Women's Role In Early Modern Europe

“Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world” said Hillary Clinton. Today there is still so much work to be done to improve the rights and equality of gender. Even though the role of women has dramatically changed since early modern we still face problems of inequality. It is almost hard to believe how different the role of a woman in early modern Europe was compared to today when we are still not satisfied with the role that women are allowed to play. However, it is arguable that Ariosto would agree with Hillary Clinton. He believed that by the sixteenth century women had, “Arrived at excellence in every art in which they have striven” and that “in their chosen fields their renown is apparent to anyone who studies the
It was believed that women shouldn’t study the arts and writing like men because it needed original and creative thought that women weren’t able to possess. Instead, women were known to study the sciences because it required care and patients which were feminine qualities. In addition, the experiments done were similar to the tasks woman would perform in the home such as making recipes. One scientist was Maria Winkelmann Kirch, an astronomer. Her husband was also an astronomer who wrote the Almanac, which predicts future changes in weather. He was the Royal astronomer to Prussia and after he died, there were discussions of whether or not his wife should be appointed as the next Royal astronomer. It was decided that the country wouldn’t be taken seriously if they had a woman in that position. Thus, her son was officially given the position, even though as the superior astronomer she did all the work. Laura Bassi was the second woman to hold a PhD and the first to become a professor in 1732. Although a woman professor was a break through, she was only hired because the University of Bologna needed a publicity stunt. Even though women were becoming more educated, they were mainly limited to the sciences and weren’t taken as seriously as
During the 16th Century there was a cluster of women rulers. Some of these rulers included Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scotts. Men saw woman rulers as a problem. John Knox wrote The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women in 1558. He was strongly against Elizabeth I as a ruler. However, some such as John Aylmer argued in the defense of women rulers and insisted on “confidence to the monarch regardless of gender.” Elizabeth I was a strong ruler who “made the most of her limited means and consolidated England’s position as a Protestant power.” She took her role extremely seriously and in order to maintain England’s independence and not lose any of her power, she refused to get married. Elizabeth and others with the social status of the nobility fulfilled the role of a successful leader. However, despite these successful female rulers, they “did not fundamentally change the patriarchal ideology of the early modern