Balance of the Sexes

 Women's roles are in the news these days. We are seeing a high-profile group doing what it can to push women back into subservience. Of course, being a woman, I don't like this much! In fact, it is hard for me to imagine that anyone could gain traction with that kind of philosophy today. But contrary to my opinion, it would seem that there is a large contingent of our society that is now embracing male domination, shuttling women back into their previous low-profile places as homebodies. Besides being angry about this development, I decided to step back a bit and get some perspective. Our species has only been around a few thousand years, and our modern selves for much less. I wanted to find out the history of patriarchy, not only for humans, but for other life forms as well. Where did this come from, I wondered? On the surface, women are fully as intelligent as men. So why have we tended to put men on top?

I learned a lot. For instance, most prehistoric societies of our species were relatively egalitarian in the beginning, the males and females sharing power and privilege. This was in our hunter-gatherer phase. Contrary to what we may imagine, this early phase of human development was very successful. Because people had a great many resources for food, hunter-gatherer populations tended to be stable and food was aplenty. It was a successful lifestyle for our ancestors. 

Then came an era in the development of homo sapiens when we began to plant crops and raise animals. Agriculture and domestication had the effect of radically changing our lifestyles. We tend to herald the development of agriculture as a wonderful wave of progress in our history. However, often the opposite was true. It meant that people were no longer mobile. They had to stay with their fields and their animals. This made them very susceptible to droughts, climate changes, and diseases that hit the very few crops that were grown (sometimes just one or two). These sedentary peoples were less healthy as a result, and often experienced starvation. It was in these times that social stratification began to take hold in groups of individuals, the farmers at the bottom, the merchants higher up. And with it, institutional violence appeared, with leaders requisitioning the lower classes to fight for the larger group. Poor men were sent off to war, while women stayed home to take care of the family and the crops. Maybe it was not surprising that women began to be considered the property of their husbands. By then, women were beginning to be thought of as morally, intellectually and physically inferior to men. Male domination was considered natural and virtuous. A tidy societal construction but not very inspiring!

At this point in my research, I decided to look into other mammals, as well as birds and insects. Are there male or female hierarchies among those groups of life forms? I found that yes, indeed there are both. And it appears that things among the "lower" life forms are less complicated. The females of most species are the ones who bear the young, with the males' predominant ambition being to fertilize the females. Thus, in many species, the female tends to have the more central, important role: the propagation of the species. Some animals, like the elephant, live in matriarchies, with the male bulls off by themselves most of the time. Then there are harems of mammals, with one male leader and many females, which leaves the other males in bachelor herds. 

What I noticed as I read about all these various kinds of living beings is that there are personality traits that tend to go with males and females, no matter what species we're focusing on. The males in general are competitive and individualistic. They fight for territory, for rights to the females, and for dominance over other males. Females tend to be less dominating, more focused on creating a peaceful life for their young. They are the caretakers of the next generation and put their energy into nurturing the family and creating a stable home environment. In hierarchies dominated by the male of the species in both human and other societies, the choice to submit to a male can be a strategy the females use to protect the family from aggression.

So what does all this mean? Do we see these male and female tendencies playing out in our current lives? Do we see evidence that men tend to compete, to be most comfortable with power over others, and depend upon women to take the home-front role, guardian of the children? Does this mean that we should let men make all the decisions, let their tendency to be competitive lead to things like environmental destruction or war with other countries? Should we let them keep women subservient and out of the picture? That's too simplistic, of course. There are many, many men who are sensitive, cooperative and peace-loving. And there are women who are competitive and lack interest in nurturing children. What begins to emerge, though, is that if indeed men and women tend to present with some inherently different traits, the combination of those traits might make a much healthier world. A man's tendency to be assertive can be useful and productive, but if it is tempered by a woman's tendency to listen and promote peace, there can emerge a healthy balance that could help to mend some of the future disasters we on this planet are facing. Balance is a beautiful word and a beautiful concept. Let's envision and work for a better balance here on this earth.