Download Chapter 9: Gender

11/16/2015
Chapter 9: Gender
• Introduction
• Kinship, age, and Sex differences are universals
– Organizing principles for groups, statuses, roles, and allocation of recourses
– Sex and age are rooted in biology
– But does that mean it’s based on nature rather than nurture?
– Margaret Mead, 1933 research of Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli on the Sepik River. (peaceful and egalitarian, both warlike, inverted)
• Did Mead get it right or wrong?
– Sex is a biological concept
– gender is a cultural construction
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9.1 The Cultural Construction of Gender
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Gender is central to social identity (how others define and perceive you) as well as your own personal identity.
Roles and symbols attached to gender:
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Dress
Behavior
Speech
Sexual preferences
Sexual practices
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Roles and symbols are expressed and reinforced in same‐sex as well as opposite sex interactions.
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Apart from interactions between individuals, gender beliefs affect social settings as well:
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Most, if not all, personal interactions and institutional relationships and permeated by notions of masculinity and femininity
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Home, school, work
Political and economic transactions
As highly publicized as this is these days, it still remains largely unconscious.
This is NOT to say that biological differences don’t matter; that it’s all nurture and no nature.
• Human societies place an importance on gender differences to a varying degree.
• From (relatively) egalitarian to highly stratified (patriarchal)
• There are no cultures that practice a “natural” form of gender relations.
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9.2 The Sexual Division of Labor
• Allocation of productive tasks
• Usually complimentary (each sex has access to the products and services of the other, usually through kinship ties)
• Rapidly changing in North America and Europe
• Elsewhere more rigidly defined
• “Breadwinning” is not even largely male let alone exclusively • Industrial society evolved to make men’s labor more valuable, but this was neither originally the case, nor has the trend continued.
• Understanding major patterns:
• Nevertheless, some general patterns emerge from a cross cultural survey of sexual division of labor:
• The table doesn’t portray any specific society
• Data reflect economic production‐ childcare, political office, ritual specialists and other tasks are excluded
• 2 Major patterns:
1) Some tasks are often found to be practiced by one sex or the other.
2) Culturally variable tasks in terms of sex assignment cannot be generalized.
– Why?
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• Explanations:
1) Biological differences (doesn’t determine):
– The argument goes like this: Some tasks are more efficiently done by one sex because they are, in general, more capable (speed, strength, endurance)
» Hunting? Depends upon what you are hunting
» Relative strength not really a factor in all tasks usually assigned to males.
2) Fertility Maintenance is not usually something people think about, but could be a factor.
3) Child care compatibility IS something that people think about, and in traditional societies women are usually caring for children throughout most of their reproductive years.
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Routine and repetitive tasks Interruptable
Don’t place children in danger
Don’t require long distance travel
• Understanding Variability:
Agriculture‐
– Women predominantly tend crops in horticultural societies, much less so in agricultural societies 1. In the Americas, fewer domesticated animals meant that hunting was more important
2. Horticulturalists tend to grow root crops, agriculturalists tend to grow cereal grains
» Root crops continuously harvested, grain is harvested all at once (usually by men) and then processed (usually by women)
3. Warfare is commonly engaged in by average (non‐
specialized) men in horticultural societies. 4
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• Exceptions from the ethnographic record:
• Kofyar (Nigeria)
– Women and men work about equally
– Generalizations do not illuminate the complex interactions between history, beliefs, adaptations, or other factors (diffusion, climate, etc)
– Exceptions don’t necessarily disprove the rule
– Cultural materialism explains broad patterns, not specific cultures.
9.3 Gender Stratification
• The third main issue – Class, kinship ties, and race are also categories that afford some groups more rewards than others based upon stratification
– Gender stratification is difficult to define
• Different roles are differently valued‐ some are shared, others are distinct, further blurring the distinction (single fathers versus single mothers, for example)
• Deference‐ what does it really mean? (Who really leads the household?)
• Where do people hold power and influence?
• Who has power over individual decisions?
• What are the general beliefs and ideas? How widely are they held? How accurate are they? • Contradictions:
– Women may have lots of control over child‐rearing decisions, less about other issues.
• Andalusia and China‐ women have a lot of power in the domestic sphere (living in matrifocal villages) but not outside the home or regard to property, marriage, etc.
• Class or ethnicity may also raise or lower power in conjunction with gender, or with social context and situation (marriages, funerals, rites of passage, family situation, etc.)
• Also changes over the course of a person’s life
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Comparing Gender Stratification: • Universal Subordination?
– There are no “Amazons” in the ethnographic record.
• Matriarchs vs. Matriarchy
• But are there societies where men and women are equal?
– That’s debatable. The best answer is a qualified “Perhaps, to an extent” (see the difficulties with defining stratification)
– Politics
– Religion
• Iroquois confederacy‐ women choose male leaders and had right of redress
• Influences on Gender Stratification
– Women’s contribution to material welfare
• Food, shelter, clothing, etc.
– Rewarded with influence, property, prestige, dignity
– Foragers (levelling mechanisms)
– Women’s control over key resources (Sanday, 1973)
• Divorce in the 21st century
• Influences on Gender Stratification
– Women’s contribution to material welfare
• Food, shelter, clothing, etc.
– Rewarded with influence, property, prestige, dignity
– Foragers (levelling mechanisms)
– Women’s control over key resources (Sanday, 1973)
• Divorce in the 21st century
– Women’s descent and postmarital residence
• Matrilineality (the avunculate), matrilocality and matrifocality
– Husbands and brothers; Chinese Confucianism
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9.4 Gender Crossing and Multiple Gender Identities
• Western societies have long had a dichotomous view of sex and gender
– Many nonwestern societies allow for gender crossing
• Institutionalized We’wha, a zuni
accommodation and ihamana
integration
• Not quite the same thing as tolerance for homosexuality
• Multiple Gender Identities
• Crow Woman Chief and the berdache
• Fifth Gender in Indonesia Among the Bugis
• Neither man nor woman
• “Bissu” Considered part deity, part mortal
• Changes in attitudes toward gender crossing and homosexuality
• Negative attitudes are not culturally universal
• Negative attitudes are, however, widespread
• Navajo nadleehi (two spirits) wore both male and female clothing
4 main characteristics
– Cross gender activities
– Transvestism
– Spiritual sanction
– Same‐sex relations
– No single aspect is “typical”
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9.5 Globalization and Gender Stratification
• Globalization creates new (western) roles for women and changes (or eliminates) traditional ones – “different” doesn’t necessarily mean increase or decrease of status or power
• Max Weber: Wealth, power, prestige (class, status, party)
– Many women have recently led governments
– Western democracy has only recently promoted female power – 2 legal barriers:
• Coverture laws (common law)
– 1870 UK abolishes them for married women
• Suffrage (property)
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New Zealand was the first country to grant women suffrage in 1893
– In the US suffrage was left up to states
• By 1920, 15 states gave women suffrage before the 19th
Amendment was passed
• The UK allowed for limited women’s suffrage in 1918 and full suffrage in 1928, eliminating property restrictions
• Currently there are 20 female US senators
• Women constitute about 20% of legislators worldwide, varying dramatically by country and region
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22% in Europe and the Americas
19% in sub‐Saharan Africa
18% in Asia
<10% in Arab countries
• Iceland elected the first female head of government in 1980
• Globalization has tended to increase the political power of women (“relative status”)
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