Constrained opportunities: women’s involvement in the capital markets of late medieval Brabant

Abstract

ABSTRACT Women’s abilities to participate in capital markets are widely considered a crucial aspect of their economic opportunities. Yet female involvement in (private) capital markets has received scarce attention in studies of medieval finance. This article explores the position of women in late medieval capital markets through a study of the Low Countries. By comparing two cities with opposite economic trajectories during the fifteenth century (Antwerp and Leuven), it interrogates how different economic conditions affected gender inequality in capital markets, and how women’s involvement was influenced by marital status. Quantitative analysis of the registers of aldermen – which contain economic contracts of all sorts – shows that, regardless of the city’s economic conditions, women’s share in the capital market was relatively modest and comparable to that in other European regions. However, the characteristics of women’s participation in Antwerp’s booming commercial economy differed from patterns that have been conventionally described by historiography. The article shows that as investors Antwerp women held a comparable position to men and highlights the importance of never-married women as creditors. It concludes that differing economic structures and conditions in adjacent cities affected women’s position in capital markets, with important implications for interregional comparisons of women’s economic opportunities across (medieval) Europe.