The Awakening of Women Part 1, Section 1-2
WOMEN: THE WAGELESS SLAVES OF THE VIPRAS
The vipras* were inclined towards intellectual exploitation. No matter what they built or destroyed, they always kept the path of exploitation open. The intelligent vipras never opened the path of logic and reasoning as they knew it was not a means of exploitation. On the contrary, they wanted to lead the ignorant mass down the alley of blind faith and so they wrote social treatises with their own selfish interests in mind. Without using logic or reason to support their statements, they continued indulging in pedantic religious injunctions. That was why the amount of genuine humanism that we come across in the ks'attriya social and matrimonial systems was never improved upon in the vipra system. Rather, what we got there was merely a coating of religious bigotry and fanaticism.  
* Vipra, ks'attriya, shu'dra and vaeshya are social classes, reflecting intellectual, warrior, labourer and capitalist mentalities, respectively. Their respective eras refer to the periods in history when those mental types dominated the society.--Trans.
The ks'attriyas tried to construct their social system and base their matrimonial relations according to the conveniences of both men and women. The vipras, however, cleverly tried to permanently keep intact the system of exploiting women and ignorant men using every diplomatic manoeuvre under the sun. To prevent the oppressed men and women from claiming equal rights, they strove hard to keep all the power invested in the hands of a particular group. The ways the ks'attriyas came to power were different in different countries of the world, but those of the vipras were the same in almost all countries. The vipras achieved their ends by concocting mythological stories and fables to suit their purpose in the name of religion, not righteousness or spirituality. 
In the Vipra Era the dependence of women upon men increased. The vipra intellect reduced them to the position of wageless slaves. Conspiring to cripple women in every way the vipras fabricated "divine" commandments together with numerous kinds of scriptural injunctions, paralogical tenets and imaginary yarns of sin and virtue. Listening to these it would seem that man alone, particularly the vipra man alone, was the chosen person of God for whom the rest of humanity had taken birth only to provide enjoyment.
In the matrimonial system of the Ks'attriya Era women were regarded as men's co-helpers and co-workers. In the Vipra Era, although women were declared on paper as men's better half and the co-performers of religious rites, they practically became maid-servants. Their social respect and prestige lasted as long as they maintained their feminine charm and beauty. In countries where the women alone toil and the men spend their days sitting idle and eating, the feminine status is no better. Women are still kept under severe domination. Even in the advanced countries of the world, where the women are courteously respected as the "fair sex", the masculine society wears a long face when the question of equal rights occurs. So the masculine domination which characterized the Vipra Era remained unchanged in the subsequent Vaeshya Era. 
In the Ks'attriya Era women were men's partners through good times and bad, commanding equal prestige in the society. But with the intellectual defeat of women in the Vipra Era, their social prestige dwindled and they became the playthings of the opposite sex. Sometimes the man doted upon a woman and sometimes he neglected her. Of course, even in the Vipra Era, particularly in the middle of the Vedic age, when the intellectuals became the leaders of the society, some of the women, as a legacy of the past, undoubtedly got equal respect as wives (ja'ya's). They enjoyed equal social rights, not equal religious rights. The majority of women, however, became mere objects of enjoyment. Society refused to recognize anything except their ability to conceive and bring up their progeny. Such women were called bha'rya's [wives without religious or social rights but with a progeny enjoying patrilineal prestige]. The opportunists declared unambiguously, Puttra'rthe kriyate bha'rya' ["Women are the child-bearing machines"].  
The continuance of this sort of primitive thought is symptomatic of the Vipra Era. The ignorant women of the Vipra Era were tricked into believing that they were not only spouses and child-bearers, but respectable housewives, having equal social rights and prestige, and the right to participate in spiritual observances. In practice, however, these rights were generally ignored. One or two women who appeared to have been given these spiritual rights had actually usurped them virtually by force on the strength of their personalities. The society of the pandits at that time did not oppose this attempt to establish such rights in black and white, but all the same it certainly did not view it favourably or patronizingly. However, those women subsequently commanded great respect and still do today. Of course it has always been a fact that nobody gives anybody rights on a platter. One has to establish one's rights by dint of one's own force and power. I mention with special emphasis -- the vipras deliberately and intentionally did not want to recognize the rights of women.  
The supremacy of clan mothers in the Ks'attriya Era was completely obliterated in the Vipra Era. At the first dawn of human knowledge, women, too, imparted knowledge to others. They also composed mantras and offered libations to the sacrificial fires sitting beside men. In the Vipra Era, however, they lost that role, and all possible means were taken to firmly establish their slavery. They were stripped of their sacrificial rights and superseded by clan fathers in the society. The rights women enjoyed to study scriptures were either withdrawn or drastically curtailed. There was no alternative left to ignorant women but to ungrudgingly submit to the superiority of men. 
The Vipra age was the age of opportunistic men and so extremely rigid conditions were imposed on women. Men, however, had the right to abandon their wives at will as well as the opportunity to be dissolute. If any such moral lapses were found in women, they would be punished by the loss of their womanly prestige and social respect. And yet, guilty of the same crime, men strutted about as leaders of society. After the Vipra Era the Vaeshya Era came. But in this Vaeshya Era we see, as the legacy of the post-Vipra Era, that abandoned wives command no prestige in society. Even in many of today's societies which are not threatened by a potential shu'dra uprising, divorce is not openly accepted. Although some concessions have been allowed to women in black and white, in reality women are at the mercy of tyrannical men. 
In the Vipra Era, due to loss of women's prestige, economic hardship, and other environmental causes, prostitution as a profession came into being for the first time. It did not develop in either the Shu'dra or Ks'attriya Era. Individual depravity may cause a certain amount of licentiousness, but it is certainly not the reason for the emergence of a large number of prostitutes. The iniquity or sin of this lewd profession is the creation of the selfish vipras. Later I shall discuss this subject at length.*   
* See p. . --Trans.
In the Ks'attriya Era women were considered as men's precious wealth. Although women did not have the same rights and privileges as men, they commanded considerable social prestige. But in the Vipra Era women were relegated to the status of animals and cattle. They became mere household necessities. In the Ks'attriya Era women were regarded as the pleasurable objects of the valiant, and abduction of women by strong men was considered an act of piety and virtue. But in the Vipra Era the trend changed, and women became playthings. Without husbands, they lost their very existence in society. In some countries, more than one woman was compelled to be subservient to one man. 
As a result of men crippling women economically with the pain of unrelenting social penalization and threats of perdition in hell, women became so dependent on men that the very sense of injustice of a man possessing many wives at the same time was erased from their minds. As a result of the peculiar logic that it was a sin for women to live unmarried lives, unmarried girls were forced to marry old men on the verge of death. In some countries and in some periods, they were married to imaginary gods and called devada'siis or "servants of God". Needless to say, these sorts of marriages only heightened social injustices. The continuation of such malpractices bred a sort of inferiority complex and despair in the minds of women. Few keep count of the millions of women who wept and sobbed themselves to death in the darkness of many a sleepless night. They were levelled flat like the soft earth under the administrative steamroller of the vipras. For this reason, we find in some social customs and ceremonies, women's doggerels and tales of religious observances, that mothers with no other means of escape, taught the daughters from their childhood to pray to God that they might not be neglected as co-wives or that their rivals might not live long. Matrimonial ties became inviolable in the Vipra Era.  

from "The Vipra Age"
Human Society Part 2