The Creation of Patriarchy

The Creation of Patriarchy: The Origins of Women’s Subordination is a compelling compilation of extensive research which ambitiously attempts to understand and critically examine the ancient origins of women’s systematic subordination to men. Gerda Lerner’s findings are radical and memorable because they attempt to give feminism a foundation which can dismantle traditionalism, the view that women were designed by God to be the childbearing-and-rearing, physically weaker, and submissive gender. Collectively, the insights she draws, rooted in historical research, are compelling, as they offer unprecedented pieces to the puzzle of patriarchy’s origins. Chapter by chapter, Gerda Lerner breaks down the topic and summarizes the results of her detailed research and findings.

Much of the work focuses on findings from Mesopotamian, Hebrew, and Abrahamic regions and religions. Historical research, often conducted by men, problematically excludes women, therefore, perhaps at times inadvertently, implicating that women were unimportant in shaping society. This is likely because the scholarly focus of historical study has primarily paid attention to efforts which women had no part in, such as warfare.

Lerner importantly points to this blind-sightedness in order to give evidence of patriarchy’s imprint on historical memory. Other noteworthy pursuits include education and scholarship, meaning that women were excluded in key areas such as philosophy, science, and law. Because women had no role in interpreting events, they were not given the opportunity to shape the historical memory. Lerner emphasizes that contrary to our flawed historical memory, women have always been and will always be equally essential contributors to society; Lerner’s research attempts to subvert the patriarchal pattern of women’s exclusion in theory formation, and therefore to challenge contemporary society to correct our historical memory.



Ultimately, Lerner posits, women’s inferior status was a result of their biological role to produce and raise children. This gradual, dramatic swing in societal power structure began with the organization of tasks, beginning with men becoming hunters while women gathered, and continued with the development of agriculture. When people began farming, establishing property ownership, family structures shifted from being one vested in matrimony to one of patriliny. What began as an attempt to organize daily tasks transformed into the formation of gender roles, which eventually resulted in women’s exclusion from education and positions of influence or leadership altogether.

This practice of power and place in society led to enslavement. In fact, the first slaves were female. Male dominance over women became the new socially and culturally adopted norm; Lerner argues that women, in some respects, relented this domineering control to men. The popular preference to stay home, raise children, and tend to the home soon became the only acceptable, and then in many ages and places, the only allowable option for women.

Laws were put in place which enforced this delegation of gender roles, officially determining women’s exclusion from education, law, and theory-formation, thereby preventing their participation in legislation formation and minimizing women’s presense in the collective historical memory. The Hammurabi Code is a famous example of this institutionalization of the patriarchal family model. In such, the social status of the male determines that of the female, because women were not granted the same access and ability to gain power and influence of their own.



As people further developed and refined their cultural symbolism and religious doctrines, feminine figures began to disappear. Goddesses who were previously worshipped for their sexuality and fertility disappeared in favor of the Abrahamic. Female sexuality, once praised for its life-giving force, was then condemned as being sinful. A woman’s power and influence was determined solely based off of her sexual ties, meaning that sex was the only way a woman could earn power or influence for herself. The patriarchal power structure confines women to a domestic, passive, and ultimately powerless role, one which she is incapable of leaving.

Centuries of social, cultural, and legal organization of genders created the patriarchal structure the world still lives in today. Women’s widespread marginalization became the socially-normalized, cross-culturally adopted status quo; its origins are historical, not biological. Women’s biological imperative to raise children determined the social allocation of gender roles; however, it is the problematic development of this social allocation, cultural adoption, and legal enforcement of this practice spanning over centuries which cemented patriarchy as the world’s power structure.

Most importantly, Gerda Lerner proposes a call to action through an extended metaphor. Men and women both participate in the “play of life,” though men determine the setting, write the lines, and play the lead roles. Women’s support roles are just as important to the play’s production; however, their artistic vision is not considered or incorporated. Lerner suggests that only through a dramatic dismantling of men’s control of the stage can we counter the marginalization and subordination of women founded in human history. Lerner insists that matriarchy offers the radical re-visioning of the past, present, and future needed in order to counteract the centuries of systemized inferiority forced upon women.