The structures that exist in in the nuclear family were carried over to the workforce and the financial sector. Thus men assume leadership roles within the workforce and receive higher wages. Women are often passed by on opportunities for leaderships roles because of devaluation of women’s skill set.

(“What is Patriarchy” ).

By "patriarchal institutions", I refer to the set of mechanisms, practices, beliefs, myths and relationships organizing relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to the distribution of resources, the reproduction of individuals, and the type of societal structures within a given Patriarchy. These institutions are closely linked with one another, creating, maintaining and transmitting inequality from generation to generation. Most sociologists recognize as institutions such social structures as governments, the family, human languages, universities, hospitals, business corporations, and legal systems. I prefer to rename these recognized institutions with more appropriate names such as the Institution of Androcentric Law, the Institution of Misogynist Religion or of Sexist Language, of Malestream Media or Malecentered Science, etc. But I also like to make visible other institutions which patriarchal sociology does not recognize as such, like the Institution of Male Solidarity, of History with Capital H, of Erotic Violence, of Woman-Blaming Myths, of Maleheteronormativity, of Dichotomous Sexual Beings, etc. Many feminists, while not speaking of institutions per se, argue that Patriarchy exists not only in the family but in all structures that allow for control over women, their work and reproductive force. I call these structures patriarchal institutions, because aside from being mechanisms for the perpetuation of Patriarchy, they are also a set of beliefs, practices, myths, relationships, etc. which make sure that Patriarchy is invisible even to those women which suffer the most exclusion or at the most, make sure it is perceived as natural or simply as the way things are and always will be for women. I borrow the idea of the “Institution of Male Solidarity” from Celia Amorós, although she does not call it this and speaks instead of a brotherhood among men that takes place in the constitution of modern Patriarchy. The Costa Rican composer/singer Guadalupe Urbina refers to this institution as “the Knighthood of Mutual Praise”. Marcela Lagarde, Angela Miles, Carole Pateman and many other feminists also believe that men create interdependence and solidarity among themselves, which enables them to dominate women. This does not mean that there is no hierarchy among men. The "appropriation of women's reproductive force" and the control of their bodies and their sexuality comes from radical feminism. For example, Shulamith Firestone discusses how human reproduction, which happens in women's bodies, is legally appropriated and controlled by men and is used to benefit men or to keep women at the mercy of men. Lidia Falcón considers women as a social and economic class, insisting that it is the father and/or husband who enforce the appropriation. Many feminists, such as Maria Meis and others, have spoken of the productive relationship between husband and wife in the modern nuclear family, which is similar to the relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate in the workplace. This subordination occurs in the private space of family because whatever the husband’s produces enters the market (the privileged area of capitalist Patriarchy), while the wife´s production is not. In this way, all of the wife’s work in the non-privileged private space of the nuclear family is invisibilized .