Historical Perspective — PATRIARCHY AND CONTROL
The Official Website of Author and Activist Gloria Steinem - Interview With Gloria Steinem
MS: I have heard a lot of references lately - one in a book a friend wrote, and another while my daughter was doing a school report on the role of women in Medieval society - that the origins of patriarchy may have begun in primitive cultures when men realized that women gave birth and controlled reproduction - that men’s domination over women seemed to stem from an insecurity and almost a fear of women’s reproductive power. Do you think that is true?
GS: I used to agree with that, but now that I know more about original cultures, I think that people have always understood reproduction; it’s just that the knowledge of contraception began to be punished and suppressed in order to produce more children as property, labor, armies. For instance, among the so-called Bushpeople in the Kalahari in Africa — the ancestors of us all, the oldest, longest-running, most successful culture on Earth - women had two or three children two or three years apart, just as they did on this continent in the 500 or so cultures that were here before Europeans showed up. Women well understood how to restrict birth through timing of sexual intercourse, herbs and abortifacients. I suspect the focus on men’s control of women as the means of reproduction came much later, in the last five percent or so of human history, with the idea of children as property and labor. One needed to have as many as possible, never mind about women’s health or mobility or brainpower. Women’s freedom was restricted in order to make sure of the paternity and ownership of children.