Matriarchy VS patriarchy

Gender is the state of reference on which status differences are based, unlike sex, which is biological; gender is a social code of conduct specifying the social and cultural roles that men and women are expected to follow, making Gender Roles a very controversial topic.

Images of women, mostly old statuettes representing women whose wombs and hips are extremely exaggerated, all dating to the Stone Age, outnumber images of men throughout evolution and history. This has led to speculation about the place of women in society and religious faiths. Some have argued that these female figurines signify, or once signified, the existence of a prominent female deity identified as the “Earth Mother” or the “Mother Goddess”, it was been suggested that, unlike today, women played a considerably more important, if not dominant, role in Paleolithic society and that possibly, a matriarchy existed.

Religion has existed for as long as man has, with the purpose to help men and women believe in a superior being to explain the existence of life. With so many different faiths and religions, men and women play different roles within what is permitted by each one of them.

Women have always had lower status than men, but the extent of the gap between the sexes varies across cultures and time. All of the major world religions “diminish” women to some degree. It is not a secret that women have historically been “put down”, so to speak, when it comes to how they are treated and viewed in religion along the centuries. There has always been tension in this topic. In most religions they are considered lowly. The men in various high religious positions maintain that the women are not inferior to men but that their God has divided the duties of men and women ...

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...elieve that the creation of everything in the universe was brought into being by God’s command. The Quran says that both men and women are equal before God in their religious duties. It is believed that men are the maintainers and protectors of women and women are expected to stay at home and care for the home and children. Muslim women were not allowed to receive an education. They are told that they have to be modest and not portray a view of sexuality therefore required to wear loose clothing so as to not attract men’s attention. Polygamy is promoted in the Islamic religion, however, it can only be practiced by the male.

In doing research for this paper, it can be noted that the women played the same type of role in all of these religions. Women were expected to be the homemakers and caregivers. They were expected to bear the children and be submissive to men.