Abstract
As feminist consciousness is reemerging in local, national, and global contexts, it is somewhat surprising that conversations about the persistence and durability of patriarchy are largely absent within contemporary discourse. For many people in the United States, “patriarchy” is sonorous with Second Wave feminism—a haunting echo of another moment in time. However, in The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy, Cynthia Enloe argues patriarchy is as current as our contemporary governments, economic systems, and policies. Enloe argues patriarchy is adaptive, dynamic, and sustainable, and it is our reluctance to examine patriarchal structures, values, beliefs, and behaviors that enables it to survive. This does not mean that patriarchy is immune to challenge; but change will require active feminist attentiveness, reflection, questioning, and investigation if we want to illuminate how interwoven ideas about sex, gender, difference, and the world we live in privilege particular forms of masculinity over less desirable forms of masculinity and all forms of femininity.
Enloe prefaces this analysis by reflecting on the Women’s Marches on January 21, 2017. Highlighting the intersectionality underpinning the Women’s Marches (from Washington, D.C. to Seoul, South Korea), the author describes how marchers expressed concerns about electoral politics, immigration laws, nationalism, racism, reproductive rights, democracy, misogyny—and their intersections in contemporary feminism. What was missing was a critique of the less bombastic and more insidious dynamics that perpetuate patriarchal ideas and relationships, which is problematic. For example, Enloe points out marchers voiced little concern about the ways in which masculinized militaries and governments silently perpetuate patriarchal values. Thus, there is an urgent need to expose the subtler ways patriarchy functions in society if these systems are to be challenged and dismantled.
The Big Push takes up this challenge in a text that is part narrative, part political history, and all feminist analysis. Beginning with the 2014 Syrian peace negotiations in Geneva, Enloe outlines current models for sustaining patriarchy. During these negotiations women were overwhelmingly excluded from discussions of strategies to end armed violence. Those women who were invited to participate where kept on the fringes of any decision making while simultaneously facing such intense internal pressure that any alliances to local women were seriously strained. Yet, even as these negotiations took place masculinized armed violence continued in a business as usual fashion, ultimately perpetuating the patriarchal notion that militarization rather than negotiation is what wins a war. The case of the Syrian peace negotiations is not unique, rather it is an exemplar of how patriarchal structures continue to function despite the advances made by feminist activists over the years.
After further outlining how models of sustaining patriarchy function through an analysis of gendered economics and international politics, the author begins the process of disrupting a system that presents difference (and inequality) in gendered dynamics as self-evident and natural as opposed to deliberately scripted. As a case, Enloe returns to the relationship between patriarchy and armed conflict. Historical accounts of war and the military are dominated by not only men’s accounts, strategies, analyses, interpretations, and representations, but the gendered expectations of men and women (boys and girls). War is a man’s endeavors. Enloe challenges readers to break through this masculine mirage by employing a feminist curiosity. For example, the author suggests we ask questions including, how does gendering impact the interpretation of military heritage? How do patriarchal systems employ that gendering to exclude women from this arena? Enloe warns readers that by failing to critically explore these issues one becomes complaisant in a masculinized militarization that keeps manly men in their rightful and visible place, while silencing women who are frequently essential to military endeavors (for example, the active and critical role of the military wife) and transforming them into the passive memorializers of savvy and courageous men.
In the final chapters of the book, Enloe illuminates the important ways in which women have taken action to bring attention to the gendered inequality embedded within patriarchal structures, while reminding readers that the fighting patriarchy takes extraordinary stamina. Highlighting the struggles of female cafeteria workers in Massachusetts and women working at the UN headquarters in New York, the author illustrates how the fight against patriarchy is an ongoing process as patriarchal systems adapt in public but clandestine ways. Thus, Enloe argues, it is necessary to continuously look for these patriarchal adaptions and speak out against even the smallest actions that perpetuate sexist norms.
The Big Push is an important contribution to scholarly work on gender inequality. Enloe provides an insightful and engaging analysis of why patriarchal beliefs and practices are so resilient, while outlining how feminist concepts, questioning, and investigation can be used to dismantle this perpetuating system. This text will appeal to scholars and activists as well as women and men who simply value empowerment, equality, and social justice.