happypunter: I totally agree with you, also on the dirty jobs men still do - in some countries migrants do these jobs.
The 'provider' role for the males came with early agricultural societies, initially men and women were equal; the whole tribe looked after the young, women made their choices of 'mates' - (which is not to say that some particularly popular male didn't have his female followers) - children and property, which mostly consisted of things absolutely necessary for survival and often hard to replicate on a larger scale belonged to everyone. Life wasn't easy and it wasn't the big game which kept the tribe fed, but the gathering abilities of women and children provided the bulk of the meals - meat came mostly in the form of smaller animals, even grubs and snails. We are only now slowly beginning to realise this, interestingly through dietary research and trying to find out, what it is we really thrive on AND it isn't massive amounts of meat.
At times, it is instructive to watch some programs on NITV about our own Aboriginal people or other simpler, ethnic societies - of course, they are disappearing fast and many have extra resources available through government assistance of a modern State, so are not a true reflection how they may have actually lived in the past.
The truth is, as soon as individual societies developed which began to breed and collect animals and also to begin the larger-scale agriculture a kind of primitive capitalism developed which gave men a chance to collect property which eventually included women and children. The richer you were in terms of animal heads you owned, the more chance you had of having more than one wife and lots of children from them, who also counted as your property.
This kind of development is reflected beautifully in our myths, some of the more exotic ones I'll miss out on, but study of the Greek myths are a must. Our own Bible, of course, reflects a fully patriarchal view of the world.
The Muslim Turks still retain a former female goddess symbol, namely the crescent moon, as one of their symbols and celebrate the moon in one of their festivals - originally the moon was dedicated to a powerful ancient goddess, popular all around the Mediterranean.
Catholics, particularly in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, have managed to endow Mary, Mother of God, with the powers of that former fertility and wisdom goddess and adore her with the same extraordinary fervour they had previously held for her heathen predecessor (processions, pilgrimages).
We are now at the end of that development and we don't know what society is going to look like in the next 100 - 200 years. We are groping our way towards it, the world is full of humanity, so the breeding potential is down-played, the value of each individual is being assessed anew.
Hence we see the little domestic scene-shifting played out in our parliament which probably acts as a lightning conductor on so many levels. Not totally useless, but a morality tale of sorts.
