It's a man's world

The inequality between men and women goes back a long way. For ages, and still today in some regions of the planet, wives were taken by force or were bought from their parent-owners, which was close to the methods of acquiring slaves. This meant that the status of a woman and that of a slave were not dissimilar. But, when slave labour was progressively abandoned in favour of more productive wage labour, the emancipation of women did not follow. This was possibly due to the fact that only a privileged few owned slaves, whereas every adult male could expect to own a wife. However, myths, legends and a few cases that still survived a century or so ago, show that another relationship between men and women existed in prehistoric times.

The Neolithic had three main characteristics, hard stones were being shaped and polished into shock resistant tools, as opposed to brittle flint, some animals were being domesticated and bred selectively, and certain plants were being grown and selectively made more productive. Prior to this, humans had been hunter-gatherers, with men doing most of the hunting and women most of the gathering. When humans began leading herds to pasture and planting crops, one form or the other of the production of food and clothing came to predominate. The animal side seems to have given rise to a patrilineal ownership of herds, while the vegetable one brought about a matrilineal ownership of land. This is pure speculation, as no one will ever know what actually happened, but it does seem probable, and matrilineal societies must have existed in a developed form to become the matter of legendary tales. The historian Emile Mireaux gives the story of Oedipus as an example of how difficult it was for a son to inherit his father’s throne, when royalty was transmitted from mother to daughter. Whatever may have been, matrilineal societies succumbed, either to the strength of their own male members, or more probably to conquest by patrilineal nomads or conquering hordes. Thereafter, women were treated as chattel, to be bought and sold, taken by force, or exchanged as a sign of alliance.

History has recorded the existence of many powerful women, but they were invariably the mothers, wives, daughters or mistresses of powerful men. This could not be avoided in a world where might was right, because the strongest men have more physical force than the strongest women. Whenever the rule of law superseded the rule of force, the plight of women was alleviated. But it was only when slavery was progressively repealed in the 19^th century that the condition of women in general was questioned and began to evolve. John Stuart Mill was one of the first influential thinkers to argue that women could equal men in all domains other than size and muscle, if they were given the chance. That was in the 1860s, when steam power was replacing the muscle power of man and beast, when men, women and even children were being worked to death on an equal footing, when Britannia ruled the waves and Queen Victoria wore the crown of empire. Mill’s campaign to extend suffrage to women failed, however, and it took another fifty years and a World War, where millions of men were sent away to fight and die on the Continent, before British women did finally get the vote. Though that symbolic step did not change much, as men still ruled the roost at home and in public office, it opened the way.

The Second World War also mobilised large numbers of adult men, leaving women in charge of households, and giving them access to jobs they had previously been excluded from. Unfortunately this did not allow women to develop their own capacities and capabilities. It just allowed them to compete in a game where the rules had been set up by men. The challenge was: equal us if you can! In the 1960s and 70s, some militant feminists tried to escape this fatality by excluding men and keeping to themselves. But these movements often became sectarian and have remained marginal. So it’s still a man’s world, and women are still forced to make do with it, however high they rise in status, wealth and power.

Emile Mireaux, Les Poèmes Homériques, vol. II
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women