Quick takeaway: Patriarchy is not an attitude or an insult — it is a system built by men, for men, that positioned male experience as the default and male power as normal. Even where laws have changed, the structures, networks, and expectations it created still shape who is heard, rewarded, and protected. It persists not through malice, but through habit, inheritance, and the invisibility of privilege.
The word patriarchy is often used loosely and without explanation. For some, it is misunderstood as meaning “hating men.” Others assume it refers only to distant history, while many are unsure how it relates to everyday life. This confusion obscures what patriarchy actually is and why it continues to shape modern societies.
At its core, patriarchy is not a person and it is not about individual intent. It is not one man, or even men as individuals. Patriarchy is a system built by men for men, creating a social structure that has historically positioned men as the default holders of power, authority, and privilege over women. This power extends to traditional religions, boardrooms, governments, and private corporations. Once this distinction is understood, its effects become much easier to recognise.
In many countries, patriarchal structures were embedded directly into law. For much of the twentieth century, women in various Western societies could not open bank accounts, access credit, or obtain mortgages without a husband or male guarantor. Married women were routinely treated as financial dependants regardless of their income or competence. Employment laws reinforced this imbalance: women were barred from certain professions, forced to resign upon marriage in many sectors, and legally paid less than men for the same work under wage systems that assumed men were breadwinners and women were dependants. These were not cultural misunderstandings — they were formal, state-sanctioned rules.
Although many of these laws have since changed, the systems they created did not disappear overnight. Patriarchy persists because power networks formed under conditions of exclusion commonly reproduce themselves. Historically, men controlled access not only to formal institutions, but also to informal ones: social clubs, professional associations, sporting clubs, and networking spaces where influence was built and opportunities exchanged. In many societies, men-only clubs, private business groups, and elite social spaces functioned as centres of power, where deals were made, careers advanced, and political or corporate alliances formed, often with women explicitly excluded.
This matters because power does not operate only through legislation; it also operates socially. When influential men gather in spaces inaccessible to women, nepotism thrives. Positions, contracts, board roles, and leadership opportunities circulate within closed networks, reinforcing male dominance even after legal barriers are removed. Women may technically be allowed into leadership, yet remain structurally disadvantaged in accessing the relationships that lead there.
Patriarchy also shapes whose experiences are treated as the default. Male perspectives have long been positioned as neutral, rational, and universal, while women’s experiences are framed as emotional, subjective, or secondary. This is visible in medical research historically centred on male bodies, workplace norms designed around uninterrupted male career paths, and legal systems that once treated domestic violence as a private matter rather than a public harm. In the workplace women are often required to justify safety concerns, boundaries, or caregiving responsibilities in way that men are not. sacrificing, while penalising ambition, assertiveness, leadership, and refusal. Often when women do speak up they are called ballbreakers, emotional or dismissed as overreacting. Women in leadership roles are often attacked for their clothing choices and referred to as ice queens.
The patriarchy also enforces a belief system about what women should be. It rewards women for being accommodating, nurturing, and self-sacrificing. This is why women continue to carry disproportionate emotional and mental labour in households and workplaces — not because they are inherently inclined to do so, but because social structures have been built to expect it.
Importantly, patriarchy does not need malicious intent to persist. It sustains itself through cultural traditions, institutional inertia, social norms, unconscious habits, and internalised beliefs across all genders. Many people reproduce these patterns simply by participating in systems they inherited, without recognising how those systems were built or who they were designed to serve. the Patriarchal system also sustains itself through internalisation. Both men and women absorb and reproduce gendered expectations without conscious intent. This is often described as internalised misogyny, where patriarchal norms are defended, normalised, or enforced by those they disadvantage. Recognising this dynamic helps explain why inequality can persist even when it is widely acknowledged and opposed and expalins why women not only men keep the system alive.
Privilege under patriarchy is often invisible to those who benefit from it. Not because it is hidden, but because it has never been experienced as an advantage it simply feels “normal.” When you have never been systematically disadvantaged in the ways women have been, the absence of barriers can be mistaken for neutrality rather than privilege
It is also critical to clarify what patriarchy is not. It is not a claim that men are inherently bad, nor an attack on individual men, nor an assertion that women are without fault. Patriarchy harms men as well by constraining emotional expression, enforcing rigid ideals of dominance and provision, and tying male worth to status and control. The distinction lies in outcomes: patriarchy benefits men collectively more than women, creating a structural imbalance rather than a personal accusation.
Patriarchy is a system in which men have historically held power by default, and women have been expected to accommodate that power — legally, economically, socially, and emotionally.
Understanding the patriarchy doesn’t divide us — it gives us language to recognise patterns we’ve lived within our whole lives. And once you can name a system, you can challenge it.
Infemism 
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