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An article about gender equality
"Note that all those things I listed — literature, art, science, etc — are optional. Women were doing what was vital for the survival of the species. Without intimate care and nurturance, children won’t survive, and the group will die out. Women contributed the necessities of life. Men’s contributions were more optional, luxuries perhaps. But culture is a powerful engine of making life better. Across many generations, culture can create large amounts of wealth, knowledge, and power. Culture did this — but mainly in the men’s sphere.
Thus, the reason for the emergence of gender inequality may have little to do with men pushing women down in some dubious patriarchal conspiracy. Rather, it came from the fact that wealth, knowledge, and power were created in the men’s sphere. This is what pushed the men’s sphere ahead. Not oppression."
I don't like it. Every feminist/irrational instinct in me screams that this guy is biased and wrong. I really don't like the idea presented, that from an evolutionary perspective women are only good for having families while men are good for creating everything else that makes life worthwhile. But he sure does write a persuasive argument, and my more logical instincts think he probably has something there. I also think that Maslow's hierarchy is probably to blame for the opinion that creating life is less valuable than all the other stuff that men are supposedly responsible for. I also think that I'm personally influenced a lot by the fact that I'm a lot more towards the male end of the spectrum when it comes to this sort of thing than most women would be, so I take the "women are good for nurturing" line almost as a personal insult since nurturing is not one of the terms anyone would ever use to describe me.
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Slowly but surely, over the centuries, we've been moving from cultures where those who CAN grab the biggest slice of the pie DO. In the case of Western Culture, I think part of that change came about because of religion to an extent, and but most of it came from more abundance.
The role of religion cannot be underestimated. For example, did you know that during the middle ages when the Germanic tribes (Visigoths among others) were slowly overrunning the area, the Catholic Church was in large part responsible for curbing some of the excesses? As Christianity spread, the priests would declare a day of "God's Peace" and Christians would not fight on such a day. As social pressure to become a Christian grew (if you had goods to trade and the locals wouldn't trade with you because you were an infidel, that was a pretty powerful motivator, and, for that matter, still is...), "God's Peace" became more the norm, and when there is peace, trading and other activities can flourish, creating more abundance.
No matter what one thinks of the Catholic Church in the current day, truly, in the beginning, it did many good works. We have a lot of books (albeit religious ones) because the Church preserved the skill of reading. In many small towns and villages, the only literate person there was the priest. And there was quite a bit of emphasis on taking care of one's fellow human beings. Obviously, I'm not talking about later excesses, but the tenet of charity was very important to the early Church. And cooperation *also* encourages abundance, does it not?
It seems to me that if you look at different cultures, abundance seems to be driving the role of women far more than anything. And that makes sense, even from an evolutionary perspective. If you are in a small group and resources are scarce, the strongest man with the aggressiveness to match is going to get the greatest share of the resources, and then, just like now, people will "suck up" to that man in order to share in the resources. It's a perfectly legitimate strategy and still very much alive and well even now.
If you look at a place where there was plenty for all, such as Ancient Egypt, you don't see the oppression of women in such large measure. What you see are people who were overall content, not particularly war-mongering, and who had quite a bit of equality among the genders.
I think this is true still. Where access to wealth tends to be shared out amongst all citizens, gender equality is much greater--think Switzerland, or any of the Scandavian countries.
So I think it has nothing to do whatsoever with a biological role and everything to do with resources. Be it some sort of religious or cultural institution, or being in an area with abundant natural resources that are easy to get to, enough wealth that everyone gets a piece of the pie produces more equality than when specific groups are able to control access.
Childbearing is a temporary condition, and it sounds to me like that researcher ALSO forgot the historical fact that people didn't have as many children that survived to adulthood, thus lessening the "role of women", much like women are free to do other things now that average family size is smaller--the kiddies, after all, DO grow up! And when women have greater access to more abundant resources, you see much more equality.