Gender, Role of Power in

Understanding Patriarchy

From the outset, though, it is clear that feminists have differed markedly both in their understanding of the origins of patriarchy and the strategies for securing its eradication. For some feminists, this system of male privilege can be explained [Page 277]adequately by reference to a social legacy under which men have been the principal agents and authors. Central to this, then, is an account of men's historical and present-day power to do certain things, namely to define women's identity and appropriate social role in light of men's understanding of what this is, or of what this should be. Significantly, moreover, it has been argued that this process of mediation has not been one of neutral translation, but rather one of, at best, clumsy misinterpretation and, at worst, deliberate and cynical misrepresentation. Thus, women are identified with domestic and family life, with reproduction and with passive but accessible (hetero)sexuality, and concepts of “femininity” have emerged that valorize women's vulnerability and naivety, while accompanying concepts of “masculinity” valorize men's chivalry and protectiveness (while paradoxically also sanctioning selective acts of excessive masculine aggression).

For feminists who subscribe to this position, the solution to the problem of patriarchal privilege lies in increasing women's access to, and thus involvement in, the arenas in which this power to construct gender roles and identities is exercised. Emphasizing the extent of women's sameness to men, many feminists have called for women's inclusion in public and political arenas, on the premise that this will offer women an equal opportunity to legislate for their own lives, represent their own experiences and values, and influence the constructions of masculine and feminine that have historically marginalized women. This approach has secured a number of high profile strikes against the patriarchal orthodoxy—women's access to higher education and their inclusion in the workplace, for example, have been successfully pursued through an approach that highlights the lack of any justification, grounded in gender difference, for not appointing, remunerating, and promoting women on equal terms with men. At the same time, though, a number of other feminists, despite being sympathetic to this agenda of including women in mainstream structures and institutions, have emphasized the limits of any approach that focuses on securing entitlements for women only where they can establish themselves to be “similarly situated” to men and draws attention to the peculiar aspects of the female life experience that are necessarily excluded in this process.

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