Your Topic
How did gender roles from colonial times to early nineteenth century (1830s) define men and women’s political and economic lives?
Guiding Questions to Address
Use the questions below to help you explore your broader topic above. By focusing on specific guiding questions, you'll build your understanding of your topic and be able to explain different key aspects of it. You'll be able to write a more nuanced and developed argument about your broader topic.
Also, it's easier to tackle a topic when you break it down into meaningful pieces. Your instructor provided these guiding questions for you to address:
- When did roles begin to change and why? For this question, you need to group periods that you find different from one another, but you don’t need to group them in smaller sections than centuries or portions of centuries.
- An adequate essay must address both the political and economic issues. For example, in terms of economic: what were men and women’s work roles and were these defined by gender conceptions? Did women work (better know the answer to this one)? Were they part of the economic exchange system?
- Ask yourself the same kinds of questions in terms of politics (power, office holding, political leadership, voting, etc.). What effect did the American Revolution have on political opportunities?