WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ECONOMY OF MEDIEVAL TOWNS Women were viable members of the economy of medieval towns in the Middle Ages. They were not able to participate in the formal political process of the towns, but unlike monarchies which were dynastic, political service in towns was by election. This republican form of governing, whether through consuls and communes in Italy and parts of France or through mayors and common councils in England, meant that men had the exclusive right to be citizens and serve in the governmental structure. While infrequently mentioned in the surviving sources, enough information is available to relate their economic contributions, and the wide-variety of employment opportunities they had. Women made their testaments, witnessed charters and deeds to property, and were subject to the legal system, all of which produced documentation. A woman's right to make a will, if she was married, had not completely become law by the late medieval period, but the church had long advocated this right. Widows and spinsters could make their testaments without the approval of a male. Far fewer female than male criminals appear in medieval court records. Some studies show the ratio was 1:9. Women were punished for crimes just like men, but their punishments were often times different. Women were usually punished by some kind of public physical shame. Common convictions for women had to do with them being quarrelsome and over-talkative women. France made the women take off all their clothes except their shift, and then carry around their neck a hefty stone circling the church on Sunday in full view of their fellow parishioners. In England the favored punishment was the ducking stool and the thewe, a pillory just for women. Women were also beaten if they were guilty of being accomplices in minor crimes. In the high middle ages, being burned at the stake or buried alive were the only forms of capital punishment for women, apparently out of fear the corpse if hung might be profaned; that is sexually asssaulted. Burning was usually reserved for the most serious offenses: treason, sorcery, and infanticide. Later on hanging, especially in England, will be added. Torture was an integral part of the justice system, and here again women were excepted from certain forms of torture. They could not be broken on the wheel, and if the woman was pregnant then she was exempted from all forms of torture and even execution.2 Our most fulsome knowledge on women in towns comes from their economic contributions. Girls and women were generally expected to work in addition to their usual occupation of keeping the house. As large-scale manufacturing did not exist in the middle ages, each home was a cottage industry unto itself. Parents served as the mentors of their daughters, teaching them their trades, including how to run a household, because most all women would marry. Only about seven to ten percent did not wed. In towns, the workplace or shop was attached to the living quarters. Only in a few specialized skills such as silk manufacturing did women go outside the home or family-run shop to serve an apprenticeship, and only if the parents could afford the fees. Once the young maidens married they would continue to practice the occupations they had learned at home, while taking care of their family. Many times they learned new skills during their lifetime or were taught their husband's trade enough to assist him in the family-run shop. In contrast men pursued a more or less steady course whether they were peasants, urban workers or nobles. Men acquired the necessary skills for their occupation and continued to work until old age or death. Marriage and having a family might make their work more or less profitable, but it did not change what they did. Women's occupations were influenced by changes in their life cycle. Unmarried women generally held lower-status jobs with the majority of them domestic servants, and then retailers: sellers of food, new and used household items and clothing. Some towns placed restrictions on certain jobs based on a woman's marital status. For instance, generally single women did not brew ale in rural England. Women who operated their own businesses without a male were called femme soles. If a femme sole became involved in a legal dispute her husband was not held responsible. Only when the married couple was in business together was the husband held libel. In widowhood a woman had lots more options. She could determine to remarry or not, and whether or not to continue with her husband's business. Women could therefore change their work frequently over the course of their lifetime. The magistrates of England recognized this when the Statue of Laborers was reissued in 1363. All men were required to choose a trade and confine themselves to it exclusively, but women were not limited to one occupation. They could be "dabblers". A woman might concentrate on thread production if that was paying well, but switch to brewing or retailing if the market was more robust in those areas. As women's training was primarily for the3domestic sphere, they were unlikely to develop skills that would permit them to enter high-status positions. Men were reluctant to admit women into their craft and its mysteries. A wife and daughter might be taught part of the mystery, but not the whole process. Men believed that if women entered their craft, they would take over because women were paid less. At Bristol in 1461, women were accused of contributing to unemployment among weavers: "For as much as divers persons of the weavers' craft hire their wives, daughters, and maidens, to weave in their own looms and men learned in the said craft go vagrant and unoccupied; therefore no weavers from this day forward set, put or hire, his said wife, daughter or maid to weaving on the loom...upon pain of six schillings eight pence, a considerable sum. Once crafts became more regulated into guilds in the later Middle Ages, women gradually were eliminated from those professions regulated by guilds. Men discouraged women from organizing their own crafts into guilds. In a survey circa 1300 in Paris, women participated in eighty-six of the one hundred guilds. Fourteen guilds excluded all women, but seven guilds were exclusively for women, although management was male. At about the same time Cologne had five guilds solely for women whereas London had none. It appears that in Europe no trade was