What male professions were originally purely female, and why then everything changed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There is a big and very popular modern myth: all professions were originally male. In fact, the professional activities of women both in Europe and in Muslim Asia began to be limited rather late, and some professions were literally taken away from women by men - they were traditionally considered only female.

Brewing

The brewer in the advertisement will necessarily be either a cheerful monk, or just a well-fed uncle. In fact, for many centuries in Europe, Asia and Africa, making beer was precisely a woman's prerogative and responsibility, and when it turned into a paid craft in which real money began to spin, women began to slowly squeeze out of breweries. In Europe, for example, it is not just that there is a stereotypical image of a witch as a woman with a broom and at a huge cauldron, and ideally in a pointed hat. A billet for beer was stirred in the kettles with a broom, so that it hung in front of the brewery house as a sign. Hats are believed to have been the trademark of the profession.

As you might guess, in order to clear the market from competitors where there are real cash flows, male brewers began to inform brewers like witches en masse. Hence the stereotypical appearance of the witch. And it’s hard to prove that you don’t secretly put satanic powders in beer: after all, in the "Hammer of the Witches" it is stated that no one likes to brew potions in the name of the devil as much as women do. And all the possibilities to throw into the cauldron are unknown what you have. This is enough to go to the fire.

As you know, part of the property after the arrest of the witch went to the informer. And the competitors of the breweries only needed that: after all, the majority of the property was made up of the instruments for the production of beer. In Asia, women, on the whole, at some point began to be squeezed out of trade, there were no witchcraft processes - a number of prohibition laws were issued.

Healing and medicine making

Rural medicine is not without reason more associated with a healer than with a doctor. Both the manufacture of medicines and the identification and treatment of diseases have been a woman's concern for a very long time (this is still largely the case - every wife and mother is expected to keep an eye on the medicine cabinet and treat loved ones in simple cases). Very soon it turned from a family business into a separate craft, and, of course, it was one of those crafts that humanity was the first to monetize.

Although healers trained new generations of their successors and took money for their craft for many, many years on all continents, they were quickly replaced by priests-healers and secular doctors. The women of Ancient Egypt held out the longest in the profession. Needless to say that the image of a healer who cooks something from herbs and mutters incomprehensible words over the brew (thus, for example, they calculated the time for cooking a healing broth), is also not just associated with a classic witch?

In Europe, women did not give up for many years and tried to return to medicine. In the eleventh century, a medical school for women operated for a short time, medicine was studied according to ancient treatises and not only in monasteries, from time to time some of the women managed to become a recognized doctor. The situation changed properly only in the sixties of the nineteenth century, when Russian women began to study medicine en masse - because it was among Russian doctors that there were enough progressives who were ready to help young ladies enter medical universities in Europe.

Obstetrics

Obstetrics and gynecology have always stood at the fore in healing. In Europe before the Vedic processes, women reigned supreme in this profession. In many cities, midwives trained by other proven midwives in the city were even paid to give birth to even the poor. Wealthy citizens paid on their own behalf, themselves. Obstetrics was one of the most constant in demand and monetary professions.

Midwifery is very complex, and therefore until the end of the doctors of those times, when everything was treated with bloodletting and enemas, it was not possible to oust women with their "stupid beliefs" from it. Time after time the class of midwives was dealt a devastating blow - and time after time women again took priority for themselves. The most successful midwifery courses, together with a super-practical training apparatus, were created in the eighteenth century by a woman. The most popular obstetrics textbook in the nineteenth century is also a woman. Until now, women prevail in this area of medicine, although now both sexes study with the same benefits.

Playing the tambourine

There are two types of tambourine: with a mallet, originating from a military shield, and one that you have to play only with your hands, a descendant of a sieve for sifting grain. Tambourines of the second type have always been a female instrument, whether it was in the Bronze Age, Antiquity or later times. And this is the case when the transition of the tambourine to the hands of a man is not associated with cash flows and competition for them.

The situation began to slowly change back in Europe, when the fashion for percussion instruments was brought from the Crusades. The audience demanded music with a clear rhythm - to the horror of the guardians of the European mellifluous tradition - and both men and women added tambourines to their arsenal. Nevertheless, over time, the tambourine, as a more street and less prestigious instrument, remained in Europe in the hands of women.

In the east, men took possession of the tambourine in earnest because of … the Sufi worldview. Sufi mystic a woman in love is submissive to representations. In addition, the shape of the tambourine made it possible to interpret the playing on it in a mystical way, since the circle is perfect - as faith should be perfect. After the Sufis, other male musicians began to play the tambourine, and very quickly in many places it became a male instrument rather than a female one.

Corset making

It would seem, what could be more feminine than making women's underwear, especially one where precise measurements of the figure are required? Naturally, initially corsets in Europe were made by craftswomen. But the fashion for corsets turned out to be long-lasting and guaranteeing constant and good money, so soon the male tailors, who decided to master this cash flow, began to lobby in every possible way for laws that oust women from sewing corsets. Even the general cult of chastity did not bother anyone. None of the men, of course, can take and measure a woman in different places, but a corset master can.

Weaving and tailoring

Even before the emergence of professions as such, it was women who spun, weaved and sewed clothes from woven almost everywhere. In the Middle Ages in Europe, a woman considered it her duty to weave more linen than was required to serve the lord and to dress the whole family. Of all agriculture, money came almost exclusively from weaving, so selling fabric was a way to raise money to pay rent.

In the Russian village, the women, too, no matter how busy they were, tried to weave canvases for years in advance. In old age, widows, so that their sons and grandchildren would not reproach them with a piece of bread, or if they completely threw the old women to death by starvation, lived by selling the woven in their youth.

In the Middle Ages, there were already male weavers, but, for example, the manufacture of silk fabrics and products from them for a very long time was completely and exclusively in female hands - because of the tenderness of the material, which required the same gentle and sensitive fingers. True, there was a lot of money circulating there, so at some point it turned out that silk weavers could and should, of course. work by profession, but only and exclusively for his uncle, and not for himself.

Likewise, women were constantly pushed out of tailoring as seamstresses - a much worse paid job. In the nineteenth century, only laundresses lived harder than seamstresses, also, by the way, originally a female profession, which men mastered only in Asia and Africa. Poverty, loss of vision, tuberculosis, varicose veins, displaced vertebrae in the neck were the usual companions of young seamstresses. Tuberculosis, of course, cannot be earned by endless sitting in one position, but the seamstress's daily regimen greatly weakened their health, and it was more difficult for them to resist the infection. However, already in the nineteenth century, women began to regain their positions in tailoring and fashion design.

In general, everywhere women have been squeezed out for centuries in a profession with great physical activity, but low pay and low prestige: What professions did women "choose" about 150 years ago, and what were they most often sick with?.