How Did Women Influence Early America

Many underestimate the influences women had on early America. It is often incorrectly assumed that women had little effect on society until much later in America’s history, when, in fact, it was women that allowed that society to form in the first place. Women were an unseen force in the development of society on many levels, from simply aiding in family prosperity to changing the very way in which society is viewed. Women’s role in the development of early America aided in shaping the America we all know today.
The progression of early America relied on women’s presence within the colonies. In the early 17th century, the Virginia Company aspired to form a family-orientated colony, a difficult task to achieve when men outnumbered women by four or five to one. Women who had emigrated, mainly did so as indentured servants and were much more predominate than free women. To alleviate this imbalance, the Virginia Company began sending “tobacco brides” in 1620 for arranged marriages (Kingsbury, p. 25). Members of the Virginia Company took “into their consideration that the plantation can never flourish till families be planted and the respect of wives and children fix the people on the soil” (Kingsbury, p. 26). Women entering the colonies allowed them to progress past a simple trading port and …show more content…
As the abolitionist movement gained traction, many women found themselves advocating in the public sphere. They were actively taking place in petitioning congress and even began publicly speaking out against slavery, a taboo act of the time to say the least. An act that did not go unopposed as can be seen Catharine Beecher’s letter to Angelina Grimké, an anti-slavery activist (Beecher, pp. 242-243). “Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior,” she claimed, “and to the other the subordinate station, and this without any reference to the character or the conduct of either” (Beecher, p.