The Creation of Patriarchy

Written by Gerda Lerner

Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

A major new work by a leading historian and pioneer in women's studies, The Creation of Patriarchy is a radical reconceptualization of Western civilization that makes gender central to its analysis. Gerda Lerner argues that male dominance over women is not "natural" or biological, but the product of an historical development begun in the second millennium BC in the Ancient Near East. As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can also be ended by the historical process.

Focusing on the contradiction between women's central role in creating society and their marginality in the meaning-giving process of definition and interpretation, Lerner explores such fascinating questions as: What can account for women's exclusion from the historical process? What could explain the long delay-more than 3,500 years-in women's coming to consciousness of their own subordinate position? She goes back to the cultures of the earliest known civilizations-those of the ancient Near East-to discover the origins of the major gender metaphors of Western civilization. Using historical, literary, archaeological, and artistic evidence, she then traces the development of these ideas, symbols, and metaphors and their incorporation into Western civilization as the basis of patriarchal gender relations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666161205

Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner (1920-2013) was author or editor of twelve books in Women's History and one of the preeminent scholars responsible for the rediscovery of the field in the 1960s. A founding member of the National Organization for Women and one of the creators of Women's History Month, she was Robinson-Edwards Professor Emerita of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her books include Fireweed: A Political Biography.

Reviews for The Creation of Patriarchy

[freeknowledgenow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Apart from its limitations (the acknowledged eurocentrism and the not so acknowledged focus on the gender binary) this book provides an insightful history of mythmaking, social customs and legislative texts from which the author convincingly argues that the creation of patriarchy was an ample process, which had to take place across multiple centuries.

[Allison Sylviadotter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So nice to read a book that clearly states how women have been subjugated due to their sex. She is clear about sex being biologically immutable, and gender being a "mask and straightjacket" forced onto women to keep them in submission. Loved this book, all men need to read this and learn how their sex has subjugated women, as to not perpetuate this behaviour in the future. Women are rising.