ROLE OF WOMEN IIN THE MIDDLE AGES

      Women in the middle ages were overshadowed by the males around them. a good example is that they answered to their fathers, uncles, brothers etc. It was almost considered blasphemy for a woman to speak her mind or stand up to a male figure for what she believed was right. many women who spoke their mind were accused of witchcraft and burned or stoned alive. In certain incidents girls who were considered to be disobedient, they were beaten into submission.
     Art in the middle ages was male dominated. Women were not really considered artists and it was considered a man's game. Women's art was mostly restricted to monasteries as shown in Chadwick page 44, "most art during this period was produced in monasteries". Education was also a very restricted commodity for women  as shown in Chadwick, " access to education and the convent, the center of women's intellectual and artistic life from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, was often determined by noble birth" (45). Women from rich families were more privileged than women from peasant families.
       Despite the fact that women were disadvantaged to men, women from privileged families had better chances of pursuing a career in art. Many of them enrolled in monasteries and were taught art but were not allowed to teach it s shown in Chadwick, " within the convent women had access to learning even though they were prohibited from teaching (45).  This meant that several talented female artists couldn't nature their talents
      As time went on the art production became more secularized as shown in Chadwick (49), " great convents continued to flourish as places of learning". Women artists were having a bigger impact on the art game despite being to their disadvantage. Transition from rural lifestyle to urban lifestyle led to more women guild producers from urban areas (Chadwick pg. 45). Most women who worked in the urban set worked jobs that were considered feminine  like embroidery.
       Chadwick shows as that " the importance of women for the medieval economy won them a place in the guilds (63). women didn't enjoy the same rights as men when it came to owning a business. They were not allowed to carry on their business if their husband or dad passed away. So technically, even though a woman may have created and expanded a business, its still owned by either her husband or if she wasn't married, it was owned by her father.