precepts in order to familiarize the reader with it. Thus I draw attention to the extensive research by Hamilton, Fudges, Oakley, Mitchell, Zaretsky, Groult, Astelarra and Borneman, among others (VI).
Patriarchal ideology conforms to the definition put forward by Schilder: “ideologies are systems of ideas and connotations that men hold in order to better guide their actions. To a greater or lesser extent, they are profoundly conscious or unconscious thoughts, held by those who uphold them as the result of pure reasoning, but which, however, often differ little from the religious beliefs with which they share a high degree of internal evidence despite a lack of empirical evidence” (VII).
The prevailing ideas of patriarchal ideology revolve around the basic premise of men’s superiority over women, a belief that leads to the establishment of the differences between sexes as one of hierarchy in which males are at the top of the ladder. From this vantage point, they exercise control and perpetuate an order, which contributes to the consolidation of women’s oppression. This hierachization justifies and endorses men’s domination over women.
The fundamental assumption of male superiority draws on biologist, naturalist and essentialist theories. It explains the hierarchical differences between the sexes as the result of exclusively biological factors that are, therefore, immutable. It relates sex with gender, omitting cultural factors that come into play in the learning and development of sexual gender. At the same time, it maintains that femininity and masculinity respond to an essence and that social roles are the expression of this essence.
This ideology is present in monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity, not only in in the figure of its maximum exponent, God the Father but also, and fundamentally, in the claims of the prophets and apostles who emphasized women’s inferiority as the result of a divine plan.
This ideology promotes a sexual division through work whereby men are assigned to production and the public realm while women are for reproduction and the private and domestic realm. Among other things, this closely associates women’s activities with maternity and domesticity, thus contributing to the identification of the woman with Mother. The characteristics attributed to motherhood are regarded as “essentially” feminine.
Patriarchy tends to establish a strict control over female sexuality, among other aspects, through familiar institutions that demand, for example, fidelity of the woman but not of the man. As J. Mitchel (VIII) observes, the transition from polygamy to monogamy did not signify equality of sexual freedom.
In short, patriarchal ideology, sustained by biologism, emphasizes the essentiality of the differences between the sexes. It validates a heirarchialized relationship that expresses women’s oppression in all areas of social functioning: sexual, economic, intellectual, political, religious, psychological and emotional oppression, among others.
The contents
This book is aimed at professionals in social sciences and men and women interested in the subject matter.
It covers topics related to women and includes a chapter addressing the dilemma concerning men’s relationship with money. Other chapters, such as those referring to psychotherapeutic treatments, are dealt with in detail for readers interested in a psychological approach.
The topics concerning women centre on the situation of economic dependence and its varied expressions. This dependence is set within a broader and more complex problem, namely that of economic marginalization and the significance money acquires for women. Cultural changes that have given women access to education and money have lessened neither this marginalization nor the attitudes of subordination by men.
This book develops the hypothesis of an internal, unconscious conflict between the desire to attain the ideal woman – responding to the maternal image and all the characteristics that patriarchy attributes to it – and the woman’s need to interact effectively and autonomously in today’s world, where they enjoy greater access to the public realm and to money.
I go on to describe the gruelling and silent struggle that women unconsciously endure and from which they emerge with differing outcomes.
This hypothesis is complemented by an analysis of certain phantasms,7 chiefly the phantasm of prostitution, which attempts to explain many of the difficulties that women encounter in their daily dealings with money.
The section given over to men outlines their ensnarement in the “money-making” trap. Associated with sexual prowess, money becomes almost an indicator of masculinity. It analyzes a particular model of sexual power based on quantity – which is linked to consumerist demands of capitalism8 – and how the expression “time is money” is representative of a trap for men that promotes the omnipotent illusion of inexhaustibility. It is an illusion that seeks to counter the anxiety of castration, understood in its broadest sense as finitude and death.
This first book on the subject attempts to explain and convey the following ideas:
1 Money is a taboo subject in our culture. It is omnipresent but is omitted in reflections. Beyond the economic context, it is shrouded by complex interpersonal contracts. Strikingly, though money interests everyone, it has no room for debate without the usual pressures.
2 Money is sexually differentiated in our culture. In widely diverging ways, for men money denotes potency and virility, verging on an indicator of male sexual identity.
3 Patriarchal ideology endorses this sexual differentiation, thus perpetuating women’s economic subordination.
4 Sexual differentiation is not innocuous to men either: money is intimately associated with “virility” while its absence questions a man’s sexual identity.
5 It is possible to contribute to the transformation of these conditioning factors through consciousness raising. For women, awareness of economic marginalization and the lack of autonomy. For men, awareness of the association of money and virility. In this respect, consciousness-raising groups are exceptionally beneficial to this end.
Some important clarifications
When I embarked on my research into this question I restricted my field of action, meaning that I had to leave out an infinite number of others.
Curiously, when I set out my reflections on money, people almost invariably asked me about the aspects that I had omitted.
Anyone with common sense, unless they are omnipotent, should accept that “everything” is a lot and generally exceeds what is “possible”.
In fact, I did not omit certain aspects that I deemed to be irrelevant.
I hasten to add that the reflections raised herein are not intended to be universal. They have their point of departure in the middle class,9 because the focus of this book is centred on financial empowerment within a patriarchal society. And with this goal in mind, the middle class is particularly suited to this end for two main reasons:
First, because economic independence is a necessary condition for autonomy. In this respect, the poorer and wealthier classes include variables that make this research extremely difficult or impossible.
It is a great deal more difficult to research autonomy in the poorer classes, whose economic hardships allow them no economic independence. Besides their economic privations, if we start from the premise that economic independence is a necessary condition for autonomy, we would have to address the former instead of the latter.
As
