Why are women not the de-facto rulers of the world?

There is no justice in history

What’s so good about men?

At least since the agricultural revolution, most human societies have been patriarchal societies that valued men more highly than women. No matter how a society defined ‘man’ and ‘woman’, to be a man was always 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 dares cross those boundaries. Yet they do no equally reward those who confirm. 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 exemplify the masculine ideal. Fewer resources are invested in the health and education of women; they have fewer economic opportunities, less political power, and less freedom of movement. Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.

It is true that a handful of women have made it to the alpha position, such as Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Yet they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Throughout Elizabeth’s forty five year reign, all Members of Parliament were men, all officers in the Royal Navy and Army were men, all judges and lawyers were men, all bishops and archbishops were men, all theologians and priests were men, all doctors and surgeons were men, all students and professors in all universities and colleges were men, all mayors and sheriffs were men, and almost all the writers, architects, poets, philosophers, painters, musicians and scientists were men.

Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. It has tenaciously weathered political upheavals, social revolutions and economic transformations. Egypt, for example, was conquered numerous times over the centuries. Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Arabs, Mameluks, Turks and British occupied it — and its society always remained patriarchal. Egypt was governed by pharaonic law, Greek law, Roman law, Muslim law, Ottoman law and British law — and they all discriminated against people who were not “real men”.

Since patriarchy is so universal, it cannot be the by product of some vicious cycle that was kick-started by a chance occurrence. It is particularly note-worthy that even before 1500, most societies in both America and Afro-Asia were patriarchal, even though they had been out of contact for thousands of years. If patriarchy in Afro-Asia resulted from some chance occurrence, why were the Aztecs and Incas patriarchal? Is it far more less likely that even though the precise definition of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is. There are plenty of theories, none of them convincing.

Muscle power?

The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women, and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows men to monopolise tasks that demand hard manual labour, such a ploughing and harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout. There are two problems with this emphasise on muscle power. First, the statement ‘men are stronger than women’ is true only on average, and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease and fatigue than men. There are also women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history been excluded mainly from jobs that require little physical effort(such as priesthood, law, politics) while engaging in hard manual labour in the fields, in crafts and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strengths or stamina, women should have got far more of it. There is simply no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their 60s usually exercise power over people in their 20s, even though the 20-somethings are much stronger than their elders. The typical plantation owner could have been wrestled to the ground in seconds by any of the slaves in the cotton fields. Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In organised crime, the big boss is not necessarily the strongest man but often an older man who very rarely uses his own fists. Human history in fact shows that there is often an inverse relationship between physical prowess and social power. If mental and social skills placed humans at the top of the food chain through natural selection, its only natural that the chain of power within the human species be determined by mental and social abilities more than brute force. It is therefore hard to believe that the most influential and most stable social hierarchy in history is founded on men’s ability physically to coerce women.

The scum of society?

Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but aggression. That millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. That women can match men so far as hatred, greed and abuse are concerned, but when push comes to shove, the theory goes, men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. That that is why throughout history, warfare has been a masculine prerogative. The feedback loop of more men controlling armies, thus gaining more power as more wars are won explains both the ubiquity of war and the ubiquity of patriarchy. Recent studies on hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen this assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies and are therefore, on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers. Yet, granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are black, plantation owners will be black as well. Just as an all black workforce might be controlled by an all white management, why couldn’t an all male soldiery be controlled by an all female or at least partly and majority female government? One can’t reasonably argue that women’s physical weakness or low testosterone levels prevented them from being successful teachers, generals, politicians, overall leaders. In order to manage a war, you do need stamina, but not much physical strength or aggressiveness. Wars are not a pub brawl. They are complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, co-operation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad and understand what goes through the minds of other people(particularly your enemies) is usually key to victory, making an aggressive brute force the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a co-operative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empires are made of. Women are usually stereotyped as better manipulators and appeasers than men, and are famed for their superior ability to see things from the perspective of others. If there is any truth in these stereotypes, then women should have made excellent politicians and empire builders, leaving the dirty work on the battlefields to testosterone charged but simple minded machos. Popular myths notwithstanding, this rarely happened in the real world. It is still not at all clear why not.

Patriarchal genes?

A third type of biological explanation gives less importance to brute force and violence, and suggests that through millions of years of evolution, men and women evolved different survival and reproduction strategies. As men competed against each other for the opportunity to impregnate fertile women, an individual’s chance of reproduction depended above all on his ability to outperform and defeat other men. As time went by, the masculine genes that made it to the next generation were those belonging to the most ambitious, aggressive and competitive men. A woman on the other hand had no problem finding a man willing to impregnate her. However, if she wanted her children to provide her with grandchildren, she need to carry them in her womb 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. She needed a man. In order to ensure her own survival and the survival of her children, the woman had little choice but to agree to whatever conditions the man stipulated 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 result of these different survival strategies — so the theory goes — is that men have been programmed to be ambitious and competitive, and to excel in politics and business, whereas women have tended to move out of the way and dedicate their lives to raising children. This reason is also problematic in its assumption that women’s dependence on external help made them dependent on men, rather than on other women, and that male competitiveness made men socially dominant. There are many species, including elephants and bonobo chimpanzees, in which this dynamic of dependent females and competitive males resulted in matriarchal societies. In such societies, since females need external help, they are obliged to develop their social skills and learn how to cooperate and appease. Males, meanwhile, spend time fighting and competing and their social and bonding remains underdeveloped creating societies controlled by strong networks of cooperative females while the self centred uncooperative males are pushed to the sidelines. If this is possible for bonobos and elephants, why not among humans, where our advantage as a species is centred on our ability to cooperate? If so, shouldn’t we expect that dependent women, even if they are dependent on men, would use their superior social skills to cooperate and outmanoeuvre and manipulate aggressive, autonomous and self-centred men?

I still don’t get it, do you?

How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individuals who are supposedly less cooperative(men) control individuals who are supposedly more cooperative(women)? After dissecting all the above, I still don’t think humanity has a good enough answer/reason/justification. Maybe the common assumptions we hold are just wrong in the first place. Maybe male humans are characterised not by physical strength, aggressiveness and competitiveness, but rather superior social skills and a greater tendency to cooperate. Are you willing to be wrong in your ideology? I don’t know still.

What I do know though, is that in the last 100 years gender roles have undergone a tremendous revolution. More and more societies today not only give men and women equal legal status, political rights and economic opportunities, but also rethink their most basic conceptions of gender and sexuality. Though the gender gap is still significant, events have been moving at a breathtaking speed. And I’m excited for what this means for African women; who have often been at the bottom tail-end of the social order hierarchy accorded to humans in general. At the beginning of the 20th century, the idea of giving voting rights to women was seen as outrageous, the prospect of a female cabinet secretary or judge was simply ridiculous. Right now, things are different even if not fully equal and ideal. Nevertheless, these dramatic changes are precisely what makes the history of gender so bewildering. If, as explained above, the patriarchal system has. been based on unfounded myths rather than biological facts, what accounts for the universality and stability of this gender system?

Do you have a plausible reason for the status quo? What do you think? Was this eye-opening for you? Do you wish things were different? How?

Let me know in the comment section below.