Is a Man’s Life Worth Less? : Why, during times of turmoil or tragedy, is the cry, ‘Women and children first’? History shows it hasn’t always been that way.

The world was horrified when Serbian soldiers attacked the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, unleashing an artillery barrage that killed many civilians.

A truce was worked out last month that permitted women and children safe passage out of the area. Left behind were the male Muslim defenders, who faced a much larger and better-equipped Serbian force.

While the events in Srebrenica give rise to sober reflection on how people can treat one another so savagely, they also lead to another question.

Why, when it comes to matters of survival, do we think (and speak) of the need to spare women and children, which in turn devalues the worth of men?

It is so fundamental an assumption that news reports of disasters or acts of violence often begin, “One hundred people, including 75 women and children, were killed when . . . “

The dichotomy was clear during the Gulf War, when the deaths of thousands of Iraqi soldiers (many of whom were sent to the front unwillingly) were taken by allied forces as a sign the war was going well. Meanwhile, the destruction of a Baghdad air raid shelter containing women and children was acknowledged by military officials as a serious mistake.

Closer to home, the collective horror over the bloody end to the Waco standoff was focused on the fact that 17 of the 72 victims of the inferno were children under 10.

Scholars offer a variety of explanations for why some societies may seek to put women and children before men. But they also point out that this principle is far from the norm.

“It’s not universal,” says Jane Lancaster, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico who studies human reproductive behavior.

Citing research on tribal conflict in New Guinea, she says, “In feuding societies . . . women and children are sacrificed as often as adult men.”

Among the Yanomamo Indians of Amazonia, where “bride capture” is a common practice, women are kidnaped and their children killed. From the Yanomamo perspective, nursing infants impair a mother’s fertility, and “who wants to raise another man’s child?” Lancaster says.

What’s more, as a host of brutal 20th-Century wars demonstrates, “Our (Western) society, as well as many others, has never given any particular sanctity to other people’s women and children,” Lancaster says. “It’s our women and children that we want to protect.”

The sinking of the Titanic, often cited as an example of chivalry toward women and children, is a good example. The story is told that when the ship struck an iceberg, male passengers and crewmen gallantly gave up their seats in the lifeboats to save “women and children first.”

But records show “survivorship was based on social class,” according to Lancaster. Women and children in steerage were not given the same chance to escape as their wealthier counterparts.

And in an era when the magnitude of domestic violence against women and children is coming to light, the belief that we are prepared to save them first today flies in the face of reality.

“We have a code of chivalry that floats around our society and has been for 800 years,” Lancaster says. “The truth is, only rarely is it applied.”

Strangely, one subculture that may realize the chivalric ideal is the Sicilian underworld, where rival mobsters are said to have an agreement never to harm one another’s women and children.

“The Mafia are the only people I know who supposedly recognize that rule,” Lancaster says. “They may be the only really good example you’re going to find.”

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Why are women and children inevitably mentioned in the same breath? Do women really need the same protection children receive?

Newspaper stories and TV news broadcasts mirror societal assumptions about such matters, and in examining the way stories are written and played, we get a glimpse of what most people consider to be unusual.

For that reason, a street-corner murder involving two men may rate a four-paragraph item in a big-city newspaper, while the killing of a woman or child usually rates more coverage. The unspoken assumption: we expect men to kill each other, while we consider women and children innocent victims, which makes the killing more heinous.

Peter Herford, a journalism professor at Columbia University, speculates that it’s “tradition, more than anything else,” that dictates how violence against women and children is handled.

“I’d love to know where it first got started, because we’ve all got examples in our head, from Sir Walter Raleigh on down,” he says.

Herford predicts that when the first woman pilot dies in combat under revamped military guidelines, it will be a big story. But over time, coverage of such deaths may follow the example of New York City newspapers in their reporting on the death of female police officers.

“It’s no bigger a headline because it’s a woman,” Herford says.

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Helen Safa, a professor of anthropology who specializes in gender studies at the University of Florida, points to the realities of human reproduction.

“If you’re going to protect the species, from a long evolutionary perspective, you need far more women than you do men,” she says. In cases of evacuation, “It would be hard for children to survive on their own, so women are sent along for their protection.”

At the same time, Safa believes there’s a cultural component to the question, “which comes out of a kind of patriarchal tradition.”

In that tradition, a woman is seen as inferior to a man and at the same time is regarded as his property. Ironically, that puts women at greater risk of sexual assault in times of war, Safa says.

“In many parts of the world, a man’s honor is identified with female chastity,” she says. “By raping the women, you’re also attacking the men.”

In such societies, women frequently are described as being child-like. It wasn’t that long ago that women in the United States were not allowed to vote or to enter into contracts without a husband’s permission--meaning they had no more legal rights than their children.

Safa, whose husband is Iranian, points out that in Persian, children also means women.

The idea of keeping women and children apart from adult males dates back at least to Greek and Roman antiquity, according to Laetitia La Follette, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts, and an archeologist by training.

In ancient Greek homes, women and children lived in a special part of the house called the gynaikion.

At the age of 7 or later, “the little boys are brought out of that world and sent to school, and at that point they’re part of their father’s life,” La Follette says.

Women received no education and were expected to stay at home with the children and primarily occupy themselves with spinning and weaving, La Follette says.

Roman households followed a similar pattern, she says, although Roman women had somewhat more autonomy than Greek women.

In classical times, La Follette says, invading armies would kill all the men and sell women and children into slavery. Scenes of civilians paying tribute to the emperor for sparing their lives are depicted on the Column of Trajan in Rome, she says.

“The devastation of war on women and children is portrayed,” she says.

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While most people agree that the advances in women’s status have been for the best, Ray Hiner, professor of history and education at the University of Kansas, points out, “Women and children were part of the same category. There is something pretty revolutionary going on in the removal of women from that protected category.”

The trend seems to be toward de-emphasizing women’s role as primary caretaker of children, Hiner says.

“When women are no longer viewed that way, whose job is it to protect children?” Hiner asks. “The ideal answer is, ‘Everybody.’ ”

Men have not been exactly leaping into the breach, Hiner says, although men today are more involved in child care than their predecessors.

“I think we’re in one of those periods when we’re about to look at children in a whole new way,” he says. “I think something fundamental is happening.”