Female enslavement

Populist opposition to feminism and women's rights.

Timeline:

Years one to thirty:
This gains widespread traction and a lot of people get involved, saying the traditional family life was better for everyone.  This is viciously opposed by feminists and corporations (the latter want the cheap labour.)  After a generation of political feuding the two have retreated into their respective echo chambers and the feminists now claim the traditionalists are Hitler clones and the traditionalists think women are morally childlike and need men to make decisions for them.

Unfortunately for the feminists, the traditionalists have been breeding like rabbits and can simply outvote them, so that's the end of women's independence.

Removing half the workforce would probably put the country that did it at a disadvantage as it would make labour more expensive and make foreign competition cheaper.  That can be partially gotten around by having traditionalist men be patriotic spenders or something.  It would also remove a large chunk of retail spending, as women would no longer have their own money to spend and the men wouldn't want to waste theirs on shopping sprees and such.

For a woman in one of these countries she would essentially living the values of the mid 19th century.  She would be married off in her late teens, nominally with her consent, but girls are often pressured into it.  While women can own property it would become her husbands on marriage.  She doesn't have the right to vote and education wise, most higher education has barred women from attending.  Unmarried women are few and far between and due to the feminism of the last few decades, are viewed with suspicion.  Good luck being a career woman in these countries.  Social attitudes are highly conservative - no sex before marriage (for women, anyway) and always dress modestly.  While it's not something spoken about in polite company, domestic violence is tolerated to a degree - after all, women are illogical, emotion driven creatures, so reasoning with her is pointless and it's best to give her a firm slap.

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Years thirty to fifty:

With the end of women's rights, most of the feminists, career women, manginas and various toadies leave for friendlier pastures.  Some countries are more accepting than others, seeing them as refugees from political persecution (and a way to boost their own flagging population - feminism has already taken it's toll in these countries too, although to a lesser degree.)  Other countries refuse them access, remembering how crazy they had gotten before being kicked out and not wanting that shit imported.

The now patriarchal nations suffer an economic hit from the short term loss of population (their birth rate is huge), reduction of their internal markets and increased labour costs relative to their national competitors.  Feminist friendly nations start crowing about this, laughing at the 'backwards misogynists'.  Some impose economic sanctions in an attempt to force them to reverse various restrictions on women.  While the patriarchs suffer a fairly bad recession due to this, their economy soon adapts and while it is smaller, it's growing fast due to solid population growth and a major drop in social spending (many social support schemes were considered feminist tools and disbanded, thus forcing most welfare cases into some sort of work or out of the countries involved.)

As the economy improves, various schemes to help it further are suggested.  Eventually it is agreed that the cost of a higher education means that it is unjustified for a women to receive one, effectively banning women from universities.  Soon after it's decided that part of the reason for the economic problems suffered earlier is that a woman in employment is taking a job from a man.  This isn't actually true, most working women were working to supplement their families limited income by helping with their husbands job.  This gets pointed out, but is largely ignored and dismissed as feminist sympathiser propaganda.  There is a low level witch hunt for feminist sympathies going on among the patriarchal nations. Originating among grass roots movements full of young men with dubious future job prospects, they soon get the attention of politicians (most voters at this point being young men).  Those who question the 'blame feminism' narrative are ostracised and most people become quick to prove their patriarchal loyalties and women's rights continue to erode.

By the end of the fifth decade a woman's path in life is pretty much entirely dictated by the men around her.  Education is now split along genders, with girls focusing solely on domestic and childrearing lessons, along with large amounts of propaganda and aspects of deportment.  By her mid to late teens she would complete the schooling available to her (some  patriarchal nations end girls education at sixteen, others at eighteen) at which point she is expected to get married.  Legally, they do still have the right to refuse to marry their fathers choice of husbands, but being 'wilful and argumentative' is seen as a feminist habit, which is now considered a mental illness, so she'll end up in a psych ward until she does as she's told.  If she's reasonably lucky, she'll be married to someone she actually loves (or at least grows to love.)  Her husband has similar levels of power over her, essentially being her only means of getting by in the world (she can't enter herself into a contract, can't drive, can't work, limited property rights, etc.)  As there is no divorce, she's his until one of them dies (usually the husband, as it's an established man marrying a teenager.)  After her husbands death, she typically goes to live with one of her sons and is expected to help his wife learn her place.

As opposed to the previous generation, women have started to dress more sexily (though still somewhat conservative by modern standards.)  It is theorised that as all women can do to build status is look good, have a successful husbands and have a large number of children, they try to take advantage of the one they have most control over.  Others argue that since men essentially run their lives now, it's because men want them to look more sexy.

Due to the financial security inherent in having sons and the fact daughters cost money and contribute little, many fathers use embryo sex selection technology to ensure they have plenty of sons, which means fewer girls are born.  Various schemes are launched to try and prevent this, but it still goes on, skewing the birth rate.  In response some enterprising men start requesting a dowry in order to marry their daughters, essentially selling them.

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Years fifty to sixty:

Other nations see the constant erosion of women's rights and decide the patriarchs are clearly a bit nuts.  They start actively opposing them out of a sense of moral duty, rather than political point scoring.  Feminism starts to get more of a boost in these countries, usually doing the opposite of whatever the patriarchs just did (40% of patriarchs whip their wives for arguing? More anti-domestic laws).  Men that can (high value skills, lots of money they're willing to invest, etc) start immigrating, fed up with the extra feminism back home (and more than a few women who get off on the idea of being borderline domestic slaves.)  Relations deteriorate and the world begins to polarise.  On one side you have the feminist nations - think Sweden, but without all the immigrants.  On the other you have the patriarchs, controlling a sizeable swathe of developed nations (I'm thinking either the US or western Europe make up this group, maybe both, having become thoroughly sick of feminism.)

In the patriarchal nations continue their various campaigns against (now completely imagined) feminist threats.  This is partially due to cultural inertia blaming all problems on lingering feminist attitudes and is also a response to widespread international criticism.  With birth rates favouring boys, there is growing tension among younger men looking for a wife.  These combined tensions result in a major rewrite and streamlining of major laws.  Most of these laws change little for the average person, as most of what they introduce has been done informally for years.  It is now explicitly illegal for women to own property or go outside unescorted.  Their nearest male relative is assigned automatic guardianship over them (this was essentially the case before, but now her father, husband or son can simply sign off on anything that involves her without needing to at least pretend they had her consent.)  In response to growing pressure from unmarried young men, the maximum age of schooling for girls is reduced to fourteen.  It's not enough to make up the difference fully, but no-one was comfortable with girls younger than that getting married.  While girls get nearly a decade of schooling, nearly all of it is indoctrination and conditioning to be obedient.  With several decades of practice these schools have become quite adept at making sure their students meet their standard.  In terms of actual education, most girls only know the basics: reading, writing and basic arithmetic and a highly slanted view of history.  Those who've gone further do so through self-study - a rare thing these days as intellectual curiosity and asking questions is considered unfeminine.

The borders of the cold gender-war are now mostly set.  Those inclined towards the patriarchal lifestyle having immigrated already.  The increasingly extreme attitudes towards women discourage more moderate nations from aligning with them.  The more feminist nations have mostly done away with the crazier feminists and are now only somewhat unreasonable by modern standards, so they are no longer heading for complete demographic implosion.  They are still getting ever more old and grey compared to the patriarchal nations, however.  Towards the end of the decade, the idea of charging a dowry to get married has caught on and the patriarch governments introduces it as a legal requirement 'to prove a man has the means to support a wife'.  In reality it is just meant to encourage fathers to start selecting for female births, relieving demographic pressure.  A small group of like-minded men high up in government also realise that it will neuter women's one last tool for controlling her fate - her sex appeal.  If there are plenty of women to go around, then they will have little individual power.  Using their influence, they start to manipulate the financial incentives to have daughters in order to insure a surplus of women.

By the end of the sixth decade women are slaves in all but name.  They are told who they'll marry (or, essentially, be sold to); can't own property or leave the house without an escort; have no education worth speaking of (plenty of indoctrination so that they're happy about this though) and aren't able to make their own decisions as far as the law is concerned.

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Years sixty to eighty:

By this point most patriarchal nations have started to abandon accusations of feminism as their reason for removing women's rights; it's lost most of it's meaning and foreign nations have stopped bringing it up so much, being used to the way things are going now.  Instead, female moral inferiority is being played up more and more, with women being described as forever morally and mentally childlike (as their purpose is to care for small children) and it being the responsibility of men to ensure they are properly guided in life.  The small cabal of men intent on removing the last traces of women's rights have grown in power and are now starting to push for genetic alterations to implemented.  Genetic engineering has been used fairly extensively in most nations to prevent various diseases and optimise the human genome wherever possible.  They begin quietly pushing for more extreme modifications to start being researched.  With their far more extensive STEM expertise, the patriarchs have been the leading source of most genemods for as long as the field has existed, so they have plenty of resources to call on with which to develop their plans.  In the wider world, the cold gender-war has calmed somewhat.  The patriarchs have seen the birthrates and know time is on their side and don't see any reason kick things off yet.  The feminist nations are split between denial and realising there is a problem, with many believing the patriarch system is doomed to failure and they just need to hold out a while longer.

By the end of the eighth decade, the birth incentives have kicked in and there is now a surplus of young women available to be sold into marriage.  As a result polygyny is legalised, as these women need to have someone to guide them in life.  While accusations of treating women like slaves has long been a popular activity for feminist talking heads, referring to women as slaves has caught on in the patriarchal countries.  By the end of the eighth decade, it quite common to hear men calling their wives slaves (the accusation has been made so many times it's lost it's bite.)  With feminism consigned to the history books in the patriarchal countries and the feminist nations being seen as a bunch of old men to afraid if their wives to get them pregnant, most justification for female enslavement is now that women are morally and intellectually incapable of running any serious organisation and have underdeveloped, childlike minds that are equipped to deal with spending all their time caring for small infants.  The fact girl's education is utterly laughable helps reinforce this view.

By the end of the decade some headway has been made on genetic alterations designed to made this state of affairs permanent.  It involves moving several genes around so the baseline IQ of an altered human is around 80, but the y-chromosome has a specialised modification that increases IQ by around 40 points.  There has been a longstanding project to boost human intelligence via genetics and 20 points if the best they can manage so far. This just takes those advantages, along with many of the baseline ones and places them exclusively on the y-chromosome.  This is combined with the end product of various longevity research projects to ensure that men outlive women considerably, and a age induced killswitch is added women's genome, so she will die at around 40, give or take a year.  The cabal know that there is no way this will be accepted by the general public just yet, so they start setting the stage via propaganda.

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Years eighty to 100:

The cabal that had originated nearly half a century earlier, with the goal of ensuring feminism was stamped out has since grown in power and purpose.  Now it seeking to remove the possibility of women ever being anything more than chattel slaves for the rest of human existence.  They begin using their ties in academia, entertainment and business to start pushing the idea that women's beauty is a wonderful thing, and without it she is greatly reduced.  This is pretty easy to do as it's true, but they are only setting the stage for later plans.  Over time this message shifts to a woman who isn't beautiful doesn't really have anything to live for.  They bring up various real and loosely interpreted real life examples.  The old Indian practice of suttee (widow burning) is used.  The argument is made that with her looks gone and the man she spent her life serving dead, her life is pointless and it's best to end it.  This resonates to a degree with most people, as they are now used to women being an obedient extension of their husband.  While it isn't widely adopted, there is growing acceptance for euthanasia of older women whose husbands have died (and whose sons don't really want them around anymore.)  Eventually, they feel the time is right and introduce the killswitch (though they have a friendlier name than that.)  They advertise it as 'making sure your daughters don't have to suffer the misery of faded looks' and that it's kinder for a woman to pass on while her beauty is still fresh in memory.  The initial uptake is low, but with a major pr campaign it quickly starts to take off.  Using the momentum from the campaign, they also start to push for the y-aligned intelligence boost, marketing it as 'building upon what's already there', rather than saying male and female intelligence is remotely comparable.

The intelligence drop for women is handled separately.  It begins as a treatment for troublesome female behaviour, as 'too much intelligence' is considered unfeminine and a cause for domestic disagreement.  It's easy to market it as a way of ensuring you can sell your daughters and expect them to be happy and obedient in their simple lives of servitude.  Once the treatment is requested, it is strongly recommended to potential fathers they take the booster treatment to ensure their sons increase in intelligence.  Uptake is not universal, but it is widespread enough that it's expected the more intelligent men will outcompete the less intelligent.  The success of the killswitch remains to be seen.

Needless to say, feminist nations are highly critical of this, but no-one really cares these days.

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Years 100 to 120:

Over the last generation, genetic treatments have grown in popularity so that now the majority of people have them.  The y-intelligence boost os almost universal (though banned in feminist countries.)  The x-decrease in intelligence comes in a distant second, but the campaign portraying girls without it as homewrecking troublemakers was quite successful, so the majority of girls born how have the modification.  The killswitch is in last place at just under half the population receiving it.  While pro patriarch propaganda is quite effective, many men are starting to question if women should be treated like this.  The opinion isn't widespread or fashionable, but it's a growing one.

Playing on the previous campaigns success, the cabal pushes even harder, trying to boost uptake of the treatment.  Newer, improved versions come out that start to boost men's longevity as well as intelligence.  Various reasons are given why it isn't a good thing for them to be applied to women, but the principles used in their creation are added to the x-chromosome to ensure women retain more of their looks as they approach forty.  Newer treatments also include sex ratio alteration, so a proportionally larger number of girls are born.  This could have been introduced sooner, but they didn't want to skew sex ratios permanently until they could guarantee women couldn't gain power through numbers.

While there is a growing movement opposed to this, most men are enjoying having multiple wives at their beck and call.  With their improved intelligence, most men don't regard their wives opinions as being worth that much (not that many did at this even with equal intelligence.)  This improves the uptake rate of the gene mods.  The patriarchy's high birthrate has started to become a problem, with overcrowding beginning to be a convern.  While there is still room to grow, it's running out.

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Years 120 to 150:

Genetic treatments continue to improve, and the 'neofeminists' continue to grow in numbers as the patriarchs are polarised between those who see women as pets and those who see them as people.  The feminist nations outside the patriarchy have also started sending whatever support they can get away with.  The cabal starts to plan for ways to deal with these problems.  Newer treatments further improve on male intelligence and longevity and start to increase sexual dimorphism.

Many young men have started one upping each other in ways treat (or mistreat) their plentiful and not too bright slaves (a word which is now synonymous with wife).  In warm climates it's not uncommon to see a woman being taken out in public naked, or for a harem of girls to have increasingly demeaning clothes for the lower status girls in the home.  With women having become essentially disposable, most men no longer feel so protective of the ones they have.

By the end of the thirteenth decade, most men have an IQ of around 140 by modern standards and will live for around 200 years in decent health.  Women have an IQ of around 80 and will die at around 40, give or take a year.

Feminist nations have turned the corner on declining birthrates, by both reverse engineering patriarchal gene therapy and using prosthetic wombs.

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Years 150 to 200

Things continue much as they have for the previous fifty years.  Genetic treatments improve slightly, though most of the gains on that front have now been reached.  It becomes more commonplace for men to treat their wives like toys rather than people and in response to this, the neofeminist movement has grown, now actually being a respectably small political faction in it's own right.  These are mainly made up of the few people in patriarchal nations who have not taken the new gene therapies.  Feminist nations are happy to provide covert reversal treatment to those who seek it, trying to undermine the patriarchal nation's social changes.  This is dealt with by obfuscating the augmented genome to prevent further tampering.  Many neofeminists start to migrate to feminist countries.

The cabal sees these trends and decides something needs to be done.  Towards the end of the century they order construction of a series of bioweapons, designed to kill (with the obfuscation, conversion is too difficult) anyone without the augmented genome.  It's seen as a weapon of last resort, but it's better to have and not need and so on.

By this point the biological changes of the augmentation have mostly filtered through.  Few men remember a time when women were anything other than airheaded pets and many men have outlived at least a few of their slaves, so don't really see them as lifelong partners.  The full social effects have yet to be felt, but those will follow in time.

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Years 200+ (optional)

At some point, due to intent, sabotage or just carelessness, one of the patriarchs bioweapon clusters is set loose.  It contains several dozen unusually resilient viruses designed to kill those without the gene augmentations common in the patriarchy.  This results in world war three, nukes fly, the feminist nations try to use their own bioweapons (but didn't have anything really nasty set up ready to go.)  This results in a huge die-off: essentially all unaugmented humans and ~95% of augmented ones.  Civilization collapses and must be rebuilt.  Fortunately, much of the infrastructure from smaller towns can be salvaged and provide enough power (though cheap fusion) to provide the boost fossil fuels gave the first time round.  A new civilization is built and the old one mostly forgotten.  Most places are based on the patriarchy, but their laws vary.  In some places it may be possible for a woman to gain freedom if she is capable of passing various mental tests, but can lose that freedom by a variety of means.