Let's Talk about what Patriarchy Is

In the West, Patriarchy is a hierarchical system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

Women are loaned limited amounts of power, on condition they behave in specific ways and hold certain values that are not threatening to the structure.
Women's rights are on loan and may be removed or withheld.
Women who do not comply are at risk.
Women who do comply may find they have not purchased safety for themselves or their children.
Womens rights can be safely ignored or overridden, the laws designed to protect us and punish our abusers are not often enforced.

There are several active threads that show these statements are true. (Even in the West, where we have equal rights on paper.)

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/02/women-s-work-how-britain-discarded-its-female-computer-programmers
This is a case in point how women are at the forefront of new technologies. As soon as the value of this is recognised men move in and women are squeezed out. The IT industry is the clearest modern example.
If you look at any female job e.g. nursing as men move in they start to take over the higher echelons.

,its because most women leave in their early to mid thirties to concentrate on family and so dont progress up the career ladder.
Why don't they go back? Often it's not a free choice - they don't have affordable, reliable childcare, they aren't allowed flexible or part time hours. All of these are structural problems.
The STRUCTURE that is in place is one where men have to provide for their kids if they dont live with them, thats what child maintenance does.
Except it doesn't work for thousands of women. Why? Take a look at the Relationship threads to see how many men get away with paying nothing. It's a structural problem again.

Alisonjabub
You are deluded if you think this proves your point. The Equal Pay act is decades old and these women have been discriminated against despite that Act. If you have to go to the courts to get treated fairly that is by definition an example of structural inequality. If we had a structurally equal society we would not need to legislate.

Some technical professions - medicine, law - have a long hours culture for no other reason than that that is the way things have always been done. However increasingly the people with the best qualifications in these areas are women. The argument that men are just ‘better’ at doing these jobs doesn’t hold.

Yes women do hold some of the highest qualifications, but the reason why women hold most of the junior roles in the legal profession isn't because men hold them back, its because most women leave in their early to mid thirties to concentrate on family and so dont progress up the career ladder. That is a choice they make, you don't seriously think you should just be able to have your cake and eat it. Biology is what holds us back not men.

Another example of structural inequality: why is it still so easy for men to walk away from their children and not provide for them? It should be relatively easy to hold them to account but we don't. We prefer to demonize single mothers instead.

Actually thats not true. The STRUCTURE that is in place is one where men have to provide for their kids if they dont live with them, thats what child maintenance does. Thats a structure that benefits women and children and is a cost to men, as it should be.

Many men have families. Why are you assuming they WANT the constraints it brings?

Well because theyve chosen to do it, and taken the responsibility that it entails. You know, I really dont think you realise how grateful many women are that their husbands go out to work to afford them the opportunity to stay at home and spend the time raising their children during the youngest most precious time of their lives.

Another example of structural inequality: why is it still so easy for men to walk away from their children and not provide for them? It should be relatively easy to hold them to account but we don't. We prefer to demonize single mothers instead.

You are seriously deluded if you believe value in areas like care is anything remotely whatsoever to do with any influence of men
It frequently happens that when women enter a previously male-dominated sector of the workforce in sufficient numbers the value (both economic and social) of that work decreases.

Examples have been given -

For example, when a couple have a baby, after 6 weeks of maternity leave a woman who is only entitled to statutory maternity pay loses a large amount of her pay. This will not be the case for a man. While recent changes mean that men can access shared paternity leave, this is accessed infrequently. This may be for various reasons (including choice) but also because if a mother is breastfeeding it is much more difficult for her to return to work at such an early stage, and because men (in general) earn more than women (in general), and so the drop in family income is likely to be greater of the man takes shared parental leave. Therefore the fact of reproduction usually reduces a woman's access to money/power compared to men.

The point above about women choosing not to work 80 hour jobs etc doesn't address the structural point. Which is that in our society women - because of pregnancy and maternity - will (as a class) have fewer opportunities to access these jobs. They therefore have less access to the power and money which flow from these jobs.

In our society, the power to act, to be free, to move house, to start again, is very very closely linked to access to money. Without access to money, a person cannot leave their situation. If a person has no job, no decent employment history, and/ore has caring responsibilities, it is very difficult for them to have the power to change their circumstances. A woman is more likely to be in this disempowered situation than a man, because a man will never have had to leave their job or lose their pay because of pregnancy.

A less patriarchal society would not financially disadvantage women because of the fact of reproduction, the physical burden of which is necessarily and invariably born by women.

And
Many women have families and simply wouldn't WANT the constraints that that brings.

Many men have families. Why are you assuming they WANT the constraints it brings?

Why are you just concerned about top jobs with the most power. Why not that there is an imbalance of bricklayers for example?

Ok fine. You said carers are less well paid because any person off the street can do it. And that I only want to talk about the powerful positions.

So, in your view, how come birmingham council paid their bin men more than their care staff (predominantly women)? (Proven in court as they had to make huge payments)
What is an argument for that happening that doesn't feature structural sexism?

I find the OED useful
Patriarchy
A form of social organization in which the father or oldest male is the head of the family, and descent and relationship are reckoned through the male line; government or rule by a man or men

The predominance of men in positions of power and influence in society, with cultural values and norms favouring men. Frequently with pejorative connotation

I think it really is that simple.

It doesn't really matter that there are homeless men, disadvantaged men, more men in prison etc.
We still live in a patriarchy, today, in our country, because men hold virtually all the power.

The important point though was that this was not some real advantage to men, it was to the advantage of the people who employed them, the capitalist. It was an exploitative relationship.

Having your own money, in your control, grants a degree of independence, as Quentin pointed out. It means that, in the worst case, you can walk away and start again somewhere else. It also gives power over your dependents. Just because waged males were/are exploited by capitalists doesn't mean they weren't able in turn to wield power over their dependents.

To say that entering the workforce for women was not a great fit because it was set up for the good of men - well, that's saying the position of the worker in a capitalist system is to be envied if you aren't caught up in it yourself. It was not set up for the good of men but for the good of the wealthy. Who don't care much about whether their system is good for working families, either the men or women or children in them.

For the purposes of this discussion, I don't think it matters what it was "set up" for. Communist society was "set up" for the good of "the people" but women still ended up getting the short end of the stick. The point is that, no matter what the system actually is, there is a strong tendency for it to end up rigged so that males at all social levels have significantly greater access to (relative) money, power and status than females do. This is true across cultures and also historically.

There are many reasons why there are sex imbalances in top positions. One is that people in top positions have been known to work 80 hour weeks non stop! Many women have families and simply wouldn't WANT the constraints that that brings.

They aren’t all really working 80 hour weeks though.

For years men have ‘worked’ at the golf club or bar.

Some technical professions - medicine, law - have a long hours culture for no other reason than that that is the way things have always been done. However increasingly the people with the best qualifications in these areas are women. The argument that men are just ‘better’ at doing these jobs doesn’t hold.

Men also have families. Most women don’t have a passionate desire to make sure that school lunches are made or that everyone has clean pants.

Childcare and "work" didn't used to be considered separate, all things that went toward maintaining the family were work, much of it carried out in and around the home for both sexes, as agriculture was the bulk of the economy.

I don't think that's really true. There were almost always forms of work that earned a wage of some sort, even if this was just supplemental to basic agricultural work. And young unmarried people often went away from the family to work, so were not involved in family childcare. Also, there were always towns and cities, where this was even more the case. The more prestigious the work, the greater the restrictions. In addition, there is plenty of evidence that males in nearly all cultures maintain a mental/cultural division between "women's work" and "real work", awarding much greater value to the latter.

Men have always operated a closed shop for almost all occupations that might allow a woman to gain independence. As a result, women's earnings were kept artificially low, because of labour over-supply in the areas where they were allowed to earn money. In addition, any money earned by a married woman automatically belonged to her husband.

Why are you just concerned about top jobs with the most power. Why not that there is an imbalance of bricklayers for example?

I don't know why you'd assume id think women in general women aren't as competent as men by what i said. We weren't talking about in general we were talking about occupying top positions, and the standard is competence NOT SEX. Your position in a top company should never be chosen on the basis of what genital organs you possess.

[quote NotMyTimes]@Alisonjabub

You really have no idea do you. Of course there is structural sexism and of course the society we live in is still racist. If you haven't experienced either of these then you're very lucky but it doesn't mean they're not there[/quote]
Thats why ive asked if you could give an example but nobody has yet. Just experiencing these things just means they exist it doesnt provide any evidence of them being structural.

So, what structural examples can you give?

@Alisonjabub

You really have no idea do you. Of course there is structural sexism and of course the society we live in is still racist. If you haven't experienced either of these then you're very lucky but it doesn't mean they're not there

To me patriarchy is structural sexism. Just like structural racism, structural sexism penetrates all areas of life. It means that even if a man and a woman presented with all the same qualifications, traits and experiences, the man would still be better off in society. Male privilege is like white privilege. It doesn't mean your life is easy, it means your sex hasn't actively made your life harder. It means that you are the default, and women are the other. It means you are celebrated for doing something a woman would be condemned for not doing. The patriarchy changes as society evolves, but it ultimately boils down to structural sexism, until men aren't the default the patriarchy is still intact.

Well it’s apparently a meritocracy so clearly yes. What nonsense. The amount of deck stacking that has already happened to be able to pay the fees for Eton and then reap the many advantages of the network it provides has got nothing to do with competence. In most cases it’s inherited wealth and privilege. Not recognising that demonstrates a lack of comprehension and understanding of structural inequity. Before you mention scholarships and bursaries there are many who do not know these things exist and even if they did they would have many issues to overcome to send a child to Eton, somewhere utterly alien to their lives.

I hope you never need state funded care carried out by people who don’t want to do it who would be sanctioned if they didn’t take the care job. Many are in that position. Guess they should have worked harder.