9781422274064

feelings in a letter to her husband, John Adams, a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1776: …and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. 2 What John Adams had to say about his wife’s plea for women’s rights is lost to history. While he helped to draft the Declaration of Independence, that document and others of early America have little to say about the rights of women. According to Dr. Graham Warder of Keene State College, the status of American women would not begin to change until the nineteenth century: In colonial America, men were considered superior to women—in all ways, even in terms of morality. In a world of strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth and political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, and all matters of right and wrong. In the early part of the nineteenth century, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. What we now view as old- fashioned and even oppressive was then new and potentially liberating. 3 Life in America in the nineteenth century for most women was hard. They often had to perform hard labor on rural farms, and that required women to be health and strong. Unfortunately, women often became exhausted, mentally and physically, by the long days of labor. Middle-

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Contemporary Issues: Gender Equality

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