Although Professor Barash has come to this as the result of her research, it is something observant people have always known, and one of the reasons women have tended to be relegated to subordinate roles not simply by the will of men, but of women as well. There are good reasons why both women and men tend as a rule to be more frightened and mistrustful of female superiors—the “female superior” being in all likelihood a competitive woman--than they are of males. There is something to the stereotype of the woman who, once threatened or alienated by competition or anything else, is an implacable enemy forever, while the man who, more abstractly goal- than person-oriented, is able to leave these things behind, or at least re-order them constructively, and get on with business. Despite the obvious risks male bosses pose to female employees they find attractive or male subordinates with whom they compete, it is more likely that both men and women will receive satisfactory treatment from the male superior—a commonplace of the workplace with which feminism is decidedly uncomfortable.
What! Women aren't the source of only pure goodness, and men aren't the cause of all evil?
So what would genuinely neutral observation of those few matriarchal societies that do exist actually reveal?
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