How Food Played a Role in the Rise of Patriarchy
On gender inequality (and equality) through the ages and what our diets likely had to do with it
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There are many hypotheses to explain why social power eventually concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of men.
Well, some stories of the ‘I don’t believe in evolution’ kind assume this has been the case since the dawn of time because people were just placed on Earth on a random Saturday and remained largely unchanged ever since.
Other hypotheses, which are at least in line with the scientific consensus on human origins, posit that male dominance might have come about as a result of the Agricultural Revolution, the rise of monotheistic religions, human sexual dimorphism — differences in size and shape between women and men — other biological sex differences, male sexual violence or a combination of these factors.
Some of these likely played a part — though the extent to which they did differed from one region of the world to another — but they don’t necessarily paint the whole picture.
There’s another element to the puzzle of the gradual emergence and spread of patriarchal societies that we should perhaps consider as well: food.
And to understand why, we must first look at a growing area of multidisciplinary research into our ancestors’ bones.
The common saying, ‘you are what you eat,’ is true for many reasons. What we eat shapes our bodies, minds and environment, but it also leaves biological information in our cells, even down to our genes. This means if a human — or a non-human — were to find your remains hundreds of years from now, they’d likely be able to know almost everything about your diet. (And probably shake their heads — or antennas — at the amount of coffee you consumed).
Today, we can already tell quite a few things about a person’s diet from their bones, teeth, and other tissues preserved in the archaeological record, even if they died thousands of years ago. I’ve been fascinated with this area of research ever since I read a study that found seaweed was once consumed as a regular part of the European diet. Yes, it really was.
Recently, I came across another paper by a team from the University of Geneva, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, that aimed to reconstruct the dietary practices of Europeans by analysing the bones and teeth of 49 individuals found in Middle Neolithic burial sites in the western part of Switzerland. The two sites, located in Collombey-Muraz, date back to between 4500 and 3800 BCE, when animal husbandry and agriculture already played a vital role.
And although the study found that roughly 20% of adults buried there weren’t locals, chemical analysis of human remains revealed that all members of the community, including non-locals, had access to the same food resources and consumed a diet high in animal protein. More interestingly, though, the study suggests that this Swiss agropastoral society was relatively egalitarian, as there were no differences in access to food resources between men and women. There were also no differences in the structures of the burials of the materials buried with the dead.
However, that’s not always the case.
Several recent investigations of human diet during the Neolithic period, for instance, in Northern France and central Germany, did find dietary differences between the sexes. In particular, in the consumption of animal-derived products, which the researchers argue could arise due to ‘gender-specific factors.’
Another study, which looked into the dietary variations over time, found that this shift might have actually occurred gradually. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it analysed the remains of 175 Neolithic and Bronze Age people who lived in China. During the Neolithic period, the analysis of bone chemistry indicated that male and female diets were similar and consisted of both meats and grains. As Kate Pechenkina, archaeologist and senior author of the paper, noted:
During early farming, females contributed a lot to food production. [Men and women] eat the same things, and they’re of more or less equal standing.
But at the end of the Neolithic era and through the Bronze Age — which began in China around 1700 BCE — the menu shifted. Or, at least, it did for women. While men continued eating grains and meats, the latter disappeared entirely from women’s diets and was replaced with wheat.
Women’s bones also started showing a type of osteoporosis and an indicator of childhood malnutrition — implying they were treated poorly even as young girls — and their burials gradually included fewer and fewer treasures compared to men’s.
The shift from largely egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups to patrilineal and patrilocal communities — where descent was traced through the paternal line, and women moved to the man’s home after marriage — and then, finally, to societies characterised by male dominance didn’t happen overnight, of course.
Actually, in some places, it didn’t happen for a long time or at all.
One well-studied example of an advanced settlement where gender made very little difference in how people organised their lives is the 9,000-year-old site of Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey. Analysis of human remains found there suggests both men and women had similar diets, lifestyles and occupations. There are also examples of possible matriarchal societies, such as the Copper Age society of southern Iberia.
However, according to the Ethnographic Atlas, there are still at least 160 existing matrilineal societies across the Americas, Africa, and Asia, where people are seen to belong to their mothers’ families over generations and where inheritance passes from mother to daughter. But, it bears noting that power and influence in these communities are usually shared equally between women and men. Matriarchies, at least those that exist or exist in real life, aren’t the direct opposite of patriarchy (as is commonly assumed) because they tend not to be built around strict hierarchies.
How did some places in the world evolve to favour men holding most of the power while others didn’t, though?
Although some argue that the balance of power between genders tipped shortly after the dawn of farming, which was supposedly done only by more physically strong and resilient men, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Prehistoric women were involved in all sorts of agricultural activities, too, from digging, hauling and hoeing to grinding grain. In fact, another study of human remains shows they worked so much their upper body strength was greater than that of female athletes today by around 5–10%.
Not to mention all the other evidence, for instance, from ancient Greek and Roman literature, that shows lower-class and enslaved women always did heavy manual labour, including in agriculture.
One plausible hypothesis, first proposed by American historian Gerda Lerner, is that the patrilocal practice of women moving away from their families to live with their husbands’ families made them more vulnerable to mistreatment and abuse. This, combined with changes in government, religion and the introduction of strict societal hierarchies — especially a warrior class — then may have all set the stage for a culture that inflated the value of men and deflated that of women. And as women were pushed into the shadows of their fathers and husbands, men gained more and more control over practically everything else — including resources like food and how they were distributed.
Could unequal distribution of food be then used as a means of ensuring this patriarchal status quo remained in place?
Another recent study published in Nature Human Behavior analysed the bones of the first Europeans to engage in agriculture and found that although people in northern Europe were taller than those in the Mediterranean, the difference in size between men and women was much smaller in the south. Specifically, the ratio of sexual dimorphism, which among Mediterraneans was 1.05, was 1.14 in the north — an extremely high figure. Today, ratios above 1.10 are limited to societies where boys have traditionally been favoured over girls.
The researchers behind the study suggest this disparity might have resulted from the cultural practice of prioritising boys and men in access to food, which, over time, led to a greater degree of sexual dimorphism and perhaps even played a role in maintaining women’s subordination.
Food has been repeatedly weaponised against marginalised communities throughout history. From enslaved African-Аmericans in the Southern states only getting the cuts considered inedible by their white ‘masters,’ and the ‘Great Hunger’ in 19th century Ireland that killed about 1 million people to the 20th century Ukrainian Holodomor — which, translated from Ukrainian, means literally ‘death by hunger’ — that killed nearly 4 million people, keeping people hungry and malnourished has proven to be an ‘efficient’ tool of oppression.
Food shortages and insecurity are something I’m all too familiar with as well, as my family had to deal with it throughout the Soviet regime and shortly after its fall in the late 20th century.
But it’s not surprising that control of the consumption of one of the most basic of human necessities — if not the most basic — has been so widely used by cruel people in power, is it? If you want people to obey, keep them perpetually hungry. If you want them to fear you, starve them.
Even today, food security isn’t gender, race or ethnicity neutral.
According to global estimates, women are significantly more likely than men to live in extreme poverty, and out of 690 million people who are food insecure in the world right now, 60% are women and girls. One of the main reasons for this is precisely the deep-rooted gender norms that imply women eat last and least, after all the men and boys have been fed first. In addition to issues arising from malnutrition, this practice has also been shown to be associated with poor mental health.
However, we shouldn’t forget about another type of female hunger: the one driven by beauty standards.
Although female body shapes go in and out of fashion — which is already ridiculous on its own — one thing that remains almost constant throughout different periods, particularly since the early 20th century, is the idea that, above all else, women ought to be dainty and slim. And so, the goal for women — and not only in terms of our physical appearance — is always to make ourselves smaller and smaller and smaller.
I’ve certainly been there, as has every other woman I know. Women come in all shapes and sizes and heights — just like men — but we aren’t exactly allowed to exist in the original packaging we came in. Oh, no. But as the popular meme goes, ‘you can’t fight the patriarchy on an empty stomach.’ Well, you can’t — can you?
And today, we still desperately need the energy that only food can provide us with to fight the leftovers of our patriarchal past that continue to creep into almost every corner of our society. But also, to imagine better ways of living together and sharing what we have equally.
That’s why looking into the past, even if just through the little we have left of it, matters so much. It gives us hope — and reassurance — that there are other ways of organising our societies. That what we have right now isn’t the only option — or the ‘natural’ and ‘inevitable’ one, as some claim — we have. As Lerner noted in her seminal book The Creation of Patriarchy:
Patriarchy as a system is historical: it has a beginning in history. If that is so, it can be ended by historical process.
There’s such incredible diversity in the human species.
But it’s a shame we so often forget about it in favour of simplistic narratives that, not coincidentally, only serve a select group of people in our world.
If we want a better future, though, these fantasies need to be treated like the leftover food you left in the back of the fridge and forgot about for way too long: relegated to the bin, pronto.
Mind blown, as always! To be conditioned to think women are meant to be smaller than men…! Aaargh
But yes! Since patriarchy has a historical start, it means it can also end! Let’s go!!!
Wonderful historical essay with excellent scientific references on patriarchy. 👍