Anglo-Saxon women

The study of the role of women in particular in the society of Anglo-Saxon England has been a topic of academic research in history and gender studies since the 1980s. A seminal study was published by Christine Fell as Women in Anglo-Saxon England in 1984. According to Fell, women were "near equal companions to the males in their lives, such as husbands and brothers, much more than in any other era before modern time". Despite this sense of equality in some strata of society, Anglo Saxon women were still subject to concubinage. This equal status prevailed until the Norman Conquest of 1066, at which point a military society re-envisioned women as unimportant.

Gender was influenced by social status, religion and sexuality. Many women in Anglo-Saxon England were of solid stance in society. They were not only allowed to have private influence, but also a wide liberty of intervention in public affairs.

Women and children were generally involved in tasks that required little physical work. Though, due to climate and weather constraints, women may have done the work that needed attention at the time. While men were ox-herders, labourers, swine-herders, and so forth, women were cheese-makers and dairy-maids. They were also bakers, though not cooks. In Old English the word for cook is coc, and is only found in the masculine form, while baecere and bascestre respectively represent the feminine and masculine forms of baker. Female slaves were corn-grinders, serving maids, wet-nurses, weavers, and seamstresses. Common free women may have been found spinning as well as weaving. Women and ladies, including queens, would serve drinks for company and family. This was not only a job for a woman of lower-class, though it would have likely been done by a low-class woman if one were present. Women of this time were also entertainers, comedians, and singers, and may have been employed by households or travelling groups.

Churches in Anglo-Saxon England stressed doctrines that preached about virginity as a virtue and faithful monogamy; this is believed to have limited an individual’s chances of acquiring status, political power and property. Anglo-Saxon England was the first place in history that women had been raised to sainthood, and this was the strongest immediately following the acceptance of Christianity. Within the church women appeared to have been equal as well there are evidences of anti-feminism found in Homilies. Although anti-feminism was found in Homilies, it does not seem to hold true in practice. Women who went into the convent and took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience were glorified in the eyes of the Church and its Fathers. The convent offered self-development and social responsibility to women, something that women are fighting for today. Uniquely, the Anglo-Saxon church had institutions that consisted of male and female monasteries, located together but segregated, and in these the female abbot had the headship of the institution. Convents were run by abbesses, and this was an opportunity for women to have a position of authority. They were responsible for the finances and managing the property, with some the help of the other nuns. This control that women had did not survive the Viking invasion of 789, although women continued to play a major role in the church in late Anglo-Saxon England. Single gendered convents and monasteries had the chores that were commonly done by the other sex would have been performed by the common sex in that location; examples are men would have worked in the kitchens of monasteries and women would have worked in the gardens of nunneries.

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