Tamás Dávid-Barrett’s book titled The Nature of Patriarchy examines how gender norms have developed across different cultures and historical periods worldwide. From the perspective of evolutionary anthropology, the book surveys the emergence and persistence of patriarchal systems, providing fascinating insight into how biological and cultural factors shape our societies. 

“In my research, I realized that inequalities arising from social gender are fundamentally different in nature from other social inequalities. Every culture regulates norms related to women and men differently. For me, it was a very interesting scientific question to explore what factors governed patriarchal systems in various cultures and social eras,” Tamás Dávid-Barrett responded when asked why he was particularly interested in the nature of patriarchy as a researcher. 

In the early 1990s, Tamás, who studied mathematical economics and international relations at Corvinus, was mentored for several years by Vilmos Csányi, an ethologist. According to him, their regular conversations steered him toward the academic career. The university’s then-rector also noticed this promising young man, and thanks to a scholarship, he was able to study economics at Cambridge for two years. Before embarking on an academic career, he led a research consulting firm specializing in developing economies. In the early 2000s, they monitored the state changes of 35 countries and predicted the approaching global economic crisis in 2005, although nobody believed them at the time. 

His interest then shifted toward evolutionary behavioral research because, as he said, “I was curious about what evolutionarily determined factors have often directed, and still direct today, the functioning of various social systems.” 

The long-lasting presence of patriarchal systems across centuries in most cultures can demonstrably be linked, for example, to the protection of family wealth, birth control, and the safeguarding of offspring’s rights. 

During the writing of the book, Tamás Dávid-Barrett said the greatest challenge – and still the source of most criticism – was to write objectively and neutrally about the topic as a middle-class heterosexual man living in the UK. 

“I can’t even count how many times my British editor and I went over every sentence of the book again and again to ensure that the final result was completely apolitical and that we examined the phenomenon of patriarchy solely from a scientific perspective,” Tamás shared during the discussion about the challenges encountered while writing the book. 

The Nature of Patriarchy was published in Hungarian by Open Books.