Gender Inequalities

Mackenzie Hansen

Dr. Faunce

History 105

March 5, 2018

Throughout history, gender inequalities have made a huge turn around. In our modern day society we accept that the gender of one human being does not limit ones capabilities, nor is one gender superior to the other. History started at having very little equality towards women, while men are greater. The historical factors throughout history explain the factors that led us to the inequalities we have today. It is crucial to note that inequalities included factors like race, class and gender playing a huge role in changing the inequalities today.

Most women in ancient cultures married, many of these cultures has specific rules regarding marriage. Once married the husband and wife were expected to follow certain rules and regulations about martial fidelity.(reilly) These rules were very different for women than for men. Some of our earliest records that exist in human nature are law codes, designed by rulers to shape society. One of the most comprehensive law code is from Mesopotamia, Hammurabi’s code.(reilly) This was a written code dealing with legal procedure and penalties. It covered all types of situations, contains no laws having to do with religion. The basis of criminal law is that of equal retaliation, comparable to the Semitic law of  “an eye for an eye”.(faunce feb 23). Some of these laws included things like “ If a man’s wife be caught lying with another, they shall be strangled and cast into the water.” “If a man’s wife has the finger pointed at her on account of another, but has not been caught lying with him, for her husband’s sake she shall plunge into the sacred river.” “If a man’s wide, for a sake of another, has causes her husband to be killed, that women shall be impaled.”  The code was particularly humane for its time. ( faucne feb 23). The Mesopotamian society was patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system in which the male acts as the primary authority figure central to social organization, fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It entails female subordination. Many patriarchal societies are also patrilineal. (faunce) The social conditions for Mesopotamian women from the law codes, were harsh, this society meant patrilineal decent, property laws guaranteeing the rights of sons, male dominance in the property and sexual relations. The Babylonian families valued the birth of sons far more than birth of daughters. Sons carried the family name and could give much greater advantages for the family. (Gerda)

A religious movement derived from China called, Neo Confucianism. This is when men thought women should not be educated, they thought education makes a women immortal. “A women’s greatest duty is to produce a son, a husband can marry twice, but his wife must never remarry, we should not be too familiar with the lower orders or with women, the women with no talent is the one who has merit, women are to be led and follow others, women’s nature is passive. “(faunce26) This movement of Neo Confucianism gave women no advantage but to produce a son but only for that son to be raised to give his mother orders.

Throughout cultures all around the world women are lesser, in the sixteenth century many male authors would write and publish multiple articles or studies that “women were the world’s most imperfect creatures: the scum of nature, the cause of misfortune, an evil necessity, a devils bait, the enemy of angels” (kate). Throughout history we see that there are critical factors leading to the change in gender inequalities. Starting with women and the enlightenment.

The Enlightenment made the perceptions of women start to change, there were new outlooks on tolerance and equality. (faunce) A Enlightenment scholar Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote a lot about men and women, he writes a piece called “Emile” He explains that women should be educated to a degree for men, (jean). Feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft writes in 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women that women have rights to an education, women need to be educated to raise their children to the best of their capabilities. It celebrates the rationality of women, and explains that women need to be intelligent in their own right. (Mary) Women started to really fight for their right to an education and began demanding rights leading to a women’s rights movement later on in the late 1800s.