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