During the 1800s women were not seen as equals to men. The role that women played was child bearer and mother to her children. During that time, women could not vote, own property, or run for office. Women were not equal with their husbands; they were owned by them. Their husbands were more like fathers to them instead of partners. Also their roles in the work environment were different. Men did heavy field labor, woodwork and repair, and worked with large edge tools: women typically did food and clothing preparation, and food preservation. Despite the realization that a farm could not survive without the skilled labor of both men and women the law still gave women few formal rights equivalent to those given to men.
One historian attempts to justify the inequality of women by saying, "natural distinctions in society is the rock on which American Republicanism is built-built on any other foundation, it never has stood, and never can stand. By virtue of those distinctions that Nature alone has made, women, children, and negroes are assigned to such places only as best suit their physical particularities at natural capacities; nor could a female or a baby become the head of government, as females and babies sometimes do in those tottering governments founded on artificial, instead of natural distinctions in society." In this statement S.A. Cartwright is saying that the inequality between men and women is inescapable because of natural, physical differences. Other historians second this notion of the natural subordination of women by making a biblical reference to Eve's betrayal of Adam.
Often times, the inequality that women faced spilled over into their marriages. However, not all historians believed that marriage at that time was fair to women. Geo. Fitzhugh argues that such marriage deprives the wife of liberty, which is unalienable. Mr. Andrews, an abolition philosopher, says that many years ago there were ten runaway wives to one runaway Negro slave.
One historian goes so far as to blame women for their state of inequality. This historian argues that women are to blame because they say nothing to oppose their God-given right of equality. Not only do they not oppose it, they teach it to their children. They teach their daughters that their goal in life is to marry and they teach their sons to be strong men who must one day be the master of his family. Do they really expect there to be an end to the cycle when they contribute to it?
In today's society we do still seem to gender stereotype certain roles and activities, but I would maintain that the above arguments are not modern. In today's society men and women are more equal in marriage and in most families both the man and the women have jobs and split parental responsibility. And in a country were the phrase "independent woman" has become a staple I doubt you would find many woman willing to tolerate their supposed inequality due to "natural distinctions." I also believe you would be hard-pressed to find a man still punishing today's women for the "original sin."