Replies

The Women/Cathedrals book - it might still be on my shelves, among the debris, or I might have already sent it to my fundamentalist friend in Alaska - traces a very interesting development. Christianity, while it pointed out different roles in life for men and women, treated them as equal in their humanity. The New Testament gives several illustrations of women acting "independently" as Christians, such as Lydia, Joanna, Mary Magdalene, etc.

It appears that over time, many European countries reverted from a Christian understanding of women to a pagan understanding, one which treated women as lifelong children, both morally and legally. This concept was found notably in pagan Greece and Rome.

I don't think blaming the Protestant Reformation is helpful (the author of this article clearly has an axe to grind) because the same development is found in Islam (look for Fatima Mernissi's books in your library ... she's a Moroccan Islamic feminist, of all things.) Islam, as promulgated by Mohammed, originally treated women as morally and socially very nearly equal to men.

However, even during Mohammed's lifetime, the culture of Arabia crushed that concept, and as Islam spread through the Middle East, additional layers of subjugation for women were added. Veiling and isolation ("purdah") for instance, came from Persian culture. Most of the anti-woman concepts in Islam do not come from the Koran, Mohammed's original "revelations," but from the Hadith, the commentaries developed by his followers in the next 150 or so years.