ABSTRACT
Peasant women were found working on the land, alongside their husbands or for an employer, and engaged in brewing and petty retailing, and in low-grade processes in the textile industry such as carding and spinning. Poor towns-women also worked as hucksters and in textiles, and both they and peasant women were found as washerwomen and labourers. Single women in Mediterranean Europe were relatively few in number, but this was not necessarily the case in many of the towns of northern Europe, as is apparent in taxation returns. In contrast to the many European women who made money as hucksters and retailers, few women were engaged in long-distance trade. At the end of the Middle Ages, however, the openings for women to work in the crafts, in merchandise and in domestic service became increasingly restricted, and these developments continued into the early modern period. The term textiles cover a vast array of crafts in the later Middle Ages.
