ABSTRACT
Feminism is not a new phenomenon, as many people seem to think. It arose long before equality between women and men became an important political theme in Norway. The background to feminism, or to the feminist struggle, is a patriarchal culture that has existed for many millennia. From ancient times down to our own days, the man has been defined as the standard human being, and the woman as his subordinate helper. Spirit, reason, creativity, strength, authority, and dominance characterized the man, while the woman represented matter, feeling, reproduction, weakness, obedience, and submissiveness. The man’s place was in society, the woman’s place in the home as the man’s servant. A patriarchal gender ideology of this kind has been dominant in the past and continues to hold sway today in many places, for example, in conservative Christian milieus in the USA.
