Limited Rights for Women
During the time of the new US Constitution and the development of the new Republic, women were widely considered inferior to men. This status was especially clear in the lack of legal rights for married women; the law did not recognize wives' independence in economic, political, or civic matters in the 18th century.
In the 18th-century United States, as in Great Britain, the legal status of married women was defined as coverture, meaning a married woman (or feme covert) had no legal or economic status independent of her husband. She could not conduct business or buy and sell property. Her husband controlled any property she brought to the marriage, though he could not sell it without her agreement. Married women’s status as femes covert did not change as a result of the American Revolution, and wives remained economically dependent on their husbands.
The Constitution, adopted in 1789, left voting rights—the rights of suffrage—largely undefined. The only directly elected body created by the original Constitution was the House of Representatives, for which voter qualifications were explicitly delegated to the individual states. At that time all states, except for New Jersey, denied voting rights to women. The New Jersey constitution of 1776 enfranchised all adult inhabitants who owned a specified amount of property. Laws enacted in 1790 and 1797 referred to voters as "he or she," and women regularly voted. A law was passed in 1807, however, that excluded women from voting in that state.
Roles of Women in the New Republic
The Revolution had a deep effect on the philosophical underpinnings of US society. One aspect the democratic ideals of the Revolution drastically changed was the roles of women.
The idea of republican motherhood was born in this period and reflects the importance of Republicanism as the dominant US ideology. Republicanism assumed that a successful republic rested on the virtue of its citizens, and required intelligent and self-disciplined citizens to form the core of the new republic. Thus, women had the essential role of instilling in their children values conducive to a healthy republic. This heightened significance to a traditional aspect of wives' duties brought with it a new commitment to female education and helped make husbands and wives somewhat more equal within the family.
Despite any gains, however, women largely found themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disenfranchised and with only the role of mother open to them. The "cult of domesticity," a new ideal of womanhood that emerged around this time, rose from the reality that a 19th-century middle-class family did not have to make what it needed in order to survive, as did previous families. Therefore, men could now work jobs that produced goods or services while their wives and children stayed at home. The ideal woman became one who stayed at home and taught her children how to be proper citizens. Nevertheless, many women of the time did work outside the home.
Early Calls for Change
The American Revolution had increased people's attention to political matters and bestowed particular importance on issues of liberty and equality. Some women of the newly independent nation, especially the wives of elite republican statesmen, began to campaign for equality under the law between husbands and wives and for the same educational opportunities as men. As Eliza Wilkinson of South Carolina explained in 1783, "I won't have it thought that because we are the weaker sex as to bodily strength we are capable of nothing more than domestic concerns. They won't even allow us liberty of thought, and that is all I want."
Judith Sargent Murray wrote the most systematic expression of a feminist position in this period, in 1779 (but not published until 1790). Her essay, "On the Equality of the Sexes," challenged the view that men had greater intellectual capacities than women. Instead, she argued that whatever differences existed between the intelligence of men and women were the result of prejudice and discrimination that prevented women from sharing the full range of male privilege and experience. Murray championed the view that the "order of nature" demanded full equality between the sexes, but male domination corrupted this principle.
Portrait of Judith Sargent Murray
Judith Sargent Murray is well known for her early feminist essay "On the Equality of the Sexes."
Like many of the most radical voices of the Revolutionary era, Murray's support for gender equality was largely met with shock and disapproval, and the New Republic remained a place of male privilege. Nevertheless, the understanding of the proper relationships among men, women, and the public world were beginning to undergo significant changes in this period.