Partnership Systems, Feminism, and the Persistence of Domination

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 speaks with Riane Eisler about feminism, partnership systems, and domination structures. Eisler reflects on the fragmented evolution of feminisms and argues that many feminists are implicitly “partnerists.” She emphasizes how historical amnesia about women’s struggles obscures persistent domination patterns. Eisler highlights how early socialization normalizes hierarchy through gender, shaping broader inequalities. Her work seeks to reconnect these patterns, offering a systemic framework to understand and ultimately transcend entrenched cultural and institutional domination.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We discussed some of the historical contexts before, where there are many admirable qualities in mainstream feminist discourse. The limitations you are positing, partnership and philosophical orientation, fill in the gaps. You are essentially like a self-healing structure that fills in its own cracks. As you have seen, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro were working on related themes before the term feminism was widely used. This was noted in the first session. Following from that, you have seen the different evolutions in the meaning of the term through what have been called waves. How have you seen the waves of feminism and the evolution of partnership studies differ, and where have they been similar or dissimilar over time? Is that fair?

Riane Eisler: Well, I do not really know the answer to that question because I do not follow it closely. First of all, the evolution of partnerism is all over the place. Every day, I learn about people who have somehow come across my work and have been deeply taken by it. As for feminism, I have not followed its evolution. I do know that feminism, really, feminisms, includes many different kinds. There is certainly a caricature of feminism promoted by those who oppose it, portraying it as a man-hating ideology, but it is not really that. Some women have had very bad experiences with domination-socialized men, and they distrust men. But most feminists are really partnerists; they do not know that. So it is difficult for me to answer that question. I do know that young women who have been brought up with feminism often take it for granted that women can do the same things that men can do. So it is all somewhat convoluted.

Jacobsen: The other question, which may be a little clearer outside of comparing and contrasting feminisms with partnerism, concerns the evolution of domination systems over the 20th century and the early 21st century in comparison with partnerism. That is the more central and substantial question, and it may provide some insight into the evolution of feminisms as well, because these ideologies are not simply in the air, so to speak. They exist in human minds and in population dynamics, and the way they interact is central to the methodological analysis of whole systems within partnerism.

Eisler: Well, the problem, as I see it, is that we are not taught our history as women. Many young women assume it has always been this way. They do not know how women have struggled for centuries, because it is simply not taught. They do not know about the early feminists. This is only taught, if at all, in women’s studies. And women’s studies were taken over, of course, by people who fit into the academy because they were asking questions such as whether there is such a category as woman. I consider that a misguided question, because women, yes, are different and live in different circumstances, nations, and cultures, but the oppression through domination has been a persistent pattern, and it is a commonality many women have shared. The struggle, whether you want to call it partnerist or feminist, has been going on for ages.

Jacobsen: Would you argue, as the last question for this session, that the negligence or omission of women’s history, both for women themselves and for men as well, has been worse due to inadvertent effects, as part of domination systems simply being dominant, or through conscious omission? For example, there have been documented cases in recent U.S. government processes in which keyword-based filtering removed materials containing terms like “gay,” inadvertently affecting unrelated items such as the Enola Gay controversy. In such instances, the decision was conscious but poorly implemented, rather than purely inadvertent, more a function of flawed policy than an invisible, taken-for-granted system in which everyone operates, both men and women.

Eisler: Well, I think there is no question that the polarization we are seeing today is, in part, a reaction to movements that have been challenging domination in various realms. But we have all, even feminists, been socialized to marginalize what happens to women and gender. In that sense, the heritage of domination we carry has really affected us, because the subordination of women is part and parcel of domination systems. That is where people first learn to equate difference, whether racial, religious, or ethnic, with hierarchy, starting with the fundamental difference between women and men in families, where most of us grow up. It is deeply organized and pervasive, so that even people who think of themselves as progressive often are not, because they tend to marginalize gender. Now, there is much more consciousness of gender today, including awareness of gender fluidity, but people do not connect the dots. They do not see that if children observe women, and what is coded as “feminine” in rigid domination systems, as less than men and what is coded as “masculine,” they internalize a template: a template that equates difference with superior and inferior, with dominating and dominated, with being served or serving. They do not connect these patterns, and my work has been to help people do so. If AI can recognize patterns, surely human intelligence can as well, but it is often fragmented by conventional ways of thinking that, at best, marginalize gender.

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.