One need only scan the literature in the social sciences to find that most of it has been about, and written by men. We have almost no contemporaneous accounts of the social development of women in the ancient world, little about women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and only with the advent of literacy and the promulgation of material through printing can one piece together the social history of women. One may also puzzle as to the meaning of this women are inexorably linked within both the social and biological patterns of the species Homo Sapiens sapiens, yet historically the study of female development within a cultural context has been, for the most part, sublimated.1 Of course, there are exceptions to this portrayal: Cleopatra, royalty in Europe, etc., yet the general rule has been to ignore many of the underlying social currents that have been caused by women.
Clearly, one must ask questions, as many historians post 1960 have attempted, about the myriad of ways in which women have impacted on various societies throughout history. Moreover, the way in which this interaction took place, with special relevance to the manner by which societal development was changed because of and by women, must form the cortex of any argument centered around human development in general.
1 For more on this biological link through evolution see Helen Fisher, The Sex Contract, (New York: William Morrow, 1982). Obviously, society could not have existed or developed without women. The tragedies of history, war, plague, famine, and the like, transpired for both sexes. One of the unfortunate ironies of history lies in the fact that contemporary society knows about women in past times largely through the colored writings of men. These writings "imply that women accepted their subordinate role, but even if they did not, there was little society permitted them to do about it, nor did it record the many times when they expressed their di...