years of solitude

“THE vast majority of cultures are patriarchies, where men are more  likely than women to hold positions of social, economic and political  power. So it is tempting to assume that this is the natural state of affairs, perhaps because men are, on average, stronger than women. But a study of humanity’s roots suggests this answer is too simple.

Chimpanzees are not a proxy for our ancestors – they have been evolving since our two family trees split between 7 and 10 million years ago  – but their social structures can tell us something about the  conditions that male dominance thrives in. Common chimpanzee groups are manifestly patriarchal. Males are vicious towards females, they take their food, forcibly copulate with females that are ovulating and even kill them merely for spending time away from the group.

Males also spend their lives in the group they were born into, whereas females leave at adolescence. As a result, males in a group are  more closely related to each other than the females. And because  relatives tend to help one another, they have an advantage.                    

The same is true in human societies: in places where women move to live with their husband’s family, men tend to have more power and privilege. Patrilocal residence, as it is called, is associated with patriarchy, says anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Hrdy at the  University of California at Davis.

For most of our history, we have been hunter-gatherers, and patrilocal residence is not the norm among modern hunter-gatherer  societies. Instead, either partner may move to live with the “in-laws”,  or a couple may relocate away from both their families. According to Hrdy, a degree of egalitarianism is built into these systems. If they reflect what prehistoric hunter-gatherers did, women in those early societies would have had the choice of support from the group they grew  up with, or the option to move away from oppression.

According to one school of thought, things changed around 12,000 years ago. With the advent of agriculture and homesteading, people began settling down.  They acquired resources to defend, and power shifted to the physically  stronger males. Fathers, sons, uncles and grandfathers began living near each other, property was passed down the male line, and female autonomy  was eroded. As a result, the argument goes, patriarchy emerged.

This origin story is supported by a study published in 2004.  Researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, studied  mitochondrial DNA (inherited from mothers) and genetic markers on the Y  chromosome (inherited from fathers) in 40 populations from sub-Saharan  Africa. This suggested  that women in hunter-gatherer populations, such as the !Kung and Hadza,  were more likely to remain with their mothers after marriage than women  from food-producing populations. It was the reverse for men, suggesting  that agriculture is indeed correlated with patrilocal societies.

“It’s tempting to assume male dominance is the natural state of human society. It isn’t”

In righting things, solidarity is crucial, says Amy Parish at the  University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She studies bonobo societies, which are patrilocal but female-dominated. Females weigh 15  per cent less than males – similarly to humans and chimps – yet Parish says they have the upper hand because they cooperate and form alliances.  She sees a parallel with feminist movements: “The goal is to behave with unrelated females as if they are your sisters.”

It’s not as easy as it seems. “The #MeToo movement is about female cooperation,” says Hrdy, “but getting cooperation among non-kin is difficult.” Competitive instincts can prevail, or events can cause cooperation to fall apart – for instance in times of war, Hrdy says. “Women start to look out for the safety of their own children and their husbands.” She worries that conflict could erode gains from recent decades. “None of this stuff is certain,” she says. “It’s what I tell my daughters: don’t take any of this that you have now for granted.”

Restoring and strengthening equality will require effort on multiple  fronts, she says. If patriarchy originated in sedentary social  structures that formalised male ownership and inheritance, then laws that give women the right to own property in their own name, for instance, can help.

But such laws exist in many 21st century societies – so why does the  patriarchy persist? Ultimately, real change will only come when societies embody the values espoused by the laws, argues Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at the Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago: “The laws are the first step, the internalized values come later.”

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Like.

These are real people. They could walk down the street anytime:

But these? I don't think This Exists in reality: