The Rise of Patriarchy: How and Why Women Became Oppressed

Hi reader! This is Ashley.

Ashley is a 27yo woman born in the United States. Even at such an advanced age she still has no descendants, a fact that would utterly scandalize her ancestors or make them question her fertility. Very embarrassing, am I right? (No.) Despite having no children she’s been involved in multiple non-marital relations with men…more reasons to doubt her fertility. She has a job outside her home and isn’t tied to any man. She can vote, drive, marry whomever her father disapproves of and dress however she pleases.

Obviously, it wasn’t always this way. Had Ashley been born 70 or more years earlier, her life would have looked very different. Heck, if she was born today in Pakistan, her life would look equally as different. Obviously, I mean that she would likely be stuck at home, raising the children of a man she barely knew before her wedding night.

Women having rights and freedoms has been an exception, not the norm, throughout human history, even today. This naturally begs the question: why? What is it about women that makes them so likely to be subjugated by society? And who is the CEO of sexism and gender roles?

As it turns out, a lot of it comes down to the simple fact that women just don’t know how to handle plowing.

Now of course, by this age (27) she would have had multiple kids some of which would have died quite young. In fact, it’s somewhat surprising she survived herself since most people around this time lived to the age of 15[1]. But look at our Ashley, she’s a tough lady! She can take the hardships of life!

Hunter-gatherer Ashley drawn by hunter-gatherer Ashley

They were used in hunting and often sounded like animals

She could have led a group of her own in their bone whistle making endeavors. However, no matter how amazing her whistle making abilities and marketing skills were, she unfortunately couldn’t have become the richest person around. Because of sexism? No, because there was no richest person around. Wealth and resources were shared among the group and hoarding or boasting were greatly looked down upon in these communities. Very communist, these hunter-gatherers, am I right? (No.)

Also, just like in communism, both genders were doing the breadwinning. Various female skeletons have been uncovered suggesting that women made up 30–50% of big game hunters[2]. But we’re not just talking big game, we’re talking medium and small game too. In 2023 there was a comprehensive study done by Cara Wall-Scheffler and her team examining the existing information on 391 foraging societies. For 63 of those there was clear, detailed information about hunting practices, which became the focus of their analysis. These were the main findings:

1. 50 societies had documentation on women hunting

2. 41 societies had data on whether women hunting was intentional (in 36 societies) or opportunistic (5 societies)

3. In groups where hunting played a central role in survival women were always actively involved in it.[3]

So, women were hunting all over the place! Sometimes even with doggies, children and infants![4] It was fun for the whole family and no, child-rearing evidently didn’t stop them.

Now, am I claiming that all hunter-gatherer societies were strictly egalitarian, or that women hunted in every single one of them? Of course not. You’ll rarely find “always” and “never” in nature. However, contrary to the outdated view that women were solely gatherers with only a few exceptions, it’s now clear that in the majority of hunter-gatherer societies, women also participated in hunting, not as anomalies, but as a significant part of the hunting group.

So how did we even come to believe this myth that “men are hunters and women are gatherers”?

Men hunters and women we ignore

In the 19th and 20th century, early anthropologists (mostly Western men) studied non-Western societies through the lens of the contemporary gender norms. They assumed men were naturally dominant, aggressive providers and women were passive, nurturing dependents. Then they projected those norms onto prehistoric people, because if this is how we conduct ourselves today it must have always been that way, right? (Still no, stop asking.) This is precisely what shaped the interpretations of archaeological findings and ethnographic data at the time.

When tools like projectile points were found in male burials they were labeled as hunting kits. However, if the buried person was female, the same tools were often interpreted as “ritual objects,” “heirlooms” or “spontaneous teleportation into the grave” (okay, I made that last one up, but it’s just as well supported as the others!)

A good example of this dismissal is the work of Marshall Sahlins “The Original Affluent Society” (1968). Although the main focus was disproving the notion that foragers lived in constant scarcity, and arguing that they met their needs with little labor, he also largely downplayed the role of women in those societies. Groups like the !Kung San, the Hadza, and various Australian Aboriginal communities have all been shown to include female hunters, yet Sahlins’ work mostly ignored this reality. Instead, he centered his vision of hunter-gatherer life around male hunting, treating it as both the economic backbone and the symbolic core of these societies.

One of the most important moments in cementing the “Man the hunter / woman the gatherer” idea was the 1966 "Man the Hunter" symposium. Many anthropologists (ironically enough) gathered together and framed hunting, specifically by males, as the key force in human evolution, claiming that it sparked the development of tools, social cooperation, and brain development. Gathering and women’s roles were minimized or treated as secondary, even though plant gathering often supplied the majority of calories. Alas, the binary “men hunt / women gather” was far easier to communicate than the messier reality.

Someone could say and reasonably so “Well, if all these past researchers were swayed by the beliefs of their time, couldn’t it be that we’re making the same mistake today? Maybe we’re seeing more and more claims that hunter-gatherers were egalitarian precisely because Western culture is becoming more feminist and egalitarian. Earlier researchers wanted to see the past as patriarchal because that’s what made sense to them, maybe today’s researchers want to see fairness and equality where there was none.”

And to that I say: maybe but no. No because, as the Wall-Scheffler’s detailed research showed, a lot of the evidence we have is not new, it was just hidden in plain sight and bad interpretations. Sure, someone might suspect the new evidence as being biased, but it seems that we can get to the same conclusions by purely going back to the old research (once we take all the prejudice out of it). “Maybe” because scientists are people after all and they’re all influenced more or less by their own philosophies, culture and upbringing. And some scientists are just not looking for truth and simply want the reality to bend to their narratives for selfish or egotistical reasons. Yes, such people exist, but they’re not the majority, far from it. Most researchers are just trying to do their job as honestly as they can and present the evidence as unbiasedly as possible and if you don’t believe that...well, you are allowed to have that opinion. You do you.

The agricultural societies with no plow

As I previously mentioned there were also societies that had agriculture but didn’t use the plow, like Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (7500–5700 BCE) [5], the Minoans of Crete (3000–1450 BCE)[6] and Banpo Culture in China (5000–4000 BCE)[7].

Now, if Ashley had been born in one of these communities she would have lived a semi-matriarchal (women in charge), matrilineal (inheritance through mother’s side), or matrifocal (mother = household celebrity) life. And that’s a good life right there! She could’ve become a local governor or a sports athlete, heck, she could have even become a goddess. Wall paintings, food offerings and all. Had some Bronze Age bangers sung in her name. Or maybe she would have preferred a more chill life, planting millet, legumes, olives, and grapes, shoulder to shoulder with her fellow men and women, using her trusty hoe or a digging stick. Or maybe she would have chosen that shepherd life or the shepherd life would have chosen her and she would have spent her days herding sheep and goats with her prehistoric pupper. Then when her time came and when she passed on, Ashley would’ve been buried with all her tools because in her world, she mattered just as much as (if not more than) the men of her society.

Connecting it all and introducing the plow

When permanent settlements became a thing so did agriculture shortly after. Guess some people experimented with putting some seeds in the ground and, voila, after some time stuff came out. You could make a civilization out of this![9] It’s still impressive to me how they even managed to invent this. Like, they noticed that if a seed falls to the ground, a whole plant pops up months later, and they still managed to make that cause-and-consequence connection, even with all that time in between. It’s quite intelligent and revolutionary, if you think about it.

And guess who invented the whole thing? Women![10] Yup! In the early settlements women weren’t just the ones tending the fields with men but were likely the ones who kickstarted agriculture, the original farmers. Of course, men joined them shortly after since the work was very labor intensive and every hand was necessary for tilling the ground. This also meant that women’s work in early agrarian and no-plow societies was valued equally to that of men.

It is also important to note that in these societies, fertility (of crops, animals, and people) meant survival and women’s biological role in childbirth made them natural symbols of life and fruitfulness. This is possibly another factor that gave women a somewhat special status in the eyes of these cultures. It was not unusual for art and figurines from those times to depict goddesses and other symbols of female power.

But now with the emergence of permanent settlements property starts being something to worry about. It is no longer shared between the larger group and you can’t just move and find more resources once you don’t have previous ones. Accumulation of possessions also meant better quality of life and more respect within the group. Now there’s something to protect, accumulate and pass down to the next generation. For all the aforementioned reasons, in the societies that didn’t use the plow, inheritance was often passed down through the mother’s line, from female to female. However, this is all going to change once the plow gets invented.

Plows were much more efficient than hoes and digging sticks, but they demanded serious upper body strength, grip and quick bursts of power to either pull the plow or handle the animals pulling it. This gave men enormous advantage over women because guys tend to have more muscle mass and stronger arms. Farming slowly shifted from a family job to mostly men’s work, while women started managing things at home.

As men became tied to their farms, it naturally made more sense for wives to leave their own families and join their husbands’ households rather than the other way around. This meant that women got regularly displaced from their centers of social influence and placed into new, unfamiliar family environments. Over time, this shift helped men gain dominance over women and led to the rise of patriarchy, where inheritance and family lines were traced through the male descendants. Around the same time, male gods rose to prominence while goddesses gradually faded from the spotlight.

There are also communities that became patriarchal for other reasons, like those that engaged in lots of wars. In such civilizations men also became dominant due to their strength and capacity for lethal violence. War required a steady supply of manpower, so women stayed at home and gave their all to making and raising children, especially sons. These societies specialized in building deep bonds and trust between their men because survival literally depended on it. On the other hand, women were mostly confined to the home and had few chances to form any networks, which left them with even less power and influence.

Whether it be because of the plow or warfare the fact is that patriarchy lasted for thousands and thousands of years uninterrupted. This was mostly because about 90% percent of society was agricultural for most of human history. It was only with the rise of the Industrial Revolution (and later the widespread availability of birth control) that women finally began to gain equal rights. The Industrial revolution didn’t exactly invent feminism but it set the stage for it. As work moved out of the home and into factories, women were brought into public life. Massive urbanization made it easier for women to form social groups, share ideas, and organize movements, including early feminist movement. And perhaps most importantly, the invention of birth control gave women something they had never had before: the ability to make decisions about their own bodies and futures.

Now this is just the beginning of a much more convoluted story about how women got their rights which I’d love to explore more deeply in a future post. So, if that’s something you’d be interested in, please let me know. I appreciate your feedback a lot! :)

Conclusion and my thoughts

The current research is clear: the main reason for female oppression throughout centuries is the plow. Personally, I’m very skeptical of overly simple solutions that explain complex social issues and dynamics. I do trust the current findings, since the evidence does seem to show the plow playing a major role. Still, I find it hard to believe that it was the only factor at work. As we’ve already seen, some societies became patriarchal not because of farming tools but because they were constantly at war, or for entirely different reasons. It’s also important to keep in mind that gender and power are topics a lot of people, including researchers, are personally invested in. This means we should stay aware of any potential biases that researchers might bring into their work. So, while I’m open to the idea that I might be wrong and we just solved this whole issue with plowing, I’m still looking forward to seeing more research on this topic. The story of how female subjugation developed over time is, in my opinion, too important and too complicated to settle just yet.

But you tell me...do you agree? Do you disagree? When was the last time you heard this many plowing jokes?

Euralēthia

References:

• [1] Gurven, M. and Kaplan, H. (2007), Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination. Population and Development Review, 33: 321-365. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x

• [2] National Geographic, Prehistoric female hunter discovery upends gender role assumptions (2020): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions

• [3] Abigail Anderson, Sophia Chilczuk, Kaylie Nelson, Roxanne Ruther, Cara Wall-Scheffler: The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women's contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts . In: PLOS ONE . Volume 18 , No. 6 , June 28, 2023, ISSN 1932-6203 , p. e0287101 , doi : 10.1371/journal.pone.0287101

• [4] See [3]

• [5] Katherine I. (Karen) Wright, Domestication and inequality? Households, corporate groups and food processing tools at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 33, 2014, Pages 1-33, ISSN 0278-4165, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2013.09.007.

• [6] Alexandra Livarda, Hector A. Orengo, Nuria Cañellas-Boltà, Santiago Riera-Mora, Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert, Vasiliki Tzevelekidi, Rena Veropoulidou, Ricard Marlasca Martín, Athanasia Krahtopoulou, Mediterranean polyculture revisited: Olive, grape and subsistence strategies at Palaikastro, East Crete, between the Late Neolithic and Late Bronze Age, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Volume 61, 2021, 101271, ISSN 0278-4165, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101271.

• [7] Cradle of Chinese civilization: women once called the shots: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/02/23/Cradle-of-Chinese-civilization-women-once-called-the-shots/1335383288400/

• [8] Pryor, Frederic, “The Invention of the Plow,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1985, 27 (4), 727–743.

• [9] A silly reference to the video „history of the entire world, i guess” by bill wurtz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCn8ux2gbs

• [10] Roth, Barbara. (2006). The Role of Gender in the Adoption of Agriculture in the Southern Southwest. Journal of Anthropological Research. 62. 513. 10.3998/jar.0521004.0062.404.

Before the plow

Before the plow was invented humans lived in 2 types of societies:

• the agricultural societies that didn’t use the plow

• the hunter gatherer societies that DEFINITELY didn’t use the plow.

Now as we all know, hunter-gatherers were our most primitive ancestors. Men were hunters, women were gatherers, women were already seen as less than men and that’s where all our troubles started. Wrong! Wrong! All of that is wrong! Throw the whole paragraph into the trash!

Quite contrary to what we might think at first, our most primitive societies were also some of the most egalitarian. Since these people lived nomadically, no one could claim land as personal property, and if someone started being too difficult, others would just abandon them. This prevented the existence of power imbalances and no doubt gave us our first trust issues.

Now this is our Ashley again, but this time she was born in one of hunter-gatherer societies.

If she happened to be really good at something she could have also been a leader of sorts because in these communities it was actually quite common for leadership to be situational and based on skill. Like if, let’s say, she was really good at making bone whistles, yeah, one of these…

So how did that come to be? How did some groups of people end up with men plowing, while the others did it with primitive hoes?

As it turns out that had a lot to do with what kind of ground you’re working with and consequently what kinds of plants you’re planting. Wheat, barley, rye, teff, and wet rice are called plough-positive crops. These are the kinds of plants you grow if you need large areas of land to be prepared quickly, your planting windows are short or you need multiple harvests a year. They thrive in environments with deep, flat, non-rocky soils, where plough use is most efficient. Basically, they kinda high-maintenance. On the other hand, maize, sorghum, millet, root and tree crops are plough-negative crops. This you plant when there’s less land to be cultivated and you can afford to grow them over longer periods of time. They are well-suited to environments like sloped, rocky, or shallow soils, where ploughing is difficult or ineffective.[8]

So, what happened to the plow people? Why did they start oppressing women?