Gender Norms Of African American Women During The Civil War

In this particular paper, I have decided to compare the gender norms of African American women and Caucasian women around the time of the Civil War. As obviously shown in the past, there are very many differences within these two cultures. Gender cultural differences were shown in everyday life then and are still prevalent today. Women were often treated worse than men during slavery and even though they had children themselves, they did not have anyone to care for their children during their worktime. The women would have to work and take their children with them. It was not uncommon for women to bring their children to the rigorously hot field with them where women worked close to ten hours a day. Women were also very valuable to slave
As stated above, they were to take care of their own children until the children were able to work themselves. Another job enslaved women were forced to do was be a housemaid. The servants were to accomplish a set amount of tasks around the home each day such as gardening, cooking meals, driving carriages, slaughtering meat, taking care of their owner’s children, etc. Even though these women worked in the homes did not mean they were treated better. Many worked as hard as they did in the fields. In the mornings a meal would be cooked, cleaned up, then the preparation for the next meal or next day would begin. Sticks needed to be gathered so there would be a fire to cook on. Frequently these servants were often raped by their owners. If resisted, they were beat. Rape was also a form of punishment to the slaves. There were many instances where the servant would become pregnant. Even though this child was mixed, they were forced to
The slaves knew there was no chance of gaining any type of job at the time once escaping but they did so anyway, taking a small step out of slavery. Before the Civil War, if there was no housemaid, white women’s duties consisted of taking care of the children and they were only able to do household chores. Unlike white women, African American women could have outside responsibilities along with their household tasks for the day. It was frowned upon for women to hold their own jobs, not having any type of power within the public. The white women were to strictly only follow their husbands. There were even instances where white women were using their power over African American males to have sex with them. White women did this out of revenge to the African American women because the white women’s husbands were raping them. As a result of this, many women became pregnant. They needed a reason to tell their husbands they were having mixed children so they told them their slaves were raping them. This was a common thing that happening during this