Essay Sample on The Ideology of Patriarchy

Introduction

Patriarchy can be defined as a male dominant society in which the father or the eldest son is the head of the family. Patriarchy always stems from the systematic oppression of women, like from the DRC's family code of 1987 dictates the idea that a woman's role is directly linked to the male commands. When the law itself obligates that a woman must obey her husband, this limits her role within the society, through keeping her away from the actions that can only be done through authorization of her husband's consent. Therefore, this shows the dynamic of gender roles in the past, which has influenced people to this day.

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Philosophers such as Kate Millet and Uma Narayan convey how patriarchal society affect and constrain women in numerous ways. There is a story, in the book One world of Literature, called "Another evening at the club" and I will illustrate the events, specifically the time zone of the story, in which the mother figure in the story feeds the patriarchal system along with oppressing women; Eliott illustrates how women became familiar, and she conveyed making strange of what had appeared familiar. The most subjugated discrimination is pointed out with a clear description by Crenshaw coining the term "intersectionality" of race and sex. In this essay, I will discuss how the status, temperament, and sex roles assigned to men and women in the law reflect the ideology of patriarchy through the descriptive analysis of each philosopher.

From Millet's argument, she tries to reason that the sexual politics gains momentum as a result of interactions of the sexes in regard to role, status, and temperament (Millet, 38). Men enjoy superior status whereas women are inferior. As for temperament, it initiates the building of someone's personality in line with stereotyped lines of a category, majorly sex; for men they are known for "masculine" and women as "feminine", in other stereotypes men are "aggressive" and women are "passionate" (Millet, 38). In terms of sex roles, females are assigned for domestic service and watching over infants, however, the rest of human activities and achievements, interest, ambitions are left all for men to take care of. According to the ruling of DRC in the year 1987, it is also seen that the law mandates men with lots of powers; this limits women with the chance to file cases against their husbands for whichever the circumstances they face. The validity for this can be evidenced openly in the Crenshaw book of "Re-thinking Intersectionality", on the case filed by a black woman. Millet distinguishes the status role as sociological and temperament as psychological. Millet tries to view in wide scope the as to why women are so dependent on men, and she discovers that this comes as a result of the limitations as per the 1987 DRC family code that restricts a woman to live with her husband and always follow his instructions to women. To Millet, this whole thing violates the sex roles in which men do all the work and women take care of "infants".

Many women's decisions to comply with cultural practices such as the ceiling or wearing makeup can be seen as forms of "bargaining with patriarchy" rather than living as prisoners or dupes of patriarchy. Women of late have proved that the patriarchal system results to many external causes on the lives them. Acknowledging that women's responses to patriarchal cultural practices involve constraints on choices, but also choice within constraints, makes a difference to the kinds of state policies feminists ought to support. Veiling happens to be one example Marilyn Friedman cites of practice she would like to protect on grounds of respect for women's procedural autonomy. The philosophical literature on autonomy reveals that although it is a widely used and widely relied on the notion, the range of meaning ascribed to it is enormous. The history of state-driven attempts to ban veiling in a number of countries shows that the motives and effects of the policies are deeply problematic... (Narayan, 2018) Many Muslim women are so voiceless, the women are controlled by norms that are imposed by the society or rather call them men. The norms could sometimes be political, cultural norms and religious. Narayan express purdah as a constraint that made communication with stranger's difficult and how trafficked roads is a struggle to pass through and how it is a problem passing down local streets.

The two women submit how the lack of skill has rendered them to the problem of dependency on men and other companies of kinsmen even in their minor errands (Narayan, 420). Therefore, those religious and mostly cultural norms oppressed most women in forcing them to wear this veil. This force is through the fear of the consequences of unveiling such as, ruining their reputation or losing the chance to get married. However, forcing women to unveil is, in Narayan's words, unacceptable; For instance, France forcing their women to take off the Purdah. Narayan has a strong standpoint that a government should never interfere with inequalities like these and impose a law to demolish it because there will always be a group that is mistreated and denied away the freedom of choice. This is because some women do want to put their veil and not only because of the perks of hiding away from their husband or immediately go out without the need to change, but because it makes them feel "naked" taking it off regardless to its physical inconvenience. Many women understand how they are torn from their right other women are too deep into the patriarchal system that they do not have knowledge concerning the false consciousness they live in.

Living in false consciousness, in terms of Karl Marx; Marx believes that living is a reality that is not the actual truth. For instance, many women believe that they have the freedom of choice, however, their society and norms force her into the choice she makes like the "DRC family act of 1987". In the narrative of "another evening at the club" illustrates a young girl living in the 1960s in Egypt and her family is economically unstable. An old man with a fine reputation and is well off proposed to marry Samia. The mother says to Samia that the man receives a huge amount of income which will save them the to set up a beautiful house and she threatens her daughter that she won't tell her what her situation was like. Research has it that by this time, a similar rule was working in Egypt, and probably the mother to Samia gave in easily as she as a woman wanted some requirements but she was bonded by the law not to, thus, she sees the marriage a source of some income. This is an evidence of limitation of sex roles in Egypt .samia personally does not like the man and she feels like making her own decision but , when she tries to look on the other side of the coin she sees herself as a burden to the family since there is no single help in terms of finance she is rendering to the family, due to the restrictions are given in the laws that do not allow any woman to do any job in search of income. The role of men in this narrative seemed like they dominate the society and women are an item and how the man "priced" Samia's beauty (Rifaat, 54).

The analysis that can be interpreted from this is that men are not the only reason for the current existence of patriarchal, but it is women enforcing other women into this system.

Considered that men have the epistemic privilege of ignorance and women have the epistemic privilege of acknowledging the issue. It is therefore expected of the women to raise concern over this issue as the patriarchal law of 1987 renders men with a lot of privileges and it is so rare except the for a few to realize the shortcomings of the other side as they are only seeing the benefits and appreciating how good the law is. Elliot also mentions how the shoes of your own are sized and shaped perfectly to fit your feet only and no one else can be in your shoes or see your exact point of view except yourself. To put it differently, not every member of the marginalized group go through the same discrimination or the same experience, this is what Crenshaw tried to explain. When asked what intersectionality was all about, she responded as follows;

Intersectionality refers to a lens through which one can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. (Nash, 2008) Crenshaw bounded the term "intersectionality" as discrimination of race and sex in line with explaining how the duties and status of both men and women beg to differ with her analysis. A black woman filed a case before the court, and it was later discovered that the woman was receiving discrimination of both sexism and racism. On the other hand, the laws in the court were only covering the two instances separately in favor of the white women for sexism cases and black men for racism cases, this thus renders the black woman nowhere in the category and the court assumes not to have seen any kind of discrimination in the filed case. Crenshaw's intersectionality, in this case, is very important as she tries to explain that in instances where both cases are witnessed then they should still be categorized as discrimination and legal action taken without discriminating black women out of the justice that they deserve.

Conclusion

In conclusion, gender roles and temperament must be considered as very crucial points. Women also contribute a lot to any economy of a country; therefore never should they be undermined. A possible solution to any country that might still be doing the similar activity of patriarchy should always have visits to other nations that have provided some share for the women so that they see the difference that exists when women are empowered. In the essay, a point of concern that was discovered was that sometimes it is not even men who push the women to the trouble, but a time fellow women do, an activity which is totally opposite to the expectations, such women should be taken to court immediately and legal action taken with immediate effect. Otherwise, the patriarchal rule is not advisable since it is just a limiting factor of development to a country and many more negative impacts with no existing positive change to a country's economy.

Works Cited

Nash, Jennifer C. "Re-thinking intersectionality." Feminist Review 89.1 (2008): 1-15.

Carastathis, Anna. "The concept of intersectionality in feminist theory." Philosophy Compass 9.5 (2014): 304-314.

Narayan, Uma. "Minds of their own: Choices, autonomy, cultural practices, and other women." A mind of one's own. Routledge, 2018. 418-432.

Eisner, Elliot. "Art and knowledge." Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (2008): 3-12.

Chen, Yunquan, et al. "Method and apparatus for measuring values of physiological parameters." U.S. Patent No. 6,602,199. 5 Aug. 2003.