There is enough metal in the asteroids to meet our exponentially increasing demand for the next 50,000 years. Oxygen is one of the most abundant elements on the Moon, and it is possible to establish lunar mining sites to extract that oxygen, and metals and building materials for the factories in space. With solar power satellites, we would have the power to manufacture anti-matter in sufficient quantities to use as an extremely concentrated portable power source. Such power would make four hour jaunts from your garage to the moon possible, and a trip to the gas mines of Jupiter would be roughly equivalent to taking the Love Boat to Hawaii. It would be easy to blame women.
Females have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
This is biological, and we could assert they are holding us back with their fear of the unknown. But women are more than their female biology, there have been as many female as male pioneers, and I know too many female visionaries to accept such a simplistic conclusion. So maybe it's men we should blame. Maybe the way men nurture within the traditional patriarchal culture is the problem, creating a human plague upon the good Earth. This traditional male role has taken us as far as it can, and now it must change or we will die in our own cesspool.