardships of English laws in relation to women published. It was not intended as a practical legal guide but as a rationally persuasive and passionate argument employing both philosophical and biblical arguments for changes in property laws affecting women (Erickson 21).

According to Eriksson (1993), Women who were relatively well-off and gentle women were reasonably knowledgeable on the law and in particular laws relating to marriage as it affected them directly. Books like the ladies dictionary contained working knowledge of property law although compiled almost entirely by men, they included such entries as alimony, covertures, dower, dowry, jointure, amongst other entries such as table behavior, the beautifying thereof and body. This popular awareness of the law is rather striking as there co- existed four separate but overlapping systems of law. Equity and common law were applicable in all of England, borough customs in the towns, manorial customs in the countryside and the ecclesiastical law which deferred the southern and Northern Province (Erickson 22).

Legal rules on property were divided into those covering marriage and those covering inheritance. Under common law, a womans legal identity was eclipsed by her husband and as such all that she owned before marriage became her husbands once she was married (Erickson 24).