"Without fossil fuels, women have to be mothers and the caretakers of the home and garden. Besides the need to be at home with several children (so that an average of two will live to maturity), there is also the fact that they are not physically as strong as men. Without fossil fuels, physical strength is much more important in the mix of abilities.
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"Without fossil fuels, women have to be mothers and the caretakers of the home and garden. "
I assume that there is no viable life without fossil fuels, given the noted danger of thousands of fuel ponds needing sophisticated, eternal monitoring. So I'm not sure why we even talk about life after collapse.
The doomosphere talks (understandably) about our predicament that, by definition, cannot be resolved. So I've come to think that what we have is not a predicament but a crisis. Some people believe that our reality is governed by thermodynamic forces that led us here unavoidably. I think this is a partial explanation, but that we have the mental ability to see where the flow of energy is misdirecting us, enabling us to change strategy and evolve. I have made godawful mistakes all my life, correcting many with time, and see no reason why the entire species hasn't done the same. The brain we evolved with makes us prone to mistakes and worship of false "gods." But we are creatures of evolution too, and that means getting past dysfunctional behavior. We would have died out long ago, otherwise.
Civilization developed in the face of errors perhaps, attempts to solve problems of shortages perhaps. It functioned like a treadmill, where it had to grow or collapse. The main thing is that it happened, leading to luxury and comfort for many, including relative near-equality for women of the west.
Since civilization also had to be defended, male strength was valued and had to be supported by women's servitude. Since civilization led to escalating complexity, compartmentalization and specialization, it relied on male mental proclivities for compartmentalization and specialization as well. Meanwhile, female brains that were better adapted to synthesis became devalued. Well, as it turns out, compartmentalization and aggression have limited efficacy past a certain point of complexity. And we are at that point. The competitive and divergent model of civilization would be better replaced with a cooperative convergent one. While men might resist such a change, it is by far the best alternative if they wish to survive.
With industrial technology at it's present unimaginable height, there are no tasks that rule out women. It isn't even clear that women need to be reproducing in large numbers in the near future. Overpopulation density is said (correctly of not) to be one of the world's greatest problems.
But the industrial civilization we have now is indispensable for keeping us alive. Simultaneously, it is sure to kill us in a none too distant future. So damned if you do, damned if you don't. I argue that there is a third choice, which is to embrace but change industrial civilization so that it doesn't destroy itself prematurely or needlessly. A major change would be to bring women into the leadership circle. If women, by virtue of history, are a de facto global species, they should be able to effect some degree of change to nation state competition. The arguments against this are based on the norms of patriarchal competition. But you can't rely on norms and have change at the same time.
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