The Curse of Patriarchy
By Ross Coggins,
missionary, pastor, professor, and author of the hymn “Send Me, Oh Lord, Send Me!”
If you could affect a single change that would most effectively enhance peace and prosperity on this planet, what would it be? I submit that a strong case can be made that the achievement of gender equality offers the brightest pathway to substantive social, political, and economic security in today’s world. The obstacle to achieving this goal, simply stated, is patriarchy. Patriarchy is defined as a social system where men are dominant over women in power, status and wealth, and in which descent is reckoned in the male line. It is no exaggeration to say that patriarchy is a near-dominant global reality.
This conclusion is not based on causal assumptions. The author has spent 13 years living among Muslim populations and worked as a U.S. Agency for International Development representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. The posting in Rome provided unique cross-cultural experience with a range of multi-national colleagues.
Few would deny that the large majority of the world’s population lives under patriarchal rule. The degree to which it dominates varies, of course, between economically advanced western cultures and those societies in which fundamentalist religious beliefs prevail.
In the U.S. press, references to current gender issues are generally limited to such issues as unequal pay for women or gay rights. This is a far cry from the daily suppression of women’s rights in major populations of the world. In those demographics encompassing fundamentalist religions, multiple restrictions on daily conduct are observed. Some notable religious restrictions relating to women include prohibition of marriage without patriarchal permission, denial of the right to vote, dress restrictions including total body coverage, requirement that females walk behind male companions, gender bias in education, segregated worship and, in isolated instances, honor killings for rape of the female victim.
Challenges to patriarchal dominance in these societies are pathetically weak, no match for accepted scriptural injunctions establishing the subordination of females. Classroom preference for boys and sexual harassment of girls further penalize female students.
There are notable efforts to reverse patriarchal dominance. In America, the first woman to be named bishop in the Episcopalian church caused fairly modest furor. The issue of equal pay for women gave rise to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter bill in response to egregious salary differentiation suffered by a working woman. Even in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has established within a walled-off enclave a university where men and women can study together in academic freedom.
It would be gratifying to see such positive developments as portents of significant anti-patriarchal change. That could be the prospect in modestly prosperous societies enjoying religious toleration. Others must endure the sheer weight of male-dictated, ever present, all-encompassing reality of patriarchy.
