Hinduism does not regard women as second rate. In the Hindu religion they are fifth-rate or worse. Women are not even human in Hunduism. Hinduism believes in the cycles of reincarnation, and each time a man lives and dies well, he is reincarnated into a higher caste until he leaves mortality behind him. If he lives a bad life, he will be reborn as something inferior, and have to work his way back through higher and higher forms of life. Before a woman can be reborn as a man, ( a higher form of life) she must go though the life of an elephant. Hinduism also states that if someone is born into a miserable life, it is that person's fault for behaving badly in a former life. So, if you are a woman, and get beaten up, raped or killed, you deserved it because you were evil in a previous incarnation, or you would have come back as a man. So, men, as superior beings, are free to treat women as muck. They think they might even be doing women a favour by hastening their next reincarnation.