How To Talk About Patriarchy

A brief description of the weak and strong versions

What do we mean when we say “patriarchy”? This word gets used by people, including myself, without really examining what we mean and what the word implies. In my experience, there are two broad ways of talking about patriarchy. I describe these ways below.

The Weak Version of Patriarchy

The weak version of patriarchy describes the condition in which men control the vast majority of wealth and positions of authority in a society. This weak version of patriarchy is a description of society.

I tend to use this way of thinking about patriarchy. I think about the obvious examples of who are the richest people, who are the heads of major corporations, and who are our political leaders. When I look at the sex of those people, they are men. In this way describing a country like the United States as patriarchy is fairly accurate.

This weak form, however, does not really explain much. It does not necessarily tell us anything about why we see men controlling more resources or in more positions of authority. But a description in itself can be enough. Suppose I say, “we live in a Democracy.” There is no need to explain anything. You are describing a given state or condition.

And so describing America as patriarchy means you can then draw compare and contrast — “If America and Canada are both patriarchies, how are they different?”, you can analyze — “Can a society…