IN a bid to up my knowledge recently, I started reading a book by Prof Leila Ahmed who teaches Women’s Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. Prof Leila is one of those hugely qualified scholars who has made it her mission to study the state of gender relations since ancient times to see how we got to some of the attitudes we have towards women today.
I’ve only just started reading the first chapter which describes civilisations in the Middle East region in the Mesopotamian era starting from about 6000BC which, being so long ago, must have taken many hours of research to get right. She unearthed some interesting information for us to think about.