HIST 405N Week 1 Case Study Option 3: Women in Colonial America CERTIFIED COREECT AND GRADE A SCORE

HIST 405N Week 1 Case Study Option 3: Women in Colonial America CERTIFIED COREECT AND GRADE A SCORE HIST 405N Colonial women of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries endured many hardships. As the Colonies evolved from newly colonized, barely surviving migrants into more structured societies, so did the gender role expectations for women. Records of women in colonial Virginia began with Native American women and gradually included European and African women (Richter, 2013). The primary gender role of women was steadfast throughout the colonies; they were subordinate to men, attend to domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning, and husbandry of animals and crops, encouraged moral development of their children, and maintain the base order of the household. However, “the experiences of these women differed widely depending on their ethnicity, their social status, and the gender roles defined by their culture and religion. In the early Virginia colonies, Indian women performed what European’s considered “men’s work”, however from the Native American women perspective their roles reflected reciprocity, balance, and autonomy (Native American women in Colonial America, n.d.) European colonists treated their women as personal property and had very few rights such as voting, owning land, or holding a political office. Native American women could sit in positions of political power and learned skills such as hunting, fishing, swimming. It was not uncommon for women to become warriors. In some tribes, the family line was continued through the women instead of the men side of the family (Richter, 2013). Indian women were not restricted to the home, as English women often were