Understanding Patriarchy with Capitalism: Women, the Society, and the Struggles

Feminism, simply put, is equality of all genders. It fights gender roles, which affect both men and women equally. Women have long been subject to male authority, which allows men to exercise their control in a way that accommodates the family, society, their culture, and every institution before the woman herself.

Illustration by The Geostrata

When the male dependence fades, and a woman becomes self-sufficient, it becomes difficult to suppress her voice, which requires providing answers to difficult questions like, “How does housework now get divided?” “What happens to the formerly assigned gender roles?” “If not women alone, who is the caregiver, or the home maker?” 

Women are not allowed to ask these questions, because when they do, society does not have the answers. But why is questioning so important? We will get to this through one of the theories regarding the origins of patriarchy.

In the times of the hunter-gatherers, responsibilities were shared equally. The division of labour was introduced with the advent of settled communities, leading to assignment of tasks based on gender- giving rise to gender roles.

The laws of any society are built in the context of the respective society. Questioning the foundations of those laws' sheds light upon their relevance in the status quo, telling us how and to whom they contribute to society. Forts built in the older times cannot sustain the lives of today.

Roads built in those times wouldn’t survive the automobiles that we use now. The mechanisms of human societies are comparable. But before one can overlay the values of successive generations, it is important to find and understand the real aspect of a society.

An educated woman knows her self worth, she is capable of managing herself, her accounts, and her family. Patriarchy instils a sense of insufficiency in women, as a woman who knows her self worth is inconvenient, she does not lower her standards to fit into the society’s expectations. They don’t squeeze into spaces built by men to accommodate their own comfort, they build institutions for themselves.

When women finally humanise themselves and ask for equality, the work which was formerly done exclusively by them, is required to be shared. Responsibilities of the house no longer would be considered the work of a ‘housewife’, but the responsibilities of everyone living in the house.

Reduced work for women means additional work for men which causes inconvenience. This explains further why women weren’t allowed more freedom.

PATRIACHY AND CAPITALISM

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege & control of property that can induce certain norms and values calling into women's insecurity.

Furthermore, patriarchal systems often impose normative gender roles that could restrain the opportunities of women and strengthen their self-doubt or underestimation. We now proceed to understand the role capitalism played in this process and how it strengthened the roots of patriarchy.

Women up until the 1800s, were kept out of any workforce and by “nature” were expected to be the caregivers. This gave rise to the economics language, terminologies, and the market in entirety being defined by men.

The economy was run by men and therefore only accommodated men. The work of a man was made economically profitable, while the work of a woman was considered ‘responsibilities’ of the household. 

PATRIACHY IN ‘THE OFFICE’

Understanding gender pay gap, the problem primarily exists since women, on average, work fewer hours than men, on paper. There are two primary reasons for this. 

The first being ‘biological differences’ since the industry did not start with women, it does not accommodate the biological differences of women.

For example, menstrual cycles, a completely natural, non-voluntary monthly cycle has been looked over by the workplace. Charging women for absence from work during this time would mean fining them for simply having a female body. 

Pregnancy constitutes another reason for workplace absenteeism. While historically, only women took maternity leave, it is important to acknowledge that women exclusively bear the physical burden of carrying offspring.

The second being the ‘slowly changing social structures’, explaining even though women have come so far as to have started working in the industry, we are yet to achieve equal distribution of responsibilities.

Women, till date, almost exclusively bear the burden of the household, hence performing dual labour. Until the times come, that there exists a fair division of labour in the genders, it becomes our responsibility to offer women a fair pay.

So why is it the responsibility of the capitalistic industries to cater to a problem created by patriarchy? One can understand this by looking at how capitalism leverages patriarchy. After patriarchy instilled the insecurities into women, capitalistic industries found their way to make a business out of this.

Creating solutions to problems that don’t exist, like advertising products to prevent ageing, wrinkles, making a person fairer, slimmer, hair dyes to cover greys, and everything natural has to be edited- ‘perfectionism’. 

Women’s insecurities were profited upon by consumerism. Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages an acquisition of goods in ever-greater amounts. In other words, it tends to prioritise material wealth over personal fulfilment.

It can also reinforce gender disparities within a feminist context by emphasising traditional societal roles and expectations — for example, in marketing certain things to women as part of their duties but devoting too much attention to consumption can contribute to more overconsumption and exploitation.

“Pink Tax” is the practice where women are charged more for gender-targeted products or services than men. The World Economic Forum (WEF) explains how products marketed to women can be pricier than similar ones for men.

For example, while a razor for men costs ₹20, the most affordable women's razor is priced at ₹80, with average costs reaching up to ₹250. The World Economic Forum explained that at the current rate of progress, it would require 134 years in order to achieve full parity in 2,158. This clearly explains how women earn far less and pay more than men for the most basic essentials.

ECOFEMINISM

Ecofeminism, coined by French feminist Françoise d'Eaubonne in 1974, is a branch of feminism that tries to understand the relationship between gender and nature. Ecofeminism as a theory challenges the linear structures of patriarchy, explaining how inequality exists and propagates itself through gender norms.

It finds the suffering of women similar to that of nature, and how it has been mostly caused by patriarchal institutions. It states that all living beings, regardless of any biological differences, are meant to live without any hierarchy, on grounds of collaboration and mutual respect- leading to the progress of all species and genders.

The creation of a dominant species and a dominant gender are considered unnatural and the sense of authority over women and nature has led to their degradation and exploitation. We follow by understanding how the two subjects' feminism and environmentalism intersect at many points.

Finally, consumerism has also led to the exploitation and degradation of the environment. Often, advertisements and media emphasise on extremely unrealistic beauty standards that are quite hazardous for women and end up causing them body image issues and self-doubt. The insecurity thus created can then be exploited by industries selling products or services promising to rectify these imagined flaws. 

Compulsive targeted advertising also promotes waste by fuelling overconsumption and selling short-lived products. Ads that perpetuate urgency or make consumers feel less result in purchasing unnecessary items, leading to increased waste.

Moreover, the emphasis on novelty leads to more packaging which in turn ends up being waste and frequent product introductions which also feeds into environmentally detrimental levels of wastage. By preventing compulsive and false advertising, and helping women embrace their real selves, we can contribute to reducing waste production.

REDEFINING WORK: POLICIES TO EMPOWER WOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE

Corporate Social Responsibility regulates company policies to keep the social and environmental effects in check. It is time to have similar laws and policies brought in place to help accommodate women in the workforce.

Some policy suggestions that can help make corporate and the society more inclusive to women can be paid menstrual, maternal, and paternal leaves across all sectors, career break reentry programs: this would help women resume their career after having taken a break for parental or other reasons, anti-discrimination training.

This can help fight unconscious bias against women employees, childcare aids for single mothers: this will help integrate a larger number of women in the economy, regardless of their social or financial status.

We believe that social structures are not made in a day, and neither can they be changed in one. We have had multiple waves of feminism, and it is now time to reach niche levels of trying to bring equality for all genders.

It will be long before we see these changes in effect, but even marginal changes in our lifestyle can create significant developments. 

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BY NISHIKA

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com