Patriarchy is a theory that attempts to explain this wide spread gender stratification and effect of social organisation rather than the result of some natural and biological fact. It is originally used to describe a ruler who was complete power in a family. It has been extended to describe a more general system in which power is secured in the hands of adults men. The Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith (1983) describes patriarchy as “the totality of male domination and it pervasiveness in women lives”. It offers the structural analysis of sex based inequality and offers a systemic explanation for the ongoing distribution of power and privilege according to gender lines.
Patriarchy existed long time ago. It can even be traced back to the bible, to the assumption that God is male and back to the book of Genesis. Where, after Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. God commanded her and all women kind to subordination to men. “In sorrow thou shalt bring faith children and thy desire shall be thy husband and he shall rule over thee”. Every society is ruled by men even though there
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Patriarchy simply shows us how our society function and how if controls women. In systems like work place, home, religion and the list goes on. Where women are developed to the way men want them to be. It is the opposite of matriarchy, where women are in control of families. Patriarchy is strongly used in every society and in many different ways, creating sexual politics where men are seen as the dominant sex class and the treatment of women is determined by their future and succession in life. It generally combines the force of male authority with the subtitles of paternal care highlighting the way women subordination rests on ideological and emotional power on personal relationship as well as physical force. (Martin Slattery.
Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units. In some cultures slaves were included as part of such households. The concept of patriarchy is often used, by extension, to refer to the expectation that men take primary responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, acting as representatives via public office (in anthropology and feminism, for example).
Patriarchies ruled the world. It’s an almost in-arguable fact. That cannot be clearer than the example of Tang and Song China. Their views on women and why they were below were influenced by two main factors, religion, and social influences. The more powerful of the two is religion. Religion unites people, it controls their daily lives, it changes what people do. It also sets laws and boundaries. Therefore, leading to divisions in gender in some cases like that of Confucianism. There were also the influences of society the ‘status quo’ as so to say. This is what other people think about a way to do something one way or another so as to fit in. It also had a daily impact on the lives of people living in Song and Tang China. They were particularly influenced by views of marriage and beauty, for example, it was deemed not beautiful for a woman to have large feet in Song China. These factors of religion and societal influences continue to affect
Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. New York: St Martin’s P, 1998
‘Women and men are different. Equal treatment of men and women does not result in equal outcomes.’ (Corsten Report, 16: 2007) According to Covington and Bloom (2003) numerous feminist writers have demonstrated and documented the patriarchal nature of our society and the variety of ways in which the patriarchal values serve masculine needs. ‘Despite claims to the contrary, masculinist epistemologies are built upon values that promote masculine needs and desires, making all others invisible’ (Kaschak, 11: 1992).
Realistically, when someone is more powerful, they have the ability to set the rules. Men have historically held power in society, which means that women did not have as much stance or freedoms as men have had in the past. For example, Canadian women did not have the right to vote until the year 1916. This factor has continued to trail into the present day, creating the ‘weak’ image towards women, overall forcing and pushing men to become the opposite of this factor. Thus, cultural ideals of masculinity rely on the ideas of femininity through patriarchy and gender binaries. The emphasis on characteristics of men are being exaggerated, as society is pressuring men with unattainable standards of masculinity such as being tough, muscular and buff. Men continue to conform to these characteristics, in the fear of being oppressed through exclusion, which only strengthens society’s standards even more. This leads to more societal pressures on men, thus leading men to experience more societal pressures in the fear of feeling excluded. These “systems of inclusion and exclusion are divisions or barriers that prevent people from joining and belonging.” (50). For example, if a man wears nail polish, they may be oppressed and excluded through facing ridicule and bullying, because wearing nail polish is considered “girly”, therefore this boy is rebelling against society’s socially
Gender order according to our text is labeled as “hierarchal” (2008), stating that “Men dominate women in terms of wealth, power, and social position, but not all men dominate all women” (2008). While this may be true, it is creating a divide between the two genders. This divide is apparent by looking at the pay scales between men and women, and even how the genders are looked at in terms of jobs or college admissions. Looking at today’s society however, women are slowly rising to compete with their male counterparts, in many ways, from education, government, and even television, for example Oprah Winfrey.
Johnson, Alan G. Patriarchy, The System: An it, Not a He, a Them, or an Us. 2005. The Gender Knot:Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy. 1997. Print
In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what
Everyone has to negotiate with patriarchy. Patriarchy, a facet of society promoting “being male dominated, male identified, and male centered,” uses the male-centered actions and exclusion of women to “subsume the female under the male,” meaning that anyone trying to exist in society as gendered beings, for better or worse, fall
Patricia Hill Collins outlines the existence of three different dimensions of gender oppression: institutional, symbolic, and individual. The institutional dimension consists of systemic relationship of domination structured through social institutions, such as government, the workplace or education institutions. In other words, this dimension explains “who has the power”. This is completely related to a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is the manifestation and institutionalism of male dominance. This means that men hold power in all institutions, while women are denied the access to this power. The symbolic dimension of oppression is based on widespread socially sanctioned ideologies used to justify relations of domination. It reflects inequality
Women are living in a patriarchal society which contributes to gender inequality. It dominates most of the institutions of society like; religion, the family politics, and the work place. The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences describes patriarchy as a social structural phenomenon in which males have the privilege of dominance over females, both visibly and subliminally. The value of women is often reduced to the role of Trophies, housekeepers and reproductive tools. “Because the subordination of women to men is a feature in the majority of all societies, patriarchy is often argued to be due to biology, such as women’s principal role in childbearing.”(Darity) Patriarchy is the cultural norm of many societies so it is seen as natural. “Bloodchild” challenges how natural the role is by reversing the roles and showing a parasitic male pregnancy.
Throughout Western history it was known to have this Patriarchal system in which the men are the head of the family, and community, during which these spheres between the male and female were divided, each having their own set of roles: the male in the public view and the women in the private view. The men worry about what is going on outside the home like politics, money, control over property while the women take care of what happens on the inside of the home doing things like taking care of the children and doing the house work. With these roles set in place the women have had a hard time being respected because of this Patriarchy.
Throughout history, women have remained subordinate to men. Subjected to the patriarchal system that favored male perspectives, women struggled against having considerably less freedom, rights, and having the burdens society placed on them that had been so ingrained the culture. This is the standpoint the feminists took, and for almost 160 years they have been challenging the “unjust distribution of power in all human relations” starting with the struggle for equality between men and women, and linking that to “struggles for social, racial, political, environmental, and economic justice”(Besel 530 and 531). Feminism, as a complex movement with many different branches, has and will continue to be incredibly influential in changing lives.
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
Patriarchy is a social system in which families and societies are dominated by males as primary authority figures. Due to patriarchy, females have been disadvantaged in many aspects of life including employment, family life, crime, health, education and media. This has led sociologists to try and find out what causes gender inequality. Feminists would agree that patriarchy is the main cause of gender inequality, however, there are different strands of feminism and these different strands have different views. There are also other theorists, such as functionalists, Weberians and postmodernists who offer different views as to the causes of gender inequality.