Why do so many societies favor males?

Factual Questions
1

I remember recreationally reading Larry Gonick’s cartoon book on Genetics, and it mentioned one Ancient Greek philosopher who contributed to genetics, even though it was biased on behalf of men and therefore inaccurate. It said that the sperm had a single human being, and it was the sperm that contributed to all the genes of the child. Now, by this thinking, one may wonder, “where did women come from then?” Well, the answer was, “Inference from the women… now onto physics!” Although I chuckled at this piece of cartoon, I admit that this type of thinking is sexist by modern-day standards and notions of equality. Yet, I find that this type of thinking is evident that Ancient Greek women were treated differently than men, as though gender is a powerful predictor of the fate of the individual. I honestly cannot tell whether this bias had always been intentional or accidental or consequential, but I do know that patriarchy extends from the Far East to the Far West.

Does anybody know why do so many societies favor males? What is the root of this bias? Could it have been male philosophical thinkers who have too much free time on their hands may have proposed inaccurate philosophies due to the unavailability of information?

2

I think it simply comes down to the fact that men are, statistically, larger and stronger. Nothing more to it than that really.

Now that size and strength aren’t really as important for survival as they once were, women are more or less equals in modern society.

3

There’s also the point that for much of human history a society’s success depended on the women devoting a high percentage of their time to child-rearing. Modern technology has reduced that.

True of some modern societies.

4

This is probably ore GD than GQ, but it’s likely more than that. There are probably inherent behavioral differences as well-- amount of aggressiveness, for example. But we really don’t have good science on that yet.

If we look at our closest relatives, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo, the former is very male dominated and the latter is female dominated. In the former species, the males are actively aggressive against other bands of chimps, routinely patrolling borders and attacking other males. That behavior is not observed in bonobos, who use sec to diffuse tension. There is some speculation that bonobos behavior is influenced by the relative abundance of food in areas they populate, as opposed to more scarce resources in the common chimp’s range. But that’s not an established fact.

At any rate, we can’t really look at our closest relatives to find the roots of human behavior in this regard since we have two equally valid models that differ so much.

5

It’s a variation on the golden rule (“Them that has gold, rules”). basically, them that has muscles, rules.

Starting even in the hunter-gatherer days, competing for resources with the gang over the hill meant the tribe had to fight. Pregnant women and women carrying infants were not the ideal warriors, so men best filled this role. Of course, even internally, men fought each other for the women (been in any good bars near closing?). This is not much different than many other animals - the males fight for the “favour” of the females. Thus males are selected for fighting ability, women less so.

(And the institution of marriage, whatever form, can be seen as society saying “OK, this guy owns this woman, so everyone else, hands off - we don’t want any more fights and injuries.”)

In fact, I read a study once that in polygamous societies, where males are more dominant, the women tend to be physically proportionally smaller than the men; while in long-time monogamous societies, the size of each sex is proportionately closer to equal. The man of the house gets his full share of the food and 1 or more women and children divide up what’s left.

Whether it’s race or sex or religion, being in a position of dominance gives people trange ideas that they are dominant due to superiority, not because of numbers, strength, viciousness, or accident. For example, IIRC it was Aristotle who said men had more teeth than women, but could not be bothered to ask the wifey to open wide so he could do a count. You need only look at the racial crap like that spewed by people who assumed blacks were subhuman and inferior to whites; or religious intolerance. With assumed superiority comes ideas of superiority.

The whole concept of what it means to be a man also plays into this. Men are defined by what they can accomplish in 10 minutes or less, while women have 9 months plus to contemplate their role; there’s no such thing as performance anxiety or impotence or being cuckolded for women.

If you accept the concept that we subconsciously are drive to promulgate and protect our genes, then much of the actions of men in some societies make sense - finding as many women as possible, locking them away from other men, preventing them from “roaming”, even trying to kill other competeing men and their “Y” chromosomes…

A an assertive woman may not let the man have his way with her whenever he wants; may even choose some other man. Therefore, assertive, independent women are “bad” from the male’s perspective.

There’s the stories that a lot of primitive invasions culminated in the invading force killing all the males (including children) and then taking the womenfolk as additional mates. As simple an example of “eliminate competing Y chromosomes” as you’ll find anywhere.

6

That last part reminds me of a video some time ago, though it really has nothing to do with humans at all. It’s about this group of personified saber-toothed cats and these big male cats would fight for dominance. I have read about how male lions would replace other male lions and claim reproductive access to the females. Sexual selection in action!

However, despite it occurs in nature, I do not think this is proper moral behavior for a human being to assume, for the acts have no civility and the acts depend on the assumption that the female would mate with the stronger male, giving the female less free will.

7

The fundamental question is what kind of belief is best at fostering cooperation between men, and fostering men’s investment in their communities.

Apparently male chauvinism / patriarchy does a better job of this than sexual egalitarianism. The end result being that male chauvinist societies outcompete those that aren’t in both war and peacetime.

There’s a society in a mountainous, isolated part of rural China, not ethnic Chinese, where the women make all of the major decisions, control the property, and have no concept of patriarchal marriage. The view in this culture is that men are generally too foolish and irresponsible to be trusted with anything important. What strikes me about this culture is how marginalized it is. Egalitarian societies may have been the rule rather than the exception at one time, but they’ve long since been swept away by the rigidly patriarchal cultures like the Han Chinese.

Even in contemporary Western industrial societies, the communities where men earn most of the money, or the larger share of it, are more stable, prosperous, and safer than those where women earn most or all of the money.

8

There’s also the problem of assuring that a man’s children are indeed his genetic children. There’s an old saying 'You’re mommy’s baby and daddy’s maybe." The only way to assure a man wasn’t raising some other guy’s bastards was to keep their wife in total submission.

9

Not only are men bigger and stronger, but they are more overtly socially dominant, and far more aggressive (I don’t see how anyone could deny this is so - all you have to do is look at the statistics for violent crimes).

Same as all the other great apes, life is a constant grab for power and resources (women/females/sex included in this), and it benefits this drive to set up societies to give women less power. It’s largely biological.

10

Anthropologist Marvin Harris suggested that male chauvinism and other extreme manifestations of male preference, such as wife beating and other aspects of society (including societies in which a single warrior-king or a handful of warriors may have exclusive sexual access to all the women in the tribal group) are a side effect of the environmental pressure to produce warrior males in societies where survival was entwined with frequent warfare.

11
12

I would definitely prefer a male to a women. I live in the United States by the way and I don’t say that simply because they’re naturally bigger and stronger. I say that because I have seen men work together, and live together, and get along and yes they have fought but over what I would think is true issues for the most part. I have kind of noticed that patter doesn’t quite exist in women. I have seen women in smaller groups tear each other apart verbally and emotionally (I mean that kind of stuff is on TV for god’s sakes) over trivial things. Almost like they live just to cause misery with other women ESPECIALLY over men. So I personally think that men are more valuable overall than women because of that overall presentation.

13

Men are also statistically smarter:

4 points may not seem like a lot, but we are talking about a statistical mean across an entire population, which is quite significant. For a long time in school we were fed the line that “men and women have the same average IQ, but men have more variance so there are more at the higher and lower ends of the spectrum”. As it turns out, that data was fudged and fabricated to support a political agenda and in fact men have always been smarter.

14

To be fair, I thinks that’s a bollocks stereotype.

I think there’s a number of factors at play - testosterone for one, which makes men more competitive in the workplace, with a greater desire for power. But I also think the burden of childbirth and rearing has held women back throughout time. I remember reading an article (can’t find it now) that said that human babies are essentially born premature compared to other animals, because they are too big to carry to a point where they can fend for themselves. So they take years of round the clock care until they are self sufficient, which hampers women’s ability to do much else.

15

Please point me to a contemporary western industrialised society where women earn the most money and I will gladly move there.

16

I’m sure we can probably all search around for articles which suggest otherwise, such as this Newsweek article:

The article goes onto to discuss how men are more confident in their abilities, even if they aren’t all that, which certainly matches my experience in the workplace. Women often suffer huge self doubt, which can undermine their progress in the workplace.

17

You still need to establish that societies do, in fact, favor males. Just because the king is male doesn’t mean the males are kings. Just because the head of the household is male doesn’t mean the males are the heads of households.

Thing is, for every man with two wives, there’s a man without a wife. For every male army that takes over a town and steals all the women, there’s an army of dead men. For every male lion that takes over the pride, there’s a dead/injured/outcast male lion that used to rule the pride. And for every submissive, pregnant wife, there’s a man tilling the field for planting or pounding the iron into shape.

So it’s not really true that societies favor men. They favor some men at the expense of other men. As the saying goes, for every man that goes to war, there’s a woman sending him.

18

Your cite is a Newsweek article, mine is a scientific study from a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Try again.

19

Read more carefully.

In just about any impoverished urban area in the US, women hold most of the legitimate jobs, and they receive the greater share of public assistance.

Feel free to move into any big city public housing project. Let me know how it goes.

20

:confused::confused::confused:

When I think of “male breadwinner” Western societies, I think of places like Russia- hardly the picture of stability, prosperity and safety. When I think of gender egalitarian Western societies, I think of stable, prosperous and safe Scandinavian countries.

Surely you don’t mean subgroups in societies, because there is A LOT more going on. I’m guessing you are probably talking about African-American communities with absent men and working mothers. Surely you realize that this is way more complicated, full of massive historical, economic and legal influences, than it being a female dominated society.

And where do largely patriarchal Latino-American communities come in?