Partnership Studies 19: Mutual Respect, Caring Economics, and Partnership Societies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/01/01

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, 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 received the Humanist Pioneer Award. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that Peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. 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). 

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Riane Eisler about how partnership societies cultivate respect as care rather than fear. Eisler argues that domination systems code caring as “feminine” and confuse respect with intimidation, producing in-group versus out-group ethics. Drawing on examples from the Teduray and contemporary Nordic policy, she links family dynamics to economics, proposing “caring economics” that values life-sustaining work across nature, households, communities, and markets. Jacobsen connects this to expanding the moral circle; Eisler responds that interconnection—technological, ecological, and even physical—makes caring respect essential in a high-technology era.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hello Riane, thank you very much for joining me again. When we talk about Partnership Studies, there is an essential mutuality in partnerships at all scales of how we are defining this. A key facet is mutual respect. I do not think it is in any naïve way, where there are different types of respect: earned and unearned. One type is that you are a person who deserves basic respect. Another type is that you have done something for the community, so you have earned its respect. In a partnership studies model, how are you differentiating types of respect, and what is the importance of this?

Riane Eisler: I will start with how we have been socialized. We have been socialized to confuse respect and fear. We are talking about deconstructing what we have been taught and reconstructing as well. We certainly do not want to go back to any so-called “good old days.” Still, we know that for millennia of our cultural evolution, there were societies that oriented more toward the partnership side of the partnership–domination social scale. In these societies, respect was very important, and it was defined in a caring way.

When The Chalice and the Blade first came out, I received a phone call from Stuart Schlegel, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is deceased. He said he had done his research among an isolated tribe in the Philippines, the Teduray (or Tiruray). He used to call them radically egalitarian, but after reading The Chalice and the Blade, he realized they were partnership societies. They spoke of not wanting to hurt someone, of not wanting anyone to feel disrespected. It was a very caring way of expressing respect.

I do not know whether they still exist. These were isolated societies, the Teduray, or Tiruray—they went by both names. I always think of them because the term “respect” in families, for example, is so often associated with fear in the domination system, and confused with fear. That is the first point: the deconstruction and, at the same time, the reconstruction. Care is a very important part of respect, as I have learned from Indigenous societies like the Teduray or Tiruray, as well as from societies that have moved further toward partnership. Our contemporary, highly technologically developed societies that have moved more toward partnership include the Nordic nations and Ireland, which have moved toward partnership very quickly.

Jacobsen: There is a contemporary ethical conversation about expanding the moral circle. The metaphor is of human beings placing themselves—their individual ego—at the center, then expanding that circle outward to include more people, other species, and so on. Does an increasing sense of care expand that moral circle, at least within the dimension of respect, as well? Is this building into that contemporary discussion—or rather, is the contemporary discussion building into what you have already been stipulating within partnership studies regarding respect?

Eisler: It is not coincidental that in a domination-oriented culture, respect is often confused with fear—fear of harm, fear of pain, fear of death. As contemporary societies have shifted, and as some Indigenous societies have survived, care has become an important part of respect. You see, for example, that in Finland, a Nordic country.

They are not socialist. They have a successful market economy, yet they are often labelled socialist. They have caring policies, and that is precisely why they have such a successful market economy.

They have caring policies: paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, health care for everyone, and affordable—and yes, well-paid —child care, because it is government-subsidized. I propose caring economics that goes beyond both capitalism and socialism to, first of all, have the realm of economics include what is now excluded as “reproductive”: the three life-sustaining sectors—the natural economy, the household economy, and the volunteer community economy, —because we have inherited uncaring and disrespectful attitudes toward the work of care in all of these sectors.

There is nothing in the classic writings of either capitalism or socialism—neither in Smith nor in Marx—about caring for nature, which cares for us. What came to mind for me is the Minangkabau: they are partially Muslim and partially Indigenous; they describe themselves as matriarchal, but they are best understood as a partnership society. They emphasize the caring parts of nature, the life-supporting parts of nature, rather than emphasizing, as we have in much of our secular literature, the dangerous or indifferent parts of nature. 

Valuing caring depends on where your priorities are. The Minangkabau also have caring policies.

Jacobsen: When I was travelling for my second major trip this year—six or seven weeks through Europe and a little of the Middle East—the first place I wanted to go, to get a sense of the culture, was Iceland, where I stayed for three weeks. When I first landed at the airport, I went to the men’s bathroom. The men’s bathroom had a baby-changing table. In many places, you can go into a unisex bathroom, which may or may not be available, but in a men-only bathroom, it is uncommon in many parts of North America. Yet in that men-only bathroom, it was there—and it was being used.

Many changing tables in North America gather dust. This was my first time in the bathroom at Keflavík International Airport, and the changing table was in use, with a man doing the work. It does not need to be framed in the language of 1970s consciousness-raising—though that can be appropriate in some theoretical contexts. It can be a slight behavioural change: getting over hesitation and then doing something basic.

Changing his child’s diaper is as basic as being on a construction site and putting caps on exposed rebar. I used to do that as a teenager while working a bit of construction. I am not saying I was good at it, but I am saying I did it.

Iceland, as you noted, is among the Nordic countries—and while some include Iceland in the Nordic category and others debate the category—it does very well according to the World Economic Forum. You noted how Ireland changed very quickly; others, like Iceland, have had a slower but very successful progression. What do you make of very basic behavioural changes, within a generation, in how we understand what counts as work—work we all have to do?

Eisler: We have to ensure our policies keep pace with the changes. Many men, including older men, are challenging old stereotypes of masculinity. The old stereotype of masculinity is an uncaring one. Caring has been coded as feminine in domination systems—soft, not masculine.

These men are saying, ‘No, I can do” women’s work,” and my wife or partner can do” men’s work,” can’t be a leader, can’t be a manager.’ It is changing, but unfortunately, our policies and resource allocations, especially now in the United States, are going the other way. I think this is a temporary setback, but it is a very serious one, and a very uncaring and disrespectful setback in terms of human rights.

Jacobsen: You referenced human rights. There are two thoughts there. One, people often talk about human rights as if they were a random assortment of propositions, when in fact they are grounded in a principle: universalism. From that principle, distinct rights emerge with claims to universal application in theory, and ideally, practice follows as closely as possible.

On the other hand, principles of respect and care—even without a human rights framework—have existed throughout history. The human rights framework helps because it is a contemporary, empirically grounded form of universalism, but respect and care are evident in many cultural expressions. I am not sure where I am going with that. I ran out of track, and I have no breadcrumbs to go home.

Could you see respect and care as more universal than human rights in some way, because they are older and more biologically grounded rather than cognitively and rationally grounded?

Eisler: The problem is that in societies oriented toward domination—and we are still emerging from that and saying this is not what we want—respect and care are reserved for those at the top, whether in the family, academia, politics, or economics. I would say that, yes, we humans have a huge capacity for empathy. That is our evolutionary gift.

Evolution has moved in that direction, but the domination system conditions us—with its economic rewards and family structures—to compartmentalize, or, at worst, suppress our capacity for respect. It becomes an in-group versus out-group dynamic. I think there are two basic components of respect.

One is the human rights component, which applies not just to the in-group but to everyone, recognizing that we are all interconnected. Physics now even shows this at the subatomic level: the Nobel Prize was awarded for work demonstrating quantum entanglement. And today we are interconnected not only by global technologies of transportation and communication, but also by technologies of destruction such as nuclear and biological warfare, and more slowly by climate change.

As I have always emphasized, the old domination system is not adaptive, because it immediately divides us into those whom you must respect—meaning fear, ultimately—and those whose human rights you can disregard, oppress, exile, or kill.

Jacobsen: Okay. So we are in a rough patch when it comes to care and respect. What is your short coda on getting through it? You have seen cycles like this before. Now it is particularly rough because there is a strong, unified push in the opposite direction.

Eisler: We have to understand our interconnection and recognize that we have the human capacity—shaped by evolution—for respect that is care, caring respect. It is not only our basic human capacity, but also essential in this age of high technology.

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

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