Concept in Definition ABC

In most societies, men and women have not had the same rights. In this sense, man has been, and in many places continues to be, the one who has a privileged position in society. This phenomenon is called patriarchy.

This reality has conditioned the different aspects of life (personal relationships, culture, recognition of rights, working conditions and wages, and language itself). If we take the family nucleus as a reference, the family patriarchal is the institution in which the figure of the father symbolizes power in a family.

Patriarchy from a religious, historical and scientific point of view

For centuries of civilization Patriarchy has been justified based on a series of evaluations:

1) the role of women in the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of subordination with respect to men and this idea is based on the Holy Scriptures and, consequently, questioning patriarchy was going against the will of God,

2) in prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, man played a dominant role and this circumstance conditioned the

evolution of the division of labor throughout history,

3) From a "scientific" perspective, the woman was considered to be biologically determined, since her role as mother represented her main function as a human being and everything else was in a second flat.

The feminist movement and criticism of the theses that founded patriarchy

When in the nineteenth century the movement feminist claiming the recognition of rights for women (especially the right to vote), the traditional theses that theoretically justified patriarchy began to be questioned. In this sense, the Judeo-Christian idea that women have to depend on a man began to lose force at the time when society was abandoning the traditional values ​​of religion.

On the other hand, the idea that the hunter man of the paleolithic had a more important role in society was in contradiction with new research (for For example, it has been shown that in the Paleolithic age 60% of the food consumed was provided by women). Finally, in the nineteenth century and especially in the twentieth, the idea that motherhood is the element that defines the feminine condition has been losing weight.

Although patriarchy has lost its theoretical foundation, today there are still traditions in which the woman is subordinate to the man (at the will of her father or her husband or at the service of her children).

The patriarchal model today

The patriarchal mentality is still very much present. As an example, we can recall some circumstances: machismo in certain sectors of society, genital mutilation of women women in certain countries, discriminatory laws against women in the Arab world, the difference in wages compared to men, the gender violence, etc.

Photo: Fotolia - rudall30

Topics in Patriarchy