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
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
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
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
development of the study of gender
in anthropology
• Anthropology of Women
– early 1970's 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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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.
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" (ScheperHughes & Lock)
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
The “Four Bodies”
•
•
•
•
Individual body
The social body
The body politic
The mindful body
The Individual Body
• lived experience of the body-self, body,
mind, matter, psyche, soul
The Social Body
• representational uses of the body as a
natural symbol with which to think about
nature, society, culture
The Body Politic
• regulation, surveillance, & control of
bodies (individual & collective) in
reproduction & sexuality, in work & leisure,
in sickness & other forms of deviance
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.'
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 women’s roles,
statuses, power, and value differ
tremendously by culture
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
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
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
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
a long running controversy in
anthropology
• Sherry Ortner’s 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
Gender Boundaries
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.
 Voice
 Physique
 Dress
 Behaviour
Hair style
 Kinetics
 Language use
Is this a man or a woman?
How do you know?
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
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
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?
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
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.
THEORIES OF GENDER
INEQUALITY
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
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
K. Sacks
• political power that results from the ability
to give & receive goods in exchange
(redistribution)
• allows for sexual stratification in non-class
societies
Sanday Reeves
• female status dependent on degree to
which men & women participate in
activities of reproduction, warfare,
subsistence
Friedl and Leacock
• not rights & control over production but
rights of distribution & control over
channels of distribution critical for gender
stratification
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)
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 women's 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