Atlantic Seafaring’s Gendered Horizons : The Complexity of Women’s Work in the 18th and 19th Century Atlantic World Industries

Abstract

Seafaring and coastal women around the Americas during the 18th and 19th centuries lived on the periphery of a male dominated world, where cultural gender prescriptions ran into the reality of women’s work roles expanding and economic needs. This trend is reflected in the work of women within various Atlantic world industries such as piracy, whaling, and coastal and port activity. While women’s roles and agency changed because of new expectations caused by the formation of Atlantic world society, they were still unable to completely transgress the world’s standard expectations for women during the 18th and 19th centuries. While women were participating in this new society and found new agency, Atlantic seafaring still upheld gendered separation and expected roles across the various industries within that limited full transgression of gender roles. Using the practices introduced by gender historians Jeanne Boydston and Joan Scott, this poster presentation will study both women and gender in the Atlantic world and also examine the power structures within. Expanding the study of women in the seafaring world beyond focus on transgressive women like pirates Anny Bonny and Mary Read helps us to see how women involved as shopkeepers, tavern and boarding house owners, laundresses, and dependent widows sought personal and economic opportunities but still faced constraints from the societal gendered power structure.