The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality

For centuries, societies have treated male domination as a natural characteristic of the human species. From biology to evolutionary theory, from philosophy to religion, countless authoritative voices have told us that men are naturally leaders, protectors, rulers, while women are naturally subordinate, passive, needing protection. But what if we did not assume men have always ruled over women? What if we saw inequality as something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted? In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini explores the roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Published by Beacon Press in February 2023 and quickly becoming a finalist for the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality is not merely a history but a profoundly hopeful argument that reveals the multiplicity of human arrangements, undercuts old grand narratives, and exposes male supremacy as no more (and no less) than an ever-shifting element in systems of control rather than eternal truth.

Angela Saini, born in 1980, is a British science journalist, broadcaster, and author, currently Assistant Professor of Science Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her career has been dedicated to critically examining how science has been used to justify inequality. Her second book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story (2017), explores the history of science’s understanding of sex differences and its impact on women’s lives, named Book of the Year 2017 by Physics World magazine. Her third book, Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019), investigates how racial science is experiencing a modern revival, named one of the top ten books of 2019 by Nature magazine and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She has won numerous honors including the 2009 European Young Science Writer of the Year Award, 2012 Association of British Science Writers Award for Best News Item, and 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science Gold Award. In 2020, she was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine. Saini’s work consistently challenges biases and power structures in science, and The Patriarchs continues this tradition, applying her critical analysis to the origins and history of gender inequality.

The Patriarchs’ core argument is both simple and revolutionary: patriarchy is not natural, eternal, or universal. It has a history, a beginning, which means it can also have an ending. Saini refutes claims frequently made by evolutionary psychologists, biological determinists, and conservative commentators that male dominance is determined by our biology, evolved from hunter-gatherer societies, and is an unchangeable feature of the human condition. Through careful examination of archaeological evidence, anthropological studies, and historical records, she reveals a more complex and surprising story.

Saini begins her investigation with humanity’s earliest known settlements. Archaeological evidence shows that from around 7,000 years ago, there are signs that a small number of powerful men were having more children than other men. This inequality—in reproductive success, resource access, and social power—was not present from the beginning of human history but emerged at a specific point in time. Before this, in approximately 100,000 to 200,000 years of anatomically modern human history, we know little about gender relations, but there is no evidence of systematic male dominance. Early hunter-gatherer societies—the type of society in which we spent most of our evolutionary history—appear to have been relatively egalitarian, with both men and women contributing to survival and power more dispersed.

Around 5,000 years ago, as the earliest states began to expand, gendered codes appeared in parts of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to serve the interests of powerful elites. But this happened slowly, piecemeal, and was always resisted. Saini emphasizes that patriarchy was not a sudden transformation that happened overnight, nor was it a uniform global phenomenon. It developed in different societies at different times in different ways—some places earlier and more intensely, some later and weaker, some not in the same way at all.

Saini traces how patriarchy became entangled with state formation, private property, class stratification, and the rise of warfare. As societies became more stratified, as wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, controlling women—particularly their reproductive capacity and labor—became key to maintaining and transmitting that power. In societies where women left their own families to live with husbands, marriage customs came to be informed by the widespread practice of captive-taking and slavery, eventually shaping laws that alienated women from systems of support and denied them equal rights.

But even within these developments, enormous variation existed. Saini travels around the world—from China to India to the Americas—documenting the diversity in gender and power over thousands of years. She describes matrilineal societies where inheritance passed through the female line; bilineal societies where both men and women held power and authority; and societies where women served as leaders, warriors, merchants, and priests. She shows that many Indigenous and pre-colonial societies understood gender as more fluid and diverse than the binary male/female classification, recognizing third genders, gender non-binary individuals, and flexibility in gender roles.

Colonialism and empire dramatically changed ways of life across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, spreading rigidly patriarchal customs and undermining how people organized their families and work. European colonizers—carrying their own patriarchal ideologies shaped by Christianity, Roman law, and Enlightenment-era “scientific” ideas about gender—imposed their gender norms on colonized peoples. They introduced laws excluding women from property ownership, education, and political participation; they enforced European-style marriage and family structures; they labeled Indigenous gender systems as “primitive” or “immoral” and attempted to eradicate them. This colonial violence had profound and lasting impacts on gender relations, often creating or exacerbating inequalities that were less rigid pre-colonially.

Saini pays particular attention to how British colonial rule in India transformed gender dynamics. Pre-colonial Indian societies were diverse in gender—some were strictly patriarchal, some allowed women greater autonomy and power. But British colonizers introduced laws defining women as subordinate to male relatives; they enforced caste and gender hierarchies to facilitate rule; they imposed European Victorian ideas about femininity and domesticity on Indian society. Ironically, some of India’s most rigid patriarchal practices today—such as widows being unable to remarry or daughters being unable to inherit property—partly stem from colonial laws rather than ancient traditions.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and feminists began actively questioning what patriarchy meant as part of attempts to understand the origins of inequality. But even within these critical inquiries, assumptions and biases persisted. Early anthropologists like Lewis Henry Morgan and Friedrich Engels attempted to establish stage theories of human social evolution—from “primitive” matrilineal societies to “civilized” patriarchal ones. While their intentions were critical (Engels argued patriarchy was linked to private property and class oppression), their frameworks still assumed linear progress with European societies at the apex.

Saini explores how 20th-century feminist theorists worked to understand patriarchy. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) argued that women were constructed as “the Other”—not subjects but objects of the male subject, defined by lack rather than wholeness. Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970) analyzed patriarchy as a political system—a power structure maintaining male dominance through institutions, ideology, and violence. Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) traced the historical development of patriarchy in Mesopotamia, showing how it was linked to state formation and class stratification.

But Saini also points out limitations of these early feminist analyses. They often assumed a single, universal patriarchy, ignoring enormous variation across different societies and historical periods. They often centered Western experience as normative. They sometimes portrayed patriarchy as so overwhelming and ubiquitous that resistance seemed futile. Later feminist scholars—particularly women of color feminists, postcolonial feminists, and intersectional feminists—challenged these assumptions, insisting we must understand how patriarchy intertwines with racism, colonialism, capitalism, and other systems of oppression.

In our own time, despite pushback against sexism, abuse, and discrimination, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini examines the contradictory legacies of 20th-century gender equality movements. In many countries, women won voting rights, property rights, educational opportunities, legal protections. But promises of equality often went unfulfilled. Gender wage gaps persist; women still bear disproportionate unpaid care and domestic labor; sexual violence remains pervasive; women remain underrepresented in political and corporate leadership. More frustratingly, some movements aimed at liberating women ultimately replicated hierarchies they sought to challenge or were defeated by powerful reactionary forces.

Saini explores why change is so difficult. Part of the reason is that patriarchy is not merely a matter of laws or policies; it is deeply embedded in culture, ideology, identity, and everyday practices. It is not just male domination over women but a more complex system involving power, privilege, norms, and expectations in which different people—including some women—have vested interests. Patriarchy is also not static; it adapts and transforms, finding new ways to maintain inequality even as old forms are challenged.

But The Patriarchs is a profoundly hopeful book. Saini insists that patriarchy’s historicity—that it had a beginning, that it developed differently in different places, that it has always been resisted and challenged—means it is not inevitable or immutable. The multiplicity of human arrangements undercuts old grand narratives and exposes male supremacy as no more (and no less) than an ever-shifting element in systems of control.

Saini points to examples of resistance and alternatives. She describes historical women—rulers, warriors, scholars, activists—who refused to accept subordinate status and fought for power and autonomy. She documents societies that created and maintained more equal gender relations. She highlights contemporary feminist movements—from MeToo to reproductive rights movements to trans liberation—continuing to challenge patriarchal norms and structures. She shows that while change is slow and incomplete, it is possible.

Saini also emphasizes the importance of understanding patriarchy’s complex history for effective activism. If we assume male dominance is natural or universal, we easily fall into despair or acceptance. But if we understand it was historically created, is variable, and can be challenged, we can imagine and create different futures. If we recognize different societies have had different gender systems, we can avoid the trap of treating Western experience as the only model and learn from other traditions and practices. If we understand how patriarchy links to colonialism, racism, and capitalism, we can build coalitions fighting all these systems of oppression.

Saini’s approach throughout is rigorous yet accessible. She carefully examines scientific and archaeological evidence, questions methodologies, identifies biases, and avoids over-interpreting sparse or ambiguous data. She brings readers into her sources, her reasoning, and where her uncertainties lie. She avoids bold generalizations, instead offering nuanced, context-based analysis. Her writing is clear and engaging, making complex scholarly debates accessible to general readers.

From a feminist theory perspective, The Patriarchs makes important contributions to understanding gender inequality. It challenges biological determinism and evolutionary psychology that are often used to justify the status quo. It provides a historical materialist analysis of how patriarchy developed, linking it to economic, political, and social structures. It embodies intersectional feminist principles, showing how gender intertwines with race, class, and colonial histories. It is rooted in decolonial methodologies, critiquing how colonialism shaped both our knowledge and practices regarding gender and power.

Saini’s work also resonates with contemporary debates about gender, sexuality, and power. In an era when transgender rights are under attack, reproductive rights are being eroded, and anti-feminist backlash is growing, understanding that patriarchy is not natural but political—not biological but historical—is crucial. It enables us to see current struggles not as isolated but as part of a longer history, that resistance has always been possible, and change is always underway.

For readers everywhere, The Patriarchs offers profound insights on the origins and history of gender inequality with global relevance. While Saini’s examples come from around the world, her analytical framework can be applied to understanding the history of gender relations in any context. Every society has its own complex gender history—from earlier relatively equal societies to later more patriarchal structures, from efforts at gender equality to ongoing challenges. Understanding that these developments are not natural evolution but results of specific historical, economic, and political forces can help us think critically about the present and imagine different futures.

Saini’s emphasis on how colonialism spread and reinforced patriarchal customs is also relevant to postcolonial contexts. While experiences differ across societies colonized by Europe, all have been affected by imperialism, modernization, and global capitalism, which have shaped gender norms and relations. Understanding how these global forces operate can help identify sources of indigenous resistance and alternatives.

The Patriarchs’ celebration of human diversity also offers hope. It reminds us there is no single “traditional” gender system or “natural” way to organize gender roles. History demonstrates enormous variation and creativity. This means we are not bound by the past; we can create new, more just ways of relating across gender.

Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality is a landmark work—simultaneously rigorous academic history and accessible public scholarship. It challenges us to rethink what we think we know about gender, power, and inequality. It provides tools for understanding how patriarchy operates and how to challenge it. For anyone interested in feminism, history, anthropology, or simply the diversity and possibility of human societies, this book is essential reading. It reminds us that patriarchy is not destiny; it is history, and history is always made by people—including those who resist, challenge, and imagine different worlds. As Saini writes: “Understanding where we come from is the first step to imagining where we can go.” This book provides the map for that journey.