Walby on Patriarchy and Power Relationships

Patriarchy as a Structural System

Earlier lessons examined inequality across domains and the factors shaping life chances. This lesson focuses in depth on patriarchy — the feminist sociological concept that explains how gender inequality is not the product of individual prejudice but of a structural system operating simultaneously through multiple institutions. Sylvia Walby (1990) provided the most comprehensive sociological account of patriarchy in her work Theorizing Patriarchy, in which she identified six interconnected structures through which male dominance is reproduced across society. Understanding Walby’s six structures is essential preparation for 12-mark Evaluate questions on gender inequality.

Walby’s Six Structures of Patriarchy

Walby argued that patriarchy is not simply a matter of individual men dominating individual women but a structural system operating through multiple institutions simultaneously. She identified six patriarchal structures:

1. Paid work: Although formal equality legislation exists in the UK (the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, consolidated into the Equality Act 2010), women continue to be disadvantaged in the labour market. Women are more likely to work part-time, to be concentrated in lower-paid “feminised” occupations (nursing, social care, administrative work), and to face the glass ceiling in reaching senior roles. The gender pay gap persists across most sectors.
2. Household production: Men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour in the home. Even when women have paid employment outside the home, research — including Oakley’s critique of the symmetrical family — shows they continue to carry the greater burden of housework and childcare. This pattern is described as the double shift, or in some formulations the triple shift (paid work, domestic labour and emotional management of the family).
3. Patriarchal culture: Cultural norms and media representations continue to impose different standards on men’s and women’s behaviour. Double standards operate in sexual behaviour, physical appearance and public conduct. Women who challenge cultural norms may face ridicule or social stigma. Media representations of women often confine them to a limited range of roles and subject them to evaluation of their appearance in contexts where men are not similarly judged.
4. Sexuality: Women have greater freedom to express their sexuality than in earlier generations, but Walby argued they do so subject to double standards. Men with multiple sexual partners may be praised by peers; women with equivalent behaviour are frequently judged negatively. These attitudes control women’s behaviour and reinforce patriarchal norms about appropriate femininity.
5. Male violence: The use or threat of violence by men against women is a powerful mechanism of patriarchal control. Heidensohn’s work on female conformity notes that fear of male violence constrains women’s behaviour in public spaces — women may avoid travelling alone at night, limit where they go, and modify their dress and behaviour as a result of this threat. Domestic violence, sexual harassment and the threat of assault restrict women’s freedom and reinforce patriarchal authority.
6. The state: While the state is less explicitly patriarchal than in earlier centuries, Walby argued it continues to do relatively little to protect women from patriarchal power. Women are under-represented in elected and appointed positions of power. Laws on equal pay are weakly enforced. State policies have sometimes reinforced traditional gender roles through benefits and tax systems. The criminal justice system’s historic treatment of domestic violence and rape as private matters rather than public crimes reflects the patriarchal nature of state institutions.

Criticisms of Walby

Walby’s framework has been influential but also contested. Functionalists argue that gender role differences reflect functional specialisation rather than structural oppression: Parsons identified expressive and instrumental roles as complementary functions within the family, not as expressions of male dominance. From a functionalist view, the gender division of labour serves a social purpose rather than simply benefiting men at women’s expense.

Marxists argue that patriarchy cannot be analysed independently of class. Gender inequality, in a Marxist view, serves the interests of capitalism by providing unpaid domestic labour (women raise the next generation of workers at no cost to employers), by dividing the working class along gender lines and by providing a reserve army of flexible labour. This argument suggests that gender inequality is ultimately rooted in class relations, not in an autonomous patriarchal system. Walby responded that patriarchy predates capitalism and persists in formally socialist societies, which suggests it cannot be reduced to class conflict alone.

Some feminist critics have also argued that Walby’s framework does not adequately account for the diversity of women’s experiences. A working-class woman of colour faces a different configuration of disadvantage from a middle-class White woman, even though both experience patriarchy. The concept of intersectionality — the idea that gender, class, ethnicity and other dimensions of inequality intersect — is used to capture these differences, though Walby’s later work engaged with intersectionality directly.