Women with Strength

MaddieZdeblick

Women are verypowerful in many ways. We know how to run a house hold, cook, clean, and muchmore. Unfortunately, just recently, in the past 60 years we’ve truly becomeequal with man. If only the Europeans hadn’t come to the Americas this may havehappened much sooner, for the ancient civilizations that first ruled this landtreated women much more fairly. None the less, women still played a role, maybenot a big one, but it was still a role. We need to pay attention to this topicbecause women take up more than 50% of our population; we need to know howthey’ve been treated through out the years. Hopefully the women of the 18^thcentury had a bigger role than what I found out in all of my researching. Forthe past two weeks I have been deep into research about the role of womenduring the conquest of Mexico. It was very hard to find information on, for notmany people think about the role of women. I thought it would be great to findout what the European women thought of the Americas, and vise versa, and whatthe women did. Apparently not many other people share this interest with me.Hopefully women will get more recognized through the up coming years, but fornow we can use the little information we have. The women of the 18^thcentury didn’t have much of a role, but they worked tremendously hard at theone they had, and didn’t get much appreciation for it.

TheAztec: An early civilization in what is now Mexico City. The Aztec were warriors;blood thirsty warriors. They sacrificed a lot of their fellow Aztecs and workedvery hard to develop the technology they lived with. The men trained forbattle, and taught their sons important skills they would need for manhood. Thewomen cooked, cleaned, ran the house, took care of the children, and taughttheir daughters how to cook and sow and such. The women were pretty much asequal as the men, but not many thought of it that way. Many people see trainingfor battle a bigger thing in life than cooking, cleaning, and sowing, but cookingis just as important as battle skills, if not more. Most people these days seewomen as doing the same thing, where more women then we think are out doing thesame thing as men. Now women are considered equal, and still a lot of women aredoing the same thing now as the Aztec women were doing then. Do we know whythis is? That women today doing the same thing as the Aztec women 500 years agoare treated more fairly and with equality? Times have definitely changed forthe better. The Europeans treated women with less equality than the Aztec, andI feel that if the Europeans never came to the Americas that maybe equality ofthe sexes would’ve come into view a lot earlier. The Europeans were savage liketo the Aztec and ruined most of their culture, but some things we will never beable to tell what it would be like if the Europeans never came.

TheEuropean women back home were treated like rocks. They were stepped on; menwalked all over them. The European women had the same job as the Aztec women; tookcare of the house, the children, cooked, cleaned, and sowed, but the Europeanwomen got much less credit for what they did. Women reproduce! We keep theworld populated! I just don’t see how the women were treated so badly backthen. Some of the Spaniard women hated this sense of enclosure. They wantedequality so they would protest, and fight for their rights. Not many peoplelistened; most men would give them looks and ignore them. This enraged thesebrave women even more. Some of the women so desperate for a new life stylewould join ships. They would ditch their homes, their friends, and their familyto go live on a ship for more of a grotesque lifestyle. These women were calledpirates.

Pirateswere grotesque barbarians that roamed the seas. They took siege of any fellowships for gold and materialistic objects. It was a unique lifestyle with veryfew women. In a way I envy these women.They had the courage to do something crazy and life threatening for a changehopefully for the better, and they stood up for what they believed in, and ifthat didn’t work, they left behind the world they new! It was a bold move butmost women who ended up as a pirate learned to love it. It was a free life. Nokids to look after, or household to run. The pirate ships normally were somewhat trashed so they wouldn’t have to worry too much about cleaning. Most ofthe time there would be a cook for the ship, the women could take up this jobif they wanted to, but otherwise they wouldn’t have to worry about cooking. Thewomen could have any job the men had, and could do it just as well. On a pirateship women were completely equal, men treated women just as they treat themtoday (but in a pirate manor) and vise versa. Some women didn’t like how theywere treated back home on land, but the idea of being a pirate scared them.These women decided to come to the Americas along with the men.

‘In1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue’. Columbus did sail the ocean blue and a long with a few women. WhenI say a few, I really mean a few. Hardlyany women sailed to the Americas with Columbus, and during other expeditionsnot enough women came a long, and a couple of the expeditions failed. The longjourney to the Americas scared off a lot of women, and some of the women thatchose to go, died a long the way from such illnesses as scurvy, starvation, and other diseases. The few women thatactually made it to the Americas were shocked by the amazing differences! TheAmerican natives had a completely differentlife style. Women here were more equal then the European women, and the waythey dressed was very exposed. The Spanish women were appalled by the fact thatthe Aztec would sacrifice their fellow Aztec for religious purposes. The tworeligions between the people had significantly large differences. The Spaniardswere Christian, and believed in one god, and the Aztec were polytheistic,believing that there was a different god for every natural element of theearth. Some of the few similarities between the two religions were that theyboth believed in a heaven and a hell. The European women were amazed that theAztec women did heavy work such as chopping wood. European women only did homejobs, such as cooking, cleaning, teaching the daughters, and running the house(of course under her husband’s circumstances), and when they came to LatinAmerica they experienced women chopping wood, tilling soil, sowing corn,stripping hemp, and making clothes, much more work than the average Europeanwomen ever would. They thought the Aztec women had been punished or somethingto deserve this work, but really the women felt that if they didn’t work thishard that men wouldn’t find them attractive.

TheAztec women felt that their domestic portion of their life was the mostimportant aspect in their existence, which is really quite sad. The women didso much work back then and no recognition for it, men felt that this was anatural thing, and that it was what they were born to do. Some women tried tobreak out of this role, and do ‘the man’s work’, or become a pirate. Women didthe same thing, day after day. Cook, clean, take care of the children, andprobably cook some more. It’s not very exciting when you do it everyday. Overthe years though, women have broken out of that shell and have not just spoken,but yelled their rights for the world to hear. They fought for what theywanted, and even though it took a very long time; several hundred years, theyearned their freedom, and became equal with men. Now women can have the samejobs as men, vote just like a man, and do everything else as men do, but somewomen choose to still stay home and cook, clean, and take care of the kids, andthat is completely fine, but the women now get more recognition for it, andeven though they stay at home, they still can do whatever they please. TheAztecs developed equality among the sexes before the Europeans, maybe not asequal as today, but yet they still were treated better. When the Europeans cameto the Americas they made the natives take their beliefs, religion, and way oflife. Now I wonder if the Europeans never came to the Americas, would equalityof the genders develop much sooner? We can only question this, but personally Ithink that equality among the sexes would’ve developed much earlier without theEuropeans.