Revision summary
Patriarchy is male dominance across household, work, and state. It shapes development by hiding care, skewing property, and producing capability failure. Sen, NFHS, SHGs, and feminized labour show mixed gains and a double day. Parsons and modernisation underplayed this structure. Inclusive development must reorganise care and voice, not only output.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Patriarchy is a system of male dominance across household, work, sexuality, culture, and the state. Social development is the expansion of capabilities, security, and participation. The relation is not accidental. Development that leaves patriarchy intact is a partial and often self-blocking process.
Body
Patriarchy as structure
- Sylvia Walby named six structures of patriarchy. Ann Oakley made unpaid housework visible as a development variable, not a private leftover.
- Friedrich Engels tied women’s subordination to property and the monogamous family. The household still reproduces labour-power without a wage.
- Sandra Harding’s standpoint: development indicators written from a male public actor miss care, mobility, and violence.
How patriarchy shapes development
- Human development: Amartya Sen’s missing women and capability failure show that growth can coexist with sex-selective harm. NFHS sex ratio, anaemia, and agency items are the Indian dashboard.
- Education and fertility can rise while property and office stay male. That is stratified development.
- Labour: feminization of work and SHGs expand women’s market presence and can intensify the double day.
- Political development: reserved panchayat seats include women and still meet proxy representation where kin patriarchy holds.
- Environmental and displacement projects, as in Narmada, distribute costs through male land title and female livelihood in commons.
How development can unsettle patriarchy
- Schooling, own income, and law against domestic violence shift bargaining.
- Public care, land in women’s names, and enforcement of inheritance are structural, not sermon, counters.
- They do not automatically win. Backlash in honour politics and in online misogyny is also “change”.
Theoretical caution
- Parsons treated the family as latency for the system; that functional story naturalises patriarchy as development’s helper.
- Modernisation theory expected patriarchy to fade with industry. It reappears in gig ratings, caste endogamy, and office glass ceilings.
- World-system development can use cheap female labour in garments as a competitive edge, which Frank would read as a gendered periphery.
Understanding, stated
- Patriarchy is a constraint on whose development counts.
- Social development that is inclusive has to reorganise care, property, and voice, not only raise GDP.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD PAT[Patriarchy] --> CARE[Unpaid care property violence] DEV[Social development] --> CAP[Capabilities voice security] CARE --> UNQ[Unequal development] CAP --> CHAL[Can unsettle patriarchy] CHAL[CHAL] --> PAT[PAT]
Conclusion
Patriarchy organises the household, labour, and state so that social development is unequally distributed. Oakley, Walby, Engels, Harding, and Sen make that relation thinkable. NFHS, SHGs, panchayat proxies, and Narmada show it. Development without a shift in patriarchy is growth with a male face.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Critically examine the contribution of dependency theories in understanding the present global scenario.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2021 · Q7(b)). View answer →
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Does GDP growth reduce patriarchy by itself?
No. Growth can buy sex selection and cheap female labour. Law, property, and care policy have to change too.
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Are SHGs a sufficient anti-patriarchal development tool?
They can raise voice and income. They do not by themselves transfer land, stop violence, or end unpaid care.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q7(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Explain how the pattern of patriarchy is being altered in a family and at the workplace in the present context. -
2018 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Define patriarchy. How does patriarchy manifest in interpersonal relations? -
2016 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
To what extent is patriarchy a cause for the problems of women? Discuss
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