The article briefly reviews scholarship on women's work in guilds and compares the socio-economic status of a variety of female and « mixed » guilds in old regime Paris. After guild reorganization in 1776 women could become merchant-mistresses in some new trades, but their « public » voice and role in these guilds was restricted. The essay ends with an analysis of the printed protest and female trades againts the 1776 guild abolition. Guildswomen and their lawyers were among the first to articulate a critique of the gendered division of labor and its positve and negative consequences for women. In sum, guild mistresses's work identity was more distinct and lasting than that of most women workers, but gains were limited by cultural construction of gender, by women's exclusion from assemblies and office holding in male dominated trades, and by the inequities inherent in the guild system itself.