Conservative gender roles

Many cultures have attitudes towards women which place them at a considerable disadvantage to men.

In some societies, women's lives are effectively controlled by their husband, family or tribe. In the most extreme forms of these views, women can be victims of honor killings if they do not conform, or even do not appear to conform, to these constraints, or women can be literally regarded as property.

Milder version of these attitudes are still prevalent to some degree in most cultures in the world, where the stereotype is still that of a nuclear family consisting of a married couple where the man goes out to work and earns money, and the woman stays at home and raises the children. This stereotype is increasingly not the common case in most wealthy countries, with both families with dual incomes and single mothers being very common.

Areas of difference

The three principal areas of difference are sexual and reproductive freedom, economic freedom, and political freedom.

Sexual freedom

In many cases, women's sexuality and hence reproduction is kept strictly under control, whether through enforced chastity or fidelity, or through enforced sexual intercourse.

Economic freedom

Similar control is often exerted over women's economic and social activities, with constraints on women's ownership of property or freedom of movement.

Political freedom

In most societies where women's sexual and economic freedom is curtailed, they are also denied political freedoms, such as the right to vote or hold public office.

Some examples of cultures with conservative gender roles

• Christian fundamentalism
  • Surrendered Wives etc.
• Arab culture
  • forced veiling of women, the harem, penalties for adultery etc.
• African culture
  • female circumcision etc.
• Chinese culture
  • one child policy, infanticide etc.
• Latin America and machismo

Machismo

Another "traditional" set of attitudes towards women is machismo. Generally speaking, machistas doubt women's rights to work, play sports or perform at other, traditionally male-dominated areas. Many machistas also believe it is their right as men to cheat on their wives, but their wives can not, in that same belief, cheat on them. Machistas often would say women were made to stay at home and be mothers and wives. Most machistas also believe firmly in the superiority of men over women.

The other side of the coin?

Perhaps an opposite set of traditional values towards women is the ideal of the gentleman, who traditionally is supposed to respect women and to defend them against other males.

Modernising forces

The feminist movement was a reaction to these and similar attitudes, and seeks to give women equal rights to men.

In part as a result of the feminist movement, and in part as a result of economic forces, women's in the West and other developed countries are beginning to enjoy economic, reproductive, and political freedoms similar to those of men. In some cases, women are beginning to enjoy rights superior to those of men (for example, in child custody), which has led to a backlash trying to assert equal rights in these areas.

Conservative forces

to be written