Professional Documents
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5 Patriarchal Relations and Sexual Division of Labour
5 Patriarchal Relations and Sexual Division of Labour
87
D. S. Gills, Rural Women and Triple Exploitation in Korean Development
© Dong-Sook Shin Gills 1999
88 Patriarchal Relations and Modes of Production
The concept of universal patriarchy assents to the autonomous
existence of patriarchy while denying its own intrinsic dynamics of
operation. The assertion that patriarchy is a social relation which
transcends the boundary of modes of production, and which is not
essentially affected by social forces in historical modes of production,
is a flawed discourse, even within the terms of its own logic. Patriarchy
is certainly a historical manifestation. Analytical isolation of patriarchy
from its historical conditions, thus ignoring divergent configurations
of a multitude of social relations, results in ahistorical analysis.
The concept of patriarchy therefore falls short of its claim to be a
social relation and, thus, to talk of patriarchy in an unqualified
fashion is to reify the concept. In addition, the emphasis on autonomy
of patriarchy, and its analytical separation from capitalism, presents
limits in accounting for the complex interrelationship between gender
and class inequality. Given the fact that patriarchy is not discerned
as a natural phenomenon, the fundamental questions become that
of why and how such a social invention came to exist and be
maintained.
Marxist feminists, on the other hand, emphasise class relations
within capitalism specifically as being the root of gender inequality.
For these writers, gender/sexual asymmetry is derivative of capitalist
class relations. Because of the nature of capital (which must expand
through the appropriation of the surplus value created by labour)
capital continuously searches for the maximum control of labour
and wages. Therefore, ‘capital has seized upon pre-existing division
between men and women, and has incorporated that division
within its own workforce to its own advantage’ (Mackintosh, M., 1981,
p. 8). The process of adopting patriarchy in the capitalist mode of
production is parallel to incorporation of other pre-existing social
differentiation – for example, by race, migration, and age – into
the subsequent hierarchical structure of capitalist production. In
this regard, women’s subordinate position in the capitalist mode of
production is recounted as a pre-determined outcome of the process
of capital accumulation.
The theory of capitalist patriarchy (Eisenstein, Z., 1979; McDonagh,
R. and Harrison, R., 1978) attempts to explain sexual hierarchy
within the capitalist mode of production. The main focus of the
theory has been on two paradigms of analysis. One is the structural
domination of women by men and the other is class domination as
the fundamental social relation. Capitalist patriarchy contains a simi-
lar logical contradiction to that of the radical feminists within its