Patriarchy In 21st Century America

“Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of property.” From the depths of a patriarchal society, feminist jurisprudence emerged in an attempt to rectify the harms that resulted from such a system. However, such an overt sense of patriarchy no longer exists in 21st Century America; in order to accommodate to current knowledge regarding gender, classical feminist jurisprudence theorists, such as Patricia Smith, have redefined patriarchy to be inclusive of gender identity (masculinity and femininity), rather than the traditional gender binary. Following from the definition, these theorists have argued that the patriarchy harms …show more content…
Proponents resort to inciting the idea that women are paid approximately 79 cents to a men’s dollar, yet this is a misleading interpretation of the data. Further, the data that supports this interpretation of a discrepancy is obtained by comparing the wages of all workers, and averaging these wages, and then distinguishing the averages by gender. , This data does not account for the level of education obtained, the amount of hours worked, or the type of job when comparing average earnings. As an analogy to how the famous “women make 79 cents on the men’s dollar” came to be, suppose my older brother makes $63,291 while I, as a woman, make $50,000 per year (79 cents to his dollar). At first glance, it seems like I may be discriminated against due to my gender. However, suppose my older brother works much longer hours and at a much more high-risk job that requires higher degrees of education. Could you still make the argument that employers are sexist? The fact of the matter is that you would be hard-pressed to find any economist who would seriously suggest that the wage discrepancy is a result of gender discrimination—when the data is controlled for confounding variables such as hours worked, education, and job position, there ceases to be a gender gap at all or at the very least, it is highly …show more content…
A meta-analysis of 286 scholarly studies indicated that women are just as, or more aggressive towards their male partners, yet there is no male counterpart of the VAWA act. Further, the VAWA provides free counsel to women, yet men must find and pay for their own legal counsel. Another study investigated the type of responses male victims receive when calling domestic violence hotlines. It was shown that 64% of male victims were told that the hotline aided women only, 32% were referred to batterers’ program (which is to help abusers control their abusive behaviors), and 16% were made fun and/or dismissed by the operator. Despite the fact that women are just as liable to be the abusers and men, the victims, there is a lack of resources for male