The economy always determines social morality. Typically, moral changes are grounded in economic considerations and given the window-dressing of morality.
The high EREOI of oil has allowed a standard of living unprecedented in human history. It has made child labor unnecessary and freed the female from the chores of domestic households and allowed for them to vote.
Let's be realistic for a moment, women and children only have rights because males allow it.
In a state of nature women and children, being significantly weaker, would, for the most part, be in a subservient position.
I am not making a moral judgment. No one ever claimed that nature is just.
On some level all women must realize that their rights are almost wholly dependent upon the temperament of their male contemporaries.
Luckily for females, children, the weak, elderly, and infirmed, they live in this age of abundant energy.
Cheap energy and abundant resources breeds mercy and a more nuanced social conscience.
Take that away and the the required level of brutality necessary for survival will return.
Excess energy in any social system is always the bottom line. Excess energy defines the political, economic, philosophical, religious, and cultural systems of each and every era.
That is why there is an incorrect perception that human beings are progressing in a sociological sense.
Social morality is becoming more sensitive, complex, and nuanced because European and European-American males, for the most part, have become more and more adept at acquiring and harassing energy to meet and, more importantly, exceed that which is required for survival.
