how do you know that? i'm not being argumentative, i'm genuinely curious as to how you have an idea of their roles back then if their participation was under-reported by contemporaries (as i'm sure it was)
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Most women in the line to the throne
- Thread starter Sam L
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The underlining problem in the argument is applying 21st century sensibilities to the medieval time period, thinking the Church or some other authority had some global systematic malicious intent to undermine and underrepresent women, which is not the case.
When women appear in history, they are reported, that is why we know there have been several exceptional women doing activities that were at the time considered "unwomanly".
There are not more simply because there weren't. As Fluffy_Fishy says himself, women where educated differently, so, even from a pragmatic point of view, they just lacked the expertise to occupy positions other than the traditional ones. On that, one can add some prejudice and other cultural influences which might tighten or remove some restrictions, but that is a secondary point to the intrinsec roles that had already been established during the very evolution of the species and then just translated into various cultural quirks.
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That is entirely culture dependent, next thing you will be going on about is Cleopatra and her beard.
Are you the first person to be taking me seriously, if so I am really happy. Usually this topic just gets you laughed at by everyone were ever you bring it up. I was reading about it a couple of years ago when there were some fairly bold claims that came out suggesting women weren't the oppressed gender that conservative history seems to imply. The main source of this was due to the discovery of some old documents from the City of London c.1200-1300 explaining the importance of women in high positions and their relations with how they came to reflect in the political system, it also noted some of the challenges about how certain female guild leaders wanted to pursue the roles like Lord Mayor but were outnumbered and outvoted by their male contemporaries despite their prestige but allowed to serve on the governing council. The revelation started a deeper look into the female role throughout history but due to the nature of historical documents the progress is slow and as an academic area its still in infancy.
I don't believe it was malicious or anything like that but the church was for the most part male dominated, especially in the upper roles so they would of course find it bizarre that in most cases they would find the whole subject of women doing things a bit unusual, there is also some link to the ancient world and the birth of history, where there was a much more male dominated environment so history was written largely by men about men. Even today most writers seem to write female roles in literature or other media very badly. There is nothing wrong with women occupying positions of power, there is just less chance it would happen for the reasons stated on both sides of the discussion. Society was hardly as rigid in the involvement of girls as you can see quite easily when you look into the backgrounds of the Hundred years war or the Wars of the Roses where they are almost dominated by the council taken of strong prestigious women.
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Why yes, that is the point. You argued that the power and rank of the female role was more prestigious than that of the male, if that was really the case, a female ruler would not want to take on the less prestigious honorific of her male counterpart, wouldn't she?
Bishops ruled courts, they were part of wide and powerful houses, so were Cardinals and Popes, they had palaces and consorts, issued feasts and patronized arts and entertainment. You seem to assume the Church is made of lonely monks born and dead in monasteries without ever seeing a female in their entire life. The Papal court was pretty much a Senate by any other name.
That is also very much arguable.
Yes, that is the point. It was very much less likely because of physical, psychical, cultural and religious factors, all combining together, creating a society where an average woman not only could not, but would not want to take on some roles. Some for the men, of course, in other circumstances. I'm certainly not arguing a male was capable of doing everything he wanted in the Middle Ages.
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i do agree with silfae that we can't be taking our 2015 sensibility and then going back and literally rewriting history so that it looks more like what we would want. on the other hand the more research that is done in this area the better.
Actually... women in the middle ages had more rights than during the early modern era 
Not in medieval Europe...
Not in medieval Europe...
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Yes, of course, but with criticism and moderation. For example, if a study shows half of the viking settlers coming to England are women, one should not consider the immediate conclusion that they obviously were all shieldmaidens fighting alongside the men, vikings really had equal rights and so forth, as some people tend to do.
Well, that is another matter entirely.Actually... women in the middle ages had more rights than during the early modern era
It was an overgeneralization, true, but if we consider all Europe, didn't Irene called herself Basileus?
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I'm not saying that we should take 2015 sensibility and uprooting history in some kind of weird feminist cleansing but its an academic discipline that needs far more time and research, I'm actually worried it will be taken over by people with strong gender views but its an interesting subject I wish I knew more about.
No I argued that it could be that way, not that it was a direct thing that always happened, there are as more accounts of queens or other strong female relations ruling through a monarch than there are of men ruling through weak queens. The title of king or queen was never a solid thing in any regards, you can pick and chose accounts to justify your arguments and I can pick as many for mine and drag this out for ages.
I'm not suggesting that monastic titles in the church are entirely cut off from women, but they were fairly removed from them, both out of choice and out of general communicative circles due to the way the church was organized. Its like when people are a bit unsure or removed of others cultures not unlike the male-female relationship satire in things like the big bang theory, to make it into a modern reference.
It is but there's something a bit weird about female characters in so much media, its better than it was but not right yet.
It was never that concrete, I keep saying that and giving statements to evident this. Most roles were never that cut off to talented women, a ruler would be an idiot to pass on a higher level of skills just because of genetic outfitting. There were certain restrictions which were nearly all purely economical, then there were a few stapled onto that such as restrictions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy but largely society was freer than most people let believe, just like dedicated serfdom wasn't such a big thing and actually on average the medieval population traveled more around with work than people tend to do in the modern era.