Women's Status in Agricultural Societies

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Women's Status in Agricultural Societies

• Text extracted from
• Our Kind
• By Marvin Harris

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(No Transcript)
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Men are larger, stronger than women

• Women 4.6 inches shorter than men on average
• Women have lighter bones and more fat
• Women 2/3 to 3/4 as strong as men

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Men specialized in hunting large game

• Men were the big game hunters in 95 of
  band-and-village societies
  
• Male advantage in height, weight, brawn in use of
  hand-held hunting weapons
  
• Women less mobile when pregnant, lactating
• hunt smaller game, gather food (majority of diet)

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Men usually specialists in weapons

• Men monopolized lethal weapons since paleolithic
  times
  
• spears
• bow and arrows
• harpoons
• clubs
• boomerangs
• Men thus more dangerous, and more coercive in
  conflict
  
• "I'm a man.  I've got my arrows.  I'm not afraid
  to die" -- !Kung hunter
  

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Men trained to be warriors

• Warriors aggressive and fearless
• More capable of hunting and killing other human
  beings without pity or remorse
  
• Women warriors only significant in recent times
  with firearms not muscle powered
  
• In Band and village societies, the more warfare
  there was, the more women suffered from male
  oppression.
  

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Amount of war correlates to oppression of women
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Bands of hunters and gatherers

•  !Kung (Kalahari desert, Africa) have little
  warfare
  
• Low population density hunters and gatherers
• Women have almost equal status as men

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Aborigines (Australia) 

• More warfare between bands
• Fairly low population density hunters and
  gatherers
  
• Captives from war cooked, eaten mostly women and
  children
  
• Males get best food
• Men beat or kill wives for adultery
• Wives cannot do the same to men for adultery

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Aborigine Women

• Aboriginal women do all the hard work
• Gather fruits, dig roots, chop larvae out of
  tree-stems
  
• Carry child on shoulders whole day
• Prepare food beating, roasting, soaking fruits
  and roots
  
• Makes hut, gathers materials
• Provide water and fuel
• Women carry all baggage when travel including
  children
  
• Men only carry light weapons, out in front when
  travel
  

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Village Societies of Agriculturalists
Yanomami (Rainforest of Brazil, Venezuela)

• Boys train for war at early age, learn cruelty by
  practicing on animals
  
• Raids between villages common 33 males die from
  armed combat
  
• competition for resources due to population
  pressure
  
• Polygynous
• men can have many wives
• Wives beat or maimed for disobedience or adultery
  
  
• burned , ears chopped off

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Village Societies of Agriculturalists
Nama  (Papua New Guinea)

• Male initiation cult trains men as warriors
• and to dominate women
• Warfare between villages rampant
• competition for resources due to population

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Nama (Papua New Guinea)

• Males given bride at initiation
• shoot her in the thigh with arrow
• to demonstrate "unyielding power over her"
• Women work in gardens, raise pigs, do all dirty
  work
  
• Men stand around gossiping

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Nama  (Papua New Guinea)

• "Women were severely punished for adultery by
  having burning sticks thrust into their vagina,
  or they were killed by their husbands they were
  whipped with a cane if they spoke out of turn or
  presumed to offer their opinions at public
  gatherings and were physically abused in marital
  arguments. 
• Men could never be seen to be weak or soft in
  dealings with women.  Men do not require specific
  incidents or reasons to abuse or mistreat women
  it is part of the normal course of events
  indeed, in ritual and myth, it is portrayed as
  the essential order of things." 
• --Daryl Feil, University of Sydney

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Why Intense Warfare in Agricultural Village
Societies?

• New Guinea high population leads to depletion of
  resources
  
• Forests depleted, burned, replaced by fields
• yams and pork replace wild animals and plants
• Selection for warfare take over neighboring
  resources
  

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Male Domination in Agricultural Village Societies

• Male domination leads to female infanticide
• Females can't become warriors
• sex ratios skewed toward males
• Female infanticide ultimately lowers population
  growth rate
  

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Male Domination of Food

• New Guinea male hunters, warriors
• monopolize meat (pork)
• Malnutrition
• especially women, children and older men
• Women and children
• Eat more insects, frogs, mice, placenta, maggots
  
  

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Patrilocality

• Patrilocality  women leave their family, village
  and move in with man's family
  
• Allows male raiding parties to be made up of
  blood relatives 
  
• trust in combat teams
• But who will look after land when men away? 
• Women
• especially sisters loyal

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Matrilocality

• Matrilocality men leave their family, village
• move in with woman's family
• Occurs in some chiefdoms where men gone on long
  raiding parties
  
• up to a year
• Example Iroquois
• Women were in charge of home and fields
• harvesting and storing crops
• Women in longhouse could withhold food for men's
  raids
  
• if didn't approve

Iroquois longhouse
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Matrilocality

• Women's power not the opposite of mens
• not equally cruel or humiliating.  Why?
• Not because women less vicious
• women often participate in torture
• Women cannot boss and degrade men
• when men have the weapons of war and warrior
  training.
  

Mohawk Warrior
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Large Stratified Societies

• Effect of warfare less direct
• most men not trained to be warriors
• Most men unarmed peasants
• also terrified of professional warriors

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Type of Agriculture affects women's status

• West Africa
• Agriculture not dependent on men
• Women empowered
• North India
• Mens strength required for plowing
• Women unempowered
• South India
• Women control agriculture
• Women empowered

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West Africa

• Yoruba, Ibo, Igbo, and Dahomey peoples
• Women's status strong
• can own fields and crops
• Dominate local market
• Acquire wealth from trade
• Short-handled hoe used in agriculture
• No animal-plowed fields due to tse-tse fly
• Therefore women not dependent on men for
  agriculture
  

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West Africa

• Men must pay bride-price to get married Women
  valuable
  
• Male polygyny only with permission of senior wife
  
  
• Women participate in village councils and high
  state office
  
• Women mobilize as group to seek redress against
  mistreatment by men
  

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North India

• Men have monopoly on ox-drawn plows
• Greater body strength 15-20 more efficient than
  women
  
• Advantage may mean difference between survival
  and starvation
  
• Even young men not strong enough to plow all day
  
  
• short window of weather opportunity for plowing

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North India

• Female infanticide common
• Dowries from women required for marriage
• Widows powerless sometimes throw themselves on
  husbands funeral pyre
  
• Increasing incidence of intentional acid
  spraying
  

Acid Burn Victim, Bangladesh
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South India (Kerala)

• Rice paddy agriculture doesn't need men's
  strength
  
• Women in charge of much agriculture
• Women have more freedom, status, social power
• True in other rice producing areas of Southeast
  Asia, Indonesia
  
•  

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How did male dominance evolve in large
agriculture societies?

• Men in charge of large plow animals
• Men thus drive animal-drawn carts when wheel
  invented, in charge of trade
  

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How did male dominance evolve in large
agriculture societies?

• Men thus in charge of bookkeeping, records
• Men thus became the scribes, accountants,
  literate
  
• Men thus became the philosophers, theologians,
  and mathematicians
  

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How did male dominance evolve in large
agriculture societies?

• Men also controlled warfare
• Men thus gained control over governments and
  state religions
  

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• "At the dawn of modern times men dominated
  politics, religion, art, science, law, industry,
  commerce, and the armed forces wherever people
  depended on animal-drawn plows for their basic
  food supply"