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bluGilltoday at 1:42 AM3 repliesview on HN

that ratio completly ignores 'women's work' which was half the labor. you don't have much a village if the naked people freeze to death, and most people like nice clothing even when the weather (and culture) allows nudism


Replies

chonglitoday at 2:09 AM

Women may have done half the labour but they didn't spend all their time weaving cloth and making clothing. You're forgetting about all the food preparation and preservation that women did. Women cooked meals, baked bread, preserved fruits and vegetables, and brewed beer, in addition to all the farm work they did (feeding chickens, collecting eggs, milking cows, working vegetable gardens, harvesting). Of course, women didn't do all of that work alone, they taught their children how to do it and supervised their labour. Large families were preferred because children are inexpensive (cheap to feed and clothe) relative to the labour they produce under proper supervision. Expensive entertainment and education for children was still centuries away.

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Retrictoday at 1:50 AM

Women and children very much participate in farming back then, harvest was a “all hands on deck” situation.

Similarly by adding ‘and clothe bodies’ that captures well over half of a typical woman’s labor back then. Drop spindles sucked up an enormous amount of labor before you even had cloth.

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legitstertoday at 2:57 AM

Yes, but also the other side of the ratio includes everything like guilded craftsmen, monks, merchants, etc. Not exactly people who weren't doing work themselves.