The Psychology of Women under Patriarchy
Edited by Holly F. Mathews and Adriana M. Manago
In the #MeToo era, why do US women continue to struggle with whether or not to report sexual harassment? How do women living in parts of rural Pakistan and Mexico pursue educational and employment opportunities without directly refusing parental wishes for them to marry? Despite rapidly changing social and economic conditions worldwide, patriarchal practices remain remarkably widespread and persistent. Noting the need to move beyond a dichotomy of accommodation and resistance, the contributors to this volume draw upon field research and in-depth qualitative data from different parts of the world to explore the reasons for women’s varied psychological responses to patriarchy. These feminist scholars bridge preexisting divides between bio-psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives to explain the ways that women’s desires, goals, and identities interact with culturally situated systems in order to develop more complex theories about the psychological underpinnings of patriarchy and to inform more socially progressive policies to improve the lives of women and men globally.
2019. 296 pp., 6 x 9, 2 tables
Editors: Holly F. Mathews and Adriana M. Manago
Contributors: Kelly H. Chong, Miguel Da Costa Frias, Leta Hong Fincher, Gülden Güvenç, Ayesha Khurshid, Jocelyn Marrow, Naomi Quinn, Susan C. Seymour, Cynthia Werner
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“The introductory chapter of this very fine collection is alone worth the price of the book, if only for its definitions and descriptions of patriarchy, including how patriarchy reveals its persistent ability to respond to colonialism, capitalism, ‘father right,’ ‘fraternal right,’ and neoliberalism. The text honors women’s agency. . . . This study does not promote psychological healing as a methodology for responding to global sexism, but is instead an examination of how women respond psychologically to that sexism.”
—P. A. Murphy, University of Toledo, CHOICE magazine, January 2021
Acknowledgments
Foreword. Women of the World Unite
Miguel Da Costa Frias
Chapter One. Introduction: Understanding Women’s Psychological Responses to Various Forms of Patriarchy
Holly F. Mathews and Adriana M. Manago
Chapter Two. Historical Circumstances and Biological Proclivities Surrounding Patriarchy
Naomi Quinn
Chapter Three. Growing Up Female in North India
Susan C. Seymour
Chapter Four. To Make Her Understand with Love: Expectations for Emotion Work in North Indian Families
Jocelyn Marrow
Chapter Five. Perspectives on Gender Roles and Relations across Three Generations of Maya Women in Southern Mexico
Adriana M. Manago
Chapter Six. Contested Terrains of Female Education in Rural Muslim Pakistan
Ayesha Khurshid
Chapter Seven. Moving beyond Notions of Resistance and Accommodation: Understanding How Women Navigate Conflicting Models of Marriage in Rural Mexico
Holly F. Mathews
Chapter Eight. What Women’s Experiences in Disadvantaged Families in Ankara, Turkey, Have to Tell about Patriarchy
Gülden Güvenç
Chapter Nine. Theorizing Female Consent: Familism, Motherhood, and Middle-Class Feminine Subjectivity in Contemporary South Korea
Kelly H. Chong
Chapter Ten. Property, Patriarchy, and the Chinese State
Leta Hong Fincher
Chapter Eleven. Reflections on Kidnap and Rape Culture: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Patriarchy
Cynthia Werner
Chapter Twelve. Conclusion: Charting a Way Forward
Holly F. Mathews and Adriana M. Manago
References
Contributors
- Costly and Cute: Helpless Infants and Human Evolution, edited by Wenda R. Trevathan and Karen R. Rosenberg, 2016
- Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture, and Symbolic Body Capital, edited by Eileen P. Anderson-Fye and Alexandra Brewis, 2017
- The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalities, edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Ann Kingsolver, 2008
- Katherine Dunham: Recovering an Anthropological Legacy, Choreographing Ethnographic Futures, edited by Elizabeth Chin, 2014
- Women & Men in the Prehispanic Southwest: Labor, Power, and Prestige, edited by Patricia L. Crown, 2001