Women's Role In Aztec Society

By 1500, the people of Spain and Portugal were using ships and guns to venture into the Atlantic to enhance oversea colonization. They were set to claim new territories and spread the Roman Catholic Faith. They did this at the expense of millions of native people especially women in Africa, the East Atlantic and then through America and beyond. Other Europeans followed, but the silver of Spanish America grew to become the world’s money. Mostly, African women were affected by slave trading that continued into modern times. The slaves were taken to distant plantations and mines (Smith et al. 508) to be traded for firearms, textiles as well as metal or to work in the households of the wealthy.
Status of Women
In America, women controlled agricultural
Becoming a midwife also made a woman have a higher status in the society. However, women’s lives were harder under the Aztec society as men limited the sphere of women’s actions to the reproductive capacity as this was highly important to the empire’s continuous war effort. Women were participating in war as much as men to sustain life through giving birth as it were considered as taking a captive (Smith et al. 528). But women’s responsibilities were as much as domestic than public and girls would be married at age fifteen. The women served mostly ass matchmakers during the
For instance, the Andeans living under the Inca rule were male-centered but in their succession preferences, their posts fell into the hands of their sisters and daughters of headmen. Both sexes participated equally in complementary agricultural tasks and contests against neighboring clans (Smith et al. 537). Some women addressed exchanges of food as well as craft goods, but the allowance to accumulate property was unknown. Women’s fertility was much respected as it was regarded as a nonevent and rarely involved midwives. Girls were allowed to participate in state-level work projects (Smith et al.