Renaissance people would not have understood the word gender to refer to categories of people, but they would have easily grasped the concept. Toward the end of the fourteenth century learned men (and a few women) began what was termed the debate about women, an argument about women’s character and nature that would last for centuries. Misogynist critiques of women from both clerical and secular authors denounced females as devious, domineering, and demanding. In response, several authors compiled long lists of famous and praiseworthy women. Some writers, including a few women who had gained a humanist education, were interested not only in defending women but also in exploring the reasons behind women’s secondary status. Beginning in the sixteenth century the debate about women also became a debate about female rulers, because in Spain, England, France, and Scotland women served as advisers to child-kings or ruled in their own right.

The dominant notion of the “true” man was that of the married head of household, so men whose class and age would have normally conferred political power but who remained unmarried were sometimes excluded from ruling positions. Actual marriage patterns in Europe left many women unmarried until late in life, but this did not lead to greater equality. Women who worked for wages, as was typical, earned about half to two-thirds of what men did even for the same work. Of all the ways in which Renaissance society was hierarchically arranged — by class, age, level of education, rank, race, occupation — gender was regarded as the most “natural” distinction and therefore the most important one to defend.