clowny wrote:Humankind made more technological progress in the 100 years from 1900 to 2000, than in the previous 50,000 years of human existence. The 20th century brought us the automobile, television, internet, and of course, the political movement known as Women's Liberation/Feminism. All these things contributed to the decline of woman. The problem is, there is nobody alive today who can tell us what women were like before 1900.
This question is too broad. If you're looking for specific answers or examples, it'd be necessary to specify the time period and location.
For example, in 19th century China (Qing Dynasty), foot binding for upper class Han Chinese women were prevalent, but prohibited by Imperial Decree for Manchu women. A women that has had foot binding cannot perform manual labor, such as working in the fields. Thus they lived a sheltered life attended by servants, with a lifestyle afforded by their husband's wealth. Peasants and tenant farmers, on the other hand, had a very different (and harder) life. Ethnic Manchus were the ruling class and they did not need to work, they received government subsidies from birth at the expense of the Han majority. In ye olde Manchu culture, when a man wants to court a girl, they'd ride on 2 different horses to a designated location (i.e. a tree). On the way to the tree the man is allowed to flirt with the girl as he sees fit. On the way back, the girl is allowed to whip the man with her horse whip however she sees fit, should she be offended by what he had said. If the man cannot endure the whipping or runs away, he is seen as a coward.
In some parts of China, where women were prohibited from attending school, they simply developed their own writing system that differs from traditional Chinese characters. In Japan, where men were educated in Kanji (Chinese characters), the women wrote in hiragana.
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