Women's Rights

During the founding years of America, women were part of the group that were not given the same rights as white men, which also included natives, africans, and other aliens. Marylynn Salmon’s The Legal Status of Women, 1776–1830, looks at this time period and analyzes the legal rights and social superstitions of women. The essay begins by examining the broad topic of women’s right under the federal or state law. While federal law did provide a basic outline for most topics, the state governments were left to decide what rights women should have. Salmon states that “the legal status of free women depended on marital status,” creating a vast difference in rights. Free women were able to enjoy many of the same rights as men as far as property was concerned. This included the ability to own, sell, and inherit property. For married women, the law was much stricter, often grouping the woman’s rights into her husband’s, creating “one person in the law.” This limited the wife in that all of her physical property and wages became the husband’s to use. The only legal requirement was that the woman was provided a life that was similar to her husband’s. Limiting the ability for a woman to be …show more content…
One of the first advances was based on inheritance of land, allowing a widow to use the land until her death, when it is based to the husband’s next of kin. This evolved even more to give married women the same right to property as unmarried women. Divorces became more accepted, raising the question of child custody. And this question was answered by giving women the option for custody of “young children and daughters.” Advances in rights also prompted the discussion of voting rights, but was shot down as the leaders of the time felt the woman would be too swayed by her husband to create her own opinion, thus allowing the husband’s opinion to receive two votes. However, single women were not able to vote