Link: “Think women have never had it so good? You should take a look at medieval days”
Interesting piece about how women in mediaeval Europe were actually much freer than we imagine them to be (and certainly than how they’re depicted in quasi-mediaeval fantasy stories), with jobs as brewers, blacksmiths, court poets, teachers, merchants, and master craftsmen
, and also barbers, apothecaries, armourers, shipwrights and tailors
. They owned land and controlled their own money. They were not married off as young teenagers, but instead usually got married in their early to mid-20s. Not so much noblewomen, of course, who were traded like pawns, but women of the lower and middle classes were relatively free. This all started to change during the Renaissance, when the middle classes became more anxious to mimic their social “betters”, which meant mimicking their misogyny.