What are some key ideas in Chapter Six of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn?

Chapter Six of A People's Historyis entitled "The Intimately Oppressed." Zinn's focus in this chapter is on the systemic sexism that was fundamental to American society in the antebellum period. He claims that it is possible, reading "standard histories," to overlook "half the population of the country," meaning that these histories have focused primarily on men (102). He discusses the role of women in Anglo-American society, examining the ideological origins of women's roles by...

Chapter Six of A People's History is entitled "The Intimately Oppressed." Zinn's focus in this chapter is on the systemic sexism that was fundamental to American society in the antebellum period. He claims that it is possible, reading "standard histories," to overlook "half the population of the country," meaning that these histories have focused primarily on men (102). He discusses the role of women in Anglo-American society, examining the ideological origins of women's roles by the nineteenth century. He discusses the so-called "cult of true womanhood" that emerged in the post-Revolutionary era. This ideology emphasized the piety, sexual purity, and submission expected of girls and women. He is especially interested in the emergence of feminist, or proto-feminist ideas that accompanied the rise of the abolition movement. The chapter finishes with quotes from two leading female activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose speech to the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 demanded the right to vote for women, and Sojourner Truth, whose famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, in Zinn's words, "joined the indignation of her race to the indignation of her sex" (122). The nineteenth century, though dominated by the "cult of true womanhood," also witnessed women's participation in a variety of reform movements. So it became a sort of touchstone for the movement for women's equality.