Thanks for that and as bell hooks points out, White supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy are all intertwined, so yes, that is certainly a factor. I write a lot about the social system of patriarchy, which is much larger than just a historic power imbalance between men and women. When patriarchy first widely arose, about 6–9 K years ago, it was the first time that cultures had social stratification, gross wealth disparity, classes, etc. Men having power and primacy over women was only one of those.
Patriarchy is a dominance hierarchy that is maintained through fear, pain, coercion and threat of pain to keep a small number of elites having power over those who are weaker. It’s essentially a feudal system, where those who are the most ruthless rule. From my perspective, the particularly viscous type of capitalism that is widely in play in the US is a function of this sort of dominance hierarchy system.
Below is an excerpt from just one of the 20+ stories I’ve written about the social system of patriarchy. The quote is from an article in New Scientist:
“FOR 5000 years, humans have grown accustomed to living in societies dominated by the privileged few. But it wasn’t always this way. For tens of thousands of years, egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies were widespread. And as a large body of anthropological research shows, long before we organized ourselves into hierarchies of wealth, social status, and power, these groups rigorously enforced norms that prevented any individual or group from acquiring more status, authority, or resources than others.*
Decision-making was decentralized and leadership ad hoc; there weren’t any chiefs. There were sporadic hot-blooded fights between individuals, of course, but there was no organized conflict between groups. Nor were there strong notions of private property and therefore any need for territorial defense. These social norms affected gender roles as well; women were important producers and relatively empowered, and marriages were typically monogamous.” (as distinct from harems or polygyny — socially monogamous does not necessarily equate to sexually monogamous, however)
