In the long history of man domination, our social structure
is built upon both hegemony and masculinity working together—like the wall and
the roof, which a house cannot live without either. Hegemony represents the
power differentiation while masculinity represents the gender differentiation.
In a society, there has to be someone playing the leading role and control the
power, such as kings or emperors, and within that level, men and women also
have to be distinguished so that men play the stronger role and women are
everything else. The two differentiation very often works together in order to achieve
a balanced and peaceful social where all people hold their own responsibility.
For instance, when the king is responsible for solving problems of the country,
the queen would be responsible for taking care of the royal family. When a
farmer has to farm, his wife would cook. This is the culture of roles.
However, the social order created from the combination of
hegemony and masculinity results in the inequality of women. Can feminism works
with hegemony? I would say it can but everything would be chaos before everyone
demands, negotiates, and settles down on their roles. For the sake of easiness,
people usually just go with the traditional form of power given men; but for
this twenty-first century, I suggest that women should never give up their
right just because of the way they got used to.
Sometimes feminism does works with hegemony. When the wife earn more than the husband in a family, the wife gains more control over the family issue than the husband. However, they are still in a subordinate position since the society, from the whole, is manipulate by men. Thus, those individuals still benefits from the general situation and earn their dominance even though they contribute less.
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