The Global Sociology Blog

One of the difficulties tackling issues of patriarchy is that it’s everywhere, embedded in all social institutions, pervading every aspect of culture, omnipresent at the macro and micro level of the social structure and interactive dynamics. As such, it seems so "natural" that it is taken for granted and calling it out is seen as ruining the fun for everyone (in the case of sexist jokes) or creating trouble and dissension against the nicely humming consensus of everyday life. Hence the stereotypes against feminists as humorless ugly troublemakers. But, once one has a trained eye to patriarchal matters, it is unavoidable. Let’s take a few examples.

First stop: France and the persistence of wage gaps and glass ceilings as detailed in a new report of the Inspectrice Générale Des Affaires Sociales:

Femmes moins payées, patrons taxés? – Libération via kwout

What is interesting in this case is that Sarkozy had given the social partners (labor unions and employers’ organizations) until 2009 to find a solution to these discriminations. After that, he told that if they had not proposed anything, he would go for Parliamentary action. So, the report outlines necessary actions to remedy these gaps: quotas and sanctions (both positive and negative):

Femmes moins payées, patrons taxés? – Libération via kwout

So, 2010 should be the year where the Parliament takes action against gender discrimination in the workplace. The employers’s organizations are not happy (but then, they never are unless legislation involves a tax cut for them).

Second stop: the United States with this horrific case of discrimination and harassment against women firefighters (a case, which, somehow, will get much less publicity than the Ricci case where white men alleged discrimination), via Shakesville:

Shakesville: Houston Firewomen Targeted by Hate Campaign via kwout

Do read the entire story but one needs a strong stomach. What is horrific in this case is that these women’s lives may be endangered by their own male colleagues. Nevertheless, harassment is the norm and reporting it or fighting back against it is treated as a nuisance, as deviant behavior and actually increases the level of harassment. One has to admire the courage of these women to stand up for their right to exercise their craft in the face of such disgusting behavior. The whole thing is very reminiscent of this (considering that the movie was based on a true story, it is amazing to see the lack of originality of male harasser. They all resort to the same sexual and phallic actions because that is the way the social / cultural script is written).

These are cases where the institutional and the interactional conspire to make women’s lives almost impossible, that is, where it seems that the entire social structure works against you and there is no way out: the organization treats the harassed as the deviant and nuisance. The hierarchy behaves in typical "let’s protect the organization at all costs". And the people who should be your in-group turn against you. Complaints of harassment are perceived as disturbances: everything worked well until women demanded equal opportunity in employment, they are seen as the disturbance to what used to be a well-oiled machine where men could be men and now they have to behave (sorta).

This junction of the structural and the cultural is also highly visible worldwide, with, for instance, the degradation of the status of women in Afghanistan:

Women’s rights ‘in decline’ in Afghanistan – Asia, World – The Independent via kwout

As one reads through these examples, it is clear that we are seeing variations on the same theme. Cultural and geographical differences are superficial layers over the same patriarchal essence embedded in every society, from the rich democracies of the West to war-torn quasi theocracies of the Global South.

Some patriarchal forms are more visible or more horrific than others and we can certainly find some worse than others (being paid 27% less than men is not comparable to having acid thrown in one’s face for the crime of going to school or being killed in the name of honor after being raped) but these are essentially all positioning social actions: putting women in their place, solidly stuck at the bottom of the social ladder. And when cultural norms are behind such positioning actions, it ensures that the victims are not seen as victims but as deviants and disruptive so that they will find no support.

In many ways, patriarchal structures and norms place women in no-win situations with no socially acceptable solutions to a variety of double-binds that men do not have to face. It is when exposed, sometimes through humor, that women’s patriarchally-engineered dilemmas become visible in all their absurdity. Sociological Images provided an example of this: