The Evolution of Women's Asylums Since 1500

Download or read book The Evolution of Women's Asylums Since 1500 written by Sherrill Cohen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Catholic Europe witnessed the growth of new institutions designed to house repentant prostitutes and girls and women at risk of becoming prostitutes. This little-known surge in institution building arose out of the Catholic reform movement and the Counter Reformation. Cohen presents a portrait of life in three such institutions for women in the Italian cities of Florence and Pistoia. In Western societies from the sixteenth century onward, far more types of gender-specific institutions have been created for women than for men. The institutions for women served many social functions, usually including the control of women's sexuality. Representing a new residential option for women beyond the traditional ones of marriage or convent, these institutions were "asylums" in a dual sense, operating as both sites of internment and shelters from harm. Cohen demonstrates how the multi-functional women's institutions of the early modern era served as the prototypes for a variety of asylums for women that emerged in later centuries - including hostels, homes for unwed mothers, and battered women's shelters. In a major revision of the historiography of social institutions, Cohen argues that the women's institutions of early modern Europe played a pioneering role in developing techniques and institutional forms in the fields of corrections and social welfare.