Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender differences in slavery
Compare and contrast males and females during slavery essay
Differences in men and women during slavery
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Gender differences in slavery
In Laboring Women by Jennifer Morgan, the author talks about the transformations African Women suffer as they become slaves in America. The author explains how their race, gender and even their reproduction of African women became very important in the sex/gender system. She explains the differences of European, African and Creole and how their role was fit and fix in the sex/gender system in regards of production, body and kinship. Morgan explains the correlation of race and reproduction as well as how this affected the Atlantic World. She also explains the differences between whites and blacks and how they experience reproduction differently. Morgan also elaborates on how sex is a sexual disclosure. This gave us the conclusion on how the ideologies of race and reproduction are central to the organization of slavery. The center of discussion and analysis about the sex/gender system focus on the differences between African, European and Creole Women. The sex/gender system describe by Morgan focus on their production, body and kinship. European women are seen as domestic, African women’s work overlaps between agricultural and pastoral. They’ll work in the field non-stop, even after giving birth. African women hold knowledge about the pastoral and agricultural work “in the planting and cultivation of fields the daily task of a good Negro Woman” (145). While Creole women were subordinated, with the job of produce and reproduce. When it came to body, European women’s bodies were seeing as fragile. After birth the rest for a while before they could stand back again or return to their activities “European observers believed the post-delivery period of abstinence lasted three months, and others commented up two- to three year period o... ... middle of paper ... ...of the flatness of their noses…” (35) The descriptions on how Europeans physical appearance as difference in a exaggerate way from Africans play an important role in constructing race. Morgan gave us in Laboring Women many pictures that were display during the 18th hundreds, in there we can take a note how race was portray to the public. In conclusion, we can see how all this factors during the 18th century were important for the lives of women. The importance of race, gender and reproduction made this century what we know today. Discrimination against a different race, separation of gender, and the myths about reproduction because of race were all part of what African women and Creole women had to suffer and deal with. This assumptions in where ones race determine their reproduction and productivity maker slaves and gave profit and enrichment to the land owners.
The first chapter focuses on the first impressions between the people of different color also the reasons Africans had evolved or changed into what they now appeared to be. The section on causes of complexion was both fascinating and entertaining. Many of the theories were of the wall and far fetched. One such opinion of how Africans gained their complexion that the book gave includes an ancient Greek myth of Phaeton. This character drove a chariot into the heavens and thus altered in his appearance (p11). Though this Greek myth, probably not the truth of how Africans gained their color many did believe it probably had something to do with the sun. The theory of equatorial dwellers of Africa, this being the reason for the skin pigmentation, became illogical once Africans were compared to the Indians living in the hottest parts of the New World (p14). Some believed that the African was merely dark because they had left their colder northern climate. Experiments quickly ruled this out as a possible answer (p15). The most far-fetched and humorous theory came through the biblical illustration involving Noah. Many believed it the curse given upon Noah’s son Ham for “looking upon his father’s nakedness” (p17). Each of these contrasting views on color needed to be used in this book. For no better reason in that it showed from an initial point that the English viewed the color of the Africans as a plague. Instead of excepting that Africans may in fact be different, the English consistently made attempts to explain the dif...
Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Six chapters form the core of the book. In “Women, Marriage and the Family,” the author gives specific consideration to the ideologies of gender apparent in the Church and family law, contrasting the traditions of Latin America’s different socioracial groups and economic classes. The chapters “Women and Work,” “Women and Slavery,” and “The Brides of Christ” offer summaries bolstered by statistics and specific examples of the choices and criticisms that determined the standards of women’s lives in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For example, in “Women and Work”, Socolow writes, “Female silk spinners were so numerous in Mexico City that in 1788 they were allowed to organize their own guild” (115). She compellingly contends that sex was the most important element determining a person’s standing in society: “race and social class were malleable; sex was not”
Thesis Statement: Men and women were in different social classes, women were expected to be in charge of running the household, the hardships of motherhood.
The presence of women in the Caribbean was due to the fact that they provided a pool for labour. Europeans need slave women in the Caribbean mostly for field works. Slave women were either field workers, ‘house wenches’, cooks or washer. Compared to the slave men who undertook the most difficult tasks on the plantations such as, cane-cutting, holing and sugar boiling, on the other hand slave women were in charge of the less demancding tasks on the plantations. Slave women, cut canes, weeded and manured . As a result, slave women in the Caribbean either worked on the plantations or worked as domestics. They looked after the children, cleaned the house and did the laundry.
Throughout the classical and postclassical eras, it is evident that women have always held a certain label whether it be positive or negative. This was evident throughout various regions such as the Middle East, Africa, Americas, and Europe. The time period from 1750-1914 was also an era of industrialization, in places especially like Europe. New machinery and a grand-scale labor force was required to allow the country to prosper as much as possible. From 1750 to 1914, the status of women in Western Euope changed through an increase in employment opportunities and through the earning of women’s rights, however, female labor in designated households was invariably evident.
The history of the African American culture shows a culture that values family, children and marriage. These values were confused and stripped when blacks from Africa and the Caribbean where brought to America to perform as slaves. While on plantations under harsh treatment, husbands, wives and children were torn apart and sold t...
In the 18th century women were basically deprived of their right as the average American. They were to be the women that society saw them, regardless if they were content with it or not. Women were inferior to men and had to obey the demands of their husbands who had the right to punish them by law.
The Colonial era spans nearly two hundred years with each settlement in the New World containing distinctive characteristics. Location in the new world is one factor that shaped women’s lives but religion and economics also played a massive role. These roles however were constantly changing and often contradicting. Since there is numerous factors that contributed to the shaping of women’s private and public roles in the seventeenth and eighteenth century it is impossible to categories all colonial woman in one group. Some historians refer to this period as the golden age of women; however, I tend to see this period as oppressive, with only few examples of women exercising social and public powers.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.
Moreover, black African, Afro-African and Caribbean women were all the same in the sexual eyes of their white master. Women had struggle for economic and political independence. Also, women struggle for the respect and jobs to be equal for them as men. They are sought out to be part of the tradition task that was forced upon them such as, being a servant, child bearer, and housekeeper. Women have suffered a great deal after colonialism more than men. They were faced with white racis...
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
As claimed by the editors of our Anthology, “The forces of Urbanization and Industrialization that led to the decline of slavery also undermined traditional roles for women”. Men and women have been viewed as totally playing different roles in the society, women who are deemed to be the weakest of the two sexes and also more vulnerable should be relegated to the home where she’ll only play the roles of a wife,mother and reproductive item.