The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide

Warfare, terrorism, and their attendant horrors are based on just this sort of inherited predisposition for team aggression which, whatever its origins, has become a horribly costly and counterproductive behavior in the modern world…The original survival advantage enjoyed by individual males with a predisposition for team aggression has long since been replaced by a major, verging on suicidal, disadvantage for our species as a whole…To a very large extent…the natural tendencies of men are not consistent with the survival and well-being of their sexual partners, their children, and future generations to come. [emphasis added]¹

But all is not set in stone. Though we outline the Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome as a self-reinforcing phenomenon, and though 120 of the 176 nations in our dataset encode the Syndrome to a greater or lesser degree, it is also true that 56 other societies have rejected many of the Syndrome’s component parts. In other words, across the world’s countries, there is a true spectrum of greater or lesser expression of the Syndrome.

The enabling factor that catalyzes the Syndrome—sexual dimorphism in upper-body strength enabling physical coercion of almost every woman by almost every man—likely will remain unchanged. This suggests that even in societies in which women have many rights, levels of domestic violence and intimate partner violence may continue to be relatively high. For example, Sweden, which is seen as a bastion of gender equality in the West, has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in Europe.2 Violence against women is endemic in our own country, the United States. Yet by no stretch of the imagination could one claim that either Sweden or the United States is a patrilineal culture today, although fraternal mind-sets may still be present. This suggests there will always be a reservoir from which the Syndrome might well resurge in any society, and that reservoir is violence against women.³ Vigilance, even in Post-Syndrome societies, therefore is warranted.

In this chapter, we focus primarily on those 120 nations in which the Syndrome remains encoded to a greater or lesser degree. When a society has relied for so long on the patrilineal/fraternal order for its security, how can it transition beyond such reliance? We know it is possible to build societies that are not founded on patrilineality for, as noted, 56 nation-states have arguably moved beyond that security provision mechanism. As Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson note,

Patriarchy is not inevitable,…Patriarchy emerged not as a direct mapping of genes onto behavior, but out of the particular strategies that men [and women] invent for achieving their emotional goals. And the strategies are highly flexible, as every different culture shows…People have long known such things intuitively and so have built civilizations with laws and justice, diplomacy and mediation, ideally keeping always a step ahead of the old demonic principles.⁴

Even before the rise of the modern state, rulers faced with the task of uniting a patchwork of clans have tried, some successfully but all too briefly, to overcome the resulting violent instability. Genghis Khan was one such ruler. Plagued by conflicts among the lineages that had sworn loyalty to him, he attempted to develop a new form of fraternal alliance, one based not on blood, but on loyalty to him as a ruler. Anthropologist Jack Weatherford describes how, by assigning warriors into non-kin groups of ten, Genghis Khan created the building blocks to unify men under a non-kin-related organizing principle.

Likewise, near the beginning of the sixth century BCE, Cleisthenes abolished the clans and assigned everyone to ten units of ten to create the Athenian city-state, which is why he is called “the father of Athenian democracy.” Similarly, Muhammad organized his new religion of Islam along a hierarchy of faith and ethical actions rather than kinship, an initiative that the highly tribal Arabs quickly undermined within the next generation.⁶ It is remarkable that even at these early time points in human history, the destabilizing tendencies of male-bonded extended kin groups not only were recognized by leaders but also were the subject of innovative and even radical policy initiatives to offset these tendencies. Given that the culture of these time periods was steeped in the Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome, such efforts lasted only as long as their charismatic leaders did, before relapsing into the status quo ante.

A key question for those who see a linkage between the sexual political order and the societal political order, then, is to suggest how societies manage to more or less permanently cast aside the Syndrome and its shackles. It would appear that stable, secure states are those that have somehow broken the power of agnatic lineages, relying on other sources for the provision of security. Clans can support a state if it is in their interest to do so, as we have seen, but that state will still tend toward instability and insecurity. Furthermore, insecurity can also increase the power of clans, such as in the context of an enemy invasion or endemic economic shortages in which kin network mobilization can be swift. A two-way street of causality exists here, as with most social phenomena, between reliance on male-bonded extended kin networks as a security provision mechanism and instability/insecurity. Nevertheless, breaking the power of the clans is clearly associated with increased levels of security and stability, as our empirical analysis and the historical record show, and thus is to be sought. But how is this done?

Scholars studying clans have traditionally explored pathways that emphasize the rule of law, a more equitable distribution of wealth, a robust market economy that obviates the need for special access networks, and a commitment to affiliation above clan levels, such as that which might be provided by a religious community (e.g., the umma).7 For example, Kathleen Collins suggests that “a growing market economy and dispersed wealth will more likely prevent the centralization of wealth under authoritarian leaders and their clan and patronage networks, thereby transforming clan politics and stabilizing these regimes.”⁸ This analysis, however, begs the questions of how to move from point A to point B. After all, powerful clans in control of the state apparatus will not be able to create the conditions Collins specifies nor are they predisposed to do so. Collins herself admits that “clan politics becomes self-reinforcing; it is a vicious cycle difficult to end.”⁹ Mark Weiner, too, contrasts “status” societies (in which the position in the kin network determines one’s fate) and “contract societies” (in which the individual stands solo under rule of law), and asks the pivotal questions, “How do societies move from Status to Contract? How do peoples governed by the rule of the clan transform into nations guided by the liberal rule of law? How can reformers within clan societies build states that treat individuals as worthy in themselves, as citizens, rather than as members of their kin groups, as cousins?”¹⁰

Weiner considers it a puzzle how “the ‘progressive’ societies of the world had been set on their course from Status to Contract through an internal force,” and wonders whether “an important social choice [had been] made in the ancient past, or a unique accident of history.”¹¹

Our research may be of assistance. Our findings suggest that one important key to this puzzle is the degree of female subordination in marriage through the components of the Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome. As David Jacobson asserts, “The focal point is women’s status and sexuality. We will elicit much through the lens of gender, not just about women as such, but about attitudes towards civic tolerance and governance more broadly.”¹² We agree. It is female subordination at the household level—brought about by such mechanisms as early marriage for girls, prevalent polygyny, patrilocality, patrilineal monopoly of household assets, and endogamy—that reproduces the exclusivity necessary to perpetuate male-bonded extended kin network influence and salience within a society.

If so, might one pathway to diluting the dysfunctional influence of agnatic clans then be to ameliorate female subordination in marriage? Two vastly different historical tales can be told: one hopeful, and one far less hopeful. We start with the hopeful tale first, by highlighting the work of several scholars, including Jack Goody, John Hajnal, Mary Hartman, Francis Fukuyama, and others, who have all examined the successful divergence of northwestern Europe from the Syndrome pattern.

Roman society, within which Christianity emerged during this era, embraced many elements of the Syndrome, including close kin marriage and other practices. But by the time of Pope Gregory at the end of the sixth century CE, a revolution in marriage law took place, in which close kin marriage, levirate marriage of kin widows, forced marriage, polygyny, divorce, concubinage, inheritance by illegitimate children, disinheritance of widows, bans on remarriage of widows, and even adoption all were forbidden in an astounding historical first. These changes had been in the making for some time, but they solidified under Pope Gregory. For example, as far back as 460 CE, Saint Albin was excommunicating those who married cousins, a common practice in countries encoding the Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome. Goody explains the rationale behind this stringent punishment:

Close kinship marriages can be seen as consolidating the wider relationships between kin, especially within kin groups. The church was concerned to weaken these wider ties, whether of clanship or of kinship, lest they threaten its increasing control of the population and its power to acquire bequests from them. Marrying cousins and other kin can do both of these, for it can keep family and property firmly together rather than dispersing ties and goods more widely.¹⁴

Note that the practices being banned in this historical time period are at the heart of Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome: close kin marriage, levirate marriage of kin widows, forced marriage, polygyny, asymmetrical rights to divorce, concubinage, inheritance by illegitimate children, disinheritance of widows, bans on widow remarriage outside the dead husband’s kin group, and adoption were all strategies undertaken to benefit the patriline and agnatic kin above all else. The prohibition of these practices thus constituted stunning changes that proved profoundly significant for Europe’s path. Just consider that by the mid-twelfth century, women no longer had to obtain parental consent to marry.16 The Church was openly attempting to prise marriage away from kin hands; Goody notes that the Church “turned marriage into a private affair, ‘voluntary and not forced.’ The nuclear family was stressed…[which contributed] to the emergence of a Western type of individualism and privatization of social relations parallel to what the Church was advocating.”¹⁷ The prohibition of polygyny may have been especially critical. Potts and Hayden goes so far as to say, “For all the wrong ideas and destructive traditions of medieval Christianity, its theologians did at least outlaw polygamy. And this has had profound and positive effects. Indeed, without the Christian teaching on monogamy, Western civilization might not have emerged in its current form.”¹⁸ Given polygyny’s devastating effects on stability, human capital investment, and economic performance, this was a critical move.

The totality of these changes in northwestern Europe from the sixth to thirteenth centuries went far beyond polygyny, however. As economist Avner Greif notes, “The actions of the church caused the nuclear family—consisting of a husband and wife, children, and sometimes a handful of close relatives—to dominate Europe by the late medieval period. The medieval church instituted marriage laws and practices that undermined kinship groups,” leading to the rise of corporations such as guilds and fraternities to provide the social safety nets “that were alternatives to those provided by kinship groups, enabl[ing] individuals to take risks and make other economic decisions without interference by members of such groups.”¹⁹

Greif highlights the role of such “corporations” in preparing the ground for the rise of democracy in Western Europe (as well as Europe’s global economic ascendancy), in “foster[ing] the beliefs and norms that justify and support self-governance, the rule of law, the legitimacy of majority rule, respect for minority rights, individualism, and trust among non-kin.”²⁰ Weiner concurs, noting, “Among the pagan Anglo-Saxons, as among all stateless peoples, law was inseparable from the customs and the interests of the extended family group of the tribe. Christianity introduced a universal set of norms by which rulers were meant to abide—what today we know as the rule of law [which also] made it possible to imagine a common public.”²¹ We would assert that the prior undermining of kinship structures—and women’s place in those structures—deserves as much or more attention than corporations. After all, the first “non-kin” that men must learn to live and cooperate with in a patrilineal society are typically their wives.

The dynamics of this change must be understood more fully. Goody poses the natural question: “Why should the Christian Church institute a whole set of new patterns of behavior in the sphere of kinship and marriage, when these ran contrary to the customs of the inhabitants they had come to convert, contrary to the Roman heritage upon which they drew, and contrary to the teaching of their sacred texts?”²²

Goody’s answer is that the crux was the disposition of inheritances. The early Church forbade the kin of a widow’s husband from marrying her; forbade adoption of a son or the taking of another wife (through divorce23 or polygyny) in case a first wife produced no male heir; and forbade bastards from inheriting at all. By Goody’s calculations, this would leave up to 40 percent of families in early European society with no immediate male heirs. Why would the Church want that to happen? Goody explains, “If [the Church] inhibited the possibilities of a family retaining its property, then they would also facilitate its alienation…one of the most profound changes that accompanied the introduction of Christianity [into Europe] was the enormous shift of property from private ownership to the hand of the Church.”²⁴ Furthermore, the Church fiercely defended the right of a widow to inherit her husband’s estate—rather than his agnatic kin. Goody comments, “The encouragement of out-marriage in a system that allocated property to women, especially as heiresses, would promote the dispersal of estates and weaken the corporations of kin based upon them…their freedom as testators and controllers of their own property was, like continued widowhood and spinsterhood, clearly in the Church’s interest.”²⁵

In other words, the Church strengthened the hand and voice of women within families by opposing certain elements of marriage and inheritance law that disfavored women in patrilineal societies, undermining patrilineal control of both property and women. Goody notes, “The Church’s insistence on consent and affection, as well as on the freedom of the testament, meant taking a stand against the power of the heads of households in matters of marriage…indeed, against male supremacy, for it asserted the equality of the sexes in concluding the marriage pact.”²⁶ This undercut the power of the old lignages des freres, and Francis Fukuyama suggests that only two to three generations passed before a significant weakening of kinship could be felt in Western Europe after various tribes, such as the Anglo-Saxon, German, Norse, and Magyar tribes, converted to Christianity.²⁷ He notes that Pope Gregory I gave explicit instructions to Augustine about needed changes in marriage and inheritance law before he sent Augustine to convert the pagan king Ethelbert of Britain. Consider that by medieval times, a woman could “inherit and transmit property, as well as bloodlines, and her property could not be stripped from her and taken over by her husband or his kin.”²⁸ For example, when Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced Louis VII of France, she took her territory with her.

Furthermore, Stephanie Coontz notes that old, gendered norms of impunity for men and lack of impunity for women were worn down by women’s property and inheritance rights. So, for example, a husband was more likely to put up with adultery by an heiress wife; after all, if she chose to, say, leave him and join a nunnery, not only might her property leave with her, but the Church would probably not allow the husband to remarry to produce a legitimate heir. Women gained the ability to “checkmate” the ambition of men. Indeed, Coontz notes the “queen” in chess, which originally had been the “vizier” in Persia, the game’s country of origin, was modeled on these powerful medieval European queens.29

Goody opines, “Women became the spearheads in the transformation of domestic structures that Christianity brought about, even if it was the male clerics who in the end benefited most.”³⁰ Remembering that by the mid-twelfth century (except for the elites) in northwestern Europe “women were freed from the necessity of seeking parental consent [in marriage],” Goody concludes that this allowed for greater equality between husband and wife, along with mate choice based on love and not lineage.³¹ This was devastating enough, but from the perspective of the patriline, the Church created even more trouble when it insisted that husband and wife be judged by the same standards, such as with regard to adultery, which meant that complete impunity for men would no longer be automatic. Greater equality, greater access to property by women, greater love, and less male impunity created a truly revolutionary mix, to be sure, and, for all intents and purposes, it was mandated by God!³²

Auxiliary customs, such as the introduction of legal wills overseen by ecclesiastical courts and making the estates of bastards open to confiscation by the Church, were also intended to ensure alienability. As Goody puts it, “It does not seem accidental that the Church appears to have condemned the very practices that would have deprived it of property.”³³ The Church justified this accumulation of land and wealth by its missions to support the poor and the celibate, but it is noteworthy that over time, the Church became the largest landowner in Europe, holding one-third to one-half of the land in various European countries, including England, France, and what we now know as Germany.

What was unique in the case of historical northwestern Europe, then, was the claim of a divine mandate that superseded all earthly mandates, even those of the government and tribe: “The religion [of western Europe] preached a doctrine of universal equality that ran counter to the hierarchy of an honor-based tribal society.”³⁴ No matter that the Church used this doctrine to change marriage and inheritance law out of economic and political self-interest. In empowering women against their agnatic kin, Fukuyama argues that the Church established the rule of law in Europe in the form of a divine law that was “higher than the will of the current government and that limit[ed] the scope of that government’s legislative acts.”³⁵ And, of course, “the growth of the power and legitimacy of European states came to be inseparable from the emergence of the rule of law.”³⁶

In a very real sense, then, as Fukuyama explains, “Individualism in the family is the foundation of all other individualism.”37 Fukuyama extends his analysis to explain why China does not have the rule of law, and why Russia is experiencing democratic reversals: these societies are still organized on the principle of agnatic lineages.³⁸ It also suggests that these “veneered” societies—modern states veneered over a social order based on agnatic lineages—will struggle to maintain economic prosperity. Fukuyama adds, “The absence of a strong rule of law is indeed one of the principal reasons why poor countries can’t achieve higher rates of growth.”³⁹

Demographer John Hajnal suggests that an additional factor that led to such a marked divergence from Syndrome characteristics was the unprecedented rise in the age of marriage of women in medieval Europe.⁴⁰ Indeed, Hajnal asserts that this anomalous late-marriage system “presumably arose only once in human history,”⁴¹ and he suggests that developments in the older Roman law concerning property ownership in the Dark Ages may have catalyzed the anomaly by incentivizing farmers to keep daughters unmarried later than usual in order to claim larger land holdings based on the size of the household.⁴² But once a custom of later marriage among the nonelite arose, a virtuous cycle began that tended to perpetuate the custom and further undercut the various components of the Syndrome.

For example, later marriage for women meant that women and men were age peers in their mid-twenties, and Hajnal notes, “The emotional content of marriage, the relation between the couple and other relatives, the methods of choosing or allocating marriage partners—all this and many other things cannot be the same in a society where a bride is usually a girl of 16 and one in which she is typically a woman of 24.”⁴³ Goody also agrees with Hajnal’s analysis, although again his emphasis is on women’s property rights rather than their age of marriage, asserting that “the fact that women are heirs to significant property affects the whole nature of the conjugal relationship, leading it in a monogamous direction. With this individualizing form of marriage is associated the concept of “love”…[whereas] in polygynous societies, ‘love,’ in the sense of a preference of one above another, is a dangerous thing.”⁴⁴ Goody also paints a relevant contrast between the character of monogamous versus polygynous societies. He quotes Eileen Krige as noting, “Polygyny, reinforced by the segregation of the sexes in everyday life and interests, renders the personal bond between husband and wife much less intimate…Men are unwilling to spend much time in the company of women.”⁴⁵ That means that something quite deep has changed when men and women assume more equal status within marriage, and the first political order begins to be transformed.

Mary Hartman takes the analyses of Hajnal and Goody one step further, suggesting that as the character of male–female relations changed—that is, as the character of marriage changed—the character of the political order, and even the economic order, could not help but change as well.⁴⁶ Goody also sees the logic here: “the late marriage age of women, combined with the necessity of accumulating property for their marriage, may have been a significant factor in both the supply and the demand for goods in the early stage of industrialization in western Europe.”⁴⁷

In this historically unusual context, this older-age-at-marriage, neolocal (and non-polygynous) marital relationship becomes one of significantly mitigated male structural control over women. In speaking of Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jacobson notes,

The Netherlands was not a complete anomaly, either. Fukuyama notes that “Englishwomen had the right to hold and dispose of property freely and sell it to individuals outside the family from a point not long after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Indeed, from at least the thirteenth century, they could not only own land and chattels, they could sue and be sued, and make wills and contracts without permission of a male guardian.”⁴⁹ Historian Charlotte Stanford has also found that women were active in the building trades in England as far back as the time of Henry VIII, becoming respectable and prosperous businesswomen in their own right—and apparently paid on a par with their male compatriots.⁵⁰ Types of employment for these businesswomen included as ironworkers, lime burners, purveyors of wood and other raw materials, and cart and boat haulers.

The development of this pattern and its increasing prevalence indicated that the power of agnatic clans had been mortally weakened. Hartman’s work indicates how, at the household level, this took place:

Notice how pivotal women’s rights in marriage are to that old “unity of kin and property,” for the kin meant here are, of course, male kin. When marriage rights no longer favor men to the degree they once did, that unity—and the economic and political power of the patriline it defines—is seriously diminished. Hartman contends that it was the breaking of this unity of male kin and property that eventually propelled northwestern Europe into capitalism, as the old economy of clan rents was destroyed. Fukuyama concurs: “Capitalism was the consequence rather than the cause of a change in social relationship and custom”⁵² and avers that the rise of neolocal marriage by the thirteenth century made it “harder to carry on blood feuds, because the circle of vengeance kept getting smaller.”⁵³ Economist Avner Greif agrees that capitalism arose only as neolocal marriage increased, noting that “the decline of kinship groups in medieval Europe and…the resulting nuclear family structure, along with other factors, led to corporations. European economic growth…was based on an unprecedented institutional complex of corporations and nuclear families, which still characterizes the West.”⁵⁴ James Foreman-Peck and Peng Zhou highlight the human capital accumulation that could occur over the generations as later marriage became a norm, given that later marriage is strongly associated with a higher level of literacy.⁵⁵ A woman who was literate would become a mother who was capable of greater human capital investment in her children, and this was an indispensable prerequisite of the Industrial Revolution.

Furthermore, neolocal marriage, according to Coontz, offered a template of companionate cooperation across recognized difference:

In cities, as in the countryside, marriage was often a business partnership with far-reaching economic implications…In many areas of northwestern Europe, a merchant’s wife became her husband’s partner in economic activities. She might keep the books for the family business or help out in the shop, act as an agent for her husband in his absence, and carry on her husband’s trade after his death…. The married couple was thus more prominent in Western Europe than in societies where each partner’s first allegiance remained to his or her own kinship group and extended family.⁵⁶

Furthermore, given the Church’s stricture on endogamy, marrying outside the kin group was found both among the nobility and also the lower classes, leading to a more open social group.57 This type of marriage, much less tied to the agnatic kin group, diluted kin group resources available to the neolocal couple, requiring a greater emphasis on savings and capital formation.

But capitalism and economic growth are not the only consequences of undermining the subordination of female interests, especially in marriage. Hartman feels that the development of democracy is also directly traceable to the anomalous late-marriage pattern of northwestern Europe. She argues that state power structures are grounded in household power structures—when the latter changes, the former will, too. Hartman describes how marriages in northwestern Europe gradually evolved as “joint enterprises” between husband and wife, in which both parties had to work and save, and thus postponed marriage until there were sufficient resources. These types of marriages, according to Hartman, encouraged individual self-reliance “long before individualism itself became an abstract social and political ideal.”⁵⁸ This new nature of marriage was to have major ramifications, not just in the social sphere, but also the political sphere:

A sense of equality of rights was further promoted by such arrangements long before notions of egalitarianism became the popular coin of political movements. These later marriages, forged now through consent by the adult principals, offered themselves as implicit models to the sensibilities of political and religious reformers grappling with questions of authority. Experience in families, which were miniature contract societies unique to northwestern Europe, offers a plausible explanation for popular receptivity to the suggestion that the state itself rests upon a prior and breakable contract with all its members. And if this is so, the influence of family organization on the ways people were coming to conceive and shape the world at large can hardly be exaggerated. The lingering mystery about the origins of a movement of equal rights and individual freedom can be explained. Contrary to notions that these were imported items, it appears that they, along with charity, began at home.⁵⁹

In a sense, Hartman argues that the companionate marriages of the system in which husband and wife were age peers, with neolocal marriage and property rights for wives (and no polygyny), were a training ground for participatory democracy, for she asserts that there are critical “links between household and state power structures.”60 Such marriages radically undermined the power of patrilineal clans and thus enhanced the stability and resilience of these societies. To live domestic parity day in and day out, year after year, in the small collective of the household allowed the majority of individuals in society to appreciate the virtues of voluntary association in larger collectives, including the state. As Hartman puts it, “More important than [class and religious divisions] for the appearance of equality as a popular political ideal was the shared domestic governance most people had experienced from the Middle Ages.”⁶¹ The voluntary nature of late marriage (as opposed to child marriage) was critical to this new social ideal of voluntary association. She explains:

That ordinary persons ultimately came to perceive the state itself as an entity whose origins and authority rested upon a voluntary compact—one that might be subject to renegotiation or even termination—begins to make more sense within that framework…. Everywhere a common denominator was the experience of men and women in partnership households that promoted participatory governance and raised new questions about the legitimate bases of authority inside and outside those households.⁶²

In other words, Hartman argues that democracy could not have arrived in northwestern Europe when it did unless the nature of marriage had previously changed and generations of children had been socialized within such households to value participatory government.

Men in northwestern Europe did not start out by applying norms of egalitarian treatment to women, and they would have thought such an idea preposterous or even radical and dangerous. Hartman notes, “Political equality for all, including women, admittedly emerges as a conscious ideal only in the later stages of this new story; but the running theme from the early medieval era is the unpremeditated undercutting of patriarchal power. Men who continued to be the acknowledged senior partner in households were sooner ready to admit formal ideals of equality in their relations with other men than with women, but that is no news.”⁶³

Far more important, Hartman notes, is that “before equality was widely touted in [the] public realm, there was grounding in daily experience to make that abstraction meaningful and to encourage its application to political rhetoric and action. [Furthermore], the children born into these households were raised on their mother’s milk of egalitarianism simply by being socialized in such anomalous families.”⁶⁴ Just as the Syndrome “is not a prior ‘given’ of some sort, but rather a constantly reenacted social process,”⁶⁵ the birth and socialization of a new type of citizen primed for egalitarian beliefs and practices was being continually reenacted in these nonelite households and thus became self-perpetuating.

Hartman’s conclusion is straightforward: “Women’s late ages at marriage were nothing less than a necessary precondition for the most critical developments we associate with the era—major religious upheaval, new systems of political authority, and transformed structures of livelihood…the stronger currents of change in this period continued to flow from households to the wider society rather than from the wider society back to households.”⁶⁶

Indeed, Hartman contends that any society can reap the same rewards if it adopts this different structuring of male–female relationships—there is no “Western genius,” she avers:

The great key, then, to the breaking of the power of agnatic clans in Europe was to break, at least to a significant degree, the power of men to control women’s marriage choices to favor the men’s patrilines. The elimination of polygyny, cousin marriage, and forced marriage, in concert with the increasing age of marriage for women and the diminution of patrilocality, proved to be some of the most effective stratagems used against patrilineal power in historical northwestern Europe. Although the Church certainly precipitated many of these changes, Goody notes that the salutary effects of these Church strategies for women were purely “unintentional,”⁶⁸ but nonetheless highly effective. Fukuyama adds,

The relatively high status of women in western Europe was an accidental by-product of the church’s self-interest. The church made it difficult for a widow to remarry within the family group so she had to own the property herself. And the women’s right to own property spelled the death knell for agnatic lineages by undermining the principle of unilineal descent. These changes had a correspondingly devastating impact on tribal organization throughout western Europe.⁶⁹

Traditional Marriage Pattern	Aberrant Marriage Pattern (arose first among nonelites in northwest Europe)
Gender segregation, seclusion of women	Women not segregated, not secluded; men’s and women’s lives do not look as different as in traditional marriage
Household is main unit of production, and extended kin are main collaborators	Voluntary associations may be main unit of production, and nonkin and wives may be partners
Hierarchical marriage with honor/shame revolving around women’s chastity	Companionate marriage leading to nuclear households
Unity of male kin and land/livestock; cousin marriage to facilitate; little to no property or inheritance rights for women	Breaks link between male kin and land—fortunes are not tied to the land. Women have real property and inheritance rights and are economic agents; no need for cousin marriage
Arranged, universal, patrilocal marriage	Nonarranged, nonuniversal, neolocal marriage
Bride married at puberty (twelve to thirteen years old); grooms in their mid-twenties or even older	Brides married in early to mid-twenties; grooms married in mid-twenties
Female infanticide and neglect; mother–son relationship is the strongest in the family	No female infanticide; mother–daughter relationships blossom
Brideprice/dowry	Reciprocal exchange, usually token, as both brides and grooms bring their own economic assets into the marriage
Eldest son or youngest son stays on the land and serves as parents’ eldercare	Daughters may be default eldercare providers
Domestic violence and double standard of marital fidelity	Lower rates of domestic violence and at least a rhetorical stand against double standards of marital fidelity
Polygyny	No polygyny
High fertility	Lower fertility
Hartman’s Assessment of Effects:	Hartman’s Assessment of Effects:
• Lack of innovation/economically stagnant	• Creative, innovative
• Accustomed to political hierarchy and inegalitarianism	• Embrace egalitarian ideals in all associations, including the form of state governance
• Lack of sense of personal responsibility for men; male impunity, resulting in no real rule of law	• Sense of personal responsibility for men; lower level of male impunity, leading to a more viable rule of law
• Nonmobile (will not leave land or livestock)	• Mobile

With Fukuyama, we believe “change in the family” was the “facilitative condition for modernization to happen in the first place.”70 Thinking of this proposition in terms of our research, a critical marker that such a transition is possible is clearly an improved situation for women in marriage. Where women’s marriage choices are not controlled by men pursuing their agnatic clan’s interests, where women’s rights within marriage begin to parallel those of men’s under the law, and where violence against women by male kin is de-normalized by the state, a tipping point has been reached: patrilineal governance cannot be perpetuated where women enjoy this status. Those with the least power under patrilineal clan governance—women—ironically possess the key to the system’s entire dismantlement.⁷¹ To lift the curse of insecurity and instability on the nation-state, the nation-state must lift the curse on its women.

When patrilineal governance cannot be perpetuated, a new form of governance can arise. Goody describes this change in the European context in this way, “In general, kin networks seem to have shrunk by the end of the Middle Ages. Central governments now looked after law and order, so that wider kin groups like armed factions tended to become things of the past.”⁷² Notice Goody is implying that the security provision mechanism of the society has now permanently shifted away from male-bonded extended kin networks to central governments.

Jacobson expresses the same sentiment:

The idea of a woman imbued with rights, self-determination, and economic freedom is a remarkable global revolution. At base this is a freedom that is expressed through the body…. We are well aware of the war and conflict that have ensued from capitalist and democratic revolutions, but we have yet to comprehend in any coherent or systemic way the ripple effects of the unbinding of the woman through the literal and figurative freeing of her body.⁷³

The freeing of women is nothing less than the freeing of all mankind from the Syndrome and its pernicious effects. To treat the first “Other” as oneself, fully deserving of respect, voice, and bodily integrity, is arguably the key microfoundation of civility and self-government within a society. Jacobson adds that empathy for the situation of women “is shadowed by a growing empathy for humans more broadly.”⁷⁴

The story of historical northwestern Europe instructs us in the most effective strategies to break the reliance on male-bonded extended kin networks as the society’s security provision mechanism. What we understand from the analysis of these scholars is that, first and foremost, if Syndrome-style marriage and inheritance practices remain unchanged, the power of these male-bonded networks will remain—no matter whether phenomena such as female literacy, female labor force participation, female representation in government, and other such indicators of women’s empowerment are all high.

Early social organization in China, India, and the Middle East was based on agnatic lineages; the state was created to overcome the limitations imposed by tribal-level societies. In each case, state builders had to figure out how to make individuals loyal to the state rather than to their local kin group. Institutions based on territory and centralized legal authority had to be layered on top of strongly segmentary societies. In none of these cases did the top-down state-building effort succeed in abolishing kinship as a basis for local social organizations…Europe was very different from these other societies insofar as exit from tribalism was not imposed by rulers from the top down but came about on a social level through rules mandated by the Catholic Church. In Europe alone, state-level institutions did not have to be built on top of tribally organized ones.⁷⁶

The case of Byzantium was mirrored in that of the Soviet Union, which tried to enforce the equality of women in its Central Asian republics by an open attack on the Patrilineal/Fraternal Syndrome in those societies. The Soviets proceeded straightforwardly through outright prohibition of underage marriage, polygyny, and brideprice as well as promulgation of equality in right to divorce and in property rights for women. This was a fascinating social experiment—could the power bases of clans be destroyed by an out-and-out frontal attack by outsiders on the Syndrome mechanisms of female subordination? The Soviets’ purpose in this was clear: as Adrienne Edgar notes, “The campaign to emancipate women was in many ways an extension of the campaign to undermine [clan] kinship structures.”⁷⁷ Rather than centuries of chipping away at the straightjacket of the Syndrome, for the first time in history, a head-on, comprehensive assault on the Syndrome was launched.

The reader will not be surprised to learn that this attempt failed spectacularly, despite Soviet success in increasing levels of women’s education, women’s labor force participation, and women’s political representation. This is important to note: it is perfectly possible to subordinate women at the household level through the Syndrome mechanisms, despite high female education rates, labor force participation, and even parliamentary representation.78 As we have seen, the real action is the struggle over the mechanisms of subordination at the household level, and it is there that resistance will be fiercest.

The result of Soviet efforts to loosen the Syndrome mechanisms was predictable—the efforts met with stiff resistance and were eventually abandoned. Edgar tells us,

Of all the activities of the Soviet regime, measures designed to emancipate women and “modernize” [Central Asian] family life aroused the most passion and controversy. Party officials reported that peasants who were passive throughout the conference proceedings, dozing through discussions of village soviet elections and land reform “came alive exactly as if shot from a cannon as soon as the women question came up.”⁷⁹

Edgar’s recounting of the Soviet attempt to quash brideprice (galling) and underage marriage for girls in Turkmenistan is illustrative. Soviets rightly saw that brideprice was a cause of instability; as Edgar notes, “it prevented poor men from marrying, facilitated polygamy among the rich; and perpetuated child marriage by encouraging poor fathers to ‘sell’ their young daughters for a profit.”⁸⁰ Yet the abolition of brideprice would become the centerpiece of the conflict between Turkmen and the Soviets:⁸¹

Turkmen peasants said bluntly that they regarded bridewealth as compensation for the expense of raising a daughter, who would contribute nothing to her own family’s future growth.

As one peasant in Leninsk province defiantly said[,] “If the authorities want to ban galling, then let them prepare a place for girls [to live], and we’ll send them there from the day of their birth.”

[Another said,] “If we have to give them away without galling, then our wives will kill their daughters at birth.”

[There] were also objections to raising the marriage age for girls to sixteen. As one Turkmen peasant commented, “The authorities want to raise the marriage age for girls to sixteen, but will they give parents the means to support them?”

Poor peasants…saw the marriage of a daughter as an opportunity for a financial windfall. As one ethnographer noted, “Every poor man who has daughters looks on them as a unique source of income.”

[Another peasant said,] “I have not fed my daughter for nothing, and won’t sell her for less than 500 rubles.”

[Party officials were of the same mind, saying] “If we don’t pay bridewealth, all of us party members are condemned to a bachelor’s life. They won’t give a single girl to us. We can’t practice abduction of girls, since that will cause us to lose our authority among the peasant masses.”⁸²

As a result of the backlash, the Soviets reversed their position on galling, acknowledging the payments would simply be made in secret even if the practices were banned. Thus, despite a serious Soviet effort to punish transgressors with prison time and hard labor, brideprice went underground but remained universal even among party members. Births and marriages went unregistered so that underage marriage and polygyny could not be detected, the threat of intermarriage caused some clan groups to flee the USSR entirely, and the uproar over female divorce rights was so extreme that the Soviets backtracked and judges were instructed to turn down requests from women for divorce. Consider the case of Turkmenistan: because only married men had a right by custom to shares of land and water, it was unthinkable for women to have the right to divorce. Edgar quotes the Turkmen saying: “A husband’s death is a wife’s divorce.” By the early 1930s, the Soviets realized that they were alienating the precise constituency—peasant clansmen—whose support they needed for governance, and for the most part, they dropped their efforts to liberate Central Asian women.83 Eurasian expert Gregory Massell reports that local judges in Soviet Central Asia not only would not grant divorces to women, they would not punish perpetrators of domestic violence—or even of honor killings.⁸⁴ (Political scientist Sophia Wilson suggests that legacy has continued in the post-Soviet era.⁸⁵)

Furthermore, the few legal improvements for married women originated by the Soviets that do remain, including the legal ban on polygyny, are now under active assault in several Central Asian states. In her study of post–Soviet era Uzbekistan, Central Asian expert Elizabeth Constantine notes the age of marriage for girls has fallen, enrollment of girls in schools has decreased, and unemployment rates for women have increased.⁸⁶ Indeed, as Edgar writes,

Because the Soviet state was a multiethnic, universalizing socialist state centered in Moscow, female emancipation and nationalism in Central Asia came to be seen as opposed to each other, instead of forming mutually supportive components of modernity. For many Central Asians, as for many colonized Arabs, women and the family became a sphere that needed to be protected from “foreign” interference, while Islamic and customary marriage and family practices came to be valued as crucial components of “national” identity.⁸⁷

Many commentators noticed the swift withdrawal of women from public life just as soon as these nations became independent of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This phenomenon was driven not only by nationalism but also by the disappearance of strong institutions along with the emergence of civil conflict and high unemployment rates. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the ancient security provision mechanism of the Syndrome resurged with a vengeance.⁸⁸

It was not only the Soviet Union that tried a frontal assault on the Syndrome. China under Mao also tried to hit the clans hard. Monica Das Gupta describes the first efforts:

Similar to the Soviet experience, even while noting that legal reforms have been “powerful tools for disseminating new ideas about gender equality…represent[ing] an ideological sea-change,”⁹⁰ Das Gupta also notes that after laws were passed in China giving equal inheritance to women, setting minimum marriage ages for girls, and allowing women to divorce,

These laws met deep-seated and violent resistance in China, and resulted in an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 suicides and murders of women between 1950 and 1953. Widespread peasant opposition threatened social and political instability, and the state backed off from implementing these controversial aspects of the law. Further efforts to protect divorced women’s rights were made in the 1980 New Marriage Law, and the 1985 Inheritance Law sought to counter gender discrimination in inheritance. In reality, land in China is allocated on the basis of village residence, and residence continues with few exceptions to be determined patrilineally. In the allocation of village land, a daughter’s share is deleted on her marriage and a new share is granted for her in her husband’s village.⁹¹

Male-bonded extended kin networks began to make a comeback in China as subsequent Chinese leaders moved back toward household responsibility, rather than communal governance. When the “iron rice bowl,” the name for early China’s job security and social benefits guarantee, disappeared, male-bonded extended kin networks again became salient. Political scientist Jie Fan and coauthors note:

This resurgence predictably encouraged other practices associated with the Syndrome. The one-child policy, for example, was the primary force catalyzing sex-selective abortion and female infanticide after 1978. As business journalist Geoffrey Murray notes,

While the revival of clans began in the early 1980s, they have become larger and much better organized recently. Rural cadres complain that clan activities have siphoned off badly needed funds for agriculture and education. The security departments cited villages in Hunan as having clan units so powerful they had refused to pay taxes or implement family planning measures. At the same time, since only males can join clans, their revival has fuelled families’ desires for male children in rural areas.⁹³

Given the cautionary tales of Byzantium, the Soviet Union, and China, how is it possible that northwestern Europe was able to sustain a different path? States in northwestern Europe became powerful and prosperous in part because the Church laid the groundwork by asserting a supercessionary religious law that unintentionally empowered women, which in turn broke up agnatic allegiances. This is remarkable, because usually, “religion and kinship are closely connected in tribal societies,”94 and as noted earlier in this volume, Katherine Young reminds us that “when a religion has a predominantly ethnic base…any threat to the family is also a fundamental threat to the religion.”⁹⁵ In patrilineal clan societies, “God” typically supports the patriline. In contrast, in historical northwestern Europe, “God” opposed the patriline (although God did not oppose patriarchy⁹⁶). The success of the Catholic Church instructs us that rule of law starts with real property rights for individuals, which begins with real property rights for women—not for their male kin who already hold those rights as part of the patriline. Real property rights for women, in turn, are based on personal status rights for women in marriage, reflected in such indicators as the average age of first marriage for women, the prevalence of patrilocal marriage, inheritance and property rights for women, and the degree to which family law favors male interests.

In 1990, only five nations had abnormal birth sex ratios favoring male births (see chapter 3); by 2015, however, that number had increased to nineteen countries, which included Christian nations (Armenia), Muslim nations (Azerbaijan), and Confucian/Buddhist societies (Vietnam). In the past seventy years, only one country has moved in the opposite direction, that is, from an abnormal birth sex ratio to a normal birth sex ratio: South Korea. Although South Korea is arguably the most Christian nation in East Asia, barring the Philippines, we believe that it was not religion in the first place that ameliorated the abnormal birth sex ratio there. Das Gupta explains, “South Korea sought to maintain an authoritarian government and traditional gender hierarchies for a long time, but these broke down eventually under strong pressure from civil society…modern ideas of individualism, freedom and equality gradually swept away Confucian morality in South Korea.”⁹⁷ In other words, change came from a concerted effort by the government and civil society actors to dismantle the legal framework encoding patrilineality. That effort is worth examining in some detail, drawing on the work of Andrea Den Boer and Valerie Hudson.⁹⁸

By 1990, South Korea’s sex ratio at birth had climbed from a normal ratio just ten years earlier to 116.5 (Korean Statistical Information Service).⁹⁹ By 2007, the birth sex ratio was back down to 106.2, well within the normal range. Recent fertility surveys demonstrate that the respondents’ desired sex ratio for offspring has also shifted from a consistently masculine sex ratio (more than one hundred boys per one hundred girls) before 2003 to a feminine sex ratio of 86 in 2012.¹⁰⁰ One South Korean woman with three sons summed up the volte-face in this manner: “When I tell people I have three sons and no daughter, they say they are sorry for my misfortune…Within a generation, I have turned from the luckiest woman possible to a pitiful mother.”¹⁰¹ Indeed, the change arguably came within less than a generation, despite conventional wisdom suggesting such swift social change would be unlikely. How was South Korea able to be so effective in reverting its birth sex ratio, despite the fact that scholars opine South Korea had one of the highest levels of son preference of any human society? After all, as the demographer Daniel Goodkind stated in 1999, “South Korea is well noted for having the strongest son preference in the world.”¹⁰²

In a nutshell, the South Korean government, especially its courts, attacked patrilineality at its roots, stripping men of privilege in inheritance, control of assets and children, and even ability to create lineage. Indeed, the South Korean government might be viewed as following in the footsteps of the Catholic Church during Middle Ages. The South Korean case echoes the European one in suggesting that interference in the reproduction of agnatic kin exclusivity by improving the legal situation of women in marriage, particularly if not imposed by perceived “outsiders,” has great potential to subvert patrilineality.

Throughout the late 1980s, women’s rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were receiving training and support through sessions sponsored by the International Women’s Rights Action Watch and the United Nations Development Fund for Women, which enabled them to more effectively challenge issues of gender inequality in the state. The women’s rights movement focused its attention on the patrilineal institution of the family register and family law.103 South Korea’s family law revolved around its traditional patrilineal clans and their interests. Women were not considered full members with equal rights in their birth clan, and upon marriage, they were removed from their birth family’s clan register yet were not considered members of their husband’s clan. Furthermore, the husband could determine unilaterally where the married couple would live, ensuring patrilocality could be practiced. In a sense, then, women were “homeless.” As is typical in patrilineal societies, resources were kept fairly strictly within the male line. Early attempts of activists to pressure the government to change family laws were met with extreme opposition—the patriarchal practices of the “head of family” register system called the hoju were designed to strengthen family bonds as well as link families to state rule, thus attempts to revise the law were viewed as an attack on state order and state nationalism.¹⁰⁴

Although women had been granted their first rights of inheritance in 1977, the laws were still fairly unequal in nature. Daughters received only 25 percent of the inheritance that their brothers received, fathers had complete child custody rights in divorce, and division of assets after divorce was highly unequal favoring men. Following state ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1984, global actors supported local NGOs and women’s activists in applying pressure to the government to revise family law.¹⁰⁵ Concluding observations from CEDAW, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Committee overseeing the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Convention all expressed concerns regarding South Korea’s Family Law, urging the state to bring its family law in line with principles of gender equality.¹⁰⁶ In 1989 (and effected beginning in 1991), the first wave of revision to family law began, stemming from lawsuits invoking the Korean Constitution’s provision in Article 36(1) that states, “Marriage and family life shall be entered into and sustained on the basis of individual dignity and equality of the sexes, and the State shall do everything in its power to achieve that goal.”¹⁰⁷

The 1991 revisions brought significant changes: the new law asserted that a married couple’s domicile had to be decided jointly; it provided that the wife’s name would be entered into her husband’s family register and his name could be entered into her family’s register if he so chose; paternal right to child custody was no longer automatic; and the inheritance shares of daughters and sons would be equal. Although the 1991 revisions struck at the taproot of patrilineality, it is also true that it took several years for people, especially in rural areas, to become aware that the law had changed.108 Nevertheless, the government continued to revise family law. In 1998, courts for the first time ruled that a child could acquire South Korean nationality through its maternal line. Previously, only the paternal line could bestow citizenship rights.¹⁰⁹

The most significant changes to the laws upholding patrilineality, however, came at the turn of the century. The Citizens for the Abolition of the Head-of-Family System, an alliance of more than 130 civic groups organized in 2000 by feminist activist Kwang-soon Ko-Eun, campaigned throughout the state to garner support for their demands for revising family law.¹¹⁰ In 2003, the government revised laws permitting women to head households, and the number of female-headed households began to slowly increase.¹¹¹ Interestingly, the majority of married women in a 2003 study, when asked why sons were necessary, replied that sons were needed for psychological satisfaction and family happiness. Only a minority indicated that sons were necessary for maintaining the family line or for retirement or economic reasons.¹¹² These responses suggest that the patrilineal and material benefits previously associated with sons had declined greatly by 2003—a year that corresponded with a drop in the sex ratio at birth to 108.7. For the first time, this decrease was not followed by a subsequent rise, as seen previously, but rather was followed by a continuous decline until the sex ratio reached normal ratios in 2007.

The civic alliance then brought a law suit against the state claiming that the revised family law was still unconstitutional. In 2005, the unfavorable headship system was eliminated, meaning that women are no longer legally subordinate to the male family head.¹¹³ The Constitutional Court in South Korea declared that the hoju system was unconstitutional because it violated the constitutional right to gender equality. In its place would be a new system of family registration, in which every family member would now have his or her own individual record book. In addition, children could use their mother’s surname if both parents agreed, and take the surname of a stepfather even without agreement of the biological father. Children of unmarried mothers would be permitted to have their mother’s surname. Stepchildren and adopted children would now have full legal and inheritance rights. The right to unilaterally dispose of property within marriage was eliminated, and the equal right of both spouses to the marital home was asserted. Additionally, in 2005, the government enacted a Framework Act on Healthy Families, which stipulated that the government would promote an equitable family culture.¹¹⁴

These changes marked the beginning of other legal gains for women that identified a married woman as a distinct, equal, and autonomous individual. Law enforcement related to domestic violence has been enhanced, for example, followed by a decrease in domestic violence-related arrests.115 In 2009, a court ruling found marital rape unconstitutional, establishing a precedent in the absence of explicit criminalization by prosecuting cases.¹¹⁶ A law specifically criminalizing marital rape was later passed in 2013. Although there is room for additional progress, South Korea has continued to march toward the legal protection of women within marriage, severely undercutting patrilineality in the process.

As patrilineality was significantly undermined, so, too, was patrilocal marriage, along with the expectation that one’s sons would provide old-age support. Attitudes toward the responsibilities of sons to provide financial and emotional care for elderly parents have been changing rapidly, as the role traditionally held by sons is replaced by the state and by the elderly. This change has been accompanied by a shift from the multigenerational household to the nuclear household. In 1980, 80 percent of the elderly lived with one of their children, but this number has decreased significantly over the years.¹¹⁷ In 1990, 49.6 percent of those age sixty-five years old and over were living in households with more than three generations, dropping to 30.8 percent in 2000.¹¹⁸ In rural areas, where multigenerational households were once common, a 2012 survey recorded that only 20.9 percent of the elderly population lived with their offspring.¹¹⁹ Of particular importance to this discussion of patrilocality is the fact that the number of parents living with the eldest son has declined dramatically. According to a 2014 nationwide Social Survey, 50.2 percent of elderly parents are now supporting themselves, and only 10.1 percent are supported by the eldest son (compared with 46.3 percent self-support and 22.7 percent eldest son support in 2002).¹²⁰

Urbanization has contributed to rapidly changing attitudes toward caring for elderly parents, both from the perspective of the children and from the parents. As Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta note, the fact that South Korea is now predominantly urban (80 percent) has undermined traditional patrilineal and patrilocal practices.¹²¹ Daughters no longer move to a patrilocal residence after marriage, and they are just as likely as sons to live near their parents and contribute to their economic support, thus weakening the pattern of eldest sons caring for their parents and reducing the gap between the value of daughters and sons. Urban assets are also transferred more easily to both sons and daughters than rural land, which further affects the valuation of daughters. Urban life also makes it possible for the elderly to work longer and save for their retirement through pensions.¹²²

Another interesting factor in the South Korean case is what has not changed in terms of gendered expectations. More specifically, sociologist Sung Yong Lee notes that the marriage cost for a groom’s family is still three times that incurred by the bride’s family, because the groom’s family is supposed to procure housing for the new couple as part of the brideprice.123 This is clearly a legacy of patrilocal marriage, but the patrilineal social structure that made such a large investment rational has crumbled. Indeed, Lee argues that the normalization of South Korea’s sex ratios did not come about because the value of daughters has increased in that nation. Rather, he argues that it is explicitly the value of sons that has decreased so dramatically in the course of a very few years. It is now the case that although parents can no longer expect a son to provide for them in their old age, at the same time, they are currently still required by custom to expend much more money to ensure a son’s place in life.¹²⁴

What the South Korean government accomplished, then, was not only the elevation of the status of daughters but also a lowering of the value and privilege assigned to sons. By eliminating all male privilege in inheritance, in lineage formation, and in control of assets—and enforcing this elimination in a nation that is increasingly urban and therefore not as dependent on land—the value of sons has decreased. Furthermore, due to one of the sole remaining legacies of patrilocality (i.e., the patrilineal custom that the groom’s family is responsible for finding housing for a new couple), it is now sons and not daughters who are the children upon whom parents lose their money. Furthermore, because daughters and sons now inherit equally, sons are no longer expected to provide for parents in old age to a greater degree than daughters. Many sons now walk away from the intergenerational contract their parents had been counting on. The South Korean government’s provision of old age insurance, even though still somewhat unreliable, has lessened reliance on patrilineal groups for individual security.

We stress that these changes in patrilineal laws and practices could not have been accomplished without the pressure applied by civil society actors in South Korea—women’s groups, for example, were instrumental in bringing about changes in discriminatory family laws and practices in the state. Their efforts were supported by pressure applied from the international women’s rights regime, particularly CEDAW. Urbanization played an important role as well—the reduced focus on rural land assets and the shift from multigenerational to nuclear households facilitated by urban living have both further diminished the importance of patrilineal practices. South Korea is also smaller, both in territory and population, than other countries we have examined in this chapter, such as China, perhaps making policy change easier to disseminate and enforce.

What appears more important in creating a more stable and resilient political and economic order is the structure of marriage, with its accompanying property rights. For example, what the Catholic Church did starting in the seventh century by asserting its authority to declare what was a legitimate marriage and what was not, Goody argues, was to reduce the “molecule of kinship to its constituent atoms, the individual, whose consent—to marriage, to alienation, and to many other activities—could not be challenged by recalcitrant or powerful relatives.”125 For the first time, a woman could be such an individual in marriage. The same could be said about developments in South Korea almost thirteen hundred years later. The consequences for the patrilineal clans were devastating—and the consequences for political and economic order, not to mention the situation of women, were salutary.

Elder provision schemes, such as pensions, are extremely important in the equation of change, but, of course, these are derivative of women’s property rights in marriage. In cases in which women are “disinherited” through lack of property rights, the state will not feel it necessary to offer old age insurance schemes, and care of the elderly will predictably devolve to sons, fueling son preference and restarting patrilineality and its attendant lamentable effects on society. The South Korean case shows how women’s property rights plus social insurance can turn that situation around. As Avraham Ebenstein notes about South Korea, “the data available implicate the large scale social insurance program in South Korea [as having] led to a normalization of the sex ratio at birth. As predicted, the groups targeted in the pension expansion experienced a large decline in the sex ratio at birth…the ‘missing girls’ phenomenon can be properly framed as a problem of missing social insurance.”¹²⁶ Provide the insurance and the property rights, and the girls no longer go missing.

The final chapter of the book, to which we now turn, takes up Kemper’s challenge. What is necessary in post-Syndrome countries (Syndrome scale points 0–5) to prevent regression? How can progress already underway in Transition countries (scale points 6–9) be shored up and further encouraged? And, most difficult to contemplate, how can change in Syndrome-encoding countries (scale points 10–16) be catalyzed?