For 500,000 years, the winning strategy has been for human males and females to specialize according to gender roles.

Traditional gender roles, viewed as anachronisms by many today, define the "way of life" that proved to be successful in producing you as the end product of 25,000 successive families winning at the game of life. For a half million years, males evolved and specialized as creatures of the jungle, while females evolved and specialized as creatures of the village. (The key fact driving specialization is that child bearing females are precious and vulnerable while young males are formidable and expendable.) A man's place is to be hunted, and to hunt. A woman's place is in the village. Men create order. Women create the village. This specialization is not merely cultural; it is "wired" into our brains, our emotions, our hormones, and our drives. (Females cannot fake the pervasive effects of high testosterone, and males cannot fake the effects of estrogen and progesterone.) This hardwired gender specialization, which evolved as humans won at the game of life presented by ancestral jungles, is a good thing, because today's urban jungle is just as hostile and dangerous as were the jungles of 500,000 years ago. Humans need villages to survive and thrive just as much today as then.