The plough was a double-edged sword for human society: economically productive but discriminatory to women

Positive technological advances sometimes lead to negative social change.
Discrimination against women stems from the invention of the plough.
By George ILIEV 

Some 8,000 years ago humans invented the plough. It was the perfect labour-saving device for efficiently bringing fresh nutrients to the surface from the soil layer below. Flipping the two layers not only buried the exhausted top layer of soil, but also covered weeds and the remains of previous crops, helping microorganisms to break down organic matter. Little did the early farmers know that, together with organic matter, this innovation was also breaking down their social structure.

Before the invention of the plough human populations lived in relative gender equality, as both men and women were economically significant contributors to society through their gender-specific occupations: hunting, gathering and primitive land tilling. The idea that women ruled the roost in a matriarchy before the dawn of agriculture has now fallen out of favour with anthropologists and archaeologist, but at least there was equality. However, the plough changed everything, as a 2011 paper by Harvard and UCLA researchers demonstrates (On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough).

Ploughing requires upper body strength and men have a natural advantage in this. Having stronger shoulders not only allows you to exert the pressure needed for efficient ploughing but also helps in maintaining control of the domesticated animals that pull the plough. So men made better ploughmen than women and over time this gave them higher socio-economic status.

We can see vestiges of the plough in modern day gender discrimination around the world: societies that relied heavily on the plough have higher rates of gender inequality.

The plough only has one cutting edge but it became a "double-edged sword" for humanity for several millennia. Should we let the plough continue to influence our world, now that we are moving on to driverless cars and artificial intelligence?

(Picture: Ploughman with Woman Planting Potatoes, by Vincent Van Gogh)