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

[YunoYurbubson]

This is probably a bit of a silly thing to ask, but the question has been forming in my mind for the last couple of months.

What I want to know is this...

If it is understood that we start out with a level playing field; ie there are as many women as men in the world, men and women have equal worth, and men and women are equally capable of achieving, how have we ended up with one gender on top and the other underneath?

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 suppose that is what I meant by "within limits" dittany, but you explained it better.

And yes elfpants. Good point. We are being diverted by a non-issue.

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

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.

support rather than suppot

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Only read the OP

The missionary position is not compulsory

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?

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.

definitely dittany, the goal for me too is equality. I see it as such an inherently Good Thing, but yet still there is such resistance to it by men and women. It's sad

Love this thread. Very interesting.

You know where I get most of my information about feminism from? Mumsnet.

vesuvia Fri 31-Dec-10 15:05:14

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.

Well, yes, woman were busy cooking food for the men who were fighting our wars (don't try and tell me woman never agree with war - we just don't want to fight them) and having babies....we were actually being quite clever at the time...staying at home was in finitely safer and easier than going out hunting/gathering or fighting wars.

These days however, being a breadwinner is a lot safer, and so we want to join in with the men, and need to convince them that preparing a few stews and childcare is within their capabilities. I think we told them they couldn't do it before to make sure they kept on going out in to the big bad world and providing for us.

You may well be right dittany, but I'm basing that on my own life. It has been easier for me to find a man to go out and earn the cash to pay the mortgage while I stay at home and have babies, well provided for while he sticks around, than try and do it all myself, as many modern women are having to do, or as you pointed out did in the past.

Sorry, lots of commas there due to NewYear wine consumption.

One word Competition.

Humans (as Homo sapiens) have existed for around 200thousand years, life was hard (still is for many) for one thing people were not always the top dogs many things could and did kill us why are males bigger well quite frankly it is for the same reason that most other mammals (and birds) have bigger males, protection and competition for females.

Strangely enough pair bonding or marriage existed long before we were 'homo sapiens'. The main reason for the size difference between males and females is because males had to compete with other males for females the biggest strongest male got the females e.g. Chimpanzees or gorillas. What is interesting is that apes which bond in pairs the males and females are similar in size (as there is less need for dominant males to impress etc), whilst human males are bigger than females the difference is much smaller than that of the apes which revolve around competition for all females. It is believed that we began in a similar manner to chimpanzees/gorillas but later began bond pairing as tamarins do (which have little difference in male/female size).

It is only about 15,000 years that humans have had agriculture, before that we was a hunter gather society, in such societies everyone had to provide in some manner, everyone had a use woman (and children) would gather men would hunt and protect. What would men protect against? well the many dangers present, and other groups of people after all women do get pregnant and as women who live together often have their menstruation cycles in sync you can imagine that many would give birth at a similar time. They would need to protect against other human groups (and also Homo neanderthalensis) because of competition for food/space/water(depending on environment)and increase the success of their progeny.

Now to the crux why did men take power well because they are 'in general' bigger and stronger so better capable of exerting their will on others. Eventually it becomes tradition and people rarely question why it is they do things they just do it because that's what's done.

Look at marriage why does the father give away the bride if you asked many fathers if they think they own their daughters many would be horrified/angry at such a thought, then if you asked them why then do they 'give' away their daughters? because....tradition.

So sorry for waffling this topic has always interested me I am a bit tipsy and so Happy new year to you all hope you all make realistic new year resolutions

Good night

Oh yes 1 more thing because men are unable to know that a woman is pregnant with their child which is why so many restrictions were placed on women as there is paranoia about being tricked into raising another man's child. And it is tradition which holds on us to this mindset although it has been gradually eroding helps that men can now also find out if a child is theirs as well.

Staying at home was safer? Not if you think about the risks of death in childbirth. Or cooking accidents - fire is dangerous stuff. (According to QI, as recently as the 19th century injuries from fire as a result of cooking were the chief cause of female death - clothes made from natural fibres burn very readily.)

Anyway, wifie at home cooking and cleaning while hubbie goes to the office is a largely 1950s middle class thing. Women have always worked. Until the Industrial Revolution, almost everyone worked at or around the home anyway, and post industrial revolution loads of women worked in factories and even down the mines. Both genders were providers in traditional hunter gatherer societies.

I'll buy the risk of death in childbirth, but not cooking accidents.