She is also thoroughly interdisciplinary in her approach. This survey and assessment of German women's existence from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century is oriented toward economic and social realities rather than toward the norms defined by the elites of government, judiciary, and church. Moving topically, Wunder begins with women's accounts of their lives, giving examples of self-fashioning by the end of the period. Wunder is not persuaded that girls were any less cared for than boys, noting parallel although not identical treatment of the sexes. Within the household, women were full partners, with legal and practical protections of their rights.
Partnership is the underlying theme of the entire book.
The Protestant Reformation, by rendering divorce legal and elevating marriage, gave the housewife a new ideological dignity in addition to the practical dignity that she already possessed by virtue of her indispensability. By the sixteenth century, the economy focused increasingly on the household. In an era of protocapitalism, the work of women was less visible, subsumed within the domestic unit. Parallel to this evolution, the professionalization of crafts resulted in the devaluation of women's labor. 2 Wunder devotes chapter six to reproduction, drawing together a broad spectrum of local and regional studies.