Riane Eisler on Partnership Systems, Caring Economics, and Humanist Values in the 21st Century

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 vs. dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award in 1996, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing from 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, not 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).

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Riane Eisler. She is an Austrian-born American systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, and attorney, best known for her pioneering work on cultural transformation, gender equity, and human rights. Eisler is internationally recognized for her 1987 bestseller, “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future,” which introduced the influential concepts of the partnership and dominator models to describe two contrasting ways societies can be structured.

Her interdisciplinary work spans history, economics, gender studies, education and neuroscience, promoting equitable, sustainable and caring social systems. In 1996, the American Humanist Association awarded her the Humanist Pioneer Award for her groundbreaking work and contributions to humanist thought and activism. Based on your lifetime of research, what do you feel the humanist community needed in the latter part of the twentieth century? And what do you think is needed now, in the first part of the twenty-first century?

Eisler: It’s fundamentally the same. We need to demonstrate that there is a better alternative. Yes, religion has all too often been used to justify domination and violence. But it is not simply a question of religious versus secular, but rather: What values do we hold? And what values continue to shape our institutions? That includes our family structures, our gender relations, our economic systems, our narratives, and even the language we use.

That has been the focus of my work. I began this journey seeking to belong—because that is a basic human drive—but I always felt like an outsider. I was born in Vienna. My family fled the Nazis and found refuge from the Holocaust in Cuba. We later emigrated to the United States. My early desire was to fit in. However, during the 1960s and 1970s, as the feminist movement emerged, I realized that the problems I believed were personal were social.

That was when I began to apply my legal training to systemic issues. For example, I contributed a Friend of the Court brief in a case making the same argument just before Reed v. Reed (1971), the landmark Supreme Court case that, for the first time, ruled that a law discriminating based on sex violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I was also involved in policy advocacy, including testifying before legislative bodies like the California state legislature during hearings on issues such as rape law reform. I argued that women should not be subjected to invasive questions about their sexual history, nor should they be blamed for the violence committed against them.

Eventually, I realized I needed to answer more profound questions rooted in my childhood experiences of war and displacement. That led me to undertake extensive interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and historical research. I found that we lack coherent alternatives to hierarchical, authoritarian systems. We are taught stories like original sin in religion or selfish genes in science—both reinforcing the notion that humans are inherently evil or violent and need to be controlled from above, whether by divine authority(as in God-fearing)  or political force (as in the current regression to domination in the U.S.).

So, I asked: Is there an alternative to this domination-based way of living? This question is especially urgent now, as we witness resurgences of authoritarianism and regression globally and within the United States.

My life’s work continues to affirm: Yes, there is a better way. Regarding feminism, it is a vital social movement against domination, but the alternative to patriarchy is not matriarchy—it is partnership. It is what I call a partnership system. And collaboration does not just mean working together—it means a particular type of structure in the family, in gender relations, in economic relations, and, yes, in the stories we tell and the language we use. And I trust you to ask questions in between this long speech!

Jacobsen: What makes the partnership model more suitable than the dominator or domination model? People are buying into the domination model, although that may be more because it is based on fear and threat rather than an aspirational model people willingly choose. Why do you think we are seeing an increase in domination systems now?

Eisler: Well, we are talking a lot about trauma these days, aren’t we? That is a partnership trend because we are beginning to understand, as I bring out in my latest book, “Nurturing Our Humanity,” that we are all traumatized to varying degrees. Domination systems are trauma factories.

“Scientific American” recently interviewed me about how what happens in families is often ignored. If you think about our conventional categories—right and left, religious and secular, East and West, North and South—they all marginalize or outright ignore women and children, who make up the majority of humanity.

We have to connect the dots. I am very pleased to do this interview because humanists need to understand what this research shows: Peace begins at home. We often talk about Peace in terms of avoiding war, terrorism, or crime, but it starts with what children observe and experience in their early years. That is what neuroscience is showing us.

We are organizing a summit, and I invite all humanists to join us on October 29—a virtual event titled “Peace Begins at Home.” We already have several speakers confirmed, such as Gary Barker, president of Equimundo, who will speak on the importance of caring  masculinity. This is not an issue of women versus men, nor is it about religion versus secularism. It is about values.

Men have been denied access to the part of themselves capable of care and nurturance. Instead, they are given a kind of sop: “You may not have much agency, but you’re the king of the castle at home.” The domination system offers them hierarchy at home, but at the price of emotional suppression and obedience.

Today, we are witnessing a resurgence of that system. Many young men are being misled—snookered, really—by figures like Andrew Tate, who promote the idea that men should dominate and control. But what do you give up in return? Often, your life—because someone at the top of the pyramid, like that dominator Putin, wants more territory.

Men do not have it easy in domination systems. These systems are always framed as “in-group versus out-group.” They rely on deflecting fear and unresolved pain from childhood—on trauma. As I said, domination systems are trauma factories, and we need to understand that.

As Einstein said, “You can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them.” That was Einstein. And to quote Gandhi, there is a big difference between what is natural and what is customary.

We have all been socialized—regardless of where we fall on the domination–partnership social scale—to accept domination as just the way it is. You either dominate, or you are dominated.

But there is another alternative. We must change our economic system so that caring—socially coded as feminine and historically devalued—is recognized and rewarded. Both Karl Marx and Adam Smith, despite challenging certain traditions of domination, maintained the idea that women should do the care work in households for free within male-controlled family structures. That was the norm in their time, and they perpetuated it through their distinction between productivework and so-called reproductive work.

There are three life-sustaining sectors of any economy, and I discuss this in detail in my book “The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics.” That is what we have to build—an economy that values care.

We need markets and enlightened government policies. But the real issue is: What is considered valuable? GDP is a deeply flawed measure—it treats only what fits within its outdated framework as productive. GDP includes the destruction of nature as gain: a tree counts in GDP only when it is dead, as a log. Neither Marx nor Smith gave attention to the value of caring for nature or people outside of market-based productivity.

We must look beyond surface-level arguments, stop arguing past one another, and recognize that the task before us is to help shift our worldview. We need a new paradigm.

Humanism does offer a framework that emphasizes values—but it often lacks the lens of partnership versus domination. That is the frame I recommend. You can read more about it in various articles, including one I sent you—my “Compass” article on the four cornerstones.

Jacobsen: One final question—what are your favorite quotes?

Eisler: My favorite quotes are those I mentioned: Einstein’s, “We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” and Gandhi’s, “We must not confuse what is natural with what is customary.”

We have all inherited specific ways of thinking—embedded in our language, stories, and gender roles—that fragment our awareness. We are taught not to connect the dots.

But we must connect the dots: between childhood and gender, economics and story, language and power. I identify these four cornerstones because we need short-term tactics—putting out the constant fires caused by domination systems—and long-term strategies for fundamental transformation.

So, keep doing whatever you are doing—but focus on at least one of these four cornerstones. They are all interconnected. The “Peace Begins at Home” summit is where we connect those dots.

Jacobsen: Riane, thank you very much for your time.

Eisler: Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it.

You are all over the place, a living encyclopedia of ideas. I always want to ask you: What do you want to do with your life?

Jacobsen: Well, the answer might be embedded in the question. One thing I am doing is building a living archive of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All these interviews and conversations are being compiled into one accessible body of work.

The books are either organized thematically or by publication. But I think the question, “What do you want to do?” makes sense when someone says, “I want to become a welder” or “I want to be a nurse.” There’s a path: do a four-year degree, complete your practicum, and enter the profession.

Eisler: No, no, no. You can’t just be a nurse or a welder. You’re accumulating so many perspectives. But what does make sense to you?

Jacobsen: I do not know yet.

Eisler: Well, think about that.

Jacobsen: It is not “To thine own self be true.” It is “Know thyself.” That’s what the Oracle of Delphi said.

Eisler: Well, the Oracle… When I was a kid—and you might want to include this in the article—I wondered about this line from the Bible: “Henceforth, woman is to be subservient to man.” I always wanted to know: What was it like before the henceforth?

Jacobsen: That’s right. You brought this up last time, too.

Eisler: And then I also wanted to know—why would a woman ask advice from a snake? Because we usually do not do that. But then I thought of the Oracle of Delphi, and it made more sense. It was a Pythia—a woman priestess working with a serpent symbol, serving as an oracle. And that lasted well into historically domination-oriented times.

But now, you know, I am an elder. And I want to share what I have learned—not only through my life but also through my research. And you do it. You are so interesting because you are such a polyglot. You accumulate things—willy-nilly. And I always want to ask: What is your passion?

Jacobsen: Oh, conversation. I love conversation.

Eisler: Well, there you have it. And communication—conversation—is very, very, very important in the partnership model. It is not all that important in the domination model because the model is: “Do as I say—or else.” And the “or else” is based on fear and pain.

Jacobsen: That reminds me—though I do not know how much it is used anymore—of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. The lower two stages are centred around fear of punishment and avoidance of pain. That fits nicely with how artificially low development is often kept in domination systems.

Eisler: However, Kohlberg did not understand what Carol Gilligan understood—that abstract reasoning is not the ultimate goal. The goal is not pure reason. It is feeling. It is valued. We humans all deeply want a caring connection; conversation is an essential step in that direction.

Jacobsen: Even Kim Jong-un got married!

Eisler: Well, there you have it. But it is a dominant marriage.

Jacobsen: Oh yes. He is probably looking for an empty shell. We will contact him very shortly.

Eisler: Cool. Good to talk to you, as always.

Jacobsen: Ciao.

Eisler: Bye-bye.