Something that's been on my mind recently

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I find it hard to understand why, even though gender is determined by only one small thing (a single chromosome of DNA), it carries a lot of weight. In the past and in the present, gender has determined things such as:

- Whether one can vote or not
- Whether one can have an education or not
- Which jobs one can and cannot hold
- How much one is paid for one's work (the gender pay gap)
- What one can and cannot do and get away with
- Who can be in a romantic relationship with who
- What one can wear
- And even what toys a child is "allowed" to play with

All of these rules and laws that are applied to only one gender or the other seem to have driven a wedge between the two genders. It's almost as if they are seen as two different species. One has rights that the other doesn't have and vice versa. Probably the earliest and most known example of this is what resulted in the Suffragette movement. Women were originally not allowed to vote and it was only after they fought long and hard for that right that they were given it. Why were they denied the right to vote in the first place? Why was it that the authorities immediately decided they would never be allowed to vote, all because they were female? Why can't we all just be seen as who we all are: people?

The male role has been "protector".

All these things likely started based on men thinking they were "protecting" women.

You'd have to do a lot of digging to fully flesh out the reasons why things were this way.

To a degree we were habituated, within tribal life, with the hunting and gathering patterns. Also infant mortality was so high for so long, as well as the need to have many children to take care of things as you got older, that there really wasn't much choice than to have as many as possible. Also add that this is the world before sanitary napkins and the like.

While I'm sure there was institutionalized thinking that would clearly ring out as misogyny at the time I also wouldn't doubt that the situation - ie. women not being as involved in public life in the same ways - weren't considered to be as in touch with the political issues. Similarly it's worth remembering that only land-owners voted for a long time so men who didn't own anything were in a similar lot in terms of sufferage.

Perhaps the most important story - human beings, men and women, fighting tooth and nail against oppression by nature and slowly beating the odds. In that relationship, really by luck, men had the more autonomy and hence ended up with an upper-hand in the situation. Also when a group of people gets power over another group they will unfortunately tend to look upon them as second-class citizens, I wish I could say something more heartening on that but we're apes and at that we're barely capable of keeping what we have right now in sync. Bigotry, biases, egotism, all of these things double as both character flaws (if one is in a society that looks down on that) or, in a different context, strengths when it comes to social domination games hence any progress made against our more negative traits tends to be a very two steps forward one step back sort of struggle.

Even though gender is determined by chromosomes, it would be ignorant to ignore the fundamental differences between the genders. In general, women only have 2/3 of the upper body strength of men, men cannot give birth or breastfeed, men have a much higher level of testosterone than women, who have a much higher level of estrogen. Testosterone plays a role in propensities for aggression and dominance whilst estrogen helps with empathy, reading facial expressions and enhanced the coding of emotions.

Historically, society has been more conservative in terms of gender roles, believing that a woman out-stepping hers is basically trying to be a man or vice versa. I guess it was generally thought that men were better at tackling the workforce as their testosterone makes them generally more competitive for dominance, and women were better off staying home and raising kids as their heightened empathy strengthens the bond between mother and child.

In terms of voting, before women could vote, voting was limited to property owners. After that black people were still barred, etc. I guess those in power wanted a constituency of voters whose self-interests would align with theirs.

Women probably weren't given an education based on the fact that back then they didn't consider it necessary for mothers to go through years of education, or they just wanted to keep women out of the loop.

The gender 'pay gap' is actually just an earnings gap, though I do acknowledge that male-dominated workforce tend to have an in-group preference.

In terms of who can be in a relationship with who, the vast majority of people historically and currently have been heterosexual, so anything outside of that was considered abnormal, and people fear what they don't understand.

What one can wear is more cultural. In western culture there are of course certain items intended for men to wear and others for women. Again, it goes back to the idea of people being averse to people acting like the opposite gender because it's abnormal in relation to what we're familiar with and how most people are.

Toys is the same explanation as above. Gender roles largely exist because people are taken aback by feminine men and masculine women.

They gave women the vote only 100 years ago, but in the US they still didn't allow Black men (or women) to vote in the Jim Crow Southern USA.

But a century before they gave women the vote most White men couldn't vote either, because they weren't property owners.

And century before they allowed the small elite who were property owners to vote NO one voted because there was no such thing as democracy, nor elections because society was run feudal lords and hereditary monarchs. Most of our ancestors then were serfs tied to the land owned by lords. Not slaves, but only a cut above slaves. A thousand years before that, in Greco-Roman and Biblical times, most of our ancestors were out and out slaves.

Why ask "why" women were barred from voting? Its only a recent miracle that any commoner can vote.

Anatomy was destiny back then. Men were in charge of the household regardless of the social rank of the household because men served as the warriors because of their greater body strength, and because they didn't die in childbirth the way women do.

I think 'gender roles' all come down to who is left holding the baby biologically speaking.

In humans the woman gives birth and (in the absence of alternative baby milk products) feeds the infant at the beginning of it's life. This biological fact tends to push all different human societies in a particular way which results in the general trend in gender roles.

In the fish world, the male is the one 'left holding the baby' (he has the last reproductive job to do where both sexes are needed.) So male fish tend to have gender roles similar to females in humans. They frequently look after the babies. It's just the way biology pushes on the male and female individuals.

In both fish and people there are exceptions to the general trend and a whole range of different responses. This is especially true now, in human populations, as baby milk is available from sources other than female bodies. Men are able to have a greater role and many do.

My sister always says that women were just stroking the men's ego so they wouldn't have to do the heavy lifting and it went to far.