When the Going Gets Tough

MisconceptionsHusbands and wives were partners on the harsh frontier.Many believe that Colonial American women had no legal or personal rights. However, some Colonial women enjoyed more legal and personal freedom based on location and necessity.Some frontier women owned property in their own names and acted as lawyers in courts. In many small communities, Colonial women worked as teachers, seamstresses, doctors, ministers, innkeepers, singers and writers. Colonial women also engaged in farming, construction and trade.Significance
The early beginnings of American feminism began in Colonial America. The lack of established social and religious institutions and the physical demands of the Colonial lifestyle allowed women the freedom to fill roles normally reserved for men. Some notable Colonial American women include Anne Dudley Bradstreet, the first published female American poet, and Anne Marbury Hutchinson, who fought for freedom of religion. 

Read more: About Colonial Women's Rights | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4571155_colonial-womens-rights.html#ixzz1TNFs6BH4

This inclusion of women into the man's realm in harsh circumstances is a dubious motivation for gaining some access to equal rights and freedoms. Both my grandmothers worked alongside their husbands, one in an agricultural setting and the other as a shopkeeper in the early part of the 20th century.  I  knew them both to be women equally skilled in labor and homemaking, living rural and small town lives.  But did their equal duties inside and outside the home give them equality?  I know that my maternal grandmother was physically abused by my grandfather, tho they remained married to his death. The above referenced text continues to state that early settlers from England came from a culture where women were the property of their husbands, legally defined as chattel.

What I am really interested in is what distance must women travel to transform from being regarded as chattel to truly being equal, specifically how many generations is enough generations.  Like evolution I suspect the change is slower than we might suspect as each successive generation of men must concede a layer entitlement and replace it with respect, in harsh times and not so harsh times. Women are repeatedly called upon to demand this. In this process are many not so proud moments like that of Clarence Thomas' inclusion as a justice in the Supreme Court despite the testimony of Anita Hill.


Demand Respect NOW