I believe, after much delving on this issue, that male domination in pre-modern day Western societies was caused _by_ the greater strength and aggressiveness of males.
If you look at early cultural groupings it is easy to find female dominated societies. Earth worship is more and more prevalent the more and more primitive the tribal grouping and the lack of opposing tribes to it. Here is the crunch issue.
Male dominance is virtually totally based on the male superiority at fighting.
I'll explain why I think this.
The earliest cultures were mostly female dominated (ie the Celts in their early period) but population growth changed this, particularily in Europe.
As populations rise you get competition over scarcer and scarcer resources or simply getting the best ones for your tribe. Such competition inevitably leads to conflict which inevitably leads to war (whether this takes the form of raiding or outright fighting, its all part of the same drive).
Once fighting becomes an important part of a tribes survival, they naturaly select those best able to perform such a function. Mostly this is the men. These men soon feel that they are doing all the hard work, going out and killing the enemy. To reinforce their own combat capability they create warrior rituals from initiation rites to tatoos to "tests of manhood" and an elaborate status system soon forms. It is not a big step for these aggressive men to seek dominance in the home and the clan as well as on the battlefield. To reinforce this dominance they create their own gods of war and blood and make the whole act of going out an killing someone else almost a religious experience.
How does this relate to Glorantha? The way I see it, Glorantha makes the RW look soft and lacking in violence. The people are not only constantly fighting but they are being afflicted with chaos gods, hell creatures, foul chaos corruption, magic wrought disasters of immense magnitude (imagine the Closing happening in the RW in 1800!)
Competition is incredibly fierce and the amount of war gods (mostly male) is a prime indicator of this. Only the Red Goddess provides a female rule to any great empire though the face of her rule is male and she takes little part herself.
If women were as strong as men it stands to reason that they would have been involved in the fighting from day one and would have had a similar place in society as the men. Orlanthi society would not be a male warrior culture. Dara Happa would not be a male dominated Empire. Even the Gods would be different and probably sexless in part.
If anyone can present a counter argument to explain how women could be as strong as men and still remain dominated by male warrior cultures, I'd like to hear it! I can't think of one for the life of me.
That is the reason why most NPC women in my Glorantha obey the same statistics as in the RW.
One last point from Msmylie:
>Martin summons the accusatory spirit of Political Correctness (sigh), and I
would >only say that I find it as unnecessary to work the term "snotty bitches"
into a >discussion of Esrolian military tactics as I would the term "sheep
fucking >hill-billies" into a discussion of Orlanthi ones.
Personally I couldn't care less about what terms you use (or anyone else for that matter, I'm a big boy an won't cry at a bit of bad language). I think though you are being a wee bit masogenistic yourself because I think the exact parallel between "Snotty Bitches" is "Arrogant Bastards" for males and I have seen that used several times by various folk and seen no complaints from anyone. I can only presume its okay to slag off men but those poor women out there will just _die_ if they hear a derogatory remark about them. Your parallel wasn't apt anyway. The female version of "sheep-fucking Hillbillies" would be something like "leper-sucking Whores" not something as mild as "Snotty Bitches".
So save your distaste for when I say something _really_ offensive.
Martin Laurie
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