Sociology: What is the origin of the general concept that women have lower status than men?

Question

It is such a well known concept that features around the world and has been evident in practise for thousands of years [whether it was practised the in law, religion, society in general etc.]. Why is this so? What gave man the idea that women are inferior to men in the first place?

Answer 1

men provided for the family, he hunted , and protected his family from danger--the women's smaller stature and physical strength deemed it necessary.

Answer 2

women are dependent on men while they are "on the nest" and caring for an infant. hundreds of years ago, a women with no man to care for her in this condition would die from starvation or freexe to death.

this may be a factor. nibs is nibbling.:)

Answer 3

Simple answer.  Woman was the possession of the man, and who through him the giver of life to (hopefully) a male air ....and for which he would (likely) extended his gratitude and protection.

Women were 'inferior to men' through their lack of strength and stamina, for hunting and survival.

Rightly or Wrongly by the standards of today, that was how things were because that was how they were perceived to be.

Sash.

Answer 4

i think nibs hit it right on the head. Wether the bullying was intentional or not, that's what it is.

Answer 5

You have to give the points to his nibs, he's spot on well done.

Answer 6

Goes back to the ownership of women by men for the purpose of carrying their children.

Concept likely comes from the physical limitation  that women were not capable of doing the heavy work needed for survival in an age that required considerable physical effort to hunt for  food. Consequently, women did the breeding and household tasks, whilst men did the work to provide food, without which, women would not have been able to survive on their own, and the human race would have become extinct.

Terms like "breadwinner" continue this appreciation of the roles of the sexes.

Answer 7

It is almost certain to derive from the physical proportions of the sexes.

Men are generally heavier and stronger.  They are therefore likely to have adopted a position of superiority between human genders that reflects the superiority of faster, stronger and heavier animal species.  

In a word...it is called bullying.

Answer 8

I would guess it comes down to physical size and strength. Men are bigger and stronger, and could therefore get their way by throwing their weight around. Although I'm not sure if men think women are 'inferior' as such, perhaps it's more that they feel responsible?

Answer 9

Oh, I know this one! We learned all about it in one of my classes, read articles on it, etc...

The idea that inequality stems from physical strength is a huge myth. In early societies, women were highly revered and given more power because they had the "magical" ability to bear children. Physical differences like muscle mass caused a division of labor, but there weren't value systems assigned to the separation (i.e. the things women did were just as important as what men did) - I think this shows that the previous answers here are mistaken. It wasn't until later that men discovered the "power of their seed" and figured out that they could control reproduction. Thus, patriarchy was born. Men could now control which women were worthy of reproducing and slowly gained more and more control over the population.

It seems like reproductive power can be directly correlated to gender balances; when the birth control pill came out, it revolutionized women's control over reproduction, and feminism has been on the rise ever since (at least, now the mainstream has some form of feminism as a basic tenet of their ideology). However, thousands of years of patriarchy stemming anthropologically from reproductive control has caused extreme inequalities in economic opportunity, and that kind of institutional sexism will take a long time to reverse.