Reverend Blair said:
I'd like to know where that culture of abuse comes from. It's something that has been prevalent in most societies at one time or another, so it seems to have pretty deep roots.
I understand the division of labour in hunter-gatherer societies (man=hunter, women=gatherer) and earling farming communities (man=farmer woman=miller/food preparer). There seem to have been an abundance of matriarchies up until we started building cities though, the division of labour was more a practical matter than a cultural one.
When cities appear it seems like patriarchies become dominant.
Any of you anthropology students have an explanation or theory about that? It seems to be a taboo subject on TV and in the popular literature.
Good questions Rev. Although there have been some exceptions, the division you make in labour seems to be correct. The distinction between the man as a hunter and the female as a gatherer was based on indeed a practical use of it; women could stay close to home and feed and raise the infants. There have been exceptions, as I said, for example among certain Inuit tribes, where some women also participated in hunting.
However, I don't know whether it is exactly true that with the start of the first cities, patriarchies became more dominant. In "Western" society, there seems to be a link between increasing emancipation for women compared to men, and a reinforcement of the masculine role in society by men - being the one who earns the money, while the wife is supposed to do the cleaning and raising the children. With emancipation by the way, I don't mean necessarily the fact that women got equal rights; I do mean that with the start of the Industrial Revolution, women got the change to work in the factory and earn well not as much money as the man could, but the distinction between what a man was "supposed" to do and what a woman was "supposed" to do declined.
The sharp division created in the Western world to decide what the role was of the man (the husband), and what the role was of the woman (the wife), is changing however - though slowly. Women can be leaders too, for example. Something which was denied for a very long time in the Western world.
But I do have to say this is a difficult subject. I don't know enough about gender relations in others parts in the world to make statements about a possible increasingly male dominance now compared to some centuries ago.
We should take in consideration though that these estimates are about 10 years old, so the numbers might be different by now.
