Patriarchal Norms

Patriarchal norms are the shared expectations, customs, and informal rules that privilege male authority and prescribe unequal roles for women and men, such as men as breadwinners and decision makers and women as caregivers and homemakers. They are transmitted through socialization in families, schools, religion, and media, and enforced through approval, ridicule, and exclusion. Simone de Beauvoir argued that femininity is socially imposed, and Betty Friedan described the feminine mystique that confined women to domesticity. Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales described instrumental and expressive roles, a model criticized for legitimizing inequality, while Candace West and Don Zimmerman's doing gender showed how people are held accountable to gender expectations in interaction. Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of masculine domination and symbolic violence explains how norms come to seem natural and are accepted by those they disadvantage. Raewyn Connell's hegemonic masculinity examines the cultural ideal that legitimizes male power, and Arlie Hochschild showed how norms shape household labor. Deniz Kandiyoti described the patriarchal bargain, in which women accept constraints in exchange for security. Norms change through feminist movements and education. Patriarchal norms remain central to research on gender, family, work, violence, and development.