PATRIARCHY

Dr Rashmi Tikku
WSRD
 Basic Definition
 Patriarchy can be traditionally defined as
the structuring of society on the basis of
family units, where the father or man has
the primary authority and responsibility
and decision making powers over the rest
of the family members
 Patriarchy
 Rests on defined notions of masculine and
feminine, is held in place by sexual and
property arrangements that privilege
men’s choices, desires and interests over
women and is sustained by relationships
that celebrate heterosexuality, female
fertility and motherhood and valorise
female subordination.
 Linked with Property and
Inheritance
 Patrilineal describes the custom of tracing
descent from paternal lineage. Typically, it
also describes the custom of passing
family responsibilities and assets from
father to son. By contrast, cultures which
trace their lineage maternally are called
matrilineal.
 Biology v. social construct
debate
 Starting from a foundation in the theories of
biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin
, many 19th-century scholars formulated a linear
theory of cultural evolution. One hypothesis
suggested that human social organization
"evolved" through a series of stages: animalistic
sexual promiscuity was followed by matriarchy,
which was in turn followed by patriarchy
 Sociological Gloss
 Most sociologists reject predominantly
biological explanations of patriarchy and
contend that social and cultural
conditioning is primarily responsible for
establishing male and female gender roles
 Need for Autonomy of gender
oppression from class analysis
 Women’s oppression needed to be
theorised on its own right and not in terms
of Marxist class oppression
 Kinship ties, marriage practices and a
culture of seclusion restrict women’s lives
and choices
 In some feminist theories, the opposite of
feminism is patriarchy. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the word patriarchy has a
range of additional, negative associations
when used in the context of feminist
theory, where it is sometimes capitalized
and used with the definite article
 EQUALITY
 Most feminists do not propose to replace
patriarchy with matriarchy, rather they
argue for equality. However,
Ronald Dworkin has argued that equality
is a difficult idea. It is particularly hard to
work out what equality means when it
comes to gender, because there are real
differences between men and women
Gerda Lerner: The Creation of
Patrirachy
 One of the foremost
historians of women's
history
 Dr. Lerner is a
professor of history at
the University of
Wisconsin,
 Women and History
 Women’s invisibility in the past
 The fundamental division of the human
race between men and women. The
oppression and neglect of women that
occurs across all cultures and all levels of
society, is very, very deep, and goes to
the very earliest beginnings of history
itself.
 How come that women did not
even know that they were
subordinated for such a long time?"
 The crucial question is whether

patriarchy was, as most of us

have been taught, a natural,
almost God-given condition, or
whether it was a human invention
coming out of a specific historic
period.
 Concept of Hegemony
 gender indoctrination
 educational deprivation: the denial to women of
knowledge of their history
 dividing women by defining “respectability‟ and
“deviance‟
 by restraints and outright coercion
 by discrimination in access to economic
resources and political power
 by awarding class privileges to conforming
women.
 Patriarchy : a human invention
Institutionalised by the Bronze Age, during the
second millennium B.C. The process of
institutionalizing it was completed by about 500-
600 B.C.
Long Before Western civilization began
If we can get underneath these ancient values that
have conditioned our culture we will find the
potential for new realms of our own
consciousness
.
 Why Patriarchy began in the
Bronze Age
 Beginnings: Crude bronze weapons like a
bronze cudgel and a hoe
 Societies with more women could produce
more children, have more labour at hand
for agriculture and consequently produce
more surpluses
 Other effect was of creating a warfare
society and intensifying warfare
 The Patriarchal Paradigm Shift
 First, there was a need to control the natural
environment for planting and harvesting
purposes.
 Second, to control the breeding of domesticated
animals for labor and food.
 Third, men's understanding of their part in
reproduction lessened their reverence for
women and instigated their desire to measure
descent through--and thereby control--the male
line.
 The creation of city states and
nations.
 The formation of the state was done in
such a way as to strengthen patriarchy
 The harem become a sign and site of royal
power
 at first it was only women's sexual conduct
that was regulated
 Commodification of womens
sexuality and reproductive
capacities
 Was the prime cause for the creation of a
patriarchal model that emphasized control.
To establishing a worldview that ordered
the world into unequal binaries, with men
holding positions of power over women.
 Re-Thinking Production
 Feminists argued that in most societies
women played the central role in
producing the necessities of life
 Sexual division of labour is a historical and
dynamic phenomenon and is changing
 Reproduction: a dynamic process includes
giving birth, rasising and socialising
children
 Indian Marriage/ Kanyadan
 Woman was controlled by men through a
pattern of “exchange” Became
commodified A gift outright; also gifted for
religious and ritual purposes
 Gayle Rubin : Logic of exchange
constituted a ‘sex-gender system’
 Streedhun vs land rights
 Loss of access to their bodies and their
sexuality
 Link between Productive and
Punitive Aspects of Patriarchy
 Women who were widows or infertile had
no civic standing and are derided
 Often confined to spaces like ashrams or
are invisible in homes or punished as
unnatural (witches) and ‘defeminised’
Family, Kinship and Community
 Practices and structures taken for granted
such as marriage, kinship emotional and
sexual intimacy.
 WS depts detatched women from the
family and addresses her as a social unit
in her own right as an individual
 The heterosexual male
 Is viewed as the human standard against
which all else (that is, non-humans such
as women and homosexuals) is measured.
This normative system of sexuality is
enforced by conceptualizing men as either
"real" or deviant. "Real men" are sexually
attracted to "real women," who are
expected to bear and raise children and
take care of the home, hence the sanctity
(and legal binding) of marriage.
 Devaluing of women’s tasks/
Valorisation of Male Roles
 Cleaning
 Cooking
 Childrearing
 Looking after farm animals

 MALES
 Hunting
 ‘breadwinner roles’
 Mechanical tasks
 Institutions such as the church, state and
national laws, the media, education, and
biological and psychological theories all
serve to instil and maintain this
heterosexist social ideology. Social control
over expressions of sexuality and gender
is also maintained through violence, either
actual or threatened.
 Concept of Patriarchy in India
 Mid 1970-80. Supreme court judgement
on custodial rape ( mathura)
 1974 Status of Woman report called “
 Of Towards Equality”
 1980’s: Fusion of interests between
activism and scholarship: the
establishment of Womens Studies Depts
and women’s visibility in human rights
cases and gender equity
 Disciplinary perspectives In
Womens Studies
 Anthropology: Women’s reproductive roles
and structures of kinship, taboos and
caste ( endogamy and exogamy)
 Economics: women and work. Invisibilty of
women’s work. Definitions of economic
activity. Economics of reproduction
 Development studies: existing models of
economic growth produced female poverty
and ecological destruction
 Need to:
 Re-examination history, literature, culture
from a feminist lens
 Enter Political reservation debates, the
role of women in panchayats, judiciary
 Role of political parties and public
institutions.
 Women’s access to public land
 land ownership and not just jewellery