Myth of Progress - Status of Women

Status of Women

How progress improved the degraded status of women in traditional society was a major theme of historians starting in the Enlightenment and continuing to today. British theorists William Robertson (1721–93) and Edmund Burke (1729–97), along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based conceptions of virtue, while working within a new Enlightenment paradigm. The political agenda related beauty, taste, and morality to the imperatives and needs of modern societies of a high level of sophistication and differentiation. Two themes in the work of Robertson and Burke - the nature of women in 'savage' and 'civilized' societies and 'beauty in distress' - reveals how long-held convictions about the character of women, especially with regard to their capacity and right to appear in the public domain, were modified and adjusted to the Idea of Progress and became central to an enlightened affirmation of modern European civilization.

Classics experts have examined the status of women in the ancient world, concluding that in the Roman Empire, with its superior social organization, internal peace, and rule of law, allowed women to enjoy a somewhat better standing than in ancient Greece, where women were distinctly inferior. The inferior status of women in traditional China has raised the issue of whether the Idea of Progress requires a thoroughgoing reject of traditionalism—a belief held by many Chinese reformers in the early 20th century.

Historians Leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish asking, "Should we in fact abandon the idea of progress as a view of the past," answer that there is no doubt "that the status of women has improved markedly" in cultures that have adopted the Enlightenment idea of progress.