My understanding, and it is completely casual, layman level understanding, is that patriarchy started around the birth of property and inheritance.
There’s plenty of evidence (that someone already linked to a layman’s level article) showing that our earliest societies didn’t have gendered hierarchy at all, and that it wasn’t all patriarchal when it started.
But for the most part, the control of women was only a useful thing once the need to have control over inheritance became important. If you don’t have land or wealth to pass on, then there’s really no point to one sex/gender being dominant to another. There isn’t a point to it in that regard in my opinion, since I don’t view biological offspring to be more worthy of inheritance than otherwise, but some people did care, especially when leadership came with a great deal of ownership as well.
Afaik, that’s when patriarchy became something that was etched into laws and religion. When the leadership, and thus ownership, was passed down, and the passing went from father to son. When that’s in place, controlling reproduction becomes paramount, and to control reproduction, you have to control women since while you couldn’t prove who someone’s father was way back then, it was hella hard to fake who gave birth.
My understanding, and it is completely casual, layman level understanding, is that patriarchy started around the birth of property and inheritance.
There’s plenty of evidence (that someone already linked to a layman’s level article) showing that our earliest societies didn’t have gendered hierarchy at all, and that it wasn’t all patriarchal when it started.
But for the most part, the control of women was only a useful thing once the need to have control over inheritance became important. If you don’t have land or wealth to pass on, then there’s really no point to one sex/gender being dominant to another. There isn’t a point to it in that regard in my opinion, since I don’t view biological offspring to be more worthy of inheritance than otherwise, but some people did care, especially when leadership came with a great deal of ownership as well.
Afaik, that’s when patriarchy became something that was etched into laws and religion. When the leadership, and thus ownership, was passed down, and the passing went from father to son. When that’s in place, controlling reproduction becomes paramount, and to control reproduction, you have to control women since while you couldn’t prove who someone’s father was way back then, it was hella hard to fake who gave birth.