Hello. Welcome to solsarin. This post is about “male dominated society is called“.
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. Some patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, meaning that property and title are inherited by the male lineage.
Patriarchy is associated with a set of ideas, a patriarchal ideology that acts to explain and justify this dominance and attributes it to inherent natural differences between men and women. Sociologists hold varied opinions on whether patriarchy is a social product or an outcome of innate differences between the sexes. Sociobiologists have argued that the roots of inequality were set in humanity’s earliest period and are primarily due to genetic and reproductive differences between men and women. Aligned closely with evolutionary psychology, this theory posits that gender inequity is an inherent part of human social structures.
Justifying the oppression of women
Social constructionists contest this argument, arguing that gender roles and gender inequity are instruments of power and have become social norms to maintain control over women. Constructionists would contend that sociobiological arguments serve to justify the oppression of women.
Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures. Most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal.
Etymology and usage
Patriarchy literally means “the rule of the father” and comes from the Greek πατριάρχης (patriarkhēs), “father or chief of a race”, which is a compound of πατριά (patria), “lineage, descent, family, fatherland” (from πατήρpatēr, “father”) and ἀρχή (arkhē), “domination, authority, sovereignty”.
Historically, the term patriarchy has been used to refer to autocratic rule by the male head of a family; however, since the late 20th century it has also been used to refer to social systems in which power is primarily held by adult men. The term was particularly used by writers associated with second-wave feminism such as Kate Millett; these writers sought to use an understanding of patriarchal social relations to liberate women from male domination. This concept of patriarchy was developed to explain male dominance as a social, rather than biological, phenomenon.
History and scope
The sociologist Sylvia Walby defines patriarchy as “a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women”. Social stratification along gender lines, in which power is predominantly held by men, has been observed in most societies.
Pre-history
Anthropological, archaeological and evolutionary psychological evidence suggests that most prehistoric societies were relatively egalitarian, and that patriarchal social structures did not develop until many years after the end of the Pleistocene epoch, following social and technological developments such as agriculture and domestication. According to Robert M. Strozier, historical research has not yet found a specific “initiating event”“. Gerda Lerner asserts that there was no single event, and documents that patriarchy as a social system arose in different parts of the world at different times. Some scholars point to about six thousand years ago (4000 BCE), when the concept of fatherhood took root, as the beginning of the spread of patriarchy.
Friedrich Engels
Marxist theory, as articulated mainly by Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, assigns the origin of patriarchy to the emergence of private property, which has traditionally been controlled by men. In this view, men directed household production and sought to control women in order to ensure the passing of family property to their own (male) offspring, while women were limited to household labor and producing children. Lerner disputes this idea, arguing that patriarchy emerged before the development of class-based society and the concept of private property.
THE vast majority of cultures are patriarchies, where men are more likely than women to hold positions of social, economic and political power. So it is tempting to assume that this is the natural state of affairs, perhaps because men are, on average, stronger than women. But a study of humanity’s roots suggests this answer is too simple.
Chimpanzees are not a proxy for our ancestors – they have been evolving since our two family trees split between 7 and 10 million years ago – but their social structures can tell us something about the conditions that male dominance thrives in. Common chimpanzee groups are manifestly patriarchal. Males are vicious towards females, they take their food, forcibly copulate with females that are ovulating and even kill them merely for spending time away from the group.
Closer ratio
Males also spend their lives in the group they were born into, whereas females leave at adolescence. As a result, males in a group are more closely related to each other than the females. And because relatives tend to help one another, they have an advantage.
The same is true in human societies: in places where women move to live with their husband’s family, men tend to have more power and privilege. Patrilocal residence, as it is called, is associated with patriarchy, says anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Hrdy at the University of California at Davis.
For most of our history, we have been hunter-gatherers, and patrilocal residence is not the norm among modern hunter-gatherer societies. Instead, either partner may move to live with the “in-laws”, or a couple may relocate away from both their families. According to Hrdy, a degree of egalitarianism is built into these systems. If they reflect what prehistoric hunter-gatherers did, women in those early societies would have had the choice of support from the group they grew up with, or the option to move away from oppression.
12,000 years ago
According to one school of thought, things changed around 12,000 years ago. With the advent of agriculture and homesteading, people began settling down. They acquired resources to defend, and power shifted to the physically stronger males. Fathers, sons, uncles and grandfathers began living near each other, property was passed down the male line, and female autonomy was eroded. As a result, the argument goes, patriarchy emerged.
This origin story is supported by a study published in 2004. Researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, studied mitochondrial DNA (inherited from mothers) and genetic markers on the Y chromosome (inherited from fathers) in 40 populations from sub-Saharan Africa. This suggested that women in hunter-gatherer populations, such as the !Kung and Hadza, were more likely to remain with their mothers after marriage than women from food-producing populations. It was the reverse for men, suggesting that agriculture is indeed correlated with patrilocal societies.
“Explanations” of Male Dominance
To explain the origins of female subordination we need a theory that accounts for the control of women’s work by men.
Published in 1986, Women’s Work, Men’s Property: The Origins of Gender and Class, edited by Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson, comprises five essays by a group of French and American feminist historians and anthropologists, in search of the sociohistorical basis of gender inequality. The editors’ introduction, reproduced below, surveys previous efforts — anthropological, sociobiological, psychological, and historical — to exhume the origin of male dominance before outlining the conclusions of their own study.
Global relationship
Male dominance is one of the earliest known and most widespread forms of inequality in human history. To some, the very idea of a book on the origins of sexual inequality is absurd. Male dominance seems to them a universal, if not inevitable, relationship that has been with us since the dawn of our species. A growing body of evidence and theory, however, suggests that this is not the case, and a number of scholars have begun to address the issue of male dominance as a historical phenomenon, grounded in a specific set of circumstances rather than flowing from some universal aspect of human nature or culture.
The essays in this volume offer differing perspectives on the development of sex role differentiation and sexual inequality. But share a belief that these phenomena did have origins. And that these must be sought in sociohistorical events and processes. Before turning to these theories, we would like critically to review some of the alternative explanations of sexual inequality.
A clear definition of male-dominated society
I was struggling to find blog ideas when I suddenly came across the Desert Dawn Magazine next to a reporter’s office. I have always enjoyed reading this student magazine produced by Dubai Women’s college. It covers a variety of topics from female circumcision to incest, which many people consider taboo to discuss publicly.
I knew I would find something interesting to blog about while reading the students’ work. An article titled “In search for hope” left me to ponder for a while. It talked about Afghan women fighting for their rights. I always used to hear the phrase “a male-dominated society,”. But couldn’t understand it properly until I thoroughly started reading more about the lives of Afghan women.
40 years older
A male-dominated society is one that benefits men in laws, education, academia and day-to-day life. In the case of Afghanistan, women there are subjugated, oppressed and have few rights. Marriage is a source of pain for many women there. Nazima, a 14-year-old girl, was forced to marry a man who was 40 years older. He tortured her and locked her in a room with little food and water. She went through all of these torments because she asked to go to school. After reading her story, I thought to myself that some humans are quite inhuman.
There was another incident where the husband poured acid on his wife’s face. Because he assumed she committed adultery with the neighbour. What a sick mentality!
Some men perceive women as the source of evil, forgetting that their mothers. Who just happen to be women, were the reason they exist.
I believe that nation’s wrath has empowered many Afghan women. Witnessing war, rape, suicide, murder and bloodshed repeatedly, they still hope for a bright future. The falling of the Taliban was good news. I wonder how many more years it will take for the women of Afghanistan to feel safe. And live life like other women around the world.
Thank you for staying with this post “male dominated society is called” until the end.