What is the ultimate cause of inequality between the sexes? Biology? Society? Both?

Question

A complex question...

Answer 1

Both

Answer 2

pregnancy. Women will never have equality with men until their contribution to humanity is valued. Pregnancy and child rearing ruins your health, limits your career and takes up ~ 1/4 of a woman's life. If women knew what they were taking on thy probably wouldn't chose to have children.

Answer 3

Reproduction does have a lot to do with it, but it is a mix of biology and society. In early societies, women were highly revered and given more power because they had the "magical" ability to bear children. 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. When the birth control pill came out, it revolutionized women's control over reproduction, and feminism has been on the rise ever since.

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. The slight "oppression" that you say women claim needs to be evaluated from a very broad, diachronic perspective. It's easy to dismiss if you're looking at every woman on an individual level.

As a sociologist, I would argue that the cause of inequality is mostly societal. For example, there is evidence in your post that you have already been strongly socialized to criticize modern women for valuing careers over children. Why isn't it wrong for a man to value his career over fatherhood? Gender roles like these have very, very little to do with biology.

Answer 4

the absence of logic and the lack of a sense of responsibility in the female mind

Answer 5

I would say society... but then I read the other answers and they made good points...I do think it is both...we do learn different roles based on society.