Re: Women's Oppression (Violence against women)

["P Chandra" <prchandra10@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think patriarchy is like any other institution/instrument of alienation,
whose primary function is to reproduce/reinforce the existing
politico-economic structure, which is based on disabling, compartmentalising
and fixing the roles of a particular section of society. It could exist in
communal societies running on backward technologies where it was needed to
reproduce a sexual division of labour on a continuous scale. But, again it
was the stage when property of some kind started emerging caused by two
determinants - one, an evolution of wealth or surplus allowing
functional differentiations within the society, and, the other, political
legal structure enforcing those differentiations, founding a 'hierarchy of
status or privileges'. A privilege includes privileged enjoyment of wealth,
too. Of course, it was not property in the modern sense of the term.

((There's an opinion that the origin of family and patriarchy resides in
scarcity and not wealth. But this 'dichotomisation' of wealth and scarcity
itself is problematic; it tends to universalise the conventional notions
used in textbook economics. It arises from the inability to perceive the
dialectical social reality as comprising of a level of surplus
production-distribution and the technological limits. Hence, even at a
penurious stage, wealth and property (which is a legal term) could exist to
allow patriarchy to flourish.))

Different forms of surplus production and distribution (property) simply
gives birth to new institutions or redefines the role of existing alienating
institutions - Patriarchy is one of the most perpetual ones, as it runs
through out the history, and the inmost one, since it settles in every
unequal pores of every socio-economic structure. Now, violence against women
as a group in this perspective has been prevalent since the birth of
patriarchy. True, womanhood is reified within every patriarchal structure in
different degrees. And, in this sense you can say in a patriarchal primitive
communal society she was viewed as a 'communal property'.

Pritha Chandra,
Centre of Linguistics & English
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi

----- Original Message -----
From: T. Flinck <tflinck@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <m-fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: Women's Oppression (Violence against women)


> Call me a non-expert on the subject matter of violence
> against women...
>
> What are your thoughts on the subject?  I made a
> statement in a class about how I think the problem
> lies in the emergence of private property (women being
> viewed as property).  However, someone disagreed with
> that statement and said...it has been around before
> that.  Anyone have any thoughts on the issue.
> Furthermore, what are some solutions to the problem?
>
> Thanks in advance.