Did Women Have A Renaissance Essay

In the essay, "Did Women have a Renaissance?”, Joan Kelly-Gadol, presents a feminist insight into women's role in society during the Renaissance and how women did not have a Renaissance. While Margaret L. King, who wrote, “Women and High Power”, offers the roles of women and learning from 1300-1800 and argues that women did . The question of, “did women benefit from the Renaissance?”, is an extremely loaded question. Like every argument or question there are two sides to every story. One way, like Margaret L. King to look at this argument is that women experienced the Renaissance just like men did. Women saw the rebirth of culture, art, literature, philosophy. They experienced that just like men. A lot of noble women were able to rule.

Kelly-Gadol, says that women were not as educated as men. They were not seen as human, they were still seen as property. Even the women of power, Catherine Medici and Queen Elizabeth I, had to fight for their right to be seen as more than property. Yes, while the women of higher classes were able to rule, most of society was made up of peasants Women did not benefit from the Renaissance. Women did not have a Renaissance. There was no benefit for women during this period. Their role in society even regressed at this period in time. Some of the ways that women’s roles in society regressed are that they had no power, they were seen at property, they had little to no access to education or culture. A woman’s main role was to be a housewife and to have children. The first point of women having now power is that men had control over their women. They controlled what the woman was able to do, how the woman was seen. Any rights that a woman had was mostly due to inheritance. The main method of women gaining any sort of power was through their sons, especially when the husband died. The husband had to put into writing what specifically the woman would own or it would