Patriarchy is the daughter of Evolution.
When we think about inequalities between women and men, we always tend to blame the patriarchy. However, the patriarchy is only a minion of the true culprit; a much more vicious and inflexible creature: Evolution.
But to solve a problem, one should first understand its origin.
So why did evolution stack the cards against women?
Since mankind first stood up, our physiognomy and biology went through such significant changes that women started to, technically, give birth prematurely. This is due to a plethora of reasons including — but not limited to — large brains, bipedalism, tight birth canal and the metabolic burden on the mother (when the mother reaches the limit of her ability to supply the fetus’s metabolic demands). Research shows that our gestation period should be around 18 to 21 months for our children to be born at a similar neurological and cognitive development stage to that of a chimpanzee new-born. Most animals’ cubs are born fully functional, a foal can stand, walk and run within minutes of birth and most female mammals have comparatively easier births than female humans.
Furthermore, our hunter-gatherers’ ancestors seemed to have been egalitarian but the advent of agriculture and sedentarism appears to have been a major factor in the offset of the current patriarchal model. Recent DNA research shows that 8,000 years ago for every 17 women who were reproducing only one man did the same; this means we have many more women ancestors than male ancestors. This could have been driven by the emergence of wars — in order to fight for land — which led to a higher female to male ratio, or perhaps due to a few men and their descendants accumulating lots of wealth and lands leaving nothing to others and litterally — excuse my french — “c**kblocking” them.
It was probably during this time, that what I call “artificial” sexual dimorphism started to appear in women — sexual dimorphism being the differences between males and females of the same species, such as in colour, shape, size, and structure. Homo sapiens has a low level of sexual dimorphism compared with many other species. In most species’ males are typically more ornamented or brightly coloured than females. Think about male lions and their manes, peacocks and their flamboyant tail feathers, bucks and their massive antlers, mandrills and their scarlet faces … Yes, in most species, females are dull, and males are brightly coloured. Nevertheless, women at a certain point felt the need to compete with one another for the attention of men, by wearing colours, make-up etc… –. If relationships were a sentence, women became the object and men became the subject.
All this — and other factors too complex to discuss here — has created an intense dependence of women on men, as both mother and child need feeding and protection following birth. With time and with the evolution of our economic societies, this has translated into emotional and financial dependence.
As women try to break the chains of the patriarchy, the first and most important chain is financial dependency. It shouldn’t be that surprising that women still get less paid than men for the same jobs — in the UK in 2019, the highest paid 10% of women received an average of 17.7% less than the highest paid 10% of men. This data gets even worse when you’re in finance, with a recent study showing that senior women are paid two-thirds less than men!
We should recognize that men who are for total equality between women and men, are actually going against their biological and evolutionary interest.
What if men are unconsciously keeping women tied up to them? This indeed can be a natural protective reaction as they could fear that with financial independence women will no longer need to attach themselves to them. And in a way, this is true! In the past and even today, women would stay married or marry men for their sole “protective” potential i.e. their money. Men fear that financially independent women will, not only, no longer need them but will become the ones deciding on whether to mate with them or not.
Therefore, men will become the object and women the subject. And this is indeed a terrifying change!
It can be said that we have made great progress since the Industrial Revolution when women tended to receive between 33% to 50% of a man’s salary. However, my fellow men should not worry too much. We are still very far away from pay parity and even further away from equality.
According to Payscale, the gender pay gap has only decreased by $0.07 since 2015 and women make only $0.81 for every dollar a man makes. Their data also show the gender pay gap is wider for women of colour, women in executive level roles and women in certain occupations and industries. Furthermore, by calculating presumptive raises given over a 40-year career, they found that women are deprived of roughly $900,000 over a lifetime — and this does not include compounded interest if invested each year for 40 years. In a report by the World Economic Forum report, gender parity stands at 68.6% globally, while only 55% of women (aged 15–64) are engaged in the labour market as opposed to 78% of men. There is no country where men spend the same amount of time on unpaid work as women. In countries where the ratio is lowest, it is still 2:1.And finally, in terms of economic participation, the gender gap will take a staggering 257 years to close!
But all is not dark and gloomy in the land of Adam and Eve. Evolution might have shackled down women and turned men into money making machines, but evolution led to scientific and technical advancements that have emancipated both genders from their narrow roles.
Women were liberated from the hazards of childbirth and from many house chores, freeing much needed time to focus on education and self-improvement, while it similarly gave men more time to focus on rearing up the young ones and connecting with their progeny and themselves.
Financial equality …can also be a great opportunity to many men left out of the “mating” market.
Financial equality can be seen as threatening to some men, as women gain more power, independence and more say in the terms of a relationship, but it can also be a great opportunity to many men that are left out of the “mating” market. Financial equality will unshackle the evolutionary chains that make women look for “providers” rather than “carers” and allow, perhaps, kinder and more supportive men to enter the Human gene pool leading on the long term to — one can hope — a less aggressive and destructive society.
