ABSTRACT
Asian social systems particularly disadvantaged women, except in Southeast Asia, and the young (including younger brothers), as well as tending to sti= e individual initiative. No social system is perfect, and none satisfy all legitimate claims or needs. In Asia the emphasis on the group may have been related to the need for directed, cooperative e% ort in the highly intensive agricultural system (including the need for irrigation) that dominated the economy, and to the relatively small place of manufacturing or long-distance trade. & is is one reason why Southeast Asia is distinctive-many of its people were involved in + shing and the sea trade over the centuries, and women took on important roles in commerce as men took to the sea. In other parts of Asia, the subjugation of women may have been related to the physical demands of agriculture, although peasant women took full part in agricultural labor and other manual tasks, as they still do. In later centuries, as urbanization and nonagricultural occupations grew, women were less mobile and thus less able to take advantage of new opportunities, leading, perhaps, to even more subjugation within the family.
