He and She

Different societies have adopted different kinds of hierarchies. Race in America, Caste in medieval India, etc. These hierarchies are products of our imagination and therefore are not consistent throughout societies.

Only one hierarchy has been of supreme importance in all known human societies: the hierarchy of gender. People have divided themselves into men and women all over the world. And almost everywhere men have gotten the better end of the deal, at least since the agricultural revolution. (pt. 2 coming soon to elaborate).

The universality of the hierarchy of genders suggest a natural division with deep biological roots. Thus, if it is indeed a natural division is there a biological explanation to the for the preference given to men over women?

Some of the political, cultural and legal disparities between men and women reflect the obvious biological differences. For example, childbearing has always been women's jobs because men don't have wombs (no shit). Yet around these physical differences every society has accumulated layers of cultural ideas and norms that lack firm biological basis. Attributes associated with masculinity and femininity have little to do with biology.

Since the Agricultural revolution, most human societies have been patriarchal societies that value men more highly than women. No matter how society defined 'man' and 'woman', to be a man has always been better. Patriarchal societies educate men to think and act in a masculine way and women to think and act in a feminine way, punishing anyone who crosses those boundaries. Yet they do not equally reward those who conform. Qualities considered masculine are more valued than those considered feminine, and members of a society who personify the feminine ideal get less than those who personify the masculine ideal. Fewer ressources are invested in the health and education of women; they have fewer economic opportunities, less political power and less freedom of movement.

Since patriarchy is so universal, it cannot be the product of some imagined hierarchy, kick started by a chance occurence. It is far more likely there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures value manhood over womanhood.

Theory 1 - Strength

The most common theory suggest that men have used their greater physical power to monopolise tasks that demand hard manual labor, such as harvesting. This gave them control of food production and thus political clout.

Problems with this theory.

A. It only considers one types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease and fatigue than men.

B. Historically women have been excluded for jobs that require little physical effort (such as priesthood, law and politics), while engaging in hard manual labour in the fields and in the household.

C. Even more importantly, there is simply no direct relation between physical strength and physical power amongst humans. The typical plantation owner in Alabama could have been wrestled to the ground by any of the slaves cultivating his cotton fields. Boxing matches are not used to select Catholic Popes. In forager societies, political dominance resides with the person with the best social skills not the most muscle. In organized crime, the big boss is not necessarily the strongest man. He is often an older man who rarely uses his fist; he gets younger stronger men to do the dirty jobs for him.

It is therefore hard to believe that the social hierarchy of genders is based on men's ability to physically coerce women.

Theory 2 - Aggression

Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed and abuse, but when push comes to shove, the theory goes that men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. This is why throughout history warfare has been a masculine prerogative.

In time of war, male control of the armed forces has made them masters of civilian society too. They then used their control of civilian society to fight more and more wars, and the greater the number of wars the greater men's control of society. This feedback loop explains both the ubiquity of war and the patriarchy.

Recent studies of hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men are indeed more aggressive/violent tendencies. And are therefore better to serve as common soldiers.

Problems with the theory :

Granted that the common soldier is male, does it follow that the ones managing the war must also be men? No.

It is just as logical as assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are black, plantation owners will be black as well. Just as an all black workforce can be controlled by an all white management couldn't an all male soldiery be controlled by partly female government? In fact in numerous societies, the top officers did not work their way to the top. Aristocrats, the wealthy and the educated were automatically assigned officer rank and never served a day in the ranks. (Examples can be given in the comments).

One can't reasonably argue that the low testosterone levels prevented women from being successful generals, mandarins and politicians. In order to manage a war, you surely need stamina, not much physical strength or aggressiveness. Wars are not pub brawls. They are complex projects that require organisation, cooperation, and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad and understand what goes on in the minds of others is usually the key to victory.

Hence an agressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. The militarily incompetent Augustus succeeded in establishing a stable imperial regime. Something that eluded both Caesar and Alexander the Great, who where much better generals. This success is often attributed to his attribute of clementia (mildness and clemency).

Women often are stereotyped as better manipulators and appeasers than men. If there is any truth in these stereotypes, then women should have made exellent politicians and empire builders, leaving the dirty work on the battlefields to testosterone-charged men.

Theory 3 - Patriarchal Genes

A third type of biological explanation suggest that through millions of years of evolution, men and women have evolved different survival and reproduction strategies. As men competed against each other for the chance to reproduce, the chance that his genes would get passed along depended on his ability to outperform other men. As time went by, masculine genes that made it to the next generation were those belonging to the most ambitious, competitive and aggressive men.

A woman, on the other hand, had no problem finding a man willing to impregnate her. However, if she wanted her children to pass on her genes, she needed to carry them for nine arduous months and then nurture them for years. During that time she had fewer opportunities to obtain food and required a lot of help. Thus she was dependant on a man in order to ensure her own survival and the survival of her children. She had little choice but to agree with whatever conditions the man wanted so that he would stick around and share some of the burden. As time went by, the feminine genes that made it to the next generation belonged to women who were submissive caretakers. Women who spent too much time fighting for power did not leave any of those powerful genes for future generations.

The theory suggest that the result of these different survival strategies is that men have been programmed to be ambitious and competitive (to excel in politics and business, whereas women have tended to move out of the way and dedicate their lives to raising children.

Problems with the theory :

A. Lack of empirical data

B. Assumption that women's dependance on external help made them dependant on men, rather than other women, and that male competitiveness made men socially dominant. There are many species of animals, such as elephants and bonobo chimpanzees, in which the dynamics between dependant females and competitive males results in a matriarchal society. Since females need external help, they develop their social skills and learned how to cooperate. They constructed and all-female social networks that helped each member raise her children. Males on the other hand spent their time fighting and competing thus their social skills and social bonds remained underdeveloped. Bonobo and elephant societies are controlled by strong networks of cooperative females, while the males are pushed to the sidelines.

If it is possible among elephants and bonobos, why not amongst humans? We are a relitavely weak animal, whose advantage rest in our ability to cooperate in large numbers. If so, we should expect that dependant women, even if they are dependant on men, would use their superior social skills to cooperate to out manoeuvre and manipulate aggressive and autonomous men.

Conclusion

How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individual who are supposedly less co-operative (men) control individuals who are supposedly more co-operative (women). At the present we have no good answers. Maybe the common assumptions are wrong. Maybe males of the species are characterized not by their physical strength but by their superior ability to cooperate. We just don't know.

What we do know however is that during the last century, gender roles have undergone a tremendous revolution. More and more societies today no only give men and women the same legal status, political rights and economic opportunities but also completely rethink their most basic conceptions of gender and sexuality.

These dramatic changes are precisely what makes the history of gender so bewildering. If, as is being demonstrated today so clearly, the patriarchal system has been founded on myths rather than biological facts, what accounts for the universality and stability of this system?

- Juliette