num_pages: 288
description: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Catholic Europe witnessed the growth of new institutions designed to house repentant prostitutes and girls and women at risk of becoming prostitutes. This little-known surge in institution building arose out of the Catholic reform movement and theCounter-Reformation. Cohen presents a portrait of life in three such institutions for women in the Italian cities of Florence and Pistoia. These institutions represented a new residential option for women beyond the traditional options of marriage or convent. They were "asylums" in a dual sense,operating as both sites of internment and shelters from harm. Cohen demonstrates how the multifunctional women's institutions of the early modern era served as the prototypes for a variety of asylums for women that emerged in later centuries--including hostels, homes for unwed mothers, and batteredwomen's shelters. In a major revision of the historiography of social institutions, Cohen argues that the women's institutions of early modern Europe played a pioneering role in developing techniques and institutional forms in the fields of corrections and social welfare.
language: English
title: The Evolution of Women's Asylums Since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women
titlecomplete: The Evolution of Women's Asylums Since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (Studies in the History of Sexuality)
genres: History
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Oxford University Press