Once again I fell prey to the patriarchy…
In the beginning of our feminist journey we tend to think that the more we immerse ourselves in the feminist world, the more we will be able to bypass the pranks the patriarchy plays on us on a daily basis. Well… think again.
It is true that studying feminism gives us tools to identify sexist/misogynist situations that we may go through, and helps us analyze those situations with more critical eyes in order for us to be able to fight them. However, this will not prevent us from falling preys of it. Patriarchy is so subjective, so entrenched in our daily lives that we ourselves act and respond within patriarchal norms and don’t even realise it.
The most cliché thing happened to me last month. I got interviewed for a higher position in my current workplace, and eventually they asked me about my salary expectations. I, in my silly little mind, thought that it would be a good idea to ask for the lower band of the grade. The reasons for this rationale were that I don’t have all the expertise for the job as I’m coming from a lower position, I thought it was fair considering the organisation is going through a rough patch financially, and it was going to be a raise anyways. Well, here I am telling my boyfriend about the interview, and when I mention that one of the questions was salary expectations, his first reaction was “obviously you went for the highest possible and negotiated from there, right?”… no?
When he said that I could literally hear a click inside my brain, and I noticed that, yes, I was another victim of the patriarchy. Why is it that I did not feel entitled to a higher pay? I’m more than qualified for the position, I’ve been doing part of that job description for a while now and I’ve been working there for 3 years. I know all the processes, I know all the people and I know how to navigate everything. Yes, I would get a raise anyways, but that’s because I would be performing a more complex set of activities, therefore I deserve the raise. And if I already have all the knowledge, just need the practice to master it, hiring me would mean saving a lot of time and money with trainings. Isn’t that enough reason to ask for the higher band? Why in the world did I put their needs in front of my own?
This mindset of neglecting our own value is present from a simple job interview to disliking ambitious women to slut shaming teenage girls to victim-blaming in a rape case. Men take and women give, this is the premise in which our society was built on. This dynamic is a product of centuries of defined gender roles where the function of the woman was to maintain the household while the men went out for food. And capitalism reinforced this dynamic, since without the labour of the women to maintain the household (unpaid labour, obviously) the men would not be able to produce as much for their masters, as they would have to share their time with other essential activities for surviving (such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the prole, etc). The world evolved and the capitalist mode of production needed the women to be part of the workforce in order to expand, so women were able to leave the household labour (mind that I’m talking about bourgeois white women, poor non-white women were always compelled to work as their reproductive function was despised), but the fragile masculinity of our counterparts could not be threatened so we all had to behave in a very unthreatening way (smiling, gentle, submissive, etc). This became the norm, and the imposition of this norm is what Kate Manne calls misogyny in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.
What we see in my example is the misogynistic society at its core: I performed the role of a woman without question. Me? Taking a higher band salary? When the organisation I work for is going through financial difficulties? When I don’t have 100% of the required expertise? Never! I’m lucky to even be considered. After all, my job here to take care of the big man.
We exist in a gendered economy in which women are assumed to owe men. The rules are: first, we must give men moral goods — such as sex, care and unpaid housework. Second, we must not ask men for the kinds of goods we give. Finally, women are not supposed to take masculine coded perks and privileges. (The presidency, for instance.)
- Moira Weigel, The Guardian.
