APAH Zinn Assignment
Chapter 6
Name: __________________________________
Directions: Read Chapter 6, The Intimately Oppressed, of Howard Zinn, and answer the following
questions.
1. For what reasons does Zinn state that it is possible to forget on half of the population in the US?
2. What is a sign of women’s submerged status?
3. According to Zinn why is the oppression of women so “hard to uproot”?
4. Why were women in matrilineal societies more equal than in European societies? What
examples does Zinn cite?
5. What was the Middle Passage like for female slaves?
6. In what ways were women treated as their husband’s property? How was this different for slave
women?
7. What did the Puritan Reverend John Cotton urge for wives?
8. What special disabilities did women rebels face?
9. Why was Anne Hutchinson put on trial? What was the result of her religious trial?
10. What happened to Mary Dyer? Why?
11. How did women participate in the American Revolution?
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12. When women are discussed in history books, authors tend to focus on a select few? Which
group of women are sometimes mentioned in history books? Why do you suppose this is?
13. What did Abigail Adams urge her husband to do?
14. Where were women given the right to vote after the American Revolution? What happened to
this right?
15. Who was Mary Wollstonecraft counter arguing in her book A Vindication of the Rights of
Women? What was her main point in her counter argument?
16. What was the “women’s place”? Why did this term arise in the early to mid 19th century?
17. What did heavy female clothes represent?
18. According to an 1808 sermon what were some wifely duties?
19. What were the “Cult of Domesticity” and the “Cult of True Womanhood”?
20. Where were early labor strikes led by women held?
21. What were working conditions in factories like for women?
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22. Compare and contrast the lives of the women at Lowell to the women of high society
Philadelphia. What experiences do they share?
23. Why did middle class women monopolize the teaching profession?
24. What did Emma Willard form? Why were women so upset with the education their daughters
received?
25. Who was Lucy Stone? Why did she lose her baby’s cradle?
26. What four areas of reform did women take up?
27. Who led the way in reforming prisons and asylums?
28. Women put enormous work into what reform movement?
29. Who sat with the women who attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London?
30. How were the struggles for abolition and women’s suffrage intertwined?
31. Why did Elizabeth Cady Stanton decide to convene a Women’s Rights Convention?
32. What did the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention Declaration of Principles paraphrase?
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33. Explain the main point of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
34. In the midst of many 1830s – 1850s reform movements, what exploded?
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