Why Women’s Status Deteriorated

After men realized that hunting-gathering was very difficult and that they could’t get enough food to last a lifetime staying in one spot, that sparked the rise of agricultural societies.Women’s statuses seemed to fall apart after agriculture was established and spread rapidly. This seems true because of the fact that in non-agricultural societies, women had more equality. Men did a lot of the heavy work such as plowing and because of that they got the reputation that they worked the hardest and soon male children were favored over female children. Primary male creators were now increasing as well. Male power actually increased even more when agricultural societies needed to defend themselves from attack and also when a formal military forces were needed on territorial battles. When the human birthrate went up, there were many new jobs for the many new children being born. Because of the birthrate increase, women’s statuses fell even more because now women spent a lot of their time taking care of their newly born children. I agree with the author on how when the birthrate went up, womens statuses deteriorated even more because women had to care for their children for most of their lives. Instead of working in the fields, they were at home caring for children so that probably made people think that women were not working as hard as men. I also agree with the author on how male power actually increased when agricultural societies needed to defend themselves with a formal army. The army was probably mostly male if not all so that probably made men seem more powerful since they were fighting in the army. I think the most significant explanation was that the rise of agriculture started the deterioration of womens statuses because everything was okay until that happened. In the hunting-gathering stage, women contributed a good amount and also in non-agricultural societies women continued to have some equality which proves that the rise of agriculture may have started