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This paper presents new data on women’s and men’s wages in rural England from a previously neglected period. It discusses the methodology of collecting and analysing wage data, and what early modern accounts reveal about the setting of wage levels and the gender wage gap. Almost 20,000 instances of labour paid by the day were collected from twelve year-long samples of household and farm accounts dating from 1482-1674. Of these, 30% relate to women’s work. It was not unusual for women to be paid the same as men for particular tasks. Nonetheless women’s earnings were lower than men’s because women’s work was highly seasonal and women were excluded from the highest paid tasks.
