Gender, Trade and Religion - Essay Example

1 GENDER, TRADE AND RELIGION Historically, gender relations since time immemorial had always been dictated by Patriarchy. To feminists all over the world, this word Patriarchy is the most loathsome word in their dictionary. And rightly so because Patriarchy since the beginning of time has engendered women to the status of oppressed and repressed beings who are not allowed to make major decisions involving their lives. According to Drislane and Parkinson, Patriarchy is "literally rule by the father but generally it refers to a social situation where men are dominant over women in wealth status and in all other aspects" (Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences). Since the time of creation women had been assigned the natural role of childbearer, homemaker and pleaser of their husband's every whim. She didn't chose, she was chosen. As in the case of biblical Leah and Rachel who were both given to Jacob in exchange of 14 years of labor (Genesis 24:42). Or in the case of Rebekah, who was given to Isaac in exchange for gold, silver and other jewelries (Genesis 29:16-28). For thousands of millenia, the lot of women had been dictated by Patriarchy. When men had discovered that by bartering and trading, gargantuan profits could be amassed, women were either given away by their fathers in exchange for something dear or they served as courtesans to the foreign traders mostly with the knowledge and blessing of the fathers (Whitfield 133 ). To my opinion, this inhumane status of women being either given, bartered or rented by the hour as a result of international trade and contacts by the native populace with foreign merchants, soldiers and other kibitzers is the most interesting and important idea that we can put forward regarding gender relations in history. In the Indian epic poem of Ramayana, 2 Sita was given away in marriage to Rama because Rama succeeded in wielding the "mighty bow of Siva" a possession of Sita's father, King Janaka (Narayan 23). In utter obeisance to paternal pressure, Sita acceded. In The Analects of Confucius, out of 20 chapters of desiderata that compel the men to follow or avoid, only four sentences pertained to women, two of them were outright shocking to modern civilization. One says "The Master said of Kung-ye Ch'ang that he might be wived.Accordingly, he gave him his own daughter to wife" and "Of Nan Yung.He gave him the daughter of his own elder brother to wife" (Confucius chapter 5). Confucianism then, was the worst because women were not bartered or exchanged but outrightly given away gratis et amore. In the African Igbo tribe in Nigeria where polygamy is being practiced by men, women are not allowed to choose their husbands but they are given away after negotiations by groups representing both sides (Achebe xxx ). Since the subject matter of this paper involves gender relations as a result of international trade which also result to the spread of religion, nothing else illustrates this situation better than the Silk Road of olden days as all 3 elements are interlaced together. We therefore focus on the Silk Road phenomenon. The Silk Road is one of the world's most important and oldest trade route leading to ancient China. It was made possible because ancient China especially during the Han Dynasty was reputed to be the wealthiest and the most civilized among all nations and it had so many important and useful products to offer to the rest of humanity. Some of these are silk, porcelain, jade, lacquer ware, pearls, rubies, diamonds, satin, musk and rhubarb (Wood 9, 13-23). 3 The Silk Road , which was partly paved and the rest on steppes and grasslands connected Xi'an in China to Mesopotamia, the Near East, Persia, Arabia, Somalia, Egypt, India, Rome and the rest of Europe (Killion 66). In exchange, these countries traded their products such as "dates, saffron powder, pitachio nuts from Persia; frankincense, aloes and myrrh from Somalia' sandalwood from India and glass bottles from Egypt"(Killion 66). Through the Silk Road trading, merchants, soldiers and monks get to mingle with the populace and both parties absorb a part of each other's culture. It's effects were not limited to cultural transmission but also to intermarriage. Moreover, it gave the zealous missionaries the chance to proselytize and thus propagate their religion. First, the Buddhist missionaries from Central Asia and India attained incomparable success during the Northern Wei Dynasty (45AD) but the fervor ended with the rise of Islam. Almost all territories along the Silk Road were conquered by the thundering Islamic forces. As they said, Islam was propagated through the sword. The Omayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks all converted the populace first by conquest, then pressured non-Muslims to pay taxes to support the government while exempting Muslims from doing so. The effect was that thepopulace had to convert to Islam and had to learn the Arab language as it was forbidden to translate the Koran to their native languages. During the rule of the Abbasids, Baghdad became the mecca of arts, culture and sciences (Kennedy 135-163). Trade then was monopolized by the Islamic Caliphate until 4 it was conquered by the Mongol hordes , who eventually converted to Islam. The Chinese civilization, meanwhile, which "was at its most brilliant on the eve of the Mongol conquest suffered a drastic break in its history as a result" of that invasion (Gernet 16). The Silk Road then disintegrated because the "Sea Silk Route' made trading possible through the high seas and because the Silk Road had become unprofitable because of marauders' constant plunders (Wild 1). As a result of this hectic international trade and the religious proselytizing, women were either bartered, given away in marriage or prostituted. Whitfield talks about the courtesan's business and the Chinese princess who was forced to marry a Turkish kaghan via a diplomatic deal (Whitfield 86 ). Marco Polo also talked about the Mongol princess Kokachin who was given away in marriage to Arghun, a Persian prince but since he died , she was instead betrothed to his son, Prince Ghazan (Polo 1 ). This detestable system of giving away women in marriage and putting them as part of bartered goods is a thing of the past although there are still vestiges of that horrid past in the form of arranged marriages in some parts of China as well as the dowry system in India. We ascribe this to the crusading work of the suffragettes and the feminists who opened opportunities for women to become presidents, astronauts, boxers etc. who have the option to marry and who cannot be cowed to marry against their will because of their new independence. 5 REFERENCES Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Heinemann. 1996. Confucius. The Analects. First World Publishing. 2004. Drislane, Robert & Parkinson, Gary. Patriarchy. Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences. ICAAP.2005. Genesis 24: 42. Genesis 29: 16-28. Gernet, Jacques. Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion.:1250-1276. Stanford University Press. 1962. Kennedy, Hugh. The Early Abbasid Caliphate. London: Croom Helm. 1981. Kennedy, Hugh. When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. Da Capo Press. Killion, Ulric. A Modern Chinese Journey to the West: Economic Globalization and Dualism. Nova Science Publishers. 2006. Narayan, R.K., Kampar & Laxman, R.K. The Ramayana. Penguin Classics. 1993. Polo, Marco. Marco Polo and His Travels. www.silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml-29k. Whitfield, Susan. Life Along The Silk Road. John Murray. 1999. Wild, Oliver. The Silk Road. http://ess/.ps.uci.edu/oliver/ Wood, Francis. The Silk Road: 2000 Years In The Heart of Asia. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 2002. Read More