Genuine question on patriarchy

[Bodd8]

So.... Ive been on MN for a while but named changed because quite frankly Im scared to ask. I feel that the longer I wait to ask the question more ignorant I am going to feel.

The reason Im asking:
I work in a highly professional environment, male and females are in roughly equal numbers, if not grouped in certain areas. There are several women that I work alongside and they are very good at their jobs and well respected. The pay for consultants and perm staff is set. It doesnt change, its the same for everyone. Its been the same wherever I work. There are also women working in quite higher positions than me. Honest to God, I've never heard anyone make sexist comments, it almost feels like a non entity. I've never personally witnessed any inappropriate behaviour [thats not to say it doesnt happen elsewhere]
You get where Im going with this?
Ive met couples on the school run and made friends, the men Ive made seem to make equal efforts with work, children and home keeping. Their wives seem in no way to be victimised and seem to have the majority of control over the daily activities of the family.

So, Im a divorced man, I was subject to all kinds of abuse from ex wife, including violence. When I finally left her she was very angry and tried to use our child against me. I had been providing the majority of care for our child as we both worked full time, however when it came time to file for joint custody I realised how tough it would be. When I attended court it was all female. All three judges, both solicitors and barristers, CAFCASS, even the justice clerk were all female. The pressure for me to give up and "let Mum do the raising and you can babysit to give Mum a break" was immense.
It has cost me £20k to finally secure joint lives with order, as a man I was not entitled to legal aid despite the domestic violence proof I had, and no one ever suggested that the ex should lose contact.
As man it feels I can only be a real parent if a woman or a judge has allowed it.
Anyway I could go on but I hope you'll understand my point.

The question:
I genuinely struggle to see a patriarchy people talk about, admittedly I live in a town of mostly families in the UK. What are the main points women feel are unfair, and in the genuinely nicest possible way how would I notice or do something differently in my daily life?
Im trying not to be bitter about how hard it is to raise my child in a world that sees me as a second class parent due to my gender. Whilst I understand this might not seem as important to some but Id die ten times over for my child. She is the only thing that matters to me. So Im trying to understand "the other side of things" as it were.
Any insight welcome please.

I didn't see any of this, until I started looking.

No, neither did I.

And I have friends who are high up in their organisations who deny that women are disadvantaged in the workplace/professionally - if they can do it, all women can.

Yet, in the next breath, they will tell me about a meeting they've had with their boss because they are having issues with insubordination, inappropriate sexual comments or complaints that they didn't speak to male team members 'nicely' enough when a deadline wasn't met. Has anyone ever complained about a male supervisor because they weren't 'nice' enough?

No.

Because men aren't expected to be nice. They're expected to be purposeful, directive and assertive. When women do this they're "not being very nice" and bossy.

That's the patriarchy.

Im trying not to be bitter about how hard it is to raise my child in a world that sees me as a second class parent due to my gender

And that ^ is the patriarchy.

I cant see a wage gap, I never have, I always thought it was illegal to pay males and females differently for the same work. Maybe its my industry but a job is a job and it comes with a set salary regardless of who gets it.

You are correct, it is illegal to pay men and women differently for the same work. It does still happen sometimes when wages are individually negotiated and employees are bound not to discuss how much they get paid. The wage gap reflects higher numbers of men than women in well paid roles. So, for example, if the board of directors are all men but all the cleaners are women there will be a wage gap. This does not mean the cleaners are being paid unfairly but it requires us to ask questions about why, on average, there are fewer women in senior and well paid jobs. It means examining how we value unpaid domestic work, how to we make policies which support men and women, without favouring either, when they are making decisions about balancing family and work life. Why do we still assume men are better suited to certain roles or that they must earn higher salaries because they are the "bread winner"?

Things women do just to try not to get raped or murdered on a daily basis.

sackrifice
I counted 20 things on that list that I do all the time. The ones I don't do are related to the country I live in or because of my type of housing. It's second nature and until you see it listed that way it's easy to forget how much mental energy is spent trying to make sure you are safe. There are things I do which aren't on that list. I try not to think about how often I feel vulnerable just going about my life because it gives me serious rage.

Thanks, Sackrifice I couldn't find that earlier!

All legal aid for family court has been scrapped except for female victims of domestic abuse.

I don't think this is true. I know a Father who got legal aid because social services said the child was at risk of emotional abuse from the mother if he wasn't involved in the child's life. This was about 4 years ago.

www.gov.uk/legal-aid

Looks like you're right, Tinsel

Although, how it's awarded in practise is a different matter.

I actually think what youve experienced is the effect of patriarchy.

• little support fir men victims of DV? That’s because it just doesn’t happen to (real) men
• children given to mothers in case if divorce? That’s because men don’t want to parent full time/will struggle with looking after a child
• people involved in family law being women? That’s because it’s seen as less interesting and the domain of women (see above)

The difference between that and your ‘normal’everyday experience is that you’ve experienced the negative side there rather things being neutral (or positive) fir you.

Eg: I appreciate you are working in an unusually balanced environment. But have you ever been careful about how much time is given to work a men in meetings? (Research has shown that if women use half if the time, they are seen as taking over whereas men doing that is normal)

• are mistakes from women as easily accepted than from men (doubt it) etc...

Eg you SEE men being as involved as mothers taking the dcs to school. But can you be sure that they actually are sharing the load 50/50? Research has shown that men are over estimating how they do in the house whereas women are under estimating how much they do.... so just listening to them will give you a skewed idea....

Etc....

And the thing about wages, is that very often, wage is based on experience.
Nothing really wrong with that. But if a COUPLE decide to have women, then their choice to have children normally impacts women's careers far more than the father's. Women have to recover from birth, they may have chosen to stay home with their children when they are small- all these things impact their career.

And I genuinely believe that women tend to be more biologically bonded to their children ( not always, but generally).

I know so (so, so) many men who took a giant step back from parenting after a divorce- leaving women literally holding the baby.

Instead of looking at men/ women ratio, maybe have a look at how many women in positions of responsibility have children? How many took a break? In more supportive ( and usually less paid) roles, how many of those people are women? With children?

Notice how very often, women have to dress like men to be taken seriously.

I've sat in so many meetings, where people tend to listen more closely to men rather than women.

• decide to have CHILDREN!!!

I know so (so, so) many men who took a giant step back from parenting after a divorce- leaving women literally holding the baby.

Yep.

My ex husband has our daughter EOW and one night in the week. He doesn't consider himself to have less involvement in our daughter's life than I do. And, more than that, whenever he does feel he is out of the loop, it's invariably my fault because she lives with me.

He also says he misses her all the time and would love to spend more time with her.

I have offered 50/50 but his job... time... partner... reasons...

OP -

1. I don't really find talking about "the patriarchy" helpful myself. Maybe if you tried to think about how society causes systemic problems for women, without using that term, it would seem clearer to you.

2. Lots of women have it better than lots of men, patriarchy or not. There are a lot of social forces and individual circumstances at work in every life. It sounds like you had a shitty time, you don't need to feel like "women" have it worse or better.

Posted this on the wrong thread!

I thought this might be encouraging. The patriarchy wants to uphold sex stereotypes, feminism wants to break them down, for the good of men as well as women, but women are centred in feminism as women have had the harder time throughout history.

OhHimAgain

Your post at 19.48 resonated with me. I don't have my own children but I've had relationships with men who have children and you're right, they complain about feeling left out or their ex partners parenting but don't actually want to do anything about it. I suggested a partners children came to live with us if he thought that would be better but he didn't want that because, as you say, reasons. More like he didn't want the responsibility of parenting and was more content criticising his ex. I have not met one single man who when given the chance to have more contact with their children took it. I can't respect men like this, if they want equal consideration as a parent then they need to stop behaving like resentful sperm donors.

I don't doubt the OP wants 50/50 but he seems to think this is the norm and courts place barriers in the way for fathers.

Think of all the jobs that are traditionally done by women: nurse, cleaner, secretary, carer, primary teacher, cook... They generally involve caring or cleaning up. Most of these jobs are minimum wage or just above. The professional ones are paid a reasonable just above median if you've got experience. Now think about jobs traditionally done by men: refuse collector, doctor, professor, lawyer, lorry driver, firefighter and even miner. If you look, these are all paid better for comparable work for the simple reason that they were done by men in the past and valued more highly. Things are changing and a lot of the service industry jobs are just paid badly full stop with terrible conditions, but generally we have come to expect that the 'going rate' for female jobs to be less and we don't notice any more.
1 in 12 primary teachers are men. 1 in 4 primary headteachers are men. Why?

Focussing in your points about not noticing it in the workplace:

• I had a very well educated colleague, she had multiple degrees, spoke multiple languages and worked hard. The men in my workplace commented that she’d been hired because of how good looking she was.

• I work in a male dominated industry, 21% of staff in my organisation are women. When arguing with my male colleague that there weren’t a lot of women in our organisation, he said there’s loads of women in our head office. That’s because the bulk of the 21% are office based and not field based. I asked him to consider what fields those women were in and he couldn’t recognise that most were in admin roles or typically female orientated business support roles (HR, communications, education). There are very few female engineers, project managers, analysts, technicians. OP, you may have 50% of women in the office but what roles are they in? Are they specialist roles or those that are more business support? How many men are admin assistants compared to women?

• When someone at work is leaving or they’ve had a baby or it’s a big birthday - who does the majority of the cards and collections? I’m assuming 90% of the time it’s a woman, that’s certainly been the case with the organisations I’ve worked anyway. Occasionally a man will delegate it to a woman. Sending round a card and collection is not business critical, so of course it gets shoved to a woman.

• In meetings, who does the note taking? If you’re all of a similar level, are you just assuming the woman will take the notes or maybe not assuming but she just always does? Maybe you could offer to take notes for her or suggest a rota for note taking if there are no admin staff present.

My workplace is quite sexist so I’m hoping your workplace isn’t quite as bad as mine. On the issue of equal pay, it starts much earlier than getting the job. At school, we’re told girls aren’t as good at maths and science but we’re really good in English and art. Boys are told they’re very good at maths and science and they’ll catch up on their English. So my husband did biomedical science at university, I did a BSc too but it was geography so humanities, using those English and art skills. My husband took a job in accountancy with his ‘advanced’ maths skills. I took a job in environmental engagement because my English skills make me good at speaking with people. I use maths and science day in, day out but I still have that little voice in my head that says “I’m not good at maths and science” as I’m working out a 5 year plan of proposed costings based on targets we need to achieve. Environment is a more female dominated industry, there are men but the environment sector actually contributes to getting more women into typically male dominated areas such as engineering and construction. Like most female dominated areas, the pay is not as high as male dominated sectors. So I have higher GCSEs, higher A-Levels, got a higher mark in my degree than my husband and I have a masters degree, which he does not have. Yet he earns 14K more with another pay rise expected shortly, I work in the environment sector there are no pay rises. I’m looking for a new role but my job hunt doesn’t focus on salary. It focuses on flexible hours, the ability to work from home and family friendly work policies because when we have kids, as you experienced, women are expected to be primary care givers.

These are just a few work examples. This isn’t getting into the time in year 9 when I was sexually assaulted in the middle of class and when I pushed the boy’s hand away the teacher told me off, so I stayed quiet after that. It doesn’t include the times I’ve been groped, propositioned and the times I’ve been scared because a man cannot take no for an answer. Or the times I’ve walked home with my keys between my fingers (do you know I was actually told to do that during one of the health visits during secondary school about periods and safe sex). Or the times people have told me I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m a young woman. Or the times trades people have spoken directly to my husband because I can’t possibly understand them. Or the many inappropriate comments made in a workplace, the “banter”.

As others have said, you experienced the patriarchy in fighting for your daughter. I’m sorry you had to go through that. How you help is by fighting it one bit at a time. So the next time someone has a negative comment about you taking custody of your daughter, ask why you, as a man, aren’t a fit parent by yourself. Challenge their assumptions. Raise your daughter to know that she can be good at maths and science and English. That if someone assaults her, she can and should shout about it from the rooftops.

More like he didn't want the responsibility of parenting and was more content criticising his ex

That's exactly it.

My exh is quite happy to run me down to his partner if I go out a couple of times a week, or am a half term late with the dentist appointment, or forgot when parents' evening is.

He's more than happy to evaluate me as a parent under those circumstances and find me failing.

But has he ever, even once asked when her dentist appointment is? Or offered to take her? Or taken responsibility and booked it himself? No. Of course he hasn't. Not once. And has he ever known when parents' evening is? Or gone without me reminding him? Or been the one to contact me and remind me that it's parents' evening a week on Thursday? Again, no. Of course he hasn't.

It's easy to be the 'better' parent, theoretically, from afar.

It's a damn sight harder to be the actual parent doing it!

I'm sure his partner thinks I'm a terrible mother for many, many reasons. Yet not once has he taken responsbility for anything.

And society doesn't expect him to.

Yet, if I'd walked out on him and the children, I'd be vilified until the end of time whilst he would be applauded for everything. And if the dentist appointment was a half term late people would say, "yes, but he has to do EVERYTHING. Give him a break... He's an amazing dad."

It is illegal to deny someone legal aid on the grounds of their sex, men can apply. The criteria is strict.

www.mensadviceline.org.uk/help-and-information/useful-links-for-male-victims-of-domestic-violence/

www.gov.uk/legal-aid/domestic-abuse-or-violence

Name changed FFS

CakeAndGin

Excellent post.

CakeAndGin
Seconded, excellent post.

OhHimAgain
I can't speak for your ex's current partner but I stood up for my partners ex wife. I've held down a full time job and managed my own household, it was enough to do without having children to bring up so I didn't need to be a mum to know she was working her arse off and doing a sterling job of raising her children. He didn't reveal his true colours until 6 months after we married, he was a dick, it didn't last.

And yes they were HER children, they were an accessory to him.

I can't speak for your ex's current partner but I stood up for my partners ex wife

That's really good to hear ❤

My ex's partner was the OW so I imagine she's heard all sorts of terrible thing about me over the years. This will just be one of them

I'm not allowed to meet her. No doubt because I'm such a 'problen' but, in reality, because she'd realise I'm none of the things he says.

I fail at 'womaning' on so many levels that she has taken on the role of instructing my now young teenage daughter in how to be a woman - how to apply make up; how to be ladylike; how to be subservient, sweet and nice...

All the things I am not and all the things my exh criticised me heavily for. My exh describes his partner as "ever glamorous". He thought I should make the effort to be like a 50s house wife - perfect home; always made up; never controversial all whilst he was lazy, overweight and with poor personal hygiene.

That, OP, is also the patriarchy.

There is some interesting points here. Im slightly cynical about some points, it seems that any undesirable effect on society is attributed to patriarchy. Maybe I still dont understand it fully. Its like this, I only understood the basic premise of communism, until I lived in a communist country and saw [as an outsider] how it affected peoples everyday lives.
So sticking to the work and parenting theme [sorry I do recognise theres a lot more to it] I know first hand that the higher you go the more ruthless it can get. Take my sister for example, she elected not to have children and is in a far higher position than me. She has been truly ruthless in her career and is reaping the financial benefits. Ive had a family and have not move up as far [although Id like to think I am capable] She has sacrificed a family for her career, Ive sacrificed [a significant portion] of my career for family. Neither of us resent each other for it, we accept thats life and you cant have it all.
So isnt this about peoples personal choices?
Maybe Im naive but I believe the market dictates what a position is worth, according to supply and demand for any given skill set or qualification. I dont understand how patriarchy can come into that, surely its an economical status quo? its surely 100,00 -1 of careworkers to CEOs. [I made that up] therefore the CEO gets 3.5 million and the care worker 22,000. Because the supply of care workers is vastly more than CEOs. There are women CEOs, women prime ministers. I cant help but believe that at that level these people have transcended far beyond gender issues and are simply ruthless and willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to get to the top.

So where is the difference? I cant go to the shop and say I want to pay less because Im poor/hungry/man/tall/thin/foreign. The price is the price, for everyone. If you want it you have to sacrifice to get it.
I want to raise my daughter more than I want my career, I work to earn money and thats it, so my career wont move anymore.
The difference I can see is maternity, but that can be shared between partners. My ex refused to share a single day, I had my two weeks paternity and that was it, I had to cut my hours drastically to be involved that first year. But thats irrelevant.

Please dont think Im being argumentative, I genuinely cant see and want to.