Male dominance recurs across nearly every society, which is what a natural tendency looks like

The argument

The case for inevitability starts from near-universality. Human societies have differed in almost every other respect, in language, religion, subsistence, descent and the form of their households, and yet the pattern of men holding disproportionate public authority recurs through nearly all of them. Proponents argue that when an arrangement appears independently in populations separated by oceans and millennia, the explanation is unlikely to be cultural transmission or local invention. Something in the common conditions of human life is doing the work. Those conditions, on this view, are not mysterious. Pregnancy, birth and prolonged nursing fall on women and tie them for years to the care of dependent infants, while the tasks that generate public standing in most pre-industrial economies, such as herding, long-distance trade, hunting, raiding and war, reward sustained absence and physical force. Proponents argue that a division of labour organised around that asymmetry will concentrate movement, weapons and dealings with outsiders in male hands, and whoever holds those holds the levers of collective decision. Patriarchy, on this account, is not a plot; it is the predictable settlement of a species whose reproduction is costly for one sex and whose early economies ran on force and mobility. The position does not claim that male dominance is good or that it must persist. Its claim is narrower: that given the conditions under which human societies actually formed, something like it was overwhelmingly likely, and that the reason it is receding now is that those conditions have changed. Control over reproduction, mechanised work and impersonal institutions have broken the link between physical force, mobility and authority. On this reading patriarchy was inevitable then and is not inevitable now.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold that patriarchy was invented reply that near-universality is weaker evidence than it appears. Hereditary rule and bondage were also close to universal and are now widely understood as human institutions rather than natural outcomes. They also contest the mechanism: in many societies women carried out heavy agricultural work and long-distance trade, so the division of labour described here is itself a cultural arrangement rather than a given. On this reading the argument assumes what it sets out to prove, treating a settlement that had to be built as a condition it was built on.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Near-universality is weak evidence for inevitability, since bondage and hereditary rule were also close to universal and are now understood as institutions people built and dismantled. [Rejecting P2] The mechanism is asserted rather than shown: women in many societies did heavy agricultural work, traded over distance and fought, so the division of labour invoked here is itself the arrangement in need of explanation. [Rejecting P3] Independent appearance can equally reflect similar institutions arising from similar material conditions, which is a claim about social organisation rather than about a natural tendency. [Rejecting C] The conclusion restates the premise: calling an outcome overwhelmingly likely given the conditions leaves open whether those conditions were themselves made by people.