Gender Issues Across Time

Time Period

Big Ideas

Specifics

Foundation

Family units emerge;

Labor divided by gender;

Organized religion normally had different roles for women;

Different rights depending upon civilization;

India: Sati

Confuscious placed men above women

Reliance on brute force in hunting and war

600 – 1450

Women had secondary roles;

Political rights were minimal or nonexistent;

Occupational roles were sharply defined;

Basic freedoms, such as dowry rights;

Managed households and family finances; supervised the education of children;

Cultural patrons;

Nuns;

Matrilinear lines in some African cultures;

Lower class women normally had less freedoms;

Women blamed for magic and witchery

Medieval Europe: 15% of women would die in childbirth; could own and inherit property; women could enter religious life as nuns; ran household when men were away (Crusades); lower class women had more freedom;

China: arranged marriages; Neo-Confucianism increased patriarchy system; foot-binding; lower class had more freedom of movement as they did not have to live under “proper” norms; inheritance and property rights;

Andean: women were property; could serve as in temples;

1450 – 1750

Limited role;

Marriage primarily an economic arrangement – a way to transfer wealth; only legitimate heirs could inherit;

European women began to seek more education, participate in business;

Informal influence by educating children, running households;

Europe: upper class women increased education; divorce easier for women to obtain; could own businesses (normally with men); victims in witch hunts; nuns and protestant women stressed literacy; writers, artists, and scientists in limited numbers; a few monarchs (Elizabeth, Isabella, and Catherine);

Ottoman Empire: informal roles to powerful men; women often controlled marriage alliances; harem women gained influence as mothers to children; women could own property; however, they were rarely seen in public; could testify in court

 

1750 – 1914

Western women affected by Enlightenment ideas;

Industrial Revolution led to women having more economic freedom;

Separation of working and domestic spheres;

Cult of domesticity in Europe;

Suffrage movements begin;

Europe: Mary Wollstonecraft considered the founder of modern feminism; Victorian society valued women as wives and mothers; gained full property rights by the end of the 19th century; divorce laws; higher education; more advanced jobs; suffragist movements; active in politics: child welfare, alcohol, and labor issues; had the right to vote in Norway, Finland, New Zealand, and Australia; although the early Industrial;

Revolution provided women with more economic opportunities, after men entered higher-paying jobs, most “middle class” women stayed home; lower class women always worked; women began leaving for the U.S. and Australia for more economic opportunities;

Africa: imperialism led to men leaving villages to work in mines; women left to subsistence farming; prostitution and sexual diseases increased; most jobs reserved for men

 

1914 - Present

Women suffrage in most countries;

WWI moved many women into the workforce leading to a call for more freedom;

Women started serving in the armed forces in western cultures;

Birth control

Europe: Suffrage mainly achieved; WWI economic role increased; Russia granted women great freedoms; WWII led to more women in work force; higher education; legal changes