What role did gender play

With respects to male/female

Relationships?

Role of Women

in
Patriarchal
Societies
AP WORLD HISTORY
DEFINITIONS: Sex - a biological distinction between male and female
Gender - the culturally created roles assigned to each gender in a
particular culture ( Adapted from The creation of Patriarchy by Gerda
Lerner)
• Life at the end of the Neolithic Era included a phenomenon called by eminent anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss,
the "Exchange of Women".This represented forms of trade where women were a commodity. It took several forms:
1. Negotiated marriage alliances between tribes or villages meant the forceful removal of women from their
homelands. 2. Women offered by tribal chiefs to sleep with visiting men as a gesture of hospitality;3. Women
forced to participate in ritual rapes in festivals to insure prosperity
• • When intertribal warfare during times of economic scarcity resulted in larger scale war, women were captured during
these early wars and enslaved. Women and children became the first slaves in human history. Women slaves were
forced to become prostitutes, concubines, or domestic servants
• • The Queen and upper class women had many privileges. The Queen served as Deputy and stand-in for her
husband, had personal slaves and attendants, but even the Queen's sexuality and reproductive capabilities were
controlled by men. Kings and warriors had harems and numerous concubines.
• • Royal edicts and legal codes legitimized the patriarchal family. The patriarchal family was based on the father as the
head of the family and he had economic and legal power over the family. He was obeyed by his wife and children.
Adultery on the part of the wife was punishable by death in many edicts and codes .
• • Legal codes differentiated between respectable and non-respectable women thus institutionalizing a ranking order
for women which has divided women, prevented women from uniting, and blocking feminist consciousness. These
male written codes caused women to compete rather than cooperate.
• • Mother Goddesses, so common during the Paleolithic and Neolithic Eras, were demoted in the pantheon of gods
with the rise of civilization and male Gods including male creator gods rose to the top of the pantheon of gods .
Example: the Hebrew god Yahweh only communicated with patriarchs of the tribes including Abraham, Noah, Moses,
Cain and Abel, but didn’t communicate directly with women. The Greek god Zeus gave birth to Athena showing he
was superior to her. Medusa's former image as a powerful fertility goddess was reworked into making her a monster
with hair of writhing snakes and Pandora, another fertility goddess, became a demon with a box full of the evils of the
world.
 Early Agricultural Societies
• Most were PATRIARCHAL : which means they were run
by men and based on the assumption that men directed
political, economic and cultural life.
• Family structure rested on men’s control of property.
Done through laws, veiling, denial of access to
institutions
 Mesopotamia
• Marriages were arranged for women by their
parents.
• The husband served as authority over his
wife and children as he did over his slaves.
• Adultery by a wife = punishable by death….
• Adultery by a husband = far more
tolerated.
Double Standard?
Mesopotamia, continued….
• Emphasis on the importance of women’s
virginity at marriage.
• Imposing a veil on respectable women in
public to emphasize their modesty.

• Mesopotamian Law (Hammurabic Codes)

- large portion was given over female
protections…but clearly emphasized limits
and inferiority.
 Hammurabi’s Code
• It frequently happened that the bride remained in her father’s house for as
much as a year after the contract was signed. If in the course of that time
the groom changed his mind he did not have to marry her but he lost the full
bride price. (159) The bride’s father might also have changed his mind, in
which case he would have been required to refund the purchase price in full
(160). If a wife died before giving birth to a son the dowry, less the bride
price, was returned immediately to her father’s house (163-164).
 Conditions Varied in other
Agricultural Societies….
• Egyptian civilization gave upper-class women more credit than
Mesopotamia did…there were several queens( Hatshepsut, Neffertiti)
which served as regents.
• Jewish law traced descendants from mothers rather than fathers,
though women were separated and inferior in worship.
• The role of family (particularly mother/wife) in Pre-Confucian China had
important implications for women, involving good treatment, but
subservience to men.
 Why was Patriarchal
Societies
•
so pervasive?
As agriculture improved with better techniques, women’s labor became less
important than in hunting/gathering societies.
• This was more common in upper classes.
• Inferior position of women was less marked in peasant families where their
work was essential.
• Essential for men to know who their heirs were (to pass along land)…when
resulted in regulating women’s sexuality to assure faithfulness.
 China
• Women were in charge of the domestic responsibilities taking care of children and the
household with family being the most important social component in Chinese society.
The women in the lives of their husbands and fathers were capable of loyalty,
courage, and devotion, but also of intrigue, manipulation, and selfishness

• The rights of women in China and India were similar as well. In India the rights of
women have barley changed since ancient times. Women in this country are not
allowed to own property, show their faces in public, and are the complete property of
a man (www.geocities.com/hinduism/hindu_women.html
 Indirect or
informal Female Powers
• Women often wielded informal power by their emotional hold over husbands/sons.
• Confucian theorists argued that women must obey men…but men must treat them decently.
• Women also formed networks within large households…which indirectly affected society.
• Older women had power over daughters/ daughter-in-laws and servant women.
• In exceptional cases, women could serve as regent(in place of your heir to throne) and wield
exceptional power (Egypt’s Hatshepsut and Nefertiti were Pharaohs)
 Dowry- payments to groom in return for bride’s hand in
marriage ( most were arranged by parents)

• Love and affection sometimes played a role (Ancient Egypt is a good

example), but marriage was always an economic union. Every business
transaction has financial questions that have to be answered, and marriage
is no exception

• In India, girls were perceived as an economic burden where they would be

married as young as the age of 6
 India under Aryans
• Vedic age considered women and girl child as desecrated. Inscription from Vedas
suggests, The friendship of women does not last long. Their nature is like that of
hyena [Rig Veda 10-95-10] [Periyar],
• During Aryan culture women who lived within home and family were considered
respectable and pride of the family. But men had right to keep non-wives and woman
slaves (low caste) for sexual use. Right to education was scrapped.
• The famous statement: “May you be the mother of a hundred sons,” was
conceptualized.
 Women in the Americas
• Both the Olmec and Chavin were firmly patriarchal.
• Traditional roles as mothers and wives served their domestic
capacity.
• They also contributed to the family through agriculture and weaving.
 Conclusions
• Patriarchy was a commanding theme in agricultural societies.
• Laws and Culture regulated order.
• Women’s options were severely constrained.
• Girls were reared to accept this order…and boys were conscious of their
superiority.
• When population excess threatened a family’s well-being, these
assumptions often determined that female infants be killed as a means of
population control.
 COMP
• From 4000 B.C.E-600 B.C.E in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, women were subjugated in
patriarchal societies where their primary role was to serve in a domestic capacity, however,
Egyptian women had a slightly elevated status where they could sign their own marriage
contract and initiate divorce while laws of Hammurabi suggested women were considered
property. In affection, Egyptian poetry and statues suggest an affection between the sexes while
in Mesopotamia, marriage was seen as an economic arrangement between families illustrated by
arranged marriage and dowries

• In the ancient world (4000 B.C.E-600 B.C.E) the dimunitized role of a woman in both South Asia
and the Middle East would see the rise of patriarchy by arranging marriages and providing dowry
to ease the economic burden of the father to husband ( child brides in the case of the Aryans),
marginalizing the economic opportunities to women as domestic servants taking care of children
and performing domestic duties, however, the Vedas limited legal roles and responsibilities in
South Asia while in Mesopotamia women enjoyed certain legal rights like divorce and some
property rights.