Why, when we are equal in number, worth and ability, are women discriminated against?

Vesuvia - the ancient society of Greece you describe is very much alive and kicking in several parts of the world. I am thinking especially of Saudi Arabia where women are subject to horrifyingly discriminatory laws.

TeiTetua; interesting point, but I disagree that racism is considered unacceptable or something no 'decent' person would do; rruacism is enshrined in many cultures and political systems; just look at Israel, as one of many examples.

Putting this in terms of "the war between the sexes" and saying men have always won it, doesn't seem to cover the whole topic. If patriarchy is so awful for women, why do so many women support it? If you want to say that men oppress women, part of the reason has to be that lots of women cooperate, in fact eagerly help the process along.

Racism was once totally accepted but now it's considered a thing no decent person would do. With male supremacy, all we've done is chip around the edges. Could it be that there are certain things we (meaning pretty much everyone) just don't want to challenge?

Only read the OP

The missionary position is not compulsory

yes, you are right dittany. power struggle is the wrong phrase. i suppose i just wonder if women did hold the power in society whether we would strive to retain it in the way men have. I just don't think we would tbh. Totally hypothetical i know, because i cannot see what set of circumstances would bring us to a situation where men were subordinate to women.

A lot of it goes back to evolutionary biology and the different opportunities, costs and benefits of childbearing for men and women (in terms of how it benefits their genes). So for a woman to have a man's baby she has to forgo the chance to have another man's baby for at least nine months and probably more. On the other hand she knows 100% that the baby is hers and therefore it is more worth her while to sacrifice other opportunities in order to keep that child alive. So you get division of labour between men and women in childrearing (.....and all that follows from that....)

On the other hand women don't face the same level of sexual competion as men. A 'very sucessful' woman in reproductive terms may have 10 surviving children. A 'very sucessful' man man can have hundreds of surviving children ( think harems, concubines, polygamy,
rape, conquest). It's not just 'some fluke' as someone said that men tend to be stronger and bigger, it is because of this competition.

All this gives the shapes the underlying difference between populations of men and women in terms of strength, aggression, ambition, investment in children etc.. And then societal structures like marriage etc.. Are built on top.

Of course, that things have an evolutionary basis doesn't mean they are 'as they should be' and shouldn't be challenged.

I think part of the reason why some people find it so hard to understand why women are still discriminated against, is that we look at the current legal and educational systems (which look quite good for women, compared to, say, the situation in 1800). But we're still living with the effects of earlier, more male-biased systems, and thinking we're not.

An example I came across the other day is this: I was chatting to a girl who's in her first year at Oxford, at St. Hilda's (which used to be a women's college and has recently gone mixed). She was saying how unfair and unnecessary women's colleges were 'in this day and age'. There's no reason why a woman educated at Oxford now, shouldn't hope to become a professor or vice-chancellor: indeed, it'd be encouraged. So she thinks that women, as Bonsoir said earlier in the thread, have it pretty good.

But, although it all looks nice and equal now, this girl is being taught by people who went to university up to 40 years ago. Back then, there were over 6 times as many colleges for men as for women, so far fewer women were able to access this elite education. Unsurprisingly, the majority of people teaching and researching (and getting paid!) at high levels, are men. It'll take some time for the equality imposed on the new people coming through the system, to make its way to the top levels.

It amazes me that quite intelligent women (like the girl I was talking to), don't realize that the equality they're seeing now, is only a whitewash over a much longer-established system of inequality, which will take a long time to dismantle.

rather than asking 'why did we let me do that?' i am interested in why they wanted / want to. Can't they see the advantages of equality?

I always think of the expression 'power corrupts'. I think having won the power struggle men cannot face the prospect of relinquishing it.

I do wonder though if that is a male trait. Would / could we women have been corrupted in the same way?

YunoYurbubson wrote - "Why did we let men do that? Why weren't we powerful enough to stop them?"

I think men took over not because women let them but because of women busy being pregnant and raising the children.

What were the men doing while while the women were busy with all the childcare? The men were not sitting idle. Men were using that time, in male-only groups, to pass all the laws to create and then consolidate patriarchy and misogyny. Once the anti-women laws were passed (e.g. in Ancient Greece), women were trapped and powerless until very recently. The women were barred by law from the law-making institutions so they were unable to change things back to how they had been originally.

support rather than suppot

I'd agree that the main issue that caused and is still causing the oppression of women is the biological burden of child-bearing and -rearing (breastfeeding). It makes women weaker physically as about 40% of our entire bodies have developed for the purpose of childbearing / rearing (our entire torso effectively!) rather than our own use. When you think about it, we are designed physically to host someone else in our bodies for nine months and then feed the same person for x months afterwards. In a world without contraception or abortion, your body is really not your own. So women have been trapped by biology for most of history. It's only in the last 50 years that women have started to get some control over their own bodies, both in terms of legal rights and medical advances.

Then you look at that from the point of view of men and it's quite threatening if you're a patriarch that wants to ensure your DNA is continued. You have zero control over what happens to your progeny post-coitus. You don't even know if the baby your wife is carrying is really yours. The only way you can control that is if you control your wife - hence patriarchal oppression of women. It's very obvious really when you think about the totally unbalanced way that humans have evolved so that child-bearing and -rearing is entirely burdened on women. Life would be better if we were more like plants. We certainly wouldn't end up with warped societies like this where women can't even have a part-time job without being beaten up for bringing "shame" to their families by going out in public.... I saw that in the NY Times yesterday and it seemed a good example to me of patriarchy gone mad.

The question was not whether they are but why they are.

Perfectly ok to argue against the premise of the question in my view although the argument would do better if some evidence were provided to suppot it.

RRocks

Hope no one minds if I don't even bother to argue whether or not women are oppressed. That wasn't the question being asked, was it?

I think that looking around the world it is hard to agree that women are free to do what they want.

In the UK I think looking at the levels of harrassment females face when they go about their daily business indicates that there is something amiss with the "place" of women in society.

Good question. You know how people nowadays say men are "confused" about what their purpose is etc? Well maybe that has always been the case. Women had the babies, yes. And men by some fluke are often bigger/stronger than women, so they found something they were good at - fighting other men. And because that was what they could contribute to best, that became THE valued property to have: A good warrior/fighter/king etc is the essence of all the old heroes.

The importance/desirability of being able to fight well is at the bottom off most human culture really. And when you think that the human population was pretty small most of the time, all this "competition for resources" thing doesn't quite stack up when you think about it. There has been plenty to go round.

I agree with bonsoir I think that women are free to do what they want

Many women and men seem to be confused about how women can be sexual beings and have fun and be independent and yet be attractive, 'sexy' and enjoy clothes and make up.

There is also a confusion and a tension in both sexes on how a woman can be a mother and then fulfill whatever role she chooses whether sahm or working full time outside of he home or part time.

I think a lot of it stems from the fact that men are physically bigger and stronger than women and that , through history, translated to the battle field. Battles, conquests and wars were won by men and not women. And thus the patriarchy was born.

Going out now will be back later, interesting thread