This document summarizes gender relations and the roles of women in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages. It discusses how women played important economic roles through labor and local commerce, and had some participation in craft guilds. While women did not have equal status and were subject to a patriarchal family structure, they had greater freedoms than in other parts of the world at the time, including not being confined to the home and having the ability to choose marriage or join a religious group. However, literature of the period still stressed women's subordinate roles and domestic responsibilities.