Women's Role In Colonial America

In the past, women in Africa have held a variety of statuses across the continent. Between the years 1500 and 1800 some were in high positions of power while others were forced into slavery and many others were somewhere in between. By looking at the different situations we can see that no matter what position a women was in, far too often she was still regarded as less of a person just because of her sex. Nzinga of Angola was a women living during the late 15th and 16th centuries. She was in the Kingdom Matamaba on the eastern coast of southern Africa where many Portuguese were coming for slaves. Her involvement with the Portuguese allowed her to eventually ascend to the throne after her brother died. She had a large influence over the slave …show more content…
There were different kinds of slavery in Africa, two being pawning and chattel slavery. Pawning involved voluntary enslavement wherein a debt is usually owed by the pawn or a family member of the pawn and was based on verbal contracts and customs. It was often linked to marriage, and children were not born into slavery. Chattel slavery is what we commonly associate with the kind of slavery primarily on plantations in the southern United States and parts of Southern America where owners have complete control over their slaves, status is inherited, and slaves were commodities. Although it wasn’t as common, this type of slavery did exist in some parts of Africa. Domestic slaves kept in Africa were women, as shown by records from the 17th century of the sex and ages of the slaves going to the Americas and Europe. There are a variety of reasons why this could be, including supply, demand, higher transportation costs for women, or that buyers wanted male slaves for certain kinds of labor. Whatever the reason was, the fact that most African slaves were women could have influenced other people in areas where slavery existed and what their perceptions of women were. It could have lead them to believe that women in general were the lesser sex, since slaves were certainly seen and treated as lesser than …show more content…
One describes women in the Cape of Good Hope saying that their genitals “are in general pretty much elongated.” One woman in the Cape of Good Hope, Sara Baartman, grew up and served in a Dutch farmer’s home and was sold to another merchant as a young adult. She eventually ended up in London as a performer. Women being overly sexualized is not a new concept, nor is it unique to this area or time period. However, it’s still important to recognize it. To sexualize these women makes them seem less of humans and more as objects. The way that their genitals were examined, or how they were “shown off” around Europe is cruel and takes away from their humanity. Outsiders are far too likely to point out differences between themselves and Africans, making themselves look better, and Africans, in this case women specifically, would appear as the lesser people. Women played a variety of roles in Africa between 1500 and 1800. Some were in high positions of powers, while others were forced into slavery. Far too often women are regarded as the “lesser” sex, and this wasn’t the exception in these cases. It’s an unfortunate situation, but there were instances of women seizing power despite what the norms were, which is inspirational and hopefully women everywhere can eventually ascend to the same level of