There Is Power in the Word ‘Patriarchy.’ We Need to Start Using It.

We can trace harmful sex binaries, reproductive control and white Christian nationalism back to the same root system: patriarchy. Naming it is the first step toward dismantling its power.

The more I learned about patriarchy, the literal “rule of the fathers,” the more clearly I saw that sexism isn’t just individuals and groups behaving badly toward women. It’s patriarchy’s playbook—a game plan of assumptions, theories and strategies that drills the culture on how to rationalize and enforce men’s dominance over women.

On March 8, 2023, International Women’s Day, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that women’s rights around the world are being “abused, threatened and violated” because “the patriarchy is fighting back.”

The virulent opposition to women’s equality globally is the patriarchy fighting for its life, and its intensity is a measure of the progress we’ve been making in changing the way most of the world has worked for the past five thousand years.

Our persistence will continue to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice and inspire succeeding generations to keep on marching toward our shared vision for a fairer world.

Success may never be linear or complete, but failure is impossible.

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