By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. This article examines the strategies, actions, and meaning of the credit activities of single women in rural credit markets in eighteenth-century France.
For the purpose of this article, gender and, more importantly, marital status, are considered as critical categories of historical analysis, and this approach has yielded key data in the examination of loans records from to This article concludes that not only did single women gradually become major agents in the circulation of capital within their communities but that they also gained greater social freedom and empowerment thanks to their role as creditors.
In early modern France, there is a common assumption that women were automatically excluded from the economic sphere, not only because of the weight of patriarchy but also because of the legal rights of women, usually perceived to be restricted. But women had, nonetheless, the legal opportunity to borrow and lend money in the local credit market. This paper examines the participation and economic strategies of female peasants in the credit market in early modern France.
I am especially interested in their role in the allocation of credit. It is my contention that women participation in the credit market led them to greater economic empowerment, and therefore, to social empowerment. How did credit constitute a tool of empowerment for women? What were the advantages of allocating credit? What were the social consequences of their economic participation within their community?
This paper also intends to explore the mechanisms of female empowerment in a period of economic transition, i. To date, a very few studies deal with the position of women in pre-industrial credit markets and almost none address this question through the prism of empowerment. Through a cross examination of loan records and notarial records from to , I hope to shed some light on this issue.
