Why Does Patriarchy Persist?
Feminism is one of the greatest liberation movements in human history. According to Carol Gilligan, one of the most influential feminist thinkers, whose work in the field of women’s moral and identity development has broken new ground in psychology, feminism is the movement to free democracy from patriarchy. It should be obvious when you think about it. Patriarchy is contradictory to democracy, like slavery is and like imperialism is.
The election of a patriarchal man as US President has unexpectedly catalysed women’s activism not only in America but also in many other places around the world. At the same time came to the fore a question that calls for explanation. Why does patriarchy persist?
This question led the authors, Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, a Research Fellow at New York University, to a set of discoveries connecting the persistence of patriarchy to the psychology of loss.
The authors start with a simple premise. We live in relationship with one another; the idea of an isolated individual standing alone is absurd. Our actions affect the people we love and care about, family, friends, etc, so we have to be aware of those relationships. But patriarchy is a culture based on a gender binary and hierarchy that forces a split between a self and relationships. In effect men have selves whereas women are ideally selfless, they “have relationships which surreptitiously serve men’s needs.” The importance of the self for feminism is reflected to Simone de Beauvoir's provocative declaration, “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other”. It is a statement that not only elevates all men over women, but it also shows that women actually come to experience themselves as other, a non-person, — indeed, as non-selves.
But if you have not self, you are not in relationship. The authors’ thesis points to a paradox: we give up relationship in order to have “relationships.” In part patriarchy persists because of its psychological function as a defense against loss. In this sense “patriarchy is at once a source of lost connection and a defence against further loss. A source of trauma and a defense against trauma.”
The persistence of patriarchy is also premised on women’s compliance and silence. By being silent, women “can’t build off or share cultural experiences.” They don’t grow, they don’t learn from one another. “Our combined silence becomes complicit in allowing patriarchy to remain the status quo.”
As a culture, patriarchy exists as a set of rules and values that specify how men and women should act in order to be safe and protected. Breaking the patriarchical rules can have real consequences. Our ability to communicate our own feelings, and to pick up the feelings of others threatens the structures of hierarchy. By resisting pressures to disengage ourselves, from our honest voices, writes Carol Gilligan in Joining the Resistance, we become able to open the way for the development of a more humane way of thinking about personal and political relationships. Feelings of empathy and compassion for another’s suffering or humanity make it difficult to maintain or justify inequality.
Based in two complementary narratives, this original work is a call for all girls and women to resist pressures to disengage themselves from their honest voices. The seeds for resistance and transformation are in our voices.