Should man rule over women for women’s own good?

[Tonus]

Why would I base that decision on gender?

Are your children, wife and their lives not your first duty to family?

Or is it to yourself?

I understood the topic as challenging those roles and the automatic assumption that everyone has a specific place based on gender. So I took up the challenge. In the situation you describe, I would base my decision on the love I feel for my wife and my children, and my desire that they carry on without me versus the shame I would feel if I allowed them to perish just to save me.

But that is an emotional decision, as would be expected in a situation where there may not be time to make a practical examination, and in a culture that expects us to fall into those roles. If we were to go with the idea of maintaining the strong and culling the weak, then arguments can be made for any number of options in that scenario: the men could be prioritized (under the assumption that they are the strongest), or the men and children (the strongest and the youngest), or the men and women (the strongest, and most ready to replace the losses). I think that if we toss aside the idea that man=strength and woman=weakness, then gender might become a secondary trait when deciding, or even discarded altogether.