What is a patriarchal mindset? 

A mindset is a set of beliefs that helps you make sense of the world. A patriarchal mindset is founded on a hierarchical duality. 

The duality states that humans are either men or women (patriarchal duality doesn’t allow for gender fluidity) and the hierarchy places men in a superior position to women. 

This, in turn,  justifies the notion that men ought to hold all of the power in a society and be treated as more important than women. 

Systems and structures have been created off the back of that which benefit men whilst oppressing and exploiting women. 

Why does it matter? 

It matters if you are a woman and you want: 

• access to the same resources and opportunities as men, 
• to be taken seriously in your career,
• to promote your work and not fear judgement around your voice, your appearance, your level of confidence, your family life etc,
• to be paid equitably for your work, 
• to feel safe in your home and as you walk the streets,
• to expect to advance in your career free of sexual harassment,
• to be treated fairly and respectfully by the justice system,
• to have your creative output valued and promoted in the same way as you might expect were you a man,
• to have industry standards created to suit your body type and biology,
• to share the domestic load equally if you have a partner, 
• to make reproductive decisions without interference from the State,
• to be free to realise your full potential as a human being, 
• to have your body accepted as it is, without needing alteration to satisfy the male gaze. 

How does it relate to my experience of being visible? 

To maintain the system, certain voices have been prioritised (men’s) and others have been silenced (women’s).

To maintain that silence, stories have been perpetuated about the nature of women. Stories about: 

• our intelligence; women having been deemed less capable, less intelligent, less ambitious, 
• our suitability for public life; women have fought persistently to overcome the pervading story that we’re less suited and/or less interested in public life, whilst being suited exclusively to the domestic sphere
• our bodies; one of the most pervasive aspect of patriarchal story telling revolves around what women’s bodies should and should not look like, what they should be used for and how they ought to be controlled
• our achievements; women’s lives have been deemed less worthy of documenting and our contribution to humanity not worthy of recording in the way we do men’s contributions and achievements
• women’s art; the story trotted out by patriarchy has been that women’s art doesn’t have the artistic merit of men’s work (whether that be in writing,  dance, painting, sculpture, photography, design, or film)
• women in sport; the old adage being that that nobody wants to watch women, that it’s unnatural for women to play certain sports, that our ‘natural’ role is to cheer on the men rather than presuming to take up space on the sporting field. 

As a result, visibility statistics are damning. 

• Female actors get far fewer speaking roles than male actors (approximately one third are awarded to women).
• Female journalists get fewer bylines than male journalists.
• Our art is featured on fewer gallery walls. The National Gallery in the UK is probably the most stark example where in 2011 it held 2,300 pieces of art in its collection, of which only 10 were by women.
• Our stories don’t fill anywhere near as many history books.
• We receive less pay than men. (And this trend is being perpetuated even in new industries. In 2016 for example, female bloggers earned only 60% of the profit that male bloggers did.)
• Female sports stars receive far less television coverage than men (approximately 7% of total coverage in Australia).
• There are less of us on the boards of fortune 500 companies (31% of board seats are occupied by women) and we’re wildly under-represented in parliaments around the world (currently 24% globally).
• Violence against us is minimised or overlooked, or in the worst instances, encouraged.
• And our opinions about our own bodies – how they should be portrayed, how they should be cared for during and after pregnancy, how we should manage our reproductive systems – are given less weight and less coverage than the opinions of cisgendered men who will never even know what it is to have a female body.

When you live in a society where: 

• you’re less visible than men, 
• you’re told diminishing stories about yourself and your gender, 
• expectations are lower re. what you might achieve in the world, 
• you don’t see role models that look like you, 
• you observe the backlash against women who do step forward and try to break through gender norms and barriers, 

you can’t help but internalise at least some of these messages. 

Worse, each time you see another woman being oppressed, silenced or diminished in some way, it triggers an awareness in you. An awareness that you’ll be punished if you stand out too much, speak up too loudly, push back too forcefully. 

And so we consciously and unconsciously shrink. We play smaller than we otherwise would. We focus on pleasing others, placating men, avoiding conflict, all in order to avoid being judged or harmed. 

In short, we protect ourselves by being less visible than we could be.

And so the system maintains itself. 

To break that cycle, we have to interrupt the patriarchal patterns threaded through our psyches and lives. We have to break down the patriarchal mindset and open into a new and different way of thinking. One that’s not built on that original hierarchical binary. 

What can I gain from working on the patriarchal mindset? 

Breaking down the patriarchal mindset opens you up to think differently about yourself, about other people, and about the world at large. It opens doors that were previously closed and gives you more confidence in yourself. 

It addresses imposter syndrome at its core and clears out some of the most significant causes of anxiety associated with speaking up and being heard. It supports you to set clear boundaries with other people (reminding you that you are not a doormat for people to walk over each and every day). 

It helps you to feel better about marketing your work because you know deep down that you deserve to take up space. You feel more at ease sharing your opinions and expressing yourself in meetings, hosting webinars and live events.  

What about ableism, classism, racism, ageism, heteronormativity, colonisation and all the other ways that inequality has been created and perpetuated in society? 

Patriarchy is thousands of years old. It created a principle on which every other form of oppression evolved. That is; hierarchical duality.

Once you understand the pattern, you see how this principle informs all oppressive systems and you see how they uphold and reinforce one another. Knowing how to address one system isn’t the end of the story, it’s the beginning. It gives you the building blocks to start thinking intersectionally and addressing all systems.

Our short course ‘Smash the Patriarchal Mindset’ can help you with that process. We are aware that it is but one contribution to a whole body of work that a great many people are contributing to in an attempt to break down all forms of inequality. 

At the School of Visibility, we encourage all students to develop a core understanding of: 

• how to understand systemic inequality, 
• how to apply that learning to their lives, 
• how to heal wounds caused by systemic oppression and 
• how to clear out the mindset that perpetuates such oppression. 

We also encourage students to think intersectionally and to use the work to step toward breaking down the entire kyriarchy (kyriarchy being a term coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission).