Medieval English peasant women and their historians: A historiography with a future?

Scholarship concerning medieval peasant women grew out of economic, Marxist, legal, and social history and, since the late 1970s, has been taken up mainly by medieval scholars using feminist methodologies. This research has been conducted by a handful of scholars most actively working before 2000. A large portion of this research has been focused on recovering information about peasant women's daily lives, their occupations, and their remuneration for work. From this body of research, scholars have attempted to understand and demonstrate the social and cultural conditions which affected peasant women's status and their agency. While most agree that peasant women's lives were profoundly affected by gendered ideas, there has been debate about the degree to which patriarchal institutions and beliefs have limited women's lives. This article focuses on scholarship concerning peasant women situated in their own social milieu, rather than their representation in art and literature. It argues that there remain many opportunities for further research, especially in the form of team-based research, which is becoming more common in digital humanities.