This paper analyzes female slave life in the context of female slave
interaction and familial roles. It looks at the bonded woman's work, her control of
particular resources, her contribution to slave households, and her ability to
cooperate with other women on a daily basis. It suggests that in relation to the
slave family, too much emphasis has been placed on what men could not do rather
than on what women could do and did. It finds that the bonded female made
significant "economic" contributions to the slave family, that the slave's world was
sex stratified so that the female slave world existed quite independently of the male
slave world, and that slave families were matrifocal.
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