amily estate instead of the one third given to English women. Although the husbands normally dealt with the family financial status some women did venture into the business market. They where known as shrewd and aggressive businessmen, one official wrote It happened one day that the wife of Wolfert Gerritsz came to me with two otter pelts, for which I offered her three guilders, ten stuivers. She refused this and asked for five guilders, whereupon I let her go, this being too much. The wife of Jacob Laurissz, the smith, knowing this, went to her and offered her five guilders (American Colonies Pg. 256).After the conquer of the Dutch New Netherlands in 1675 a attempt to reconstitute Dutch law, the English governor ruled to forbid the use of Dutch courts form that time forth (HIST 210 lecture notes). Under English rule women where not allowed to own land or have economic ventures. Due to the relative lack of freedom women under English rule where subjected too they where able to have nothing but upward movement. Author and psychiatrist Fratz Fanon wrote it best in his book The Wretched of the Earth to drive into the natives heads the idea that if the settlers where to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation, and bestiality (Womens America Pg. 3). If natives is changed to womens and settlers to men this quote can summarize the effect that English rule had on women. Raised that without their fathers and husbands they would be nothing, only the few men that saw the flaw in the theory could change the plight for their women.Location and subsequently economic status also allowed some women to have better lives then their counterparts elsewhere. The women living on the southern plantations had a social advantage over their sisters in the north. This was due too the labor and monies brought in by their slaves. Since the soil was better and the growing season longer the southern women had an advantage with ...
