Patriarchy

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For other senses, see Patriarch (disambiguation).

Patriarchy (from Greek: pater (genitive form patris, showing the root patr-), meaning father and arché meaning rule) is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where fathers have supreme authority within families and male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that position. The term patriarchy is also used in systems of ranking male leadership in certain hierarchical churches or religious bodies (see patriarch and Patriarchate). Examples include the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches. Finally, the term patriarchy is used pejoratively to describe a seemingly immobile and sclerotic political order.

The term "patriarchy' is distinct from patrilineality and patrilocality. "Patrilineal" defines societies where the derivation of inheritance (financial or otherwise) originates from the father's line; a society with matrilineal traits such as Judaism, for example, provides that in order to be considered a Jew, a person must be born of a Jewish mother. However, Judaism is still considered a patriarchal society. "Patrilocal" defines a locus of control coming from the father's geographic/cultural community. In a matrilineal/matrilocal society, a woman will live with her mother and her sisters and brothers, even after marriage. She doesn't leave her maternal home. Her brothers act as 'social fathers' and will hold a higher influence on the women's offspring than the children's biological father. Most societies in the world today are patrilineal and patrilocal, but not all (see: matriarchy).

1 In gender studies
2 Feminist view
3 Non-feminist View
4 Pro-feminism and patriarchy
5 In psychology
6 See also
7 External links
8 Literature

[edit] In gender studies

In gender studies, the word patriarchy often refers to a social organization marked by the supremacy of a male figure, group of male figures, or men in general. It is sometimes depicted as subordinating women, children, and those whose genders or bodies defy traditional man/woman categorization.

[edit] Feminist view

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Many feminist writers consider patriarchy to be the basis on which most modern societies have been formed. They argue that it is necessary and desirable to get away from this model to achieve gender equality.

Feminist writer Marilyn French, in her polemic Beyond Power, defines patriarchy as a system that values power over life, control over pleasure, and dominance over happiness. She argues that:

It is therefore extremely ironic that patriarchy has upheld power as a good that is permanent and dependable, opposing it to the fluid, transitory goods of matricentry. Power has been exalted as the bulwark against pain, against the ephemerality of pleasure, but it is no bulwark, and is as ephemeral as any other part of life...Yet so strong is the mythology of power that we continue to believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that it is substantial, that if we possessed enough of it we could be happy, that if some "great man" possessed enough of it, he could make the world come right.

According to French:

It is not enough either to devise a morality that will allow the human race simply to survive. Survival is an evil when it entails existing in a state of wretchedness. Intrinsic to survival and continuation is felicity, pleasure [...] But pleasure does not exclude serious pursuits or intentions, indeed, it is found in them, and it is the only real reason for staying alive" —Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals The latter philosophy is what French offers as a replacement to the current structure where, she says, power has the highest value.

[edit] Non-feminist View

Gender-issues writer Cathy Young, by contrast, dismisses reference to "patriarchy" as a semantic device intended to shield the speaker from accountability when making misandrist slurs, since "patriarchy" means all of Western society.[1] She cites Andrea Dworkin's criticism, "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."

[edit] Pro-feminism and patriarchy

Main article: Pro-feminism

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Pro-feminism refers to a school of thought developed by men that supports the feminist analysis of patriarchy as a system that privileges men over women, and also men over other men. A pro-feminist analysis of patriarchy asserts that gender interacts with factors such as ethnicity, power and social class. Patriarchy is seen as a hegemonic gender order imposed through individual, collective and institutional behaviours.

[edit] In psychology

Psychology researchers have used the SDO and RWA measures to predict patriarchal attitudes.

Terrence Real, best-selling author of I Don't Want to Talk about it: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, believes there are two types of patriarchy: 1. Political patriarchy (the sexist oppression of women by men, the target of most feminist writers) 2. Psychological patriarchy ("the dynamic between those qualities deemed masculine and feminine... a dance of contempt, a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation... it is the unacknowledged paradigm of relationship that has suffused western civilization generation after generation, deforming both sexes and the passionate bond between them.")

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links

Cattle ownership makes it a man's world New Scientist (1. October 2003): Early matrilineal societies became patrilineal when they started herding cattle, a new study demonstrates
Debate Between Mark Ridley and Stephen Goldberg on the Inevitability of Patriarchy
The Return of Patriarchy by By Phillip Longman

[edit] Literature

Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, Polity Press 2001
Robert Brown, Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1991
Margaret Mead, . (1950). Male and Female, Penguin, London.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, Palgrave MacMillan 1999