Page 205 - Cultures and Organizations

He, She, and (S)he 181

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said to
them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.

This text suggests equal partnership between the sexes. The second ver-
sion, Genesis 2:8ff. (which Old Testament experts suppose to have been
derived from a different source document), contains the story of the garden
in Eden, in which God first put “the man” alone. Then, in Genesis 2:18, it

states:

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone: I will
make him a help meet for him.” 84

Then follows the story of woman made from Adam’s rib. This text gives
clear priority to the male partner and defines the woman as “a help meet”

(that is, appropriate) for him; it justifies a society in which there is male
dominance.
In ancient Greece, Plato (in the fourth century b.c.) describes the sexes
as equal in principle and (apart from their role in procreation) only statisti-
cally different. In The Republic he offers a design for an ideal state governed
by an elite composed of men as well as women. Of course, in actual fact the
Greek state was male dominated. So was the Roman state, but at least one
Roman writer, C. Musonius Rufus (in the fi rst century a.d.), defended the
equality of the sexes and in particular the study of philosophy by women
and men alike.
The German sociologist Norbert Elias argued that the balance of power
between the genders varies with the development of a society. During the
Roman Republic and early Empire (400 b.c. to 100 a.d.), the infl uence and

rights of patrician women improved gradually along with the development
of the city-state into a world empire and of the senatorial class from peasant
warriors into aristocrats. With the disintegration of the Roman Empire in
the third century a.d., the status of women deteriorated. In an earlier book
Elias had described how around the eleventh century a.d. in Europe, and
particularly in France, the gradual reestablishment of an orderly society
and reduction of fighting gave the noble women a social and civilizing role.

In the history of European civilization, the French nobility and court have
been major models, being followed at a distance by other countries and
classes. The present differences on the masculinity- femininity dimension