THE PROBLEM WITH PATRIARCHY.

The article discusses problems associated with patriarchy. The concept of patriarchy has been both essential and problematic in the development of feminist thought, as the two papers by sociologists Malcolm Waters and S. Walby, published here, argue. In responding to their work, the author sketches the recent history of the concept and discuss a few of the issues raised by a reading of these papers. In the 1960s and 1970s, patriarchy provided the essential focus and the identification of the theoretical object for rapidly developing innovative thinking about the subordination of women. Feminists criticized social theory as inadequate for explaining this widespread phenomenon. Existing theory attributed women's domination by men either to nature or social necessity rather than to social-structural processes, unequal power, or exploitation. Further, theory had been produced from the perspectives of men, usually men associated with ruling classes, to whom women were generally invisible, unimportant, or uninteresting as social actors. Theorizing patriarchy was a first step to reconceptualizing the subordination of women and to correcting flawed social theory, even to achieving a paradigm revolution.