Patriarchy in Practice at UNCG: Traditionally, a college for women. Pragmatically, controlled by men.

We interpret patriarchy here as a hegemonic system that privileges a male ruling class by naturalizing the social hierarchies of gender roles. The structures of the university reflect and contain patriarchal power structures that promote subordinate positions for females while supporting the consolidation of institutional power in the hands of a few white men.

Charles Duncan McIver was one of the greatest proponents of women's education and the principal founder and first President of the Normal School in Greensboro, which would later become the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This statue of McIver, located on campus in front of the Jackson Library, stands as a tribute to McIver and his leadership of the school. It highlights the fact that, although the university was founded to educate women, men historically held the positions of administrative authority. In fact, it was not until 1994, over 100 years after the school’s founding, that the university had its first female chancellor. One of the plaques on the base of the statue is inscribed with the quote “People – not rocks and rivers and imaginary boundary lines – make a state: and the state is great just in proportion as its people are educated.” This quote emphasizes the importance of education, in this case the education of women, in strengthening the state. However, in 1911, the year that the statue was erected, women did not have the right to vote. Political power was considered largely the purview of men, and so even educated women remained second class citizens. In this case, the monument indicates that not only is the school itself rooted in patriarchal rule, but also that it has been a part of a larger patriarchal government system.

At first glance, the statue of the Roman goddess Minerva seems to represent women embodying wisdom and power, alluding to the school’s history as a women’s college. Yet within sight of this statue stands that of Charles McIver, a real historical male authority figure. Minerva, on the other hand, is an ancient mythological figure who represents no concrete power or authority in the contemporary world. As a fictitious character, she is less threatening and more comforting than a statue memorializing the achievement of a real woman would be -- her abstraction raises no embarrassing questions about the history of the school’s inequitable balance of power along gendered and racial lines.Ultimately, in terms of this institution’s monumental representations of gender, women still remain beyond the realm of pragmatic political power and influence.

The Margaret C. Moore Building was constructed in 1969 to house the School of Nursing, founded in 1967. The architecture of the building suggests that at the time of its construction, the school was moving away from its earlier, more classically influenced style of architecture to a more progressive style. Also in 1963, just a few years before the building’s construction, the school was made coeducational, another sign of progress. However, the school was still governed by a patriarchal system with a male chancellor and male authority. Though a female dean controlled the School of Nursing at the time of the building’s construction and it was later named for a notable alumna and former dean, the building still contains a discipline which has been historically female and leads to a career considered “acceptable” for females. The all female nursing school class of 1983 pictured here suggests that the discipline segregated a portion of the female population from the coeducational environment of the school. Although the school had integrated the genders, it still excelled in and emphasized disciplines, such as nursing, that were considered appropriate for females to pursue. This representation of the students of 1983 also suggests that the nursing school was segregated along racial lines; the apparent predominance of white students further implicates the institution in the maintenance of social hierarchies that politically stratify access to resources and power through racial and gender divisions.