Was our western society the first to experiment with womens rights equality and womens liberation?

Question

or were there societies in the past that did something similiar at their peaks ? And if yes how did things work out ?

And by society I do not mean Italy or England and by past I mean 500 1000 2000 or so years ago and not 40 years ago.

Answer 1

Agreeing with untamed rose and lynn on this one. There were a ton of them, actually. I was really surprised to learn about them in an anthropology class.

And people have different definitions of developed, so I can't answer you on that one.

Answer 2

It's probably a mistake to assume that pre-agricultural societies were matriarchal simply because women did the hard work of pre-agriculture and a large number of deities were female. The question is where power is most concentrated and that has always been with men.

I don't think any 'turning point' can be identified where everything suddenly went patriarchal, but there have been times when women have been lowered in status: e.g. high points of monotheistic religion.

As much as people would like to prove it, there have been no societies like ours and no societies where women did the things women can do now; it's as if people think that a historical analogue would somehow make everything more legitimate. Revolutions don't have to be made on past legitimacies.

Answer 3

We had a matrilineal system in our place.  Kerala India.

Answer 4

Depends upon the cultural anthropologist you speak with.

Marija Gimbutas and several others argue that the art work and the god/goddess during the neolithic period points to evidence for a matriarchal society prior to the Kurgan incursion.

There are also the Amazons, several tribes in africa, majority of the native american tribes...

Answer 5

Most pre-agricultural societies were matriarchal, because the women brought in most of the food.  These societies also tended to have female deities.

In Sparta, at the height of its military power, women arguably had more rights than men (both genders had property rights, etc, but unlike the women, the men basically belonged to the army for their whole lives and could be pressed into service at basically any time.)