Look at the Iroquois Confederacy where the women played key roles in trade as well as council duties. Women even were warriors and leaders. That is because they were believers that the bloodline passed through mother to infant so therefore when a man married the woman he took her name. Men were still chiefs (Sachems) but it was common for a woman to be one either; specially if her father had been one. Women’s role in the European culture were that of the domestic. They were the weaker and inferior of the sex; both physically and mentally. Their role was to take care of the house and children as was dictated to them by the man or men in their household.
The woman of the colonial time was the property of her father or her husband and could not own property let alone herself; in some cases, not even her own dignity. She was not allowed to vote for she was not a citizen; but like livestock that her father had to pay a husband to marry her, with a