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I would say they're not mirror images; namely, that 19th century patriarchal paternalism was far more consistent and reciprocal than things are today. Sure, men were the heads of the household with some legal power like owning the property that came into the marriage and being able to enter into contracts, but that came with a corresponding responsibility - husbands had a legal responsibility to support their wives and any children born out of the marriage, and what was considered "necessaries" for a wife (and kids) was dependent on socioeconomic status. So a rich man could not simply leave his wife in rags, feed her gruel and claim she was technically being supported. The courts would not accept this.
The next thing to note is that the husband, along with taking ownership of all of his wife's property, also took responsibility for all of her debts before marriage. Husbands continued to be responsible for all family debts contracted after marriage as well. A wife could also buy necessaries on her husband's credit (this was called the law of agency), and had the ability to act as her husband's agent. This is important because it means all debt contracted on behalf of the family's maintenance (whether made by the husband or the wife) was held to be the husband's debt. And defaulting on the debt meant he could go to jail. In the 18th/19th centuries, the vast majority of imprisoned debtors in England and Wales were men (all estimates of the sex ratios of imprisoned debtors are over 90% male), and it is likely that coverture was a very big reason why.
Now? The male end of the responsibility is still being socially upheld under a veneer of female helplessness and victimisation, and at the same time, women are equally as capable as men and all of that
agitpropdistinctly non-agentic framing that emphasises their need for special protections shouldn't impact your evaluations of their suitability for leadership positions that require one to exercise agency. You don't want to be a misogynist, do you?Yes I agree, I was oversimplifying for sure.
It's interesting to note how since the dawn of settled civilisation, there has been a clear understanding of the reciprocal nature of rights and responsibilities - you can't vote unless you serve in the Athenian army, you can't pursue a career as a Roman magistrate without financing public infrastructure, you can't hold a title of nobility unless you also physically fight on the battlefield when the king summons you to, etc.
Liberalism's lean into universalist perspectives on societies and the nature of civic cohesion completely shattered this extremely meaningful relationship of the individual to the collective - the very last gasp of this traditional understanding of civics might have been JFK's "ask what you can do for your country". Today, one can demand all rights with zero corresponding responsibilities - like the left-wing/communist alliance here in Vienna demanding full voting rights for any adult who lives here - no matter if they are citizens, net contributors to the welfare state, or if they can even speak German. They of course don't remotely understanding how this would be the deathknell of any kind of civic mindset and would rapidly push society into the same tribal ingroupings based on family, clan, ethnicity and faith that have dominated virtually all societies on Earth outside of highly structured civilisations.
The industrial revolution destroyed the specific socioeconomic/sociobiological niche for men and offered no replacement.
It did not do the same for women.
The more automation replaces one gender more than the other, the worse it gets for that gender- if you want to see how that ends, look at how we treat teenaged men, who have been completely replaced in the workforce to the point society considers disenfranchisement a moral imperative.
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There are a lot of reasons for this. One is that most of the West is democratic and therefore there’s a sort of pandering that develops where people prefer leaders who tell them what they want to believe, and what people generally want is liberty from obligations both social and economic, liberty to do whatever they want to regardless of consequences, and someone else to be forced to pick up the tab.
But of course none of that works. A society in which no one has any obligations even to simply not be a drain on society is one that will not last. A society in which every social vice is tolerated is one that will quickly decline due to disease, drugs and associated crimes to pay for those drugs. And thus no one will want to go into the increasingly lawless parts of civilization, or if they do, they go prepared to defend themselves and trust no one until they can retreat into areas where social bonds prevent the social and economic rot they see in the city.
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