Women on the March

| March 13, 2009

There should always be an equal place for women in all aspects of social and economic life, because their participation is essential for the spiritual and economic prosperity of every civilised nation.

Over 10,000 years ago, since the end of the Stone Age and the matriarchal eras when men were worshipping goddesses, and from the beginning of ancient civilisation, the woman was assigned a subservient role to the man. This is until the emergence of the woman's right movement in America and Europe in the eighteenth century and during the Age of Enlightenment, which is further reinforced by the right to vote movement. It started in the 1850s, intensified in the 1920s and later in the 1960s by the civil rights and woman's liberation movements. These movements set out to correct the unfairness and the indignity imposed on women for many centuries.

In a relatively short time span, women achieved a great deal in political, social, emotional and economic equality with men and commenced a long journey to enhance their presence in human culture. The more economic independence they achieve the more liberated they become and the greater the social, economic and cultural contributions they make.

For many centuries, religious dogma promoted the myths of, ‘God placed Eve under the control of Adam' and as in the book of Genesis and Aristotle's declaration that ‘Woman is inferior to man and should be ruled by man', which was further reinforced by St Paul's direction ‘Wives to obey their husbands'.

Some religious fundamentalists went further in considering the woman as an evil distraction. In some backward countries, woman's value is more precise, she gets half of what the man gets when the inheritance is distributed between the sons and daughters of the deceased. Also in court cases, two women witness statements are accepted as equal to one man's statement.

The demeaning of the role of women in historical myths is part of all mainstream religions, and resulted in her subordination to man that gave her no chance to achieve either equality or a notable role in the cultural development of the human race. This was until she was freed from the shackles of history when she started to become economically independent and when the man's honour started to be detached from her body. (In some countries, like Saudi Arabia, it is still legal for the man to kill the wife or the daughter, if she commits adultery)

In ancient civilisation, the role of women was limited, because of the constant wars and conquests to defend or expand the empires. Woman's limitation in hand to hand combat could have contributed to the women's secondary role to that of man, because of the priority placed on the ability to fight, ahead of other functions. This could have resulted in limiting the woman's role to serving the man and raising children.

This is until the 20th century when her military role changed to allow her to participate in minor combat, nursing, computer technology and administrative work. With the rapid development of various technologies in the 21st century, her role is increasing and should soon become equal to the man's in all aspects of life.

Considering the short span of time since her liberation in the 18th century, gaining the right to vote in the 19th century and the passing of the sex discrimination act in the 20th century, woman has proven to be the equal of man in making major contributions to enhance human culture and economic and scientific development.

Woman has advantage over man, especially for her instinct of moderation and for her rejection of the premise of war and conquest, which is usually driven by man's aggression. Man's aggression could be the source of his weakness and vulnerability to emotional exploitation. The woman is more equipped with patience and natural intuition than the man, but by virtue of his historic role and conditioning, the man has developed analytical power that the woman needs to develop for her to excel further. The twenty-first century is certainly for women to consolidate their position and to achieve total equality with men; provided they clear the hurdles placed in front of them by men who will resist the surrender.

Discrimination against women may be a thing of the past, if women:

  • Continue to fight against the remaining institutionalised oppression that prevents them from reaching their potential
  • Strive to become leaders instead of followers by priming their mental and psychological energy
  • Reject developmental psychology, based on the ‘Barbie Doll' tag, and prevent the same conditioning for their daughters
  • Question and reject religion, the main cause of their historical predicament of oppression, especially patriarchal religion that persist in assigning woman a secondary role to man
  • Continue the fight for equal rights, equal opportunity and equal pay, because they are not fully achieved
  • Fight against sex discrimination, because it is still widespread
  • Reject the concept of adopting the husband's surname in marriage, because in doing so, the woman surrenders her identity to male ego
  • Vote more women into parliament and avoid the election of manipulative and religious politicians
  • Understand that man and woman are meant, as nature intended, to have complementary roles, in both a physical and emotional sense. The woman is more cool-headed and intuitive, whilst the less sophisticated man is more aggressive and egotistic
  • Understand that women of any religion who wear outfits that symbolise their religion may be indoctrinated, oppressed or manipulated (except for women who wear them because of their total conviction and personal choice)
  • Understand that it is not the man's world, because it is nothing without a woman and worth remembering, because of his insecurity, the man may always feel that ‘a place without a woman is a place without spirit'
  • Achieving total economic independence is equal to obtaining total freedom
  • Education, knowledge, experience and reasoning are the keys to their equality
  • United they stand, divided they fall.

Women's unity was on display in a recent conscience vote in Parliament on the legalisation of the abortion pill RU486 and stem cell research. It would be in women's best interests to fight to ensure that a conscience vote on every social issue becomes the rule, rather than the exception, because man's agenda is different to hers.

There should always be an equal place for women in all aspects of social and economic life, because their participation is essential for the spiritual and economic prosperity of every civilised nation. Women's participation in work is a prerequisite for economic growth and prosperity. 

Born in Iraq in1939, Hani Montan arrived in Australia in 1969 and acquired citizenship in 1973. In 1966, he post graduated with a Masters of Science Degree in Civil and Industrial Engineering. Prior to that, he was a primary school teacher in Iraq. In addition to his extensive travelling around the world, he has studied and worked in Iraq, Russia, Algeria and Australia. Hani worked at Sydney Water as a project engineer and group leader for twenty years, which was followed by fourteen years of managing a retail business and a further four years of study and writing.

Many other social, political, religious and environmental issues are discussed in my book titled "Thorny Opinion". The book can be previewed on Google Book Search and Amazon.com, and can be purchased from Amazon.com and the publisher BookSurge.com. Australian readers can purchase the book directly from the author by emailing hanimontan@optusnet.com.au ($20.00, postage free within Australia) 

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0 Comments

  1. Hani.Montan

    April 21, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Reply to rucus76au

    I enjoyed reading your comments; especially your way of dissecting my blog to focus on points of agreement or otherwise. In the following reply however, my focus is on disagreed point and to clear any misunderstanding.

    Firstly, it is necessary to draw a distinction between the feminist revolution and the almost exclusively male-oriented "sexual revolution." The commercialisation of sex by Hollywood and the media is not the subject of my blog. Women liberation is meant to empower women, who were socially disenfranchised and oppressed for thousands of years.   

    The gender differences and procreation motivation in biological terms, rest mostly with females rather than males. Liberated women in developed countries are more discriminating in their choice of a mate, because they have high level of awareness, they invest more energy in the offspring than men and they have more rights to choose. In backward countries however, the reverse is true where a mate is chosen for her. This is where religion plays a major role.

    Developed countries are more secular than backward countries and therefore, (generally speaking) women liberation is proportional to their democratic system of government and the level of religious entrenchment in the social life.

    Historically, women liberation has its genesis in the social movements, and the essential part of this is the revolt against religious sexist and discriminatory doctrines.

    On reading the Tenth Commandment for example, you can see what I mean. Alternatively, you can read chapter 6 of my book "Thorny Opinion" where I highlighted the problem with our blind beliefs.

    Other religions' attitude towards women is not any better. Jews believed women to be responsible for the downfall of the human race, and considered menstruation and childbirth to be the consequences of a Divine curse. In Buddhism, women were said to be the personification of evil. Hindu women were declared to be unfit for independence, inherently weak, easily misled, sinful and unintelligent. Islam's attitude is even more striking; the men acquire instant self-esteem not by real accomplishment, but by the mere fact of being men, rather than women. They still stone women to death on suspicion of adultery.

    In 1586, French Catholics were debating whether or not women possessed souls. English Christians burned thousands of women alive on the mere suspicion that they were witches. Married women in Europe did not gain the right to own property, obtain a divorce or enter into their own contracts until the 19th century. This is what women had to revolt against.

    Although religions are showing some sign of progress, but this however, is for the wrong reason. It is only for maintaining the commercial viability of their business. It is worth remembering that religious leaders control huge infrastructures and have the power to revert back to fundamentalism when the time is right. They are humans and there is nothing more corrupting of human than power.

    Let us not forget the era of inquisition.

  2. rucus76au

    May 6, 2009 at 11:32 am

    Yes and No

    Some religious fundamentalists went further in considering the woman as an evil distraction. In some backward countries, woman's value is more precise, she gets half of what the man gets when the inheritance is distributed between the sons and daughters of the deceased. Also in court cases, two women witness statements are accepted as equal to one man's statement.

     Agreed. Absolutely ridiculous and totally discriminatory.

    In ancient civilisation, the role of women was limited, because of the constant wars and conquests to defend or expand the empires. Woman's limitation in hand to hand combat could have contributed to the women's secondary role to that of man, because of the priority placed on the ability to fight, ahead of other functions. This could have resulted in limiting the woman's role to serving the man and raising children.

     Good point. Agreed. Woman was unfortunately forced to contribute to man's war efforts as a lesser of two evils. The obvious retort to refusing assistance to engaging in wars was 'would you prefer to be handed over to he invaders/ marauders?' The wars waged by man did result in subjugation of women.

    But this is not the full  story and I will come to this point later.

     Woman has advantage over man, especially for her instinct of moderation and for her rejection of the premise of war and conquest, which is usually driven by man's aggression. Man's aggression could be the source of his weakness and vulnerability to emotional exploitation. The woman is more equipped with patience and natural intuition than the man, but by virtue of his historic role and conditioning, the man has developed analytical power that the woman needs to develop for her to excel further.

    Yes and No. It is true that men have lead societies into war – psychologically and militarily. As an instinct, man competes with other man to gain advantage and improve his social status to attract a good 'mate' for reproduction. On this point, his needs perfectly match those of the woman's – probably the only point of fundamental agreement. He needs to provide a livelihood for her and her offsprings and she needs to obtain the security he offers and his 'good' genes to procreate. This means that there is an evolutionary battle for survival amongst men to spread their stock as easily as possible. For this to occur, it comes as a result of being 'stronger/ richer' (the progression of the qualities deemed attractive to women and this has changed over time in colour but has remained the same in principle).

    For this to occur, he needs to subjugate and rule other men to eliminate competition. Thus, man's lust for war is not as a result of his 'instincts' of pure violence for the sake of violence but as a result of a biological imperative that urges him to kill another in order to survive and procreate. This would make him more attractive to the female kind and the cycle is established and has continued unabated in its various forms though less aggressive nowadays than in the past.

    Thus, and as a conclusion, men do not cause wars for the sake of it. It takes time, effort and money to organise and engage enemies. The blame ought to be shared by allhumanity, women included, thanks to this evolutionary urge to survive.

    Further, and whilst not blatantly stated, I get the distinct impression from what you write that had we been ruled by matriachs, we would have had fewer wars as woman places greater value on human life and is more conciliatory.

    I agree that women can be more conciliatory and less prone to bouts of violence. But women can have a brutal streak as fierce as that of men. Witness the bullying that girls subject other girls to in the playground. Witness the battles to attract the most 'eligible' bachelor be they a doctor or lawyer. Witness the quite extraordinary voting patterns of such shows as Australian Idol with legions of young female teenage fans generally voting out the most attractive females out of the competition and leaving guys or fat, frumpy and 'non threatening' females. No, the competitive edge does not die with women leading – it simply changes its colour and focus. Whilst this evidence is anecdotal, it is relevant to this discussion.

    Whilst we may have had fewer wars, we would have had a lot more committees and organisations and we would have seen slower material progress with lesser advances in technologies. The innovative spirit would have been moderated and it is this spark that is required. This is not to deny the intelligence of women – far from it – it is simply to state that a society that continously focuses on feelings and emotions and conciliation accomplishes very little. The balance needs to be right.

    • Question and reject religion, the main cause of their historical predicament of oppression, especially patriarchal religion that persist in assigning woman a secondary role to man

    This is a subject that I think is close to your heart and I think that we will have to disagree for the most part.

    We need to distinguish between religions on this. Christianity and Judaism, whilst initially patriarchal, have had their Reformations and the West as a whole has had its Enlightenment. This has lead to the most  significant progress in lives of women in the history of mankind. Islam? Not much progress there – Saudi Arabia seems to be carried along kicking and screaming on any initiative that carries any semblance of equality. An example of course is the ban on single female drivers.

    Further, and as a fundamental principle , to question the value of religion on the lives of many women is in fact an insult to their intelligence. There is absolutely no need for women these days to belong to any Christian Church given their freedom in this day and age correct? If that is the case, why do Church pews continue to be visited by clever and 'independen't women week in week out? This is because religions has an attempt at answering some of life's basic questions and it delivers hopes to the lives of men and women. Whilst the history of religion on the lives of women has not been overly positive in some epochs, their liberation / subjugation no longer rests with this institution. Historically, this may have had a hand but this was linked to the question of survival. This is no longer the case and thus your link between subjugation and Christianity is tenous at best.

    There should always be an equal place for women in all aspects of social and economic life, because their participation is essential for the spiritual and economic prosperity of every civilised nation. Women's participation in work is a prerequisite for economic growth and prosperity. 

    I could not agree more. The history of women's liberation and progress has demonstrated a solid link. Societies that have emancipated women have higher standards of living. The reason for this is because liberation unlocks the tremendous potential of half of society. A free and happy female population contributes magnificently to the betterment and welfare of society in general.

    'The Truth shall Set you free'