Women in 19th Century America

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at how, by 1863, women in the US were beginning to influence the economy due in large part to the Civil War and the shortage of male labor. The paper looks at how many men, however, endorsed the societal norm of the time that a woman's rightful place was in the home. The paper describes how women starting their own businesses found it very hard to secure adequate credit to start and expand their businesses. The paper portrays how even resourceful women were relegated by societal norms to the role of glorified housekeeper.

From the Paper:

"One has to only look at the Declaration of Sentiments issued at the end of The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 for historical proof that women were treated as second class citizens in America in the latter half of the 19th century.1 If women were in fact treated legally, politically and socially as men's equals, there would have been no convention, no one hundred and fifty plus year feminist movement in America. Women may well have made only limited progress in the subsequent half century in elevating their status, but there is ample evidence that it was not for lack of trying."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Andrews, William D., and Deborah C. Andrews. "Technology and the housewife in nineteenth-century America." Women's Studies 2, no. 3 (1974): 309-328. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 29, 2007).
• Dillon, Lisa. "Women and the Dynamics of Marriage, Household Status, and Aging in Victorian Canada and the United States." History Of The Family 4, no. 4 (1999): 447. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed, January 29, 2007).
• Sivulka, Juliann. "From Domestic to Municipal Housekeeper: The Influence of the Sanitary Reform Movement on Changing Women's Roles in America, 1860-1920." Journal OF American Culture 22, no. 4 (1999): 1-7. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 29, 2007).
• Stansell, Christine. "Woman in Nineteenth-Century America." GENDER & HISTORY 11, no. 3 (1999): 419-432. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 1, 2007).
• Walsh, Margaret. "Women outworkers in industrializing America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." Labour History Review 56, no. 3 (1991): 17-22. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 29, 2007).

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