Late medieval Coventry attracted so many in-migrating singlewomen that it might have seemed a city of women — for every ten women, only seven men. Some of these peasants-turned-townswomen supported themselves as labourers, domestic servants or prostitutes, but it was the demand for their industrial labour as spinners of cloth-yarn and cap-yarn that drew most women to the city. Coventry’s merchants and masters, who needed spinners’ work but deplored women’s autonomy, tried with considerable success to push these spinners into supervised living within the city’s established households. The experiences of Coventry’s singlewoman-spinners show that ‘maidservants’ were sometimes industrial workers; that singlewomen were corralled into ‘little commonwealths’ well before Protestantism; and that ‘girl power’ was more about economic growth than the empowerment of women.

中文翻译：

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需要但令人遗憾：工业考文垂的纺纱工和单身女性，c.1490–1525


中世纪晚期的考文垂吸引了如此多的移民单身女性，以至于它看起来像是一座女性城市——每十名女性对应七名男性。其中一些由农民出身的城镇妇女以劳工、家庭佣人或妓女的身份养活自己，但正是对她们作为布纱和帽纱纺纱工的工业劳动的需求吸引了大多数妇女来到城市。考文垂的商人和大师需要纺纱工的工作，但又对妇女的自主权感到遗憾，他们试图将这些纺纱工推入城市成熟家庭的监督下生活，并取得了相当大的成功。考文垂单身女纺纱工的经历表明，“女仆”有时是产业工人；早在新教出现之前，单身女性就被纳入“小联邦”； “女孩力量”更多地是关于经济增长，而不是赋予妇女权力。