Patriarchy: A Global Reality

by Dolores L. Greeley, R.S.M.

from Where can we find her?
searching for women’s identity in the new church
edited by Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt , pp. 80-91

Published by Paulist Press,1991.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

Patriarchy is a pervasive moral evil of global proportions which wreaks destructive effects on the female half of humankind. Patriarchy is defined as a social system founded upon the control, rule, authority that the father of the family possesses over all members of the family, the ownership of properties and all possessions. It is a masculine power structure which understands relationships in terms of superiority and inferiority, power and powerlessness, domination and subordination.(1) In our Judaeo/ Christian tradition we apply the term “patriarchal” generally to the primacy represented by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob or the heads of families before the flood. But the structures of patriarchy are as strong a reality today in many countries of the world as they were four thousand years ago. And as Kate Millett points out, “our society, like all other historical civilizations, is a patriarchy. ”(2) This is evident when we reflect that power for the most part is still in the hands of men-military forces, universities, political offices, courts of law, and business establishments.

During the 1970s the term “patriarchy,” male rule, was expanded to include a broad variety of situations and types of oppression. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel in a recent book describes the characteristics of what she calls “everyday patriarchy” in which women are often involved. She refers to the “intellectual, moral, physical, and psychological domination” that man exerts over the woman. It can be summed up in the truth that “Whatever the husband wants, he gets.” Another characteristic of “everyday patriarchy” is the loss of a woman’s identity when she takes on her husband’s name, his profession and role in society.(3) With few exceptions women are identified through their male relationships. They are called wives of Mr. so-and-so, or daughters of Mr. so-and-so. Women seldom have an autonomous identity.

For Maria Riley, patriarchy “includes those symbols, language patterns, attitudes, structures, and social and cultural mores that constantly impress upon all women their inferiority and dependency.”(4) It is in the patriarchal context that all women knowingly or unknowingly live out their lives. Patriarchy is the linchpin of sexism, racism, classism, as well as clericalism. It is characterized by androcentrism, as the male is taken to be the norm for the human species, and by misogyny, as the male dominates and controls both women and social structures. Its effects sound through the cultural, political, economic, and ecclesial structures of our world.(5) It is the purpose of this essay to reflect theologically on patriarchy in its ecclesial and transcultural dimensions.

Patriarchy has an ecclesial dimension. Women in the Roman Catholic Church struggle to free themselves from oppressive ecclesial structures so that they might serve as full partners in leadership positions and be an integral part of decision-making bodies in the church. Their efforts can be seen as part of a global movement by women to free themselves from the social and ecclesial structures of racism, classism and sexism. The women’s movement is itself not isolated but is the result in part of new developments in thinking that might be stated as the birth of the person in the world and in the churches. The theoretical foundation of this reality lies in new perspectives in psychology, philosophy, scripture, and theology.

In traditional theology all rights seemed to have been given to men in the garden of paradise. Today African, Asian, and Latin American women, together with women from the western countries, realize that the church’s exclusion of women from positions of authority and the denial of basic rights for women both call for a rereading of the Bible. Scripture scholars such as Phyllis Trible(6) and authors of books on creation theology such as Dorothee Soelle(7) have shown the importance of taking seriously the teaching that God created the world and all that is in it and God saw that all was good. They have found that all persons have dignity, worth, and a right tojustice. Equality between the sexes is firmly rooted in the creation accounts of Genesis. The creation narratives, far from teaching the subordination of woman to man, reveals the equality of woman and man. God created male and female in his image (Gen 1:27). All human beings are created in the divine image, equal in dignity and favor in the eyes of God. All that God has made exists in a relation of mutual love and respect in the whole of human life.

New Testament authors seek to exclude women from positions of leadership in the Christian community (1 Tim 2:12). But St. Paul’s theological reflections on the meaning of Christ for us continues the principle of equality (Gal 3:28). We see this especially in Paul’s use of the image of “body of Christ.” All of us, men and women alike, share the risen life of Christ. Through baptism women and men have put on Christ. We are all one body in Christ. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, foremost among feminist scripture scholars, uses a variety of hermeneutical methods to reinterpret early Christian history. She brings to our attention that women held positions of teaching and responsibility in the early Christian communities. These communities were not hierarchical but were a discipleship of equals. Women exerted great influence and made valuable contributions to the life of the community.(8) In fact it took several centuries for the leadership of women to be repressed by the powerful patriarchal culture. Even the attacks of Tertullian, the earliest of the Latin theologians, show that women must have held prominent positions of leadership in the Christian community toward the end of the second century.(9) But Christian teaching and tradition, especially as it developed in the west during many centuries, saw God as male and on the side of the dominating male. This patriarchical theology as solidly developed through the writings of Augustine, bishop of Hippo in the early fifth century, and later in the thirteenth century with Thomas Aquinas, was limiting of the position of women in church and society. Catholic attitudes toward women for the last fifteen hundred years are rooted theologically in the writings of these two formidable thinkers.

Both Augustine and Thomas borrowed the patriarchal structure of the society of their age and taught that although women are equal to men according to the teaching of scripture, yet they are subordinate to men in history. Both taught that women are made for procreation. Women are like the earth which receives the seed which will grow into trees. Women are helpmates for men in only those areas when they cannot be better served by other men. The big difference between these two thinkers in regard to their teaching on women is that Augustine affirms the equality of woman’s soul with man’s soul. Thomas, using Aristotle’s understanding of the soul as the form of the body, reasoned that the female soul must be different from the male soul as the female soul produced a female body rather than a male body. Not only is the female soul different, but there is something deficient because the active power of the male seed would tend to produce a perfect likeness of itself with the male sex. Therefore, the female soul lacks the physical perfection of the male body and must be not only different but deficient.

For Thomas Aquinas it would have been impossible for women ever to be ordained, and if they were ordained it would not have been a sacramental ordination. A sacrament is a sign. What is done in a sacrament requires a reality and also a sign of the reality. Since women were subordinate they could never be a sign of authority and superiority. Moreover, women could never be ordained, for they were less fully human than men. Only a fully human being could represent the community in the person of Christ. Based on this theological principle some would argue today against the possibility of ordaining women. We find this clearly stated in the 1976 Vatican Declaration against the Ordination of Women where it is argued that women are incapable of being ordained because they cannot “image Christ.”(10) Today it is questionable whether the acceptance of women for ordained office and other positions of leadership can be argued against by using this medieval anthropology.

The Roman Catholic Church, alert to the “signs of the times,” has become more and more sensitive in recent years to the dignity of each person, regardless of sex, creed, and race. The church exhorts us to recognize the person’s innate right to respect and freedom from unjust oppression. Particularly during and after the Second Vatican Council, by spoken and written pronouncements, the bishops have affirmed the rights, the dignity and the role of women and their basic equality with men. We recall the words of the prophetic Pope, John XXIII:

It is obvious to everyone that women are now taking a part in public life. This is happening more rapidly perhaps in nations of Christian civilization, and more slowly but widely among peoples who have inherited other traditions or cultures. Since women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity, they will not tolerate being treated as mere material instruments, but demand rights befitting a human person both in domestic and in public life (Pacem in Terris, 41).

Vatican Council II ended its deliberations in 1965 with the powerful “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.” This treatise refers to “new social relationships between men and women” (#3) and notes that “since women now engage in almost all spheres of activity . . . it is incumbent upon all to acknowledge and favor the proper and necessary participation of women in cultural life” (#60). In 1980 the National Council of Catholic Bishops submitted to the Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome a paper titled “Changing Roles of Women and Men.” The bishops acknowledged that in many cultures women are discriminated against in one way or another and are left in subservient positions. While the bishops teach that “co-equality, interdependence and the complementary nature of women and men in marriage and in the institution of society is according to the will of God, they also realize they must continue to study how this teaching impacts the role of women in the church itself.”(11)

Since 1978 the U.S. bishops have been involved in such a study. At the bishops’ meeting in Baltimore that year a commission was set up to dialogue with representatives of the Women’s Ordination Conference.

In 1983 Bishop Joseph Imesch, chair of the Commission on Women, told the bishops that the most pressing issue today in the church is women. When the news became public, however, that the bishops were going to publish a pastoral on women, there was a good deal of reaction. Many thought that if anything was to be said about women, women should do the speaking. Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza urged the bishops not to write a pastoral letter on women but rather to address the problem of patriarchy.(12) The initial document appeared as an interpretative dialogue involving seventy-five thousand women offering their views on women in church and society.

Since the publication of “Partners in Redemption,” numerous voices have been raised addressing the need for a revised letter to address the larger theological issue which lies at the root of sexism, gender stereotyping, exclusion of women from ordination, and an inadequate understanding of relationships. This issue is patriarchy.

Many women feel that the changes allowed by the Catholic Church are palliative rather than substantive, e.g. that women are allowed to distribute communion when exceptional circumstances exist, that girls participate as altar servers, or that women study theology so they may preach the gospel. It is evident that power remains in the hands of males. The fundamental equality of women and men in the life of the Christian community is not enacted in the church’s leadership roles.

Just as the bishops have written letters on the economy, not on poor people, and on racism, not on black people, so too the bishops might focus on the problem of patriarchy, not on women who are the victims. The bishops consulted experts in the area of economics, sociology, psychology, and theology for the letters on economic justice and on racism. So, too, the bishops might consult feminist scholars such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sandra Schneiders, Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Anne Carr, Mary Daly and Mary Jo Weaver to construct a forthright and developed treatise on patriarchy. The consensus of many respondents can be summed up by quoting from the conclusion to the comments sent to the NCCB’s ad hoc committee by the Center of Concern. “The draft, for all its good will, reveals how deeply the institutional church and its teaching office are informed by patriarchy and patriarchical categories.”(13)

Patriarchy is a global social structure and has a transcultural dimension. The issue of patriarchy is not an isolated issue within the Roman Catholic Church or within other Christian churches. Women in all nations of the world are well acquainted with patriarchal structures, sexism, and male domination, and they consequently suffer inequality, subordination and injustice. This is especially true of women in the third world who comprise over two-thirds of the world’s women and eighty to ninety percent of the world’s oppressed women. The type of problem differs, but fundamental problems of discrimination against women are common in all nations.

The United Nations, responding to the inequalities and discrimination that women have endured for centuries, declared 1976-1985 the U.N. Decade for Women. The goals of the decade were to examine why women who are half of the population of the world do not share equally in the world’s resources and rewards, especially in the areas of health care, education and employment.

At the 1985 U.N. conference in Nairobi, Kenya, that closed the Decade on Women, over thirteen thousand women from all nations of the world expressed their objection to the situation of oppression in song. “We are the world, we are the women. We are the ones who do two-thirds of the world’s work, earn ten percent of the world’s income, and own less than one percent of the world’s assets.”

All women work, but in developing countries like Pakistan their work is not counted as wages and as part of the gross national product. In rural areas women do one hundred percent of the work. It is considered women’s work to plant the seeds, do the weeding of the fields and the harvesting, thrashing and storage of crops as well as some of the food processing, fodder collection, and livestock care. All of this is in addition to the household work and the bearing and caring for children. Women walk hours to get water since only ten percent of the more than forty-five thousand rural villages have drinking water. Women are also responsible for collecting the fuel to make the fires. The non-recognition of women’s contribution to economic development is emphasized by the fact that only three percent of women in Pakistan are recorded as working.(14)

The history of patriarchy includes a series of cruelties wreaked on women. At the Nairobi conference women told stories of wifebeatings which are a common practice in many African nations. Hearers learned that genital mutilation through the practice of circumcising women is still widely practiced in parts of Africa. One hundred percent of women in Ethiopia are circumcised before the age of ten. The majority of them undergo the severe form, infibulation. There are serious health complications which result, including severe shock, hemorrhage, pain, and infections. Subsequent problems are experienced by women during childbirth.(15) Most patriarchies have institutionalized control over women through the legal system. In Islamic countries the prohibition against illegitimacy or sexual autonomy is exacted by the death penalty on the guilty woman. Often there is no penalty imposed on the man.(16)

Women in southern Africa, victims of apartheid, suffer a triple oppression because of their class, sex and race. As women they are regarded as dependents and inferior to men; being black they are discriminated against by apartheid legislation. Since the men must work as migrant workers at places far from home, and be away for months at a time, the women are left with the arduous task of trying to get enough food from the land to feed the family. Removal of two million people to the resettlement camps has been especially hard on women. Being considered non-productive, they are the first to be expelled from the “white” urban areas and relocated in the remote, underdeveloped areas of the reserves.

In India the practice of “dowry deaths” illustrates how women are regarded as objects and property to be disposed of when no longer of use. It is not uncommon that a man will set a fire in the kitchen of the house so as to kill his wife and be free to marry another woman who can bring him a larger dowry. Since it is easy to spill the kerosene which many women use to cook, causing a fire, there is usually no investigation. Such incidents are considered a family matter not to be brought to the attention of the law. In Bombay recently, a survey was taken of women who underwent amniocentesis. The study covered a ten-year period and concluded that of the eight thousand aborted fetuses, seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine were female.

The women of Southeast Asia, especially those from Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia, spoke of the system of organized prostitution. Due to a large extent to poverty and destitution, families will often sell their daughters into prostitution at a very young age. Today prostitution is a large industry and linked to travel packages sold to tourists and to those attending professional meetings. Pimps trade in selling sex like merchants selling wares.(17) Closely linked to this social sin is the practice of buying a wife from advertisements in catalogues. Through such a practice a large number of women from Southeast Asia are sold to men throughout the world. The image of the docile, submissive Asian woman seems especially attractive to men in western Europe. These men who sometimes confront independent, well-educated women who have their own ideas and opinions welcome the gentle, dependent women who are “seen and not heard.” This is, however, a tragic stereotype of Asian women, and such European-Asian marriages often end with great heartache in divorce. Then it is the woman who is left in poverty and destitution in a foreign country.

In Nairobi women sang, “Three billion of us can’t hold up half the sky if men blow up the world.” The Chinese quote a saying that “women hold up half the sky,” so women continue to sing. “It is women’s wealth that men are spending making bullets, deciding wars, fighting.” Peace is also very much a women’s issue. If the world suffers a nuclear holocaust it will be the women and children who will be equal victims with men of the mass extermination. Yet women are not part of the patriarchal structures deciding the life or death of humankind and the planet.

With the presence of militarism and military dictatorships around the world the position of civilian women remains economically vulnerable. When eighty billion dollars is spent each year on arms, there is that much less for development opportunities for women, for clean water systems, heating and cooking devices in developing countries. Carrying water and wood for fuel consumes six hours of a woman’s day in many African and Southeast Asian countries. Growing food for foreign exchange to pay military debts also concerns women who do seventy-five percent of the farming. Such a demand for export crops does not allow the women to grow food for families at home, so when droughts come there is no food. In the Philippines large areas of valuable land have been taken over by the U.S. Army forces and by the large multi-national agribusiness which use the land to grow pineapples and other foods for export to developed countries. This seizure of land from the farmers means that many persons must leave the countryside and go into the crowded slums in the city. Here as refugees they suffer severe malnutrition.

Education is a crucial means of giving women the skills and abilities to stand up for their rights and participate on all levels of society on an equal basis with men. Most countries have laws which give equal access to education to boys and girls. Yet two out of every three women are illiterate. In developing countries such as Pakistan, education is very limited and very elitist. Eighty percent of the people live in rural villages where there are no schools. If there is a village lucky enough to have a primary school, it will most likely be the boys who will have the opportunity to attend. Only one and one-half percent of the national budget is spent on education. Only four percent of women in rural areas can pass the literacy test. Even this figure is misleading, since the test consists in being able to read a few words from the holy Koran. Most Pakistani women cannot sign their names.

It will take many years before we can fully assess the effects of raising the consciousness of women throughout the world to the sufferings of their sisters. Clearly the struggle has only begun. Women realize, however, that whatever their country of origin, they all share similar problems. A patriarchal environment contributes to abuses against women, which include rape, prostitution, physical violence and pornographic exploitation by the media. More subtle forms of abuse include demeaning women by ignoring, ridiculing, or trivializing them. Social bias toward women’s status is often too deeply set to yield immediately to women’s pressures. But it is a fact that women, as members of the global community, whether from developed or developing nations, no longer accept the discrimination and inequalities they have endured for ages. They are networking to bring about change. Women want to walk together in solidarity on the journey toward liberation and a new society.

Notes

1. CE Sandra M. Schneiders, Women and the Word (New York: Paulist Press, 1986) 1119.

2. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1970) 25.

3. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, A Land Flowing With Milk and Honey-Perspectives on Feminist Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1988) 29-35.

4. Maria Riley, “Beyond Patriarchy,” Sojourners 16 (1987) 25-26.

5. Cf. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Feminist Theology in the Academy,” Christianity and Crisis 45 (1985) 57-62.

6. Cf. Phyllis Trible, “Eve and Adam: Genesis 2-3,” in Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womenspirit Rising (New York: Harper and Row, 1979) 74-81.

7. Dorothee Soelle with Shirley A. Cloyes, To Work and To Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).

8. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983) 41-67.

9. Tertullian of Carthage, On Baptism, 1. Migne, Patrologia Latina 1, 1197. English trans. ANF 3, 669-679.

10. “Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood,” Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1976), Carroll Stuhlmueller, ed., Women and Priesthood (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1978) Appendix 1, 212-225.

11. U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Changing Roles of Women and Men,” Origins 10 (1980) 299-301.

12. Cf. Francine Cardman, “Feminist Theology-Recent Development,” Church 3 (Summer 1987) 48-53.

13. Peter Henriot, S.J. et al., “Comments on the First Draft NCCB Pastoral Letter ‘Partners in the Mystery of Redemption’ ” (Washington, D.C. Center of Concern, 1988) 18.

14. For an understanding of the situation of women in Pakistan I am indebted to Sabiha Syed who made possible so many experiences for me during the Fulbright summer seminar study program in Pakistan in 1987.

15. “The Somali Women’s Democratic Organization (SWDO)’s Report to the Non-Governmental Forum, ‘The Women’s Decade in Review’ ” (Nairobi, 1985) 6.

16. Millett, op. cit. 43-58.

17. “Such is the case for example in the Ermila Bar district of Manila in the Philippines where eleven and twelve year olds support families from money earned as street prostitutes, and are walking carriers and sufferers of herpes, syphilis and gonorrhea.” Cf. Constance F. Parvey, ed. The Community of Women and Men in the Church-A Report of the World Council of Churches Conference (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982) 163.

Recommended Reading

Allison, Caroline. “It’s Like Holding the Key to Your Own Jail. ” Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1986. The women of Namibia speak their own stories of oppression and their persevering struggle against it.

Fabella, Virginia and Mercy Amba Oduyoye (eds.). With Passion and Compassion-Third World Women Doing Theology. New York: Orbis, 1988. These essays are by Christian women from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The women address the question of what it means to be a Christian and a woman in a developing country. Their reflections present powerful challenges to patriarchal structures.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Disputed Questions-On Being a Christian. New York: Orbis, 1989. Dr. Ruether explores the question of what it means to be a Roman Catholic Christian white woman in a patriarchal world.

Tamez, Elsa. Against Machismo. Oak Park: Meyer Stone, 1987. Elsa Tamez dialogues with fifteen Latin American liberation theologians. The men share their experience of attempting to do theology from a woman’s perspective.

Tamez, Elsa (ed.). Through Her Eyes – Women’s Theology From Latin America. New York: Orbis, 1989. These essays cover a variety of subjects, e.g. popular religiosity, concept of God from the feminine perspective, and women and christology. It is evident that the women’s issue is not just a concern of North American women.