Patriarchy

Question One: Patriarchy

In Joan Scott’s article, “Women in History,” she offers the following criticism of attempts to “rewrite” history: “Some historians of women’s work have used a notion of patriarchy as a way of including gender in their analyses, but the term seems insufficiently theorized. Most often political, class and family systems are described as forms of male dominance which either transcend particular historical situations and social relations or follow directly from economic causes.” (p. 151) While her comments are about labor historians in particular, she is suggesting that patriarchy can’t be the answer, but instead how patriarchy functions in any given institutions or society needs to be examined. Choose two secondary sources from two different weeks and discuss either the ways in which the author scrutinizes the structure of patriarchy OR, if that analysis seems missing, how that approach would benefit the author’s argument. Please note that the author need not mention the word “patriarchy” to be discussing patriarchy.