The millennial tradition of patrilineal filiation is being recognized by women's groups as the source of two thousand years of Chinese preferential gender treatment, "valuing the male and devaluing the female," and "ennobling the male and debasing the female." Dagmar You says, "Patrilineal filiation makes the male into the orthodox carrier of the lineage bloodline in perpetuity, and the females are removed from the genealogical records."
而傳統「從父姓」則被女性團體認為是中國千年來「重男輕女」、「男尊女卑」兩性差別待遇的根源，「從父姓使得男性成為延續宗族血緣的正統，女性從家譜裡消失」，尤美女說。