Why Patriarchy Doesn't Exist in America

America Is Not A Patriarchy (nor are most 1st world western countries)

dictionary.com states that patriarchy is:

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1. a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe anddescent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father's clan or tribe.
2. a society, community, or country based on this social organization.

In America and most western countries, no human being holds authority over another based on sex. This is illegal. Descent is reckoned by both male and female lines (see: family tree) and children are 100% the property of women during gestation. Women win custody rights in 84% of child custody battles. Patriarchy in America and most western countries is not only illegal, but culturally impossible in this modern time.


But Women's Rights Are Ignored!
Evidence provides the contrary. For example, there are over 700 Women’s Studies programs on colleges and universities throughout the United States teaching thousands or tens of thousands of classes from the gender feminist perspective, but not one program or class, teaching men’s studies from the masculist perspective.

To date, there are numerous federal offices on women’s health, and not a single one for men. Also, the lion’s share of gender specific medical research is done on behalf of women.

But The Wage Gap Shows Sexism Against Women!
Actually, it doesn't. 

One could also logically assume that if this myth were true, employers would be eager to replace their male workers with cheaper (and better) female workers, and thus increase their profits. But the “72 cents” claim is misleading because it only refers to the median wages of all men and all women in the work force, without regard to age, education, occupation, experience or working hours — factors that even the NCPE admits are valid explanations for different pay rates. When those key factors enter the equation, the “wage gap” disappears. Studies based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, taking into account these key variables, reveal that among people ages 27-33 who have never had a child, women's earnings are actually 98 percent of men's.

Remember, (wage) discrimination has been unlawful since 1963. You would not be surprised to know that bosses earn more than their assistants or that full time workers are paid more than their part-time colleagues. Market forces and common sense dictate that some people earn more than others because of their education and skills, their experience, the demand for their services, or their willingness to work longer, harder or under more difficult conditions. Differing wages exist for many reasons and are not in themselves an indication of discrimination.

The NCPE claims that certain jobs (like sales, clerical and service work) are paid less because they are held by women, and they say that any earnings differences not explained by differences in education, experience or time in the work force are “proof” of discrimination. But the NCPE is overlooking some important facts. First, the value of a job is determined by the supply and demand of able and willing workers. Women who might be able to hold a better-paying job often choose a job that pays less but provides more flexibility. This is not discrimination.

In case you didn't know, the "72 cents" claim was coined from a study done by a sexist organization; American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. A group which has been criticized since their founding for being sexist against men and providing anecdotal, bias evidence in their studies.

An excerpt from The War Against Boys: 

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In 1990, Carol Gilligan announced to the world that America’s adolescent girls were in crisis. In her words, “As the river of a girl’s life flows into the sea of Western culture, she is in danger of drowning or disappearing. Gilligan offered little in the way of conventional evidence to support this alarming finding. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what sort of empirical research could establish so large a claim. But Gilligan quickly attracted powerful allies.”


Gilligan’s ideas had special resonance in women’s groups already committed to the proposition that our society is unsympathetic to women. Such organizations were naturally receptive to bad news about girls. The interest of the venerable and politically influential American Association of University Women (AAUW), in particular, was piqued. Officers at the AAUW were reported to be “intrigued and alarmed” by Gilligan’s findings. “Wanting to know more,” they commissioned a polling firm to study whether American schoolgirls were being drained of their self-confidence.


In 1991, the AAUW announced the disturbing results: “Most [girls] emerge from adolescence with a poor self-image. Anne Bryant, then executive director of the AAUW and an expert in public relations, organized a media campaign to spread the word that “an unacknowledged American tragedy” had been uncovered. Newspapers and magazines around the country carried the bleak tidings that girls were being adversely affected by gender bias that eroded their self-esteem. Susan Schuster, at the time president of the AAUW, candidly explained to The New York Times why the AAUW had undertaken the research in the first place: “We wanted to put some factual data behind our belief that girls are getting shortchanged in the classroom.”


At the time the AAUW’s self-esteem results were making headlines, a little-known journal called Science News, which has been supplying information on scientific and technical developments to interested newspapers since 1922, quoted leading adolescent psychologists who questioned the validity of the self-esteem poll. But somehow the doubts of the experts were not reported in the hundreds of news stories the AAUW study generated.


The AAUW quickly commissioned a second study, How Schools Shortchange Girls. This new study, carried out by the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women and released in 1992, asserted a direct causal relationship between girls’ (alleged) second-class status in the nation’s schools and deficiencies in their level of self-esteem. Carol Gilligan’s psychological girl crisis was thus transformed into a pressing civil rights issue: girls w…

A little about this Carol Gilligan individual:

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There has been criticism of Gilligan’s work and much of it has come from Christina Hoff Sommers, PhD. She says that Gilligan has failed to produce the data for her research. She condemns the fact that Gilligan used anecdotal evidence, that researchers have not been able to duplicate her work, and that the samples used were too small. She thinks the field of gender studies needs to be put to the test of people from fields such as neuroscience or evolutionary psychology rather than from the area of education. She feels strongly that promoting an anti-male agenda hurts both males and females. Public policy and funding has been allocated based on Gilligan’s data, which Sommers says is not publicly available.”

But Social Patriarchy Exists, Even If Not Legal Patriarchy!

1. You'd have to prove that men are socially favored, which would require overwhelming evidence aside from social stereotypes. The issue with proving men are socially favored is that if they were socially favored it would only be rational to assume they are also legally favored. This is typically how society functions. 

2. You'd also have to explain how women owning/running/controlling the majority of media and consumerism would not be indicative of women being socially favored, given that media and consumerism are a massive aspect of society. 

3. You'd have to take all data on male social favoritism and all data on female social favoritism and compare them objectively to come to any reasonable logical conclusion that could be provided as sound evidence. Good luck with that one. 

4. Laws are created by society. Laws come into affect because they are of the general consensus, not because a group of old and domineering patriarchal men decided them to exist. This is a democracy and contrary to the beliefs of prestigious UFO hunters and conspiracy theorists, it really does work quite well. 

5. Given that we live in a democracy which regularly promotes female rights in literally every single branch of government to include the White House, while male rights are ignored to such a degree that they have less rights and, that organizations such as the Domestic Violence Hotline redirect male victims of abuse to batterer programs, it would be easy to come to the rational conclusion that we do not, as a society, live in a patriarchy. 

Information and Sources
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mission-and-values/about/
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/04/23/the-gender-feminist-wage-gap-myth-appears-to-be-growing-legs/
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html