Women's Roles In The 18th Century

The world we live in today has a gender barrier that is slowly being transformed. Imagine a world where if you were born a female you would immediately be thought of as an object rather than a living, breathing person. The only reason you would be valuable is because you could do the housework. You had zero access to an education, no voice, and no freedom. You are limited to do only things men viewed as “feminine” which was a very small list. You could cook, clean, and as soon as you were viewed as old enough, you were married off and expected to bare children for your husband. There is no choice in it for you, you are a woman. This whole idea was because males in early modern Europe to the time of World War I undermined the role of women.

The most important jobs they had were to cook, clean, and raise the children. The “Enlightenment”, however, helped progress the views towards women, and more and more people thought it was appropriate for women to bare this sort of job. During the end of the 18th century, women were met with little, if any, opposition to them being apart of science and medical fields. The Scientific Revolution allowed men to discover and describe the body and its anatomical functions. For women, however, there was no Scientific Revolution. “When men studied female anatomy, when they spoke of female physiology, of women’s reproductive organs, of the female role in procreation, they ceased to be scientific.”( “A History of Their Own,” 1988). They took away reason and did not allow for the evidence to change their views of the female anatomy. Tradition, sexism, and a false sense dictated their conclusions about women. “With the authority of their “objective,” “rational” inquiry they restated ancient premises and arrived at the same traditional conclusions: the innate superiority of the male and the justifiable subordination of the female.” (“A History of Their Own,” 1988). The perception of their social roles never changed, they were still viewed as objects rather than an actual human

Many women took on particularly important roles as patrons and intellectual contributors to the meetings of philosophes and members of the upper-middle-class and aristocratic elite. It was very difficult, however, for women to get published as a serious author based on their gender. Enlightenment thinkers did little to change basic attitudes about the inferiority of women. “It is a tragedy for women that these men, who were aided, sponsored, and lionized by the salonieres, produced-with very few exceptions- art and writing which either ignored women completely or upheld the most traditional views of womanhood.” ("The Rights of Woman,” 1792). Just as there was no Renaissance or Scientific Revolution for women, there was no Enlightenment due to the fact that the goals and ideas that sprouted from them were only available towards men. Men constantly reaffirmed these ideas about females ; that they belonged below men based on the main ideas of reason and ethics. The conception of women’s social role hardly changed at all during this time period, they were still viewed as