0:01 [Music]
0:12 [Music]
0:17 we human beings have taken over the
0:20 whole planet but now we must learn to
0:22 share it or else we will lose it we have
0:26 to outgrow tribalism patriarchy all our
0:29 old ways and we have to move fast
0:32 because we're running out of time
0:34 [Music]
0:58 [Applause]
1:03 [Music]
1:09 I've always enjoyed a good revolution so
1:13 kitchens are an interesting place to be
1:15 these days this is where the basic power
1:18 balance between men and women is being
1:20 renegotiated at last and if we get it
1:23 right the whole human race will be the
1:25 winner most males behave quite decently
1:29 as individuals but when human beings get
1:31 together in large groups we behave very
1:34 badly wars tyranny the huge gulf between
1:37 rich and poor north and south and all
1:41 those things are directly connected with
1:43 the imbalance of power between men and
1:45 women male domination is right at the
1:48 heart of what's wrong with math
1:49 civilization or just one of the hundreds
1:59 of thousands of everyday people who want
2:01 to partake in this inaugural celebration
2:03 everybody and I mean everybody's gonna
2:06 get a great show today America is
2:16 inaugurating a new president and all the
2:18 old hopes for peace and justice and
2:20 equality are having an outing but
2:23 compared to its stated ideals the United
2:26 States is a grave disappointment
2:29 America's militarize up to its eyeballs
2:32 and it spent much of its history
2:33 fighting wars and other people's
2:35 territory native Indians Mexicans
2:37 Filipinos Vietnamese all classes of its
2:41 own citizens have spent generations in
2:43 the back of the bus and even now not one
2:45 of its 42 presidents has come from the
2:47 female majority of the population go
2:50 talk to congressman Broun Elizabeth
2:53 Curtis was just surprised herself by
2:55 being elected to Congress she doesn't
2:58 fit the mold and not just because she's
3:00 a woman she's also been a full time
3:02 peace activist for years and last year
3:06 she earned less than the minimum wage
3:08 house meets at 11
3:10 good bye lovie have fun you and Barbra
3:13 Streisand my another reception
3:19 [Music]
3:24 this reception is for all the women who
3:27 were elected to Congress in 1992 there
3:30 were almost twice as many of them as
3:32 ever before Elizabeth first glad hands
3:37 the crowd like any traditional
3:38 politician but she's not it is time for
3:48 those of us who have been disempowered
3:50 in many ways who felt that we are on the
3:52 outside of the mainstream to understand
3:56 that in fact we can be incredibly
3:58 powerful
4:01 okay I need my senator clementa I think
4:07 this is a very male institution here you
4:10 know when the hundred and third Congress
4:11 came in and we're we're we're of color
4:13 we're women
4:14 it's a marvelous group of people but
4:17 once we got into the whole of the
4:18 Congress I suddenly realized how few of
4:21 us they really were less than 10 percent
4:23 is female you look at those portraits in
4:29 the rotunda and somebody from outer
4:31 space would say this is a country made
4:34 up of white men there's no women old
4:36 people of color in their statute it's
4:40 manifest destiny writ large we just wipe
4:45 out parts of our history the founders of
4:53 the American Republic were trying to
4:55 escape from the evils of the past they
4:58 thought all they had to do was create a
5:00 democracy they didn't realize that the
5:03 pattern of violence and oppression was
5:05 part of civilization itself now we do
5:08 and we even have a name for it the
5:11 patriarchal
5:12 [Music]
5:12 [Applause]
5:15 [Music]
5:20 some king or Emperor gives the orders
5:23 those who enforce them have lots of
5:26 power and privileges people at the
5:29 bottom have no rights at all the poor
5:32 slaves almost all women and Outsiders
5:37 can just be killed if they get in the
5:39 way in fact American warplanes were
5:42 bombing Iraq on inauguration day
5:46 what I think about now is we play this
5:49 terrible game of cat-and-mouse is there
5:51 are thousands of children dying in
5:53 Baghdad from the last time we were
5:55 bombing what are we doing when do we
5:58 begin to say that an Iraqi child's life
6:00 is the same as the life of a white
6:03 America until we do that we'll go on
6:05 having wars Americans have been trying
6:08 to break out of the old pattern for over
6:11 two centuries and there has been
6:12 progress
6:13 there's no king now and no slaves and
6:15 women have the vote but hierarchy and
6:18 violence still rule the world
6:21 men still rule the world this has been
6:24 the pattern of our history for so long
6:26 that many people think it's just human
6:28 nature and there's no point in asking a
6:30 pig to fly but before we abandon hope we
6:33 should be sure whether the patriarchal
6:35 order is natural or not and the key
6:38 evidence for that is not here it's
6:41 deeply buried in a different
6:51 you
7:58 thousand years ago the options began to
8:01 grow narrower it was probably women who
8:05 invented agriculture since gathering
8:07 plants was traditionally a woman's job
8:11 but farming changed everybody's roles
8:14 and created a new way of doing things
8:16 all over the world the village way
8:21 [Applause]
8:24 people have probably lived on this spot
8:26 for about 8,000 years and at the start
8:29 it would have been what's called an
8:31 autonomous village there were no cities
8:36 yet no kings no soldiers just hundreds
8:39 of independent villages each living its
8:42 own quiet life and decisions probably
8:48 still got me the old hunter-gatherer way
8:51 everybody came together and talked
8:54 things over
8:54 until they reached a consensus panitch
9:03 alchemy is an anthropologist and the
9:06 villages she studies are in 20th century
9:08 Egypt but the economic realities in a
9:11 village like this have not changed much
9:13 in thousands of years but I would dare
9:18 say anywhere the social fabric would
9:22 completely collapse without the input of
9:25 women in economics everything to do with
9:30 the essential day-to-day life of
9:32 villages must be processed through women
9:36 if men cultivate the wheat it has to be
9:41 picked over and put through a mill to
9:44 become flour and then to be processed
9:46 into bread which is the lifeline of
9:48 everyone
9:51 [Music]
9:55 the main investment of any rule of
9:58 household
9:58 besides the land is the cattle that they
10:01 own this is the woman's domain before so
10:08 means women are so central to the home
10:11 but sometimes they hardly ever leave it
10:15 [Music]
10:17 it's the fact that there is so much live
10:19 capital
10:20 [Music]
10:22 unlike hunter-gatherers villagers owned
10:25 things and to make sure this valuable
10:27 property stayed in the family almost all
10:30 the earliest cultures passed it down
10:31 through women babies have fathers too
10:39 and the villagers knew it once obtained
10:41 animals it's obvious that making babies
10:44 requires a male input but you can't
10:47 really be sure which male is the father
10:49 while you always know who the mother is
10:52 so men's property went to their sisters
10:55 children when they died not to their own
11:01 [Music]
11:03 the status of men dropped steeply when
11:05 human being settled in villages once
11:08 their value to society had come from
11:10 their ability as hunters but the wild
11:12 game was quickly hunted out near the
11:14 villages and when hunting lost its
11:17 importance so did the people who used to
11:20 do it we don't actually know who sat at
11:26 the head of the table in the autonomous
11:27 villages but we do know that in some
11:30 places women were buried in the center
11:32 of the house with the valuable household
11:34 goods and men were buried out at the
11:37 corners with the children
11:41 archeologists find up to a hundred
11:44 female fertility figures for every male
11:46 symbol fertility was the key to whether
11:51 the villages lived or died and fertility
11:55 was traditionally female magic men were
12:02 never actually oppressed there was never
12:05 a matriarchy in that sense but you can
12:08 see how men might have felt marginalized
12:09 in the early village cultures so what's
12:12 that got to do with us well first of all
12:15 the huge changes that happen when
12:17 hunter-gatherers settled down in the
12:19 autonomous villages show just how
12:21 flexible this thing called human nature
12:24 is male domination is natural and
12:27 neither is equality of the sexes it all
12:29 depends same goes for whether we're
12:31 warlike or peaceful democratic or
12:34 authoritarian change the way we live and
12:37 you may also change the way we behave
12:39 towards each other
12:40 [Music]
12:48 men were just not very important in the
12:50 autonomous villages and people who don't
12:52 feel important tend to feel resentful
12:54 instead you realize of course that we're
12:57 talking about the raw material for a
12:59 revolution here and the revolution
13:09 dually happened so long ago that it
13:11 isn't in the history books but thousands
13:14 of years later we can see the results of
13:16 it all around us
13:19 [Music]
13:28 now women are at the bottom of the
13:30 pecking order
13:31 men run practically everything and
13:34 there's military all over the place what
13:36 happened the Middle East is the best
13:41 place to look for answers because over
13:43 half the people on earth live in
13:44 cultures that stem from here there are
13:51 various kinds of histories and the one
13:53 that got recorded is not the only one
13:56 but more importantly it is the history
13:58 of the dominant to us it's the dominant
14:00 group it is it is male history it is the
14:04 state's history the archive isn't I see
14:08 and the documents I consult in the
14:10 Egyptian National Archives down there on
14:13 the Nile is they are documents of stated
14:16 fashion whether they are police records
14:18 prison accounts medical treatises now
14:23 for important purposes these are all
14:26 written by men women are excluded and
14:29 when they appear they appear in a very
14:31 marginal way call it funny studies the
14:35 history of militarism in Egypt today
14:38 he's celebrating his doctorate with
14:39 French mostly young scholars who spend
14:42 their working days trying to piece
14:44 together researches the live women in
14:52 medieval Islam she's a history professor
14:55 at the American University of Cairo
14:58 women have always been neglected in
15:00 history so not just as a woman but also
15:05 as a historian I'd like to bring out
15:07 what has been neglected invisible
15:09 silence I learn a lot from it because it
15:12 explodes myths
15:14 unfortunately the sources that I used
15:16 have been written by men expressing the
15:19 patriarchal view of what is important
15:21 the army the state the bureaucracy what
15:24 my students call boring history the
15:29 women hooda studies left no written
15:31 records so she looks for clues in the
15:33 writings of medieval Islamic scholars
15:39 who to figures out what women were
15:41 really doing from the demands of the
15:43 male scholars that they stopped doing it
15:50 first of all a woman should go out only
15:53 for an assessment if she does she should
15:56 go in long an unattractive garment
15:59 sounds to me a woman should work close
16:03 to the walls of houses in order to make
16:06 way for men men should make the road
16:09 difficult and narrow for women as
16:11 religious scholars they viewed the
16:14 female body as threatening to the order
16:17 of the main world the nudity of the
16:19 female bodies is frowned upon and this
16:22 is a very sensitive subject on the part
16:24 of our religious scholar because he
16:26 hates women prancing in the public bath
16:29 you know walking around nude because
16:32 they exchanged domestic news about
16:35 themselves about their husbands and they
16:39 competed among themselves in terms of
16:42 you know like clothes and jewelry and
16:44 what did my husband get it was trouble
16:47 for the man at home I always encountered
16:52 this in my research you know about women
16:54 that the female body in public space
16:58 caused chaos and again I'm wondering
17:01 whether this is not also a male
17:04 retention of the past you know when
17:07 material power was expressed through the
17:10 years sexuality of the female
17:13 when the male revolted against that
17:17 sexual dominance he started taming it
17:20 [Music]
17:21 women's fertility made them powerful in
17:24 the village times but those times did
17:27 not last
17:27 [Music]
17:38 around 5,000 years ago a great change
17:41 swept across the world the era of the
17:45 autonomous villages came to an end
17:49 nobody really knows why but in half a
17:52 dozen places around the world a new way
17:54 of living arose it was the point where
17:58 human beings stopped just fitting into
17:59 the world and began to subjugate it
18:02 [Music]
18:06 in Egypt in Mesopotamia in China in
18:10 Central America
18:11 great numbers of villages were united
18:14 under single rulers human beings
18:17 invented the state and patriarchy was
18:21 born at the same moment all the early
18:26 States were pyramids of power and
18:28 privilege with a single man at the top a
18:30 fairy a god-king a sacred person and how
18:35 could a single man get so much power
18:39 only by terror
18:42 [Music]
18:50 the tombs around here belonged to the
18:53 kings and Nobles of Egypt's first
18:55 dynasty they died about 5000 years ago
18:58 so there's not much left of the tombs
19:00 now except the outside walls of
19:01 mud-brick but once the interiors were
19:04 lined with inlaid cedar and filled with
19:06 gold and ivory in all manner of precious
19:08 things and some of the kings may have
19:11 been quite decent men when they were
19:12 alive but this is what happened when
19:15 they died
19:17 they strangled scores are hundreds of
19:20 the people who've worked for the King
19:21 concubines bodyguards minor officials
19:24 servant girls and buried them nearby to
19:27 serve Him in the next world around the
19:29 tomb of Jer the third king of unified
19:32 Egypt are the graves of 317 other people
19:35 the great majority of them young women
19:40 and these were not the Kings enemies
19:42 there were people he knew but murdering
19:45 hundreds of people and burying them with
19:47 the king is almost normal in the
19:49 earliest kingdoms Egypt Mesopotamia
19:51 China they all did it absolute power
19:55 corrupts absolutely welcome to
19:57 civilization but the terrible things
20:02 they did had a purpose terror is a
20:05 primitive form of mass communication put
20:08 up enough images like this and you don't
20:10 have to station so
20:19 you
20:56 one quarter of early Mesopotamian laws
20:59 were about controlling women the man
21:04 wants to make sure that the the children
21:07 are his and one way of doing it is to
21:10 regulate you know marriage and to say to
21:12 the woman you know I have to control
21:15 your movement the legacy of Mesopotamia
21:21 is still visible today in all parts of
21:23 Cairo the wealthier houses contain
21:26 harems where women were segregated in
21:28 order to prevent social contact with men
21:30 who were not part of the family you have
21:39 this ideology in architectural form the
21:43 house is enclosed by high walls the male
21:46 space is on the ground floor so that
21:48 there's easy access for the male
21:50 visitors and the female spaces are on
21:53 the upper floors where they could
21:55 overlook these male spaces
21:58 [Music]
22:16 I'd served the purposes of secluding the
22:19 women from strange Maine eyes at the
22:22 same time it allowed women privacy to
22:26 socialize without interference from
22:28 females
22:29 [Music]
22:33 segregating women and making them wear
22:35 veils were just part of the process of
22:38 turning women into private property
22:41 women had to wear veils in Mesopotamia
22:44 4000 years ago
22:48 so did respectable women in classical
22:51 Greece and Rome women in medieval Europe
22:55 were still veiling their hair and even
22:59 in our grandmother's time women still
23:01 wore veils on special occasions today
23:05 almost everybody has forgotten that the
23:08 veil comes from an ancient upheaval that
23:10 also brought us tyranny endless war but
23:14 he does
23:15 [Music]
23:27 every state echos the first state
23:31 hierarchy militarism male domination
23:37 [Applause]
23:40 the meeting place
23:42 [Music]
23:48 please
23:51 [Music]
23:52 [Applause]
23:52 [Music]
23:54 [Applause]
24:02 like anybody trying to run a mouse
24:05 civilization Bill Clinton must get
24:07 millions of people to pay taxes work
24:10 together obey orders from a distant
24:12 Capitol that's so hard to do that until
24:16 recently all math societies hadn't be
24:19 dictatorships but Bill Clinton doesn't
24:25 have to be a dictator
24:26 [Music]
24:29 he can actually try to talk people into
24:31 cooperating because he has all the
24:34 technology of mass communication is
24:36 available to party or persons but the
24:44 common ground we call America but what
24:50 was it like before mass media go all the
24:57 way back to ancient Egypt 5,000 years
25:00 ago no human being has ever lived in
25:05 anything bigger than a village and
25:07 suddenly here we are in the world's
25:09 first unified state and we have a little
25:12 problem how to rocket think of the
25:17 number of people involved 50 thousand a
25:20 hundred thousand half a million and
25:22 remember that the ancient Egyptians
25:24 stitch and everybody lived in a world
25:26 with no mass communications no radio no
25:28 television no books no newspapers hardly
25:31 anybody could even read and write so
25:34 they had no way to talk things over as a
25:36 mass society no way to reach a consensus
25:39 no way to agree voluntarily and what
25:42 ought to be done so somebody had to give
25:45 the orders and everybody else had to
25:47 obey
25:49 when we left the villages we had to
25:51 leave equality behind to a mass society
25:55 without mass communications has to be a
25:58 dictatorship
26:02 but he doesn't have to go in for
26:05 militarism and it doesn't have to
26:07 destroy women's rights
26:09 [Music]
26:12 Egypt was one of the few ancient
26:14 kingdoms where all the elements of
26:16 patriarchy did not arrive at the same
26:18 time in fact the early Egyptians at
26:22 least accepted no more the patriarchal
26:24 order than they absolutely had to the
26:27 very first Kings behaved quite badly but
26:30 my society in Egypt did not become a
26:32 permanent nightmare of exploitation and
26:34 depression as soon as they could the
26:37 Egyptians moved away from the terror of
26:40 the founding times they even gave up
26:46 building pyramids eventually and
26:48 satisfied themselves with more modest
26:50 temples in fact Egypt became the great
26:56 exception a mass society that managed to
26:59 keep a lot of the old village values
27:09 you
27:16 [Music]
27:18 before the coming of Judaism
27:20 Christianity and Islam
27:22 patriarchy was dominant but it tolerated
27:25 the presence of goddesses so he received
27:28 goddesses juxtaposed to gods in the
27:30 religious ideologies the early early
27:33 period the more dominant the female
27:36 figures
27:36 [Music]
27:45 you
28:38 [Music]
28:44 beneath the sands lies the city of La
28:47 who briefly Egypt's capital over 3,000
28:50 years ago Nick Miller the curator of
28:53 Egyptology at the Royal Ontario Museum
28:55 is overseeing the dig the sharp contrast
29:01 that has always impressed me there's
29:04 this difference between the status of
29:05 women in Egypt and that in shall we say
29:08 classical Greece the ancient Greeks were
29:09 a very peculiar Bunch indeed and they
29:12 were basically terrified of their women
29:13 folk I don't say that lightly I really
29:16 believe this if you will go over Greek
29:18 mythology you will find that almost all
29:20 the monsters are female and that must
29:23 surely mean something this did not
29:25 happen in Egypt a man had his women folk
29:29 around him
29:34 this gives the whole court life a kind
29:37 of a feminine quality the art shows
29:39 extremely fine linen garments on the
29:42 women through which the bodies show very
29:43 clearly
29:45 [Music]
29:47 women's clothing particularly which I
29:49 have kind of an interest in at this time
29:50 it does develop new styles appeared in
29:53 many cases you can date a picture on a
29:56 tomb wall by the fashions of the moment
30:02 it was not a misfortune to be born a
30:06 girl in ancient Egypt nobody'd even
30:09 heard of the veil why this huge
30:14 difference between Egypt and other
30:16 places ancient Egypt lived along a river
30:20 in a desert so wide that early armies
30:23 couldn't cross it to the north was open
30:26 sea so for almost 2,000 years
30:29 ancient Egypt was safe from attack by
30:31 other civilized States but Egypt's luck
30:38 eventually ran out around 1600 BC the
30:43 first invaders arrived it was the end of
30:52 Egypt as the great exception first came
30:55 the Hyksos and then came the Hittites an
30:57 even more aggressive law and in the
31:00 course of organizing itself to fight
31:01 them off
31:02 Egypt became like everywhere else this
31:05 temple was built over 3,000 years ago by
31:08 Ramses the third one of the first
31:10 Pharaohs to glory in being a conqueror
31:12 and a killer there's the great Pharaoh
31:15 in his war chariot pulled by horses that
31:18 look like New Kingdom harley-davidsons
31:20 trampling the foe underfoot
31:23 there's the Pharaoh ten times larger
31:25 than life holding a bunch of doomed
31:27 captives by the hair and there are the
31:31 Pharaoh scribes counting the severed
31:34 hands and various other severed bits of
31:38 his slaughtered enemies this was when
31:44 Egypt finally accepted the full
31:45 patriarchal package once other
31:54 civilizations can reach out and hurt you
31:57 you have to militarize that's what
32:00 happened in 19th dynasty Egypt and it
32:02 had an immediate impact on women with
32:06 the exception of the 19th dynasty which
32:08 was a military dynasty under Ramses the
32:10 first you have the beginning of a new
32:13 approach a new presentation of the
32:16 kingship they saw themselves as
32:18 reforming the increasingly effeminate
32:20 and ineffectual ways of the latter part
32:23 of the 18th dynasty we're not like those
32:25 guys who Miss ruled you before we are
32:27 men we are warriors
32:29 we are the new conquering kings of the
32:32 Empire and they represent their sons in
32:35 a way that the earlier Kings had not
32:38 representations of the royal princes in
32:40 the 18th dynasty even the ones who
32:42 ultimately become King are very rare
32:44 indeed under the 19th dynasty you have
32:47 the boys rows of them ramses ii brags of
32:50 having had 108 sons and those presumably
32:53 were only the legitimate ones
32:55 [Music]
33:00 the picture in the 19th time students
33:03 wanted an increasingly masculine
33:05 presentation nice guys finish last the
33:11 Chinese the Incas Mesopotamians Millions
33:14 Aztecs even Egyptians they all went the
33:17 same way in the end first a reasonably
33:19 Pleasant and tolerant culture and then
33:21 smash along comes the local version of
33:24 the patriarchal revolution and its
33:26 tyranny slaughter and depression
33:28 forevermore which still leaves one big
33:31 question maybe the most important one
33:33 why was it necessary in every
33:36 patriarchal culture to destroy the
33:38 status of women
33:40 [Applause]
33:48 poverty babies with the average woman
33:50 have if nobody was pushing her around it
33:54 would certainly not be the six children
33:56 that were the norm in our grandmother's
33:58 generation in cultures that let women
34:01 make their own choices small families
34:03 are the norm because women know the
34:05 children are a lot of work big families
34:10 are a legacy of militarized societies
34:14 military power requires lots of people
34:17 especially soldiers that means lots of
34:20 babies especially boys but you can't get
34:26 a high birthrate of women are really
34:28 free to choose so you have to reduce
34:31 them to a state where their best hope of
34:33 security and respect is their children
34:35 or more precisely their boy children
34:45 [Music]
34:48 truly niala see the passing down of
34:51 possessions and property and name from
34:55 father to son means that you must have a
34:57 son if you're so unlucky as not to have
35:00 a boy this is big trouble one recourse
35:04 is to try to attain a boy by for example
35:07 giving your inheritance
35:09 to a nephew that obliges him to take
35:13 care of you and respect you
35:20 women who don't produce sons wind up
35:23 being destitute for that very reason you
35:26 can't afford to alienate your brothers
35:28 or uncle's or any milk in the source of
35:33 weakness for women is the fact that they
35:36 are replaceable that a man can take
35:39 another woman instead of his wife it's
35:42 not that their functions are replaceable
35:45 it's the fact that they are personally
35:48 there are so many other women to choose
35:50 from the McNish is exhilarating women
35:58 try to overcome this oppression by
36:01 practicing maximum freedom within the
36:04 space that is allowed to them
36:07 they just know the boundaries they know
36:09 where not to go and within that they
36:12 have because of woman's intelligence
36:34 women have created a stake in patriarchy
36:38 and have tried to play by the rules and
36:41 get the most out of it
36:43 you're not going to upturn the culture
36:46 what people write in newspapers or how
36:48 the country is ruled you're not going to
36:50 change that anyway I'm talking about
36:53 making the most out of scarce resources
36:56 in a culture of poverty that is devalued
36:59 and doesn't have a voice the rulers had
37:08 to destroy women's freedom to get the
37:10 birthrate
37:11 they needed men support do that but most
37:15 men love their mothers and their wives
37:16 and their daughters why would they
37:19 collaborate and hurting them besides a
37:24 fully militarized patriarchy was not
37:26 good news for the average male for every
37:29 general there are thousands of foot
37:31 soldiers and being a foot soldier is not
37:34 good for your health
37:39 a few men ended up on top but most men
37:47 were less free less rich and maybe even
37:49 less safe than before so why did men go
37:53 along with the patriarchal revolution I
37:55 suspected in most places there was an
37:57 unspoken deal made right at the dawn of
38:00 civilization the patriarchs had to buy
38:04 men's support and what they had to offer
38:06 was status here was a way to reverse the
38:10 huge loss of status men had suffered
38:12 back when we all moved into the villages
38:14 any competent tyrant would spot the raw
38:17 material for a deal here
38:23 so here's an offer you can't refuse
38:26 throw your lot in with us back
38:29 patriarchy and we'll make you superior
38:31 to all women you'll have to obey us but
38:34 from now on you'll have control over
38:36 your women and you can be certain well
38:38 pretty certain that they're your kids
38:40 what's more your kids will belong to you
38:42 not your wife and your property will go
38:45 to your sons not your sister's kids oh
38:47 and we'll change the religion - from now
38:50 on God will be male and so will all his
38:53 priests and they'll all back your new
38:55 male privileges
38:56 [Music]
39:05 around 2,000 years ago
39:07 new religions swept away the old pagan
39:10 beliefs in almost all the mass
39:12 civilizations of the old world the new
39:15 religions of the Middle East turned the
39:17 universe into a perfect hierarchy with a
39:20 single male sky God at the top and the
39:23 goddesses who always play the major role
39:26 in earlier religions were demoted to
39:28 mere Saints or at best the mother of the
39:31 god
39:33 [Music]
39:38 early Christianity and Islam all
39:40 segregated worshippers by sects their
39:43 rules for women were patriarchy these
39:45 rules
39:46 [Music]
39:46 [Applause]
39:49 and those who interpret God's will of
39:53 course are exclusively made
39:58 [Music]
40:05 [Music]
40:07 in Islam God becomes much more abstract
40:12 as an idea as a concept
40:16 [Music]
40:18 Oh
40:28 [Music]
40:29 Oh
40:31 [Music]
40:47 [Music]
40:51 linguistically speaking is referred to
40:53 as a male God however it's really a very
40:57 abstract concept of divinity and
41:00 definitely there's no tolerance of any
41:02 female divinity there in their structure
41:08 and rules Christianity and Islam
41:10 represent the final triumph of
41:12 patriarchy
41:13 [Music]
41:17 yet the new religions were a paradox for
41:20 at the same time they were actually a
41:22 revolt against inequality the very core
41:25 of patriarchy they proclaimed that all
41:27 human beings were basically equal and
41:31 that's probably why they spread so fast
41:46 however little the new religions changed
41:49 things in practice they were a sign that
41:52 people would break with patriarchy if
41:54 they had the chance maybe not oh we have
41:59 [Music]
42:01 [Laughter]
42:02 [Music]
42:08 the veil has made a comeback in Egypt
42:11 recently and fundamentalism is on the
42:13 rise but looks can be deceiving
42:17 even though there is no law that says
42:19 women should wear the veil in Egypt we
42:22 see it all over the Muslim world you
42:25 know why are women wearing the veil and
42:28 why they willingly wearing the veil we
42:30 know that some are pressured to wear it
42:32 and I think that it's panicking the
42:35 insecurities of patriarchy and its need
42:37 to say to women you should be more
42:40 controlled patriarchy is right to panic
42:44 because these young women behave in ways
42:46 unimaginable to their grandmothers and
42:51 they put on the veil it's not in
42:53 submission to some 4000 year old law off
42:56 and it's just a tactic to move outside
42:58 the house you know still our to meet me
43:07 but I get that
43:08 Ali Anakin's event can finish be able to
43:11 go still mushiya mark say ok thou fat
43:16 about tobacco jumbo I mean an alarm
43:18 listen up together
43:19 [Music]
43:20 fidelity table inaudible vistas a slay
43:24 me man if my Malaysian ilaha darkest
43:28 Nina McDonald de la ley of la savate
43:31 Murdock are the marks in elected are we
43:33 are we early
43:34 Lee Miller had have enough left so pack
43:37 it in the sector
43:40 [Music]
43:43 the modern economy pulls women into the
43:45 workforce and education gives them new
43:48 ideas such rapid change has provoked a
43:52 fundamentalist backlash
43:58 it's the same struggle that started
44:00 centuries ago in the West and it isn't
44:02 over there yet either
44:05 if you put it in perspective we can say
44:08 that the new right has become a
44:10 universal phenomena it takes the
44:13 manifestation of women veiling in this
44:17 culture it takes other forms and in
44:20 other cultures there are fascist
44:22 movements in other countries that demand
44:25 certain forms of behavior I'm sure there
44:28 are similarities I think the world
44:30 economy is going through a crisis and
44:34 people always turn to religion or
44:36 conservatism to what they know
44:44 all across the globe a communications
44:46 revolution is undermining the old ways
44:52 televisions bringing the images and
44:55 ideas of an emerging global culture to
44:57 traditional societies and that's already
45:00 having an impact on the power balance
45:02 between sexes everywhere
45:07 people see a very alien world much of it
45:11 is foreign it's about places people have
45:13 never been and will never go to but
45:15 people are avid to learn just how on
45:18 Islamic the stories can be one incident
45:23 was caused by television for young girls
45:26 decided to escape from the village and
45:29 go through Cairo and become TV stars
45:33 they were of course brought back some
45:36 early and they didn't get very far
45:39 but this had a great impact on the
45:42 village that television can be
45:44 subversive not this year not this decade
45:49 but patriarchy is slowly collapsing
45:52 even though male hierarchy and privilege
45:55 still predominate everywhere even though
45:58 every country in the world is still
46:00 militarized
46:01 [Music]
46:06 after 5,000 years patriarchy is not just
46:10 in our institutions it's in our heads
46:14 but it is not in our genes
46:18 the problem is not human nature
46:21 it's that math societies are still
46:23 trapped inside the ancient machine they
46:25 know thousands of years ago to deal with
46:27 the problems of thousands of years ago
46:30 the machine called patriarchy was the
46:33 only way to run an early mass society it
46:36 was refined to both the killing machine
46:38 and a breeding machine as the early
46:40 civilization started fighting one
46:42 another and we conquered the whole
46:45 planet with thousands of years ago
46:48 [Music]
46:53 but now our weapons have become so
46:56 destructive that we can no longer afford
46:58 to type major Wars and we don't actually
47:02 have to live in patriarchal
47:03 dictatorships anymore
47:05 mass communications mean that we can be
47:08 democratic
47:10 patriarchy no longer makes sense as an
47:12 institution
47:13 [Music]
47:18 I think we have built enormous monuments
47:21 to man's domination there was a
47:26 photograph of all the new members of
47:27 Congress we were all lined up on the
47:29 steps and I was on the top step and
47:32 ready to have this photograph taken and
47:35 two of the new members two white males
47:38 just on the photograph with a student
47:41 and I am lost as if I'm not there it's
47:44 sort of symbolic there's no me and I
47:47 think I have to learn somehow to be able
47:50 to move that aside and say I'm here to
47:55 photographs like this may one day seem
47:58 as bizarre as those old pictures of the
48:00 Soviet leaders lined up on top of
48:02 Lenin's tomb and it will be as normal
48:05 for women to hold power as it is for men
48:08 to do the dishes somebody that bought
48:17 something dinner with you at an auction
48:20 that's right I don't have to take them
48:21 to do that so we stand amongst tonight
48:23 basically what you do is you eat and
48:25 drink in this job that's a no-no you try
48:28 to avoid both the drinking but you look
48:30 like you're eating at drinking
48:44 there's no golden age coming no happy
48:47 ever afters but patriarchy is in retreat
48:49 in every front and the vital front is
48:52 right here where men and women are
48:54 changing the most fundamental human
48:56 partnership the process is often
48:59 confusing and painful but we are
49:01 changing it and that's a good reason to
49:03 be hopeful about the human race if we
49:06 can achieve equality between the sexes
49:08 then the other big problems like war and
49:10 nationalism and north/south are not
49:12 insoluble either and a century from now
49:16 people may have to explain to their kids
49:18 about patriarchy the way we have to
49:21 explain about slavery and wouldn't that
49:23 be nice
49:24 [Music]
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