This study tested three types of theories of gender inequality in preindustrial societies by using half the societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample: militarist, Marxian, and non-Marxian materialist theories. The first phase of the research used simple cross-tabulations with chi-square as a test of significance and gamma as a measure of association. The results from this phase showed no support for militarist theories, some support for Marxian theories, and substantial support for non-Marxian materialist theories. Since the first phase involved no control variables, a second phase was conducted using multivariate analyses. These analyses confirmed that militarist theories must be emphatically rejected, and that both Marxian and non-Marxian materialist variables help determine gender inequality. Non-Marxian materialist variables, however, explain much more of the variance in gender inequality than Marxian variables do.