The dissertation employs three major resources, viz. wills, poll tax returns and deposition material from the Church court, to explore a range of issues relating to the role of women in the urban economy of later medieval England. Despite the use of York material by way of a case study, an attempt has been made to set this evidence within a wider national and, to a more limited degree, European context. The relationship between women's economic opportunities and the prevailing marriage regime, and the social arrangements that underpin that regime, have been explored. Consideration has been given to the institution of service as a life-cycle function for both sexes, the nature and duration of service, the mechanisms by which servants were hired, and the relations between. servants and employers. The range of female economic activity has been fully examined and evidence presented for both regional and secular variation. The case argued is that the early emotional independence from I parents created by service, and the possibility of real economic independence outside marriage through servanthood and other employment, permitted women a degree of freedom to reach their own decisions about marriage and choice of marriage partner. This view implicitly challenges those analyses of nuptiality that ignore gender-specific differences in economic and emotional circumstances. The evidence assembled suggests that a characteristically north-western marriage regime prevailed within urban Yorkshire from the later fourteenth century, and points to a significant proportion of women achieving adulthood without ever marrying. The evidence further suggests profound changes in the status and opportunities of female workers in response to wider demographic fluctuations. It may be that in certain Northern towns of the ear ly fifteenth century women enjoyed a fuller economic role than at any subsequent period before the latter part of this present century. By the end of that century, however, women's economic role was becoming marginalised and women may have become more dependent upon marriage : Similarly the status of female servants was eroded and more women may have been forced into prostitution and associated petty crime as males displaced them from more rewarding (and legal) economic activity.

The primary objectives of the current research were to (1) test the effectiveness of conspicuous consumption as a status-enhancement tactic and (2) examine access to material resources as an interpersonal benefit that incentivizes status striving behavior. The studies that follow investigated the status striving motivations of both men and women; however, this research endeavor was primarily designed to address the paucity of research on female status. In Study 1, a nation-wide sample of participants perceived target women to be higher status when they were depicted conspicuously consuming than when not. Several individual difference variables that predict conspicuous consumption were also identified, many of which related to the attainment of high status. In Studies 2 and 3, conspicuous consumption was shown to increase perceptions of status in face-to-face interactions, further supporting the status signaling function of conspicuous consumption. Study 3 utilized a Dictator Game methodology to test the prediction that participants would share more of a monetary allotment with confederates who were conspicuously consuming than with those who were not. Results indicated that conspicuous consumption did not increase generosity except in male participants who shared more of a monetary allotment with conspicuous consumers, particularly those of the same sex. This sex-specific result is discussed in light of the possibility that conspicuous consumption signals a type of status that is particularly relevant to men (i.e., economic status). In conclusion, I consider the different pathways by which high status individuals receive increased access to resources. / text