A person's worth can take many different shapes and forms, but overall the rule of thumb as to how much a person is worth can be said that it depends on the amount of potential someone has to contribute something positive to society. As in, the main thing that defines someone's worth, is the ability to influence other people with what they are able to provide. Generally it can be said that the ability to contribute being how much a person is worth, could be potentially a very rigid form of determining how much someone is worth, but the general consensus of someone being successful in society is normally measured by not only just the individual's potential, intelligence and so forth, but also how it was applied in said person's life, which could in turn translate into what the common man refers to as success. That being said, however, there are still cases where a person has managed to influence society as a whole, while still not being considered conventionally successful by others. Success implies both being able to contribute meaningful things, but also the very impact someone has had. It could also be measured by the amount of money a person manages to make. There are many contributing factors related to an individual's overall worth and success in society. But in my own personal opinion, someone who is successful is someone who manages to earn an above average salary, while also contributing meaningful things to society.
>what if a woman can but doesn't want to bear children? is her life worth more or less then a man's? do we judge based on abilities alone or do actions factor in somewhere?
I would say that it's based on the ability, the woman in question doesn't necessarily have to be forced to have children in order for her worth to be determined, the mere possibility of pregnancy alone defines her worth. In theory such a person's worth should, and I am putting emphasis on should, be lowered to that of a man, but that is not the way things work. There's also the entire concept behind men being defensive of women, taking care of them and such, this is also related to the fragility that women display. I think a contributing factor to this would be that the most relevant people in society are male, therefore some of the rules society is made up of, some of the tendencies displayed in the mental aspect of how it functions, could be attributed to an idea that if society had been a human being, it would probably be a male. You could say that this is because of the patriarchy, but I think it goes deeper than that. It's autistic in nature, almost. And apparently a form of very logical and critical thinking, is a trait that males are on average most likely to manifest. Though not an exclusively male trait, it shows itself more often in males than females. Each sex have their own traits, society simply takes these traits into account and attempts to level the field given some of these qualities. Because men consider women to be fragile, society also fall victim to the same ideas. Society is just a set of autistic rules, but these rules are based around human behavior and qualities that present themselves in each person. It's all about the people that exist within society, society in itself is a living and breathing thing, things change often because people themselves also change. Things that once upon a time were considered logical and okay no longer are, because the people that exist within society have changed, society also changed with them. There's a mindset that many people have adopted, and wrongly, that society is some form of oppressing force that is designed to keep people down. While in reality, the only ones keeping eachother down are other humans. You can't blame your problems on society, because without humans then society wouldn't even exist to begin with.