I'm not sure that this quality has to be essential to a civilization. I suppose we have to think about the actual definition - and nature - of what a civilization is, what we want it to be.
But it is a quality that is common to many of the great civilizations in the short time frame of agrarian and industrial human history. The great civilizations become empires; they become empires because they harden around a certain delimited and defining idea with expansionary and progressive properties, expanding outward and dominating weaker - or more peaceful - heterogeneous societies.
The very structural basis of such an entity is of a masculine nature. Thus the corollary of its amplification is the suppression of the feminine. Is it necessary?
