Women played a crucial role in agricultural production, working shoulder to shoulder with men in the fields. While men tilled and ploughed, women were responsible for sowing, weeding, threshing and winnowing the harvest. The entire household's labour and resources formed the basis of production, making gendered segregation between home and world impossible.

Women also contributed to artisanal tasks like spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and embroidery. As production became more commercialised, the demand on women's labour increased. Peasant and artisan women not only worked in fields but also visited markets or their employers' houses when necessary.

Women were considered an important resource in agrarian society because they were child bearers in a labour-dependent society. Among the landed gentry, women had the right to inherit property and actively participated in the rural land market as sellers.