How Societies Fail: Cultures of Honor, Patriarchy, Women’s Rights, and Social Stability

 A recent issue of The Economist provided a fascinating article detailing the costs a country pays when its culture demands the subjugation of females: Societies that treat women badly are poorer and less stable.  The author uses research into the correlation between the fragility of societies and their oppression of women to make the point that when women suffer, the men, and greater society, suffer as well.

The article turns on the work of Valerie Hudson of Texas A&M University and Donna Lee Bowen and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen of Brigham Young University.

“In ‘The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide’, Ms Hudson, Ms Bowen and Ms Nielsen rank 176 countries on a scale of 0 to 16 for what they call the ‘patrilineal/fraternal syndrome’. This is a composite of such things as unequal treatment of women in family law and property rights, early marriage for girls, patrilocal marriage, polygamy, bride price, son preference, violence against women and social attitudes towards it (for example, is rape seen as a property crime against men?).”

The term fraternal syndrome arises from the tendency in many countries to form strong clan bonds within an extended family in which the clan as a whole acts to protect the interests of each male member.  Patrilocal refers to the female as the one who must move on when a marriage agreement is made.  Patrilineal refers to the family name and assets passing down through the male descendants.  The term “bride price” refers to the common practice of a father charging a fee to a prospective groom in order to close a marriage deal.  This certainly represents the fact that women are considered economic commodities and their “honor” and market value must be protected.  The accumulated data is plotted on the y-axis versus a measure of the degree of disorder and uncontrolled violence in a nation.

Cultures of honor require individuals to be willing to resort to violence, or the threat of violence, as a response to any affront to their honor.  These features tend to develop in societies where there is no recourse to external assistance in protecting property; the threat of theft is common with only the potential victim able to protect himself and his assets.  This situation will encourage strong family bonds as a means of protection and extend this familial response as far as possible, forming a clan—and perhaps a tribe.  However, the potential thieves will also have developed a clan.  A conflict between two individuals can lead to conflict between a large number of people and extend over generations.  The author uses Iraq as an example of a nation where clannishness leads to dysfunction. 

“The Iraqi police are reluctant to intervene in tribal murders. The culprit is probably armed. If he dies resisting arrest, his male relatives will feel a moral duty to kill the officer who fired the shot or, failing that, one of his colleagues. Few cops want to pick such a fight. It is far easier to let the tribes sort out their own disputes.”

“The upshot is that old codes of honour often trump Iraqi law (and also, whisper it, Islamic scripture, which is usually milder). Cycles of vengeance can spiral out of control.”

Situations in which allegiances to family or clan are stronger than that to the nation predictably produce corruption.

“Clan loyalties can cripple the state. When a clan member gets a job in the health ministry, he may feel a stronger duty to hire his unqualified cousins and steer contracts to his kin than to improve the nation’s health. This helps explain why Iraqi ministries are so corrupt.

Male dominance in a society leads to adverse trends that produce dysfunction.  Nature, wisely, produces male and female babies in equal numbers.  Humans, foolishly, often tend to favor males over females.

“The obstacles females face begin in the womb. Families that prefer sons may abort daughters. This has been especially common in China, India and the post-Soviet Caucasus region. Thanks to sex-selective abortion and the neglect of girl children, at least 130m girls are missing from the world’s population, by one estimate.”

“That means many men are doomed to remain single; and frustrated single men can be dangerous. Lena Edlund of Columbia University and her co-authors found that in China, for every 1% rise in the ratio of men to women, violent and property crime rose by 3.7%. Parts of India with more surplus men also have more violence against women. The insurgency in Kashmir has political roots, but it cannot help that the state has one of most skewed sex ratios in India.”

There is a more efficient way to limit the number of women available for marriage: polygamy (or more precisely, polygyny).  The number of women in polygynous marriages worldwide is small, but it happens to be quite large in some of the most violent regions of the world.

“Only about 2% of people live in polygamous households. But in the most unstable places it is rife. In war-racked Mali, Burkina Faso and South Sudan, the figure is more than a third. In the north-east of Nigeria, where the jihadists of Boko Haram control large swathes of territory, 44% of women aged 15-49 are in polygynous unions.”

“If the richest 10% of men have four wives each, the bottom 30% will have none. This gives them a powerful incentive to kill other men and steal their goods. They can either form groups of bandits with their cousins, as in north-western Nigeria, or join rebel armies, as in the Sahel. In Guinea, where soldiers carried out a coup on September 5th, 42% of married women aged 15-49 have co-wives.”

“Insurgent groups exploit male frustration to recruit. Islamic State gave its fighters sex slaves. Boko Haram offers its troops the chance to kidnap girls. Some Taliban are reportedly knocking on doors and demanding that families surrender single women to ‘wed’ them.”

The custom of bride price turns girls into marketable commodities.  In a situation where females are in short supply, the price can soar producing an unstable situation.

“Bride price, a more widespread practice, is also destabilising. In half of countries, marriage commonly entails money or goods changing hands. Most patrilineal cultures insist on it. Usually the resources pass from the groom’s family to the bride’s, though in South Asia it is typically the other way round (known as dowry).”

“The sums involved are often large. In Tororo district in Uganda, a groom is expected to pay his bride’s family five cows, five goats and a bit of cash, which are shared out among her male relatives. As a consequence, “some men will say: ‘you are my property, so I have the right to beat you,’” says Mary Asili, who runs a local branch of Mifumi, a women’s group.”

“Bride price encourages early marriage for girls, and later marriage for men. If a man’s daughters marry at 15 and his sons at 25, he has on average ten years to milk and breed the cows he receives for his daughters before he must pay up for his sons’ nuptials. In Uganda, 34% of women are married before the age of 18 and 7% before the age of 15. Early marriage means girls are more likely to drop out of school, and less able to stand up to an abusive husband.”

If bride price becomes unaffordable, crime can be the only path to marriage.

“Bride price can make marriage unaffordable for men. Mr Manshad in Iraq complains: ‘Many young men can’t get married. It can cost $10,000.’ Asked if his tribe’s recent lethal disputes over sand and vehicles might have been motivated by the desire to raise such a sum, he shrugs: ‘It is a basic necessity in life to get married’.”

The author introduces his article with a quote from the just mentioned Mr. Manshad of Iraq.

“’A woman who drives a car will be killed,’ says Sheikh Hazim Muhammad al-Manshad. He says it matter-of-factly, without raising his voice. The unwritten rules of his tribe, the al-Ghazi of southern Iraq, are clear. A woman who drives a car might meet a man. The very possibility is ‘a violation of her honour’. So her male relatives will kill her, with a knife or a bullet, and bury the body in a sand dune.”

These types of attitudes, and the desire to conceal females from public view by encasing them in clothing from head to foot, are common in Islamic countries, but they do not seem to be driven by the precepts of Islam itself.  Death for driving a car is a choice that particular society has made.  The Quran merely requires both men and women to dress modestly, a not unreasonable demand.  The culture of honor described above is derived not from an attempt to protect the car-driving woman’s honor but that of the men who own her.  That cultural tradition developed well before even the culture of the ancient Hebrews.  It is associated with the development of patriarchy in what we today refer to as the Middle East.

Gerda Lerner was one of the many Jews driven from Europe by Hitler who went on to make the lives of the rest of us more interesting.  She is credited with producing the first formal class on women’s history at any university in 1963 while she was still an undergraduate.  It would be her efforts that were critical in establishing the history of women as a formal topic for academic research.  She is best known for her book The Creation of Patriarchy(1986).  It covers the origins of patriarchy, its effects on society, its incorporation into religion and history, and its effects on women up to our current time.

As humans progressed from a hunter-gatherer existence to a more sedentary agricultural-based economy, the division of responsibilities between the genders changed.  This period would begin the introduction of features of economics and capitalism that encouraged the accumulation of wealth by individuals, the industrialization of production, and the waging of war for conquest or defense.  All of these advantaged a division of labor in which men took the lead while women focused on the female responsibilities of breeding and caring for children.  Writing and the production of historically useful documents date back to about 3000 B.C.  At that time, evidence existed that women played a substantial, though not equal, role to that of men in society.  Over the next 1000 years or so such references disappeared from historical documents and the dominance of men was expressed in the patriarchal family structure.  At its worst, patriarchy provided these characteristics.

“The father had the power of life and death over his children.  He had the power to commit infanticide by exposure or abandonment.  He could give his daughters in marriage in exchange for receiving a bride price even during their childhood, or he could consecrate them to a life of virginity in the temple service.  He could arrange marriages for children of both sexes.  A man could pledge his wife, his concubines and their children as pawns for his debt; if he failed to pay back the debt, these pledges would be turned into debt slaves.”

“The class difference between a wife living under the patriarchal dominance/protection of her husband and a slave living under the dominance/protection of the master was mainly that the wife could own a slave…”

The fate of girls from poor families was worse.

“By the second millennium B.C. in Mesopotamian societies, the daughters of the poor were sold into marriage or prostitution in order to advance the economic interests of their families.”

Women became valuable commodities that could be bought or sold, but men would do the buying and selling.  It became very important to a man of wealth that he have some means of demonstrating that the women of his family were not available for sale and were safely held under his protection.  From this grew the practice of veiling “honorable” women so they could be distinguished from “dishonored” women who were forbidden the veil.  It is not difficult to imagine veiling by the wealthy becoming an aspirational goal for all.  And if a face covering contributes to family honor, why would not some try to outdo others by covering ever more of the body.  Consequently, the dress requirements for women vary wildly, depending on the particular culture. 

It would be the Hebrews, in assembling their sacred documents, who would establish then current cultural treatment of women as a subordinate species to one ordained as being according to God’s will.  Christianity and Islam would then follow along and evolve from this same starting point.

The Biblical narratives are not kind to women.  The tale of Adam being created by a presumed male God by a means not requiring a birth process, eliminates any female role in creation.  Woman, in the form of Eve, is subsequently created from a rib of Adam, suggesting a lower status or rank relative to Adam and thus to God himself.  Eve then becomes the temptress that causes the fall from grace and the expulsion from Eden.  What clearer message could there be suggesting that women and their sexuality are dangerous to men and must be strictly controlled by men.  The basis of the Hebrew religion would be the covenant God was said to have made with Abraham.

“He asks acceptance that He will be the God of Israel, He alone and no other.  And He demands that His people which worship Him will be set apart from other people by a bodily sign, a clearly identifiable token…”

The token will be the required circumcision of males.

“We must take note of the fact that Yahweh makes the covenant with Abraham alone, not including [his wife] Sarah, and that in so doing He gives divine sanction to the leadership of the patriarch over his family and tribe…the covenant relationship is only with males—first with Abraham, then explicitly with Abraham and Sarah’s son, Isaac, who is referred to only as Abraham’s son.  Moreover, the community of the covenant is divinely defined as a male community, as can be seen by the selection of the symbol chosen as ‘token of the covenant’.”

“For females, the Book of Genesis represented their definition as creatures essentially different from males; a redefinition of their sexuality as beneficial and redemptive only within the boundaries of patriarchal dominance; and finally the recognition that they were excluded from directly being able to represent the divine principle.  The weight of the Biblical narrative seemed to decree that by the will of God women were included in His covenant only through the mediation of men.”

The tyranny of the religions men created in order to propagate their dominance held women back for many centuries—and still does in some regions and cultures.

“…All males, whether enslaved or economically or racially oppressed, could still identify with those like them—other males—who represented mastery of the symbol system.  No matter how degraded, each male slave or peasant was like to the master in his relationship to God.  This was not the case for women.  Up to the time of the Protestant Reformation the vast majority of women could not confirm and strengthen their humanity by reference to other females in positions of intellectual authority and religious leadership.”

“Where there is no precedent, one cannot imagine alternatives to existing conditions.  It is this feature of male hegemony which has been the most damaging to women and has ensured their subordinate status for millennia.  The denial to women of their history has reinforced their acceptance of the ideology of patriarchy and has undermined the individual woman’s sense of self-worth.”

No matter how counterproductive they may be, cultural attributes can be propagated for millennia, long after the conditions that generated them have disappeared.  Revolutions, wars, plagues, they come and go, but all too often the culture persists.

You can learn a little about a lot of things or you can learn a lot about a very few things. Guess which is the most fun.