5.1 Chapter Introduction
Chapter Overview: Locating Gendered Power
Power in patriarchal societies has traditionally been secured by the violent enforcement of binary gender roles and gender inequality. This violence occurs at multiple levels, including structural, cultural, and interpersonally. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), coercive control of a spouse or romantic partner, is a common way to secure power in intimate relationships within patriarchal societies. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has identified traditional gender norms and gender inequality, and the social acceptance of interpersonal aggression as societal risk factors for IPV, and states that “Sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence are major public health problems in the United States” (Reamer 2023).
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has at different times been referred to as wife battering, domestic violence, and spousal abuse, but since people of all genders and sexualities in a variety of intimate relationships experience IPV, the more inclusive and expansive term, “Intimate Partner Violence,” is being widely adopted. However, there is some concern that this language obscures the connection between gender and violence (Bonnet & Whittaker 2015). The Wheel of Power and Control (figure 5.1) describes many of the forms of violence that perpetrators of IPV use to control their intimate partners.
Violence is one way that power is created and maintained in unequal systems of power. As the Wheel of Power and Control demonstrates, violence can take many forms in multiple domains. In this chapter, The Wheel of Power and Control is adapted in two different ways to help us understand that gender and other categories of identity are intersectional constructions of power that operate in multiple domains to create and maintain unequal systems of power. We will also consider some specific ways people are marginalized or privileged within those systems. Building on the discussion of patriarchy that we began in Chapter One, this chapter will also introduce four complex systems of power, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, that are sustained by gender inequality and explore how resistance to these systems can shift power towards the possibility of more equitable and expansive genders and sexualities.
LEARN MORE: Intimate Partner Violence
Intimate partner violence (IPV) can be a challenging topic, especially for people who have experienced it. If you have experienced IPV, please take time to create safety for yourself as you work through this material. For more research about intimate partner violence, you can explore the National Domestic Violence Hotline [Website].
Key Terms
This section contains a list of foundational key terms from the chapter. After reviewing them here, be on the lookout for them as you work through the rest of the book.
- capitalism: a complex competitive economic system of power in which limited resources are subject to private ownership and the accumulation of surplus is rewarded.
- decolonization: (multiple interrelated meanings from Cott 2000; Indigenous Corporate Training n.d.)
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- a political process that included a transfer of power back from a colonial government to an Indigenous one. For example, when India became independent from the British Empire in 1947.
- For those who have benefited from colonization, decolonization has also come to mean a personal divestment of colonial power across structural, disciplinary, cultural, and interpersonal domains of power.
- a cultural process of identifying and challenging cultural domains of colonial power so that pre-colonial ways of being and knowing can be reclaimed, recovered, and reimagined.
- heteropatriarchy: (a merging of the words heterosexual and patriarchy) is a system of power in which cisgender and heterosexual men have authority over everyone else. This term emphasizes that discrimination against women and LGBTQIA+ people is derived from the same sexist social principle (Valdes 1996).
- internalized oppression: a process of individuals within an oppressed group incorporating and accepting the prejudices of the dominant society (Pheterson 1986).
- intersectionality: describes how multiple social locations overlap and influence each other to create complex hierarchies of power and oppression, and that overlapping social identities produce unique inequities that influence the lives of people and groups (Crenshaw 1989).
- marginalization: a process of social exclusion in which individuals or groups are pushed to the outside of society by denying them economic and political power (Chandler & Munday 2011).
- meritocracy: a hypothetical system of power in which social status is determined by personal effort and merit (Conerly et al. 2021).
- microaggressions: are statements that indirectly reference stereotypes to assert the dominance of the aggressor.
- privilege: a right or immunity granted as a benefit, advantage, or favor. While privileges can be earned in some systems, privileges can also be unearned and based on social location. For the purpose of describing unequal power arrangements in systems of power we will be referring to those privileges that are “unearned advantages, exclusive to a particular group or social category, and socially conferred by others” (Johnson 2001).
- settler colonialism: is an unequal system of power that relies on white supremacy to justify removing established indigenous residents of colonized territory so that the land can be occupied by settlers and its resources used for the benefit of the occupying power.
- social identity: consists of the combination of social characteristics, roles, and group memberships with which a person identifies. Social identity can be described as “the sum total of who we think we are in relation to other people and social systems” (Johnson 2014, p. 178).
- social location: describes the relationship between social identity and social power.
- social movements: purposeful, organized groups that strive to work toward a common social goal.
- systems of power: socially constructed beliefs, practices, and cultural norms that produce and normalize power arrangements in social institutions.
- tokenism: the practice of making only a superficial or symbolic effort to diversify an organization by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups to give the appearance of equality.
- The Matrix of Domination: a theoretical framework developed by Patricia Hill Collins (she/her) to describe how power is socially constructed. Hill Collins identifies four domains of socially constructed power, which arrange power and work together to create systems of power (Hill Collins 1990).
- White supremacy: a complex system of racist power that is based on discredited racist enlightenment-era social science and constructed through policies and practices that privileged white people over people of other races, based on the racist ideas that that there are meaningful differences between people in different racial categories, that White people are physically and culturally superior, and that they are therefore entitled to dominate other people in other racial categories.
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you will be able to:
- Explain how binary gender is embedded in unequal systems of power.
- Describe how binary gender norms and unequal systems of power can impact individuals.
- Describe the role of binary gender norms in the conquest and colonization of the global south.
- Explain why successful social movements to dismantle unequal systems of power require the leadership of women, people who are LGBTQIA+, and People of the Global Majority.
- Explain how violence reinforced heteropatriarchal gender norms.
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Introduction
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Introduction” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
All Rights Reserved Content
Figure 5.1. “The Wheel of Power and Control” © Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs is included with permission.
the meanings, attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a society or culture ascribes to sexual differences (Adapted from Conerly et.al. 2021a).
the unequal distribution of power and resources based on gender.
any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion by any person, regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting (WHO 2022).
interconnected ideas and practices that attach identity and social position to power and serve to produce and normalize arrangements of power in society.
literally the rule of fathers. A patriarchal society is one where characteristics associated with masculinity signify more power and status than those associated with femininity.
(a merging of the words heterosexual and patriarchy) is a system of power in which cisgender and heterosexual men have authority over everyone else. This term emphasizes that discrimination against women and LGBTQIA+ people is derived from the same sexist social principle (Valdes, 1996).
a complex competitive economic system of power in which limited resources are subject to private ownership and the accumulation of surplus is rewarded.
a complex system of racist power that is based on discredited racist enlightenment-era social science and constructed through policies and practices that privileged white people over people of other races, based on the racist ideas that that there are meaningful differences between people in different racial categories, that White people are physically and culturally superior, and that they are therefore entitled to dominate other people in other racial categories.
is an unequal system of power that relies on white supremacy to justify removing established indigenous residents of colonized territory so that the land can be occupied by settlers and its resources used for the benefit of the occupying power.
a systematic approach that involves asking questions, identifying possible answers to your question, collecting, and evaluating evidence—not always in that order—before drawing logical, testable conclusions based on the best available evidence.
purposeful, organized groups that strive to work toward a common social goal.
an acronym that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual, Plus a continuously expanding spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations.