> If men as a group has all the power, why would men as a group allow men to be incarcerated in higher rate than women?

I'm not sure I understand the premise. The fact that a group is powerful (and therefore serves itself) does not imply that the members of the group are necessarily allies. Even shared interests do not imply alliance. In fact, the more powerful each member of the group is, the less reason there is for them to be allies. Powerful groups usually become allegiant to one another only when threatened by a large accumulation of less powerful groups (that together have a lot of power).

> In the context of dating?

Maybe not, but this is getting into very specific contexts. I'm generally talking about social, or political power, in the context of distribution of resources. This is what most social scientists mean when they say "power" and don't qualify the context. Dating is quite special anyway in that the dynamics usually involves a very small number of people, so there can't be interesting alliances.

> Or social norms shapes power.

It's not either or. Nearly all dynamical systems involve feedback. But from a political point of view, what matters is that social norms are malleable. I won't go so far as to say that biology plays no role in social norms, but I don't think we have any reason to believe that our society today is anywhere near the boundary of biological forces.

> If men must be bread earners in order to be successful in reproduction rituals, those who are more inclined to do so will reproduce at an evolutionary higher rate than others.

Regardless of my previous statement (feedback etc.), I should warn against relying too much on behaviors attributed to a prehistoric past, which is largely unknown. We're not sure exactly about the different roles men and women had in prehistoric society.

> One could easily think that it is the citizens that control the government that votes a party into power.

Yes, but one citizen does not vote a party into power. Lots of citizens have lots of power.

> It seems that the group in power did not get their way, and the cultural changes came from the less powerful groups working together.

Less powerful groups working together is precisely a way to gather power. That's why capitalists hate unions. A worker alone has far less power than the capitalist. But combined, they are quite fearsome. It is a very crude and simplistic description, but the power of the rich is in their money, and the power of the poor is in their numbers. It's just that it's much easier for a rich man to yield his power than for a large group of poor people, because they must coordinate.

> New feminism,

I don't like this distinction. Feminism is simply the ideology of having women attain the same power as men. Feminists simply have different strategies of attaining those goals. When people start talking about "new" vs. "old" feminism, I get the sense that they really cherry pick some feminist strategies that they like and some that they don't.

> The Civilizing Process sounds interesting and valuable read, but not sure how it links back to the concept that a powerful group shapes society and culture.

Only indirectly. The thesis is that the top echelons of society want to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi by adopting behavior that is more refined. Eventually, the lower classes want to resemble the high classes, and mimic the same behavior, and the cycle starts again. What is interesting is how internalized things have become that we can literally throw up when seeing behavior that was once common place. I mentioned it as an example of social dynamics shaping norms.

> and you can't do so by only addressing the most powerful group.

Ah, maybe that's the source of the misunderstanding. The most powerful "group" does not necessarily hold most of the power. Power is spread, just not equally. To give a simple example, to change policy in an aristocracy, you could either convince one king and thirty noblemen, or 100,000 peasants that would revolt. In modern society, power is not that concentrated, and I don't think it's ever enough to convince just one group (although we may be getting there) no matter how powerful it is.