PRACTICE TEST!!!!!!!!
SATURDAY, MAY 5th
9-12
BE HERE WITH PENCIL, PAPER, PEN
BY 8:45
"Yes, I am fond of history."
"I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing
that does not either vex or weary me.
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page;
the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very tiresome:"
Catherine Morland, in Northhangar Abbey (1803),
by Jane Austen
Gender roles and relations
Racial and ethnic constructions
Family and kinship
Social and economic classes
NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
•Authority was based on family relationships.
•Gender roles were more flexible, but most cultures has some
sort of division.
•Men took leadership roles.
•Women responsible for gathering.
•Later, women were probably the first to plant seeds .
•Both men and women made tools.
•As people settled, women remained high in social status
controlling crops planted and sharing them.
•Women had children at more frequent intervals and they
began to spin and weave…WHY NOT MEN?
•Men began to take over agricultural jobs and patriarchal
system began to develop.
•Had reverence for females through fertility statues
•Social inequality grew due to slavery and specialization
•Women were sometimes shamans
•Marriages were frequently to men at least 10 years older
•Laws were set up to pass down property to heirs
Cult of the Great Mother
Goddess worshipped in this
period. Artemis/Diana from
Ephesus
The earth tied to the fertility of
crops and animals
Women in Egypt were less repressed than
in Mesopotamia….
in the upper-class at least.
“Hold her back from mastery.”
(a patriarchal statement from Egypt)
HATSHEPSUT as pharaoh and after. It is TOUGH to be queen!
Husbands needed to be sure the children were theirs, so laws were passed that
women HAD to be virgins at marriage. Laws were passed against adultery.
Later, men began to veil their wives to protect her honor which was linked with
her sexuality. Men’s honor was linked to their job or position in society.
Legally, a woman became subject to her husband with widows being the only women
allowed to control property.
Eventually, the emphasis was on the role of the male deity over the female once
writing was invented. Female goddesses became less important.
•Family arrangements became more arranged.
•Philosophies were used to formulate ideas about men’s and women’s qualities and
roles.
•Female infanticide became more common.
•Laws were passed restricting women in certain stages of life such as widowhood.
•Women viewed as necessary but inferior.
•Women increasingly secluded from society.
•Cultures became patrilocal.
•Women were trained to be wives and mothers.
•Families were the basis for a man’s place in the world.
• A woman’s location determined her place.
•People were expected to marry with few exceptions.
•The stability of the family determined if the armies won battles.
•Patriarchal family structure.
•Slavery continued and grew in number in some areas.
•Women were regarded as capable of achieving spiritual goals.
•Citizenship was for free males not women or slaves.
•social status was determined by the land a person held.
•Lower class women suffered less inequality than their upper-class sisters.
•In China, women were never on the official list of her birth family.
•In Confucianism, the most important concept of li was the parent/child (son)
relationship.
Spartan women had more freedom, because the men were in the barracks.
They ran businesses, managed slaves and owned property.
Paterfamilias in Rome was a male-dominated family structure.
Social classes: patricians = upper-class; plebeians = free farmers; had a merchant
class; slaves
Indian Mauryan/Gupta caste membership was determined by birth
Status of women declined during the Gupta because of the increased emphasis on
inheritance of property. The ritual of Sati for wealthy women was instituted.
•Centralization led to greater gender distinctions.
•Women were taken by conquerors from prominent families as symbols of their
conquest.
•Special sections of the house were set aside for women as harim/harem or
“forbidden area.” Seclusion and veiling were based on rank.
•Female religious communities (convents). The worship of female saints.
•Hereditary monarchies sometimes had individual women rule, however, it was
often in the name of a son or husband.
Even though the system in Arabia was patriarchal,
women enjoyed rights not
always given in other lands.
Could inherit property; own a business (Khadijah);
divorce husbands
The Qur’an outlawed female infanticide,
emphasized that all people were equal
before Allah. Dowries were to go directly
to the brides.
At first, in early Islam, women prayed and
attended ceremonies in public.
Muhammad’s youngest wife,
Aisha, even led troops into battle.
With the arrival of slaves, and the influence of
lands conquered, Muslims began to
veil and seclude women. Shari’a expanded
concept of seclusion, so unlike
Khadija, women couldn’t hold property,
run a business, etc.
Mohammed and his wife Aisha freeing the daughter of a tribal chief.
From the Siyer-i Nebi. In the Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul.
In China, the Tang/Song dynasties begin the custom of footbinding.
Neo-Confucianist doctrines about female subordination become stronger in the
Song dynasty.
Women were increasingly secluded; even
in peasant homes.
Widows were forbidden to remarry.
Empress Wu stressed the family unit as
the basic unit of society focusing on
loyalty and obedience. (Confucian values)
She took power and stressed the loyalty
owed to one’s mother (Confucian values),
and the Buddhist ideas of the godlike ruler
to build up her power.
Murasaki Shikibu author of Tale of Genji
As with most Heian women, we do not
know her real name.
In Japan women played a significant
public role, but lost position with the
growing power of the Shogunate.
Daughters were more valuable than sons
due to the marital political arrangements
in the upper class.
Husbands often went to live with their
wives families.
Sei Shonagan author of the Pillowbook
The emperor of Japan traced his
ancestry to Amaterasu the sun goddess.
Women could be religious leaders in Shinto.
With the arrival of Buddhism, women
became nuns.
Wives of samurai managed the estates of
their husbands when they were away even
fighting if necessary.
Poor women were expected to be workers in
agriculture or divers for ocean products
such as seaweed.
Aztec and Inca
• Aztecs had slaves that were
household servants.
• women who died in childbirth
received honor as a warrior
• upper-class boys and girls
received formal schooling
• large gap between rich and
poor
• smaller merchant class and
fewer craftsmen than Aztecs
• virgin women were selected to
serve the Inca and his family
who had the status of gods
• the line of descent was through
the mothers for girls and boys
from the father
• women were seen as links to
the earth deities, so they were
the ones to put seeds in the
ground while men dug the
holes
MEDIEVAL EUROPE
•Women could inherit estates and take oaths of vassalage and they were expected to
defend the estates.
At first, the king’s wife was in charge of the kingdom’s finances just like she was of the
household. Women were the caregivers who studied herbs and remedies.
•Primogeniture trickled down to all levels of society.
•Convents offered women protection and opportunities for leadership as abbesses.
Worship of female saints, such as Mary, became important.
•Men cleared land, plowed and took care of large animals. Women took care of small
animals, the spinning and food prep.
•Widows were not restricted as in other places, and women were often employed in the
production of trade products.
AFRICA
Very Diverse….but many cultures were matrilineal and had systems of marriage that
involved a bride-price rather than a dowry. Thus, girls were seen as a source of
wealth rather than a drain on their families.
Many cultures practiced polygamy with families living in compounds where each wife
had her own house, cattle, fields and property.
The division of labor was quite varied, but in most areas women were responsible for
the growing, processing and even selling of crops.
In some kingdoms there was the position of “Mother of the King” who was a joint ruler
with certain duties.
Both men and women acted as priests and honored male and female gods/spirits.
Ethiopian Christian culture and Islamic regions excluded women from positions of
leadership.
New international contacts led to new ethnicities.
Traditional gender patterns disrupted with new patterns formed.
Concepts of race and status developed.
“Need” for consumer goods!
Intellectual movements
“An eloquent woman is never chaste.”
New international contacts led to new ethnicities and to new ideas of racial
hierarchies.
In Africa, 2/3rds of the slaves taken were male which reinforced or
created the idea of polygamy.
Mestizos, Mulattos
Traditional gender patterns disrupted with new patterns formed.
Men were the early travelers, and laws were passed against
“racial mixing.” miscengenation
This to changes in religious practices, languages, and family
patterns.
So many men left that women were left competing for the few
men available in Europe.
“Need” for consumer goods!
Male labor needed in large numbers as a workforce on plantations.
Women’s roles in upper-class homes become consumption rather than
production.
Intellectual movements
“An eloquent woman is never chaste.”
Protestant women didn’t learn to write, because it was seen as
dangerous.
Educated women always viewed as suspect in character.
The home was “A haven in a heartless world.”
A low point for women around the world.
A time of “equality of misery.” Both men and women living in a poor state
compounded by industrialization and imperialism with most men and women left
back. It was more about class structure than gender structure.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Were our state a pure democracy, there would still be
excluded from our deliberation women, who, to prevent the deprivation of morals
and ambiguity of issues, should not mix promiscuously in gatherings of men.”
“Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed
without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.”
Mary Wollstonecraft
And so it begins, the push for rights and suffrage!
Political Revolutions
Women’s Movements
Women in factories were paid less for less skilled labor.
Women were mainly unmarried which led to sexual exploitation
and concerns about THEIR morality and respectability!!!
In Japan and Latin America
Women were to stay home to be
“Good wives and wise mothers.”
At home, women still had to work to survive, but the
governments didn’t count it as real work as it was
“housekeeping.”
Men frequently left home in Latin America to seek work
leaving women to continue subsistence farming.
Marianismo and machismo
Scientific discoveries about women used to justify
limits on their education.
Women who accomplished anything intellectual were seen
as having “transcended their sex.”
China:
“She who is unskilled in arts and literature is
a virtuous woman.”
Japan:
“To cultivate women’s skills would be harmful.”
Women’s Movements
“The woman question.”
Families
Work Patterns
Marriage Patterns
Independence
Movements
Political and Legal
Developments
Families: smaller; access to birth control; by 1950’s people
no longer saw big families as necessary for survival in
Industrialized countries.
Size of families limited by governments.
Marriage patterns changed and declined in industrialized
areas.
Work Patterns: factory workers remain mainly female along
With many children.
Some parts of the world women make up very little of the
workforce except for highly trained professionals in sex
segregated societies.
Independence Movements:
Single women are taxed by colonial powers for leaving home to
find work which caused them to join movements.
Women participate in every way.
After independence, women begin to get some power which was
limited.
“Women’s issues” such as access to birth control or family
violence were not considered important by Marxist leaders.
Great quote!
1st
Prime
Minister
of
Israel
Indira Gandhi
India
Margaret Thatcher
United Kingdom
Francis Perkins
1st Female in USA
Cabinet
Benazir Bhutto
Pakistan
Bronze
Nazi’s Mother’s
Cross
Der Deutschen
Mutter
Awarded for
having4-5
babies
World War II
China’s one child policy
Most posters today
are of girls.
Civil Rights Leaders
Rosa Parks
You’ve come along way, Baby!