a history of women in america

The book "A history of women in America" overall I thought was a okay book. I like that the book told about women’s struggle and the situations they endured. Through those struggles they gave us a voice and major goals were accomplished. The women who spoke out and gave all women equal rights really made me feel and have a great pride in being a woman myself with the rights they fought for in present day America. The most interesting information I read in this book was how women basically did everything from making cleaning supplies to doing men’s jobs and even doing the man’s jobs better. Colonial society did not support the idea of equality between women and men. As the book says "European men brought with them America the tenet that women was man’s inferior". Though women had to ultimately work for everything, this attitude the European men brought with them was cut down due to the way things were in the new world. Women had a small bite of independence as the colonies were working to become developed. Women activities were much the same through the colony. They watched over the house, clean and made their own cleaning supplies such as brooms, soap, polish and starch. They did men’s jobs in the villages, towns and small cities like ran taverns, and they were silversmiths, wheelwrights, teachers, printers and newspaper publishers. This was interesting to me because the colony did not support the equality between men and women but the women were doing the work that men did plus the common work that women were supposed to do. The material in this book did not relate to my life in any way I feel because I am not in the real world just yet. By saying real world I mean in the work force, I do not feel as though I have been discriminated against just yet because I am a female. This material did not change my perception of history in any way because I already knew from past history classes the struggles women went through. I already have the upmost right respect for women in the past because they are the reason I have a voice in today’s world. For example I would not have the right to vote if it were not for the women in past America. Before the civil war women were denied the right to vote by state law, clearly seen in section two of the fourteenth amendment the section dealt with the right to vote. The constitution had the word “male" instead of “the people" or "citizen". With that one word alone discrimination by sex into the constitution was introduced in a way that women were not citizens. Because women such as Elizabeth Staton, Susan Anthony and all the other women who fought hard for women rights, we as women today now have the right to vote. When first reading this book I did not think this material played a role in this course but in a small way it did. I felt at sometimes it added to the topic and the course because when reading the information in the book we would sometimes go over similar discussion in class which made the class or that specific topic easier to remember on tests, quiz or if we were simply just talking about a certain situation or person. On the other hand because we did not talk about many of the hard working women in past America, the book somewhat seem like we were reading it because we had to for the questions but not for the overall class lesson. “A history of women in America" overall was a very informative book on a lot of important women that paved the way for all of the women in America today and for that I wish I had the opportunity to let each of the women in past America know how grateful I am for their hard work and drive to not give up. This book was insightful and I am glad I was introduced to the book “A history of women in America".