Roles

Societies, both in the past and today, make roles for people that help the society survive. All societies have had distinct roles for men and women. Often many different roles existed for each gender. There is generally very little overlap in roles.

These roles were often disadvantageous to the individual. What feminists have often done is point at the roles provided to women and claim patriarchy, when in reality that was just one piece of a much larger puzzle. In fact the roles assigned to most men in most societies were worse than those assigned to the women. A minority of men received highly desirable roles at the top of society. A much smaller number of women were able to access these top roles also (often through family connections to men in the top roles).

A related concept is the apex fallacy where women look at how the most successful men in society are doing and assume that means that all men are doing better than all women. The truth is very different to that.