WE often imagine patriarchy as a fortress guarded exclusively by men, its ramparts manned by those who benefit most from its hierarchy.
However, the unsettling reality is that these walls are frequently maintained, brick by brick, silence by silence, by women.
This is a painful truth that clashes with our modern ideals of sisterhood. To dismantle the system, we must confront the ways in which women often serve as its most effective gatekeepers.
In Zimbabwe, this phenomenon is captured by the chilling Shona idiom, Mhandu yemukadzi mukadzi—the enemy of a woman is another woman.
This gatekeeping manifests in daily acts of protection, blame and deflection that prioritise male reputations over female safety.
Consider the case of Maria. At 13, she was assaulted by her stepfather. When she confided in her mother, the response was not a fierce embrace, but a panicked injunction: “You must keep quiet. If you speak, they will take your daddy away. What will happen to us?”
Fearing economic ruin, Maria’s mother sacrificed her daughter’s truth on the altar of familial survival.
Similarly, Chloe, 27, found herself besieged by a trio of women, the wife, mother and sister of her assailant, who pleaded for "mercy" to save the man’s "promising future."
- Chakombera’s novel explores the suffering of women
- ‘Mhandu yemukadzi’: Confronting how internalised sexism maintains the status quo
Keep Reading
These women became his first line of defence, weaponising emotional guilt to silence a victim. There is also the reason they went, instead of his male relatives: because they were women, they related more with the victim, leveraging on "gender advantage".
These are not monstrous outliers; they are documented sociopolitical patterns. Research into "Intragender Vigilantism" suggests that women often police other women to maintain social equilibrium.
From the office manager who buries a harassment complaint to the circle of friends who question a victim’s outfit, female gatekeeping acts as a social lubricant that allows patriarchal machinery to run without friction.
Even in professional spheres, the "Queen Bee syndrome", a term coined by researchers at the University of Michigan in 1973, describes how women in positions of authority may distance themselves from female subordinates to align with male-dominated power structures, often treating them with more severity than their male counterparts.
According to psychologists, this behaviour is built on several pillars. Primarily, it is built on internalised misogyny. Living within a patriarchal system, women absorb the belief that male approval and provision are paramount.
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology indicates that women who harbour internalised sexist beliefs are more likely to justify gender inequality as a means of maintaining "stability".
For many, protecting a man, even a guilty one, is subconsciously equated with protecting the system that offers them a defined, albeit subordinate, role.
Furthermore, resource dependency plays a major role. In many societies, a woman’s economic and social security remains intrinsically tied to her husband or father. When a mother silences her daughter to keep a "provider" out of jail, she is making a desperate, albeit tragic, calculation for survival.
Another reason is identification with the aggressor, a defence mechanism where victims adopt the ideology of the oppressor to feel a sense of control. By siding with the powerful male, some women seek proximity to power, distancing themselves from the "vulnerable" or "blameworthy" victim to convince themselves they are safe from similar harm.
The culture also enforces a “good woman” versus “troublemaker” dichotomy. Women are socialised to be peacekeepers and "fixers." The woman who demands accountability is framed as disruptive or vindictive. This pressure to "be the bigger person" is a form of emotional labour that women often impose on one another to restore superficial peace, effectively enforcing patriarchal silence through the guise of maturity or religious forgiveness.
Recently on digital platforms, the Epstein files have been a trending topic, drawing attention to the disgraced couple. Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein serve as a modern, extreme illustration of this complicity. Maxwell did not just witness predation; she allegedly was its architect.
Her case highlights "loyalty-based complicity," where a woman uses her unique understanding of female vulnerability to recruit and betray other women. It is the ultimate corruption of solidarity — using one’s gender as a tool to gain a favoured place beside a patriarch.
However, acknowledging female complicity is not about shifting the primary blame away from men. The perpetrator remains the perpetrator. Rather, it is about understanding patriarchy as a collective, co-constructed prison where both genders can hold the keys. Sociologist Sylvia Walby, who has written extensively on the structures of patriarchy, notes that the system survives not just through coercion, but through the "consent" and "co-operation" of those within it.
Breaking this cycle requires courageous introspection. It asks women to recognise when they have prioritised a man’s comfort over a woman’s truth or when they have whispered "he didn’t mean it" to avoid social friction.
We must build economic and social safety nets so that no woman feels forced to choose between justice and her next meal.
We must celebrate, rather than shun, the "troublemakers" who speak out.
The path to true liberation begins when women stop acting as the sentinels of a fortress that ultimately imprisons us all and instead become the architects of its dismantling. It begins by turning our protection away from the system and back towards each other.
