Quite a bit of attention has been given to the ending of the patriarchal era and its destructive excesses.  

However, I find it curious that we haven’t collectively converged on a shared vision or description for where we are headed. 

One day the term “partnerarchy” popped into my mind. Oddly, when I looked it up online, it had only been used on a couple of posts in Instagram and not in any way that made it seem that a body of work was established.

For me, it’s a term that accurately describes the shift in power underneath the larger Shift of our time. Women and the feminine are clearly rising (which is a blessing!), but the real healing isn’t to take down the patriarchy and to create a matriarchy. Instead, it’s to recognize the sacred balance between genders that is at the heart of the new era that’s dawning.

If we are all equal in our divinity (which I believe is simply true), it stands to reason that we are equal in our rights to sovereignty, self-determination, and leadership within societal roles. It stands to reason that men and women should be equal in opportunity and in the liberty to express their gifts.  

That’s part of why the notion of patriarchy has become so dissonant — it runs counter to the now obvious and intuitive truth that we are co-equal, regardless of gender.

While there is a biological reality underpinning the division into two sexes, traditional gender definitions of masculine and feminine are becoming more nuanced and multidimensional now with the rise of post-binary identities and a decoupling of sex and gender. Basically, we are becoming less rigid in how we hold gender, which is, to my mind, part of the equalization between genders as well. If one gender is not privileged relative to the other, there’s a freedom to explore, claim, and embody expressions that might have been the monopoly of one gender or the other.

I’m grateful for that freedom as a man who doesn’t always resonate with traditional masculinity.

The distinctions of masculine and feminine can nonetheless still offer an interesting way of understanding tendencies rooted in biology, psychology, sociology, and spirituality. Polarities can be creative if they are respectful vs. oppressive. Parenting two girls has made it clear that there are real differences from parenting boys. I want to celebrate those differences in a frame of also not privileging those differences one way or the other.

As we make this larger Shift from a patriarchal era to a partnerarchal era, we need a vision for how we can do much better as a planetary civilization, creating space for the next generation to grow into their full expression.

Partnerarchy means, literally, power held in partnership, which implies that collective decision-making should not be the purview of any single group (whether based on gender, race, culture, or other identity), but based on skills and agreements between otherwise sovereign individuals who agree to work together on common aims. Those common aims might be a marriage, a community, a business, or even a government.

So the growing edge for our world is learning how to share power in a way that is complementary while also recognizing functional hierarchies of skill, role, or function. It’s not possible to run a company with one hundred CEOs but it is possible to create fuller participation for many people and their various skills using a partnership framework.

For me, the call of partnerarchy would be to recognize that there is a balance of centralization of power (in roles from CEO to President) along with greater decentralization (more democracy) and a balance of leadership expertise and egalitarian care.  

Instead of a model based on competition alone, we would balance that with more cooperation sourced in respect for other opinions, perspectives, and needs. It’s not a zero-sum logic; the wins of one can become the wins of another.

We’re actually reasonably close, from a historical perspective, to enacting such a vision as women grow their influence and gender norms embrace more fluidity. A more participatory partnerarchy becomes possible as we fully re-integrate the values, perspectives, and strengths of women into the decision-making of our societies. This does not overthrow the “old ways” of doing business or doing democracy, but brings in a more multi-stakeholder and leader-full model.

Spiritually, this simply makes sense. It’s why we’ve seen a move away from guru models that invest excess adulation in a spiritual teacher, and a move toward collaborative communities of practice that nonetheless honor mastery, depth, and wisdom. Anything that places too much emphasis on a single individual can fall into the autocratic and self-aggrandizing mode that is patriarchy in its dysfunctional state.

As we embrace wisdom sourcing from more directions, we recognize that there is beauty, power, and magic coming from all cultures and that there is no tradition with a monopoly on truth. As we practice this spiritually and claim our own discernment and sovereignty, we become an awakening community rather than a cultish congregation — and that in turn is good practice for how we enact more partner-full dynamics in organizations, families, communities, and democracies.

We’re building new muscles as a society as we learn to lift our vision of ourselves while also more fully honoring the gifts and blessings of others. Eventually, we begin to embrace the unique power that can move through each of us and trust in the synergistic dance that can happen when we remember that we are all powerful divine souls here to collaborate on making this world a true heaven on earth. Partnering with other souls isn’t something we seek to achieve; it’s something that is a foundational truth of who we are. Now we just need to create the partnerarchy here on planet Earth as part of the larger Shift!

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