Patriarchy-Kamla Bhasin
Patriarchy-Kamla Bhasin
Patriarchy-Kamla Bhasin
WHAT IS PATRIARCHY?
BY KALI FOR WOMEN 1993 NEW DELHI ©
KAMLA BHASIN
Introduction
Many of us involved with different programmes and
activities for women’s development over the years, have
found it necessary to understand the system which keeps
women dominated and subordinated, and to unravel its
workings in order to work for women’s development in a
systematic way. For years I looked at women’s oppression in
a piecemeal fashion; the fragments began to form a pattern
when I started to look at them as part of a system– the
system of patriarchy. It was not easy to understand, initially;
not being an academic I was not trained to immediately
grasp, concepts and abstractions. Gradually, listening to
friends who were academics, reading bits and pieces here
and there, things became clearer. What really helped me
was a month-long workshop on women and development
that I organised in Bangladesh some years ago, with Amrita
Chhachhi (of the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague) as
resource person. That workshop clarified many issues and
concepts, not just for me, but for most of the participants as
well.
Since then (1987) I have been looking for short and simply
written articles on the subject of patriarchy, which I could
share with women and men activists. Most of what- I had
read was either too difficult to understand or too full of
jargon, or it assumed prior knowledge of the subject. So I
started initiating discussions on patriarchy in different
workshops with the help of my notes and of Amrita’s
presentation at Bangladesh. During these discussions my
own understanding became clearer, and I also found some
articles and books which were very good. I decided to try to
put all that I had read, liked and understood together in an
accessible and, I hope, useful form.
In this pamphlet, I try to look at patriarchy as we
experience it in our lives and as a concept which explains
women’s subordination. (Some theories regarding its origin
are introduced here but very briefly. For a more detailed
understanding other readings will be necessary.) It is
intended for activists who may not have access to books and
journal or the kind of time required to go through them all;
but I hope that the writers of whose work I have drawn upon
will be illuminated and will encourage at least some activists
to read more on the subject. What we desperately need is
more conceptual work on the nature, origin and roots of
patriarchy in South Asia so that we can understand our own
situation better.
The material is presented in a question and answer style, a
format that I have used earlier in pamphlets on Feminism,
and one that people find easy to assimilate.
What is Patriarchy?
Q. What do we mean by patriarchy?
A. The word patriarchy literally means the rule of the father
or the “patriarch”, and originally it was used to describe a
specific type of “male-dominated family”-the large household
of the patriarch which included women, junior men, children,
slaves and domestic servants all under the rule of this
dominant male. Now it is used more generally to refer to
male domination, to the power relationships by which men
dominate women, and to characterise a system whereby
women are kept subordinate in a number of ways. In South
Asia, for example, it is called pitrasatta in Hindi, pidarshahi in
Urdu and pitratontro in Bangla.
The subordination that we experience at a daily level,
regardless of the class we might belong to, takes various
forms -discrimination, disregard, insult, control, exploitation,
oppression, violence- within the family, at the place of work,
in society. The details may be different, but the theme is the
same.
2. Women’s reproduction
Men also control women’s reproductive power. In many
societies women do not have the freedom to decide how
many children they want, when to have them, whether they
can use contraception, or terminate a pregnancy, etc. Apart
from individual male control, male dominated institutions like
the church or state (i.e. religion arid politics) also lay down
rules regarding women’s reproductive capacity. This is
institutionalised control. For example, in the Catholic Church
the male religious hierarchy decides whether men and
women can use birth control methods, which methods are
permissible, whether women can abort unwanted children,
and so on. The continuous struggle by women for the
freedom to choose when, whether and how many children to
have, in practically every country in the world, is an
indication of how strong this control is and how reluctant
men are to relinquish it. We will discuss why this is so in the
next section.
In modem times, the patriarchal state tries to control
women’s reproduction through the family planning
programmes. The state decides the optimum size of the
country’s population and accordingly, actively encourages or
discourages women to have children. In India there has
been an aggressive birth control programme to limit family
sizes drastically. In Malaysia, women have been urged to
have several children, in order to ensure a sizeable domestic
market for the country’s industrial products. In Europe,
where birth rates are very low, women are lured through
various incentives to have more children. They are given
fully-paid and very long maternity leave, opportunities for
part time jobs, childcare facilities, etc.; some countries even
provide for “male maternity leave”. The ideology and policies
of the state also change according to the demand for labour
birth economy. For example, after World War II in Germany,
when labour power was required to rebuild the country,
women were called upon to take up jobs and participate in
nation-building. Conversely, in Britain, once the war had
been won, women who had participated actively on the
frontlines were told to go back home now that the men could
engage in peace-time activities. The famous Baby Boom of
the 1950s in the U.S. is an illustration of this, and of the
state’s implicit endorsement of the ideology of motherhood.
This ideology of motherhood is central to the radical
feminist analysis of women’s situation. According to them
women are subjugated mainly because the burden of
mothering and nurturing is forced on to them, and only on
them, by patriarchal societies. Motherhood is forced by
depriving young women of adequate contraceptive
information; the contraceptives it does make available are
inconvenient, unreliable, expensive and often dangerous.
Patriarchy, they assert, limits abortions and often seeks to
deny them entirely, but at the same time subjects women to
intense and unremitting pressure to engage in sexual
relations.
Further, patriarchy not only forces women to be mothers, it
also determines the conditions of their motherhood. This
ideology of motherhood is considered one of the bases of
women’s oppression because it creates feminine and
masculine character types which perpetuate patriarchy; it
creates and strengthens the divide between private and
public, it restricts women’s mobility and growth and it
reproduces male dominance.
3. Control over women’s sexuality
This is another very important area of women’s
subordination. Women are obliged to provide sexual
services to their en according to their needs and desires. A
whole moral and legal regime exists to restrict the
expression of women’s sexuality outside marriage in every
society, whereas customarily, a blind eye is turned towards
male promiscuity. At the other end of the spectrum men may
force their wives, daughters or other women in their control
into prostitution, i.e. trading their sexuality. Rape and the
threat of rape is another way in which women’s sexuality is
dominated through an invocation of “shame” and “honour”. In
order to control women’s sexuality their dress, behaviour and
mobility are carefully monitored by familial, social, cultural
and religious codes of behaviour.
A radical feminist analysis says that women under
patriarchy are not only mothers, they are also sexual slaves,
and patriarchal ideology typically opposes women as sexual
beings to women as mothers. With the partial exception of
mothers, the male culture defines women as sexual objects
for male pleasure. According to it, rape may not have existed
in every society but it is a defining feature of patriarchy. It
sees rape as an effective political device, a political act of
oppression exercised by members of a powerful class on
members of a powerless class. Radical feminists also focus
their attention on institutionalised prostitution, pornography
and forced heterosexuality as other examples of control over
women’s sexuality under patriarchy.
4. Women’s mobility
In order to control women’s sexuality, production and
reproduction, men need to control women’s mobility. The
imposition of parda, restrictions on leaving the domestic
space, a strict separation of private and public, limits on
interaction between the sexes; and so on, all control
women’s mobility and freedom in ways that are unique to
them-that is, they are gender-specific, because men are not
subjected to the same constraints.
(ii) Religion
Most modem religions are patriarchal, defining male
authority as supreme. They present a patriarchal order as
being supernaturally ordained. The feminine principle of
power which existed before the evolution of institutionalised
religions has been gradually weakened, goddesses have
been replaced by gods. All major religions have been
created, interpreted and controlled by upper class and upper
cast men; they have defined morality, ethics, behaviour and
even law; they have laid down the duties and rights of men
and women, the relationship between them. They have
influenced state policy and continue to be a major force in
most societies; in South Asia their power and presence are
enormous. In India, for instance, inspite of the fact that it is
•a secular country, a person’s legal identity with regard to
marriage, divorce and inheritance is determined by his or her
religion.
There is sufficient analysis now to show how almost every
religion considers women to be inferior, impure, sinful; how
they have created double standards of morality and
behaviour; how religious laws often justify the use of
violence against “deviant” women; how inequitous
relationships are sanctioned and legitimised by recourse to
“religious” creeds and fundamental tenets.
(v) Media
Media are very important tools in the hands of upper class,
upper caste men to propagate class and gender ideology.
From films and television to magazines, newspapers, radio,
the portrayal of women is stereotypical and distorted.
Messages about male superiority and female inferiority are
repeated constantly; violence against women is rampant,
especially in films. As with other sectors, women are highly
under-represented in the media, professionally, and biases
in reporting coverage, advertising and messaging are still
very sexist.
In conclusion
Generally speaking, a large number of women’s groups in
South Asia seem to accept the social feminist position, i.e.
that both patriarchy and class oppression are important, are
related to, and in most cases, reinforce each other, and that
women have to simultaneously challenge the system of
patriarchy and class and caste domination.
In South Asia during the last three decades, women and
their organisations have been challenging patriarchy in
different ways; their challenges have local, sporadic and
spontaneous, as well as well-thought-out, organised and
coordinated, through autonomous women’s formations or in
association with other social movements, political parties or
trade unions. In a way, women’s conceptualisation of
patriarchy, their attempts to analyse it as a system and to
deconstruct it are themselves a powerful challenge. The
subsequent applicacon of this analysis to action at several
levels -academic, grassroots, regional and international, and
in society in general – has placed the issue of women’s
subordination on most national agendas.
Over the last two decades or more middle and working
class, rural and urban women have come together in small
and large groups, in formal and informal meetings, study
camps and workshops to further their own understanding of
oppression and male domination.
Besides such generalised opposition to patriarchy,
individual women and women’s organisations have
challenged different manifestations of patriarchal ideology
through the media, conferences, trainings, and actual
projects on the ground for women’s empowerment. They
have analysed and opposed in very many ways the different
forms of violence women are subjected to, they have lobbied
for changes in the laws, stricter implementation of existing
laws, the creation of special police cells to deal with violence
against women. They have created homes for battered
women, support groups for women in distress, shelters and
short-stay homes.
Individual women, women’s organisations and feminist
scholars have challenged the patriarchal assumptions and
sexist biases in the health, education and legal systems of
our countries and have carried out different campaigns to
make these systems more gender equitable. In almost every
country in South Asia women’s groups have analysed the
sexist bias in the media, and examined the impact of their
portrayal on women, suggested guidelines and proposed
alternatives. Similarly, women’s groups and feminist
researchers have also studied the impact of development
policies and programmes on woman and have attempted to
interact with national governments on policy planning and
implementation.
Notes
1 See Alison Jagger’s excellent presentation of the analysis
of patriarchy by different strands of feminism in her book,
Feminist Politics and Human Nature (New Jersey: Rowman
and Allanheld, 1993).
2 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford and New
York : Oxford University Press,
1986), p.217.
3 Gerda Lerner, op. cit., p.219.
4. Alison Jaggar, op. cit., p.367.
5 Sylvia Walby, Theorising Patriarchy (Oxford : Basil
Blackwell, 1990).
6 Mary Daly, Gynocology : The Metaethics of Radical
Feminism (Boston Beacon Press, 1978).
7 Taken from the Report of the Nari Mukti Sangharsh
Sammelan, Patna, 1988.
8 Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and
Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union”, in Capital
ar.d Class 8, Summer.
9 Gerda Lerner, op. cit.
10 Sylvia Walby, op. cit.
11 Gerda Lerner, op. cit., p.l6.
12 Ibid, p.23.
13 For instance Sheila Jeffery, “The Need for Revolutionary
Feminism” quoted in Veronica Beechy, “On Patriarchy”,
Feminist Review, 3.
14 Veronica Beechy, op. cit.
15 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will : Men, Women and
Rape (New York : Bantam, 1976).
16 Gerda Lerner, op dt., p.46.
17 Jaggar, op. cit., p.160.
18 Veronica Beechy, op. cit.
19 Ibid.
20 Heidi Hartmann, op. cit.
21 This paper has been reproduced in Maria Mies, et al.,
Women: the Last Colony (Delhi : Kali for Women, 1988).
22 Gerda Lerner, op. cit.
23 Ibid, pp. 8-11.
24 Uma Chakravarti, “Conceptualising Brahmanical
Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State”,
Economic and Political Weekly, Apr. 3, 1993.
25 Gail Omvedt, “Patriarchy and Matriarchy”, Feminist
Concepts series, SNDT, Bombay.