Gender Identity During the Gold Rush

Over the course of America's history, the gender role for men and women has evolved. Since the beginning of time, men have played the dominant role in nearly every culture around the world, including the United States. The men during the seventeenth century were dominant figures who earned money to take care of themselves and their families. Women on the other hand, were the ones who were in the home taking care of the children, cooking, and cleaning. When the Gold Rush occurred in 1849, not only was society changing, but the roles of both men and women were rapidly changing as well. The effects of gender role determined the way that society was running. When this sudden change of gender role started to change, society started to run much differently. Traditional gender roles are beneficial to society. They benefited society in many ways including keeping stability, order and just making life easier in general. Brian Roberts book American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture looks at how the gender role for men and women were evolving during this time, including women taking over the role of men back in the homestead and how the lives of the miners in California were. When many people think of the men who were the forty-niners, many people seem to think of unmarried men who were unattached, who were rebellious, poor, and had a working class identity in society. That stereotype however, is completely untrue. Many of the miners were far from being poor. In fact, they had to have some money in order to make the journey from the East coast all the way to California. At this time, the cost of getting there was more than a year's pay for the average man. In addition, most of the miners were not single young men. In fact, most of the miners were married and were usually connected to their families and communities back in the East. Furthermore, nearly all of them were brought up and lived on the moral codes and values which was going around in the