18 Gender
Anthropology:
Appreciating Human Diversity
14th Edition
Conrad Phillip Kottak
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Gender
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Sex and Gender
Recurrent Gender Patterns
Gender Among Foragers
Gender Among Horticulturalists
Gender Among Agriculturalists
Patriarchy and Violence
Gender and Industrialism
Sexual Orientation
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Gender
• How are biology and culture expressed
in human sex/gender systems?
• How do gender, gender roles,
and gender stratification
correlate with other social,
economic, and political variables?
• What is sexual orientation, and how do
sexual practices vary cross-culturally?
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Sex and Gender
• Women and men differ genetically.
– Sexual dimorphism: marked differences
in male and female biology besides the
primary and secondary sexual features
– Sex differences are biological.
– Gender is a cultural construction
of male and female characteristics.
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• The biological nature of men and women
(should be seen) not as a narrow enclosure
limiting the human organism, but rather as a
broad base upon which a variety of
structures can be built. (Friedl 1975)
• Fluidity of sex and gender!! (Judith Butler)
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Sex and Gender
• Gender roles: tasks and activities
that a culture assigns to the sexes
• Gender stereotypes:
oversimplified, strongly held ideas
of characteristics of men and women
• Gender stratification: unequal
distribution of rewards between men
and women, reflecting their different
positions in a social hierarchy
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Recurrent Gender Patterns
• The subsistence contributions of men
and women are roughly equal crossculturally.
– In domestic activities,
female labor dominates.
– In extradomestic activities,
male labor dominates.
– Women are the primary caregivers,
but men often play a role.
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Recurrent Gender Patterns
• Differences in male and
female reproductive strategies
– Men mate, within and outside
marriage, more than women do.
– Double standards restrict women more
than men and illustrate gender
stratification.
• Gender stratification is lower when men
and women make roughly equal
contributions to subsistence.
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Table 18.1: Generalities in the Division of Labor by
Gender, Based on Data from 185 Societies
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Table 18.2: Time and Effort Expended on
Subsistence Activities by Men and Women
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Table 18.3: Who Does the Domestic Work?
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Table 18.4: Who Has Final Authority over the Care, Handling, and
Discipline of Infant Children (Under Four Years Old)?
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Table 18.5: Does the Society
Allow Multiple Spouses?
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Table 18.6: Is There a Double Standard with
Respect to Premarital Sex?
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Table 18.7: Is There a Double Standard with
Respect to Extramarital Sex?
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Gender Among Foragers
• The Domestic–Public Dichotomy
– The strong differentiation between home
and the outside world is called the
domestic–public dichotomy,
or the private–public contrast.
• Activities of the domestic sphere
tend to be performed by women.
• Activities of the public sphere
tend to be restricted to men.
– Gender stratification is less
developed among foragers.
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Gender Among Foragers
• Almost universally, the greater size,
strength, and mobility of men have
led to their exclusive service in
the roles of hunters and warriors.
– Lactation and pregnancy also tend to
preclude the possibility of women being
primary hunters in foraging societies.
– The Agta (women hunt small animals)
– The Ju/’hoansi San (gender equality)
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Gender roles and
stratification among
cultivators vary widely
(economy, social structure).
– Matrilineal descent: people
join mother’s group at birth
– Patrilineal descent: people
have membership in the
father’s group
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
– Patrilocality: couple lives
in husband’s community
– Matrilocality: couple
lives in wife’s community
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Martin and Voorhies:
women main producers
in horticultural societies
– Dominate horticulture
in 64 percent of matrilineal
societies and 50 percent
of patrilineal societies
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Reduced Gender Stratification—
Matrilineal, Matrilocal Societies
– Matrilineal-matrilocal systems tend to occur in
societies where population pressure on strategic
resources is minimal and warfare infrequent.
– Women tend to have high status (status, social
identity).
– For example, the Iroquois (women manage
production and distribution, control alliances,
make political decisions)
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Table 18.8: Male and Female Contributions to
Production in Cultivating Societies
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Figure 18.2: Historic Territory of the Iroquois
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Reduced Gender
Stratification—Matrilocal Societies
– Tanner: A combination of male travel and a
prominent female economic role reduced
gender stratification and promoted high
female status.
• Igbo of eastern Nigeria
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Matriarchy
– Sanday: Matriarchies exist in that society,
but not as mirror images of patriarchies.
– Among the Minangkabau, despite the
special position of women, the matriarchy
is not the equivalent of female rule.
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• Increased Gender Stratification—
Patrilineal-Patrifocal Societies
– Patrilineal-patrifocal complex:
male supremacy is based on
patrilineality, patrilocality, and warfare
– Martin and Voorhies: The decline of
matrilineality and spread of the patrilinealpatrifocal can be linked to pressure on
resources.
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Gender Among Horticulturalists
• The patrilineal-patrilocal tends to have a
sharp domestic-public dichotomy; men
tend to dominate the prestige hierarchy.
– Women do most of the cultivation,
cooking, and raising children, but
are isolated from the public domain.
– Males dominate the public domain: politics,
feasts, warfare
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Table 18.8: Male and Female Contributions
to Production in Cultivating Societies
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Gender Among Agriculturalists
• Women typically lose roles as primary
cultivators in an agriculture economy.
– Women are main workers in 50 percent of
horticultural societies but only in 15 percent
of agricultural societies.
– The advent of agriculture cut women off
from production.
– Belief systems started contrasting
men’s valuable extradomestic (outside
the home) with women’s domestic role.
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Patriarchy and Violence
• Patriarchy: a political system ruled by
men in which women have inferior
social and political status
– Societies that feature a full-fledged
patriarchy, with warfare and
intervillage raiding, adopt such
practices as dowry murders, female
infanticide, and clitoridectomy.
– Isolated families and patrilineal social
forms spread at expense of matrilineality
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Patriarchy and Violence
• With the spread of the women’s rights
and human rights movements, attention
to domestic violence and the abuse of
women increased.
– Patriarchal institutions persist in what
should be a more enlightened world.
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Gender and Industrialism
• The domestic–public dichotomy has
affected gender stratification in
industrial societies.
• Gender roles are changing rapidly in
North America.
– The traditional idea that a woman’s place
is in the home developed among middleand upper-class Americans as
industrialism spread after 1900.
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Gender and Industrialism
• Margolis: gendered work, attitudes, and
beliefs have varied in response to U.S.
economic needs.
– Attitudes about gendered work
have varied with class and region.
– Woman’s role in the home is stressed
during periods of high unemployment.
– Today’s jobs are not especially
demanding in terms of physical labor.
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Gender and Industrialism
• The Feminization of Poverty
– There is an increasing representation of
women and their children among America’s
poorest people.
– Globally, households headed
by women tend to be poorer
than those headed by men.
• It is widely believed that one way to
improve the situation of poor women
is to encourage them to organize.
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Table 18.9: Cash Employment of U.S. Mothers,
Wives, and Husbands, 1960–2007
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Table 18.10: Earnings in the U.S. by Gender and Job
Type for Year-Round Full-Time Workers, 2006
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Table 18.11: Median Annual Income of U.S.
Households by Household Type, 2006
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Sexual Orientation
• Sexual orientation: a person’s
habitual sexual attraction to,
and sexual activities with
– Persons of opposite sex (heterosexuality)
– Persons of same sex (homosexuality)
– Both sexes (bisexuality)
– Asexuality: indifference toward
or lack of attraction to members of either
sex
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Sexual Orientation
• Recently in U.S., the tendency has
been to see sexual orientation
as fixed and biologically based.
– Culture always plays a role in molding
individual sexual urges to a collective
norm.
– Sex acts involving people of the same sex
were absent, rare, or secret in only 37
percent of 76 societies studied by Ford and
Beach
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Sexual Orientation
• Various forms of same-sex sexual
activity are considered normal and
acceptable in some societies.
– Sudanese Azande
– Etoro
• Flexibility in sexual expression seems
to be an aspect of our primate heritage.
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Figure 18.3: The Location of the Etoro, Kaluli, and
Sambia in Papua New Guinea
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