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Women's role in ancient societies
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Although some women had power, most women were in patriarchy because society was run by men who had more power and were educated in an agricultural civilization. In Mesopotamia, men ruled over all women. Patriarchy may differ in different class as most women who were educated and literate could be free from their household. Women who worked under administration were likely to have more power over ones that work under agriculture or housings. Yet, women who had power were still having to go back home to see their husband and family. Women who were living with their family, or are single are more likely to be under patriarchy. Under patriarchy all women were looked upon as objects. They were properties you can buy, sell, or exchange. Women’s
Patriarchies ruled the world. It’s an almost in-arguable fact. That cannot be clearer than the example of Tang and Song China. Their views on women and why they were below were influenced by two main factors, religion, and social influences. The more powerful of the two is religion. Religion unites people, it controls their daily lives, it changes what people do. It also sets laws and boundaries. Therefore, leading to divisions in gender in some cases like that of Confucianism. There were also the influences of society the ‘status quo’ as so to say. This is what other people think about a way to do something one way or another so as to fit in. It also had a daily impact on the lives of people living in Song and Tang China. They were particularly influenced by views of marriage and beauty, for example, it was deemed not beautiful for a woman to have large feet in Song China. These factors of religion and societal influences continue to affect
Throughout the history of our society, women have gained a certain respect and certain rights over time. Such simple aspects of life such as getting a job, voting, and even choosing who they would like to marry are things that women have fought for, for many years. At one point, these were all things that women in America and parts of Europe had no right to. Men as a whole had suppressed women and taken control of the society. Despite mass oppression in history, women have risen in society and now posses these natural rights.
This rule over women started to trend in early civilizations. In the early civilizations like Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Chinese and Islamic cultures, the societies are said to be patriarchal and women would report to men. In the Babylonian empire, the ruler Hammurabi created something no civilization had ever seen before: a law code citizens were to abide to. This law code was one of the most famous ancient law codes because of the harshness and the women's rights. In the Hammurabi code the social order was really important and exceeded importance of individual right. Hammurabi also emphasized the sacrifice of women’s sexuality just to assure legitimacy. Women were seen as property of men and that obviously isn’t
Roman, Greek, Persian, and Han women all had certain limits on what they could or could not do in each society. In all societies dating back from 600 B.C.E to 600 C.E. women were considered inferior to men but that doesn’t mean women did not have rights and roles they played in the community. Women’s roles in society throughout each civilization was different ranging from, their purpose being only to bear children to being commanders in war.
It is clear that throughout the Western tradition men and women occupied different roles in different civilizations. Separate rights and privileges were awarded to either sex based upon the places that their cultures designated for them. Though every culture had those that would (often justifiably) upset the order of things by challenging conventional gender roles, ultimately, one was more likely to be confined by the limitations of what society said one could do. Religion in particular tended to codify the separate treatment of men and women; it could not be easily defied, because of the divine power behind it. Although no two religions were quite the same, a few generalizations can be made; monotheistic cultures allowed less fluidity between masculine and feminine gender roles and gave males a more powerful place in their societies, where polytheistic gender roles permitted greater flexibility and were more likely to sanction female authority figures.
Subordination of women to men is prevalent in large parts of the world. We come across experiences where women are not only treated like less than but are also subject to discriminations, humiliations, exploitations, oppressions, control and violence. Patriarchy literally means rule of the father in a male-dominated family. It is a social and ideological construct which considers men superior to women. Patriarchy is based on a system of power relations which are unequal where men control women’s production, reproduction and sexuality. It imposes masculinity and femininity character stereotypes in society which strengthen the bas power relations between men and women. Patriarchy within a particular class also differs in terms of religious and regional variations. This control has developed historically and is institutionalized and legitimized by several ideologies, social practices, and institutions including, family, religion, education, media, society and more.
Henrik Ibsen once said, “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.”(Notable Quotes) Ibsen’s statement exemplifies what life was like for women during ancient times. In many of the organized ancient civilizations, it was very common to find a primarily patriarchal civilization in government as well as in society. The causing factors can be attributed to different reasons, the main being the Neolithic Revolution and the new found dependence on manpower it caused. As a result of this, a woman found herself to be placed into an entirely different view in the eye of society. In comparison to the early Paleolithic matriarchal societies, the kinds of changes that came about for women due to the introduction of agriculture are shocking. Since the beginnings of the Neolithic era, the role and rights of women in many ancient civilizations began to become limited and discriminatory as a result of their gender.
The world is constantly changing and evolving. In every society across the world, men and women have specific roles that they each carry out. During ancient times, in most western cultures, women were inferior to men. Women’s status seemed to change in a pattern that repeated it self from one time period to another. Gradually, the status of women did change from political standpoints of the societies.
Throughout history, women have been mistreated as the weaker gender. It has been evident throughout the epic of Sunjata, the history of Greek society as well as Indian society. It is evident today with the social classes we have formed that there are predominant gender roles in our society; history as we know tends to repeat itself.
Throughout history we see many factors that lead to the inequality of woman and to hierarchal governments dominated by men. Because there were many patriarchal society’s in history; legal inequalities, customs and religions were passed down through historical periods that imposed upon women based on the fact that women are biologically weaker than men physically and mentally. During the 1800s the theory that the weaker sex should be subordinate politically and socially to the stronger sex was quite common. This lead many to question whether patriarchy is inevitable biologically due to the fact that it favors men physically, or whether it is unnatural because it forms discriminations and inequalities based on power relations between the males and females John steward Mills essay the subordination of women helps us to understand the controversial perspective of patriarchy and the social theories based on societal opinions in the 1860s.
When a person says “Patriarchy” we tend to think of male dominance. This idea that men rule the word and women are just there to stand by them and do what they say. Before there were women's rights, women were seen as property to their husbands and they had total dependency on them. This was called coverture and it was the law in the 1900’s, “The status of a married woman considered as under the protection and authority of her husband”(dictionary). However in 21st century America things have come a long way for women than how they used to be. Women can vote, own property, write wills, make a higher income than men, all things that they could not do in the 19th century. If that dates too far back, it is still safe to say that things have come a long way in as little as 50 years. In Bell Hooks essay, Understanding Patriarchy, many of her ideas are outdated and refer back to a time when men had more control over women. As we move toward a future with more equal rights for everyone, women are starting to get the upper hand on men in all aspects.
Throughout Western history it was known to have this Patriarchal system in which the men are the head of the family, and community, during which these spheres between the male and female were divided, each having their own set of roles: the male in the public view and the women in the private view. The men worry about what is going on outside the home like politics, money, control over property while the women take care of what happens on the inside of the home doing things like taking care of the children and doing the house work. With these roles set in place the women have had a hard time being respected because of this Patriarchy.
Some aspects of the lifestyle ancient civilizations lived almost seem appalling or intolerable when compared to the very developed and carefully shaped the world inhabited today. One of these characteristics of previous societies that prove to be rather challenging to conceive in current times consists of the lack of rights, privileges, and equity women had. Society maintained this assumption of a man’s superiority up until the women’s rights movement of the early twentieth century; yet with the two sexes essentially equal in America today, imagining a restricted life as a female proves unfathomable. Looking back at the history of human kind, men almost always subdued women and treated them as property. When focusing on the first civilizations appearing thousands of years ago, particularly in the west, the differences between men and women in most cultures remained accentuated, strict, and very structured. However, each different society allotted different regulations pertaining to women for their citizens to abide by. One of these ancient cultures consisted of Babylon. With the evidence provided by Hammurabi’s Law Code, it remains clear that ancient Babylonian women exercised little rights and privileges, forced to mainly maintain the structural unit of family and the home.
It is difficult to fully understand the role of women in ancient Egyptian society because the understandings of the society and government are still incomplete. There are also two other major problems, those being that there is very little source material on women, and the material that has been found was biased by the ideas and minds of previous Egyptologists. The only source material that has survived from great kingdoms of Egypt is material that has been either found in tombs on the walls and sarcophaguses, or carved on major government and religious document. None of the writings on papyrus and other delicate materials survived. This material, which has survived, is the writings of the Egyptian literate male elite. In their writings the also did not show any emotions or feelings, this was not the style of the Egyptian people, writings were purely a record keeping device. Because of these limitations, “It is essential to avoid the temptation to extrapolate from the particular to the general, a process which can only too easily introduce error.”
Patriarchy is a social system in which families and societies are dominated by males as primary authority figures. Due to patriarchy, females have been disadvantaged in many aspects of life including employment, family life, crime, health, education and media. This has led sociologists to try and find out what causes gender inequality. Feminists would agree that patriarchy is the main cause of gender inequality, however, there are different strands of feminism and these different strands have different views. There are also other theorists, such as functionalists, Weberians and postmodernists who offer different views as to the causes of gender inequality.