On women's social stature

The other day I got sucked into an argument on "Women opression in Muslim society and how women there are brainwashed into a woman-opressing religion" and found myself demonstrating that it is not just Muslim religion that opresses women, most of the major religions have, till recently, condemned women to a second-citizen stature. Which made me wonder about the why of the situation.

There are medically established physical differences between men and women. Bodily, men are stronger and more capable of physical work than women are. Hence, for the hunting-farming societies at the orgin of human economic growth, men were of more economic value than women. Secondly, women spent most of their adult life in child bearing and child rearing, physical and mental demands of which effectively removed them from taking on any significant economic role in the family or important role in the society. All these firmly established men's prominience in the social structure while a woman's realm was family rearing which created more capable hands. (Which is probably why we have the custom of marrying off a girl.) As societies grew, men became law-makers and made the laws which eventually came down as religions to the masses. However, in most of the original non-messiah-ic religions thus created, though women were designated a homely role, they were respected and were not handed out a raw deal.

A bit chunk of intermediate history, during which most of the messiah-ic religions were born, is a story of small/large feudal wars. Most of these wars had paid armies whose recruits were from the large poor populace of the times. When wars left widows and girl orphans, these were an economic burden to these poor classes. Even for non-widow, non-orphan women, the very crunch of resources that families faced led to prioritization of men over women simply because it gave more returns in economic sense. This acted as a positive feedback loop leading to more and more dimunitive status that women got in the society.

Here, I would like to digress and make a comment on those defaming Islam against Hinduism. Islam brought a concept of multiple wives as a solution to the war widows (read the terrible infighting in Arab history when Islam was born). Hinduism, on the other hand, gave sati or a living death in which they had no social recognition. Have you read about those widows who would live their lives wearing plain red or plain white sarees, with their head shaved off, barred from any social occasion as they were ill-omened. One did rather be a third wife of a person with some social existence than being imprisoned all one'slife. And especially multiple wives didnt matter in a society where families were not husband-wife units but a social group. Anyways, thats besides the point.

The point to note though is that though non-messiah-ic religions never had anti-women policies, the political powers and economic pressures of the day led to the secondary treatment of women. Good or bad in most religions depends heavily on how much progressive thought is allowed into the religion and this inturn depends on the economics and politics of the day.

In 'progressive' places like Maharashtra or Bengal, women status became better over 19th century due to diligient efforts by social workers. We owe a whole lot to them. They brought in better life for women and clamored for girl education. And soon, with passing of British Raj, as societies moved away from an agrarian lifestyle to a more complex and developed industrial city structure, income opportunities became less labor oriented and more mental effort related. This is reflected in increase in education and literacy rates in men, which too was neglected till then. However, even then education didn't happen for girls as girls married off and the investment would not pay-off. So, it was a combination of social workers efforts and economics that led to a change in cultural and social perspective. Girl education empowered women to become economically significant and use that to leverage their social status. Even today, in societies where all these elements have not done their parts, women are yet relegated to behind a ghoonghat.

(Here, I write about the Indian society. For European societies, it was the off-shore colonization that brought in non-labor jobs and the world war that heralded the women workforce concept which then led to education and better social stature)
Now-a-days, as women become economically significant, their social status is improving in leaps. No longer do they have to dutifully accept any un-favorable rules imposed on them. But this is leading to a different issue. Child rearing is a woman's job because a woman's physiology and psychology is to nurture. And as women move into active workforce, these roles come into conflict. So, today we see a range of reactions - from outright denial of nurturing role to stresses of work-life balance to neglected children to falling population rates. But this does not indicate that the progress achieved since nineteenth century has been off track. It should be applauded and all the challenges it has thrown up must be dealt while trying to achieve fairness over men, women and children living standards.