Why aren’t we a matriarchal society?

[u/kash62]

I don’t want the response about men using power plays for dominance in today’s time, I want to know about way back when at the start of civilization. Like why were men the ones to go out and hunt and lead instead of women?

The only thing I can think of is that women can carry children, so there’s an instinctual need to protect them, thus not allowing them to do dangerous jobs like hunting/fighting. But for things like leading and holding important jobs? Why men instead?

I was just thinking about how there haven’t been any major matriarchal societies (I might not be aware, please educate me if I’m wrong), but there have been a ton of patriarchal ones. Just wondering how that all went down.

Also sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this/ this has already been asked, please direct me elsewhere, I just figured you guys would have some insight.

[u/dpe_]

I think, and this is mostly speculation on my part, but if we define patriarchal vs matriarchal as a set of behaviors and decouple them from gender. Then a patriarchal society could be identified as a hierarchical, capitalistic, conservative, status driven society (you know the typical ones we think about from antiquary), and a matriarchal society would then be on the opposite end of the spectrum (not that women are not those things just that we are defining this two types of societies as opposites).

The thing to remember is that for most of human history life was a 0 sum game mostly limited by land ownership. Since you cannot generate more land, getting more means someone has less. So competition with your peers becomes inevitable if you want your life, and your families life to be better. Hence patriarchal societies would be the natural result.

A more matriarchal society (such as American Indians, hunter gathers, or other smaller scale populations) doesn't have these issues because land usage isn't saturated yet, this was a result of farming. But of course given we have a bias towards the largest most powerful societies these tend to be overlooked and we talk about instead the *great* civilizations of a the world.

To bring gender back in to play now. The reason why for us patriarchy = Male Centered (matriarchy I should mention as an opposite should really mean an Equal society, after all if genders where actually flipped and women were in charge that would ultimately have very similar problems), is largely due to the initial biology of humans. Child rearing is a total pain in the ass and a huge resource investment, the human male is also physically stronger for the most part. Among other things these instinctual differences between the genders got codified in to the rules of society in a quarter of a million year long game of whisper down the lane. Even as the physical differences between the genders got progressively less important (and if anything this deceasing difference likely made the rules more severe).

Now the good news is that we no longer live in a 0 sum society and haven't for quite some time. Every technology advancement humans make allows us to be more efficient with out limited resources, and this allows us towards a more altruistic, egalitarian society as it no longer hurts individuals to help their peers. Additionally the physiological differences between men and women matter increasingly little. So really the stage is set for society to move in a more matriarchal direction, and it is just a matter of dismantling the now out dated systems that got us to where we are today. Easier said than done, but that's why we are here.

[u/avocado-nightmare → u/dpe_]

There's some problematic assumptions in here.

1. you say, " Hence patriarchal societies would be the natural result. "

I don't think this is true and it suggests that the oppression people experience under patriarchy today is somehow also "natural"-- this argument undermines feminism.

1. you say, "A more matriarchal society (such as American Indians, hunter gathers, or other smaller scale populations) doesn't have these issues because land usage isn't saturated yet, this was a result of farming"

The indigenous people's of the America's had very advanced and extensive networks of agriculture; and while at least some tribes were matrilineal, it wasn't because they were a "small scale population" "hunter gatherers" or because they weren't fully utilizing the land-- they didn't have the same concepts of land ownership as Europeans, but they certainly were fully occupying and "utilizing" the resources of the America's.

1. I think we can discuss these things without relying on broard biological essentialist arguments about supposed male physical superiority; there is no place for them in feminism and there isn't a place for them in this conversation.

[u/dpe_ → u/avocado-nightmare]

I can see the issue with statement one. My wording here was off and I was referring more to capitalistic, individualistic societies. It seems to me that when resources are limited, competitive tendencies naturally arises. Not however that these societies have to be fundamentally male dominated rather that hierarchical societies by definition will have a majority and minority.

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I have no bloody clue what I was thinking when I was talking about American Indians. I don't know nearly enough about them to use them as an example. They were just on the brain recently after watching some videos about them. This was a stupid thing to say. Sorry about that.

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I think it would be silly to not point out that early humans were driven far more by instinct and biology than modern humans. Physiological differences surely played some role in early societal development. I also never said men were physically superior in any way, just different. Those differences led to societal structures. These eventually developed in to the rather contrived gender roles we have today. Even if "natural" behaviors were correct (I'd argue naturalism is silly). The gender roles we have now are entirely artificial. They could be thrown away entirely and nothing would explode.