9781422274248

WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SLAVERY In the early years most of the slaves brought to the colonies were male. Slave traders sought workers to fulfill the labor shortage and believed men would be best suited for doing such hard work. Interestingly, because of cultural differences, African villages were often more willing to part with men than with women. “In most West African societies women dominated agriculture,” notes the book Women’s America: Refocusing the Past . “Faced with the demands for captives, African villages preferred to surrender up their males and protect their female agriculturists; faced with a need for fieldworkers, Europeans preferred to purchase men.” Over time, the perceived value of male and female slaves shifted and changed. Slave owners realized that female slaves could help perpetuate the slave population. Female slaves became valuable because through reproduction, they produced new generations of slave workers. Colonial laws were amended to

codify that the legal status of the mother would dictate the status of her child. A free woman’s child would be free; a slave woman’s child would be a slave. Although male women, there were female slaves from the start.  The work that female slaves were assigned to do changed over time, also. In smaller farms slaves greatly outnumbered

DID YOU KNOW ? At the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, female slaves sometimes sold for double what a male slave cost. The reason is not that women were considered more valuable as people, but rather they were able to reproduce and so could produce more slaves for their owners. This higher cost, however, was only for young, fit, and beautiful female slaves.

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WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SLAVERY