The whole notion of a uniform and globally repressive patriarchy was an unnecessary argument

Documenting an emerging impression rather than noting a particular insight.

This arises from the genealogical work I am doing.

Many feminist writers and theorists make the claim that women have long been victims of a patriarchy designed and intended to suppress women as free and equal participants in society. This claim is frequently made in some context regarding the absence of women's equal material contribution to civilizational development (art, science, philosophy, music, technology, etc.). There is a sotto voce sense that sometimes they are advancing the argument because they are justifying an empirical observation.

More explicitly, it sometimes feels like they are answering an argument that is not frequently or baldly heard but which they appear to sense is implicit. They hear "Women aren't as capable" and they answer "They never had the chance to make contributions because of patriarchal suppression."

It has always seemed to me that this is an unnecessary argument. Of course women made fewer contributions. For the 100,000 years of anatomically modern humans, 95,000 of those years were spent uniformly at the perilous margin of death from conflict, accident, disease and starvation. It is only in the past five thousand years in which we have seen even enough prosperity for there to be civilizational material goods of any sort regardless of who produced them.

And in those five thousand years, women usually lived a reasonably inescapable cycle of reproduction from menarche to death. There needed to be no patriarchal system of repression for there to be a differential in production of civilizational goods. One sex had time and one sex did not.

The fact that there was a differential in civilizational goods production had nothing to do with capability. Even in deep history of 5,000 years, there are plenty of women who demonstrated great talents and abilities (Sapho, Hatshepsut, etc.) and that record becomes richer and deeper, the closer we approach the present. The further away we moved from marginal existence and a critical dependence on women having lots of babies for even a few to survive, the more easy it is to see that women are as able as men.

That's where I was a couple of years ago. Feminists were making an argument (dearth of female achievement must be evidence of patriarchal suppression) that didn't need to be made because there was no dearth not explained simply by the demands of the reproductive division of labor.

Having now spent a year digging into five hundred years of genealogical records, that impression is greatly reinforced. In the early days of documenting and researching, it was striking to me the imbalance of records.

Men were easier to track in the historical record. Their names remained the same in the historical record which certainly helped. But they also did so many things (not all of them) which necessarily or probabilistically increased the chances of entering the historical record. They bought and sold land. They served in the military. They fought and defended court cases. They participated in public offices.

For women the record is much more meager. Birth, marriage, children, death and wills. If you are lucky. That record exists for men as well but men's records are greatly bolstered by all the other stuff. The further back in time you go, the more patchy the records become and the greater necessity there is of corroboration. A single record, say a record of birth, without other corroborating records is not much use.

Christian names become endlessly recycled in families and those families were reproductive for ten and twenty years. As a consequence you can have a John F. Smith born in 1850 who has a younger brother John P. Smith born in 1870, the same year John F. Smith has a son born who he names after himself. You end up with two John Smiths born in the same year who are related in a different way (one a son and one a brother) to a third John Smith. Hence the importance of other records which can distinguish one from the other. For women, the absence of those other records makes it very hard to track them down through time.

So it is easy to gain the impression that all women do is only have babies. And empirically, until the most recent decades, that was pretty much true.

But the problem is with that only. That only thing was also the most important thing in every generation.

Men did many more things which resulted in records attached to their actions. Their action records were more prolific but also more varied. They look more interesting. But fundamentally they are not. Variation always attracts our psychological attention. We are pattern recognizers and we are attracted to changes in patterns. But the fact that there is more variation in their actions can never displace the foundational role of women and children.

Great grand-uncle Joe died in a shipwreck heading to California in the gold rush. That is a pattern variance that makes it memorable. Not many people died in such a fashion. Besides a death record and a will, there is an accident investigation record, there might be an insurance record, there is a news story that includes his name among the missing and presumed dead. His record is rich and memorable. It passes into family lore. And he left no progeny. His older brother Jim died in service during the Mexican-American war and was buried with honors. All the usual records plus military records plus his medals plus some news articles. His record is rich and memorable. It also passes into family lore. And he left no progeny. Their younger sister, great grand-aunt Jane dies in childbirth or of old age leaving nine children who reached adulthood. Death certificate and will perhaps. Death in childbirth is tragically common, certainly not notable.

The records and stories and the family lore are with great grand-uncle Joe and great grand-uncle Jim. The DNA trail is with great grand-aunt Jane.

Biology imposes a differential force on patterns of records that was overwhelmingly determinative for 95,000 years; compellingly influential on the remaining 4,750 years; and massively influential until the past fifty years or so. Freedom from the tyranny of biology (owing the the pill introduced in 1960) and freedom from the constraints of marginal survival (owing to global mass prosperity emerging after 1960) has caused it to become clearer and clearer that there are only differences between male and female capabilities strictly at the margin and there are puts and takes on both sides. Women who elect to not have children lead as productive and record-rich lives as comparable men. Their capacity to generate civilizational development is the same.

The whole notion of a uniform and globally repressive patriarchy was an unnecessary argument. Women were never incapable, they were otherwise occupied in the most existential activity possible - the continuance of the species. All other civilizational advances were mere garnishments to that achievement.