Document 4 The Creation of Patriarchy Gerda Lerner (1920-2013) was a historian who specialized in the development of historically constructed and was not the result of natural or biological processes.

women's history as a discipline. She is attributed with teaching the first women's history course in the world. Her work. The Creation of Patriarchy is a two volume series

that deals with development of the concept of patriarchy, a system in which men hold the social and political power. In the book. Lerner argues that patriarchy was

History-making, on the other hand, is a historical creation which dates from the

invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia. From the time of the king lists of ancient Sumer on, historians, whether priests, royal servants, clerks, clerics of professional class of university-trained intellectuals, have selected the events to be recorded and interpreted them so as to give the meaning and significance. Until the most recent past, these historians have been men, and what they have recorded is what men have done and experienced and found significant. They called this History and claimed universality for it. What women have done and experienced has been left unrecorded, neglected and ignored in interpretation. Thus, the recorded and interpreted record of the past of the human race is only a partial record, in that it omits the past of half of humankind, and it is distorted, in that it tells the story from the viewpoint of the make half of humanity only Women have been kept from contributing to History-making, that is, the ordering and interpretation of the past is humankind. Since this process of meaning-giving is essential to the creation and perpetuation of civilization, we can see at one that women's marginality in this endeavor places us in a unique and segregate position. Women are the majority, yet we are structured into social institutions as

though we were a minority.

1. How has history traditionally depicted women? Why?