The concept of patriarchy is generally understood as a set of political, social, and economic systems that privilege all men over all women. The beliefs and values of patriarchal systems undervalue the “feminine” and overvalue the “masculine.” In patriarchal systems, power, resources, and authority are distributed unevenly to ensure that men dominate.
In conversations about patriarchy, people tend to conceptualize patriarchy as an external force that resides outside an individual’s self-concept. The truth is, part of patriarchy does live externally. With awareness, we come to realize that there is also a part of it that resides within us, even if we identify as a woman. This we name as internalized patriarchy, a close relative of internalized misogyny, that may be conceptualized more broadly than misogyny and specifically as the internalization of patriarchal order. All people may experience internalized patriarchy in relation to both their feminine aspects and gender identity including cis-gendered women, trans women, non-binary people and men.
As with all aspects of the human shadow side, it is not comfortable to recognize and own personal participation in patriarchy related to internalized and unexamined oppressive norms. We are raised in a patriarchal society and few people put much thought into how this has formed our personality, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns.
For women-identified people, examining the shadow of internalized patriarchy and internalized misogyny may be especially difficult as it calls women to examine what they believe to be proper, true, right, just and moral. For many women, it is the only way they know how to be relational, even though adhering to patriarchal norms damages the ability for authentic and intimate relationships.
When a woman experiences internalized misogyny, she internalizes, assimilates, or buys into, the expectations, self-concepts, roles, and expected elements of her core identity and gender identity based on misogyny, sexism, harmful gender norms, cultural double standards, gender symbolism and societal stereotypes, consciously or not. It may seem that this order of things requires no examination as it is the way life works. However, internalized misogyny harms women’s mental health. Women may go along in life taking depression medication as a way of life. She may not question this need as 17.7% of her women friends, and if over 60, more that 24.3% of her women friends in the United States also take antidepressants. From 2009-2010 to 2017-2018 the percentage of U.S. adult women that use antidepressants increased, while use by men did not. That is just the way things are.
It is a well understood phenomenon that after long periods of oppression, targeted groups begin to internalize harmful cultural stereotypes. As oppression becomes embedded in our society, it becomes embedded in the target group’s sense of identity. This has been identified and studied in relationship to racism and is shown to have negative mental health consequences. It is considered by some as the most harmful psychological effect of oppression.
When internalized oppression becomes embedded in a woman’s sense of self, she then serves as a supporter of the self-perpetuating system of patriarchy. It is in this way that internalized oppression strengthens the oppressor and the oppressed become participants in their own subordination and the subordination of other women. Internalized oppression subjugates the mind of the oppressed. This subjugation is most often below conscious awareness.
It is important to remember that the tendency to blame women for internalized misogyny is victim blaming. Internalized misogyny is the result of domination. Once in place, it uses the oppressed to reinforce sexist cultural and relational factors, including structural systems that maintain a patriarchal order. The social order works to maintain women in this subordinate position. In this way, internalized oppression is a reinforcing factor, not the root of the oppression from which it stems.
The thinking that women are somehow responsible for their own oppression because women as a group exhibit signs of internalized misogyny has been debunked by research. A study, How Does The Internalization Of Misogyny Operate: A Thoretical Approach With European Examples, found that internalized misogyny parallels the state of gender inequality within a given society. Internalized misogyny is informed by the degree of gender domination, it does not inform it. This study concluded that the degree of women’s internalized misogyny found in a society’s women always lags behind the average level of sexist attitudes within that country.
Increasing self-awareness of internalized patriarchy and internalized misogyny, and questioning our related values, beliefs, roles, choices and behaviors is one way that all people, especially women-identified people, can resist the harmful impact of patriarchy on our relationships, physical health, mental health, and the well-being of our society and world.