In her 2006 book History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith M. Bennett tackles the question (among many others): Do women uphold patriarchy themselves? Borrowing from Deniz Kandiyoti, Bennett utilizes the concept of the “patriarchal bargain,” defined as “how women strategize within the constraints of any patriarchal regime” (59). Bennett clarifies that although the bargain is not a “good buy,” as it requires women assisting in their own oppression, it “creates strategic opportunities for women and invests women in patriarchy” (59). Over 30 years earlier, the 1975 film The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes and written by William Goldman, touched on these same issues. In the film, the main character Joanna Eberhart moves from the city to the pastoral town of Stepford, where the wives of the town live subserviently to their husbands. Frustrated by the conservatism of the town, Joanna attempts to organize a women's liberation group to mirror the dominant Men's Association, but the wives insist that they are happy to forgo their personal endeavors in favor of serving their husbands and children. The film concludes with Joanna and the audience discovering that the Men's Association have been engaged in an overt conspiracy to replace their wives with obedient robots. Though it ultimately presents the patriarchal bargain as a master plot by men rather than as the result of women's own agency within the patriarchy, The Stepford Wives still captures many of the key concepts of the patriarchal bargain, while also providing alternative dimension to the appeals of the bargain from what is outlined in Bennett's History Matters.

The Stepford Wives glaringly diverges from Kandiyoti and Bennett's conception of the patriarchal bargain in its presentation of women's agency (or lack thereof). Kandiyoti and Bennett argue that the patriarchy cannot be understood as women merely being “passive victims” (Bennett 59). Bennett writes that “Women's agency is part of the strength of patriarchy,” because women themselves elect to uphold it (59). The question arises why women would assist in their own oppression, and the answer is seemingly paradoxical: submitting to the patriarchy provides some level of societal power that is not accessible to those working outside of it. Bennett cites Kandiyoti's example of “classic patriarchy,” where “an older woman is subordinate to men but exercises substantial power over younger women, giving her a strong reason to maintain the patriarchal status quo” (Bennett 60). The Stepford Wives notably differs from Kandiyoti and Bennett in that the major twist of the film reveals that the women did not collude with patriarchy on their own accord, thereby presenting the women as innocent victims.

Bennett criticizes the tendency of simplistic victimization in other 1970s pop feminist works, specifically in history (Bennett 65). But examining the women's rhetoric in the film prior to the inclusion of the science fiction elements reveals more nuance. Three telling conversations with Stepford wives comment on why women may choose to take the patriarchal bargain. The first conversation is with Carol; when Joanna asks Carol if her life is fulfilling, she responds by expressing that, for her, helping her husband and children makes her happy (01:01:40). The second is with Charmaine, who bulldozed her tennis court after being replaced by a robot; she explains, “You see, Ed [Charmaine's husband] hated tennis, but he never said a word. All he wanted to do was to please me. Well, I want to please him now … All I ever thought about before was just me” (01:05:13). The third is with Joanna's closest friend, Bobbie, after Bobbie was “changed”; when Joanna asks why Bobbie is uncharacteristically wearing makeup and cleaning her kitchen, Bobbie responds, “Dave works hard all day long, and what does he come home to? A slob” (01:21:29). The wives are alike in their reasoning: they love their husbands and want to help them succeed. Charmaine and Bobbie go even further to imply that being anything other than a housewife is selfish. Ignoring that it is later revealed that these responses are artificial, the rhetoric itself proposes a different appeal to the patriarchal bargain: for the hefty price of forgoing personal fulfillment, the structure of the patriarchy allows women to fulfill their patriarchally-imposed duty of service to their loved ones. The Stepford Wives appears to argue that this rhetoric of selflessness and love—rather than following pure self-interest, like in Kandiyoti's analysis of “classic patriarchy”—traps women in patriarchy, through oppressive and limiting institutions like traditional marriage.

Bennett's History Matters outlines one way that women are deterred from refusing the patriarchal bargain, but The Stepford Wives demonstrates how other deterrents are missing in her analysis. Bennett conceptualizes this deterrent as “the linking of women's agency to women's vulnerability” (59), which allows for the restriction of women under the guise of protecting them. The example that Bennett uses is “the ‘freedom’ of [modern Western] women to walk the streets at night and their vulnerability in such environments to rape” (59). Notably, this exact example is utilized in The Stepford Wives: Joanna is walking her dog when she encounters a police officer who tells her it's unwise to walk alone at night (00:57:27); when Joanna says that this activity was one of the reasons her family moved to Stepford, the police officer responds: “Well, certainly, you and Fred [Joanna's husband] can walk around at night. But I'd stick a little closer to home. Really, Mrs. Eberhart, this isn't the best place for you to wander around” (00:57:35). Though it isn't explicitly stated, the implication of the police officer is that women are not safe walking at night without a man.

But the film touches on other deterrents to nonconformity to patriarchy. One recurring theme throughout the film is that the independent women are “crazy”. After their aforementioned conversation with Carol, Bobbie questions, “You know, maybe we're the crazy ones” (01:02:25), and Joanna immediately strikes that thought down as absurd. It's relevant that Joanna and Bobbie are isolated in multiple ways from the rest of Stepford. They are obviously structurally isolated: from the men by being excluded from the Men's Association, and from the other women due to the lack of accessible organizations or social spheres outside of the home. Additionally, they are isolated in thought: from the sexist men, and from the women, who are not conscious of their oppression. This isolation clearly causes self-doubt of their own sanity. Once Bobbie is replaced with a robot, Joanna has no one to verify her sanity; although Joanna does remain an assertive protagonist, this further isolation leads her to visit a psychiatrist, at her husband's insistence. This more existential, psychological deterrent to refusing the patriarchal bargain, potentially inspired by Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, is missing in Bennett's analysis.

But perhaps the starkest difference between the portrayals of the patriarchal bargain in The Stepford Wives and in Bennett's analysis is in the portrayals of patriarchy itself. Bennett's conception of patriarchal bargain requires that patriarchy be amorphous; she writes, “Patriarchy has often been understood in simplistic terms. My students sometimes talk about ‘The Patriarchy,’ which always evokes for me a committee of white-haired men, nastily scheming to keep women in their place. Not so, of course” (58). As mentioned earlier, Bennett contends that much of the patriarchal bargain's strength comes from the genuine benefits it provides, despite the costs. In discussing the institutions that worked to limit the status of brewsters in late medieval England, Bennett writes, “What was—and remains—particularly confounding about this patriarchal equilibrium was that none of these institutions existed solely to keep women in their place or acted self-consciously in tandem with others to keep women in their place. Indeed, each had advantages that could appeal to women as well as men” (78). The Stepford Wives is notably much less nuanced in this regard. Stepford's “Men's Association” is “The Patriarchy” personified, with quite literally the description that Bennett criticizes. Apart from the previously described social pressures, there is little material appeal to taking the bargain shown in the film. But by portraying patriarchy as an institution of men, the film does raise interesting questions about coercion and blame when juxtaposed with Bennett's analysis. It is not the women who ultimately coerce Joanna to become a housewife—it is the men. When conceiving patriarchy as an organized plot by men to harm women, like the film does, blaming these women constitutes a sort of victim-blaming that ignores the “real enemy”—men. But in reality, this line of thinking is over-simplistic. When an analysis ignores the power to oppress that submitting to the patriarchy can bring, and ignores the coercive power that women also have under the patriarchy (particularly as mothers), it will naturally downplay how much we should blame women. Bennett rightfully indicts women for colluding in oppression, and although The Stepford Wives somewhat picks up on this collusion, it ends up absolving women's responsibility for it.

This case study demonstrates the value of placing feminist works of different media and time periods in communication with one another. The Stepford Wives, although created 30 years prior to Bennett's History Matters and in a different medium, provides valuable insights into the patriarchal bargain that can expand our theory beyond the outline that Bennett provides. And conversely, Bennett's outline of the patriarchal bargain allows us to understand the film and its concepts through a new and useful lens. Although The Stepford Wives ultimately portrays the women as innocent victims, the bulk of the film prior to the twist examines why women collude with patriarchy. The main reason suggested by the film, to fulfill a patriarchally-imposed duty of service to their loved ones, is not considered by Bennett. The film picks up on the “linking of women's agency to women's vulnerability” (Bennett 59), but it also focuses on the existential angst of pursuing agency that Bennett does not. And although the film is reductionist in its portrayal of patriarchy, juxtaposing it with History Matters raises the complex question of who, if anyone, should be blamed for patriarchy.