Status of Women in Society

WOMEN IN HISTORY AND TODAY very few matters upon which irrational beliefs of one sort or another had not been adopted. Such perverted thinking became elevated to the status of religion and, as such, had a pervasively baneful influence on all human relations. Speculation was another mode of thought which produced strange and often pernicious results. Ridiculing the thought processes of the ancient Greeks, Bertrand Russell writes, “Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.” (Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society [1976], p. 17) Women’s Status in Christianity Christianity did little to improve this situation, having given great importance, in the very first book of the Bible, to the erroneous belief that it had been Eve’s wrongdoing that had caused Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Referring to women in general in this context, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says, “(According to Christianity) they were regarded as temptresses, responsible for the fall of Adam, and as second-class human beings.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica [1984], Vol. 19, p. 909) With such a myth everpresent in the collective consciousness of society, it is little wonder that women were allotted an inferior position in both religious and secular matters. In the first letter addressed to the Corinthians, St. Paul says, “For the man is not of the woman, but the woman is of the man. Neither