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Gender, Freedom, and Work in Early Modern Europe

As part of the BCDSS' Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series, Jane Whittle from the University of Exeter, UK, gave a lecture on How did Mary Astell question the apparent contradiction between the freedom of all men and the perceived enslavement of all women. This lecture reexamined women's economic status in early modern Europe, probing the link between their economic position and personal freedom. It highlights gender inequalities in work tasks, employment forms, and pay levels, presenting new evidence from England and comparing it to research on Sweden and Germany. The lecture critiques two theoretical frameworks—economic choice and feminist patriarchy—arguing their insufficiency. Instead, it explores the concept of women's freedom/unfreedom, drawing on ideas from the history of slavery, Carole Pateman, and Amartya Sen for a deeper understanding of economic gender inequality roots. Jane Whittle is professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Exeter, UK, where she has worked since 1995, having studied at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford. Her research addresses themes such as economic development, household economies, property rights, consumption, and material culture in the period from c.1300 to1750. Most recently, she has focused on the history of work and gender, with an ERC Advanced Grant on ‘Forms of Labour: Gender, Freedom and Experience of Work in the Preindustrial Economy’ (2019-24). Recent publications include ‘A critique of approaches to“domestic work”’, Past and Present 243 (2019), ‘The gender division of labour in early modern England’, Economic History Review 73:1 (2020), Labour Laws in Preindustrial Europe: The Coercion and Regulation of Wage Labour, c.1300-1850, (edited with Thijs Lambrecht) Boydell Press [Open Access] (2023), and a chapter in Macleod, Shepard and Ågren ed., The Whole Economy: Work and Gender in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press (2023).