TheRod wrote:Stu,
Do you think the western world is not a patriarchy? How would you describe the social structure? Perhaps confining women to skirts for hundreds of years was just egalitarianism, or was it a meritocracy then?
Rod
The western world is most definitely not a patriarchy. In fact, it is rapidly turning into a gynocentric society. The social structure is heavily designed around the interests and needs of women, often affording them unjust privileges and treating masculinity as toxic, and some kind of defect.
Women weren't "confined to skirts" by some kind of evil patriarchy in the past. A little over a century ago, the typical life expectancy of a western woman was around 56, although higher class women tended to live longer. Out of that time, they went from having periods which were relatively poorly managed into numerous pregnancies, childbirth, lactation and rearing infants, soon after which they hit the menopause which was, again, poorly managed owing to lack of resources. Out of a possible working life of around 40-years, for at least half of that she was indisposed by virtue of her biological processes. Women weren't "confined to skirts" because some mythical patriarchy made them wear skirts, but rather the sexes had very specific and defined gender roles, and these roles weren't simply imposed on them by this patriarchy; they were considered by both sexes as the natural order. In individual homes, patriarchies in the literal sense could and did exist, but again this was understood as the natural order. Human evolution from the first primates dictates that males are the primary provider of resources in a family and the female is the primary carer of the young. That has been seen in bonobos, spider monkeys, chimpanzees, orang-utans and gorillas as well as around 98% of human societies, civilised or otherwise. Women have thus adapted to best survive if they can appeal to males on the basis of need, hence the phenomenon of neoteny which we discussed recently on another thread but, put simply, males are attracted to females who have child-like qualities like big eyes and clear complexion. Their characters and other attributes have followed the same path, which is how some women become gold diggers, preying on wealthy, but much older, men. It's also why women are attracted to male muscles, height and physical strength because such a specimen can provide for her and protect her and her young. That's not to say society hasn't changed markedly, but these chances are extremely recent in evolutionary terms and they are far from established in out=r psychology, let along our physiology.
But meritocracy has largely existed for many years and can even be found a long time ago in respect of the few women who broke into traditionally male disciplines, which is why Marie Curie was one of only two people who ever won the Nobel Prize for Physics twice, around a century ago. In our present times, women have rights and privileges way ahead of those men enjoy and, if you want me to outline these in more detail, I am happy to do so.