Partnership Studies 13: Domination vs Partnership: Rethinking Power

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/11/08

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 with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler argues that many social binaries are gradients, not absolutes, and that domination systems distort them into hierarchies. She outlines four cornerstones for shifting toward partnership—childhood and family, gender, economics, and story/language—held together by the binding force of fear. Partnership reframes power as care and connection, challenges punitive conditioning, and links movements for gender equity, anti-racism, children’s rights, peace, and environmental justice into one unified project. Eisler cites evidence from history, neuroscience, and physics to stress interdependence and empathy. She urges rapid cultural evolution to navigate climate risk and the resurgence of authoritarianism, emphasizing rituals, rights, and relational wealth over control.

Interview conducted October 25, 2025.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We see, in how we think about things, that religions often codify hierarchical and binary patterns—though not all do. Nature itself contains many apparent dualities, such as light and dark or hot and cold. However, these are not absolute opposites; they exist along continuums. Why is this important, and how does it relate to a partnership studies model for understanding the world?

Riane Eisler: Binary oppositions such as hot and cold, night and day, do exist in nature, yet they operate on gradients. Likewise, human social systems have often mistaken natural variation for rigid polarity. Domination systems—those that prioritize hierarchy and control—tend to exaggerate these binaries into stereotypes, such as masculine versus feminine. We should not discard the concept of duality altogether, but we must move beyond rigid categorization.

My research suggests that to achieve the consciousness needed to address our global crises, we must adopt new conceptual frameworks beyond traditional oppositions: right versus left, religious versus secular, Eastern versus Western, Northern versus Southern. These categories have hardened into in-group and out-group identities that justify exclusion and conflict.

Across history, authoritarian regimes—whether religious or secular, left or right—have shared standard features: control through fear, the suppression of diversity, and the marginalization of women and children, who together form the majority of humanity. In societies such as those governed by the Taliban or the clerical establishment in Iran, men and the so-called masculine are still regarded as superior to women and the feminine. This is not intrinsic to religion itself but reflects a domination model of social organization.

As Albert Einstein observed, problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them. To evolve, humanity must move beyond the inherited worldview of domination.

Jacobsen: Are there areas where domination models and partnership models overlap—where they touch?

Eisler: Yes, and we can see this tension vividly in the United States today. The country’s deepest struggle is not right versus left, capitalist versus socialist, or men versus women—these are false dichotomies. They obscure the underlying dynamic between domination and partnership, in which both the political left and right have, at times, sought power through ranking and control. Viewed through the partnership–domination continuum, today’s global resurgence of authoritarianism represents a backlash against social progress toward partnership.

The women’s movement, the children’s rights movement, the anti-racism movement, the peace movement, the movement for social and economic equity, and the environmental movement are all challenging the same underlying problem—a tradition of domination. If that is the case, then the real conflict beneath all these categories so often tossed about in the media and public discourse is between a return to rigid domination systems—with greater ranking, whether economic, gender, or familial—and the use of violent punishment, versus the rise of partnership models.

Many movements, though still lacking the conceptual frame of partnership—or “partnerism,” if you prefer—are, whatever we call them, parts of a unified movement.

To move forward, we must leave behind traditions of domination. It is one unified movement expressed in different areas of life.

Jacobsen: Do you rank or order the relative impact, scale, or influence of different binaries within the domination–partnership model? As these categories are broken apart, others seem to appear. Are there distinct binaries within these models that emerge as more foundational?

Eisler: I have identified several key cornerstones that are necessary to shift from domination to partnership. Of course, we need short-term tactics to address immediate crises and traumas. For example, poverty itself is a form of trauma. But such efforts alone maintain the system. What we genuinely need is transformative work—work that changes the structure from domination to partnership in four critical areas.

In each of these areas, there is a fifth element, a binding force: fear and coercion. Domination systems are held together by fear and force.

The first cornerstone is childhood and family. That is also the focus of the upcoming Peace Begins at Home Summit, on October 29, 2025, available at peacebeginsathomesummit.org. As the United Nations reports, roughly two-thirds of all children globally live in unsafe homes—homes where violence ranges from spanking to severe abuse. This is where the cycle of denial and normalization of violence begins. It ripples outward into war, social violence, and crime.

When I was in Colombia, for example, the vice president—who had been held hostage by the FARC—told me that every one of his captors had endured a violent childhood. That connection is critical, yet we still have not fully recognized it.

Of course, not everyone who experiences violence as a child becomes violent, thank goodness. But many become punitive, angry, and deeply wounded. These highly traumatized individuals often perpetuate the very systems that harmed them. This dynamic maintains the larger structure of domination.

The next cornerstone is gender. Whether we look at the Taliban, fundamentalist Iran, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union—whether right-wing or left-wing, religious or secular—all of these domination systems place a strong emphasis on controlling gender roles.

Yet gender is rarely analyzed as a central organizing principle of domination. Only a few scholars, such as Claudia von Werlhof and I, have written extensively on how gender has been used to justify hierarchy and violence. Hitler, for example, claimed that feminist ideas were part of a “Jewish conspiracy,” reflecting how gender equality itself was portrayed as subversive.

The larger point is this: yes, there are dichotomies in nature, but they are not adversarial. You do not see hot and cold at war with each other, or night trying to destroy day. You see gradients, relationships, transitions. In healthy systems, opposites coexist in balance rather than conflict. That is the essence of partnership thinking.

Domination and partnership are distinct systems, but there are degrees within them. They do not have to operate, as we are often taught, in terms of in-group versus out-group.

Jacobsen: How can we reach people who are so deeply traumatized that they identify with authority figures—the same kinds of figures who controlled or punished them in childhood? Many grew up in highly punitive and violent households. That must be a significant challenge.

Eisler: It is indeed. But another challenge is helping those already working toward a partnership to recognize their shared purpose. The movements for anti-racism, gender equity, children’s rights, and against antisemitism are all connected. They are each confronting traditions of domination and the false divisions of in-group versus out-group.

So, we face two enormous challenges. The first is to reach those who sincerely want a more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable world and to show them that their efforts need not be oppositional. True partnership is not about replacing one dominant group with another—it is about caring.

Care—so often labelled “feminine” and therefore “weak” under domination systems—is in fact central to recognizing human rights. It is also essential to realize that we cannot continue exploiting the Earth. Even our language holds the clues: the phrase “Mother Earth” parallels millennia of dominion over women and dominion over nature. These forms of domination are intertwined.

The second challenge is more difficult but equally vital. Those who seek a better world must begin to view power not as the blade but as the chalice—as something that empowers and connects rather than divides and destroys. The widening inequalities of our time, much like those of the Gilded Age, mirror domination thinking: the concentration of wealth and authority among a few, alongside gender and social hierarchies that separate “haves” from “have-nots,” “men” from “women,” and “in-groups” from “out-groups.”

If we can transform our understanding of power in this way, people will no longer automatically identify with those who wield it coercively. But this requires a profound shift in worldview. For instance, it is inconsistent for some in the anti-racism movement to also express antisemitic or anti-white sentiment. The problem is not the colour of one’s skin—it is the very existence of in-group versus out-group structures. Merely changing who is on top does not change the system itself.

Jacobsen: These domination patterns, according to your historical modelling, have persisted for several thousand years. If these structures are so deeply ingrained, does change have to occur on an intergenerational scale? Especially considering that humanity may have only a few generations left to act if current trends continue.

Eisler: Yes—and that intergenerational work is essential, though secondary in the sense that it depends on a fundamental shift in consciousness first. Without that, structural change cannot endure.

We are at a truly critical point in our cultural evolution—approaching a dead end, frankly. Nuclear weapons pose an immediate existential risk, and climate change, though slower, is steadily producing more and more disasters. We have to act quickly.

The good news is that a shift in consciousness can happen in an instant. It can be as sudden as realizing, “Yes, I see it now.” I can speak to this personally. I did not always perceive the possibility of a partnership alternative. I once accepted gender discrimination as simply “the way things are.” Then I discovered overwhelming evidence showing that it has not always been this way. Humanity has changed before, and we can change again.

Jacobsen: Another example might be Germany—one of the most advanced societies of its time—collapsing morally under Nazism and then transforming again into a far more humane and democratic society.

Eisler: Exactly. These transformations demonstrate that cultural systems can and do evolve. Human nature has been misunderstood for millennia. We have been told that humans are inherently selfish and violent, but that is a falsehood that sustains domination systems.

In truth, by the grace of evolution, humans have developed the most advanced capacity for empathy of any species we know. We naturally care for those close to us—our kin, our neighbours—but we can also extend empathy beyond those boundaries once we recognize our interconnection.

Modern science reinforces this view. The Nobel Prize in Physics recently went to two physicists who demonstrated that, at the subatomic level, everything is interconnected—entangled. Physical anthropology shows the same truth: all human beings are biologically related.

What we must learn is to connect the dots between all this evidence. Those who seek to reimpose rigid domination systems try very hard to suppress this understanding. They exclude from public consciousness the very evidence that reveals our interdependence.

This suppression is deeply embedded in traditions of domination—including specific interpretations of religion. Not all religions, but some, emphasize fear and submission, even framing divinity as something to be “God-fearing.” That fear-based mindset maintains domination rather than dissolving it.

Jacobsen: Do you think the prevalence of binaries in nature, and our tendency to perceive the world through dualities, has actually enabled us to study it systematically? Does the symmetry of opposites play a role in our scientific understanding of the natural world?

Eisler: Nature itself is cooperative, not purely competitive. We are discovering that cooperation is a central principle of evolution. You’ve written about this too—the natural role of love, connection, and sexuality as part of life’s continuity. Nature evolves, and we must evolve with it.

The last five to ten thousand years of domination is a brief detour in evolutionary time compared with the millennia before, when partnership-oriented societies predominated. I wrote about this in my first major book, which emerged from a whole-systems analysis of human civilization, including gender. The evidence suggests that the shift to domination systems was not inevitable.

You can even see echoes of that transition in cultural texts such as The Odyssey. The female figures—Circe, Calypso, the Sirens—are all vilified or reduced to temptresses or monsters. Yet Odysseus still needs Penelope, a woman, to affirm his legitimacy as ruler. These are traces of an earlier time when female power and partnership values were integral to society.

Jacobsen: Are those same themes visible in popular culture today? For example, in ordinary television shows like Friends or Seinfeld, or dramas like Suits, where masculinity is often portrayed through conquest, even if off-screen?

Eisler: Of course. That pattern is everywhere. And we must point it out, because there is a profound difference between sex as domination—what I call the eroticization of domination—and sex within a partnership context. In the latter, both partners experience mutual pleasure and respect. Research shows that sexuality is far more fulfilling in partnership-based relationships, where both individuals give and receive pleasure as equals rather than as conqueror and conquered.

So this, too, is a question of worldview. The neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, who works closely with the Dalai Lama, emphasizes that human nature is not inherently evil. Yet the myth of innate human wickedness persists.

We’ve also discussed how the “hero’s journey,” so dominant in cultural storytelling, often glorifies violence. Even when the protagonist is a woman, she is frequently co-opted into the same narrative of domination—winning through force rather than transforming the structure itself.

As we move toward partnership, we are not envisioning a perfect society, but a more humane, satisfying, and sustainable one. 

Jacobsen: I spent three weeks in Iceland earlier this year studying the culture, and I can tell you—it’s a society that embodies many partnership principles. Though I must say, even in the summer, it’s cold. Iceland is famously chilly even in July.

Eisler: Exactly. No society is perfect—and Iceland isn’t nearly warm enough—but it does show that progress toward partnership is possible, even under challenging conditions.

Iceland is fascinating. Despite their cold, dark climates, the Nordic countries have moved strongly toward partnership-oriented values. What’s remarkable is that these societies—despite their harsh geography—cultivate social warmth and equality.

Jacobsen: I noticed that too. After about a week there, I felt a sense of calm—almost a physiological relaxation. The social tone feels cooperative and trusting. There’s a book called Independent People by Halldór Laxness. Iceland’s Nobel laureate in literature, and that same spirit runs through it: a respect for autonomy and accountability. Your victories are your own, your losses too—but you take responsibility for both. People let you live as a whole person. It’s an ongoing cultural project, but you can see how those shifts in policy, representation, and values reshape society. Even now, three or four major political parties are led by women—the president, the prime minister, even the head of the major church is a woman, circa 2024.

Eisler: That’s very natural for humans—to be partners. It’s more natural to seek pleasure and connection than to live in fear and pain. There are, of course, things to fear—disease, death, natural disasters—but we don’t need to build entire systems around fear. Ireland seems to be changing along similar lines—and it’s also wealthier for it. Ireland has grown more affluent and more open, returning in some ways to pre-Christian cultural roots. They’re reclaiming aspects of earlier, nature-based traditions, such as the revival of interest in Brigid. 

Brigid—originally a goddess—was later canonized as Saint Brigid by the Catholic Church because the people continued to revere her. She was a deity of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. Her name comes from the old Irish Bríde, meaning “the exalted one.” She’s part of what mythology calls a “triple goddess,” but that so-called mythic golden age wasn’t entirely mythical. It reflects an earlier social order rooted in balance and partnership.

Jacobsen: That’s quite humanistic, really. Taking what was once treated as supernatural and reinterpreting it as symbolic—turning old myths into stories that teach values, like Santa Claus or The Three Little Pigs. It’s not about worship but education, meaning-making, and shared narrative. The ceremonial aspects—like humanist weddings and naming ceremonies—fit perfectly within a modern, secular, and compassionate worldview. Ireland and Scotland both seem to be leaning into that.

Eisler: It’s a way of reclaiming cultural continuity while shedding the authoritarian framework. It’s the transformation of mythology into metaphor—a bridge from domination toward partnership. We need rights, but we also need rituals. Humanity has always created symbolic acts to mark transitions—birth, maturity, death—because we don’t really know what happens after we die. We lack the perceptual “equipment” to fully comprehend it. Even secular people need ways to honour change and meaning.

Jacobsen: I feel the same. I never had formal rites of passage. You end up marking the chapters of your life alone, which is more complicated than doing it in community. You mark them through others’ life events—your father’s death, your grandfather’s, your uncle’s—but that isn’t the same as having a social ceremony acknowledging your own growth. Norway, for example, has secular coming-of-age ceremonies around age fifteen, organized by the Human-Etisk Forbund. Every culture needs something like that; otherwise, people drift psychologically. Not developmentally—you still mature—but in terms of having coherent chapters of identity.

Eisler: Such rituals recognize biological and emotional thresholds—acknowledging that we’re entering new phases of life. Yet we always carry our childhood within us. Many people suppress their early traumas, but they shape us nonetheless.

Nature has lessons here, too. We still don’t fully understand nature’s complexity, but we can observe its limits and patterns. I often return to the Fibonacci sequence—those spirals and ratios found in shells, sunflowers, and even the proportions of our bodies. There appears to be a kind of design in nature, though I use that word poetically, not theologically. The Fibonacci ratio, approximately 1.618, appears repeatedly—in biological growth patterns, in the branching of trees, in rabbit populations. It suggests an underlying order to natural processes, though its causes remain mathematical rather than mystical.

Jacobsen: I spoke recently with a mathematician friend about that after one of our talks. He noted that since nature doesn’t seem to contain actual infinities, every Fibonacci expression we observe is an approximation, never an actual infinite sequence. The precision we see—down to decimal ratios—is bounded by physical constraints. So what we’re really witnessing are natural approximations of abstract mathematical relationships.

Eisler: That makes sense. Nature expresses patterns, not perfection. They’re not exact, but they reveal coherence. And rather than puzzling endlessly about whether infinity exists or where it “ends,” I prefer to focus on what we can do now—to make life better, to transform how we live together. That’s the real challenge and the real beauty of being human.

The transformation from domination to partnership must happen across all four cornerstones: childhood and family, gender, economics, and story or language. It begins in childhood—violence, denial, in-group thinking, and punitive conditioning all ripple outward from the family system. Gender, too, is central and vastly underanalyzed, except through frameworks like my study of relational dynamics.

Economics is another pillar: what do we reward as a society? In domination systems, we reward conquest and control. In partnership systems, we must reward care, creativity, and storytelling—forms of relational wealth. These are not separate issues; they are interdependent. As we shift toward partnership, fear and violence diminish.

Jacobsen: Thank you again for your time today, Riane. 

Eisler: That’s wonderful. You’re so bright, Scott. It’s a pleasure working with you.

Jacobsen: Thank you, Riane. Take care.

Eisler: Goodbye.

Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In-Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices.  In-Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In-Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.