RJ seems to subscribe to a very traditional and common concept of understanding the differences between men and women. As my mother likes to sum it up: Men want sex and women want security. Substitute "satiation" or "satisfaction" for sex, and it works to explain other spheres of human activity as well. The primal male urge is to achieve a goal whether getting laid, killing the food, aquiring the material or defeating the rival. The female mindset, on the other hand, focuses more on the maintenance and protection whatever their goal is, as opposed to aquisition or achievement thereof. That's why a woman's idea of decorating a room involves superfluous pillows, and a man's involves status symbols and entertainment apparatus. People who know what that ying-yang is all about would have their own way of putting it, but it all comes down to the same thing. Given RJ's use of the symbol, as well as the characteristics of saidin when compared to saidar, I have to think he agrees.

The explanation then would see the male force or soul or what have you as the driving force, the initiative that goes out and does things, while the female force is the maintaining and nurturing spirit. Hence the state of the world - despite being in a high state of civilization with relative prosperity throughout the world (the dominant female mindset would be making the maintenance and security of the nations a primary goal) with limited warfare, and greater emphasis on unity and cooperation and continuity. Think about this fact and compare it to real world European history: Most of the nations in WoT have been around for 1,000 years! How many countries can say THAT? 1,000 years ago, none of the important nation-states of the West were around or in anything resembling their current form. Yet in WoT, the national boundaries were roughly what they are in the present, with some enlargement and shrinkage depending on various political fortunes. Andor, at least, and apparently Tear and Tarabon, have maintained the same general form of government for over a millenium, and so did Malkier until less than half a century ago. There seems to be little or no sign of massive expansions or other such movements. As admirable as all that apparent stability is, however, it seems to be lacking the vital force or a surge of energy that might make a country unstable, but also makes it grow or expand. They're keeping what they have very nice and steadily, but without a balancing masculine force to push back against the steady encroachment of entropy, they are fading.

That's probably why population is also dwindling. Most families seem to be fairly small, probably because it's not polite for husbands to pester their wives when the ladies claim to be suffering headaches. Plus, there's no hookers and REALLY effective birth control. From what we have seen about the way WoT women piss and moan over the minor inconveniences associated with reproduction, I would imagine they don't get pregnant a lot. When you leave it up to the women, there are not going to be a lot of kids. In the corresponding era in our world, any woman with ideas like "oh, a boy and a girl would make a nice complete family" would have her thinking readjusted rather emphatically. And if she tried to appeal that decision to the highest human authority, rather than an island run by an organization of mystically powerful women who think of men as something like piscine bicycles, she would end up in the Vatican with the Pope admonishing her to do her Christian duty and breed some more, and if she didn't like it, she shouldn't have been a woman and heir to Eve's curse. Or she could go live in a locked-up house with women who do NOT wear colorful shawls, but instead work hard and pray a lot, and NEVER have sex. In our world, there was a very definite notion of "shit or get off the pot." The decay and diminishing state of humanity shows what happens when you give women options.