Oh hey, anthropology questions on a primarily western instance filled with Americans and Europeans, this will end well.
Simple answer: It heavily depends on the region and time period, there were periods of equality and periods of great inequality in every area of the – it was Greece. and the Germanic tribes that eventually formed Rome. That is the reason why it is prevalent in western culture as a meme, as well as anywhere western culture colonized.
Complex Answer:
Women have historically been equal to men or held in higher positions of power than men for most of human history. In early human societies (and intact uncontacted societies today, from observation) there was no clear sexual hierarchy, so we can conclude it didn’t really start there. From western development we see women in equal roles in pre-dynastic Egypt and across multiple middle eastern areas. While some greek tribes (and for that matter some germanic tribes) did have women in spiritual or leadership roles, this was incredibly uncommon and as ‘European’ culture became the ‘civilized’ culture, women took on a much more subservient, lesser role in society; as they saw the male form as more capable.
As one culture and viewpoint started to dominate, it started to leak in and infect practically every aspect of society. Early Catholicism and christianity, for instance, had women as equals, though the church lost that idea by the 9th century. By the 19th century when we see modern women’s liberation movements, a fully patriarchal society had developed which was incredibly domineering and widespread. Thanks to colonization by western European powers.
There does seem to have been a pretty widespread shift around 5000-3000 BCE (7000-5000 years ago) where a number of different populations across Europe, Asia, and North and East Africa all shifted in a relatively small time window to a patriarchal (literally “father-lead” for people who aren’t familiar with what the term actually means) social structure. Interestingly this also coincides with a rapid loss of genetic diversity in the y-chromosome suggesting it was highly hazardous to the health of most men when this shift happened. Some have speculated that this is the point at which we went from minor territorial disputes and some mild raiding to the emergence of organized “warfare”, though the evidence is circumstantial. While cultures still often went back and forth between being more egalitarian and more patriarchal, that seems to be a major historical turning point. In the (roughly) 300,000 year history of Homo sapiens, and the several million year history of the Homo genus, that’s a relatively recent.
Pretty much from the dawn of societies. Generational wealth and progeny is extremely important, and women must be controlled so that provenance of her children may be assured.
In the Bible you constantly see themes that don’t make sense until you understand how important that stuff was. Abraham was asked to sacrifice the thing most precious to him: his son. God killed the first-born of Egypt. Lot’s daughters had sex with their dad because that was the only way to ensure that their ‘pure’ line continued. Calling back to Abraham, God himself sacrificed what? His son.
Pre-agriculture societies were probably pretty egalitarian. And the idea that hunting and gathering was segregated by sex doesn’t have much evidence besides “common sense” and vibes.
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.
Church out the history section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
Short version seems to be: it’s not older than agriculture.
the word you’re looking for is patriarchy 🥰
No idea. I mean my exposure to it is with the bible and christiantity but asia seemed to have a lot of it to. Pagan europe felt a bit less so especially as you head north. Native peoples im not sure but did not seem to be so stark. I honestly never understood why inheritance and property did not flow down the maternal line. That would have at least equaled things out a bit and makes much more sense. I mean you know a womens kid is her kid mostly.
women are physically weaker on average. there was a time when physical strength was hugely important
Women were the “scientists” when men (and some women too!) were running after mammoths. Physical strength was irrelevant. If you wanted to figure out if you could eat that plant or how to prevent infection in that leg you weren’t going to ask a dude.
women are physically weaker on average. there was a time when physical strength was hugely important
That’s only a small part of the equation, and is by no means the main reason for “subserviance,” altho I think @[email protected] answers it pretty nicely, here.
In reality, the “subserviant” thing is probably an extremely recent development out of the ~300Kyrs of modern human history and ~2.4Myrs of genus Homo history. It’s certainly not universal across the history we do know, but AFAIK is indeed heavily tied to concepts of agriculture, property, and the accumulation of lucre.
For example, if you look at the other Great Apes, you won’t see anything resembling what humans have spiraled in to in terms of such control. Nor across most (or all) of the other observable animals.
So the idea that this “subserviance” idea is traditional for humans is technically true across a very short time period, and near-complete nonsense on the whole. It’s mainly the controllers and elitists who have always been trying to push that chronic BS, from what I can tell.
It still is in a lot of places in the world. Not everyone lives in a developed high skilled economy. In fact, only about 20% of the world population does.
It never began, it just always was. Likely due to biological differences between men and women and their social roles.
The concept that men and women are equal is fairly short lived, kind of started in the Enlightenment really, as it’s a derivative of the theory that ‘all men are equal’. The concept of ‘gender identity’ is even newer, it’s really a post WW2 thing.
For some reason, however, a lot of people now want to read modern gender identity theory and roles and all that onto history. This revisionist type of historicism has always been around though, often in the case that the author wants to ‘claim’ suprerority or legitimate for their ‘people’ by saying they were teh OG people.
I’m reading a book on Indo European and it talks about historically a lot of scholars try to argue that their native language is the OG language of Babel, and all the other languages are ‘poseurs’, so to speak. People tend to do shit like that.
