A History of Masculinity

[RWStanding]

A History of Masculinity
This book by Ivan Jablonka is no doubt a good global history of the subect, and the feminine. It is barely a book of philosophy, since it would appear simply to set female freedom and bondage against each other, with the obvious conclusion that there should be freedom and equality.
In most medieval society there was a perfectly natural and obvious division of labour between the sexes.
As generalities. Women by their nature had care of their infants and with it the household. Men were able to labour in the fields and elsewhere. It is only in recent centuries that technology has so entered the picture that much variation on this natural division is possible. Where the community takes reponsibility for care of older infants in creches, the mother may be released for work in commerce during the day, and at other times share with the husband care of children and the house.
Where society worked in a more communal way, variation on this was possible, but some authoritarian states took this to an extreme.
As ever, today, and into the future, there is a threefold classification of societies, communities, the state. There is not a simple contrast beween freedom and servility.
Nature: There is also a loss of religious prejudices today, and in its place a resort to ‘Nature’ as if it is a value that defines virtue. The natural world is about survivalism, and has no ethics. It is true that there is a wide variation in genetics between people, but that is Nature experimenting naturally with variations for what is most adapted to survive. The fact that there are mid-sex people as a fact of nature is a result. These people need to be treated according to ethical norms. Human beings do not change sex during their life, as some other creatures. The basis of human society and community is the family of male and female nurturing offspring.
Transhumanism and Posthumanism are perversions of ethics.

[Iwannaplato]

Women by their nature had care of their infants and with it the household. Men were able to labour in the fields and elsewhere.

Women were very much involved in agriculture and with the livestock in the MIddle Ages. And as a rule, not as exception. And women also hunted in most tribal groups.

This is not to say there weren't men's and women's roles, but physical labor overlapped much more than your description would indicate.