Question

Why do you think the lives of ordinary women workers did not attract the attention of travellers such as Ibn Battuta and Bernier?

Answer 1

The lives of ordinary women workers did not attract the attention of medieval travellers like Ibn Battuta and François Bernier primarily because of the male-centric focus of their travel missions and the strict patriarchal restrictions of contemporary Indian society.

• Limited Access to Domestic Spaces: Due to strict gender segregation, male foreign travellers had virtually no access to the private spaces or households where ordinary women lived and worked.
• Obsession with Elite Settings: These travellers primarily interacted with royal courts, noble administrators, and wealthy merchants, making the lives of lower-class working women structurally invisible to them.
• Focus on the Unusual and Sensational: Travellers documented things that surprised them; because women performing manual or agricultural labour was common across both Europe and Asia, it lacked the “novelty factor” required to make it into their memoirs.
• Preoccupation with Customs Over Economy: When these scholars did notice women, they focused almost entirely on practices that shocked their cultural sensibilities, such as the practice of Sati or the buying and selling of female domestic slaves as luxury items in markets rather than their daily economic contributions.
• Political Motives: Thinkers like Bernier travelled to analyse macro-political systems (like crown land ownership vs private property). They did not look at grassroots socio-economic realities like female agrarian labour.