The Creation of Patriarchy

The dominance of men over women has been a defining factor throughout history. From ancient texts and laws in which women were shown to be under the rule of men to the denial of rights to women in ancient Greece to the more modern fight for suffrage by American women in the early 1920’s, one can assume that women have been considered inferior throughout history. New research, however, points to the fact that prehistoric peoples had little distinction between the social statuses of men and women. This leads one to question when and why the system of patriarchy began, and, along with it, the belief that women were inferior. Patriarchal societies were created as a result of many factors: the beginning of surplus wealth and private property as caused by the Agricultural Revolution, some biological factors, and changing beliefs about sex and creation.

The first issue to address is that women have not always been subordinate to men, an idea that is only recently becoming accepted. In the past, some scholars argued that sex differences led to the sexual division of labor in which men had the more important role in society, further leading to sexual inequality and male dominance. Also, there is the argument of biology: “man-the-hunter, superior in strength, ability, and the experience derived from using tools and weapons, “naturally” protects and defends the most vulnerable female” (Lerner 17). The argument that men were in control merely because they were physically stronger is a commonly established idea, but this and other past assumptions are slowly being disproven through further study of the formation of archaic states.

While the roles of men and women were different, they were equal in value in society: “Difference need not imply great dominance of one sex over the other. The distinction between women and men is not apt to be great in groups that do not produce surpluses” (McElvaine 62). In a society where the main focus was finding enough food to survive, there was no spare time for dividing up property and evaluating the ranks of different people. As men and women both contributed to the survival of the group, they had nearly equal roles in society. New evidence shows that most food in prehistoric times was actually acquired from gathering, not hunting, so the women had high value in society. Mary Louise Stig Sorenson stated, “woman-the-gatherer provided a major part of the diet, formed the core social unit (the mother-child relationship), and were inventors” (Sorenson 188). During early development of civilizations, women invented things such as agriculture and vessels for storing and preserving food (Gough 765). In a society later named the Linear Pottery Culture (after the designs on the pottery), pots for storing grain were found buried with women, not with men (Ehrenberg 93). These pots suggest that women were greatly involved in the storing and processing of food.