A very serious question for the men here at DU:

[RainDog]

118. It's not just christianity

Judaism is a patriarchal religion.

Greek mythology is a patriarchal religion.

Roman mythology is a patriarchal religion.

The religions that were held by those who most informed western civilization were all patriarchal in concept and practice and these informed laws.

Yes, god was created in the image of men - all religions are the creations of humans. That has nothing to say about the power these beliefs have held over societies for thousands of years.

Some Native American tribes were patriarchal and some weren't.

The Native Americans that lived in the northeastern part of what became the U.S. were not - women had a role in tribal governance. The Great Law of Peace was an important influence on the founders. It was an oral constitution that bound together the six-nation Iroquois. This constitution was translated and written down in English. Franklin circulated copies of it.

Some historians think this document was extremely important for the founders but was not given credit because the Iroquois did not exclude women from governing bodies and property was held in common. This Iroquois constitution, historians believe, dates back to the time of the Magna Carta.

Historian Donald Grinde said that John Adams, on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, pointed out that the best example of separation of powers was the Iroquois confederacy, because they had three distinct branches. In many discussions I have read by political theorists about what makes American democracy unique, they say that it is the separation of powers — the three branches, separately autonomous and mutually counterbalancing."

Grinde also says: "Sally Roesch Wagner has done a great deal of research, and points out that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony — many of the early theorists of the women's movement — had a great deal of contact with Iroquois women.

The power of the Iroquois women was based in economics, since they controlled the fields and the agricultural production. Their power flowed from that, and that is an important part of how the Iroquois defined democracy: in order to be equal, one had to have a stake in society.

...Elizabeth Cady Stanton describes how, as a young girl on an Iroquois reservation — she was twelve or thirteen — she saw a man come up, and the mother of her Indian playmate went outside and talked to this man for a half hour or more. Then he handed her some money, they went to the barn and took a horse out, and he rode off on the horse.

Stanton asked the mother what had happened, and the woman said, "Well, I sold the man one of my horses. We negotiated the price, and then he gave me the money, and then he left with the horse."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "What will your husband say when he gets home?"

The woman said, "Well, it was my horse, and I can do with it as I please."

For a young Euro-American woman, it was quite a revelation that this was possible, that a woman could behave in this way, holding property and disposing of it without the approval of a husband or father."