Productive Men, Reproductive Women
Subtitle: The Agrarian Household and the Emergence of Separate Spheres in the German Enlightenment
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: January 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 608
ISBN-13: 9781571811714
Subjects: Family & relationships; Gender Studies; Rural communities; Sex Roles (Sociological Aspects); Social Science; History - General History; Sociology; Germany; Modern - 18th Century; Women's Studies - History; Economic conditions; Europe, German-speaking; History; Rural conditions; Sex role
Description: "The scholarly discussion on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active, interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood."--Jacket.