One of the key elements of history is supposed to be change. Looking at the modern world compared to medieval England, very little looks the same. But the compelling argument of Judith Bennet in Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England boldly asserts that the role of women’s work in the brewing industry represents a continuity rather than a change. While the ways that women are marginalized have changed throughout time, the consequences remain largely the same. Some of the primary reasons for women’s exclusion from the brewing business were the increasing financial burdens of industrialization, the rise of beer over ale, and the public perception of alewives. The consequences merely begin with the fueling of stereotypes and the invalidation of women’s work.
When ale-brewing got started, its status was far from that of an industry. Ale was primarily brewed by domestic women as a household necessity. It was not until the wake of the Black Death that grain prices plummeted and demand for the drink increased¬– a statistic that appears contradictory, due to the considerable drop in population, but in fact has an explanation. “Brewers had fewer customers than before, but those fewer customers drank much more ale per capita than had their parents and grandparents.” creating fertile ground for higher profit margins and thus piquing an interest in brewing ale on a larger scale. However, the possibilities of industrialized brewing were only available to those with the resources to expand their property and purchase equipment¬. At this point in history, women did not have any kind of financial independence. Single women were particularly disadvantaged, as they had no money to invest in industry and had a notoriously low level of status and wealth. They were the first group to be pushed out, while married women still had some sort of stake in the growing business. But while married women were lucky to have a partnership that could allow them a gild membership and the access to some capital that allowed them somewhat greater subsistence, they were still entirely financially dependent, their husbands possessing unlimited claim to all of their assets. Thus, even if they were the workers behind the brewing, the men owned what they produced. While ale brewing had started with women, it could only grow to an industrial scale if men took over. Since profits were of increasing importance in Europe, men seized the opportunity at gaining wealth through a new industry and took over the domain of ale, pushing women into secondary work roles “in the lowest levels of the trade (especially as ale sellers and ale carriers).” Their new work was less profitable and required less skill, effectively demeaning women’s abilities and depriving them of their agency.
As beer gained predominance over ale, women were even further marginalized from the brewing industry. Beer-brewing was far more labor intensive, and aside from the mere fact that women were viewed as significantly less physically capable, the work required the hiring of many servants¬– again, women were unable to possess the kind of funds this investment would require. Additionally, should they somehow be able to hire the servants, the mere social structure of seventeenth century London would have created an impossible power struggle between a female employer and male employees. As Bennet summarizes in her account of beer brewing widow Margery Draper, women were unable to “exercise authority over the large and masculine labor forces found in some… ale breweries and in virtually all beerbreweries” due to “gender roles, social prejudice, sexual anxiety, or a combination of these factors.”
But the rising prevalence of beer carried implications far beyond the issue of women’s financial dependence. Beer became more popular in part because of its key ingredient: hops. The different recipe allowed beer to remain good long after ale had soured, and thus opened up possibilities for trading. This was obviously appealing for its promises of an even more profitable industry, but for women, it promised further exclusion. Only men had the connections required to enter a trade, and the existing networks were entirely under male operation. As Bennet explains, “male control of beer export was not exceptional, for the involvement of women in overseas trade was generally very low; one study has suggested that less than 2 percent of importers were female.”
The last and most despicable reason for women being forced out of the brewing industry was the public portrayal of alewives. Unlike the former two catalysts, this was not a mere consequence of pre-existing structural inequalities between men and women. Rather, this was a concentrated effort to slander women’s work and craft unfair stereotypes that would keep women away from the English man’s newly discovered industrial goldmine. Through pop cultural pieces such as plays and ballads, women in the industry were painted as evil and dangerous creatures. Bennet makes an apt analysis, that “like all women, alewives were deemed untrustworthy. if Adam was deceived by Eve, Samson by Delilah, David by Bathsheba, even Robin Hood by the wicked prioress, how could a simple man hope do escape the deceit of a conniving alewife?” The alewives were thought to be lustful and impure, using sex to lure men into purchasing their product which was overpriced and poor in quality. The brewster’s ale was promoted as unfit for consumption, and thus any final chance of women having a role in the brewing industry was destroyed. On top of the immediate financial and social advantages of men, women were rendered even more unable to compete through this spreading of dishonest stereotypes.
The factors that contributed to women’s marginalization are upsetting, but the consequences are even more unfortunate. Bennet argues rather radically that this oppression has been a consistent issue through time, even going so far as to compare history to “a sort of dance in which women and men… move across the room, alter their steps, and even change partners, but always the men are leading.” Bennet even feels that sexist marginalization remained strongly enforced even as she wrote in the late 1990s, and would likely argue that patriarchal institutions continue to thrive today, more than twenty years later. She emphasizes that “the power of patriarchy in our lives today rests, in part, on our failure to understand how it has worked in past times. As long as we refuse to study patriarchy as a historical force, we will fail to understand its workings and we will be subject to its power.” Patriarchal social structures enabled the financial helplessness of the brewsters, as well as the misogynistic stereotyping that contributed to their exile from the industry. These stereotypes are still prevalent today, though in different contexts– that women belong at home with their children, and that their pregnancy and maternity leave will make them too expensive to employ. Bennet is right¬– we must learn from patriarchal historical patterns to break out of the trap of demeaning women’s agency in the workforce.