I attended a meeting recently, where a speaker talked about educational opportunities for children at a local museum. She mentioned, children could dress up in historical garb and act out a day in the life of the men and women during the Seven Years’ War, known colloquially as they French and Indian War.

“Boys can dress up like soldiers or blacksmiths and girls can dress up like, well, women, because that’s all they were back then. There was some discrimination,” the speaker said.

While I think the historical and continuing discrimination of women should be acknowledged, discussed and rectified as we move forward, that discussion should never involve minimizing the importance of women during any era of history.

I also fear the discussion of women in a historical context has devolved into a simple list of  exceptional women. Women such as Joan d’Arc, Sybil Ludington, Helen Keller, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Cleopatra, Eleanor Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Indira Gandhi and Sacagawea should be celebrated and their accomplishments lauded. But this is known as compensatory history. That is, the history of women has been truncated into a list of our highest achievers, instead of also including discussion on the importance of women collectively.

On the subject of compensatory history, renown historian Gerda Lerner said it best in her work, “Placing women in history: definitions and challenges,” which appeared in Feminist Studies:

The resulting history of “notable women” does not tell us much about the activities in which most women engaged, nor does it tell us much about the significance of women’s activities to society as a whole. The history of notable women is the history of the exceptional, even deviant women, and does not describe the experience and history of the mass of women.

In addition, there’s a great deal of research done on the rights (or lack thereof) of women through the ages, but not much research on their value to society despite the lack of equality.

Despite fiercely unequal human rights, women have been and will continue to be integral to society in innumerable ways. The omission in history of the collective contribution of women says to our children that women should not be valued until society treats them as equal.

Life in the early French and British colonies was very difficult for families. Homes among the rural landscape were self-sustaining. Clothes were handmade; every home had a loom and spinning wheel. Most of the food consumed was grown on the property. Meat came from hunting and the raising of some domestic animals such as pigs and chickens[1]. Women sewed, knitted, mended, spun, cooked and washed[2]. They cared for the domestic animals, preserved food and made household goods such as soap and candles[3]. In addition, women typically gave birth to between five and 10 children[1].

The women who did survive in the early southern colonies found themselves in a place where the old gender rules had been, it not abolished, at least temporarily suspended due to emergency conditions. It was a raw country, and the first generations of colonial women did things that their granddaughters would have found unthinkable … Well-born women labored like field hands and made their way through the roadless countryside on horseback or by waterway. “Many of the Women are very handy in Canoes, and will manage them with great Dexterity and Skill, which they become accustomed to in this watry Country,” reported a traveler in 1700. William Byrd described an acquaintance who lived on the Virgina frontier as “a very civil woman” who could nonetheless “carry a gunn in the woods and kill deer, turkeys … shoot down wild cattle, catch and tye hoggs … and perform the most manful exercises as well as men in these parts.”

Almost everyone lived on a farm — the whole point of the colonial dream was to get your own land and grow a profitable cash crop like tobacco. The English believed that fieldwork was a man’s task, but as the colonies were desperately short on labor, and young planters expected their wives to labor alongside them in the fields … Plantation owners were forced to be away from home for long periods of time on business, and they often depended on their wives, or even daughters, to drain swamps, tend cattle, cultivate the tobacco, and otherwise manage things while they were gone[4].

There are few online resources that espouse on the effect of the Seven Years’ War on women and families. We do know that during specific battles, women were responsible for bringing British and French soldiers and ammunition[2]. They often traveled with soldiers to cook, do laundry, sew and serve in hospitals[5]. One historian says colonial women fought alongside their husbands[6]. Women and children were often taken captive by the opposing militia[2]. And when they were left alone, they protected their family’s homestead by whatever means necessary[7].

I think it can also be argued that the effect of women during the Revolutionary War — which started just 12 years after end of the Seven Years’ War was similar. During the Revolutionary War, women were called on to clothe, feed and nurse soldiers, as well as hold down the family fort. Martha Washington began a formal effort to encourage women to volunteer on behalf of the Continental Army. She wrote letters to the wives of all the colonial governors, asking them to encourage the women living in their colonies to make financial contributions to the war effort, sew and gather supplies for soldiers[8].

“We are in no ways dispiritted here,” wrote Abigail Adams, who was holding down the fort at the family farm in Massachusetts. “We possess a Spirit that will not be conquered. If our Men are all drawn off and we should be attacked, you would find a Race of Amazons in American.”

Abigail spent much of her married life as a veritable widow to the Revolution — her husband John was always off serving his country as a statesman or diplomat. Now, she was sheltering soldiers and refugees from the conflict, and as the war approached Boston, she made contingency plans for grabbing her children and fleeing into the woods … She raised their five children, managed their finances, ran their farm, and kept the house throughout the war. The Revolution not only deprived her of her helpmate but of a companion she dearly loved [4].

So, while, I’m sure the speaker I mentioned earlier meant no harm by her comment, and, in fact tried to address the discrimination women faced; and while, I know the local museum she referenced has amazing resources on the important role that women played during the beginning of our nation, as well as women’s lack of rights while performing that role; I also think we could all do a little better job of representing the historical importance of women to our children.

They were not just women. We are not just women. We are valuable, and we are vital to society.

I am fortunate to be from a family full of women who are strong and brave and smart and funny and independent. From birth, I was raised to strive to be all those things, without shame or apology.

And even though we are not planning to have children, I hope that I can still impart some of those same qualities on young girls that I know.

My friend Michou is all of those things. She wants to own a bakery someday. And I think that’s awesome.

Last Sunday, Michou and I made dinner for her family. It included csirke paprikas, roasted green beans and freshly baked white bread.

We started by proofing the yeast. That means adding yeast to warm (not hot!) water and letting it sit for a bit. The water activates the yeast to get ready to work.

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