The reason there wasn’t equality before is that there’s no equality between people. No two people are the same, and no one is “equal” to any other.

Like other social primates – chimpanzees, gorillas, rhesus macaques – humans organize themselves into hierarchies.

These can be based on age, sex, social status from birth, innate qualities like size, strength, ability to find food, ability to steal it from others, tool-using ability, ability to learn new things, etc.

Between men and women, very obviously we evolved different social roles. Male primates are generally larger and more powerful : this can’t be an accident. They’re competing with each other for access to females. Genetic evidence shows that more females than males contributed to our genetic past: it means many males never make it in the mating game. Others steal the females (beat, kill, rob, rape, sneak, avoid getting killed)

So women and men were never equal.

What I suspect is that we had complementary roles. We moved between them, but by and large, most female humans did some things and most males did others; some crossed over and there was overlap.

Men are better at spatial tasks and math. That’s not sexism: you can see it in the stats. Women are much chattier and have far superior linguistic abilities.

These are innate tendencies. There are good female accountants and very good male writers; but look at fiction: Almost the entire audience is female. The publishing industries of every country know it.

There are great male language experts. But as a rule, there are strong differences (as well as obvious similarities) between the sexes.

So obviously, we were “equal” in a general sense of both being important for humanity. But we were different: we had different roles.

What those roles were probably depended on when and where we were. We’re a very flexible species. No strong men around? Women aren’t useless; some are quite strong. Have to hunt? Some women will be good at it, though not as many as men; still respectable.

Etc.

SO “Equality”:

Remember, nature doesn’t care about “equality”. It doesn’t give a damn.

We evolved to reproduce. Anything else is irrelevant to our biology. Nature never cared about “fair”. It engineered for breeding success – and nothing more.

You want to see what’s not fair, … look into the world of insects. The horrors of parasitic insects will dispel any illusions you have about “fair” or “equal” in nature.

One fly attacks ants – injecting its eggs into the ants. The larva burrows its way through the ant to the head; there, after 2 weeks of the ant appearing to be normal, it causes the ant’s body to fall apart (a chemical) and then eats the contents of the head; it uses the head as a shell, then pops it open after pupating and then goes on to attack other ants.

It only attacks fire ants.

Then there are the parasitic wasps: They paralyze spiders, then lay an egg on it. The spider lives for days or weeks. But it’s eaten alive by the wasp’s larva. It’s gruesome.

There are so many tales of horror, …

In some fish, the male is tiny. It attaches itself to the female, becoming part of her body. It loses its head – literally. It gets absorbed. It provides sperm.

Is it fair?

Whatever. Fair is irrelevant. Equality is irrelevant.

If WE want equality, it’s clear we have to go some distance to defy nature – not that much; we’re not fish.

But we do.

And some things – well, just don’t expect men and women to achieve real absolute equality, ever.

The same way you can’t expect any two people to achieve equality.

Life isn’t about fair.