We Were Meant to be Seen and not Heard

Bell Hooks writes about suppression of speech as a woman, and how she tried to overcome it during her childhood and after. Hooks describes the control a patriarchal society that existed when she was a child. At this time children weren't meant to speak much, "to make yourself heard if you were a child was to invite punishment...to speak when one was not spoken to was a courageous act" (15). This applied to most children but often boys were encouraged to speak, whereas girls were always suppressed. This begins to show the sexist principles that Hook was forced to grow up around. Because boys were capable of becoming preachers, they were often made to speak, whereas for girls it was thought better to keep quiet in submission to the society ways. 'The right speech of womanhood', Hook describes is the "talk that is simply not listened to", though women could talk, their words weren't to be remembered, they could be tuned out (16).
In society today there are still large traces of patriarchal authority, where men are given more importance than women, more power, more freedom. Much of this can be seen in the different cultures of today's society. For example, in the Indian culture there are still a fair amount of male dominance shown. You have sisters tying rakhis on their brothers wrists which symbolizes the sister's prayers for her brother's well-being. You have wives fasting for husbands in order to insure that they have safety and long lives. Much of the times these things are celebrated blindly by women and are just considered to be tradition. There doesn't necessarily have to be meaning behind it, and there isn't much questioning. Should the husbands not have to fast for their wives? Should brothers not have to tie rakhis on their sisters? No one bothers asking these questions, and if they do, they never seemed to answered. They don't matter, tradition is tradition even if it connotes traces of sexism. I know my family and I still follow these traditions, and whenever I question them, I never get any satisfying answers. Would Hook consider this as women's submission to the patriarchal society? I probably would.