Declining female participation: mechanisms at play on the Viennese private annuity market, c. 1360 – 1450

During the high and late Middle Ages, the European economy witnessed the emergence and substantial growth of capital markets, a phenomenon connected to urbanisation and pestilence, both of which brought profound changes to the social, legal, and economic positions of women. In the second half of the fourteenth century, women participated as both lenders and borrowers in the emerging capital markets of public and private annuities in the Holy Roman Empire, forced loans in northern Italy, and microcredit in Valencia. This heightened level of participation declined at varying speeds across Europe, with women disappearing from some credit markets altogether. Through a novel collection of private annuities from late medieval Vienna, this article examines three channels of female financial agency and identifies the mechanisms behind the forces that gradually changed the circumstances of women, leading to a decline in their participation in private credit.