Thus through legend and the records of travelers we have clear
testimony that man is not larger and stronger than woman because of
innate differences, as is generally supposed, but that physical
superiority is a characteristic of the dominant sex, regardless whether
that be male or female.
Similarly those secondary physical characteristics which are to-day
regarded as female are found among males when they occupy the
subordinate position in which woman lives to-day. Woman is inclined
to-day to full, rounded curves and even to stoutness. Among the Celts
the woman dominated, and according to Strabo the men of that people
were inclined to be fat and heavy-paunched. The same was true of
the Kamchadales in the days of woman rule. The men were strikingly
voluptuous and well rounded. The male Eskimos too were inclined
to fatness in the days when they did the housekeeping. The more
subordinate the fatter.
In this connection the Oriental women are typical; their exuberance
of figure is as well known as their absolute subordination and their
confinement to the home. They may be contrasted with the fat and
subordinate male Kamchadales, whose wives were slim and firm breasted
into old age.
Equal rights do away with this division of labor. There are no longer
male and female jobs; not sex but inclination and fitness now begin
to determine the individual’s occupation. In late Egypt, when the
domination of woman was merging into a period of equal rights, there
are many indications that both sexes did the same work without any
differentiation of occupation. In the marriage contract in the time of
Darius, the woman--who then made the contract alone--says, “All, which
you and I may together earn....” Victor Marx has studied the position
of woman in Babylon in the period 604-485 B.C., and finds a similar
situation. In an inheritance case of that period a woman recites that
“I and my husband carried on business with my dowry and together
bought a piece of land.” Such common businesses by man and woman are
frequently mentioned. Under such circumstances it was natural that
neither man nor woman bound themselves at marriage to live in the same
house, for both went to work outside the home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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