The Female's Hard Knock Life

[mishalak]

-OR-
More Snarking On Off the Shelf Fantasy Kingdoms
(Previous Installment: Gays in Fantasy Kingdoms)
Life was quite hard for everyone, but it was especially hard upon women in centuries past. Women typically had a status that was lower than men, but it seems that it was most often so in agriculturally based societies. Indeed I cannot think of a single example of a culture that was primarily agricultural in food production where women having power were anything but exceptional. (This is the cue for hundreds of you to post counter examples that I don't know about.) I suspect three culprits making this so were biology, hierarchy, and poverty.

Women do not have the same potential for muscle strength that men have. This was a much greater handicap when so much labor was of the backbreaking sort, and more importantly all the weapons relied upon muscle power. So at first it is the men with swords and the physique to be warriors that dominate their neighbors. This is a simplistic explanation, but where I am going is to say that because women would have an exceptionally difficult time starting out on the bottom the tradition of male power becomes entrenched and it makes it difficult for women to jump in higher up or to get a start on the ladder.

Poverty, which is more common in agricultural societies, makes the bad situation worse. Poverty means there is more need for work than there are workers. No end of work on a farm, so someone is going to get stuck doing more. This isn't always true, but it is quite common because of the difficulty leaving. Living with another person or a lot of people makes life easier. So as hard as it is life outside the family or group might very well be impossible, so someone who can be physically dominated may feel or in fact be trapped. Plus human nature being what it is there would be a huge temptation for the physically stronger man to force the women to do work he doesn't want to do. Again this becomes entrenched in the society before technology has a chance to make life easier, and so the tradition continues beyond where economics is making it more likely.

None of this excuses bad behavior. This is me being like a criminologist. I hate that women have been oppressed and I would like to know why it happened and why it became so widespread. I think it is unlikely to have become the majority way of doing things without there being some reason. I think better of people than that. So it is totally possible that a fantasy kingdom could have women with a better status than they got in most real world kingdoms.

For one this could be the one exception. Though I would like an explanation as to why it is. Maybe there was a great respected religious reformer and also women are just as strong in the force/magic or whatever as men so that tips the balance in this one place, even if women with magic are hunted to preserve the order of things in others. If magic is just replacing technology giving a more modern society it isn't going to be medieval, as the standard off the shelf fantasy kingdom is, but it will be more equal. Or perhaps in this world women are just as strong as men physically. Why? Magic, the gods, whatever, this is fantasy after all. And it would make for a very interesting society in my opinion.

So there are lots of options, but not many (any?) if the writer wants to make it just like England 1300 (as a random example) with magic and without the lower social status for women. Because in my opinion such a setting will have the women in lower status except for the few with magic and those will probably have a similar status to noble women with power. They get to be exceptions if they don't challenge the order of things.

Comments

On Industry

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

One other thing. Lots of women worked for a wage in the industrial revolution. In fact it was not uncommon for the man to be worn out by labor or drink and the women to still be working to support the family and several of the chilren as well. The whole of the weaving industry was staffed by women and children. The situation was very fluid, but it wasn't really until the 1950s that we got a situation where factory workers could support a family with just one paycheck. Before that it was a feature of the upwardly mobile middle class where the husband worked and the wife worked to raise children and present a graceful house.

Re: On Industry

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good point, you're right. And in the working-class world, women worked all through the 50s and afterwards-- in families where they need every penny to stay afloat, women have always worked, like everyone else. But I believe that women were traditionally paid less, on the theory that their work wasn't what was supporting the family? And there's that whole difference in class-- working-class people work to survive, middle-class people work because that's how they get status and authority. And so middle-class women had to struggle to be allowed to work, where working-class women never had the choice not to. Neh?

--R