Patriarchy and Control over Women's bodies: Special focus on Reproductive Health in Pakistan

Abstract

The word patriarchy literally means the rule of the father or the “patriarch”, and originally it was used to describe a specific type of “man-dominated family”. According to the (Britannica, 2012) patriarchy is ―a societal system in which family members are related to each other through their fathers‖. Walby in “Theorizing Patriarchy” calls it ―a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women‖ (Walby, 1990). It is generally used to refer to men domination, to the power relationships by which men dominate women, and to characterize a system whereby women are kept subordinate in a number of ways. Walby also prompts why it is important to understand patriarchy as a system because this helps us to reject the notion that every individual man is always in a dominant position and every woman in a subordinate one (Walby, 1990).