Goldfields: Women and Children
by jadon
Introduction
Women on the goldfields were changing a lot.In 1854 there were many women on the goldfields. There were 4023 women there! Including men there was a total population of 12660.
5% of the women there were single and the other percentage of women there were all married.
Education
Life was hard for children because parents constantly moved around to richer goldfields.
This meant that the children had to move to new schools, this was hard because goldfields kept growing so it took longer for schools to be built.While the parents mined for gold the children instead of learning they had to do chores like doing the shopping and looking after family.Some parents sent their child/children to schools on the goldfields which were in tents.Some of the tents could hold up to one hundred students.You can infer that the standard education at those schools wasn't that high.Children moved from one goldfield to another if there wasn't a teacher there they had to wait until one turned up to the tent.As a bench children were to sit on long piece of thick wood.Their parents had to pay a fee so that their child/children could go to school.
Roles and Responsibilities of women in the goldfields
From the beginning there were some women who went to the goldfields with their husbands, brothers or friends. Women shared all of the discomforts of life on the goldfields. They worked as hard as men they had to: do the washing, do the cooking,chopping wood and also helping the men with their gold digging.
Other women travelled to the goldfields later when their husbands had struck enough gold to build more comfortable huts and send for their children. As the number of women on the goldfields became much bigger, life became more settled. There were other women on the goldfields. Laundresses took in the washing that the men were not bothered to do.