Patriarchy, Geography And

Patriarchy refers to a set of hierarchical power relations between men and women in which men are able to dominate women and masculinity is privileged over femininity. Such gender domination takes place at all levels of social interactions. While intersecting factors such as race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity may place men and women at different levels of the power hierarchy, patriarchy unites men in their domination over women across place and time. Patriarchy is not a random hierarchical system but rather a system in which women are particularly oppressed and their roles devalued or undervalued. Patriarchy is therefore systemic and has led to the material and ideological oppression of women and the marginalization of femininity while simultaneously benefitting men and attributes considered masculine. As a [Page 2136]foundational concept in the study of feminist geography, patriarchy historically places the sex/gender system as the central object of analysis in social relations. In the past 20 years, however, feminist geographers have increasingly favored analyses that focus on interlocking systems of power that include but do not privilege gender. Analyses of patriarchy are necessary in a number of fields in geography, including economic, cultural, and political geography as well as geographies of sexuality and race/racism.

In a pivotal article in feminist social theory, Heidi Hartmann outlined the main elements of patriarchy as heterosexual marriage and hetero-sexism or heteronormativity, female care work and household labor, women's economic oppression in the paid labor market, the state and governmentality, and diverse institutions that promote and privilege social relations among men such as the military, churches, universities, sports clubs, and the professions. While offering a closely connected list of locations of patriarchal relations, the sociologist Sylvia Walby also added the realms of sexuality and male violence as important sites of male dominance over women. Her analysis of patriarchy divides these sites into a domestic regime, which occurs primarily in the private sphere, and a public regime, which pertains to the courts, the government, and the formal labor market. Other examples of patriarchal power and control include domestic violence and sexual assault, the gendered division of labor, and discourses on motherhood and care work that promote women's unpaid labor in the home.

Some view patriarchy as universal and separate from other systems such as capitalism, while others believe that patriarchy takes on different forms and changes in particular economic, political, and social settings. Within feminist geography, these positions are defined as the dual-systems model and the single-systems model. Some have argued that patriarchy and capitalism are distinct and separate phenomena, while others believe that patriarchy exists as a result of capitalist modes of production and reproduction. These debates, which took place among feminist geographers in the pages of Antipode in the mid 1980s, gave rise to further discussions and connections concerning the relationship between patriarchy and sexuality, patriarchy and race/racism, and patriarchy and ethnicity, to name a few.

These debates also highlighted the differing views of gender within feminist geography. By the mid 1990s, many feminist geographers argued that gender was not a single category but a limited and fractured analytical and material one. Patriarchy as a hierarchical system was therefore decentered, as feminist geographers explored the contextuality of patriarchal relations and the importance of overlapping, interlocking, or intersecting relations of power and domination. Importantly, this work has offered new subjectivities of women not simply as victims of their gender but also as actively engaged and not merely oppressed. For geographers, this means distinguishing between forms of patriarchy across space and place and illustrating the fluidity of power and hierarchies.

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