The Female Social Structure of Philadelphia in 1775
Year: 1983
Type: article
Abstract: *W W y HEN HISTORIANS of early modern England and colonial \/\/America describe the social structure of a community, they generally employ a framework that combines status and occu pational categories. The agricultural hierarchy?lord, knight, gentle man, yeoman, husbandman and so forth?is mixed with the profes sions, trades, and crafts to form one scale.l Though often used to represent the entire society, this rendition of the social structure is, of course, only a profile of the male population. Women, if included at all in the schema, are differentiated solely by their marital state. Seventeenth and eighteenth-century men believed that a woman's status as single, married or widowed, rather than her employment, was the most notable fact about her and normally chose to record only that information after her name. Moreover, a married woman in the pre-industrial period has often been viewed by historians as simply her husband's assistant, helping him in his work on the farm or in the shop. The problem is that while in most communities 90-95% of women ultimately wed, nowhere near that proportion were married at any given point in time. Furthermore not all husbands were in an economic position to support or employ their wives. Many married women who contributed to family income worked independently from their spouses as day laborers, peddlers or at by-employments such as spinning and knitting.2 Rarely, though, did these jobs earn them an occupational title.
Author: Carole Shammas
Institution: University of Wisconsin System
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2224670940