> that's gonna need some backup as you're going up against the likes of foucault and nietzsche on this one. Sorry, I don't follow. What needs backing up? That

> that's gonna need some backup as you're going up against the likes of foucault and nietzsche on this one. Sorry, I don't follow. What needs backing up? That men are disproportionally represented at the bottom or that this observation is incompatible with patriarchy theory? Regarding Nietzsche and Foucault, I'm afraid I don't put much stock in philosophy as a discipline. > besides, what happens at the bottom of the hierarchy is a non sequitur here. you can't just claim that power theory is wrong because not all men are at the top. that's an odd stipulation to impose. Agreed, but that's not what I claimed! :) I claimed _patriarchy_ is wrong because _men are disproportionally represented at the bottom_. This is different than "not all men are at the top". Patriarchy predicts a distribution in which men are skewed toward the top and women toward the bottom (as you pointed out, this is compatible with overlap in the distributions); instead we see that the distribution of men is relatively flat compared to that of women (more men at the extremes and fewer in the middle compared to the distribution of women), but no measurable skew. > this is also an odd statement. both men and women are crucial to species survival. They're not _equally_ crucial to _reproduction_. The society with 49 women and 1 man is much more likely to survive than the society with 49 men and 1 woman. The society that prioritizes the safety of its female constituents is the society that survives. This predicts the universally gendered nature of work and distribution of power without needing to invoke collusion. > the power dynamic has disporportionately placed value on "manly" work and less so on "womanly" work Society is a complex beast, but here's my best attempt at explaining the most relevant bits of the system (this mostly applies to any time between the Paleolithic and ~1900, inclusive): A household needs to bring in resources and it needs general maintenance/overhead. The best way to bring in resources tended to be to render services to the community (market). The highest value services were often the riskiest. Because men are less reproductively critical, men specialized in the high-risk, high-value work while women tended to take care of the maintenance/overhead (like caring for the family). The men who were very successful at their risky enterprises rose to the top of society, and the men who were not very successful sank to the bottom. Even though men brought in the resources, they didn't keep them for themselves, but shared them with the family, thereby compensating their wives equally for their work. > what do you think incentivized women to enter the workforce in the first place? There were 2 major catalysts: out-of-home, high-value work began to get significantly safer in the wake of the industrial revolution and two world wars killed off tens of million of men, creating huge economic opportunities for survivors who were disproportionately women.