Based on ethnographic research, this study investigates the meaning and impact of women’s involvement in South Korean evangelicalism. While recent works addressing the “paradox” of women’s participation in conservative religions have highlighted the significance of these religions as unexpected vehicles of gender empowerment and contestation, this study finds that the experiences and consequences of Korean evangelical women’s religiosity are highly contradictory; although crucial in women’s efforts to negotiate the injuries of the modern Confucian-patriarchal family, conversion, for many women, also signifies (...) their effective redomestication to this family/gender regime, which helps maintain current gender arrangements. To address this tension, the article explores the meaning of religious submission in the Korean context, focusing on the motivations behind women’s consent to patriarchy, which are rooted in women’s contradictory desires regarding the family system and the ambivalent subjectivities that they evoke. (shrink)

In considering patriarchy as potentially institutional and as a characteristic also of contemporary Western societies, a fundamental issue concerns how to make sense of largely informal institutions to begin with. Traditional accounts of institutions have often focused on formalized ones. It is argued here, however, that the principal idea behind one commonly accepted conception of institutions can be developed in a way that better facilitates an explication of informal institutions. When applied to the phenomenon of patriarchy, such an approach can (...) then also allow us to ontologically make sense of gray areas and hierarchies of authority, as well as the intersectionality of social positions. (shrink)

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach. This is a reply to Burke.

Patriarchy's timeline showing how the Lords of patriarchy developed language in its own self-interest. Exposes the need patriarchy had to make and use language as a political tool to achieve its political ends, control, power and domination.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends couple human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) counselling and testing (CHCT) as one of the beneficial and cost-effective means for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV within couple’s relationships. However, CHCT within the PMTCT of HIV settings in Zimbabwe remains low. This study explored adult men and women’s views from a rural district of Zimbabwe regarding the possible factors that facilitate or inhibit the uptake of CHCT for the PMTCT of HIV. The study utilised (...) qualitative methods. Data were collected by conducting eight focus group discussions among adult men and women, as well as eight in-depth interviews with pregnant women admitted in antenatal wards in local hospitals. Thematic analysis was used for analysing the data with the aid of NVivo software. The study revealed that CHCT initiatives were hampered by certain patriarchal behaviours and beliefs that make it acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners, thereby exposing their marriages and relationships to HIV. Social constructions around gender roles tend to prescribe women as the sole custodians of children’s health, and this led to stigmatisation against men who participated in PMTCT programmes. In addition, certain religious practices do not allow the use of medicine, which makes CHCT a nonevent. However, engaging men on platforms that advocate for progressive masculinities and raising awareness of this practice through information dissemination were identified as enablers in increasing CHCT. Contribution: The significant contribution of this study is that it demonstrated the importance of acknowledging the societal, cultural and religious practices inherent in a community, as they are central to their responses to HIV prevention interventions. (shrink)

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends couple human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) counselling and testing (CHCT) as one of the beneficial and cost-effective means for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV within couple’s relationships. However, CHCT within the PMTCT of HIV settings in Zimbabwe remains low. This study explored adult men and women’s views from a rural district of Zimbabwe regarding the possible factors that facilitate or inhibit the uptake of CHCT for the PMTCT of HIV. The study utilised (...) qualitative methods. Data were collected by conducting eight focus group discussions among adult men and women, as well as eight in-depth interviews with pregnant women admitted in antenatal wards in local hospitals. Thematic analysis was used for analysing the data with the aid of NVivo software. The study revealed that CHCT initiatives were hampered by certain patriarchal behaviours and beliefs that make it acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners, thereby exposing their marriages and relationships to HIV. Social constructions around gender roles tend to prescribe women as the sole custodians of children’s health, and this led to stigmatisation against men who participated in PMTCT programmes. In addition, certain religious practices do not allow the use of medicine, which makes CHCT a nonevent. However, engaging men on platforms that advocate for progressive masculinities and raising awareness of this practice through information dissemination were identified as enablers in increasing CHCT.Contribution: The significant contribution of this study is that it demonstrated the importance of acknowledging the societal, cultural and religious practices inherent in a community, as they are central to their responses to HIV prevention interventions. (shrink)

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach.

During the 11,000 years patriarchy ruled it embedded male-bias in over 20,000 names thus making language suit their ideology of eternal males rule. Every male-biased name stops our species from seeing reality-as-it-is. Every bias hides a truth creating ignorance of what actually exists to be seen and known.

This article argues that feminist analyses of patriarchy should be expanded to address the evolutionary basis of male motivation to control female sexuality. Evidence from other primates of male sexual coercion and female resistance to it indicates that the sexual conflicts of interest that underlie patriarchy predate the emergence of the human species. Humans, however, exhibit more extensive male dominance and male control of female sexuality than is shown by most other primates. Six hypotheses are proposed to explain how, over (...) the course of human evolution, this unusual degree of gender inequality came about. This approach emphasizes behavioral flexibility, cross-cultural variability in the degree of partriarchy, and possibilities for future change. (shrink)

This article employs the descriptive and exegetical methods. It found several ways by which patriarchy precipitates marital disharmony in Nigeria. For instance, the custom of the bride price instils in the husband the feeling of ownership of the wife, which encourages some men to treat their wives like their property. The nature of marital disharmony varies with couples, but there are some common characteristics. The husband may withdraw from his wife, avoiding all forms of contact and communication with her; wife (...) beating is also common. Ephesians 5:22-33 mitigates the patriarchal view of marriage, redefining the concepts of submission and leadership. The wife should submit to her husband’s authority as she would to Christ whilst the husband should exercise his authority with love in imitation of Christ. When this new definition of marital relationship is understood and applied by Christian couples, disharmony will be considerably alleviated. The church should be involved in the application of the text, teaching husbands particularly the need to exercise their authority in sacrificial love.Contribution: The article endorses the journal’s focus on the combination of the notions ‘source’ and ‘interpretation’ by its emphasis on the exegesis of writings in the field of early Christian literature. (shrink)

So Lentricchia has fulfilled one of his purposes in this essay. He has subverted the patriarchy from within: that is, he has subverted Bloom’s literary history as well as the essentialist feminism associated with it. But he has not fulfilled his affiliated purpose of establishing a dialogue between feminists and feminized males. The “feminization” of literary studies by patriarchal figures like Bloom does not account for the feminization of Stoddard, Gilder, Van Dyke, Woodberry, or Stedman. Their feminization, like that of (...) the Stevens who felt positively lady-like, was not the result of patriarchal oppression. And it will not disappear as the result of the subversion of the patriarchy by a feminized male. Mistaking the work of feminization with the work of the patriarch eradicates the feminine. By identifying the difference between a feminization produced by the patriarchy and a feminine cultural sphere, Lentricchia has made room for the different cultural conversation he wants to develop. But this conversation can take place only after the backdrop of an oppressive patriarch can drop away.This conversation might begin with an account of that cultural sphere in which women are the agency to which Lentricchia alludes. It might begin when we recall that the model for the culture’s “Emmeline Grangerfords” was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Little Eva. The social change Little Eva helped effect was the emancipation of both slaves and slaveholders. Donald E. Pease is professor of English and American literature at Dartmouth College. His articles on nineteenth-century authors and literature have appeared in a number of journals. He is the coeditor, with Walter Benn Michaels, of American Renaissance Reconsidered, and is the author of Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Contexts, which won the Mark H. Ingraham Prize in 1987. (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic study of women's social groups and networks in a community of Vietnamese immigrants recently settled in the United States, this article explores the effects of migration on gender roles and power. The women's groups and networks play an important role in the exchange of social and economic resources among households and in the mediation of disputes between men and women in the family. These community forms are an important source of informal power for women, enabling them (...) to cope effectively with male authority in the family. Yet, despite their increased power and economic resources, these women supported a patriarchal social structure because it preserved their parental authority and promised greater economic security in the future. (shrink)

Why does the world have the pattern of patriarchy it currently possesses? Why have patriarchal practices and institutions evolved and changed in the ways they have tended to over time in human societies? This paper explores these general questions by integrating a feminist analysis of patriarchy with the central insights of the functionalist interpretation of historical materialism advanced by G. A. Cohen. The paper has two central aspirations: first, to help narrow the divide between analytical Marxism and feminism by redressing (...) the former's neglect of the important role female labor has played, and continues to play, in shaping human history. Second, by developing the functionalist account of historical materialism in order to take patriarchy seriously, we can derive useful insights for diagnosing the emancipatory challenges that women face in the world today. The degree and form of patriarchy present in any particular society is determined by the productive forces it has had at its disposal. According to historical materialism, technological, material, and medical advances that ease the pressures on high fertility rates (such as the sanitation revolution, vaccinations, birth control, and so on) are the real driving forces behind the positive modulations to patriarchy witnessed in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Western stereotypes often characterize gender relations in Muslim-majority societies as uniformly traditional and patriarchal. Underlying this imagery is a unidimensional understanding of gender ideology as moving along a single traditional-to-egalitarian continuum. In this study, we interrogate these assumptions by exploring variability across and within Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) societies in beliefs related to two regionally salient gender principles: women’s chastity and marital patriarchy. Data from a new online survey of Muslim Facebook users show substantial heterogeneity across (...) and within six MENASA societies in support for these principles. These data also reveal a multidimensional structure, in that societies show different configurations of chastity and marital patriarchy beliefs, and each of these gender principles is influenced by respondents’ religious beliefs and gender status in different ways. Although religious absolutism predicts agreement with both gender principles, piety is associated with support for chastity but not for marital patriarchy. Results also show a clear gender divide in attitudes toward hierarchy in marriage but not with respect to chastity. Findings complicate broad-brush depictions of patriarchy in the region and corroborate previous research on the multidimensionality of gender beliefs and the multifaceted attitudinal influences of gender and religious beliefs. (shrink)

This article argues that systematic comparative analyses of women's strategies and coping mechanisms lead to a more culturally and temporally grounded understanding of patriarchal systems than the unqualified, abstract notion of patriarchy encountered in contemporary feminist theory. Women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which I identify as patriarchal bargains. Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct “rules of the game” and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or (...) passive resistance in the face of oppression. Two systems of male dominance are contrasted: the sub-Saharan African pattern, in which the insecurities of polygyny are matched with areas of relative autonomy for women, and classic patriarchy, which is characteristic of South and East Asia as well as the Muslim Middle East. The article ends with an analysis of the conditions leading to the breakdown and transformation of patriarchal bargains and their implications for women's consciousness and struggles. (shrink)

Describes my book from the first bias creating belief in male superiority, to developing language with a massive number of names embedding male bias to guarantee patriarchy's survival, creating belief supplanting knowledge. Suggests changing language with evidence-based, neutral, inclusive and specific names reducing, and perhaps, eliminating male dominance.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with individuals in current and former plural Mormon fundamentalist families, I demonstrate how gender is structured relationally in plural marriage, dependent on noncoercive power relations. Men perform a “conciliatory masculinity” based on their position as head of the family that requires constant consensus-building skills and emotional labor to maintain family harmony. This masculinity is shaped in relation to women’s performance of “homosocial femininity” that curbs men’s power by building strong bonds among wives to deflect jealousies and (...) negotiate household duties. I argue for the importance of studying masculinities and femininities together as a relational structure to better understand specific religious and family contexts. (shrink)

This article discusses the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture and reflects on the everyday online meanings of the term in distinction to academic theorisations. In the 1960s–1980s, feminists theorised patriarchy as the systematic oppression of women, with differing approaches to how it worked. Criticisms that the concept was unable to account for intersectional experiences of oppression, alongside the ‘turn to culture’, resulted in a fall from academic grace. However, ‘patriarchy’ has found new life through Internet memes (humorous, (...) mutational images that circulate widely on social media). This article aims to investigate the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture. Based on an analysis of memes with the phrase ‘patriarchy’ and ‘smash the patriarchy’, we identify how patriarchy memes are used by two different online communities (feminists and anti-feminists) and consider what this means for the ongoing usefulness of the concept of patriarchy. We argue that, whilst performing important community-forming work, using the term is a risky strategy for feminists for two reasons: first, because memes are by their nature brief, there is little opportunity to address intersections of oppression; secondly, the underlying logic of feminism is omitted in favour of brevity, leaving it exposed to being undermined by the more mainstream logic of masculinism. (shrink)

This article investigates some of the constraining factors experienced by 16 school-going mothers in the Okalongo circuit, Namibia. This was a qualitative phenomenological study, conducted through in-depth individual interviews, focus group discussions, and reflective journals with 16 school-going mothers between the ages of 17 and 20, purposively selected from three different public rural schools. This qualitative, phenomenological study analyses, through feminist and intersectionality theory, the lived experiences of these young mothers as they encounter the traditional, patriarchal attitudes and practices of (...) the Ovambadja community because these girls fell pregnant before their formal, cultural initiation. The article documents, through the voices of the young women themselves, the numerous constraints they experienced and overcame in their determination to complete their schooling. The findings show that, aside from the deeply held destructive patriarchal beliefs that significantly constrain and harm the mother-learners, the Namibian Learners Pregnancy Policy, which is intended to protect and ensure pregnant learners and motherlearners complete their schooling, is not being properly or effectively implemented. The study recommends an increase in efforts at the national level in Namibia to raise awareness among members of parliament, school administrators and principals, and all policymakers to develop better monitoring systems that will improve policy implementation in schools. (shrink)

1948 and 1989 were turning points in Czech society. In forty years under communism, men and women were equalized by the regime's totalitarianism and egalitarianism. I argue that these forces, as well as concomitant changes in the public and private spheres, dictate that women's situation should not be interpreted in terms of patriarchy. Women's issues and the problem of patriarchy, which under communism seemed irrelevant in Czech society, may now come to the fore because the postcommunist period requires women to (...) undertake an essential rethinking of their identity. (shrink)

1948 and 1989 were turning points in Czech society. In forty years under communism, men and women were equalized by the regime's totalitarianism and egalitarianism. I argue that these forces, as well as concomitant changes in the public and private spheres, dictate that women's situation should not be interpreted in terms of patriarchy. Women's issues and the problem of patriarchy, which under communism seemed irrelevant in Czech society, may now come to the fore because the postcommunist period requires women to (...) undertake an essential rethinking of their identity. (shrink)

Patriarchy created the life-threatening social disease that 11,000 years of rule inflicted on the whole species. The poisonous mix of phallic fantasy, myth and facts, is traumatic stress that the species may not be able to solve its centuries-old problems. Since patriarchy is perpetrated and perpetuated anew every day through male-bias in 20,000 names a big part of the solution is changing names.

ABSTRACT Religion is both valuable and influential to the organization of society. It affects, not only how people relate to God, but also how they relate to each other. In this paper, I examine the relationship between religion and society in relation to gender inequality. I argue that the patriarchal nature and organization of religion influences and perpetuates gender inequality in the broader social context, especially in a country as religious as South Africa. Since, for religion, a meaningful life is (...) believed to be a life that fulfills God’s will, adherents of religion subscribe to these patriarchal notions because they are believed to be coming from God. The implication for South Africa is that, while it is considered to be a liberal state, its state of religiousness makes it difficult for equality to be realized from a purely liberal position. Therefore, to begin addressing this issue, I maintain that the application of a feminist standpoint approach to religion can be helpful in: 1) realizing the extent to which gender inequality exists in religion and its patriarchal contribution in society and 2) providing a method in which women’s experiences and relations to religion are taken into consideration. (shrink)

In what is advertised as a “controversial coast to coast bestseller,” most men who were asked “How would you feel if something about you were described as feminine or womanly?” said they’d be angry. Consider these voices from The Hite Report on Male Sexuality:Enraged. Insulted. Never mind what women are really like—I know what he’s saying: he’s saying I should be submissive to him.To be called “like a woman” by another man is to be humiliated by him, because most men (...) consider women to be weak, and a man doesn’t want to be considered weak.Chagrined. I may appear soft, but I carry a big stick. So watch out.If I was described as having something “like a woman’s,” I would be outraged. I would defend my masculinity almost automatically. I wouldn’t like being compared to a woman’s anything.1About two seconds of reflection should be enough to convince most of us that what is offered in The Hite Report on Male Sexuality as the representative testimony of contemporary American men is, in fact, representative: our relations with women are problematic, those with ourselves something worse. What Shere Hite does not call attention to is an intriguing recurrence in many of the responses: the question is heard as a charge and it is imagined to be coming from another male. The basic point now seems to me inescapable, though to say “inescapable” is in no way to say that the history of literary theory and criticism has found it so . One way of understanding that history is to read it as a series of ingenious escapes from the basic point which is economic and sexual and which goes something like this: What we know as “femininity” is internally linked to what we know as “masculinity” because both designations are highly motivated cultural constructions of biological difference that do powerful social work at the moment when they are lived, when they constitute the barely conscious and barely reflected upon substance of belief. The political synonym for “belief” is “ideology” in the particular sense of “ideology” as a constructed thing which nevertheless feels natural and is never experienced as a thing bearing interested human intention. The basic ideological point has to do with social engenderment, and it means, among other things, if you’re male, that you must police yourself for traces of femininity. If you’re male it means, among other things, that the great dread is not so much that another man might call you feminine or womanly , but that you might have to call yourself feminine or womanly. The political issue of gender has recently been the special concern of feminist criticism and eventually, after a long look at Wallace Stevens, I’ll address feminism directly, in what may be its institutionally most potent form. 1. Shere Hite, The Hite Report on Male Sexuality , p. 64. Frank Lentricchia is professor of English at Duke University. This essay is part of a forthcoming book, Ariel and the Police: Michel Foucault, William James, Wallace Stevens. He has also published Criticism and Social Change and After the new Criticism. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the golden era and proposes an exercise of creativity whereby we imagine Diana, the Amazon, becoming Wonder Woman in order to overthrow Man's World. Through Wonder Woman's story, we can build a feminist epic that depicts women who fight patriarchy. In the novel Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary, Wittig and Zeig describe the Amazons as the warriors thanks to whom we have been able to enter the Golden Age, an age without patriarchy or sex differences. (...) Diana, by becoming Wonder Woman and by fighting against heteropatriarchal injustice, leads the war toward the destruction of this dualistic division. The connection between Amazons and Guerrilleres, between two generations of fighters against patriarchy, aims to inspire our sorority and union in this fight against heteronormative, oppressive structures that affect us all, especially women and other subjects with alternative sexual and gender identities. (shrink)

The myth that women had equal rights and were emancipated in the Soviet Union masks the reality that the Soviet state, like all totalitarian states, is a manifestation of patriarchal ideology. The true democratization of Russian society requires the rejection of masculinist ideology and constitutes one of the most important social and cultural challenges.

We applaud Campbell's cogent arguments for the evolution of female survival mechanisms but take issue with several key conceptual claims: the treatment of patriarchy; the implicit assumption that women are passive pawns in a male game of media exploitation; and the neglect of the possibility that media images exploit existing evolved psychological mechanisms rather than create them.

Paper 1 The argument is made that the names made to be used by our species as its identity fall short of being a theory. Up to the present it was assumed that the names were based on a theory. No one questioned this situation before.

I, an Indian Christian, have been made to feel inferior in Britain on account of my Indian identity and my sex. Something of the past British imperialism still expresses itself in its sexism and racism towards me. This combination I name imperial patriarchy. I find that white feminist theologians often present an analysis that still stems from an imperial/colonial mind-set. I critique Mary Daly’s Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism with the help of post-colonial feminists. Daly suffered the same convenient (...) amnesia as the Victorian missionaries who criticized Chinese foot binding while forgetting that a Victorian woman’s torso was bound by a corset or tight lacing. I call upon Western feminists to become aware of the imprint of imperial patriarchy on their own thinking and then to join with their non-Western sisters in combating both sexism and racist imperialism. (shrink)

Paper 3 This paper discusses how patriarchy made the name 'man' their Brand. It would guarantee their entitlement to rule and control the masses by repeating man in so many names. Partial lists are shown.