What is gender prejudice?

Answer 1

Gender prejudice had long been woven into the fabric of most societies. It was driven by a universal belief that women were the weaker of the sexes emotionally as well as physically and must be protected from the world outside the home. Normally, males were expected to be the provider and dominated in family matters, particularly those relating to the outside world in commerce and politics. Females were expected to assume domestic chores, cook and bake, spin yarn, sew, and make soap and candles and other needed household goods. At the same time, it was their responsibility to bear children and raise them according to the values and morals of the society in which they lived. In a farming economy, males cleared land, plowed, planted and harvested fields, hunted, chopped wood, built structures, and constructed fences. Wives were sheltered from most relations outside the family and not allowed to take part in business or politics. Similarly, sons in families enjoyed more freedoms than daughters in just about every known society. Emerging industrialization brought major changes to gender roles and prejudices. Industrialization was a major economic change in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which large quantities of goods became produced by wage-earning workers operating machines located in factories.