> Gender inequality seems to have increased with early civilization, including agriculture. Why? The feminist explanation has been that the men banded together to create patriarchy. This is essentially a conspiracy theory, and there is little or no evidence that it is true. Some argue that the men erased it from the history books in order to safeguard their newly won power. Still, the lack of evidence should be worrisome, especially since this same kind of conspiracy would have had to happen over and over, in group after group, all over the world.
> Let me offer a different explanation. It’s not that the men pushed the women down. Rather, it’s just that the women’s sphere remained about where it was, while the men’s sphere, with its big and shallow social networks, slowly benefited from the progress of culture. By accumulating knowledge and improving the gains from division of labor, the men’s sphere gradually made progress.
Or maybe it's the more obvious answer that women were almost always stuck with the more mundane chores of child-rearing, cooking, and cleaning, and men were the ones doing just about everything else? I mean it's true that it wasn't really a conspiracy, it's entirely predictable that men would end up in that position, since they don't give birth or breastfeed, and they're physically stronger.
But at the same time, it wasn't that women just didn't choose to improve the things they worked on, it's that the things that fell to them lent themselves to relatively little social power or advancement. You can't gain more political power (individually, anyway) if you're just staying at home taking care of the kids, instead of, say, going on a military expedition.