HISTORY OF PATRIARCHY AND MALE DOMINATED CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
Even if we are living in 21st century, people are facing dominance, discriminations, racism, sexism and abuse all around the world. Being specific about dominance in gender inequality "patriarchy" becomes a highlighted reason. History of patriarchy plays an important role in gender inequality, which still reflects in 21st century, today! In the sense of solving the crisis, when did the gender inequality start? Including origin of patriarchy society, detail explanations of concept of patriarchy, effects then and now and much more. According to some books, we tried to cover all the possible information:
ORIGIN OF PATRIARCHY
According to the book "The creation of Patriarchy" author Greda Lerner says, there was no single event happened, where we can point it as the start of patriarchy as a social system. It arose in different times, at different places, due to different events. According to some researches, it happened around 6000 years ago (4000BCE) at the time when fatherhood took root, in the sense of forming family culture.
HISTORY OF PATRIARCHY
In ancient times, human have to look for food and hunt everyday, due to lack of idea of storing and preserving food for later. So they have to go out everyday. And by the time, if a man gets interested in sexual intercourse with woman, then he had to ask her. Then woman used to arise with concern of pregnancy in future. Means, if she gets pregnant, she wouldn't be physically fit for hunting while carrying baby for next few months. So a man had to assure her, that by the time of delivery, he would be taking care of her food and would be hunting for both of them. And then that woman would be taking care of food and that child. And if they again get into sexual intercourse, again a woman had to stay home! Since now man is capable enough to hunt and feed all the family members, and due to need of nourishment of offspring, the need of woman hunting reduced. This is how women were remained limited to household chores and nourishment of family. And eventually, the dependency of woman on man increased. This is how the types of work got segregated between man and woman since ancient times.
WHEN DID THE GENDER INEQUALITY START
In later time, the concept of marriage arose. Initially, marriages were done for exchange of properties, land or wealth. Kings used to get married to increase their kingdoms. And their kingdoms were further taken by their male offspring. And since the women were not working outside the home, they were treated as liabilities for the families. So people started using women and young girls child as a exchange of property. People use to buy cattle by exchanging females, who further treated as slaves. In the sense of increase the property, men used to marry multiple women, and used to use them for services and sexual desires. Due to ability of reproduction of women, they were used to reproduced the male offspring who they going to carry forward their kingdoms to! Due to pressure of producing male child, women had to gone through lots of torture, mentally and sexually, even till cutting their genitals!
MALE DOMINATED CULTURE
The most important factor promoting patriarchy is "dependency" . since longer time, other genders are dependent on men for food, facilities and protection. So this patriarchy system had got deeper roots in our culture with time. Since the people stared considering this as a part of culture, it becomes even more difficult to talk against it or take a stand against it for women. It makes women more and more dependent on men for living normal peaceful social life. This concept of dependency is still there in 21 st century. We still see women are not doing paid work and being finically dependent on men, which makes them less likely to get priority while taking finical decisions. And female children in such houses are also sort of grow in the impact if patriarchy, which prepares them to tolerate and compromise with male dominance! And this cycle keeps rotating from generation to generation.
CONCEPT OF PATRIARCHY
We have to understand that opposing patriarchy is not man hating. So raising voice against patriarchy is not as same as raising voice against men. Patriarchy is a thought, is a mentality. There are lot of good men believe in women's rights, women's opinion. Stand against male dominance, not against men! The more we stand against each other, the more understanding level going to decrease between genders. It will make situations even more complicated to solve the gender inequality crisis. Stand for each other as a human, for human rights, stand together. Encourage each other to get more opportunities, more choices and better lives!
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