​Feudalism was the dominant social, political, and economic system in the Middle Ages in Europe and Japan. In this system, the nobility was gifted lands by the monarch in exchange for military service as knights, and vassals rented and worked lands as tenants of the nobles. Peasants - also known as serfs in some places - were given protection of sorts, but they basically lived as slaves on the land, paid homage to the nobles, labored hard, and had to give up portions of their crops to landowners. 

Women in Europe and Japan lived similar lives under feudalism. In both regions, the lord of the land was responsible for, and rigidly controlled all aspects of, the lower class serf's life. A serf was essentially property of the lord. The lord chose brides for men, and married women were controlled under a system of coverture, where her interests and behavior were the responsibility of her husband. In legal battles, women are barely mentioned, and a husband would be sued when a wife broke the law.

In both cultures, higher-class women were also given more opportunities, but they were still held to strict sexual behaviors and expected to be mothers. There are exceptions to this "rule," but they were very rare. 

Feudal Labor

In the Middle Ages, women in Europe entered a period of great change. The planet warmed a bit, allowing for longer growing seasons, and this phenomenon led to a push to clear and settle more lands. The stability of the period also led to population growth. European cities climbed from the tens to hundreds of thousands, and population growth had an impact on women’s roles in society, forcing them into greater domestic responsibilities. Yet, there were few jobs women were excluded from when the work needed to be done. Women and their families worked in unison for the success of the family, but women’s work was undercompensated, with records showing them earning around three-quarters what men earned.

The majority lived in small rural farming societies. Peasant women had many domestic responsibilities, including caring for children, preparing food, and tending livestock. During the harvest, women worked in the fields too. Women labored in their communities, tending their children, their farms, their homes, and their family businesses. Working women were the fabric that held communities together, yet farm records only recorded the output of the farmer, ignoring the labor of his wife. Women also worked in vital cottage industries; brewing beer, baking, and weaving or manufacturing textiles.  

Textile production

Women were also active in urban professions like milling grain, midwifery, laundering, spinning, and prostitution. Estimates vary depending on the location, but between one third and almost half of merchants in European urban areas were female. Widows, in particular, continued their husband's businesses and used their wealth to support social projects, politics, and even wars. 

At the same time, women's guilds were disappearing and even brothels were run mainly by male owners. In places like England, regulations outlawed women’s participation in lucrative fields, thus keeping wealth in the hands of men. For example, weaving had long been an occupation of women, but as larger looms and mills powered by animals or water made production more efficient and provided thicker cloth, men took over these profitable businesses. 

Laboring serfs

Women’s labor was often multifaceted, menial, and constant, while men’s work, by contrast, was deemed dangerous and exhausting. While men were singularly focused, women balanced many tasks. A traditional English couplet made this point plain, “For man’s work ends at setting sun, Yet woman’s work is never done.” Wherever they labored, and no matter how hard women worked, they were still paid less than men. For example, Cecelia Penifader, the subject of Judith Bennett’s A Medieval Life, was an unmarried English woman of the lower class at the turn of the 14th century whose family's prosperity allowed her to lead an independent life. Though independent, she earned one-third less than men doing unskilled labor.

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians 

Women in England had more independence than their feudal counterparts elsewhere in the world, but, of course, there were class differences here. It was mostly upper class women that had more freedom, received some education and managed their estates and finances. Nevertheless, women were barred from learning Latin, perhaps as a way of keeping them away from church policy and administration.

Alternatively, Germanic tribes had long seen power in the hands of priestesses and queens, and in many ways they were seen as equal. This is exemplified by women’s wergild, or “blood price” paid if they were murdered, which was equal to men’s. Married women were also expected to be active partners. Husbands bought property and gifts for their brides, rather than the brides bringing dowries. Women had the right to divorce, and could take with them half of the family wealth. They also had relative control over their finances, including the right to hold land in their own name and to defend themselves in court.

For England, the best example of a powerful elite woman in this era is Aethelflaed, the daughter of Alfred the Great - kind of the Anglo-Saxons - and one of the greatest military commanders in medieval England. She received an elaborate education for a girl of her time which included political and military training. She was eventually married to Aethelred of Mercia in a political alliance to unite the two kingdoms. The two held equal power, and when he died, she took sole control of the kingdom of Mercia titling herself, “Lady of the Mercians” instead of queen.

Aethelflaed

When her younger brother, Edward, ascended to their father’s throne, this brother-sister duo proved to be a formidable team. They fought against Danish Vikings who ruled nearby kingdoms, which is where her military strategy shone and earned her the respect of her peers. In 917, her brother distracted the Danes elsewhere while she took control of the heart of Danish fortifications by surprise. She also invested in the construction of fortresses, providing effective defenses against the Danes. 

Together, Aethelflaed and her brother helped secure England from the Vikings, but in 918, at the peak of her power, Aethelflaed became sick and died. In many ways, her death was more significant to the lives of English people than that of her father or her brother. In a history written two centuries later, William of Malmesbury described Aethelflaed as a “powerful member of king Edward’s party, the delight of her subjects, and the dread of his enemies. She was a spirited heroine who assisted her brother greatly with her advice. She was of equal service in building cities, and, whether through fortune or her own efforts, was a woman who protected men at home and intimidated them abroad.”

Nunneries 

In pre-feudal England, Anglo-Saxon society had well defined codes of laws, diverse trade, talented artisans, and connections to learning on the continent. In 597, the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity by Augustine whose mission was commissioned by Pope Gregory and sponsored by Queen Brunhild in Francia.

Slightly to the west, the Celtic Christian Church maintained a number of practices that diverged from those of the Roman Catholic Church. In 644, the Abbess Hilda hosted a meeting in Whitby to reconcile the churches. The result was a unified church with Roman authority superseding the Celtic church. Hilda’s accomplishment left her venerated on statues, crosses, and in stained glass windows within churches. A homily to Hilda captured her spirit: “Bend your minds to holy learning that you may escape the fretting moth of littleness of mind that would wear out your souls. Train your hearts and lips to song which gives courage to the soul.”

Abbess Hilda

By 900, the English were unquestioningly Christian, but pagan traditions were integrated in the daily lives of the working class. Worship of Eostre, for example, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, merged into the Christian celebration of Easter, which is why flowers and eggs became part of celebrating the resurrection. 

In the early Middle Ages, nunneries provided opportunity and sanctuary for women of all classes generally outside the control of men. Women in these nunneries wielded enormous power and had lasting influence on scholarship of the time. Abbesses ruled over land, commanded armies, used their own coins, and even had their own courts. Abbesses heard confession, gave absolution and benediction, and some even went by the title “majesty.” 

Being some of the few women with education and the resources for a dowry (either coin or lands) to the church, nuns were recruited almost exclusively from the aristocracy, but certainly women of lower classes found themselves in convents as well. Women joined nunneries for piety, but there were also more practical reasons such as self-preservation. A woman from the aristocracy had two life paths: marry into continued financial security or become a nun. Medieval women in nunneries lived longer than their married sisters because of the high-risk of childbirth. Additionally, some women retired to nunneries in widowhood. Nonconforming women, queer women, women who didn’t want to get married, and women who found the prospects of housekeeping and childrearing abhorrent, sought the covenant with enthusiasm. The standard of living was pretty high, and nuns worked in the scriptorium, did domestic labor, and worked in shops.

Convents also provided intellectual opportunity for women denied to them elsewhere. Historian Rosalind Miles suggested marriage was the “enemy of any woman’s intellectual development” and Historian Joshua J. Mark stated, “The nunnery was a refuge of female intellectuals.”  There is abundant correspondence from this time that highlights the daily lives of the nuns and shows that they did serious scholarship equal to that created by monks. The nun Lioba claimed she only put her books down to sleep. Hroswitha of Gandersheim wrote seven Latin plays in the 10th century, making her the world's first humanist for her abundant love of classical literature.

But by the 900s and 1000s, there was a major decline in the opportunities available to nuns. The church was overwhelmingly masculine in its power structure and became increasingly concerned about women and the time-honored tradition of silencing them. Therefore, their public activity, status in church, and educational opportunities all declined in the mid-to-late Middle Ages. Double houses disappeared and nuns were forced to live in strict enclosures or in seclusion, completely separated from the male monks. Nuns were forced to rely on male priests for all sacraments, including confessions. The contributions of nuns to scholarship and learning declined in turn. Phillippe of Navarre, writing in 1300, reflected the general sentiment about learned women, wrote, “One should not teach a woman letters or writing unless she is a nun, because a woman’s reading and writing leads to great evil.” It seemed that this was reflected in the religious community, as even in all-female convents, all the opportunities for status and advancement available to male scholars were denied to them.

Interestingly, the increasing hostility toward the essence of womanhood saw a parallel rise in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. There was a thriving religious mysticism around her that the church saw as basically heresy. Although honoring the mother of Christ could be seen as a net win for womankind, in reality, it only led to their further subordination. Proponents felt that the essence of a woman was her innocence; to educate her would be to pollute her. The rationale to deprive women of an education deepened.

Medieval nuns

Hroswitha Gandersheim

Hroswitha of Gandersheim was a canoness, working in the scriptorium to record documents in the 900s in Saxony. She was a noblewoman given to the nunnery as a child to acquire an education, as the Gandersheim nunnery was the center of intellectual activity in Germany. Hroswitha became an abbess and negotiated with the German Holy Roman Emperor to hold her own court and coin money. She was called the “strong voice of Gandersheim.”

She was also the first female German historian to write a long poem about Otto I’s rule, documenting the struggle between paganism and Christianity. She wrote legends about the saints and was the first known playwright of Christianity, having written six plays. She wrote, “Sometimes I compose with great effort, again I destroyed what I had poorly written [so that] the slight talent [...] given me by Heaven should not lie idle in the dark recesses of the mind and thus be destroyed by the rush of neglect.” She took a stand for women, as the characters and plots in her plays countered the religious dogma that suggested women were corruptible and weak.

Roswitha of Gandersheim offers Emperor Otto I a copy of her book

Hildegard of Bingen 

Some medieval women were able to bypass misogyny and forge meaningful careers through the church. One of the more notable of these women was Hildegard de Bingen in Germany. She was a nun turned abbess, turned scholar and Christian mystic. She was brilliant, and her research and written works touched many fields, from philosophy to musical composition, herbology to medieval literature, and cosmology to medicine. In one of her books, she identified almost 300 herbs. In another, she listed and suggested causes and remedies for 47 different illnesses. She was also interested in understanding the female reproductive system. She also had visions that she believed, as was common at the time, foretold the future. She wrote interpretations of those visions, and popes, emperors, and kings accepted her writings. She also corresponded with extraordinary women of her time, including Eleanor of Aquitaine and lamented bad leadership and corrupt governments stating, “You neglect Justice [...] you permit her to lie prostrate on the earth.”    

Hildegard von Bingen receiving divine inspiration and relaying it to her scribe

She regularly defied the patriarchal hierarchy of her profession and pushed boundaries for women, often by playing up the image and idea of women as being the weaker sex. In doing so, she made a church’s patriarchal power structure more open to her other ideas and revelations about the faith. She was unanimously selected as abbess in 1136 after growing the reputation and wealth of the convent for many years. After a while, she requested permission to build her own convent away from patriarchal influences. She was initially denied but persisted and eventually founded the convent at Rupertsberg around 1150. There, Hildegard was free to explore her spiritual and intellectual ideas. A partner in the development of those ideas was another nun, Richardis von Stade, who worked as her assistant. While the two were undeniably close, many have speculated that their relationship may also have been romantic given the heartbreak shared in their letters after Richardis’ wealthy family had her moved away to a distant convent, leaving Hildegard stunned.

​Her theology emphasized the feminine, and she thought women had just as important roles to play as men. She was widely popular and went on four speaking tours in defiance of prescriptions that women should stay silent in churches and in public. Reflecting on her life, she claimed she was a “poor uneducated woman.” But she justified her work as her contribution to posterity. She wrote that she was asked to write, “for the benefit of mankind.”

Viking Women

The experiences of women in Europe were not universal, and the systems of feudalism (particularly the ability of nobles to protect the peasantry) were tested by the Vikings - referring to the people spanning Scandinavia - during the so-called Viking Age stretched from around 800-1100 CE. During this time, Scandinavian people of various clans, tribes, and burgeoning kingdoms used their advancing shipbuilding technology to sail outward to surrounding lands in search of new resources, riches, and lands to settle away from warring clans.

The lives of women in Viking culture was largely similar to that of their fellow Europeans, and undoubtedly the differences in women’s responsibilities reflected their social class. They were primarily agricultural people, so many women worked on family and community farms, in textile production, and other skilled fields alongside their fathers or husbands. Their role in the home was a respected one, as an engraving on a funeral stone at Hassmyra reads, “The good farmer Holmgaut had this raised in memory of his wife Odindis. A better housewife will never come to Hassmyra to run the farm.”As was typical in societies all around the world, women were also the primary caregivers of children and were likely also partnered through political and economic marriages for the betterment of the tribe or family. There is also some evidence of plural marriage and concubinage among aristocratic members of some clans. 

The funeral stone at Hassmyra

While evidence is limited, there are signs that women held positions of nobility, and were potentially recognized as queens. One of the greatest indications of this was the burial of a woman in a ship in Oseberg in 834 CE. A burial of such high honor would suggest a level of significant nobility or prominence. 

The Oseberg ship on display in an Oslo museum

As groups began to settle new territories in the British Isles and Continental Europe, women were invariably part of these settling parties. When attempting to set down permanent roots, it was necessary to make these new settlements reflective of the society they were attempting to build, which was one that would allow for the families of their clan to prosper. Thus, women took part in these establishing efforts to maintain all the roles they fulfilled at home. 

However, some explorations were not based in settlement. Sometimes, the goal was to retrieve resources, including items of high value like gold and silver, to bring home to their clans. In the time that these roving warriors were away, women were given sizable control over their households for indefinite periods of time while waiting for raiders to return. 

Feudal Japan

Across the world, a strikingly similar society existed on the islands of Japan. Japan adopted feudalism a bit later with the rise of the first shogun, Yoritomo, in 1192. A shogun was an emperor by title but was more like a military ruler in practice. The shogun’s goal was to use his military prowess to prevent the return of civil war among the 260 daimyo (feudal lords), each of whom had his own band of samurai soldiers. 

Yoritomo’s funeral procession entering the capital of Kyoto

Prior to the shogunate, women in Japan had numerous privileges. They were allowed to own and inherit property, unmarried women lived alone, and physical abuse of one’s wife was forbidden by law. Aristocrats were polygamous, but women lived with and were protected by their families and their husbands would visit them. While this allowed women some independence, it also meant their spouse could more easily desert them.

Before and after the rise of the shogunate, the idea of chivalry, which was important in Europe, did not exist. While women could influence affairs at court, they did so in a cloistered setting behind sliding screens. Unlike in Europe, women were given more sexual freedoms and would accept male visitors at night, and divorces were somewhat common and easy to obtain.

Japanese Writers 

Aristocratic ladies lived lives of luxury, engaged in artistic pursuits, and had scandalous love affairs. Women writers were abundant in Japanese courts, and they developed a uniquely female style of writing as they were barred from learning Chinese, the official legal language in Japan. This was similar to the European custom that prohibited women from learning Latin. They wrote in everyday Japanese language in their diaries, novels, and poetry, making it widely readable and popular. ​

Showing how smart you were was important in Japanese courts, and people were regularly challenged to prove their intellect. Aristocrats would have poetry contests that men and women would enter. To misquote or be proven wrong was equivalent to being socially humiliated. 

Lady Murasaki

Lady Murasaki wrote the world's first novel, The Tale of the Genji. The story is as long as an epic and follows the journey of a fictional prince. In the story, she wrote, “Without the novel what should we know of how people lived in the past from the age of the Gods down to the present day? For history books...show us only one corner of life; whereas the diaries and romances contain...the most minute information about people’s private affairs.”

Sei Shonagon wrote a collection of her vivid observations at court known as The Pillow Book. She divided what she saw into categories like, “Annoying Things” and “Things Which Distract in Moments of Boredom.” In a detached way, she ranked and classified the people, events, and objects around her. ​

Izumi was Japan’s most illustrious female poet. Her writings were erotic and anguished, and they reinforced the impermanence of life. She was born around 975 and grew up in the imperial court, where her father was a mid-level government official. There, girls of her status were granted an education in poetry and the arts. She wrote her most famous poem while she was just a teenager: “from utter darkness/I must embark upon an/even darker Road/oh distant moon, cast your light/from the rim of the mountains.” ​

She was married to a provincial governor but began an affair with the son of the emperor. When the emperor died, the scandal reached its climax and she was divorced from her husband and estranged from her family. She then started a relationship with the emperor's brother and was invited to the prince's compound, much to the distress of his principal wife. Her life was marred by scandal, and even Lady Murasaki, a contemporary, wrote, “how interestingly Izumi Shikibu writes. What a disgraceful person she is.” The irony is that all of the men of court had many concubines, but relations with a handful of men in her lifetime made her disgraced. 

Convents in Japan 

Like wealthy European women, upper-class women in Japan found Buddhist convents appealing. Nunneries offered women leadership opportunities, intellectual pursuits, and an alternative to marriage. But Buddhism also lessened women’s status with its teachings that emphasized female deceitfulness and dishonesty.​

Before Buddhism became the primary religion of the region, the Japanese practiced Shintoism. The Japanese worshiped the Goddess Amaterasu, known as “the great divinity illuminating heaven,” who was the daughter of Izanami and Izanagi from the Japanese creation story. She was ruler of the sky and the sun goddess of Shintoism, which morphed with Buddhism as it spread throughout Asia. Women were religious leaders known as shamans in Shintoism. They were called upon in crisis to provide wisdom, and participated equally in religious celebrations, some of which were designed specifically for women, such as the Maid Star. 

Hōjō Masako 

The shogunate brought centuries of peace, which allowed for economic growth, commercialization, and urban development. Women's status declined a bit, more with the rise of the shogun than the encroachment of Confucian ideas from China.

Minamoto no Yoritomo being admitted to the house of Masako

When Yoritomo - the first shogun - died in 1199, his widow Hōjō Masako was left to hold the shogunate together for her son Minamoto no Yoriie, serving as regent amid ongoing internal power struggles. In 1204, Yoriie fell ill and died under suspicious circumstances, and was likely the victim of political maneuvering. Her younger son then moved into the position of shogun, while Masako continued to play an important political role as she guided him.  She managed political allies and enemies, and even helped rally the troops against rebelling forces. She became known as “Mother Shogun” and her clan ruled as regents over the successive shoguns  for a century and a half.

Feudal Labor

As with feudal Europe, women had traditional roles to play in Japanese feudal culture. As was typical around the world, there were stark differences between women of the upper and lower classes. Poor women worked alongside men relatively equally, had some property and divorce rights, but were not allowed to remarry. Peasant women had short hair, while aristocrats grew it long. Peasant farmers only had one wife, while aristocratic men might have several concubines in addition to their legal wife. 

Medieval Japanese laborers

Aristocratic women married young, and under the shogun samurai culture were expected to be brave and loyal wives and daughters. They had very important duties at home providing food and supplies for their warrior husbands, and managed all of the servants, finances, and business affairs. Women were also responsible for providing education for their children, emphasizing physical activity, strength, and samurai ideals. Because the samurai father was so often absent, women’s ideas and opinions were honored in his stead. While not all men of the nation were samurai, the later samurai ideal of the obedient, submissive woman was accepted by the common people and peasant women lost much of their earlier independence.

Uniquely, it was also not uncommon for women connected to the samurai to fight. Many of these women were trained in weaponry and carried a curved dagger called a naginata which they threw with remarkable precision. Women sometimes even fought alongside their husbands in battle and played pivotal roles in encouraging troop loyalty. Further, all samurai were expected to commit suicide if they were dishonored in war, and women were no exception. Some women even used suicide as a form of protest against domestic abuse.

Samurai women

But the powerful samurai women were eventually pushed into domestic servitude as the culture became more peaceful. The ideal samurai woman was obedient, controlled, and subservient, and women’s access to property ownership and inheritance disappeared. ​​By the 1400s, Confucian ideas spread to Japan and solidified what the shogun had begun. Women were subjected to the teachings of the “Three Obediences” emphasized in China, and women continued to be subordinate to their fathers, husbands, and sons. 

​Conclusion

The feudal period in both Europe and Japan was a mixed bag for women, and the effect varied significantly by class. Nonetheless, feudal women were leaders, thinkers, and workers who helped lay the groundwork for the rise in capitalism.

By the end of this period, so much remained in question. Would women be able to circumvent the confines of cloistered life and have more public lives? Would women regain their rights lost? Did peace in Japan outweigh the decline in rights? And, was chivalry in Europe helpful to women?