For most of its history, the U.S. Constitution, a document crafted exclusively by men, has denied women the right to vote. Women hold a very small portion of the top positions in government and industry. Most religions relegate women to a subservient role/status. Women are lumped with “other minorities” in government programs designed discourage discrimination.
Why is this the case? Why do men subjugate women?
Women are repressed probably because they have been opressed.
Now for the non-smartass answer: Men traditionally and through history have been in charge. This is because women, until very recently, have been dependant on men for biological reasons. It is still so, but much less so. That is why things are changing.
The image of women being weak and dependant is changing. The more this changes the greater women’s power in society.
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
I would tend to agree with Biggirl. Also, as a guess, physical strength and belligerancy were factors.
I understand that physical strenght and the associated dependence for survival are the mechanism utilized to attain dominance, but why the persistent need for dominance? Men have been dependent on women for the survival of the species; why hasn’t that dependence resulted in an equal partnership?
Because once you attain dominance, you don’t want to let it go. Over the centuries men (and women too, for that matter) believed that women were the weaker sex. Women’s dependence was codified into our belief systems and societal mores.
Once a group has attained a position of dominance they will not give it up willing. It is in our nature to believe that the dominant group deserves to be there. There is a strong instinct to keep the status quo, especially if basic needs are being met throughout the society.
And the truth is women are dependent because of our biology. As long as we bear the children, we need the support of society as a whole to insure our children’s (and our own) survival.
I think the thing that has taken so long to sink into the collective mind is that this is not a function of women’s weakness, but an accident of biology.
Biggirl wrote:
This belief didn’t just take hold in a vacuum, of course. Humans, like some other species on the planet, exhibit characteristics of sexual dimorphism; that is, the average adult body size of one sex is larger than the average adult body size of the other sex.
In species where the males tend to be much larger than the females, we usually see “alpha male” behavior – one male, the biggest and strongest, gets exclusive mating access to all the females in his tribe. He is called the Alpha Male. Gorillas and Elephant Seals are examples of this. The average adult male gorilla weighs twice as much as the average adult female gorilla, but only the biggest male gorilla (or the one that wins all the fights, at least) gets access to the harem. The rest of the males in the tribe are out of luck, or have to “sneak in” their nooky when the Alpha Male isn’t looking.
Humans exhibit a mild degree of sexual dimorphism. The average man weighs about 15% more than the average woman. Men also have an easier time developing muscle mass than women do. This would imply, by evolutionary psychology, that human males should compete for mates to some degree, and even perhaps have occasional instances of polygamy. And this is, in fact, the case – many “primitive” societies allow a man to have more than one wife, but vanishingly few societies allow a woman to have more than one husband.
An interesting consequence of this sexual dimorphism was that it meant men tended to make better warriors and better big-game hunters than women did. Prehistoric humans didn’t have guns or bows-and-arrows to help them hunt or make war, so victory usually fell to whoever could hit the hardest or throw a spear the farthest – in other words, whoever had the most musclepower.
Incidentally, there are some species where the sexual dimorphism is reversed from the way it is in humans and gorillas; that is, where the adult females are larger than the adult males. Most spider species have bigger females than males, and one species of saltwater fish, Ceratias holboelki, has females that weigh up to half a million times as much as the males.
The Constitution never denied women the right to vote. State laws did that; an amendment to the Constitution overturned those state laws.
The rest of your question is more valid, but the other Dopers have already given better responses than I could. I particularly assent to tracer’s points about how men, like other male mammals, can obtain a genetic reward if they try to monopolize females and treat them as property.
Also, back in caveman days and for quite some time afterwards, due to high rates of miscarriage and infant morality, propagation of the species depended on women spending a fair amount of time knocked up, or nursing. During which periods they were more or less out of the running for the “who runs society” competition. Even as pumping out babies repeatedly and nursing them was required less often, men had pretty much built a society where they ran things, and the women stayed at home.
tracer: My favorite are Spotted Hyenas ( Crocuta crocuta ). Female Spotted Hyenas kick ass 
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http://sailfish.exis.net/~spook/hyenatxt.html
Tamerlane Perhaps, but I once watched a program on lions, and the only function of the male lion other than studding was killing hyenas to protect the weaker female lion. For this protection, male lions do not have to hunt or do any other work.
Your cite mentions hyenas rarely attack lions, but this television program showed a female getting isolated from the pride by crafty female hyenas and getting taken down. Later the program showed a male lion chasing and taking down an alpha female hyena. If I remember correctly it may have been in response.
Possibly because the the need for dominance (not especially dominance over women) is hardwired is men’s brain.
Possibly because when you’re dominant, there would be no benefit (at the contrary) in giving up this status
Possibly both
Though the rarity of polyandry could be explained also because in this instance, it’s impossible to know who is the father (while in a polygamous marriage, the father and mother are both known).
Two points:
1)We can’t overlook the fact that there are genuine and pronounced psychological differences between men and women.
One of the primary effects of increased testosterone levels is an increase in agressiveness and assertivenes. Men are inherently more assertive and agressive than women, and since in so many fields being agressive and assertive are vital to an ability to perform the job men are naturally going to perform better.
Of course you can argue forever about whether agressiveness and assertiveness in something like politics is essential because politics is male dominated, or whether it is male domiiated because of the relative value of those characteristics. The fact remains however that as the system stands men have an inherent advantage over women. This isn’t a case of subjegating women, it’s a case of women being disadvanatged by a system, which isn’t the same thing at all.
2)Men have one major responsibility which until very recently women were essentially unable unable to fulfill. That responsibility has been to lay down their lives for their society in times of war and even today women have a limited capacity to fulfil this function. With or without choice men are ordered to die to defend their societies. This is a pretty scary prospect and a very serious responsibility with the ultimate penalty for carrying it through. I suspect that a large part of the reason women have been left out of the governmental process is that they are percieved as having no personal stake in this ultimate political tactic. If men are going to die then they at least want to feel that the decisions are being made by others who know what is at stake. There is also a perception that if you’re going to be asked to shoulder a responsibility like that then there has to be some additional rights that go along with it.
I’ve also heard agriculture blamed for the difference in the status of men and women. Since farming requires manual labor which men are better equipped for, the women were relegated to second-class citizens because they could not produce. If you look at some hunter-gatherer societies you notice that men and women are a bit more equal. Perhaps agriculture is the wedge that drove us farther apart…
All my years of experience have led me to believe that the “subjugation” of women is largely a myth. Only in extreme cases like Afghanistan does this hold true, but this is only accomplished by organized force. When I look around at all the women I know in my life, No one is being subjugated. In fact it seems to me that men are far more subjugated than women. Men operate on the illusion that they are under control, and by and large the women see no reason to disillusion them.
With regard to agriculture, you’ll find it is the women who do the manual labour in primitive societies where the men hunt. The men risk their lives hunting and protecting, and their lives are more expendable.
Elephants and orcas come to mind as two high order species that need very little protection and hence the mature males have no role at all in the heirarchy of their society other than being available when the females want them for sex.
It seems that today with computers and automation the role of the male as a protector has diminished in our society and perhaps the breakdown of the family (many children without fathers) has been the result.
I can’t give you a particularly meaningful one-paragraph version of my answer to the question.
So here’s a rather garbled and difficult-to-follow one-paragraph version of my answer to the question.
Women are repressed because roughly 9-11 thousand years ago, (and significantly later in some spots; essentially the time frame in which hunting/gathering gave way to agriculture), it was socially useful and convenient to tie sex and reproduction to the ability and willingness to work hard–in a way that they had ever been tied before-- because agriculture tended to be a lot more labor-intensive than hunting and gathering. They probably started with tying reproduction to labor, but in order to establish that “tie” for males, controlling access to sex became implicated, and once it did, it probably proved advantageous to use and manipulate sex drive (much the same way that advertisers find it useful to link it to the purchase of products). Agrarian societies at their most stable tended towards pyramidical distributions: many young people, few adult, very few elderly; and, similarly, many people today, few yesterday, very few in existence way back when (i.e., constantly geometrically-expanding population). The control structure tended to benefit the old men and to manipulate the young men and the women, and is therefore called “patriarchy”.
Details–including why “repression” (instead of just “oppression”), why it means anything other than “the strong oppressed the weak because they could & so they did”, and what “power” and “control” are all about in the first place–are discussed on my web site and in particular in this paper.
The funny thing about social change is that it takes time. We tend to view the world microscopically or microchronically if you will. With a perspective based primarily in our own lifespan,it is naturally difficult to see the great strides this society has taken toward equality.
Granted, we have a long way to go but look what has been accomplished in this less-than-perfect society in the past century. Women have the right to vote, own property, hold political office, speak their minds about any subject they wish, and with a few exceptions hold any job they are qualified for. These are rights which were unheard of in previous centuries. Obviously there are people who resist these changes and attempt to keep their power but I believe that is based not on some belief in the inferiority of women but rather a fear of losing their own power and position.
As for subjugation, I see few modern societies which actively subjugate women. Afghanistan being the most visible. In the case of Afghanistan and many of the islamic societies, the cause is religious dogma.
IMHO I believe that the natural tendency toward greater agression and the role of the male in the hunter-gatherer society was the basis for the primarily patriarchal societies we grew into.
A Hunter3, while your explanation seems to go some way to perhaps explaining control, I can’t see hhow it explains women losing control.
It seems to me that if access to sex was the controlling factor then women would have all control, since they ultimatly have the lower sex drive. Almost Anyone in a heterosexual relationship will confirm that the use of sex as a coercive tool is primarily a female privilege.
If you are suggesting that men controlled harems of women and doled them out as a reward for hard work, then this seems to rather conflict with the idea that agriculturalism disempowered women, since females would already have been under the control of men for this scenario to occur.
I haven’t read your papaer yet, but perhaps you could clarify this for me first off.