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Women In Colonial America

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For most of history, we have lived in a patriarchal society, where men have been the rulers and the leaders. Women in general have always been second in society, especially women of color. During the colonization area, women were going to the new homeland to start a new life for them and their families. The gender norms of the time were to be the husband was the bread winner and went out and the women stayed home and took care of the children. Throughout this colonization time, certain women were challenging their status quo and paving the way for more women to have more rights in society.

The women who were new to America were traveling by boat from England to come to the Jamestown colony, in hopes for a new life away from a dictatorship. Most of the new colonists lived on a farm. Back in England, farm work was …show more content…

The plantation owners (normally rich white men) relied on their wife, daughters and a person of color (normally a Native American/African American person) to do their work for them to work and manage while the owners were gone. One of the most remarkable women of this time was a woman named Margaret Brent. In America’s Women, Collins states: “Virtually all the colonial women wanted to marry but when they did, they were automatically stripped of their legal rights. Brent was an unmarried woman who “virtually ran the colony of Maryland during a crisis” (12). Brent and her sister were unmarried, so they could own all the land that they wanted. “Brent became an active businesswoman, who specialized in lending money to newly arrived settlers. When her debtors failed to meet their obligations, she was quick to go to court to demand payment. Between 1642-1650, she

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Looking back to the 1500s, the English had been situating settlements in Ireland and used a familiar model in the New World. The early years of Jamestown were difficult for the settlers. The land was hot, humid, and mosquito-infested, and the settlers were mostly aristocrats and artisans that spent much of their time searching for gold. Those who didn’t die on the trip, died once they arrived from diseases and starvation. In 1607, about 3 ships-each holding more than 100 English passengers, arrived on the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia.

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Sally Hemings was a slave on the Monticello plantation in the late 18th century, and her experience helps us to understand that her gender aided the way she was treated versus if they went by the color of her skin (Dilkes Mullins). {Woman during this era were thought of as property, they were objectified, they were treated poorly and had no choice. Their husbands were liable for anything that they did} [Being a female during this era outweighed what one 's social status was. It did not matter what race you were, but if you were a woman, you were treated as such] (Dilkes Mullins). Ms. Hemings was a beautiful sixteen-year-old enslaved girl (Gordon-Reed, 102) who was more than just a slave on the Monticello plantation.

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In the colonies marriage was a bit different than those in England. White women were reserved the same rights as free black women during this time. The legal presence of women did not exist while married. Men controlled everything by law. Women were under the man 's protection and controlled all the finances even if they belonged to the women.

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A woman’s place in Puritan society was very limited during these times. A preface was added to her narrative by a puritan pastor as approval for her to publish her prose. Before her captivity Rowlandson didn’t know what a struggle consisted of. She was the typical housewife in a Puritan society. She never went without food, shelter, or clothing before her captivity.

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First Generations: Women of Colonial America, written by Carol Berkin, is a novel that took ten years to make. Carol Berkin received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries. Berkin has written several books on the topic of women in America. Some of her publications include: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009).

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Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.

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While reading about American history the thing that I found most appealing was the limited rights that women had during this era. Although women gave the early settlers longer life expectancy and brought hope to their future, women still were not considered equal to a man. Women were discriminated against and didn’t play an important role in early American history. Generally, women had fewer legal rights and career opportunity than men because they were considered weak and not able to perform certain tasks. Different women came from different ethnic backgrounds and were all created equal in the eyes of men.

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The life of Women in the late 1800s. Life for women in the 1800s began to change as they pushed for more rights and equality. Still, men were seen as better than women, this way of thinking pushed women to break out from the limitations imposed on their sex. In the early 1800s women had virtually no rights and ultimately were not seen as people but they rather seen as items of possession, it wasn’t until the late 1800s that women started to gain more rights. The Civil War actually opened opportunities for women to gain more rights, because with many of the men gone to war women were left with the responsibilities that men usually fulfilled during that time period.

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The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution and various other reasons. In this paper we will explore the many roles both male and female colonists as well as Native Africans played. In the colonies gender played a large role in everyday life.

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However, it’s a known fact that the majority of enslaved women worked in the fields. In this novel, the enslaved women experiences mostly consisted of having to work in households as cooks, housekeepers; some as sexual slaves, and how some women became so used to the abuse that it was a norm. One of the experiences enslaved women happened to go through was having to work in households as cooks. While living in the Weylin household Dana meets various slaves including one whose name is Sarah. Sarah was a “stocky middle-aged woman” who not only struggled as an enslaved women but also as the cook of the Weylin household (Butler 72).

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A colonial wife had no legal rights but for single women or widows they could run their own business. They were normally married by the age of 13 or 14. They were treated as the inside caretakers.

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American Women in the Late 1800’s Were married American women in the late 1800’s expected to restrict their sphere of interest to the home and the family? In the late 1800’s women were second-class citizens. Women were expected to limit their interest to the home and family. Women were not encouraged to obtain a real education or pursue a professional career. After marriage, women did not have the right to own their own property, keep their own wages, or sign a contract.

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Evodie Saadoun Trevor Kallimani Hist 210 13th October 2015 Women in the American Revolution There is a proverb that says, “The woman is born free and remains equal to men in rights”. Since the eighteenth century, women still try to be equal to men and try to be independent. During the American Revolution, women were dependent on their husband. This meant they had to cook, clean and take care of their children. They were not allowed to do what they wanted.

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Throughout history discrimination has had a negative impact on people and has cause certain groups of people to suffer. Discrimination can be against people of different race, religion, gender and sexuality and in the late 1800’s women were one of the groups that were discriminated. Women had to fight hard to obtain the rights they now have in the 21st century and many of the women who fought for equal rights didn’t get to experience those rights since laws in their favor weren’t passed until years and years of fighting. In the late 1800’s American women were discriminated because they were not granted the same rights as men in the workforce, women had to be obedient to their husbands in their marriage and society had certain norms that women

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In addition, they formed the majority of the suburban housewives who were doing far much better compared to the working-class women of color. In her work, Friedan discriminates African-American women to a large extent even in the light that many of them formed the category of working-class women. She actually, entirely underscores their contributions to the economy at the time. The reason why she left them out of the book could be because they never participated in the roles that she deemed “fulfilling” or those that she advocated. While Friedan generalizes the idea that all women were struggling to achieve equality with men at the time, she fails to understand that there were others who were not under the broad “category of Feminine Mystique.”

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