Partnership Studies 8: Language, Parenting, Mythos

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/03

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, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. 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 with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler argues that domination persists through rigid gender roles, early socialization, skewed economics, and mythic narratives. Her partnership model centers four cornerstones—childhood and family, gender, economics, and story/language—shaping minds, policies, and culture. She critiques religious and secular dogmas while noting that faith and science can support partnership. Eisler emphasizes caring economics, hierarchies of actualization, and empathy that extends beyond in-groups. Examples include Nordic policies, Ireland’s shift, archaeological hints of egalitarian prehistory, and linguistic change. She warns that domination is maladaptive in the face of nuclear and climate risks, urging systemic reform. The Peace Begins at Home Summit highlights early caregiving as a vital infrastructure and encourages collaboration toward partnership.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Once again, we are here with the prolific and internationally distinguished Riane Eisler, founder of Partnership Studies. This is part eight of our series. Today, the focus, based on our preset plan from several weeks ago, is gender, childhood stories, and language within partnerships. This promises to be a fascinating discussion because, as you have often noted, domination models in many societies neglect more than half of the world’s population—women and children, both boys and girls. How do you connect the social construction of gender roles to the persistence of domination systems, not just as a model but as systems embedded in society?

Riane Eisler: We have been conditioned to think of gender as simply a woman’s issue. Later, it was also framed as a men’s issue. In reality, gender encompasses everyone, including people who do not fit neatly into binary categories—gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other identities—which have always existed, despite being marginalized.

Gender roles are not peripheral matters; they are central to how families, economies, education, and societies are organized. Those pushing for a return to rigid domination systems—more authoritarian, male-dominated orders, with extreme inequality between haves and have-nots—place heavy emphasis on gender. Domination systems are built on rigid stereotypes of “masculine” and “feminine,” leaving no legitimate space for anything in between.

In the United States, we see ongoing attempts to impose policies that legally recognize only two sexes. These efforts are tied to reinforcing male dominance. Ranking men and masculinity over women, girls, and femininity is only possible if rigid stereotypes are first enforced; otherwise, there is no clear basis for hierarchy.

This plays out in economic policy. There is consistent funding for stereotypically “masculine” priorities—war, domination, and violence—yet insufficient support for stereotypically “feminine” responsibilities such as childcare, education, and caregiving. Moreover, because there is now a growing movement toward caring policies, emphasizing investment in families and social well-being, those who cling to domination models perceive this as a direct threat. That has triggered the backlash we are witnessing today.

These traits are considered “feminine,” and domination systems insist on reinstating rigid gender stereotypes. Difference itself is equated with superiority and inferiority, dominating or being dominated, serving or being served.

That logic extends to all forms of difference: racism, antisemitism, all in-group versus out-group thinking and behaviour. 

Jacobsen: We internalize these patterns early, through parental modelling and, in a way, through mentoring. How does this shape childhood experience? Moreover, how do those childhood experiences then shape society when these children grow into adults?

Eisler: Findings from neuroscience are obvious. What children observe or experience—especially in the first five years, but really throughout their upbringing, which occurs mainly in families—has a profound impact. If children see that what women and girls are and do is devalued in domination systems—caring, caregiving, nonviolence, and so forth—they absorb that. Girls are socialized for it, but this is not an issue of women against men. It is a human issue. Many women support domination because it is deeply ingrained in their brains.

If children see this devaluation, they internalize it. It shapes how they think, feel, act—including how they vote, when they have the opportunity.

Why do human beings often defend their chains? I mean the unseen chains of tradition and hierarchy. People defend them, polish them, even protect them. That is what we must understand and overcome.

The answer lies in what I call the four cornerstones that underlie both domination-oriented and partnership-oriented systems—always a matter of degree. First is childhood and family. In our conventional categories, where do children and families appear? Nowhere. Second is gender: how gender roles and relations are structured. That is fundamental.

Moreover, yes, in fundamentalist religious frameworks, gender inequality is justified as “God’s will,” where women are told they must be men’s helpers and subordinate. Third is economics. Both socialism and capitalism, as I discuss in my book The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, perpetuate gendered systems of value. There is always money for the “masculine”—control, violence, weaponry—but somehow not enough for the “feminine” work of care.

The fourth cornerstone is story and language. All four—childhood, gender, economics, and story/language—are interconnected, and they profoundly shape how we think, feel, and act. In domination systems, they all reinforce in-group versus out-group domination.

Superiority, inferiority, and related hierarchies bring me to what I would like to leave as my legacy. Yes, we must put out the immediate fires, but domination systems are trauma factories—there will always be new fires as long as the system persists. At the same time, we must address the four cornerstones, whichever speaks to us most directly.

There is the women’s movement, the children’s rights movement, the anti-racism movement—each is part of the same larger shift toward partnership, challenging traditions of domination. The backlash we see today is a reaction to these partnership-oriented movements, which have accelerated over the past three centuries, especially as the Industrial Revolution disrupted old patterns. What once seemed immutable no longer was.

During this period, movements for economic justice, peace, abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and, more recently, children’s rights gained momentum. The environmental movement also arose, challenging the dominant tradition that claimed humans—particularly men—were divinely ordained to dominate the earth and everything that lives on it.

Jacobsen: That tradition, again, is supported by stories and myths. What about those?

Eisler: We all live in stories, whether we realize it or not. Take, for example, the stories told about human nature: original sin or selfish genes. Different language, same message—we are bad and must be rigidly controlled from above, whether by a fearful God or by rigid social hierarchies. Domination systems inculcate fear. Of course, there are natural fears—illness, death, earthquakes—but domination systems focus on instilling human-created fear: the fear of punishment, the fear of authority, the fear of stepping outside rigid rankings.

Jacobsen: There is a hidden premise here worth clarifying. What about secular dogmas—often political ideologies—that function as dogmas in much the same way as religious or divinely ordained hierarchies? Do they play a similar role in imposing domination?

Eisler: First, it is important to emphasize that faith itself is not the problem. Many people hold faith in transcendent realities and do not subscribe to domination systems. To target faith as the root issue is too simplistic. Remember, science itself, until well into the nineteenth century, upheld domination myths. For example, the scientific consensus of the time claimed women contributed nothing biologically to reproduction; they were just containers.

For centuries, scientific dogma held that men alone passed on their genes. Women were thought to be merely containers. Historian David Noble, in his book A World Without Women, describes how modern science began in a monastic, clerical, celibate, and deeply misogynist context. Moreover, I would add—it was not only a world without women. It was also a world without children.

It was a world rooted in domination: the “God-fearing” model replicated in hierarchical religions, where authority is enforced through obedience. So it is not faith in itself, nor science in itself. The real struggle is between partnership and domination. We see this conflict across movements challenging traditions of domination and against the backlash that seeks regression.

Think about it: in domination systems, authoritarian families and authoritarian states mirror each other. Gender ranking is central. Violence and abuse are built into the structure, reinforced by story and language. These are stories rooted in fear of punishment. Look at our fairy tales: only a prince can save Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Such tales teach gender roles, but also something subtler—that only those on top can save us, usually from the very dangers they embody.

We must change our worldview. The traditions of domination need to be left behind. We must distinguish between hierarchies of domination and hierarchies of actualization. Every society needs parents, teachers, managers, and leaders, but power can be understood in different ways. Not “power over,” but “power with” and “power to”—including our creative power.

Archaeology increasingly shows evidence of prehistoric societies oriented toward partnership: more gender-balanced, more equitable, more peaceful. For example, Chinese archaeologists recently excavated a matrilineal society that was more egalitarian. Reports even appeared in mainstream outlets like The Wall Street Journal. However, we receive these findings only in fragments, and without the frame of partnership versus domination, the larger pattern remains invisible. Without that shift in framing, we will continue fighting for scraps falling from the tables of those at the top.

What we need is a change in what we institutionally value.

Jacobsen: What about the metaphors of war and conquest? Domination systems seem to glorify them, whether through heroic tales of warriors or through demonizing villains.

Eisler: It is always simplified into “good versus evil,” resolved through violence. Even our judicial system carries traces of this; trial by combat has only been replaced with a ritualized version in court. As an attorney, I can attest to that.

The whole judicial system is set up to be adversarial. Before I left the law, I practiced family law. If someone had set out to invent the worst possible system for dissolving or restructuring a family—especially one with children—it would be this adversarial approach.

I introduced fair prenuptial agreements and mediation as alternatives, but this was in the 1970s. Much has changed since then, including my decision to leave that profession. Still, my legal training was helpful because it gave me a systematic way of thinking. Clients do not come into your office and ask you to apply section 1222 of the penal code; they tell you a story, and your job is to translate that story into applicable law. That is systems thinking.

Earlier, right out of college, I worked for an offshoot of the RAND Corporation. There, I learned about systems thinking from the start. That perspective has shaped my research. It considers all of humanity—both its female and male halves, and everyone in between. It encompasses the intimate relationships within families, as well as political relationships. It connects the dots, and it includes all of history, even prehistory.

The shift to domination happened very recently in evolutionary terms—only about five to ten thousand years ago, after millennia of more partnership-oriented societies. So yes, we can move back toward partnership. Not to return to some “good old days,” but to build something new while still in motion, like flying the plane while we are building it.

The key is to focus on the four cornerstones that underlie both domination-oriented and partnership-oriented systems. First, childhood and family: neuroscience shows us how critical early experiences are. Second, gender: we know how roles are structured and the consequences. Third, economics: here too, the evidence is clear. Neoliberalism, which is neither new nor liberal, is simply a form of economic domination. Like feudalism, it tells those at the bottom to be satisfied with scraps falling from the tables of those at the top; moreover, fourth, story and language: the narratives that shape culture and justify hierarchy.

We are highlighting these issues in the upcoming Peace Begins at Home Summit, taking place on October 29, 2025, at peacebeginsathomesummit.org. The summit will bring together participants from seventeen nations, including many young people and scientists, to emphasize the importance of paying close attention to what children observe and experience in their early years. The good news is that change is possible. Our brains are highly flexible.

All of this is bombarding us, and yet we lack the frame to connect the dots. There is an alternative, even in language. Think of how domination systems devalue the feminine through grammar. Romance languages—Spanish, Italian, French—default to the masculine in the plural. One man among five thousand women, and the group is still masculine. If that is not an unconscious lesson in devaluing the feminine, I do not know what is.

English has started to shift. The use of “they,” the conscious inclusion of “her” and “him”—these are small steps. However, they are emerging against the backdrop of a highly organized, worldwide regression toward domination. This is not confined to the United States. Moreover, for those socialized to believe the only alternative is domination—a lie, of course—change is tough. Transformative change seems almost impossible.

My late husband and our colleague David Loye introduced the terms norm maintainers and norm changers. Most people fall somewhere in between, and they adapt to whatever the prevailing norm is. If the norm is domination, they go along with that. This makes it all the more crucial that we pay attention to what we value.

Everyone values caring and connection. As children, we cannot survive without it. However, domination systems restrict empathy to the in-group, and even then, only to those who conform rigidly. That is not sustainable. The bottom line—and I will say it again and again—is that domination systems are taking us to an evolutionary dead end.

We are interconnected not only by technologies of communication and transportation, but also by technologies of destruction—nuclear weapons, and more slowly, climate change. Domination systems cannot address these crises. Domination of nature, of other humans, of families, of economies—it is built into their logic. At this stage of human technological evolution, domination is maladaptive. Whether the threat is nuclear catastrophe or ecological collapse, the trajectory is the same: an evolutionary dead end.

So either we move further toward partnership, or it is curtains.

Jacobsen: What cultivates empathy in children? They must see empathy in action, and not just within the in-group. Domination systems limit empathy to the in-group and only to select members. Partnership systems, by contrast, extend empathy universally.

Eisler: In domination systems, children are taught to blame and shame. Partnership systems are not about blame or shame—certainly not about blaming our parents. They repeated what they themselves experienced and were taught. However, there is another way. Many young people today, including young men, are diapering and feeding babies, engaging in caregiving once dismissed as “women’s work.” This is very important.

I have always supported both the men’s movement and the women’s movement. I am a feminist, yes, but also a humanist and, above all, a partnerist. Because the alternative to patriarchy is not matriarchy; it is partnership. Prehistory and contemporary examples both show this.

Look at Ireland, which shifted almost overnight from rigid domination to partnership. There, you see both men and women in positions of leadership. In the Nordic nations, nearly half of the national legislatures are comprised of female members, and with that comes a focus on caring policies. These nations are not socialist, as some critics argue—they are partnership-oriented.

We need a new language. We need a new frame: the partnership-domination scale. Believe me, those pushing us back have a very rigid domination frame, and they are laser-focused on childhood and family. Consider the intense political attention given to controlling what children can learn, even to the point of banning ideas that might open their eyes to reality. This does not mean ignoring the good in American history—the founding rejection of monarchy was groundbreaking. However, we must also acknowledge the harm caused by the dominant heritage and the suffering it has produced.

Those pushing regression also pay careful attention to gender, as you noted with your imitation of U.S. politics. They pay enormous attention to economics—the new tax bills being celebrated as “beautiful” are written to favour domination structures.

I must say something about our present administration and President Trump. This is a deeply traumatized man, surrounded by deeply traumatized people, all shaped by domination in their families. They internalized a worldview that, as Trump himself put it, is all about domination. So the challenge is not to shame or blame them, but to understand that this was the only possibility they were given. The task is to convince the rest of the population that there is another way.

Our task now is to show that there is a better alternative. The partnership alternative requires shifting the four cornerstones—family and childhood, gender, economics, and story and language—from domination support to partnership support.

Jacobsen: What else should we cover? 

Eisler: We have covered nearly everything. The narrative is key. Every one of us must pay attention to the lies we have been told about human nature. This is not a science-versus-religion issue. In fact, science is moving toward partnership. Two physicists recently won the Nobel Prize for their work on quantum entanglement—research showing deep interconnection at the subatomic level. Archaeology, too, is shifting, as I mentioned in relation to the Chinese findings.

There is even a film being made about me—The Chalice and the Blade—about my life and work, which are deeply interconnected. I am living proof that people can change radically. My partnership with David Loye, my late husband, was central to that. We were together for forty-five years. It was not perfect—we fought—but we always reconciled. We could rely on one another, on acceptance, love, and care. Partnership is not only essential for survival, but for thriving. I could not have done my research without him.

Jacobsen: Last question: how can scholars, writers, and educators consciously shape partnership narratives without them feeling contrived?

Eisler: The first step is to live in partnership in our own lives. When a caring connection is authentic, it will not come across as artificial. Forgiveness also plays a role. It helps to understand that people who cling to dominant traditions are often traumatized. Recognizing that makes forgiveness freeing.

I will add one more thing: many on the left believe that if they can be on top, everything will be fine. However, that is not true. Look at the former Soviet Union: the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” state capitalism—it was still domination. The fundamental shift is from hierarchies of domination to hierarchies of actualization and care. What has been dismissed as “feminine” activity—caring, nurturing—is actually the essence of being human. Deep down, we all value that.

Jacobsen: Riane, thank you very much for your time again today. I will see you next week, and as always.

Eisler: You are lovely. Take good care of yourself, my friend. Bye-bye.

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