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Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term patriarchy is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in feminist theory to describe a broader social structure in which men as a group dominate society. [1] [2] [3]
From a historical point of view, the term patriarchy refers to the father as the power holder inside family hierarchy, and thereby, women become subordinate to the power of men. Patriarchy is a social system in which men have predominant power and are dominant and have privilege in roles such as: political, economical, societal, and social roles.
And like their male counterparts, their power is used to control those persons in subordinate roles, as indicated by the rise in reports of sexual harassment (cougar syndrome) and cronyism. Despite the explanation of social roles, there has not been a feminist theory that is fully developed to explain for the uniqueness of female criminality.
[5] [6] [7] Gender roles can be linked with essentialism, the idea that humans have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity based on their gender. Sociologists tend to use the term "gender role" instead of "sex role", because the sociocultural understanding of gender is distinguished from biological conceptions of sex. [8]
Gender essentialism is a theory which attributes distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men. [1] [2] Based in essentialism, it holds that there are certain universal, innate, biologically (or psychologically) based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women.
Cisnormativity contributes to patriarchy by providing a rigid division of people into genders and gender roles. [11] Cisnormativity often appears together with heteronormativity. [12] [13] According to Judith Butler, the dominant view of gender assumes a "causal continuity among sex, gender, and desire". [14]
Normative gender roles can be reinforced outside of the household, adding power to these established ideas about gender. An analysis of children's books in the twenty-first century, by Janice McCabe, suggests that this particular avenue of children's media symbolically annihilates females, representing them about half as often as that of males.
In Key Issues in Women's Work (2nd ed., 2004), sociologist Catherine Hakim compares four competing theories of male dominance, including Goldberg's theory of patriarchy as well as her own preference theory, and notes the strengths and weaknesses of patriarchy theory. [9]