Plus Wizards have beards, of course they would be on top.

 

From the second chapter:

 

So he was born a couple minutes before his brother.

 

Considering the era wizarding society seems to be trapped in it makes plenty of sense for it to be a patriarchal society. Old England wasn't much different from Old everywhere else. Daughters of those with status inherited as well but they were rarely ever made 'head' of the family over a son and in such cases there had to either be some pretty extenuating circumstances or severe eccentricity involved. Physical strength or ability didn't come into it, that's just the way it was.

 

Wizards are not Muggles with magic. Why do you assume that sexism was ever institutionalised in the wizarding world? Magic makes the difference in physical strength meaningless and so witches were never in disadvantage. Their culture is likely to reflect that - and it does. There are women in high government offices and even in the most elite fighting force of the country.

 

Another example would be the founders of Hogwarts; two wizards, two witches, each supposedly great in their own right.

 

I'll do it for him:

Aurors: Kingsley, Moody, Gawain Roberds, Rufus Scrimegour, Harry Potter, Dawlish, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Proudfoot and Ron Weasley.

Goverment officials: Rufus Scrimegour, Cornelius Fudge, Barty Crouch Sr, Pius Thicknesse, Yaxely, Ludo Bagman, Madam Edgecombe, Croaker, and Bodrick Bode.

Have a nice bag of cocks, Oz.

 

The point was to prove that there are/were women in positions of power and authority.

Point=missed

 

To be fair, he got Madam Edgecombe (Floo department, I think).

 

And Alice Longbottom as a Auror, although I don't remember her being an Auror.

 

Sexism could have been established in a number of other ways besides men beating those weak women into submission. For instance the Statute of secrecy was only established in the 17th century. So sexism would have carried over through nothing but cultural diffusion. As the wizarding world is closely tied to The muggle society

 

Holy Shit.

I wouldn't have thought it was possible for a thread to be derailed so badly or as often as this one has been.

 

There are just enough updates to keep up a lot of interest, and just few enough updates to allow DLPers to drunkenly wander the landscape of conversation. It's like the Ballmer Peak of WbA.

 

Have people forgotten poor Hestia Jones? Was she an Auror? Did we ever find out what she did or was she just enjoying unemployed rebellion?

 

God I hate these conversations... :S

At the end of the day no-one can say yes or no with any certainty. All we can do is speculate. Do you honestly think that a small number of women holding or having held positions of power is enough to be able to say a society isn't patriarchal or there isn't any male bias or institutionalised sexism...?

You can't determine something like that by looking at absolutes and ignoring the clear implications of relatives- it paints a pretty different picture. Besides, women have started holding some of the highest positions in our society as well in recent times but there's still a pretty significant male bias in a lot of cases.

You mention the fact that there are women in high office but I distinctly remember acknowledging that even in our old school patriarchal culture there existed such women- they just weren't as multitudinous as men. In the olden days there were ladies, baronesses, princesses, queens, duchesses, dames, countesses etc but that society is still considered patriarchal by history regardless of bagnolds, bones', Longbottoms etc.

This isn't about physical strength or magical strength making up for physical strength either, its an ideological thing that doesn't go away without massive idelogical changes.

BTW, this doesn't in any way reflect my own views. I'm just saying that arguing whether the wizarding world is or isn't patriarchal is pointless since no-one can prove it with any resonable degree of certainty.

 

Yes, but where do you think that ideology stems from? As men aren't any smarter or more numerous that women, it must have been strength that allowed men to rule. No such unbalance of power exist between witches and wizards, and so it wouldn't make sense for the wizarding world to develop bias against women. I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it would also be equally likely for the wizarding world to be matriarchal.