According to King Ashurbanipal of Sumeria
Record-keeping in families (invented writing); cooking, baking technologies, technology for making beer and wine, writing poetry, making music, singing, religious rituals, making of cloth and the healing arts and science.
They started the first schools and universities
The Gottmans continue- Female society throughout the ages is generally more extensive and cohesive than for males, passed down this knowledge and grew it. Women’s status started to diminish with the rise of warfare and the societies changed the stories of the Gods and Godesses to one of male domination. With the rise of warfare, they devalued family and domesticity. The feminine in nature and spirituality and personal relationships became de-valued.
Peggy Sanday writes that Gender role specialization in hunter gatherer societies did not necessarily imply male dominance. This only happened half the time. In male dominant cultures, food was quite scarce and daily life was hard and there was often a lot of danger. Large game hunting was more valued than other food sources and was almost always a male activity.
In more equalitarian cultures, men participated in the care and raising of infants. Food was more plentiful and the environmental conditions were not quite as harsh. food was obtained by gathering and hunting small game.
Gottman goes on to point out how similar the equalitarian cultures are to our own and how there is a world-wide revolution in women’s rights.
If you believe that a woman’s life dreams deserve to be honored, if only for the psychological health, then you believe in women’s rights.
Honoring their dreams will also help their relationships.
pp 69-71
The Art and Science of Love: A Weekend Workshop for Couples Gottman and Gottman
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