WOMEN AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD

Quite likely, women never ruled the ‘outside’ world. Matriarchal communities have been rare, whereas female figurines are shown to be unrelated to domination of either sex.

People in tribal societies, onwards from about 25,000 years ago, made small, voluptuous female figurines that are thought to represent nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or the bounty of the earth. Others believe these figurines were made by men to express their sexual longing for women.

Some believe the female figurines represent matriarchal or female-dominated society but there is no evidence for that belief, whereas in tribal societies women and men tend to only have a division of labor, with women mostly collecting plant food and men mostly collecting animal food, which remains unrelated to domination by either sex.

Furthermore, agrarian societies, from over the last 10,000 years, also made female figurines whereas these societies are clearly patriarchal or male dominated. Male dominance arose with agriculture with men gradually leaving the domain of hunting and pushing women out of control in the domain of plant food, although women kept working a lot in agriculture.

But we may not underestimate the indirect power of women if it comes to the ‘outside’ world. In the ‘inside’ world, women have a strong influence on what men do in the ‘outside’ world. As spouses and even more so as mothers they shape the behaviors of men, mostly along the lines of the particular cultures that women and men live in.