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The context in which Thomas Carlyle used the phrase in the 1830s shows all too clearly that his readiness to applaud manly displays in others grew out of a deep insecurity about his own masculinity, which he later sought to purge through historical writings on such ‘heroic’ men as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great. This chapter reviews the ways in which historians have discussed manliness, and the calls from gender studies for a more informed historical perspective on masculinity. It looks at how historians and sociologists have theorized masculinity and its relationship to male dominance. Several strands of sexual politics are involved in this chapter. For historians focusing on masculinity, the notion of patriarchy is important because of the primacy it gives to women’s oppression, and because it provides a way of integrating the individual and structural dimensions of male dominance. The chapter offers conclusions about the historical themes which seem critical to the study of British masculinities.

Historically, gender expanded far beyond the bounds of female/male or woman/man. With the evolution of the patriarchy and colonialism, the development of gender binary system has led to the erasure and exclusion of gender non-conforming and transgender individuals (GNCT). Gender expansive individuals who were historically valued, protected, and regarded as spiritual leaders are now subject to institutional barriers resulting in ongoing minority stress that directly impacts their health and well-being. While the gender binary system is deeply ingrained into every inch of our society, it is possible to dismantle the harmful system and move in a direction of a more compassionate, gender expansive society.

This chapter examines the character of George Wickham from Pride and Prejudice first as a failure of the hegemonic/subordinate binaries of masculinity that the patriarchy historically produced. When adapting his character for modern audiences, issues of rank become less relevant, but his social threat needs to be preserved. Consequently, his contemporary failure is interpreted as toxic behaviors: particularly aggression, violence, and emotional/psychological abuse.

The context in which works are not only produced but also received may have significant impact on the degree to which they exert influence Laura Castro speaks about the response to a work representing a goddess figure by a Portuguese feminist artist, Clara Meneres. Woman-Earth-Life, constituted from earth and plant matter, was frequently vandalised during its initial exhibition as part of the Alternativa Zero exhibition in Lisbon in 1977, and caused controversy when another version of the work was exhibited at the XIV Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the same year. Opportunities were not taken up to retain the work when it was constructed for a third time in the gardens of Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto in 1997. In her engagement with these iterations of the installation, Castro explores overt as well as more surreptitious forms of censorship and prejudice within the contexts of museums and exhibition spaces, revealing how these served as endeavours to suppress work deemed to be threatening and offensive to patriarchy.

Efforts to conceptualize the noun “patriarchy” and the adjective “patriarchal,” long central to feminist theory, have often elicited mixed responses. This chapter summarizes an approach to intersectional political economy that the author develop more fully in her book, The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems, describing distinct sets of institutions as structures of collective power that deliver exploitative advantages to some members of socially assigned groups based on factors such as gender, age, sexuality, race/ethnicity, citizenship, and class. Like Marilyn Power, it emphasizes the importance of work that takes place outside capitalist production and exchange; unlike her, the author draws parallels between forms of exploitation based on different dimensions of group membership. Increases in women’s participation in paid employment may not only increase family market income but also weaken the relative bargaining power of men in the family.

This chapter focuses on how women have been represented in Namibia’s national memorialisation initiatives as well as in the demands for reparations from Germany. It explores how narratives of the Ovaherero/Nama genocide often neglect the gendered experiences of women or reduce women’s roles to those of victims and/or nurturers. To understand the gendered dimensions of the genocide, it is important to understand how race and patriarchy intersected at that time. The competing narrative is a continuation of pre-war and conflict imagery, in which indigenous men are portrayed as warring, rebellious, and vicious, whereas the German settlers were merely acting in self-defence against these ‘savages’. The traumatic legacy of the genocide inevitably shaped the lives of those who survived the concentration camps. The physical and psychological torture experienced by Ovaherero and Nama women in these concentration camps was exacerbated by sexual violence and assault, often referred to in missionary documentation as 'dirty business'.

The most enduring influences on European and Middle Eastern thought were Aristotle and Galen. They had different theories, but neither thought the female was generative. Deeply held beliefs about procreation are aspects of spirituality, and to challenge them is to challenge ‘nature’ and the commonly believed source of nature, which many call ‘God’. Utter confusion characterized seventeenth- and eighteenth-century reproduction theory. Throughout embryological history, the fundamental question was whether the baby is a new creation formed from both male and female material, and an unfolding, preformed seed - the theories of epigenesis and preformation respectively. At the turn of the nineteenth century, although no new embryological discoveries had been made, the scientific community had philosophically come around to the idea of epigenesis. Some were impressed by the fact that a female aphis can reproduce without a male, while others were misled into ovism by observations of dermoid cysts or ovarian pregnancies.

In recent years, scholars and peace practitioners have expressed interest in exploring the role of traditional methods in peace and conflict resolution strategies. However, many “traditional” societies – which are often characterised by male authority and decision-making at home, rigid gender roles, and definitions of masculinity that are linked to male honour and socio-economic inequality between men and women – have been criticised for their exclusion of women from peace processes. This chapter, while discussing traditional conflict resolution, highlights various challenges associated with equal representation of women in such processes. By discussing “Pashtunwali”, a set of cultural norms followed by the Pashtuns both in Pakistan and Afghanistan from a postcolonial, feminist perspective, the chapter analyses various dimensions and the recent changes in the Pashtun culture and its role in peace and conflict resolution. The author concludes that in societies where male stakeholders justify excluding women from public/private life on “traditional” and “religious” grounds, ensuring equal participation of women in peace processes becomes a major challenge. However, a good starting point for better inclusion of gendered perspectives in traditional societies is using a postcolonial feminist perspective which “problematises, questions and critically examines” women’s exclusion and suffering in public/private life.

Marxist ideology has underplayed the importance of Confucianism on the level of macro society, finding greater usefulness in Buddhism, which through its institution of priesthood and ritual-making, maintains a clearly defined separate ideology from Marxism. The metaphor of the 'male' in macro society, however, permeates family intersexual relationships, engendering the family system further. Submissiveness was usually thought of in terms of specific periods in a woman's life. The most commonly acquired commodity for this kind of female protective investment is jewellery, preferably in unalloyed gold or with recognisable gems. Young girls quietly watch their mothers' elaborate systems of boxes, jars, purses, hidden floor boards, furtive containers of every kind and dimension, never opened in the father's presence – they observe and they learn. Obviously a modus vivendi had to be arrived at, one involving a sort of two-tiered layering of external male domination and internal female primacy.

Ever since the United Nations recognised and included it as part of its sustainable development goals, gender equality has become a global concern as women’s empowerment outreach programs and policies have dominated everywhere in the world, especially places where patriarchy is negatively impacting on the output of women in contributing to political and social development. In the quest to entrench women’s empowerment in patriarchy-dominated settings like Nigeria, a country with half of its population being women, there has been a call to address patriarchy and structural issues (Onwutuebe 2019:1). In order to answer the question, how does patriarchy undermine gender equality and women’s empowerment in Nigeria, the first part generally addresses gender equality and patriarchy in Nigeria; the second part concentrates on women’s empowerment as a tool for ensuring women’s economic and political participation in Nigeria: the progress and setbacks and the last part dwell on how patriarchal structure is negatively impacting on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The second part discusses UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy 2018–2021 and how it will help empower women in Nigeria. Some crucial areas where patriarchy get inspiration – religion and tradition – are looked at in the third section as these can be considered significant inspiration of “patriarchal manifesto”. In this vein, this section also looks into the connection between undermining women’s empowerment and the role of religious and traditionally backed patriarchy.

This chapter aims at a feminist reading of contemporary politics in Turkey. It focuses on the period after 2013, as the last stage of the regime change that the country has been experiencing since the 1980s. The main argument is that the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) terms in government mark the last phase in the socio-political transformation in Turkey, characterized by authoritarian politics in neoliberal frames. First, I offer a brief account of the AKP’s terms in government with a view to the accompanying gender regime. Second, I delineate the regime change with a view to the re-organization of public order. Third, I discuss the mode of patriarchy that accompanies the regime change in Turkey.

This chapter analyses colonialism and patriarchy in the field of Egyptian archaeology and how they interact with the interpretation of the past as well as the management of Egyptian heritage today. Imperialism and colonialism also went hand in hand with androcentrism in the interpretation of archaeological data and the construction of the ancient Egyptian past, which was in turn used in Western identity formation. The Western stereotypes of Egyptian women proliferated through the scholarship of mainly Western male academics as well as some Egyptians until very recently. The archaeological discoveries at Deir el-Medina by Ernesto Schiaparelli at the beginning of the twentieth century, shedding light on the lives of common women, prompted gender studies to relate to women in ancient Egypt. The Western misconception that women’s equal rights can only be attained in non-Islamic nations undermines the feminist movement in Egypt and shows a typical orientalist and colonialist stereotype that only asserts a Western model of democracy.

This chapter examines the ways in which men’s performance of their patriarchal roles was monitored and policed in early modern England, and in particular, the role of violence in that process. Violence was both a source of disorder and a means of its informal control. Furthermore, because of the importance of reputation, words had concrete impacts and acted as another form of violence. In the absence of physical violence, the use of shaming words also functioned as a form of violence. By examining elite failed patriarchs, along with cuckolds and violent husbands, the essay demonstrates that failed patriarchs were more likely to be punished when their failures had a broader social impact. Responses began with admonition or insults and extended through other informal and formal processes. The chapter argues that the policing of patriarchy was a regular and critical feature of social and political life. That policing, and the exclusion it implied, helped ensure that men played their role in the political order.

This chapter discusses the framework for anticolonial/liberatory criminology founded on African resistance to colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Nelson Mandela’s life of struggle and imprisonment embodies the spirit of resistance and indictment of colonial apartheid as a crime against humanity. Mandela attained the status of global icon partly because of serving 27 years in prison and partly due to his unique approach towards the rebuilding of a post-apartheid South Africa predicated on principles of forgiveness, reconciliation, unity, nonracialism, and liberal democracy. A response to this haunting question enables the laying down of a framework of anticolonial/liberatory criminology that legitimizes African resistance to colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Mandela’s life of struggles and imprisonment are read as texts, which are revealing of how apartheid colonialism literally criminalized Black people. Certain laws were introduced, such as the Suppression of Communism Act, that rendered it an offense to belong to a political party.

Women’s bodies are used everywhere to symbolise and project collective ideals. Perhaps nowhere has this been more the case than in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) where women’s bodies, women’s dress and women’s presence in particular spaces have always been used as a way of characterising a host of religious, moral and political notions. This chapter seeks to explore some of the religious, historical and cultural embodiment practices that have had an impact on the perception and representation of women’s bodies, gender and sexuality in the region today. It considers the impact of colonialism, the post-independence nationalist ideologies which created new mechanisms to control women’s bodies and sexuality, and the rise of institutionalised Islam, which has placed the construction of an ‘Islamic’ sexual identity of women at the top of its agenda. Because religion is often misused by patriarchy as a powerful instrument of control with the goal of legitimising violations of women’s rights, this chapter also delves into the construction of the female body and sexuality in the Qur’an and ‘Shari’a’ law, and into the question of ‘the veil’ or ‘hijab’ which is now one of the prominent contentious issues in the contemporary Maghreb. Focus is placed on the works of some Maghrebi women writers who provide feminist readings of Islam’s conceptions of gender and sexuality in order to resist phallocentric interpretations of the Qur’an. Some of these works include Lamrabet’s Women in the Qur’an, Mernissi’s book (which she wrote under the pen name Fatna Ait Sabbah) Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (1984) and her Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society (1987), and Lazreg’s Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (2009), along with other feminist texts which attempt to retrieve women’s voices and bodies from the grips of an objectifying male discourse.

Patriarchy is a social system in which power rests with men and privileges them through greater access to institutional power, higher incomes, and labor participation, and greater access to all social and cultural resources, among other beneficial arrangements. The rise of British burlesque and its emergence in New York City in the 1800s is seen as the first “strip-like” performance within Western society. Many women might view their attendance of male strip shows as evidence of women’s empowerment or equality within society. This potential empowerment suggests female homo-sociality might be normalized when it takes place in mainstream heterosexual spaces but not spaces dedicated to female-sexualized entertainment. Within Jordan’s auto-ethnographic narratives, many scenes detail the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity. With the interest and niche focus of sex, gender, and feminist studies cultivating within strip contexts since 1960s, women have increasingly used employment at strip clubs as the “perfect laboratory to literally work through these concerns using their own bodies”.

Gendered systems of oppression and power like patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity situate those who identify as men and women in specific ways and afford specific understandings of sex, power, and control in and outside of relationships. The feelings of entitlement to sexual and social power felt by some men remain, even as social norms and power systems are changing in parts of the world. The nature of participation in incel and pickup artist subcultures are confluences of leisure pursuits and modern connectivity. The ideologies carried by the members of these groups have existed for some time, as men’s groups came into existence as an offshoot of second-wave feminism in the 1970s. Almost 30 years after the introduction of consumer-available internet access, leisure scholars are just beginning to understand leisure in digital landscapes to be equivalent to, and not solely a niche subset of, leisure practices as people have traditionally understood them.

This book explores the intimate marital relationships of Indonesian Muslim married women. As well as describing and analysing their sexual relationships, the book also investigates how Islam influences discourses of sexuality in Indonesia, and in particular how Islamic teachings affect Muslim married women’s perceptions and behaviour in their sexual relationships with their husbands. Based on extensive original research, the book reveals that Muslim women perceive marriage as a social, cultural, and religious obligation that they need to fulfil; that they realise that finding an ideal marriage partner is complicated, with some having the opportunity for a long courtship and others barely knowing their partner prior to marriage; and that there is a strong tendency, with some exceptions, for women to consider a sexual relationship in marriage as their duty and their husband’s right. Religious and cultural discourses justify and support this view and consider refusal a sin (dosa) or taboo (pamali). Both discourses emphasise obedience towards husbands in marriage.

This chapter explains that a prolonged crisis of patriarchy reverberated through all levels of governance in Western societies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and that this crisis is as important for explanations of the rise of compulsory schooling as are transformations of contemporary class relations. Until the 1970s, the accepted way of writing about the beginnings of mass compulsory schooling was to focus on the bitter conflict between the church and the state over who would educate the people and own the schools. The 'revised' histories, in contrast, put emphasis on industrialization and urbanization as causal factors, and made explicit use of the theories associated with these. Feminists have drawn attention to the fact that, until recently, the various accounts of schooling dealt almost exclusively with the history of men and boys and of boys' education. The proletarianisation of labouring families was associated with many developments which eventually influenced schools.

Gender can be defined as a cultural construction or social assignment which is instrumental in one’s cognition of how specific roles-masculine/feminine/alternate-are to be performed. The performance of men and women is formed and shaped as masculine, feminine and alternate by socio-cultural conditioning. This chapter analyzes and explores how cultural conditioning, patriarchy and socialization are responsible for the exploitation and secondary position of women as illustrated in the novels of Manju Kapur. Women face many problems because of their sex and their identities are contingent upon traditions and social structures. Astha represents the existing cultural pattern in the country wherein the marital home is considered to be the real home for a woman.

In recent decades, feminism has resurfaced as a considerable and widespread political movement throughout the world, devoted to obtaining equal rights and status for women in the economic and political spheres. Put more generally, feminism seeks a world where the biological, sexual difference between female and male does not entail an economic, social and political inequality between the lives of the two genders, feminine and masculine. In theoretical, scholarly terms, the focus of feminism is upon the term gender, the socially and culturally-produced difference of identities attributed to biologically female and male persons. Around these different gender identities is organised the phenomenon known as patriarchy, the system which embodies and assures the inequitable distribution of power between women and men, to the continuing advantage of men. Patriarchy, then, is the structure of social relations which ensures that men tend to have better access to career, salary, status and power in any given set of economic, social and political circumstances. It further ensures that in situations usually thought of as ‘private’ or ‘personal’, men also tend to occupy the most powerful position. The point of concentrating upon gender is therefore to discover, understand, criticise and overthrow the means by which feminine and masculine identities are made; are socially-constructed artefacts which support and produce a fundamental, systematic and arguably universal condition of inequality which holds across boundaries of class, culture and race.