Theories Of Patriarchy
This is an A grade essay Assess the claim that gender inequalities in the
domestic and occupational divisions of labour are best understood with reference
to the concept of patriarchy. You should illustrate your answer with reference
to a range of feminist perspectives. Introduction Western female thought through
the centuries has identified the relationship between patriarchy and gender as
crucial to the women’s subordinate position. For two hundred years, patriarchy
precluded women from having a legal or political identity and the legislation
and attitudes supporting this provided the model for slavery. In the late 19th
and early 20th centuries suffrage campaigners succeeded in securing some legal
and political rights for women in the UK. By the middle of the 20th century, the
emphasis had shifted from suffrage to social and economic equality in the public
and private sphere and the women’s movement that sprung up during the 1960s
began to argue that women were oppressed by patriarchal structures. Equal status
for women of all races, classes, sexualities and abilities - in the 21st century
these feminist claims for equality are generally accepted as reasonable
principles in western society; yet the contradiction between this principle of
equality and the demonstrable inequalities between the sexes that still exist
exposes the continuing dominance of male privilege and values throughout society
(patriarchy). This essay seeks to move beyond the irrepressible evidence for
gender inequality and the division of labour. Rather, it poses the question of
gender inequality as it manifests itself as an effect of patriarchy drawing from
a theoretical body of work which has been developed so recently that it would
have been impossible to write this essay thirty years ago. Feminist Theory and
Patriarchy Although “… patriarchy is arguably the oldest example of a forced or
exploitative division of social activities” and clearly existed before it was
ever examined by sociologists, the features of patriarchy had been accepted as
natural (biological) in substance.
It was not until feminists in the 1960s began
to explore the features and institutions of patriarchy, that the power of the
concept to explain women’s subordinate position in society was proven (Seidman,
1994) . The feminist engagement with theories of patriarchy criticised
pre-existing theoretical positions and their ideological use, tracing
theoretical progenitors of popular views about gender, gender roles etc (Cooper,
1995; Raymond, 1980). Developing theories to explain how gender inequalities
have their roots in ideologies of gender difference and a hierarchical gender
order, feminist theoretical concepts of patriarchy are able to explain and
challenge gender inequality and the gendered division of labour in the private
and social spheres (Seidman, 1994). They have done this by challenging concepts
of gender, the family and the unequal division of labour underpinned by a theory
of patriarchy that has come to reveal how it operates to subordinate women and
privilege men, often at women’s expense. Patriarchy, Structure and Gender
Inequality Walby (1990) reveals how patriarchy operates to achieve and maintain
the gender inequalities essential for the subordination of women. Crucially for
this essay, she shows how it can operate differently in the private and public
domain but toward the same end. She identifies patriarchy as having diverse
forms of and relationships between its structures in the public and private
spheres, and yet still operates in a related fashion. Walby’s explanation sees
the household and household production as being a key site of women’s
subordination but acknowledges that the domestic area is not the only one that
women participate in. She shows how the concept of patriarchy is useful in
explaining the relationship between women’s subordination in the private and
public arenas by showing that they work equally to achieve this subordination as
well as supporting, reflecting and maintaining patriarchy itself. Firstly, Walby
points out that the structures of patriarchy differ in their form. The household
has a different structure to other institutional forms, e.g., the workplace.
This is an important point because if feminist theories of patriarchy are to
stand they must show that patriarchy operates to the same end in both the
private and public sphere, even if it uses different strategies, otherwise it
could not be the main reason for the continuing inequality of women in both the
private and public sphere. Walby shows that within the private structure and the
public structures, patriarchy does use different strategies to maintain gender
inequality and these strategies both achieve the subordination of women. The
household strategy is considered to be exclusionary and the public structures
strategy as segregationist. The exclusionary strategy in the private arena is
based on household production. Application of this strategy in the domestic
sphere depends on individual patriarchs controlling women in the private world
of the home. The male patriarch in the household is both the oppressor and
recipient of women’s subordination. This strategy is direct – women are
oppressed on a personal and individual basis by the individual patriarchs who
share their lives. The segregationist strategy used in the public patriarchy
actively excludes women from the public arena using various structures to
subordinate them. Application depends on controlling access to public arenas (Golombok
and Fivush, 1995). This strategy does not benefit the institution directly, but
it does ensure that individual patriarchs are privileged at the expense of
women, and it maintains gender differences. The way in which individual
patriarchs and public institutions use there power further reveals how related
the structures of patriarchy are. Public institutions do not have the power to
oppress individual women or exclude them directly from public structures; this
work is carried out in the home. Power in institutions is used collectively
rather than individually, and the segregationist strategy pursued in the public
arena maintains the exclusionary strategy used in private that in turn supports
the segregationist strategy used in public.
Yet, the institution can only pursue
its segregationist strategy because the individual patriarch subordinates the
individual women daily. Walby’s description of patriarchal structure looks
powerful where there are fewer variables – e.g., when women and men seem to
share the ‘privilege’ of being exploited equally as a labour force working equal
hours for equal pay in equal conditions (Haug, 1998). Haug (1998) cites research
from East Germany which allows her to calculate that women do 4 hours and 41
minutes of domestic labour against men’s 2 hours 38 minutes. Men split their
extra two hours between leisure time and paid employment. She asks if it is a
realistic possibility that patriarchy could be so completely and comprehensively
asserted in as little as two hours a day. Haug does not answer this question
(perhaps it is rhetorical) but I think that Walby’s (1990) theory of patriarchy
is so powerful because it can reveal the answer to questions like this. Walby’s
theory stands because she shows that the power of patriarchy is asserted in both
the private and public sphere simultaneously supporting, reflecting and
maintaining itself, regardless of the economic and social framework that
prevails. In Haug’s case, patriarchy is not being asserted in two hours per day,
rather it is an expression of patriarchy, i.e., a symbol of male privilege,
which could only be expressed if the general strategies of patriarchal structure
were intact and functioning. This description of the relationship between
patriarchy and structure demonstrates how inequalities in the workplace and in
inequality in the home are two sides of the same coin and individual males are
involved in the direct and indirect subordination of women simultaneously. The
concepts that allowed Walby (1990) to define patriarchy as she has are discussed
below, with reference to the work of second and third wave feminist thinkers.
Gender and Gender Inequalities in the Domestic and Occupational Divisions of
Labour Feminist concepts of gender and gender inequality allow us to refer more
or less directly to a theoretical framework for understanding how they have come
to form a basis that helps structure the whole of society according to the
concept of patriarchy (Seidman, 1994). The gender differences, which lead to
gender inequality in the division of labour, and presented as natural by
patriarchy and unequal gender order has been normalised and legitimated by
science, medicine and popular culture (Raymond, 1980). Feminists hold that this
normalisation conceals the social and political formation of an unequal male
order, arguing that gender difference is socially produced in order to sustain
male dominance (Seidman, 1994). Frable (1997) points out that there is no basis
for a biological account of gender difference since gender identity can only
refer to the psychological sense of being male or female.
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