If we accept that most of the world's cultures were male-dominated

>>335425
Because men have always been the dominant gender and thus, culture is reflected on that fact.

>>335429
Oops, I meant to say physically dominant.

>>335425
Woman gets pregnant.
Woman gives birth.
Woman takes care of kid.

Man makes sure these things happen unimpeded.

Man gets a place of power.

This is simple.

>>335425

Because back in the pre-modern medicine days, death from childbirth was enormous and all-pervasive. We're talking a 1 in 5 chance per pregnancy killing the mother in a lot of societies.

Considering the lack of contraception widely available, and the fact that most women had multiple pregnancies, the odds were, a woman was virtually guaranteed to die in her mid 20s at the latest.

Very hard to build up social or political power with that kind of existence.

>>335425
Child-rearing necessitating female sedentary lifestyle. Freedom of Motion = Freedom

>>335443
>her mid 20s at the latest.
And so did men.

The fact boils down to that women were preoccupied raising children and tending camp and men had more time to do other things like lead and hunt.

>>335455

>And so did men.

No. You get low average lifespans by the additional factor of high infant mortality, but if you were a man in say, Elizabethan England, you stood a reasonable chance of making it to 50-60 if you lived through your first five years. If you were a woman, no such luck.

>The fact boils down to that women were preoccupied raising children and tending camp and men had more time to do other things like lead and hunt.

The fact boils down to the fact that by the time you hit 30, you had way more men than women. They weren't "preoccupied raising children and tending camp". By and large, they were dead.

>>335425
My hypothesis been that it's a combination of things. First off, restricting the freedom of women probably came about due to men wanting to be sure of the paternity of their children; one can always know who a child's mother is, but one cannot be so sure about who a child's father is. Relatedly, there was desire to control the means of reproduction.

Now, as to the *how*; generally speaking, men are larger and have more upper-body strength, and in most of history the strong dominating those weaker than them has been the running theme. All the other cultural justifications (they're stupid, they're sinful, they're cursed, they were created by <deity> to serve, <mythical story> says they caused <thing>, etc.) were created later on, after open, undisguised "might makes right" became unfashionable. That's also the reason why most aristocracies arose out of warrior-classes or warrior bands, or religious classes that got the warriors to follow them by telling them what they wanted to hear and making mutually beneficial arrangements with them.

Plus, in a lot of ancient cultures, there seems to have been a common fear and revulsion toward things like menstruation. Which is, admittedly, kind of understandable; imagine being some ancient neolithic person with absolutely zero scientific understanding, and suddenly half your group just starts bleeding mysteriously every month for no apparent reason. You'd probably be creeped out and assume there's something wrong with them.

>>335475
>>335443
Oh, right, and also the pervasiveness of death from childbirth.

>>335425
Men were hunters. They had to think on their feet, figure things out like how to set traps or predict where the animal would run, be crafty and have a good sense of awareness. Bravery, strength, and leadership were also traits that would make for a successful hunter.

Women focussed more on things like making clothes and caring for children. This doesn't require much strength leadership or bravery, but empathy and perhaps creativity.

The gender roles fit because men and women have different hormones and body structures that make them better suited for their roles. It's changing now because its a current trend to do away with gender roles, and I feel that's not going to lead to humans being happier overall. Women are evolved to like caring for and loving children and men are evolved to like thinking creatively, working with their hands, and doing bold things, which in modern times is good for businesses. Women naturally are going to struggle and feel put of place trying to adapt to inherently male roles. It's also not good for the family unit. Since women entered the workforce, the laborer supply doubled, thus cutting the cost of labor in half. Once man could work and provide for an entire family, then both parents had to work to do so. The mother has less time to raise her children. Then mass immigration came and cheapened the value of our labor even more, now both parents can work their asses off and still not provide for a family. But that's another issue...

>>335467
and in societies that women do make it to menopause age the old mothers become caretakers but since most women don't make it to old age having an older female relative is rare thus most females have to raise the kid with 100% dedication due to lack of older female relatives.

So you are saying that higher female mortality leads to more restrictions on the women if they manged to survive pregnancy?

>>335511

Well, I'm saying several things.

1) High maternal mortality means you can't really afford to let women take any sort of risks whatsoever. Population growth is slow; with a lot of babies dying and a lot of mothers dying giving birth to them. Men can die in accidents or in war or whatever, and it won't affect your reproductive rates; in addition to the men being able to impregnate multiple women, you probably have a lot more of them hanging around. Every woman who dies somewhere other than a birthing bed though, represents a loss to your reproductive capabilities.

2) You will get occasional women who survive to menopause (although usually due to infertility), and they will probably become invested in childcare. But men took more of a childrearing role than a lot of people realize. Almost every code of law before the 19th century invariably leaves children with their fathers if there's some sort of split of the couple, not their mothers: It was the man who was expected to provide for and teach.

3) Social norms are pretty inflexible. They're made for the normal person, not the exception. You're going to get restrictive codes of conduct for women because most of them aren't expected to survive their pregnancies. That there are some who will, or other women who won't get pregnant, but they're the exceptions, not the norms, and the rules that govern conduct aren't really designed with them in mind.

>>335546
>>335511

And lastly, it affects the social capital women can accumulate. If the average woman is breeding stock, and expected to die in that line of duty, you're not going to develop social institutions conducive for women attaining social or political power.

You don't educate women. Why bother? Most of them are never going to recoup the investment spent into their minds. You certainly can't risk them in battle or in the mines, that's just insane. Trade keeps them away from home and away from squatting out more children. Any sort of hierarchy where age is at a premium is almost certainly going to disadvantage women, so they won't rise to that either.

The expectation that women will die younger than men is enormously damaging in a social sense, even if you're a lucky woman who beats it. It is perhaps the biggest sociological difference between life today and life a thousand years ago, and it's honestly baffling how little people realize the difference.