Today the rights of women and men are usually viewed as equality, though things weren't always that simple.  In Colonial America the woman's role with her family was a private one compared to her spouse's public role.  Because women couldn't speak up in many matters, such as politics and war issues, they wrote letters and diaries that showed a deep interest in such issues.  Females were even considered totally under the control of their husbands, not being able to do anything without permission.
 
 
 

Draft

Were men and women always treated with equality?  The customs of family life, in the Colonial Period were inherited from Europe.  Colonial Americans underwent alternations that were an enormous effect on the way that family members defined themselves in relations to one another and society at large.  As more information unfolds, studies show that Colonial women were just as responsible as Colonial men.  Women were successful at this by creating their societies and becoming an important factor in the progression of American culture as well as history.  All women including European American, Native American, African American of the south, north, and mid- Atlantic regions experienced these hardships. (ebsco)  They all lived different lives, but shared the same experiences as women.  The difference in race made a difference in marriage in the Colonial Period.  All women had to overcome more obstacles than men which included being bound together by certain laws.  These certain laws prevented them from certain abilities due to the small and simple fact that they were female.  (Monita Chawla)  A woman's role in the household was limited to either being considered a wife, a mother, or a household manager.  (Monita Chawla)  Looking back though, we see that women held many more positions that were more effective and that actually aid the construction of our society today.

The arrival of the first women in America was due to the fact that the settlers needed wives.  "Ninety came on one ship alone in 1619.  Agreeable persons, young and incorrupt...sold with their own consent to settlers as wives, the price to be the cost of transportation," stated Monita Chawla.  The women were sold to the settlers at the price that it cost for them to travel there. (Monita Chawla)  Women were simply presented as objects to be purchased.  The majority of African Americans, most of which lived in the Chesapeake region, were slaves.  Over half of the African Americans living in the Chesapeake worked on tobacco plantations or large farms. (ebsco)  Since the cultivation of tobacco was extremely labor-intensive, African slave labor was used, despite the questions of whether slavery was morally right or not.  Tobacco was an eleven -month crop. Starting in January they began preparing the fields for planting, mending the tools, and laying out seed. Then in mid summer the tobacco was ready and growing in the fields.  Later, the tobacco was gathered and shipped off to England.  The variety of food crops and livestock usually kept slaves busy throughout the year.  Slaves either lived on plantations or in urban/households.  (ebsco)  The plantation slaves worked on the plantation or farm and lived in complete family units.  Their work dictated the rising and setting of the sun, and they usually had Sundays off.  Plantation slaves were more likely to be sold or transferred than a slave in a domestic setting.  They were also more likely to be brutally or severely punished because they were considered less valuable than a household/urban slave.  The household/urban slave generally did not live in a complete family units.  Most domestic settings used female labor.  The men were coachmen, waiting men, or gardeners.  Urban slaves did not have the privacy that field slaves had. (ebsco)  They often worked seven days a week (even through the chores of Sundays) and their work was set by tasks.  They were fed more and usually dressed better.  Regardless of a slave's occupation, there was a considerable amount of fear caused by an environment of constant uncertainty and threats of violence and abuse.

Marriage was first and foremost in a girl's life.  "Civil death" was the term thought of when women thought of marriage.  Woman felt this way because they had no rights in the relationship. (Monita Chawla)  Women were married very early on in their lives, and those that had been previously married were always in demand to be wed again because they were thought of as being experienced in  housekeeping and child raising.  Women owned nothing, not even clothes, what clothes they wore were considered their husband's. (Monita Chawla)  Despite the fact that some obligations were to be upheld by both partners, men and women were still not equal.  Wives were expected to submit to the male's authority and to assist their husbands in productive behavior and frugality.

Despite all of the restrictions made upon women, they still managed to make significant contributions.  Free white women were the first to establish schools, orphanages, and to act as doctors.  Some women chose to speak out, for example Anne Hutchinson started her own independent role.  She was not admired by most because she liked to speak her mind about religious issues.  Even though she was inferior being a woman, Boston's government felt threatened by her.  They thought that people would only be saved through hard work, good deeds, and righteousness.  Anne continued to express her personal beliefs that salvation was sought in a direct and personal relationship with God.  She reminded people to make their own moral choices and thought that women should be able to preach as men did.  "Though women might meet to pray and edify one another; yet such a set assembly where sixty or more did meet every week, and one woman took it upon her the whole exercise was agreed to be disorderly and without rule."  (Berkin 40).  She eventually was taken to court and found guilty of breaking the Bible's Fifth Commandment.  Another example of a woman that spoke out was teacher, Emma Willard.  She fought for the rights of equal education for girls.  She eventually acquired money to open up a school in which all girls attended and did not pay for their education.

During the American Revolution women experienced several significant parts of the war and political activism.  They were deputy husbands, propagandists, petitioners, spies, camp followers, and participated in boycotts and crowd actions.  It has been discussed how unstable demography, unbalanced sex ratios, and intense labor demands of the tobacco economy, provided opportunities for white women, (especially widows) to gain property and position.  Yet, under the same circumstances, also pushed lower-class white and black women out into labor fields and forced all to cope with high death rates and social disruption.

More was expected out of the female role and regardless of race, females weren't really given any legal rights.  Although the majority of women's roles were in the household, they also maintained roles in the working world as well.  Women and children were the prominent workers in the factory, but women were left unskilled which resulted in lower wages.  It took women a week to make what a man made in one day.  There have been pictures found of slave women, where they have been beaten viciously, or women holding their sons hanging lynched from a bridge.  "Anytime, anytime while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told that I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it--just to stand one minute, I would have taken it just to stand one minute on God's earth as a free woman--I would."  Elizabeth Freeman (known as Mum Bett)  Every religion barred women from the ministry with the exception of Quakers.  Many women found religion to be a way out of their daily lives.  They found that the church provided an enticing lure of spiritual equality.  This gave them the sense of personal connection to God.

A growing number of scholars have shifted away from examining traditional sources like letters, diaries, and newspapers.  Instead they have turned more to the unexplored realm of court records, wills, sewing tables, day books, and childbed linens.  These new discoveries have caused a new diverse and complex experience of early American women, putting them in their proper place in history.

As we perceive from pictures that we study, the women were very unhappy, but were not given the chance to express their unhappiness or emotions.  When pictures are drawn up of women from the colonial period, you see their feeling of invisibility and neglect.  The women are shown with their heads bowed over their work, usually wearing a head wrap or straw hat.  They carried wide circular baskets, or impossible loads of laundry atop of their heads.

Women were treated brutally in the Colonial period.  Everyone held high expectations for women in their household duties, child caring, and political involvement.  Women were overlooked but generally did not voice their opinions in the open about the abuse and violence taken against them.  Many women wrote in diaries or letters explaining their fears and hardships, and researchers are able to see through the eyes of these poor colonial women.  Another one of women's ways to escape the overpowering of men was to settle in the comfort of religion.  Women were able to speak out when they were exploring religion and God.  The women of the Colonial period were stronger than men, but were only credited for very little of what they contributed to their family lives, work efforts, and physical labor.
 
 

Works Cited

Introduction to Colonial African-American Life.  Ebsco Host

Monita Chawla, Women in Colonial America.  Ebsco Host

Hessinger, Rodney.  Journal of Family History, April 1996, vol. 21 issue 2, p125

Speth and Hirsch.  Women, Family, and Community In Colonial America, 1983