How did gender inequality start?
Paul Reuman
Sociology
Rasmussen College
Instructor Pamela Collins
August 6, 2010
How did gender inequality start? My opinion is that it started with modern organized religion, such as Christianity or the Islamic religions, before these religions were established many societies worshiped women as the bringers of life and joy to man. At some point in time, the status of women and man reversed; this did not happen overnight, in some societies, it never happened at all. The Hindu religion still worships several female deities. “In Rig Veda or Upanishad and particularly in Bhagwat Gita, the ideal of equality both social, economic and gender are fundamental. Following these classical texts of Hindu religion, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism subsequently have considered equality as the essential part of their religious doctrines. (Basu, 2007).
The Islam or Christians do not share this concept of equality with the Hindu religion,
Christian thinkers portrayed women as hindrances to men, who are vessels for evil and prevent man from working, studying and distract men from pursuing their relationship with God. early Christians went so far as to call women the door through which the devil enters and because women were not created by god but created from Adam’s rib women were inferior by virtue and this inferiority which makes Eve Adam’s temptress and leads to disaster (Emerson, 2006).
Thankfully western civilization has out grown these ancient concepts for the most part, and women play an equal roll in our society as do men, today we see examples of men staying at home taking care of the children while their wives go to work, today women hold high ranking jobs in corporate and government positions. Condoleezza Rice is an American professor, politician, diplomat and author. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, and ran for president. It is my opinion, the citizens of the United States of America, have reduced gender inequality to a tolerable level. There will always be some form of gender inequality, as long as there is organized religion, and people who blindly believe in antiquated ideals written down over two thousand years ago,
Christianity has made great strides to open there minds to new ideas, however women in the Middle East and North Africa are denied some of the most basic human rights we take for granted. For instance, Saudi Arabian women are not allowed to drive or ride bikes, and men are not allowed to drive women that are not close relatives. If no men are allowed to drive girls they are not closely related to, how to get 367,000 girls to school on buses that can only driven by men?
That seems to be a way to deny girls an education, unless their fathers want to drive them to school. Of course, the Saudi Arabians have come up with more extreme ways to deny girls educations. In 2002 a school was on fire. Saudi Arabia’s religious police wouldn’t allow 15 girls to leaving the building, and in some cases beat them to keep them from leaving, because the girls’ heads weren’t properly veiled. The girls all died in the fire (Listverse, 2008). What worse is there are still ignorant Islamic traditionalists who have ascribed to religious beliefs and cultural traditions involving horrific forms of female genital mutilation (FGM, which they defend as a form of “female circumcision”) (Ahmad, 2000).
References
Ahmad, I.-A. (2000). Female genital mutilation: an islamic perspective. The mfi
pamphlet series. Retrieved from http://www.minaret.org/fgm-pamphlet.htm
Basu, D. (2007, February 22). Hinduism and the concept of equality. In
Hinduism and equality. Retrieved from Nagasaki University website:
http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_070222.htm,
Emerson, H. (2006, May 30). How christian theology in the patristic era
perpetuated gender inequality. Retrieved from Associated Content History
website: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/778933/
how_christian_theology_in_the_patristic.html?cat=37
theshagsspot 
If you look up their were gender inequality in ancient china, India, Egypt and many more
My post was a reference to modern day inequality, however I agree with you, gender inequality has been around since the dawn of mankind in some form or another, thank you for your comment and feel free to post any of your research you have found.