Divorce, Patriarchy, Religion, and Partnership Systems

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She has received many honours, including the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Nuclear Peace Leadership Award, earlier awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Center for Compassion Humanitarian Award, the Humanist Pioneer Award, and induction into the California Hall of Fame. She is President of the Center for Partnership Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). These contributions amount to a second series with Eisler.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Riane Eisler about religious and secular objections to divorce, feminism’s effects on marriage, and the historical treatment of women within legal and cultural systems. Eisler examines fault-based divorce, classical Athens, infant exposure, Islamic legal diversity, Western imperialism, and global movements toward partnership. She rejects simplistic civilizational narratives, emphasizing that women’s rights and democratic reforms have emerged unevenly worldwide while patriarchal traditions continue to shape family law, religion, and social power today.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Fundamentally, do you see any difference between objections coming from a transcendental perspective, such as “God does not approve of it” or “it violates a scriptural ethic,” and more earthly objections, such as “Think about the children” or “I do not approve of people doing that”?

Riane Eisler: I do not think that distinction has much to do with the system itself. Whether you have no-fault divorce or fault-based divorce, the history of divorce, as I said before, was largely one-sided. Over time, as societies moved somewhat more toward partnership, women gained greater access to divorce.

When I obtained my divorce in the mid-1960s, divorce was still less common than it later became. Divorce rates rose substantially from the late 1960s through the 1970s, alongside legal changes and broader shifts in marriage, gender roles, and social attitudes.

Feminism is often accused of “breaking up the family.” In one sense, it did give women, and men too, the courage and practical ability to leave marriages that were oppressive, violent, or simply untenable. At the same time, the 1960s were a period of rebellion against many aspects of the domination system.

Jacobsen: Why was the statement “I divorce you” supposedly repeated three times? Was it said in Aramaic, Hebrew, or some other language?

Eisler: I have no idea. I had thought that was the custom, but the threefold declaration belongs to later Islamic divorce traditions, not to the Jewish divorce practices of Jesus’s time.

Ancient Greece is also being re-examined, which is interesting. Classical Athens was a very male-centred society. As the classicist Eva Keuls argues in The Reign of the Phallus, it was a deeply restrictive society for women.

Women were excluded from formal political citizenship and voting. Respectable citizen women were expected to remain closely associated with the household, although the degree of physical seclusion varied by class, period, and circumstance. Enslaved women and hetairai occupied different social positions. Some hetairai were educated and moved more freely in male social circles, but they were still part of a system structured around male privilege.

It was a highly androcratic society. Phallic imagery was widespread in Greek religion and public life, although its meanings were not limited to political domination. It could also signify fertility, protection, humour, and ritual power. Still, Keuls interprets its prominence in Athens as symbolically connected to male rule.

There were also customs such as infant exposure. The male head of household could decide not to rear a newborn. An exposed infant might die or be taken in and raised, sometimes as an enslaved person. It was not identical to direct killing, but it could have the same result.

It is a shame that ancient Greece is often idealized so uncritically because that produces a distorted history. We tend not to examine gender except in terms of equalizing the formal status of women and men. But that alone does not necessarily change the underlying system.

Jacobsen: Which society made the first major changes to the legal difficulties surrounding partners who separate?

Eisler: I have no idea. The history is buried across many different legal systems, and it is difficult to identify a single first society.

The legal availability of divorce remains highly restricted in a few countries and is unequal or difficult to obtain in others. Across Muslim-majority societies, divorce law varies enormously by country, school of law, civil code, and local practice. It would be inaccurate to treat the Muslim world as a single legal system.

The spread of Islam across Africa also occurred through a mixture of conquest, trade, migration, scholarship, intermarriage, state formation, and voluntary conversion. Some regions were conquered militarily, while others adopted Islam gradually over centuries. So it cannot accurately be described simply as conversion “at the point of the sword.”

I do not know all the laws. I have focused mostly on Europe and the United States because, when I conducted my research, those regions had a larger body of archaeological excavation and published material available to me. So I do not want to claim expertise beyond that. But I do know that the difficulties remain. The United States at least tried, even with this transition…

The West has certainly used technology for domination, but it has also made some efforts to move toward partnership. You find many of these legal reforms in Europe and the United States. Other parts of the world have followed different trajectories, and progress has been highly uneven.

I understand criticism of the West because Western powers have exercised enormous imperial influence. But global power is shifting, and China has become an increasingly important economic and geopolitical power. Still, it would be inaccurate to say that the rest of the world has made no effort toward partnership. Movements for women’s rights, democratic participation, labour rights, and social equality have emerged in societies throughout the world.

The status of women has risen in many places, although progress remains uneven and is frequently challenged. This is true in some Muslim-majority societies and in fundamentalist Christian movements. Christian fundamentalism, as I understand it, does not reflect the partnership teachings of Jesus. Yet patriarchal interpretations remain embedded in religious traditions, including the idea that woman was created primarily as man’s helper.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Riane.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer-Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 1,900 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.