The Root of Female Submissiveness and Servitude

Wives as slaves

Licensed from Adobe Stock

I’ve written quite a bit about the rise of patriarchy about 5K years ago and how that ushered in not just power differentials between men and women but also normalized a stratified and unequal society in other contexts as well. A patriarchy is, in essence, a male-led dominance hierarchy system where men have the power in their families and rich or otherwise powerful men have the power in the broader society — obtained and maintained through domination, coercion, and intimidation of anyone deemed as “weaker,” including weaker men.

While it’s important to understand and discuss the ways that patriarchy is a social hierarchy designed as a Might Makes Right system, and the ways that it impacts all the dynamics of a given culture, I want to focus today on the ways that the institution of marriage in patriarchal cultures is grounded in a history of women as war captives, and very literally as slaves.

Modern-era notions of “good” women as submissive to their husbands, forever self-sacrificing for the well-being of the rest of the family, and having little identity other than that as wives and mothers come directly out of the rise of patriarchy just a few thousand years ago.

Even today, around the world, a large number of girls are married off to older men at a young…