The History of Women's Labor and Exploitation in the U.S

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The History of Women's Labor and Exploitation in the U.S
When Columbus discovered America in the fifteenth century, the country set its foundations on labor, particularly slave labor, where women also had to work with men as enslaved people, whose exploitation was a fashion. From the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century, when the civil war ended slavery and began free labor, women had to endure all kinds of physical, mental, and sexual abuses. The history of the U.S. shows how women have labored and been uniquely exploited because of gender; The women's exploitation had no boundary and targeted equally free women, unfree women, Black and white, working in and outside of the home, paid and unpaid.
History tells us that labor and exploitation have been interconnected since the beginning of society. When Columbus discovered America, slave labor was a reality; even many religions like Christianity and Islam considered it a part of theology (Clark & Hewitt 18). The early seventeenth century brought the era of slavery in its true meaning. The first enslaved people taken to Virginia were Africans, and they had defined rules to perform their duties with anticipation of freedom at the end with appropriate dues according to the policy. Although the enslaved people got their slavery rights in the beginning years, the mid-seventeenth century brought severe insecurity, racial injustice, and exploitation of freedom rewards (Clark & Hewitt 63). It was a time of family labor, where both men and women had to work outside in fields and bear the torture of their masters. The enslaved African Americans tolerated frequent whipping while toiling day and night and watching their female family members get whipped and physically abused by their masters, like mothers and sisters. As physical abuse applies to only women, black women in the seventeenth century were more exploited than black men because they labored, bore and raised babies, and got physically abused. Any woman who seemed independent or involved in suspicious activities was accused of witchcraft. In various towns, notably Salem, the puritan authority hanged many women from different races and classes as practicing devils (Clark & Hewitt 118). Shortly, the beginning of the seventeenth century brought the growth of northern and southern colonies with labor policies for slaves, which underwent changes in the mid-seventeenth century as puritanism began. The exploitation of laborers, specifically women, which started to form enslaved African Americans, got root in American socio-cultural and economic values. With the beginning of puritanism, white women and women of color suffered equally.
At the end of the seventeenth century, slavery changed its social and economic status. Enslaved people had substituted indentured servants at the beginning of the eighteenth century. With the availability of labor of men and women slaves and vast lands, farming progressed in the south. The crop of tobacco got financial and cultural association. Also, the eighteenth century arrived packed with various revolutions, protests, battles, and riots to eliminate social injustice and unacceptable government policies and establish laborer rights (Clark & Hewit...