The Crusades - the role of women in the modern world

Larry's reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and a few days ago I glanced over his shoulder and happened to see this paragraph:

"They did not suspect her for a moment.  It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous.  How foolish they were!  Women could do most of the things men did.  Who was left in charge when the men were fighting wars, or going on crusades?  There were women carpenters, dyers, tanners, bakers and brewers.  Aliena herself was one of the most important wool merchants in the county.  The duties of an abbess, running a nunnery were exactly the same as those of an abbot.  Yet these wooden-headed men-at-arms did not expect a woman to be an enemy agent because it was not the normal thing."

Men have always considered themselves the superior of the species.  They often as a group, and individually, treat women as chattel, as inferior creatures good only for a good fuck and bearing children.  Yet they leave them to raise the children they spawn and run the mundane every day world while they pursue "men's work." What is the mundane every day world?  The checkbook, the household, teaching children to become responsible adults? Running the family business while they pick a fight with some other "clan"? Women are now earning more bachelor's degrees and because they have more of the "people skill" such as flexibility and creativity they are more valued in our rapidly evolving economy. (The End of Men and the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin.)

Maybe we as women need to educate our young that WE are the superior sex and men ARE only here to provide us with children and then we let them go play at being useful. By the time they grow up to be functioning adults maybe the reality of the world might sink through - that men and women are equal and have equal skills and intellect and can together run the world - a lot more peacefully and efficiently than one "superior" sex can alone.