Introduction
Aetas Deae—the Age of the Goddess—names a civilizational transition rather than a symbolic aspiration. It asserts that patriarchy, understood as a system of male-dominated governance and social organization, is no longer ethically legitimate, empirically functional, or politically defensible. It further asserts that dismantling patriarchy requires not merely reform or inclusion, but the systematic decentering of men from governance and the establishment of female dominance in institutional authority.
This position is neither rhetorical nor theological. It is grounded in feminist political theory, social science, economics, anthropology, and ethics. It reflects a growing consensus within feminist scholarship that patriarchal systems cannot be dismantled while those historically empowered by them retain final authority over law, policy, culture, and economic design.
This essay addresses four core propositions:
- Patriarchy is a structural system, not a moral failure of individuals.
- Ending patriarchy requires removing men from governance, not merely balancing representation.
- Female dominance in leadership is a corrective and necessary form of authority, not discrimination.
- A female-led order grounded in care and non-domination is ethically and empirically justified.
I. Patriarchy as a System of Governance
In feminist political theory, patriarchy refers to a historically entrenched system in which men collectively hold disproportionate power over political institutions, economic resources, legal authority, and cultural legitimacy.¹ It is not reducible to personal prejudice or individual behavior; it is a structural arrangement reproduced through institutions.
bell hooks defines patriarchy as “a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females.”² This definition locates domination in the organization of power, not in biology. Patriarchy is maintained through governance systems that normalize hierarchy, competition, coercion, and control.
The consequences are empirically documented. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 30 percent of women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence during their lifetime, most often by men they know.³ The United Nations reports that women perform over 75 percent of global unpaid care labor while holding less than 27 percent of parliamentary seats worldwide.⁴ These outcomes persist across cultures and political regimes, indicating structural rather than incidental causes.
To oppose patriarchy is therefore to oppose a system that produces predictable, measurable harm.
II. Why Patriarchy Cannot Be Dismantled While Men Govern
Aetas Deae rejects the premise that patriarchy can be dismantled through inclusion within existing governance structures. Liberal models of equality—focused on representation, access, or formal rights—have failed to disrupt male dominance in institutional design.
Carole Pateman’s analysis of the “sexual contract” demonstrates that modern political systems are founded on implicit agreements that secure male authority over women, even under conditions of formal equality.⁵ As long as men occupy positions of decisive power, patriarchal rationalities continue to shape law, policy, and norms.
This is not a claim about male intent or moral capacity. It is a claim about systemic reproduction. Institutions reproduce the values of those who design and govern them. Empirical research consistently shows that male-dominated institutions prioritize militarization, extraction, and competition, while marginalizing care, dependency, and relational accountability.⁶
Therefore, Aetas Deae holds that men must be structurally removed from governance. This means exclusion from positions of final authority over political, legal, economic, and cultural systems. This is not punishment, exile, or disenfranchisement. It is the necessary withdrawal of a dominant class from control of the mechanisms that reproduce domination.
III. Female Dominance as Corrective Authority
A female-led system, as articulated by Aetas Deae, is explicitly female-dominant. This dominance is structural, not personal; political, not interpersonal.
Dominance here refers to:
- final decision-making authority,
- control over institutional design,
- legitimacy grounded in female experience and embodiment,
- the capacity to enforce limits on domination itself.
Iris Marion Young argues that justice in structurally unequal societies requires asymmetrical remedies rather than neutral procedures.⁷ Neutrality under conditions of domination merely preserves existing hierarchies. Corrective authority must rest with those historically excluded from power.
Similarly, Riane Eisler’s work on partnership societies demonstrates that non-dominating systems do not emerge through compromise with domination structures, but through their replacement.⁸ A partnership order cannot be co-governed by those socialized into dominance without reproducing it.
Female dominance in governance is therefore not supremacist. It is corrective and preventative. It interrupts the historical pattern by which male authority continually recenters itself, even within ostensibly egalitarian frameworks.
IV. Decentering Men Is Not Discrimination
Aetas Deae distinguishes between individual rights and structural authority. Men are not stripped of civil rights, social participation, or moral worth. They are removed from governance because their continued presence in ruling institutions perpetuates patriarchal outcomes.
This distinction is well established in feminist economics and social theory. Silvia Federici demonstrates that capitalist patriarchy depends on the systematic exploitation of women’s reproductive and care labor, a pattern that persists regardless of individual goodwill.⁹ Nancy Folbre similarly shows that care-centered values are structurally incompatible with masculinist economic governance.¹⁰
Decentering men from governance is therefore a non-violent structural intervention. It addresses causes rather than symptoms. It aims to prevent the reproduction of domination rather than punish its beneficiaries.
The ethical justification lies in outcomes: systems organized around care, relational accountability, and non-domination produce greater social stability, lower violence, and higher well-being.¹¹ The evidence supports governance designed and led by women.
V. The Political Philosophy of Aetas Deae
Aetas Deae affirms the following principles:
- Patriarchy is a system of governance, not a personal trait.
- Systems of domination cannot dismantle themselves.
- Female dominance in institutional authority is a necessary corrective.
- Men must be structurally decentered from governance to prevent the reproduction of patriarchy.
- Care, embodiment, and relational accountability are legitimate foundations of political order.
- A post-patriarchal society must be designed and ruled by women.
This position is not liberal, egalitarian, or conciliatory. It is post-liberal feminist political philosophy, grounded in historical analysis, empirical evidence, and ethical reasoning.
Aetas Deae does not seek to reverse domination for its own sake. It seeks to end domination as a governing principle altogether. The transition requires female rule because no other arrangement has proven capable of dismantling patriarchy.
This is not the exclusion of men from society.
It is the removal of men from rule.
Core Thesis Statement
Aetas Deae exists to dismantle patriarchal systems of domination and to establish a female-led social order in which women hold decisive governance authority, men are structurally decentered from ruling institutions, and care replaces domination as the organizing principle of society.
Footnotes (Chicago Notes and Bibliography Style)
- Sylvia Walby, Theorizing Patriarchy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
- bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria Books, 2004), 17.
- World Health Organization, Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates, 2018 (Geneva: WHO, 2021).
- United Nations, Progress of the World’s Women 2019–2020 (New York: UN Women, 2020).
- Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
- Raewyn Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
- Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
- Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).
- Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004).
- Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values (New York: The New Press, 2001).
- Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).