Humberto Barreto said:  
>This made me think of a different way to slice education, not between rich and  
>poor, but by gender. David Landes points out in _The Wealth and Poverty of  
>Nations_ that "The economic implications of gender discrimination are most  
>serious. To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent, but--even  
>worse--to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men." (footnotes omitted,  
>p. 412.)  Landes hammers Islam pretty hard on this point.  You can add Easterly,  
>Sen, and many others who have noticed that extreme gender discrimination is an  
>albatross re economic development. Adam Smith (and maybe Stark?) did not notice this.  
                   
  
Smith can be faulted for his neglect of gender discrimination, but he did make many  
important strides in understanding the evolving position of women through history.  
Chris Nyland has described how his material analyses connects the changes in the  
modes of production to the women's improving status in commercial society. In the  
context of this discussion on Stark's book I would like to point out another facet  
of his work.  
   
Smith  had interesting thoughts on the role of Christianity in making women better  
off. The medieval times had seen a gross decline in women's position in marriage  
when they became practically slaves and could be divorced at will by their husbands.  
The Lectures on Jurisprudence has a lengthy discussion of this history. Jane Rendall  
summarizes it succinctly:  
   
"The introduction of Christianity equally transformed the pattern of marriage in  
medieval Europe, for the clergy, as 'impartial judges', put both partners on a much  
more equal footing, and introduced the indissolubility of marriage. It was this  
according to Smith, which brought a new significance to the choice of a partner who  
would be lifelong....Smith suggested that, both as a result of the introduction of  
Christianity, and as a product of the refinement of manners, the status of the women  
within the family had risen up until his own day. Smith was always careful to relate  
the pattern of authority within the family both to the material context, and to  
those general moral sentiments about the nature of marriage which had come to be  
accepted in particular societies". ("Virtue and Commerce: Women in the Making of  
Adam Smith's Political Economy", in Women in Western Political Economy, p. 66).   
   
Smith's ideas about the man-woman relationship were conservative even for his day,  
compared with those of his predecessors like Gershom Carmichael and his other  
notions (about infidelity and rape) are abhorrent.  Nevertheless, he deserves credit  
for taking on gender analyses where he could.  
  
   
Sumitra Shah