دانلود کتاب What is Patriarchy?

Many of us involved with different programmes and
activities for women’s development over the years, have found it necessary to understand the system which keeps women dominated and subordinated, and to unravel its workings in order to work for women’s development in a systematic way. For years I looked at women’s oppression in a piecemeal fashion; the fragments began to form a pattern when I started to look at them as part of a system– the system of patriarchy. It was not easy to understand, initially; not being an academic I was not trained to immediately grasp, concepts and abstractions. Gradually, listening to friends who were academics, reading bits and pieces here and there, things became clearer. What really helped me was a month-long workshop on women and development that I organised in Bangladesh some years ago, with Amrita Chhachhi (of the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague) as resource person. That workshop clarified many issues and concepts, not just for me, but for most of the participants as well. Since then (1987) I have been looking for short and simply written articles on the subject of patriarchy, which I could share with women and men activists. Most of what- I had read was either too difficult to understand or too full of jargon, or it assumed prior knowledge of the subject. So I started initiating discussions on patriarchy in different workshops with the help of my notes and of Amrita’s presentation at Bangladesh. During these discussions my own understanding became clearer, and I also found some articles and books which were very good. I decided to try toput all that I had read, liked and understood together in an accessible and, I hope, useful form. In this pamphlet, I try to look at patriarchy as we
experience it in our lives and as a concept which explains women’s subordination. (Some theories regarding its origin are introduced here but very briefly. For a more detailed understanding other readings will be necessary.) It is intended for activists who may not have access to books and journal or the kind of time required to go through them all; but I hope that the writers of whose work I have drawn upon will be illuminated and will encourage at least some activists to read more on the subject. What we desperately need is more conceptual work on the nature, origin and roots of patriarchy in South Asia so that we can understand our own situation better. The material is presented in a question and answer style, a format that I have used earlier in pamphlets on Feminism, and one that people find easy to assimilate.

— Kamla Bhasin