One can better understand the historical oppression of women by considering three social factors throughout the world's history religion, tradition, and labor-based economic supply and demand. In almost all of the world's major religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and many others) very clear distinctions have been made about gender roles are socialized expectations of what is normal, desirable, acceptable, and conforming for males and females in specific jobs or positions in groups and organizations over the life course. These gender roles have very specific meanings for the daily lives and activities of males and females who live under the religious cultures in nations throughout history and even in our day. The Book of Leviticus in the Judeao-Christian Old Testament has many biological rituals based specifically on womens' hygiene. A close friend of mine performed her Master's thesis in Ancient Near East Studies on the reproductive hygiene rituals described in the book of Leviticus. \({ }^4\) In brief, she found no modern-day scientific support for these religious rituals on female's health nor on their reproduction. Her conclusion was that these were religious codes of conduct, not biologically-based scientifically beneficial codes.
Many ancient writings in religions refer to the flaws of females, their reproductive disadvantages, their temperament, and the rules that should govern them in the religious community. Many current religious doctrines have transformed as society's values of gender equality have emerged. The point is that throughout history, religions were a dominant social force in many nations and the religious doctrines, like the cultural values, often placed women in a subjugated role to men and a number of different levels.
The second social force is tradition. Traditions can be and have been very harsh toward women. Table 3 shows a scale of the outcomes of oppression toward women that have and currently do exist somewhere in the world. Even though the average woman out lives the average man by three years worldwide and seven years in developed countries, there are still a few countries where cultural and social oppression literally translates into shorter life expectancies for women (Niger, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia have lower death rates for women while Kenya, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Micronesia have a tie between men and women's life expectancy-this even though in developing nations the average woman outlives the average man by three years.).
Some cultural traditions are so harsh that females are biologically trumped by males by withholding nutrition, abandoning wife and daughters, abuse, neglect, violence, refugee status, diseases, and complications of childbirth unsupported by the government. If you study this online looking at the Population Reference Bureau's many links and reports, you will find a worldwide concerted effort to persuade government, religious, and cultural leaders to shift their focus and efforts to nurture and protect females. \({ }^5\) Progress has already been made to some degree, but much change is still warranted because life, health and well-being are at stake for billions of women worldwide.
Outcomes of 10 Forms of Oppression of Women.6
- Death from cultural and social oppression (Various Countries)
- Sexual and other forms of slavery (Western Africa and Thailand)
- Maternal deaths (Sub-Sahara Africa and developing nations)
- Female Genital Mutilation (Mid- Africa about 120 million victims)
- Rape and sexual abuse (South Africa and United States are worst countries)
- Wage disparity (worldwide)
- No/low education for females (various degrees in most countries of the world)
- Denial of access to jobs and careers (many developing nations)
- Mandatory covering of females’ bodies head to toe (Traditional countries, Muslim)
- Public demeaning of women (still practiced, public and private)
One of the most repugnant traditions in our world has been and still is the sale of children and women into sexual and other forms of slavery. Countless civilizations that are still influential in our modern thought and tradition have sold girls and women the same way one might sell a horse or cow. It's estimated by a variety of organizations and sources that about one million women are currently forced into the sex slavery industry (boys are also sold and bought into slavery). India, Western Africa, and Thailand are some of the most notorious regions for this atrocity. \({ }^7\) Governments fail at two levels in the sexual slavery trade First, they allow it to occur as in the case of Thailand where it's a major draw of male tourists and Second, they fail to police sexual slavery which is criminal and often connected to organized crime. The consequences to these girls and women are harsh at every level of human existence and are often connected to the spread of HIV and other communicable diseases.
Although pregnancy is not a disease it carries with it many health risks when governments fail to provide resources to expecting mothers before, during, and after delivery of their baby. Maternal Death is the death of a pregnant woman resulting from pregnancy, delivery, or recovery complications. Maternal deaths number in the hundreds of thousands and are estimated by the United Nations to be around \(1 / 2\) million per year worldwide. \({ }^8\) Typically very little medical attention is required to prevent infection, mediate complications, and assist in complications to mothers. To answer this problem one must approach it at the larger social level with government, health care systems, economy, family, and other institutional efforts. The Population Reference Bureau puts a woman's risk of dying from maternal causes at 1 in 92 worldwide with it being as low as 1 in 6,000 in developed countries and as high as 1 in 22 for the least developed regions of the world. \({ }^9\) The PRB reports "little improvement in maternal Mortality in developing countries.
Female Genital Mutilation is the traditional cutting, circumcision, and removal of most or all external genitalia of women for the end result of closing off some or part of the vagina until such time that the woman is married and cut open. In some traditions, there are religious underpinnings. In others, there are customs and rituals that have been passed down. In no way does the main body of any world religion condone or mandate this practice-many countries where this takes place are predominantly Muslim-yet local traditions have corrupted the purer form of the religion and its beliefs and female genital mutilation predates Islam. \({ }^{11}\) An analogy can be drawn from the Taliban, which was extreme in comparison to most Muslims worldwide and which literally practiced homicide toward its females to enforce conformity. It should also be explained that there are no medical therapeutic benefits from female genital mutilation. Quite the contrary, there are many adverse medical consequences that result from it including pain, difficulty in childbirth, illness, and even death.
Many human rights groups, the United Nations, scientists, advocates, the United States, the World Health Organization, and other organizations have made aggressive efforts to influence the cessation of this practice worldwide. But, progress has come very slowly. Part of the problem is that women often perform the ritual and carry on the tradition as it was perpetrated upon them. In other words, many cases have women preparing the next generation for it and at times performing it on them.
The mandatory covering of females' bodies head to toe has been opposed by some and applauded by others. Christians, Hindus, and many other religious groups have the practice of covering or veiling in their histories. As fundamentalist Muslim nations and cultures have returned to their much more traditional way of life, hijab which is the Arabic word that means to cover or veil has become more common. Often hijab means modest and private in the day-to-day interpretations of the practice. For some countries it is a personal choice, while for others it becomes a crime not to comply. The former Taliban, punished such a crime with death (they also punished formal schooling of females and the use of makeup by death).
Many women's rights groups have brought public attention to this trend, not so much because the mandated covering of females is that oppressive, but because the veiling and covering is symbolic of the religious, traditional, and labor-forced patterns of oppression that have caused so many problems for women and continue to do so today.
Professor Ron Hammond interviewed a retired OBGYN nurse who served as a training nurse for a mission in Saudi Arabia on a volunteer basis. She taught other local nurses from her 30 years of experience. Each and every day she was guarded by machine gun toting security forces everywhere she went. She was asked to cover and veil and did so. Ron asked her how she felt about that, given that her U.S. culture was so relaxed on this issue.
"I wanted to teach those women and knew that they would benefit from my experience. I just had to do what I was told by the authorities," she said.
"What would have happened if you had tried to leave the compound without your veil?" Ron asked.
"I suspect, I would have been arrested and shot." She chuckles. "Not shot, perhaps, but if I did not comply, my training efforts would have been stopped and I would have been sent home."
"So, you complied because of your desire to train the nurses?"
"That and the mothers and babies." She answered. \({ }^{12}\)
The public demeaning of women has been acceptable throughout various cultures because publicly demeaning members of society who are privately devalued and or considered flawed fits the reality of most day-to-day interactions. Misogyny is the physical or verbal abuse and mistreatment of women. Verbal misogyny is unacceptable in public in most Western Nations today. With the ever present technology found in cell phones, video cameras, and security devices a person's private and public misogynistic language could easily be recorded and posted for millions to see on any number of websites.
Perhaps, this fear of being found out as a woman-hater is not the ideal motivation for creating cultural values of respect and even admiration of women and men. As was mentioned above, most of the world historical leaders assumed that women were not as valuable as men and it has been a few decades since changes have begun. Yet, an even more sinister assumption has and does persist today that women were the totality of their reproductive role, or Sex=Gender (Biology=Culture). If this were true then women would ultimately just be breeders of the species, rather than valued human beings they are throughout the world today.
Footnotes
4. see Is God a respecter of persons? : another look at the purity laws in Leviticus by Anne M. Adams , 2000 in BYU Library Holdings
5. www.PRB.org see also United Nations www.un.org
6. www.prb.org World Population Data Sheet2008; pages 7-15. http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf
7. Google Amnesty International, Sexual Slavery, PRB.org, United Nations, and search Wikipedia.org
8. See www.UN.org
9. See www.prb.org World Population Data Sheet 2008, page 3
10. Obermeyer, C.M. March 1999, Female Genital Surgeries: The Known and the Unknowable. Medical Anthropology Quaterly13, pages 79-106;p retrieved 5 December from http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/...q.1999.13.1.79
11. Interview with HB, 12 June, 2005
12. http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-a...e-Systems.html
