REVIEW ESSAYS/ NOTES CRITIQUES The Origins of Patriarchy: Gender and Class in the Ancient World Virginia Hunter Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press 1986). Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson, eds., Women's Work, Men's Property. The Origins of Gender and Class (London: Verso 1986). Do WOMEN IN ANTIQUITY HAVE anything to tell us about male dominance? The premise of both these books is that they do. In order to argue this position, Gerda Lerner has produced a work of great complexity and some daring: it should provoke serious discussion. Lerner herself is an American historian, a professor of History, and the author of several books in Women's History. As such, she criticizes the theoretical work of modern feminists as ahistorical, a situation she sets out to change by offering nothing less than a feminist theory of history. Her basic thesis is that patriarchy as a system is historical and had a beginning in history: her aim is to understand the process whereby it became established and institutionalized. But in order to gain this understanding, she was led back to the fourth millennium B.C., where she spent eight years studying the history of ancient Mesopotamia. She defines patriarchy as "the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance Virginia Hunter, "The Origins of Patriarchy: Gender and Class in the Ancient World," Labour/Le Travail, 22 (Fall 1988), 239-246.