Why Were Women Treated In The Late 1800's

e history of women in the nineteenth-century United States is extensive. For decades, women were treated as property and the lower class. Society gave women a role as home keepers and child bearers. There are several reasons why women had no rights. In the late 1800’s, women were treated unfairly, because of their social class, race, and education. The first reason on why women were treated unfairly was because of their social class. Social class played a tremendous part in the way women were treated in the 1800’s. In today’s society, class still is important and will probably be until the end of mankind. Men and women were in three distinct types of classes- the lower class, middle class, and the upper class. The worst part was that even

Women in the 1800’s were never encouraged to obtain a real education or pursue a professional career. The idealized middle-class white marriage emphasized the valuable task that mothers performed in educating their children to be productive and moral citizens; therefore women's education became increasingly important.(“Women,”2000). A marked improvement in the education of girls occurred around the end of the eighteenth century. In the 1800s, as more girls attended primary school, female literacy rose, but secondary education existed mostly for the daughters of wealthy white men and reinforced upper-class women's domestic talents. Inspired by their education, some middle-class women took their mission outside the home. As the first quarter of the century gave way to the second, women expanded their reform efforts to include education reform, the abolition of slavery, and, rights for themselves. Both as reformers and as teachers, women played a significant role in education. Not to mention, all northern states provided some public education for blacks in 1860. Although some rural areas, especially in the southern portions of the Midwest, refused to fund schools for blacks and maintained segregated schools for whites. By the 1850’s most teachers—especially in white schools—were women, in part because women could be paid less than men. Female education still emphasized moral and religious education, domestic science, and teacher training. Even though the educational opportunities for women dramatically expanded, universities often trained women for homemaking, thus dissuading them from higher intellectual pursuits. In addition, the role women played in education- men were still in control of how the system went about. Colleges required female students to wash male students' clothing, clean their rooms, and serve them at meals. (“Women’s Movement,”2016). On the bright side, women were