In my global gender history graduate seminar this week, we’re thinking a lot about patriarchy and “agency”

I think that for people starting out in the field, there’s a tendency to think about these concepts as correlated: more patriarchy less agency (and the reverse, if you see more agency, that means less patriarchy)

But I like to use a metaphor: “Agency” shapes an individual’s path, but patriarchy is the landscape.

And our conception of the landscape shapes our choices about how to move through it. You’re not going to try to go over a mountain that everyone says can’t be climbed, and that you’ve never seen anyone attempt.

Instead, you’re probably going to “choose” to take the path that everyone has mapped and planned out, that you’ve seen traveled all your life.

This is still a choice. And there will always be a few people who see the advantages of a different choice, and make that one. But most people will do what seems possible rather than what they think is dangerous and probably impossible.

Over time, new technology, new ideas, and the accumulation of other people’s idiosyncratic choices will shape our ideas of the landscape and what can be attempted.

Now you have a parka and some good boots; there’s a trail and a map; all kinds of people come back with interesting stories of crossing the mountains, so you believe that you can go that way, too.

And yes, now the landscape has changed, because your conception of what’s possible has changed. But the landscape - the givens - still exist, throwing up more obstacles some places than others - and that is patriarchy.