Meg-John Barker - Gender: a graphic guide

THERE IS MASSIVE DIVERSITY WITHIN AND BETWEEN GROUPS: FOR ANYTHING YOU MIGHT WANT TO CLAIM ABOUT GENDER THERELL ALWAYS BE A COUNTER EXAMPLE FROM SOMEWHERE IN HISTORY AND/OR ACROSS THE WORLD TODAY.

So we have to be cautious about any claims about the natural, normal, or right ways of doing gender, at the same time as acknowledging the massive impact that patriarchal history has on all of us.

Gatherer-hunters: Archaeologists used to assume that in prehistoric societies men hunted and made tools while women raised children and did the less vital work of gathering. We now know that gatherer-hunters depended much more on foraged than hunted food, which is why archaeologists inverted the phrase hunter-gatherer. We also know that women did hunt in some gatherer-hunter societies. Women may well have developed some of the earliest tools as well.

The agricultural revolution: The first agricultural revolution between 10,000 and 2,000 BCE increased the gap between men and women in the social hierarchy. Plowing and caring for animals became almost universally a mens task, valued over what became seen as womens tasks like spinning, weaving, and child-raising.

Land was needed for farming, and men became the ones who inherited this land in most places. Trading took men out into public life while women were increasingly kept in the private world of home and family.

UNMARRIED!

Hereditary aristocracies: The states that developed across the ancient world after 3,000 BCE heightened gender distinctions. Rulers depended on taxes and slave labour, which meant they controlled the population more strictly.

Cultural norms and laws enhanced unequal gender relations and policed womens sexuality, often insisting they stay virgins until marriage and strictly punishing them for adultery.

In many cultures and religions, men became seen as the original humans created by a male god in his image. Women were an afterthought and often held responsible for everything that went wrong with the world.