During the colonial period most white women were expected to devote their chief energies to housekeeping and to the care of the children. While husbands where expected to support them by raising crops or working for wages. Women also did some outside chores such as gathering fruits and vegetables and making clothes for their family. Only the wealthiest women who had servants escaped some of these labors. Native American women had similar work roles. They did not do the spinning of wool or weaving but made clothes by tanning and processing the hides of the animals their husbands killed. Like their white counterparts the Native American also drew a division between the domestic labors of women to the public realm of men. Black women were more inclined to work both in field and in house. More often black women engaged in labor outdoors then the whites.

It is easy to see that in Mary Beth Norton's essay that it is a myth that there really was a golden age, at least not for women. The conception of the "Golden Age" was dissected by the author so clearly that it can be seen why so many people falsely labeled this time period. It seems women will always be stereotyped as the lady of the house. Women then like now will never get treated equal to men. We are not well respected like men. Women were seen as the one who took care of all the domestic needs. Back then, women did not have all the modern technologies and luxuries that we have now. Back then just to make a meal might take all morning. They also had to make clothing for their children and their husbands. Which was a very tedious and time-consuming job. Women were also left out of the cultural and social world during these years. The only way they found anything out was through their husbands. Women had to use churches to make contact with friends and family just to have a!

break from their daily chores. It should not be considered the Golden Age for women because they out numbered men 6 to 1. Women may have had a chance to pick and choose their spouse but who knows if the man they chose was the right one.

Historians of American women have regarded the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a "Golden Age" in which women were better off than their English female contemporaries of the succeeding Victorian era. Mary Beth Norton states, "Evaluation of women's position depends on what aspects of their experience are relevant to an understanding of their social and economic position, for no one would claim that colonial females exerted much political power." Many historians' felt that the sex ratio gave the women power through choice of spouse. They also felt that without women to do the domestic jobs such as processing food and making clothes men would have been lost. "They have correctly noted that it was practically impossible for a man to run a colonial household properly without a wife, for a woman's labor was essential to survival for the family." Finally, historians argue that sex roles in early America were more fluid and less defined than they were in the nineteenth and twen!

When looking back at America during the colonial era, it is

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Approximate Word count = 1526
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)