Evaluating the role of female police leaders in Ethiopia

Abstract

According to Seble (2003:15), in the early stages of human existence, that is to say, in primitive society, the head of the family was a woman, who took on every family responsibility and duty. However, this role of leadership did not last long. With the division of society into classes and the emergence of the state, women were degraded to a lower societal position. Women, starting from this time, were in one way or another forced to assume a dual burden. This burden emanated from the social and marital systems. The emergence of the state and the development of religion can be cited as major causes of the inferior status of women. Religious conceptions of the inferiority of women extended to Christian and Muslim teaching that God created woman from a split of the bone of man to serve man. Biblical excerpts from Genesis 1 and 2 state that: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth … So God created man in his own image ... and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman. [Eve ate the fruit of tree of knowledge, expressly forbidden by God. God told Eve] “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you” (Genesis 1. 1, 27; Genesis 2. 22, 16).