How did the early lawmakers of the United States create structures that limited women’s agency and controlled women’s power, sexualities, and identities?
How did the early lawmakers of the United States create structures that limited women’s agency and controlled women’s power, sexualities, and identities?
The United States was initially a colony of the British Empire and therefore were ruled generally by the legal structures of the parent country. Gradually though American settlers began to pass laws that were at variance with those in England. Take for instance the 1664 Law in Maryland which reduced a free woman who married a slave to a slave herself. This targeting of women can also be seen in Partus sequitur ventrem, passed by the Virginia in 1662 which refused to accept child born to a white father and enslaved mother to remain a slave.
While these colonial laws indicate prejudice, post-independence laws explicitly targeted women’s power, sexualities, and identities.
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