Women Changing Role

671 Words3 Pages
Throughout American history, the role of women and their rights have greatly changed. Since the time of the American Revolution, women were ideally no more than housekeepers. Husbands were the providers of the family and would enlist in the army or work. Since the husband was the primary provider at this revolutionary time, there typically not a lot of revenues or funds to purchase luxurious items. At this time, women like Martha Washington were not highly influential and played an insignificant role when dealing with politics, economics, and social factors. Women at this time were uneducated and illiterate. Over the course of about a decade, the role of women was beginning to change slightly. From Benjamin Rush’s Thoughts Upon Female Education 1787, he states “make it necessary that our ladies should be qualified to a certain degree....to concur in instructing their sons in the principles of liberty and government (Doc B). Around this time, the importance of women’s education arose, and they were beginning to become more educated than they were before. The women would learn and become qualified as “teachers” knowing very important things about the structures of government and ways how society ran. They would use their newfound knowledge to teach and pass on this info to their sons in order to become hardworking, respectable members of society. Even so, women were not allowed to be a part of the government for example vote nor express their own political views in any way. Fifty years later, the structure of society, and the role of women have greatly changed from how it was more than a century ago. Women were now able to hold jobs. With the Industrial Revolution, many factories began to appear mainly in the North. In the graph from Document C, it shows data that 105, 977 women were employed in Massachusetts in 1837. There was still an abundance of housewifes;
Open Document