by Dr Saheb Sahu
“To prove women’s inferiority, antifeminists began to draw not only, as before, on religion, philosophy and theology, but also on science, biology, experimental psychology and so forth.”
-Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
Some Facts and Figures
- Gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty: it is estimated that 60 percent of chronically hungry are women and girls.
- Almost 70 percent of women in South Asia work in agriculture.
- Less than 20 percent of the world’s landholders are women.
- Women make up more than two-thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate people.
- Men’s average wages are higher (on average 24%) than women in both rural and urban areas.
- A large gender gap remains in women’s access to decision-making and leadership all over the world. ( unwomen.org)
Ancient History
Sumer and Egypt
Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the modern-day Iraq. It is considered to be the first civilization in the world along with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley. Women in ancient Sumer (3000 BCE), could buy, own, sell and inherit property. They could engage in commerce and testify in courts as witnesses. Female deities, such as Inanna were widely worshipped, but majority of deities were male.
In ancient Egypt, women enjoyed the same rights under the law as men. Landed property descended in the female line from mother to daughter. Women could buy, sell, be a partner in legal contracts, bring court action, and adopt children.
India
In India, women during the early Vedic period enjoyed equal status with men in all aspects of life. Women were allowed to be educated in Vedas and other scriptures. Rigveda and Upanishads mention several sages and seers, notably Gargi and Maitreyi. Rigvedic verses suggest that women married at a mature age and probably were free to select their own husbands in a practice called swayamvar or live-in –relationship called Gandharva marriage. Later on several Dharmashastras, especially the Manusmriti (200-BCE-300CE) restricted the role of the women in the society.
China
Women throughout historical and ancient China were considered inferior to men. They had subordinate legal status based on Confucian laws. In Imperial China, the “Three Obediences” promoted daughter to obey their fathers, wives to obey their husbands, and widows to obey their sons. The Chinese society was predominantly patriarchal. Women could not inherit property or business.
Athens
Women in classical Athens had no legal personhood. Women were excluded from ancient Athenian democracy, both in principle and in practice. Male slaves could become citizens after being freed, but women were not allowed to be citizens. Athenian women received little education. According to Aristotle the labor of women added no value to the household. Contrary to these views, the Stoic philosophers argued for the equality of the sexes. In their views sexual inequality was contrary to the law of nature.
Roman
Rome was quite influenced by Athens. Roman law, similar to the Athenian law was created by men in favor of men. Women had no public voice, no public role. Women could not hold any public office. Roman society was patriarchal. However, girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will.
Influence of Religions
Judaism
Judaism is an ancient monotheistic (belief in one god) religion with Torah as its foundational text. The history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years. Judaism’s texts, traditions and values strongly influenced other two monotheistic religions- Christianity and Islam. Christianity was founded in the 1st century CE and Islam in 7th century CE. Many aspects of Judaism and Christianity have directly or indirectly influenced the Western civilization and western civil laws.
The role of women in Judaism is determined by the Hebrew Bible (The Torah), the Oral law and by custom. Relatively few women are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible by name and role.
Marriage and family law in biblical times favored men over women. For example, a husband could divorce a wife if he chooses to, but a wife could not divorce a husband without his consent. Women depended on men economically. Women generally did not own property except in the rare case of inheriting property from a father who did not have sons. Women were not allowed to study the Bible. During the time of worship, they were separated from men. The practice still continues to this day in Orthodox Judaism and Islam.
Christianity
Throughout Church’s history women have been considered inferior by nature and law. Women were not encouraged to study the Bible. Apostle Paul had forbidden women to preach in the church. Even today in the Catholic Church women are not allowed to be priest. Nevertheless, the Christian Bible gives rights to women to make contracts, own, sell, and inherit property.
Islam
The Qur’an introduced fundamental reforms to the existing customs and gave rights to women in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. It provides for the wife to receive a dowry from the husband which she could administer as her personal property. It makes woman a legal party to marriage contract. The Qur’an prohibits female infanticide. It recognizes woman’s full personhood. Women were not given such legal status in other cultures until many centuries later.
Hinduism
Like the Bible or the Qur’an Hinduism does not have a foundational text as ‘ the book’. Hindus have many texts which are considered sacred. They present diverse and conflicting views on the position of women. The Devi Sukta hymn of the Rigveda declares the feminine energy as the essence of the universe. The woman is celebrated as the most powerful and the empowering force in some Hindu Upanishads, Sastras and Puranas. In Smritis, such as the Manusmriti, the position is mixed. Manusmriti asserts that ” as a girl, she should obey and seek protection of her father, as a young woman her husband and as a widow her son”. However in other section, the same text asserts that “women must be honored and adored” and ” where women are revered, there the gods rejoice, but where they are not, no sacred rite bears any fruit”. Records left by travelers to ancient and medieval India suggest that ancient and early Hindu society did not practice Dowry or Sati. These practices likely became widespread sometime in the 2nd millennium C.E.
In the Mahabharata, the main female character Draupadi is strong, opinionated and deals with five husbands. They listen to her advice. In the Ramayana, Sita is presented as the honest, obedient and the ideal wife to Rama. She even goes to the forest with him leaving the luxuries of the palace.
In approximately 500 BCE the status of women in India began to decline. Although reform movement such as Jainism allowed women to be admitted to religious orders, by and large women in India faced confinement and restrictions. The practice of the child marriage is believed to have started around the 6th century CE. The position of women further deteriorated during the medieval period. The Muslim conquest of parts of India brought purdah to Indian society. It also led to the practice of the Jauhar among the Rajputs of Rajastan. The practice of Devadasi, a form of sexual exploitation of women by the temple priests started around the same time in South India.
Gender of God in Hinduism
In Hinduism, the impersonal Absolute (Brahman) is genderless. Both male gods (Devas)) and powerful female gods (Devis) are found in Hinduism. But the most popular goddesses are the incarnations of Shakt-Devi-Mata (Mother). Ardhanariswara is a composite androgynous form of Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvati (also known as Devi, Shakti and Uma). It is depicted as half male and half female, split down the middle. It represents the synthesis of masculine and feminine energies of the universe.
According to religious scholar Bryant-” Hinduism has the strongest presence of the divine feminine among major world religions, from ancient to the present. The goddess is viewed as central in Shakti and Saiva Hindu traditions”
Science
In her book, Inferior; How Science Got Women Wrong (2017), the British journalist Angela Saini, has summarized most of the important scientific studies that have framed women as inferior to men. Most of the earlier studies have described women as gentle, caring and empathetic and men as strong, rational and dominant. They attribute the differences to biology and evolution. A striking pattern emerges: almost all of the prominent scientists behind these studies are men, whereas much of the growing, more recent research that disputes them is done by women.
Here are some findings discussed in more details in the book:
1- Studies from around the world show that boys have around 10 percent higher risk of dying than girls during the first month of life (p-32).
2- Pretty much at every age, women seem to survive better than men. Women live five to six years longer than men across almost every society, and that has been true for countries (p-34).
3-When it comes to intelligence it has been convincingly established that there are no difference between the average woman and man. In some countries, girls are now better at maths than boys (p-65).
4- It is true that men’s brains are 8-13% bigger than women’s. But reams of research have shown that differences between the sexes in cognitive abilities or motor skills are very small or non-existent. The brain like other organs is simply proportionate in size to men’s bigger bodies (p-78).
5-Research to date suggest that humans survived, thrived and spread across the globe through the efforts of everyone (both men and women) equally sharing the same work and responsibilities. For most of our history, we lived hand in hand. And our biology reflects this (p-180).
Conclusions
There has been total subordination of women throughout the recorded human history, in all cultures and all countries. The reasons are cultural, religious and poor science. The religious scriptures were written by men from male prospective. In all the major religions of the world, God is masculine. Only ancient Hindus had some doubt about the actual gender of their God. Some of them had the concept of Ardhanariswara-half female and half male. What a great concept! There have been many female goddesses from the ancient times from Sumer-Athens-Rome to India. But all of them have been inferior to their male counterparts. Most of the interpreters of religious scriptures have been men. All the heads of the religious orders -Pope, Imam, Dalai Lama, Shankaracharya have been and still are male.
Scientific studies from Darwin to the recent times have reflected male prospective and biases. Only recently it has begun to change. Recent studies have clearly established that man may be physically larger than woman but not more intelligent. Women can do pretty much anything men can. They also live longer and give birth to babies.
According to Voice of America News Survey (2016) one in five people around the world believe women to be inferior to men and should stay at home. However, nearly all of them who were surveyed (18, 000 of them), also agreed that men and women should have equal rights. At least there is some hope.
The World Economic Forum said in its 2017 Global Gender Gap Report:
“While women worldwide are closing the gap in the critical areas such as health and education, significant gender inequality persists in the workforce and politics. Given the current rates of change it will be another 217 years before we achieve gender parity.”
It is culture, not biology which is keeping women down. Increasing the proportion of women in leadership positions in all fields-politics-education-science- industry is key to improving gender equality.
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