Transcript Gender and Sex Roles - Bishop Alemany High School

Gender and Sex Roles
1000 b.c.e. – 1250 c.e.
Rachel Mallari
April 16, 2010
Mr. Kelly
APWH; Period 1
China – Qin, Han, and Zhou
• Downgraded the status and potential of women
• Agricultural civilizations were patriarchal
• Husband determined conditions and made
decisions while the woman gave obedience to the
male
India – 1600 B.C.E. – 535 C.E.
• Dominance of husbands and fathers remained
strong
 A wife should worship her husband as a god
• As agriculture became better organized and
improved technology reduced women’s
economic contributions, the stress on male
authority expanded
Women enjoyed hunting cultures
• Featured clever and strong-willed women’s
status as wives and mothers, in contrast to China
Rome and Greece – 1000 B.C.E. – 476 C.E.
• Also patriarchal
• Women played vital roles in farming and artisan
families
• In the upper classes, women often commanded
great influence and power within a household;
but in law and culture women were held inferior
• “The husband is the judge of his wife”
Abbasids – 700 C.E. – 1200 C.E.
• Lower class women farmed, wove clothing and
rugs, or raised silkworms while rich women were
allowed almost no career outlets beyond the
home
• Women we raised to devote their lives to
running a household and serving their husbands
Western Europe – 500 C.E. – 1450 C.E.
• Women in the West had higher status than their
sister under Islam (less segregated in religious
services) and less confined to the household
• urban women often played important roles in
local commerce and even operated some craft
guilds
• Women were not assured property rights
• Patriarchal structures seemed to be taking
deeper root
China – Tang and Song
• Position of women improved under the Tang
and early Song eras and then deteriorated
steadily in the late Song
• Male-dominated hierarchy promoted by
Confucius
• Women remained subordinate to men;
practiced footbinding
• Opportunities for personal expression increased
Tang women could wield considerable power at
the highest levels of Chinese society
Foot
binding
Mongol gender roles – 1270s
• Women remained aloof from Chinese culture
Refused to practice footbinding
 Retained rights to property and control within
household and freedom to move about the town
 they hunted; i.e. daughter of Kubilai’s cousins
went to war
Africa in Atlantic Age - 1400
• The enslavement of women was a central feature of
African society
▫ Excess of women led to polygamy
▫ The position of women was lowered in some societies
• Trans-Saharan slave trade concentrated on women
as concubines and domestic servants but the
Atlantic slave trade focused on men
• African societies preferred to sell men and keep
women and children as domestic slaves or extend
kin groups
Early Latin America - 1450
• Sexual exploitation of Indian women and
occasional alliances formed by the giving of
concubines and female servants
• Slave owners exploited their female slaves or
took slave women as mistresses, and then
sometimes freed their mulatto children
• A mestizo who married a Spanish woman might
be called white
Muslim Empires - 1450
• Akbar legally prohibited sati
• Seclusion was more and more strictly enforced
for upper-class women, both Hindu and Muslim
▫ Muslim women rarely went from their homes
unveiled
• The birth of a girl was increasingly seen as an
inauspicious event
• Only the birth of a son was greeted with feasting
and celebrations