Gender as an Analytical Tool to Understand Inequality

Gender is both a useful and necessary analytical tool which helps historians understand how social interactions and social hierarchies were constructed and changed with respect to historical events. When scholars analyze history by using gender, they are able to see events through a revisionist point of view, and thus understand aspects that may have been ignored earlier. From this viewpoint, scholars can see how space is organized unequally, which allows them to understand how because of gender, women became a social minority in the New World. The repercussions from the way social space was constructed in the seventeenth century, led to a long-lived patriarchy that dominated institutions in the United States throughout the nineteenth century. Many scholars have already used gender as their primary analytical category for research, and more scholars should attempt to include gender in their research because it helps us understand how social conflict and inequality have persisted in America for centuries, and it also helps us more completely understand American history.

Before I continue my argument, it is necessary to understand that gender has many stipulative definitions. For the purpose of my argument, I am using gender to mean a social condition where roles are assigned based on a cultures notion of masculinity and femininity. Gender affects space because these cultural notions structure social hierarchies, which then inevitably leads to an unequal allocation of power. The idea of gender affecting space is similar to Kathleen Brown's idea of the "gender frontier."¹ Brown's recognition of the role that gender played in the seventeenth century has revised the common history of Anglo-Algonquian interactions in order to give a more complete analysis of events. Gender was present in this historical moment socially and physically, since Europeans commonly described the New World in feminine terms and justified their conquest based on notions of a gendered hierarchy. In her argument, Brown uses such evidence to assert that the Anglo-Algonquian encounter "changed the gender relations of both societies. Contact bred trade, political reshuffling, sexual intimacy and warfare. On both sides, male roles intensified in ways that appear to have reinforced the patriarchal tendencies of each culture."² This shows how the issue of gender had many implications in the seventeenth century, which were not only about male and female relationships, but also about the way gender strengthened a system of dominations which proved to be extremely important when the two cultures came into contact. In this historical moment gender constructed a new social hierarchy, in which the allocation of power made the conquering Europeans dominant and in control.

The new gendered social hierarchy that resulted from the Anglo-Algonquian encounter had serious ramifications for the Algonquians, especially the Algonquian women. As the Europeans imposed a dominating patriarchy on the Algonquian women they lost the power they had in the previous hierarchy, and thus became a social minority. As women lost their political voice by not being allowed to choose leaders, and lost their economic voice in not being allowed to farm, it is obvious that inequality was echoing across the New Worlds developing institutions. This echoing inequality strengthened the patriarchy and in turn affected women in the United States for centuries. Gender has affected economic institutions and political institutions even throughout the nineteenth century. By using gender as an analytical category, scholars have been able to better understand how space was constructed within a respective institution and how social hierarchies were structured to keep women in separate and often limited spaces.

Similar to the way gender affected trade between the Europeans and the Algonquians in the seventeenth century, gender also affected the economic institutions of the United States in the nineteenth century as industrialization was manifesting. Industrialization was a powerful historical event that allowed women to enter the workforce, albeit with some criticism that they should not be allowed to work for wages. Thomas Dublin recognizes the role gender played in the Lowell mill experience, and he claims that it allowed women workers to take "an irreversible step away from the rural, agricultural lives of their parents."³ This step, although small, did provide an opportunity for women to become more independent and in control their own lives. This led to a reorganization of the social hierarchy, as women started to make a place for themselves in the economic world outside of the home. Women who had for the most part only worked inside the home could now enter a new space. Yet their new space was limited, since women were separated from men while working and they were supervised by a Matron^. This clearly shows that a gendered hierarchy was still in place which allocated more space to men in the work force and left women as a social minority.

Without using gender as an analytical category, the history of Lowell mill would not be complete. It is because Dublin recognized the usefulness and necessity of gender to interpret women working in mills that we can more completely understand how industrialism affected the United States, and how it affected women living during this era. For example, by taking a step away from the patriarchy, women began to take more control of their lives by choosing who they would marry. Since Lowell women were paid cash wages directly, they could choose to save their money to build a dowry which would make them more attractive for marriage, and give them more power in deciding who and when to marry.⁴ This undeniably changed marital practices because previous gender relations gave parents more control. This change may seem small, but it is important to recognize that this change came about because of women attaining a space in the work force, because they could now bring money into the marriage they were able to assert some power. Clearly without Dublin's recognition of gender, this aspect of how industrialization affected women and their marital interactions would not be properly understood. Additionally, using gender in analysis allows us to observe trends of how social hierarchies have been reorganized to progressively allow women to attain space in economic institutions throughout American history. Such trends can also be observed in other American institutions, such as political institutions.

A mere proximity of dates is what started Amy Kaplan to research the relationship between female writers and American imperialism during the antebellum period. Kaplan found that there were numerous domestic writings that coincided with America's expansionist era. This evidence allowed her to reconceptualize domesticity and its relationship to the foreign, and shows that women, although still a social minority were attaining a space in the political sphere. Kaplan defines domesticity as "men and women in a national domain and to generate notions of the foreign against which the nation can be imagined as a home."⁵ This definition structurally unites men and women against the alien and promotes an ideology of expansionism. Through this ideology, a woman's place within the home and nation is reinforced and used to justify and carry forward expansionist policies. Thus domestic writings became an anchor for the legitimization of expansion, and men started to tolerate women in the political sphere.

Kaplan's analysis of gendered domestic writings and its relationship to imperialism helps us more completely understand how the country was being affected by Manifest Destiny. One aspect is clearly how women were able to cross into the political sphere because the nation was now viewed as the home. This allows us to understand why women were able to participate in the political arena, albeit with limitations. Even without the right to vote, women were producing influential domestic writings, and it was even acceptable for women to affiliate themselves with a political party and attend rallies. This may not seem like a radical change in the social hierarchy, especially from a modern point of view, but these changes provided women with some legitimacy in the public political realm. Without Kaplan's recognition of gendered domestic writings, this aspect of women gaining some political agency through expansionism would not be properly understood. Additionally, without using gender analytically to observe trends in American political institutions, one would also not properly understand how social hierarchies allocated women virtually no political power in the seventeenth century, to reorganize in order to accept a woman's political presence during the expansionist era.

Gender has had an undeniable presence throughout American history, which can be seen not only in the foundation of the New World but also in the political institutions and economic institutions of the nineteenth century. And its undeniable presence and ability to analyze Anglo-Algonquian encounters, industrialism, and imperialism from a revisionist point of view to illustrate a social minority proves its inherent analytical usefulness. Clearly gender is a useful and necessary analytical category in order to completely understand the way space was organized unequally in American history. By focusing on gender and how it revises history, one can understand how women were a social minority. Additionally one can understand and how historical events helped reorganize social hierarchies so that women have been able to progressively attain more space in American institutions. Thus the omission of gender in historical analysis would be disadvantageous because it would be ignoring certain historical aspects that need to be highlighted to best conduct research. Yet in order to fully understand the role that social hierarchies have played in American history, one must also consider race and class, since gender is not the only aspect of identity. Race and class also are unequally organized spatially, and to combine them with gender would be complex, but ideal in order to completely grasp the structure and evolution of hierarchies.

¹ Kathleen Brown, "The Anglo-Algonquian Gender Frontier;" 27.
² Brown, 33.
³ Thomas Dublin, Chapter Three, "The Lowell Work Force, 1836, and the Social Origins of Women Workers," 57.
⁴ Dublin, 40.
⁵ Amy Kaplan, "Manifest Domesticity," American Literature, 582.