Roles Of Women In The 17th And 18th Century Essay

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In the 17th and 18th centuries, the economic role of women was mostly focused around the family economy. How women worked to support their family depended on the kind of household they came from. In farm households they would usually run the farm and do farm work with the smaller children while their husband and older children went off to find work elsewhere so that they could make more money. In artisan households the women would usually sell their husband’s manufactured goods or open a small shop of their own. They would also be in charge of household finances and the entire business while their husband was away, this was also the case in merchant households. Also in peasant households, if the family had enough land to support themselves, …show more content…

Noblewomen and women from the artisan class were most of the women who engaged in this new scientific activity but they could only do so through their husbands or male relatives. In the artisan class women would work with their husbands on particular fields of the new science, in Germany it was mostly astronomy, and when their husband died they would usually take it over. Examples of some important women during the Scientific Revolution are Margaret Cavendish, who was a noblewoman from England and wrote many significant works about natural philosophy and early modern science. She was also the only women in the 17th century to be allowed to attend a meeting of the Royal Society of London. Other important women are Maria Winkelmann from Germany who discovered a comet in 1704 but was not credited for the discovery until 1930 and Maria Cunitz, also from Germany, who published a book about astronomy that many people thought her husband wrote until he added a preface to the book that stated she was the author, not him. Overall during the Scientific Revolution not many women were able to participate due to the many sexist ideas that were prevalent during this time

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