Patriarchy 101: When Things Go Wrong, Fire the Women

There is a script. It’s old. It’s tired. And they keep running it.

When things go bad - remove the women. Blame the women.

This is Patriarchy 101.

The patriarchal system has never been designed for women’s protection. It has always offered a conditional bargain: align yourself with power, defend it, and you will be shielded. But that protection is precarious. You are still required to walk a narrow line. One misstep, one political liability, one bad news cycle, and you are expendable.

You were always expendable.

We are watching that pattern unfold again, in real time.

President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, largely due to her handling of the Epstein files, a political liability the administration needed someone to answer for. Her replacement is Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Before Bondi, it was Kristi Noem, replaced by Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter and sitting senator who has faced ethics questions and allegations of inflammatory rhetoric. And there are already rumors that Tulsi Gabbard could be next.

See the pattern?

This is Patriarchy 101 in practice. Women are placed in visible positions of authority. Their presence is used as proof of inclusion, progress, even empowerment. But the moment things become unstable, when accountability looms, they are the first to be pushed out. And they are replaced, almost without exception, by men.

The message is not subtle.

When women fall, their fall is generalized. It becomes a story about what women are not capable of. It reinforces a narrative that has been circulated for generations: women cannot lead, cannot withstand pressure, cannot handle power.

I want to be clear: I have no admiration for Bondi, Noem, or the choices they made in service of this administration. Good riddance. But my contempt for their politics is not the point, because that is exactly what the system counts on. It counts on us to be so satisfied watching these particular women fall that we miss what is actually happening.

This is the glass cliff: the tendency for women to be elevated into leadership roles precisely when institutions are already in crisis. They are handed failing systems and impossible expectations, then blamed when those systems do not recover.

We have seen this pattern across industries.

When Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo, the company was already in steep decline. She was expected to reverse years of strategic failure. When that did not happen, she became the face of Yahoo’s collapse. At Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina led during a turbulent transition and was later held up as a symbol of executive failure. In retail, Jill Soltau was tasked with rescuing JCPenney at the brink of collapse and removed when the inevitable bankruptcy followed.

The setup is consistent: women are handed the wheel of a car already going off the road and then blamed for the crash.

But scrutiny is not applied equally.

Figures like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Howard Lutnick have faced serious controversy: allegations of misconduct, documented ethical failures, and troubling behavior, without triggering sweeping narratives about male incapacity. Their failures remain individual. They are not asked to stand in for all men. They are given chance after chance and they remain in power.

Women are rarely afforded that distinction.

This pattern stretches across centuries. During the Salem Witch Trials, women were blamed for social panic and instability. Marie Antoinette became the symbol of excess during the French Revolution, her image weaponized to channel public anger away from systemic failure and toward a single, visible woman. The mechanism is the same: when systems men built break down, women become the story.

And in a moment of chaos, much of it deliberately manufactured by those in power, it is almost too predictable that women are the first to be cast aside.

What is changing is not the pattern, but the response to it.

Millions of people have taken to the streets in protest, signaling a growing refusal to accept scapegoating as accountability. The more than eight million who showed up or the March 28^th No Kings march understand something important: what is being presented as responsibility is often deflection, an effort to preserve power by redirecting blame.

Women are not failing these systems. They are being inserted into failing systems and the blame is assigned before they even walk through the door.

It is a system that uses women as proof when convenient and as scapegoats when necessary.

The question is no longer whether women will continue to be placed on the edge of the cliff. The question is how much longer we are willing to pretend we don’t see who is doing the pushing.