Lea Perez Marasigan

Instructor, Sociology
UPLB
 1. Historical
explanations for the origins
of patriarchy
• 1.1 Lerner
• 1.2 Eisler
• 1.3 Mies
• 1.4 Ofreneo et al (synthesis)
 2. Evolution
of patriarchy in the
Philippine context
 Unrecorded past (all events of the past as recollected by
human beings vs. history (recorded and interpreted past)
 Women have been central, not marginal to the making of
society and building of civilization; women have also shared
with men in preserving collective memory
 Preserving collective memory; oral tradition kept alive in
poem and myth, which both women and men created and
preserved in folklore, art, and ritual
 History making = historical creation which dates from the
invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia; until recently
historians have been men and what they have recorded is
what men have done and experienced and found significant
 Women have been kept from contributing to history making, i.e.
ordering and interpretation of the past of human kind, which is
essential to the creation and perpetuation of civilization
 Women are majority yet structured into social institutions as
though a minority
 Women have made history but are kept from knowing their
history and from interpreting history; systematically excluded
from the enterprise of creating symbol systems, philosophies,
science, law; women are educationally deprived AND excluded
from theory formation
 Contradiction between women‟s actual historical experience and
their exclusion from interpreting that experience has caused them
to struggle against their condition
 Men and women are biologically different, but the values and
implications based on that difference are the result of CULTURE
 Patriarchy as a system is HISTORICAL. It has a beginning in
history, therefore it can be ended in historical process.
 Subordination of women antedated Western civilization (when
written historical record began)
 The period of the establishment of patriarchy was not one „event‟
but a process developing over a period of nearly 2500 years
(approx 3100 to 600 BC)
 Process was manifested in changes in kinship organization and
economic relations, in the establishment of religious and state
bureaucracies, and in the shift in cosmogonies expressing the
ascendancy of male god figures
 1) Is female subordination universal?
 2) Was there ever an alternative model of
society?
 3) How, when, why did female
subordination come into existence?
Using a RELIGIOUS FRAMEWORK: Women’s
subordination is universal, God-given, or natural,
hence immutable
 Women are subordinate to men because they
were so created by God; sexual division of labor
based on biological differences is functional and
just
 Men have greater physical strength, and as such
become the hunters and providers of food for
their tribes and are more highly valued
TRADITIONALIST VIEW (using a
SCIENTIFIC FRAMEWORK)
 Charles Darwin: “Survival of the fittest”

 Sigmund Freud: “Anatomy is destiny”; the

“normal” human is male while the female is
a deviant human being lacking a penis,
whose entire psychological structure is
centered on the struggle to compensate for
this deficiency
TRADITIONALIST VIEW (using a
SCIENTIFIC FRAMEWORK)

 E. O. Wilson‟s
sociobiology: human
behaviors which are „adaptive‟ for group
survival become encoded in genes and they
include complex traits as altruism, loyalty,
and maternalism; groups practising a sex-
based division of labor have an
„evolutionary advantage‟
Frederick Engels:
 there existed classless communist societies prior to the
formation of private property
 development of animal husbandry led to surpluses, which
were appropriated by men and became private property
 Monogamous family (Men wanted to secure private
property for themselves and their heirs, so they started to
control women‟s sexuality through the requirement of
prenuptial chastity; sexual double standard in marriage to
assure themselves of legitimacy of their children)
 With the development of the state, monogamous family
became the patriarchal family, in which the wife‟s
 housework became a „private service‟
 Frederick Engels: Main Contributions
 1. Pointed to the connection between structural changes in
kinship relations and change in the division of labor on one
hand and women‟s position in society on the other
 2. Showed connection between establishment of private
property, monogamous marriage and prostitution
 3. Showed connection between economic and political
dominance and their control over female sexuality
 4. By locating „world historical defeat of the female sex‟ in
the period of the formation of the archaic states, based on
dominance of propertied elites, he gave the event historicity
 Built upon the acceptance of biological sex differences as a
given; sexual division of labor built upon these biological
differences is inevitable
 Bachofen: women in primitive society developed culture;
there was a stage of matriarchy which led society out of
barbarism; ascendancy of patriarchy as a triumph of
superior religious and political thought and organization, but
advocated the incorporation of the „feminine principle‟ of
nurturance and altruism in modern society; influenced
Engels and several others
 19th century American and British feminists: women are
more altruistic than men because of their maternal instincts
and more „virtuous‟ because of their weaker sex drives; it is
women‟s mission to rescue society from destructiveness,
competition, and violence created by men
 Stanton: woman as the „mother of the republic‟
 Strauss: The „exchange of women,‟ in which women are turned into
a commodity marked the beginning of women‟s subordination;
this reinforces a sexual division of labor which institutes male
dominance
 Ortner: female subordination is universal; in every known society,
women are identified as being closer to nature than to culture;
since every culture devalues nature as it strives to rise above it
through mastery, women become symbolic of an inferior,
intermediate order of being
 Maternalists: asserted that there had been an alternative model of
human social organization before patriarchy but this was based on
evidence that was a combination of archaeology, myth, religion,
and artifacts of dubious meaning, held together by speculation
 Evidence supported matrilocality and matriliny, NOT matriarchy. It
is NOT possible to show a connection between kinship structure
and the social position of women (e.g. in most matrilineal
societies, it is a male relative, usually the women‟s brother or
uncle, who controls economic and family decision).
 There is no anthropological evidence to support the
universality of prehistoric matriarchy
 Vague definition: A society where women dominate
over men? Any kind of societal arrangement in which
women hold power over any aspect of public life?
Any society in which women have high status?
 Lerner: if matriarchy is the mirror image of
patriarchy, then no matriarchal society ever existed;
there have been and are societies in which women
share power with men, where women in groups have
considerable power to influence or check the power
of men; there is archaeological evidence for
existence of societies in Neolithic and Bronze ages in
which women were held in high esteem
 Search for social origins of unequal and hierarchical
relationships in society and asymmetric division of labor
between in men and women is part of the political strategy
of women‟s emancipation
 Biological determinism is the most deep rooted obstacle to
the analysis of the cause of women‟s oppression and
exploitation
 The unequal, hierarchical, and exploitative relationship
between men and women is in fact caused by social, i.e.
historical, factors
 Concepts of nature, labor, sexual division of labor, family
and productivity are all “infected” by biological
determinism
 Women‟s object-relation to nature: women
can experience their whole body as
productive; not only their hands or their
heads; do not simply breed children like
cows, but appropriated their own generative
and productive forces

 Men‟s
object-relation to nature: male bodily
productivity cannot appear as such w/o the
mediation of external means, of tools.
 Myth of „man the hunter‟
 Women‟s tools vs. men‟s tools
 Women invented the first tools(digging stick, hoe)
 Men developed specialized hunting tools –
specifically geared at destroying life; not a means of
production, but destruction
 By observing the behavior of animals, men
pastoralists discovered their own generative
functions (started to see women as breeders of
children, rather than producers or gatherers)
 Man the hunter under feudalism and capitalism: full
potential of the predatory mode, based on
patriarchal division of labor, could only be realized
under feudalism and capitalism
 Older modes of production were replaced by
„transformed‟ modes of production (relations
remained the same; only forms of dominance and
appropriation changed)
 Assymetric division of labor by sex, once established
by means of violence, were upheld by institutions
like the patriarchal family and the state, and by
powerful ideological systems (religions, law,
medicine)
 Man the hunter under feudalism and capitalism: full
potential of the predatory mode, based on patriarchal
division of labor, could only be realized under
feudalism and capitalism
 Older modes of production were replaced by
„transformed‟ modes of production (relations remained
the same; only forms of dominance and appropriation
changed)
 Assymetric division of labor by sex, once established
by means of violence, were upheld by institutions like
the patriarchal family and the state, and by powerful
ideological systems (religions, law, medicine)
 The woman as the “queen of the
home”
 Actualization of motherhood being
the pursekeeper and primarily
confined to domestic sphere (i.e.
childrearing, domestic chores)
 The growing trend of
“housewifezation” --- the housewife
stripping her of developing her
other potentials outside of the
domestic sphere.
 The reproductive sphere as unpaid,
unrecognized labor and regarded
as menial
 Men as the “provider
of the family”
 His final say is sought
in most important
decisions of the
family members
 He basically operates
on the productive
sphere--- which is
outside of the home,
usually paid and hard
labor
 Within the wage labor
force, the sexual division of
labor is almost striking as
the sexual division of labor
between the home and
outside work.
 The availability of the large
„reserve army” of labor,
prepared to work for
relatively low wages and
with relatively few fringe
benefits, is obviously
advantageous to capital.
 Women usually constitutes
this „reserve army‟ and
women‟s work acquires
specifically feminine
character.
gender short films\Bride.mp4
  Women‟s low
ages used to be
justified on the
grounds that a
man was working
to support his
family, while a
woman was
working merely
for „pin money‟.

• They are alienated simply as genderless workers and

are forced to exploit not only their physical strength and
skill or their intellectual capacities, they are also forced
to exploit their sexuality and their emotion.
 There were spheres where women exercised autonomy, and
others where men‟s dominance was already in place
 Productive sphere: women were workers in their own rights
and were not dependent on men for their own survival; had
control over their labor and the fruits of their labor; shared
many productive tasks with men, although men did not
uniformly share women‟s household work
 Women were prominent in cosmological system as religious
intermediaries, but not as deities
 Political options not freely open to women; political
positions not available to them, or theirs only on condition of
absence of male heirs
 Women were used to pay debts of the household; also the
object of traffic in marriage
 Women‟s sexuality was regulated to some extent; marital
infidelity was a more serious offence for women
 Practices of concubinage and polygyny indicated a merging
of social and sexual hierarchy; evident in separation of
concubines (lower ranked women) from wives as men are
able to appropriate the labor of women
 Men had sexual and social privileges; women exercised
autonomy in production and in ritual domains
 No extensive social apparatus to regulate the activities of
women and men
 Lerner, G (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy, Chapters 1-3.
Oxford University Press.
 Pineda-Ofreneo, R, Apuan, VN, and Claudio, SE (1997)
Module 5: WD 210 Feminist Theories and Movements. Quezon
City.
 Eisler, R (1988). The Chalice and the Blade. San Francisco:
Harper and Row.
 Mies, M (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale.
London: Zed Press
 Eviota, E (1993). Political Economy of Gender. London: Zed
Press