Breaking Down Patriarchy
Season One Timeline

 
First Agricultural Revolution

Humans change from egalitarian systems to patriarchal systems, where not only is labor divided, but men start to rule women and view them as a means of reproduction

Settlement of Catal Hayuk in Turkey

Many female figurines found in ruins, dwellings indicate matrilocality

First written records 

Code Hammurabi

If a man strikes a free-born woman so that she loses her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss. …If the woman dies, his daughter shall be put to death.

Middle Assyrian Law

“a man may [scourge] his wife, pluck [her hair], may bruise and destroy [her] ears. There is no liability therefore.” MAL 59

Minoan Civilization in Crete

(Snake goddesses, priestesses, co-ed bull jumping, peaceful, nature-loving civilization)

Hebrew Bible written after centuries of oral tradition

Aristotle publishes Politics

“The relation of male to female is by nature a relation of superior to inferior and ruler to ruled.”

Canonical gospels written 

Gnostic gospels written

(including Gospel of Mary Magdalene)

Mary begins to be worshipped

(regulated by the pope)

In Medieval Europe, the Laws of Couverture gradually develop and are exported all over the world via colonialism

(Women are “covered” by their husbands and lose all legal rights, property, and even distinct identity upon marriage)

St. Thomas Aquinas publishes Summa Theologica

(“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten”)

Hildegard von Bingen publishes Scivias

Christine de Pizan writes The City of the Ladies

Martin Luther publishes (Women… should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children.”)

Sor Juana de la Cruz writes to defend women’s right to education

Olympe de Gouges publishes Declaration on the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen

Judith Sargent Murray publishes “On the Equality of the Sexes”

Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women

Sarah Grimke publishes Letters on the Equality of the Sexes

The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention

Sojourner Truth delivers “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech

John Stuart Mill publishes The Subjection of Women

Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes “The Yellow Wallpaper”  

Kate Chopin publishes The Awakening

Alice Paul organizes the first march in Washington DC for political purposes – a women’s rights parade

(white Northern leaders capitulate to Southern women’s demand that the parade be segregated)

Anna Howard Shaw publishes  “The Fundamental Principle of a Republic”

The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is published, granting women the right to vote

Alice Paul introduces the Equal Rights Amendment

(The ERA still hasn’t passed)

Margaret Sanger publishes “The Morality of Birth Control”

Virginia Woolf publishes A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf delivers the speech “Professions for Women” at Cambridge University

Eleanor Roosevelt reads “An Open Letter to the Women of the World” at the United Nations

Eleanor Roosevelt presents The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations 

Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex

Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique

Title VII of the Civil Rights Amendment is passed

Pauli Murray and Mary Eastwood publish “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII” in the George Washington Law Review

Women are admitted to Yale for the first time

Frances Beal publises the essay “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female”

Gloria Steinem delivers the speech “Living the Revolution” for commencement at Vassar College

Kate Millett publishes Sexual Politics

The Boston Women’s Health Collective publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves

The US Supreme Court legalizes abortion in some circumstances with Roe v. Wade

The first edition of  Ms. magazine is published

Cherrie Morraga and Gloria Anzaldua edit the collection, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color

Angela Davis publishes Women, Race, and Class

bell hooks publishes “Ain’t I A Woman?”

Audre Lourde publishes Sister Outsider

Naomi Woolf publishes The Beauty Myth

 Laguna Puebla tribe member Paula Gunn Allen publishes The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

The United Nations publishes “The Declaraion of the Elimination of Violence Against Women”

bell hooks publishes Feminism Is For Everybody

The Supreme Court rules in favor of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges

Mary Beard publishes Women and Power

The Equal Rights Amendment is ratified as an amendment to the United States constitution, after ___ years.