For centuries, societies all over the world gave men more social, economic and intellectual power. Who decided that?
Nature doesn't explain it, and history tells a different story, one where women are pharaohs, queens and warriors.
Science journalist and BBC host Angela Saini, says we invented the patriarchy, and we can fix it.
www.Angela Saini.co.uk Photo: Angela Saini
She searches for the roots of gender inequality in science, philosophy, and anthropology. Her new book is The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule which uncovers the complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe.
The idea that male domination or patriarchy is universal is wrong, Saini says.
“In some societies, this role of the father or this authority that men are supposed to have, just doesn't exist,” she tells Jesse Mulligan.
There are throughout the world matrilineal societies, she says.
“These are societies in which name and property is passed through from mother to daughter, rather than from father to son.”
This can be seen throughout Africa, Asia and the Americas, she says. And a look back through history reveals even more social variation.
An ancient settlement called Çatalhöyük in what is now Turkey was a society that was very equal, she says.
“One of the very oldest settlements in the world is Çatalhöyük which is in southern Anatolia in modern day Turkey.
“This is 9000 years old. So, it's very hard for us to get our heads around just how ancient that is.
“But this is many thousands of years older than the pyramids in Egypt, many thousands of years older than Stonehenge in England, it predates writing.”
It was a very sophisticated place with thousands of people living here, she says.
“They weren't just hunter gatherers, they were also practising plant and animal domestication.
“They have these quite sophisticated homes in which you see these beautiful red frescoes of vultures feasting on dead bodies and people hunting.”
The archaeological record there suggests men and women lived very similar lives, she says.
“Everything from what they ate, how much time they spent indoors, the kind of work that they did, everything shows us that this wasn't a particularly gendered society.”
There was no one point in history, when patriarchies became the norm, she says.
“The age of patriarchy really depends on where you are in the world.
“So, in Europe, for instance, certainly patriarchal systems are thousands of years old.
“But if you go to North America, or if you go to parts of Asia and Africa, the introduction of male domination, in this kind of patriarchal way, this idea that the father is the head of the family, and that men have more authority is actually very new.”
Photo: Harper Collins
Patrilocality is also a pernicious force, she says.
“I would argue one of the necessary conditions for a patriarchal society is patrilocality.
“And that means that as you grow up you stay with your father's family rather than your mother's family.
“It also means that generally in patriarchal, patrilocal societies, a woman will leave her family to live with her husband's family when she gets married.”
Such arrangements are fraught with power imbalance, she says.
“If you can imagine you become almost like a stranger in somebody else's house, that's a crucible for exploitation.
“And, in the very worst of cases, almost conditions like modern day slavery. And in fact, in the last few years, the International Labor Organization has categorized forced marriage as a form of modern day slavery.”
Such patriarchal systems are a choice and have reinforced traditional power bases, she says.
“Patriarchy definitely as a system was spread, not just through everyday social change by ordinary people, but by those at the very top of society, the elites for whom this was a way of building their power base, encouraging people to have more children who would then work for them, encouraging loyalty within families, to those who are most powerful, and creating a class of people who essentially will work for free in the domestic space.”
Younger generations are increasingly challenging such gendered norms, she says.
“When we push back against that, and we assert our right to not be following stereotypes and to live, especially this new generation coming up now, to say that we don't follow the same kind of patterns of masculinity and femininity, that we are challenging gender at its most fundamental.
“There is nothing, in my opinion, that is more anti patriarchal than that.”
