ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the issues involved in analyzing gender norms and their enforcement by looking at the early modern period. It considers the problem of how to identify gender norms, which entails reminding ourselves of some aspects of the political, social and cultural structures of early modern Germany. The hypothesis that new gender norms were created in the early modern period as compared to the Middle Ages is based on assumptions about the impact of Protestantism, which was intimately interwoven with the emergence of the modern state. The chapter discusses the production of gender norms during the Reformation, and reflects upon their "enforcement". The enforcement of norms in early modern society has been perceived as a process initiated "from above": by "the state" assisted by "the Church". Drawing on concepts of the absolutist state as a quasi-omnipotent agent, notions of institutional enforcement by courts of law, public punishment and imprisonment still dominate.
