This content originally appeared in Rogare Fundraising Think Tank Critical Fundraising Blog Terminology 101 as part of their Gender in Fundraising project.
The Patriarchy
Meaning: A social system in which power is distributed unequally between men and women, to the detriment of women. Originates from “a form of social organisation in which fathers or other males control the family, clan, tribe, or larger social unit”.
What’s more: Historically, patriarchy was used to refer to autocratic rule by the male head of a family, or ‘patriarch’ – it literally means ‘the rule of the father’ from the Greek πατριάρχης (patriarkhēs) meaning ‘father or chief of a race’ – but over the years it has been broadened to mean a society where power is distributed unequally between men and women (patriarchy is rooted in gender essentialism, which only recognises the existence of two genders).
It is widely accepted not to be about individual men oppressing individual women through specific acts but instead an interconnected, multi-layered structure of power relations in which men dominate our legal, political, social, and cultural spaces resulting in the subordination, discrimination and oppression of women. This inequality is upheld by powerful cultural and social norms and supported by tradition, education and religion in addition to the law and state. Despite some misconceptions, feminist theories on patriarchy don’t posit that all men enthusiastically uphold or benefit equally from the patriarchy or exonerate women’s role in it either.
What does this look like in practice? A few examples:
In England and Wales, only 1.5 per cent of rapes and sexual assaults reported to the police resulted in a conviction in 2018. The logical answer as to why is that few were brought to trial but there is a whole series of patriarchal contributing factors which might not seem immediately obvious, from the way our society shames sexually active women to a legal system historically designed by men.
The take-up of shared parental leave by eligible parents since it was introduced back in 2017 is thought to be as low as two per cent. You could conclude that non-birthing parents just don’t want to take the time off but, in reality, this is influenced by things like ingrained gender roles (who ‘should’ be at home looking after the baby and who ‘should’ be the breadwinner) and the gender pay gap (it’s often more expensive for a male partner in a heterosexual relationship to take time off).
There is a belief that women lack the self-confidence and assertiveness of their male peers and that this holds them back in the workplace; the implication being that if they were to be more direct, assert themselves, and negotiate better, they’d be more successful. Aside from the fact that there is growing evidence that this is a myth, new studies show that when they do behave in this way, women suffer a ‘likeability’ penalty due to stereotypes about how women are supposed to behave which sets them back anyway.
Further reading:
The Persistence of Patriarchy – Cynthia Enloe
Feminism Is For Everybody – bell hooks
Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules – Rebecca Asher
The week in patriarchy series – The Guardian