Post History
Do they really still do that? The origins are not hard to guess at. It has been a fundamental social presumption for centuries that the essential role of men is to protect women and children. On si...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28299 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28299 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Do they really still do that? The origins are not hard to guess at. It has been a fundamental social presumption for centuries that the essential role of men is to protect women and children. On sinking ships, the rule was women and children first, and woe betide a man who survived a shipwreck in which a woman or child perished. And of course this rule was pretty much a practical necessity at anytime up to the creation of civilian police forces. Routine protection of persons in everyday life was simply not a function of government up until quite recently, or at least no one it had the means to effectively carry out. But do they really still do it? And if they do, is it perhaps just a cultural survival, or do we really still think that women's lives matter more?