The Dismantling of Patriarchy
![handle is hein.journals/ucljurev7 and id is 273 raw text is: The Dismantling of Patriarchy
Sophie Cubbon
Introduction
The patriarchal foundations that underpin society have long sustained the
acceptance of male violence towards their female partners. 'Domestic
violence' includes 'a range of abusive behaviours, and is *used to establish
power and control over another person through fear and intimidation.'2
Despite the sensationalist attempts of the male-dominated media to portray
domestic violence as equally perpetrated by women, this is not the case. It has
been 'consistently [found] that no matter what the rate of violence or who
initiates the violence, women are seven to ten times more likely to be injured
in acts of intimate violence than men.'3 Thus, domestic violence predominantly
harms women. This is fundamentally because 'violence [is] a necessary
concomitant of woman's generally oppressed position in the social structure.'4
This social structure is patriarchy, 'the ordering of society under which
standards political, economic, legal, social are set by, and fixed in the
interests of, men.'5 This has been so since pre-Biblical times. As Mill states,
'from the earliest twilight of human society, every woman ... was found in a
state of bondage to some man.'6 Thus the history of our society and its legal
system is deeply imbued with male domination and authority, and the brutal
and inequitable steps taken to ensure the subordination of women.
Society has controlled women, first by sanctioning, and then by
acquiescing in domestic violence; it has instilled concrete conceptions of male
superiority into the minds of both sexes. This has resulted in a grossly
imbalanced division of labour. By undermining women's capacity to reach the
higher echelons of employment, thus denying them equal prospects, society
has cultivated a continuance of female economic dependence. By limiting
women financially and socially, society is removing from battered women the
1 Hester and Radford, Domestic Violence and Child Contact Arrangements in
England and Denmark'(Bristol, 1996), p.7.
2 National Coalition Against Domestic Violence Website, 'The Problem: What is
Battering?'
3 Richard J. Gelles, 'Domestic Violence Factoids,' University of Rhode Island
Family Violence Research Program (1995).
4 M.D.A. Freeman, Violence in the Home (Farnborough,1979), p.142.
5 J.G. Riddall, Jurisprudence (London, 1999), p.272.
6 J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (London, 1869).
The Dismantling of Patriarchy
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