Patriarchy and Matriarchy
PATRIARCHY AND MATRIARCHY. Patriarchy may be defined as the "rule of the father" that extends beyond the confines of the family to include the governance of men and the dominance of male values in society as a whole. Patriarchal dominance, whether that of male heads of extended families or the andrarchy of senior men within a given political dispensation, gives men control over the familial and political economy; limits women's freedom of sexual expression and alliance; marginalizes or excludes them from political and religious leadership; and limits their education and sometimes their freedom of movement. Specific phenomena associated with the patriarchal privileging of the masculine include female economic disadvantage, the coerced genital mutilation experienced by an estimated two million girls a year, the sex selection practices and female infanticide in parts of India and China, and the preferential care of boys in developing or underdeveloped countries leading to a higher mortality rate for girls.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, first and then second wave feminisms have sharply challenged patriarchy as a primary injustice to be remedied by women's educational, professional, and political emancipation from the familial sphere. By the end of the 1970s patriarchy had been judged not only the primary and general cause of female suffering, but the appropriation, accumulation, and consumption of all bodily and natural territory and resources (often cast as female) by male elites in the consolidation and expansion of their own power.
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