ABSTRACT
The impression that women's work was mainly casual and poorly paid is reinforced by their experiences in medical care and nursing. Medical employments for women had differing levels of acceptability in the later Middle Ages. Midwifery and nursing were regarded as suitable work, although individual women might find themselves prosecuted for misdemeanours and low standards. Wet-nurses and children's nurses also worked in municipal and institutional employment. Lille in the second half of the fifteenth century had an examination for midwives, consisting of an examination by a doctor and a report on their work during childbirth from the women they attended. Although Louis IX attempted to expel public prostitutes in his ordinance of 1254, the decision two years later to ban them only from the centre of town's points to a realisation that prostitution could not be eradicated. All town governments wanted to maintain law and order, and the fear of disorder was very real in late medieval Europe.
