Patriarchy

Patriarchy, from the Latin idea of “rule of the fathers,” refers to a social order in which men, especially cis men, hold a disproportionate amount of social, political, economic, and symbolic power. These power relations shape social relationships, values, norms, gender roles, and expectations placed on all people.

In feminist discourse, the term describes the totality of social and structural mechanisms that help cis men gain greater access to power, resources, money, safety, recognition, and agency, while women, trans, non-binary, and intersex people are disadvantaged or excluded from them. Patriarchal structures can appear in laws, institutions, language, divisions of labor, patterns of violence, sexual norms, family models, and everyday behavior.

Patriarchy is therefore both a key analytical concept, especially in feminist theory and scholarship, and a term for social power relations that feminist movements criticize and seek to change. The term does not mean that every individual man is always powerful or consciously oppressive, but that social structures systematically privilege certain groups and disadvantage others.