THE PATRIARCHS

A sometimes-belabored but mostly accessible argument that male domination is a cultural and not biological imperative.

Why have men held disproportionate power across societies and millennia? British science journalist Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, combs through the archaeological and anthropological literature to examine leading theories. While patriarchy is widely seen in both human societies and the animal kingdom, there is plenty of variation in both realms, including greater or lesser degrees of inequality and of women’s participation in leadership. While some scientists—almost always men—have insisted that the patriarchy is the natural outgrowth of the biological fact that men are larger and stronger, the evidence more broadly points to cultural constraints. Usefully, Saini resurrects the once-forgotten work of anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, who examined Neolithic societies to adduce an “old Europe” centered on goddess worship and gender parity—until it was conquered by a warrior society from the Eurasian steppes. This hypothesis of migration and submission was long disputed, but, as Saini notes, “remnants of ancient DNA point to the likelihood that it did happen,” perhaps 4,500 years ago, when Stonehenge was built. Gimbutas has not been the only scholar to point to times, mostly ancient, when women’s roles were far higher up in the social hierarchy, as in the dynasties of ancient Mesopotamia and the traditions across later centuries of female warriors. Interestingly, Saini brings these traditions to the present by examining the supposed gender equality instilled by the Bolshevik Revolution, which, though largely undone (and now officially disavowed by the Putin regime), did witness the phenomenon of more than 800,000 Soviet women fighting alongside men in World War II. From start to finish, Saini sounds a constant theme: “As far back as we can see, humans have landed on rainbows of different ways of organizing themselves, always negotiating the rules around gender and its meaning. Nothing was static.”

A useful resource for scholars and students of gender studies and cultural anthropology.