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The Kiduyu

Fairytales, Jane Austen novels, made-for-TV-movies, toothpaste commercials end with weddings and smiling brides, women being feted for their youth and their beauty. But while the brides in popular culture images seem happy enough, such happiness is in most cultures unlikely to last past the wedding day itself, for marriage has been in most historical periods and for most cultures an institution that has restricted and even abrogated the rights of women. We see how marriage has curtailed women's rights and straitened women's lives if we look at marriage and gender roles in three very different society - ancient Greece, Kikuyu and Igbo societies.

Married women in ancient Greece society were in generally excluded from public life: Their only socially sanctioned roles were to accept the husband that their fathers had selected for them and then to bear legitimate children for those husbands. Women in Athens were married at a very young age - 14 or 15 - while women in Sparta did not generally marry until they were 18 - a fact that reflects the generally somewhat higher status and greater independence of Spartan women (Stafford 82).

Married Greek women could not walk by themselves on the street, were not formally educated, were usually illiterate, and were often pressured to practice female infanticide (or to sell daughters into prostitution) to provide greater resources to any male children, who would inherit all property and carry on the family name.

The Kikuyu are a Bantu-speaking people who are the dominant ethnic group in Kenya. The Kikuyu have traditionally been agricultural (raising beans, millet, and sweet potatoes), living in compound family households consisting of a man, his multiple wives, and their children. The society is patrilineal, with property passing from fathers to sons and women having few formal or informal rights. Their major role is to produce male heirs, but even being good wives and mothers does not offer w...

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The Kiduyu. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1688101.html