I N T E R C O M M U N I T Y
P E A C E & J U S T I C E
This issue: Status of Women
C E N T E R
No. 90 Spring 2011
Patriarchy: A System Past Its Prime Gretchen Gundrum
“p
atriarchy,” asserts author Sue Monk Kidd, “is neither men nor the masculine Gretchen Gundrum principle; it is rather a system in is a psychologist which that principle has become and spiritual distorted.”1 For 2,500 years, the director in Seattle. patriarchal system was the very air that everyone breathed. Males were privileged in society, fathers knew best, and the social and economic hierarchies put men at the top, women next, followed by slaves, animals, plants, and inanimate objects. This unquestioned social order seemed to be divinely ordained. Although both were created in God’s image, man was created first. Woman was a derivative, fashioned from his rib. The Bible and Greek philosophy God created the sexes are two of the root of male and female, causes for the entrenchment of the but humans have constructed gender… patriarchal system in Western culture. God created the sexes of male and female, but humans have constructed gender, the roles that women and men play in society. Religious literature is an important unifier of consciousness. It reflects and reinforces the beliefs and values that ruling elites hold dear. In the biblical creation story, God gave naming rights to Adam (Gen. 2:19-23). Whoever
has naming rights, controls the human beings of an entirely difculture. The writers, redactors, ferent order than men.”3 Greek and editors of the Bible were likely mythology made another woman only males, since women did not responsible for unleashing evil in have access to education. Thus, the world; her name was Pandora. men controlled the symbol system Religion shapes culture and and made decisions about which culture reinforces religious messtories were the “inspired word sages. One subtle visual reinforceof God.” They chose masculine ment of female inferiority can be God-language and God images found in the Sistine Chapel. Miover feminine ones,2 and whether chelangelo’s magnificent painting of the creation of man has become intending it or not, clearly commuiconic in Western consciousness. nicated female inferiority. There The powerful creative God—the are feminine and gender-neutral old man with the beard—reaches images and metaphors of the Diacross the heavens to touch the tip vine in scripture (for example, El of Adam’s finger, thus transmitting shaddai, Sophia—God’s wisdom, creative authority to him. God God as a mother hen protecting and man are almost in the same her chicks, God as rock and living plane of the fresco. In a smaller, water), but masculine images of God continue to dominate our consciousness and our prayers. The creation account explains that evil came into the world through a woman’s curiosity and a desire for more knowledge. The snake seduced Eve but she gave in to temptation and brought Adam along for the ride. By listening Fresco by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel depicting the creation of Eve. to the voice of his wife, Adam got into a lot of trouble with God. different place in the vault of the Aristotle, the Greek philosoSistine Chapel, Michelangelo pher who shaped Western scidepicts Eve’s creation as coming entific thought and impacted out of the sleeping Adam. Here, the theological understanding of however, Eve is a supplicant, with Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, bowed posture and hands folded assumed as a given that “women toward God. God’s right hand is are incomplete and damaged slightly extended in a benevolent 1
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AMOS Spring 2011: Status of Women