1900s to Present Day

You figure that you might as well start as close to now as you can and try to work your way back. So climbing the stairs you head into the area marked 1900s to Present Day.

There are actually a few people in this area, you spy a pair of middle aged women wandering among the displays, both are dressed in what you consider to be normal clothes and are holding hands. Aside from them you also spot a younger woman who has the look of a staff member. Much like them she is wearing nearly normal clothing, although the long heavy dress and gloves put you more in mind of protective clothing than anything else.

The display itself is much like what you would see back in your world, a mix of video screen, dioramas and standees. The area is open plan although the layout means that you will be moving from the turn of the 20th century to the present day.

A few of the displays are pretty standard talk about tech advances but the one that stands out to you is a stand that talks about the “Woman's Duty Movement”. You walk over to it, at first thinking that it is this universe's equivalent of the suffragette movement.

You are almost right, the movement seems to have had twin goals, the first was much the same as in your world namely giving women the same rights as men. However the language is different, it talks about how women already outnumber men and they hold most jobs and offices of power. It seems that that part was more about formalising things that had already been going on. The part that is completely new to you is the part that talks about a “Woman's Duty”.

The idea is simple, namely that with the number of men dwindling we can no longer rely on ideas of monogamy or even marriage. There are now so few men that it is suicide on a species level to expect them to only ever have children with a single women, or to expect a woman to only have children by a single man. The speech, which is reproduced on the all beside the stand, uses a great deal of religious context, coming back time and time again to the commandment to go forth and be fruitful.

The next few displays talk about the reaction to the movement, unsurprisingly there was a fair amount of push back however eventually it could no longer be denied that there was a problem. So it was that in 1930 the first raft of laws related to the movement was passed. It was a combination of laws that decriminalized adultery and also a collection of tax laws that aimed to make monogamy less attractive. However there were still hangovers of the old ways, the first set of laws was move toward polygamy rather than monogamy however marriage was still expected.

Over the following decades it seems like these ideas were slowly chipped away at as even polygamy was pushed to the side. The situation now seems to be in a pretty dire straights, men are now expected to leave home at the age of 18 and submit to being moved to areas where there are the fewest men. Homosexual men are expected to provide regular semen specimens for artificial insemination and monogamy seems to be viewed as a race and outmoded way of living. Societies whole view of sex seems to be one of a means to an end, both women and men have a expectation bear as many children as they can.

The final part of the displays talks about what the future might hold for humanity. It is hopeful, talking about research into gene therapies that are aimed at fixing whatever problem that is causing the decline or even creating designer babies who are guaranteed to be male.

Your head is spinning as you come to the end of the display, you wonder if you should go and look at the other display or maybe just head downstairs.