patriarchy and gender inequality essay

Interrogating Patriarchal Power: Radical Feminist Perspectives on Gender Inequality

This essay about the profound impact of radical feminism in challenging patriarchal power structures and addressing gender inequality. It explores how radical feminists perceive gender inequality as a deeply entrenched systemic oppression, intricately woven into the fabric of society. Through an intersectional lens, the essay examines how gender oppression intersects with other forms of discrimination, highlighting the unique challenges faced by marginalized groups. It also into radical feminism’s critique of traditional gender norms and its advocacy for bodily autonomy and reproductive justice. By shining a light on the unequal distribution of power and resources, the essay underscores the importance of systemic change advocated by radical feminists to create a more equitable society for all genders.

How it works

In the corridors of power, amidst the whispers of influence, and within the intimate confines of households, the grip of patriarchal power asserts its dominance. It weaves its tendrils through the very fabric of society, shaping norms, perceptions, and opportunities along rigid lines of gender. Yet, within this intricate tapestry of inequality, radical feminism emerges as a beacon of defiance, unyielding in its quest to unravel the threads of patriarchy and unveil the truth of gender justice.

At the core of radical feminism lies a profound conviction: that gender inequality is not merely a matter of individual bias or discrimination, but a deeply ingrained systemic oppression that permeates every facet of society.

Radical feminists boldly declare that patriarchal power operates not only in the overt acts of misogyny, but also in the subtle nuances of everyday interactions and the structural foundations of institutions.

Central to the ethos of radical feminism is the recognition of the interconnected nature of oppressions. Radical feminists vehemently reject the notion that gender inequality exists in isolation, understanding instead that it intersects with and exacerbates other forms of oppression, including racism, classism, ableism, and homophobia. They advocate for an intersectional approach that acknowledges the complex interplay of power dynamics that shape individuals’ lived experiences.

Through this nuanced lens, radical feminists illuminate the ways in which patriarchal power manifests differently for different marginalized groups. They highlight the unique challenges faced by women of color, transgender individuals, and those living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities. By centering the experiences of those most marginalized, radical feminism offers a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of gender inequality.

In their interrogation of patriarchal power, radical feminists also challenge conventional notions of femininity and masculinity. They reject the idea that gender is a binary construct, instead embracing the rich diversity of gender identities and expressions. Radical feminists critique the rigid gender roles enforced by society, which dictate how individuals should look, behave, and exist in the world based on their assigned gender at birth.

Moreover, radical feminists confront the ways in which patriarchal power seeks to control and commodify women’s bodies. From restrictive reproductive rights legislation to pervasive beauty standards, women’s bodies are often subjected to scrutiny and objectification in service of patriarchal ideals. Radical feminists advocate for bodily autonomy and reproductive justice, asserting that individuals have the right to make decisions about their own bodies free from interference or coercion.

In the realms of politics and economics, radical feminists shine a light on the unequal distribution of power and resources between genders. They critique the marginalization of women in political decision-making processes and the persistent gender wage gap that devalues women’s labor. Radical feminists demand systemic change to address these inequalities, advocating for policies that promote gender equity and dismantle the structures of patriarchal power.

Despite the strides made in recent years, gender inequality continues to persist as a pervasive and entrenched problem. Radical feminism offers a powerful framework for understanding and confronting the root causes of this inequality. By unraveling the threads of patriarchy and challenging the status quo, radical feminists pave the way for a more just and equitable society for people of all genders. As we navigate the complexities of gender inequality, the insights and perspectives of radical feminism remain invaluable in our collective journey toward liberation.

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Critical Overview of Patriarchy, Its Interferences With Psychological Development, and Risks for Mental Health

Mayank gupta.

1 Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Southwood Psychiatric Hospital, Pittsburgh, USA

Jayakrishna S Madabushi

2 Psychiatry, Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, Birmingham, USA

Nihit Gupta

3 Psychiatry, Dayton Children’s Hospital, Dayton, USA

The systemic oppression of women and gender-based discrimination has deep roots in human civilization. As evident in both written texts and widespread practices, conscious and unconscious biases associated with patriarchy have been and continue to be interlaced with power struggles, control, and conformity enforced by the male-dominant cultures of the time. Brought into bold relief in this pandemic, recent dramatic events (the tragic murder of George Floyd and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example) have heightened social outrage against bias, racism, and bigotry and have also brought us to an inflection point demanding our better understanding of the pernicious and long-term mental health effects of patriarchy. There are compelling grounds to further expand their construct, but efforts to do so in psychiatric phenomenology have, until now, failed to gain momentum and substantive attention. The resistance may in part lie in misconceptions that patriarchy is supported by archetypal endowments of the collective unconscious constitutive of shared societal beliefs. While many continue to live with the adverse experiences associated with patriarchy within the current times, critics have argued that our concepts about patriarchy are not empirical enough. Empirically supported deconstruction is necessary to debunk misinformed notions that undermine women’s equality.

Introduction and background

In the last few decades, transformational technological advances have rapidly ushered in newer human behaviors, and we have witnessed paradigmatic shifts in the socio-cultural landscape of human civilizations. Renaissance and empiricism movements laid the foundation for advances in modern scientific methodology that challenged centuries of dogmatism. Technologies deriving from scientific inquiries outpace millions of years of gradual change. Yet the quest to infer the unmanifested mind remains a challenge even as mental health's significance is increasingly acknowledged in news, social media, journals, and everyday conversation.

Since 2020 there have been some critical turns of events. First, the widespread misinformation rejecting the existence of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, and then the tragic murder of George Floyd that led to a hyperpolarized society and civil unrest [ 1 ]. Lastly, there was outrage about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, effectively overturning Roe v. Wade, thereby restricting an individual's right to abortion [ 2 , 3 ]. Considering these events, the surge in the epidemiological trends of mental disorders without access to healthcare highlights the imminent status quo and inspires the need for alternative ideas. Amidst these developments, in 2021 a declaration of a National State of Emergency in Children’s Mental Health came from the American Academy of Paediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association. Complex, intertwined, and confounding multifactorial aetiologies are gaining more recognition [ 4 , 5 ]. There are organizational efforts to develop systematic inquiries and uncover potential blind spots by applying the principles of scientific skepticism to psychiatric phenomenology [ 6 ]. The overarching pledge is to create a multifaceted understanding of the transgenerational effects of race, racism, social justice, and equity. There is a compelling rationale to expand the scope of the examination to include the societal institution of patriarchy, its marked pervasiveness in individual and social existence, and its pivotal role in human development. There is, indeed, an urgent need for systematic scientific verification of the relationship between gender-based discrimination issued from patriarchal worldviews and mental health trajectories for children, adolescents, and youths. However, without first having a coherent understanding of the essential construct that might command substantial consensus among stakeholders and, in turn, lead to objective measures to assess and refine it, there will remain a steep gap in the clinical practices of contextual psychiatry.

A panoramic overview of the rich literature scattered across disciplines is provided to establish the groundwork for a better understanding of the relationship of patriarchy to the psyche. Given the systemic omnipresence of patriarchy and the likelihood of subtle indoctrination among children and youths, this overview has implications in the context of both developmental psychopathology and implementing measures for course correction. 

This article was previously posted to the www.researchsquare.com preprint server on January 09, 2023.

A comprehensive search of several databases from the date of inception to the date of the search was conducted. The databases include PubMed, PsychINFO, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. We also searched the database of ongoing clinical trials through clinicaltrials.gov . The search was designed using controlled vocabulary and keywords such as "Patriarchy*", "Mental Health"," Feminism", "Trauma*", "Adverse Childhood Experiences", "Anthropology", "Developmental Psychopathology", Gender Discrimination Therapy,", and "Social Determinant*". It was performed in all languages and was limited to human subjects. We also performed a manual search. The inclusion criteria were any published material on patriarchy across all ages with links to mental health. Studies focused on social determinants associated with gender-based discrimination, patriarchy, and developmental psychopathology were selected for the review. We identified 305 published materials after the removal of duplicates. After reviewing the abstract, only 35 studies met our inclusion criteria. And 24 other studies were added manually after reverse citations were reviewed to update the material. Figure ​ Figure1 1 provides the details.

**270 articles were removed as they were not relevant to the topics of patriarchy and mental health

Is patriarchy a coherent concept?

Patriarchy is often used loosely to indicate women’s oppression through male domination. There is a growing body of literature studying the impact of patriarchy (as a social determinant) on psychological functioning, and there are numerous theoretical explanations of patriarchy stemming from various fields, including not only the social and political sciences but also the humanities [ 7 ]. A contextual understanding of patriarchy’s deeply entrenched roots would be incomplete without diving into historical literature. Feminist movements paved the way for systematic studies of patriarchy; both Anglo-American and French feminist criticism and theory, for example, offer unique insights into the term "patriarchy." The former meditated on the concept of gender in a patriarchal society, and the latter did so in the specific context of literature and art [ 8 ]. In his sociological definition of patriarchy as a system of government in which men rule societies through their positions at the head of their families, Max Weber refers to "Herrschaft" a relationship based on the domination of men over women and subordinate men in households [ 9 ]. Critics have found this definition to be focused too exclusively on domination and submission and consequently grossly lacking in intersectionality.

Given the complexity of the topic, it is imperative to examine the evolution, perpetuation, and factors associated with the persistence of patriarchy. A panoramic overview of its mention in the various forms of literature provides insight from various vantage points.

Among Western cultures, there are accounts from early Celtic settlements (6th to 11th centuries) in which women were legally equal to men [ 10 ]. They could hold and sell property, marry or divorce, and hold high educational degrees (physician, lawyer, or religious). Subsequently, Gaelic Christianity was brought into alignment with Roman Catholic orthodoxy [ 11 ]. ‘Traditional’ patriarchal concepts of marriage, equality, authority, and ordination became dominant in biblical interpretation and canonical literature [ 12 ]. That priestly ordination can only be conferred upon men is controversial to this day.

Although scripture states God created men and women as equals in his image, giving them both dominion over the earth and all living things, the writings of noted theologians declare otherwise. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, q. 92 a.) writes: "Woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active force or some material indisposition…" [ 13 ].

St. Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram, 9, 5-9 ) writes: "I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If a woman was not given to a man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be…?" These writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity.

Likewise, in Eastern theology, the ancient Sanskrit scripture Manusmṛiti dating back from the 2nd century BCE to the 3rd century CE was a systematic legal text of written codes establishing Brahminic (caste-based social order) patriarchy. The text discusses denying women the right to bodily integrity, marriage rights, contraception, divorce, etc. [ 14 ]. Women are objectified and considered sexually promiscuous in a deeply disturbing misogynist set of rules (dharma) in which subordination is celebrated to propagate the patriarchy as natural.

In the rules of medieval common law in England, widows were usually automatically entitled to a third share of their late husband's wealth. However, it changed with the Statute of Westminster II (1285) c. 34, when property holders may claim exceptions citing elopement and adultery to oppose widows’ attempts to claim their share [ 15 ].

Advocates and apologists for patriarchy have used the sexual division of labor to explain the gender roles propagated by patriarchy. According to Lerner, the progression of civilization from tribal existence into larger communities required different individuals to attend to varying necessary life activities [ 16 ]. The female was seen as the birthgiver and child-rearer, while the male was seen as the hunter, provider, and protector. The latter set of roles was perceived as the more highly valued one in society, which led to a sort of excuse for the legitimization of female inferiority. Apologists' views of gender continue to reference this idea of higher male value perpetuating male supremacy in society as an attempt to explain gender relations.

Marxism and Feminist Marxism

In the 19th-century movement of ideas of an egalitarian state with classless societies, Marxism completely rejects theological hegemony with its theories about gender and equality. Nonetheless, Friedrich Engels perpetuates an argument rooted in the hunter-gatherer society. Engels states that in such a society, women were demoted to the subordinate position of childbearer, caretaker, and provider of erotic pleasure to men. Paralleling Marxism, he maintains that the development of private property led to the "enslavement" of women [ 17 ]. This perspective draws from an evolutionary theory of sociobiology, however, a theory that has been largely debunked [ 18 ]. Feminist Marxism understands patriarchy as the capitalist mode of production. According to Sylvia Walby, patriarchy is "a system of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women" [ 19 ]. Juliet Mitchell refers to patriarchy as a system of kinship among men based on the commodification and exchange of women [ 20 ]. Eisenstein connects patriarchy to a sexual hierarchy, with the woman’s role relegated to domestic labor and procreator [ 21 ]. Patriarchy is thus often seen through a wider lens, including not only capitalism but also colonialism and racism. It should consequently be noted that in early Anglo-American feminist movements, women carried banners for not only women’s suffrage but also the abolition of slavery and ending the exploitation of children in the labor force. Furthermore, in the 1960s, women were championing not only feminism but also civil rights, an end to the Vietnam War, children’s welfare, and social and educational reform for individuals with disabilities [ 22 ]. The history of these opportunities for women is not a linear one but rather a 'snakes and ladders' type of projection in which the trajectory forward has often been plagued by societal failures and political pitfalls.

Anthropological and developmental points of view

Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex argues that mate choice is explicitly aesthetic. Darwin repeatedly writes of mating preferences as an ‘aesthetic faculty’ and describes them as a "taste for the beautiful". These theories remain deeply problematic for millennials, whose reproductive options, sexual orientations, and gender identities have become more fluid. Contraception has revolutionized reproduction [ 23 ]. It has afforded innumerable individuals autonomy over their bodies. According to the natural selection argument that fitness and worth are intertwined with reproductive capability, contraception diminishes the worth of the person using it. Currently, with mounting political opposition to abortion and contraceptive rights, patriarchal factions seem bent on imposing laws on the bodies of women-another plummet down the game board of 'snakes and ladders.' These theories have lent themselves to arguments invalidating those who identify as part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community and/or undergo gender affirmation surgery.

Among mammals, sex differences in behaviors stem from differences in how females and males reproduce. According to Trivers, reproduction is an intensely time- and energy-consuming process for the female, beginning with gestation and continuing after birth to lactation and childrearing. For the male, however, there is less commitment, according to Trivers, in terms of time and effort, as the male commitment ends with fertilization [ 24 ]. Thus, Trivers refers to the interest of the male as simply maximizing the number of fertilized eggs to increase the chances of having children [ 24 ]. This divergence of interest, translated into human world-building based on ownership of private property and disproportionate valuation of male-male community bonds, and the resulting aggression can be seen as the beginning of the patriarchal domination of the female. In this view, females have been forced to surrender power and property to males to ensure heightened safety for their offspring, usually to the detriment of female advantages [ 25 ]. However, the anthropological account does not suggest that counterstrategies are entirely unavailable to females. Smuts found that after studying great apes, aggressive male sexual conquest of females was mitigated by social support from same-sex communalism among females [ 25 ]. The groundbreaking work of Margaret Mead laid the foundation for challenging gender roles and social norms around sexuality [ 26 ].

Perpetuation of systemic patriarchy

According to Walby, six structures-broadly termed the patriarchal mode of production, patriarchal relations in paid work, patriarchal relations in the state, male violence, patriarchal relations in sexuality, and patriarchal relations in cultural institutions such as religion, media, and education-perpetuate systemic patriarchy [ 19 ]. While these structures can be seen in the larger society, they are also seen in the familial unit, in which patriarchal tradition, practices, and ideals are vertically transmitted from generation to generation [ 27 ].

Parental guidance is shaped by patriarchal beliefs about gender norms, which are usually a large part of patriarchy in practice and perpetuated through households both consciously and unconsciously. The be-all and end-all goals of patriarchal practices remain control over female reproduction, and the ultimate sanction to achieve this goal is a violation of the basic human rights of others. Evolutionary analysis suggests that whenever we consider any aspect of gender inequality, we need to ask how it affects female sexuality and reproduction in ways that benefit men at the expense of women (and other men).

Anecdotal narratives of such indoctrination and subsequent commodification are rampant among women from the Indian subcontinent. It is not uncommon for families to be unwilling to send women to school, preferring to save up for their wedding expenses instead [ 28 ]. The culture of the extravagant wedding with the expectation of the bride’s family bearing the expenses underscores the pervasiveness of these practices. The oppression is often at a subversive level, enmeshed within the culture. Innocuous comments underlie the instinctive disdain for anything feminine, indicating that an achievement worth celebrating can only be achieved via a man. This has a deeply traumatic effect on the psyche of women, who learn to view themselves as inherently "less."

Parenting plays a formative role in the indoctrination of gender roles from infancy [ 29 ]. Parents make lasting decisions regarding a person’s gender identity from the time of birth, dictating the person’s name, pronouns, semantics, and activities. Any male child showing an instinctive preference for so-called feminine toys or colors may be chastised and ridiculed. Young girls may be encouraged to act in "womanly" ways, indicating a submissive and yielding attitude. This indoctrination of societal norms creates an oppressive environment, damaging the self-confidence of men and women.

Closely related to this is the issue of body image. Increasingly, cases of extreme anorexia and bulimia, often significantly heightened through exposure to a highly patriarchal social media feed, are becoming common among teenage girls and young women. The patriarchal convention of the "perfect woman," accompanied by a punishingly harsh physical model, bears a negative effect on impressionable psyches. Women are driven to desperate measures in their attempts to conform to unrealistic physical expectations. These psychological issues lead to intense physical harm and can even prove fatal in extreme cases. In a patriarchal society, gender identity is viewed through a fundamentally rigid heteronormative lens. The heteronormative standards are maintained as "normal," and as a result, any deviation from heteronormative behavior is presumed to be a form of deviance that needs treatment [ 30 ]. This has led to the labeling of homosexual and transgender individuals as diseased people who are then shunned and mistreated. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning, asexual (LGBTQIA+) community face harassment and violence in society as their authentic gender identities lead to ostracism. Thus, oppressive social norms are linked to mental health disorders. 

The patriarchal system perpetuates a narrow, heteronormative, and archaic worldview. In the context of South Asian societies, certain patriarchal beliefs and practices can be traced back to history.

Patriarchy and its historical relationship with psychopathology

Malleus Maleficarum (Latin: Hammer of Witches), a detailed legal and theological document written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, was regarded as the standard handbook on witchcraft, including its detection and its extirpation, until well into the 18th century. Published 30 times between 1486 and 1669 and a best seller in Germany and France, it is a deeply disturbing misogynistic treatise on female religious transgression [ 31 ]. The Hammer of Witches is an especially egregious example, but in other historical periods too, we can discern societal developments that were particularly influenced by a patriarchal understanding of gender rules and behaviors.

Elaine Showalter explores this theme in The Female Malady, in which she discusses the development of psychiatry in England. The Victorian period, spanning almost the entire 19th century, was known for its rigid rules of conduct based on the division of the sexes [ 32 ]. It was also a time of enormous scientific discovery; studying the human mind became particularly exciting, and there was significant interest in understanding and treating mental ailments. Despite this rising interest in mental illness, the study was steeped in socially prevalent patriarchal beliefs, resulting in deep-rooted biases against women. Unsurprisingly, such institutionalized patriarchy, with its inherent misogyny, had a profound impact on the female psyche.

Numerous ailments were viewed as "feminine problems" and allotted a place of derision. This very naming of certain maladies brings this inbuilt bias to light. A psychiatric diagnosis of "hysteria" was often imposed on women suffering from epileptic fits, and the term is derived from the Latin term for "uterus." Similarly, "madness" was viewed as a feminine affliction in Victorian England, and treatments often included surgically removing internal female reproductive organs (The Hysterical Female). Psychiatrists often diagnosed perfectly sane women with insanity if they did not conform to social norms and conventions. Such diagnoses were often followed by incarceration in mental asylums with heinous practices including electric shock and lobotomies. Women, children, and the severely mentally ill were particularly likely to be lobotomized without their consent or, sometimes, even knowledge [ 33 ].

Generations of the scientific community theorized and perpetuated oppressive norms for women. In the last three decades of the 19th century, lobotomies gained widespread popularity for not only dysmenorrhea and ovarian neuralgia but also epilepsy, nymphomania, and insanity. Thousands of primarily young women had their healthy ovaries removed to cure them of a range of mental disorders that were believed to be caused by menstrual disorders. Thus, female sexuality, viewed as a dangerous aspect of femininity that needs to be kept under tight control, was increasingly viewed through a pathological lens [ 30 ]. Ironically, "madness," unnatural behavior, and trauma were often actually the results of women’s desperate efforts to live up to stifling social norms of conduct.

Sociologist Thomas J. Scheff referred to the relationship between power hierarchies in society and the labeling of individuals as mentally ill in Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Study [ 34 ]. Socially negotiated power dynamics under the patriarchal system put men at the highest level of authority, and social-behavioral norms parallel patriarchal rules. Actions or behaviors that might threaten such social norms and conventions are summarily termed "deviant." Any behavior that could be related to mental illness was seen as deviant behavior, and thus, women who were relatively powerless in society became more susceptible to being labeled mentally ill [ 34 ].

Phyllis Chesler, in her 1972 book Women and Madness, argues that one of the largest causes of a numerically higher prevalence of women in mental patient populations is that "women, by definition, are viewed as psychiatrically impaired-whether they accept or reject the female role-simply because they are women" [ 30 ]. Women’s behavior is then devalued and even pathologized. Given that the world of psychiatry has also traditionally been overwhelmingly male, it is hardly surprising that patriarchal stereotypes of acceptable sex roles and the presumed inferiority of feminine traits underlie attempts to address mental ailments. Notably, it is because of the overwhelming presence of male thinking and the establishment of the study of the mind as a masculine enterprise that psychoanalysis continues to be more successful in understanding men than women.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) claimed that anatomy is destiny and that one’s gender determines one’s main personality traits (1973). This belief has continued to play a dangerously significant role in shaping how women are treated by men and even fellow women. Women have been taught that the fluctuations of their natural biology, such as menstruation, menopause, and pregnancy, are pathological conditions that incapacitate their ability to function [ 35 ]. While considering herself a disciple of Freud, Karen Horney (1995-1952) disagreed. She argued that the overwhelming impact of culture over biology was the primary determinant of personality. She refuted Freud’s claims that a woman’s sense of inferiority to the male sex stemmed from some universal process, what Freud referred to as "penis envy." She wrote, "[t]he wishes to be a man... may be the expression of a wish for all those qualities or privileges which in our culture are regarded as masculine, such as strength, courage, independence, success, sexual freedom, right to choose a partner" [ 36 ].

Developmental psychopathology and patriarchy

The societal impact of patriarchal attitudes toward women’s anatomy is nearly universal. Women are taught about the role and behaviors expected of them from infancy. The impact of patriarchal oppression on women can be found in presumably healing scenarios. In analytical psychology, the term "father complex" was developed both by Freud and Jung, and it's applied to a group of unconscious associations specifically about the image or archetype of the father [ 37 ]. Freud described the male child’s ambivalence toward parental authority in his multiple writings ( Rat Man  in 1909,  The Schreber Case  in 1911,  Totem and Taboo  in 1912, and  The Future of an Illusion  in 1927, etc.), as that which manifested as fear, defiance, and disbelief of the father, which could be interpreted as resistance to treatment. On the contrary, the Jungian view incorporates both males and females into the purview of the father complex. It theorizes that while a positive father complex is attributed to conformity with authority, a negative father complex could dispose one to an internalized image of all men as harsh, uncooperative, dominating, etc. [ 38 ].

In Western culture, the 1960s sexual revolution and subsequent feminist movements have had a huge impact on somewhat diminishing the gender gap [ 39 ]. However, in the non-Western world, including populous Southeast Asia, women continue to be subjected to violence in many forms, including domestic violence, rape, harmful traditional and customary practices, "honor killing," and trafficking [ 40 ]. In India, for example, it is common for young women to be treated as secondary to their male siblings. The needs of the male children in the patriarchal family are given precedence in aspects ranging from clothing and nourishment to education and medical attention. The idea that a woman is someone else’s property gets reemphasized at every step of her life. These beliefs go on to feed the unwillingness of parents to spend on their daughters' education. They attempt to justify this by stating that since the girl will have to be married off at a fairly early age, any benefits from her education will not accrue to the birth family and is thus seen as a waste of limited resources [ 41 ]. 

Scholars have observed the underlying phenomenon of commodification and "exchange of women," a socially accepted form of conduct that dehumanizes women and makes them a commodity to serve male requirements. Interestingly, this phenomenon also indicates a degree of male-male cooperation in humans that remains highly unusual in other mammals [ 42 , 43 ]. Negotiated marriages, bride stealing, and ritual defloration are common representations of this commodification. Women are indoctrinated from childhood to accept their subordinate roles and their obligation to their kin to accept such exchanges.

Impact of patriarchy on mental health

The patriarchal division of gender norms has set certain behavioral expectations for individuals based on their biological sex. Patriarchy perpetuates the psyche of equating biological sex with the socially constructed element of gender-pressurizing individuals in society to adhere to a strict set of narrow "acceptable behaviors" for each biological sex. This could be traumatic for individuals who may not necessarily want to adhere to such behaviors or extremely limiting gender boundaries. These individuals face alienation and ostracization and are more susceptible to sexual violence. For example, individuals from the LGBTQIA+ communities are frequently subjected to harassment and sexual abuse.

Thus, a patriarchal society makes for a fundamentally unsafe and detrimental space for non-conforming women and those who do not fit within narrow societal limits of gender and sexuality. Though this power imbalance may often be seen to exclusively benefit men, it has insidious dangers for their psychological well-being as well.

The rigid patriarchal outlook became particularly prominent in the social norms of the 19th century. William Alcott’s The Young Woman’s Book of Health (1850) and Edward H. Clarke’s Sex in Education or A Fair Chance for the Girls (1873) are both examples of instructive texts that were created based on the premise of female physical inferiority [ 44 , 45 ]. Needless to say, such a social outlook had a massive impact on the psychological well-being of women, who imbibed a predisposition towards submission based on presumed lower status, and thus accepted male aggression and violence towards them as normal and even necessary.

With the increasingly ubiquitous presence of social media, people are more vulnerable to patriarchy-induced deterioration of mental health. Social media and the internet have made it easier to perpetuate gender bigotry, support patriarchy, and spread negative portrayals of women [ 46 ]. Studies have specifically indicated that "social media use may be tied to negative mental health outcomes, including suicidality, loneliness, and decreased empathy" [ 47 ]. For example, social media platforms exhibit curated visual content promoting unrealistic lifestyles and body images that can trigger comparison, jealousy, and anxiety in individuals. Social media has also become a fertile ground for sexual predators [ 47 ]. Prepubescents and teenagers are particularly susceptible to falling victim to grooming, a practice in which an adult "builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them." Sexual violence is a major element of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and leaves lifelong scars on a child's psyche. Feminist thinkers and intellectuals, beginning with Simone de Beauvoir, have postulated that a patriarchal society is built around and caters to male sexual instincts from early childhood [ 48 ]. Mary O’Brien has argued that male sexual violence is essentially a form of dominance display used to compensate for the male's inability to bear children [ 49 ]. According to Elizabeth Fisher, the mating practices and forced mating of animals became the source of inspiration for the human male to practice sexual violence [ 50 ]. This conducive social atmosphere gave root to men’s sexual dominance and institutionalized aggression.

In the 1970s, Susan Brownmiller, a member of the New York Radical Feminists, started a movement against the prevailing narratives around sexual violence. In a blistering rebuttal, she famously said, "rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." In 1975, her ground-breaking book Against Our Will was published, years after the foundational works of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex [ 51 ].

Needless to say, sexual violence is experienced by both sexes, though the number of female victims significantly outnumbers male victims. Perpetrators, too, are overwhelmingly male, once again validating the fundamental definition of patriarchy as an institution of dominance aided by aggression and violence [ 52 ].

Adverse childhood experiences and subsequent trauma have life-altering impacts, often diminishing a person’s long-term well-being. A particularly brutal example of ACE is female genital mutilation (FGM)/cutting. This refers to the "surgical modification of the female genitalia, comprising all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or another injury to the female genital organs for cultural or nontherapeutic reasons" [ 53 ]. This practice continues to be prevalent in many parts of Africa and Asia, and sporadically around the globe. According to the World Health Organization, available data from 30 countries where FGM is practiced in the Western, Eastern, and North-Eastern regions of Africa and some countries in the Middle East and Asia reveal that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to the practice, with more than 3 million girls estimated to be at risk of FGM annually. Victims of FGM often suffer prolonged health complications and even death, and survivors of the practice report extreme levels of trauma [ 54 ].

An oft-overlooked ill effect of patriarchy on mental health vis-à-vis gender is the negative impact it has on the well-being of men [ 55 ]. A large section of the male population faces incessant pressure to go against their natural inclinations and behave according to acceptable stereotypes. Men are expected to exude ‘masculinity’ in their everyday lives by negating emotions and adopting an aggressive attitude. Boys face ruthless bullying and cruelty from peers if they display sensitivity or other ‘feminine’ traits. As a result, they learn to suppress emotions and adopt a lifestyle that normalizes violence to live up to patriarchal gender constructs [ 56 ]. It has been long documented that men, on average, have a shorter lifespan than women. While some of this can be attributed to genetic and biological factors, it is also largely exacerbated by increased risk-taking behaviors and the consequent heightening of stress levels in men [ 57 ]. A large proportion of men exhibit signs of stunted emotional development, which eventually leads to difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships as adults. Stereotypes about male resilience and ‘toughness’ prevent men from seeking mental health help, which worsens an already difficult situation. There may be a hidden cost of patriarchy in the mounting burden of mental disorders, but it is yet to be estimated. However, inferences could be drawn from recommendations from gender equity commissions that, when adopted, have yielded improvements in economic indicators and workforce productivity after decades of advocacy for equal pay and labor opportunities. 

Addressing patriarchy in clinical encounters

It bears repeating that patriarchy is a fundamentally oppressive, all-pervasive system that permeates all aspects of life. The impact of this disruptive system is exemplified in the physical, emotional, financial, and socio-political realms, and as argued here, no more so than in the realm of mental health and disorder. As clinicians, we encounter persons with very different concerns. What can clinicians do?

We, as clinicians, are accustomed to making personal inquiries into all aspects of a person's life, particularly into their competencies founded upon their attachments, their adverse life events, and how these shape their embodied experience of current stressors. Further inquiries into their stress responses in the body and mind, coping strategies, and the experience of demoralization are distinct from but interactive with any psychopathological interferences there may be in their pursuit of personal flourishing. Life-affirming values provide a motive force for countering demoralization and trajectories toward harm and restoring them to their trajectory of personal flourishment. And lastly, their support systems provide scaffolding and guidance when individual efforts to retrieve life-affirming values falter.

Instead of a linear image of climbing ladders, scala in alignment with the ways of human flourishing is required, examples of which we have from antiquity and which can be conjured by clinicians from childhood memories. Such as the game of 'snakes and ladders' (aka chutes and ladders) that depicts roadblocks, setbacks, and effortful turnarounds. With this image in mind, if clinicians construe patriarchal oppression to be among the factors potentially affecting competencies, contributing to ongoing stressors while constraining adaptive stress responses, contributing to demoralization, affecting the formation or deformation of values supporting or undermining revaluations, factors lodged firmly among the encrypted structural biases that lead to social system failure, then clinicians can begin shaping clinical inquiries into the snakes and ladders board game in which persons have been given roles to play [ 58 , 59 ].

Some people will have concerns about the role they perceive they have been assigned and seek to challenge it. Some will seem content with the rules as received, while others will discern the injustices inherent in them and call for new ones. Some will deeply wonder about the construction of the game board itself. In each case, the clinician has the privilege of making personal inquiries. See Figure ​ Figure2 2 for details.

Image used with permission from Dr. Matthew Galvin of the Indiana University Conscience Project.

Limitations 

There are several limitations to this narrative review. The potential for selection bias, given that it is not based on protocol-based searches, provides a piece of weaker evidence. Given that patriarchy is not yet established as a valid mental health construct, there is a dearth of studies that measure its association with developmental psychopathologies. Also, this is a broad review of patriarchy and attends to multiple faculties within scientific disciplines to provide a critique of many pieces of information together in a readable format.

Conclusions

The virtues that supported human evolution since the Neolithic ages are no longer of similar importance. Especially since inherent subjugation failed to stand the empirical verification process and societal perspectives began to alter towards progressiveness during the 14th-century Renaissance period.

Likewise, it is critical to validate the subjective experiences of those affected across genders and recognize and acknowledge the plausible negative effects of patriarchy on mental health. Several confounding variables require robust empirical scrutiny, and the crucial first step is to spread awareness regarding patriarchy. While the negative impact of patriarchal oppression on women and other minority communities has been long recognized across many disciplines, it is vital to highlight that the advantages of this institution for men are frequently overridden by severe detrimental and long-term deleterious effects. The recognition of this universal construct perpetuated by existing systems is imperative for institutional overhaul. It is undoubtedly a tricky proposition, as it will involve a paradigm shift in the societal power dynamics of gender and heteronormativity and will certainly encounter resistance from many quarters. Overhauling a systemic, institutionalized philosophy will involve identifying and eradicating the instruments that perpetuate patriarchy. The decades-long scholarship by feminist thinkers, mental-health experts, and social workers will be of immense value in this endeavor.

As John Stuart Mill pointed out in  The Subjection of Women  (1873), we cannot know the inherent nature of the sexes as long as we are reared in environments in which women are subordinate. Until gender equality exists, we cannot claim to know what shape the natural unfolding of male and female psyches will take. The experience of nearly gender-equitable societies such as those in Scandinavian nations indicates that a society free of patriarchal oppression leads to improved mental and physical health and a thriving and prosperous community.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the support from the Indiana University Conscience Project.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Autocracy and patriarchy are surging worldwide—but women are pushing back

HKS faculty members Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks explain the relationships between rising authoritarianism, assaults on gender equity, and the power of nonviolent resistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine is unfolding into the autocrat’s most aggressive move to extend his reach.  Beyond Putin’s Russia, authoritarian regimes are on the rise globally—a worrying trend that could roll back decades of democratic gains and human rights achievements worldwide. Autocracies pose a particular threat to gender equity and the rights of historically marginalized people, including women and LGBTQ+ people.

To explore those trends, Harvard Kennedy School faculty members Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks have conducted research to understand the interplay of gender, violence, and resistance—including through the Women in Resistance Data Project. They discuss the rise of autocracy and its attendant patriarchal backlash in a substantial new Foreign Affairs essay .

We spoke to Chenoweth, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, and Marks, a lecturer in public policy, about their work.

Q:  You write about a current wave of authoritarian regimes that are highly patriarchal—from Xi Jinping’s China to Vladimir Putin’s Russia—including democracies that are moving in an illiberal direction, such as Brazil, Hungary, and Poland. Why do you think we are seeing this global patriarchal backlash now, at this moment?

EC: The world has witnessed a major wave of autocratization, which has been expanding for the past 16 years (according to Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy project). In response, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of mass pro-democratic social movements rising up to resist the autocratic tide. Many of these—in places like Turkey, Russia, Hong Kong, and the United States—have featured a high proportion of women participants. But many of these mass movements have been defeated, at least in the short term, and patriarchal backlash is one way that autocrats attempt to undermine and prevent mass movements from effectively mobilizing again.  

ZM: Democracy by definition requires equal human and civil rights for citizens—including, of course, women, who have had the right to vote for less than 100 years in most countries. Authoritarians often rely on the overrepresentation of male power (patriarchy)—in both public and private life—to consolidate their power and chip away at crosscutting social coalitions. They seek to minimize women's equal rights as citizens and frame it as niche "opposition" or identity politics; and they center masculinity and male breadwinners' status as the key indicator of the nation. Some of the most male-dominated parties and regimes are also the most preoccupied with reasserting gender hierarchies, revealing profound insecurities about gender equality and LGBTQ freedom.

“[G]ains by women, gender minorities, racial minorities, and other historically excluded groups are often contingent on systems becoming more just. It is antidemocratic to reverse these trends.”

Q:  While misogyny and gender discrimination may at times be expressed differently in different cultures and contexts, what overlapping themes cross national boundaries? 

EC: The primary commonality—and the most dangerous trend—is the enshrinement of sexist policies. These include increased state control over women’s reproductive rights (i.e., withdrawal of healthcare, forced pregnancies or forced abortions), the loosening of laws punishing sexual violence or domestic abuse, the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people, the promotion of the “traditional family” where women’s roles are to be subservient to men and primarily confined to the home, and laws that make it more difficult for women to fully participate in the workforce and in politics. All of these policies serve to reinforce gender hierarchies in which women are not considered full and equal persons.

Q:  You write that women’s participation in protest can make a big difference in fighting against authoritarian and patriarchal regimes. What can organizers do to increase women’s participation or to create a more gender-inclusive environment?

EC: First and foremost, they should see gender parity as a necessary but insufficient factor in the movement’s success. At a minimum, this requires actively recruiting and retaining women organizers, activists, community leaders, and public figures to build a deep bench of women participants. It also means providing many different points of entry for movement participation recognizing that many women tend to have numerous care responsibilities that make it difficult for them to become full-time dissidents without support (e.g., child care at planning meetings, etc.).

ZM: We know from our research that women participate at much higher rates in nonviolent mass movements and that women's presence can lead to new strategies and tactics in civil resistance. Campaigns that turn violent will be less inclusive, as well as less effective. We are currently doing a deeper dive into the effects of women leaders and gender equitable ideology. Activists looking to harness the power of inclusive revolution should certainly incorporate women and full equality at every level of the movement.

Q:  You discuss how some authoritarians get women to support them by valorizing the concept of traditional motherhood, and that these authoritarians sometimes use their own wives or daughters as examples. Why does this tactic work? And why is it compelling for women?

ZM:  Many women benefit from the status quo, especially elite women and those from dominant castes, like white women in the United States. Women have also been socialized in the same patriarchal society that trains us to imagine the default voter, politician, worker, or business-owner is a man, and that being a "good" wife or daughter to a successful man is deeply desirable. The combination of being invested in one's own status—often tied to a man—and being socialized to deprioritize your own autonomy and ambition can be incredibly politically disempowering for women, while also feeling aspirational.

“Americans who are interested in protecting and improving democracy in the United States must see these assaults on women’s equality as assaults on democracy.”

Erica chenoweth.

Q:  Another authoritarian tactic you mention is creating the perception that masculinity is under threat. How can people work against this narrative? And in what ways can more men be allies in building gender-inclusive agendas?

ZM: First, when people say men are under threat, we can step back and look at how economic and political power is still overwhelmingly male—in this country and in most of the world. Second, we can take seriously concerns about men's mental health and declining life expectancy and recognize that women and gender minorities are not the cause of these problems. Often, they're tied to growing inequality, environmental and economic crisis, and other complex problems that require fully inclusive solutions. Third, at the executive and legislative levels, politicians pushing the male victimhood narrative are also selling the story that the system is unjust unless they're winning; it's important to pause to recognize that gains by women, gender minorities, racial minorities, and other historically excluded groups are often contingent on systems becoming more just. It is antidemocratic to reverse these trends. Anyone—men, LGBTQ allies, all people—can support democracy and gender-inclusive agendas by remembering that they, too, lead gendered lives, that pernicious hierarchies and inequalities hurt all of us, and that everyone, regardless of their gender, can advocate for what bell hooks describes as "an end to sexist oppression." 

Q:  What role can, or should, the United States play in combating misogyny and attacks on women’s rights in other countries?

EC: As with anything the United States does to support women’s rights and pro-democracy movements worldwide, the struggle starts at home. Today, in numerous states around the country, restrictions on voting—such as eliminating drive-through voting in some states—have made it harder for women to vote. There are full-out assaults of the rights of trans children and their families. The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, with numerous states ready to introduce draconian restrictions on abortion access immediately thereafter. Americans who are interested in protecting and improving democracy in the United States must see these assaults on women’s equality as assaults on democracy. If the United States wants to champion democracy abroad, it could help to marshal its considerable resources to convene a global summit of democratic leaders, advocacy organizations, civil society, and grassroots activists and organizers to help to boost a multinational campaign to promote both democracy and women’s equality. But I think our most important point is that the United States cannot afford to treat these issues as separate any more.

— Banner image: Women from the Ukranian community in London protest the attack on Ukraine by Russia. Photo by Jenny Matthews/Getty Images. Faculty portraits by Martha Stewart

More from HKS

Erica chenoweth illuminates the value of nonviolent resistance in societal conflicts, q&a with zoe marks: diving deep into the complexities of war and peace in africa, covid-19: gender and the pandemic.

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 13 May 2020

Patriarchy and gender-inequitable attitudes as drivers of intimate partner violence against women in the central region of Ghana

• Yandisa Sikweyiya 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Adolphina Addoley Addo-Lartey 3 ,
• Deda Ogum Alangea 4 ,
• Phyllis Dako-Gyeke 5 ,
• Esnat D. Chirwa 1 ,
• Dorcas Coker-Appiah 6 ,
• Richard M. K. Adanu 4 &
• Rachel Jewkes 1 , 2   na1  

BMC Public Health volume  20 , Article number:  682 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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In order to reduce women’s exposure to violence and develop culturally appropriate interventions, it is important to gain an understanding of how men who use violence rationalize it. The present study sought to explore the perspectives of men who had used violence on their female partners, specifically their views on intimate partner violence (IPV), gender norms, manhood, their gender attitudes and to understand how these may drive male perpetrated IPV against women in the Central Region of Ghana.

This was a qualitative study involving purposively sampled adult men who had participated in a household-based survey in selected districts in the Central Region of Ghana and who had self-reported perpetration of IPV in the past 12 months. In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 men.

Data revealed how a range of social, cultural, and religious factors ̶ stemming from patriarchy ̶ combined to inform the construction of a traditional masculinity. These factors included the notion that decision-making in the home is a man’s prerogative, there should be rigid and distinct gender roles, men’s perceptions of owning female partners and having the right to have sex with them whenever they desire, and the notion that wife beating is legitimate discipline. Findings suggest that it was through performing, or aspiring to achieve, this form of masculinity that men used varying forms of violence against their female partners. Moreover, data show that the men’s use of violence was a tactic for controlling women and emphasizing their authority and power over them.

Conclusions

Developers of interventions to prevent IPV need to recognize that there is a coherent configuration of aspirations, social norms and behaviours that is drawn on by some men to justify their use of IPV. Understanding the perspectives of men who have perpetrated IPV against women and their motivations for perpetration is essential for interventions to prevent IPV. This is discussed as drawing authority from ‘tradition’ and so engaging traditional and religious leaders, as well as men and women throughout the community, in activities to challenge this is likely to be particularly fruitful.

Peer Review reports

In Africa intimate partner violence (IPV) is widespread [ 1 ]. Whilst there has been relatively little research on IPV conducted in Ghana, published studies have shown that more than one third of women report being abused in some form or another [ 2 , 3 ]. A nationwide study on violence against women (VAW) in Ghana reported that 33% of women experienced physical violence at the hands of their current or previous partners, 29% of women had their first experience of sexual intercourse by force, whilst 33% of the women had been touched inappropriately against their will [ 3 ].

Women’s vulnerability to experiencing IPV is exacerbated by their relative lack of material resources, which creates dependency on male partners, as well as community norms of male dominance and acceptance of violence, with cultural ideologies that place women in subordinate positions [ 2 , 4 , 5 ]. These structures of domination and exploitation of women, which heighten their vulnerability to violence, obtain legitimacy from patriarchy [ 4 , 6 , 7 ].

In Ghana, the reports of exposure of so many women to violence points to a socially normative element in the use of IPV, yet its legitimacy is still contested. A recent study found that wife beating is commonly reported to be unacceptable, however a proportion of those interviewed asserted that it was justified in some circumstances, including when a woman disobeys her husband, neglects the children or refuses to have sex with her husband [ 8 ].

In the context of very high prevalence, these contested narratives of the acceptability of violence indicate both the need for interventions to prevent IPV and the possibility of building upon existing social disagreement to develop and deploy interventions working the discursive space of violence acceptability and the practical space of demonstrated assistance to women experiencing IPV. Understanding how narratives of acceptability of violence operate to create vulnerability for women and to justify the use of violence against them by male partners is critical for efforts directed at social change. This requires a much deeper understanding of how men who use violence understand and justify their behaviours, and the paths through which they seek legitimacy for it.

A starting point for research to understand men’s use of IPV is a theoretical understanding of Ghanaian society as deeply patriarchal [ 9 ]. There are distinct gender roles, with women expected to marry, bear children, keep the home and nurture children, whilst being available sexually for their husbands [ 8 ], while men are chiefly expected to work, earn and provide for their families [ 9 ]. Ghanaian patriarchy provides the framing of gender inequality and concomitant unequal power, social values, entitlements, and roles. In this context men construct and perform masculinities, which express their identities, aspirations and values, in their social relationships with other men as well as with women. Connell [ 10 ] argues that in any setting there are multiple masculinities, all of which draw on the patriarchal privilege, but they have an uneven relationship to domination and control over women, and also are held with unequal esteem by other men. Some masculinities are much less violent than others, and emphasise to a greater extent men’s responsibilities and position them in a supportive and cooperative relationship to women. Others are predicated much more strongly on dominance and control over women, often with men’s success and honour viewed through the lens of their ability to do this, and violence or threats are strategically used to achieve this position over women, teach them gender hierarchy and punish transgressions. These, and other, different models of manhood sit uncomfortably side by side within a community, with their relations unequal and contested. Among them there is usually a communal cultural model of masculinity that is most widely recognized as an ideal and superior to the other masculinities [ 11 , 12 ]. This is described by Connell as hegemonic masculinity [ 10 ]. In the hierarchy of masculinities, the dominance maintained by the hegemonic masculinity is attained through a social agreement, rather than through violent suppression of the subordinate masculinities [ 13 , 14 ].

Hegemonic masculinities, as an ideal, reflect a masculine position which is aspirational as often as it is occupied. For example, in most societies it includes elements of ideas of men as providers, and these are esteemed and aspired to by both men who are financially able to occupy this role as well as by men who may be marginally- or un-employed and struggle to do so. In sub-Saharan Africa hegemonic masculinities invariably express men’s power and dominance over women, but the role of men’s violence in achieving this is contested. Wood et al. [ 15 ] argued that amongst the Xhosa in South Africa it is men’s power of verbal persuasion which is more highly regarded, although violence may be used at times when persuasion fails. In other settings or among other groups within that setting, violence may be more readily deployed by men. There is considerable debate in the literature [ 16 ] about whether the use of violence makes men feel good, and much as it is often legitimated as ‘discipline’, it is often asserted that it does not if viewed as ‘loss of control’. A further pertinent element of this debate is elucidation and understanding of how men justify their use of violence to deflect blame for it, where they see the act as blameworthy, and to deflect the stigma that might otherwise be accorded to men who ‘lose control and are violent’ [ 16 ].

For those who seek to end women’s exposure to IPV, and develop culturally appropriate interventions, it is critical to gain and understand the perspectives of men who perpetrate IPV against women, their motives and justification for perpetrating it. In this paper, we draw on the narratives of men who acknowledged their use of violence over their wives and girlfriends in Ghana and show how a range of social, cultural, and religious factors ̶ flowing from patriarchy ̶ intersected to inform the construction of a traditional masculinity, and how men draw on this to legitimize their violence.

Study design

This qualitative study was conducted during the pre-intervention phase within a larger trial that assessed the community level impact of the Rural Response System (RRS) intervention (registered on ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03237585). The baseline survey for the larger trial used a multistage stratified cluster random sampling process to select participants. Full details regarding the sampling approach for the larger trial are described elsewhere [ 17 , 18 ].

The primary objective of the RRS is to reduce and prevent VAW in Ghana. The RRS uses the strategy of trained community members known as community-based action teams to undertake awareness-raising on VAW as well as providing support to victims of violence to access justice. For this study, in-depth interviews (IDI) were conducted with men who had self-reported in the quantitative baseline survey to have perpetrated IPV ( n  = 17 IDIs).

The scope of inquiry for the IDIs (see appendix 1 ) was to understand the perspectives of the men in our sample ̶ with regards to IPV, their views on gender norms, manhood, and their gender related attitudes and practices, and whether and how these drive male perpetrated IPV. The questions which were asked in the interviews were developed by the authors of this paper for the purpose of this study.

The trial was conducted in four districts located in the Central Region of Ghana. Two of these districts are along the coast while the other two districts are inland districts. The four districts in the study (each comprising about 10 communities) were selected based on operational and program considerations. Selection of participating districts was done using a census map of the Central Region that showed Inland and Coastal districts.

After excluding some districts because previous intervention work on VAW has been carried out in those districts; two inland and two coastal districts were then purposively selected as study sites. Designated sites were separated from each other by a geographical buffer (at least one district wide) to reduce spill over . Adult literacy rate in the Central Region is about 50%, with more men being literate (69.8%) compared to women (46.3%) (Ghana Statistical Service, 2013). The region is predominantly Akan speaking (82.0%) and Fante is the indigenous dialect of most districts in the region. Unemployment rate is 8.0% which is 2.4% lower than the national average.

Study participants

Research assistants were trained and primed to identify men who reported experience of IPV (as perpetrators) during the baseline survey. These respondents were followed-up and privately asked to confirm if they had perpetrated any form of IPV (physical, sexual, emotional, economic) in the past 12 months. Those who admitted to such behaviour were invited to participate in the IDIs, which would offer them an opportunity to share their experiences within a private space.

The same research assistants contacted those who agreed to this invitation to conduct the IDIs. Focusing on such individuals allowed us to capture specific IPV experiences in these communities and examine how these experiences highlight the knowledge and understanding of the negative impact of IPV as a social issue as well as actions taken. All IDIs with men were conducted within the intervention communities. While the research assistants came from similar communities as participants, they did not conduct interviews in their own communities and had no prior knowledge of the participants.

Participants’ characteristics

Seventeen men undertook IDIs, majority of whom were married or cohabitating, professed Christian faith, and had attained junior high school level of education (grade 7–9). With regards to age, they ranged between 18 and 73. Each of the 17 men was interviewed once. Few of the participants had lived less than 5 years in the community, while most had lived there over 16 years. In terms of age, four men were between the ages of 18–25, six were between 26 and 35 years, three were between 36 and 44 years and six were between 45 and over. With regards to marital status, 13 were married, three were single, two were cohabiting and one was divorced. One had never attended school, six had completed primary school, three had completed junior high school, five had completed senior high school, two had tertiary education.

Amongst those employed, most men were likely to be working in the agriculture sector (including fishing) as it was the main occupation and employed more than two-thirds of the work force in many districts. Fishing is concentrated mainly along the coast, whereas cocoa and oil palm production is concentrated inland.

Data collection

The IDIs were carried out from May to June 2016 by male interviewers. The interview guides were translated into local languages (Fante and Twi) by bi-lingual members of the project team at the University of Ghana. This was independently back translated by consultants who had not seen the English guides. The project team then discussed and resolved differences before the tools were used. Participants were interviewed in either Fante and Twi, in a private space of their compound or away from their residence (if desired). Interviews lasted about 1.5 h. From about the 15th interview, no new information was being produced, and this suggested to us that saturation had been reached.

Data analysis

All audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. Transcriptions were augmented with researcher’s field notes generated through observations during the IDIs. Data were analysed inductively using thematic analysis [ 19 ]. However, there were deductive elements to the analysis as we explored themes that have been reported in similar published studies and then tested those in our data.

Transcripts were read repeatedly, and initial codes developed based on the IDI guide and short words or phrases representing segments of the text in the transcript. The first author used the codes to develop a codebook. Following this stage, all authors reviewed and tested the applicability of the codebook using the raw data from the transcripts, which led to expansion of codes. Next, text which seemed to fit together was grouped together under a specific code [ 20 ].

Further to this, the authors explored the data and identified numerous open codes. Analogous open codes were grouped together under clearly defined categories [ 20 ]. Next, the authors explored the relationships between the categories and interpreted what they saw emerging [ 19 ].

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana, (# 006/15–16) and the South African Medical Research Council’s Ethics Committee (EC031–9/2015). All project staff received training on gender, VAW, and research ethics prior to implementing the trial. All participants were asked to provide written informed consent before participating. This was done in participants’ language of preference (English or local languages).

Participants were informed about the purpose, risk and benefits of the study and that participation was voluntary. They were also informed that they may withdraw at any stage or skip any question in the research, with no adverse consequences to them. All participants were assured that the information they provide will be handled confidentially and that findings will be reported with complete anonymity (pseudonyms were used for participants during interviews and are not representative of any particular ethnic group).

All interviews were recorded both in writing and audio taping with the consent of the participants. Participants were reimbursed for their time with a beverage (malt) and water as well as Ghs 10 (~ 2.5 USD).

The sample of this study was limited to men who reported in the baseline survey to have used violence on their female intimate partners. As such, these findings reflect the gender attitudes and practices of men who reported to have used IPV, and not those of all men in the Central Region of Ghana.

Men make decisions at home and perform his roles

Most men held a view that decision-making in the home is a preserve of men, and also a responsibility men cannot abdicate, as it is part of their expected gender roles. This was best illustrated in Dodzi’s narrative to follow: ‘ At home I make the decisions and perform my roles and do the things that I’m supposed to do for my wife when it comes to our chop money [i.e. money for food and the home and other things]’. Several men viewed decision-making in the home as a man’s natural and essential role, as Adjo explained: ‘ In most cases, it’s the man who has to initiate such issues of planning for the future of the children. If that fails to happen, the future of the children will be jeopardized ’.

Our interviews suggested that a man’s failure to provide such direction to his family would reflect badly on him as a man, in so doing call into question his masculinity. Yet, on the other side, this socially sanctioned duty of men to provide direction to his family primarily worked to elevate and emphasize men’s position as superior to women and other males (e.g., boys) in the gender hierarchy. Elikplim’s asserted: ‘ The man can tell his son not to go out and he’ll listen but the woman can also tell the son the same thing but the son won’t listen to his mom ’.

Men considered that the hierarchical gender structure described here, with men occupying the top most position, needed to be respected by the wives to prevent violence in their homes. Any challenge to it from a wife could result in beating from her husband. To argue and substantiate their view that a man is the head of the household, some men drew on religious teachings and texts. Danquah contended that: ‘ As Christ is the head of the church so is a man to the house ’. Several of the men drew on the higher authority of ‘God’s law’ to justify their view that they were superior to women. Adjo commented that: ‘ If we are to be honest, even the Bible makes us understand that the man is the head of the family … ’. For these men, this ‘God given’ role could not be contested, and this meant that women must subject themselves to their control, and dutifully perform their duties to serve them. It was in the context of a perceived challenge to men’s rules and authority that men emotionally and or physically harmed their female partners.

‘Women are not regarded in society’

While Acheampong explained that in his community ‘ men do not treat women as fools’ , and ‘ men are not rough with women ’, other men shared contrasting attitudes and experiences regarding gender relations between men and women in their communities. They shared narratives that suggested they thought women were sub-human or intellectually inferior. This is evidenced by Elikplim’s argument:

Elikplim: I think that since women are not regarded in the society that’s why they’re not allowed to make decisions; we count them as part of our cooking utensils and other things.

Interviewer: So, are you saying that women are counted as cooking utensils and other things?

Elikplim: Maybe this is one the woman 2, like plate 1, woman 2, and spoon 3.

Highlighting that women were feeble-minded and sub-human, men like Elikplim contended that it was the men’s duty to think on behalf of women and provide them with direction on what ought to be done and how. Yet, while some men reasoned that it was progressive for a man to consult with his wife when taking decisions, they stressed that the final decision-making lies with the man. Abedi underscored that: ‘ A man [takes the decision] but a woman also brings her idea to touch, so it’s going to be 70-30 ’.

Similarly, other men argued that it is important for a man to listen to his wife’s opinions as that can aid men in making well thought through decisions. However, it was apparent in the data that the final decision on a matter rested with the man. While initially it may appear that these men were different from those, within this sample, who demonstrated gender-inequitable attitudes with regards to decision making at home, these men had no intention of considering the views of their wives and allowed no indication that their wives had the power to make them decide on anything that did not suit them. Also, interviews showed that the men’s trepidation about including their wives in decision-making process stemmed from how they felt the society would perceive them and appeared to have nothing to do with the quality of the woman’s contribution.

Our interviews suggested that almost all men interviewed preferred a wife who exhibited a femininity characterized by obedience towards her husband. This is best illustrated in Abronoma’s extract to follow:

Decisions normally taken are farm related. The man could take a decision like “I have seen some farm somewhere here, let’s go clear the land”. If the woman is “correct” [obedient] she will go and assist you cultivate the land. On the other hand, if she is not correct [disobedient], she will not help the man in the farm. (Abronoma)

The notion that a good woman acquiesces to men was a strategic tool in bolstering this traditional masculinity and worked to sustain these men’s dominance over women. Practically, the men’s stated preference for a subservient wife was another tactic for controlling women and ensuring that they be fearful and subservient to their husbands, and thereby conform to their dictates. The ever-present threat of violence underpinned this.

Interviews suggested that wives, however, were not completely excluded from decision-making. We interrogated the data to understand the terms and circumstances under which women were included. The narratives suggest that instances of a wife’s inclusion had conditions attached, and chiefly depended on the woman’s demeanor. For example, wives who were perceived to be disrespectful by some men, and disagreed with them were excluded, while those viewed as subservient were included. In his interview, Abedi explained that he broke his engagement with his fiancée when he noticed that she had started disrespecting him and challenging his decisions:

We were planning to get married but later I gave one of my keys to her but she felt pompous; if I said ‘oh Abena do this’, she said she won’t do that. She started challenging me so I told her I can’t continue this thing … she can go her way. So as for women, if you study her well and you get married to her, you can share ideas. That’s why most men don’t share ideas with their wives, only a few. (Abedi)

Thus, the women’s inclusion in decision-making was a reward for their subservience and support to men’s ideas, a subtle strategy to control women and keep the existing hierarchical gender structure undisturbed. It appears that the wives of these men knew of these expectations, were aware of the violent consequences to them if they challenged the husband’s authority.

Men should provide, and women must cook

The interviews suggest there were rigid and distinct gender roles which were conspicuously reflected in the attitudes and practices of these men. Men’s dominance of decision-making was one male gender role, but there were many more that were perceived as ingrained in inflexible and unchanging ‘culture’. For example, Aboagye asserted that in his culture there were ‘ responsibilities that were solely reserved for women and others exclusively meant for men ’.

The gender roles for women centered around the home ̶ and this is best shown in Adjo’s explanation that: ‘ The difference here is, in the case of a woman, your responsibilities are to clean the home, tidy up everywhere including the toilets, and cook for the man ’. In the interviews, it appeared that the need to reinforce men’s supremacy over women, primarily informed the gender roles for women. For these men, women’s responsibilities were menial and domestic.

On the other hand, there were roles that were clearly reserved for men. Many men expressed the view that a man’s place is outside the home; where he is expected to toil to earn money for his family’s upkeep. This provider role ̶ a key trait of the traditional masculinity which was valued by most of the men comes with clearly stipulated responsibilities that a man must perform. Aboagye’s assertion that: ‘ The role of the man is that since you brought the woman into your house, you have to make sure you provide her with food, clothing, good shelter, and other basic things at home ’, is explanatory.

As argued by Adjo below, a man who succeed in performing these responsibilities obtained some social rewards including respect and honour as a man in his community:

In terms of reward, if there is any that comes, it goes a lot more to the man than the woman because your ability as a man to take very good care of your wife for her to look good is what brings honour to you. (Adjo)

Yet, interviews suggest that a man who failed to meet these responsibilities may lose the respect of his wife and therefore be stripped, symbolically, of his position as the head of the household.

Gender roles could, however, be temporarily filled by either men and women. Yet, per these men’s views, this exchange of gender roles chiefly depended on men’s will. Some men emphasised that such change was time and circumstance bound and never perpetual. In explicating this, Aboagye said:

It will work because it could happen that there is some day the woman wouldn’t be feeling that ok so since you the man knows she is sick and cannot do her household duties, you have to give a helping hand maybe for 2 or 3 days. In the same way when it comes to the woman, you have noticed that the man isn’t feeling well so the roles or duties he is supposed to do that period and he isn’t doing, you have to help him accomplish that task for maybe 2 or 3 days.

In line with Aboagye’s view, in other men’s narratives there was an indication that gendered tasks could be shared in a limited way under certain circumstances. For example, Kofi emphasised that a man should help with domestic chores when the wife was infirm and therefore unable to carry out her domestic roles but not in other circumstances. He posited:

The role of the woman is that you have to cook, you can also fetch water for your husband to take his bath and ask him to eat his food. You the woman has no right to ask your man to go to the kitchen and cook food. What is even the essence of the marriage in the first place? The only time you can sacrifice and do those things is when you realise that your wife is sick and cannot do anything. (Kofi)

In the interviews, it was evident, however, that the rigidness of the gender roles was challenged under various economic conditions especially when the woman was bringing in money in the home or was the sole breadwinner, but even here it was implied that this could be temporary. Aboagye’s extract below shows this:

Sometimes when you the man is financially unstable, you can at least talk to your wife to support with what she has, and later you will pay her back. So, I think when all these go on in the house there will be peace. (Aboagye)

Linked to the notion that the men’s place is outside the home, material provision was a critical feature of the traditional masculinity, valorized by most men in our sample. To attain this masculinity, men had to provide for their wives and children. Any failure to provide triggered frustration in their wife and, sometimes, a violent response from the men. Kofi’s extract to follow is illustrative:

Chop money can also generate violence in the house. Maybe even if the man is financially unstable, he [husband] won’t even inform the woman of the fact that he doesn’t have money today but the moment the woman asks for money, then he will use pride. Pride can never solve that problem. (Kofi)

If the wife questioned the men’s inability to provide for her and his children, men interpreted this as a direct assault on his masculinity and would use violence to temporarily reclaim his honour.

She is mine and must allow me to do it (sex)

In the interviews, several men emphasized that the wife’s responsibility towards her husband centered around her ‘pampering’ him. According to these men, ‘pampering’ meant to sexually pleasure and satisfy the male partner. Two reasons appeared to inform these men’s sexual entitlement on their female partners: the bride-price and the notion that ‘men own their female partner (i.e. ‘You are my girl’)’. In the interviews, men interpreted their bride-price payment as meaning that they own their wives, and that their wives cannot refuse their sexual advances.

Our data showed that men’s entitlement to be ‘pampered’ by their wives was inextricably tied to their view that because the man had paid bride-price for his wife and met other customary demands from the wife’s family, he was entitled to her sexually. For men who held this notion, a wife was thus culturally bound to satisfy her husband sexually whenever he desired. Adom explained: ‘ How can I marry you and put a ring on your finger and when I want to have sex you say no? If you won’t do it then it means you don’t love me ’.

The payment of bride-price emphasized men’s sense of ownership of their wives and entitlement to their bodies. It also meant that wives were not permitted to go with other men. For men like Danquah, a woman who was suspected, or known, to have cheated on her husband should expect to be physically beaten. Danquah posited:

The woman I was with cheated on me with another man as a result I got annoyed and gave her some punches. Because, as a woman that I have married legally, how can you cheat on me? So, if a woman goes out without coming to sleep home, what does it mean? So, that is what happened which led to the violence. I gave her some punches which she also replied and become a problem which led to the divorce. (Danquah)

It was not only in a marriage that some men felt sexually entitled to their partners. Men in dating relationships also felt entitled to have sex with their partners whenever they desired sex. Several men reported that they had forced their girlfriends to have sex with them.

It appears their entitlement to have sex with their girlfriends, whenever they wished, was also linked to their view that men own the women they are in a relationship with. Such sexual entitlement and sense of ownership of women is best illustrated in Abedi’s extract below:

Oh I forced her I told her, ‘chaley [dude] today I feel oo’ so I want to have sex with her, but she said ‘chaley today I am tired’, but I said ‘oo what are you talking about, that is why I told you I am in love with you, you are my girl so you have to allow me to do it’, but as I said I had to force her … yeah, about 3 months, 4 months I hadn’t had sex so (laughing). I forced her. (Abedi)

In our sample, men who reported to have sexually violated their partners were likely to also report that they felt entitled to their partners’ body, that their partners were their possessions, and had strongly identified with the traditional masculinity circulating in this context.

Beating as discipline

The men in our sample viewed partner violence as a strategy to discipline a female partner. Addae very simply remarked: ‘ occasionally the man will beat the woman’. Danso similarly explained that: ‘in marriage it is not always smooth, there will definitely be beatings, but they are no big issues ’. Through first diminishing and even dehumanizing women, men found it easier to inflict violence on their female partners.

For some men, wife beating was an entitlement that came with marriage, and was closely tied to men’s payment of the bride price for the wife. Adom’s quote below shows this:

When I used to stay here the relationship that exists between a man and woman sometimes it’s heart-breaking … because a man can be living together with a woman while he has not performed the marriage rites, but the man beats the woman like he has performed the marriage rites of the woman. (Adom)

Wives were perceived to be men’s possessions and thus under their control. Dodzi explained that: ‘ for understanding to prevail in the home, she [wife] has to obey me and listen to what I tell her ’ . When a wife was judged to have misbehaved, or had been disobedient, men felt it was their responsibility to discipline her. Abronoma’s narrative to follow evidences this, he posited: ‘ I came from the farm only to find my wife sleeping instead of joining me in the farm. Meanwhile, she wasn’t sick … nothing happened. She wasn’t injured. I gave her a lesson [beating] ’.

Likewise, several other men described instances where they had beaten their wives. Abronoma reported that ‘ My second wife, I caned her … yes. I used a cane to whip her’. Suggesting that he has beaten his wife multiple times, he further said: ‘ … the last time it [beating the wife] happened was when I divorced my last wife ’ (Abronoma). That some men had repeatedly beaten their wives and used implements (such as a whip) to do this with, suggests the severity of IPV perpetration by these men.

Men felt they had the responsibility to discipline a ‘ lazy wife ’, and some, like Mawuli, went as far as to blame the women for their violence: ‘ [it] was because of what she said that made me raise my hands on her ’. He further explicated: ‘ Okay, I see some cases of these violent acts. Sometimes the woman is someone who doesn’t respect, so the man can hit her in the face or be physically violent towards her ’. He felt it was his responsibility to beat his wife when she ‘ deserved ’ it, and complaining about being hampered in doing this due to the children, Mawuli said:

I have hit her [wife] before. Interviewer: Was it because of her refusal to sleep with you? Not only that but other issues also gave rise to my violent behavior towards her … because of the kids at home I find it difficult to hit her even if she does wrong. (Mawuli)

Blame deflected any sense of guilt for the beating. When Kafui was asked how he felt after beating his partner, he stated that ‘ I didn’t feel anything because; I knew she wasn’t doing the right thing and if she had listened to me, I wouldn’t have beaten her ’. Beating their wives was a necessary form of discipline for a disobedience or shirking responsibilities, something that men could not abdicate. For them, it was part of being a man. Notwithstanding, few men perceived wife beating as violence and somewhat regretted it.

This study has described the perspectives of men who used violence against their female partners. We have shown how an array of social, cultural, and religious factors ̶ deriving from patriarchy ̶ coalesced to inform the construction of a traditional masculine position which the men interviewed aspired to occupy. These factors included the notion that decision-making in the home is a man’s prerogative, as are the rigid and distinct gender role (e.g. domestic work), men’s perceptions about owning their female partners and having the right to have sex with them whenever they desire, and the notion that wife beating is legitimate and important for discipline. Our findings show that it was through performing or aspiring to achieve this form of masculinity that men employed different forms of violence against their female partners. Moreover, findings suggest that the traditional masculinity displayed or aspired to by these men was rooted in patriarchal power relations in which men were positioned as superior to and dominant over women. Also, findings revealed that patriarchy was particularly reflected in the gender attitudes and practices of the men, who had reported that they have been violent towards their partners and had generally supported men’s dominance in decision-making at home and wife beating.

These findings are an important contribution to literature as they highlight how some structures of patriarchy (i.e. men’s violence and patriarchal mode of production) [ 21 ] play out in this setting to subordinate women and inform the construction of a traditional masculinity (amongst men in our sample) ̶ which often manifested itself through display of extreme gender-inequitable attitudes and use of various forms of violence against female partners. Thus, these findings bring significant nuance to understandings of the links between patriarchy and male perpetrated IPV in the Central Region of Ghana [ 22 ]. Furthermore, these findings shed light on the ideas and justification violent men in this setting drew on to support their use of violence against their female partners and deflect blame.

It has been argued that Ghanaian culture demands that women should not only be submissive to their husbands, but also demonstrate unquestioning respect, be dutiful, and serviceable to the extent that going against or challenging abuse may be interpreted as an attempt to disrupt the authority of the man [ 7 , 9 ]. In this study, what the participants described is an inflexible gender hierarchy, which is enforced, as we have shown, through authoritarian rule by some men in the home.

In this context, the use of violence against female partners is seen as an integral part of the dominant masculinity, as presented by these men who have all themselves used violence. Hearn and others have argued that the use of violence by men is not an inherent part of hegemonic masculinity [ 23 , 24 ], but our data suggest that in these contexts in Ghana it was inseparable from an authoritarian patriarchy and an intrinsic element of the expected and revered authoritarian rule by some men within the home.

Our study has shown that the structures of patriarchy (e.g. men’s violence and patriarchal mode of production) and related elements and practices illuminated by the interviews were very similar to those described by Walby [ 21 ] and found in very many settings: distinct gender roles, decision-making being a men’s prerogative, men’s sexual entitlement, and wife beating as discipline (see also [ 25 ]). However, these elements alone, reveal little about the specific cultural context in which men construct and perform their masculinity and the embodied meaning of these different elements.

Notable features from the interviews were the extremes of subordination of women – some of the men dehumanized their female partners or viewed them as feeble-minded, categorizing them as possessions, little more than animated household implements. This clearly constitutes pervasive emotional violence against women. Some of the authors of this paper have undertaken research on IPV in many countries over several decades and have often reflected that women are objectified and treated as children or as possessions, but have not previously encountered women described as household implements in any setting. Furthermore, the subordination and dehumanization described by men interviewed ̶ a tactic often used in genocides or conflict situations [ 26 ] ̶ was required in order to justify the treatment of women, when the men thought women were disrespectful, disobeyed or had transgressed gender roles. These men said it was their culturally sanctioned responsibility to control and discipline their female partners, as part of fulfilling their gender roles [ 27 ]. Feminist scholars argue that when the sub-humanness of women obtains justification from tradition and religion, it legitimizes men’s use of violence against women; and that, when men think of women as less human, they often act in violent ways towards them (Shose Kessi: personal communication). Indeed, some men’s sexual violence against their wives appeared to have been legitimated by the cultural practice of bride-price payment which, in turn, seemed to have informed these men’s sense of ownership of their wives, making them to believe they had unlimited access to their wives’ bodies [ 28 ]. It was thus in the context where wives resisted their husband’s sexual advances that men sexually assaulted their wives [ 5 , 7 ]. This is akin to findings of a South African study in which men’s sexual entitlement was the most commonly reported motivation for rape of women [ 29 ].

There are implications for the development of prevention interventions that stem from this research. To build effective programmes to stop men’s IPV in this setting, more research is needed to understand how men who are violent perceive dominant forms of masculinity and their contribution to IPV. It is difficult to see how interventions to prevent IPV can be effective without transforming the dominant construction of masculinity. For as long as men perceive that they are expected to enact authoritarian rule in the home, and view women as inferior to them emotional, sexual and physical violence are likely to be inseparable parts of the domestic regime. Building respect for and admiration of women, acknowledging domestic partnership and promoting shared decision-making are essential elements of programmes that seek to disrupt authoritarian patriarchies and prevent male perpetrated IPV. In this setting, such programmes should also address cultural and other context specific factors that drive male perpetrated IPV. Furthermore, among these violent men, who confidently perceived themselves to be ‘traditionally’ masculine men, widespread community-based change is most likely needed to enable and sustain change in masculinity, drawing on contributions from traditional and religious leaders as well as other community members.

We have also shown that some men refrained from beating their wives in front of the children or regretted beating their wives. This is an important finding as it displays a possible “crack” in the solid construction of violence as an intrinsic part of the hegemonic masculinity in this setting [ 14 ]. This suggests that the dominant masculinity circulating in this setting was fragile and open to challenge [ 14 ], and this needs to be emphasized as a factor that could potentially protect women from IPV. Moreover, this opens a window of opportunity for prevention interventions in those areas where it is difficult to tackle rigid gender norms upfront. Using violence within the family as an entry point should thus be an integral component of gender-transformative interventions to prevent male perpetrated IPV in Ghana.

Reflexivity

The authors constitute a team of African women and men researchers, who are situated within both academia and practice on the continent. They come from diverse disciplines and have expertise in qualitative research. The authors who are Ghanaians were born in Ghana and had lived within this context for the most part of their lives as academics and researchers. They were thus not only familiar with the context but had also spent a considerable amount of time in the study communities during the data collection period. With appreciation that their previous observations may bias their viewpoints on IPV perpetration in Ghana, they were fully aware and worked hard to be impartial in the interpretation of the data and avoid unintentionally imposing their personal opinions and assumptions on the data. Moreover, all authors including those who were African foreign nationals were a part of this study from conceptualization and data gathering through to the analysis and write up of the paper.

Limitations

In this study, we only interviewed men who had reported in the survey to have perpetrated IPV against a woman. This may explain their extreme perspectives on IPV, gender-attitudes, gender norms, and violent practices; and these men are likely to be different in terms of gender attitudes from other men who do not perpetrate IPV in the Central Region of Ghana. However, the data from the men’s interviews were triangulated with the researchers’ observation notes – which were documented during the fieldwork – and these notes were included as data in this analysis.

As this was a qualitative study, which interviewed men who had perpetrated IPV, our findings are not generalizable, however we hope the insights we have gathered are of interest to other settings. It is also possible that some men may have felt compelled to answer in certain ways, including feeling the need to describe themselves as macho or to represent themselves in a socially desirable manner with regards to their perspectives on gender relations with women and use of violence on their female partners. Notwithstanding, this study is notable for the unique sample it used to study qualitatively the drivers of male perpetrated IPV against women.

There is consensus in the field of IPV that to reduce male perpetrated IPV, social norms that hinder gender equity and foster violence should be addressed [ 22 , 30 ]. In Ghana, there is need for evidence-based primary prevention interventions that aim to disrupt and/or dismantle the existing hierarchical gender structure and the harmful hegemonic masculinity circulating in this setting. To reduce male perpetrated IPV in Ghana, there needs to be urgent implementation of evidence-based community-based interventions that aim to change destructive social and gender norms that render women subordinate to men and legitimate male violence, among which the COMBAT intervention that was evaluated as part of this research shows promise.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Violence against women

• Intimate partner violence

Rural Response System

Randomized controlled trial

In-depth interview

Focus group discussion

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Acknowledgements

We thank the participants who shared their time, experiences and reflections which made this analysis possible.

This paper is an output from the What Works to Prevent Violence: A Global Programme which is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries. The South African Medical Research Council managed the funding. However, the views expressed and information contained in it is not necessarily those of or endorsed by DFID, which can accept no responsibility for such views or information. Furthermore, the funder was not involved in the design of the study, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data and in writing this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa

Yandisa Sikweyiya, Esnat D. Chirwa & Rachel Jewkes

School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Yandisa Sikweyiya & Rachel Jewkes

Department of Epidemiology and Disease Control, School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

Adolphina Addoley Addo-Lartey

Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

Deda Ogum Alangea & Richard M. K. Adanu

Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana

Phyllis Dako-Gyeke

Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre, Accra, Ghana

Dorcas Coker-Appiah

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Contributions

Conceptualization: Yandisa Sikweyiya, Adolphina Addo-Lartey, Esnat D. Chirwa, Deda Ogum Alangea, Phyllis Dako-Gyeke, Dorcas Coker-Appiah, Richard M, K. Adanu, Rachel Jewkes. Formal analysis: Yandisa Sikweyiya, Phyllis Dako-Gyeke, Addolphina Addo-Lartey, Deda Ogum Alangea. Funding acquisition: Dorcas Coker-Appiah, Richard M. K. Adanu, Rachel Jewkes. Methodology: Yandisa Sikweyiya, Adolphina Addo-Lartey, Deda Ogum Alangea, Esnat D. Chirwa, Rachel Jewkes. Project administration: Yandisa Sikweyiya, Adolphina Addoley Addo-Lartey, Deda Ogum Alangea. Supervision: Richard M. K. Adanu, Rachel Jewkes. Validation: Rachel Jewkes. Writing ± original draft: Yandisa Sikweyiya. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yandisa Sikweyiya .

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Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana, (# 006/15–16) and the South African Medical Research Council’s Ethics Committee (EC031–9/2015). All participants were provided written informed consent before participating.

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Sikweyiya, Y., Addo-Lartey, A.A., Alangea, D.O. et al. Patriarchy and gender-inequitable attitudes as drivers of intimate partner violence against women in the central region of Ghana. BMC Public Health 20 , 682 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-08825-z

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Challenging patriarchy: gender equality and humanitarian principles.

By Ricardo Fal-Dutra Santos

This blog seeks to explore the ongoing discourse in the humanitarian sector that portrays gender equality as a goal outside the scope of humanitarianism. It explores how emphasis on the cultural, social and political nature of gender has contributed to a perception of gender-transformative action as incompatible with humanitarian principles. It ultimately argues that challenging patriarchy is not only in line with, but also an essential component of, principled humanitarian action.

In recent decades, the issue of gender has attracted increasing attention from humanitarian actors. This has seen a growing focus on the specific needs and vulnerabilities of groups marginalised by predominant gender norms and historically overlooked by humanitarian actors. It has also seen the mainstreaming of gender as a tool to assess the gendered nature and impact of conflict, as well as the gendered implications of humanitarian programming. Finally, it has seen the emergence of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) as a humanitarian sub-sector . [1] This emergent spotlight on gender issues has been accompanied by commitments to ‘ combat structural and behavioural barriers to gender equality ’ in humanitarian settings.

Despite these advances, it seems more needs to be done to challenge gender inequalities. This is reflected in the consistently low percentage of humanitarian funding allocated to programmes contributing to gender equality – only 4% of the total aid funding between 2015-2016, according to OECD . Unsurprisingly, the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit ‘shared frustration that greater progress on gender equality humanitarian programming had not been made yet ’.

Definitions

In this article, I borrow Cynthia Enloe ’s definition of patriarchy, understood as ‘the structural and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of [hegemonic] masculinit[ies]’. [2] Thus, it is a hegemonic system of power relations based on gender norms, which establish the expected roles of men and women. In this system, women and girls [3] have historically, and overwhelmingly, been oppressed, exploited or otherwise disadvantaged. So too have groups who do not conform with gender norms, the predominant binary approach to gender and sexuality, and/or heteronormative expectations. These include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations, as well as certain groups of men and boys. [4]

Also central to this article is the concept of gender equality. While UN Women defines it as ‘equality between women and men’, I expand this definition to encompass equality between all people, regardless of their gender, their sexuality, and the degree to which they conform with gender norms and the patriarchal binary approach to gender and sexuality. In essence, gender equality emphasises the gendered aspects of inequality and the groups generally marginalised by patriarchy. Thus, the promotion of gender equality inevitably challenges patriarchy insofar as it fights against gender inequalities. The latter are enabled by the patriarchal system while also contributing to perpetuating it.

Humanitarian action focused on promoting gender equality can be characterised as gender-transformative . Examples of gender-transformative programming include women’s empowerment through livelihoods, for example in Syria , or the promotion of women’s participation in decision-making processes, as done by Oxfam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . It can also involve activities specifically targeting men, such as raising awareness of the fact that sexual violence can also occur to men and boys, as done by the Refugee Law Project in Uganda .

Why challenge patriarchy?

As I have argued previously , gender-transformative action is essential to a resilience-focused humanitarianism, to the extent that it empowers groups marginalised by patriarchy to have a bigger role in local responses. Gender-transformative action can also be an answer to requests from local populations. As research by Oxfam reveals, local women’s rights actors in various countries have shown dissatisfaction with lack of recognition and lack of prioritisation of gender equality in humanitarian action.

Another good reason for challenging patriarchy lies in the fact that gender inequality underpins and intensifies risks and vulnerabilities in areas of key concern to humanitarian actors. These include, notably, gender-based violence , but also limited access, especially by women and girls, to education, healthcare, agricultural lands and water points, safe livelihoods opportunities and adequate shelter . In times of conflict, these gender inequalities can be exacerbated – which has been acknowledged by practitioners , donors and scholars .

Practitioners , donors and scholars also agree that conflict can create a window of opportunity for promoting gender equality, which can be supported by humanitarian actors. As Oxfam observes, while conflicts ‘create risks for women and can exacerbate inequalities, the collapse of political and social order can paradoxically create opportunities for change.’ Changes in the power dynamics in the household, the loosening up of the division of labour, and the strengthening of women civil society organizations can ‘provide opportunities for more fundamental issues to be addressed’.

Therefore, gender equality can contribute to more resilient, locally-driven, effective humanitarian action. At the same time, humanitarians may be uniquely placed to support the promotion of gender equality in times of conflict. Yet, many practitioners hesitate – or even refuse – to include gender equality in their mandates and activities.

A matter of principle

As Elisabeth Olivus observes, ‘[n]ot long ago, the promotion of gender equality was controversial in the UNHCR, as interventions in matters of culture were considered to be at odds with humanitarian principles’. The ICRC has also expressed similar positioning. Up until its 2011 edition, the organization’s Annual Reports included a general disclaimer that ‘in accordance with its principles of neutrality and impartiality, the ICRC does not claim to reform gender relations’.

Thus, the hesitation in addressing gendered consequences of conflict seems to be linked, to some extent, [5] to a perceived incompatibility between gender and humanitarian principles, especially neutrality. Nonetheless, I would argue that this perception is misguided.

Neutrality can be defined as ‘not tak[ing] sides in hostilities or engag[ing] at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature ’. As Jean Pictet explains, this principle is composed of military neutrality and ideological neutrality. Evidently, gender-transformative humanitarian action cannot be understood to be in violation of military neutrality, for the power struggle derived of unequal gender relations is not of a military nature. Nonetheless, gender-transformative action can be seen as a violation of ideological neutrality, as it seeks to address the inequalities created by an ‘ideological system’ – patriarchy.

This reasoning, however, overlooks the fact that patriarchy is not an ideological system underpinning armed conflict; rather, in most (if not all) societies patriarchal dynamics are at play before, during and after conflict. It further ignores that, humanitarian actors also operate in, and are influenced by the norms of, a patriarchal world. In such circumstances, without continuous, conscious efforts to challenge patriarchy, humanitarian action may, even inadvertently, contribute to perpetuating it. An example of this is the common depiction of women as ‘intrinsically weak and vulnerable ’ in humanitarian messaging and practice.

Moreover, such a conceptualisation of neutrality is patriarchal in itself, for it is based on a male-centric understanding of the world, accidentally unaware or intentionally dismissive of gender inequalities that privilege hegemonic masculinities. As Lori Handrahan puts it, ‘[w]hile it can take a war for personal security to become an issue in most men’s lives, insecurity is all too common for women, irrespective of war. Female insecurity is so prevalent that it becomes invisible and accepted as the norm’. This can be said not only of women’s insecurity, but of other gender-based consequences of patriarchy as well, to both women and men.

Thus, attempting to be neutral vis-à-vis the existing gender relations in fact violates the principle of humanitarian neutrality. As Desmond Tutu famously said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’.

Humanity can be translated, inter alia, as an endeavour to ensure respect for the human being, including ‘[their] life, liberty and happiness’. However, the gender inequalities inherent in the prevailing patriarchal system are a constant obstacle to ensuring the respect of those whom the system seeks to marginalise. Therefore, the full application of the principle humanity not only allows for, but requires the promotion of gender equality, essential to the full respect for all human beings.

In line with the above, gender equality can be understood as a tenet of principled humanitarian action, contained in the principle of humanity. This means that, since humanity is an essential component of principled humanitarian action, so too must gender equality.

This has a serious implication for the application of neutrality. The principle of neutrality refers to the ‘reserve’ that a principled humanitarian actor ‘ must maintain with regard to any doctrine except its own ’ (emphasis added). In other words, as Hugo Slim observes, neutrality ‘does not prevent an organisation from having a principled position, based on firm ideals’. Therefore, neutrality does not prevent humanitarians from having a principled position with regards to gender equality – understood as part of the principle of humanity, and thus enshrined in a ‘principled position’.

In fact, this reasoning reveals that a humanitarian’s refusal to embrace gender equality is not an unfortunate consequence of the perceived constraints imposed by humanitarian principles. Rather, it is a choice by humanitarian actors themselves – a choice not to embrace gender equality as a ‘firm ideal’ and, thus, place it above neutrality.

Impartiality

Impartiality is another fundamental principle widely accepted by humanitarian actors. As Pictet notes, one of its key components is the fundamental idea of non-discrimination. In this regard, gender-transformative action is essential to ensuring impartiality. This occurs because the provision of humanitarian aid to specific populations, notably women, can sometimes be hindered by gender inequalities. In such cases, humanitarian action actually depends on challenging patriarchy.

As Julie Mertus notes , in Afghanistan, Oxfam and Save the Children suspended selected activities to protest the Taliban’s edicts blocking equal participation of women and girls. Similarly Clifton and Gell emphasise that ‘with no access to women, Oxfam GB did not believe it could deliver humanitarian aid with impartiality’.

Humanitarian actors are inevitably a part of patriarchal dynamics. For this reason, refusing to challenge existing gender relations has the effect of violating the very principles this refusal intends to uphold. This positioning is not in line with the principle of neutrality, insofar as it contributes to maintaining prevailing (patriarchal) power structures, and has further consequences on the application of the principles of humanity and impartiality.

Still, the place humanitarianism occupies in a patriarchal world goes largely ignored in the conceptualisation of humanitarian principles. As long as it remains so, principled humanitarian action is bound to continue perpetuating patriarchal dynamics that create or aggravate the very needs and vulnerabilities humanitarianism seeks to address.

A call for discussion

The fact that gender equality is not in itself against humanitarian principles does not mean that we, humanitarians, do not have to be careful about how we promote it. Gender-transformative action can still have a negative impact on humanitarian access, or on the security of humanitarian workers, depending on how it is perceived by local populations. This has to be taken into consideration on a case-by-case basis.

It is also key to ensure that gender-transformative action is based on local perspectives of the very people marginalised by patriarchy and gender inequalities. Otherwise, we risk imposing our own perspectives and values on them.

Thus, by no means does this article intend to be a comprehensive analysis of gender-transformative humanitarian action, or of its relationship with humanitarian principles. Rather, it is an invitation to seriously discuss gender equality and principled humanitarian action, without having humanitarian principles as a conversation stopper.

[1] This progressive focus on gender was reflected in the publication of multiple policy and guidance documents, such as the UNHCR’s Policy on Refugee Women (1990) , Guidelines on the Protection of Women (1991) , Gender-Related Persecution Guidelines (2002) and Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls (2008) , and IASC’s Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action ( 2006 and 2017 ) and Gender-Based Violence Guidelines ( 2005 and 2015 ), to name but a few. Most recently, it was also reflected the World Humanitarian Summit’s commitment to ensure that humanitarian programming is gender-responsive , which received the third highest number of endorsements.

[2] The acknowledgment of multiple forms of masculinity is essential to understanding how patriarchy can be damaging to certain groups of men. For this reason, I adapted Enloe’s definition by adding the qualifier ‘hegemonic’ and modifying the word ‘masculinity’ to its plural form.

[3] The use of the generalised terms ‘women’, ‘girls’, ‘men’ and ‘boys’ in this article is not meant to restrict specific effects of patriarchy to all, or only, women/girls/men/boys, but rather to emphasise how these groups are, in general, affected. These groups of individuals are not homogenous and are also impacted by other power dynamics, such as those of race and class. In this regard, see, e.g., Hugo Slim’s article in this blog, ‘Impartiality and Intersectionality ’.

[4] As Srushti Mahamuni observes, ‘patriarchy is not only harmful to women but to men as well. While it oppresses women and restricts them to subjugated positions in society, it imposes unrealistic expectations on men about what it means to “be a man”’.

[5] Humanitarian principles are not the only obstacles, raised by humanitarian actors, to gender-transformative humanitarian programming. Other obstacles would include (i) the perception that gender equality goes against local cultures, and (ii) the relinquishment of gender equality to ‘gender experts’, as opposed to mainstreaming it across all sectors. However, these issues will not be addressed here, as that would require a more comprehensive analysis, incompatible with the format of this blog post.

Other blog posts by this author

‘Basics’ won’t do: A response to Marc DuBois’ ‘new humanitarian basics’ , Ricardo Fal-Dutra Santos, 13 November, 2018

Further blog posts on gender and humanitarianism

Masculinity and humanitarianism , Graham Parsons, 20 May, 2019 Equal treatment for women in State armed forces: Three practical implications for medical care , Helen Durham & Vanessa Murphy, 8 March, 2019 The impact of gender and race bias in AI , Noel Sharkey, 28 August, 2018 Continuing the conversation: Which masculinities, which wars? David Duriesmith, 5 July, 2018 Masculinity and war–let’s talk about it , Hugo Slim, 15 March, 2018

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Patriarchy and power: how socialisation underpins abusive behaviour

Men don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK. They do it because society tells them they are entitled to be in control

I nvestigative journalist Jess Hill interviewed dozens of abused women, domestic abuse sector workers, male perpetrators, children’s advocates and system experts over five years in order to write her award-winning book, See What You Made Me Do. Here she answers some questions about issues arising from the murders in Brisbane of Hannah Clarke and her three children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3.

Hannah Clarke’s family described her husband Rowan Baxter as controlling, coercive and obsessive. His abuse appears to have followed a familiar script known as coercive control. Can you explain this?

Coercive control is a very particular kind of domestic abuse. It’s not a “reaction” to stress, nor is it triggered by alcohol or drugs. It’s an ongoing system of control, in which the abusive partner seeks to override their partner’s autonomy and destroy their sense of self. The end game – whether the perpetrator knowingly sets out to achieve it – is to make their partner entirely subordinate; a “willing slave”. To do this, they isolate, micro-manage, humiliate, degrade, surveil, gaslight and create an environment of confusion, contradiction and extreme threat. The feeling victims have, as the British survivor-advocate Min Grob tweeted the other day, is that the rug has been pulled from under your feet. “You become disoriented, hyper vigilant, confused and most likely sleep-deprived. You are walking on eggshells. Afraid you’re going mad. Afraid to make them mad. Afraid. All the time. Sometimes not even knowing why you’re in fear but the panic is there. Always.” This abuse can also be incredibly hard for the victim to detect, because it happens slowly, bit by bit. It’s the total mental dislocation of coercive control – which Amnesty International has classified as torture – that is the hardest thing to recover from.

Coercive controllers may use extreme physical or sexual violence; or, as was reportedly the case with Rowan Baxter, no physical violence at all. For more than 40 years, women and children have been saying that except for extreme violence, the coercive control is the worst part. In fact, one of the most common refrains from victims of coercive control is “I wish he’d just hit me”.

If domestic abuse cases almost always follow the same script, as you write in your book, why is it so hard to stop them?

So many reasons, but in cases of coercive control, I think it boils down to this. Many women don’t know they are experiencing abuse until they are already in situations that are incredibly dangerous – partly because coercive control is so poorly understood, but also because the perpetrator makes it invisible. By the time victims realise the danger they’re in, many believe no system will ever be powerful enough to keep them safe. If they do report to police – if something reportable actually occurs – they are making a terrifying gamble. Will they get an officer who’s sympathetic and proactive? Will reporting their partner make him more dangerous? What if child protection gets involved? What if he contests for custody? There are absolutely no guarantees that they (or their children) will be protected. Their suspicion that the system is not powerful enough to protect them is too often correct. The justice system is not only full of holes; too often it actively colludes with the perpetrator (especially the family law system). So they stay, even after they want to leave, and know it’s dangerous. They stay because it may be even more dangerous to leave. Until the justice system properly assesses and responds to risk, and as long as women are made to be responsible for their own safety, we will continue to see an intractable domestic homicide rate.

How do some men come to feel so entitled to their power over women?

Thousands of years of patriarchy has laid pretty good groundwork for this – and it’s not so long since a wife was considered her husband’s property, and had no legal rights whatsoever. It was only in the 1980s that new laws against marital rape recognised that men didn’t have the right to demand sex with their wives anytime they wanted; prior to that, consent was considered to have been given on the wedding day and never revoked. Today, we still live in a society that entrenches women’s subordination at every level – from the home, to the boardroom, to our parliament. Even in the courtroom, as we see so often. As the Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman writes: “The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men.” I’m sure any survivor reading this will know exactly what she’s talking about.

Men don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK. Men abuse women because society tells them they are entitled to be in control. In fact, society says that if they are not in control, they won’t succeed – they won’t get the girl, they won’t get the money, and they will be vulnerable to the violence and control of other men. It says that if they fail to assert themselves like “real men”, they will end up poor and alone.

But we don’t just see men being entitled to power over their partners; some women identify with this, too. That’s because “having power over” is valued within patriarchy – much more for men than it is for women – but nevertheless, it is regarded generally as a sign of strength to claim power over others. To add more complication, in many perpetrators who have had trauma or attachment disruption in their childhoods, you get another layer of entitlement: as one perpetrator told me “I never had any control over anything as a child, and I vowed that I would never let that happen to me again. I would always be in control.”

Trauma-based entitlement is very common in people who are abusive – the notion that “I had to go through so much, so fuck you, you just have to deal with whatever I do to you.” When that entitlement is thwarted, there is this notion of being defied, of being humiliated – of being shamed. This is what has been called “humiliated fury” – when insecurity, toxic shame and entitlement combine. That is a very dangerous emotional state.

Do behaviour change programs for men work?

Opinions – and studies - on this are mixed. Here in Australia, group therapeutic programs generally run for a few months, once a week. A recent study by Monash University found that 65% of men report that they are “violence free” or almost violence free two years after the program ended; that is a very encouraging result. There are a couple of residential therapeutic programs, like Breathing Space in Western Australia and Room4Change in Canberra, that I think are also really promising – they give men a place to live, so women and children don’t have to leave, and they follow up intensive individual and group work with months of ongoing outreach support. Indigenous men’s programs throughout the country are also some of the best I’ve seen, in terms of reconnecting men to what is meaningful.

But the model I keep coming back to is one that actually takes seriously the deep work that is required to shift men out of long-habituated behaviour. It’s a Scottish program called the Caledonian model, and it runs for two years. It combines two approaches to offending that are typically at odds with each other – the psychopathology model, which looks at what drives a specific person to abuse, and the feminist model, which looks at how men are socialised under patriarchy, and how gender inequality underpins their abusive behaviour.

To do this it gives abusers six months of one-on-one counselling to begin with, and puts them in touch with specialists who can deal with any other presenting issues: addiction, mental illness, childhood trauma, etc. After that they go into a group program with other men, where they confront issues around gendered expectations, socialisation, what actually constitutes abuse and so on. Then they go back into one-on-one counselling. Throughout that time, caseworkers are also working directly with their partners or ex-partners, and their children. It’s a fantastic model.

How can you help a friend if you think they are being coercively controlled?

When you first hear those red flags – isolation, micro-management, rule-setting, financial control – you need to respond carefully. Listen without judgement. Criticise their partner’s behaviour, but don’t condemn their partner – that may only make them defensive. Comment on the changes you’ve notice in them personally, and why you’re worried about it. Most importantly, don’t give up. The perpetrator wants their partner to be isolated – don’t enable them. Stay in contact, if you can. Remember always that your friend is the expert in their own experience, and they don’t need you to take over. Let them know that if they are thinking of leaving, they should get in touch with a domestic violence caseworker, so they can develop a safety plan. Lastly, don’t make your friendship conditional on your friend leaving – they may take months or years to leave, or they may never leave. Just let them know you will be there for them, no matter what.

The federal government says it is open to new ideas for reducing violence. Can you suggest any?

We need practical action, at the coalface, that encourages – and supports – women to seek help, keeps them and their children safe, and removes the loopholes of impunity for perpetrators.

If the government wants new ideas, here are some bold new strategies – proven to reduce domestic abuse here and internationally – that we should be seriously considering.

First, the introduction of police stations for women, which are solely dedicated to policing family violence (and provide a one-stop shop for women and children, including therapeutic, legal and financial help), have been proven to reduce domestic homicide in countries across South America, and crucially, they get women reporting earlier. Greens co-deputy Larissa Waters is calling for a trial of these women’s police stations.

Second we should look very seriously at criminalising coercive control, as has been promised by the Queensland opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, and urged by New South Wales MP Anna Watson. Criminalising coercive control is not just about locking people up. It’s about changing the paradigm on domestic abuse and requiring police to investigate and report on the entire arc of a relationship, instead of isolated incidents. Globally speaking, Scotland is seen as the world leader, as all of the harms of domestic abuse are included under the one charge.

Third, I’m also a big advocate of localised strategies, like focused deterrence and justice reinvestment, that develop close and constant collaboration between the community sector – domestic abuse, substance abuse, homelessness and so on – and the justice system. These strategies break down silos between sector groups that often work at odds with each other, they close loopholes in the justice system, and they deliver a strong message to perpetrators that unless they accept the help that is on offer, and make the rational choice to stop their offending, they will feel the full force of the law.

Last, fix the family law system. The Australian Law Reform Commission has delivered a set of reforms that will make children safe. Implement them.

What could we do today - right now - to urgently improve this situation and prevent more murders like this?

The good news is we know that change is possible.

Here are some critical changes the federal parliament could introduce now. To begin with, straightaway announce enough secure funding for the women’s refuge sector to ensure no woman or child is denied vital protection. Allocate proper funding for affordable and transitional housing so they can move into homes they can afford. Reverse funding cuts to community legal aid – we just saw $130,000 in funding removed from Victoria Legal Aid, which has cancelled the Court Network of volunteers who help family violence victims at the family law courts; community legal aid is already woefully underfunded. There is so much good work already being done – if the federal government truly cared about women and children’s safety, they’d stop making the women’s sector beg and scrape for basic funding.

In Australia, if you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au . In the UK, visit the National Domestic Abuse Helpline website here or call 0808 2000 247 . In the US visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website here , or call 1-800-799-7233 .

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What does gender equality look like today?

Date: Wednesday, 6 October 2021

Progress towards gender equality is looking bleak. But it doesn’t need to.

A new global analysis of progress on gender equality and women’s rights shows women and girls remain disproportionately affected by the socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling with disproportionately high job and livelihood losses, education disruptions and increased burdens of unpaid care work. Women’s health services, poorly funded even before the pandemic, faced major disruptions, undermining women’s sexual and reproductive health. And despite women’s central role in responding to COVID-19, including as front-line health workers, they are still largely bypassed for leadership positions they deserve.

UN Women’s latest report, together with UN DESA, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2021 presents the latest data on gender equality across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The report highlights the progress made since 2015 but also the continued alarm over the COVID-19 pandemic, its immediate effect on women’s well-being and the threat it poses to future generations.

We’re breaking down some of the findings from the report, and calling for the action needed to accelerate progress.

The pandemic is making matters worse

One and a half years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the toll on the poorest and most vulnerable people remains devastating and disproportionate. The combined impact of conflict, extreme weather events and COVID-19 has deprived women and girls of even basic needs such as food security. Without urgent action to stem rising poverty, hunger and inequality, especially in countries affected by conflict and other acute forms of crisis, millions will continue to suffer.

A global goal by global goal reality check:

Goal 1. Poverty

In 2021, extreme poverty is on the rise and progress towards its elimination has reversed. An estimated 435 million women and girls globally are living in extreme poverty.

And yet we can change this .

Over 150 million women and girls could emerge from poverty by 2030 if governments implement a comprehensive strategy to improve access to education and family planning, achieve equal wages and extend social transfers.

Goal 2. Zero hunger

The global gender gap in food security has risen dramatically during the pandemic, with more women and girls going hungry. Women’s food insecurity levels were 10 per cent higher than men’s in 2020, compared with 6 per cent higher in 2019.

This trend can be reversed , including by supporting women small-scale producers, who typically earn far less than men, through increased funding, training and land rights reforms.

Goal 3. Good health and well-being

Disruptions in essential health services due to COVID-19 are taking a tragic toll on women and girls. In the first year of the pandemic, there were an estimated 1.4 million additional unintended pregnancies in lower and middle-income countries.

We need to do better .

Response to the pandemic must include prioritizing sexual and reproductive health services, ensuring they continue to operate safely now and after the pandemic is long over. In addition, more support is needed to ensure life-saving personal protection equipment, tests, oxygen and especially vaccines are available in rich and poor countries alike as well as to vulnerable population within countries.

Goal 4. Quality education

A year and a half into the pandemic, schools remain partially or fully closed in 42 per cent of the world’s countries and territories. School closures spell lost opportunities for girls and an increased risk of violence, exploitation and early marriage .

Governments can do more to protect girls education .

Measures focused specifically on supporting girls returning to school are urgently needed, including measures focused on girls from marginalized communities who are most at risk.

Goal 5. Gender equality

The pandemic has tested and even reversed progress in expanding women’s rights and opportunities. Reports of violence against women and girls, a “shadow” pandemic to COVID-19, are increasing in many parts of the world. COVID-19 is also intensifying women’s workload at home, forcing many to leave the labour force altogether.

Building forward differently and better will hinge on placing women and girls at the centre of all aspects of response and recovery, including through gender-responsive laws, policies and budgeting.

Goal 6. Clean water and sanitation

In 2018, nearly 2.3 billion people lived in water-stressed countries. Without safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and menstrual hygiene facilities, women and girls find it harder to lead safe, productive and healthy lives.

Change is possible .

Involve those most impacted in water management processes, including women. Women’s voices are often missing in water management processes. 

Goal 7. Affordable and clean energy

Increased demand for clean energy and low-carbon solutions is driving an unprecedented transformation of the energy sector. But women are being left out. Women hold only 32 per cent of renewable energy jobs.

We can do better .

Expose girls early on to STEM education, provide training and support to women entering the energy field, close the pay gap and increase women’s leadership in the energy sector.

Goal 8. Decent work and economic growth

The number of employed women declined by 54 million in 2020 and 45 million women left the labour market altogether. Women have suffered steeper job losses than men, along with increased unpaid care burdens at home.

We must do more to support women in the workforce .

Guarantee decent work for all, introduce labour laws/reforms, removing legal barriers for married women entering the workforce, support access to affordable/quality childcare.

Goal 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The COVID-19 crisis has spurred striking achievements in medical research and innovation. Women’s contribution has been profound. But still only a little over a third of graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics field are female.

We can take action today.

 Quotas mandating that a proportion of research grants are awarded to women-led teams or teams that include women is one concrete way to support women researchers. 

Goal 10. Reduced inequalities

Limited progress for women is being eroded by the pandemic. Women facing multiple forms of discrimination, including women and girls with disabilities, migrant women, women discriminated against because of their race/ethnicity are especially affected.

Commit to end racism and discrimination in all its forms, invest in inclusive, universal, gender responsive social protection systems that support all women. 

Goal 11. Sustainable cities and communities

Globally, more than 1 billion people live in informal settlements and slums. Women and girls, often overrepresented in these densely populated areas, suffer from lack of access to basic water and sanitation, health care and transportation.

The needs of urban poor women must be prioritized .

Increase the provision of durable and adequate housing and equitable access to land; included women in urban planning and development processes.

Goal 12. Sustainable consumption and production; Goal 13. Climate action; Goal 14. Life below water; and Goal 15. Life on land

Women activists, scientists and researchers are working hard to solve the climate crisis but often without the same platforms as men to share their knowledge and skills. Only 29 per cent of featured speakers at international ocean science conferences are women.

 And yet we can change this .

Ensure women activists, scientists and researchers have equal voice, representation and access to forums where these issues are being discussed and debated. 

Goal 16. Peace, justice and strong institutions

The lack of women in decision-making limits the reach and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergency recovery efforts. In conflict-affected countries, 18.9 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, much lower than the global average of 25.6 per cent.

This is unacceptable .

It's time for women to have an equal share of power and decision-making at all levels.

Goal 17. Global partnerships for the goals

There are just 9 years left to achieve the Global Goals by 2030, and gender equality cuts across all 17 of them. With COVID-19 slowing progress on women's rights, the time to act is now.

Looking ahead

As it stands today, only one indicator under the global goal for gender equality (SDG5) is ‘close to target’: proportion of seats held by women in local government. In other areas critical to women’s empowerment, equality in time spent on unpaid care and domestic work and decision making regarding sexual and reproductive health the world is far from target. Without a bold commitment to accelerate progress, the global community will fail to achieve gender equality. Building forward differently and better will require placing women and girls at the centre of all aspects of response and recovery, including through gender-responsive laws, policies and budgeting.

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What is patriarchy? What does it mean and why is everyone talking about it?

By Eliza Anyangwe and Melissa Mahtani, CNN

Updated 0934 GMT (1734 HKT) August 3, 2023

This story is part of As Equals , CNN's ongoing series on gender inequality. Find out more about it here .

(CNN) "Barbie" has made headlines with its record performance at the US box office, bringing in $155 million over its first weekend. It's the largest opening of the year so far and the biggest-ever debut for a film directed by a woman.

What is patriarchy?

What are the characteristics of a patriarchal society.

Is patriarchy another term for gender inequality?

Is the us a patriarchy, are all societies patriarchal and have they always been, so aside from barbieland, what other societies are matriarchies.

Is patriarchy good for men?

Can a patriarchy be dismantled.

(CNN and Warner Bros., which distributed "Barbie," are both owned by Warner Bros. Discovery).

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Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature

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• Published: 15 January 2021
• Volume 19 , pages 581–614, ( 2021 )

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• Stephan Klasen 1  

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In this article, we survey the theoretical literature investigating the role of gender inequality in economic development. The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to development, particularly over the long run. Among the many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy, the role of women for fertility decisions and human capital investments is particularly emphasized in the literature. Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions.

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1 Introduction

Theories of long-run economic development have increasingly relied on two central forces: population growth and human capital accumulation. Both forces depend on decisions made primarily within households: population growth is partially determined by households’ fertility choices (e.g., Becker & Barro 1988 ), while human capital accumulation is partially dependent on parental investments in child education and health (e.g., Lucas 1988 ).

In an earlier survey of the literature linking family decisions to economic growth, Grimm ( 2003 ) laments that “[m]ost models ignore the two-sex issue. Parents are modeled as a fictive asexual human being” (p. 154). Footnote 1 Since then, however, economists are increasingly recognizing that gender plays a fundamental role in how households reproduce and care for their children. As a result, many models of economic growth are now populated with men and women. The “fictive asexual human being” is a dying species. In this article, we survey this rich new landscape in theoretical macroeconomics, reviewing, in particular, micro-founded theories where gender inequality affects economic development.

For the purpose of this survey, gender inequality is defined as any exogenously imposed difference between male and female economic agents that, by shaping their behavior, has implications for aggregate economic growth. In practice, gender inequality is typically modeled as differences between men and women in endowments, constraints, or preferences.

Many articles review the literature on gender inequality and economic growth. Footnote 2 Typically, both the theoretical and empirical literature are discussed, but, in almost all cases, the vast empirical literature receives most of the attention. In addition, some of the surveys examine both sides of the two-way relationship between gender inequality and economic growth: gender equality as a cause of economic growth and economic growth as a cause of gender equality. As a result, most surveys end up only scratching the surface of each of these distinct strands of literature.

There is, by now, a large and insightful body of micro-founded theories exploring how gender equality affects economic growth. In our view, these theories merit a separate review. Moreover, they have not received sufficient attention in empirical work, which has largely developed independently (see also Cuberes & Teignier 2014 ). By reviewing the theoretical literature, we hope to motivate empirical researchers in finding new ways of putting these theories to test. In doing so, our work complements several existing surveys. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2016 ) review the theoretical literature that incorporates families in macroeconomic models, without focusing exclusively on models that include gender inequality, as we do. Greenwood, Guner and Vandenbroucke ( 2017 ), in turn, review the theoretical literature from the opposite direction; they study how macroeconomic models can explain changes in family outcomes. Doepke, Tertilt and Voena ( 2012 ) survey the political economy of women’s rights, but without focusing explicitly on their impact on economic development.

To be precise, the scope of this survey consists of micro-founded macroeconomic models where gender inequality (in endowments, constraints, preferences) affects economic growth—either by influencing the economy’s growth rate or shaping the transition paths between multiple income equilibria. As a result, this survey does not cover several upstream fields of partial-equilibrium micro models, where gender inequality affects several intermediate growth-related outcomes, such as labor supply, education, health. Additionally, by focusing on micro-founded macro models, we do not review studies in heterodox macroeconomics, including the feminist economics tradition using structuralist, demand-driven models. For recent overviews of this literature, see Kabeer ( 2016 ) and Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ). Overall, we find very little dialogue between the neoclassical and feminist heterodox literatures. In this review, we will show that actually these two traditions have several points of contact and reach similar conclusions in many areas, albeit following distinct intellectual routes.

Although the incorporation of gender in macroeconomic models of economic growth is a recent development, the main gendered ingredients of those models are not new. They were developed in at least two strands of literature. First, since the 1960s, “new home economics” has applied the analytical toolbox of rational choice theory to decisions being made within the boundaries of the family (see, e.g., Becker 1960 , 1981 ). Footnote 3 A second literature strand, mostly based on empirical work at the micro level in developing countries, described clear patterns of gender-specific behavior within households that differed across regions of the developing world (see, e.g., Boserup 1970 ). Footnote 4 As we shall see, most of the (micro-founded) macroeconomic models reviewed in this article use several analytical mechanisms from "new home economics”; these mechanisms can typically rationalize several of the gender-specific regularities observed in early studies of developing countries. The growth theorist is then left to explore the aggregate implications for economic development.

The first models we present focus on gender discrimination in (or on access to) the labor market as a distortionary tax on talent. If talent is randomly distributed in the population, men and women are imperfect substitutes in aggregate production, and, as a consequence, gender inequality (as long as determined by non-market processes) will misallocate talent and lower incentives for female human capital formation. These theories do not rely on typical household functions such as reproduction and childrearing. Therefore, in these models, individuals are not organized into households. We review this literature in section 2 .

From there, we proceed to theories where the household is the unit of analysis. In sections 3 and 4 , we cover models that take the household as given and avoid marriage markets or other household formation institutions. This is a world where marriage (or cohabitation) is universal, consensual, and monogamous; families are nuclear, and spouses are matched randomly. The first articles in this tradition model the household as a unitary entity with joint preferences and interests, and with an efficient and centralized decision making process. Footnote 5 These theories posit how men and women specialize into different activities and how parents interact with their children. Section 3 reviews these theories. Over time, the literature has incorporated intra-household dynamics. Now, family members are allowed to have different preferences and interests; they bargain, either cooperatively or not, over family decisions. Now, the theorist recognizes power asymmetries between family members and analyzes how spouses bargain over decisions. Footnote 6 These articles are surveyed in section 4 .

The final set of articles we survey take into account how households are formed. These theories show how gender inequality can influence economic growth and long-run development through marriage market institutions and family formation patterns. Among other topics, this literature has studied ages at first marriage, relative supply of potential partners, monogamy and polygyny, arranged and consensual marriages, and divorce risk. Upon marriage, these models assume different bargaining processes between the spouses, or even unitary households, but they all recognize, in one way or another, that marriage, labor supply, consumption, and investment decisions are interdependent. We review these theories in section 5 .

Table 1 offers a schematic overview of the literature. To improve readability, the table only includes studies that we review in detail, with articles listed in order of appearance in the text. The table also abstracts from models’ extensions and sensitivity checks, and focuses exclusively on the causal pathways leading from gender inequality to economic growth.

The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to economic development, particularly over the long run. The focus on long-run supply-side models reflects a recent effort by growth theorists to incorporate two stylized facts of economic development in the last two centuries: (i) a strong positive association between gender equality and income per capita (Fig. 1 ), and (ii) a strong association between the timing of the fertility transition and income per capita (Fig. 2 ). Footnote 7 Models that endogenize a fertility transition are able to generate a transition from a Malthusian regime of stagnation to a modern regime of sustained economic growth, thus replicating the development experience of human societies in the very long run (e.g., Galor 2005a , b ; Guinnane 2011 ). In contrast, demand-driven models in the heterodox and feminist traditions have often argued that gender wage discrimination and gendered sectoral and occupational segregation can be conducive to economic growth in semi-industrialized export-oriented economies. Footnote 8 In these settings—that fit well the experience of East and Southeast Asian economies—gender wage discrimination in female-intensive export industries reduces production costs and boosts exports, profits, and investment (Blecker & Seguino 2002 ; Seguino 2010 ).

Income level and gender equality. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted). The Gender Development Index is the ratio of gender-specific Human Development Indexes: female HDI/male HDI. Data are for the year 2000. Sources: UNDP

Income level and timing of the fertility transition. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted) in 2000. Years since fertility transition are the number of years between 2000 and the onset year of the fertility decline. See Reher ( 2004 ) for details. Sources: UNDP and Reher ( 2004 )

In most long-run, supply-side models reviewed here, irrespectively of the underlying source of gender differences (e.g., biology, socialization, discrimination), the opportunity cost of women’s time in foregone labor market earnings is lower than that of men. This gender gap in the value of time affects economic growth through two main mechanisms. First, when the labor market value of women’s time is relatively low, women will be in charge of childrearing and domestic work in the family. A low value of female time means that children are cheap. Fertility will be high, and economic growth will be low, both because population growth has a direct negative impact on long-run economic performance and because human capital accumulates at a slower pace (through the quantity-quality trade-off). Second, if parents expect relatively low returns to female education, due to women specializing in domestic activities, they will invest relatively less in the education of girls. In the words of Harriet Martineau, one of the first to describe this mechanism, “as women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given” (Martineau 1837 , p. 107). In the long run, lower human capital investments (on girls) lead to slower economic development.

Overall, gender inequality can be conceptualized as a source of inefficiency, to the extent that it results in the misallocation of productive factors, such as talent or labor, and as a source of negative externalities, when it leads to higher fertility, skewed sex ratios, or lower human capital accumulation.

We conclude, in section 6 , by examining the limitations of the current literature and pointing ways forward. Among them, we suggest deeper investigations of the role of (endogenous) technological change on gender inequality, as well as greater attention to the role and interests of men in affecting gender inequality and its impact on growth.

2 Gender discrimination and misallocation of talent

Perhaps the single most intuitive argument for why gender discrimination leads to aggregate inefficiency and hampers economic growth concerns the allocation of talent. Assume that talent is randomly distributed in the population. Then, an economy that curbs women’s access to education, market employment, or certain occupations draws talent from a smaller pool than an economy without such restrictions. Gender inequality can thus be viewed as a distortionary tax on talent. Indeed, occupational choice models with heterogeneous talent (as in Roy 1951 ) show that exogenous barriers to women’s participation in the labor market or access to certain occupations reduce aggregate productivity and per capita output (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ; Hsieh, Hurst, Jones and Klenow 2019 ).

Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) represent the US economy with a model where individuals sort into occupations based on innate ability. Footnote 9 Gender and race identity, however, are a source of discrimination, with three forces preventing women and black men from choosing the occupations best fitting their comparative advantage. First, these groups face labor market discrimination, which is modeled as a tax on wages and can vary by occupation. Second, there is discrimination in human capital formation, with the costs of occupation-specific human capital being higher for certain groups. This cost penalty is a composite term encompassing discrimination or quality differentials in private or public inputs into children’s human capital. The third force are group-specific social norms that generate utility premia or penalties across occupations. Footnote 10

Assuming that the distribution of innate ability across race and gender is constant over time, Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) investigate and quantify how declines in labor market discrimination, barriers to human capital formation, and changing social norms affect aggregate output and productivity in the United States, between 1960 and 2010. Over that period, their general equilibrium model suggests that around 40 percent of growth in per capita GDP and 90 percent of growth in labor force participation can be attributed to reductions in the misallocation of talent across occupations. Declining in barriers to human capital formation account for most of these effects, followed by declining labor market discrimination. Changing social norms, on the other hand, explain only a residual share of aggregate changes.

Two main mechanisms drive these results. First, falling discrimination improves efficiency through a better match between individual ability and occupation. Second, because discrimination is higher in high-skill occupations, when discrimination decreases, high-ability women and black men invest more in human capital and supply more labor to the market. Overall, better allocation of talent, rising labor supply, and faster human capital accumulation raise aggregate growth and productivity.

Other occupational choice models assuming gender inequality in access to the labor market or certain occupations reach similar conclusions. In addition to the mechanisms in Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ), barriers to women’s work in managerial or entrepreneurial occupations reduce average talent in these positions, resulting in aggregate losses in innovation, technology adoption, and productivity (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ). The argument can be readily applied to talent misallocation across sectors (Lee 2020 ). In Lee’s model, female workers face discrimination in the non-agricultural sector. As a result, talented women end up sorting into ill-suited agricultural activities. This distortion reduces aggregate productivity in agriculture. Footnote 11

To sum up, when talent is randomly distributed in the population, barriers to women’s education, employment, or occupational choice effectively reduce the pool of talent in the economy. According to these models, dismantling these gendered barriers can have an immediate positive effect on economic growth.

3 Unitary households: parents and children

In this section, we review models built upon unitary households. A unitary household maximizes a joint utility function subject to pooled household resources. Intra-household decision making is assumed away; the household is effectively a black-box. In this class of models, gender inequality stems from a variety of sources. It is rooted in differences in physical strength (Galor & Weil 1996 ; Hiller 2014 ; Kimura & Yasui 2010 ) or health (Bloom et al. 2015 ); it is embedded in social norms (Hiller 2014 ; Lagerlöf 2003 ), labor market discrimination (Cavalcanti & Tavares 2016 ), or son preference (Zhang, Zhang and Li 1999 ). In all these models, gender inequality is a barrier to long-run economic development.

Galor & Weil ( 1996 ) model an economy with three factors of production: capital, physical labor (“brawn”), and mental labor (“brain”). Men and women are equally endowed with brains, but men have more brawn. In economies starting with very low levels of capital per worker, women fully specialize in childrearing because their opportunity cost in terms of foregone market earnings is lower than men’s. Over time, the stock of capital per worker builds up due to exogenous technological progress. The degree of complementarity between capital and mental labor is higher than that between capital and physical labor; as the economy accumulates capital per worker, the returns to brain rise relative to the returns to brawn. As a result, the relative wages of women rise, increasing the opportunity cost of childrearing. This negative substitution effect dominates the positive income effect on the demand for children and fertility falls. Footnote 12 As fertility falls, capital per worker accumulates faster creating a positive feedback loop that generates a fertility transition and kick starts a process of sustained economic growth.

The model has multiple stable equilibria. An economy starting from a low level of capital per worker is caught in a Malthusian poverty trap of high fertility, low income per capita, and low relative wages for women. In contrast, an economy starting from a sufficiently high level of capital per worker will converge to a virtuous equilibrium of low fertility, high income per capita, and high relative wages for women. Through exogenous technological progress, the economy can move from the low to the high equilibrium.

Gender inequality in labor market access or returns to brain can slow down or even prevent the escape from the Malthusian equilibrium. Wage discrimination or barriers to employment would work against the rise of relative female wages and, therefore, slow down the takeoff to modern economic growth.

The Galor and Weil model predicts how female labor supply and fertility evolve in the course of development. First, (married) women start participating in market work and only afterwards does fertility start declining. Historically, however, in the US and Western Europe, the decline in fertility occurred before women’s participation rates in the labor market started their dramatic increase. In addition, these regions experienced a mid-twentieth century baby boom which seems at odds with Galor and Weil’s theory.

Both these stylized facts can be addressed by adding home production to the modeling, as do Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ). In their article, as capital per worker accumulates, the market wage for brains rises and the economy moves through four stages of development. In the first stage, with a sufficiently low market wage, both husband and wife are fully dedicated to home production and childrearing. The household does not supply labor to the market; fertility is high and constant. In the second stage, as the wage rate increases, men enter the labor market (supplying both brawn and brain), whereas women remain fully engaged in home production and childrearing. But as men partially withdraw from home production, women have to replace them. As a result, their time cost of childrearing goes up. At this stage of development, the negative substitution effect of rising wages on fertility dominates the positive income effect. Fertility starts declining, even though women have not yet entered the labor market. The third stage arrives when men stop working in home production. There is complete specialization of labor by gender; men only do market work, and women only do home production and childrearing. As the market wage rises for men, the positive income effect becomes dominant and fertility increases; this mimics the baby-boom period of the mid-twentieth century. In the fourth and final stage, once sufficient capital is accumulated, women enter the market sector as wage-earners. The negative substitution effect of rising female opportunity costs dominates once again, and fertility declines. The economy moves from a “breadwinner model” to a “dual-earnings model”.

Another important form of gender inequality is discrimination against women in the form of lower wages, holding male and female productivity constant. Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ) estimate the aggregate effects of wage discrimination using a model-based general equilibrium representation of the US economy. In their model, women are assumed to be more productive in childrearing than men, so they pay the full time cost of this activity. In the labor market, even though men and women are equally productive, women receive only a fraction of the male wage rate—this is the wage discrimination assumption. Wage discrimination works as a tax on female labor supply. Because women work less than they would without discrimination, there is a negative level effect on per capita output. In addition, there is a second negative effect of wage discrimination operating through endogenous fertility. Since lower wages reduce women’s opportunity costs of childrearing, fertility is relatively high, and output per capita is relatively low. The authors calibrate the model to US steady state parameters and estimate large negative output costs of the gender wage gap. Reducing wage discrimination against women by 50 percent would raise per capita income by 35 percent, in the long run.

Human capital accumulation plays no role in Galor & Weil ( 1996 ), Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ), and Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ). Each person is exogenously endowed with a unit of brains. The fundamental trade-off in the these models is between the income and substitution effects of rising wages on the demand for children. When Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) adds education investments to a gender-based model, an additional trade-off emerges: that between the quantity and the quality of children.

Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) models gender inequality as a social norm: on average, men have higher human capital than women. Confronted with this fact, parents play a coordination game in which it is optimal for them to reproduce the inequality in the next generation. The reason is that parents expect the future husbands of their daughters to be, on average, relatively more educated than the future wives of their sons. Because, in the model, parents care for the total income of their children’s future households, they respond by investing relatively less in daughters’ human capital. Here, gender inequality does not arise from some intrinsic difference between men and women. It is instead the result of a coordination failure: “[i]f everyone else behaves in a discriminatory manner, it is optimal for the atomistic player to do the same” (Lagerlöf 2003 , p. 404).

With lower human capital, women earn lower wages than men and are therefore solely responsible for the time cost of childrearing. But if, exogenously, the social norm becomes more gender egalitarian over time, the gender gap in parental educational investment decreases. As better educated girls grow up and become mothers, their opportunity costs of childrearing are higher. Parents trade-off the quantity of children by their quality; fertility falls and human capital accumulates. However, rising wages have an offsetting positive income effect on fertility because parents pay a (fixed) “goods cost” per child. The goods cost is proportionally more important in poor societies than in richer ones. As a result, in poor economies, growth takes off slowly because the positive income effect offsets a large chunk of the negative substitution effect. As economies grow richer, the positive income effect vanishes (as a share of total income), and fertility declines faster. That is, growth accelerates over time even if gender equality increases only linearly.

The natural next step is to model how the social norm on gender roles evolves endogenously during the course of development. Hiller ( 2014 ) develops such a model by combining two main ingredients: a gender gap in the endowments of brawn (as in Galor & Weil 1996 ) generates a social norm, which each parental couple takes as given (as in Lagerlöf 2003 ). The social norm evolves endogenously, but slowly; it tracks the gender ratio of labor supply in the market, but with a small elasticity. When the male-female ratio in labor supply decreases, stereotypes adjust and the norm becomes less discriminatory against women.

The model generates a U-shaped relationship between economic development and female labor force participation. Footnote 13 In the preindustrial stage, there is no education and all labor activities are unskilled, i.e., produced with brawn. Because men have a comparative advantage in brawn, they supply more labor to the market than women, who specialize in home production. This gender gap in labor supply creates a social norm that favors boys over girls. Over time, exogenous skill-biased technological progress raises the relative returns to brains, inducing parents to invest in their children’s education. At the beginning, however, because of the social norm, only boys become educated. The economy accumulates human capital and grows, generating a positive income effect that, in isolation, would eventually drive up parental investments in girls’ education. Footnote 14 But endogenous social norms move in the opposite direction. When only boys receive education, the gender gap in returns to market work increases, and women withdraw to home production. As female relative labor supply in the market drops, the social norm becomes more discriminatory against women. As a result, parents want to invest relatively less in their daughters’ education.

In the end, initial conditions determine which of the forces dominates, thereby shaping long-term outcomes. If, initially, the social norm is very discriminatory, its effect is stronger than the income effect; the economy becomes trapped in an equilibrium with high gender inequality and low per capita income. If, on the other hand, social norms are relatively egalitarian to begin with, then the income effect dominates, and the economy converges to an equilibrium with gender equality and high income per capita.

In the models reviewed so far, human capital or brain endowments can be understood as combining both education and health. Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) explicitly distinguish these two dimensions. Health affects labor market earnings because sick people are out of work more often (participation effect) and are less productive per hour of work (productivity effect). Female health is assumed to be worse than male health, implying that women’s effective wages are lower than men’s. As a result, women are solely responsible for childrearing. Footnote 15

The model produces two growth regimes: a Malthusian trap with high fertility and no educational investments; and a regime of sustained growth, declining fertility, and rising educational investments. Once wages reach a certain threshold, the economy goes through a fertility transition and education expansion, taking off from the Malthusian regime to the sustained growth regime.

Female health promotes growth in both regimes, and it affects the timing of the takeoff. The healthier women are, the earlier the economy takes off. The reason is that a healthier woman earns a higher effective wage and, consequently, faces higher opportunity costs of raising children. When female health improves, the rising opportunity costs of children reduce the wage threshold at which educational investments become attractive; the fertility transition and mass education periods occur earlier.

In contrast, improved male health slows down economic growth and delays the fertility transition. When men become healthier, there is only a income effect on the demand for children, without the negative substitution effect (because male childrearing time is already zero). The policy conclusion would be to redistribute health from men to women. However, the policy would impose a static utility cost on the household. Because women’s time allocation to market work is constrained by childrearing responsibilities (whereas men work full-time), the marginal effect of health on household income is larger for men than for women. From the household’s point of view, reducing the gender gap in health produces a trade-off between short-term income maximization and long-term economic development.

In an extension of the model, the authors endogeneize health investments, while keeping the assumption that women pay the full time cost of childrearing. Because women participate less in the labor market (due to childrearing duties), it is optimal for households to invest more in male health. A health gender gap emerges from rational household behavior that takes into account how time-constraints differ by gender; assuming taste-based discrimination against girls or gender-specific preferences is not necessary.

In the models reviewed so far, parents invest in their children’s human capital for purely altruistic reasons. This is captured in the models by assuming that parents derive utility directly from the quantity and quality of children. This is the classical representation of children as durable consumption goods (e.g., Becker 1960 ). In reality, of course, parents may also have egoistic motivations for investing in child quantity and quality. A typical example is that, when parents get old and retire, they receive support from their children. The quantity and quality of children will affect the size of old-age transfers and parents internalize this in their fertility and childcare behavior. According to this view, children are best understood as investment goods.

Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) build an endogenous growth model that incorporates the old-age support mechanism in parental decisions. Another innovative element of their model is that parents can choose the gender of their children. The implicit assumption is that sex selection technologies are freely available to all parents.

At birth, there is a gender gap in human capital endowment, favoring boys over girls. Footnote 16 In adulthood, a child’s human capital depends on the initial endowment and on the parents’ human capital. In addition, the probability that a child survives to adulthood is exogenous and can differ by gender.

Parents receive old-age support from children that survive until adulthood. The more human capital children have, the more old-age support they provide to their parents. Beyond this egoistic motive, parents also enjoy the quantity and the quality of children (altruistic motive). Son preference is modeled by boys having a higher relative weight in the altruistic-component of the parental utility function. In other words, in their enjoyment of children as consumer goods, parents enjoy “consuming” a son more than “consuming” a girl. Parents who prefer sons want more boys than girls. A larger preference for sons, a higher relative survival probability of boys, and a higher human capital endowment of boys positively affect the sex ratio at birth, because, in the parents’ perspective, all these forces increase the marginal utility of boys relative to girls.

Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) show that, if human capital transmission from parents to children is efficient enough, the economy grows endogenously. When boys have a higher human capital endowment than girls, and the survival probability of sons is not smaller than the survival probability of daughters, then only sons provide old-age support. Anticipating this, parents invest more in the human capital of their sons than on the human capital of their daughters. As a result, the gender gap in human capital at birth widens endogenously.

When only boys provide old-age support, an exogenous increase in son preference harms long-run economic growth. The reason is that, when son preference increases, parents enjoy each son relatively more and demand less old-age support from him. Other things equal, parents want to “consume” more sons now and less old-age support later. Because parents want more sons, the sex ratio at birth increases; but because each son provides less old-age support, human capital investments per son decrease (such that the gender gap in human capital narrows). At the aggregate level, the pace of human capital accumulation slows down and, in the long run, economic growth is lower. Thus, an exogenous increase in son preference increases the sex ratio at birth, and reduces human capital accumulation and long-run growth (although it narrows the gender gap in education).

In summary, in growth models with unitary households, gender inequality is closely linked to the division of labor between family members. If women earn relatively less in market activities, they specialize in childrearing and home production, while men specialize in market work. And precisely due to this division of labor, the returns to female educational investments are relatively low. These household behaviors translate into higher fertility and lower human capital and thus pose a barrier to long-run development.

4 Intra-household bargaining: husbands and wives

In this section, we review models populated with non-unitary households, where decisions are the result of bargaining between the spouses. There are two broad types of bargaining processes: non-cooperative, where spouses act independently or interact in a non-cooperative game that often leads to inefficient outcomes (e.g., Doepke & Tertilt 2019 , Heath & Tan 2020 ); and cooperative, where the spouses are assumed to achieve an efficient outcome (e.g., De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ). As in the previous section, all of these non-unitary models take the household as given, thereby abstracting from marriage markets or other household formation institutions, which will be discussed separately in section 5 . When preferences differ by gender, bargaining between the spouses matters for economic growth. If women care more about child quality than men do and human capital accumulation is the main engine of growth, then empowering women leads to faster economic growth (Prettner & Strulik 2017 ). If, however, men and women have similar preferences but are imperfect substitutes in the production of household public goods, then empowering women has an ambiguous effect on economic growth (Doepke & Tertilt 2019 ).

A separate channel concerns the intergenerational transmission of human capital and woman’s role as the main caregiver of children. If the education of the mother matters more than the education of the father in the production of children’s human capital, then empowering women will be conducive to growth (Agénor 2017 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ), with the returns to education playing a crucial role in the political economy of female empowerment (Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ).

However, different dimensions of gender inequality have different growth impacts along the development process (De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ). Policies that improve gender equality across many dimensions can be particularly effective for economic growth by reaping complementarities and positive externalities (Agénor 2017 ).

The idea that women might have stronger preferences for child-related expenditures than men can be easily incorporated in a Beckerian model of fertility. The necessary assumption is that women place a higher weight on child quality (relative to child quantity) than men do. Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) build a unified growth theory model with collective households. Men and women have different preferences, but they achieve efficient cooperation based on (reduced-form) bargaining parameters. The authors study the effect of two types of preferences: (i) women are assumed to have a relative preference for child quality, while men have a relative preference for child quantity; and (ii) parents are assumed to have a relative preference for the education of sons over the education of daughters. In addition, it is assumed that the time cost of childcare borne by men cannot be above that borne by women (but it could be the same).

When women have a relative preference for child quality, increasing female empowerment speeds up the economy’s escape from a Malthusian trap of high fertility, low education, and low income per capita. When female empowerment increases (exogenously), a woman’s relative preference for child quality has a higher impact on household’s decisions. As a consequence, fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and the economy starts growing. The model also predicts that the more preferences for child quality differ between husband and wife, the more effective is female empowerment in raising long-run per capita income, because the sooner the economy escapes the Malthusian trap. This effect is not affected by whether parents have a preference for the education of boys relative to that of girls. If, however, men and women have similar preferences with respect to the quantity and quality of their children, then female empowerment does not affect the timing of the transition to the sustained growth regime.

Strulik ( 2019 ) goes one step further and endogeneizes why men seem to prefer having more children than women. The reason is a different preference for sexual activity: other things equal, men enjoy having sex more than women. Footnote 17 When cheap and effective contraception is not available, a higher male desire for sexual activity explains why men also prefer to have more children than women. In a traditional economy, where no contraception is available, fertility is high, while human capital and economic growth are low. When female bargaining power increases, couples reduce their sexual activity, fertility declines, and human capital accumulates faster. Faster human capital accumulation increases household income and, as a consequence, the demand for contraception goes up. As contraception use increases, fertility declines further. Eventually, the economy undergoes a fertility transition and moves to a modern regime with low fertility, widespread use of contraception, high human capital, and high economic growth. In the modern regime, because contraception is widely used, men’s desire for sex is decoupled from fertility. Both sex and children cost time and money. When the two are decoupled, men prefer to have more sex at the expense of the number of children. There is a reversal in the gender gap in desired fertility. When contraceptives are not available, men desire more children than women; once contraceptives are widely used, men desire fewer children than women. If women are more empowered, the transition from the traditional equilibrium to the modern equilibrium occurs faster.

Both Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) and Strulik ( 2019 ) rely on gender-specific preferences. In contrast, Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ) are able to explain gender-specific expenditure patterns without having to assume that men and women have different preferences. They set up a non-cooperative model of household decision making and ask whether more female control of household resources leads to higher child expenditures and, thus, to economic development. Footnote 18

In their model, household public goods are produced with two inputs: time and goods. Instead of a single home-produced good (as in most models), there is a continuum of household public goods whose production technologies differ. Some public goods are more time-intensive to produce, while others are more goods-intensive. Each specific public good can only be produced by one spouse—i.e., time and good inputs are not separable. Women face wage discrimination in the labor market, so their opportunity cost of time is lower than men’s. As a result, women specialize in the production of the most time-intensive household public goods (e.g., childrearing activities), while men specialize in the production of goods-intensive household public goods (e.g., housing infrastructure). Notice that, because the household is non-cooperative, there is not only a division of labor between husband and wife, but also a division of decision making, since ultimately each spouse decides how much to provide of his or her public goods.

When household resources are redistributed from men to women (i.e., from the high-wage spouse to the low-wage spouse), women provide more public goods, in relative terms. It is ambiguous, however, whether the total provision of public goods increases with the re-distributive transfer. In a classic model of gender-specific preferences, a wife increases child expenditures and her own private consumption at the expense of the husband’s private consumption. In Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ), however, the rise in child expenditures (and time-intensive public goods in general) comes at the expense of male consumption and male-provided public goods.

Parents contribute to the welfare of the next generation in two ways: via human capital investments (time-intensive, typically done by the mother) and bequests of physical capital (goods-intensive, typically done by the father). Transferring resources to women increases human capital, but reduces the stock of physical capital. The effect of such transfers on economic growth depends on whether the aggregate production function is relatively intensive in human capital or in physical capital. If aggregate production is relatively human capital intensive, then transfers to women boost economic growth; if it is relatively intensive in physical capital, then transfers to women may reduce economic growth.

There is an interesting paradox here. On the one hand, transfers to women will be growth-enhancing in economies where production is intensive in human capital. These would be more developed, knowledge intensive, service economies. On the other hand, the positive growth effect of transfers to women increases with the size of the gender wage gap, that is, decreases with female empowerment. But the more advanced, human capital intensive economies are also the ones with more female empowerment (i.e., lower gender wage gaps). In other words, in settings where human capital investments are relatively beneficial, the contribution of female empowerment to human capital accumulation is reduced. Overall, Doepke and Tertilt’s ( 2019 ) model predicts that female empowerment has at best a limited positive effect and at worst a negative effect on economic growth.

Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) argue that, in a non-cooperative household model, income transfers to women may increase female labor supply. Footnote 19 This result may appear counter-intuitive at first, because in collective household models unearned income unambiguously reduces labor supply through a negative income effect. In Heath and Tan’s model, husband and wife derive utility from leisure, consuming private goods, and consuming a household public good. The spouses decide separately on labor supply and monetary contributions to the household public good. Men and women are identical in preferences and behavior, but women have limited control over resources, with a share of their income being captured by the husband. Female control over resources (i.e., autonomy) depends positively on the wife’s relative contribution to household income. Thus, an income transfer to the wife, keeping husband unearned income constant, raises the fraction of her own income that she privately controls. This autonomy effect unambiguously increases women’s labor supply, because the wife can now reap an additional share of her wage bill. Whenever the autonomy effect dominates the (negative) income effect, female labor supply increases. The net effect will be heterogeneous over the wage distribution, but the authors show that aggregate female labor supply is always weakly larger after the income transfer.

Diebolt & Perrin ( 2013 ) assume cooperative bargaining between husband and wife, but do not rely on sex-specific preferences or differences in ability. Men and women are only distinguished by different uses of their time endowments, with females in charge of all childrearing activities. In line with this labor division, the authors further assume that only the mother’s human capital is inherited by the child at birth. On top of the inherited maternal endowment, individuals can accumulate human capital during adulthood, through schooling. The higher the initial human capital endowment, the more effective is the accumulation of human capital via schooling.

A woman’s bargaining power in marriage determines her share in total household consumption and is a function of the relative female human capital of the previous generation. An increase in the human capital of mothers relative to that of fathers has two effects. First, it raises the incentives for human capital accumulation of the next generation, because inherited maternal human capital makes schooling more effective. Second, it raises the bargaining power of the next generation of women and, because women’s consumption share increases, boosts the returns on women’s education. The second effect is not internalized in women’s time allocation decisions; it is an intergenerational externality. Thus, an exogenous increase in women’s bargaining power would promote economic growth by speeding up the accumulation of human capital across overlapping generations.

De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) contribute to the literature by clearly distinguishing between different gender gaps: a gap in the probability of survival, a wage gap, a social and institutional gap, and a gender education gap. The first three are exogenously given, while the fourth is determined within the model.

By assumption, men and women have identical preferences and ability, but women pay the full time cost of childrearing. As in a typical collective household model, bargaining power is partially determined by the spouses’ earnings potential (i.e., their levels of human capital and their wage rates). But there is also a component of bargaining power that is exogenous and captures social norms that discriminate against women—this is the social and institutional gender gap.

Husbands and wives bargain over fertility and human capital investments for their children. A standard Beckerian result emerges: parents invest relatively less in the education of girls, because girls will be more time-constrained than boys and, therefore, the female returns to education are lower in relative terms.

There are at least two regimes in the economy: a corner regime and an interior regime. The corner regime consists of maximum fertility, full gender specialization (no women in the labor market), and large gender gaps in education (no education for girls). Reducing the wage gap or the social and institutional gap does not help the economy escaping this regime. Women are not in labor force, so the wage gap is meaningless. The social and institutional gap will determine women’s share in household consumption, but does not affect fertility and growth. At this stage, the only effective instruments for escaping the corner regime are reducing the gender survival gap or reducing child mortality. Reducing the gender survival gap increases women’s lifespan, which increases their time budget and attracts them to the labor market. Reducing child mortality decreases the time costs of kids, therefore drawing women into the labor market. In both cases, fertility decreases.

In the interior regime, fertility is below the maximum, women’s labor supply is above zero, and both boys and girls receive education. In this regime, with endogenous bargaining power, reducing all gender gaps will boost economic growth. Footnote 20 Thus, depending on the growth regime, some gender gaps affect economic growth, while others do not. Accordingly, the policy-maker should tackle different dimensions of gender inequality at different stages of the development process.

Agénor ( 2017 ) presents a computable general equilibrium that includes many of the elements of gender inequality reviewed so far. An important contribution of the model is to explicitly add the government as an agent whose policies interact with family decisions and, therefore, will impact women’s time allocation. Workers produce a market good and a home good and are organized in collective households. Bargaining power depends on the spouses’ relative human capital levels. By assumption, there is gender discrimination in market wages against women. On top, mothers are exclusively responsible for home production and childrearing, which takes the form of time spent improving children’s health and education. But public investments in education and health also improve these outcomes during childhood. Likewise, public investment in public infrastructure contributes positively to home production. In particular, the ratio of public infrastructure capital stock to private capital stock is a substitute for women’s time in home production. The underlying idea is that improving sanitation, transportation, and other infrastructure reduces time spent in home production. Health status in adulthood depends on health status in childhood, which, in turn, relates positively to mother’s health, her time inputs into childrearing, and government spending. Children’s human capital depends on similar factors, except that mother’s human capital replaces her health as an input. Additionally, women are assumed to derive less utility from current consumption and more utility from children’s health relative to men. Wives are also assumed to live longer than their husbands, which further down-weights female’s emphasis on current consumption. The final gendered assumption is that mother’s time use is biased towards boys. This bias alone creates a gender gap in education and health. As adults, women’s relative lower health and human capital are translated into relative lower bargaining power in household decisions.

Agénor ( 2017 ) calibrates this rich setup for Benin, a low income country, and runs a series of policy experiments on different dimensions of gender inequality: a fall in childrearing costs, a fall in gender pay discrimination, a fall in son bias in mother’s time allocation, and an exogenous increase in female bargaining power. Footnote 21 Interestingly, despite all policies improving gender equality in separate dimensions, not all unambiguously stimulate economic growth. For example, falling childrearing costs raise savings and private investments, which are growth-enhancing, but increase fertility (as children become ‘cheaper’) and reduce maternal time investment per child, thus reducing growth. In contrast, a fall in gender pay discrimination always leads to higher growth, through higher household income that, in turn, boosts savings, tax revenues, and public spending. Higher public spending further contributes to improved health and education of the next generation. Lastly, Agénor ( 2017 ) simulates the effect of a combined policy that improves gender equality in all domains simultaneously. Due to complementarities and positive externalities across dimensions, the combined policy generates more economic growth than the sum of the individual policies. Footnote 22

In the models reviewed so far, men are passive observers of women’s empowerment. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) set up an interesting political economy model of women’s rights, where men make the decisive choice. Their model is motivated by the fact that, historically, the economic rights of women were expanded before their political rights. Because the granting of economic rights empowers women in the household, and this was done before women were allowed to participate in the political process, the relevant question is why did men willingly share their power with their wives?

Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) answer this question by arguing that men face a fundamental trade-off. On the one hand, husbands would vote for their wives to have no rights whatsoever, because husbands prefer as much intra-household bargaining power as possible. But, on the other hand, fathers would vote for their daughters to have economic rights in their future households. In addition, fathers want their children to marry highly educated spouses, and grandfathers want their grandchildren to be highly educated. By assumption, men and women have different preferences, with women having a relative preference for child quality over quantity. Accordingly, men internalize that, when women become empowered, human capital investments increase, making their children and grandchildren better-off.

Skill-biased (exogenous) technological progress that raises the returns to education over time can shift male incentives along this trade-off. When the returns to education are low, men prefer to make all decisions on their own and deny all rights to women. But once the returns to education are sufficiently high, men voluntarily share their power with women by granting them economic rights. As a result, human capital investments increase and the economy grows faster.

In summary, gender inequality in labor market earnings often implies power asymmetries within the household, with men having more bargaining power than women. If preferences differ by gender and female preferences are more conducive to development, then empowering women is beneficial for growth. When preferences are the same and the bargaining process is non-cooperative, the implications are less clear-cut, and more context-specific. If, in addition, women’s empowerment is curtailed by law (e.g., restrictions on women’s economic rights), then it is important to understand the political economy of women’s rights, in which men are crucial actors.

5 Marriage markets and household formation

Two-sex models of economic growth have largely ignored how households are formed. The marriage market is not explicitly modeled: spouses are matched randomly, marriage is universal and monogamous, and families are nuclear. In reality, however, household formation patterns vary substantially across societies, with some of these differences extending far back in history. For example, Hajnal ( 1965 , 1982 ) described a distinct household formation pattern in preindustrial Northwestern Europe (often referred to as the “European Marriage Pattern”) characterized by: (i) late ages at first marriage for women, (ii) most marriages done under individual consent, and (iii) neolocality (i.e., upon marriage, the bride and the groom leave their parental households to form a new household). In contrast, marriage systems in China and India consisted of: (i) very early female ages at first marriage, (ii) arranged marriages, and (iii) patrilocality (i.e., the bride joins the parental household of the groom).

Economic historians argue that the “European Marriage Pattern” empowered women, encouraging their participation in market activities and reducing fertility levels. While some view this as one of the deep-rooted factors explaining Northwestern Europe’s earlier takeoff to sustained economic growth (e.g., Carmichael, de Pleijt, van Zanden and De Moor 2016 ; De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hartman 2004 ), others have downplayed the long-run significance of this marriage pattern (e.g., Dennison & Ogilvie 2014 ; Ruggles 2009 ). Despite this lively debate, the topic has been largely ignored by growth theorists. The few exceptions are Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ), Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ), and Tertilt ( 2005 , 2006 ).

After exploring different marriage institutions, we zoom in on contemporary monogamous and consensual marriage and review models where gender inequality affects economic growth through marriage markets that facilitate household formation (Du & Wei 2013 ; Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ). In contrast with the previous two sections, where the household is the starting point of the analysis, the literature on marriage markets and household formation recognizes that marriage, labor supply, and investment decisions are interlinked. The analysis of these interlinkages is sometimes done with unitary households (upon marriage) (Du & Wei 2013 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ), or with non-cooperative models of individual decision-making within households (Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ).

Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) argue that the emergence of the “European Marriage Pattern” is a direct consequence of the mid-fourteen century Black Death. They set up a two-sector agricultural economy consisting of physically demanding cereal farming, and less physically demanding pastoral production. The economy is populated by many male and female peasants and by a class of idle, rent-maximizing landlords. Female peasants are heterogeneous with respect to physical strength, but, on average, are assumed to have less brawn relative to male peasants and, thus, have a comparative advantage in the pastoral sector. Both sectors use land as a production input, although the pastoral sector is more land-intensive than cereal production. All land is owned by the landlords, who can rent it out for peasant cereal farming, or use it for large-scale livestock farming, for which they hire female workers. Crucially, women can only work and earn wages in the pastoral sector as long as they are unmarried. Footnote 23 Peasant women decide when to marry and, upon marriage, a peasant couple forms a new household, where husband and wife both work on cereal farming, and have children at a given time frequency. Thus, the only contraceptive method available is delaying marriage. Because women derive utility from consumption and children, they face a trade-off between earned income and marriage.

Initially, the economy rests in a Malthusian regime, where land-labor ratios are relatively low, making the land-intensive pastoral sector unattractive and depressing relative female wages. As a result, women marry early and fertility is high. The initial regime ends in 1348–1350, when the Black Death kills between one third and half of Europe’s population, exogenously generating land abundance and, therefore, raising the relative wages of female labor in pastoral production. Women postpone marriage to reap higher wages, and fertility decreases—moving the economy to a regime of late marriages and low fertility.

In addition to late marital ages and reduced fertility, another important feature of the “European Marriage Pattern” was individual consent for marriage. Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ) study how rules of consent for marriage influence long-run economic development. In their model, marriages can be formed according to two types of consent rules: individual consent or parental consent. Under individual consent, young people are free to marry whomever they wish, while, under parental consent, their parents are in charge of arranging the marriage. Depending on the prevailing rule, the recipient of the bride-price differs. Under individual consent, a woman receives the bride-price from her husband, whereas, under parental consent, her father receives the bride-price from the father of the groom. Footnote 24 In both situations, the father of the groom owns the labor income of his son and, therefore, pays the bride-price, either directly, under parental consent, or indirectly, under individual consent. Under individual consent, the father needs to transfer resources to his son to nudge him into marrying. Thus, individual consent implies a transfer of resources from the old to the young and from men to women, relative to the rule of parental consent. Redistributing resources from the old to the young boosts long-run economic growth. Because the young have a longer timespan to extract income from their children’s labor, they invest relatively more in the human capital of the next generation. In addition, under individual consent, the reallocation of resources from men to women can have additional positive effects on growth, by increasing women’s bargaining power (see section 4 ), although this channel is not explicitly modeled in Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ).

Tertilt ( 2005 ) explores the effects of polygyny on long-run development through its impact on savings and fertility. In her model, parental consent applies to women, while individual consent applies to men. There is a competitive marriage market where fathers sell their daughters and men buy their wives. As each man is allowed (and wants) to marry several wives, a positive bride-price emerges in equilibrium. Footnote 25 Upon marriage, the reproductive rights of the bride are transferred from her father to her husband, who makes all fertility decisions on his own and, in turn, owns the reproductive rights of his daughters. From a father’s perspective, daughters are investments goods; they can be sold in the marriage market, at any time. This feature generates additional demand for daughters, which increases overall fertility, and reduces the incentives to save, which decreases the stock of physical capital. Under monogamy, in contrast, the equilibrium bride-price is negative (i.e., a dowry). The reason is that maintaining unmarried daughters is costly for their fathers, so they are better-off paying a (small enough) dowry to their future husbands. In this setting, the economic returns to daughters are lower and, consequently, so is the demand for children. Fertility decreases and savings increase. Thus, moving from polygny to monogamy lowers population growth and raises the capital stock in the long run, which translates into higher output per capita in the steady state.

Instead of enforcing monogamy in a traditionally polygynous setting, an alternative policy is to transfer marriage consent from fathers to daughters. Tertilt ( 2006 ) shows that when individual consent is extended to daughters, such that fathers do not receive the bride-price anymore, the consequences are qualitatively similar to a ban on polygyny. If fathers stop receiving the bride-price, they save more physical capital. In the long run, per capita output is higher when consent is transferred to daughters.

Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) develops the first non-cooperative model where (monogamous) marriage, home production, and labor supply decisions are interdependent. Footnote 26 Spouses are modeled as separate agents deciding over production and consumption. Marriage becomes an implicit contract for ‘work-in-household’ (WiHo), defined as “an activity that benefits another household member [typically a spouse] who could potentially compensate the individual for these efforts” (Grossbard 2015 , p. 21). Footnote 27 In particular, each spouse decides how much labor to supply to market work and WiHo, and how much labor to demand from the other spouse for WiHo. Through this lens, spousal decisions over the intra-marriage distribution of consumption and WiHo are akin to well-known principal-agent problems faced between firms and workers. In the marriage market equilibrium, a spouse benefiting from WiHo (the principal) must compensate the spouse producing it (the agent) via intra-household transfers (of goods or leisure). Footnote 28 Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) and Grossbard ( 2015 ) show that, under these conditions, the ratio of men to women (i.e., the sex ratio) in the marriage market is inversely related to female labor supply to the market. The reason is that, as the pool of potential wives shrinks, prospective husbands have to increase compensation for female WiHo. From the potential wife’s point of view, as the equilibrium price for her WiHo increases, market work becomes less attractive. Conversely, when sex ratios are lower, female labor supply outside the home increases. Although the model does not explicit derive growth implications, the relative increase in female labor supply is expected to be beneficial for economic growth, as argued by many of the theories reviewed so far.

In an extension of this framework, Grossbard & Pereira ( 2015 ) analyze how sex ratios affect gendered savings over the marital life-cycle. Assuming that women supply a disproportionate amount of labor for WiHo (due, for example, to traditional gender norms), the authors show that men and women will have very distinct saving trajectories. A higher sex ratio increases savings by single men, who anticipate higher compensation transfers for their wives’ WiHo, whereas it decreases savings by single women, who anticipate receiving those transfers upon marriage. But the pattern flips after marriage: precautionary savings raise among married women, because the possibility of marriage dissolution entails a loss of income from WiHo. The opposite effect happens for married men: marriage dissolution would imply less expenditures in the future. The higher the sex ratio, the higher will be the equilibrium compensation paid by husbands for their wives’ WiHo. Therefore, the sex ratio will positively affect savings among single men and married women, but negatively affect savings among single women and married men. The net effect on the aggregate savings rate and on economic growth will depend on the relative size of these demographic groups.

In a related article, Du & Wei ( 2013 ) propose a model where higher sex ratios worsen marriage markets prospects for young men and their families, who react by increasing savings. Women in turn reduce savings. However, because sex ratios shift the composition of the population in favor of men (high saving type) relative to women (low saving type) and men save additionally to compensate for women’s dis-saving, aggregate savings increase unambiguously with sex ratios.

In Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ), female education is, in part, demanded as insurance against divorce risk. The reason is that divorce laws often protect spouses’ future labor market earnings (i.e., returns to human capital), but force them to share their physical assets. Because, in the model, women are more likely to gain custody of their children after divorce, they face higher costs from divorce relative to their husbands. Therefore, the higher the risk of divorce, the more women invest in human capital, as insurance against a future vulnerable economic position. Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ) shows that, over time, divorce risk has increased (for example, consensual divorce became replaced by unilateral divorce in most US states in the 1970s). In the aggregate, higher divorce risk boosted female education and female labor supply.

In summary, the rules regulating marriage and household formation carry relevant theoretical consequences for economic development. While the few studies on this topic have focused on age at marriage, consent rules and polygyny, and the interaction between sex ratios, marriage, and labor supply, other features of the marriage market remain largely unexplored (Borella, De Nardi and Yang 2018 ). Growth theorists would benefit from further incorporating theories of household formation in gendered macro models. Footnote 29

6 Conclusion

In this article, we surveyed micro-founded theories linking gender inequality to economic development. This literature offers many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy (see Table 1 ). Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions. We discuss them below and highlight lessons for policy.

The first direction for future research concerns control over fertility. In models where fertility is endogenous, households are always able to achieve their preferred number of children (see Strulik 2019 , for an exception). The implicit assumption is that there is a free and infallible method of fertility control available for all households—a view rejected by most demographers. The gap between desired fertility and achieved fertility can be endogeneized at three levels. First, at the societal level, the diffusion of particular contraceptive methods may be influenced by cultural and religious norms. Second, at the household level, fertility control may be object of non-cooperative bargaining between the spouses, in particular, for contraceptive methods that only women perfectly observe (Ashraf, Field and Lee 2014 ; Doepke & Kindermann 2019 ). More generally, the role of asymmetric information within the household is not yet explored (Walther 2017 ). Third, if parents have preferences over the gender composition of their offspring, fertility is better modeled as a sequential and uncertain process, where household size is likely endogenous to the sex of the last born child (Hazan & Zoabi 2015 ).

A second direction worth exploring concerns gender inequality in a historical perspective. In models with multiple equilibria, an economy’s path is often determined by its initial level of gender equality. Therefore, it would be useful to develop theories explaining why initial conditions varied across societies. In particular, there is a large literature on economic and demographic history documenting how systems of marriage and household formation differed substantially across preindustrial societies (e.g., De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hajnal 1965 , 1982 ; Hartman 2004 ; Ruggles 2009 ). In our view, more theoretical work is needed to explain both the origins and the consequences of these historical systems.

A third avenue for future research concerns the role of technological change. In several models, technological change is the exogenous force that ultimately erodes gender gaps in education or labor supply (e.g., Bloom et al. 2015 ; Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ; Galor & Weil 1996 ). For that to happen, technological progress is assumed to be skill-biased, thus raising the returns to education—or, in other words, favoring brain over brawn. As such, new technologies make male advantage in physical strength ever more irrelevant, while making female time spent on childrearing and housework ever more expensive. Moreover, recent technological progress increased the efficiency of domestic activities, thereby relaxing women’s time constraints (e.g., Cavalcanti & Tavares 2008 ; Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu 2005 ). These mechanisms are plausible, but other aspects of technological change need not be equally favorable for women. In many countries, for example, the booming science, technology, and engineering sectors tend to be particularly male-intensive. And Tejani & Milberg ( 2016 ) provide evidence for developing countries that as manufacturing industries become more capital intensive, their female employment share decreases.

Even if current technological progress is assumed to weaken gender gaps, historically, technology may have played exactly the opposite role. If technology today is more complementary to brain, in the past it could have been more complementary to brawn. An example is the plow that, relative to alternative technologies for field preparation (e.g., hoe, digging stick), requires upper body strength, on which men have a comparative advantage over women (Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn 2013 ; Boserup 1970 ). Another, even more striking example, is the invention of agriculture itself—the Neolithic Revolution. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture involved a relative loss of status for women (Dyble et al. 2015 ; Hansen, Jensen and Skovsgaard 2015 ). One explanation is that property rights on land were captured by men, who had an advantage on physical strength and, consequently, on physical violence. Thus, in the long view of human history, technological change appears to have shifted from being male-biased towards being female-biased. Endogeneizing technological progress and its interaction with gender inequality is a promising avenue for future research.

Fourth, open economy issues are still almost entirely absent. An exception is Rees & Riezman ( 2012 ), who model the effect of globalization on economic growth. Whether global capital flows generate jobs primarily in female or male intensive sectors matters for long-run growth. If globalization creates job opportunities for women, their bargaining power increases and households trade off child quantity by child quality. Fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and long-run per capita output is high. If, on the other hand, globalization creates jobs for men, their intra-household power increases; fertility increases, human capital decreases, and steady-state income per capita is low. The literature would benefit from engaging with open economy demand-driven models of the feminist tradition, such as Blecker & Seguino ( 2002 ), Seguino ( 2010 ). Other fruitful avenues for future research on open economy macro concern gender analysis of global value chains (Barrientos 2019 ), gendered patterns of international migration (Cortes 2015 ; Cortes & Tessada 2011 ), and the diffusion of gender norms through globalization (Beine, Docquier and Schiff 2013 ; Klasen 2020 ; Tuccio & Wahba 2018 ).

A final point concerns the role of men in this literature. In most theoretical models, gender inequality is not the result of an active male project that seeks the domination of women. Instead, inequality emerges as a rational best response to some underlying gender gap in endowments or constraints. Then, as the underlying gap becomes less relevant—for example, due to skill-biased technological change—, men passively relinquish their power (see Doepke & Tertilt 2009 , for an exception). There is never a male backlash against the short-term power loss that necessarily comes with female empowerment. In reality, it is more likely that men actively oppose losing power and resources towards women (Folbre 2020 ; Kabeer 2016 ; Klasen 2020 ). This possibility has not yet been explored in formal models, even though it could threaten the typical virtuous cycle between gender equality and growth. If men are forward-looking, and the short-run losses outweigh the dynamic gains from higher growth, they might ensure that women never get empowered to begin with. Power asymmetries tend to be sticky, because “any group that is able to claim a disproportionate share of the gains from cooperation can develop social institutions to fortify their position” (Folbre 2020 , p. 199). For example, Eswaran & Malhotra ( 2011 ) set up a household decision model where men use domestic violence against their wives as a tool to enhance male bargaining power. Thus, future theories should recognize more often that men have a vested interest on the process of female empowerment.

More generally, policymakers should pay attention to the possibility of a male backlash as an unintended consequence of female empowerment policies (Erten & Keskin 2018 ; Eswaran & Malhotra 2011 ). Likewise, whereas most theories reviewed here link lower fertility to higher economic growth, the relationship is non-monotonic. Fertility levels below the replacement rate will eventually generate aggregate social costs in the form of smaller future workforces, rapidly ageing societies, and increased pressure on welfare systems, to name a few.

Many theories presented in this survey make another important practical point: public policies should recognize that gender gaps in separate dimensions complement and reinforce one another and, therefore, have to be dealt with simultaneously. A naïve policy targeting a single gap in isolation is unlikely to have substantial growth effects in the short run. Typically, inequalities in separate dimensions are not independent from each other (Agénor 2017 ; Bandiera & Does 2013 ; Duflo 2012 ; Kabeer 2016 ). For example, if credit-constrained women face weak property rights, are unable to access certain markets, and have mobility and time constraints, then the marginal return to capital may nevertheless be larger for men. Similarly, the return to male education may well be above the female return if demand for female labor is low or concentrated in sectors with low productivity. In sum, “the fact that women face multiple constraints means that relaxing just one may not improve outcomes” (Duflo 2012 , p. 1076).

Promising policy directions that would benefit from further macroeconomic research are the role of public investments in physical infrastructure and care provision (Agénor 2017 ; Braunstein, Bouhia and Seguino 2020 ), gender-based taxation (Guner, Kaygusuz and Ventura 2012 ; Meier & Rainer 2015 ), and linkages between gender equality and pro-environmental agendas (Matsumoto 2014 ).

See Echevarria & Moe ( 2000 ) for a similar complaint that “theories of economic growth and development have consistently neglected to include gender as a variable” (p. 77).

A non-exhaustive list includes Bandiera & Does ( 2013 ), Braunstein ( 2013 ), Cuberes & Teignier ( 2014 ), Duflo ( 2012 ), Kabeer ( 2016 ), Kabeer & Natali ( 2013 ), Klasen ( 2018 ), Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ), Sinha et al. ( 2007 ), Stotsky ( 2006 ), World Bank ( 2001 , 2011 ).

For an in-depth history of “new home economics” see Grossbard-Shechtman ( 2001 ) and Grossbard ( 2010 , 2011 ).

For recent empirical reviews see Duflo ( 2012 ) and Doss ( 2013 ).

Although the unitary approach has being rejected on theoretical (e.g., Echevarria & Moe 2000 ; Folbre 1986 ; Knowles 2013 ; Sen 1989 ) and empirical grounds (e.g., Doss 2013 ; Duflo 2003 ; Lundberg et al. 1997 ), these early models are foundational to the subsequent literature. As it turns out, some of the key mechanisms survive in non-unitary theories of the household.

For nice conceptual perspectives on conflict and cooperation in households see Sen ( 1989 ), Grossbard ( 2011 ), and Folbre ( 2020 ).

The relationship depicted in Fig. 1 is robust to using other composite measures of gender equality (e.g., UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index or OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) (see Branisa, Klasen and Ziegler 2013 )), and other years besides 2000. In Fig. 2 , the linear prediction explains 56 percent of the cross-country variation in per capita income.

See Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ) for a review of this literature.

The model allows for sorting on ability (“some people are better teachers”) or sorting on occupation-specific preferences (“others derive more utility from working as a teacher”) (Hsieh et al. 2019 , p. 1441). Here, we restrict our presentation to the case where sorting occurs primarily on ability. The authors find little empirical support for sorting on preferences.

Because the home sector is treated as any other occupation, the model can capture, in a reduced-form fashion, social norms on women’s labor force participation. For example, a social norm on traditional gender roles can be represented as a utility premium obtained by all women working on the home sector.

Note, however, that discrimination against women raises productivity in the non-agricultural sector. The reason is that the few women who end up working outside agriculture are positively selected on talent. Lee ( 2020 ) shows that this countervailing effect is modest and dominated by the loss of productivity in agriculture.

This is not the classic Beckerian quantity-quality trade-off because parents cannot invest in the quality of their children. Instead, the mechanism is built by assumption in the household’s utility function. When women’s wages increase relative to male wages, the substitution effect dominates the income effect.

The hypothesis that female labor force participation and economic development have a U-shaped relationship—known as the feminization-U hypothesis—goes back to Boserup ( 1970 ). See also Goldin ( 1995 ). Recently, Gaddis & Klasen ( 2014 ) find only limited empirical support for the feminization-U.

The model does not consider fertility decisions. Parents derive utility from their children’s human capital (social status utility). When household income increases, parents want to “consume” more social status by investing in their children’s education—this is the positive income effect.

Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) build their main model with unitary households, but show that the key conclusions are robust to a collective representation of the household.

This assumption does not necessarily mean that boys are more talented than girls. It can be also interpreted as a reduced-form way of capturing labor market discrimination against women.

Many empirical studies are in line with this assumption, which is rooted in evolutionary psychology. See Strulik ( 2019 ) for references. There are several other evolutionary arguments for men wanting more children (including with different women). See, among others, Mulder & Rauch ( 2009 ), Penn & Smith ( 2007 ), von Rueden & Jaeggi ( 2016 ). However, for a different view, see Fine ( 2017 ).

They do not model fertility decisions. So there is no quantity-quality trade-off.

In their empirical application, Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) study the Hindu Succession Act, which, through improved female inheritance rights, increased the lifetime unearned income of Indian women. Other policies consistent with the model are, for example, unconditional cash transfers to women.

De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) show this with numerical simulations, because the interior regime becomes analytically intractable.

We focus on gender-related policies in our presentation, but the article simulates additional public policies.

Agénor and Agénor ( 2014 ) develop a similar model, but with unitary households, and Agénor and Canuto ( 2015 ) have a similar model of collective households for Brazil, where adult women can also invest time in human capital formation. Since public infrastructure substitutes for women’s time in home production, more (or better) infrastructure can free up time for female human capital accumulation and, thus, endogenously increase wives’ bargaining power.

Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) justify this assumption arguing that, in England, employment contracts for farm servants working in animal husbandry were conditional on celibacy. However, see Edwards & Ogilvie ( 2018 ) for a critique of this assumption.

The bride-price under individual consent need not be paid explicitly as a lump-sum transfer. It could, instead, be paid to the bride implicitly in the form of higher lifetime consumption.

In Tertilt ( 2005 ), all men are similar (except in age). Widespread polygyny is possible because older men marry younger women and population growth is high. This setup reflects stylized facts for Sub-Saharan Africa. It differs from models that assume male heterogeneity in endowments, where polygyny emerges because a rich male elite owns several wives, while poor men remain single (e.g., Gould, Moav and Simhon 2008 ; Lagerlöf 2005 , 2010 ).

See Grossbard ( 2015 ) for more details and extensions of this model and Grossbard ( 2018 ) for a non-technical overview of the related literature. For an earlier application, see Grossbard ( 1976 ).

The concept of WiHo is closely related but not equivalent to the ‘black-box’ term home production used by much of the literature. It also relates to feminist perspectives on care and social reproduction labor (c.f. Folbre 1994 ).

In the general setup, the model need not lead to a corner solution where only one spouse specializes in WiHo.

For promising approaches, see, among others, Cubeddu and Ríos-Rull ( 2003 ), Goussé, Jacquemet and Robin ( 2017 ), Greenwood, Guner, Kocharkov and Santos ( 2016 ), Guler, Guvenen and Violante ( 2012 ), Walther ( 2017 ), Wong ( 2016 ).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Editor, Shoshana Grossbard, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) initiative, a multi-funder partnership between the UK’s Department for International Development, the Hewlett Foundation and the International Development Research Centre. All views expressed here and remaining errors are our own. Manuel dedicates this article to Stephan Klasen, in loving memory.

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Santos Silva, M., Klasen, S. Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature. Rev Econ Household 19 , 581–614 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-020-09535-6

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What Is Patriarchy? Gender Inequality And Mental Health

The relationship between patriarchy—a system in which men hold most of the power and authority in society—and mental health can be complex. In a patriarchal society, men and their associated traits are often valued more than women and their associated traits, which can have a range of adverse effects on people of all genders, including men. It is a system that creates and perpetuates gender and intersectional inequalities. For this reason, all individuals can play a part in learning how patriarchy manifests, its impacts on an individual and global scale, and the mental health implications of gender inequality.

What is patriarchy?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines patriarchy as “a society in which the oldest male is the leader of the family or a society controlled by men in which they use their power relations to their own advantage.” In other words, patriarchy is a social system characterized by male power and dominance. 

The extent to which patriarchal social structures exist today can vary based on the society. Historically, patriarchal systems in human societies have prevailed in many countries and cultures. However, in recent decades, progress has been made to varying extents due to ongoing efforts to promote gender equality and end women’s oppression. Still, patriarchal relations and dynamics exist to varying degrees in different communities, cultures, and settings. 

Patriarchal structures can take various forms depending on the location and context. For instance, in some settings, women may continue to experience systemic inequalities like limited access to reproductive healthcare, employment, or education. In others, inequalities may be more social, such as bias or prejudice. 

Examples of the patriarchy’s effects on women worldwide can include:

• Limited access to reproductive healthcare
• Inequalities in employment 
• Lack of access to education
• Differences in salary compared to male peers (also known as the “wage gap”)
• Gender-based violence, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, or the use of force to otherwise oppress women 
• Lack of political representation or inability to participate in politics

If you are facing or witnessing abuse of any kind, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 for support. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788. You can also use the online chat . 

Current patriarchal effects

The extent to which patriarchal structures and ideas still dominate can vary, with some societies making attempts to bridge historical gender gaps and promote gender equality. However, not all women may experience the effects of patriarchy in the same way, and patriarchal ideas and cultural norms may remain in places where women are considered legally equal to men. As a result, these differences may contribute to ongoing forms of prejudice and discrimination. 

Often embedded in the patriarchy is the false notion of a “gender and sex binary”—i.e., the idea that gender is binary and follows directly from biological sex. Researchers have argued that the gender and sex binary “supports the patriarchy” by sustaining “a gendered system of power imbalance that oppresses women (and other marginalized groups) as a group and encourages harmful behaviors in men.”

While some of the discussion around the patriarchy is framed in these binary “men vs. women” terms, patriarchal systems can involve the systematic oppression of women, gender minorities, and a range of other marginalized groups.  

Patriarchal culture: Mental health considerations

Patriarchal social systems can have a range of potential mental health effects on people of all genders. These effects can vary depending on the individual and the type of inequality they are experiencing. Examples of possible mental health challenges related to the patriarchy may include the following. 

Recent research has found evidence of a relationship between high gender inequality and a higher ratio of depressive disorder rates for people of all genders.  

Reduced self-esteem

Women and gender minorities may experience low self-esteem due to sexism and related dynamics on both a societal scale and in more personal interactions. However, men may also feel confined and negatively impacted by patriarchal views around masculinity—for example, believing they aren’t “manly” enough may contribute to low self-esteem. 

Experiencing inequality, bias, stigma, discrimination, and oppression can lead to high levels of stress. Stress can sometimes lead to long-term mental and physical health complications, such as inflammation, chronic pain, and headaches. 

Some women may experience prolonged, high levels of stress leading to burnout when juggling a career and taking on most household duties (sometimes called the “second shift”). Women are often expected to take on emotional, physical, and domestic responsibilities in relationships, which can lead to severe stress. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder

After experiencing gender-based violence, some women and gender minorities may experience trauma-related mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

The mental health of men and boys

Although these possible effects may come because of attempts to oppress or exploit women and gender minorities, the patriarchy can have mental health effects on people of all genders, including men. Patriarchal gender expectations—for example, that men should “man up,” avoid expressing their emotions, or act stereotypically masculine—may contribute to social isolation, stress, or depression among men. 

Getting support

If you are experiencing any challenges connected to inequality and patriarchal systems, various resources are available to navigate them, which may help support mental health and well-being. For instance, support groups may provide an opportunity for those affected by the patriarchy to connect with others over shared experiences in a safe, non-judgmental space. 

For individuals experiencing gender inequality or discrimination, community resources and advocacy groups may be a helpful source of guidance, support, and assistance. For those experiencing gender-based violence, hotlines like the National Domestic Violence Hotline can be a source of immediate help and assistance.

Alternative support options 

For those experiencing mental health challenges related to the patriarchy, therapy can be another helpful resource. Speaking with a licensed therapist can be a way to express one’s emotions openly, develop strategies for supporting one’s mental health, or address mental health conditions that may have arisen due to patriarchal structures. 

Those navigating the adverse effects of gender inequality and other related dynamics in their daily lives may find that concerns arise at unpredictable, unexpected times, and it may be helpful to reach out to a professional in those moments. In these cases, online therapy through platforms like BetterHelp may be a beneficial option, offering the ability to use in-app messaging to reach out to your therapist anytime and receive a response when they are available.  

A range of studies have found online therapy to be an effective alternative to in-person treatment for a range of concerns, including mental health conditions like depression. For instance, a 2018 meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) for depression and anxiety disorders, and it found that iCBT and face-to-face CBT were equally effective. 

For those experiencing patriarchy-related mental health challenges, resources such as hotlines, support groups, community organizations, and therapy—either in-person or online—may be helpful for supporting mental health and well-being.

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PATRIARCHY AND GENDER INEQUALITY IN NIGERIA: THE WAY FORWARD

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Gender Inequality Essay

500+ words essay on gender inequality.

For many years, the dominant gender has been men while women were the minority. It was mostly because men earned the money and women looked after the house and children. Similarly, they didn’t have any rights as well. However, as time passed by, things started changing slowly. Nonetheless, they are far from perfect. Gender inequality remains a serious issue in today’s time. Thus, this gender inequality essay will highlight its impact and how we can fight against it.

  About Gender Inequality Essay

Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Impact of Gender Inequality

The biggest problem we’re facing is that a lot of people still see gender inequality as a women’s issue. However, by gender, we refer to all genders including male, female, transgender and others.

When we empower all genders especially the marginalized ones, they can lead their lives freely. Moreover, gender inequality results in not letting people speak their minds. Ultimately, it hampers their future and compromises it.

History is proof that fighting gender inequality has resulted in stable and safe societies. Due to gender inequality, we have a gender pay gap. Similarly, it also exposes certain genders to violence and discrimination.

In addition, they also get objectified and receive socioeconomic inequality. All of this ultimately results in severe anxiety, depression and even low self-esteem. Therefore, we must all recognize that gender inequality harms genders of all kinds. We must work collectively to stop these long-lasting consequences and this gender inequality essay will tell you how.

How to Fight Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is an old-age issue that won’t resolve within a few days. Similarly, achieving the goal of equality is also not going to be an easy one. We must start by breaking it down and allow it time to go away.

Firstly, we must focus on eradicating this problem through education. In other words, we must teach our young ones to counter gender stereotypes from their childhood.

Similarly, it is essential to ensure that they hold on to the very same beliefs till they turn old. We must show them how sports are not gender-biased.

Further, we must promote equality in the fields of labour. For instance, some people believe that women cannot do certain jobs like men. However, that is not the case. We can also get celebrities on board to promote and implant the idea of equality in people’s brains.

All in all, humanity needs men and women to continue. Thus, inequality will get us nowhere. To conclude the gender inequality essay, we need to get rid of the old-age traditions and mentality. We must teach everyone, especially the boys all about equality and respect. It requires quite a lot of work but it is possible. We can work together and achieve equal respect and opportunities for all genders alike.

FAQ of Gender Inequality Essay

Question 1: What is gender inequality?

Answer 1: Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Question 2: How does gender inequality impact us?

Answer 2:  The gender inequality essay tells us that gender inequality impacts us badly. It takes away opportunities from deserving people. Moreover, it results in discriminatory behaviour towards people of a certain gender. Finally, it also puts people of a certain gender in dangerous situations.

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Challenging patriarchy: gender equality and humanitarian principles

In recent decades, the issue of gender has attracted increasing attention from humanitarian actors. This has seen a growing focus on the specific needs and vulnerabilities of groups marginalised by predominant gender norms and historically overlooked by humanitarian actors. It has also seen the mainstreaming of gender as a tool to assess the gendered nature and impact of conflict, as well as the gendered implications of humanitarian programming. Finally, it has seen the emergence of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) as a humanitarian sub-sector . [1]  This emergent spotlight on gender issues has been accompanied by commitments to ‘ combat structural and behavioural barriers to gender equality ’ in humanitarian settings.

Despite these advances, it seems more needs to be done to challenge gender inequalities. This is reflected in the consistently low percentage of humanitarian funding allocated to programmes contributing to gender equality – only 4% of the total aid funding between 2015-2016, according to OECD . Unsurprisingly, the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit ‘shared frustration that greater progress on gender equality humanitarian programming had not been made yet ’.

Definitions

In this article, I borrow Cynthia Enloe ’s definition of patriarchy, understood as ‘the structural and ideological system that perpetuates the privileging of [hegemonic] masculinit[ies]’. [2] Thus, it is a hegemonic system of power relations based on gender norms, which establish the expected roles of men and women. In this system, women and girls [3] have historically, and overwhelmingly, been oppressed, exploited or otherwise disadvantaged. So too have groups who do not conform with gender norms, the predominant binary approach to gender and sexuality, and/or heteronormative expectations. These include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations, as well as certain groups of men and boys. [4]

Also central to this article is the concept of gender equality. While UN Women defines it as ‘equality between women and men’, I expand this definition to encompass equality between all people, regardless of their gender, their sexuality, and the degree to which they conform with gender norms and the patriarchal binary approach to gender and sexuality. In essence, gender equality emphasises the gendered aspects of inequality and the groups generally marginalised by patriarchy. Thus, the promotion of gender equality inevitably challenges patriarchy insofar as it fights against gender inequalities. The latter are enabled by the patriarchal system while also contributing to perpetuating it.

Humanitarian action focused on promoting gender equality can be characterised as gender-transformative . Examples of gender-transformative programming include women’s empowerment through livelihoods, for example in Syria , or the promotion of women’s participation in decision-making processes, as done by Oxfam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo . It can also involve activities specifically targeting men, such as raising awareness of the fact that sexual violence can also occur to men and boys, as done by the Refugee Law Project in Uganda .

Why challenge patriarchy?

As I have argued previously , gender-transformative action is essential to a resilience-focused humanitarianism, to the extent that it empowers groups marginalised by patriarchy to have a bigger role in local responses. Gender-transformative action can also be an answer to requests from local populations. As research by Oxfam reveals, local women’s rights actors in various countries have shown dissatisfaction with lack of recognition and lack of prioritisation of gender equality in humanitarian action.

Another good reason for challenging patriarchy lies in the fact that gender inequality underpins and intensifies risks and vulnerabilities in areas of key concern to humanitarian actors. These include, notably, gender-based violence , but also limited access, especially by women and girls, to education, healthcare, agricultural lands and water points, safe livelihoods opportunities and adequate shelter . In times of conflict, these gender inequalities can be exacerbated – which has been acknowledged by practitioners , donors and scholars .

Practitioners , donors and scholars also agree that conflict can create a window of opportunity for promoting gender equality, which can be supported by humanitarian actors. As Oxfam observes, while conflicts ‘create risks for women and can exacerbate inequalities, the collapse of political and social order can paradoxically create opportunities for change.’ Changes in the power dynamics in the household, the loosening up of the division of labour, and the strengthening of women civil society organizations can ‘provide opportunities for more fundamental issues to be addressed’.

Therefore, gender equality can contribute to more resilient, locally-driven, effective humanitarian action. At the same time, humanitarians may be uniquely placed to support the promotion of gender equality in times of conflict. Yet, many practitioners hesitate – or even refuse – to include gender equality in their mandates and activities.

A matter of principle

As Elisabeth Olivius observes, ‘[n]ot long ago, the promotion of gender equality was controversial in the UNHCR, as interventions in matters of culture were considered to be at odds with humanitarian principles’. The ICRC has also expressed similar positioning. Up until its 2011 edition, the organization’s Annual Reports included a general disclaimer that ‘in accordance with its principles of neutrality and impartiality, the ICRC does not claim to reform gender relations’.

Thus, the hesitation in addressing gendered consequences of conflict seems to be linked, to some extent, [5] to a perceived incompatibility between gender and humanitarian principles, especially neutrality. Nonetheless, I would argue that this perception is misguided.

Neutrality can be defined as ‘not tak[ing] sides in hostilities or engag[ing] at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature ’. As Jean Pictet explains, this principle is composed of military neutrality and ideological neutrality. Evidently, gender-transformative humanitarian action cannot be understood to be in violation of military neutrality, for the power struggle derived of unequal gender relations is not of a military nature. Nonetheless, gender-transformative action can be seen as a violation of ideological neutrality, as it seeks to address the inequalities created by an ‘ideological system’ – patriarchy.

This reasoning, however, overlooks the fact that patriarchy is not an ideological system underpinning armed conflict; rather, in most (if not all) societies patriarchal dynamics are at play before, during and after conflict. It further ignores that, humanitarian actors also operate in, and are influenced by the norms of, a patriarchal world. In such circumstances, without continuous, conscious efforts to challenge patriarchy, humanitarian action may, even inadvertently, contribute to perpetuating it. An example of this is the common depiction of women as ‘intrinsically weak and vulnerable ’ in humanitarian messaging and practice.

Moreover, such a conceptualisation of neutrality is patriarchal in itself, for it is based on a male-centric understanding of the world, accidentally unaware or intentionally dismissive of gender inequalities that privilege hegemonic masculinities. As Lori Handrahan puts it, ‘[w]hile it can take a war for personal security to become an issue in most men’s lives, insecurity is all too common for women, irrespective of war. Female insecurity is so prevalent that it becomes invisible and accepted as the norm’. This can be said not only of women’s insecurity, but of other gender-based consequences of patriarchy as well, to both women and men.

Thus, attempting to be neutral vis-à-vis the existing gender relations in fact violates the principle of humanitarian neutrality. As Desmond Tutu famously said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’.

Humanity can be translated, inter alia, as an endeavour to ensure respect for the human being, including ‘[their] life, liberty and happiness’. However, the gender inequalities inherent in the prevailing patriarchal system are a constant obstacle to ensuring the respect of those whom the system seeks to marginalise. Therefore, the full application of the principle humanity not only allows for, but requires the promotion of gender equality, essential to the full respect for all human beings.

In line with the above, gender equality can be understood as a tenet of principled humanitarian action, contained in the principle of humanity. This means that, since humanity is an essential component of principled humanitarian action, so too must gender equality.

This has a serious implication for the application of neutrality. The principle of neutrality refers to the ‘reserve’ that a principled humanitarian actor ‘ must maintain with regard to any doctrine except its own ’ (emphasis added). In other words, as Hugo Slim observes, neutrality ‘does not prevent an organisation from having a principled position, based on firm ideals’. Therefore, neutrality does not prevent humanitarians from having a principled position with regards to gender equality – understood as part of the principle of humanity, and thus enshrined in a ‘principled position’.

In fact, this reasoning reveals that a humanitarian’s refusal to embrace gender equality is not an unfortunate consequence of the perceived constraints imposed by humanitarian principles. Rather, it is a choice by humanitarian actors themselves – a choice not to embrace gender equality as a ‘firm ideal’ and, thus, place it above neutrality.

Impartiality

Impartiality is another fundamental principle widely accepted by humanitarian actors. As Pictet notes, one of its key components is the fundamental idea of non-discrimination. In this regard, gender-transformative action is essential to ensuring impartiality. This occurs because the provision of humanitarian aid to specific populations, notably women, can sometimes be hindered by gender inequalities. In such cases, humanitarian action actually depends on challenging patriarchy.

As Julie Mertus notes , in Afghanistan, Oxfam and Save the Children suspended selected activities to protest the Taliban’s edicts blocking equal participation of women and girls. Similarly Clifton and Gell emphasise that ‘with no access to women, Oxfam GB did not believe it could deliver humanitarian aid with impartiality’.

Humanitarian actors are inevitably a part of patriarchal dynamics. For this reason, refusing to challenge existing gender relations has the effect of violating the very principles this refusal intends to uphold. This positioning is not in line with the principle of neutrality, insofar as it contributes to maintaining prevailing (patriarchal) power structures, and has further consequences on the application of the principles of humanity and impartiality.

Still, the place humanitarianism occupies in a patriarchal world goes largely ignored in the conceptualisation of humanitarian principles. As long as it remains so, principled humanitarian action is bound to continue perpetuating patriarchal dynamics that create or aggravate the very needs and vulnerabilities humanitarianism seeks to address.

A call for discussion

The fact that gender equality is not in itself against humanitarian principles does not mean that we, humanitarians, do not have to be careful about how we promote it. Gender-transformative action can still have a negative impact on humanitarian access, or on the security of humanitarian workers, depending on how it is perceived by local populations. This has to be taken into consideration on a case-by-case basis.

It is also key to ensure that gender-transformative action is based on local perspectives of the very people marginalised by patriarchy and gender inequalities. Otherwise, we risk imposing our own perspectives and values on them.

Thus, by no means does this article intend to be a comprehensive analysis of gender-transformative humanitarian action, or of its relationship with humanitarian principles. Rather, it is an invitation to seriously discuss gender equality and principled humanitarian action, without having humanitarian principles as a conversation stopper.

[1] This progressive focus on gender was reflected in the publication of multiple policy and guidance documents, such as the UNHCR’s Policy on Refugee Women (1990) , Guidelines on the Protection of Women (1991) , Gender-Related Persecution Guidelines (2002) and Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls (2008) , and IASC’s Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action ( 2006 and 2017 ) and Gender-Based Violence Guidelines ( 2005 and 2015 ), to name but a few. Most recently, it was also reflected the World Humanitarian Summit’s commitment to ensure that humanitarian programming is gender-responsive , which received the third highest number of endorsements.

[2] The acknowledgment of multiple forms of masculinity is essential to understanding how patriarchy can be damaging to certain groups of men. For this reason, I adapted Enloe’s definition by adding the qualifier ‘hegemonic’ and modifying the word ‘masculinity’ to its plural form.

[3] The use of the generalised terms ‘women’, ‘girls’, ‘men’ and ‘boys’ in this article is not meant to restrict specific effects of patriarchy to all, or only, women/girls/men/boys, but rather to emphasise how these groups are, in general, affected. These groups of individuals are not homogenous and are also impacted by other power dynamics, such as those of race and class. In this regard, see, e.g., Hugo Slim’s article in this blog, ‘Impartiality and Intersectionality ’.

[4] As Srushti Mahamuni observes, ‘patriarchy is not only harmful to women but to men as well. While it oppresses women and restricts them to subjugated positions in society, it imposes unrealistic expectations on men about what it means to “be a man”’.

[5] Humanitarian principles are not the only obstacles, raised by humanitarian actors, to gender-transformative humanitarian programming. Other obstacles would include (i) the perception that gender equality goes against local cultures, and (ii) the relinquishment of gender equality to ‘gender experts’, as opposed to mainstreaming it across all sectors. However, these issues will not be addressed here, as that would require a more comprehensive analysis, incompatible with the format of this blog post.

Other blog posts by this author

‘Basics’ won’t do: A response to Marc DuBois’ ‘new humanitarian basics’ , Ricardo Fal-Dutra Santos, 13 November, 2018

Further blog posts on gender and humanitarianism

Masculinity and humanitarianism , Graham Parsons, 20 May, 2019 Equal treatment for women in State armed forces: Three practical implications for medical care , Helen Durham & Vanessa Murphy, 8 March, 2019 The impact of gender and race bias in AI , Noel Sharkey, 28 August, 2018 Continuing the conversation: Which masculinities, which wars? David Duriesmith, 5 July, 2018 Masculinity and war–let’s talk about it , Hugo Slim, 15 March, 2018

DISCLAIMER: Posts and discussion on the Humanitarian Law & Policy blog may not be interpreted as positioning the ICRC in any way, nor does the blog’s content amount to formal policy or doctrine, unless specifically indicated.

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Thank you, Ricardo, for a really interesting and thought-provoking piece.

The Diversity Inclusion team here in AAP is working to bring clarity and a consistent approach to gender (and broader diversity issues) and your article is helpful in identifying the numerous facets and challenges of what it means to integrate gender in our work and what it may mean for affected people if we do not.

As you say, we know that conflict is gendered. We know that pre-conflict, conflict-affected and post-conflict societies are gendered. We know that conflict disrupts gendered roles and responsibilities; exacerbating gender inequality in some areas and presenting opportunities for shifts in gendered roles and responsibilities that promote gender equality in others. Interlinking cogs are moving all around us. And yet we hesitate, cautious that any attention to gender will “reform” and “transform” gender relations. They are changing in any event and not understanding and adapting our actions to such change has the potential, I believe, to perpetuate a status quo of inequality or to hamper grassroots change that is occurring with or without us.

I look forward to continuing this important discussion on gender, the humanitarian principles and the ICRC’s position on integrating gender in operations.

I was reading a paper about young afghanistan’s girls being forced to marry old men to provide money to their family… and I found your paper. Thank you for helping us to apprehend what patriarchal inequality – that we all experiment in our lives – means.

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