The Gender Construction of Women in Early America .
Life was difficult in the early colonization of North America by the Europeans. The Native people were being forced off the land they had lived on for thousands of years, and forced to adopt they ways of the colonizers. The African people were being captured and brought to the Americas for a life of slavery. The Europeans were the dominant group of this new country, but they were also struggling to establish themselves apart from England. All three of these cultures believed in different religions, held different values, and allocated different responsibilities among the sexes. Therefore, the women in these cultures had their gender constructed differently, yet in each it was the woman who played the domestic role.
The creation stories in each of these societies reflect how little or much women were valued. In most of the Native American cultures, women were valued beings. Their stories of creation differed from those of Christianity. In the Iroquois story of creation, a woman came from heaven and fluttered above the sea. A tortoise then offered her his back, which represented land, and there she made her home. A spirit that noticed she was lonely gave her three children; two sons and a daughter. The daughter became the mother of the great nations of the Iroquois (Kerber and De Hart 30). So even though the Native women performed similar tasks to those of European and African women, they were highly valued and held much more power.
Women in Indian societies carried out many tasks. They gathered fruits and nuts, cultivated crops, and were responsible for cooking, preserving foods and making household furnishings. Men's tasks focused mainly on hunting and warfare. Although the men and women did separate tasks, they were equally valued. (Evans 8).
The women of the Iroquois tribe held much political power: "The land was theirs.
