do they dictate any particular division of labour as inevitable. These differences related to the reproductive and nurturing functions, the height and weight differentials, proportion and distribution of fat, the consequential differences in maneuverability and combativeness, the effects of hormones on the control-centers of sex or violence, the differential in the verbal as against visual faculties etc. None of these differences justify the lower status accorded to women. This lower status to women is therefore not at all natural or biologically justified. It was not there when agriculture began; which incidentally was invented by women. Agriculture freed society from the miseries and uncertainties of the food-gathering and hunting days. Unfortunately, the abundance brought about by the early agriculture, was followed by the plundering by some persons, near or far apart, what others had cultivated with hard work, rather than putting in any work themselves in cultivating land. These plunderers came with their weapons and by brute force simply took away the entire ready crop. The plunderers came with more and more menacing weapons each time. Joshi believed that the history of human society is the history of the evolution of the instruments for plundering of this agricultural produce. This was the beginning of a very long and bloody epoch replete with loot, plunder, invasions, colonialism each with its quota of maiming, murders or rapes. Such attacks by the plunderers became a routine matter. The plunder or loot settled down as the most remunerative activity. Always under the threat of an attack, entire communities got restructured to defend themselves against attacks. This situation changed the earlier natural roles of men and women; both having equal status. Faced with the prospect of extermination, men had primary interest in doing the actual fighting. Women, marginally handicapped in physical combat due to child bearing and rearing 222
Q
Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
