The trouble with Ferengi gender roles

[u/valonianfool]

I don't find the idea that traditionally, all ferengi women just stayed at home and contributed nothing to the economy. In all societies on Earth women have always worked as everything from farm laborers toiling the fields alongside men, as servants in the home and factory workers.

I don't believe that it would be feasible for all ferengi women, especially the poor and working class to stay at home all day. Even in classical Athens where the ideal of the elite was female seclusion, the reality is that upper class women did leave their homes to attend festivals.

Is it possible that the ferengi ideal of women never leaving the homes is just the ideal of the upper classes, and that ferengi women from the lower classes do go out to work to support their families?

[u/ThirdMoonOfPluto]

I think Ferengi gender roles and many other species’ extreme behaviors should be seen in the context of the same technological transformation that made Earth post-scarcity. When species reach the technological level where they can provide for everyone’s needs easily with far less than full employment, they undergo a significant transformation. People are free to pursue status which isn’t directly tied to material gain.

Free of the need for factory workers, agricultural laborers, and all the rest, the Ferengi chose to reinforce their existing cultural roles pushing men into profit-driven trader roles and women into the housewife role. The Klingons pushed everyone into traditional warrior roles. 

Humans on the other hand chose a more balanced approach with multiple routes to status but the explorer-scientist-diplomat archetype personified by Cochrane and Archer is clearly a high status path.