2020-10-10
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Man has been blaming woman for his own misdeeds since Adam. "Fallen women!" said a 19th-century British reformer, meaning knocked-down women. The notion had crossed few male minds replacing the idea of woman as the seductive leader-astray which had long been widespread.
And the virtuous wife? Christians and Muslims agreed on her duty: absolute obedience to her husband, love and patience. Marriage frees the man from looking after the home... cooking, sweeping, cleaning pans to work, study and attend to religion. And outside affairs are men's business.
An inferior species?
Why? Because to both sexes it seemed natural. Medieval men did not expect women to think much at all. " Deceit, weeping and spinning" were their traditional skills, in Chaucer's England, "children, kitchen and church" the later German notion of their business. After all, if God had meant Eve to be Adam's equal, He'd have made her from our first father's head, not a rib, would He not?
Reality and prejudice for centuries fed each other. Laws based on the notion that women could not handle money ensured that many did not: until the 19th century in England a wife's property was in law her husband's. A few – widows, often – were rich in their own right. England had some notable peeresses like this. Women did farm work, though their men owned or rented the land. Wives ran shops, or helped husbands in business, famously to run inns. But at any level of society these were a small minority.
That was notably so in education. When schools spread, they were not for girls. Henry VI set one up at Eton in 1441 for "70 poor schollers". All were boys (as are the 1,200 rich Etonians today).
Escaping the spiral
Yet women have escaped this spiral of deprivation. Not that equality is near, even in the West, let alone in those Islamic states which have decided to confine women back to their homeswhether they like it or not. Yet real change has happened. Women can choose for themselves as never before. How was it done? Painfully, and recently; thanks to better hygiene, medicine, contraception and – very recently – electronics; to the Enlightenment, the Victorian conscience, education and, yes, feminist discourse and action.
Men helped little, till they were shouted at or shocked. Less natural absentees from that list are the vote and the industrial revolution. The vote's absence is easily explained: though macho but egalitarian New Zealand led the way in 1893, few countries let women vote till after the first world war. The United States, having in 1776 declared all men created equal, did not include women (as the 1840s feminists lamented) until 1920; France, proponent in 1789 of equality and fraternity, forgot both till 1944. Nor, when won, did the vote do much: women's issues have barely figured in any national election anywhere. Yet surely the brute power of economics, sucking women into 19th-century labour forces, must have played its part? That is often said, but it is disputable. Women indeed found new roles, and often alongside men: underground, pulling coal-tubs, for instance, by a chain between their legs. And women were active in Britain's embryo trade unions and radical politics in the 1820s-1840s. Yet they mostly then dropped out, and what had it got them? The vote? No, and not even male radicals felt sure they should have it. Jobs and wages, yes, but what jobs and wages? Mainly unskilled work (women did not get apprenticeship) in textile mills, say, or in back-street sweatshops, or as outworkers; and nearly always at low wages. It was widely assumed that men were supporting a household, women merely adding to its income, so men should be paid more; and men had no interest in upsetting this belief. Women would in fact work for less, so less they got. In the 1960s even in clerical work women in Europe got only 60-70% of male earnings. Only recently has that figure risen, thanks partly to law, but more to automation and electronics, which have devalued brawn in favour of brains, or at least agile fingers.
The biggest change came, a bit sooner, from elsewhere: better health. Until about 1900, death in childbed was a real risk for a woman – even rich ones, in rich countries – and the death of some of her children a near-certainty. When that ceased to be so, repeated child-bearing was no longer necessary. And it could be prevented. Both marriage and sex took a new form. So did women's idea of themselves, their roles and their possibilities. Add "the pill" and you have one of the great liberations of history.
Yet not all wasa side-effect of progress. Women had to fight, often stridently, at times dismaying other women and always irritating men. Just as the horrors of industry in time led to legislation against them, the irrefutable facts of sex inequality led, belatedly, to laws on divorce and married women's property. At the time, these mainly benefited middle-class women; they later spread their benefits to all.
The story was much the same in schools and then universities. Donnish silliness at Oxford and Cambridge could not for ever resist the plain evidence that women should be let in. Women's colleges were set up and their undergraduates allowed into lectures, though not, for decades, to get degrees.
Practicum 10.10
Translate the italicized word combinations in Text 11a from English into Russian
Practicum 10.11 
Practicum 10.12
Study the terms to follow
respect for human rights; human rights activist / advocate / watchdog / monitor; to uphold human rights; security; political equality; due / / inalienable / indigenous rights; violations of human rights; to promote / protect / secure human rights; fundamental / individual / basic human rights
Practicum 10.13
Study selected articles from the Declaration of Human Rights. Relate them to American Constitution to find differences (if any)
Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.
Article 13. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
Article 16. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Article 23. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Article 25. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
III. Communication Practice
Team work
Work as a team of social scientists to criticize current Internet legislation; suggest amendments to it relating to children’s access to the net and web censorship, in the human rights perspective
Text 10b
The text to follow deals in talking politics. Study the text and use it as a starting point for communication in formal setting
