Women in Ancient Times: from Matriarchy to Patriarchy Essay examples --

Women in Ancient Times from Matriarchy to PatriarchyIn addition to age, sexuality is one of the universal dimensions on which stance differences are based. Unlike sex, which is a biological concept, g discontinueer is a social construct specifying the soci eachy and culturally prescribed roles that men and women are to follow. Women have always had refuse status than men, but the extent of the gap between the sexes varies across cultures and time. Images of women, mostly figurines of the alike(p) type as the "Venus" of Willendorf*, Lespugue** and Laussel*** (old statuettes representing obese women, women whose wombs and hips are extremely exaggerated) all dating to the Paleolithic period, far outnumber images of men. This has lead to speculation around the place of women in Stone Age society. Some have argued that these egg-producing(prenominal) figures denote the existence during this period of a prominent female god identified usually as the Earth pay off or the Mo ther Goddess. On the basis of this assumption, it has been suggested that, unlike today, women played a considerably more(prenominal) important, if not dominant, role in Paleolithic society that possibly a matriarchy existed and women ruled. That means men havent always been the leaders its not an inborn quality (as a lot of them suggest) Johann Bachofen was a 19th Century Swiss archaeologist and classicist who was among the start-off to grapple the presence of an early matriarchal stage in proto-European cultural evolution. Bachofen utilise Greek myth to support his arguments. He felt that in that respect were lead cultural stages that the early European culture went through. In his view the first stage was a barbaric or hetairistic stage (from the Greek treatment hetero meaning both) where both or actually neither sex was in reality in control for there was no control. The strong took advantage of the weak, and there was wide-spread "wanton" sexual activity, uncontr olled by values or morals. Bachofen judgement that Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, was the chief deity of this time. The second stage was the matriarchal stage, where women banded unneurotic for their own defense. Strong Greek hunter/warrior goddesses such as Artemis and genus Athene were thought by Bachofen to have come from ancient fragments of memory stemming from this time, as well as the mythic Amazons and Furies. This middle stage saw the emergence of agriculture, and the rise of... ...e largely unobserved it was a new kind of gist composed of husband and wife, distinctly different form the former order union of sisters and brothers. The two were in fundamental antagonism to each other. Thus, although wedlock was introduced by the mothers within the framework of the maternal clan structure, in the end marriage would undermine the matriarchy. Therefore womankind gave up its most powerful apparatus in maintaining its dominance in a reality of fatherless children and brought to the highest degree itself the torments of patriarchy, by instutionalizing marriage. Unfortunately, unlike the matriarchy, patriarchy has lasted to our present day. Of course there has been major progress since the days of the Roman Empire, now it is illegal to consider women lower then men in any sense (at least in some countries), yet most of us still see the world through the patriarchal curtain that covers our eyes. BibliographyWomen out of history a herstory anthology by Ann Forfreedom The Underside of history by Elise Boulding cleaning womans evolution from matriarchal clan to patriarchal family by Evelyn Reed When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone http//www.yahoo.comhttp//www.google.com