androcracy
{{Short description|Ruling by males}}
{{refimprove|date=July 2007}}
{{Forms of government}}
Androcracy is a form of government in which the government rulers are male. The males, especially fathers, have the central roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property. It is also sometimes called a phallocracy or andrarchy or an androcentric or phallocratic society.
Example
Traditionally, influential political positions have been disproportionately occupied by males. With the rise of feminism since the late 19th century, opinions concerning women in politics have changed in a manner that has facilitated an increase in female political participation. Nevertheless, there continues to be a considerable disparity between the percentage of males and females in politics. As of 2011 women represented 19.4 percent of all parliamentarians in the regions of Europe, the Americas, Sub-Sahara Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Arab States, and Nordic countries.{{cite web|url=http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/arc/world311011.htm |title= Women in National Parliaments as of 31 October 2011 |access-date=2 December 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130103004742/http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/arc/world311011.htm | website = ipu.org | publisher = Inter-Parliamentary Union |archive-date=3 January 2013 }}, with the level of female participation in parliament varying between regions, ranging from percentages as high as 42 in Nordic countries to as low as 11.4 in Arabic states.
Riane Eisler, in her book The Chalice and the Blade, contrasts androcratic male-dominated society with gylany, i.e., partnership society based on gender equality.{{cite book | last = Eisler | first = Riane | author-link = Riane Eisler | title = The chalice and the blade: our history, our future | pages = [https://archive.org/details/chaliceblade00eisl/page/24 24]–25 and 105–106 | publisher = Harper & Row | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | year = 1987 | isbn = 9780062502896 | title-link = The Chalice and the Blade }}
Gylany is balanced and equalitarian, and should not be confused with gynocracy or matriarchy, which define the ancient systems where women ruled without hierarchy and lineage was matricentral.
Gender bias
Androcracy as a gender bias may influence the decision-making process in many countries. Kleinberg and Boris point to a dominant paradigm which promotes wage-earning fathers with financially dependent mothers, the exclusion of same-sex couples, and the marginalization of single-parent families.{{cite journal | last1 = Boris | first1 = Eileen | last2 = Kleinberg | first2 = S.J. | title = Mothers and other workers: (re)conceiving labor, maternalism, and the state | journal = Journal of Women's History | volume = 15 | issue = 3 | pages = 90–117 | publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press | doi = 10.1353/jowh.2003.0061 | date = Autumn 2003 | s2cid = 144560405 }} [https://web.archive.org/web/20160918161002/https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/eileen-boris-and-s-j-kleinberg-mothers-and-other-workers-reconceiving-labor-maternalism-and-the-state/ View online.]
:Citing:
:* Kessler-Harris, Alice (2001), "[https://books.google.com/books?id=9Qtw5i7yQzwC&pg=PA161 Questions of equity]", in {{cite book | editor-last = Kessler-Harris | editor-first = Alice | title = In pursuit of equity: women, men, and the quest for economic citizenship in 20th-century America | pages = 161–169 | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = New York | isbn = 9780195158021 | year = 2003 }}
Gynocracy
{{Further|Matriarchy}}
The opposite of androcracy is gynocracy, or rule by women. It is related to but not synonymous with matriarchy. Evidence indicating historical gynocracies survives mostly in mythology and in some archaeological records, although it is disputed by some authors, like Cynthia Eller in her book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.{{cite book | last = Eller | first = Cynthia | title = Gentlemen and Amazons: the Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900 | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley | year = 2011 | isbn = 9780520266766 | title-link = The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory }}