Answer:
There were significant changes in the course of this period. Employment opportunities for women expanded significantly during the course of the 19th century for instance. In the mid 19th century, teaching was the main occupation open to educated women, and of course there was a great variety in the type of schools women taught in, a school in an eastern city for instance would be very different to a rural school in the west, where conditions could be very primitive. During the Civil War, a great many women took up nursing, either voluntarily or professionally, and the status of nursing as an occupation improved significantly. Women also took over clerical jobs that had been vacated by men going to war, and after the war some women were kept on. The invention of the typewriter in 1869 also led to more women being employed in offices, as women were found to make better typists than men. By 1900, three quarters of the secretaries and stenographers in the USA were women. Likewise when the telephone was invented it was found that women had pleasanter telephone manners than men, so telephonist became a mainly female job. Educational opportunities for women expanded significantly in this period, with colleges for women opening for the first time. If you want to know what life was like at a women’s college you could not do better than read Jean Webster’s delightful book ‘Daddy Long-Legs’, by the time you’ve finished it you feel you’ve been to college with Judy. Some women were going into the medical and legal professions, Elizabeth Blackwell paved the way for women doctors by becoming the first woman to obtain a medical degree in The USA. Most women continued to live at home while they were single,unless they went as teachers somewhere far away, in which case they might board with a respectable family, living on your own was not considered respectable if you were female and single. and of course some middle class and most upper class women did not go out to work at all, they amused themselves with the social round, parties, dances (dancing was a very important social skill) and games such as golf, tennis, archery and croquet. If a woman did not marry, she often stayed at home to look after her parents in their old age, or some unmarried women might become a housekeeper for an unmarried brother. Sometimes two single women might decide to share a home, for friendship or possibly love (though of course lesbianism was an unmentionable subject at this time, so it is impossible to say how many such relationships were based on romantic love) Most middle class women expected to give up work when they married, and devote themselves to their homes and families, women who were anxious to pursue careers most often chose to remain single. A middle or upper class married woman would be likely to have domestic help, even a household on a moderate middle class income would be likely to employ a maid, a wealthy household might have several servants. Women would enjoy shopping in the luxurious new department stores that were opened from 1862, where they could walk around looking at the goods and there was no pressure to buy. Many women became politically active during this period - before the Civil War, a lot of women were involved in the Abolitionist movement, and after the war, women’s suffrage became a popular cause, though not as popular as the temperance movement, which was huge. Many more women supported Temperance than women’s suffrage, though eventually the temperance supporters threw their support behind the Suffrage movement, because they believed it was the best way to get Prohibition passed (in fact Prohibition became law before all American women got the vote). Women’s clubs became popular in this era, groups of women would get together to discuss history, literature, or current affairs, in rural areas women might travel miles to get to the nearest club. Bicycling became a craze in the late 19th century, the head of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Frances Williard, published a book called How I Learned to Ride a Bycycle in 1895, and cycling became immensely popular with women. Susan B. Anthony enthused that bicycling ““did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world