Fenced in or out?

Fences are omnipresent in today’s environment. They visualise property borders and range from ornamental to insurmountable elements of control. When looking at fences one does not necessarily think of gender. They convey property demarcations, but they are not connected with either female or male possessions. On the other hand, movable goods and smaller things are often associated with women, and work has been done analysing contemporary consumption habits in view of gender. ¹ The fence, although being an object, is associated with landed property, which in turn is often thought to have been in predominantly male possession. The question is whether the object “fence” signifies differences in access to property, whether landed property was more in male possession, why this might have been the case, and in how far the law facilitated this or left some scope for wider access. In a metaphorical sense, in this paper the fence visualises the legal, social, institutional, and political conditions for women’s access to landed property. By looking at sixteenth and seventeenth century court records of the town of Brixen and the rural court district of Sonnenburg, this paper investigates women and landownership comparing all social strata of town and countryside with the exception of the nobility.