Comparative History of the Americas

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Comparative History of the Americas

• Term 1, Week 8
• Gender

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Gender

• Not just about biology
• Gender social relations between sexes, what
  governs them, how they change
• Also about how a society is ordered, and how it
  develops over time
• Americas allow for many comparisons North/South,
  slave/free, within regions

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16th-18thC

• Trad gender rels imported from Europe.
• Women subordinate to men in all colonial
  societies via coverture
• Imp of religion in shaping attitudes
• Womens public roles restricted, meant to be
  focused on home and children
• Yet dictates of environment means that women not
  so restricted as in Europe scarcity of women
  gives them more power

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Patriarchy

• Men legally dominant within families, seen as
  masters of wives, children, servants
• Women lose identity on marriage, imp of dowry,
  divorce or lack of it.
• Strong similarity between slave societies eg US
  South has similar pat. Rels to Lat Am
• Pat. Weaker in US North, and in non-slave socs

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Benjamin Eleanor Lanning (1788)
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Gender and Race

• Shortage of white women forces inter-racial
  unions, esp in LAm, but less so in Nam (at least
  not formally)
• Blurring of racial lines makes gender rels more
  complicated, as adds another category.
• Non-white women usually understood to have
  greater social status in LAm, with racial
  hierarchies stronger in NAm

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Free Black Girls in New Orleans
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Gender among slaves

• Emasculating effect of slavery on men
• The Case for the double burden
• Frequency of family separation
• Fictive kinship
• Contradicts established ideas of gender

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An overseer doing his duty Benjamin LaTrobe,
Maryland 1799
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Gender among Native Americans

• Very different from whites and blacks
• Matri-focal / matri-lineal socities
• Gender roles in society

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19thC Developments

• Revolutions throughout Americas bring social
  turmoil, trad gender roles questioned (e.g.
  Abigail Adams)
• Start of movements for more political and social
  equality, Seneca Falls 1848 - reaction
• Women become promoters of benevolence, reform and
  education
• Cult of Domesticity - Lack of progress

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Masculinity

• Maleness trad expressed through violence,
  warfare, hunting etc. Popularity of duelling,
  cultures of personal honour
• Devt in 19thC of sport, health and fitness as
  masculine pursuits, esp in US North less
  prevalent in US South and Lat Am
• Helps to change male attitudes towards society,
  and their roles within family
• Only in late 20th has female athleticism become
  commonplace in the USA, not in Lat Am

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The Gendered nature of Sport New York baseball
players 1865
Carlos Albertos scores for Brazil in the 1970
World cup final
Florence Griffith Joyner (1959-98)World Record
Holder at 100m and 200m
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20thC Developments

• Pressure for voting rights, led by NAm women,
  spreads south during 20thC
• With political equality comes movt for social
  equality
• Patriarchy in decline in NAm, but remains strong
  in LAm, women now take more active role

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Women's Suffrage  A Timeline

• 1917Canada 1920United States of America 1924
• Saint Lucia1929Ecuador1931Chile1932Uruguay1
  934Brazil, Cuba, 1938Bolivia1939El
  Salvador1941Panama1942Dominican
  Republic1944 Jamaica

• 1946 Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago,
  Venezuela1947Argentina, Mexico 1948
  Suriname1949Costa Rica, 1950Barbados,
  Haiti1951Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica,
  Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and
  the Grenadines1953Guyana1954Belize, Colombia,
  1955Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru 1961Bahamas,
  Paraguay,

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Everything changes
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Yet much remains the sameMother and Children
during the depression
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World War II

• Rosie the Riveter

Therese Bonny, 1942
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1950s backlash
Domestic magazines
Cast of the Donna Reed Show
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The future?

• Gradual rise of feminist movt in 1960s and 70s
• Growth of female employment, and female
  empowerment
• But patchy devt, USA seen as forefront of gender
  battles, LAm more backwards, but still developing

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Women of past, present and possibly future?