Have we become immune to
gender issues? Has the work of theoretical feminists become too empty to ignite
our political and moral framework? Should
they abandon their deep reliance and employment of the term
'Patriarchy'?
The theoretical employment of 'patriarchy' has
provided many women with a grand way of seeing the world by conjoining the
experiences of women with the invisible powers of men. The concept has also
been criticized by other feminists who say that it generates a downheartedly
simplistic and distorted view of women, by stripping away any dynamic tension
between agency and structure. My aim will be to advocate the view
that, although we ought to be cautious in our theoretical employment of
patriarchy, it is however the lesser of two evils. That is, the concept of
patriarchy can obscure and impoverish feminist analysis, but despite this, it
ought to remain central in feminist analysis of gender.
The concept of patriarchy was officially introduced
by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1985) to typify the rule of the
father in a male-dominated family. It is both a social and ideological
construct which perceives and perpetuates men, the patriarchs, as superior to
women. Sylvia Walby in Theorising Patriarchy refers to this as “…a
system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and
exploit women” (1990). In other words, it is a system of power relations
that are hierarchical and imbalanced, where men control women’s production,
reproduction, and sexuality. Both my employment and critique of patriarchy will
profoundly rest on this definition, for it holds bearing on many structural
feminists’ account of women’s subordination.
I - Theorising
Patriarchy
Walby’s work (1990), Theorising patriarchy,
is developed by incorporating the strength of many other traditional theories
of gender, but by rejecting their dual-system approach which seeks to explain
women’s exploitation in terms of two distinct systems of capitalism and
patriarchy. According to Wallby, feminists, such as Heidi Hartmann (1981),
underestimate the tension between capitalism and patriarchy, and in doing so,
they fail to recognise other aspects of patriarchy, such as violence and
sexuality. To Walby (1990), in
attempting to theorise about gender inequality, the concept of patriarchy must
remain central to a feminist understanding of society. This is because the term
“patriarchy” is indispensable for the understanding of gender inequality,
(Walby, 1990). Thus, in rejection of the very narrow ‘dual-system’ approach,
she offers six patriarchal structures that restrict women, and maintain male
domination.
The first is paid work. To her, patriarchy
operates via paid work where females face both horizontal and vertical
segregation, which leads to women being paid considerably less than men (Walby,
1990). The second is Gender Division of Labour within the household. To
her, Patriarchy thrives through the division of labour in the household by
entrapping and forcing women to take primary responsibility for housework and
childcare, even if they are in full-time employment. This allows individual men
to directly benefit from women’s unpaid labour (Walby, 1990). The third is Culture.
Women are at a cultural disadvantage because modern western culture emphasises
particular behavioural expectations of men and women, such as the importance of
feminine attractiveness, which degrades and, sometimes, threatens women (Walby,
1990). The fourth is Sexuality.
Although women have made some gains in this respect, Sexuality is one of
the structures that oppressed and maintained patriarchy. For example, in the 19th
century women’s sexuality was subject to strict control within monogamous
marriage, whereby the husband’s pleasure took premise over the wife’s
(Haralambos, 2008). Although, in the 20th
centuries, modern contraception and the ease on divorce laws has increased
women’s sexual freedom, ‘sexual double standard is still alive and well’, in
modern capitalist society (Walby, 1990). Young women that are sexually active
are condemned as ‘slags’, whereas, males, on the other hand, that have had just
as many sexual conquests are admired for their virility (Walby, 1990). The
fifth structure is Domestic violence.
Like many other feminists, Walby sees Domestic Violence as a
patriarchal structure to keep women in their place, and to discourage them from
challenging the status quo. And finally, the activities of the State, is
a another structure that sustains patriarchy, by not passing and enforcing
genuine laws that will improve women’s position in the public sphere.
II- Success of the term
Patriarchy
Walby’s
work succeeds because it identifies the different forms and facets that
patriarchy takes, when aiming to explain women’s experience. By rejecting the
dualistic approach, and by centring our attention to ‘patriarchy’, as an
indispensable concept, we encapsulate both the subordination of women in
western capitalist society and the different structures, or mechanics, which
manifest this experience upon women.
It’s important to note that these different structures of patriarchy,
which Walby has identified, are not only independent from another, but can also
interact and affect one another, leading to a strengthening, or weakening of
other structures. So, as well as capturing women’s experience, theorisation of
patriarchy, employed by Walby, also sufficiently explains the mechanics that
drives and maintain the patriarchal status quo in western capitalist society.
For example, using Walby’s theory, it’s easily conceivable for one to construct
an account of women’s experience whereby culture, as a patriarchal
structure, can change in a way that it can affect the structure of sexuality,
causing sexual patriarchal behaviours and expectations of women to be,
either strengthened or weakened.
More importantly, in Walby’s account, the
theorisation of patriarchy allows us to track historical changes in the
structure of ‘patriarchy’ in capitalist society, by encapsulating the
historical development of women’s subordination in the west. An evident example
of this historical development is the change in the type of patriarchy from the
private to the public sphere, between the 19th to the
20th century (Walby, 1990).
In the 19th century, patriarchy was predominantly private.
Whereby an individual patriarch, the male head of the household,
controlled Women ‘individually and directly in the relatively private sphere
of the home’ (Walby, 1990). In other words, it is the man, in his position
as husband or father, who is the direct oppressor and beneficiary, individually
and directly, of the subordination of women’ (Walby, 1990). By the 20th
century there was a shift away from private patriarchy, which was, in part, a
consequence of ‘first wave feminism’, which campaigned for more than just
voting rights, between 1850 and 1930 (Haralambos, 2008). They sought for the
containment of predatory male sexual behaviour, for access to employment,
training and education, for reform in the legal status of married women so they
can own properties, for divorce and legal separation at the woman’s behest as
well as that of the husband, and much more (Walby, 1990). Simultaneously,
whilst these campaigns took place, capitalism and its economy was expanding
exponentially, creating the need for a larger workforce (Haralambos, 2008).
This inevitably led to public patriarchy, whereby women were allowed
access to both the public and private arena. However, although women were no
longer barred from the public arena, they were, and still are, nonetheless,
subordinated within it by being segregated into certain jobs that are
lower-paid and are thus given a lower status than men. Out of this shift we get
the development and strengthening of the state and of paid work
as patriarchal structures, by extending the exploitation of women from
individual patriarchs to the collective of men, through their subordination in
public arenas (Haralambos, 2008). As Walby herself exquisitely puts it, the
shift between the 19th-20th century in western society
means “…women are no longer restricted to the domestic hearth, but have the
whole society in which to roam and be exploited“ (Walby, 1990). By
conceptualising patriarchy theoretically, like Walby, into different structural
facets, we can explain and understand both the historical changes and effects
of patriarchy, by establishing the relationships between different structures.
This enables us to comprehend, at least, why the struggle of feminists during
the 60s and 70s did not end patriarchy, but instead, forced it from the private
sphere, centred around the power of husbands over their wives, to the public
sphere, where patriarchy is reproduced through more diffuse means.
III- The Poverty of
Patriarchy
 |
| Rid Patriarchy |
Although one can, at least, praise Walby’s theory
for providing an all-encompassing account of the
Despite rigorous attacks and critics on many grand
narratives, such as Marxism, many feminists have stubbornly stuck to using
the idea of patriarchy (Haralambos, 2008). Whereas, other feminists, like Anna
Pollert, argue that the concept of patriarchy is of little use and, at times,
can hold back feminist analysis rather than aiding it. In her book, The Poverty of Patriarchy, (1996)
she brings into question the analytical usefulness of patriarchy as a core
concept when aiming to explain women’s subordination. According to her work, many structural
accounts that are grounded on a theoretical employment of patriarchy,
inescapably, fall onto a circular tendency when using the term ‘patriarchy’. Many of them used patriarchy both as a
description of inequalities between men and women, and as an explanation of
those inequalities. An example of this is Heidi Hartmann’s work, The Unhappy
Marriage of Marxism and Feminism, (1981).
Hartmann (1981) sees patriarchy, in western capitalist societies, as
based upon male control over female labour power. In doing so, she fails to
explain how men come to control women’s labour power in the first place.
Instead, she argues that control comes from the exclusion of women from
independent work and control over their work, but this itself can only be
explained in terms of the control over women’s labour power, which it is
supposed to be explaining. In effect, Hartmann is actually arguing that men
have control over women because men have control over women. This circularity is also evident in Walby’s
work and of other feminists that employ the concept of patriarchy. Walby
defines patriarchy as “a system of social structures and practices in which
men dominate, oppress and exploit women”(1990), and in explaining this
domination and oppression of men over women she ends up, inescapably, giving an
elaborated account of her own definition by borrowing the concept of
structures. Thus, one may also sum up her account along this circular tendency.
That is, patriarchy subordinates women because patriarchal structures are
subordinated against women.
Simultaneously, structural accounts, such as Walby,
that are rooted on the concept of patriarchy, treat, view and employ
‘patriarchy’ as though it is a system that forms part of society, such as
capitalism. They are using and theorising about patriarchy as though it was an
independent gender-based system, with its own internal dynamic parallel to
capitalism (Pollert, 1996). However, doing so is to confuse description with
explanation. To Pollert (1996), patriarchy is not a system or structure in the
same sense as capitalism. There is simply no intrinsic motor or dynamic within
patriarchy, which can explain its self-perpetuation. Whereas, capitalism, on
the other hand, does have such an internal dynamic. The core sustaining and
determining factor in capitalism is its self-expansion of capital/profit. It is
this that drives the system (Pollert, 1996). Capitalism, as a system/structure,
is therefore constrained to consistently pursue profit, and if they fail to do
so, then they will cease to operate and exist. Although, it is worth noting
that this cannot be said for gendered systems, such as patriarchy, as portrayed
and employed by Walby, and of other feminists alike. Pollert’s (1996) works
reveals that gendered systems are not at all constrained in such a manner.
Instead, men and women can behave differently to each other, or even change
sex, “without social production grinding to a halt, or abolishing all
gendered relations between men and women” (Pollert, 1996). There is simply
no internal dynamic to patriarchy comparable to that of capitalism (Gottfried,
1998).
IV - A Concept Too
Useful To Lose
A success of Pollert’s work is that it reveals a
very detrimental nature about structural theories by highlighting that the
theoretical employment of patriarchy, as a core concept, can obscure and, very
often, impoverish our analysis of gender when seeking to explain women’s subordination
in western capitalist societies. It does
this by transforming the term into an abstract semiautonomous structure of
capitalism. Another success of Pollerts’ work is that it reveals that the
theoretical employment of patriarchy can perpetuate abstract structuralism,
which results in the inevitable loss of the dynamic tension between agency and
structure. And, instead of it aiding feminists in their analysis of gender,
they end up reducing the motivations, the interests, and the strategies of male
domination of women to, either, the abstract ‘needs of capital’, or to the
equally abstract ‘role of patriarchy’ (Pollert, 1996).
However, as it stands, this is as far as I am
willing to commit to Pollert’s analysis. The reason being lies in the alternative
method that she advocates. Although gender theories, centred on patriarchy, can
obscure the reality of women’s experience in western countries, it is however
the lesser of the two evils. The following section of the essay intends to
argue this case, by providing a brief overview of Pollert’s alternative mode of
theorising, and by shining a light on some severe repercussions that can occur
if one was to fulfil her demands.
Pollert advocates, as an alternative, a
loyal return to a historical materialist theory of method, by which structural
determination and over-determination give way to an analysis of subjects’
efficacious agency (Gottfried, 1998). The goal here is that it will avoid
structural determinism by providing an orientation that will close the gap
between agency-centred and structuralist accounts (Gottfried, 1998). She is, in effect, calling for a new language to encapsulate and to speak about the
experiences of ‘real’ women and men, through qualitative methods. And as for
the term ‘patriarchy’, she asks for it to be solely reserved to specific
historical structures, that is, “the patrilocal extended household in which
the senior male holds authority” (Pollert, 1996). Meaning that, if one is
to pursue her theoretical and methodological goals, then one need not employ’
patriarchy’, for it can be sufficiently substituted for a more concrete and
effective term, like ‘male-domination’. The anticipation of this is that these
theoretical and methodological injunctions will steer our thoughts to ‘the institutional
embedded-ness of different forms of male power’ (Pollert, 1996). As she puts it
herself, “only when we turn our gaze to lived practice” can theories
develop both as an interpretive and analytic activity (Pollert, 1996:655). It’s
important to note here that Pollert’s alternative rests profoundly on the
influence of E.P. Thompson’s work, 'The Poverty of Theory’ (1978). Thompson
(1978) argued that historical method must be developed, “...to detect any
attempt at arbitrary manipulation: the facts will disclose nothing of their own
accord, the historian, [in this case, the feminist], must work hard to
enable them to find "their own voices". Not the historian's voice.” The
intent here, for Pollert, is that one will avoid the mode of theorising which leads
to pure abstraction, and the ‘juggling of empty categories’, as Thompson puts
it (1978).
My depart from Pollert’s analysis begins here. It seems that if one was to follow through
her demands then they will become victims of a more detrimental case than if
they would have remained loyal to the use of ‘patriarchy’. Like myself, some
feminists have expressed ambivalence about the concept of ‘patriarchy’, and are
uneasy about abandoning all structural categories, as suggested by Pollert.
Both Joan Acker (1989) and V. Beechey (1987) are, too, apprehensive. Although it is reasonable to be sceptical and
to question the analytical usefulness of ‘patriarchy’ as a core concept, a complete departure from it, however must be regarded with
great concern. This is because a full commitment to Pollert’s demands will
generate a myriad of micro-level studies (Bryson, 1999), whereby a multitude of
case studies remain unconnected in theory, leading to gender analysis to
devolve into pure relativism or particularism, by shifting our attention and
energy into discussion and debates about details, and neglecting the larger
picture (Bryson, 1999). My objection is, perhaps, best articulated by Acker’s
question (1989); do we rob feminist analysis of its theoretical and political
force in the effort to overcome problems of abstract structuralism? My
answer to this is ‘No’, this is because the concept of patriarchy fixes gender
relations into a trans-historical totality, and, the absence of a ‘dynamic’ as
such will deprive gender studies of distinctive social relations (Bryson,
1999). After all, the overall aim of feminist is to
encapsulate the understanding of women's subordination, oppression, and
exploitation so it can be defied and changed. However, because naming male
power is a crucial first step in this process, the concept of ‘patriarchy’ too
must remain and persist to be of critical importance. It is not merely a colourful term used by
feminists to rebuke men, as Pollert seems to be implying (Cockburn, 1991). It is not a term of bygone days, that ought
to be reserved solely to ‘specific historical structures’, as argued by
Pollert, and nor is it a rhetorical flourish (Cockburn, 1991). It is an
important dimension of the structures of modern societies. It defines a form of
gender system in which fathers practise customary or juridical rights to, and
over, women (Bryson, 1999). This ‘father-right’ gives rise to a more
generalised ‘male-right through the brotherhood of men under capitalism
(Bryson, 1999). Not only does the adjectival use of ‘patriarchal’, name a
particular structure of gender relations, it also captures its systemic and
enduring aspects by summarising the concrete ways in which male power
legitimises authority in capitalists societies. As Cockburn puts it, patriarchy
“…is a living reality, a system that quite observably shapes the lives and
differentiates the chances of women and of men” (1991). The struggle of
women in western society for gender equality is to, both, contradict and undo
patriarchy. Therefore, it is crucial to note that the absence of the concept
will cause many of these observable facts about women’s subordination to be
overlooked, or dismissed as individual or local experiences. Its complete
abandonment, as demanded by Pollert, will allow women to be taken by surprise
by the obstacle that confronts them daily. They will be deprived of a way of
seeing the world that can oppose dominant, male-centred, 'common-sense'
assumptions (Bryson, 1999).
In conclusion, it is certainly reasonable to accept
Pollert’s critique, that patriarchy is not a system in the same sense as
capitalism, that the concept can by misused, and that, perhaps, we should label
it as ‘dangerous: handle with care’, as Pollert (1996) puts it. However
this is also true of most political concepts, and if we had abandoned all those
that have been misused, then very few would be left. The theoretical beauty of
patriarchy lies in its simplicity. As demonstrated by Walby’s work, it cuts
through unnecessary details and irrelevant differences by laying down the bare
essentials. For these reasons, the
theoretical employment of patriarchy is the lesser of the two evils, and a full
commitment to Pollert’s demand will rob political feminist theory of the only
concept that specifically insinuates the subjection of women; that men have a
political and social right, just in the virtue of being men.
Bibliography
- Millett, K. (1985) Sexual Politics, Granada, London
- Pateman, C. (1988) The Sexual Contract, Blackwell, London
- Cockburn, C. (1991) In the Way of Women. Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations, Basingstoke
- Gottfried, H. (1998) Beyond Patriarchy? Theorising Gender and Class. Sociology, vol 32,
- Thompson, E.P. (1978) 'The Poverty of Theory: or an Orrery of Errors' in E. P Thompson The Poverty of Theory and other Essays, London: Merlin Press.
- Bryson, V. (1999): ‘Patriarchy’: A concept too useful to lose, Contemporary Politics, 5:4, 311-324
- Beechey, V. (1987) Unequal Work. London: Verso
- Acker, J. (1989) The Problem with Patriarchy', Sociology, Vol. 23,
- Walby, s. (1990) Theorising Patriarchy, Blackwell, Oxford
- Haralambos, M. & Holborn, M. (2008) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, HarperCollins, London
- Pollert, A. (1996) Gender and Class revisited; or The Poverty of “Patriarchy”, Sociology, vol 30,
- Hartmann, H. (1981) The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism; A Debate on Class and Patriarchy, Pluto Press, London
No comments:
Post a Comment