"In the Middle Ages men were more likely to be
literate than women. The main reason for this was that women were usually denied an education. Even in wealthy families, it was often considered wrong to spend time and money on teaching daughters to read and write. It has been estimated that "in the later Middle Ages out of the total population 10 per cent of men and I per cent of women were literate." Most men were very hostile to the idea of women becoming literate."
The Growth of Female Literacy in the Middle Ages (Classroom Activity)
While commonly perceived to be true, those views are really a bit outdated now.
Late Medieval Education: Continuity and Change
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Viewed through the lens of humanist critics, religious reformers, and later confessional politics, late medieval education was once routinely dismissed as moribund, tradition-bound, and unable to meet the needs of an emerging modernity. Pre-university education was deemed the preserve of a narrow clerical elite. The faculty of the late medieval university was depicted as primarily interested in protecting its entrenched and myopic interests against upstart humanists. The education of the parish clergy was at best inconsistent and at worst entirely lacking. Women and religious minority communities hardly entered the discussion at all. However, research over the last 50 years has substantially reframed our understanding of all of these issues.
Scholars of the late Middle Ages now describe a complex, crowded educational landscape. Alongside traditional monastic, cathedral, and collegiate schools, new religious orders, most notably the mendicants, established schools for their members, and in some cases served the broader educational needs of their surrounding communities.2 In many cities and towns, local officials founded new schools, recruited qualified masters, and paid teaching personnel from communal funds. Private instructors with varying degrees of competency and legal recognition also set up shop in larger cities and towns or served in the households of the privileged. In rural areas, parish priests, despite complaints by reformers about the ignorance of the petty clergy, often provided at least basic instruction in Latin for a few young ‘scholars’.3 Nor was formal schooling exclusively reserved for boys. Private tutors contracted by wealthy parents, school-mistresses, and female religious houses provided at least basic literacy for some girls.4...
Educational opportunities for women in the late Middle Ages also expanded. Although the universities were exclusively male (or at least nearly so),41 women and girls increasingly had access to an elementary education that led to vernacular literacy.42 Many may also have received at least basic instruction in mathematics useful for the keeping of business accounts. By the 14th century formal schools for girls are well documented in nearly every major region.43 Numerous city statutes sought to regulate the personnel, discipline, fees, and curriculum of the growing number of girls’ schools. Although in the shadows, unregulated schools operated on the legal fringe leaving few traces of their structure or curriculum. Not surprisingly, these educational opportunities were concentrated primarily within larger towns and cities and associated with the interests of a growing merchant elite. Nevertheless, even in smaller communities girls may have had access to basic education through women’s religious houses or private arrangements...
the primary impetus for the expansion of educational opportunities for girls and women was largely the same as that for boys and men. It was useful. It was especially useful for merchants, although we also find interest in education and basic literacy within the guilds representing even the humblest trades.47 However, as most correspondence, business records, and even property transactions and court cases were increasingly conducted in vernacular languages, Latin was generally not considered useful for women. It was in fact of limited utility for men outside the narrow elite who pursued higher education or a career in the Church. It is thus misleading to emphasize the limitations placed on women’s education at the expense of the substantial and obvious growth.
The beginnings of novels happened a lot earlier in Japan (with the first novel written in the 1100's--by a woman no less-- Tale of Genji). Up until the printing press, novel circulation as a hobby among a broader spectrum of women became normalized earlier. Writing was also part of Shinto spirituality and Shinto had a lot of women priests.
Interesting, thanks for this.
Any idea what percentage of the population would be literate?
