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Early men and women were equal, say scientists

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Early men and women were equal, say scientists

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Study shows that modern hunter-gatherer tribes operate on egalitarian basis, suggesting inequality was an aberration that came with the advent of agriculture

Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists.

A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history.

Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
The study suggests that it was only with the dawn of agriculture, when people were able to accumulate resources for the first time, that an imbalance emerged. “Men can start to have several wives and they can have more children than women,” said Dyble. “It pays more for men to start accumulating resources and becomes favourable to form alliances with male kin.”

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Roles of Men and Women in Ancient Greece

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Roles of Men and Women in Ancient Greece

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Men had the dominant role in public life in ancient Greece. They were engaged in politics and public events, while women were often encouraged to stay in the home. When men entertained, their wives were not invited to the dinner. The Olympic Games were for males only, while in another part of Olympia, the women had a small event of their own in honor of Hera. In Athens, pale skin was in style for women, showing that they were wealthy enough to stay inside. Also in Athens, only the very poor woman was found at the agora without a male escort.
The sheltering of women was not as common in other Greek cities. For example, in Sparta, women had much more freedom and a larger role in society, but still secondary to men.

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When a young woman married in the early years of the Roman Republic she left her childhood home and the authority of her father and entered not only the home of her husband but his power and control as well. In law her status was not very different from that of her husband’s daughter. As Rome’s empire grew and more and more money poured in things began to change. Any amendments to the law probably seemed quite insignificant at the time they were made, but the reality of day to day life gradually began to transform the way society viewed women and the way they viewed themselves. By the end of the First Century women had achieved a level of freedom they would not see again in Western Society until the last half of the Twentieth Century.

Life was hard in the Ancient World and death, disease and hunger lurked around every corner. If told about the new liberty for women, those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder would have laughed and said it did not apply to them for they were too busy earning a living to take advantage of whatever liberation was going on elsewhere in society. Outside of the lower classes women could not work but they did not want to do so either.  In fact "work" was seen as something to be done by slaves and low class people who did not know any better.  Nevertheless women were demanding and getting greater freedom.  Some men objected, of course, but their cries of protest were in vain.  Emperor Augustus introduced a series of laws to promote traditional values but even he was unable to stem the tide of progress.

Generalizations on the status of women in the ancient world are always difficult, and never more so than in the case of Rome where theory and practice were often so far apart.  Many Athenian men seem to have regarded their wives as at best essential inconveniences, but Roman men placed a very high value on marriage, home and the family and this made quite a difference to society's treatment of women. At no time in Rome's history were women allowed to hold public office or work in the government.  In the early days of the Republic women were not even allowed to make suggestions, but by the beginning of the Empire many men were seeking and even following the advice of their wives.  It was all right to do so, provided the advice was given in private and the husband did not make a big deal of it.  Respectable women were not supposed to be wandering around alone outside, but somehow they managed to have a life beyond the home.

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https://www.malala.org/malalas-story