Gender Work And Wages In Colonial New England Summary

Gloria L. Main in her article ,“Gender, Work, and Wages in Colonial New England”, describes to us the economic issues women would partake in at the colonies and how they differ from those given to men. At the beginning of the colony, there were few women and little economic gain from textile industries so there was little business done in the making of fabrics, a role seen to be only for women. Near the start there was also little mention of brewery, baking, butter making, etc. because they lacked the tools for it, these were also traditionally a women’s task in household at the time. During this time, women helped men in the fields, doing the gardening, planting, weeding, and many other activities. Later on the appearance of proper tools from

Records show that the men and boys would be the ones harvesting and reaping the fields, planting orchards, and tending to the livestock, while women would only participate in harvest times. Women more often exclusively worked within the household, where they tended to smaller animals and prepared meals throughout the day. The article describes that “Gender-based assignments of many farm chores centered on objective difference in body height and strength rather than on what was deemed culturally appropriate to one sex or the other”, this is where the article describes how some division in labor was stemmed from psychical capabilities. Like men and boy did the lumbering and such and then by association to this task they also did the sawmill, built buildings, shaved shingles and staves, etc. This developed off into the division of trades between men and women, where some simple tasks that young boys did weren’t performed by women. Here the women performed more family tasks like cleaning, cooking, and caring for the children, while the men were off doing their