Professor Carol Birkin

Gender rules were that women were in charge of the dairy, the garden, the household, and turning raw materials into usable manufactured goods.

So now they set up spinning wheels and they spin cloth, and they call themselves the Daughters of Liberty.

It's a political identity.

People often ask me what were the most radical things in the American Revolution.

And I say, well, one of them was the politicization of women.

It happened virtually overnight.

Gender rules were that women were in charge of the dairy, the garden, the household, and turning raw materials into usable manufactured goods.

So now they set up spinning wheels and they spin cloth, and they call themselves the Daughters of Liberty.

It's a political identity.

People often ask me what were the most radical things in the American Revolution.

And I say, well, one of them was the politicization of women.

It happened virtually overnight.