STRUCTURES OF PATRIARCHY

Gerda Lerner - Creation of Patriarchy

In her path breaking work The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner defines it in the following words:
“Patriarchy is the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children
in the Family, and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general”. She seeks to
explain how Patriarchy was created and not biologically natural as male historians wanted us to
believe. Since it has a beginning in history it will also come to an end and feminists hold out the hope
that that will happen soon.

Patriarchy which brought women from a position of strength to a position of subordination as the
years went by did not happen in a single series of events meant to overthrow women but was
established over a long period of more than 2500 years. The complex mutually interactive dialectical
processes involving demographic, ecological, cultural, and historical factors which impacted the lives
of women emerged towards the end of the Neolithic Era, around the 4th Century BC, in ancient
Mesopotamia.

For Gerda Lerner the question of the origins of patriarchy is not as important as the question how it
became established and institutionalized over time through historical processes. She makes the
following points in her discussion of the establishment of Patriarchy:

1) Women’s roles in society were primarily defined by their sexuality, i.e. their reproductive
capacities and their capacity to provide sexual services to men. With the development of agriculture
including farming and domestication of animals, and the invention of pottery and textiles which
emerged in the Neolithic period around 9000 B.C., the inter-tribal “exchange of women” as
commodities became widely prevalent. Eminent anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss was the first
sociologist to discuss this phenomenon. It represented trade exchanges which took several forms:
negotiated marriage alliances between tribes or villages meant the forceful removal of women from
their homelands for benefit of the family; women used as concubines or stand-in wives; women
offered by tribal chiefs to sleep with visiting men as a gesture of hospitality; women forced to
participate in ritual rapes in festivals to insure prosperity; women loaned to other men for bearing
children; and so on. It worked on the principle that societies that had more women could produce
more children and therefore have more labour at hand for agriculture and consequently produce
more surpluses. Women were the first “private property” acquired by men.

2) Women also became a resource to be conquered or bought as slaves by the victorious state after
bloody battles. Slavery originated with the idea of enslaving and appropriating the services of
women and became the pre dominant form of owning women. After warfare men captured from the
conquered tribes were killed whereas the women and children were taken into slavery for various
purposes.

3) Patriarchy appeared in its earliest form in the Archaic State which appeared in the 2nd millennium
B.C. It was so organized that the King or Supreme Ruler exercised control over the army and the
political class which comprised of the males. These males in turn exercised control over their
families. The laws of ancient Mesopotamian civilization reflected this hierarchy and consolidated
male dominance.

4) The patriarchal family was the nucleus of the Patriarchal state. Family relations as they developed
under patriarchy were arranged in a manner in which the father as head of the family exercised
authority over all the members of his household including women and minor sons. He commanded
absolute obedience from them and in exchange, he owed them the obligation of economic support
and protection. Throughout the years, women simply went from one male protector, the father, to
another, the husband. Furthermore, a woman’s marriage partner was chosen in line with her family’s
interest. The dominating role for male family heads was in compensation of the fact that they were
themselves under the control of and dependent on the King or the State. Male dominance was
ensured whether it was through polygamy in the East or monogamy in the west. And the control of
women on the basis of their sexual role was ensured through paternalistic protection promised by
their men folk. The family persists as the core institution of the modern industrialized state but even
now it reinforces the system of male dominance within the patriarchal order.

5) The enslavement of women predated the formation of class society. Societies became
differentiated on the basis of class very early in the development of the state. While for men class
was judged by their resources for production and ownership of property including ownership of
female sexual services, for women it was determined through their sexual ties to a man. Class
dominance too was different for men and women. Men of a lower class were exploited mainly as
workers while women of that class were exploited not just as laborers but also as producers of
children and providers of sexual services. Women from poor families were sold into prostitution or
marriage for a nominal price or given away for economic reasons. Women of wealthy men could
fetch a bride-price (of which the modern equivalent is dowry). This money helped the woman’s
family to secure financially advantageous matches for their sons. It also fetched respect for the bride
herself. Slavery combined with class discrimination and other forms of oppression such as racism,
sexism and the patriarchal organization of family, effectively ensured women’s exploitation and total
subordination.

6) Patriarchy could not have survived without women’s cooperation. Women for thousands of years
have participated in the process of their own subordination. Their psychological conditioning from
early childhood forced women to internalize the idea that they were naturally inferior to men. This
made them fearful and unsure of themselves and easy to control.

7) An important factor in the growing practice of patriarchy was the complete absence of group
consciousness amongst women. This was due to women’s lack of knowledge of their common
history, which prevented them from forging bonds amongst themselves. It was also because of the
fact that laws written by males were so designed as to differentiate not only the genders but also
draw lines between classes of women. Other oppressed groups like the slaves or peasants had
shared interests and social and cultural bonds dating back to the time when they had not as a group
been subordinated. Thus they could forge a group consciousness which bound them closely with one
another and helped them to launch coordinated resistance against the more brutal modes of
oppression exercised by their masters. But this did not happen with women as a group. The system
divided them against one another by defining what was normal for women and what was deviant.
The so called deviant, “free” educated women were cast out of the fold by their own kin. Women
became their strictest critics and their own worst enemy.

8) Finally Gerda Lerner talks about the appropriation of the so called symbol systems of society by
males - the system of education, language, definitions, similes and metaphors, and cultural symbols
that were accumulated over time by the human race. Male historians, scribes, and scholars
established an absolute hegemony over most of the belief systems and explanatory systems in the
various civilizations and women were largely excluded from this process. Some of the major symbols
of female power, the mother goddess and the fertility goddesses were also appropriated by males
and transformed into metaphors that celebrated male procreativity. Such metaphors treated the
male as norm and female as deviant; the male as whole and powerful and the female as unfinished,
inferior and lacking in autonomy, to be conceived only in narrow sexually dependent ways. According
to Lerner, “it is this feature of male hegemony which has been most damaging to women and has
ensured their subordinate status for millennia.”

VANITA RUTH
SELF AND GENDER DEBATE
The Sulabha-Janaka debate in the Mahabharata presents a philosophical confrontation between
Janaka, who argues for the subordination of women based on traditional roles, and Sulabha, who
challenges this view by advocating for the autonomy of women, particularly through the lens of
asceticism and self-realization.

Janaka, a philosopher king, dismisses Sulabha's asceticism due to her youthful beauty, implying that
a woman cannot overcome sensual desires. He reduces her to her physical appearance and social
identity, questioning her legitimacy as an ascetic. He also accuses her of being an agent of a rival
king, thus denying her autonomy and agency as a woman.

In contrast, Sulabha defends her position by arguing that the essence of all beings is the same—
composed of the same primal elements and consciousness. She challenges the notion of gender
difference, asserting that the distinction between man and woman is not essential, but rather a
social construct. She argues that identity is fluid and ever-changing, and the Self (Atman) is constant,
transcending the physical form. Her message is that the body is mutable, but the essence of the Self
remains unchanged, which is the core of her argument against Janaka's view of women as inferior to
men.

The debate highlights the conflict between traditional gender roles and the concept of an
autonomous, self-realized individual, as represented by Sulabha's refusal to be confined by societal
norms.

Conclusions

Sulabha therefore provides philosophical justification for equality and non-differentiation between
women and men. More than providing the basis for a woman’s role and her dharma, the text
provides a new direction to the sex and gender debate and characterises the self as a liberating and
emancipated concept of identity and individual.

Her primary arguments can be summarised as follows:

1. The body is gendered but the Atman (Universal self/spirit) is not gendered.

2. The body acquires its gender at a certain stage in the womb, and the body changes constantly, so
even the body id not always gendered in the same way, that is, even bodily gender is not a fixed or
static thing.

3. The Atman is one and the same in all beings, regardless of the body’s gender

4. The Atman is neither the property of anyone under the control of anyone, and the Atman does not
really act.

Following these arguments, their implication in the practical world are as follows:
1. Since the same Atman animates both man and woman, women are capable of pursuing the same
paths as men

2. A truly wise person, who has realized the oneness of the Atman, will not try to judge anyone,
including any woman, by caste or marital status

3. The Atman is not the property of anyone, so a truly wise person realises that to ask a woman
whom she belongs to is meaningless

4. Since the Atman is one, intellectual or spiritual communion/ union between two personals
including a man and a woman, is not the same as physical union and is not wrong.

Sylvia Walby - Theorizing Patriarchy

She distinguished two main forms of patriarchy, private and public.

Private patriarchy is based upon household production as the main site of women's oppression.
Public patriarchy is based principally in public sites such as employment and the state. The
household does not cease to be a patriarchal structure in the public form, but it is no longer the chief
site.

In private patriarchy the expropriation of women's labour takes place primarily by individual
patriarchs within the household, while in the public form it is a more collective appropriation. In
private patriarchy the principle patriarchal strategy is exclusionary; in the public it is segregationist
and subordinating.

The change from private to public patriarchy involves a change both in the relations between the
structures and within the structures. In the private form household production is the dominant
structure; in the public form it is replaced by employment and the state. In each form all the
remaining patriarchal structures are present - there is simply a change in which are dominant. There
is also a change in the institutional forms of patriarchy, with the replacement of a primarily individual
form of appropriation of women by a collective one.

This takes place within each of the six patriarchal structures.

1. Household Production
2. Employment
3. State
4. Sexuality
5. Violence
6. Culture

So, while the absolute exclusion of women from paid work is diminishing, their segregation into low-
paying industries and occupations and part-time work has declined only a little. Women are gaining
access to the public sphere of paid employment, but are subordinated to men within it.

This process of change from private to public form of patriarchal exploitation of women is a product
of two main forces for change.

Firstly, there is the demand for cheaper labour by employers within a capitalist labour market. This
produces a continuing pull towards the entry of women into paid employment because patriarchal
production relations constitute women as a cheaper labour force than men on average. As we have
seen, however, this process is complicated by the differing forms of capital restructuring and of
racism. Secondly, feminist struggle has helped undermine patriarchal exclusionary strategies. This has
occurred on a number of sites, but those of the state and the trade unions are of particular
importance here. The winning of the suffrage has enabled women to block exclusionary strategies
being supported by the state. Trade unions themselves have been changed by women's entry to
membership, and by increasing organization within them, from vehicles for patriarchal exclusionary
strategies to at worst vehicles for segregation strategies.

The combined result of capitalist forces and feminist struggle have been primarily responsible for the
change from private towards public patriarchal exploitation of women's labour.

PATRIACHY IN INDIA
Patriarchy is a rather tricky question, as with other kinds of definitions related to social phenomena
and concepts, defining patriarchy in its entirety is not always possible. It is therefore better to
understand the concept rather than getting into some watertight definition. However, patriarchy can
be defined as “a system of social structure and practices in which men dominate, oppress, and
exploit women” (Walby, 1990). This definition clearly outlines the nature of patriarchy, which is
engrained in our social structure that gives it a very fundamental character. Based on this social
structure, men dominate and exploit women and their action gets legitimized by the existing
structure through institutions like family, kinship, marriage, religion, class, caste, race, etc. Patriarchy
envisages within itself a form of power relation between men and women. In this relationship, a
hierarchy exists that places men in an advantageous position, and this makes a complete recipe for
female exploitation. In a more literal sense, patriarchy (pitrasatta in Hindi) denotes the rule of father
in a male-dominated family. This rule emerges from an unequal resource distribution like land, which
is invariably inherited by the male line of descent. This control over the resources later gets
translated into control over the production and reproduction of women. However, later in this unit,
we will also see how matrilineal and bilateral kinship structures alter this power relation in family
and outside.

The male control over the sexuality of women is considered to be a manifestation of patriarchy. This
control is exercised by the male within the structure of marriage, family, and kinship. Especially in
patrilineal societies like ours in India, the institutions of marriage, family, and kinship become a site
for reproducing the patriarchal structures.

The relation of production and reproduction needs to be analyzed historically in order to understand
the consolidation of patriarchy. Uma Chakraborty in her essay on Brahminical patriarchy in early
India tries to understand this relation of production and reproduction during historical periods. She
has based her analysis largely on pre-historical, proto-historical, and historical accounts and evidence
that throw some light on the dimension of women’s role both in production and reproduction. Her
argument starts with the contention that in the hunting and food-gathering stages, women’s role was
not restricted only in terms of reproduction but they also played an active role in food gathering and
also sometimes in hunting, which she argues is evident in cave paintings of Bhimbetka and other
archaeological sites in central India. In many such paintings, women are depicted wearing some sort
of headgear (depicting power and authority) and are shown taking part in hunting activities. The
reproductive role of women was also considered important since they were considered as ‘life-givers’
and thus having close association with the events of life and death. This belief places women in some
sort of mystical and supernatural space which is in sync with the evidence found related to the cult of
mother goddess. During the Indus Valley Civilization, the position of women and the emergence of
patriarchy cannot be established based on the evidence since the in-situ evidence is not supported
by written documents as they are not yet decisively deciphered. However, there is evidence of class
formation which are depicted and present in the form of rural and urban centers, citadel, surplus
grain stocks, etc. Presence of female figurines, mother goddess icons, and dancing girl statues can be
seen as pointing towards the important role of women in relation to reproduction. But nothing can
be said with conviction regarding the gender relations.

It was with the coming of the Aryans that the real consolidation of patriarchy and male dominance
took place. It is intended in early Vedic literature that the Aryans had to fight with the indigenous
people of the land, and in this fight, they conquered their cattle, land, and women. This is the first-
ever historical evidence of women taken as captives by the Aryans. These women then were
assigned different roles that related to serving the Aryan race and were also used as gift items, thus
depicting a control over their sexuality. Later on, various texts including the Arthashastra and
Manusmriti outline the behavior of women and laid down rules for controlling their productive and
reproductive capacities. There are written evidence that is sufficient to show that the state also had
some control over the reproductive powers and sexuality of women. In this context, it was laid down
that the king can punish a woman for her adulterous behavior. This state control was guided by the
principle that the sexuality of women needs to be controlled and this controlling power lies mainly
with the husband after the woman is married, and if the husband is not able to control her, then the
state can take action against such ‘culprit.’ This also had some effect on the role of production of
women. With such strict control over her sexuality, she was now mainly confined to the domestic
sphere of life. Here also the kind of importance that must be accorded to a woman’s productive role
was absent (Chakravarti 1993).

How in the context of India, patriarchy became established. In this section, we started with the
example and evidence from the hunting-gathering stage and moved on to the Vedic and post-Vedic
period where the state also became an instrument for upholding patriarchy and male dominance.
Further, we understood how kinship structures in the form of patrilocality and the Hindu marriage
patterns have in-built patriarchal structures. This has been explained with the help of certain
examples. In a nutshell, it can be said that one has to be very observant in order to decipher more
such models based on patriarchy and male dominance.