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Gender. Sex and Gender Recurrent Gender Patterns Gender Among Foragers Gender Among Horticulturalists Gender Among Agriculturalists Patriarchy and Violence Gender and Industrialism Sexual Orientation. Gender.
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Gender • Sex and Gender • Recurrent Gender Patterns • Gender Among Foragers • Gender Among Horticulturalists • Gender Among Agriculturalists • Patriarchy and Violence • Gender and Industrialism • Sexual Orientation
Gender • 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? • How are biology and culture expressed in human sex/gender systems?
Sex and Gender • 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. • Women and men differ genetically.
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)
Sex and Gender • 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 • Gender roles: tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes
Recurrent Gender Patterns • In domestic activities, female labor dominates. • In extradomestic activities, male labor dominates. • Women are the primary caregivers, but men often play a role. • The subsistence contributions of men and women are roughly equal cross-culturally.
Recurrent Gender Patterns • 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. • Differences in male and female reproductive strategies
Table 18.1: Generalities in the Division of Labor by Gender, Based on Data from 185 Societies
Table 18.2: Time and Effort Expended on Subsistence Activities by Men and Women
Table 18.4: Who Has Final Authority over the Care, Handling, and Discipline of Infant Children (Under Four Years Old)?
Table 18.6: Is There a Double Standard with Respect to Premarital Sex?
Table 18.7: Is There a Double Standard with Respect to Extramarital Sex?
Gender Among Foragers • 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. • The Domestic–Public Dichotomy
Gender Among Foragers • 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) • Almost universally, the greater size, strength, and mobility of men have led to their exclusive service in the roles of hunters and warriors.
Gender Among Horticulturalists • Matrilineal descent: people join mother’s group at birth • Patrilinealdescent: people have membership in the father’s group • Gender roles and stratification among cultivators vary widely (economy, social structure).
Gender Among Horticulturalists Matrilocality: couple lives in wife’s community • Patrilocality: couple lives in husband’s community
Gender Among Horticulturalists • Dominate horticulture in 64 percent of matrilineal societies and 50 percent of patrilineal societies • Martin and Voorhies: women main producers in horticultural societies
Gender Among Horticulturalists • 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) • Reduced Gender Stratification—Matrilineal, Matrilocal Societies
Table 18.8: Male and Female Contributions to Production in Cultivating Societies
Gender Among Horticulturalists • Tanner: A combination of male travel and a prominent female economic role reduced gender stratification and promoted high female status. • Igbo of eastern Nigeria • Reduced Gender Stratification—Matrilocal Societies
Gender Among Horticulturalists • Sanday: Matriarchies exist in that society, but not as mirror images of patriarchies. • Among the Minangkabau, despite thespecial position of women, the matriarchy is not the equivalent of female rule. • Matriarchy
Gender Among Horticulturalists • Patrilineal-patrifocal complex: male supremacy is based on patrilineality, patrilocality, and warfare • Martin and Voorhies: The decline of matrilineality and spread of the patrilineal- patrifocal can be linked to pressure on resources. • Increased Gender Stratification—Patrilineal-Patrifocal Societies
Gender Among Horticulturalists • 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 • The patrilineal-patrilocal tends to have a sharp domestic-public dichotomy; men tend to dominate the prestige hierarchy.
Table 18.8: Male and Female Contributions to Production in Cultivating Societies
Gender Among Agriculturalists • 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. • Women typically lose roles as primary cultivators in an agriculture economy.
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
Patriarchy and Violence • Patriarchal institutions persist in what should be a more enlightened world. • With the spread of the women’s rights and human rights movements, attention to domestic violence and the abuse of women increased.
Gender and Industrialism • Gender roles are changing rapidly in North America. • The traditional idea that a woman’s place is in the home developed among middle- and upper-class Americans as industrialism spread after 1900. • The domestic–public dichotomy has affected gender stratification in industrial societies.
Gender and Industrialism • 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. • Margolis: gendered work, attitudes, and beliefs have varied in response to U.S. economic needs.
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.
Table 18.9: Cash Employment of U.S. Mothers, Wives, and Husbands, 1960–2007
Table 18.10: Earnings in the U.S. by Gender and Job Type for Year-Round Full-Time Workers, 2006
Table 18.11: Median Annual Income of U.S. Households by Household Type, 2006
Sexual Orientation • 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 • Sexual orientation: a person’s habitual sexual attraction to, and sexual activities with
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
Sexual Orientation • Sudanese Azande • Etoro • Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage. • Various forms of same-sex sexual activity are considered normal and acceptable in some societies.
Figure 18.3: The Location of the Etoro, Kaluli, and Sambia in Papua New Guinea
