Early Career Network: ‘Women’s Voices? Gender-spaces, Power and Powerlessness in the Pre-Modern Era’

How and by whom are women, their lived realities and their roles portrayed? Are these ‘officially’ attributed to women in their own time, or do they have to fight for them? How does this compare with other periods in the same city, with other cities, and with rural areas? Does metropolitan life enhance or restrict women’s scope for action?

These and other questions were addressed at the Regensburg conference ‘Women’s Voices? On the Resonance of Female Power and Powerlessness in Pre-modern Metropolises’. This event gave rise to a desire for closer collaboration, leading to the establishment in July 2025 of the early-career network ‘Women’s Voices? Gender-spaces, Power and Powerlessness in the Pre-Modern Era’. The interdisciplinary and cross-period focus is central to this. For only in this way can the numerous facets of female representation and women’s scope for action at specific times and in specific spaces be explored. 
However, due to the nature of the surviving sources, it is often only possible to a limited extent to make specific women or groups of women the subject of analysis; attempts to provide a comprehensive picture of various female roles and spheres of action in a specific city usually remain incomplete. Furthermore, many these accounts were written by male authors, whose perspectives and intentions may colour the reports. Within this context, the aim is to give women a voice to highlight their perspective. The network therefore explicitly focuses on accounts by and about women in the pre-modern era. This is intended to sharpen the focus on a multifaceted, socially differentiated pre-modern era. It was particularly during the interdisciplinary and cross-period discussions at the conference that underpins the network that it became clear that a comparison between urban and rural areas is essential. In this way, not only do women from both areas become the subject of study; at the same time, this allows their respective scope for action and roles to be better highlighted. This also results in a more nuanced view of the realities of life and the scope for action available to them.