Check out Jack Holland's book Misogyny. It starts from the origins of misogyny on.... Also, there is an interesting story about the book itself. Holland died before the book was published, and then the publisher then wanted to not publish the book, but his wife and daughter stepped in and saw to it that it was published.

I just took a women's history class last spring about women in pre-industrial Europe. My professor had co-authored our two volume text titled, "A History of Their Own." I highly recommend this book!!! It is not organized by time period, but topic and has a really extensive review of women's history that is overlooked in most history texts.

I would suggest that women and almost every group of people have always gone through some form of oppression. There is no one year or decade that you could point to and say "that's where it started." Many people suggest that the oppression of women started when the catholic church started to take off. This makes some sense considering women were not included in the church and were mass murdered during The Witch's Hammer times. See: Malleus Maleficarum. On the other hand, the attitude against women has always been. Oppression and violence begins with an internal belief that women are lesser beings. There were/are societies and civilizations that held women in equal or higher regard. But these societies could not hold a candle to the overriding attitude about women. This form of brainwashing is easy when you think about it. Women are inadequate because they just are. If you are bombarded both outside and inside the home with an idea, it will eventually stick with most of the population. How has the media affected today's youth? Especially its pre-teen girls? In conclusion: there is no answer to your question. People can guess all they like, but the truth is that there is an attitude that has prevailed that is still prevalent in society today.

"If we look back at history it seems that women have always been looked down as the lower one or have only been appreciated in a few ways. Is it religion and customs (culture) that began oppressing women in early history?"

If you look further back in history (before written history) pretty much every group believed in a Great Goddess, usually the mother of other dieties, who was the giver of life. Women were seen as created in the Goddess's image and the process of giving birth was seen as sacred. More warlike, patriarchal cultures who valued the male ability to take life took over these more egalitarian cultures and brought their oppressive male diety with them. Childbirth was then deemed "dirty" and women lost their sacred standing.

Carol Christ's Rebirth of the Goddess is a good book to read.

Another great read is Riane Eisler's The Chalice and The Blade.

This comes from Carol Christ's website and is more eloquent than I can be:"The Goddess of Old Europe and Ancient Crete represented the unity of life in nature, delight in the diversity of form, the powers of birth, death and regeneration. In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal. We are not to 'lord' over nature and other creatures. Rather we are all interconnected in the web of life.
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.Men were valued for their contributions to agriculture, to trade, and to the navigation of rivers and seas. Warfare was unknown or rarely practiced. Though she lived in more violent times, Sappho remembered "how tender feet of Cretan girls danced once around an altar of love" and wrote that "whatever one loves" is more to be valued than calvary corps, infantry, and ships of war."

"If we look back at history it seems that women have always been looked down as the lower one or have only been appreciated in a few ways. Is it religion and customs (culture) that began oppressing women in early history?"

If you look further back in history (before written history) pretty much every group believed in a Great Goddess, usually the mother of other dieties, who was the giver of life. Women were seen as created in the Goddess's image and the process of giving birth was seen as sacred. More warlike, patriarchal cultures who valued the male ability to take life took over these more egalitarian cultures and brought their oppressive male diety with them. Childbirth was then deemed "dirty" and women lost their sacred standing.

Carol Christ's Rebirth of the Goddess is a good book to read.

Another great read is Riane Eisler's The Chalice and The Blade.

This comes from Carol Christ's website and is more eloquent than I can be:"The Goddess of Old Europe and Ancient Crete represented the unity of life in nature, delight in the diversity of form, the powers of birth, death and regeneration. In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal. We are not to 'lord' over nature and other creatures. Rather we are all interconnected in the web of life.
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.Men were valued for their contributions to agriculture, to trade, and to the navigation of rivers and seas. Warfare was unknown or rarely practiced. Though she lived in more violent times, Sappho remembered "how tender feet of Cretan girls danced once around an altar of love" and wrote that "whatever one loves" is more to be valued than calvary corps, infantry, and ships of war."

***The same comment with links is in moderation, but if you search for the authors you can find their websites.

I guess it seems that we can't really trace history to it's roots. Well at least I don't think so, we also have to see that history is very tricky to learn since it's always coming from a person's point of view. I mean try and really think about how it must have been in our caveman times or "uncivilized times" you think people really had any prejudices against each other? We were pretty much like animals, trying to survive and mate. We didn't care about if two females or males made out with each other, we didn't care about the color of our skin, there existed no such thing as class status, and the list goes on. I think first human beings were much like animals, if you want to go back to ancient times. But I think as we became more comfortable and able to survive, we started developing reasoning and thought. And with reasoning and thought we began thinking of greater things than just surviving. In other words we became more human.Because what separates us from animals is the ability of reasoning (or is reasoning another means of survival and also an animal trait?). Then humans started to make differences among themselves and then came inequality. So is being a human by nature,leads us to find differences among each other? Or is inequality all in our mind, and like a lot of thoughts in our mind they are simply just our imagination, not real. What I'm trying to say is that maybe inequality is an illusion, and people are so brainwash and condition by roles and stereotypes that they believe it so much. But it is as false as fairy tales are, as false as T.V. and other human created things and thoughts.
I don't even know if I agree with everything I've said, so send me your thoughts and arguments.
Thanks.