Women in Time

Look at this!

Anyone walking our local city sidewalks can expect to see pedestrians wearing a wide variety of clothing. However, seeing someone  clothed in this fashion might be considered out of the ordinary.

In Arabian nations, this would be very commonplace and often required.  Women are covered from the top of their head to their feet in a black costume called a 'Burqa'. This costume has , in the strictest interpretation of some Muslim males, been required to be worn in public.

- - - - - - - -

'Burqa' is an Arabized Persian word meaning 'curtain and veil'. The Quran ,the  Muslim Holy Book, has no requirement that women cover their faces with a veil, or cover their bodies with the full-body burqa. Many Muslims believe that the  tradition goes back to the days of the Prophet  Muhammed,  requiring both men and women to dress and behave modestly in public. However, this requirement has been interpreted in many different ways. The Quran has been translated to instruct women:
"not  to display their beauty  except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband's fathers, or their sons, or their husband's sons," ....and others in the family relationship.
This is considered  a virtue in a Middle Eastern Muslim patriarchal society, a strongly gender-specific  relations within a family stressing honor, attention, respect/respectability, and modesty. Young, unmarried women or young, married women in their first years of marriage are required to wear the burqa. However,  the husband usually decides if his wife should continue to wear a burqa. The body-covering is necessary because a

Muslim man who sees a woman's body parts can be  aroused, and this might cause him to commit sin. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria  compels people in the areas that it controls to declare Islamic creed and live according to its interpretation of Sunni Islam and sharia law. ISIL warned women in the city of Mosul to wear full-face veils or face severe punishment. One rule stipulated that women should stay at home and not go outside unless necessary.

- - - - - - - - - -

17 yr old Malala Yousafzai  is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in  northwest Pakistan  where the local Taliban has banned girls from attending school. One October afternoon in 2012, Yousafzai boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three shots. The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai.Taliban had set an edict that no girls could attend school after 15 January 2009. In these countries, girls and women in general are forbidden to be educated, and  strictly regulated in their daily activities. Those wishing to participate in any Western country culture activity and not adherring to current laws are severely punished.

- - - - - - - - - -

Different countries have different attitudes pertaining to the ‘Fairer Sex’. 

Women in  America  campaigned for their right to vote for several decades until the legal right of women to vote  was established   nationally in 1920.  The slogan of " All men are created equal"  omits the American women as they strive for 'equal pay; for doing the same work.

- - - - - - - - - -

Considering  this 'male superiority' status, one might wonder how the woman's life must have been in the Viking age of  uneducated and seemingly vicious nature of the raiding and plundering Vikings.

 Women in the Viking age were considered property and plunder when at war and carried off as slaves.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Due to a lack of education and no written language, 'word of mouth'  stories past down through generations of Vikings and later Scandinavian excavations have revealed that the roles of men and women in Norse society to be quite distinct and male dominated. Each gender had a set of expected behaviors, and that line could not be crossed. Women did not participate in trading or raiding parties (although they clearly participated in journeys of exploration and settlement to places such as Iceland and Vínland).

 - - - - - - - - -

Women’s responsibilites were clearly defined to be domestic. Members of either sex who crossed the gender line were, at very least,
not    approved by society and often strictly prohibited by law. The medieval Icelandic lawbook Grágás prohibited women from wearing men’s clothes, from cutting their hair short, or from carrying weapons. She was prohibited from participating in most political or governmental activities On the other hand, women were respected in Norse society and had great freedom. In most sagas, the heroes are men and probably were written by men. Women tend to play only minor roles, but those roles are varied. In real life, the female characters were strong.The women seemed  much harder than the men, even more eager to protect the family’s honor. It was considered shameful  to harm a woman, and examples in the sagas of such violence are rare.

 - - - - - - - - - -

In one of these sagas , Gunnar, in a fit of rage, slapped his wife Hallgerur in the face when he discovered his wife had stolen food from a nearby farm during a famine. (Theft was highly unacceptable in Norse society.) Hallgerur said she would remember that slap and pay him back. Some years later, in this story, Gunnar was attacked in his home by a gang seeking revenge. He kept the attack party at bay with a shower of arrows from his bow. When his bow string was cut by one of the attackers, he asked his wife,Hallger for two locks of her hair in order to make a new one.

“Does anything depend on it?” she asked.”My life,” replied Gunnar.

”Then I remind you of the slap you once gave me,” and she refused to give him the hair.

Gunnar was eventually overcome by the attackers and killed.

Women were excluded from these kinds of attacks on a household. It was a grave dishonor for a man to injure a woman, even accidentally, in an attack on a household. And if, for instance, a house were going to be burned to kill the occupants, women and children were allowed to leave without injury.

- - - - - - - - - -

In another Norse saga, a vengeful warrior named Eyjólfur and his men attacked Gísli in overwhelming numbers, Gísli’s wife Auur stood by his side, armed with a club. In the first rush, Gísli killed the chief attacker  while Auur struck Eyjólfur so hard with her club that he staggered back down the hill. Soon after, Eyjólfur returned and killed Gísli .

 - - -

 Later in the saga, Eyjólfur visited Börkur and his wife. The woman of the house happened to be Gisli’s sister, Ordís, and she did not  want to offer hospitality to her brother’s killer, but her husband insisted. During the meal, Ordís recognized Gísli’s sword lying on the floor by the killer’s feet. She dropped a tray of spoons, and after bending down to pick them up, she grabbed the sword and thrust up at Eyjólfur from below, inflicting a fatal wound. Due to her husband's action, she divorced him on the spot. Viking women had some rights and were granted great respect from the viking men.

- - - - - - - - - -

Women’s roles vary from country to country. Ancient accounts have evolved into actions never intended by the earlier authors. Our news is filled with unbelievable horrors as vindictive leaders have twisted these basic beliefs into new laws, killing their enemies and violently preventing the education of their women and female children.

  Equality for all has been difficult to achieve.