old crones or as greedy and sexually rapacious women looking for their next husbands.” Widowers tended to remarry a lot more easily than widows. The older they were and the more children they had, the more difficult it was for widows to find a new husband. However, widowhood could also provide social and financial opportunities for women. They tended to be more empowered as widows than as married women. Because the woman was under her husband's power, when he died, part of that power was passed on to his wife. Widows could inherit the family money and dispose of it as they wished. They would become the head of the household and have great power over their children, deciding of the dowry for their daughters and assisting their sons in gaining more political influence. Depending on what the husband's occupation was, it could get passed on to his wife as well. This meant that if a man was a business-owner, his widow could even have control over that business. Historians assert that becoming a widow also empowered a woman because according to church and state, she had officially fulfilled her duty as a woman – marrying and most likely having children. So when a woman's husband died, she had done all that she could as a woman, in their eyes. Catharina chose to take up midwifery after her first husband died. As a widow, she had more freedom to travel and practice. She didn’t practice much during her second marriage but proceeded to pick it back up when she became a widow again. Midwifery: the art of assisting childbirth Women’s input in medicine evolved throughout human history. In the Roman Empire, some physicians expected midwives to have a thorough knowledge of anatomy, and in the Middle Ages, women were involved and accepted in medicine. In the thirteenth century, however, women doctors disappeared and got excluded from the medical field, except for midwifery. Midwives were respected and feared, for if they could save lives, they could kill too. Up to the eighteenth century, men were completely excluded from the event of childbirth. Physicians did not care about gynecology, and women preferred to give birth in the presence of midwives. Female relatives and women from the community too would attend labor to help and provide support. Indeed, in representations of labor scenes from that period, we can see only women were present