If you could go back in time and kill anyone to improve history, who would it be?
Most people would choose someone like Adolf Hitler. For the most bang for my buck, I would kill a young Julius Caesar before the battle of Alesia. “Why Julius Caesar?” you ask?
Because Julius Caesar is the cause of sexism in today’s Western society. Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix and the united Gallic tribes at the battle of Alesia. And this, in my opinion, is one of the primary reasons the world is in bad shape today. It takes some leaps of logic but hear me out.
When Julius Caesar defeated the Gauls he put Roman culture as the center and the foundation of the Western world. Greeks and Romans were already ethnocentric. However this meant that Roman religion, ethics and culture became the defacto religion, ethics and culture of the Western world.
Romans were horribly sexist. Unlike Gallic (or even Egyptian society), women were not equals before the law. Women were property and received very little education. As second-class citizens their ability to make contributions was minimized.
In comparison, in Gallic society women could be chiefs, scholars, artists. Women could divorce their husbands, fight in battle, own property and were very much a man’s equal.
This loss of equality was and still is, a massive cost for society today. In fact, there is literally a book on this very topic!
Gender equality has strong correlations with human development, national competitiveness, economic growth and a number of other important societal measurements.
The sexism of Roman society was passed along through the ages. It becomes ingrained in Christianity as Constantine shifted the Roman Empire from a polytheistic religion to a monotheistic religion. Christianity, influenced by Judaism adopts pidyon haben and the concept of the first born male child being the most important. This in turn influences Islam.
Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups.
Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic.
“Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,” Gates said, “you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.”
The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering.
New York Times Magazine
Imagine how much farther along we’d be if we hadn’t suppressed the contributions of half of society for 2000 years.