Introduction

The scholarly notion of gender has only recently been framed. In the aftermath of World War II, a series of social demands and protests emerged which shook the Western world. These movements placed social and political inequality at the core of their struggle. In particular, feminist movements, collectively called the second wave, blossomed throughout the Western world in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Their powerful socio-political dimension and dynamism quickly attracted worldwide attention. This chapter also presents an overview of this book. The book covers various regions in Europe in different time periods at all levels of society. It covers a wide socio-professional spectrum, from elite women to female artisans, domestics and peasant women. The book redresses a lack of scholarship on gender and 'the dark or unofficial side of the preindustrial economy'. It examines the illness experience articulated by two late medieval mystical writers through the possibilities afforded by medicine and religious culture.