As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can also be ended by the historical process.įocusing 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. 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 B.C. Its evidence is fascinating, its arguments compelling, and its conclusions full of significance for our time as well as the distant past.” - Kathryn Kish Sklar, University of California, Los AngelesĪ 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.
“Written by one of the most brilliant historians of our era, this book dramatically reopens a chapter of women’s history that historians had thought was forever closed to them-the origins of the collective dominance of women by men.
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