Guest Post: Economic Self-Reliance and Well-Being in American Women

Gender, Capitalism, and Labor: The Relationship Between Economic Self-Reliance and Well-Being in American Women

by Sarah Madeleine Wheeler

The proposition that “Throughout U.S history a woman’s capacity for economic self-reliance is the most important determinant of her well-being” is not unreasonable and is well-supported by evidence; however, it is incomplete and fails to extend into the critique of capitalism, power and class disenfranchisement that is necessary for a well-rounded understanding.  In any capitalist system, the powerful will seek to deprive the disadvantaged of monetary resources, the better to retain and stratify their own class privilege, and to maintain a desperate class of workers willing to labor on starvation wages.  While the American race-caste system, dating back to the 1681 statues made in reaction to Bacon’s Rebellion (How America Invented Race, 2020), was orchestrated with the suppression and control of minority labor forces in mind, the domination of the largest minority on Earth pre-dates the invasion of the continent and composes the oldest form of unpaid labor.  That a woman’s economic self-reliance is primary and critical to her well-being is true insofar as any disadvantaged person’s economic fortunes is thusly important to their fate within the capitalist system; that is to say, women’s rights are human rights and human rights are labor rights.

Prior to and during the strict control of women’s capital via legal statute, women frequently were capital, a reflection of both their reproductive capacity and of the unpaid labor they were expected to perform.  From approximately 1600 onwards, both colonialist and Indigenous women (and children) functioned as chattel and “valuable cultural commodities to be taken hostage and exchanged” for inanimate objects and other capital (Brooks, 1996).  In the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion, women were key to controlling the labor force through racial categorization; miscegenation laws combined with “according to the condition of the mother” clauses (Hening, 1823) ensured that neither women of color nor their descendents would have access to either freedom or capital of their own.  As systems of power and control began to emerge, those women whose labor was not controlled by systems of servitude and racial disenfranchisement were constrained by the laws of men which erased their separate legal identities after marriage and stripped from them most claims to capital and property, a system known as coveture.  The twin American disenfranchisements, on the basis of sex and on the basis of race, had devastating consequences for women’s well-being.  For instance, renowned poet Phillis Wheatley, the founder of multiple American literary traditions, died at 31 years of age in wretched poverty as she struggled alone to support an infant son by working as a scullery maid, on account of both her race and her sex (Wikipedia, 2021; Phillis Wheatley clip…, 2014).  Even Rachel Wells, a White woman who lent the hefty sum of £300 from her own resources to fund the Revolutionary War and therefore should have been a valued patriot, could not get her bond returned on account of her sex and was reduced to sleeping on straw in her old age, begging piteously in misspelled letters to Congress for “a little [interest]” from her ‘borrowed’ funds (Living Through War & Revolution, 1786).  Many younger women took advantage of the war to leave their gender behind and cross-dressed as soldiers, the better to pursue their own wellbeing (Deborah Sampson Cross-Dresses…, 2019).  That it was better to be a man at war than a woman at any occupation casts a stark light upon women’s fortunes during this era.

However, in the wake of the Revolutionary War, “the mothers of the republic were tasked with instilling in their sons the qualities of virtue, piety, and patriotism necessary to the young country’s future,” for which education was essential (Ware, 2015).  While, as Ware observes (2015), access to segregated education was “a long way” from equality, “it was an opening wedge.”  Indeed, the mothers of suffrage, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, were both educated women, a condition predicated by relative affluence which afforded them the liberty to pursue their life’s work.  Anthony, a teacher who never married, astutely remarked on the grim dichotomy facing her sex: “I do not want to give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. If a girl marries poverty, she becomes a drudge. If she marries wealth, she becomes a doll, and I want none of either.”  (One Woman, One Vote, 1995)  Her determination to retain her economic independence was no doubt a significant factor behind her ability to remain a staunchly active figure in the Women’s Movement until her death: better able to protect her own economic health, dispossessed by neither a feckless husband nor his descendants, with the right to access and manage her own economic resources, she was not reduced to working as a drudge or to homelessness in her twilight years for lack of a man to “cover” her.

Crossroads of Darkover: Rosemary & India Edghill on Story Inspiration

This all-new Darkover anthology features tales of decisions, turning

points, love lost and found, all in the beloved world of the Bloody Sun. Stories by Jenna Rhodes, Pat MacEwen, Gabrielle Harbowy, Evey Brett, Rosemary and India Edghill, Diana L. Paxson, and more!


Order yours today at: iBook, Kindle, Kobo, Nook. 

Table of Contents is here.

While we (Rosemary and India Edghill) have collaborated before – which is always wonderful, because we have different strengths as writers – this is our first Darkover collaboration.  So in addition to working with each other, we’re also working within a third author’s universe.  Being able to “play” in MZB’s power Darkover universe and to co-author with each other is incredibly energizing.

            Our story in CROSSROADS OF DARKOVER is “A Cobbler to His Last,” and was inspired not only by the Darkovan Dry Towns, but by the research India’s done on women’s life in the Middle East, as well as by what we now know about how  the people that anthropologists like Margaret Mead actually felt about being interviewed.  One of Mead’s original subjects said later that she and her purposely mislead Mead and invented answers to what they felt were intrusive questions.  In comparison to Mead’s monumental but controversial works, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea lived within the women’s world her husband (a fellow anthropologist) could not enter, and her works are regarded as groundbreaking and definitive in the field of women’s studies in the Middle East.

            India has a long-standing interest in the Dry Towns, and Rosemary agreed that seeing scenic Darkover through the eyes of a woman who arrives with no real information about Darkover except that the Darkovan women live horrifically restricted lives.  So what would really be going on when our protagonist, Grace, tried to study Darkovan women?  What will Grace really find?  And what would the Darkovan women think when they interacted with her?

            Tossing a woman from a very egalitarian society into newly-opened Darkover was a fascinating.  Grace interacts with comynara, Renunciates, farmers’ wives, and chained Dry Town women, and struggles to truly understand what she learns – which turns out to be harder to do than she’d thought it would be. Remaining totally object turns out to be almost impossible.  In the end, she learns more, perhaps, than she truly wanted to about relationships between men and women.

            Unfortunately, since “Cobbler to His Last” is a short story, not a novel, we weren’t able to include everything we’d wanted to add to the mix.  However, we had a lot of fun playing what, say, the small-holders’ wives opinions of the studious off-worlder in their midst.  Or India’s favorite scene-that-doesn’t-exist in the confines of the story:  Lord Akram’s conversation with his mother when she tells him he’s going to have to take on yet another wife!

Rosemary Edghill describes herself as the keeper of the Eddystone Light, corny as Kansas in August, normal as blueberry pie, and only a paper moon. She says she was found floating down the Amazon in a hatbox, and, because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, she became a creature of the night (black, terrible). She began her professional career working as a time-traveling vampire killer and has never looked back. She's also a New York Times Bestselling Writer. 

About herself, India Edghill writes, Having written four books about Biblical women (Delilah, Queenmaker, Wisdom's 

Daughter, and Game of Queens), I'm now writing an epic-length romantic historical novel set in Victorian India.  And India (that's me, not the country) is also going Indie!  My short stories will be available in a collection:  The Courtesan Who Loved Cats and Other Stories, and my mystery series set in 1984 New York City, starring Cornelia Upshaw, a professional temporary secretary, will be continued as well.  The first book in the series, File M For Murder, should be reissued in 2017. 

GUEST BLOG: Catherine Lundoff on Organizations Building Diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science fiction and fantasy as a genre gives us the opportunity as readers and writers to explore new worlds, new futures and new concepts. As a reflection of the genre, science fiction fandom often prides itself on being very welcoming and inclusive. That said, sometimes both genre and fandom need some help achieving those goals. The organizations mentioned in this post are part of that help: sponsoring awards, increasing visibility of unrepresented writers and their books and providing support (emotional and/or financial).

I recently joined the Mother Board for Broad Universe . Broad Universe is a volunteer-run organization that promotes women writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror through podcasts, convention readings, book tables, panels, a listserv and various forms of social media. We run an ad in Locus every year celebrating our award winners (it gets bigger each time!) and do other forms of outreach and promotion. "Women" are defined as anyone identifying and presenting as female, as I found out when I asked.  I'm really enjoying being on the board and I'm hoping to see the organization grow and expand during my tenure.

One of the things I'm working on as part of my board duties is building bridges with other organizations in the genre. We're hoping to start doing some joint readings and events such as panels at different cons in the near future so that more readers and fans find out about us and the issues that we're working on.