Gender and Anthropology

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Gender and Anthropology

• interest in social relations between human sexual
  differences (men and women) has been a feature
  of anthropology since its earliest days
• 19th century evolutionists and their explanations
  for the rise of society culture
• promiscuous horde gives way to socially organized
  marriage and kinship for example
• Mother right

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Margaret Mead 20th cent. Cultural/Social
Anthropology

• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
  (1935)
• Male and Female (1949).
• temperamental differences between the sexes were
  culturally determined rather than innate
  biological
• different patterns of male and female behavior in
  each of the cultures she studied

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The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh

• Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities evenly
  divided among men and women

The fierce cannibalistic Mundugumor

• a natural hostility exists between all members of
  the same sex. Mundugumor fathers and sons and
  mothers and daughters were adversaries.

The graceful headhunters of Tchambuli

• While men were preoccupied with art the women had
  the real power controlling fishing and
  manufacturing

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Divisions of Labor Society

• Social differentiation (sex based differences)
  social integration society
• Anthropology
• Sex differences not only a biological fact
• A universal social fact
• At the same time -- culturally specific and
  historical anchored
• Universal particulars/the general the
  specific

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development of the study of gender in anthropology

• Anthropology of Women
• early 1970s attention to the lack of women in
  standard ethnographies
• Anthropology of Gender
• more thorough examinations of gender in social
  structure
• challenged the basis for understanding social
  roles of male and female
• Feminist Anthropology challenged the biological
  basis of sex and sexuality
• Patriarchy universal subordination of women
• and the foundations of anthropology as it had
  been done

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Society-culture

• Culture meaningful (action)
• Society bundle of institutions
• Institution -- institutions in society work
  together to produce social order
• behavior patterns important to a society
• structures and mechanisms of social order and
  cooperation governing the behavior of a set of
  individuals
• transcending individual human lives and
  intentions
• Culture presupposes society -- something shared
  supra-individual
• Society presupposes persons -- assemblage of
  individuals

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Social structure

• Social relationships ongoing network of social
  relations
• Relationships among and between definite entities
  or groups to each other
• enduring patterns of behaviour by participants in
  a social system in relation to each other
• institutionalised norms or cognitive frameworks
  that structure the actions in the social system
• systems of relationships organization forms of
  associations - standardized modes of behavior

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Social stratification

• inequality in society
• the unequal distribution of goods and services
  rights and obligations power and prestige
• all attributes of positions in society not
  attributes of individuals
• Stratified society is
• when a society exhibits stratification it means
  that there are significant breaks in the
  distribution of goods services rights
  obligations power prestige
• as a result of which are formed collectivities or
  groups we call strata

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Status Social Difference

• status - ascribed achieved
• ascribed status - social positions that people
  hold by virtue of birth
• sex age family relationships birth into class
  or caste
• achieved status - social positions attained as a
  result of individual action
• shift from homogeneous kin based societies
  (mechanic) to heterogeneous societies of
  associations (organic) involves growth in
  importance of achieved

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GENDER ROLES STEREOTYPES STRATIFICATION

• gender roles - tasks activities that a culture
  assigns to sexes
• gender stereotypes - oversimplified strongly held
  ideas about the characteristics of men women
  third sex-third gender
• gender stratification - unequal distribution of
  rewards (socially valued resources power
  prestige personal freedom) between men women
  reflecting their position in the social hierarchy

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Gender Stratification

• unequal distribution of wealth power and
  privilege between men and women
• unequal distribution of wealth power and
  privilege between any embodied orientation
• cultures everywhere give man as a category
  opposed to women higher social value and moral
  worth.
• Is the secondary status of women one of the true
  cultural universals

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How does one measure gender stratification

• economic power
• prestige
• Autonomy
• ideology
• Legal rights
• Freedom to choose marriage partner profession
  and conception. Etc.
• look at the roles played by women and the value
  society places on those roles

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Structure Agency

• Agency action
• Agency as praxis/practice
• Praxis activity/action oriented towards a
  historically relevant change
• Practice -- Practical sense (practice) --
  adjustment (anticipatory) to demands of structure

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SEX SEXUALITY GENDER

• not the same thing
• all societies distinguish between males and
  females
• a very few societies recognize a third sexually
  intermediate category
• Gender-sexuality fixed and fluid identities
• Embodiments of history human bodily experience
• Corporeal experience and social
  structure/organization

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GENDER

• GENDER - the cultural construction of male
  female characteristics
• vs. the biological nature of men women
• SEX differences are biological - GENDER
  differences are cultural/historical
• behavioral attitudinal differences from social
  cultural rather than biological point of view

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Sex Versus Gender

• Sex refers to biological differences
• Gender refers to the ways members of the two
  sexes are perceived evaluated and expected to
  behave.
• The cultural construction of male and female
  characteristics.

• what different cultures make of sex.

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SEX

• differences in biology
• Socially culturally marked
• the body is simultaneously a physical and
  symbolic artifact both naturally and culturally
  produced anchored in a particular historical
  moment (Scheper-Hughes Lock)

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SEXUALITY (reproduction)

• all societies regulate sexuality
• lots of variation cross-culturally
• degree of restrictiveness not always consistent
  through life span
• adolescence vs. adulthood
• Varieties of normative sexual orientation
• Heterosexual homosexual transexual
• Sexuality in societies change over time

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The Four Bodies

• Individual body
• The social body
• The body politic
• The mindful body

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The Individual Body

• lived experience of the body-self body mind
  matter psyche soul

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The Social Body

• representational uses of the body as a natural
  symbol with which to think about nature society
  culture

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The Body Politic

• regulation surveillance control of bodies
  (individual collective) in reproduction
  sexuality in work leisure in sickness other
  forms of deviance

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The Mindful Body

• the most immediate the proximate terrain where
  social truths and social contradictions are
  played out
• a locus of personal and social resistance
  creativity and struggle
• emotions form the mediatrix between the
  individual social and political body unified
  through the concept of the mindful body.

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universals versus particulars

• universal subordination of women is often cited
  as one of the true cross-cultural universals a
  pan-cultural fact
• Engels called it the world historical defeat of
  women
• even so the particulars of womens roles
  statuses power and value differ tremendously by
  culture

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Friedl and Leacock argument

• variation among foragers
• male dominance is based on exchange public
  exchange
• versus that exchanged privately by women
• Exchange of scarce resources in egalitarian
  societies gender stratification and universal
  subordination of women

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DOMESTIC - PUBLIC DICHOTOMY (M. Rosaldo)

• opposition between domestic (reproduction)
  public (production) provides the basis of a
  framework necessary to identify and explore the
  place of male female in psycho cultural
  social and economic aspects of life
• degree to which the contrast between public
  domestic (private) sphere is drawn promotes
  gender stratification-rewards prestige power

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persistence of dualisms in ideologies of gender

• a particular view of men and women as opposite
  kinds of creatures both biologically and
  culturally
• nature/culture
• domestic/public
• reproduction/production

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Production Reproduction and Social Roles

• roles - those minimal institutions and modes of
  activity that are organized immediately around
  one or more mothers and their children
• women everywhere lactate give birth to children
• likely to be associated with child rearing
  responsibilities of the home

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a long running controversy in anthropology

• Sherry Ortners famous article Is Female to Male
  as Nature is to Culture
• argument is that across cultures women are more
  often associated with nature and the natural and
  are therefore denigrated
• Ortner - in reality women are no further nor
  closer to nature than men - cultural valuations
  make women appear closer to nature than men

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• We (North Americans in general) demand that the
  categories of male and female be discrete
• since gender is culturally constructed the
  boundaries are conceptual rather than physical
• Boundaries require markers to indicate gender
• the boundaries are dynamic eg. now it is
  acceptable for men to wear earrings.

Gender Boundaries
Is this a man or a woman How do you know

• Voice
• Physique
• Dress
• Behaviour

• Hair style
• Kinetics
• Language use

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The Third Gender

• essentialism of western ideas of sexual
  dimorphism - dichotomized into natural then
  moral entities of male female that are given to
  all persons one or the other
• committed western view of sex and gender as
  dichotomous ascribed unchanging
• other categories - every society including our
  own is at some time or other faced with people
  who do not fit into its sex gender categories

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The Third Gender

• a significant number of people are born with
  genitalia that is neither clearly male or female
• Hermaphrodites
• persons who change their biological sex
• persons who exhibit behavior deemed appropriate
  for the opposite sex
• persons who take on other gender roles other than
  those indicated by their genitals

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Third Genders

• transsexual gender/ sex incongruent trapped
  in wrong body but with the gender identity of
  their organs/sex change operation
• transvestite dressing as other gender
  biological sex (cross-dresser)
• homosexual
• bisexual
• eunuch castrated male
• hermaphrodite both sets of biological organs
• Virgin
• Boy/Girl

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Third Gender Western Bias

• multiple cultural historical worlds in which
  people of divergent gender sexual desire exist
• margins or borders of society
• may pass as normal to remain hidden in the
  official ideology everyday commerce of social
  life
• when discovered - iconic matter out of place -
  monsters of the cultural imagination
• third gender as sexual deviance a common theme in
  US
• evolution religious doctrine
• heterosexuality the highest form the most moral
  way of life its natural

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Third Gender Cross-Culturally

• provokes us to reexamine our own assumptions
  regarding our gender system
• emphasizes gender role alternatives as
  adaptations to economic and political conditions
  rather than as deviant and idiosyncratic
  behavior
• rigid dichotomozation of genders is a means of
  perpetuating the domination of females by males
  and patriarchal institutions.

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THEORIES OF GENDER INEQUALITY
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F. Engels

• theory of the origin of female subordination
• tied to the male control of wealth
• built on 19th cent. assumption of communal
  societies as matrilineal
• men overthrew matrilineality formed patriarchal
  family leading to monogamous family
• differential ownership of wealth led to
  inequality within the family thus between the
  sexes
• gender differences arose from technological
  developments that led to changes in relations of
  production

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E. Leacock - (expands on Engels)

• subjugation of women due to breakdown of communal
  ownership of property isolation of individual
  family as economic unit
• transformation of relations of production
• Association of female labor with domestic unit or
  private sphere
• male production directed towards distribution
  outside the domestic group (public sphere)
• occurs with development of private property
  class society

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K. Sacks

• political power that results from the ability to
  give receive goods in exchange (redistribution)
• allows for sexual stratification in non-class
  societies

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Sanday Reeves

• female status dependent on degree to which men
  women participate in activities of reproduction
  warfare subsistence

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Friedl and Leacock

• not rights control over production but rights
  of distribution control over channels of
  distribution critical for gender stratification

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RETHINKING SUBORDINATION

• Ardener - muted models that underlie male
  discourse
• diversity of one life or many lives
• gender roles stereotypes stratification
• changes over time
• changes with position in lifecycle
• status of men women i.e. in male dominant
  societies
• decision making roles belong to men but as women
  reach menopause change with marriage status
  virgins wives widows (and men)

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RETHINKING SUBORDINATION

• women like men are social actors who work in
  structured ways to achieve desired ends
• formal authority structure of a society may
  declare that women are impotent irrelevant
• but attention to womens strategies motives
  sorts of choices relationships established ends
  achieved indicates women have good deal of power
• strategies appear deviant disruptive
• actual components of how social life proceeds