Womens Social Status in the World :: Gender Female Women Woman

[Introduction] Women's status is a complex issue and a hard-to-define subject. Around the world, women's status in each society and culture varies in different ways. In some societies, women's status improved gradually, while in other, it declined or remained unchanged. What affects women's status in a society? In what kind(s) of society, /is women's status /is/ among the highest? And why? My research paper will focus on the relationship between women's status and the degree of stratification and wealth of a society. [Hypotheses] Measurement of women's status: First of all, I realized that there is no standard on how people define and judge women's status in a society. In my point of view, one of the judgements /that could be used for women's status is the "opinion of people/," which includes two areas - society and family. That is, how the public views females and how parents' treatment of the daughter compares to that of the son. (See group III for related variables used.) This group of variables is going to be compared with other groups of variables in different areas to test my hypotheses. Besides, there are another two groups of variables related to women's status that are selected to be used in the paper. (See group V and group VI.) Factors that affect women's status: First, a woman's ability to survive, that is, what I refer to as financial independence for women nowadays, would affect women's status in most societies. I believe it is more likely that people would have more respect /for/on/ productive persons than /for/independen/ce/ts/WHY? in most cultures. Therefore, I suppose women's contribution to be one of the factors affecting women's status. Variables related to this topic are collected in group IV. Second, /in a society in which castes and/or slaves exist, that is, /in/ a non-egalitarian society, women are more likely to have a lower social status. My point is, /in such a case/if/ the public believe/s that human beings are not equal, and thus/,/ they classify people into different classes, socially or politically. Then speaking of genders, there must be a higher class as well. Would that be male or female? I suppose it to be male. The reason is that/,/ males are physically advantage/d/ous/ relative to females, and therefore, males are traditionally valued over females in many cultures. (Females could hardly talk about equal rights with males in jungles/[but look at the Mbuti of the Iruri forest for example-- doesnt it depend on the society?