How important is the patriarchy compared to social class?

[RitaLynn]

This is a fairly basic question perhaps, but I ask as a lay feminist, but coming from a left-wing / social democratic position.

I've seen the longer thread on the patriarchy, and it's dissolved a little into a discussion on the evolutionary or otherwise origins of the patriarchy. However, my question about the patriarchy is posited on the idea that social class is far more important as a determinant of your life chances than gender. I don't have the empirical evidence for this, but I would have thought it's fairly clear. Given the choice between being a boy growing up in Toxteth, or a girl growing up and going to Marlborough College, it's clear who would have the greater opportunities in life.

How do these issues of class and gender intersect from a feminist perspective?

This question has come up on here before - I think the key thing is that you have to compare like with like. Obviously a girl from a 'higher' social class with lots of money will have more opportunities than a boy from a 'lower' social class with less money. But if you take a girl from that 'lower' class, with less money, and compare her with the boy from the same class and background, the boy will almost always be better off.

I agree with like with like comparison, but isn't that to an extent an admission of how much more important social class is - this is in part my perspective as a left-winger - I want equal rights, but class outweighs gender so much more

Why does there have to be a clash though? Why does either have to be more important than the other? That just detracts from both issues. It's not like there's only a certain amount of equality to go round, and if women and men become equal than classes will be enshrined FOREVER.

Women and men should have equal opportunities. People from different social classes should have equal opportunities. End of.

And, FWIW, doing things to improve one set of inequalities will probably end up helping remove other inequalities too.

Agree entirely that there's no need for a clash - there are of course other factors such as race and ethnicity, as well as disability and sexual preference that I can think of, off the top of my head (I'm sure there are some others).

I just wondered how feminism interacted with these thorny issues of class.

Have a look at some of the dual systems feminism whereby the socialist feminist believe that women are affected by their dual roles concerning production and reproduction, which can cause a conflict of interests (ie, the capitalist men want them working, the patriarchal men want them not working).

Your question interests me a lot, too. Does a healthy, wealthy woman enjoy more priviege than a less-healthy, unwealthy man? Yes, I would say so. Would the man defer to the woman due to class? I would say not: he's liable to call her "love", make sexist jokes and try to rip her off over her car & boiler repairs. I do think he would defer to her male counterpart.

I don't feel deference on the basis of class is desirable. But I do feel disrespect on the basis of gender overrides the class constraint. So, on balance, I'd say sexism is the bigger problem at this time, in our society.

In the bad old days, the wealthy literally looked down on the lower classes because of malnourishment among the poor. This is no longer a problem, happily. But they also felt free to hit the lower classes, insult them and control their personal lives. The depradations are still routinely inflicted on women by men, but not by the wealthy on the poor.

The These depradations

I would say the healthy, wealthy woman would enjoy far more privilege than the less-healthy unwealthy man, by a long, long way. This is slightly related to the thread by Himalaya on the Patriarchy.

To an extent, it's a question of where you fight one's battles. I think poor women are far more oppressed than wealthy woman, are more likely to have their career choices barred, and to suffer violence at the hands of men, and focusing on this class issue is for me more likely to improve the lot of women than focusing on the patriarchy directly (which I'm not sure really exists in any meaningful sense in a place like the UK)

Princess Diana is hardly a representative sample though is she?

I found Princess Diana a really good example here! She not only exemplified the privileges of beauty, wealth & power but, also, the problems of objectification that are suffered by the majority of women, irrespective of class and location.

I very much doubt that DV is more prevalent in the poorer classes. I think that's a myth, which keeps abused wealthy women silent. Naturally stress plays a part in DV escalation - but stress is relative and subjective.

Actually, I think I am more or less in agreement with Dittany here. Leaving all other factors aside apart from economic ones, nationwide and worldwide, women are poorer, work more (paid and unpaid), and enjoy less leisure time.

Overall, I think this can be a knotty subject, to the point of becoming almost a distraction if I get too bogged down in the theory stuff. Overall, I think I tend towards the view that greater equality across society and between the classes benefits women, although that alone does not answer all feminists prayers (as per treacle's point about comparing like with like).

If any one thing shocked me into awareness of just how bad inequality is, it was the history lesson in which we learned about droit de seigneur. We'd herad this phrase, on and off, for years but always glossed over.

Then our teacher explained that it means the right of the upper class to rape the lower class at will, disregarding anny & all objections such as youth, virginity, age, pregnancy, disability, marriage, gender and anything else. If you were a male landowner in those days, you had the legal right to fuck whatever, whoever, however, wherever the mood should take you

That is the "rule of the penis". I'll believe we've moved beyond it when invaders give up raping vanquished citizens: exercising droit de seigneur under legal protection. Until then, every woman who feels feminism is a different question from social inequality is living in a dreamworld or - to put it more harshly - a victim in suspension.

I dislike admitting this, and rarely think it. But it's unarguable :(

Depends on how you define privilege and whether you think that is more important than happiness and whether privilege translates into opportunities.

As aren't you saying that access to opportunities is the fundamental difference.

Is it better to be free in your own home or more likely to not be so. Even wealthy people need to work.