Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best.

In 2020, I recorded the very first episode of Breaking Down Patriarchy, and I started the episode by reading an excerpt from GERDA Learners, The Creation of Patriarchy.

And I'm going to read it again now.

Men and women live on a stage, on which they act out their assigned roles equal in importance.

The play cannot go on without both kinds of performers. Neither of them contributes more or less to the

whole, neither is marginal or dispensable. But the stage set is conceived, painted, defined by men. Men have written the play, have directed

the show, interpreted the meanings of the action. They have assigned themselves the most interesting,

most heroic parts, giving women the supporting roles. As the women become aware of the difference

in the way they fit into the play, they ask for more equality in the role assignments.

They upstage the men at times.

At other times, they pinch hit for a missing male performer.

The women finally, after considerable struggle, win the right of access to equal role assignment.

But first, they must qualify. The terms of their qualifications

are again set by the men. Men are the judges of how women measure up. Men grant or deny admission.

They give preference to docile women and to those who fit their job descriptions accurately.

Men punish, by ridicule, exclusion, or ostracism, any woman who assumes the right

to interpret her own role, or, worst of all sins, the right to rewrite the script. It takes

considerable time for the women to understand that getting equal parts will not make them equal,

as long as the script, the props, the stage setting, and the direction

are firmly held by men. When the women begin to realize that, and cluster together between the

acts, or even during the performance, to discuss what to do about it, this play comes to an end.

For the past five years, I have been studying the social system of patriarchy, which human

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