Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

48 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
challenge the status quo and to move people to justice. Ideological criticism is
particularly helpful when one asks whose interests are being served by a certain
depiction of society, of women, and of work. 70
BORROWING FROM EXISTING MODELS
Having made explicit the body of research and the main methodologies, it is
time to review some models, establishing their usefulness for us. The one we
prefer is a model in which power is seen as a continuum, with shades of gray,
rather than black and white compartments.
THE “CONTINUUM OF POWERLESSNESS” MODEL
Gerda Lerner’s work is a history of the relation of women to history. That
means, on the one hand, women have made history from its very beginning,
while on the other hand history writing has ignored woman’s contribution and
participation. Lerner traces the beginning of patriarchy to the submission of
woman’s sexuality, beginning with Mesopotamia at a time before history
writing, private property, and classes. Thus, as city-states grew and empires
formed, submission of their women and submission of enemies were not foreign
to each other, but the two sides of the same coin. This is how she sees the
beginning of the process.
The appropriation by men of women’s sexual and reproductive capacity
occurred prior to the formation of private property and class society. Its
commodification lies, in fact, at the foundation of private property ...
Men learned to institute dominance and hierarchy over other people by their
earlier practice over the women of their own group. This found expression in
the institutionalization of slavery, which began with the enslavement of women
of conquered groups ....
Women’s sexual subordination was institutionalized in the earliest law codes
and enforced by the full power of the state. Women’s cooperation in the system
was secured by various means: force, economic dependency on the male head
of the family, class privileges bestowed upon conforming and dependent
70 The matter is, however, far more complicated, as Newsom’s analysis, for instance, shows
(“Reflections on Ideological Criticism and Postcritical Perspectives,” 542–44). For there are several
different understandings of the words “ideology,” “(false) consciousness,” “power,” or “reality.” My
preferences lie with those who see “ideology” as somehow similar to a political worldview, in the
sense that an ideology explains how the world works, who is “in” and who is “out,” who deserves
better, and so forth.