In the four-part docu-series, The Ascent of Woman, creator and accomplished historian, Dr. Amanda Foreman, chronicles the little known and largely untold evolution of women across the globe over the span of a few millennia. In doing so, she attempts to provide context for the feminist movements of today. She also pays overdue homage to countless women whose contributions to society had been corrupted or erased entirely by subsequent male rulers.
If you’re like me—strongly opinionated about what I hold to be my reproductive, sexual, and basic rights as a woman, with limited historical understanding of the origins of sexism or whom to even thank for the some of the rights I do enjoy—this is the perfect primer. There were many interesting and enlightening tidbits I picked up on my journey through “Herstory.”
1 | Women in nomadic and Neolithic society were equal to men. Why is this interesting? As Dr. Foreman put it, “It’s one thing to ask for something you’ve never had, but another to demand something that’s been taken away.”
2 | Greece developed democracy in 507 BC, but did not give women the right to vote until 1952.
3 | Though starkly different cultures, the societies of Ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and Ancient China all viewed women as naturally inferior and sexuality as deviant. They also all took steps to ensure that women of their era were either suppressed or in some way purged of that sexuality.
4 | Hammurabi’s Code demanded women wear hijabs before any modern religious dogma did.
5 | Quite a few mandates in Christianity and Islam regarding how women should behave or be punished (i.e. infidelity or promiscuity leading to physical punishment and the inability for women to own property) correlates with a number of laws in Hammurabi’s Code.
6 | Though hidden behind screen doors and layers of silk kimonos for a majority of her life, Murasaki Shikibu, author of the world’s first novel, The Tales of Genji, was pivotal in cultural development of Japanese society.
7 | The French Revolution launched as a direct result of the woman’s march on Versailles—though the movement was left unaccredited to them. Ironically, the revolution also led to women having even less freedoms than they started out with.
8 | Marriage in early 20th century China was perceived as a girl’s only means of prosperity. As a result, it was customary for women to break and bind their feet to slim them. The tighter their binds, the smaller their feet. The smaller their feet, the more attractive they were to men of that time.
9 | In early 20th century Manhattan, sex-ed pamphlets and clinics run by Margaret Sanger (the same clinics that eventually evolved into Planned Parenthood) were shut down for “promoting pornography.”
Despite what I have learned, The Ascent of Woman is missing a critical point:
Why is the oppression of women happening at all?
Dr. Foreman does address the question in episode one by breaking it down into three questions.
1 | Why did history become exclusively male?
2 | Why are women’s physical appearances and behaviors highly regulated?
3 | Why is the status of women so vulnerable to the dictates of politics, economics, and religion?
The explanations she sprinkles across the series only brushes on the topic. I would have liked to have seen a few interviews that could suggest some sociological or psychological reason behind why patriarchies across vastly different cultures seem to exhibit the same possessive and suppressive behavior. Instead, the viewer is pretty much left to infer why any of these things occurred—or else trust Dr. Foreman’s opinion.
Given the depth and breadth with which The Ascent of Woman covers the role of all women in history in just four hours, it’s understandable why she would chose to skim or oversimplify explanations. My hope is that the docu-series picks up for another season or that the answers I seek will be found in the book version of The Ascent on Woman releasing sometime this year.
The Ascent of Man had 13 parts, anyway. But who’s keeping score?
Leave a Reply