*Founding Mothers*

The Fate of the European women who came to the New World in the early days of colonial settlement was a life of nearly ceaseless hard work. Many who came were already accustomed to physical labor. Those who were not quickly adapted. In a totally undeveloped and sparsely populated land, the labor of every able-bodied settler was desperately needed, and women's traditional work - providing food, clothing, shelter, and the rudiments of hygiene-was essential to survival.

The demands of the New World allowed colonial women more freedom "to do" than was often available to women of later generations. This latitude was the product not of ideology, but of necessity. Colonial society did not support the idea of equality between men and women. European men brought with them to America the tenet that woman was man's inferior. This belief in female inferiority, however, was minimized by the conditions of the New World. So long as the colonies remained relatively undeveloped, women enjoyed a limited kind of independence.

Women were an integral part of all permanent settlements in the New World. When men traveled alone to America, they came as fortune hunters, adventurers looking for a pot of gold; such single men had no compelling reason to establish communities. Women acted as civilizers for men living alone in the wilderness. Where there were women, there were children who had to be taught. There was a future-a reason to establish laws, towns, churches, schools. The organizers of Virginia understood as much when they sought to attract women to their colony so that men who came "might be faster tied to Virginia." The labor provided by a wife and children also helped transform the forest into farmland. On the early days of the Georgia settlement the proprietors advertise for male recruits with "Industrious wives."

Onto..The Making of a Middle-Class Lady.

This page is based on the book "The History of Women in America" by Carol Hymowitz & Michaele Weissman and notes from my women in history college class. Please check out the links page it has loads of links to wonderful pages pertaining women's history from around the world. Thanks.

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