Women in the Old West – Some Reality Checks

Life in the old west was hard. Real hard. For everyone, not just the women. It was so hard, that we have myths about it. So difficult to survive, that it became the stuff of legends. Now, I have nothing against legends, but sometimes, sometimes some reality checks are in order.

Reality check 1 – Woman in the old west stayed at home.

I honestly don’t know where we got this one from. Maybe it was the fact that the old homesteads were often so many miles away from town that some women and men had no choice. At any rate, it’s largely untrue. Many women in the old west had no choice but to work outside the home. They worked at a variety of jobs, from sewing buttons on shirts, to school teaching, to being “retail clerks” in stores. They worked, and they got paid. Cash was often needed to pay the taxes, and with the men working in the fields, the cash part, often was the responsibility of the woman. The Pinkerton Detective Agency hired women, and while they did have a “Code of Conduct”, women did get to be Detectives.

Reality check 2 – Women received less of an education then men.

It was often the other way around. with the men and boys off herding cattle or in the fields, it was the woman and girls that were most often found in the school room.

Many if not most, of the teachers in the infamous one room schoolhouses were women. “Teaching Certificates”, could often be gotton around the age of 15 or 16, and a good number of women left their homes and families at this young age to work in schoolhouses in, “The territories”. This was not an easy job and the women who did it often lived with members of the school boards, or anyone else who could put them up.

Reality check 3 – Women did not or could not own land

It was only in Massachusetts and Coneticut that women were not allowed to own land separate from their husbands. Many of the homesteads were owned and defended by women. Sometimes single women. Not sure you believe that one? Pick up a copy of , “Letters from a Women Homesteader” by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. She’ll tell you all about it.

Reality Check 4 – Women dIdn’t participate in politics.

Women May not have had the right to vote in all states and territories, but they were voting in Washington in 1883. The 19th amendment might not have been passed until 1920, but women in the old west were active in politics before that. they voted where and when they could, wrote and spoke on on issues from slavery to prohibition, and they were often very effective. they got laws passed and enforced, including some which weren’t’ popular with their husbands. Such as the closing of brothels.

The Old West is still a place of myths and legends, and women will always be a part of that, and they deserve to be. Women had an active and vital role in the Old West, and hopefully those reality checks will lead to a better understanding of it.