Žena na venkovském trhu

• Authors: Daniel Drápala

Title variants

EN

Woman at rural market

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

There were several different roles that women at city, town and market village fairs of Moravia and Silesia played. Most of them were buyers - entire social and professional groups can be identified among them. Traditionally their task was to purchase products necessary for trouble-free running of household: food, the household equipment (mostly used in the kitchen), but also textiles and garments. This rule worked similarly on the other side - in the role of woman as a seller. Here we must differentiate between two groups of market women. The first of them were non-professional housewives (selling dairy products, eggs, mushrooms, herbs, small animals) for whom selling was an occasional business (seasonal or additional way of acquiring certain sums of money). The other group included professional traders who went to the market regularly and it became their main livelihood. The types of goods offered by countrywomen corresponded to standard running of farmstead and to home production. Professional market women enriched this range of products. However, farm products and groceries dominated what they offered. At the beginning, women did not take part in selling other goods, they usually held the role of assistants, or they used to stand in for the male participants of markets on a short-term basis. The number of women, sometimes even running their own business, started increasing only at the end of 19th century.

Keywords

EN

markets; fairs; business; position of woman; country and small town

Discipline

• ETHNOLOGY: ETHNOLOGY

• Publisher: Czech Ethnological Society
• Journal: Národopisný věstník
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 25_(67)
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 16-33
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Daniel Drápala

• Česká národopisná společnost, z. s., Národní třída 3, 117 20 Praha 1, Czech Republic