Breaking down the question
The question has two clear parts. First it asks for a definition of patriarchy, so precision and a cited conception are expected. Second it asks how patriarchy shapes the “overall entitlement” of a girl child — the analytical core, where the marks are concentrated.
The phrase overall entitlement is deliberately broad. It invites you to move across the girl's life course — from survival before birth to food, health, education and inheritance — rather than dwelling on any single deprivation. A 10-mark answer must be tightly organised to cover this range within the word limit.
The note on patriarchy, entitlements and the sexual division of labour develops the concept.
How to approach it
Open with a crisp definition of patriarchy as a system of male dominance, drawing on a recognised formulation such as Sylvia Walby's. Then pivot quickly to the substantive question, organising the discussion of entitlement around distinct arenas so that each carries its own point.
Use the life-course as a spine — survival, nutrition and health, education, and property — and anchor the argument in Amartya Sen's notion of the “missing women” and the skewed child sex ratio. Close with a brief note that entitlement is being contested, not merely denied.
Model answer
Patriarchy is a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women. Sylvia Walby defines it as a system operating through several interlocking structures — the household, paid work, the state, culture, sexuality and violence — so that male dominance is reproduced across the whole of social life rather than resting on individual prejudice alone. In the Indian setting patriarchy is reinforced by patrilineal descent, patrilocal residence and the ideology of son preference.
Patriarchy shapes the entitlements of a girl child from before birth and across her life course.
Survival. Son preference, sharpened by the practice of dowry and the desire for an heir, translates into a hostile calculus even for a girl's existence. Sex-selective abortion and, historically, female infanticide have produced a persistently adverse child sex ratio. Amartya Sen's concept of the “missing women” captures the demographic scale of this deficit, in which millions of girls are absent from the population who would exist under equal treatment.
Nutrition and health. Within the household, scarce resources are distributed unequally. Girls are often fed last and least, breastfed for shorter periods, and taken for medical care later and less often than their brothers. The result is higher rates of malnutrition and, in some age groups, higher child mortality for girls despite their natural biological advantage.
Education. The perception of a daughter as paraya dhan — someone who will leave for her marital home — depresses investment in her schooling. Girls are more likely to be withdrawn early, kept back for domestic work and the care of siblings, and married before completing their education, curtailing their later autonomy and earning capacity.
Property and inheritance. Although the law now grants daughters equal shares in ancestral property, patriarchal custom continues to treat sons as the natural heirs, and daughters are frequently pressured to relinquish their claims in the name of family harmony, leaving them without an independent economic base.
Taken together, these deprivations show that patriarchy does not affect one entitlement in isolation but structures a girl's whole life chances — her survival, her body, her education and her assets. Yet entitlement is also being actively contested through legislation, schemes for the girl child and rising female education, so the picture is one of a system under strain rather than intact.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is checking two things — a clean conceptual definition of patriarchy and a genuinely analytical treatment of entitlement. A script that offers only a vague definition, or that lists women's problems in general without focusing on the girl child, will stay in the middle band.
High marks reward the life-course structure — survival, nutrition, education, property — with son preference and the “missing women” argument used to give it sociological weight. Citing Walby for the definition and Sen for the demographic consequence, and noting that entitlement is being contested, secures the top of the range within the ten-mark limit.