Patriarchy at Work: Patriarchal and Capitalist Relations in Employment, 1800-1984

The concept of 'patriarchy' is one which signals a sharp divide between traditions of feminist thought. Sylvia Walby attempts to conceptualize 'patriarchy' in a way that takes account not only of the complexity of relationships of gender, but also of the subtleties of the interconnections of patriarchy and capitalism.

She rejects those accounts which treat patriarchy as a unified set of relations, or which confine the site of patriarchy to any one privileged sphere such as the family. Inst...