নারীর অধস্তনতা, ব্যক্তিগত সম্পত্তি ও পিতৃতন্ত্র : ফ্রেডরিক এঙ্গেলসের ‘পরিবার, ব্যক্তিগত মালিকানা ও রাষ্ট্রের উৎপত্তি’ গ্রন্থের একটি সমালোচনামূলক বিশ্লেষণ/ Women’s Subordination, Private Property, and Patriarchy : A Critical Analysis of Friedrich Engels’s

Abstract

The 1884 work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels is still a major contribution to our understanding of the historical origins of women's subordination in both society and the economy. Based on Lewis Henry Morgan's anthropological research, Engels examined how family structures, property relations, and gender hierarchies have changed. The present article offers a critical examination of his views on the connection among private property, patriarchal authority, and monogamous marriage, and investigates how changes in methods of production, the accumulation of surplus, and practices of inheritance have led to women's declining social status. Special attention is paid to the replacement of maternal descent by paternal lineage, the regulation of women's sexuality, and their being restricted to unpaid domestic work. The article also looks at Engels's conception of the sexual division of labour and the link between women's economic dependence and their subordination in the family; it further considers the parallels that Engels drew between the oppression of women and the exploitation of the proletariat under capitalism. Engels’s arguments are not accepted without criticism. By taking account of later scholarly work, especially that of Gerda Lerner and Bina Agarwal, the article looks at the shortcomings in Engels’s interpretations of early human societies, matrilineal rights, and the way in which patriarchy developed together with class society and private property. It casts doubt on the idea that gendered divisions of labour apply universally and on the assumption that women’s subordination can be accounted for by a single historical path. The article sets Engels within the intellectual environment of his nineteenth-century period and thus separates his lasting theoretical achievements from the limitations of his historical approach. It maintains that, although there are some theoretical and empirical faults, Engels’s main contribution has been to show how women’s oppression can be historicised and to demonstrate the links between this oppression and economic power, property ownership, inheritance, and social organisation. Finally, the article points out the ongoing value of his work for understanding the historical development of patriarchy and the connection between gender inequality and material conditions, while at the same time acknowledging the need for a critical re-evaluation based on later feminist scholarship.