History of Patriarchy Perspectives from the West Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed

as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel. This quote by Bella Savitsky Abzug (July 24, 1920 March 31, 1998), an American lawyer, Congresswoman and social activist, very aptly describes how patriarchal norms have permeated every sphere of life of a woman. Not only in the social, cultural and political sphere of life- patriarchy, is an ideology that we live out unconsciously everyday such that it has entered out psyche. We do not know any other way of organizing our social relationships. The patriarchal ideology of womens subordination in private and public lives is perpetuated, supported and maintained by both men and women in society. What is patriarchy then- In laymans terms, patriarchy is an ideology of male domination over cultural and political systems. It is the ideology based on which the roles of men and women are socially constructed in the form of gender roles. It is the oldest form of exploitative division of social activities. The features of patriarchy had been accepted as natural (biological) in substance until feminists in the 1960s began to explore the features and institutions of patriarchy. Kate Millett, an American feminist writer and activist, in her book Sexual Politics argues that society is governed by power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another. In this sense patriarchy is a structure whereby male shall dominate female. Millet feels that patriarchy is like gravity- one knows it is there but does not relate or interpret its role every day. She states that in terms of activity, women are supposed to perform roles that take care of the biological needs of the family like domestic service and attendance upon infants, the rest of human achievement, interest, and ambition is the sphere of the male. The entire notion of patriarchy therefore is based on inequality between the two gendersmale and female. It was the biological difference between males and females, which is a biological fact that was translated into inequality between them with one claiming to be superior to the other. Patriarchy therefore is not based on biological difference but social and cultural notions of inequality. This inequality between sexes happened gradually over centuries. And it how came to be a socio-cultural construction is a matter of historical examination. Many social scientists have proposed different accounts of the historical development of patriarchy- How the notion of patriarchy came to be the way it is nowpermeating every sphere of life such that we cannot see social relationships any other way. Foremost amongst the social scientists who investigated how the current system of a patriarchal family came into being was Fredrick Engels. His book The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State is based on the chief works of Lewis H. Morgan: Ancient Society in which Morgan outlines the history of the patriarchal family. Engels work systematically set out to provide a social explanation for the emergence of patriarchysubjugation of women with the development of the social institutions of family and private property at a particular historic period. According to Friedrich Engels, patriarchal societies began to emerge approximately nine thousand years ago with the development of agriculture. His explanation challenged the dominant religious view of that time that womens inferior

status rested on biological, physical, intellectual and moral inferiority. Engels stressed that such views determined womens oppression as timeless and unchangeable and are actually an ideological justification for the maintenance of the existing system of exploitation. In his book Engels gives Marxs interpretation of history and relates the development of history of society with the state of sexual ties within the society at that time. He states that according to the materialistic conception, the decisive factor in history is the production and reproduction of immediate life. It involves on the one hand the production of the means of subsistence, food, clothing and shelter; on the other hand, the production of human beings themselves i.e. the propagation of the species. He further elaborates that the social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and of a definite country live are determined by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour and that of the family. The less the development of labour and more limited its volume in terms of production and the resultant production of wealth, the more dominating are the ties of sex. However within this structure of society based on the ties of sex, the productivity of labour develops more and more, and with it private property and exchange, difference in wealth, the possibility of utilizing the labour power of others and thereby the basis of class antagonisms; new social elements which strive in the course of generations to adapt the old structure of society to the new conditions, until, finally the incompatibility of the two leads to a complete revolution. The old society based on the ties of sex gives way to a new society, constituted in a state, the units of which are no longer sex groups but territorial groups, family systems are dominated by the property ownership system in which class antagonisms and class struggles, which make up the content of all hitherto written history, now freely develop. According to the materialist conception of history then Liberation from gender oppression, like liberation from class oppression, was possible. In his analysis Engels gives an account of the development of society and, at a particular stage, the subjugation of women. He is in agreement with Morgans concept of the three main epochs of social evolution savagery, barbarism and civilisation. It was at this latter stage of social evolution that the division of labour and commodity exchange between individuals arising from it developed. Only at this stage was the subjugation of women fully manifested. The epoch of savagery is marked by dependence of human ancestors on natural products like fruits, nuts, roots, etc. Speech had not yet developed; fire was discovered followed by migration and the development of early stone tools. The epoch of barbarism commenced from the introduction of pottery, the development of cattle breeding followed by land cultivation that increased the productivity of nature through human activity. It is during these two epochs that gender inequality began to emerge and was consolidated leading to its full development in the epoch of civilisation. This was characterised by the specialisation of crafts, separation of town and country, commodity production and the emergence of social classes, private property and the monogamous father-family and eventually the state. The basic unit of the savage society was a maternal clan composed of a community of mothers, their brothers and the children of the mothers. Gender relations during this time were determined through free sexuality and social organisation of tracing kinship links through the maternal line, based on who you could have sexual relations with and which kin formed your primary social group. The first exclusions for sexual intercourse were

generational, then with siblings, then through categories of siblings all traced in the maternal (matrilineal) line, leading to a pairing relationship based on mutual agreement with both parties having the ability to dissolve the bond. Engels characterised this pairing family as natural and saw this as the final stage of the evolution of natural selection on the form of the family. This took place in the final stages of savagery and the first stages of barbarism. With the development of domestication of animals and stock breeding, there was a greater accumulation of wealth and this led to new social relations that changed the gender relations. Consequently, women as the reproducers of new human beings began to be exchanged as valued property as there was a need for more human labour. This extra labour allowed for further developments in trades and field cultivation. More wealth was being generated. The ownership of the wealth began to shift from clan ownership into private ownership in the family. This gave more status to the man in the family and provided the stimulus to overthrow the traditional order of matrilineal inheritance to establish the institution of paternal control. This was accompanied by a shift to monogamy in sexual relations. Engels argues that this gender revolution took place in prehistoric times (i.e., before the development of writing) and therefore the exact knowledge of how and when it took place is unknown but it can be demonstrated ethnographically. He states the overthrow of mother right was the world-historic defeat of the female sex. Men seized control over the households, women became degraded and slaves to mens lust and were the instruments for reproducing more children. The patriarch, who inherited all the wealth, wielded absolute power over all members of the household. This shift towards gender inequality was presented as a natural, not a social process. Engels argues that the source of the oppression of women came from the exclusion of women from social production and the conversion of household tasks into a private service. Consequently, societies slowly moved towards a patriarchal model that emphasized control. Man took control of the household and started to regulate his wifes sexuality. These factors led to a worldview that ordered the world into unequal binaries, with men holding positions of power over women. The epoch of civilization as Engels notes, is based on the power men have to pass on their private property (that is, wealth) to their children. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism and mass market economies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries labour moved from the land to urban factories. As a result, men's power became tied up in the wages they were able to earn as workers away from the home. The strength of the home and church became weakened, as institutions such as industry, science, schools, and government became loci of power in society and bolstered male dominance. Engels demonstrates that division of labor is detrimental to women for several reasons. First, once mens work starts being monetarily rewarded, they are given dominion over womens work that is usually unpaid. Second, when men start working outside of the home, there is a clear demarcation of where supposedly valued work should be performed. Thus women get marginalized and their activities are deemed inferior. Engels account of origin of the patriarchal family is considered to be a landmark and is very significant even in the current scenario and is taken as the foundation of many contemporary works in the field.

Looking at more recent writings it would be worthwhile to look at Simone De Beauvoir, a French feminist of the 20th century. Simone De Beauvoir in her book Second Sex does not analyze the historical development of patriarchy. She stresses on the historical end product of this development. She has described man as autonomous and transcendent, woman as immanent. She states that women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit as they have no past, no history, no religion of their own. However it is not that women have no history but they were never made a part of making history which was always constructed and interpreted by men. Social scientists now believe that women do have a history which is still being discovered. Rather women have been made to believe that they do not have a history and this has given men a skewed and essentially erroneous view of their place in human society. For Simone de Beauvoir then, when she says that women have no history, could mean that history offered only negative lessons and no precedent for significant action heroism, or liberating example for women. History in general indicates an absence of a tradition which would reaffirm the independence and autonomy 'of women. It seemed that there had never been any woman or group of women who had lived without male protection. History of Patriarchy Today Another feminist Gerda Lerner in her book The Creation of Patriarchy states that patriarchy is a historical process which took nearly 2500 years to its completion and there is nothing natural about it. She states that since patriarchal systems are historical they can be ended by historical processes. If one does not understand patriarchys historicity, one may be tempted to see it as natural, a product of human biology or psychology and ordained by God. In its earliest form patriarchy appeared as the archaic state. The basic unit of its organization was the patriarchal family, which both expressed and constantly generated its rules and values. It was with the Bronze Age that patriarchal came to be manifested for the first time in history. Lerner states that with the commencement of the Bronze Age and plough agriculture, there was an increase in agricultural production that made it possible to amass enough surpluses so that people could keep prisoners of war alive and at the same time intensify warfare enormously. There was a tremendous technological advance in terms of the ease with which one could conquer other people. And so the people of those regions lived at that time, in very unstable situation. In such a scenario it was advantageous for women to have protection for themselves and their children by allying themselves to a man who promised to give them that protection. This in effect was the initial underpinning of patriarchy. Women gave up their sexual freedom, in the sense of sexual promiscuity and the opportunity to select partners in exchange for security in a war-torn world. As a result at that time patriarchy was quite a good solution to the problems of the people who instituted it. Lerner states that prior to the third millennium B.C. there is no hard evidence of how social evolution took place. There are only archaeological findings like artefacts etc. on the basis of which historian have produced an account of social and physical evolution. However she further elucidates that we tend to interpret findings always in line with the existing philosophy. In this context she gives an example of Engels, who described the family in the archaic states that looked like the Victorian bourgeoisie of his day. And so the explanations that we have had up to now have all been from a framework of patriarchy looking back and explaining patriarchy as being natural. Lerner elaborates that with the emergence of patriarchy agriculturists could use the labour of children to increase production and accumulate surpluses. Men-as-a-group had rights in

women which women-as-a-group did not have in men. Women were exchanged or bought in marriages for the benefit of their families; later, they were conquered or bought in slavery, and their sexual services were part of their labour and their children were the property of their masters. In every known society it was women of conquered tribes who were first enslaved, whereas men were killed. It was only after men had learned how to enslave the women enemy tribes that they learned how to enslave men. Thus, the enslavement of women, combining both racism and sexism, preceded the formation of classes and class oppression. Class differences were, at their very beginnings, expressed and constituted in terms of patriarchal relations. By the second millennium B.C. in Mesopotamian societies, the daughters of the poor were sold into marriage or prostitution in order to advance the economic interests of their families. If a husband or father could not pay his debt, his wife and children could be used as pawns by becoming slaves to the creditor. Class for men was and is based on their relationship to the means of production: those who owned the means of production could dominate those who did not. For women, class is mediated through their sexual ties to a man. It is through the man that women have access to or are denied access to the means of production and resources. It is through their sexual behaviour that they gain access to class. "Respectable women" gain access to class through their fathers and husbands. Lerner suggests that women have been marginalised in terms of being a part of history and the male version of the same is highly inaccurate due to the absence of the female in their accounts which valorise men and women are portrayed as sexually dependent on them. History gives a sense of meaning to human life and helps in preserving the collective past and reinterpreting it to the present. She states that the absence of women in history has led to the reinforcement of their acceptance of the ideology of patriarchy and has undermined the individual woman's sense of self-worth. Today, Lerner says that women are thinking of themselves out of the patriarchal norms and are in the process of redefinition. She further elucidates that as long as both men and women regard the subordination of women by men as "natural," it is impossible to envision a society in which differences do not connote either dominance or subordination. Women's History, the essential tool in creating feminist consciousness in women, is providing the body of experience against which new theory can be tested. She adds that a feminist world-view will enable women and men to free their minds from patriarchal thought and practice and at last to build a world free of dominance and hierarchy. However, an ideology that has been rooted in our conscience for the last 2500 years will take a long time to wipe away from our psyche. In order to look at how patriarchy works in a globalized society we can look at the works of Sandra Lee Bartky. In her book, Femininity and Domination, she looks at Foucaults description of how the rise of parliamentary institutions and modern concepts of political liberty today have become increasingly invasive in the way they wield power over individuals. What Foucault is talking about is the increasing discipline required from the body- to regulate its forces and operations through modern forms of army, school, hospital and prison. The aim of these disciplines is to increase the utility of the body, to augment its forces. He says that way power structures control individuals behavior is becoming increasingly invasive because of the use of more social and psychological control than was

previously used. Because the control is internalized, control of individuals takes place within the individual. There is increased access to individuals bodies, gestures, and actions, thus there is little need for external surveillance. Bartky says that in modern industrial societies normative femininity is becoming centered on womans body- not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children but its sexuality- a body designed to please and excite. This reflects the growing power of image in a society that is more and more oriented towards visual media. This discipline she says has spread to all classes of women and all age groups. The description that she gives regarding the notions of feminine image, are very western. She states that women today are obsessed with the idea of looking good at all times- frequently applying make-up, checking what she eats so that she does not become fat and so on. This serves as a system of self surveillance, self-policing where she is an inmate of the panoptical- the male gaze. This self- surveillance according to her is a form of obedience to patriarchy. In todays context Bartky emphasizes that, we obey patriarchy without patriarchy having to lift a finger. We have, in Foucaults terms, internalized patriarchy to such an extent that we do not question how it tells us to live. We have put ourselves into a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. This also works to mens advantage because they can claim that they are not to blame, because women are doing this to themselves. The growing concern amongst feminists is how to conceive of a society that is free of patriarchal ideology. Patriarchal norms have become so much a part of our consciousnesswho we are and how we interact with the others in society, that to conceive of any other way of organizing our society is a humongous task. Women realizing that they are subordinated is a tough task and tougher than that is to make men aware of this fact. In order to bring about a change in society- to make it equalitarian, both men and women have to work in cooperation. References: Engels Fredrick, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State, 1948, Foreign Languages Publishing House. Bartky, Sandra Lee, Femininity and Domination: Studies In The Phenomenology of Oppression, 1990, Routledge. Millet Kate, Sexual Politics, March 2000, University Of Illinois Press. De Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, September 1989, Vintage Books Edition Lerner Gerda, The Creation Of Patriarchy, October 1987, Oxford University Press, USA