I think that part of the issue is that people are sometimes mistaking a comparative claim for an absolute claim. Researchers claiming that hunter-gatherer societies had better gender relations than early agricultural ones aren’t thereby claiming that hunter-gatherer societies are anywhere near equal—just less unequal than the agricultural societies that followed them.
Searching a bit (using “origin of patriarchy” as the search term) I found two relevant books that seem to be the sources of a lot of claims: The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner, from 1986; The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, by Marija Gimbutaš, 1991. These seem to both often be described as stating that there was once an equal society, and a later society imposed patriarchy on it some time around 5000 years ago. But the former seems to be more specifically claiming that early Mesopotamian civilization was less unequal than later Mesopotamian civilization, and the latter seems to be more specifically claiming that the Neolithic agricultural inhabitants of Europe had a matrilocal goddess-oriented society that was disrupted by the patrilocal god-oriented nomadic society of the Indo-Europeans that gave rise to the later societies. Neither one of them particularly supports the claim that hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian and agricultural societies are patriarchal (the latter even seems to reverse this!) But both do give some evidence for the claim that might be more plausible, that there was a period shortly before recorded history in which gender relations were not as bad as they became by the early period of recorded history.
If true, this would be one more way in which one might expect pre-agricultural life to have been substantially worse than the present, but also better than much of agricultural history.
25 of 33 societies appear to have no possibility for female leaders. [76%]
19 of 33 societies appear to have limited or no female voice in intraband affairs. [58%]
Out of curiosity, I wanted to check how many current societies (countries) have female leaders. This wikipedia page lists 26, and there are ~195 countries total, which gives us 13%.
To weigh by population and rule out ceremonial positions, I compiled some data in this Google Sheet, which gets us that 5.44% of the world population has a female leader.
To be clear, I don’t consider this a particularly strong counterpoint. You do go on to mention that even the societies with female leaders had serious gender inequality. Also, many of the countries I’ve listed have had female leaders in the past, or have laws allowing female leaders, so it’s not as if they have “no possibility” as may have been the case in the past.
But if I were writing the article “post-agricultural gender relations seem bad”, I might say something like “169 out of 195 societies have no female leaders” and “19 out of 20 people don’t have a female leader”, and it would sound quite bad for the modern world.
I thought this was a helpful corrective to a largely unchecked popular narrative.
It seems to me that there is a fair amount of interest in stretching thin evidence to argue that pre-agriculture societies had strong gender equality. This might be partly be coming from a fear that if people think gender inequality is “ancient” or “natural,” they might conclude that it is also “good” and not to be changed.
That’s part of it, but I think the stronger reason is something like “there were female leaders in the past, therefore today’s gender inequality is the result of social norms”.
EDIT: Also FWIW, the Wikipedia page for Sexism does note under Ancient world:
Evidence, however, is lacking to support the idea that many pre-agricultural societies afforded women a higher status than women today.
From the abstract: “Ethnohistorical and nutritional evidence shows that edible plants and small animals, most often gathered by women, represent an abundant and accessible source of “brain foods.” This is in contrast to the “man the hunter” hypothesis where big-game hunting and meat-eating are seen as prime movers in the development of biological and behavioral traits that distinguish humans from other primates.” I am not familiar with that form of the “man the hunter” hypothesis; what I’ve seen elsewhere implies that men dominate big-game hunting and that big game is often associated with prestige, regardless of whatever nutritional value it does or doesn’t have.
I’m pretty sure “man” here means “human”, not “male”; and they’re referring to the idea that human intelligence evolved primarily for hunting purposes as part of a “get smarter > hunt better > get nutrition from meat to support brain > get smarter still” feedback loop. [This doesn’t have much direct implication regarding equality.]
The third piece in this series is Pre-agriculture gender relations seem bad. I suggest that any comments on it go in this thread.
I think that part of the issue is that people are sometimes mistaking a comparative claim for an absolute claim. Researchers claiming that hunter-gatherer societies had better gender relations than early agricultural ones aren’t thereby claiming that hunter-gatherer societies are anywhere near equal—just less unequal than the agricultural societies that followed them.
Searching a bit (using “origin of patriarchy” as the search term) I found two relevant books that seem to be the sources of a lot of claims: The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner, from 1986; The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, by Marija Gimbutaš, 1991. These seem to both often be described as stating that there was once an equal society, and a later society imposed patriarchy on it some time around 5000 years ago. But the former seems to be more specifically claiming that early Mesopotamian civilization was less unequal than later Mesopotamian civilization, and the latter seems to be more specifically claiming that the Neolithic agricultural inhabitants of Europe had a matrilocal goddess-oriented society that was disrupted by the patrilocal god-oriented nomadic society of the Indo-Europeans that gave rise to the later societies. Neither one of them particularly supports the claim that hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian and agricultural societies are patriarchal (the latter even seems to reverse this!) But both do give some evidence for the claim that might be more plausible, that there was a period shortly before recorded history in which gender relations were not as bad as they became by the early period of recorded history.
If true, this would be one more way in which one might expect pre-agricultural life to have been substantially worse than the present, but also better than much of agricultural history.
You write:
Out of curiosity, I wanted to check how many current societies (countries) have female leaders. This wikipedia page lists 26, and there are ~195 countries total, which gives us 13%.
To weigh by population and rule out ceremonial positions, I compiled some data in this Google Sheet, which gets us that 5.44% of the world population has a female leader.
To be clear, I don’t consider this a particularly strong counterpoint. You do go on to mention that even the societies with female leaders had serious gender inequality. Also, many of the countries I’ve listed have had female leaders in the past, or have laws allowing female leaders, so it’s not as if they have “no possibility” as may have been the case in the past.
But if I were writing the article “post-agricultural gender relations seem bad”, I might say something like “169 out of 195 societies have no female leaders” and “19 out of 20 people don’t have a female leader”, and it would sound quite bad for the modern world.
I thought this was a helpful corrective to a largely unchecked popular narrative.
That’s part of it, but I think the stronger reason is something like “there were female leaders in the past, therefore today’s gender inequality is the result of social norms”.
EDIT: Also FWIW, the Wikipedia page for Sexism does note under Ancient world:
I’m pretty sure “man” here means “human”, not “male”; and they’re referring to the idea that human intelligence evolved primarily for hunting purposes as part of a “get smarter > hunt better > get nutrition from meat to support brain > get smarter still” feedback loop. [This doesn’t have much direct implication regarding equality.]