Toil and Trouble: The Labour, Duties and Rights of Women in Alpine Communities in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

How were women perceived and treated in Alpine communities in the late Middle Ages? This study explores this question by using sources ranging from the fourteenth up to the sixteenth century and from Valais to Tyrol to investigate practices of gender-based inclusion and exclusion in three interconnected areas: language, communal work projects, and legal proceedings. As the findings presented in this article show, Alpine communities depended heavily on the labour and knowledge of women. This dependence led to a pragmatic acknowledgement of the contribution of female labour and knowledge. In some cases, this even led to their inclusion in civic duties and rights which were (nominally) reserved for men. Nominally because, as this analysis also shows, the language in sources from the rural Alpine area can be heavily distorted by the widespread use of generic masculine terms, which conceal the presence of women in the past.