Gender Roles in Christine Eber's Women and Alcohol in a Highland Mayan Town

The male's role in the household was the polar opposite to that of the women. His labour intensive job was seen to be too demanding to have him come home and continue to work in a place designed for relaxation. Men were considered to be strong, confident, intellectual leaders, whose skills were too advanced to have them wasted on simple house chores. Their main responsibility within the household was to provide their wives and family with financial stability; men were the “suppliers”. A man was depicted as a hard worker who would

Households were strictly patriarchal in which the man of the house made all the important decisions. Women's jobs at the time were mostly relegated to domestic service and occasional work at harvest time. The jobs were always of low pay, low status, and required little training. In addition to this females were not legally permitted to inherit land or property. This was the bleak life of a woman, with little hope or power, and always the subordinate of men.

Women in pre-industrialist times and states played a central role in the economic system of the community. Whereas in other places when men were involved in hunting of animals and birds, women played their role as the also gathered fruits and vegetables. This signifies the importance they had in a community. In my opinion, women play an essential role in society as much as men do. They complement men, and together they work as a system (Angela, 2011). If women are left out in community activities, the whole system collapses and fails to work appropriately hence it is imperative that they are working together for the betterment of the community. However, there have been significant changes, and women have been left behind to do less economically profitable works. They are involved in washing dishes, making beds, scrubbing floors and motherly chores that are deemed to be unprofitable. I think that women do essential jobs in homesteads and need to be paid for their work. The way that people associate home chores to be economically unproductive needs to change.

Prior to these changes, career options were limited for women. The work of a wife was often alongside her husband, running a household, farm or plantation. "Indeed, a wife herself was considered her husband's chattel, or personal

Emerging businesses created new job possibilities for women, such as; saleswomen, clerks, secretaries, factory workers, etc. Factory work meant mass production of household items that were easily obtainable for the average middle class family, thus allowing women more time for leisure. Not only did the job market expand, but education also became more accessible, allowing younger females to seek achievement outside the household. Despite all these positive changes, women often felt defeated as men still viewed them as being good at domesticity and childbearing and not much else. Women still were unable to vote in

While social change has brought on more changes than what women are a custom too, at one point in history women actually felt a form of importance in fulfilling their roles not only in the home; but outside as well. “These demographic shifts account for many new or altered roles, such as increased number of duel-earner families, later and fewer marriages, fewer children, increased life expectancy, and the massive migration shifting employees across a nation and across the globe” (Lindsey, 2011, pg. 275).

When one pictures the societies that spanned throughout our Mesoamerica and South America the images of warriors, conquests, gold and great feats of architecture, spawn in the mind. Missing from not only there, but the focus of many studies are the crucial roles that women played in these societies. Between each society; the Mayan, Aztec and Inca, each has their own unique culture and role for women within it. One wonders the roles of women in society, where does she fit in; politics, religious practices, and within the home. These roles are dictated by the characteristics of the society in which they live. It is crucial to begin uncovering for each of these societies, the roles of which the women took on, through exploring three subject matters, the role of women concerning government and law, politics, the role of women in day-to-day life and lastly, religious roles of women.

The war of 1812 played a crucial role in changing the role of women in the American society and other parts of the world. One of the roles of women that changed due to the war was in the economic sector. Initially, the society bestowed females with the role of taking care of their homes while the husbands engaged in economic activities so as to provide income to the households (Shi & Tindall, 2016). However, during the 1812 war, women switched roles and began engaging in economic activities such agricultural practices and trade so as to meet the needs of their families in the absence of their husbands.

Changes in the economy contributed to changed ideas about class, gender, and family. The ideas of “republican motherhood” that had been prevalent following the American Revolution, gave way to the “cult of domesticity”. Women were expected to remain in the household and were relegated to second-class citizens. Additionally, children in urban households were much more likely to leave the family in search of work than they had been in the rural world. This was because of the shift of income-earning work out of the home.

In that time, women were known to stay home and take care of their children, cook and clean. So having an opportunity

The resilience of women and the hardship of men were prominent during this time. However, women were still deeply grounded in their home life (Bolin, 74). Particularly women from middle-income families were left with job of being able to balance work and home life (Bolin, 74). Being a caregiver and taking care of the domestic needs of the home was very important. During this time tradition values were deeply routed in the home. Women made sure not let their home life consume them because their may focus was being a good wife and mother. This is a trend that has made its way even in today’s society. “Even now lack of adequate day-care (necessitating private baby-sitting service), low paying jobs for women, and the growth of technologies that open the door to and “electronic cottage industry”, indicate that women’s home production is a mutable but perhaps permanent response to women’s economic and social inequality under capitalism” (Hollingsworth, & Tyyska). The oppression in the past is shown to have made and imprint on society even to this day. Even though

With the help of the Industrial Revolution, women made significant strives in changing the traditional economic roles given to females. Before the industrial revolution the only opportunity for a woman to be financially secure was for that woman to marry a financially secure husband. This created women’s dependence on men because if the man died they would have no source of income. The Industrial Revolution provided many women with jobs of their own helping women to become self-dependant. This self-dependence allowed for women to pursue interests not involving men, such as

This ability to work gave men the upper hand, if a woman couldn’t work, and provide, she had very little power over her destiny. In fact, it was not until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that it became illegal to refuse a credit card to a woman based on her gender. That’s right, up until 1974 credit was denied to women unless she was married and her husband cosigned. According to the Census bureau only about 14 million women worked a full-time job in 1967, earning only a medium of $20,000 a year. In that very same year 36 million men held a full-time job, earning a medium of about $34,000 a year. That’s without considering harassment, and sexual assault that women were more likely to endure then.

During the 1800-1900s men and women were viewed differently. Back then it was said that men were the ones who would work and women would stay home and take care of household needs. Men were viewed as the strong ones in the family. If men were to be weak they would be called a ‘good for nothing’. Women, on the other hand, were considered weak and more emotional. They were the one who stayed home to wash dishes, do laundry, cook food, babysit, and clean the whole household. If a women were not to have the

In 1870, nearly two million women and girls worked outside the home. Domestic work was an important source of income. Some girls even dropped out of school to help make money. One in fifteen American homes employed live-in servants that were mostly immigrants or African American. Working from dawn to dusk, these women cooked, cleaned, washed, ironed, and cared for children. A lot of them supported their own families who lived elsewhere. Most of the women that were working were single because then they did not think that married life and careers for women mixed. Many of the single women workers were between the ages of 16 and 24. Employers thought that they would leave when they got married so they rarely gave them supervisory jobs or advanced training. They also paid women an average of $3 to $5 a week, 30 to 60 percent less than men. Self-supporting women were discouraged from entering the fields that would put them in competition with men. There were many educated young women that wanted or needed work became nurses or teachers where they wouldn?t be competing with men.