No durable alternative to male public authority has emerged anywhere on its own

The argument

A second argument for inevitability turns on the absence of stable alternatives. Proponents point out that the counterfactual is testable in a rough way: across the whole range of human societies, some should by chance have settled into durable female public authority. On this account almost none did. There are societies that trace descent through mothers, that hold land in female lines, that accord women considerable domestic and ritual power, and in these, proponents argue, formal public authority still tended to rest with men. If male dominance were one option among several, the record should show the others persisting somewhere, and it does not. The mechanism proposed is the one that distinguishes the sexes in reproduction. Because a mother always knows which children are hers and a father does not, men who wanted their effort and property to reach their own offspring had an interest in controlling women's sexual lives, while women had no symmetrical interest. Once any society began passing goods between generations, proponents argue, that asymmetry gave male control a function that female control simply did not have, and the institutions of marriage, seclusion and guardianship grew up around it wherever goods were heritable. Proponents are careful about the scope of the claim. Inevitable does not mean right, and it does not mean permanent. It means that the explanation for male dominance should be sought in conditions shared by all human societies rather than in the choices of particular ones, and that the burden lies with those who say a different outcome was realistically available to show where, in all of recorded human experience, it was actually reached.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold that patriarchy was invented object on two grounds. First, the evidential claim is weaker than it sounds: the record is largely the work of societies that were already patriarchal, and the categories used to find public authority, such as formal office, written law and standing armies, are ones that male-dominated states invented, so the search is calibrated to find them. Second, reasoning from reproductive certainty explains an interest, not an institution: an interest only becomes guardianship and seclusion if people build and enforce those things, which is precisely the human choice at issue.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The counterfactual cannot be run on a record written almost entirely by societies that were already patriarchal, using categories of formal office and written law that those societies themselves created. [Rejecting P2] The apparent exceptions are dismissed too quickly: where women held land, allocated it and controlled the household economy, counting only formal office as authority decides the question in advance. [Rejecting P3] Reproductive certainty establishes an interest, not an institution; guardianship, seclusion and marriage rules had to be invented and enforced, and that is precisely the human work at issue. [Rejecting C] At most the premises support the claim that male dominance was likely, which is weaker than inevitable and fully compatible with its having been invented.