On The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

A summary of Lerner’s text about historic approach to understanding patriarchy and feminism

Overview of the Book

The Creation of Patriarchy: The Origins of Women’s Subordination draws focus on the historical development of the concept of patriarchy and how the history of gender is of utmost importance while creating or approaching feminist works. It is a radically different way of looking at the western civilization and how it has come to be what it is.

Pointing out how feminist history has largely been neglected, Lerner emphasizes on the vitality of ‘the dialectic of women’s history’ (the tension between women’s history and their exclusion from its interpretation) as the driving force that could lead women into action against the patriarchal system.

Central Claims/Arguments

Lerner focuses on two central questions in the text:

1. What are the concepts/definitions needed to make sense of women’s segregated and unique place in the historical process?
2. Why do women uphold the patriarchal system in which they have been and are marginalized and neglected through generations?

Importance of Women’s History and Criticism of Exclusionary Historical Research

Gerda Lerner believed that for making possible the attainment of women’s freedom, it is essential that we understand their history. She pointed out how understanding of women’s history has deep (positive) psychological impact on those who study it. Yet, women’s history has been largely neglected as modern feminist work is mostly ahistorical and does not take into account any work of feminist historical scholarship. She contended that this is because of the troubled relationship that women have with history.

Historians, up until recently, have primarily been men who have neglected women and their (unrecorded) experiences while deciphering history. This makes their version of history incomplete and distorted, and partial at best, as it excludes the experiences of what is about half of humankind. This implies how they perceive women’s role in shaping the society as being insignificant. Lerner aims to expose and challenge this patriarchal pattern of history and improve the historical memory.

Dismantling Traditionalism

Lerner dismantles traditionalism while looking for a foundation for feminism. As per traditionalism, women are designed to be weaker and submissive, their role being restricted to childbearing and upbringing. Even though men and women are biologically different, the different accepted roles for each are a result of culture (and not biology).

Context and Evidence for the Creation of Patriarchy

Women’s Exclusion From History and Scholarship

Women were not given the opportunity to add to the historical memory. They were also excluded from participating in the practice of law, science or philosophy. Here, Lerner pointed out that the reason for this exclusion was not because they had no role in the creation of history, but that their role had been woefully dismissed. She emphasized — Women have always played a crucial and equal role in contributing to the society in every way.

Men and women, both have been subjected to discrimination and exclusion on the basis of class, but unlike women, gender/sex has not been the reason for men’s exclusion. Women are a majority who have been treated as a minority. Lerner exposes this through a historical lens.

There is little work of value on women in the Mesopotamian and Hebrew sources, and whatever is there is purely descriptive. Lerner pointed out how patriarchy took over 2500 years to develop in a culmination of events. She aimed to find those historical evidences and symbols that came to be incorporated into the western civilization.

1. Tribes in Neolithic Period: Women in this period were commodified into a resource for their sexuality. By the creation of the incest taboo, they were exchanged with other tribes for avoiding warfare by the formation of marriage alliance. Other factor was the focus on increase in workforce — more the women, more the children and hence, more the workforce leading to more agricultural production. Lerner contends that women were the first slaves as they were bought first for marriage, and then for slavery. Racism, sexism and class operation together led to their marginalization.
2. Mesopotamian Societies in the Second Millennium B.C.: In the economic interest of the family, women were sold for marriage or for prostitution. Fathers who had property could ask for a ‘bride-price’ which eventually went to the son of that family. Also, when there was debt on the men of the family, the women and children had to become debt-slaves for the creditor. This commodification of women by men can be understood to be the first accumulation of private property. Enslaving not only alleviated one’s social status, but also provided the master with means of acquiring wealth through slave’s labor and by the sale of their children.

Women’s Role as Child-Bearers and Slaves

Lerner claimed that the main reason for women’s subjugation was their biological function of birth-giving. Since ancient times, the division of tasks between men (as hunter-gatherers) and women (as birth-givers and domestic workers) led to the formation of patriarchal system with defined gender roles. This subsequently led to women’s debarring from positions of significance (like leadership).

Lerner stated that women were the first slaves. This was due to power-play and gender-specific roles in the society. Domination over women became an accepted practice across cultures and societies. She pointed out that women played an equal part in relinquishing control to men. They accepted their role as though it appeared to be the only choice they had.

Laws and Religious Symbolism

The patriarchal system was institutionalized by the enforcement of gender-role defining laws. Women were officially excluded from areas like policy-making and education. Lerner gave the popular example of the Hammurabi Code, as per which women were property of men, and thus, the former’s social status would be be dependent upon the latter’s.

There was a shift in religious practices as Goddesses (who strongly symbolized fertility and sexuality) were replaced by Abrahamic God. The former came to be condemned. The patriarchal system caged the women in such a way that they became passive, powerless domestic beings that needed the support of men to exist.

Reification of Women and their Psychological Struggle

French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss talked about the reification (turning into reality from abstract) of sexuality of women and their reproductive capacity as a result of their ‘exchange’.

Women were psychologically restrained because their sexuality was controlled by men. Men, through ‘marriage transactions’, defined women’s role. Stand-in wives provided reproductive services and were replaced on the whim of their husbands.

There were varying degrees of unfreedom for women. Wives had more power as they enjoyed property and legal rights in relation to the men they were married to. Concubines had a decreased, but still some level of power as per the wish of the men they were involved with. But the slave women were completely commodified and enjoyed no power or freedom.

Class Distinction

Men and women had different relationship with class struggles. For men, it was about owning property and being able to dominate others. Whereas for women, access to resources was directly determined by the men they were in relation with. ‘Respectable’ women had to gain this power through their father’s/brother’s decision, whereas ‘not-respectable’ women used their ‘sexual deviance’ for the same.

As slaves, women and men suffered from class dominance in different ways. The former were exploited for labor, sexual and reproductive purposes while the latter were exploited for labor only.

Compliance of Women

Lerner emphasized how the system of patriarchy could not have functioned without the compliance of women. Women had been made compliant by education deprivation, discrimination, controlled sexuality, among other things.

Women, for thousands of years, have been a part of the patriarchal system — dependent and controlled first by fathers/brothers, and then by husbands/men they were sexually involved with. In the patriarchal family, male children are only submissive till they themselves become heads of the family, but for females, this submission is lifelong.

Rationale Behind Women’s Submissiveness: The society being unequal, and women’s status being dependent on the men they were associated with, it made sense for them to prefer more powerful men who had a higher status in the society. Also, women from high class found it difficult to lose their status to lower level, so they conformed with the norms in order to maintain it.

Internalization of Women’s Inferiority: Women had a role to play in their own subordination as they had grown to internalize their inferiority. One primary reason for their continued subordination and marginalization was their disconnect with their own history of struggles and victories.

Women’s place within the family structure made any progress in their solidarity difficult. Since a very young age, they had been indoctrinated to have a set of obligations towards their family. Women never got out of their childlike-protected state as their male protectors changed from their fathers to their husbands. Also, women knew that the consequence of rebelling against their imposed subordination would result in them being cast out of their family and society. Therefore, women could only achieve freedom to the extent that they could manipulate their protector.

Male Hegemony Over Symbol System

Lerner divides male hegemony into two key components — educational deprivation and definition monopoly. Men have made themselves the center of discourse by explaining and defining the universe as per their perspective. This presents a distorted image of reality as their perspective does not represent every and all perspectives.

Lerner stated that to rectify this, merely adding women’s viewpoint to men’s viewpoint is not enough. A radical reconstruction of thought is required in which it is accepted that humankind consists of two equal halves who need to have equal representation in every generalization about their species.

Feminist Works Should Not Be Ahistorical

Lerner pointed out that even Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, which describes men as being autonomous and transcendent and women as immanent, completely overlooks history. De Beauvoir believed that it is because women have ‘no past, no history, no religion of their own’ that they do not have any means of organizing themselves. Here, Lerner commented that she agreed with De Beauvoir’s claim that women have not transcended but disagreed on the claim of women lacking a history.

Struggles While Creating Feminist History

Because women were made to think that they have no history, they did not think of them having any alternative to the marginalized role they had come to have in the society. In other words, because of the lack of precedent, they could not perceive any alternatives for their existing conditions.

Class struggle can be understood to be the struggle over the control of the society’s symbol system. For revolutionary ideas to emerge, those oppressed need to have their own meanings and symbols for the dominant system. This was the case for the oppressed males but not the oppressed females.

Denial of women’s history had reinforced their acceptance of the patriarchal system and diminished their self-worth. Men’s history portrayed women as being the marginal victims of historical process. But women’s history shows how they have struggled against this misconception.

It is because of their educational disadvantage and their lack of leisure time that they could not develop abstract thought. They had come to internalize their position as subordinated domestic service giver. But there were some women from the ruling class who had struggled to provide androcentric thought. They had to begin by learning ‘how to think like men’. This led to them mistrusting and devaluing their own experience. Additionally, these women who challenged the existing system and made progress in feminist thought were labelled as being deviant and marginalized by the society. The same was the case for female artists and writers whose creative efforts attempted to uncover the meaning of women’s literary work (and they have only recently succeeded).

Though marginalized and trivialized, women’s literary contributions from the 18th and 19th centuries have nevertheless survived. But even these writers were restrained by their psyche. Their work was a product of their time. The challenge for modern-day women attempting the same is the redefining of their ‘self’ without any effect of their internalized notions in their psyche that were a product of patriarchal system.

Need for Shift in Consciousness

Lerner believed for there to be a need for shift in women’s consciousness, for which she perceived the following two steps:

1. being women-centered
2. stepping outside patriarchal thought

The question one should ask here is — how would an argument be defined if women were central to it? This would require separating all evidence of patriarchal intervention from it, and assuming that no event could take place without the involvement of women in it (unless they were specifically barred from doing so). Hence, any traditional (or other) methods used need to be considered from the viewpoint of women.

A skeptical and critical approach towards every known system of thought is essential if one wishes to do away with patriarchal system of thought.

Conclusion and Takeaway

Lerner claims that since the patriarchal system has historical roots, its destruction must also be a historical process. It is after centuries of gender perception in social, legal and cultural spheres that patriarchal system has come to stay dominant. She emphasizes how this total marginalization of women is not biological but historical. Over the centuries, it has become socially and culturally normalized as the status-quo. Women’s status, power and influence was associated with their relations with men.

Lerner concludes with an analogy for call for action. In the play of life, men and women are equal actors with the same level/type of roles and responsibilities. Yet, women’s contribution is not considered or subsumed in the totality. To remedy this, Lerner suggested deconstructing patriarchy in favor of feminist thought, as that would allow recovery from the damages of the past marginalization as well improvement of the present and future for women and the society.