Is 'Patriarchy' a useful concept anymore?

Authors Avatar

Ayeesha Qureshi

Is 'Patriarchy' a useful concept anymore?

My personal way of defining patriarchy is a society typically dominated and control by men. Patriarchy shows us how our society functions and how it controls women, including all systems, like work place, home, religion etc, where women are formed and developed to the way men want them to be. It is the opposite of matriarchy, meaning women are the head and in control of families. This quote given by H, Hartman signifies social patriarchy, so it is not naturally suggested but socially. 'I define patriarchy as a set of social relations which has a material base and in which there are hierarchical relations between men, and solidarity among them, which enables them to control women. [p3, H Hartman: (1982), 'What about women?'; 'Gender Inequality in Employment', 551.04 leatures 11 and 12.]

The way in which society used to be, was that once the content of 'patriarchy' had been established, it was used strongly in every society and in many different ways, creating sexual politics, where men were seen as the dominant sex class and the treatment of women, through this patriarchy system determined their future and success in life. The possibilities for women making choices in every aspect of their own personal life were taken away from them or where very limited because of this patriarchal control that was upon them.

In the past the husband was clearly the principal negotiator, with the marriage license being the only exception, where the women would really be going into a life long commitment of serving her husband as a slave. The females main source of learning were things such as learning to spin, sew and weave, and maybe a little reading and writing. The main company that was given to them, were other females, and they lived more or less behind closed doors. The women had a separate section in the house that was located away from the other sections so that communications with males or strangers were barred.

While the men when out to work, the women's role was just seen as to be looking after the house and children, and listen to their husbands. 'The separation of home from work led to a sharper separation of male and female spheres. The world of business outside the home became a male sphere and the world of home and children became a women's one.' [p366, Fulcher & Scott. (1999) Sociology] The husband's leisure and business time were of no business to the wife, domesticity cut women off from business life and public activities in general. In some society's women were degraded, they were seen as objects used for male needs and a simple tool of breeding children. 'A woman of a particular community, caste or social-economic stratum is raped to 'teach' that section of the society, in other words, to reproduce the hierarchical structure.'[http:marxists.org/archive/marx/work/1884/orgin-family/ch02d.htm].

Join now!

It was in the mid-1800 when the first signs of the feminist movement came about. In 1961 it was discussed by a man named John Stuart, that the role of women is society during that time, pointing out how the patriarchy placed such an intense limit on what women could do. A time came out when evidence should the existence of a pre-industrial division of labour between men and women. However this existence contained occupational segregation, where the females worked only in female jobs and males concentrated in male jobs. 'Middleton (1979) argued that women did carry many different ...

This is a preview of the whole essay