A Woman’s Worth: Female Labor Over the Centuries
I woke up with a feeling of panic. It was the same nightmare I’d been having for months: losing my job and moving back into my mom’s house with my abusive stepdad. At 23, I was newly married, the only way I figured I could move out of my childhood home and survive financially. My job was part-time, and my hourly pay was only 70% of my husband’s.
The ability to provide for oneself is a measure of security, of the power one has over one’s own life. However, in America women only earn 84 cents for every dollar men make. Women are twice as likely to be victims of sexual violence than men, and almost twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence. The gendered division of labor and the resulting continued diminishment of women’s bodies, economic status, and power can be traced back to the adoption of the plow. (In contrast, prehistoric women had exceptional physical strength.)
My third-great-grandmother, Marilla Washburn, traveled the Oregon Trail with her family circa 1851. I wrote about her experiences in The River People (Unsolicited Press), after reading family stories and other historical documents collected by my great-aunt.
Marilla didn’t want to leave her home and school in Chicago, but the Oregon Donation Land Act gave 320 acres of land to single men, and doubled that for married men. (Women would not gain the right to own land in all U.S. states until 1900.) Drawn by the promise of land, Marilla’s father took his wife and children on the perilous 2,170-mile journey to the Pacific Northwest.
Marilla’s closest brother drowned crossing the Snake River. Another sibling died and was buried in the trail—wagons ran over the grave to pack down the dirt so animals wouldn’t dig up the body. The rest of the family barely survived the cholera that swept through the wagon train and killed several of their fellow travelers within hours. Marilla’s mother gave birth on the trail, too, a new brother coming into the world at Chimney Rock.
After abandoning their wagons in The Dalles, the family traveled by boat down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver. It was November, and the bone-chilling rain echoed their grief. When interviewed later in life, Marilla said: My most vivid recollection of that first winter… is of the weeping skies and of Mother and me also weeping. I was homesick for my schoolmates…, and I thought I would die.
Pioneer families weren’t the only ones grieving. The federal government was making a concerted effort to remove Indigenous families from their ancestral lands, lands accessed by rivers full of fish that watered healthy farming soil and nourished forests full of timber. By 1854 my ancestors had settled in Freeport on the Cowlitz River. It was near present-day Longview, Washington, on land belonging to the Cowlitz people.
In 1855, Marilla married a neighbor, 28-year-old Irish immigrant John Black. She was 15. That same year, the so-called “Indian Wars” began as territorial governor Isaac Stevens used intimidation and force to push Indigenous tribes off their land. In 1856 Marilla gave birth to her first child in a stockade. She would have ten children in 20 years, and those years were filled with manual labor. In her own words:
I was married at 15, and was not only a good cook and housekeeper, but I knew how to take care of babies, from having cared for my brothers and sisters. I had ten babies of my own, and never had help. I could paddle my canoe on the river and handle the oars in a rowboat as well as an Indian. When my husband was away I could rustle the meat on which we lived, for I could handle a revolver or a rifle as well as most men. I have shot bears, deer and all sorts of smaller game. I used to take the revolver out and shoot the heads off grouse and pheasants. In fact, I became so expert with a revolver that at 50 to 100 feet I could beat most men.
During the early days, I lived in tents, in log pens and in log cabins. The modern mother would think twice before letting her 15-year-old daughter move out on a tract of timber miles away from any other settler, where she would have to kill the game for meat, cook over a fireplace, and take care of the children, make soap and make clothes for the children. In those days we could not run into some handy store to get supplies.
Marilla was not unique among pioneer women—the historical record is brimming with similar stories. Female labor was not just an expression of familial love and matriarchal pride. It was an expectation, an economic arrangement. In Oregon Territory during this time, married men could claim more land. While they logged and farmed, their wives raised children—more laborers—and kept the family clothed and fed.
170 years later, women still do the majority of housework and caregiving labor, even when they also work outside of the home. Female labor is simultaneously exploited and diminished, used to enrich the wealth of those in power.
As a female in various workplaces over the last 30 years, I’ve been underpaid, physically assaulted, sexually harassed, and ignored for promotion. I’ve been asked to do things outside of my job description, like bring baked goods to meetings (paid for out of my own meager paycheck) and deliver mysterious packages that I later realized probably contained drugs. During my twenties, I was so focused on working to stay out of poverty that it took me ten years to earn all the college credits I needed for my two-year associate’s degree. Even if I’d wanted kids, they were entirely unaffordable.
There was a divorce and a recession, followed by a drastic reduction in my working hours. I took out student loans to finish my bachelor’s degree, then a master’s—both low-residency programs, because I had to work. It took falling in love and moving to a larger city to find a work opportunity that would eventually pay me what I was worth.
Sometimes, though, I still lie awake at night, knowing that I’m only one corporate layoff away from starting over in a new industry, or that in a few more years I’ll be viewed as an old woman in a work culture that still values women’s appearances over their contributions. I consider wearing makeup, changing my hair. But then I remember Marilla, who took up new skills and celebrated the value of her own hard work—appearances had nothing to do with it. If she could thrive, so can I, in a world where so much and so little has changed.
Liz Kellebrew wrote her debut poetry book, Water Signs (Unsolicited Press), while riding the ferry between Seattle and Bainbridge Island. Her latest book, The River People, weaves together fiction, historical documents, memoir, and poetry to tell the story of her ancestors' journeys to what is now Washington State. Liz received The Miracle Monocle Award for Innovative Writing, and she was a finalist for The Calvino Prize. Her work has appeared in public art installations and literary journals such as About Place, Fourth Genre, and Catamaran. She is a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, and more often than not, she has lived by a river.
“A sensitively crafted history of pioneers and immigrants for American history enthusiasts.” – Kirkus Reviews
The River People by Liz Kellebrew is a haunting and lyrical exploration of 19th-century westward expansion into the Pacific Northwest. Through the intertwined journeys of Marilla, John, and Walter—each navigating rivers that serve as both roads and unforgiving forces—the book weaves together fiction, historical documents, memoir, and poetry. As these characters face hardships and triumphs, their choices and loves reverberate through generations. Kellebrew delves into the myths and realities of migration, revealing the harsh lessons the West has to offer. This powerful, evocative story of love, loss, and survival exposes the relentless nature of the land where nature shows no mercy.
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