Thread:Angie Y./@comment-1672596-20140421194620/@comment-37405-20140423161223

During the 18th century AD, women were treated like slaves. They had little authority regarding anything. Women didn’t have the right to vote or the right to own property. Only a spinster or widow woman could own and manage property until they married. Women were owned by the husband just as he owned material possessions. Many women were trapped in loveless marriages and those without families were seen as outcasts. The husband was legally entitled to beat his wife for disobedience, sometimes to the point of severe injury or death. Divorces were rarely granted and women usually ran away from bad marriages.

Women were expected to do a lot of labor work in the home. Being a wife and mother was the woman’s main profession. Some of their duties were to feed the family, make the clothing, clean the house, care for the children, and serve as a nurse and midwife. Women were considered weaker than men and unable to perform work requiring muscular and intellectual development. There are several stereotypes about women. A common one is “a woman’s place is in the home”. Black women worked in the fields and in the house. Free white women could often find employment as maids, cooks, laundresses, or seamstresses. The diaries of women in the 18th century talk about long hours of ironing, cleaning, baking, sewing, and knitting.

In the 19th century, women began working outside the home. Women and children worked twelve hours a day in poorly ventilated rooms. By 1870, one fifth of resident college and university students were women. They usually studied to be nurses or teachers. Some women studied to own their own businesses, such as sewing shops, clothing stores, and café’s.

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It is hard to believe but women were not always persons. They were not individuals and so they had no rights. Women were properties of their father and when they got married they became property of their husbands. We know in centuries gone by women were not even allowed to read and write; that was left up to the man.

Any university sociology class we tell you how a woman's place was in the home; to cook, clean and bear children for her husband. She was not allowed to think, the husband was the master of the house and she did his bidding without any objection. We also know that through time there were courageous women who fought the patriarchal system and fought for their own rights; and some actually fought for all women's rights.