Why are so many women facilitating the patriarchy?

[readysetcake]

As I sit here trapped under a sleeping baby perusing the internet, it eems to me that so many women online are ready to tear other women down for every little thing. Particularly when it comes to to parenting, but not exclusively.

I’m not one for the sisterhood supporting women regardless of their behaviour. If your behaviour is disckish I believe you should be called on it, regardless of sex or gender. Yet it seems to me that unless women are the “perfect” parent, daughter, wife, worker then they are vilified online by many.

Im sure this has been discussed before but it just seems to me to be getting worse. I feel that while women are tearing other women down for not living up to a perfect ideal the progress of women is hampered and women are kept down. Do people agree?

Women are criticised by other women for bringing children into low income families, critised for bringing up entitled children in well off families, criticised for not having independent wealth when they are stay at home mums, criticised for not spending enough time with their children when they work, criticised for letting themselves go, criticised for spending too much effort and money on their appearance. I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Is this negative narrative an accidental byproduct of social media? Is it women putting other women down in a bid to make them look good to men or just make themselves feel better about their own life choices? Or is it men perpetuating it and women are for some reason falling into line with it as women have done for centuries?

Or am I talking out of my arse and it’s all in my head?!

Is this negative narrative an accidental byproduct of social media?

My grandmother (b. 1886) used complaints as a form of social control, so I am not convinced that it is s by product of social media. In those days, the way to escape was to ensure you were not dependent on her either by getting a good job or a hood husband

Probably still the same now

What saddens me most is how we submit to other forms of control , from wearing uncomfortable shoes in order to look 'dressed up' to being happy to be the default parent, being glad we are needed rather than sharing the load of parenting equallyI

Since it is self imposed, t's a much more insidious form of control, perpetuated by glossy magazines and see social media. I started to see through it all as a student in the 70's and am sorry to see that the battle has still not been won.

@Italiangreyhound indeed , What could be behind it!!!

I used to assume that once people noticed it, they would stop conforming. Instead, I am as bad as the rest and have started having blow drys in my late fifties.

Used to laugh at the idea of the patriarchy, now, not so much.

It’s lack of power. When you have no power you can’t kick up, so you kick out, or down on the ladder. This - I think it's a great point.

I’m convinced that this is also behind a huge chunk of ‘abusive MIL’ behaviour. If that’s the only power you have, and you’re that way inclined, you take it out on those you can control. So not the men or the structures that enable them, but the younger ones and women. And then the cycle repeats and becomes entrenched.

It’s power and fear, in a nutshell.

Since at least the 1800s my family has has women in the main financial supporting role. That has given vast power to these women. I earned 10x my husband. Some people may be anti capitalist it but certainly helps power imbalances if you earn a lot.

Secondly what do you read? If you don't post on twitter or facebook (I don't) then where is the competitiveness over looks etc coming from? If you spend your weekends in the park or in church or whatever floats your boat or scrubbing the floor or working then this competitive lark doesn't kick in at all. I had my first babies before my friends did so I didn't see anyone with a baby and was back working in weeks. I read the FT. I didn't find a lot of competitive pressure on me about looks and anything else child or home related in the Financial Times.

If you have good moral values from your family and that does not have to be religious values - then you will value things like hard work, loyalty, the family etc and what people look like won't matter.

Since at least the 1800s my family has has women in the main financial supporting role.

That's great and it goes to show how important and influential role models are.

The erasure of women's contributions from history has a demoralising effect on girls. It disguises from us the power we have if we apply ourselves.

It’s exhausting. I try and keep out of it but you get dragged in. The competitiveness over what the kids are doing etc etc. I’m very self deprecating about myself which I intend to address, but I refuse to put my dc down to make others feel better or to show we’re not a threat. The prizes you get for being ‘best’ at this stuff are not ones worth having anyway.

It’s lack of power. When you have no power you can’t kick up, so you kick out, or down on the ladder.

That's how hierarchical thinkers react. They also make public displays of deference to the people they perceive as higher on the ladder.

Community thinkers believe there is strength in numbers and reach sideways to make alliances.

You know Xenia, I think there's a lot in what you say. My dad was raised by a single woman who made a good living and put him through private school etc. He married a strong woman who earned similar to him, more at times, throughout their marriage and who was extraordinarily competent. My parents brought my sister and I up to truly believe we could do anything and I'd like to think we were also raised to be supportive and non-judgemental of other people. Certainly, with the exception of ongoing bitching about our respective in laws (but that's normal right?! ) we don't do a lot of mutual judging of other people.

Similarly, my brother has married a very strong, capable independent woman who might actually be one of the nicest women in the world.

So this theory about it coming down to family, and morals, and long-standing role models makes a lot of sense.

Despite being extremely competitive, extensive studies have shown that men collaborate very well. In contrast, women don't collaborate well and it has been shown that in a working relationship a man and a woman will colloborate better than two women. Similarly, the majority of women vote that they'd rather have a male boss and studies surprisingly show that they have greater preference for this than men do. I remember a thread about this on here a year or so back, and lots of posters were confirming the bad experiences they'd had with other female workmates/bosses.

It is hard work to unpack a lifetime of conditioning.
Reading Dworkin's Right Wing Women really helped me understand and be kinder in my assessment of those who cut the best deal they thought they could make and now have to defend it or go screaming into the sea.

The patriarchy doesn't just indoctrinate men; women are part of it.

As has been noted above, it's about power. Marrying or in other ways aligning yourself with the dominant class is a way for women to gain position and influence they can't access as individuals.

Once you have aligned yourself with the dominant culture, it's in your own interests to promote and defend that culture. In order to maintain your own position you need to police other women.

Beyond competitiveness about child-resting, it is women who continue to enforce FGM. It is women who are the mothers of sons who wield power over their daughters-in-law (as in some traditional Indian or Chinese communities).

Women who cast their lot with the patriarchy are rewarded with status or attention or approval. They're not any safer really, but recognising that is very uncomfortable.

Anf it works really well for the patriarchy because the system enables women to be the flying monkeys, enforcing female oppression. Women are divided, and dependent on scraps from the patriarchal table.

The truth is, there are lots of really awful women around, we all know some of them. But sexual politics is a class analysis - it is perfectly possible to be a member of a vulnerable and oppressed group and be a no-good human being. Oppression doesn't necessarily make you a better person, sometimes it makes you worse as you scramble onto the coat tails of the more powerful just to survive. Like people in a life boat, some women will push other women into the sea if they believe that's their only chance of survival.

I think that's why lesbians have become such a target - their sexual orientation enables them to escape the dominant paradigm, to some extent, and that makes them dangerous.

Some of it relates back to JADE: women are socialised to always justify, apologise, defend and explain.

They get defensive about their life choices and criticise others’ to validate (justify) their own.

I think we struggle to understand what exactly a world of true equality looks like and where the patriarchy starts and ends because it is so ingrained in our society. It causes infighting as women are expected and in lots of cases want to fulfil roles that conflict with each other.

For example lots of women want to be mothers and want to spend time with their children but also want fulfilling well paid careers that enable them to be financially independent. The reality is that the current system works in a way that most people will struggle to achieve both as the workplace still favours someone that is capable of acting as if they are a 1950s man with little responsibility outside of work and the ability to concentrate solely on their career.

Lots of women will work FT, have long commutes and put their children into childcare for long hours in order to compete in this environment but put simply many women don't want to do this and more importantly feel like they shouldn't have to. I think this is where the infighting begins as we try to understand how to reconcile the demands of motherhood with being a career woman. We try to justify our own decisions and by default belittle those of others. "I am a WOHM as I want to provide a good role model to my children" or "I wouldn't have children if I wasnt prepared to raise them myself". Snipe, snipe, snipe ... Meanwhile men just continue to dominate the world.

I personally think the whole system needs to be radically altered to build PARENTHOOD into someone's expected career lifecycle. We can have it all just not at the same time and I think acceptance of this and consequently adapting working norms to reflect this could make the world of difference
.

The sad truth is that the person without kids is able to commit more time and effort to their job, and ultimately businesses usually care more about making profit than about being there to offer balance to the individual.

@UptonSnodbury
Yes, you can understand why people without commitments outside of work are favoured in the workplace, however I'm not sure if this is in the long term of interest of anyone involved. Businesses potentially end up with a culture of presenteeism and without the most talented workforce possible as people that need/want flexibility are pushed out, individuals never fulfil their potential as they are deprived of opportunities and effectively written off and as a society we are forced to effectively outsource all of the care for the vulnerable (children, elderly and sick). I do think some intervention is needed to change the culture and expectations of people. Why are women's fertile decades also the same decades when women are supposed to build their careers?

I think EmmaGoldman's explanation is spot on. But I'd go further - it's not just that the women who play by the rules mistakenly think they'll get a quieter life, they genuinely will. I have an anthropologist friend who's interesting on this subject. Challenging the rules can sometimes make life better for all women (the struggle for women's suffrage, for instance), but if you think the rules are so entrenched that challenging them won't make a difference, as an individual, you can do better than other women in the system (not men, of course, but other women) by playing by the rules and gaming them to your advantage: better to be a "wife" or an "aunt" than a "handmaid". As an individual strategy it still makes sense.

Of course "wives" are still subject to some of the violence that comes with patriarchy, e.g. the risk and reality of rape, but they do at least avoid the additional violence that gets directed at women who try to fight the system.

(Total aside, but was anyone else as annoyed by Joseph Fiennes' interview where he tried to get brownie points for having refused to do a rape scene in the most recent series of the TV version of the Handmaid's Tale? His argument wasn't "We've made graphic rape and violence against women such a central part of the series that we run the risk of it becoming a titillating audience-figure booster rather than a critique of the violence itself..." No, his argument was that he was trying to make the Commander an interesting, rounded character with good points and bad points, and the Commander raping his wife would just turn him into a pantomime villain. What's that rule of Misogyny? "The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.")

Yes I saw his comments. The scenes that ended up in there were pretty good anyway without an additional rape but you make a good point.

(On the ancient relatives above, women got power in this family on both sides for various reasons. My great grandfather born about 1830 turned to drink and whilst the older children had a reasonable education (one became a solicitor and one a senior nurse) the younger ones had a bad time and my grandfather, youngest of 10 left school at 12. Then his mother had to take a job which was not that common for some women in the 1800s. So that woman working etc came out of the drink (the girl who studied nursing in the 1890s probably realised her father wasn 't going to be able to help her financially.

On the other side my great grandmother was widowed twice, the second time due to WWI wounds of her husband so her self sufficiency was born of war and her daughter, my granny, from death at a young age of a spouse.

I think one reason i work for myself is my grandfather did and my parents recommended it too as it gives you power and control and self sufficiency and you can work in the way that you choose and my advice to my children of all genders is pick work which is well paid, interesting and where ultimately if you choose you might work for yourself. Got off the feminism point a bit here, sorry and need to get back to work now.

It’s important to remember that the “women are always tearing each other down” trope in all its many forms are brilliant distractions from the much more serious issue of male generated misogyny!

I completely concur, Bertrand. I always suspect this agenda when people say that. Actually, I know that's what they're doing.

My daughter's school has undergone some changes of heads over the last few years.
It's interesting that women have to work so much harder to gain respect than their male counterparts.
If a woman is strict she's bossy, a bitch, uptight.
If a man is strict it's viewed as relief that finally someone is introducing some discipline.
If a woman is soft, she's not up to the job, she's being taken advantage of.
If a man is soft he has good leadership skills, knows how to gain respect from the pupils.
These are all comments from parents.

In terms of school relationship dynamics, girls are trained early on to understand that in order to maintain friendship groups they need to be handmaidens, of course this doesn't extend to accepting "lesser" people, boys and girls who don't fit society's narrow expectations, but a boy who islucky enough to fit this role can almost literally get away with murder, because no matter what he's done, he will be defended by boys and girls alike.

In order to change things we need everyone to be prepared to call out bad behaviour from wherever it comes, rather than the current system of making pathetic excuses to let so many men off the hook every time.

It’s important to remember that the “women are always tearing each other down” trope in all its many forms are brilliant distractions from the much more serious issue of male generated misogyny!

It's also not been true in any workplace I've ever been in.

Many great comments from Bling, Bowl, thebewilderness, and EmmaG. Yes, it is all to do with power structures, and surviving/thriving within that structure we call Patriarchy.

Bowl said:
It’s lack of power. When you have no power you can’t kick up, so you kick out, or down on the ladder.

Generally, when it is sideways (women against women) it is called 'horizontal hostility' (not sure who coined that term).

I agree with Babel and Countrygirl. It's the scarcity of power for women that amplifies the competition.

I don't think that is facilitating the patriarchy. Giving birth to children you can't afford or spoiling children is a bad thing to do regardless of sex. If they were criticised for putting their career before having a family or for not doing what their husband says that would be facilitating the patriarchym

Fermats
but if you think the rules are so entrenched that challenging them won't make a difference, as an individual, you can do better than other women in the system (not men, of course, but other women) by playing by the rules and gaming them to your advantage

It is generally either an artificial or short-lived advantage. Artificial in the case of younger women (under 30), who thing that the attention and courtesy from males in general, will go on forever - it is generally superficial flattery. Many wives will get a longer run of it, but we know that a significant number will be "traded in for a younger model". So short-lived.

I think most want to live in denial, and hope it is not them.