Angela Saini (London, 1980) is a renowned science communicator who specializes in breaking down stereotypes. With the clarity and succinctness of journalism – he worked at the BBC before devoting himself full-time to writing – he illuminates seemingly immutable concepts and the clichés they convey, as his latest work proves with an optimistic and even provocative look back at the patriarchy : The patriarchy. The Origins of Male Domination (Kairós). He reiterates that the question of male power, which the historian Gerda Lerner addressed almost 40 years ago in her work “The Creation of Patriarchy” (1986), needs to be updated. “Since then we have learned a lot in archaeology, in science, in anthropology…” says the popularizer.
Saini, who is also an engineer from the University of Oxford, studies the interaction between science and society and its impact on marginalized groups. Two of his books have attracted particular attention because they deal with phenomena as controversial as they are diverse: Racism in Superior: The Return of Scientific Racism (2019), published by Círculo de Tiza – chosen by the publisher as one of the 10 best books of the year In the In renowned science magazines Nature and the Financial Times, she recalls the discrimination she suffered as a child because of the color of her skin (she is of Indian origin) and the lies and scientific prejudices of sexism in Lower. How science underestimates women and how research is rewriting history, from 2017 and translated into 14 languages.
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Saini received this newspaper in early February at his apartment in New York, a cozy place that, he says, looked nothing like this when he arrived in the middle of the pandemic and that stands like a watchtower over Manhattan and offers spectacular views. The talk is refreshing yet intense, a kaleidoscope of ideas in which science and social conscience coexist. At the end she talks about how much she misses the Indian restaurants in London despite the large selection in New York and how much she feels foreign in the New World as a European.
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Questions. Has patriarchy always been the same or has it been reinvented over the years?
Answer. What we imagine in the past as a major event that controlled our entire lives in a uniform way has actually happened in very different ways in different parts of the world. There are still many places where there is no patriarchy, but rather matrilineal societies where authority tends to be shared.
Q Is there global cartography?
R. What seems huge and sometimes indestructible is in reality just a product of decisions and actions and the colonization of ideas and the export of ideologies, in the same way that democracy or the idea of the state or capitalism or communism spreads and have generalized. That doesn't mean any of them are natural. If it were inevitable, it would be everywhere. I think there are certain circumstances that are responsible for this, some more crucial than others.
Q What are these determinants?
R. In patrilineal societies, it is easier to move toward patriarchy because of the conditions that networks of interconnected men create. The emergence of the state was crucial because the first states were very concerned about the population. Therefore, you must be interested in the family, that is, in reproduction and defense. These concerns became the axes of the modern patriarchal state and encouraged women to have as many children as possible.
Q Did he demand something from the men?
R. Of course, they must be available to fight and defend the state and, if necessary, give their lives. So patriarchy demands a lot from men and women. And that is just as true today as it was 2,000 years ago.
Q Is it more of an economic, cultural, social, political system…?
R. It is a whole, just as other political systems become social and cultural. Just as capitalism can sometimes be tied to our ideas of individualism, growth and productivity, I think patriarchy is the same. It is a system imposed from above.
Q Then it's a control system…
R. This is probably the main argument of my book: although we imagine that patriarchy began in the family, the historical evidence suggests that it began with the state and then spread to the family. And if it is a system imposed from above, it obviously also affects social and cultural relationships.
Q How or why are the few matrilineal societies that exist maintained?
R. The big question is why not. We should expect that there are huge social differences in the way people live. We are capable of living in many different ways. The strangest thing about patriarchy being so widespread is that such an unjust system has become so commonplace and so habitual. Let's look at it as something inevitable. Psychologically, we continue to behave as if it were a norm.
“This image of the man going hunting and the woman with the children never existed. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis.”
Q Strong leaders like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Narendra Modi… are they shaping a new kind of patriarchy?
R. I think so. People who talk about patriarchy as something traditional or a return to something assume that there is an original form of male rule that never existed. The Taliban are not resurrecting something that existed in Afghanistan's past. They are recreating patriarchy for the 21st century in their own way, selectively using religion. The same thing happens with Putin, with Trump…when Trump talks about making America great again, or when Putin constantly invokes the idea of Russia. They are not old ideas. They are quite new.
Q He says that there is no definitive history of patriarchy, nor a single story, that its narrative has changed over time. Which is the dominant one today?
R. I think it varies. It is widely believed that patriarchy has always existed, that male dominance is inherently biological, and that the difference in average height between the sexes is what created the power imbalance between men and women in the first place. When we think of the Stone Age, we imagine the nuclear family, the man who goes hunting and the woman with the children. That was never true. We have no evidence to support this division of labor hypothesis. But we take our modern ideas about family or gender and project them into the past. And we assume that the situation must have been even worse, when in reality the evidence says nothing of the sort.
Q Does this mean life was better before?
R. Everyone has to work; you cannot survive with this highly specialized division of labor. The further we go back in time, the more evidence we see that people lived in a very egalitarian way, that women and men did virtually the same work, which is what you would particularly expect in subsistence societies, because there everyone has to be able to do everything do, even children.
Q That's why equality is possible…
R. Yes, of course it is possible. There are more egalitarian societies and less egalitarian ones. We have also seen more egalitarian societies throughout history. There is a very wide variety. And the reason I think this book is optimistic is because I want to remind people that anything is possible. The idea that patriarchy is inevitable is self-defeating and counterfactual.
Q How important are movements like MeToo in opening up cracks in the system?
R. They are crucial. Over the course of my writing career, I have seen the enormous difference they have made. I remember when I tried to write “Inferior” before 2017 [cuando eclosionó el MeToo] and the editors didn't want to know anything about it. It was very difficult to sell the idea of sexism in the sciences, which led to today's myths about men and women. When the book came out, MeToo was going on. Scientists made the book a success because they had been saying for a long time: Look at the discrimination and abuse we face.
Q But Hollywood took the first step…
R. We are only now beginning to realize the extent of sexual harassment in academia. And of course it's not just there, it's Hollywood, it's the corporate spaces. It's politics. It is everywhere. Now I see a generation of young people who will not tolerate the things my generation had to endure, they feel like they have a voice.
Q What are we talking about when we talk about women empowerment? About economic independence, about self-esteem, about the justification of gender?
R. Every person has their own idea of what feminism and gender equality mean. For me, gender equality is a society where no one feels vulnerable and everyone feels safe. Sometimes ideas of freedom or liberation do not always recognize the fact that freedom in itself is not enough. We are social creatures. We depend on systems that we can rely on. And when they don't exist, we are trapped in undesirable situations: women in terrible marriages or abusive situations or in bad jobs where they are harassed because they have no other choice. So a supportive society, a more egalitarian society, is a society that always gives you another option.
Q The myth of the superwoman, of the perfect woman 24 hours a day… is it a trap of the patriarchy or of ourselves?
R. We are part of this patriarchal system. We also internalize these things, they will continue through generations. So when we talk about patriarchy, I don't just mean men telling women what to do. It's a system where we grow and see that, okay, okay, if I follow these rules, this will work for me. If I don't follow them, things get a little more difficult. And that is the harmful way such ideologies spread.
“Sexual fluidity or gender diversity speaks not only to sexual minorities, but to each and every one of us.”
Q Nobody said freedom was easy.
R. That's why in the book, and I find it quite uncomfortable to confront such issues, I examine the ways in which we make decisions or behave that harm other women. For example, the phenomenon of mothers-in-law in traditional patriarchal families who are incredibly abusive and controlling of their daughters-in-law because that's what happened to them and that's their only source of power. “I will endure this as a daughter-in-law, because later I will gain this power as a mother-in-law.” Everyone values status, and this is a factor when thinking about maintaining power imbalances.
Q Diversity or fluidity of genres is mainstream. Can it undermine patriarchy by driving a wedge into the dichotomy between men and women?
R. Yes, of course. I think part of the patriarchal control mechanism is dividing people into these two rigid compartments and telling them very precisely how they should behave. Saying that men can only act like this, women like that. So when we talk about sexual fluidity or gender diversity, it's not just about sexual minorities, but about each and every one of us. Because when we open our minds to what it means to be a man or a woman or what it means to be human, we fundamentally undermine this patriarchal system.
Q How many generations must pass to achieve full equality?
R. We could do it in the same generation if we wanted. But I think we're not at the point where people are fully ready to accept what gender equality would really mean, which would mean questioning everything. It means questioning capitalism. It means questioning the way the state works, and that takes time. It is important to remember that we have made incredible progress over the last century. In most countries, women have gone from being the property of their husbands to individuals who have the right to divorce and not be raped in marriage… And this happened not through the revolution, but through the reform. So something can happen. And 100 years is not a long time. So I'm very optimistic and hopeful.
Q However, some studies show that younger people perceive gender equality as a grievance, if not a threat.
R. I wonder whether we as feminists have done a good job of communicating gender equality to men and women. Globally, Generation Z men are increasingly moving away from gender equality, while their peers are increasingly embracing it. And I think that's because there's a feeling that gender equality is only for women, but no: it's for everyone. We could sell it better and present it convincingly to both genders.
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