I.  Creation of separate women's sphere (late 18th-mid 19th century)

• Rise of industrialization and cities leads to changes in gender roles
• men and women's lives increasingly grew apart from one another once manufacturing left the home and with the advent of larger department stores, wage work began to leave the home
• this took place gradually, over a period of 40-50 years
• In rural areas, households remained more centered, with overlap still occurring
• These changes led to the creation of separate spheres--as work took on greater gender meaning and segregation
• Religion, education, morality, domestic skills and culture began to overshadow women's economic functions
• A "True Woman" expected to have four cardinal virtues:
• piety--religion is "exactly what a woman needs, for it gives her that dignity that best suits her dependence."
• purity--terrible consequences befall women who lose their purity before marriage (madness, loss of child, etc.)
• submissiveness--most feminine virtue, submit to husband (or father)
• domesticity--woman's true place at her own fireside--she is to provide a haven of purity and comfort to men struggling in the wicked public world
• Magazines, books, and sermons frequently spoke about this "new" role for women
• "Female World of Love and Ritual"
• separate spheres for women create similar roles for all--women find themselves bound together by commonality of their experiences
• rites of passage--marriage and birth of first child move girl from mother's circle to her own network of support

• many women go along with status quo
• some actively embrace status quo and urge separate spheres
• Catherine Beecher, Sarah Josepha Hale, and Lydia Sigourney
• Godey's Lady's Book, The Ladies' Repository, The Ladies Companion, and The Young Lady's Book
• These authors advised women on proper ways to behave and think
• women begin to seek smaller family--use of birth control in form of condoms, rhythym method, coitus interruptus, and abortions (although outlawed in more than 20 states by beginning of the Civil War)
• emphasis on children and changes in childhood begin
• technological change brought changes in housekeeping
• What place would women like Martha Ballard or the Lowell Girls have in this world?

• Women's groups are an urban phenomenon, not rural
• women began to form groups to aid other women
• groups formed primarily around churches
• women began to promote the idea of sisterhood
• women's movement well under way before the abolitionist movement begins

•  Women remained part of an integrated household throughout the South
• exception, some signs of separate seen in urban areas
• in cities, labor and household divided, thus separate spheres begin to form
• Thus, did not move toward forming a "sisterhood" with other women until much later