By Stephy Gomez
When I was young, I had typical sibling-rivalry with my brother. My grandmother would always justify my brother's anger saying ‘boys always act impulsively. Girls are supposed to be understanding and compromising towards that.’ I was young, my only taste of feminism was reading Jane Eyre, and I simply brushed it off as an old-fashioned rule that was completely normal. Until the word ‘compromise’ became more and more normal in my house.
Not enough space on the chair for two people? Compromise because men needed more space to sit. Divided the chocolate unevenly? Compromise so that your brother gets the bigger piece, he needs to eat more to grow. Two different programs going on two different channels? Compromise so your dad can watch what he wants.
Growing up, it was a confusing time for the new generation. On one hand, our mothers were trying their very best to grow us up into independent, free women. On the other hand, they were still tied down by patriarchal values they weren’t even aware were patriarchal, which they projected onto us. It was confusing for them. It was confusing for us too. I began to fight back at one point; I refused to “compromise”. The chocolate’s been cut unevenly? The one who bought it gets the bigger half. Two different programs on TV? Settle on another one that we both like.
Women are always told that our worth lies in our relationship to someone. One of the most asked questions after sexual assault has taken place is, “how would you feel if that was your mother or sister?” The idea that a woman ought to have worth only when they're "someone's someone" unfortunately runs deeply in society. The protectors of the patriarchy aren't only men; it's also women who have been conditioned to believe that they are subordinate to men. This, known as internalized patriarchy, is the subconscious acceptance of sexist ideas and gender hierarchies.
Before little girls are even conscious of gender differences, they inherit a script that tells them what to do, how to behave, what to want, and what to fear. From nursery rhymes to dinner-table advice, girls internalize a map of "acceptable" behaviours. They're given phrases like "good girls don't talk back," "boys don't like loud girls," and "you'll understand when you're married," which their male counterparts are not given. Unfortunately, this conditioning is not spread purely by men– mothers, grandmothers, aunts and teachers often become its biggest carriers.
Although my brother and I went to finishing schools, we were taught vastly different things. While I was taught to cook in cute aprons and learn to sew buttons, my brother was taught to light bonfires and set up tents. Teaching a young girl that her place is in the house and teaching a young boy that the world is his house reinforces the patriarchy and sends impressionable young children into spirals they often cannot escape from. Our mothers and grandmothers only repeat what their mothers and grandmothers told them, and they say it out of care, mistaking compliance for safety. They pass on an idea of a femininity that is shaped by silence, service and sacrifice.
The unfortunate situation of this is that we cannot blame our maternal relatives either, they simply taught us with what they had to in order to protect us. They cannot be blamed for the fact that the tools they were provided with were patriarchal. Older generations of women grew up in worlds where questioning men had consequences. They were forced to learn that endurance meant safety, that obedience earned respect, and that rebellion brought social rejection.
Girls are expected to play quietly, an instruction that gradually becomes an expectation to defer in public conversations. Based on one of our community member’s experiences in their workplace who had a mentor tell them not to ask questions they don't want answers to, led to the realization that "women always feel the need to defend or explain themselves." These tiny directives add up. They train young women to moderate themselves, to perform modestly and to always value others' comfort over their own needs.
The advice that makes sense then becomes limiting now. It's the cruel result of internalised patriarchal strategies that kept women safe in one era but feels like shackles in this one. Our mothers weren't trying to silence us. They were trying to keep us safe within a system that punished women for speaking. Internalized patriarchy is not born out of ignorance; it is a survival instinct disguised as tradition.
We see it everywhere in the subtle ways women police one another. From the aunt who says “that's too modern” about your clothes, to the co-worker who calls you “rude” for making yourself heard over your male co-workers, and the grandmothers who whisper that a divorced woman brings “shame” to her family. These comments aren't made entirely out of malice; they're simply the echoes of generations of conditioning. Patriarchy thrives through male dominance– but it survives because women enforce it upon each other. It convinces women that obedience is pride, and that modesty is power, until they themselves begin to guard those “boundaries.”
Culture, religion and tradition plays an important role in reinforcing this conditioning. For example, in South Asia, a "good woman" is a woman who sacrifices but doesn't complain. She's the first to wake, the last to eat, and never raises her voice above her husbands. Across many cultures, that sentiment has been repeated in different shapes and forms; the sentiment that a woman's silence is what holds a household together. Even when someone is screaming at them, silence is expected. These teachings may look like they honour women, but they only honour women by rewarding them with the gift of invisibility.
Generations of women have learned to apologize for simply existing. A study in 2010 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20855900) identified that women apologize more than men because men have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behaviour. History has placed men in a position where they don't feel guilt for most of their actions because they've been conditioned to believe that they can’t be wrong. The study further emphasized how men rate offenses as less severe than women did. The different ratings predicted whether or not an apology was deserved. Our previous articles examined how the legal system has such openly patriarchal and misogynist laws. Internalized patriarchy isn't visible in laws and policies, it lives inside the small gestures that we see commonly amongst women; the hesitation before being the loudest one in the room, the discomfort in taking up space, the reflex to justify their actions.
Yet, within those same generations, there were silent acts of defiance. The waves of feminism that has led us to a point where we are even able to talk freely about feminism is a result of the defiance of our mothers and grandmothers. Despite living in a time where my grandmother believed women should compromise, she made sure my mother got an excellent higher education. Despite living in an era where women were looked down upon when entering a university, my mother attended college with my brother inside her very-pregnant belly. Feminism didn't appear suddenly, it was always there within the women who wanted better for their daughters. They didn't have the language to call it “liberation,” but they understood that it was a necessary change. The sheer desperation to ensure their daughters didn't go through the same subjugation they went through made them want a better life for them. They fought in the only ways they could under the weight of expectation.
As feminism evolves, younger generations begin to question and reinterpret the "wisdom" they are handed down. Women begin to question why kindness should equal silence and why love means endurance. My grandmother who once asked me to 'compromise' to my brother's needs now proudly tells people that her granddaughter has a career of her own. That transformation is the heart of generational feminism. It isn't about rejecting the women before us but about reimagining what they could not.
The conversations between generations isn't a smooth one; it's painful. It's essentially the rejection of the deeply held beliefs of the previous generations which were passed down with love and out of concern. When daughters tell their mothers that their advice to not call out boys' misogynist comments is actually harmful, it can sound like an accusation, when in reality, it's a slow act of healing. Older women tend to feel defensive because those same rules caused them to sacrifice so much to the point where questioning it feels disrespectful. But change demands compassion, and feminism that ignores generational pain is not feminism, it's arrogance.
Beth Breslaw conducted an experiment in the city of New York and identified a phenomenon known as “manslamming,” where she resolved not to move out of the way of oncoming pedestrians on the sidewalk. The result? Frequent collisions with men that left her feeling “invisible.” While some view it as a minor annoyance, others see it as a microaggression that reflects a broader cultural entitlement. The behaviour stems from the cultural attitude that teaches men to take up space without necessarily being aware of their surroundings resulting in an unintentional act that is a result of a lack of conscious awareness about how their actions impact others. The men aren't aware they are doing it, but it's a small act that contributes to a larger pattern of inequality.
Imagine what the world would look like if the power dynamics were reversed and women ran society where leadership, authority and social order are shaped primarily by equality. Young boys will be told to control their tempers, and women's bodies will be seen as sacred and not sexualized. Social rituals will celebrate childbirth and menstruation rather than labelling them as private shame. Workplaces would prioritize empathy, emotional intelligence and democratic decision-making, which are qualities that are often dismissed as "feminine weaknesses" in patriarchal structures.
That doesn't mean that a matriarchal society would automatically be utopian. It could just as easily create its own hierarchies where men will be expected to conform to ideals of gentleness and self-sacrifice. The value of imagining such a world doesn't lie in simply reversing roles but in revealing how arbitrary gender expectations are. Postmodern feminists argue that what is “feminine” and “masculine” is simply a product of language and not necessarily tied to actions. In this perspective, gender expectations are arbitrary and require a reconstruction. If men were the ones who were taught to be small and to apologize for speaking too much, we would quickly see how deeply gender shapes self-worth.
Understanding internalized patriarchy requires that we understand two truths at once: our mothers and grandmothers taught us things that hurt us, but that they did so out of love and necessity. Generational feminism doesn't necessarily seek to blame our mothers and grandmothers, but rather seeks to honor their survival while refusing to repeat their silences. It asks us to unlearn obedience without losing compassion.
Perhaps the most feminist act of all time is to look back with empathy. By recognizing and acknowledging the women who folded their dreams into quiet resilience so that we could unfold ours loudly. The "advice" they gave to us in the form of inheritance was nowhere close to perfect, but it was the beginning of change. The freedom we build today is the inheritance our daughters receive tomorrow. While our mothers taught us to survive within silence while simultaneously giving us an environment to sharpen our voices, we can teach our daughters to not survive within silence, but how to create equality through their voices.