Women's Roles In Colonial America

When we are thinking of women in the United States today, we think of an example of women who have the same rights as men and who can make their own decisions concerning their lives. In other words, an American woman may have the same kind of broad concerns about conducting her life that men have. However, this has not always been the case. For instance, in Colonial America, women were considered the weaker sex. In fact, they had a totally different role than this of women today.
The Colonial women were inferior to their men. They were expected to obey their husbands’ orders without argument. We could say that they had no rights. Despite, not all women had the same rights. In fact, unmarried or widowed women had more rights than married women. The latter could not make a decision or plan something without the formal consent of their husband, could not buy or sell property, could not make a contract, could not vote, and could not sue, or be sued. Unmarried and widowed women could do all these things and many more. Widows even received ⅓ interest of their deceased husbands’ property. We could say that married women were like slaves. They always had to do things to assist their families, without having the right to do things that would help them evolve and be
On the other hand, women’s role was very demanding and difficult. Their life was focused on the home and they were expected to help their husbands with their tasks. Poor housewives had to run the house, raise their children, spin, weave, make clothes etc. Nevertheless, the conditions in their houses were poor. They were drafty, they had no inside toilet and no running water. Middle class women also shared these chores, but not to the same extent, since they had servants to help them. Moreover, women healed other people who had health problems, since their husbands had to do a variety of hard labor tasks and they were usually the only doctors