Gender in North America
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 July 2024
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 January 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0225
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 July 2024
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 January 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0225
Introduction
Gender, in Joan Scott’s famous formulation, is “a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power (Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91.5 [December 1986]: 1067). Scholars who have taken issue with aspects of Scott’s definition include Jeanne Boydston, who noted the Eurocentric character of Scott’s depiction of gender and called for more scrutiny of the ways that using gender “as a category of historical analysis has stymied our efforts to write a history—or many histories—of gender as historical process” (Jeanne Boydston, “Gender as a Question of Historical Analysis,” Gender & History 20.3 (November 2008, p. 559). Nonetheless, key features of Scott’s theory about the place and function of gender remain central to historical writing about North America in the period c. 1400–1800. The scholarship focused on gender in North America c. 1400–1800 is primarily concerned with explaining the relationship of women to the societies and cultures in which they lived. Gender is a key component of that explanation, whether looking at labor, law, sexuality, religion, or politics—or even biography. A secondary thread is the impact of ideas about gender, mostly femininity but also masculinity and, more rarely, their mutual constitution in shaping those societies and cultures. Many of the works that have focused on women as subjects and have analyzed gender have looked primarily at the experiences of white women. These patterns reflect the relative dearth of textual sources written by and about women, but especially by and about women who were not middling or upper status and white. More recent studies look to Native American and African American women. Gender is also more recently analyzed as critically connected to race, class, and sexuality. In North American scholarship on the era of European colonization, these multiple elements of identity were ideological in that they were formed in the context of relations and exercise of power, whether through colonialism more broadly or slavery more specifically. The first generation of sustained attention to women in early America focused most heavily on European women in British America, but more recent scholarship is often formulated in an Atlantic context. Connections to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean are regular features in this work. Topics such as labor, law, marriage, and religion have remained important in understanding the role and impact of gender, although many of the works listed here might reasonably fit into more than one category.
General Overviews
No one volume can tell, or tries to tell, the history of gender in early North America. Rather, the books and articles included here each try to give a sense of the diversity of women’s experiences, and the diversity of gender systems, in this place and time. There is a clear imbalance, with more attention paid to European women or women of European ancestry than to Native American or African American women, or women of mixed race. It is also the case that efforts to speak of “women” collectively or of gender singly must fail because of the complex diversity of women’s experiences and systems of gendered power. The two historiographical essays Haulman 2003 and Snyder 2012 survey the field of early American women’s history making clear connections between women’s and gender history. Texts with a sampling of the most recent and influential work in this field are Norton and Alexander 2007 and Kerber, et al. 2010. The edited collection Stoler 2006 indicates new directions in thinking about gender as it relates to the history of empires in North America. Stoler’s own scholarship, in this volume and elsewhere, on the making of gender and racial hierarchies with the intimate relationships of colonial households in the Dutch East Indies helped to stimulate thinking about how such domestic relationships, even as they were highly regulated, were central to the creation and perpetuation of status hierarchies beneficial to imperial aims. Brown 1996 is one of the most regularly cited examples of scholarship that analyzes the mutuality of race and gender as systems of power.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1996.
Brown’s book, though it focuses on Virginia, has become required reading for anyone interested in women, race, and gender in early America and well beyond. Articulating and demonstrating the connection between hierarchies of race, class, and gender, Brown’s reconceived the history not only of Virginia, but of early America.
Haulman, Kate. “Room in Back: Before and beyond the Nation in Women’s and Gender History.” Journal of Women’s History 15.1 (2003): 167–171.
Haulman reflects on the small percentage of women’s and gender history devoted to the early period. Haulman suggests that, like other aspects of colonial history, women’s history is often tied to a narrative about the American nation and thus the earlier period is difficult to synthesize or connect with modern concerns.
Kerber, Linda K., Jane Sherron De Hart, and Cornelia H. Dayton. Women’s America: Refocusing the Past. 7th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
The first part (of four) includes excerpts from some classic and some newer scholarly books and articles as well as primary sources focused on women and gender in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Norton, Mary Beth, and Ruth M. Alexander. Major Problems in American Women’s History. 7th ed. New York: Cenage, 2007.
The first five chapters (of sixteen) are a combination of essays, most excerpted from longer works, and primary documents.
Snyder, Terri. “Refiguring Women in Early American History.” William and Mary Quarterly 69.3 (July 2012): 421–450.
DOI: 10.5309/willmaryquar.69.3.0421
This essay reviews papers delivered at a 2011 conference on the topic as well as surveys the field of early American women’s history, concluding that studies of women can and should contribute to the study of early America more generally. Snyder reiterates Boydston’s point that focusing on women as historical subjects is critical to understanding gender.
Stoler, Ann Laura, ed. Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
A set of essays that apply the insights of postcolonial theory to early America and the United States, including the ways that race, family, and sexuality were scrutinized by authorities within disparate but “intimate” settings and relationships. Maintaining cultural hierarchies led to the regulation, for example, of marriage across a range of American social and cultural contexts.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets