There's a curious question that a lot of people ask, and that has created a lot of controversy around the topic of gender. Why are there more male scientists, male inventors, male leaders, male artists, and generally more men who have been successful and accomplished in history?

Is it because men are superior to women? Is it because women preferred to be provided for instead of having to struggle in society? Or is it because women were often pregnant for most of their lives, and were therefore burdened with giving birth and breastfeeding?

The later is a widely accepted view inside modern academia. But before anyone ever proposed this explanation, feminists came up with their own explanation. And they were very quick to point their fingers at men for the problem.

The Patriarchy as an explanation for men's outsized accomplishments in history

The patriarchy was invented as a way to explain the fact that men have historically done more in society. After all, if men and women are truly equal, why have men always been more successful? The reason they came up with was that men were oppressing women, and that's why women have been less prominent in history.

There's a glaring problem with this theory though. If men and women are equal, why were women oppressed? Why were women less successful, and unable to "battle" against men for gender supremacy?

The obvious conclusion within this framework is that men are simply better than women. The patriarchy necessitates that there was some kind of battle between men and women, and that women lost. This makes the patriarchy, in my opinion, an inherently misogynistic and sexist framework to look at gender from.

And really this is for three reasons:

  • Patriarchy theory implies malice from men (which I think is misplaced and is hateful)

  • Patriarchy theory implies that women are somehow less capable and inferior to men (which is sexist against women)

  • Patriarchy theory implies that men and women are natural enemies, instead of loving partners

Naturally you can try to argue that women are physically weaker than men, and that this might explain women's subordinate status. But at that point, you've opened up the flood gates to examine how else men and women might be different.

Now there is one rebuttal to this, if you want to call it that. And that is the "gender myth" theory that feminists have come up with. Which is the claim that physical differences between men and women are socially constructed, and that there is no such thing as gender. And while I respect that gender does have a social element to it, and that people can identify with a different gender, I think the outlandish nature of this theory speaks strongly to some people's desires to imply that men and women are literally equal (especially while still trying to defend their theory of a patriarchy at the same time).

This theory is outdated though, and is problematic on several fronts. In particular, the history of modern medicine provides a much more sane, and factually consistent explanation.

The high infant mortality rate before modern medicine turned women into "baby making machines"

Before modern medicine, the infant mortality rate was very high. And as a result, families had to have a lot of babies in order for some of them to make it into adulthood. Which left women pregnant and breastfeeding for most of their adult lives.

In addition, a lack of effective contraception also contributed to this.

This explanation provides an equally valid theory for gender differences in history. No patriarchy is needed. No war of the sexes is needed. Women aren't assumed to be inferior to men. And men aren't assumed to be evil oppressors.

Instead, our gender roles, and the relative accomplishments that men and women have made in history, are entirely explained by the fact that women made babies. Nothing else is needed or required for this to make sense.

And that also means that the development of medicine is responsible for bringing us into the modern era and freeing people from their historical gender roles. Because families no longer need armies of children to guarantee that some will make it into adulthood, women have been freed to spend more time at work, and less time at home. In retrospect, feminism really had nothing to do with this. It is itself a result of our changing gender roles more so than it is a cause of it.

Of course there is still room for improvement. Thousands of years of ingrained gender roles don't simply disappear overnight. Better paternity leave for men, and subsidized child care, would do a lot to even out the genders even more than what they are today. But fundamentally, this is an issue of biology. It comes down to the simple, indisputable fact, that women have babies, and men don't.

Note that this explanation is widely accepted, so it's not at all a fringe idea. For one citation, check out the popular documentary Origins: The Journey of Humankind from National Geographic (episode 2: Medicine).

Conclusion / TLDR

The patriarchy was invented as a way to explain men historically being more successful than women. But we've overlooked an equally valid explanation in coming up with this: that before the advent of modern medicine, women essentially had to be "baby making machines" for most of their lives. If all you're doing is nursing and having children, you can't really run a country, or discover and invent something new.

Instead, the patriarchy implies that there was some kind of battle between men and women, and that women lost. Which implies that women are inferior to men, and that men are evil oppressors. Not only does this explanation ignore history, I think it is sexist, and does a huge disservice to both women and men.