CHAPTER 14: GENDER
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter introduces students to the study of gender. It examines gender roles and gender stratification in foraging, horticultural, agricultural, and industrial societies, highlighting the interrelationship of economy and gender relations. The chapter also explores the cultural construction of sexuality, and cross-cultural variation in sexual norms.
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1. Know the difference between sex and gender and why gender is a cultural construction. In addition, you should understand the difference between gender roles, gender stereotypes, and gender stratification.
2. Consider the relationship of gender relations and economy among foragers, horticulturalists, agriculturalists, and industrialists. How do these economies tend to influence gender relations? What ethnographic evidence, presented by Kottak, complicates a simple relationship between economic form and gender relations?
3. Understand what the domestic-public dichotomy is and how it relates to differential gender status. In addition, be familiar with the patrilineal-patrilocal complex and how it contributes to gender stratification.
4. Understand the relationship between patriarchy and domestic violence.
5. Be familiar with how and why poverty in industrialized states is increasingly located among female-headed households.
6. Understand how sexuality and gender vary cross-culturally. As one particular example, consider sexual beliefs and practices among Etoro men (as described in the late 1960s). Know the significance of homosexual intercourse in Etoro society, as well as Etoro men’s beliefs regarding heterosexual intercourse. What does this case study tell us about human sexuality?
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. Questions about nature (biological predispositions) and nurture (environment) emerge in the discussion of human sex-gender roles and sexuality.
B. Sexual dimorphism refers to differences in male and female biology besides the contrasts in secondary and primary sexual characteristics.
C. Sex differences are biological, but gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and inculcates in males and females; in other words, gender refers to the cultural construction of male and female characteristics (Rosaldo 1980).
D. Definitions
1. Gender roles are the tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes.
2. Gender stereotypes are oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics of males and females.
3. Gender stratification describes an unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, human rights, and personal freedom) between men and women, reflecting their different positions in a social hierarchy.
II. Recurrent Gender Patterns
A. Cross-cultural data indicate that the time and effort spent in subsistence activities by men and women tend to be about equal.
B. While the subsistence contributions of men and women are roughly equal cross-culturally, female labor predominates in domestic activities and child care.
C. Adding together their subsistence activities and their domestic work, women tend to work more hours than men do.
D. Women tend to be the primary child caregivers in most societies, but men often play a role.
E. There are differences in male and female reproductive strategies.
1. Women work to ensure their progeny will survive by establishing a close bond with each baby, and by having a reliable mate to ease the child-rearing process and ensure the survival of her children.
2. Men, who have a longer reproductive period than women do, may choose to enhance their reproductive success by impregnating several women over a longer period of time.
F. Double standards (e.g., regarding premarital or extramarital sex) that restrict women more than men illustrate gender stratification.
III. Gender among Foragers
A. Economic Roles and Gender Stratification
1. In foraging societies gender stratification is most marked when men contribute much more to the diet than women do (e.g., the Inuit and other northern hunters and fishers).
2. When gathering—which tends to be women’s work—is prominent (e.g., among tropical and semitropical foragers), gender status tends to be more equal.
B. The Public-Domestic Dichotomy
1. Gender stratification is also reduced when the domestic and public spheres are not sharply separated.
2. Strong differentiation between the home and the outside world is called the domestic-public dichotomy, or the private-public contrast.
a. Cross-culturally, women’s activities tend to be closer to home than men’s are.
b. Often when domestic and public spheres are clearly separated, public activities have greater prestige than domestic ones do, and gender stratification is promoted.
C. Sex-Linked Activities
1. Certain roles tend to be more sex-linked than others.
2. Considering cross-cultural data, women rarely are the primary hunters (Friedl 1975).
3. Warfare and trade are two public arenas that contribute to status inequality of males and females among food producers.
3. Nevertheless, the activities and spheres of influence of men and women may overlap among foragers (e.g., the Ju/’hoansi San).
D. In foraging societies, the public and domestic spheres are least separate, hierarchy is least marked, aggression and competition are most discouraged, and the rights, activities, and spheres of influence of men and women overlap the most.
E. Given that all humans were foragers until 10,000 years ago, relative gender equality is most likely the ancestral pattern of human society.
IV. Gender among Horticulturalists
A. Martin and Voorhies (1975) studied 515 horticultural societies to investigate how gender roles and stratification varied according to economy and social structure.
1. Women were found to be the main producers in horticultural societies.
2. In half of the societies, women did most of the cultivating.
3. In a third of the societies, men and women made equal contributions to cultivation.
4. Men did most of the work in only 17 percent of the societies.
5. Women dominated horticulture in 64 percent of the matrilineal societies and in 50 percent of the patrilineal ones.
B. Reduced Gender Stratification—Matrilineal, Matrilocal Societies
1. Female status tends to be high in horticultural societies that are matrilineal and matrilocal.
2. Women tend to have high status in matrilineal, matrilocal societies because descent-group membership, succession to political positions, allocation of land, and overall social identity all come through female links.
C. Increased Gender Stratification—Patrilineal-Patrilocal Societies
1. The spread of the patrilineal-patrilocal complex (consisting of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy) has been linked to pressure on resources.
a. As resources become scarce, intervillage warfare often increases.
b. Patrilocality and patrilineality keep related men together in the same village, where they make strong allies in battle.
2. The patrilineal-patrilocal complex tends to enhance male prestige and, as a result, to increase gender stratification (e.g., societies in highland Papua New Guinea).
a. Women work hard growing and processing subsistence crops, raising and tending pigs, and doing domestic cooking, but they are isolated from the male-controlled public domain.
b. Males dominate the public domain—growing and distributing prestige crops, preparing food for feasts, arranging marriages, and trading pigs and controlling their use in ritual.
3. In densely populated areas of Papua New Guinea where there is strong pressure on resources, male-female avoidance is extreme: men regard contact with females (including sex) as dangerous and polluting, and they segregate themselves in men’s houses and hide their precious ritual objects from women.
4. In contrast, sparsely populated areas of Papua New Guinea lack taboos on male-female contacts.
V. Gender among Agriculturalists
A. When the economy is based on agriculture, women typically lose their role as primary cultivators.
1. Martin and Voorhies (1975) found that women were the main workers in 50 percent of the horticultural societies surveyed but in only 15 percent of the agricultural groups.
2. Male subsistence labor dominated 81 percent of the agricultural societies but only 17 percent of the horticultural ones.
B. Social changes accompanying the advent of agriculture affected women negatively.
1. Belief systems started contrasting men's valuable extradomestic (public) labor with women's domestic role, now viewed as inferior.
2. The decline of descent groups and polygyny, and the increased importance of the nuclear family, isolated women from their kinswomen and cowives.
3. Female sexuality is carefully supervised in agricultural societies, while men enjoy easier access to divorce and extramarital sex.
C. Nevertheless, female status is not inevitably low in agricultural societies.
1. Gender stratification is associated with plow agriculture rather than with intensive cultivation per se.
2. The Betsileo of Madagascar illustrate that intensive cultivation does not necessarily entail sharp gender stratification.
a. Betsileo women contribute slightly more than 50 percent of the labor devoted to producing and preparing rice before cooking.
b. Although postmarital residence is mainly patrilocal, descent rules permit married Betsileo women to keep membership in and a strong allegiance to their own descent groups.
c. Betsileo women also participate in various public activities—such as holding political office, selling their produce and products in markets, investing in cattle, sponsoring ceremonials, and arranging marriages.
VI. Patriarchy and Violence
A. Patriarchal Societies
1. Patriarchy describes a political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.
2. Such practices as dowry murders, female infanticide, and clitoridectomy exemplify patriarchy, which extends from tribal societies such as the Yanomami to state societies such as India and Pakistan.
B. Domestic Violence
1. Family violence and domestic abuse of women are worldwide problems.
2. Abuse of women is more common in societies where women are separated from supportive kin (e.g., patrilineal-patrilocal societies).
VII. Gender and Industrialism
A. Early American Industrialism
1. The “traditional” idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” actually emerged in the United States as industrialism spread after 1900.
a. In the 1890s more than 1 million American women held unskilled factory positions.
b. After 1900, European immigrants willing to work for wages lower than those of American-born workers moved into factory jobs that previously had gone to women.
c. As machine tools and mass production further reduced the need for female labor, the notion that women were biologically unfit for factory work began to emerge.
2. During the world wars the notion that women were unfit for hard physical labor faded.
3. Increased female employment has been spurred by a number of factors—inflation, a culture of consumption, the baby boom, and industrial expansion.
4. Today, almost half of all Americans who work outside the home are women, and women fill more than half of all professional jobs.
B. The Feminization of Poverty
1. In the United States, poverty is becoming feminized—that is, women (and their children) are increasingly represented among America’s poorest people.
2. The number of single-parent, female-headed households in the United States has more than doubled since 1959.
3. The feminization of poverty (including an increase in female-headed households) is evident worldwide.
4. The increase in female-headed households stems from a number of factors, including male migration, civil strife (men off fighting), divorce, abandonment, widowhood, unwed adolescent parenthood, and, more generally, the idea that children are women’s responsibility.
VIII. What Determines Gender Variation?
A. Gender roles and stratification have varied widely across cultures and through history.
B. Gender is flexible and varies with cultural, social, political, and economic factors.
IX. Sexual Orientation
A. Sexual orientation refers to a person’s habitual sexual attractions and activities.
1. Heterosexuality refers to sexual preference for members of the opposite sex.
2. Homosexuality refers to sexual preference for members of the same sex.
3. Bisexuality refers to sexual preference for members of both sexes.
4. Asexuality refers to indifference toward, or lack of attraction to, either sex.
B. To some extent at least, all human activities and preferences, including erotic expression, are learned, malleable, and culturally constructed.
C. In any society, individuals will differ in the nature, range, and intensity of their sexual interests and urges.
D. Whatever the reason for individual variation, culture always plays a role in molding individual sexual urges toward a collective norm.
E. Sexual norms vary considerably both cross-culturally and through time.
1. Attitudes about masturbation, bestiality (sex with animals), and homosexuality vary widely between societies, as well as within a single society.
2. In many societies (e.g., the Azande, the Etoro), various forms of same-sex sexual activity are considered normal and acceptable.
F. Homosexual Behavior among the Etoro (Kelly 1976)
1. Etoro culture, in which there was extreme tension surrounding male-female sexual relations, illustrates the power of culture in molding human sexuality.
2. Etoro men believed that semen was necessary to give life force to a fetus.
a. Men were believed to have a limited supply of semen.
b. Sexuality was thought to deplete this supply and to sap male virility and vitality.
3. Although heterosexual intercourse was necessary for reproduction, it was deemed unpleasant because it would eventually lead to a man's death.
a. Heterosexual sex was discouraged and limited to only about 100 days a year.
b. Heterosexual sex was removed from community life and could only take place in the woods.
4. Although heterosexual sex was discouraged, sex between males was viewed as essential.
a. The Etoro believed that in order for boys to grow into men and eventually give life force to their children, they had to acquire semen orally from older men.
b. From the age of 10 until adulthood, boys were inseminated by older men.
c. Such homosexual acts could take place in the village.
5. Etoro homosexuality was governed by a code of propriety: although sexual relations between older and younger males were considered culturally essential, those between boys of the same age were discouraged.
G. Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage, for both masturbation and same-sex sexual activity exist among chimpanzees and other primates.
H. Like gender roles and attitudes more generally, the sexual component of human personality and identity—how we express our “natural” sexual urges—is a matter that culture and environment determine and limit.
IX. Anthropology Today: Indonesia’s Matriarchal Minangkabau Offer an Alternative Social System
A. Most scholars who have searched for a true matriarchy—a society in which women, rather than men, have power—have concluded that such a society does not exist, and perhaps has never existed.
B. Anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday believes that this conclusion is incorrect.
1. Matriarchies have never been found because researchers have been looking for the wrong thing—a society in which women control everyday affairs, including government.
2. Among the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia, males and females are partners for the common good of the community, rather than self-interested competitors for social and political power.
C. Minangkabau society is based on matrilineality as well as a nature-based philosophy (known as adat) emphasizing the importance of nurturing growth in humans, animals, and plants.
D. The Minangkabau matriarchy is focused on making women the center, origin, and foundation of life and the social order.
1. Women control land inheritance.
2. Post-marital residence is matrilocal (husbands join their wives’ households).