Patriocratic Democracy: When Gender Equality Is Conditioned Upon Masculine and Cis-Heteronormative Conformity – Lessons from the UK Supreme Court (2025) and Thailand’s Constitutional Court (Decision No. 20/2564)

Abstract

         This article introduces the concept of “patriocratic democracy” to explain how democratic legal systems, while promising equality, continue to reproduce gender hierarchies by conditioning full political personhood on conformity to cisnormative standards. Building on feminist jurisprudence, queer legal theory, and the critiques of Carole Pateman and bell hooks, the article argues that legal recognition often becomes recognition in name only—a formal gesture that masks exclusion in practice. Judicial reasoning, statutory interpretation, and administrative implementation together reinforce biological essentialism by dividing people into two rigid sex categories, while invoking administrative clarity as a rationale for restricting political rights and access to public services.

         Through a comparative doctrinal analysis of recent jurisprudence in the United Kingdom and Thailand—including the UK Supreme Court decision in For Women Scotland (2025) and rulings of the Thai Constitutional Court—the article illustrates how democratic institutions embed patriarchal authority through legal form. The concept of patriocratic democracy provides a framework to understand how law and courts sustain masculine legitimacy by making equality conditional on sameness to cisgender norms. The article concludes by proposing legal and policy reforms that align recognition with substantive participation: statutory harmonisation, explicit legal gender-recognition and sex characteristics frameworks, and accountability mechanisms to prevent retrogression. Such retrogressive measures would contradict the principle of progressive realisation under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which obliges States to advance rights and prohibits regression unless justified by the most compelling reasons.