Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

Toleration of domestic violence was, among other things, also a consequence of
the message delivered by public punishments. Public punishments imposed on
women were even stricter than those undergone by men, as the violation of the
law was considered even less proper for women than for men. Non-compliance
with the rules of womanhood was an act far graver than the violation itself.
Throughout history, many attempts have been made to construct
femininity. Women were chained to their homes by various rituals, customs
and traditions, proverbs and other messages which, amongst other channels,
were mainly handed down from mother to daughter and acted as unwritten
laws which must be complied with. If one turns to less recent history, one
will find two early Slavic customs which symbolically relate to submission.
These are the death of the wife along with the death of her husband and haircutting
for boys. 11 Both actions have a ritual character and represent codified,
recurring acts involving both a symbolic meaning and an actual function.
There is nothing known about how these rituals functioned, what they meant
and what their consequences or effects were, as their meaning is explained
neither in ethnological nor in anthropological studies, therefore one can only
speculate about such questions. This is particularly true of the wife’s ritual death.
In various cultures, such burials were associated with the husband’s possessions
which, at the time of his death, were placed in his tomb. The same was also
true of Slavic burials that were linked to the patriarchal order. The patriarchal
order devalues woman in mental and spiritual and physical terms. It claims
that a woman is intellectually and emotionally inferior, physically weaker and,
therefore, fully dependent. The only function determining her value is her reproductive
capability, which becomes the real object of possession. Possession
of a womb and, at the same time, prohibition of sexual intercourse with other
men ensured the clear identity of the children who, at the time of transition to
individual economy, had already assumed the role of successors. In this context,
woman means nothing more than a means of reproduction. Her womb is only
a “flower pot” 12 into which a man’s seed is planted, with the latter being the
sole agent of making a child. This flower pot or vessel is buried together with
11
Lenard Leonard, Slovenska žena v dobi narodnega preporoda. (Slovene Women in Times of National Revival)
(Maribor: Družba sv. Cirila in Metoda, 1922). Sergej Vilfan, Pravna zgodovina Slovencev. (The Legal History of
Slovenes) (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1961). Meta Sluga, ed. Zgodovina Slovencev. (The History of Slovenes)
(Ljubljana: Cankarjeva Založba, 1979).
12
Barbara Katz Rothman, Recreating Motherhood. Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society. (London:
W.W. Norton&Company, 1989).
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