Throughout most of history women generally have had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men women being considered intellectually inferior to men.
Early Christian theology perpetuated these views. St. Jerome, a 4th-century Latin father of the Christian church, said: "Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object." Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Christian theologian, said that woman was "created to be man's helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception . . . since for other purposes men would be better assisted by other men."
Traditionally a middle-class girl in Western culture tended to learn from her mother's example that cooking, cleaning, and caring for children was the behavior expected of her when she grew up. Tests made in the 1960s showed that the scholastic achievement of girls was higher in the early grades than in high school. The major reason being the girls' own expectations declined because neither their families nor their teachers expected them to prepare for a future other than that of marriage and motherhood.
Formal education for girls historically has been secondary to that for boys. In colonial America girls learned to read and write at dame schools. They could attend the master's schools for boys when there was room, usually during the summer when most of the boys were working.
The myth of the natural inferiority of women greatly influenced the status of women in law. Under the common law of England, an unmarried woman could own property, make a contract, or sue and be sued. But a married woman, defined as being one with her husband, gave up her name, and virtually all her property came under her husband's control.
During the early history of the United States, a man virtually owned his wife and children as he did his material possessions. Some communities modified the common law to allow women to own property in their own names if their husbands agreed.
Many retail stores would not issue independent credit cards to married women. Divorced or single women often found it difficult to obtain credit. Laws concerned with welfare, crime, prostitution, and abortion also displayed a bias against women. A mother receiving government welfare payments was subject to frequent investigations in order to verify her welfare claim. A woman who shot and killed her husband would be accused of homicide, but the shooting of a wife by her husband could be termed a "passion shooting." Often women prostitutes were prosecuted although their male customers were allowed to go free
Women constituted almost half of employed persons in the United States in 1989, but they had only a small share of the decision-making jobs. Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women in 1970 were paid about 45 percent less than men for the same jobs; in 1988, about 32 percent less.
Working women faced discrimination because they were married or would most likely get married, they would not be permanent workers.
American women have had the right to vote since 1920, but their political roles have been minimal. It was not considered respectable for women to speak before mixed audiences of men and women.
Women and slaves were expected to be passive, cooperative, and obedient to their master-husbands. With the Union victory in the Civil War, women abolitionists hoped their hard work would result in suffrage for women as well as for blacks. But the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, adopted in 1868 and 1870 respectively, granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to women.
The struggle to win the vote was slow. A woman-suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution, presented to every Congress since 1878, repeatedly failed to pass.
