We live in patriarchy

Cambridge Dictionary: Patriarchy (n.) – a society controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage.

1 Who Actually Holds the Levers?

1. Politics

   • Western legislatures are still male-heavy (≈65 % men in Europe; ≈73 % in the U.S.).

   • Women nevertheless chair key committees, run major ministries, and hold the European Commission and ECB presidencies.

   • Head-count ≠ agenda control: those male-majority chambers routinely pass laws explicitly framed as benefiting women (e.g., EU Pay-Transparency Directive, Violence Against Women Act expansions).

2. Corporate boardrooms

   • Roughly 9 out of 10 Fortune 500 CEOs are male.

   • Yet boards chase ESG scores, female-quota targets, and brand campaigns centred on “empowering women.”

The pattern: a numerical male skew among decision-makers, but not an observable pro-male policy bias.

2 Do Ordinary Men Reap Group-Level Advantages?

Domain	Outcome	Does it favour men?
Criminal justice	Sentencing studies show women receive ~25–30 % lighter penalties than similarly situated men.	No
Family courts	Mothers win sole custody ≈80 % of the time.	No
Workplace risk	>90 % of occupational deaths are male.	No
Education	Women earn ~60 % of all university degrees in Anglophone countries.	No
Health funding	Breast-cancer research still outspends prostate-cancer research 2–3 : 1 despite similar mortality.	No

If the system were patriarchal by definition, we would expect the inverse of every line in that table.

3 Where the “Patriarchy” Frame Breaks Down

1. Elite ≠ Class Solidarity. Male executives or senators share education, income, and network ties with elite women—much more than with working-class men. Sex is not the operative glue.

2. Policy Outputs Clash with Patriarchy Claims. Laws and budgets are skewing toward female-specific benefits, while male-specific crises (suicide, homelessness, drop-out rates) draw scant political urgency.

3. Benefit Pathway Is Missing. A male-controlled institution that delivers neither preferential sentencing nor better health outcomes for men fails the “advantage” clause in the definition.

A More Accurate Label

What we actually see is elite dominance with a residual male head-count surplus. Call it an oligarchy, a managerial class, the “Davos set”—but don’t call it patriarchy unless:

• virtually all seats of power are male and

• those seats are used to lift men as a group above women.

Modern Western data satisfy neither condition. The word “patriarchy” therefore obscures more than it explains; it smuggles in an assumption of collective male benefit that the evidence simply does not support.