Hughes Essay

Was the development of gender inequality natural or was it created by early humans? That is a question that scholars studying global history are still asking today. Although gender in global history has been explored recently, it is clear that woman’s political and social status was usually inferior in most literate civilization of the classical period as we know from Hughes essay. But the question is, was gender inequality a natural occurrence or was it developed in early literate civilizations? That is a question that even prominent scholars cannot answer. According to “new” woman’s history, gender is a basic and logical concept, equally important as class or ethnicity. It does not refer to a male–female pair. Biological differences between men and women have such different social meanings and are changing, that the typical male and female characteristics are misguiding, rather than being useful. Usually women are thought of as being meek, while men are thought of as being strong and superior. In ancient civilizations, and even today, men are usually thought of as doing hard, physical, and strenuous activity. Women are thought of executing little physical and less strenuous activity. The types of physical activities men and women execute, is based on their biological differences. Therefore, men could’ve been thought of as superior for their strength. Since men were thought of as the strong, leading figures for their families, they did the important jobs of providing resources. While most women were physically weaker than most men, they were important in the production of those resources for human necessities. Whereas a man can bring the materials for clothing and animals or vegetables for food, the woman’s job is to prepare the food or make the clothing. Women are thought of as being craftier rather than physically strong. Even though society depended on productive labor by most adults, they usually divided it into male and female tasks according to Hughes essay. According to Hughes essay, patriarchy, a society mostly run by men, triumphed when the Hebrews developed monotheism. When the belief of one God came around, God was thought of as a male figure. We can infer that since people thought of God, the most important figure as being male, that men were naturally already thought of as being superior. Hughes essay also reminds us that Hebrew women were excluded from access to the covenant of males in a religion that allowed worship of only one male God. With all the information we have gathered, we can conclude that people could not create gender inequality. Gender inequality was a natural thing from the beginning of human civilization. The physical attributes and characteristics of men and women create them for who they are, and create gender inequality. For years, gender inequality has been a problem, at times enormously, but from the facts we can tell nature has chosen its course.