Do you think a Xianxia setting would be unlikely to develop a patriarchy?

[Ibrinar]

Not sure whether enough here have read xianxia to generate many opinions but we will see. For those that do not know the genre it is mystical martial arts super powers taken to the 11th degree. In it people are "cultivating" that mean they improve their bodies and souls using ki and if you are good at it you become increasingly stronger (up to ridiculous living nuke heights) and also increase your lifespan from centuries up to immortality (some might also ascend and become gods). In some settings everyone cultivates at least a little though only the talented can reach the high levels, in other not everyone can even start. Often serious cultivators congregate in big sects that might not directly rule people, but usually people with political power are cultivators although they might not measure up to the sects.

Now why do I think that matter to whether there is a patriarchy? (Assuming that cultivation ability is not gendered.)
1. I would expect cultivators as the most powerful to have an huge influence on culture. Among cultivators two differences between genders become insignificant. First a difference in average upper body strength matter little when a young teen in the first cultivation realm is probably stronger than an adult man without cultivation. And if you live multiple centuries or millennia the fraction of her life a woman spents in the later phases of a pregnancy becomes small (unless each ancient cultivator lady accumulates children by the dozen) (caveat with how eggs work an cultivator lady might be unable to have children after the same age a mortal woman would, though I think in most settings that isn't the case, which would mean they are either pregnant during their early years (which is where you have the most time pressure in cultivation) or never have heirs which could create a weird dynamic), making differences less significant should make a gender based domination less likely I think.

In settings with non cultivators that doesn't apply to them but they also lack in social power so I could see for many things to trickle down from the superhuman part of the population.

2.While for the early stages having resources is important, for reaching real heights talent (and determination and stuff) is what matters. If you don't already have a society that alters the starting conditions for one group you should get about the same amount of high tier male and female cultivators. Higher realm cultivators can usually defeat multiple opponents one realm lower and if the difference is larger than one realm... Having a high realm comes with social influence, sect leaders usually are also the strongest in the sect. An even split between man and woman in the highest position should make it harder for one gender to accumulate the majority of the power.

2b. That you and other might live for millennia and that you can't be quite sure who reaches a bottleneck one changes some things. For one you don't know who will be stronger than you in a few centuries and hold a grudge but there are also other changes like: If you don't know which of your children will be the powerhouse in your family you would probably be more reluctant to use them as currency for political marriage (and if you do, I suspect if the clans are of similar power then the family with the currently stronger child would insist on the weaker child coming to them instead of it being in general that the bride goes to the husbands family.)



Yeah a pretty pointless topic, but I was just thinking about it and thought I might at well post about it.

[Psyren]

In general, high-magic settings tend towards magocracy. That would probably only divide along gender lines if the magic (or at least, the people in the setting's understanding of how to access/use it) does.

[Tvtyrant]

Not sure whether enough here have read xianxia to generate many opinions but we will see. For those that do not know the genre it is mystical martial arts super powers taken to the 11th degree. In it people are "cultivating" that mean they improve their bodies and souls using ki and if you are good at it you become increasingly stronger (up to ridiculous living nuke heights) and also increase your lifespan from centuries up to immortality (some might also ascend and become gods). In some settings everyone cultivates at least a little though only the talented can reach the high levels, in other not everyone can even start. Often serious cultivators congregate in big sects that might not directly rule people, but usually people with political power are cultivators although they might not measure up to the sects.

Now why do I think that matter to whether there is a patriarchy? (Assuming that cultivation ability is not gendered.)
1. I would expect cultivators as the most powerful to have an huge influence on culture. Among cultivators two differences between genders become insignificant. First a difference in average upper body strength matter little when a young teen in the first cultivation realm is probably stronger than an adult man without cultivation. And if you live multiple centuries or millennia the fraction of her life a woman spents in the later phases of a pregnancy becomes small (unless each ancient cultivator lady accumulates children by the dozen) (caveat with how eggs work an cultivator lady might be unable to have children after the same age a mortal woman would, though I think in most settings that isn't the case, which would mean they are either pregnant during their early years (which is where you have the most time pressure in cultivation) or never have heirs which could create a weird dynamic), making differences less significant should make a gender based domination less likely I think.

In settings with non cultivators that doesn't apply to them but they also lack in social power so I could see for many things to trickle down from the superhuman part of the population.

2.While for the early stages having resources is important, for reaching real heights talent (and determination and stuff) is what matters. If you don't already have a society that alters the starting conditions for one group you should get about the same amount of high tier male and female cultivators. Higher realm cultivators can usually defeat multiple opponents one realm lower and if the difference is larger than one realm... Having a high realm comes with social influence, sect leaders usually are also the strongest in the sect. An even split between man and woman in the highest position should make it harder for one gender to accumulate the majority of the power.

2b. That you and other might live for millennia and that you can't be quite sure who reaches a bottleneck one changes some things. For one you don't know who will be stronger than you in a few centuries and hold a grudge but there are also other changes like: If you don't know which of your children will be the powerhouse in your family you would probably be more reluctant to use them as currency for political marriage (and if you do, I suspect if the clans are of similar power then the family with the currently stronger child would insist on the weaker child coming to them instead of it being in general that the bride goes to the husbands family.)



Yeah a pretty pointless topic, but I was just thinking about it and thought I might at well post about it.

Depends on lots of stuff. How is cultivation ability passed on? Is it genetic? How many children can a cultivator have?

I think in general it breaks down to "traditional ninja/martial arts schools but with men and women on top." You have far less women as practitioners, if there is a scene with mooks to get slaughtered they tend to all be men while characters can be more evenly split (see Veritas, Breaker, Naruto, Bleach as examples.) Any faceless characters default to men.

[warty goblin]

It depends substantially on how the power increases work. If, say, every cultivation level squares your existing strength (and comes with sufficient reinforcement of the practitioner's body so they don't punch their arm off), then the strength advantage that comes with male biochemistry is enormously important. Sure a first level woman will outclass level 0 men, but she will be at even more of a disadvantage against a level 1 man than a level 0 woman is, on average, against a level 0 man. And the situation only gets worse from there. One would expect this sort of society to look like Homeric Greece; with an extreme Pareto distribution of power favoring high level men to an absurd degree.

If the increase in power is constant in your starting strength (say just quadratic in level), then male strength advantage quickly becomes irrelevant. This culture looks like a gender neutral Homeric Greece, at least at the high end. So you're just as likely to be obliterated by an unstoppable God queen as an unstoppable God king. Progress!

[InvisibleBison]

Which came first, the society or the cultivation techniques? If the society developed in the absence of cultivation, and then people figured out how to do cultivation, I'd expect a great deal of pre-cultivation gender roles to continue long after they'd stopped mattering.

[Friv]

The answer to this is likely to be based on the degree to which cultivators are able to fight armies, and the number of them who are able to develop powers.

As a rule of thumb (i.e. not a perfect rule but a decent guideline), patriarchy tends to develop hand in hand with empire. Patriarchy encourages women to focus on child-rearing and childcare, and then sends excess men out to fight and conquer, gathering wealth to fuel the next generation. This development tends to happen because empires grow faster with more soldiers, you get more soldiers if you have a lot of kids, and the period during which you get the most kids out of a person is also the period during which you get the best physical prowess.

Empires tend to overwhelm communities that aren't focusing on an imperial model, because they have far more bodies to throw at situations and get their wealth mainly by beating up other people. As a result, communities near empires tend to start imitating imperial models as their only method of survival, which then spreads the system farther.

So, if you want to try to culturally figure out whether a patriarchy is likely to develop, you end up with four big questions.

Question #1 - Can a woman develop her ki at the same time that she is having children, or does pregnancy and having child-care forced on them by the system delay their power? If you're well into your cultivation by the teenage years, or if there's no discrepancy (or even more, if having cultivation makes you have the same number of kids but be more likely to survive) you'll see a lot of older women with earth-shaking power.

Question #2 - How common is the talent? Can most people learn some cool ki powers, or are only one in a thousand able to manifest more than the most basic capabilities? What's the likelihood of the average person having met a cultivator? Ten cultivators? The more common the ability is overall, the more it changes the world. If it is quite rare, most people will assume it is not in play in any given situation. Which leads to...

Question #3 - Is the value of having twice as many cultivators equal to or greater than the value of having substantially more soldiers? If your nation only produces half the soldiers, but has twice as many great heroes, can they withstand a horde of Romans coming over the borders? If cultivators are able to hold off enough soldiers, societies with equitable gender balance are more likely to survive fights against societies who are pumping out disposable bodies. If they can't, you're more likely to end up with smaller numbers of them making a big difference on a low level, which will mean that while the cultivators themselves may be gender-balanced, their society will remain patriarchal.

Question #4 - How easy is it to become a cultivator, provided that you have the talent to begin with? Do you need to have time and resources to train, to find a mentor willing to train you, or do you only really need focus and determination? Is it easy to disrupt your training when you are young? If it's easy to self-train, you'll see more cultivators arise from marginalized groups in general, including women, which in turn will increase their share of political power and adjust the system. If it's relatively easy to cut people off from that training, entrenched power blocs are likely to do so, leading to physical power coalescing in the same way that other forms of power do; fewer peasants with ki power, women discouraged from training because of prejudice, etc.

Those four dials are going to produce very different results in terms of what a setting might look like. If ki users are rare, capable of holding off squads of soldiers but not solo'ing armies, and need years of dedicated training that interrupts the rest of their lives, you probably won't see a big change in society. If they're more common, more powerful, and more able to access that power, you will see bigger changes.

[GloatingSwine]

It depends substantially on how the power increases work. If, say, every cultivation level squares your existing strength (and comes with sufficient reinforcement of the practitioner's body so they don't punch their arm off), then the strength advantage that comes with male biochemistry is enormously important. Sure a first level woman will outclass level 0 men, but she will be at even more of a disadvantage against a level 1 man than a level 0 woman is, on average, against a level 0 man. And the situation only gets worse from there. One would expect this sort of society to look like Homeric Greece; with an extreme Pareto distribution of power favoring high level men to an absurd degree.

You're maybe thinking of the wrong kind of strength. Spiritual strength is more important here than physical strength, to the point that the physical actions of the body are just a conduit for the qi to enact the actual effect, the strength of the muscles performing the action have no impact on the effect at all.

The actual effect might start out at "punch a dude across a room" and end up at "destroy and recreate the universe", depending on the spiritual development of the one doing it.

The root of xianxia "cultivation" is qigong, which is rooted in meditative exercise and traditional medicine.

Think Exalted but no level cap and no resource limits on charms.

[Ibrinar]

Which came first, the society or the cultivation techniques? If the society developed in the absence of cultivation, and then people figured out how to do cultivation, I'd expect a great deal of pre-cultivation gender roles to continue long after they'd stopped mattering.

Ah yeah thought about saying something about that but forgot. Problem is, who knows? I mean you can often be certain it is at least millennia old because millenia old cultivators are a dime a dozen and xianxia loves big numbers so far older things might be mentioned (like I just google popular xianxia, then a glossary and picked some powerful sounding name and the dude was 100000+ years old) but it is not like they usually mention a beginning.

But I would assume it is older than agriculture, fixed settlements without cultivators would probably be a death sentence. I forgot to mention but there are usually also cultivating animals (and plants) so cultivation less humans probably would have to hide a lot. (I guess there might have always been some form of cultivation, their animal ancestors might might have been "demon/spirit beasts" and the change to the human way might have been gradual.)

Anyway my assumption is early enough in the development and long enough ago that what came before doesn't matter anymore.

[warty goblin]

One of the more interesting places you could go with this is changing the power balance between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists.

Usually agricultural peoples (often violently) supplant hunter-gatherers, since they can support a much higher population density. Most of these people are subsistence farmers, an occupation that leaves one with very little time for anything else, such as intense spiritual training.

Hunting and gathering however generally leaves a lot more leisure time for spiritual cultivation. Since the major determinant of power is not how many dudes with spears you can round up, but how many ascended death gods a group has, this could really put centralized urban agricultural tribes on the back foot. So long as the entire adult tribe is more cultivated than the aristocracy of the, um, actual cultivators, they can thoroughly kick the tail of the urbanized elite. And since hunting and gathering is generally a better deal for the peasants than being peasants, the assorted priests and kings may not even enjoy much popular support.

Which would be a radically different world than you normally see in fantasy.

[endoperez]

I've been reading cultivation and xianxia novels for quite a while now, and this is an issue I've given quite a bit of thought already.

1) First and foremost, they're grown out of Chinese action stories and folk lore, which were based on historical Chinese society. It comes with baggage. It's like the Wild West stuff that comes with its own set of norms on what's acceptable and what's not, and what heroes are allowed to do. Similarly, Asian stories are built on fictionalized versions of Asian societies from various historical periods. Breaking from the tradition would be a big twist and subversion.

2) They're written for a real-world audience as cheap entertainment. Challenging traditional power and gender norms is too heavy of a topic. There is no valid in-world reason for men to always assume women are weaker then them, or for these men to be right in their assumptions in basically all the stories almost all the time, and there is no valid in-world reason that the protagonist always happens to arrive in the midst of this situation just in time to save these women. They are stories about a young hero being able to beat up arrogant scions born to wealth and riches who abuse their power, and the world is written to accommodate that. Thus, there are lots of beautiful young women (and sometimes some cute little kids or magical beast puppies) for the protagonist to save.

3) It seriously sucks that there's so little variation in this stuff, because there are so many more interesting stories that could be told with the same settings and rules.

In-universe, the world and its gender norms would absolutely have to be very different. I'd love to read a story like that, but I don't know of any. I guess I'm waiting for the expatriate Chinese communities and for web novel enthusiasts influenced by xianxia settings to start telling new, original stories that combine the setting with Western ideas and rebel against the traditional norms. Some sort of cultivation punk renaissance, I guess.


EDIT:
Also, regarding Warty Goblin's thoughts on hunter-gatherer tribes. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there is Chronicles of Primordial Wars, which is basically cultivators as hunter-gatherers, where every important member of the tribe is a cultivator. There are lots of nuances there - the priests gather the tribe's power and help the cultivator-warriors manifest the power into totems. The well-being of the whole tribe brings the priests and the warriors more spiritual mojo.

[Tyndmyr]

In general, high-magic settings tend towards magocracy. That would probably only divide along gender lines if the magic (or at least, the people in the setting's understanding of how to access/use it) does.

This. Whoever has the power ends up on top. Magic is pretty basically a lot of power, so unless there is some strong counterbalancing force, those with access to magic will tend to rise.

This can be wildly unbalanced even if there is no particular natural reason for it. Maybe two groups came into conflict, and the winning group killed a lot of the most powerful magic users of the losing group. Then you end up with one group probably subjugating the other. Groups can be broken down by national, racial, religious, or other lines.

I'd honestly be a bit suspect of a fantasy world that didn't have some sort of problem like that. It doesn't have to be patriarchy, specifically, but humans not finding some way to exploit power over other humans just seems too optimistic for an entire world, yknow?

[Tvtyrant]

I've been reading cultivation and xianxia novels for quite a while now, and this is an issue I've given quite a bit of thought already.

1) First and foremost, they're grown out of Chinese action stories and folk lore, which were based on historical Chinese society. It comes with baggage. It's like the Wild West stuff that comes with its own set of norms on what's acceptable and what's not, and what heroes are allowed to do. Similarly, Asian stories are built on fictionalized versions of Asian societies from various historical periods. Breaking from the tradition would be a big twist and subversion.

2) They're written for a real-world audience as cheap entertainment. Challenging traditional power and gender norms is too heavy of a topic. There is no valid in-world reason for men to always assume women are weaker then them, or for these men to be right in their assumptions in basically all the stories almost all the time, and there is no valid in-world reason that the protagonist always happens to arrive in the midst of this situation just in time to save these women. They are stories about a young hero being able to beat up arrogant scions born to wealth and riches who abuse their power, and the world is written to accommodate that. Thus, there are lots of beautiful young women (and sometimes some cute little kids or magical beast puppies) for the protagonist to save.

3) It seriously sucks that there's so little variation in this stuff, because there are so many more interesting stories that could be told with the same settings and rules.

In-universe, the world and its gender norms would absolutely have to be very different. I'd love to read a story like that, but I don't know of any. I guess I'm waiting for the expatriate Chinese communities and for web novel enthusiasts influenced by xianxia settings to start telling new, original stories that combine the setting with Western ideas and rebel against the traditional norms. Some sort of cultivation punk renaissance, I guess.


EDIT:
Also, regarding Warty Goblin's thoughts on hunter-gatherer tribes. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there is Chronicles of Primordial Wars, which is basically cultivators as hunter-gatherers, where every important member of the tribe is a cultivator. There are lots of nuances there - the priests gather the tribe's power and help the cultivator-warriors manifest the power into totems. The well-being of the whole tribe brings the priests and the warriors more spiritual mojo.

I mean, Veritas is all about how the inheritors of deific power are women and the fight to either get them to godhood or prevent them from getting there.

[Ibrinar]

3) It seriously sucks that there's so little variation in this stuff, because there are so many more interesting stories that could be told with the same settings and rules.

In-universe, the world and its gender norms would absolutely have to be very different. I'd love to read a story like that, but I don't know of any. I guess I'm waiting for the expatriate Chinese communities and for web novel enthusiasts influenced by xianxia settings to start telling new, original stories that combine the setting with Western ideas and rebel against the traditional norms. Some sort of cultivation punk renaissance, I guess.


EDIT:
Also, regarding Warty Goblin's thoughts on hunter-gatherer tribes. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there is Chronicles of Primordial Wars, which is basically cultivators as hunter-gatherers, where every important member of the tribe is a cultivator. There are lots of nuances there - the priests gather the tribe's power and help the cultivator-warriors manifest the power into totems. The well-being of the whole tribe brings the priests and the warriors more spiritual mojo.

I tend to prefer non chinese xianxia to be honest. The cradle series is pretty classic xianxia in many ways but with actual main plots and subplots that progress at an reasonable pace and less everyone being a murderous psycho for the pettiest thing. And the group MC forms aren't just hanger-ons the MC drags along (or leaves behind) but are competent (and for quite a while more competent than the MC because he has much catching up to do). Street cultivation is an interesting variant with a xianxia world having developed into one pretty similiar to ours but with cultivation. (And the author will start publishing a non modern xianxia setting variant soon so I am curious about that.) A thousand li is decent though pretty standard "live is sect and grow stronger" fare. And of course there are some web serials thogh you never know whether they will finish (I wonder whether "Though the Heavens Should Fall" will continue). Edit: I also have high hopes for earthwitch but only 1 book out and it was filled dealing with one huge mess so more books needed to see how it does when it is less action rich.


Anyway about hunter-gatherer, that is an interesting idea. Chronicles of Primordial Wars seems to basically xianxia stone age but I think a more modern xianxia setting could use it too. You can either have both settlements and nomadic (with how giant xianxia worlds tend to be there should be plenty space for both and you can set the world up to make the options relatively balanced in pro and cons) but I think if I ever wrote one I might go with pure nomadic. With the reasoning that some high tier demon beasts migrate around the world and it is best not to stay in one area but to move to stay away from dangers. (Also moving allows collecting a wide variety of cultivation resources.)

In xianxia the you could probably have much bigger groups traveling together and get enough food. For one because their speeds allows gathering resources in a much wider area, for another because some demon beast get rather giant so you can feed more people per kill. And I think with their powers the powerful ones might have flying buildings so when they set down somewhere for a period it would probably a mix of movable permanent structures at the center with more portable stuff around. I would probably also give the nomadic groups artifacts to communicate with other groups so that groups have an easier time periodically meeting up or exchanging infos about the movement of dangers.

Well I suppose I am being a bit off topic for the thread I started but I do find the idea cool.

[Anteros]

Which came first, the society or the cultivation techniques? If the society developed in the absence of cultivation, and then people figured out how to do cultivation, I'd expect a great deal of pre-cultivation gender roles to continue long after they'd stopped mattering.

This is the in universe answer. Humanity might evolve past gender roles eventually, but it would take thousands or even tens of thousands of years.

Out of universe, the reason these novels are so male dominated is because they're power fantasies primarily marketed towards young teen males. They also take a lot of cues from the author's culture which were historically male dominated.

[endoperez]

I tend to prefer non chinese xianxia to be honest. The cradle series is pretty classic xianxia in many ways but with actual main plots and subplots that progress at an reasonable pace and less everyone being a murderous psycho for the pettiest thing. And the group MC forms aren't just hanger-ons the MC drags along (or leaves behind) but are competent (and for quite a while more competent than the MC because he has much catching up to do). Street cultivation is an interesting variant with a xianxia world having developed into one pretty similiar to ours but with cultivation. (And the author will start publishing a non modern xianxia setting variant soon so I am curious about that.) A thousand li is decent though pretty standard "live is sect and grow stronger" fare. And of course there are some web serials thogh you never know whether they will finish (I wonder whether "Though the Heavens Should Fall" will continue). Edit: I also have high hopes for earthwitch but only 1 book out and it was filled dealing with one huge mess so more books needed to see how it does when it is less action rich.

Thanks for the recommendations, I hadn't heard of most of them!

Most of the translated novels get very repetitive either on their own, or once you're familiar with the genre. However, there have been some exceptions that I think have the possibility to do alright in the general fantasy novel / power fantasy market even in the west, assuming they had really good translators, editors, and a good localization that makes them more approachable. None of them are good with everything, obviously.

World of Cultivation did a good job with the group the protagonist formed, but the protagonist's own story certainly drags on, and the female representation is weird. There's a woman who manages to be the most powerful individual within the hero's group, extremely subservient to him, a damsel in distress the hero has to save, and a non-character who doesn't do anything, all at the same time.

A Regular Mortal's Journey to Immortality somehow manages to be alright longer than I ever expected, even though it's very stereotypical. I think the only difference is that the protagonist isn't the most powerful person around, and also doesn't go around finding fights for no reason. There are frequent time skips where the guy just slowly grinds up his power level, and much of the story is him running away from someone powerful and ending up in a new place. It's basically a way to have him arrive in a new place with higher power level, but the small changes make it fresh again.

A Way of Choices is like a different genre altogether, even though it has all the trappings of a generic cultivation novel. Orphans, destinies, mysterious mentors who bestowed great knowledge on a character, bloodline secrets, and so on. But it's all slow and pondering and methodical.

Lord of Mysteries is a different genre, and more of a Chinese fantasy novel partially inspired by cultivation stories than an actual cultivation story on its own. It also heavily draws from non-Chinese sources, and it's set on a pseudo-Western setting with Lovecraftian horrors, where SCP-style (the internet story thing) secret police who lock away cursed items and artifacts to keep normal people safe, but must also use the items (curses and all) to fight monsters. The story changes tracks a few times, with some parts being more successful than the others, but it was absolutely a breath of fresh air.


And since we're speaking about roles women have in these series, there are few rare books that do things at least slightly differently. Both happen to be relatively low-power and down-to-earth (more wuxia than xianxia).

Grandmaster Strategist had a rare all-female sect being a major political player who wanted to change the status quo... as villains. I found them sympathetic villains, but I can't tell if that's just me interpreting it through my Western values or not. Also, sexual violence is rather prevalent, even compared to other stories in the same genre.

Phoenix Destiny has a female protagonist who's weak and much of the early story is about her trying to stand against the patriarchal values of the setting, but women are actually able to hold political power, and her struggle isn't portrayed as foolish or wrong. It's the best female-protagonist book I've found that still follows the same action tropes that most male-centric books do. Many books with female leads tend to be the Chinese equivalent of a cheap paperback romance novel with a shirtless dude in the cover... which can also be fun, but they're not what this thread is about.

Well I suppose I am being a bit off topic for the thread I started but I do find the idea cool.

Yeah, there are many really cool things that could be done with the basic settings / tropes / "rule-sets". How long did it take before fantasy novels started challenging the cliches and the tropes? I'm not that familiar with early fantasy, but I think it was decades before

I mean, Veritas is all about how the inheritors of deific power are women and the fight to either get them to godhood or prevent them from getting there.

Veritas? Am I supposed to know what it is? I tried searching for books, web serials, comics and tv shows, but couldn't find anything that has more than a passing resemblance.

[Tvtyrant]

I think it qualifies for the genre. I'm not sure if the Korean Murim falls under Xianxia or not.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritas_(manhwa)

[Knaight]

There's an obvious analog here - early scientists (and their contemporaries in other scholarly fields) who tended to be overwhelmingly male members of an upper class with extensive leisure time. That leisure time can then be put towards science or other scholarly subjects, giving the members of that class a pretty major advantage that's hard to break into. You get the occasional particularly brilliant person able to break in (e.g. Faraday), but generally the people who dominate scholarly fields are the people who are able to dedicate a lot of time to study, and who have access to knowledge from the broader scientific community (and often teachers earlier on), both of which are socially determined. The combination of expectations around housework and teacher access tend to push out upper class women; the leisure time factor tends to push out lower classes almost entirely (at the time mostly factory workers and the like).

Now take common elements to Xianxia settings. Something like 90% of the population are agricultural laborers, who are unlikely to be able to become cultivators because they simply don't have time (with occasional exceptions). The cultivators then tend to come from the aristocracy, usually as a dedicated leisure (to training) class which live in remote estates supported by a bunch of servants (who don't have time to train), and sometimes a bunch of farmers (though bodyguard work and the like is a notable alternate funding source), with a small group of dedicated cultivators at the top. Who has the opportunity to end up in that group is hugely socially determined, the occasional self taught paragon aside - and it's really easy for these social dynamics to end up deeply patriarchal without biological ability difference being involved in any way, as has repeatedly happened with analogous historical situations.

[endoperez]

There's an obvious analog here - early scientists (and their contemporaries in other scholarly fields) who tended to be overwhelmingly male members of an upper class with extensive leisure time. That leisure time can then be put towards science or other scholarly subjects, giving the members of that class a pretty major advantage that's hard to break into.

That is a great analog! It makes tons of sense when you think about it that way. There would still be many disruptors to it though, like the fact that having someone talented in your family / nation brings in immediate, concrete and instantly visible advantages. In many xianxia settings, training talent is something that can be objectively measured. If talent or potential wasn't easy to measure, though, wealth and leisure times and so on is a great explanation.