Abstract
Patriarchy, literally ‘the rule of the father,’ is part of the common sense accepted as an almost inevitable status quo in many countries. The immediate consequence of patriarchal domination is numerous female victims throughout the world whose suffering, ranging from everyday humiliation to rape and death, calls not only for urgent study, discussion and academic scaffolding, but also for immediate action. Paraphrasing Karl Marx, the role of intellectuals is not just to describe the world, but to transform it and, in this case, we add, to improve it. Living with Patriarchy proposes looking at male domination in different spheres, such as the private, the public and the professional domains, so as to unveil the myriad discursive processes that make that domination possible and to attempt to dismantle the conditions of possibility that enable its survival. As the editors say, ‘the book has the underlying conception that studying gender is a political choice’ (p. 4). While the topic of gender has been increasingly dealt with both academically and militantly in the recent decades of the 20th and 21st centuries, rising femicide, to mention just one issue, proves that the effort spent is never enough when the aim is to achieve gender equality and emancipation as a way to improve women’s everyday lives.
Part I examines ‘Patriarchy and emancipation in private spaces’. Laura Tolton deals with the public acceptance of abuse of women in Colombian society, as shown in the analysis of an Internet forum in which a famous case of family violence was posted. Domestic violence in Colombia, Tolton suggests, is naturalized within a context of more general violence existing in the country. In Chapter 2, Michael Abudi, Felicia Yieke and Chatherine Kitetu argue that male domination is produced and perpetuated in everyday language, with reference to Luo society.
In Chapter 3, Karin Miles discusses the introduction of the colloquial Swedish word snippa to refer to girls’ genitals. Miles suggests there was a lexical gap that did not allow Swedish speakers, who enjoy a high degree of gender equality, to refer to girls’ genitals if it was not with a scientific or derogatory or taboo term. Having the term snippa has helped authorities to carry out sexual education programs more successfully from pre-school level onwards.
Danijela Majstrović and Maja Mandić give an overview of strongly patriarchal dominance in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH), in particular after the Balkan war. This is shown in the description of a sample of a larger study carried out through interviews with working and professional women. The researchers find that feminism is considered ‘dangerous’ in BiH, which accounts for the scarce resistance against male domination.
Part II is about ‘Mediating gender in public spaces’. Ouravia Hatzidaki reports on a study carried out using Greek men’s and women’s magazines as a corpus. Research done at both quantitative and qualitative levels shows that gender stereotypes are reinforced but, at the same time and on an equal footing, deontic discourse is used to supposedly give advice on consumerism, body care and personal finances, among other things, thus biasing readers’ behaviors.
Toyoko Sato analyzes how categories of femininity and desire were built through a popular advertising campaign for a Japanese department store. Interviews with advertisers and detailed analysis of the slogans and visuals using CDA as methodology help her discuss concepts such as gender as an act of doing and how discourse contributes to this process.
Grace Diabah shifts our attention to Africa. She compares the BBC profiles of two 2005 Liberian presidential candidates. Since politics is considered a male occupation in Liberia, the way the female candidate is portrayed and evaluated is highly gender-biased.
Nguyen Thi Thu Ha probes into the quality of gender equality in Vietnam from the end of the war to the present day. By using feminist critical discourse analysis, she examines 99 articles issued on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Though women are widely recognized as invaluable builders of the Vietnamese nation, there still remain in the media messages supporting a chauvinistic social order.
Part III discusses the ‘Trajectories of patriarchy and emancipation across professions’. Stella M. Advani from Canada aims at showing, through the analysis of interviews with two hospital doctors, how workplaces are gendered. The author sees that there is an increasing number of female doctors who seem to succeed professionally as long as they adapt to a male lifestyle and working practice, a situation which more often than not clashes with their personal aspirations for having a family and raising children. Female doctors even adopt male discursive styles, which constitutes an extra effort in their attempt to be better suited for their positions.
Inger Lassen explores how women are underrepresented in management positions in a Danish bank, in contrast to their apparently formal egalitarian gender status in the country. By resorting to CDA and appraisal analysis, Lassen shows how patriarchal stereotypes are reinforced via discursive practices, leading women to incorporate male values in order to be considered more apt for a managerial position.
Joanna Pawelczyk and Eva-Maria Graf analyzed 65 hours of recorded therapy sessions between a male therapist and male and female patients using discourse analysis as a tool to show how the use of symbolic feminine discourse, which builds an environment of collaboration, empowerment and symmetry, may be an agent of social change in search of a more egalitarian society. The assumption that we live in a therapeutic society has inspired the study of the strategies typical of feminine discourse, which have usually been underestimated and which are now being valued positively both in the private and in the public sphere.
Although referring to one chapter in particular, the editors’ statement that ‘[the book] brings new hope, advocating a new avenue towards emancipation’ (p. 8) pervades the whole book and, as such, I warmly recommend it to the readers of this journal.