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  • The Guardian

    Who made you king of everything? Angela Saini on the origins of patriarchy

    Mar 04, 2023 7 minutes

    On the day Angela Saini talks to me from her book-lined study in New York, the patriarchy is hard at work all over the world. Anti-abortion protestors are getting ready to march on the Supreme Court in Washington, the Metropolitan police force is caught up in yet more accusations of rape, Jacinda Ardern has resigned as prime minister of New Zealand after years of misogynist abuse, and Iran is executing protestors after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini. In this context, it’s easy to see how patriarchy operates but harder to explain exactly what it is.

    “Patriarchy is one of these words that has lost some of its meaning through overuse,” Saini says. “We rarely interrogate what we really think it means, and that’s part of what I was trying to do with The Patriarchs.” The subtitle of her new book, “How Men Came to Rule”, is a simple question with a fascinating and complicated answer, which boils down to: “In various ways, in different places, but not everywhere, not always and not necessarily.” Just as her 2017 book, , challenged the idea that gendered inequality is rooted in our biology, and in 2019 exposed the lie of “race science” as it began to creep chillingly , this

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