Gender inequality has been and continues to remain one of the most important issues affecting the world, where half of its population continues to be widely discriminated based on biological sex. The most recent Global Gender Gap Report clearly shows that total equality between men and women is still an ideal for which even the most equalitarian countries in the world, Iceland, Norway and Finland, continue to strive. The difference between the ways in which men and women are perceived by the society has been labeled as “male privilege” by one author, who names a list of rights and benefits that men enjoy, including that of being less involved in house chores and childrearing, being treated fairly at work, being freer to express themselves sexually, among other.
Codes of law provide the earliest type of evidence regarding the subjugation of females in the society. The reason for the establishment of a patriarchal system was that males had more power due to their power to provide food, and to defend the nation, in the army. Their role as providers transformed them into property owners, and then, into politicians and governing bodies. Women were reduced to the role of sexual providers, and child bearers, and their sexual activities were restrained, in order to protect the family blood line. For example, one of the laws establishes that, “if the wife of a seignior has been caught while lying with another man, they shall bind them and throw them into water”. Adultery was serious in ancient societies where women had to guard their honor in order to preserve masculine dignity.
In pre-industrialized societies, particularly in the low classes, men and women worked together in order to survive, and thus, a situation of equality often existed between them. For example, in the memoirs of Glikl bas Judah Leib, it became obvious that Jewish women were free to work outside the house and to conduct businesses. However, during these times, religion was often used to denigrate women, to subjugate them and tie them to the domestic space, while feminine ‘nature’ was meant to ‘explain’ feminine weakness and inferiority. These sources supported the patriarchal base of the society, and of the man as fully entitled to his own children.
Women were considered incapable of taking care of themselves, partially based on religious beliefs regarding women’s weakness in front of sin. Women were perceived as temptresses, who were more likely to fall in the trap of low pleasures, because of their weaker nature. Consequently, the view that natural law demanded that women obey men, because of men’s greater physical strength also represented the basis of the labor division, and of the idea that women were specifically designed to please men. These ideas cemented the division of gender roles, which could still be perceived two centuries later, in Flora Annie Steel’s guide to housekeeping in India. In this account, the author argues for example, that educated women should learn the language of the natives, and they should learn to keep accounts, only in order to be able to administer the household properly. This corresponds to Jean Jacques’s Rousseau’s misogynistic ideas, according to which, a brilliant wife was a curse, because her knowledge made her disdain her household duties, but the woman should not be illiterate either.
These views were nevertheless opposed by the rising feminism of the society, where more and more women sought education and financial freedom. For example, Wollstonecraft’s argued that women’s lower moral qualities, and their weakness of spirit and mind, came from the fact that they were completely ignorant, as education was offered to boys only.. Because the lack of education often stopped women of the higher classes from gaining financial freedom, this became a barrier which needed to be broken.
Breaking barriers in the society has called for either extraordinary circumstance where the members of the societies were force to admit an exception, or sudden empowerment resulting from education or financial prosperity. In Burns’s article, the emergence of the male nurse in the South African tradition can be traced to the conditions of war. Nursing has been associated with female bodies because women are perceived as nurturers and care-providers by nature. Furthermore, while a woman adopting a historically masculine profession has been seen as a success, a man adopting a historically feminine profession has been seen as a loss of prestige.
The history of gender inequality can inform the decisions of public makers in the present and in the future, by showing that the socialization of women as homemakers and mothers led to the emergence of gendered institutions, such as the healthcare system, and to the subjugation of women by lack of education. Even today, there are still many other countries in the world where this right is denied to them. In addition, even in Western countries, women are largely discriminated in many fields, such as politics, where they are underrepresented. In order to make sure that women’s rights are fully respected, they must be empowered in the public space, and they must have an active role in the decision-making process.
Bibliography
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Bas Judah Leib, Glickl. “Trading Activities in Memoirs”, in Lives and Voices, ed. Lisa di Caprio & Merry Wiesner, 200-2002. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2001.
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“Global Gender Gap Report”.World Economic Forum, 2015, accessed 10 March, 2016, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/rankings/
Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. n.d
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