Male domination is the least important form of social oppression, coming a long way behind class exploitation, imperialist domination, and racial segregation. At the extreme—and this was at times the view of some militants and left-wing circles—such domination could wait its time, fated to disappear together with class exploitation, imperialism and racism.
However can it wait?
All social inequalities, though never coextensive, (extending over the same area) feed off one another and ultimately benefit the same class; each one, that is, enters into the reproduction of the dominant mode of production, which in our society is the capitalist mode of production.
Inequality between the sexes does not exist only in capitalist society: it exists elsewhere and is older than capitalism. In order to analyse it, we must therefore have recourse to the comparative data of anthropology and history.
We shall confine ourselves to analysis of the anthropological data. Let us merely say that if we turn to the class societies of Antiquity, both western (Greece, Rome) and eastern (China, Japan), or, in the middle ages, to the state societies of pre-Columbian America (Incas, Aztecs), or to the caste societies of India, we find that social life has been dominated by men. To own land in the city-state, to sacrifice to the gods, to defend one’s territory arms in hand, to exercise judicial powers and political sovereignty, to develop philosophy, mathematics and the rest—these are male privileges in classical Athens. For a Greek to be fully a man is above all to be a man and not a woman, a free man and not a slave, an Athenian and not a barbarian
Marriage bonds enclose the free Greek woman in the family of her master-husband, whose household economy she partially manages. The master’s female slaves are at his beck and call in sexual matters. Aristotle, himself, clearly defined these relations of subjection: ‘The primary, irreducible parts of the family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. . . .’ And he adds: ‘Hesiod was right to say that the first family was composed of a woman and an ox to draw the plough. For the poor, in fact, an ox takes the place of a slave.’
However can it wait?
All social inequalities, though never coextensive, (extending over the same area) feed off one another and ultimately benefit the same class; each one, that is, enters into the reproduction of the dominant mode of production, which in our society is the capitalist mode of production.
Inequality between the sexes does not exist only in capitalist society: it exists elsewhere and is older than capitalism. In order to analyse it, we must therefore have recourse to the comparative data of anthropology and history.
We shall confine ourselves to analysis of the anthropological data. Let us merely say that if we turn to the class societies of Antiquity, both western (Greece, Rome) and eastern (China, Japan), or, in the middle ages, to the state societies of pre-Columbian America (Incas, Aztecs), or to the caste societies of India, we find that social life has been dominated by men. To own land in the city-state, to sacrifice to the gods, to defend one’s territory arms in hand, to exercise judicial powers and political sovereignty, to develop philosophy, mathematics and the rest—these are male privileges in classical Athens. For a Greek to be fully a man is above all to be a man and not a woman, a free man and not a slave, an Athenian and not a barbarian
Marriage bonds enclose the free Greek woman in the family of her master-husband, whose household economy she partially manages. The master’s female slaves are at his beck and call in sexual matters. Aristotle, himself, clearly defined these relations of subjection: ‘The primary, irreducible parts of the family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. . . .’ And he adds: ‘Hesiod was right to say that the first family was composed of a woman and an ox to draw the plough. For the poor, in fact, an ox takes the place of a slave.’
Here we can see the relationship between family structure and the structure of the mode of production, as well as the bases of woman’s twofold subjection, in the city and in the family. Of course, Greek society was a class society, of a patrilineal character like our own. But this was not always the case in the Europe of Antiquity: we should recall Tacitus’s surprise when, having been sent on a mission among the Britons and Germans, he discovered that women sat on the council of
The question inevitably arises as to whether women’s subordination to men has always existed, and whether it exists in every society today. The example of the Germans or the Iroquois leaves room for doubt.
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