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Introduction to Patriarchy and Gender Roles

I. Sex and Gender

It is normal to distinguish sex from gender. Sex is a biological concept. Men and women are classified as such on the basis of their biological identity. For example, women can bear children, men cannot. Gender is a social-psychological concept; the roles, norms and psychological states of mind are associated with certain patterns of behaviour that might be called 'masculine' or 'feminine'. Stoller, who made this distinction in 1968, writes, “Gender is a term that has psychological and cultural connotations, if the proper terms for sex are 'male' and 'female', the corresponding terms for gender are 'masculine' and 'feminine'; these latter might be quite independent of (biological) sex.” In other words, a person that is biologically male may act in ways that society would regard as normal for a female.
Clearly, then, there is the question of the relationship between sex and gender. Since there are physical differences between men and women, it seems natural to consider whether these physical differences are the causes of the differences in gender behaviours. Two extreme positions can be adopted. Biological determinism takes the view that gender roles are the product of sex differences; culturally determinism takes the view that gender roles are the product of socialization — the environment. This is the nature/nuture debate again. Thus, we have
Sex difference perspective
The sex difference perspective is the view that biological differences of sex either wholly or predominantly determine gender roles — biology is destiny. Tiger and Fox argued that different 'biogrammars' determine behaviour. John Bowlby advanced the view that mothers have a biologically determined maternal instinct. Talcott Parsons maintains that within a capitalist society it is functional that women fulfill the expressive and nuturing function and that men fulfill the instrumental and competitive function. These roles are strongly influenced by biological differences.
Cultural perspective
The cultural perspective takes the view that gender differences are culturally produced. Margaret Mead attempted to demonstrate that there is no universal 'masculine' or 'feminine' personality in her anthropological studies of South Pacific Tribes.
An integrated perspective
An integrated perspective acknowledges that there are biological differences that have a bearing on gender identity (for example, menstruation, childbirth, menopause) but argues that these differences are differently treated by different cultures. This gives the integrated perspective a leaning towards the cultural perspective, since the interpretation of biological differences makes all the difference.

II. Patriarchy

Patriarchy literally means rule by the father but is taken to refer to the male dominance in society. Kate Millett argues as follows. Firstly, society is governed by “power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another”. Secondly, patriarchy is a structure whereby “male shall dominate female”.
There are questions raised by this.
1 Do we in fact live in a patriarchy?
2 Is there a biological basis to patriarchy?
3 Are patriarchy and capitalism separate structures or do they depend on each other?
4 If patriarchy is a separate structure from capitalism, is it a more or less fundamental structure than capitalism?
A Marxist would reply to these questions as follows
1 Yes, we do live in a patriarchy.
2 There is no biological basis to patriarchy. Women are not the weaker sex. Gender roles are socially constructed.
3 Patriarchy depends on capitalism
4 Capitalism is the fundamental structure. Patriarchy serves capitalism.
Note, that if there is a biological basis to gender roles, then patriarchy must be a separate structure to capitalism, since it is rooted in biological differences. Hence, for consistency, a Marxist should argue that gender roles are socially constructed and not constructed out of biological differences.
The Marxist view is expressed by Engles. He put forward a Marxist interpretation of the family in his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, published in 1884. In this work he describes the evolution of the family. He maintains that at some early stage of human evolution the means of production were owned communally and there was a period of primitive communism. Sexual relations were promiscuous.
According to Engles, following the period of primitive communism marriage evolved through several stages that include polygyny and finally took the form of the monogamous nuclear family. The monogamous nuclear family emerged as a result of the development of private property. He writes, “It is based on the supremacy of man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father's property as his natural heir.”
A radical feminist does not agree that patriarchy is a product of capitalism. A radical feminist would argue as follows.
1 Yes, we do live in a patriarchy.
2 There is no biological basis to patriarchy.
3 There is no necessary link between patriarchy and capitalism, though in practice they may support each other.
4 Patriarchy is the more fundamental structure.
Kate Millet is an example of a radical feminist. She states that patriarchy is “the most pervasive ideology of our culture, its most fundamental concept of power.” Another radical feminist is Christine Delphy. According to Christine Delphy the exploitation involved in domestic labour is not primarily exploitation by capital over labour, but an exploitation of men over women. She is a radical feminist that wants women to organize so as to overthrown men.

III. Changes in the Patterns of Women's Economic Dependency

Generally more women work nowadays than in the past, and they work for greater periods of their adult life.
In 1921 30.6% of women worked. In 1981 61.1% of women worked.
In the pre-war period a woman's working career usually ended with marriage; in the post-war period a woman's working career tends to be interrupted by maternity.
Since 1951 full-time women employment has remained steady at 30%, but part-time employment has risen from 5% to 27% by 1981.
In 1981 75% of women were employed (a) in personal services, such as cleaning and hairdressing; (b) in clerical work; (c) in education, health and welfare; (d) as shop assistants. 63% of women worked solely with other women. 81% of men had no female colleague doing the same kind of work.
In 1984 only 3% of university professors were women, 3% of MPs were women, though this rose to 6% by 1987.
An estimate by Gershung calculated that in 1984 women were doing on average 16 hours more unpaid work than men in a given week.
In 1982 the equal opportunities commission found that community care of the handicapped relies almost exclusively on the unpaid caring work of wives, daughters and mothers.
In the 1970s women's average pay was 60% of the male hourly pay rate. However, this rose to 70% after the implementation of the Equal Pay Act in 1977.
Women earn less than men because (a) there is a traditional division of responsibilities in the family that make women less available for work; (b) women are treated unequally in the labour market.
If all women were happy with the domestic role then the inequality would arguably be not a problem. However, marriage is not a secure institution and (a) marital arguments are often caused by unequal access to money; (b) lone mothers experience great hardships.
Women's low incomes
Motherhood lowers the pay of employed mothers by around 15% because of (a) lost employment experience; (b) downward occupational mobility; (c) low rates for part-time work.
It is worth noting that married men actually earn more than bachelors.
Women who return to work after a period of child rearing are likely to return to a different job with lower pay than the one they had before.
Lifetime earnings profiles
Hypothetical lifetime earnings profiles illustrate the discrimination against women in employment. Compared to a man a childless woman after the age of 24 can expect to earn on average less £3,000 (1987 prices) than a man per annum. She is also likely to end her career earlier at 54 and up to retirement take lower paid part-time work.
A mother of two typically experiences a gap of seven years of no pay whilst she brings up the family. Thereafter she returns to less well-paid employment and never reaches the earnings of the career woman.
Educated women who take the career option are less disadvantaged provided they remain in employment; they suffer a greater drop of income than uneducated women if they chose to become mothers and take a break from employment.
Lone mothers and lone elderly women are statistically more likely to be among the visibly poor. Research should be undertaken to discover the extent of female poverty hidden within households.
Women in the contemporary labour market
During the Victorian period working-class women were legally banned from working in heavy industry and mining. Middle-class women were legally prevented from entering the professions. Women worked as domestic servants, in the textile industry, as elementary school teachers and as nurses.
Between 1911 and 1989, six million women were added to the total labour force (of 28 million).
Despite the Equal Pay Act of 1979 the average wage of women in manual jobs is 72% of men, and in non-manual jobs 63%.
Although teaching is said to be 'not badly paid for women', teaching is not generally well paid. As in all the professions, women tend to occupy a lower scale in teaching, and less well-paid posts.
In 1989/90 2 of 83 High Court judges were women, 22% of barristers and solicitors were women.
In the Equal Pay Act (which came into operation in 1975) and the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) the focus was on employment. But these have not resulted in a reduction of the concentration of women in low-paid occupations. The Employment Protection and Social Security Pensions Act (1975) introduced the first legal entitlement to maternity leave for women, but banned dismissal on the grounds of pregnancy. It guaranteed mothers their jobs for up to 19 weeks from childbirth.
The Social Security Pensions Act placed women sickness and unemployment pay and pension rights on an equal basis to those of men.
The failure of these acts can be seen in the very few cases that are taken to the Employment Appeals Tribunal under the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts. For example, in 1988/89 there were 368 cases tabled under the Equal Pay Act, but only 14 complainants were successful. Of the 300 causes brought under the Sex Discrimination Act, only 78 complainants were successful. The cost of bringing a case is at the individual's risk.
The Thatcher administration passed little or no legislation to improve the position of women in society. The freezing of child benefit between 1986 and 1990, which is paid directly to women, disadvantaged women.
Sue Sharpe: Just Like a Girl
Sue Sharp conducted an influential study of girls' expectations whilst at school in 1972 and in 1994 she replicated this study. During the interval there were some background changes in society and the economy, such as (a) the passage of the Thatcher era, which presented possible new female role-models; (b) high levels of structural unemployment and corresponding increases in the number and diversity of training schemes. However, these background influences do not appear to have had much influence of girls' attitudes.
The principle finding was that girls in the 1990s still expect to undertake work that could be described as 'women's work' — that is teaching, health work, air hostesses, beauticians, working with children and clerical work in banks. However, there were some changes: (a) the expectation or desire to do office work had significantly diminished. This may be attributed to changes in technology; (b) diminished expectations to become shop assistants; (c) some interest in car mechanics, engineering or firefighting.
Other findings were (a) a greater stress on equality with men, increased sense of assertiveness and confidence; (b) a greater emphasis on the importance of having a job or career and being able to support themselves, especially in the event of a breakdown of marriage; (c) no desire generally to identify themselves as feminists; (d) less positive attitudes to marriage; (e) the expectation to combine work and family life; the expectation that husbands or partners would help with housework and childcare. However, realisitically, the feeling that 'new man' was a bit of a joke. (f) Young women continue to “look forward to a future in which they are likely to end up juggling work and domestic life like their mothers before them.”

IV. Changing Forms of Patriarchy

Sylvia Walby in Theorising Patriarchy advances the view that society has developed in the last 100 years from private to public patriarchy. Although this development improved to an extent the position of women, society is nonetheless still patriarchal and still discriminates against women.
In private patriarchy women are denied all access to paid employment. They are necessarily dependent on a man as husband or father — that is, as patriarch. In public patriarchy women are allowed access to paid employment but are subordinated within the public area — that is, they are segregated from men and given lower status and paid less.
First-wave feminist victories enabled women to break out of the system of private patriarchy. Women gained political citizenship, the right to vote, access to education and the professions, property ownership and the right to leave marriages.
Walby advances the view that the move from private to public patriarchy has arisen as a result of (a) a capitalist interest in employing women who supply a flexible pool of labour and work at a cheaper rate; (b) a powerful feminist movement.
In fact, in her view it turns out that there is a conflict between capitalism, which is a patriarchal structure, and private patriarchy. In the absence of a feminist movement, for example, in the third world countries, women who are employed effectively remain under patriarchal control in the family and gain no additional freedom.
The opposition of patriarchy to the employment of women is expressed by pre-war restrictions on the period of work of married women and restrictions on the employment of women as a result of opposition by male craft unions.
Modern patriarchy expresses a compromise between these two forces of private patriarchy and capitalism by allowing women into paid employment but segregating them once they get there and discriminating against them. The development of public patriarchy was fastest in the post-war period when there was a severe shortage of labour.
Ivan Illich in Sexism and Economic Growth argues that modern industrial society has replaced traditional male/female roles by a more brutal form of sex-discrimination. He calls the earlier form of socialization vernacular gender. In it male/female roles are sharply defined and social taboos prevent either sex from crossing over from one to the other. However, whilst a woman, therefore, could not do a man's work, equality between the sexes was possible precisely because the roles were so clearly defined. Women did not have to work more than men as such, and their work was not inherently oppressive.
Modern economic sex is a pure discrimination based on sex alone. In other words, women are discriminated against purely because they are women. The economic sex discrimination is motivated by the demands of capitalism, which requires an under-class. The sex-role is not confined purely to women, men can occupy the same position, but the position is in fact almost wholly occupied by women. In other words, the discrimination is in a sense purely arbitrary, so whilst it is a sex-discrimination it makes no acknowledgement of femininity. There is nothing feminine about being in a subordinate role.
He makes two important additional observations
(a) Unreported work, or the black economy. Illich argues that women are discriminated against by also being excluded from this sector of the economy. The discrimination is comprehensive. “Women know that they are excluded from desirable jobs in the growing arena of illegitimate work — even more so than from the taxed wage labour — while their housework is a form of bondage.”
(b) Shadow work, which refers to work that people, who are generally women, do in order to turn a consumer good into a good that can be consumed. Although, for example, we have food in plastic containers, we still have to shop for it and still have to put it into the microwave. This shadow work is oppressive because (i) it is additional to other work, and is essentially unpaid; (ii) it is boring, lonely, dull, impersonal and polluting. Illich comments that “I expect that automated production will decrease the overall volume of wage labour and lead to the marketing of commodities requiring more, not less, unpaid toil by the buyer/user.” It is in shadow work that women are more intensely discriminated against. Illich also claims that “the total volume of shadow work rapidly surpasses the total volume of available production-associated work or ritual. No matter how you compare a money equivalent to housework, its total value exceeds the volume of wage labour.”

V. Gender Role and Choice

Catherine Hakim states that the “objective” picture of the position of women in the labour market indicates that they are subject to discrimination and exploitation. However, many studies have revealed that women generally experience high levels of job and pay satisfaction. However, Hakim calls this the “paradox of grateful slaves”.
The National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) initiated in the mid 1960s in the USA was based on women aged 14-24 in 1968. Women were interviewed almost every year up to 1983 when they were aged 29-39. It was discovered that this cohort divided into three groups:
(a)25% were career planners who anticipated working throughout their twenties and at the age of 35. Of these 82% were still working at 35 in typically male jobs and like men had typically lower job satisfaction. They had adapted their fertility behaviour to their workplans.
(b)28% were homemakers, who had no plans for work and aimed at marriage, family and homemaking activities. Of these 49% were working at the age of 35. They were obliged to work by economic factors such as divorce.
(c)47% were drifters or had unplanned careers. Of these 64% were in work at the age of 35.
The NLS project also monitored changes in women's work orientations. Women entering the labour market in the 1980s had much stronger work expectations and work commitment than those entering in the 1970s.
Hakim concludes that “it is time to abandon the concept of women as so totally formed and constrained by past patterns of economic activity and sex-role stereotyping that they are unable to shape their own lives to any meaningful degree.” She argues that “Women make choices as often as men do, and those choices have real effects.” There are two contrasting types of women — career planners and homemakers — and both are successful in general in their plans. Women who are homemakers are not discriminated against by the system; in fact, they enjoy a higher level of satisfaction with their work.
Another conclusion is that employers, often castigated by feminists and sociologists, many not be to blame for failing to encourage those with firm work plans. However, research is required to discover the extent of the influence of husbands on a wife's employment decisions. It is possible that the extent to which women are in an inferior stratum is exaggerated.