Hi, I am Hully's (from MN) DS. Hully said I could ask you a question!

[Hullygully]

For R.S i have been asked to think, and collect, 10 key points WHY women have suffered from sexism in the past. I can think of HOW, but I am interested in WHY. I would be really interseted and grateful in any thoughts you may have! Thanks!

Soz, ColdTruth, I've no way of knowing!

I dunno CV, ds is 14, but he's always had an old head. Borned that way I think.

Ancient statues of female forms, obviously fertile and pregnant, are probably the best indication that - at some point - the female of the species was worshipped and venerated.

I suspect, once men realised they were essential to the procreation of children (let's face it - it's not obvious that women don;t do it all on their own, what with sex not always being 100% resultant in pregnancy etc) they started to put their foot down a bit more about their woman/women only getting pregnant with their babies and wanting more of a look in with some of that worshipping and venerating stuff.

Humans being what they are we obviously couldn't share this position (although some paganistic religions manage to assign both male and female deities equal amounts of marvellousness) so the pendulum swung to give paternalistic society and religion a go and hence - anti-woman sexism. History does not relate whether anti-male sexism was rife in the maternalistic society.

Interestingly Dh just said to me, as I collapsed in tears (34 wks pg) that God in his wisdom had designed women to be nurturing and emotionally vulnerable and to carry babies and their partners to be a little tougher emotionally so they could take up the slack and protect their women and unborn babies. I don;t know why it sounds sexist when I type it here - the way he said it it just sounded eminently sensible and made me feel a bit better about collapsing in tears on his shoulder letting him look after me.

Hello Hully DS.

I read an interesting piece of research (possibly linked to by another MN poster) that suggested that societies that adopted the plough as a tool for food production thousands of years ago have tended to produce modern societies where women have a less equal role in society. Conversely, socities that did not adopt the plough or remained hunter gatherer societies for longer have tended to produce modern socities where women have a more equal role.

The thinking was that horse (or bullock) drawn plough needs great physical strength to use and hence a society that adopted the plough tended to allocate ploughing tasks to men and other tasks in the home to women. This had the tendency of isolating women and also removing them from a very important economic process. In a village men out ploughing not only had a crucial economic role but also far more opportunity to participate outside the home in the political life of the village.

Once that societal structure had been created it tended to be perpetuated through the centuries - even when people left the land and went to cities to work in manufacturing. Perhaps the social revolution caused by WWII when women went to do physical work on the land and in factories was when the genie really came out of the bottle and centuries of accepted thinking in 'plough societies' began to be overturned.

Make of that what you will, but it has a ring of credibility about it. As a young man (yes another man on MN) I worked on my father's farm and his Grandad ploughed with horses. I have never ploughed by hand but I have tried to pick up a hand plough in a museum and it is a very heavy piece of iron. Also, my mother was a farmer's wife and it is still true (even in the 1970s) she had few opportinities for social interaction but my father as a farmer and economic head of the household had many opportunities to meet other men in the course of business outside the home. He was later invited to serve on the local parish council.

SUCH an interesting theory, MoreBeta.

mind you, what societies didn't adopt the plough? when bruce payne went to spend time with those nomadic tribes the women seemed to live in hell on earth.

Yes, I read that Beta. I was trying to tell it to ds, but couldn't remember WHY the plough had caused it (strength). He's off meeting young ladies today, I'll show him later. Ta!

Personally I believe it to be a far more primitive instinct than most of the suggestions above.

If one looks at the animals which are genetically closest to humans, the great apes, it is clear that as a family we tend towards male dominated groups. There are complex and well researched reasons for this behaviour in many animals, including early humans.

Unfortunately, evolution is a painfully slow process and, for the same reason we still have tails as early embryos and grow wisdom teeth, and whales have arm bones, the brain function of many humans has not fully progressed beyond the primitive instincts of a male dominant society where the physically stronger males control the behaviour of females in order to protect their genetic material and ensure said females produce progeny of confirmed parentage.

Because Freud said women were prone to hysteria and irrationality.

This 'voice of authority' gave a legitimate 'scientific explanation' as to why women were less suited to be leaders.

(I'm sure Hully has explained to you how you passed through the Oedipus Complex to become a well-rounded young man...?)

If one looks at the animals which are genetically closest to humans, the great apes it's clear that chimpanzees and bonobos, despite being much much more genetically close to each other than they are to us, have very different societal structures and behavioural norms, so comparing us to apes will be very little use at all.

Aitch - not sure on this but I have a feeling that Scandinavian countries might fit the model quite well. Recognisably modern egalitarian societies with a strong consensus that women should play an equal role in all aspects political and economic life and where men are encouraged to paly an equal role ein bringing up children. Interestingly, these are also countries where ploughing for crop production was not prevalent (too cold for most cereal crops) and much more hunter gathering or nomadic especially in the northern parts of the region.

Hully - was it you who posted the original link? I found it very thought provoking. I also read an article recently about the political decison to force women back into the home after WWII. It was quite deliberate and discussed at cabinet level. Politicians were very worried about what would happen when large numbers of men with no job returned home.

Women (tend) to have smaller brains than men, a fact which could be studied when autopsies became more common place. Victorian men (including Darwin) believed this was empirical evidence that women were intellectually inferior to men and justified their exclusion from decision-making, careers and voting.

It's a myth that women are treated as second class inferior weaker subjects.
In some areas women do get a rough deal and that's a fact.
But in some areas men get a rough deal i'll grant you that.
Making babies exclusively with a male so his genes get passed on isn't just what human males want....it's what mammalian males want.
We are animals yet we're being clinically removed from our genetic profiles by over thinkers.
Life's a matter of swings and roundabouts.
If you want to go on the swings you have to play on the roundabout first.

A lack of financial freedom went along way to ensuring a lack of freedom and therefore choice.

Until equal pay and a change in the divorce laws, women had little freedom to make choices since they had no money and probably no idea of how the household finances worked.

Without money women were held back enormously.

It's because men are angry at their mothers for having so much power over them at a primal level. They never quite get over it. Sexism is an act of toddler rebellion against the mother, sublimated and institutionalised.

Wondering now whether mine was an entirely appropriate response to perfectly nice and impeccably polite school boy looking for help with his RS homework.

Er, sorry hully's ds.