Blog 14: A Woman’s Work
One thing that stuck out to me in this reading was the fact that in America there was not a large difference in jobs slaves had between men and women compared to in the Caribbean and other places women tended to be inside the house working as a slave. I couldn’t not seem to understand this or wrap my head around it at all. The only explanation and difference I could possibly come up with is the location and culture where these slave owners lived. I am a Hispanic woman who has family and relatives in the Caribbean, being a puerto Rican woman it is expected from me to be inside the house doing “house work” like cooking cleaning etc and its a “mans” job to be outside of the house working. Could this be a reason for why most women slaves in the Caribbean served inside the home? Personally I believe it could be. The fact that women slaves in American served both inside and outside the home is quite interesting but also seem explainable. When Immigrants moved to American it was more than common for women to work in order to feed their families. Although more men worked compared to women, women did work when they had the opportunity too. So this could explain it, Since some immigrant women in the AMerica did work, men were already used to see women work so it didn’t matter to them that they were woman men children they saw them as slaves and with that in mind had them worked and serve them with whatever needed to be done.
I agree with the notion that the possibily for gendered roles come from the place where it is happening. The country where it is taking place plays a tremendous role in gendered roles.
I also talked about why I thought Americans treated their slaves equally while the Caribbeans did not. I am almost proud of the women slaves for keeping up with the men and showing how strong they really were. I agree when you said that American slave owners didn’t care who was doing the work, and that they just wanted to get their work done asap. There was no pity wether you were male or female.