Women as property in Europe?

[Dry]

So I was reading this book by Johan Norberg Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future.
Near the end he said something that I had previously read, but only on radical feminist sites/posts/blogs.

He claimed that in the past, in UK and American law women were treated as property and/or chattel. He also added that this was the case in Swedish law.
Considering the quality of its arguments on all other topics I was surprised that he mentioned this hard to believe assertion as fact.

I'm not familiar at all with old british law, but this sounds really hard to believe.
While I can find references in the literature (historical or fictional) of children being sold, I have no such example of women (wives) being sold (or re-sold) in western societies.
As far as I know, as far as I can go back in time, in western christian societies, once married you could not divorce your wife. While you could acquire and resell furniture, houses or even livestock, I haven't read anything like that with legally married wives.
I know that King Henry VIII got into troubles with the pope for not being able to divorce his first wife. He got away only at the price of a split from the church. And even for his other spouses he had to find/fabricate excuses for divorcing or killing them.
And this was at the highest social level (King), so I have trouble believing that ordinary men could divorce their wives on a whim. Let alone sell them or send them back to their father.

In the book, he also said that women could not own property.
Again, weird assertion. My references are more french literature than anglo-saxon, but many of them speak of family jewels (necklace, earring) passed from generation of mothers to generations of daughters. There are stories of thieves stealing from women or husbands plotting to kill their wives so they could inherit, because 'she is the real owner of the house/castle/land'. So much for women not being allowed to own asset.
In my family, there is the story my great-grand mother who lost her house in a fire. Her husband claimed that as he was the one who built the house, he was the only one who get the money from the insurance company. She went to a lawyer clerk (she could not afford the lawyer himself) who confirmed that she owned half of the house and thus could claim half of the insurance money. She won the case. This was somewhere between 1900 and 1910.

Even the tradition of dowry seem to contradict the idea that women could not own assets. The few I read about european civilizations practicing dowry, seem to indicate that often, women kept ownership of their dowry. It was precisely the purpose of that tradition. It seems there are even historical references of wives lending money to their husbands in Italy of the 16th century.
Widows could also inherit from their husbands, expanding their assets this way.
There is the story of the Veuve Cliquot (Champagne). She inherited the company from her husband in 1805 at the age of 27, and she not only owned it, but she became its more than successful manager.

Do you know where this ideas of 'being property' and 'not being allowed to own anything' in british law comes from?
Do you have examples of british wives (not daughters or sons) being sold as chattel? Even in historical fiction?
Was this only in british law or also in other european laws?

Is this a myth? An exaggeration of some historically accurate situation?
How far in the past do you need to go to be true? The book said it was in the American law too, so it should not be before 1776.
What are the evidence of this?

[Proteus_MST]

Well, in the 1960s/1970s still, a married woman was (in germany as well as in the USA and other western countries) only allowed to work, if her husband allowed it.
Likewise in most of these countries all money in the family (even that which she earned (if allowed by her husband to have a job)) was managed by her husband.
If he decided, for example, to use the money his wife earned in order to buy himself a new sports car, she had, de jure, no say in it.
Likewise a married woman duriung these times couldn't do any larger financial transactions on her own, or open her own banking account, unless her husband gave her the written permission to do so.
(My mother still experienced these times ... fortunately my father never was one of those backwards men who thought of his wife as property, so getting the necessary permissions to work wasn't a problem for my mother)

So, with other words, women in most industrialized nations during this time by law were treated similar to underage kids nowadays

If you have Amazon Prime I can recommend the series "Good girls revolt" ... it is about working women at a newspaper in the USA during the end 60s/ beginning 70s, from their perspective, with their problems to actually be taken serious as full-fledged journalists by their male colleagues (and not just as their secretaries/attendants) (and likewise with the problems that some of them are married and their husbands have other plans with their wifes life, then they themselves would like)

(you could also look, for example, at womans suffrage in europe ... especially switzerland ... in Switzerland suffrage rights were, more or less, governed on a cantonal level (and they have basic democracy, meaning the citizens themselves hold referenda about important things)
This resulted in the sad fact that in one canton women only got their rights to vote on federal elections in 1991. And this wasn't because it was decided in a referendum (the men in this canton were in their majority against giving women these rights), but rather was enforced by a federal court)


One might say that women in most western nations and coloured people in the USA have one thing in common: Their equal treatment by law (compared to the rest of the population) only began from the 1970s on

[Bereta_Eder]

in Greece women were never (barring old times) property and if you suggested as such they would hit you on the head with a frying pan and you could die. On a more serious note, nope, that doesn't ring a bell. Women as property. DEcreased human rights for women, yes, it was a problem up untill the 60's-70's where it radically changed.

[Bereta_Eder]

However, dowry (?) which was widely used in the past ('50's etc) did not indeed appartient, belonged to the woman and future wife. It belonged to her father who, gave it up to the groom alongside his daughter. Those, I suppose were very strange times. In order to marry a girl would have to have dowry to give to the future husband. Love, mutual attraction, all those things went out the window. DO YOU HAVE MONEY? That was all that was asked. (well I guess in some occasions). The past sucked very much.

[Bereta_Eder]

Also sometimes a guy would marry a girl without her having a dowery. That was a true sign of love. Although nearly everyone had a dowery. They collected it or som,ething like in the US where education is not free and people have to pay for it and collect comney "for college". My great great grandfather was a farmer and he fell in love with the daugher of a baron. Needless to say her father didn't give him any dowery on the contrary he disowned her. They went and lived on a farm and they did ok.

[Proteus_MST]

In germany we also had the concept of Kranzgeld till the beginning of the 1990s.

Kranzgeld was some kind of legally enforcable compensation for the woman, if a man deflorated her under the pretense of wanting to marry her and then broke the promise (and/or was unfaithful to her)

With other words, you damage her under false pretenses, you have to pay her

[Bereta_Eder]

Germany... rules and regulations for everything... (just, though!) I once kind of fancied a girl who was from sicily. I said, just for a bit of fun you know, nothing serious. A (northern) italian friend of mine said: "they WILL hunt you down (her family) you know. To the end of the world. I think the german method was more humane

[rah]

I always showed the two mounds of dirt behind my garage to all of my daughters suitors when she was younger.

[Dry]

Well, in the 1960s/1970s still, a married woman was (in germany as well as in the USA and other western countries) only allowed to work, if her husband allowed it.
Likewise in most of these countries all money in the family (even that which she earned (if allowed by her husband to have a job)) was managed by her husband.
If he decided, for example, to use the money his wife earned in order to buy himself a new sports car, she had, de jure, no say in it.
Likewise a married woman duriung these times couldn't do any larger financial transactions on her own, or open her own banking account, unless her husband gave her the written permission to do so.
(My mother still experienced these times ... fortunately my father never was one of those backwards men who thought of his wife as property, so getting the necessary permissions to work wasn't a problem for my mother)

That sounds very far from what my parents or any of their friends of that generation experienced.
Sure there were husbands who didn't want their wife to work, but the law was not on their side. I have zero echo of wives complaining about the need to have the agreement of their husband when looking for a job or signing her hiring contract. Zero.
I have more than one example of women complaining their husband tried to forbid them to work, but never ever with the help of the law. I have never heard of a husband asking the police to get back his wife from work because he didn't want to.
The book I mentionned was clear about being "by law".
The money wife and husband earned was (and still is) either put in a common pool or kept separated, depending on their marriage contract. In the absence of a contract, it was put in a common pool by default. The common pool was the default back then. I think today, the default is separated.

The one thing that my mother (born in 1936) and her female friends complained about was the unability to open a bank account of their own, or to buy something on credit.
When a purchase was done on credit, many sellers asked a counter signature of the husband as he was usually the one bringing money in the family (only very few women worked).
I can understand the logic: back then, most couples were under a "common account" contract, and most women were not working. The "default" position was, in case of a credit based purchase, to ask the one earning the money if he agreed. Problem was they made a absolute rule out of a general case.
Once women start to really contribute to the family money, this rule became stupid to say the least.

The only examples I have in the family and friends of someone taking the earned money from someone else is parents demanding their working children to contribute to the "pool".

And on the spending of a husband, I'm not a law specialist or historian, but I am quite sure there are (were) laws about not taking care of your family. It most certainly was a social stigma to have a wife and children that were not well dressed or fed. I know more fathers who chose not to eat or to sacrifice themselve so their family (wife, children) could do well. Around the generation of my parents, it was a proudness to have a well dressed, happy wife.

The social stigma for the generation of my grand-parents was to have a wife forced to work because the husband didn't earn enough.
At my parents level, this translated by having working wife meant you were not able to take care of your family.
It went south when women WANTED to work. Not because they were forced, but when they chose to. "backward" men as you call them could not adjust so fast.
In fact what I heard most often from husbands forbidding their wives to work was "I don't want society think I don't earn enough to take care of my family".

The only example of husbands spending their money on sport cars and not wanting their wives to go out (and meet others guys) are jaleous egocentric *******s. But I think they are more common today as they were back then.

So, with other words, women in most industrialized nations during this time by law were treated similar to underage kids nowadays

I agree on the sentence, but I disagree that underage kids are your property.

[Proteus_MST]

....
I agree on the sentence, but I disagree that underage kids are your property.

Sure, I guess regarding women being actually "properties of the men", that was already long over during that time (i.e. 1960s/1970s) ...
after all AFAIK all Women had the right to divorce their husband in almost all industrialized nations since at least the early 20th century

[Bereta_Eder]

dry was raised by an uber feminist belgian mother. He has issues becasue of that. He tries to find dignity in the man's ecistence of old. He needs not do that. There is plenty. He better not find a feminist SO.

[Kidlicious]

If you married a feminist of the kind he's talking about you are the one with issues. Good luck with that, and say goodbye to your manhood, if you ever had any.

[Kidlicious]

In one sense ownership means that you control something, not just being able to sell it. It that sense people own their children to some extent, and so does the government. The government owns us all, by definition, to some extent. Progressives want the government to own us more, so they are crazy.

[rah]

If you married a feminist of the kind he's talking about you are the one with issues. Good luck with that, and say goodbye to your manhood, if you ever had any.

Obviously spoken from experience.

[Dinner]

I will take two.