Why Patriarchy Arose and is No Longer Inevitable

In this article, I desire to lay out two essential claims: First, that the widespread oppression of women throughout history, as well as the division of labor between the sexes, arose for biological and survival reasons; and second, that it was morally repugnant and is no longer necessary due to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, modern medicine, and increasing respect for private property rights.

Consider a society comprised of two individuals: former United Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell and…me. Liddell, or “The Iceman” as he is known to his fans, is four inches taller than me, weighs thirty pounds more, and is trained in Karate, kickboxing, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Absent any scruples on his part, it is quite possible that our relationship would very quickly become that of master and slave. Let us then extend this metaphor to two groups of people: UFC fighters and college students. Again, absent any scruples, it is quite possible that society may become organized hierarchically, with the fighters on top and the college students relegated to serving them in one manner or another. Why would this be? The answer is quite simple: UFC fighters are physically superior to the rest of us (at least, in their capacity to inflict violence). The rest of us, fearful of their power, may understandably choose to resign ourselves to a state of oppression rather than risk being beaten to a pulp.

The differences between myself and Chuck Liddell, or between UFC fighters and college students as a class, are biological in nature. It is a fact that there are certain groups of people who are naturally bigger, stronger, faster, and more capable of inflicting violence than others. Is it not plausible that certain men, recognizing their physical superiority in this regard, would abuse it to domineer over women?

Precisely this state of affairs has existed for much of human history. The greater male capacity for inflicting violence does not imply moral justification, merely a lens through which we may understand patriarchy. It is precisely this sort of a system, whereby one group of people exploits the other through the use of superior physical force, which libertarians struggle against. The stubborn refusal of the Women’s Liberation movement to join forces with libertarians in a struggle against the patriarchal organization of the state, the most violent organization of all, remains an enduring mystery.

Back to theory. The widespread norm of violence throughout history has made patriarchy a necessity for both male and female survival. Women had to rely upon a father or some sort of paternal male figure to provide protection for them while young and were rushed away to be married almost as soon as they could birth children. Both of these phenomena have biological origins. Regarding the former: physically weaker individuals (and women as a class are physically weaker than men) need physical protection in societies lacking a fundamental respect for the rights of person and property. Regarding the latter: The mortifyingly high infant death rate prior to the advent of modern medicine meant that a far higher birth-rate had to be maintained lest population should decline.

Children, moreover, were useful commodities. In a modern, industrialized nation, one or two children are sufficient to take care of most middle class parents when they grow old. In pre-industrial times, and in those areas still without substantial industrialization, many more children are required for this same task. Moreover, children made for useful farmhands and gatherers before the rise of enclosure, mechanization, and selective breeding and when a substantial portion of the world’s population was still involved in the procurement of food. This state of affairs still prevails today in certain parts of the world untouched by the agricultural revolution, where subsistence farming is still practiced.

From the perspective of the survival of the human race, or of any particular group of humans, women were far more precious than men. (I purposefully avoid use of the present tense.) This too can find cause in the differing biological natures of man and woman. While women are born with around two million egg follicles, the number that will actually release mature eggs for fertilization is a mere 450. Moreover, as it is the woman who bears children, she can only produce as many children every nine months as nature sees fit to place inside her womb (usually one).

Men, on the other hand, with roughly 525 billion sperm cells to spread around over the course of a lifetime, are subject to no such limitations. To put things more bluntly, a few men can impregnate a lot of women, whereas it won’t do a woman any good (reproductively speaking) to have any more than one male partner. Hence why men have historically been the cannon fodder of choice for warlords and military leaders, while women, whose reproductive organs are much scarcer, were protected from physical harm. The loss of a man was rationally deemed trifling compared to the loss of a woman, upon whose scarce reproductive organs the survival of the family/tribe/nation depended. It is but a short step from protector to ruler, and from protectee to subject. Thus do women fall prey to a state of patriarchy.

There were, of course, exceptions. Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, who lead a brief revolt against the Roman presence in Britain, and Queen Elizabeth I England, are two of the most frequently mentioned counters to claims of the historical norm of patriarchy. They are, of course, rare in the extreme. Even these widely-recognized great female rulers relied upon male officers and soldiers to fight for them, and Boudicca’s reputation in particular has been drastically inflated by popular culture.

This division of labor between men and women has remained relatively constant throughout history until recently, with men dominating professions involving the use of violence. Since governments are territorial monopolies on violence, and men are enormously advantaged in the arena of violence, it has overwhelmingly been men who dominated political institutions. The move away from rule by warlord to rule by politician has, to a certain extent, opened the halls of government to women. Presidents and prime ministers do not charge into the battle at the head of a column of bodyguards; rather, they sit comfortably in their chairs while lower class males perform this task on their behalf. This state of affairs is more conducive to female involvement in politics.

Inequality, it must be noted, is the cause, not the result, of the division of labor. “For just as an ever greater division of labor is needed to give full scope to the abilities and powers of each individual, so does the existence of that very division depend upon the innate diversity of men. For there would be no scope at all for a division of labor if every person were uniform and interchangeable.”[i] It was the biological differences between men and women, the fact that they were different and not interchangeable, that created the division of labor into “men’s work” and “women’s work,” not the other way around.

In the past and in certain parts of the world today, such as those operating under subsistence farming or fishing, this division was an absolute necessity. The survival of a family or tribe depended upon every individual—man, woman, and child—performing those tasks in which he or she has a comparative advantage. Thus, men would hunt mammoths while women pick berries. Men would fend off saber tooth tigers while women retreat with the children to the caves. Reversing the gender roles would clearly not be an evolutionarily stable strategy.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Women can operate most machines just as well as men. And even where they could not, they had a compensating differential—the ability to work for a lower wage. With the rise of wage labor, employers could pay employees in accordance with their marginal productivity. Women could thus compete with men in the workforce in those tasks in which they suffered biological impediments by simply undercutting them.

In other words, capitalism liberated women from household roles of mother and wife, as Murray Rothbard noted in his 1970 essay, “Against Women’s Lib”:

It should be emphasized that, in contrast to the Women’s Lib forces who tend to blame capitalism as well as male tyrants for centuries-old discrimination, it was precisely capitalism and the "capitalist revolution" of the 18^th and 19^th centuries that freed women from male oppression, and set each woman free to find her best level. It was the feudal and pre-capitalist, pre-market society that was marked by male oppression; it was that society where women were chattels of their fathers and husbands, where they could own no property of their own, etc. Capitalism set women free to find their own level, and the result is what we have today.[ii]

The decreases in productivity brought about by a slackening in the division of labor between men and women no longer comes with the dire threats of the past. Woman can pursue the occupation of their choosing without the human race, or her tribe, or even her family enduring the threat of extinction as a result. It is not necessary for women to have children to ensure that they are adequately cared for in old age, as it is possible under the enormous increases in productivity brought about by the capitalist mode of production to set aside a portion of one’s income, abstaining from immediate consumption in favor of saving. It is possible, therefore, for anyone to become a capitalist. To the extent that this is difficult, the fault rests at the feet of government officials, whose policies of “taxation” and “quantitative easing” disincentive production and saving. (More apt terms would be “theft” and “counterfeiting.”)

From a philosophical perspective, anarchism seeks the abolition of rule altogether. Thus, as it is men who have historically ruled over women, it is women who pertain to benefit the most from an anarchist society. Libertarianism seeks the abolition of initiatory violence (which is to say, absolute respect of private property rights).[iii] Thus, as it is men who have historically made use of violence and violated property rights, it is women who pertain to benefit the most from a libertarian society in which the fruits of one’s labor are respected. The interests of women and libertarian anarchists, therefore, are one and the same.

The same could not be said for Chuck Liddell.