The Patriarchs

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2023

A WATERSTONES BOOK OF YEAR FOR POLITICS 2023

‘By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.’

In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present.

Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are.

Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini ends by asking what part we all play – women included – in keeping patriarchal structures alive, and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

Author Biography

Angela Saini presents science programmes on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, and her writing has appeared in the New Scientist, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, Scientific American, Wired and the Economist. Angela has a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University, she is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work has won a string of national and international awards. Angela’s first book, Geek Nation, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2011, and her second book, Inferior, was the subject of a national crowdfunding campaign which will donate a copy to every state school in the UK.