The Patriarchy - examining the problematic monolith
Nikola Man
If you spend more than 12 seconds talking to a modern feminist, you will undoubtedly hear the word patriarchy. This infamous term is generally used in two contexts:
Everything can be blamed on the patriarchy
Smash (or dismantle) the patriarchy
In this article, I will try to answer one question and one question only – do we live in a patriarchy? Anja, my friend and former colleague, suggested that I stick to one country as it makes it easier to follow and makes more sense from a socio-political perspective. I listened to feedback and will stick to the U.S. for the majority of this piece. I chose the U.S. for two main reasons – 1) their statistics are detailed and widely available, and 2) most of the modern feminist theory comes from this country. That being said, I will also intersperse data and commentary about my home country, Serbia, as well as the United Kingdom and Canada to show that certain trends are global, not just in the U.S.
Now that the introductory mumbo-jumbo is out of the way, we can start tackling this topic. If you are one of the people who have claimed that we live in a patriarchy and that the patriarchy is the root of all evil or at the very least the reason why women are oppressed, I want you to do something very simple – define patriarchy. No, seriously, what is your definition of the term “patriarchy”? Okay, I will go a step further, have you ever tried to define it for yourself or even looked up the definition of this term? I am not trying to be facetious, the reason why I am asking you to define the term is rather straightforward. Imagine that you are talking to a normal, average Joe or Jolene who resides outside of the political sphere and the online feminist bubble. If you come at this person with “we need to smash the patriarchy because its causing massive suffering”, their instinctual reaction will be to understand what you mean by patriarchy. So let’s do just that, let’s look at the dictionary definition of the patriarchy:
a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father's clan or tribe
a society, community, or country based on this social organization
Okay, we have something to work with here. Fatherhood seems to be a very important element of this. Let’s test if the feminist assertion that we live in a patriarchy is true. The first thing we will notice is that marriage rates are plummeting. Young people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are marrying less and less while divorce rates see the opposite trend.
This same phenomenon is happening in Serbia too. We went from somewhere around 8.2 thousand divorces in 2011 to almost 11 thousand in 2019. Anyway, back to the U.S. The next fact you will discover that over a quarter of families are single-parent households. The vast majority (around two thirds) of these single-parent households are led by mothers. Fathers seem to be on the losing end of this deal.
The average person would also look at political and economic power. Let’s do political power first. In 2021, 141 women hold seats in the United States Congress, comprising 26.4% of the total members, 24% of people serving in the U.S. Senate are women, and 117 women (26.9%) serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Vice President of the United States is a woman, with many other important members of the cabinet also being women. Canada’s Prime Minister has a 50/50 cabinet. Serbia has a female Prime Minister. There seem to be no barriers for women in this regard. Unlike the 1950s and early 1960s, women now have substantial representation on the political scene.
Let’s turn to the world of business and money. The number of women leading the Fortune 500 companies hit an all-time record in 2020. The Fortune 500 simply ranks America's largest companies. These are the most influential, best-performing businesses in the U.S. and the world. Interestingly enough, millionaire women are out-earning millionaire men in the U.S., according to the 2019 IRS data. There were nearly 13 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. as of 2019 and these businesses generated $1.9 trillion in revenue in that year alone. Moreover, women are in control of money and household finances in the U.S. Women hold 60% of all personal wealth and 51% of all stocks. At home, the majority of women (90 percent) still control the family's purse strings, from stocking up on household items to having the final say on home and car purchases and health care. Just like with political power, there are no barriers for women here. In fact, it is not just that there are no barriers, women are passing all the economic tests with flying colors. Literally all tests, ranging from leading and/or owning businesses over remarkable personal wealth to managing household finances.
On top of that women are outperforming men at universities by a noticeable margin. In the U.S., American women are 33 percent more likely to earn a college degree than their male counterparts, according to the results of a longitudinal study published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, women have been earning around 58% of all bachelor’s degrees in the U.S. for the past 20 years. They have also been outperforming men in master’s and doctorate programs, with roughly 61% of master’s degrees and 53% of doctor’s degrees. It is not just graduation rates, it is also enrolment. Women are joining universities at a higher rate than men. The same is happening in Serbia, in the academic year 2019/20, 43% of students who enrolled were men and 57% were women. The United Kingdom is no different as you can see in the graph below.
Academic year 2018/2019
After having looked at the main spheres of life, when the average person returns to the dictionary definition of the word “patriarchy”, they will be wondering – what the hell are you people talking about?
Over the past 6, 7 years I have been heavily involved in the online debate sphere on many societal issues. You might be wondering why and what is wrong with me. Perfectly understandable questions, as this endeavor usually brings nothing but frustration and disappointment. Nevertheless, I have always had 3 goals and I stuck to these goals with unwavering conviction:
Get better knowledge for myself by being proven wrong
Teach people how to use the tools of science and philosophy
Help improve the lives of my fellow humans through donations and charity/activism
I still use these 3 goals to navigate the debate sphere and my life generally. These 3 goals were also the inspiration for this series of articles. With that in mind, this online debate experience has given me the opportunity to actually speak to people who truly believe that we live in a patriarchy. By speaking to them, I have realized that there isn’t a singular, clear definition of the patriarchy that people agree on. I have also realized that many people have their own definitions. Obviously, these definitions differ from the one found in the dictionary. I would like to explore these definitions with you.
Shannon Ridgway from Everyday Feminism defines the patriarchy as “a system of domination by which the wealthy, white, male ruling class has authority over everyone else”. But as we’ve seen, women are present in both the economic and political sphere of life and in no small number. So this definition definitely doesn’t reflect reality.
Let’s try Wikipedia. Feminist theorists see the patriarchy as an unjust social system that is harmful to both men and women. The patriarchy includes any social, political, or economic mechanism based on male dominance over women. Like most things in modern feminist theory, the patriarchy is a social construction, it can be overcome by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations. Another contributor at Everyday Feminism, Marina Watanabe, argues that and I quote “patriarchy perpetuates oppressive and limiting gender roles, the gender binary, trans phobia and cissexism, sexual assault, the political and economic subordination of women, and so much more”. What this effectively translates to is that the patriarchy is an incredibly oppressive system that can be dismantled by talking about it. Interesting.
Shannon from the article mentioned above also said: “but unfortunately, just like racism, patriarchy still exists. And just like racism, it often manifests in casual ways that tend to go unnoticed by the majority of people”. Okay, so the patriarchy is a terribly oppressive system, a system that harms both men and women, a system that enforces gender roles, and this system does all of that in a subtle, unnoticeable manner and it can be disassembled from within by just talking about it. Oh and I almost forgot, this system also allows women to outperform men at universities for decades, hold tremendous economic and political power, and have the same legal rights as men.
Let’s throw in one more, this one is by the London Feminist Network: “Patriarchy is the term used to describe the society in which we live today, characterised by current and historic unequal power relations between women and men whereby women are systematically disadvantaged and oppressed. This takes place across almost every sphere of life but is particularly noticeable in women’s under-representation in key state institutions, in decision-making positions and in employment and industry. Male violence against women is also a key feature of patriarchy. Women in minority groups face multiple oppressions in this society, as race, class and sexuality intersect with sexism for example”.
What have we learned about the patriarchy so far?
It has absolutely nothing to do with the common, dictionary definition of the word
Feminists are unable to consistently define the term patriarchy
Even though they can’t define it accurately and consistently, they think it is alive and well in today’s society and that it is omnipresent
They also think that they know exactly what the patriarchy wants
The patriarchy is not preventing women from acquiring power, money and status
The patriarchy manifests itself in subtle ways in all spheres of life yet has effects varying from trivial to cataclysmic
The patriarchy is concerned with gender roles
The patriarchy is also concerned with the class struggle between the bourgeois male and the proletariat female
The patriarchy is a system designed in such a way to promote subordination of women
The patriarchy oppresses all women, including the many rich and powerful women even though most of them are not aware of this oppression
The patriarchy also oppresses men
The patriarchy can be blamed for everything
Just look at this magnificent list of mutually-exclusive and contradicting statements. Does any of this even remotely resemble reality? It so clearly doesn’t. Do you know what does resemble reality though? How about this – we live in a society that used to be heavily patriarchal some 40-50 years ago. Our society has some vestiges of these patriarchal times, but they are disappearing as a result of the feminist work in the last century. Does this mean that women have a buttery, smooth road with no issues? Of course not. However, blaming these issues on the patriarchy which doesn’t exist as I have hopefully been able to demonstrate today, won’t do anyone any good, but it will pit men against women and divide us even further. There are many books and idiotic university courses on patriarchy. Just wrap your mind around that. Imagine how much effort, time and money is being spent on something that doesn’t even fucking exist. Imagine how detrimental to our society it is to teach men that they are evil oppressors when most of them haven’t done anything wrong. Imagine how detrimental to our society it is to teach women that they are victims and therefore should be looking for these subtle manifestations of patriarchal oppression. I don’t know many attitudes and ideologies more pernicious than those based on victimhood. In order to shift the focus from the non-existent issues to the ones that have roots in reality we have to do one thing – we need to stop feeling through problems, and start thinking through problems.
As usual, here is the link to all of the sources used for the construction of this argument.