Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies / / William Chester Jordan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Jordan, William Chester,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2016]; ©1993
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Edition: Reprint 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (164 p.)

The active role of women in the labor force is not limited to recent decades, or even to the last century. As William Chester Jordan amply demonstrates in Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial and Developing Societies, women in premodern times played an integral part both as a source of labor and as participants in lending and borrowing. In this wide-ranging and provocative study, the author assesses the overall significance of women's work in medieval and early modern Europe, and in colonial and postcolonial societies. While earlier studies have concentrated on women in agriculture or craftwork, Jordan investigates consumption lending and borrowing among women in the European Middle Ages, female investment in early modern Europe, and, in a final section, the role of African and Caribbean marketwomen and their provision of and access to credit. By viewing the historical situation, Jordan sheds light on contemporary concerns about commercialization, the transformation of rural society, and industrialization. He provides a historical and comparative context for some of the current issues that plague the twentieth-century female work force. By understanding the role of gender in such an important aspect of traditional life as credit relationships, Jordan advances an ongoing reexamination of the issue in general. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and early modern European, African, and Caribbean history; anthropology; and women's studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: The Parameters of the Study -- Part One: Consumption Loans and Networks of Sociability in the Middle Ages -- Part Two: Investment and Capital Formation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe -- Part Three: Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean in the Colonial and Post- Colonial Period -- Conclusion: Persistent Concerns -- References -- Index -- Backmatter