Cultural transformation theory

The cultural transformation theory was proposed by scholar Riane Eisler that there was once a "partnership model" of civilization which gave way to a "dominator model". This model was based on an equal partnership between males and females in society, as opposed to the dominator model, which is male dominated. Eisler proposes that the original direction in the mainstream of our cultural evolution was toward partnership but that, following a period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there occurred a fundamental shift towards the dominator model. The greater availability of data on Western societies (due to the ethnocentric focus of Western social science) makes it possible to document this shift in more detail through the analysis of Western cultural evolution.