Gender Roles and Artistic Expression: c. 600 BCE - 600 CE
AP Concept: 2.1 The Development and Codification of Religious and Cultural Traditions
Key Concepts
Gender Roles
Artistic Expression
Key Concepts
- Belief systems affected gender roles
- Artistic expressions reflected cultural developments
- While many civilizations were patriarchal, the advent of new religions sometimes allowed women to be treated equally
- Christianity held that God loved both men and women equally, and both could ascend to heaven after death
- Women, like men, could join holy orders, and many early converts to Christianity were women
- While the Roman Empire was patriarchal, as Christianity spread it encouraged women to have more of an active role in religion
- Buddhism held that women could achieve nirvana with proper practice, and they were allowed to live as nuns in holy orders
- Both China and India, where Buddhism spread, had patriarchal societies where women were meant to marry well and were legally subject to their fathers and husbands
- Buddhism allowed women an alternative to rigid lifestyles
- Islam allowed women to keep their dowries and held that women and men were equal in the eyes of Allah
- Most belief systems, however, cemented pre-existing patriarchal social structures
- Hinduism and the caste system, which kept women in a legally subordinate status, were interdependent, and women were not allowed to read the sacred Veda prayers
- Confucianism's key relationships asserted that women must always be subordinate to their husbands
- Greece, which had a complex polytheistic religion, had a patriarchal society where women were subordinate to their fathers, husbands, and sons
- Women could participate in religious cults, however
- Belief systems often influenced art and architecture
- Greece emphasized human life and beauty in all aspects of its culture, including sophisticated sculptures of the human body that reflected a growing knowledge of anatomy
- Ashoka, a Maurya emperor (India, c. 260 BCE), converted to Buddhism and built monasteries and stupas for worship in his empire
- The development of more advanced metallurgy and craft technologies allowed civilizations to create more sophisticated pieces
- Early Shang period saw the development of sophisticated bronze containers and weapons, perhaps using the "lost-wax" method, which allowed further experimentation and refinement
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Related Links: AP World History Quizzes AP World History AP World History Notes States and Empires: c. 600 BCE - 600 CE |