The Wife : A Study in Patriarchy

Abstract

The concept of patriarchy is a notoriously difficult one. Loosely speaking, of course, it means a social system in which males have more power—but the manner in which that power is transmitted can be multifarious in its aspect. It can, for instance, be expressed through direct and quantifiable differences in the situation of the genders; at the time of writing there exists in the UK, on average, a 15% discrepancy between the wages ¹ paid to a man or a woman within the same job sectors. But beyond that there remains the more intangible phenomena: the forms of cultural behaviour which men and women exhibit—the routines enacted out in the backdrop of our day-to-day lives, which perpetuate a myriad of nebulous feelings and beliefs that come to underpin and fortify more traditional gender roles.