While watching Mrs Beatty doing battle with an unruly weed infestation in our front yard, I was reminded of the women I saw working in the rice paddies of rural Thailand.
Rice has been cultivated in Asia for possibly ten thousand years. Its cultivation as a food source during the global warming following the last glacial maxim was the primary reason Asian humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to permanent villages. Cultivation of other cereal grains predicated the same transition on other parts of the planet during the post-glacial period.
Subsistence rice farming is labor intensive, most of it done by women — but not because they are consigned the role by “the patriarchy”. Women are more anatomically suited for that sort of farming than men.
On a MedCAP op in rural Thailand during my tour of duty there in the Air Force (which I wrote about here) one of the physicians, who had an interest in such things, and I were watching the women working in the paddy.
He said, “Notice how long they can remain bent over at the waist. Men can’t do that…” He went on to explain the difference between male and female anatomy which makes that possible.
Aside from sexual organs, and muscle mass, the primary anatomical differences between the genders are height and center of gravity. From the waist up, the average male and female are nearly the same length. If you lay next to a woman you’ll observe that.
The average greater overall height in males results from longer lower limbs, particularly the thighbones. The evolutionary explanation for the difference is the distances males in hunter-gatherer cultures had to walk to locate game, and the need to run the game down (or run from it as the case may be).
Males with longer strides, and stronger thigh muscles (which results in longer femurs) survived. They were the successful hunters, making them more attractive mates to females – thus passing on those genetic traits to their male progeny.
The difference in center of gravity between the genders results from increased male upper body muscle bulk in the chest and shoulders. Again those characteristics evolved from the necessities of hunting.
Because of that upper body mass, the male center of gravity in approximately in the lower rib-cage at the level of the diaphragm. So while both genders are about the same height from the waist up, males have more body mass above the waist. Bending at the waist for males puts more stress on the lower back structure, and quicker fatigue, than it does for females.
The center of gravity in females is at the pelvic hip joint. That evolutionary history is based on two factors — both related to hunter-gatherer culture.
First, while the males were out hunting, the females were gathering nuts, berries, tubers etc, most of which grew close to the ground — requiring bending to collect. The best gatherers were better able to feed their children, who then survived to pass on that genetic trait to their female offspring.
More importantly, however, the lower center of gravity facilitated mobility during pregnancy, especially in the third trimester. For nomadic hunter-gatherer women mobility while pregnant was critical to simple survival.
The lower center of gravity explains why females can remain bent at the waist for the prolonged periods observable in the rice paddies. They are anatomically structured for that activity.
Modern rice-farming women weren’t consigned to the paddies by “the patriarchy” – they were adapted to it by their maternal ancestors.
According to anthropologist Steven Mithen, women were critical in the transition from hunter-gatherer societies, to permanent village culture — due in part their reproductive role.
Settling down to bare, and raise, kids was an attractive alternative to being a nomad. Keeping up with the nomadic tribe while pregnant or lugging a newborn, would get old pretty damn quick.
To a pregnant woman, or one raising children, a permanent residence adjacent to a steady food source provides survival advantages to both her and her children. Agriculture affords that opportunity.
Learning to grow edible cereal grains, rather than always wondering around looking for food, was a significant advantage to women. Since they were also the ones grinding the cereals into consumable form (another task that can be performed while pregnant or caring for an infant), they were able to select the best grains to use for seed. Successful domestication of cereal grains was likely a result of the efforts of women to maintain a reliable food source for their children.
As a result of the ability of women to feed their children without having to be constantly on the move in search of food, males who were willing to abandon nomadic wandering and settle into agricultural-based village life became preferable mates. Given the high rate of single-mother pregnancies nowadays, it appears women were more successful domesticating cereals than domesticating men.
The city of Jericho, in present day Israel, is the oldest continuously occupied human settlement. It dates back to c 9000 BC. It’s location provides a unique combination of climate, soil and consistent water source to facilitate early human agriculture.
With the advent of permanent settlements, the need for rules dictating how people lived together evolved. Some of those rules concerned relations between men, women – and their children.
The earliest discovered ‘laws’ — the Sumerian Code of Lipit-Ishtar written circa 1860 BC — comes from near Jericho. One of the dictates of that code relates to marriage and children. It provides that:
If a man’s wife has not borne him children but a harlot (from) the public square has borne him children, he shall provide grain, oil, and clothing for that harlot; the children which the harlot has borne him shall be his heirs, and as long as his wife lives the harlot shall not live in the house with his wife.
That doesn’t sound like an “oppressive patriarchy”. Sounds more like it binds men to support their children, and the ‘harlot’ who bore them… while making sure that so long as the wife is alive, the “harlot” (as a female law school classmate put it) “ain’t gonna be the new Mrs. livin’ in the big house!”
If a woman didn’t write that law, I’ll bet the man who did had his wife looking over his shoulder.
Concurrent with anatomical evolution, which includes how the female brain is wired, was psychological evolution. Eons of that evolution can’t be undone by a couple of classes in gender studies. What can happen, though, is evidenced by the increasing number of unhappy, childless women who pursued a career path instead.
Psychology Professor Jordan Peterson says the fundamental error, by those who espouse the evils of the patriarchy, is an ignorance of human history. Until only about a hundred-fifty years ago, most men and women had to work successfully together in order just to survive — and feed their kids.
Accordingly, their respective roles in that survival scheme were not imposed on them, but had evolved out of necessity. Millennia of evolution isn’t obliterated by the relatively recent mental wanderings of some academics. All they do is confuse those naive enough to listen to them — which results in the increasing number of unhappy childless women professor Peterson is seeing in his clinical practice.
So when I see Thai women toiling in those rice paddies, some with infants strapped to their backs, I don’t see a sinister ‘patriarchy’ dreamed up in the head of a gender studies faculty. I see the successful result of evolution going back to the dawn of homo sapien existence.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.