Reply #106: It is "A" measure of society

[fberknm]

Would it not be great if we could boil down the value of a society based solely on its treatment of women? History and politics would be so much easier to contemplate! It is of course not "the" measure of society.

It is "A" measure of society and likely tracks many other elements of the society. This is a more a-theoretical statement than one based on a fundamental theory of reasoning and behavior.

A more accurate and more general statement is one made by John Rawls in "Justice" when he built a model in which the value of a society was to be evaluated not by the relationship between the haves and have nots. The difference between those at the top of the economic ladder and those at the bottom was irrelevant. The real metric to be used was simply an absolute evaluation of the living standards of those at the bottom. The relevance to this discussion is that an analysis of womens' roles and the treatment they receive is an extension of the model that states that a society is measured by its treatment of its lowest ranked members. In terms of gender roles, females are still ranked lower today than are men, gender still matters to alot of people.