New Books Network

Nena Vandeweerdt, "Women and Work Through a Comparative Lens: Gender and the Urban Labor Markets of Premodern Brabant and Biscay" (Leuven UP, 2025)

Jan 25, 2026
Nena Vandeweerdt, historian of late medieval and early modern cities, explores women’s economic roles in Brabant and Biscay. She probes craft guilds, household economies, taxation records, and municipal regulation. Comparative cases like a Bilbao grain broker reveal how institutions made some women's work visible while others stayed hidden.
Ask episode
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
INSIGHT

Guilds As Gatekeepers

  • Craft guilds were powerful urban institutions that controlled who could practice occupations and were generally male-dominated.
  • Women's formal membership was rare, so their economic roles were often indirect via husbands or fathers.
INSIGHT

Rethinking The North–South Divide

  • The North–South divide (more female agency north) is an overgeneralized framework based on different scopes of prior studies.
  • Comparative empirical work reveals local mechanisms rather than a single continental pattern.
INSIGHT

Four Institutional Pillars

  • Institutions shaping women's work included guilds, households, informal markets, and town governments.
  • Their interplay produced region-specific opportunities and constraints for women.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Get the app