The concept of gender has become such an important subject in international historiography over the last two decades that it might appear odd to devote an entire dossier of the Annales to the topic. However, the relative success of this field of research may also conceal ambiguities in both the intellectual project underlying the term as well as its reception in the social sciences. For certain authors, undertaking a history of gender has meant writing a history of women. Though this form of history now enjoys proper recognition, it is still depreciated in two ways: on the one hand, it is qualified as a militant—and therefore unscholarly—history; and, on the other, it is criticized according to some vague argument claiming that no matter how it is labeled—“gender” or “women”—the inquiry is already dated. Without a doubt, the now canonical expression “history of women and gender” has generated real confusion among those scholars who are not particularly engaged with the field.1

Gender studies use gender to characterize behavioral norms, personality traits, and the relative importance given to differences between the sexes in individual relationships. In the field of Classical studies, these three definitions usually converge to isolate a single gender system: the polarity between anēr (male citizen) and gunē (wife and mother), which is strictly articulated as a division between male/female. Nonetheless, a number of studies, particularly those dealing with sexuality, have demonstrated that ancient Greek societies were not systematically organized according to gender differences. These conclusions encourage researchers to examine the various points of view expressed in documents elaborated by the Greeks living on the shores of the ancient Mediterranean. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the male/female division often seems secondary to that opposing members of the community to foreigners, Greeks to Barbarians or mortals to immortals.

This article examines the historical value of poetical texts, such as the Roman poet Martial’s Epigrams, with regard to the relationship between captatores (legacy hunters) and wealthy, often elderly single women. By comparing the provisions and limits of private law, common practices of acquisition, and wealth management in Roman society during the first and second centuries AD with the behavioral patterns elaborated in poetic texts, this article demonstrates that the theme of legacy hunting was not a mere literary topos, but a scenario based on models of gender and age in addition to the values associated with them. Unmarried and childless women of the elite could be depicted as very wealthy and powerful due to their ability to establish personal relationships through the transmission of their wealth. Martial’s perception of the modes of communication and interaction between female testari-ces and male legacy hunters are interpreted as reflections of male experiences of belittlement.

On February 18, 1306, the city of Camerino signed a peace treaty with three neighboring communes (Matelica, San Severino, and Fabriano). Among its provisions was a plan for a series of marriages between the inhabitants of the four communes, which would have made a group of 140 men brothers-in-law through the exchange of 140 women. Analyzing this document and its extraordinary clause—which was never enforced and did not bring hostilities to an end—, this article examines the genesis of a gender regime in a specific historical, documentary, and relational context. Adopting a pragmatic approach to gender as a means for understanding social interactions, the article analyzes the roles elite men assigned to women of their communities in reconciliation rituals, matrimonial alliances as miniature figures of peace, and the systems established to ensure the transfer of dowries and the granting of citizenship. Under such gender regimes, women served as mediators, promoting peace in their households so that it would spread throughout the entire community. They also provided dowries and citizenship to men, allowing them to maintain their dominant role in society.

Unlike in the Mediterranean world, marriage in cisalpine urban societies was dominated by representations of equality and reciprocity, both in social practice and in theological and didactic discourse. This article first examines the conception of heavenly marriage as developed in late antiquity and elaborated in theological discourse before providing an in-depth analysis of various marriage contracts, particularly those held in the municipal archives of Strasbourg. Analysis of these contracts reveals the strong ties between social practice and didactic discourse, demonstrating that the representations of equality and reciprocity they conveyed were rooted in inheritance law, which treated both male and female children equally.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, aristocratic daughters inherited fiefs in the absence of a male heir. Over the course of the seventeenth century, however, royal decisions and jurisprudence increasingly limited this possibility, imposing masculinity as the primary—though not exclusive—criteria for inheritance. This article explores the legal debates that accompanied this evolution, highlighting a number of changes within the French nobility of this period that reveal a new conception of gender relations. The growing importance of the notion of service, changes to the procedure for proving one’s nobility, and the desire for greater exclusivity within the nobility all reveal how gender was no longer defined in relation to the place and role each individual occupied within the ancestral line or family. Instead, gender assumed an unchanging identity, which, much like nobility itself, was considered inherent to the individual.