I think we can undo it but it is a bigger task than most people think. To do it we need to not simply imagine a world where power functions as it does today but women have equal access but work towards a world where power flows very differently.
Start off by imagining a world where being inside the boundary meant access to power but rather access to power was according to service required. A world where those who cared for others came first and by caring you gained status and power.
Regarding the origins of patriarchy, Angela Saini addresses some of the assumptions, for example about agriculture, in this article, based on her book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule:
More importantly for the story of patriarchy, there was plant and animal domestication for a long time before the historical record shows obvious evidence of oppression based on gender. "The old idea that as soon as you get farming, you get property, and therefore you get control of women as property," explains Hodder, "is wrong, clearly wrong." The timelines don’t match up.
The first clear signs of women being treated categorically differently from men appear much later, in the first states in ancient Mesopotamia, the historical region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Around 5,000 years ago, administrative tablets from the Sumerian city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia show those in charge taking great pains to draw up detailed lists of population and resources.
…
As documented by the American historian Gerda Lerner, written records from that time show women gradually disappearing from the public world of work and leadership, and being pushed into the domestic shadows to focus on motherhood and domestic labour.
Excellent link! Maybe I’ve missed it but I don’t think the article considers Ancient Egypt. A dominant influence. And as far as I can see both highly heirarchical and patriarchal. But it’s fascinating to read about ancient cultures which weren’t.
So I think the author is quite right to say that human social structures don’t need to be patriarchal.
And from way out of left field, just because some of the ancestors have “eaten sour grapes” there is no inevitability that their children’s teeth will be similarly “set on edge”. It ain’t necessarily so.
I'm sure I read somewhere that aid agencies tended to give funding to male farmers rather than women farmers because of the Western cultural bias that believed that men were farmers and women weren't. I can't remember where I saw it now, but there is a UN article on Feeding Africa that acknowledges the existence and importance of women farmers.
So, women have always been farmers, and there are examples throughout history of matrilineal inheritance - so I don't think that's a good reason for assuming that inheritance of land means male dominance. It's a bit more complicated than that.
@Gramps49 trans people are currently barred from the US military. Also please refer to transgender people as people rather than just "transgender" - transgender is an adjective not a noun.
I think it's important to recognise that recognition of rights for minorities can be revoked, and that societies don't simply inevitably progress. Progress has been made because people fought for it.
It's proof that we impose our own view of gender roles on earlier societies. The archaeologists who did the original excavation assumed she was a man because they thought women couldn't be smiths.
It's proof that we impose our own view of gender roles on earlier societies. The archaeologists who did the original excavation assumed she was a man because they thought women couldn't be smiths.
Agreed, and that bias definitely needs to be acknowledged and countered.
But the claim @mousethief and I were asking for support for was the claim that “earlier societies were far more egalitarian than modern patriarchies.”
It's proof that we impose our own view of gender roles on earlier societies. The archaeologists who did the original excavation assumed she was a man because they thought women couldn't be smiths.
Agreed, and that bias definitely needs to be acknowledged and countered.
But the claim @mousethief and I were asking for support for was the claim that “earlier societies were far more egalitarian than modern patriarchies.”
Personally I don't think that the claim (in general) was this, so much as that we look at the evidence within our own worldview, so if we expect men to be the farmers then that's what we find even when later science disproves that specific claim in this case.
It's this thing that there are few "facts" that stand on their own, they only make sense in a specific context.
It's proof that we impose our own view of gender roles on earlier societies. The archaeologists who did the original excavation assumed she was a man because they thought women couldn't be smiths.
Agreed, and that bias definitely needs to be acknowledged and countered.
But the claim @mousethief and I were asking for support for was the claim that “earlier societies were far more egalitarian than modern patriarchies.”
It depends what you mean by egalitarian. A society where only a few people are buried with elaborate grave goods probably is not egalitarian in the sense that everyone has roughly the same value in the eyes of their community, but it might still be egalitarian in the sense that equal importance is given to female leaders and craftspeople.
Most modern societies aren't really egalitarian in the sense of valuing each person equally, so I'm not sure what you and mousethief are trying to prove here.
It's proof that we impose our own view of gender roles on earlier societies. The archaeologists who did the original excavation assumed she was a man because they thought women couldn't be smiths.
Agreed, and that bias definitely needs to be acknowledged and countered.
But the claim @mousethief and I were asking for support for was the claim that “earlier societies were far more egalitarian than modern patriarchies.”
It depends what you mean by egalitarian. A society where only a few people are buried with elaborate grave goods probably is not egalitarian in the sense that everyone has roughly the same value in the eyes of their community, but it might still be egalitarian in the sense that equal importance is given to female leaders and craftspeople.
Most modern societies aren't really egalitarian in the sense of valuing each person equally, so I'm not sure what you and mousethief are trying to prove here.
I would say it’s not so much that earlier societies were necessarily more egalitarian as that social structures have been much more variable than we tend to assume. The modernist belief that societies progress through a fixed series of stages from small, egalitarian hunting and gathering bands through increasingly organized and hierarchical systems until they end up with urban industrial nation states is at best doubtful, as David Graeber was at pains to show in The Dawn of Everything. Complexity does not necessarily require hierarchy.
There's another aspect of this in addition to the feminist lens I mentioned earlier. There's a whole trans lens that is frequently forgotten.
I have been reading and thinking quite a lot about feminist views of the Philosophy of Science but of course there is also a critique about gender.
In this case we have been discussing archaeology and the assumption that a buried chieftain was male being overturned by more recent DNA studies.
But of course with that there are clearly assumptions about the words and ideas around gender. Who did the culture that buried the body consider to be a man, never mind the assumptions of the archaeologists who excavated it centuries later.
I can do some more reading and try to bring some voices from this lens, but I thought it was important here to say that even this apparently uncontested point about DNA carries with it some cultural baggage in multiple directions that is impossible to untangle.
I would say it’s not so much that earlier societies were necessarily more egalitarian as that social structures have been much more variable than we tend to assume. The modernist belief that societies progress through a fixed series of stages from small, egalitarian hunting and gathering bands through increasingly organized and hierarchical systems until they end up with urban industrial nation states is at best doubtful, as David Graeber was at pains to show in The Dawn of Everything. Complexity does not necessarily require hierarchy.
Truth, and there were "primitive" societies that were deeply stratified even relative to ours. Even across the Old Testament, you can see egalitarianism wax and wane over history.
Comments
Start off by imagining a world where being inside the boundary meant access to power but rather access to power was according to service required. A world where those who cared for others came first and by caring you gained status and power.
Excellent link! Maybe I’ve missed it but I don’t think the article considers Ancient Egypt. A dominant influence. And as far as I can see both highly heirarchical and patriarchal. But it’s fascinating to read about ancient cultures which weren’t.
So I think the author is quite right to say that human social structures don’t need to be patriarchal.
And from way out of left field, just because some of the ancestors have “eaten sour grapes” there is no inevitability that their children’s teeth will be similarly “set on edge”. It ain’t necessarily so.
Those aren't earlier societies, they're contemporaneous with us.
Many of them predate our contemporary Western societies.
So, women have always been farmers, and there are examples throughout history of matrilineal inheritance - so I don't think that's a good reason for assuming that inheritance of land means male dominance. It's a bit more complicated than that.
I think it's important to recognise that recognition of rights for minorities can be revoked, and that societies don't simply inevitably progress. Progress has been made because people fought for it.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/14/ancient-dna-analysis-reveals-upton-lovell-shaman-was-woman-wiltshire
This is proof that earlier societies were more egalitarian than ours?
But the claim @mousethief and I were asking for support for was the claim that “earlier societies were far more egalitarian than modern patriarchies.”
Personally I don't think that the claim (in general) was this, so much as that we look at the evidence within our own worldview, so if we expect men to be the farmers then that's what we find even when later science disproves that specific claim in this case.
It's this thing that there are few "facts" that stand on their own, they only make sense in a specific context.
I think about this quite a lot.
It depends what you mean by egalitarian. A society where only a few people are buried with elaborate grave goods probably is not egalitarian in the sense that everyone has roughly the same value in the eyes of their community, but it might still be egalitarian in the sense that equal importance is given to female leaders and craftspeople.
Most modern societies aren't really egalitarian in the sense of valuing each person equally, so I'm not sure what you and mousethief are trying to prove here.
We simply asked Gramps49 what his support for that argument would be.
I have been reading and thinking quite a lot about feminist views of the Philosophy of Science but of course there is also a critique about gender.
In this case we have been discussing archaeology and the assumption that a buried chieftain was male being overturned by more recent DNA studies.
But of course with that there are clearly assumptions about the words and ideas around gender. Who did the culture that buried the body consider to be a man, never mind the assumptions of the archaeologists who excavated it centuries later.
I can do some more reading and try to bring some voices from this lens, but I thought it was important here to say that even this apparently uncontested point about DNA carries with it some cultural baggage in multiple directions that is impossible to untangle.
Truth, and there were "primitive" societies that were deeply stratified even relative to ours. Even across the Old Testament, you can see egalitarianism wax and wane over history.