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Women's History |
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In the South, women’s social groups had not been formed as they had in the north. Up to this point these groups comprised strictly of charity work, traveling, and social time. However, after Fort Sumter fell, women felt a growing need to be useful and formed voluntary sewing groups and aid societies. By the end of the war, more than 1,000 of these groups appeared across the South.
Before the war, men controlled all aspects of their lives and continued to do so during the war through newspapers and letters. They tried to encourage women to retain their female moral and religious identity while praising their righteousness in their aid to their men.
These groups empowered women by giving them more freedom to discuss and compare their lifestyles. This in turn enabled them to shed their weaknesses, their feelings of inferiority and their dependency on their male counterparts. Women began to feel confident and self reliant.
Women of comfortable means gathered together to sew flags, uniforms, cartridges, tents, and sewing kits. They knitted socks and gloves and sewed scarves and blankets for the men in the winter months. As the war escalated, women felt a need to nurse the wounded, once acceptable only in the male population. Women of lesser means found themselves thrown into working family farms.
As these organizations and positions encouraged women to aid their men in the fields, it also made it acceptable to add women to a workplace outside of the home once shunned by Southern society. Little did they realize a long hard battle for Women’s Rights would be just around the corner.
Mother’s of Invention -Drew Gilpin Faust
Before the war, men controlled all aspects of their lives and continued to do so during the war through newspapers and letters. They tried to encourage women to retain their female moral and religious identity while praising their righteousness in their aid to their men.
These groups empowered women by giving them more freedom to discuss and compare their lifestyles. This in turn enabled them to shed their weaknesses, their feelings of inferiority and their dependency on their male counterparts. Women began to feel confident and self reliant.
Women of comfortable means gathered together to sew flags, uniforms, cartridges, tents, and sewing kits. They knitted socks and gloves and sewed scarves and blankets for the men in the winter months. As the war escalated, women felt a need to nurse the wounded, once acceptable only in the male population. Women of lesser means found themselves thrown into working family farms.
As these organizations and positions encouraged women to aid their men in the fields, it also made it acceptable to add women to a workplace outside of the home once shunned by Southern society. Little did they realize a long hard battle for Women’s Rights would be just around the corner.
Mother’s of Invention -Drew Gilpin Faust