WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT LECTURE#1 TRANSCRIPT

Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls of many societies worldwide, and formed the basis to the women's rights movement in the nineteenth century and feminist movement during the 20th century. In some countries, these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed.

Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to be free from sexual violence; to vote; to hold public office; to enter into legal contracts; to have equal rights in family law; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to have reproductive rights; to own property; to education.

History

Ancient cultures

Although males seem to have dominated in many ancient cultures, there are some exceptions. For instance in the Nigerian Aka culture women may hunt, even on their own, and often control distribution of resources. Ancient Egypt had female rulers, such as Cleopatra.

China

Women throughout historical and ancient China were considered inferior and had subordinate legal status based on the Confucian law. In Imperial China, the "Three Obedience’s" promoted daughters to obey their fathers, wives to obey their husbands and widows to obey their sons. Women could not inherit businesses or wealth and men had to adopt a son for such financial purposes. Late imperial law also features seven different types of divorces. A wife could be ousted if she failed to birth a son, committed adultery, disobeyed her parent's in law, spoke excessively, stole, or suffered from an incurable or hateful disease or disorder. But there were also limits for the husband like for example he could not divorce if she observed her parent's in law's mourning sites, if she had no family to return to or if the husband's family used to be poor and since then have become richer.

Due to the social custom that men and women should not be near to one another, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male doctors of Western Medicine. This resulted in a tremendous need for female doctors of Western Medicine in China.

During the Republic of China (1912–49) and earlier Chinese governments, women were legally bought and sold into slavery under the guise of domestic servants. These women were known as Mui Tsai. The lives of Mui Tsai were recorded by American feminist Agnes Smedley in her book Portraits of Chinese Women in Revolution.

However, in 1949 the Republic of China had been overthrown by communist guerillas led by Mao Zedong, and the people's republic of china was founded in the same year. In May 1950 the Peoples Republic of China enacted the New Marriage Law to tackle the sale of women into slavery. This outlawed marriage by proxy and made marriage legal so long as both partners consent. The New Marriage Law raised the legal age of marriage to 20 for men and 18 for women. This was an essential part of countryside land reform as women could no longer legally be sold to landlords. The official slogan was "Men and women are equal.

Greece

Although most women lacked political and equal rights in ancient Greece, they enjoyed a certain freedom of movement until the Archaic age. Records also exist of women in ancient Delphi, Gortyn, Thessaly, Megara and Sparta owning land, the most prestigious form of private property at the time. However, after the Archaic age, women's status had gotten worse and introduction of legal laws such as gender separation were implemented.

Women in Classical Athens had no legal personhood until marriage, women were under the guardianship of their father or other male relative. Once married, the husband became a woman's kyrios. As women were barred from conducting legal proceedings, the kyrios would do so on their behalf. Athenian women had limited right to property and therefore were not considered full citizens. However, women could acquire rights over property through gifts, dowry and inheritance, though her kyrios had the right to dispose of a woman's property. The only permanent barrier to citizenship, and hence full political and civil rights, in ancient Athens was gender. No women ever acquired citizenship in ancient Athens, and therefore women were excluded in principle and practice from ancient Athenian democracy.

Athens was also the cradle of philosophy at the time and anyone could become a poet, scholar, politician, and artist except if you were a woman. During the Hellenistic period in Athens, the famous philosopher Aristotle thought that women would bring disorder, evil, and were “utterly useless and caused more confusion than the enemy.” Because of this, Aristotle thought keeping women separate from the rest of the society was the best idea.

By contrast, Spartan women enjoyed a status, power, and respect that was unknown in the rest of the classical world. Although Spartan women were formally excluded from military and political life they enjoyed considerable status as mothers of Spartan warriors. As men engaged in military activity, women took responsibility for running estates. Following protracted warfare in the 4th century BC Spartan women owned approximately between 35% and 40% of all Spartan land and property. By the Hellenistic Period, some of the wealthiest Spartans were women. They controlled their own properties, as well as the properties of male relatives who were away with the army. Spartan women rarely married before the age of 20, and unlike Athenian women who wore heavy, concealing clothes and were rarely seen outside the house, Spartan women wore short dresses and went where they pleased.  Despite relatively greater mobility for Spartan women, their role in politics was just as the same as Athenian women, they could not take part in it. Men forbade them from speaking at assemblies and segregated them from any political activities. Aristotle also thought Spartan women's influence was mischievous and highlighted the greater legal freedom of women in Sparta were its ruins.

Plato acknowledged that extending civil and political rights to women would substantively alter the nature of the household and the state.

Ancient Rome

Roman law similar to Athenian law, was created by men in favor of men. Women had no public voice, and no public role which only improved after the 1st century to the 6th century BCE. Freeborn women of ancient Rome were citizens who enjoyed legal privileges and protections that did not extend to non-citizens or slaves. Roman society, however, was patriarchal, and women could not vote, hold public office, or serve in the military. Women of the upper classes exercised political influence through marriage and motherhood. The central core of the Roman society was the pater families or the male head of the household who exercised his authority over all his children, servants, and wife. Similar to Athenian women, Roman women had a guardian or as it was called "tutor" who managed and oversaw all her activity.  In the earliest period of the Roman Republic, a bride passed from her father's control into the "hand" of her husband. A married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Although it was a point of pride to be a "one-man woman" who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after the loss of a husband through death or divorce. Under classical Roman law, a husband had no right to abuse his wife physically or compel her to have sex. Wife beating was sufficient grounds for divorce or other legal action against the husband. Because she remained legally a part of her birth family, a Roman woman kept her own family name for life. Children most often took the father's name, but in the Imperial period sometimes made their mother's name part of theirs, or even used it instead. A Roman mother's right to own property and to dispose of it as she saw fit, including setting the terms of her own will, enhanced her influence over her sons even when they were adults. Because of their legal status as citizens and the degree to which they could become emancipated, women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business.

Byzantine Empire

Since Byzantine law was essentially based on Roman law, the legal status of women did not change significantly from the practices of the 6th century. But the traditional restriction of women in the public life as well as the hostility against independent women still continued. Greater influence of Greek culture contributed to strict attitudes about women' roles being domestic instead of being public.  Like previous Roman law, women could not be legal witnesses, hold administrations or run banking but they could still inherit properties and own land. The restrictions on the marriage of senators and other men of high rank with women of low rank were extended by Constantine, but it was almost entirely removed by Justinian. Second marriages were discouraged, especially by making it legal to impose a condition that a widow's right to property should cease on remarriage,

Religious scriptures

Bible

"If he marries another wife, he is not to reduce her food, clothing or marital rights." (Exodus 21:10) from the Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) So from ancient times women have had a right to sex with their husbands, in addition to being fed and clothed by them. Slave wives may have been abolished but the general moral principles covering activities such as divorce still apply today. However, before and during biblical times, the roles of women were almost always severely restricted.

Qur'an

The Qur'an, revealed to Muhammad over the course of 23 years, provided guidance to the Islamic community and modified existing customs in Arab societyFrom 610 and 661, known as the early reforms under Islam, the Qur'an introduced fundamental reforms to customary law and introduced rights for women in marriage, divorce, and inheritance. By providing that the wife, not her family, would receive a dowry from the husband, which she could administer as her personal property, the Qur'an made women a legal party to the marriage contract.

While in customary law, inheritance was limited to male descendants, the Qur'an introduced rules on inheritance with certain fixed shares being distributed to designated heirs, first to the nearest female relatives and then the nearest male relatives. According to Annemarie Schimmel "compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work."

The general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide and recognizing women's full personhood. Women generally gained greater rights than women in pre-Islamic Arabia and medieval Europe. Women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures until centuries later. to Professor William Montgomery Watt, when seen in such historical context, Muhammad "can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women's rights."

Medieval Europe

The English Church and culture in the middle Ages regarded women as weak, irrational and vulnerable to temptation who was constantly needed to be kept in check. This was reflected on the Christian culture in England through the story of Adam and Eve where Eve fell to Satan's temptations and led Adam to eat the apple. It was belief based on St.Paul, that the pain of childbirth was a punishment for this deed that led mankind to be banished from the Garden of Eden. Women's inferiority also appears in many medieval writing for example the 1200 AD theologian Jacques de Vitry (who was rather sympathetic to women over others) emphasized for female obedience towards their men and expressed women as being slippery, weak, untrustworthy, devious, deceitful and stubborn.  Rape was also seen in medieval England as a crime against the father or husband and violation of their protection and guardianship of the women whom they look after in the household. Women's identity in the middle Ages was also referred through her relations with men she was associated with for example "His daughter" or "So and so's wife". Despite all this, the Church still emphasized on the importance of love and mutual counselling within a marriage and prohibited any form of divorce so the wife have someone to look after her.

In overall Europe during the middle Ages, women were inferior to that of a man in legal status.  Throughout medieval Europe, women were pressured to not attend courts and leave all legal business affairs to their husbands. In the legal system, women were regarded as the properties of men so any threat or injury to them was in the duty of their male guardians.

In Irish law, women were forbidden to act as witnesses in courts. In Welsh law, women's testimony can be accepted towards other women but not against another man. Women could not act as justices in courts, be attorneys, they could not be members of a jury and they could not accuse another person of a felony unless it's the murder of her husband. For most part, the best thing a woman could do in medieval courts is observe the legal proceedings taking place.

Medieval marriages among the elites were arranged in a way that would meet the interests of the family as a whole. Theoretically a woman needed to consent before a marriage took place and the Church encouraged this consent to be expressed in present tense and not future. Marriage could also take place anywhere and minimum age for girls would have to be 12 while 14 for boys.[

Renaissance Europe

By the 16th and 17th century, there was the Great Witch trials orchestrated by the Roman Church, which saw thousands across Europe burned alive, of whom 75-95% were women (depending on time and place). The burnings mostly took place in German speaking lands, and during the 15th century the terminology "witchcraft" was definitely viewed as something feminine as opposed to prior years. Famous witchcraft manuals such as the Malleus Maleficarum and Summis Desiderantes depicted witches as diabolical conspirators who worshipped Satan and were primarily women. Culture and art at the time depicted these witches as seductive and evil further fuelling moral panic in fusion with rhetoric from the Church.  Authors of the Malleus Maleficarum strongly established the link between witchcraft and women by proclaiming greater likelihood for women to be addicted to "evil". 

By 1500, Europe was divided into two types of secular law. One was customary law which was predominant in northern France, England and Scandinavia, and the other was Roman based written laws which was predominant in southern France, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

In the 16th century, the Reformation in Europe allowed more women to add their voices, including the English writers Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and the prophetess Anna Trapnell. English and American Quakers believed that men and women were equal.

The philosopher John Locke opposed marital inequality and the mistreatment of women during this time. He was well known for advocating for marital equality among the sexes in his work during the 17th century. According to a study published in the American Journal of Social Issues & Humanities, the condition for women during Locke's time were as quote:

         English women had less grounds for divorce than men until 1923.

         Husbands controlled most of their wives' personal property until the Married Women's 

            Property

Act 1870 and Married Women's Property Act 1882

         Children were the husband's property

         Rape was legally impossible within a marriage.

         Wives lacked crucial features of legal personhood, since the husband was taken as the

representative of the family (thereby eliminating the need for women's suffrage).

Other philosophers have also made the statements regarding women's rights during this time. For example, Thomas Paine wrote in An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex 1775 where he states (as quote):  "If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost without exception... adored and oppressed... they are ... robbed of freedom of will by the laws...Yet such, I am sorry to say, is the lot of women over the whole earth. Man with regard to them, has been either an insensible husband or an oppressor."

18th and 19th century Europe

Starting in the late 18th century, and throughout the 19th century, rights, as a concept and claim, gained increasing political, social, and philosophical importance in Europe. Movements emerged which demanded freedom of religion, the abolition of slavery, rights for women, rights for those who did not own property, and universal suffrage. In the late 18th century the question of women's rights became central to political debates in both France and Britain. At the time some of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, who defended democratic principles of equality and challenged notions that a privileged few should rule over the vast majority of the population, believed that these principles should be applied only to their own gender and their own race.

In 1791 the French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. The Declaration is ironic in formulation and exposes the failure of the French Revolution, which had been devoted to equality. It states that: "This revolution will only take effect when all women become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they have lost in society. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility." De Gouges expands the sixth article of the Declaration:

"All citizens including women are equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their capacity, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents".

In his 1869 essay "The Subjection of Women" the English philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill described the situation for women in Britain as follows: “We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband; no less so, as far as the legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called."

Then a member of parliament, Mill argued that women deserve the right to vote, though his proposal to replace the term "man" with "person" in the second Reform Bill of 1867was greeted with laughter in the House of Commons and defeated by 76 to 196 votes. Suffrage became the primary cause of the British women's movement at the beginning of the 20th century.