Encyclopedia of
Sex and Gender
Men and Women in the World’s Cultures
Volume I: Topics and Cultures A–K
Volume II: Cultures L–Z
Encyclopedia of
Sex and Gender
Men and Women in the World’s Cultures
Volume I: Topics and Cultures A–K
Volume II: Cultures L–Z
Edited by
Carol R. Ember
Human Relations Area Files/Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
and
Melvin Ember
Human Relations Area Files/Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Published in conjunction with the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
New York • Boston • Dordrecht • London • Moscow
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of sex and gender: men and women in the world’s cultures/edited by Carol
R. Ember and Melvin Ember.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-306-47770-X
1. Sex—Encyclopedias. 2. Sex—Cross-cultural studies. I. Ember, Carol R. II. Ember,
Melvin.
HQ16.E53 2004
306.7⬘03—dc21
2003050649
ISBN 0-306-47770-X
©2003 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York
233 Spring Street, New York, N. Y. 10013
http://www.wkap.nl/
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A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
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Advisory Board
FLORENCE E. BABB
CAROLINE BRETTELL
MICHAEL L. BURTON
CAROLYN POPE EDWARDS
DOUGLAS P. FRY
TERENCE E. HAYS
JEROME KAGAN
MAXINE MARGOLIS
MARY MORAN
WINIFRED MITCHELL
ROBERT L. MUNROE
ALICE SCHLEGEL
SUSAN SEYMOUR
THOMAS WEISNER
BEATRICE B. WHITING
MARGERY WOLF
University of Iowa
Southern Methodist University
University of California, Irvine
University of Nebraska
Åbo Akademi University and University of Arizona
Rhode Island College
Harvard University
University of Florida
Colgate University
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Pitzer College
University of Arizona
Pitzer College
University of California, Los Angeles
Harvard University
University of Iowa
Matthew White and Kathleen Adams
Managing Editors:
The Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender was prepared under the auspices and with the support of the Human Relations
Area Files, Inc. (HRAF) at Yale University. The foremost international research organization in the field of cultural
anthropology, HRAF is a not-for-profit consortium of 19 Sponsoring Member institutions and more than 400 active
and inactive Associate Member institutions in nearly 40 countries. The mission of HRAF is to provide information
that facilitates the worldwide comparative study of human behavior, society, and culture. The HRAF Collection of
Ethnography, which has been building since 1949, contains nearly one million pages of information, organized by
culture and indexed according to more than 700 subject categories, on the cultures of the world. An increasing portion
of the Collection of Ethnography, which now covers more than 380 cultures, is accessible via the World Wide Web to
member institutions. The HRAF Collection of Archaeology, the first installment of which appeared in 1999, is also
accessible on the web to member institutions. HRAF also prepares multivolume reference works with the help of
nearly 2,000 scholars around the world, and sponsors Cross-Cultural Research: The Journal of Comparative
Social Science.
v
Contributors
Iiris Aaltio, Department of Business Administration, Lappeenranta University of Technology, 53851 Lappeenranta,
Finland
Irén Annus, University of Szeged, Hungary
George N. Appell, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02254, U.S.A.
Laura W. R. Appell, Sabah Oral Literature Project, Phillips, ME 04996, U.S.A.
Marysol Asencio, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Institute, University of Connecticut-Storrs, Storrs, CT 062692058, U.S.A.
Christine Avenarius, Department of Anthropology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858-4353, U.S.A.
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, Grimstad MPAT-Institute, 4876 Grimstad, Norway
Emilio Paqcha Benites, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, U.S.A.
Ilana Berger, Israeli Center for Human Sexuality and Gender Identity, Tel Aviv 64738, Israel
Deborah L. Best, Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, U.S.A.
Harald Beyer Broch, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
Gwen J. Broude, Department of Psychology, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, U.S.A.
Judith K. Brown, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309-4495,
U.S.A.
Margaret Buckner, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield,
MO 65804-0095, U.S.A.
Mary M. Cameron, Women’s Studies Center, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991, U.S.A.
Fernando Luiz Cardoso, Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis/Santa Catarina 88.015-630, Brazil
Maria G. Cattell, Research Associate, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 6065-2496, U.S.A.
Dia Cha, Department of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN 56301, U.S.A.
Janet M. Chernela, Florida International University, Miami, FL, U.S.A.
Richley H. Crapo, Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, Logan,
UT 84322-0730, U.S.A.
Susan A. Crate, Department of Geography, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, U.S.A.
William H. Crocker, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 20013, U.S.A.
Shanshan Du, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, U.S.A.
Timothy Dunnigan, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, U.S.A.
Carolyn Pope Edwards, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308,
U.S.A.
Richard Ekins, Cultural and Media Studies Transgender Archive, School of Media and Performing Arts, University
of Ulster at Coleraine, County Londonderry BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland
Carol R. Ember, Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, U.S.A.
Melvin Ember, Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, U.S.A.
Pamela I. Erickson, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2176, U.S.A.
vii
viii
Contributors
Randi Ettner, New Health Foundation, Evanston, IL 60201, U.S.A.
Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057,
U.S.A.
William H. Fisher, Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, U.S.A.
Diana Fox, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater,
MA 02325, U.S.A.
Mary Jo Tippeconnic Fox, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85721, Arizona,
U.S.A.
Susan Tax Freeman, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60612, U.S.A.
Rita S. Gallin, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1111, U.S.A.
Victoria A. Goddard, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London SE14 6NW,
U.K.
Joshua S. Goldstein, American University, Washington DC, 20016, U.S.A.
Alma Gottlieb, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A.
Chien-Juh Gu, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1111, U.S.A.
Timothy M. Hall, University of California, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.
Katsuki Harima, Family Court Clinic of Tokyo Family Court, 100-13 1-1-2 Kasumigaseki Chiyodaku, Tokyo, Japan
Betty J. Harris, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, U.S.A.
Mary Elaine Hegland, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053,
U.S.A.
Lewellyn Hendrix, Department of Sociology, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62958,
U.S.A.
Warren M. Hern, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80304, U.S.A.
Gabriele Herzog-Schröder, Research Group Human Ethnology, Max-Planck-Society, Andechs, Germany, and
Institute for Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
Jon Holtzman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, U.S.A.
James Howe, Anthropology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, U.S.A.
Armine Ishkanian, University of California, Berkeley, California, U.S.A.
William R. Jankowiak, Department of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV
89154, U.S.A.
Robert Jarvenpa, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, U.S.A.
Carol Zane Jolles, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3100, U.S.A.
Marianne Ruth Kamp, Department of History, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82070, U.S.A.
Kaisa Kauppinen, Department of Psychology, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland
Alice Beck Kehoe, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211-3436, U.S.A.
Dave King, Department of Sociology, Social Policy, and Social Work Studies, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69
7ZA, England
Laura F. Klein, Department of Anthropology, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA 98447, U.S.A.
Lisa Knoche, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308, U.S.A.
Kathleen Kuehnast, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University,
Washington DC, 20052, U.S.A.
Contributors
ix
Asiye Kumru, Abant Izzet Baysal Universitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakultesi, Psikoloji Bolumu, Golkoy Kampusu, 14280
Bolu, Turkey
Lynn M. Kwiatkowski, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of South Alabama, Mobile,
AL 36688, U.S.A.
Oneka LaBennett, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610,
U.S.A.
Mikael Landén, Section of Psychiatry, Institute of Clinical Neuroscience, Göteborg, SE 431 80 Mölndal, Sweden
Lioba Lenhart, Institut für Völkerkunde, Universität Köln, D-50923 Köln, Germany
Charles Lindholm, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, U.S.A.
Lamont Lindstrom, Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104, U.S.A.
Bobbi S. Low, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1115,
U.S.A.
Judith Macdonald, Anthropology Programme, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Jeannette Marie Mageo, Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4910,
U.S.A.
Maxine L. Margolis, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, U.S.A.
Richard A. Marksbury, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, U.S.A.
Frank Marlowe, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA 02138,
U.S.A.
Nancy McDowell, Department of Anthropology, Beloit College, Beloit, WI 53511, U.S.A.
Bonnie McElhinny, Department of Anthropology and Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender’s Studies, University
of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
Winifred Mitchell, Department of Anthropology, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN 56001, U.S.A.
Brian Montes, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, U.S.A.
Mary H. Moran, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY 13346, U.S.A.
Nuno Nodin, Lisbon, Portugal
Barbara S. Nowak, Institute of Development Studies, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey
University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Regina Smith Oboler, Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA 19426, U.S.A.
Robin O’Brian, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Elmira College, Elmira, NY 14901, U.S.A.
Lyn Parker, Department of Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
Jakob M. Pastötter, Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology at Humboldt University Berlin, D-13189 Berlin,
Germany
Julia Pauli, Institute of Ethnology, Universität Köln, D-50923 Köln, Germany
Sarah D. Phillips, Department of Anthropology, University of the South, Sewanee, TN 37383, U.S.A.
Debra Picchi, Department of Anthropology, Franklin Pierce College, Rindge, NH 03461, U.S.A.
Ulrike Prinz, Institute for Ethnology and African Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany
Volodymyr P’yatokha, Volyn Regional Hospital, Lutsk 43007, Ukraine
Aparna Rao, Institut für Völkerkunde, Universität Köln, D-50923 Köln, Germany
Kathleen C. Riley, Johnson State College, Johnson, VT 05656, U.S.A.
Paul Roscoe, Department of Anthropology, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, U.S.A.
x
Contributors
Amir Rosenmann, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
Celia E. Rothenberg, Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Marilyn P. Safir, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
Richard Scaglion, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, U.S.A.
Wulf Schiefenhövel, Human Ethology Group, Max-Planck-Institut, 82346 Andechs, Germany
Alice Schlegel, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, U.S.A.
Maureen Trudelle Schwarz, Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1090, U.S.A.
Edwin S. Segal, Department of Anthropology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, U.S.A.
Susan C. Seymour, Pitzer College, Claremont, CA 91711, U.S.A.
Audrey C. Shalinsky, Department of History, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82070, U.S.A.
Andrew N. Sharpe, Department of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
Eric Kline Silverman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, DePauw University, Greencastle, IN 46135,
U.S.A.
Daniel Jordan Smith, Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, U.S.A.
John R. Sosa, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, State University of New York Cortland, Cortland, NY
13045, U.S.A.
Allyn MacLean Stearman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
32816-1800, U.S.A.
Lynn Stephen, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1218, U.S.A.
Bilinda Straight, Department of Anthropology, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, U.S.A.
David E. Sutton, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, U.S.A.
James M. Taggart, Department of Anthropology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003, U.S.A.
Aud Talle, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway
Myrna Tonkinson, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
Robert Tonkinson, Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia
Rebecca L. Upton, Institute for Social Research and Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, U.S.A.
Robert A. Veneziano, Department of Social Work, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT 06810, U.S.A.
Eileen Rose Walsh, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, U.S.A.
William Wedenoja, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield,
MO 65804-0095, U.S.A.
Glenn E. Weisfeld, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, U.S.A.
Cynthia Werner, Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4352, U.S.A.
Dennis Werner, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Santa Caterina 88.015-630 Brazil
Barbara A. West, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211, U.S.A.
Cynthia Whissell, Department of Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Tarynn M. Witten, TranScience Research Institute, Richmond, VA 23228-28089, U.S.A.
Felice S. Wyndham, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, U.S.A.
Melissa-Ann Yeager, Department of Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, U.S.A.
Xiaojian Zhao, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A.
Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Cultural Solutions, West Chester, PA 19382, U.S.A.
Preface
In some animal species, one can hardly tell the difference between females and males. Their size, coloring, and
behavior may be so similar that even experts cannot readily tell the difference until they are ready to reproduce. In
contrast, human females and males differ not only in secondary sexual characteristics (like breasts and beards), but
they also generally exhibit differences in height, weight, and ratio of muscle to fat. Given the reproductive differences
as well as differences in appearance between males and females, it is hardly surprising that most if not all societies
conceive of females and males as important social categories. These reproductive and biological facts by themselves
cannot explain the enormous variability in the way societies treat persons of the different biological sexes. The most
sexually egalitarian societies may hardly treat males and females differently. But there are no societies that clearly
give more overall advantages to females than to males, and those that advantage males vary considerably from mild
to extreme inequality.
Cultural expectations have profound effects on how males and females grow up in a society, so much so
that many researchers prefer to use the terms gender differences or gender roles to reflect the large impact of
culture on differences between the sexes. The terms sex differences and sex roles now usually refer to differences
that are thought to derive primarily from biological differences. The advantage of the term gender is that it also
allows us to deal with situations where societies conceptualize more than two genders or who have individuals who
change gender role in the course of their lifetimes. The problem for social science is that we often do not know
whether a particular difference is due to biology or culture, or both. Biological and cultural influences are not always
clearly separable because in most societies parents start treating boy and girl babies differently from the moment
of birth.
The central aim of this encyclopedia is to give the reader a comparative perspective on issues involving conceptions
of gender, gender differences, gender roles, relationships between the genders, and sexuality. We do this in two ways.
First, we have invited scholars to write comparative overviews about what may be universal, what is variable, and to
discuss theory and research that might explain those patterns. Second, each of 82 specific cultural articles provides a
“portrait” of what it is like for boys and girls to grow up and become men and women in that society. Some societies
have other gender classes and where these occur, or where boys and girls can cross into other roles, these are discussed.
Our portraits also discuss important male–female relationships and a culture’s sexual attitudes and practices. We deliberately chose to include cultures from the widest possible spectrums—from egalitarian to stratified, from foragers to
intensive agriculturalists, from those with kin groups structured around males to those structured around females, from
those where the status of women and men is relatively equal to those where status is mostly unequal. We also have
cultures from every major geographical region. The combination of topical overviews and varying cultural portraits is
what makes this encyclopedia unique.
The topical overviews are divided into four sections. The first deals with cultural conceptions of gender (Cultural
Constructions of Gender, and Gender Stereotypes). The second explores observed differences between males and
females in behavior and personality and asks what biological and/or social factors may explain those differences
(Biological Bases of Gender Differences, Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts, Adolescence, and
Personality and Emotion). The third section deals with more institutionalized aspects of gender—gender roles, lifecycle transitions, status, and social institutions that relate to gender (Courtship and Marriage, Parental Roles,
Economic Activities and Gender Roles, Leadership, Power, and Gender, War and Gender, Religion, Religiosity, and
Gender, Gender-Based Social Groups, Relative Status of Men and Women, Economic Development and Gender,
Language and Gender, Transitions in the Life-Course of Women). The fourth section deals with sexuality and
male–female interaction (Sexual Attitudes and Practices, Modesty and Sexual Restraint, Husband–Wife Interaction
and Aloofness, Homosexuality, Transgender and Transsexuality, and Rape and Other Sexual Aggression). Some of the
articles in a section deal with topics that overlap other sections.
xii
Preface
To facilitate comparison across cultures, the cultural portraits follow a standard set of topics so that readers may
readily compare across cultures. Most of the authors are anthropologists or other social scientists who have lived with
the people they write about and are able to give a vivid portrait of life in that society.
The term “gender” in a title or subtitle of a work often suggests today that the work is primarily about women.
We have deliberately included the words “men” and “women” in our subtitle to convey that this reference work deals
with the roles and status of women and men in many cultures and with how they relate to each other. This is another
quality that makes this encyclopedia unique.
ORGANIZATION
OF THE
ARTICLES
The thematic and comparative essays vary in how they are organized, not just in their topics. The authors were encouraged by the editors to structure their discussions as they saw fit. On the other hand, the articles on sex and gender in
particular cultures follow the same format to provide maximum comparability. That is, the culture articles cover the
same topics, the list of which we developed with the help of our Advisory Board (see the headings in boldface type
below). If there is substantial variation within the culture (e.g., by class or gender), the author was instructed to discuss it, either in a particular section or at the end. A heading may be omitted if information on it is lacking or not
applicable. The headings that follow are found in the vast majority of the articles to facilitate search and retrieval of
information. Thus the reader may easily compare how the cultures of the world differ and are similar in the ways they
deal with sex and gender.
The outline for the culture articles includes the following topics.
Alternative Names
Other names or ethnonyms used in the literature.
Location and Linguistic Affiliation
Where the described culture is located (region of the world, country, and location within the country, where
appropriate).
Cultural Overview
A summary of the culture to orient the reader, covering such topics as basic economy, political organization, settlement
patterns, family and kinship, and intercultural relations. Any general features that are important for understanding gender differences that are not covered in the more specific topics below are included here.
Cultural Construction of Gender
What are the recognized gender categories? How does the culture conceptualize these genders? Do the different genders dress differently or do anything different to their bodies so that they visually appear different (in hairstyle, scarification, make-up)? If differentiation is age related, when the changes occur is discussed. What makes a male or
female attractive? Are sexual preferences associated with visual cues?
Gender over the Life Cycle
What are the cultural names for stages in the life cycle? Do they differ for the different genders? Which passages
from one stage to another are publicly marked and how do they differ by gender? Any changes in rights and responsibilities accompanying the transitions?
Preface
xiii
Socialization of Boys and Girls. The aim of this section is to convey the ways in which boys and girls are reared
similarly or differently from infancy through childhood by parents and other socialization agents (extended families,
other kin, neighbors, peers). Are boys and girls valued equally, or are there cultural ways that convey a preference?
What are the expectations that parents and other caretakers have for boys and girls? Which traits do they value in boys
and girls? Do they expect different behaviors or work? Do boys and girls have different patterns of play, games, or
leisure? Are there different rites and rituals in infancy and childhood for boys and girls? Do caretakers educate,
instruct, or discipline boys and girls differently? Who are the major caretakers? Are there differences or similarities
in formal education or apprenticeship? If there are few obvious differences in socialization, this section discusses the
common features of socialization. (How boys and girls are introduced to sexuality, rules of modesty, or sexual expression is mostly discussed in a later section.)
Puberty and Adolescence. Is there a named stage for adolescence? Is there continuity in socialization around
the time of puberty or are there significant changes from childhood socialization? Similar questions raised in the
previous section are addressed for this stage too, if the culture identifies a separate stage. Are there special rites or
genital modifications that are not associated with the attainment of adulthood?
Attainment of Adulthood. This describes any special rites of passage marking the transition from boyhood to
manhood and/or from girlhood to womanhood. If there are no special rites, when are the genders considered adults?
What behavioral changes are expected with adulthood?
Middle Age and Old Age. Aside from adult roles described in later sections, are there any important gender
changes associated with middle age and old age (such as changes in respect)?
Personality Differences by Gender
Aside from behaviors required in different roles, are there differences in the ways boys and girls and men and women
behave? Are there changes over the life cycle? Particular areas considered are degree of nurturance, dominance,
dependency, sociability, aggression, reticence or shyness, expressiveness, etc. What are cultural stereotypes of
how males and females ought to be? Do these stereotypes differ from reality? Is there explicit research on gender
differences in cognition, perception, or mental illness in the culture?
Gender-Related Social Groups
To what degree are the social institutions in society structured around males or females? Do married couples live with
or near the husband’s family or the wife’s family? Does this change through the life cycle? Are there larger kin groups
formed through males (patrilineal kin groups) or through females (matrilineal kin groups)? Are there important nonkin
associations for males or females in the society?
Gender Roles in Economics
What is the division of labor between men and women in making a living, household and domestic work, and
occupational specialization? How strongly is the division of labor adhered to? To what degree are the genders involved
in trade, marketing, and nonmarket exchange? Is one gender substantially removed from home because of involvement in long-distance trade, work, or warfare? When does this happen and what is the duration? Who can own or
inherit property and does it vary by type of property?
xiii
xiv
Preface
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
What defines the parental role? To what degree do fathers (and/or other males) and mothers (and/or other females) play
a role in child-rearing and do they differ in the ways they socialize (e.g., in disciplining, education, physical care, time
spent with children, or affection)? Does the behavior of a male or female differ toward a male or female child?
Leadership in Public Arenas
To what extent is leadership in the political arena (including social/political movements), kin groups, warfare, etc.
restricted to males? If women have leadership roles, do they have equal authority? If there are differences, what are they?
Gender and Religion
What roles do the genders play in religion? Are there any special gendered orders, such as monks and nuns? What
entities in the external universe are associated with the gender categories? What genders are the gods and spirits and
what is their relative position in a hierarchy, if there is one? Was the original human male or female?
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
Do men and women have much leisure time? Does one sex have more leisure time? How do men and women spend
their leisure time? (Games, socializing with friends, discussing politics, storytelling, singing, dancing, music, etc.) Are
there substantial differences in the ways that boys and girls and men and women spend their leisure time? To what
degree are the sexes segregated in their free time? Is segregation voluntary or required? (Gender specialization in crafts
and art is discussed under economic activities.)
Relative Status of Men and Women
Status refers to the value attached to men and women by society as well as differential authority, rights, and privileges.
Since formal positions in the public arena are described in previous sections, this section focuses on other aspects.
Are there substantial differences in decision-making and influence for men and women in subsistence and economy,
family matters, community, kin group, and religion? Do men and women have different rights to important resources
and do they control the fruits of their labor? Do males and females control or influence their sexuality, education,
marriage choice, divorce choice, etc.? Do males or females obtain special privileges (such as deference)? Do these
change over the life cycle?
Sexuality
What are male and female attitudes toward sexuality generally (i.e., is it natural, healthy, dangerous, polluting, only
for reproduction)? Do attitudes toward, and practices of, premarital sex and extramarital sex differ for males and
females? Do they change over the life cycle? How does the cultural conception of male sexuality differ from the
cultural conception of female sexuality? To what degree is modesty about the body required in the society? When
is modesty expected and does it vary by gender? To what degree is expression of sexuality allowed or not allowed
in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood? Does it vary by gender or by class? How does the society deal with
expressions of cross-sex identification, cross-dressing, etc.? How does the society treat male and female homosexuality?
Preface
xv
Courtship and Marriage
What are the typical patterns of male–female courtship and marriage? To what degree are there departures from those
patterns? How many people get married or are expected to marry? What roles do unmarried people have? Is love a
part of marriage choice or are other considerations more important? Do males and females have choice in when and
whom they can marry? If not, who exercises choice and how are marriages arranged? If there is a marriage ceremony,
what is it like? Are there any special postmarriage customs? Can widows or widowers remarry and whom do they
marry (any preferences or rules)?
Husband–Wife Relationship
To what degree is the husband–wife relationship characterized by love, affection, and/or companionship, or is there
characteristic hostility, antagonism, or aloofness? Do husbands and wives eat together, sleep together, spend other
time together, make decisions together? Is there a strict division of tasks, or is there interchangeability? If there is
polygamy, describe the relationship between cowives or cohusbands. If the marriage is not satisfactory, what are the
possibilities of divorce and for what reasons? Can the husband and/or the wife initiate the divorce? What happens to
any children if there is a divorce?
Other Cross-Sex Relationships
Are there significant male–female relationships (other than husband–wife) such as brother–sister, grandparent–
grandchild, uncle–niece, aunt–nephew, cousins, cross-sex friendships, etc.?
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices Regarding Gender
This optional section describes important changes over time if they are not described earlier.
REFERENCES
References to sources in the text are included to allow the reader to explore topics and cultures further.
USING THE ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF
SEX
AND
GENDER
This reference work can be used by a variety of people for a variety of purposes. It can be used both to gain a broad
understanding of the lives of males and females in different cultures or to find out about particular cultures and topics.
A bibliography is provided at the end of each entry to facilitate further investigation.
Beyond serving as a basic reference resource, the Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender also serves readers with more
focused needs. For researchers interested in comparing cultures, this work provides information that can guide the
selection of particular cultures for further study. The “Cultural Overview” section provides a summary that enables
users to compare cultures with different types of economies (e.g., foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists or intensive
agriculturalists), or with different degrees of social stratification (e.g, egalitarian versus class or caste systems), or with
different levels of political hierarchies (e.g., independent communities to kingships). The section “Gender-Related
Social Groups” allows the user to tell if the society is socially structured around males (patrilocal and/or patrilineal
societies), females (matrilocal and/or matrilineal societies) or neither (e.g., bilateral or ambilineal societies). Educators
and teachers might be interested in having students consider what it is like to grow up as a girl or a boy in different
xvi
Preface
cultures. For students, from high school through graduate school, this encyclopedia provides background and bibliographic information for term papers and class projects. And for those just curious about how sex and gender issues
differ from how they may appear in their own society, this encyclopedia provides an unparalleled look at worldwide
variation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to thank for their contributions. Eliot Werner, formerly at Plenum, played an important role in
the planning of the project. The Advisory Board made valuable suggestions about the outline for the culture entries
and possible topics to be covered in the thematic essays, and suggested potential authors. The editors were responsible for the final selection of authors and for reviewing the manuscripts. For managing the project at HRAF, we are
indebted to Matthew White and Kathleen Adams. We thank Teresa Krauss for overseeing the production process at
Kluwer/Plenum and Anne Meagher for her efficient handling of the production of this Encyclopedia. Finally, and most
of all, we thank the contributors for their entries. Without their knowledge and commitment, this work would not have
been possible.
Carol R. Ember, Executive Director
Melvin Ember, President
Human Relations Area Files at Yale University
Contents
GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
CULTURAL CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER
Cultural Constructions of Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Edwin S. Segal
Gender Stereotypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deborah L. Best
3
11
GENDER DIFFERENCES
Biological Bases of Sex Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bobbi S. Low
Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carolyn Pope Edwards, Lisa Knoche, and Asiye Kumru
Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Glenn E. Weisfeld
Personality and Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cynthia Whissell
27
34
42
57
GENDER ROLES, STATUS, AND INSTITUTIONS
Courtship and Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lewellyn Hendrix
Parental Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robert A. Veneziano
Economic Activities and Gender Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robin O’Brian
Leadership, Power, and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kaisa Kauppinen and Iiris Aaltio
War and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Joshua S. Goldstein
Religion, Religiosity, and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
Gender-Based Social Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember
The Relative Status of Men and Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maxine L. Margolis
Economic Development and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robin O’Brian
71
78
91
97
107
117
128
137
146
xviii
Contents
Language and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Bonnie McElhinny
Transitions in the Life-Course of Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Judith K. Brown
SEXUALITY AND MALE–FEMALE INTERACTION
Sexual Attitudes and Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Gwen J. Broude
Modesty and Sexual Restraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Celia E. Rothenberg
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Gwen J. Broude
Homosexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Fernando Luiz Cardoso and Dennis Werner
Transgender and Transsexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Tarynn M. Witten, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, Ilana Berger, Richard Ekins,
Randi Ettner, Katsuki Harima, Dave King, Mikael Landén, Nuno Nodin,
Volodymyr P’yatokha, and Andrew N. Sharpe
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi
177
187
192
204
216
230
SEX AND GENDER IN THE WORLD’S CULTURES
Abaluyia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maria G. Cattell
Abelam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Richard Scaglion
Armenians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Armine Ishkanian
Aymara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Winifred Mitchell
Bakairí . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Debra Picchi
Bakkarwal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aparna Rao
Balinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lyn Parker
Bamiléké . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg
Beng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alma Gottlieb
Blackfoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice Beck Kehoe
Canela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
William H. Crocker
247
257
265
274
283
293
303
314
323
334
345
Contents
xix
Cherokee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mary Jo Tippeconnic Fox
Chinese Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Xiaojian Zhao
Chipewyan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robert Jarvenpa
Czechs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Timothy M. Hall
Eastern Tukanoans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janet M. Chernela
Germans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jakob M. Pastötter
Glebo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mary H. Moran
Greeks of Kalymnos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
David E. Sutton
Hadza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frank Marlowe
Han Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
William R. Jankowiak
Hma’ Btsisi’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barbara S. Nowak
Hmong of Laos and the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dia Cha and Timothy Dunnigan
Hopi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice Schlegel
Hungarians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barbara A. West and Irén Annus
Iatmul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eric Kline Silverman
Ifugao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lynn M. Kwiatkowski
Igbo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Daniel Jordan Smith
Iranians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mary Elaine Hegland
Israelis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marilyn P. Safir and Amir Rosenmann
Italians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Victoria A. Goddard
Jamaica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
William Wedenoja and Diana Fox
Kayapo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
William H. Fisher
Kazakhs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Cynthia Werner
Kuna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
James Howe
356
364
371
380
389
400
408
417
425
433
443
452
465
475
487
498
508
518
530
540
551
561
572
581
xx
Contents
Kyrgyz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kathleen Kuehnast
Lahu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Shanshan Du
Maasai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Aud Talle
Manjako . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Margaret Buckner
Mardu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robert Tonkinson and Myrna Tonkinson
Marquesans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kathleen C. Riley
Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
John R. Sosa, Brian Montes, Melissa-Ann Yeager, and Emilio Paqcha Benites
Mehinako . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ulrike Prinz
Mexicans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Julia Pauli
Mormon Fundamentalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
William R. Jankowiak
Mountain Arapesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Paul Roscoe
Mundugumor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nancy McDowell
Na . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eileen Rose Walsh
Nahua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
James M. Taggart
Nandi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Regina Smith Oboler
Navajo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maureen Trudelle Schwarz
Nepali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mary M. Cameron
Northeast India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Susan C. Seymour
Orang Suku Laut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lioba Lenhart
Puerto Ricans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marysol Asencio
Rungus Dusun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
George N. Appell and Laura W. R. Appell
Sakha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Susan A. Crate
Samburu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bilinda Straight and Jon Holtzman
Samoans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jeannette Marie Mageo
592
600
608
617
625
635
645
652
661
670
680
688
697
708
716
725
733
741
750
760
770
779
790
798
Contents
xxi
Shipibo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Warren M. Hern
Shoshone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Richley H. Crapo
Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Susan Tax Freeman
Swat Pathan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Charles Lindholm
Swazi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Betty J. Harris
Taiwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Chien-Juh Gu and Rita S. Gallin
Taiwanese Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Christine Avenarius
Tanna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lamont Lindstrom
Tarahumara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Felice S. Wyndham
Tikopia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Judith Macdonald
Timpaus Banggai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Harald Beyer Broch
Tlingit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Laura F. Klein
Trobriands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Wulf Schiefenhövel
Tswana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Rebecca L. Upton
Ukrainians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sarah D. Phillips
Uzbeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marianne Ruth Kamp and Audrey C. Shalinsky
Waorani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pamela I. Erickson
West Indian Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oneka LaBennett
Yanomami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Gabriele Herzog-Schröder
Yapese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Richard A. Marksbury
Yupik Eskimos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carol Zane Jolles
Yuquí . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Allyn MacLean Stearman
Zapotec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lynn Stephen
806
816
823
833
841
848
858
868
877
885
893
903
912
922
930
939
947
956
967
976
985
997
1006
CULTURE NAME INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1017
SUBJECT INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1021
Glossary
1.5 generation. Immigrants who immigrated to the host country in the midst of their personal development, between
the ages of five and twelve; also called the “in-between generation.”
acculturation. The process of extensive borrowing of aspects of culture in the context of superordinate–subordinate
relations between societies; usually occurs as the result of external pressure.
adaptive trait. A trait that enhances survival and reproductive success in a particular environment. Usually applied
to biological evolution, the term is also often used by cultural anthropologists to refer to cultural traits that
enhance reproductive success.
affinal kin. One’s relatives by marriage.
age-grade. A category of persons who happen to fall within a particular, culturally distinguished age range.
age-mate. One of the persons of one’s own age-set or age-grade.
age-set. A group of persons of similar age and the same sex who move together through some or all of life’s stages.
agricultural societies. Societies that depend primarily on domesticated plants for subsistence; See Horticulture and
Intensive Agriculture for the major type of agriculture.
agropastoralism. A type of subsistence economy based largely on agriculture with the raising of domesticated
animals playing an important part.
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). A recent fatal disease caused by the HIV virus. A positive HIV
test result does not mean that a person has AIDS. A diagnosis of AIDS is made using certain clinical criteria
(e.g., AIDS indicator illnesses such as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, malignancies such as Kaposi’s sarcoma
and lymphoma).
ambilineal descent. The rule of descent that affiliates an individual with groups of kin related to him or her through
men or women.
ambilocal residence. See bilocal residence.
ancestor spirits. Supernatural beings who are the ghosts of dead relatives.
ancestor worship. Veneration or reverence of ancestor spirits; ancestor spirits may be called upon for help or may
be given sacrifices to have them refrain from harming the living.
animism. A term used by Edward Tylor to describe a belief in a dual existence for all things—a physical, visible
body and a psychic, invisible soul.
anthropology. A discipline that studies humans, focusing on the study of differences and similarities, both biological
and cultural, in human populations. Anthropology is concerned with typical biological and cultural characteristics
of human populations in all periods and in all parts of the world.
association. An organized group not based exclusively on kinship or territory.
avoidance relationship. A custom specifying that people in a particular kinship relationship (e.g., a man and his
mother-in-law) must refrain from interaction or show marked restraint with each other.
avunculocal residence. A pattern of residence in which a married couple settles with or near the husband’s mother’s
brother.
balanced reciprocity. Giving with the expectation of a straightforward immediate or limited-time trade.
band. A fairly small, usually nomadic local group that is politically autonomous.
barrio. A neighborhood in a city; used in Spanish-speaking countries.
behavioral ecology. The study of how all kinds of behavior may be related to the environment. The theoretical orientation involves the application of biological evolutionary principles to the behavior (including social behavior)
of animals, including humans. Also called sociobiology, particularly when applied to social organization and
social behavior.
berdache. A male transvestite in some Native American societies.
xxiii
xxiv
Glossary
Big Man. A male leader in a tribal society who has competed with others to attract followers.
Big Woman. A female leader in a tribal society who has competed with others to attract followers.
bilateral kinship. The type of kinship system in which individuals affiliate more or less equally with their mother’s
and father’s relatives; descent groups are absent.
bilingual. Using or knowing two languages.
bilocal residence. A pattern of residence in which a married couple lives with or near either the husband’s parents
or the wife’s parents.
biological (physical) anthropology. The study of humans as biological organisms, dealing with the emergence and
evolution of humans and with contemporary biological variations among human populations.
bride price. A substantial gift of goods or money given to the bride’s kin by the groom or his kin at or before the
marriage. Also called bride wealth.
bride service. Work performed by the groom for his bride’s family for a variable length of time either before or
after the marriage.
bridewealth. (or bride wealth). See bride price
cash crops. Crops grown primarily for sale.
caste. A ranked group, often associated with a certain occupation, in which membership is determined at birth and
marriage is restricted to members of one’s own caste.
chief. A person who exercises authority, usually on behalf of a multicommunity political unit. This role is generally
found in rank societies and is usually permanent and often hereditary.
chiefdom. A political unit, with a chief at its head, integrating more than one community but not necessarily the
whole society or language group.
circumcision. In males, a genital operation in which the fold of the skin covering the top of the penis is removed.
In females, a genital operation in which the fold covering the clitoris, or all or part of the clitoris, or parts of the
labia may be removed.
clan. A set of kin whose members believe themselves to be descended from a common ancestor or ancestress but
cannot specify the links back to that founder; often designated by a totem. Also called a sib.
clan exogamy. A rule specifying that a person must marry outside his/her clan.
class. A category of persons who have about the same opportunity to obtain economic resources, power, and prestige.
classificatory terms. Kinship terms that merge or equate relatives who are genealogically distinct from one another;
the same term is used for a number of different kin.
class society. A society containing social groups that have unequal access to economic resources, power, and
prestige.
cognates. Individuals who have the same parentage or descent.
cognatic kinship. In contrast to unilineal kinship systems (See unilineal descent) that allow transmission through
either the male or the female line, nonunilineal kinship systems allows any or all relatives to be included that can
be traced through both parents. The major forms are bilateral kinship and ambilineal descent. See bilateral
kinship and ambilineal descent.
colonialism. The control by one nation of a territory or people; the controlled territory may be referred to as a
colony.
concubinage. The custom of a socially recognized nonmarital sexual relationship between a man and a woman
(concubine) who has lower status than the wife.
commercialization. The increasing dependence on buying and selling, with money usually as the medium of
exchange.
compadrazgo. A fictive kinship relationship established primarily through baptism in which a child’s sponsor
becomes a “co-parent” and establishes a relationship with the child’s parents as well as with the child.
consanguineal kin. One’s biological relatives; relatives by birth.
couvade. The apparent experiencing of labor by a man during his wife’s pregnancy; in milder forms a man may
avoid certain types of work or rest during the pregnancy.
Glossary
xxv
crime. Violence not considered legitimate that occurs within a political unit.
cross-cousins. Children of siblings of the opposite sex. One’s cross-cousins are father’s sisters’ children and
mother’s brothers’ children.
cross-sex identification. The psychological identification with the opposite sex (e.g., a boy who wishes to be like
his mother).
cultural anthropology. The study of cultural variation and universals.
cultural ecology. The analysis of the relationship between a culture and its environment.
culture. The set of learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and ideals that are characteristic of a particular society
or population.
descriptive term. Kinship term used to refer to a genealogically distinct relative; a different term is used for each
relative.
descent rules. See rules of descent.
dialect. A variety of a language spoken in a particular area or by a particular social group.
diffusion. The borrowing by one society of a cultural trait belonging to another society as the result of contact
between the two societies.
diglossia. The widespread existence of two very different forms of the same language within the same society
spoken in different social contexts (e.g., formal versus informal) or by different groups of people (e.g., by varying
gender).
divination. Getting the supernatural to provide guidance.
domestic cycle. In many societies, the type of household changes in some regular way depending upon the demographics of the family. An example would be that a married son and his family must leave an extended family
household and set up an independent household when his children approach marriageable age.
double descent. A system that affiliates an individual with a group of matrilineal kin for some purposes and with
a group of patrilineal kin for other purposes. Also called double unilineal descent or dual descent.
dowry. A substantial transfer of goods or money from the bride’s family to the bride.
dual descent. See double descent.
egalitarian society. A society in which all persons of a given age–sex category have equal access to economic
resources, power, and prestige.
ego. In the reckoning of kinship, the reference point or focal person.
emic. From the perspective of the insider; often referring to the point of view of the society studied; contrast with
etic.
enculturation. See socialization.
endogamy. The rule specifying marriage to a person within one’s own group (kin, caste, community).
ethnicity. The process of defining ethnicity usually involves a group of people emphasizing common origins and
language, shared history, and selected aspects of cultural difference such as a difference in religion. Since
different groups are doing the perceiving, ethnic identities often vary with whether one is inside or outside the
group.
ethnic group. A social group perceived by insiders or outsiders to share a culture or a group that emphasizes its
cultural or social separateness.
ethnic stratification. A type of social stratification where different ethnic groups in a society have different access
to advantages.
ethnonym. An alternative name for a culture or ethnic group.
ethnocentric. Refers to judgment of other cultures solely in terms of one’s own culture.
ethnocentrism. The attitude that other societies’ customs and ideas can be judged in the context of one’s own
culture.
ethnographer. A person who spends some time living with, interviewing, and observing a group of people so that
he or she can describe their customs.
ethnography. A description of a society’s customary behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes.
xxvi
Glossary
ethnology. The study of how and why recent cultures differ and are similar.
ethos. The dominant assumptions or sentiments of a culture.
etic. From the perspective of the outsider; often refers to the way a researcher will classify something in the culture
studied based on her or his own scholarly perspective.
exogamy. The rule specifying marriage to a person from outside one’s own group (kin group or community).
explanation. An answer to a why question. In science, there are two kinds of explanation that researchers try to
achieve: associations (relationships between variables) and theories (sets of principles that predict associations).
extended family. A family consisting of two or more single-parent, monogamous, polygynous, or polyandrous
families linked by a blood tie.
extensive cultivation. A type of horticulture in which the land is worked for short periods and then left to regenerate
for some years before being used again. Also called shifting cultivation.
external warfare. Warfare that takes places with another society.
family. A social and economic unit consisting minimally of a parent and a child.
fecundity. The biological capacity to have offspring; fecundity varies by individual and also by population. May be
affected by breastfeeding, caloric intake, strenuous exercise among other factors.
female genital mutilation. Usually refers to a societally mandated genital operation that removes some part of the
female genitalia or alters the genitalia. See circumcision and infibulation.
feuding. A state of recurring hostility between families or groups of kin, usually motivated by a desire to avenge an
offense against a member of the group.
fieldwork. Firsthand experience with the people being studied and the usual means by which anthropological information is obtained. Regardless of other methods (e.g., censuses, surveys) that anthropologists may use, fieldwork
usually involves participant-observation for an extended period of time, often a year or more. See participantobservation.
first generation immigrants. Refers to the people who immigrated to the new country after their formative years
(e.g., after age 13) in the homeland country.
folklore. Includes all the myths, legends, folktales, ballads, riddles, proverbs, and superstitions of a cultural group.
Generally, folklore is transmitted orally, but it may also be written.
food collection. All forms of subsistence technology in which food-getting is dependent on naturally occurring
resources—wild plants and animals.
food production. The form of subsistence technology in which food-getting is dependent on the cultivation and
domestication of plants and animals.
foragers. People who subsist on the collection of naturally occurring plants and animals. Also referred to as huntergatherers.
fraternal polyandry. The marriage of a woman to two or more brothers at the same time.
gender. Two or more classes of persons who are believed to be different from each other; society has different roles
and expectations for different genders (most societies have two genders—male and female—but others have
more than two).
gender differences. Differences between females and males that reflect cultural expectations and experiences.
gender division of labor. Rules and customary patterns specifying which kinds of work the respective genders
perform.
gender roles. Roles that are culturally assigned to genders.
gender status. The importance, rights, power, and authority of a particular gender.
gender stratification. The degree of unequal access by the different genders to prestige, authority, power, rights,
and economic resources.
generalized reciprocity. Gift giving without any immediate or planned return.
genitor. The biological father.
genotype. The total complement of inherited traits or genes of an organism.
ghosts. Supernatural beings who were once human; the souls of dead people.
Glossary
xxvii
gods. Supernatural beings of nonhuman origin who are named personalities; often anthropomorphic.
grammatical gender. A set of two or more noun classes in a language which are either modified or are associated
with other forms that are modified to indicate the particular class to which the noun belongs (e.g., some languages
have feminine and masculine nouns).
group marriage. Marriage in which more than one man is married to more than one woman at the same time; not
customary in any known human society.
group selection. Natural selection of group characteristics.
headman. A person who holds a powerless but symbolically unifying position in a community within an egalitarian
society; may exercise influence but has no power to impose sanctions.
hectare. A unit of measurement equal to 10,000 square meters.
homosexuality. Defined broadly as sexual relationships between people of the same sex; however, cultures differ
widely in the ways they define and treat these relationships and the people who engage in them.
homosocial. Relates to social relationships between persons of the same sex.
horticulture. Plant cultivation carried out with relatively simple tools and methods; nature is allowed to replace
nutrients in the soil, in the absence of permanently cultivated fields.
hunter-gatherers. People who collect food from naturally occurring resources, that is, wild plants, animals, and fish.
The phrase “hunter-gatherers” minimizes sometimes heavy dependence on fishing. Also referred to as foragers.
hypotheses. Predictions, which may be derived from theories, about how variables are related.
incest taboo. Prohibition of sexual intercourse or marriage between mother and son, father and daughter, and
brother and sister.
indirect dowry. Goods given by the groom’s kin to the bride (or her father, who passes most of them to her) at or
before her marriage.
individual selection. Natural selection of individual characteristics.
infibulation. Female genital surgery that involves stitching together the vulva leaving only a small opening for the
passage of urine and menstrual blood. Usually done following circumcision. See circumcision.
initiation rites. A ceremony that marks the entry of a person into a group or marks the individual’s passage into a
new status (e.g., boyhood to manhood). Male initiation rites are often group initiations involving some trauma
(e.g., hazing, tests of manliness, genital surgery); female initiation rites are usually more individual and less
painful.
intensive agriculture. Food production characterized by the permanent cultivation of fields and made possible by
the use of the plow, draft animals or machines, fertilizers, irrigation, water-storage techniques, and other complex agricultural techniques.
internal warfare. Warfare within the society.
joint family. A type of extended family with at least two married siblings in the same generation; can also contain
parents.
junior levirate. A form of levirate whereby a man’s younger brother is obliged to marry his widow.
kindred. A bilateral set of close relatives.
levirate. A custom whereby a man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow. See junior levirate.
lineage. A set of kin whose members trace descent from a common ancestor through known links.
longhouse. A multifamily dwelling with a rectilinear floorplan.
machismo. A strong or exaggerated sense of manliness.
magic. The performance of certain rituals that are believed to compel the supernatural powers to act in particular
ways.
maidenhood. The customary period of time from the onset of puberty to marriage.
mana. A supernatural, impersonal force that inhabits certain objects or people and is believed to confer success
and/or strength.
market (or commercial) exchange. Transactions in which the “prices” are subject to supply and demand, whether
or not the transactions occur in a marketplace.
xxviii
Glossary
marriage. A socially approved sexual and economic union usually between a man and a woman that is presumed
by both the couple and others to be more or less permanent, and that subsumes reciprocal rights and obligations
between the two spouses and between spouses and their future children.
matriarchy. A old general term for the disproportionate holding of power or authority by females; since there are
many domains of authority and power, anthropologists now generally identify more specific institutions or customs such as the presence of matrilineal descent, matrilocal residence, the proportion of leaders or heads of
household that are female, inheritance by females, etc.
matriclan. A clan tracing descent through the female line.
matrifocal family. A female-centered or female-dominated family consisting minimally of a mother and her children.
matrilateral. Pertaining to the mother’s side of the family, as in matrilateral cross-cousins or matrilateral parallel
cousins.
matrilineage. A kin group whose members trace descent through known links in the female line from a common
female ancestor.
matrilineal descent. The rule of descent that affiliates an individual with kin of both sexes related to him or her
through women only.
matrilocal residence. A pattern of residence in which a married couple lives with or near the wife’s parents. Often
referred to as uxorilocal residence in the absence of matrilineal descent.
mediation. The process by which a third party tries to bring about a settlement in the absence of formal authority
to force a settlement.
medium. Religious practitioner (usually part-time) who is asked to heal, divine, and communicate with spirits while
in a trance.
men’s house. A separate building in a community where men commonly sleep and/or spend much of their free time.
menstrual seclusion. A mandated time that women must avoid all or some others (e.g., men) during their menstruation. Seclusion is often in a special menstrual hut or house.
menstrual taboos. Proscriptions about what women may or may not do during menstruation (e.g., must stay in a
menstrual hut or avoid cooking for others); rules may also apply to men (e.g., they not have sex with their wives
during menstruation).
mestizo. A person of mixed European and Native American heritage; this term is usually used in Latin America.
moiety. A unilineal descent group in a society that is divided into two such maximal groups; there may be smaller
unilineal descent groups as well.
monogamy. Marriage between only one man and only one woman at a time.
monolingual. Using or knowing one language.
monotheism. The belief that there is only one high god and that all other supernatural beings are subordinate to, or
are alternative manifestations of, this supreme being.
natal home. The place where a person was born and (usually) grew up.
natural selection. The outcome of processes that affect the frequencies of traits in a particular environment. Traits
that enhance survival and reproductive success increase in frequency over time.
negotiation. The process by which the parties to a dispute try to resolve it themselves.
neolocal residence. A pattern of residence whereby a married couple lives separately, and usually at some distance,
from the kin of both spouses.
nonfraternal polyandry. Marriage of a woman to two or more men who are not brothers.
nonsororal polygyny. Marriage of a man to two or more women who are not sisters.
norms. Standards or rules about acceptable behavior in a society. The importance of a norm usually can be judged
by how members of a society respond when the norm is violated.
nuclear family. A family consisting of a married couple and their young children.
oath. The act of calling upon a deity to bear witness to the truth of what one says.
ordeal. A means of determining guilt or innocence by submitting the accused to dangerous or painful tests believed
to be under supernatural control.
Glossary
xxix
paradigm. A general concept or model accepted by an intellectual community as a effective way of explaining phenomena
parallel cousins. Children of siblings of the same sex. One’s parallel cousins are father’s brothers’ children and
mother’s sisters’ children.
paramount chiefdom. A chiefdom that has a chief of chiefs who integrates a number of chiefdoms into a larger unit.
participant-observation. Living among the people being studied—observing, questioning, and (when possible)
taking part in the important events of the group. Includes writing or otherwise recording notes on observations,
questions asked and answered, and things to check out later.
pastoralism. A form of subsistence technology in which food-getting is based directly or indirectly on the maintenance
of domesticated animals.
pater. The socially defined father. Compare with genitor.
patriarchy. An old general term for the disproportionate holding of power or authority by males; since there are
many domains of authority and power, anthropologists generally identify more specific institutions or customs
such as the presence of patrilineal descent, patrilocal residence, the proportion of leaders that are male, inheritance by males, etc.
patriclan. A clan tracing descent through the male line.
patrifocal family. A male-centered or male-dominated family.
patrilateral. Pertaining to the father’s side of the family, as in patrilateral cross-cousin or patrilateral parallel
cousin marriage.
patrilineage. A kin group whose members trace descent through known links in the male line from a common male
ancestor.
patrilineal descent. The rule of descent that affiliates an individual with kin of both sexes related to him or her
through men only.
patrilocal residence. A pattern of residence in which a married couple lives with or near the husband’s parents.
Often referred to as virilocal residence in the absence of patrilineal descent.
peasants. Rural people who produce food for their own subsistence but who must also contribute or sell their
surpluses to others (in towns and cities) who do not produce their own food.
personality. The distinctive way an individual thinks, feels, and behaves.
phratry. A unilineal descent group composed of a number of supposedly related clans (sibs).
physical (biological) anthropology. See biological (physical) anthropology.
political economy. The study of how external forces, particularly powerful state societies, explain the way a society
changes and adapts.
polyandry. The marriage of one woman to more than one man at a time.
polygamy. Plural marriage; marriage to more than one spouse simultaneously.
polygyny. The marriage of one man to more than one woman at a time.
polytheistic. Recognizing many gods, none of whom is believed to be superordinate.
postmarital residence rules. Rules that specify where a couple should live after they marry. See avunculocal
residence, bilocal residence, matrilocal residence, neolocal residence and patrilocal residence.
postpartum. After birth.
postpartum abstinence or postpartum sex taboo. Prohibition of sexual intercourse between a couple for a period
of time after the birth of their child.
postpartum amenorrhea. The suppression of ovulation (and menses) after the birth of a baby.
potlatch. A feast among Pacific Northwest Native Americans at which great quantities of food and goods are given
to the guests in order to gain prestige for the host(s).
prehistory. The time before written records.
prestation. Anything (material things, services, entertainment) given freely or in obligation as a gift or in exchange.
priest. Generally a full-time specialist, with very high status, who is thought to be able to relate to superior or high
gods beyond the ordinary person’s access or control. A woman priest may be referred to as a priestess.
xxx
Glossary
primate. A member of the mammalian order Primates, divided into the two suborders of Prosimians and
Anthropoids.
primatologists. Persons who study primates.
primogeniture. The rule or custom by which the first-born inherits all or most of property or titles.
psychosomatic. Referring to a physical disorder or symptom that is influenced by the mind or emotional factors.
race. In biology, race refers to a subpopulation or variety of a species that differs somewhat in gene frequencies
from other varieties of the species. All members of a species can interbreed and produce viable offspring. Many
anthropologists do not think that the concept of “race” is usefully applied to humans because humans do not fall
into geographic populations that can be easily distinguished in terms of different sets of biological or physical
traits. Thus, “race” in humans is largely a culturally assigned category.
racism. The belief that some “races” are inferior to others.
raiding. A short-term use of force, generally planned and organized, to realize a limited objective.
rank society. A society that does not have social groups with unequal access to economic resources or power, but
has social groups with unequal access to status positions and prestige.
reciprocity. Giving and taking (not politically arranged) without the use of money.
redistribution. The accumulation of goods (or labor) by a particular person or in a particular place and their
subsequent distribution.
religion. Any set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices pertaining to supernatural power, whether that power rests in
forces, gods, spirits, ghosts, or demons.
reverse migration. The movement of immigrants back to their homeland.
revitalization movement. A religious movement intended to save a culture by infusing it with a new purpose and
life.
rite. A ceremonial act or series of actions.
rite of passage. A ritual associated with a change of status; See initiation rites.
ritual. A ceremony, usually formal, with a prescribed or customary form.
ritual defloration. A rite, usually following a marriage, in which a woman’s hymen is ruptured; usually occurs as
part of the consummation of marriage.
rotating credit associations. A mutual aid society in which members agree to make regular contributions for the
purpose of giving lump sums to individuals members to do something significant. Lump-sum distributions are
rotated among the members.
rules of descent. Rules that connect individuals with particular sets of kin because of known or presumed common
ancestry.
second generation immigrants. Children of first generation immigrants; usually refers to the children born in the
host country, but it may also include those born elsewhere who arrived before the age of 5 and spent their formative years in the host country. See 1.5 generation of immigrants.
section. A group of kin related to one another by both matrilineal and patrilineal principles; excluded are those
related by only one principle as well as those not related by either principle. Associated with moieties and moiety exogamy.
segmentary lineage system. A hierarchy of more and more inclusive lineages; usually functions only in conflict
situations.
sex differences. The typical differences between females and males which are most likely due to biological
differences.
sexual division of labor. See gender division of labor.
sexually dimorphic. Refers to a species in which males differ markedly from females in size and appearance.
shaman. A religious intermediary, usually part time, whose primary function is to cure people through sacred songs,
pantomime, and other means; sometimes called witch doctor by Westerners.
Shamanism. A religion characterized by the importance of the shaman as the intermediary between people and their
gods and spirits.
Glossary
xxxi
shifting cultivation. See extensive cultivation.
sib. See clan.
siblings. A person’s brothers or sisters.
slash-and-burn. A form of shifting cultivation in which the natural vegetation is cut down and burned off. The
cleared ground is used for a short time and then left to regenerate.
slaves. A class of persons who do not own their own labor or the products thereof.
socialization. a term used to describe the development, through the direct and indirect influence of parents and
others, of children’s patterns of behavior (and attitudes and values) that conform to cultural expectations.
social stratification. The presence of unequal access to important advantages depending on the social group to
which one belongs. See class and caste.
society. A group of people who occupy a particular territory and speak a common language not generally understood by neighboring peoples. By this definition, societies do not necessarily correspond to nations.
sociology. A discipline that focuses on understanding social relations, social groups, and social institutions. Usually
focuses on complex societies.
sociobiology. See behavioral ecology.
sorcery. The use of certain materials to invoke supernatural powers to harm people.
sororal polygyny. The marriage of a man to two or more sisters at the same time.
sororate. A custom whereby a woman is obliged to marry her deceased sister’s husband.
spirits. Unnamed supernatural beings of nonhuman origin who are beneath the gods in prestige and often closer to
the people; may be helpful, mischievous, or evil.
state. A political unit with centralized decision making affecting a large population. Most states have cities with
public buildings; full-time craft and religious specialists; an “official” art style; a hierarchical social structure
topped by an elite class; and a governmental monopoly on the legitimate use of force to implement policies.
statistically significant. Refers to a result that would occur very rarely by chance. The result (and stronger ones)
would occur fewer than 5 times out of 100 by chance.
stereotype. A mental picture or attitude that is an oversimplified opinion or a prejudiced attitude.
structuralism. A theoretical orientation that looks for the underlying structure in a society’s culture, social institutions, or social relationships.
subculture. The shared customs of a subgroup within a society.
sublineage. A smaller division of a lineage; when the core members (e.g., males in a patrilineal system) live together
in the same locality, they will be referred to as a localized sublineage.
subsistence economy. An economy relying principally on food that its people collect or produce for themselves.
subsistence patterns. The methods humans use to procure food.
supernatural. Believed to be not human or not subject to the laws of nature.
supernumerary. Extra or more than the usual.
swidden. The name used for a plot under extensive cultivation. See extensive cultivation.
syncretism. The combination of different forms of belief or practice; usually refers to the blending of elements from
different religions as a result of contact.
taboo (tabu). A prohibition that, if violated, is believed to bring supernatural punishment.
theories. Explanations of associations.
time allocation study. A study that systematically measures the time that people spend in various activities.
tomboy. A girl who behaves in ways that are usually considered boyish.
totem. A plant or animal associated with a clan (sib) as a means of group identification; may have other special
significance for the group.
transnationalism. A broad term referring to the extension of activities beyond national boundaries. Economic and
political relationships today are often transnational. With respect to migration, there is today an enormous movement of people back and forth between national boundaries who often maintain ties with both their host and
homeland communities and with others in a global community.
xxxii
Glossary
tribal organization. The kind of political organization in which local communities mostly act autonomously but
there are kin groups (such as clans) or associations (such as age-sets) that can temporarily integrate a number of
local groups into a larger unit.
tribe. A territorial population in which there are kin or nonkin groups with representatives in a number of local
groups.
unilineal descent. Affiliation with a group of kin through descent links of one sex only.
unilocal residence. A pattern of residence (patrilocal, matrilocal, or avunculocal) that specifies just one set of
relatives that the married couple lives with or near.
unisex association. An association that restricts its membership to one sex, usually male.
urbanization. The process of become urbanized
usufruct. The right to use land or other property.
uxorilocal residence. See matrilocal residence.
variable. A thing or quantity that varies.
virilocal residence. See patrilocal residence.
warfare. Violence between political entities such as communities, districts, or nations.
warrior society. An association, usually voluntary, that unites members through their common experience as
warriors; warrior or military societies were common among North American Plains Indians.
witchcraft. The practice of attempting to harm people by supernatural means, but through emotions and thought
alone, not through the use of tangible objects.
woman–woman marriage. A type of marriage in which a woman takes on the legal and social roles of a father and
husband. The marriage partner, a younger woman, has children with a male chosen by the female husband. The
female husband is considered the father.
Cultural Conceptions of Gender
Cultural Constructions of Gender
Edwin S. Segal
culturally mediated, sex. “Gender” is taken to refer to a
culturally based complex of norms, values, and behaviors
that a particular culture assigns to one biological sex or
another. Where sex and gender are lodged largely in the
matrix of a culture’s norms, values, and beliefs, “sexuality” is taken here as referring to a more individualized
concept. Sexuality is used here to refer to the ways in
which individuals structure their sexual and gender
performances, and the partners toward whom they direct
their behavior and emotional attachments. As Lorber
(1994) notes, these are not really completely separate
and we are better off thinking in terms of a sex–
gender–sexuality system.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th
century a considerable amount of ethnographic data
regarding cultural variations in concepts of sex and gender were collected. The data included a variety of casual
mentions, some detailed case-oriented studies, and compilations of data. However, most of these were cast within
an ethnocentric paradigm focused on psychosocial anomalies or presumed pathologies. The major exception was
the collection by Ford and Beach (1951) dealing with
variations in human sexual behavior, looking to develop
a sense of patterning. A little more than 20 years later,
Martin and Voorhies (1975) coined the term “supernumerary sexes” in an effort to make sense out of the data
that then existed. They meant this term to refer to cultural
categories that did not fit the Western European and
North American bipolar paradigms.
Although a great deal of ethnographic data regarding
cultural variations in conceptualizing sex and gender had
been collected throughout the 19th century and the first
half of the 20th, it was not until the mid-1970s that the
degree of patterning and variability was recognized as an
ordinary part of the range of human behavior. It is not as
easy to pinpoint the earliest use of “gender” as a part of
the social science vocabulary regarding human sexuality.
At this point in time, three terms have come into
common use: sex, gender, and sexuality. There are a variety of definitions of each, so, in order to provide a common ground for readers, this article uses the following
conceptualizations. “Sex” is taken to refer primarily to
biological characteristics. In that sense human beings
everywhere have only two sexes, except for a few rarely
occurring genetic or hormonal anomalies, a few of which
are clearly understood, a few of whom are not. However,
every culture also contains a set of norms describing the
“proper” use of sexual physiology. For example, who
constitute appropriate sexual partners, when sexual activity should take place, or what sorts of clothing are sexually provocative and which are not. From this point of
view we can talk of both biological sex and cultural, or
INTERSEXUALITY
Human biology is everywhere the same, and follows the
basic mammalian sexual pattern. There are, of course, a
variety of genetic and hormonal anomalies which occasionally occur. Examination of the ways in which different cultures deal with these helps make the case for
understanding gender, and, to some extent, cultural sex,
as culturally constructed in ways that are not dependent
on biological realities. One anomaly, the birth of a child
with external genitalia that are not clearly male or female,
usually referred to as intersexuality, illustrates that the
variation is along the lines of social and cultural location.
The Pokot, living in Kenya, respond to intersexed
individuals as an extremely unfortunate occurrence, and
frequently resort to infanticide (Edgerton, 1964). The
Navajo classify such individuals as belonging to a third
category that is neither masculine nor feminine (Hill,
1935). Most segments of middle class U.S. culture tend
to see such people as “mistakes of nature” and seek to
correct the “error.” For the Pokot, there is no cultural
place for those they call sererr, and those few who
survive live on the margins of the society. U.S. cultures
also have no place for intersexed individuals, but try to
fit them into one of the two normatively accepted
categories.
3
4
Although both the middle-class United States and
the Pokot can be said to have a bipolar view of sex and
gender, the conceptualizations are still very different. For
the Pokot, only those with the normatively appropriate
morphological structures can be transformed into gendered children. For the United States, a surgical transformation renders biologically anomalous individuals fit for
the social and cultural transformation that will occur.
Ultimately, in every culture there is a process by which
genderless neonates are transformed into gendered children (or adults-in-training).
Recently, at least in North America and Western
Europe, people who see themselves as transsexual or
transgendered have been agitating for an end to the
assumption that biologically intersexed people suffer
from a malady. They have also urged an end to automatic
consideration of sex reassignment surgery. Their vision is
of North American macroculture as it might be. However,
it is still the case that the most frequent occurrence is to
view children born with ambiguous genital structures as
needing treatment so that they can fit into one of the two
culturally accepted poles.
BIPOLAR CONSTRUCTS
The cultural worlds of North America and Western Europe
organize their varied understandings of sex–gender–
sexuality systems around a set of intersecting dichotomous pairs: masculine–feminine and homosexual
(forbidden)–heterosexual (permitted). This paradigm then
constrains and directs understandings of sexual behavior,
sexualized behavior, and their association with nonsexual
aspects of social and cultural life. When preadolescent
North American boys avoid some activities or modes of
behavior because they are said to be “girlish,” or when
preadolescent girls are harassed for engaging in activities
said to be “boyish,” we are witnessing something more
than socialization for a culture’s sexual division of labor.
In most of this culture area division of labor is not
strongly marked in detail, but it is strongly marked in
terms of the diffusely defined general categories of public and private or household and outside. To the extent
that the household domain is defined as feminine space
and is also associated with motherhood, childcare, and
wife roles, it becomes partially sexualized. The result is a
cultural constraint on the breadth of role and status
variation open to men. Men who are good household
Cultural Constructions of Gender
managers and involved parents are often thought of as
disturbingly feminine. Similarly, to the extent that the
“outside” is defined as masculine space and is also associated with excelling in nonhousehold tasks and with husband and economic support roles, it too becomes partially
sexualized, resulting in constraints on the breadth of role
and status variation open to women. Women who are
good income earners or highly trained professionals are
frequently seen as disturbingly masculine.
To be sure, there are cultures outside the boundaries
of the Western world that are also traditionally organized
around a variation on the bipolar theme. It is also the case
that every culture makes some distinction between the
positions of women and men. The important point here
is the Western association of role transcendence with
flawed and improper sexuality.
VARIATION
IN
GENDER CONSTRUCTS
The accumulation of ethnographic data indicates that
some cultures have developed gender paradigms going
beyond the Western conceptualization of two gender
poles. The existence of more than two gender poles does
not mean that both people with the morphological
characteristics of men and those with the morphological
characteristics of women necessarily have available more
than one gender pole. Many multipolar cultures deal with
morphological men and morphological women differently. The general case is that morphological men are
more likely to be seen as possibly fitting into more than
one named institutionalized position with a distinct gender construction, and that morphological women are more
likely to be seen as falling along a continuum of variations, all of which are considered womanly and feminine.
The classic instance is the difference between the
manly hearted women among the Mandan and other
Plains Indians and the berdache, or two spirit people, also
on the North American plains (Williams, 1992). While
morphological men might, as the result of a vision quest
or other spirit visitation, occupy the separate berdache
social position, manly hearted women were still women,
and sometimes valued even more highly than “ordinary”
women. At least in this instance, morphological women
did not cease being sociological women, while morphological men might cease being sociological men.
At the same time, it is also important to note that
some cultures (e.g., the Mohave in North America and the
Variation in Gender Constructs
Chuckchee in Siberia) did have parallel institutional
structures for women and men. Similarly, in a few North
American Plains cultures, some women did, on their own
initiative, assume roles comparable to male berdache.
On a cross-cultural level, it was most often the case that
female gender variations were individualized and male
variations were institutionalized.
In general, gender, as constructed in particular cultures, consists of both signifying elements and performance elements. A person assumes the signifying elements
(e.g., clothing or hair style) and exhibits the performance
elements. While biological sex is something a person has,
regardless of behavior, gender is seen only when it is performed or signaled.
The existing ethnographic literature documents four
different forms of gender variation.
1. Some societies construct gender so as to contain distinct
categories that are neither masculine nor feminine.
2. Some societies construct gender in ways that are bipolar, but in
which the boundaries are markedly different from those
common in Western Europe and North America.
3. Some societies construct gender so that, while the basic pattern
is bipolar, people with one set of biological characteristics are
able, under specific circumstances, to step outside of the
society’s ordinary construct and enter the other construct.
4. A residual category—instances that do not quite fit our neatly
created typology. This category is necessary to highlight the
purely heuristic nature of the other three and to avoid sterile
typological debates and arguments.
In all instances, there is an initial transformation from
genderless to gendered. But in two of these there is a distinct transformational process that takes place after the
initial one has begun. For example, although physiologically intersexed individuals are recognizable at birth, and
the Navajo place them in a third category, nadle, the
Navajo also recognize a group of people they call “those
who pretend to be (or play the part of) nadle” (Hill,
1935). These individuals come to their status after having
begun socialization as masculine or feminine.
Neither Masculine nor Feminine
Here we can place the berdache as found in some cultures
on the North American Plains. The term berdache has a
history reflecting its Eurocentric origins and the ethnocentrism of most 17th, 18th, and 19th century European
and European American observers of Native American
cultures. The term “two spirit” is assuming greater
5
currency among Native Americans. Two spirit comes
closer to reflecting cultural realities than does berdache.
In all the ethnographic instances cited by Williams
(1992), a young, usually preadolescent, boy would set out
on a vision quest, seeking a relationship with a spirit being
who would then help him determine and strive for his
future life. Once he had the vision, he would return to his
group and someone skilled in such matters would interpret
his vision for him. For some, their vision was interpreted
as indicating the two-spirit status. In the traditional world
of late 19th century Plains life, they would then wear
women’s clothes and engage in the daily activities of ordinary women. But they also had unique roles in instances
of weddings, childbirth, child naming, and warfare.
In the contemporary world, the situation is rather
different. By the late 20th century, the position of the
berdache had been heavily overlaid with Western
sex–gender–sexuality constructs. One Lakota berdache
describing his position (Bradley & Phillips, 1991) wears
contemporary men’s clothing rather than the traditional
women’s clothing. He also speaks to the contemporary
rarity of berdache, implies an absence of clearly defined
role, and does not mention any sort of vision quest.
Although to some extent these changes are illustrative of
the effects of westernization, they are also a testament to
the resilience of traditional patterns in the face of disvaluing culturally foreign pressures. Berdache were, and
apparently still are, seen as neither men nor women, or
possibly sociologically both. The two-spirit designation
reflects the first spirit of the child’s birth as well as the
second spirit of the child’s vision, or other contemporary
realization about who he is.
There are other instances of cultures containing
sex–gender–sexuality categories that do not fit within the
constraints of bipolar paradigms, and many of them also do
not fit the two-spirit model. At the time of writing, no clear
count has yet been done. However, as will be seen below,
the categories created by a particular culture under particular sociocultural conditions are not necessarily fixed and
unchangeable. A rough sense of the magnitude of variations may be possible, but not a definitive count.
Nonwestern Bipolar Constructs
Among the classic instances of cultures whose sex–
gender–sexuality systems are bipolar, but do not fit
Western models of such organization, are those documented more than 70 years ago by Margaret Mead (1950).
6
In those instances, Mead was most concerned with aspects
of behavior other than the sexual, and in that very concern
was able to document the ways in which gender was
separately constructed and not necessarily causally tied to
biological sex. Each of the three cultures she describes
assigns a different emotional–behavioral complex to
women and to men. Some of those complexes mirror
Western constructs and some do not.
Since all cultures contain at least masculine and
feminine categories, it is probably also the case that none
of those definitions completely matches contemporary
Western categories. For example, Maasai in Kenya and
Tanzania, or Wodaabi Fulani in the Sahel, are peoples
with bipolar gender constructs. But when it comes to cultural definitions of masculine dress, jewelry, or decoration, they are very different from the business suit, wrist
watch, and ring model of the Western world.
Transcendent Gender
The peoples falling into this category pose significant
theoretical questions about the strength of cultural linkages between gender constructs and biological sex. Smith
Oboler’s (1980) description of marriage between two
women among the Nandi explicitly explores this ground
(see also the chapter on the Nandi in this encyclopedia).
Her conclusion is that some aspects of male behavior and
privileges are lightly tied to concepts of masculinity, so
that it is possible for a woman to become husband to
another woman, and in so doing be able to own land and
other masculine property, as well as found her own patrilineage. Unfortunately, she provides no direct material
regarding sexuality.
Similarly, among some groups of Igbo (Amadiume,
1987) it is possible for a woman to engage in a variety of
behaviors, including marrying another woman or taking
a male position in some rituals or legal proceedings, and
not lose her sociological position as a woman. In all of
these cases, the dominant factor is that women in a bipolar culture are able to transcend the normative boundaries
of womanhood, and in so doing gain prestige and privilege in the society but do not lose a culturally defined
essential femininity.
Other Conceptions
The Chuckchee of northern Siberia, as they were at the
beginning of the 20th century (Bogoras, 1909), represent
Cultural Constructions of Gender
one documented instance in which the potential for gender change is restricted to a small segment of the population. In this particular case the option was available only
to those who found themselves thrust into the role of
shaman. Chuckchee shamans are largely healers, and
usually come to that position through recovery from a
serious illness. Shamans can be either women or men,
and on their recovery acquire a spouse in the world of
spirits (kelet). Occasionally, the kelet spouse for a female
shaman will be female, or for a male shaman, male.
Under these circumstances, the Chuckchee claimed that
the shaman had begun a process of changing sex that
would culminate in an actual change in external genitalia.
The shaman’s human spouses would mirror the kelet
spouse’s gender. By the 1960s, the process of sovietization seems to have been thorough enough to wipe out
shamanism. Levin and Potapov’s (1964) discussion of the
peoples of Siberia makes no mention of shamanism
among any of them. The possible resurgence of the institution since the collapse of the Soviet Union is unknown.
Transformations
The Chuckchee represent an instance in which some sort
of gender transformation is said to occur. Generally, we
can think in terms of three axes of post-childhood gender
transformation. One is of a temporary sort: a person takes
on different gender characteristics for a short period of
time, and then returns to the initial gender stance. The
most common example of this phenomenon is the
practice referred to by the term couvade. Most commonly found among peoples in the Amazon basin
(Gregor, 1985), the couvade is also found in Melanesia
(Blackwood, 1935; Meigs, 1976). In general, during
some portion, or all, of his spouse’s pregnancy and childbirth, a man takes on some aspects of the woman’s behavioral complex. This may range from observing the same
food regulations to taking to his bed and experiencing the
pains of childbirth, or observing restrictions on sexual
activity. Sometimes, the couvade lasts until the child is
weaned.
This particular institution has been thoroughly
researched, and a variety of psychogenic or sociogenic
hypotheses have been tested (Munroe, Munroe, &
Whiting, 1981, pp. 611–632). Those hypotheses revolving around cultural establishment of a secure masculine
identity have been most convincingly supported. The
interesting aspect of that explanation here is that in
Variation in Gender Constructs
societies practicing couvade, secure masculine identity is
anchored by a temporary gender transformation.
Not quite as common, but hardly rare, are various
forms of gender transgression. Murray (2000), Bullough
(1976), and many other writers have noted that rituals
of license, such as carnival or Mardi Gras, or rituals of
rebellion (cf. Gluckman, 1956) often provide room for
transgressing sexual and gender norms. Murray is one
of several writers who see this as an acceptance of
homosexuality but, as Gluckman points out, it can be just
the opposite, in that the rituals permit, for a brief time,
that which is generally forbidden. Regardless, a person
engaging in a ritual of this sort does seem to temporarily
change gender. The same can be said of female impersonators, whether in Shakespeare’s plays, the film Victor
Victoria, or a contemporary stage act.
A second form of gender transformation is relatively
rare. In the course of an ordinary life cycle a person
moves from one gender status to another. Among the
Gabra in Kenya and Ethiopia, men, as they age, pass
through a period in which they are said to be women
(Wood, 1996, 1999). In a slightly different vein, Turnbull
(1986) argues that the Mbuti in the Ituri Rainforest region
of the Democratic Republic of Congo are genderless until
they marry; that is, they pass through childhood without
a distinct gender identity and are transformed only later.
The third form of gender transformation is a more or
less permanent second transformation. Wikan (1977,
1982) indicates that those whom she calls xanith sometimes choose to become xanith and then later choose to
stop being xanith. A similar phenomenon has also been
reported for people in the Society Islands (Elliston,
1999). This third form is the abstract category, containing
examples from every continent, of people fitting particular gender statuses unknown in the gender constructions
of Western cultures. This is also the category containing
instances such as shamans among the Chuckchee, who
may undergo a transformation from male to female or
female to male (Bogoras, 1909), as well as those being
referred to when people talk of a “third gender.”
In the world at the end of the 20th and the beginning
of the 21st century, globalization, and its concomitant
spread of Western European and North American economic, political, and cultural hegemony, has led, in some
areas, to adoption of new sex–gender–sexuality paradigms. Donham (1998), in his discussion of African male
sexuality in the Republic of South Africa, notes the prevalence of cross-dressing and cross-role-taking behavior
7
among those who define themselves as gay. He also notes
the general perception that gay men were not seen as
either women or men, but as occupying a position in
between—a “third sex.”
Donham is describing aspects of South African
sex–gender–sexuality systems in the early 1990s. He
notes that at that time “gay” was not the commonly used
term. Rather, the commonly used term was stabane, literally hermaphrodite, reflecting ambiguity about the sex
or gender of the person being referred to. Also important
here is Donham’s note that stabane only referred to the
“effeminate” partner in a male same-sex relationship. The
implication is that two stabane did not have relations with
each other. Although Donham is silent on the point, at the
most this points to stabane as truly occupying a third category, and at the least it points to a very different cultural
construction of homosexuality.
Prior to 1994, much of township sexuality in South
Africa was conditioned by the strictures imposed by
apartheid. We tend to think of that system as being largely
a “simple” matter of racial segregation, but it was more.
It focused on population control and the provision of
cheap industrial labor, particularly in extractive industries. The male labor force was then housed in single-sex
hostels. Although stabane may have been the appropriate
term, and it may have had both connotations and denotations very different from Western concepts of sexuality,
the distortions produced by apartheid obscured these
differences, reducing them to little more than a variant of
female impersonation and a specifically subordinate sexual role. However, Donham’s analysis adds one other
complication of theoretical significance. Although
many people in the township, especially strangers, took
gay people to be some sort of biologically mixed third
sex, the people themselves did not seem to do so.
This phenomenon brings up the importance of the
distinction between the cultural insider’s view (emic) and
the external observer’s view (etic). Donham’s analysis
presents two emic constructions of the same sociocultural facts. In one, there is a sex–gender category beyond
what we usually think of as the ordinary two, and in the
other there is not.
The collapse of apartheid has led (or will lead) to
changes in the cultural constructions of a local sex–
gender–sexuality system, especially to the extent that the
system of single-sex hostels disappears. Although he provides some caveats, Donham tends to see the process as a
variety of “modernization” matching the “modernization”
8
of the sociocultural system that was apartheid. Given the
artificial constraints created by apartheid, there is some
justification in this approach. However, considering a
bipolar homosexual–heterosexual paradigm as more modern than other paradigms tends to obscure the range of
human variation. It also tends to gloss over the two
discrepant views of sex–sexuality variations he describes.
In a more “modern” context, similar discrepancies are
reported by Kulick (1998) among travestis in Brazil.
Only Two Genders or More?
Murray (2000) tries to subsume all nonstandard nonheterosexual relationships under a model of three different types of homosexuality. The result is a shift of focus
from sociocultural gender constructs to culturally mediated sexual activity. His entire book, which contains a
wealth of carefully considered ethnographic material, is
largely male oriented and organized around cultural definitions of who takes dominant or receptive positions.
While some of his data fit that construct, his model, which
denies the possibility of gender constructs beyond masculine and feminine, cannot deal with instances such as that
noted by Jacobs and Cromwell (1992), while exploring
the cultural construction of kwidó, a Tewa “third-gender”
category, one of those positions that Williams (1992)
would include under the general term berdache.
In the course of her fieldwork, Jacobs was told that
a person could be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or
trisexual. From the perspective of one of her male informants, homosexual meant that he had sex with other sociological men. Heterosexual meant that he had sex with
sociological women, bisexual meant that he would have
sex with either men or women, and trisexual would mean
that he would have sex with men, women or kwidó. The
logic of these statements is that someone, man or woman,
who has sex with a kwidó is behaving in a heterosexual
manner, even though kwidó are morphologically male.
A three- or four-gender system creates a more
complex set of gender-based relationships than are
contemplated by a system derived from Northern
European and North American constructs. One of the
complexities is the question of different emic understandings of a phenomenon (Segal, 1997). The problem
is clearly marked by Jacobs and Cromwell’s material
from the Tewa. In this case, Jacobs’ informant explained
that the kwidó was not “gay,” despite the fact that some
people called him that. Rather, the kwidó was made so by
Cultural Constructions of Gender
“spiritual powers.” In addition, other informants, elders,
informed Jacobs that proper socialization for kwidó
included raising them “to be who they are” aided by the
knowledge and experience of an adult kwidó (Jacobs and
Cromwell, 1992, p. 56).
The Tewa in the southwestern United States are not
the only people among whom more than one emic understanding of sex–gender–sexuality phenomena can be
found. A strong case can be made for similar variation in
the Society Islands, including Tahiti. In that setting, the
person occupying a nonmasculine nonfeminine gender
position is termed a mahu, and is often morphologically
male. The data from Tahiti and the other Society Islands
also raise a question about the relationship between
sex–gender–sexuality systems as they existed prior to
contact with European cultures (and conquest), and constructs as they are now found. Levy (1971, 1973) claims
that only men were/are mahu. However, Elliston (1999)
documents the existence of both morphological males
and morphological females who take on the mahu status.
In light of the relatively low level of gender dimorphism
in the Society Islands, her projection that this was also
probably the case in traditional (i.e., precolonial) times
seems logical.
Here, it seems that a man’s sexual relations with
a mahu are conceptualized (except by the mahu) as a
replacement for relations with a woman. No one (except
the mahu) seems to consider questions of sexual orientation (Levy, 1971, 1973). Among the Tewa, orientation
seems to be an issue. Sex with a kwidó is a distinct cultural category and, Jacobs indicates, kwidó might have
sex with other kwidó.
In both instances, we are confronted with a heterogeneity of emic understandings that is all too often
glossed over in anthropological literature. Another difficulty is the veneer of Eurocentric ethnocentrism and
homophobia created by the European colonial enterprise
over a span of at least 200 years in most portions of the
globe. In the instance of the Tewa, the major source has
probably been an Anglo-Euro-American Protestantism.
It is somewhat facile, but the shorthand reference to
European colonialism and missionary activities fairly
expresses the worldwide trends of which this is a part.
Where the kwidó’s origins in an encounter with
superhuman forces granted an element of sacredness to
his nature, that has been largely lost and concepts of a
variety of sexual sins have become part of Tewa cognitions (Jacobs & Cromwell, 1992). On the other hand,
Conclusion
Jacobs’ fieldwork is of relatively recent date, and the
Tewa third gender seems to continue as a part of both
beliefs and behaviors.
In contrast, the status mahu, as found in the Society
Islands, does not seem to be as clearly delineated as a
third gender in the definitive way that the kwidó seems to
be marked among the Tewa. The largest part of the difficulty lies in the nature of the early sources, none of which
took the people’s perspectives into account, but the data
that do exist are suggestive in a number of directions. By
the latter half of the 20th century, when attention to emic
perspectives had became more common, most of the
world was in the throes of the sort of “modernization”
noted by Donham (1998), although not as a result of so
felicitous a process as the collapse of apartheid. The
effects of colonial and mission cultures in shifting local
cultural understandings of sex–gender systems have been
pervasive, and sexuality has been a prime target.
Tahiti and the other Society Islands represent one
type of tripolar sex–gender–sexuality system, in which
there is only a single category beyond masculine and
feminine, and that category is equally available to both
women and men. The Society Islands are a region in
which gender dimorphism is relatively light. People seem
unconcerned about sharply marked gender distinctions
(Elliston, 1999; Levy, 1973). This is exactly the social
setting that seems most conducive to a sex–gender–
sexuality system accommodating what Martin and Voorhies
(1975) called supernumerary categories (Munroe &
Whiting, 1969).
Mahu is not the only category or term currently
found on the Society Islands. Of the terms now found,
mahu has the longest history and might, in some frames
of reference, be referred to as “traditional.” There
are other contemporary categories that explicitly link
sexual behavior with gender, but mahu separates gender
and sexuality in a way more complex than can be
reviewed here.
Elliston’s (1999) explication makes clear what may
be a central question in the study of sex–gender–sexuality systems: In each particular culture, of sexuality and
gender, which is perceived as producer and which as
product? The very asking of the question points to the
interaction of biology and culture, rather than to the primacy of one over the other. Elliston’s analysis of sexuality–gender categories in the Society Islands clarifies
some of the apparent confusion. Mahu refers to the oldest layer, one in which experience and observed behavior
9
produce gender, which, in turn, directs people to their
sexual partners, regardless of their morphology, that is,
produces sexuality.
Other categories (raerae, petea, lesbiennes) refer to
same-sex sexual relationships, coupled with coordinated
gender behavior, and are conceived of as referring to
categories of sexuality and gender derived from French
colonial influence. However, the major difference seems
to be that, for people assuming positioning within these
categories, sexuality and gender behavior both exist
within a performative foreground. In Elliston’s experience mahu gender characteristics were part of the cultural
foreground, and mahu sexuality was part of the cultural
background. They were not culturally linked as a single
ascribed unit.
CONCLUSION
By way of contrast, we might consider the way in which
Western cultural constructs first place sex as the producer
of sexuality, which then produces behavior. These two
different visions of the relationship among sex, gender,
and sexuality help us to understand both Western
Christian religious difficulties with the sex–gender–
sexuality systems of other parts of the world, as well as
phenomena such as Zimbabwean, Kenyan, or Ugandan
governmental fulminations that homosexuality is a foreign import. The foreign import is actually the cultural
construct: sex leads to sexuality leads to behavior, along
with the idea that only a portion of the possibilities is
permitted.
Ultimately, reducing all sex–gender–sexuality
systems to acceptance or rejection of homosexuality
imposes a universal foreground, as well as a bipolar
system that is consistent with the dichotomous thinking
of most Western cultures. If we look at the Western system, which operates with two intersecting dichotomies
(masculine–feminine and heterosexual [permitted]–
homosexual [forbidden]), and the effort to change that
model and the values and meanings attached to it, the
desire to demonstrate the “acceptance” of homosexuality
on the large cross-cultural canvas becomes understandable. But the distortion of complex sex–gender–sexuality
systems in service to that aim does a disservice to the
cultural integrity of many peoples and to their efforts to
recapture traditional patterns that have often been
suppressed.
10
Cultural Constructions of Gender
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Gender Stereotypes
Deborah L. Best
Imagine that you are head of a human relations department in a large company and your job is to hire the
administrative/managerial employees for your company.
For one particularly important position, you have two
finalists who have similar educational backgrounds and
other qualifications. To help in making your choice, you
give the candidates a self-descriptive personality test to
see how they might handle the job. Here are the results.
Person A chose these items as self-descriptive: attractive,
dependent, emotional, gentle, kind, talkative. Person B
chose these items: active, ambitious, determined, inventive, self-confident, serious. Which person would you
hire? Why? Is it easier to imagine one of these individuals as a man? Which one? As a woman? Which one? Is it
easier to visualize Person A as a woman and Person B as
a man? If so, your views demonstrate the influence of
gender stereotypes—beliefs about how men and women
differ in their psychological make-up.
differentially by men and women themselves. Ascription
deals with sex-trait stereotypes, and endorsement
concerns how these traits are incorporated into self and
ideal-self descriptions, hence masculinity and femininity.
Stereotype traits reflect cognitive beliefs about
differences between women and men that participants
share with members of their culture. Stereotypes are not
necessarily pernicious and may contain some elements of
truth. They help predict others’ behaviors, but they also
fail to recognize individual differences and overlap
between groups. For example, if one considers men to be
more aggressive than women, this ignores individual differences and variation in aggression found in both gender
groups. Some women are more aggressive than some
men. Stereotypes make no allowance for variability and,
when believed uncritically, they justify treating all men as
more aggressive than all women.
Previous Research on Stereotypes in
the United States
GENDER STEREOTYPES
One of the earliest programs of research to examine
stereotypes was conducted by McKee and Sheriffs in
California in the 1950s (McKee & Sheriffs, 1957, 1959;
Sheriffs & McKee, 1957). Using a list of 200 adjectives,
they found that there were a large number of characteristics differentially ascribed to men in general and women
in general. Men were described as frank, straightforward,
rational, competent, bold, and effective. Women were
emotionally warm and concerned with social customs.
Their findings were consistent with those of Parsons and
Bales (1955) who identified the traits associated with
men as more adaptive–instrumental and those associated
with females as integrative–expressive.
Another series of classic sex stereotype studies was
conducted by the Brovermans, Rosenkrantz, and their
associates in the 1960s and 1970s (Broverman, Broverman,
Clarkson, Rosenkrantz, & Vogel, 1970; Broverman, Vogel,
Broverman, Clarkson, & Rosenkrantz, 1972; Rosenkrantz,
Vogel, Bee, Broverman, & Broverman, 1968; Vogel,
Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, & Rosenkrantz, 1970).
Gender stereotypes refer to the psychological traits and
behaviors that are believed to occur with differential frequency in the two gender groups (e.g., men are more
“aggressive,” women are more “emotional”). Stereotypes
are often used as support for traditional sex roles (e.g.,
women are nurses, men are construction workers) and
may serve as socialization models for children. The
research that will be reviewed here concerns sex roles and
stereotypes with the emphasis on cross-cultural research.
Methodological issues concerning measurement as well
as theoretical views of how stereotypes develop will be
briefly reviewed.
What are Gender Stereotypes?
Gender differences in the adjectives used by men and
women to describe themselves and others can be seen in
two areas: adjectives may be ascribed differentially to
other men and women, and adjectives may be endorsed
11
12
In their studies, college students listed behaviors,
attitudes, and personality characteristics that they thought
differentiated men and women. Using these items, bipolar scales were constructed and other college students
rated how characteristic each item is for the typical adult
male, the typical adult female, and themselves. The sex
stereotypes they found were similar to those identified by
McKee and Sheriffs, suggesting agreement about the
characteristics that college students generally ascribed to
men and women.
In the development of their Personal Attributes
Questionnaire (PAQ), Spence, Helmreich, and Stapp
(1974) revised the Brovermans’ questionnaire by simplifying the format and removing the “oppositeness” of the
ratings. The original PAQ contained only socially desirable items, but a later version also included undesirable
traits (Spence & Holahan, 1979). Research participants
described themselves with both female and male traits,
permitting the assessment of androgyny (i.e., possessing
characteristics of both sexes). Thus masculinity and
femininity were considered a duality that could coexist in
every person.
Bem (1974, 1975) took a similar conceptual
approach in developing the Bem Sex Role Inventory
(BSRI). Masculinity and femininity are treated as separate
dimensions, and persons can be characterized as masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated. Items
judged by students to be more desirable in American society for one sex or the other were included in the BSRI.
Stereotypes identified with the PAQ and BSRI are generally similar, reflecting male instrumentality or agency and
female expressiveness or communion.
Although there are few studies examining the dimensions that underlie male and female stereotypes, in their
analysis of traits that raters attributed to others, Ashmore
and colleagues (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1979) found two
independent dimensions, social desirability and potency.
These dimensions are conceptually similar to Williams
and Best’s (1990a) favorability and strength dimensions
which were based on Osgood’s (Osgood, Suci, &
Tannenbaum, 1957) evaluation and potency dimensions of
connotative meaning. These will be discussed below.
Cross-Cultural Research on
Stereotypes
Although there are several small-scale studies of sex
stereotypes in other countries (e.g., Lii & Wong, 1982;
Gender Stereotypes
Sunar, 1982), to date a large number of studies have been
conducted by an international group of researchers cooperating in a 32-country project (Williams & Best, 1990a,
1990b). These studies have been integrated by Williams
and Best and will be discussed in detail here with
highlights on methodological issues and findings.
Williams and Best’s Sex Stereotype Study. In
their study, Williams and Best examined gender differences in trait ascription in both the USA and 30 other
countries, with data from almost 9,000 children and
adults. Adult participants identified stereotyped traits in
their own culture, but they were not asked whether they
approved of the assignment of different characteristic to
men and women or if they believed that the items were
self-descriptive.
Measure. In their stereotype study, Williams and Best
used the 300-item Adjective Checklist (ACL) (Gough &
Heilbrun, 1980). They chose this methodology so that
they would have a large diverse item pool descriptive of
human personality, not just stereotypes. They included
both favorable and unfavorable traits in the pool and did
not assume the oppositeness of men and women. Items
permitted the assessment of androgyny and interfaced
with existing personality research.
When translations were not already available for the
ACL, translations by groups of bilinguals and backtranslation procedures (e.g., translating from English to
the second language, then back to English to check
translation fidelity) were used. Because individual items
may not be comparable across languages, comparisons of
individual item scores between countries may not have
score equivalence, or similar quantitative values. Hence,
Williams and Best only analyzed male and female stereotype differences within the same country—the relative
gender differences within a country—rather than comparing masculinity between countries or femininity between
countries.
Using the 300 ACL items, college students in each
country made relative judgments by identifying the
adjectives more frequently associated with men or more
frequently associated with women. They were permitted
to leave out items that were not associated with either
gender group. This method “extracts” differences in the
views of men and women rather than focusing on similarities. For example, “coarse” is infrequently used to
describe either men or women, but research participants
Gender Stereotypes
13
associated this adjective with men more frequently than
with women.
Study Participants. Williams and Best used university
students as study participants, asking them to be “cultural
reporters.” College students are not representative of their
respective populations, but they represent narrow wellmatched samples which are functionally equivalent in
each country, and they are certainly products of their
respective cultures.
The countries in Williams and Best’s stereotype
study, shown in Table 1, are not representative of all the
nations of the world. The sample has a high proportion of
English-speaking countries and economically developed
countries. Unfortunately, these biases represent the world
of cooperative research in academic psychology.
Analyses and Findings. With approximately 100
participants in each country responding to the 300 items
of the ACL, the analysis began with over 750,000 “bits”
of data. This required a meaningful way to reduce the
data. Four scoring systems were used to summarize findings: analyses of individual items, affective meaning,
psychological needs, and transactional analysis (TA) ego
states. The last two are part of the standard ACL scoring
procedure and will not be discussed here (see Williams &
Best, 1990a).
For item analyses a simple index was devised to
reflect the degree of male association or female association
of a particular item in a given country. Male association is
represented by an M% score computed for each item by
Table 1. Countries in Williams and Best’s Study
Asia
India
Israel
Japan
Malaysia
Pakistan
Taiwan
Thailand
Oceania
Australia
New Zealand
Europe
England
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Scotland
Spain
North America
Canada
United States
South America
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Peru
Trinidad
Venezuela
Africa
Nigeria
South America
Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)
calculating the male association frequency and dividing it
by the sum of the male plus female frequencies and discarding the decimal. Thus a high M% score indicates that
an item is more frequently associated with men than with
women. It does not indicate that a particular adjective
would be used frequently to characterize a large portion of
men who were being described with ACL items. Similarly,
a low M% indicates that an item is more frequently associated with women than with men, not necessarily that the
item would be used to describe a majority of women. The
method teases out relative differences between men and
women.
When the male-associated and female-associated
items were identified in each country, a standard degree
of association across all countries was used to represent
the focused stereotypes, with the number of items varying from country to country. In each country, items were
included in the stereotype for a particular sex if they were
associated with that sex at least twice as often as with the
other sex. Thus items with M% scores of 67% or greater
were identified as male stereotype items, and female
stereotype items were those with M% scores of 33% and
below (F% score of 67% and above). Items that fell into
the male-associated and female-associated groups in
three quarters of the countries are shown in Table 2. The
figures in parentheses beside the adjectives indicate
the number of countries out of the original 25 in which
the item was in the indicated group. Only three items
were female-associated in all 25 countries: sentimental,
submissive, and superstitious. On the other hand, six
items were male-associated in all countries: adventurous,
dominant, forceful, independent, masculine, and strong.
Correlation coefficients were computed for M%
scores between pairs of countries to examine the comparability of stereotypes across countries. Across all 300
items, correlations ranged from 0.35 for Pakistan versus
Venezuela to 0.94 for Australia versus England. The
mean common variance across all 25 countries was 42%,
indicating a substantial degree of agreement about the
psychological characteristics differentially associated
with men and with women.
What about exceptions to the “rules?” How often did
an item which was usually in the high M% group fall into
the low M% (female) category? For the male-associated
items in the table, arrogant, lazy, robust, and rude were
associated with women in Nigeria; assertive, humorous,
and ingenious were associated with women in Malaysia;
boastful, disorderly, and obnoxious were associated with
14
Gender Stereotypes
Table 2. Items Associated with Males and Females in
at least 19 of 25 Countries
Male-associated items (N ⫽ 49)
Active (23)
Adventurous (25)
Aggressive (24)
Ambitious (22)
Arrogant (20)
Assertive (20)
Autocratic (24)
Boastful (19)
Clear-thinking (21)
Coarse (21)
Confident (19)
Courageous (23)
Cruel (21)
Daring (24)
Determined (21)
Disorderly (21)
Dominant (25)
Egotistical (21)
Energetic (22)
Enterprising (24)
Forceful (25)
Hardheaded (21)
Hardhearted (21)
Humorous (19)
Independent (25)
Ingenious (19)
Initiative (21)
Inventive (22)
Lazy (21)
Logical (22)
Loud (21)
Masculine (25)
Obnoxious (19)
Opportunistic (20)
Progressive (23)
Rational (20)
Realistic (20)
Reckless (20)
Robust (24)
Rude (23)
Self-confident (21)
Serious (20)
Severe (23)
Stern (24)
Stolid (20)
Strong (25)
Unemotional (23)
Unkind (19)
Wise (23)
Female-associated items
(N ⫽ 25)
Affected (20)
Affectionate (24)
Anxious (19)
Attractive (23)
Charming (20)
Curious (21)
Dependent (23)
Dreamy (24)
Emotional (23)
Fearful (23)
Feminine (24)
Gentle (21)
Kind (19)
Meek (19)
Mild (21)
Pleasant (19)
Sensitive (24)
Sentimental (25)
Sexy (22)
Shy (19)
Softhearted (23)
Submissive (25)
Superstitious (25)
Talkative (20)
Weak (23)
women in Japan; and lazy was associated with women in
Pakistan. The exceptions for the female-associated items
were even fewer: sympathetic was associated with men in
France and Italy, and affected was associated with men in
Germany. Impressionistically grouping the items in the
table, there is some suggestion of oppositeness for the
items associated with men and women (e.g., men—
aggressive, dominant, women—submissive; men—stern,
severe, women—sentimental, soft-hearted, affectionate).
Even though these lists represent considerable crosscultural and cross-linguistic agreement, this level of
analysis is most affected by translation problems. It is
perhaps remarkable there is so much similarity in the
stereotypes across countries.
Williams and Best’s secondly scoring system is an
affective meaning analysis derived from the research of
Osgood and his associates (Osgood et al., 1957). Based
on his extensive research in the United States and in 23
language-culture groups (Osgood, May, & Miron, 1975),
Osgood concluded that the principle components of
affective meaning—evaluation (good/bad), potency
(strong/weak), and activity (active/passive)—were general and could be found in all languages studied. Based
on Osgood’s findings, Williams and Best had separate
groups of American university students use 5-point scales
to rate the favorability, strength, and activity of each ACL
item, without reference to gender. Standard scores for
these ratings were computed by setting the overall mean
equal to 500 and the standard deviation equal to 100.
Thus scores above 500 indicate ratings that are more
favorable, stronger, and more active, while scores below
500 indicate unfavorability, weakness, and inactivity
(e.g., Aggressive ⫽ favorability 504, neutral; strength
713, very strong; activity 712, very active; Gentle ⫽
favorability 635, very good; strength 492, neutral;
activity 362, very passive).
Ideally, participants in each country should have
scaled each ACL item for favorability, strength, and
activity, but this was not possible. However, the Osgood
system has sufficient cross-cultural applicability even
though particular ratings for individual items may vary by
country. Indeed, in making item-by-item translations,
affective meaning may determine whether one particular
synonym is chosen over another.
In each country the male and female stereotype
items were identified and mean favorability, strength, and
activity scores for these groups of items were calculated.
The ranges of the mean scores across the 25 countries is
shown in Figure 1. There is considerable variation among
the countries in the favorability associated with the male
and female stereotypes, but the ranges of the two stereotypes overlap. In about half the countries the male stereotype was rated more favorably than the female, and the
reverse was true in the remaining countries. Moreover,
there was no cross-cultural tendency for one stereotype to
be more favorable than the other. Frequent objections to
the female stereotype are not associated with differential
favorability of the adjectives attributed to men and
women, but may be related to activity and strength
differences.
Looking at these two dimensions, the means for all
the male stereotypes are on the active and strong sides of
the scales, and the female stereotypes are on the passive
and weak sides of the scales, with no overlap between the
distributions. Pan-culturally, male-associated items carry
connotations of activity and strength, and female items
carry connotations of passivity and weakness. It is likely
that the differences in activity and strength, rather than
Masculinity/Femininity of Self-Concepts
15
600
580
560
M
M
Standard scores
540
520
500
M
F
480
F
460
F
440
420
400
0
Favorability
Activity
Strength
Figure 1. Ranges of mean affective meaning scores (favorability,
activity, strength) for male (M) and female (F) stereotypes across
25 countries.
differences in favorability, account for the general disfavor attributed to the female stereotype items in comparison with the male items.
In view of the variation in the stereotype scores
across countries, the question arises as to how these
differences may relate to cultural differences. Williams
and Best (1990a) examined the relationship between
stereotype scores and a number of cultural comparison
variables. They used 17 demographic indices (e.g.,
economic/social development—GNP; education—literacy;
status of women—percentage in university, percentage
working outside home; religion, general demographics—
population, latitude, urban/rural) and four indices of
national work-related values from Hofstede’s (1980)
research (Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance,
Individualism, Masculinity). They correlated these indices
with the stereotype scores. Surprisingly, they found that
their stereotype scores were generally unrelated to indices
of economic and social development or to work-related
values.
The only demographic variable that showed consistent relationships with the stereotype scores was religious
affiliation. In countries with higher percentages of
Catholics, the greater the relative favorability of the
female stereotype and the lower the relative strength of the
male stereotype. This may be related to a more significant
role for women in the Catholic tradition, perhaps due to
the virtue and power associated with the Virgin Mary.
Another interesting religious comparison was
between the Muslim and Hindu traditions (Williams,
Best, Haque, Pandey, & Verma, 1982). In Muslim theology, significant figures are male and religious practice is
controlled exclusively by men, as is society. Women are
expected to remain secluded in their homes and are
depersonalized by traditional dress. The status of women
in Hindu tradition contrasts sharply with that just
described. Though most Indian women are homemakers,
they also participate actively in commerce, government,
religious activities, and education.
In Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country, the
traits associated with women were less favorable than
those associated with men, but in India the reverse was
true. While the male stereotype in each country was
stronger and more active than the corresponding female
stereotype, the differences were much smaller in India
than in Pakistan.
Looking at male–female stereotype differentiation
within each country, differences were largest in The
Netherlands, Finland, Norway, and Germany, and smallest in Scotland, Bolivia, and Venezuela. The stereotypes
of men and women showed greater differences in more
developed countries, and in countries where Hofstede’s
male work-related values (Hofstede, 1980, 2001) were
relatively high in Individualism. The strength and activity differences between the male and female stereotypes
were greater in socio-economically less developed countries, in countries where literacy was low, and in countries
where the percentage of women attending the university
was low. Perhaps economic and educational advancement
are accompanied by a reduction in the tendency to view
men as stronger and more active than women. However,
those effects were merely reduced, not eliminated, by
cultural and economic factors.
MASCULINITY/FEMININITY
SELF-CONCEPTS
OF
The degree to which stereotyped traits are endorsed or
incorporated in the self-concepts of men and women is
one definition of masculinity and femininity, and is the
one that will be used in this review. However, a person
can be masculine or feminine in many ways, including
16
dress, mannerisms, or tone of voice, but these areas will
not be discussed here.
Masculinity/Femininity Studies in
the United States
There have been numerous studies looking at the differences between men’s and women’s self-concepts, but
these will not be reviewed exhaustively. However, there
are two general observations from these studies. First,
differences between women’s and men’s self-concepts
are usually found, and these are consistent with the sex
stereotypes discussed above (Bem, 1974; Spence et al.,
1974, 1975; Williams & Best, 1990a). Second, the differences between men and women are often smaller than
those found within each of the gender groups (Deaux,
1984; Spence, Deaux, & Helmreich, 1985).
Cross-Cultural Studies of
Masculinity/Femininity
Methodological Issues. Turning to cross-cultural
research, measurement is particularly important in studies of gender. A problem arises, for example, when a masculinity/femininity scale developed in one country, often
the United States, is translated into another language and
administered to persons in other cultures. Spence and
Helmreich’s (1978) study illustrates this problem. They
compared the self-descriptive responses of men in the
United States and in Brazil to the PAQ which contains
positively valued traits that American research participants identified as male-associated and female-associated.
In their study, American men endorsed more maleassociated traits than female-associated traits, but
Brazilian men had the opposite pattern. Does this mean
that Brazilian men have more feminine self-concepts than
American men? Probably not. This interpretation pays
little attention to how each culture defines masculinity
and femininity. Cross-culturally, some items in translated
scales may be inappropriate due to content, whereas
others may be poorly translated.
Williams and Best’s Masculinity/Femininity
Study. Because cultural groups may differ in their
definitions of masculinity and femininity, Williams and
Best (1990b) used culture-specific measures. University
Gender Stereotypes
students in 14 countries were asked to describe themselves and their ideal selves using the 300 ACL adjectives. Their descriptions were scored relative to locally
defined sex-trait stereotypes derived in their stereotype
study (Williams & Best, 1990a).
Williams and Best found that men in all countries
were more masculine than women, which is hardly surprising. Interestingly, for the ideal self, both gender
groups wished to be “more masculine” than they thought
they were. Although some cultural variation in selfconcepts was found, surprisingly these differences were
not associated with other cultural comparison variables
such as economic/social development. Across cultural
groups, relative to their own culture’s definition of
femininity and masculinity, there was no evidence that
women in some societies were more feminine than
women in others, or that men in some societies were more
masculine than men in others.
In contrast, when the affective meaning scoring system was used, there were substantial differences across
countries in self- and ideal self-concepts. Men’s self- and
ideal self-descriptions were stronger and more active than
women’s, with no general difference for favorability.
Moreover, in all countries there was a tendency for both
men’s and women’s ideal self-descriptions to be stronger,
more active, and more favorable than their self-descriptions.
Differences in men’s and women’s self-concepts were
smaller in more developed countries, in countries where
women were employed outside the home, where they
constituted a large percentage of the university population, and where relatively modern beliefs about men’s
and women’s roles (e.g., sex role ideology) prevailed.
Hofstede’s Masculine Work-Related Values.
Using a different methodological approach to examine
masculinity/femininity, Hofstede (1980, 2001),
compared work-related values in 40 countries. Attitude
survey data from thousands of employees of IBM, a large
multinational high-technology business organization,
were examined. One scale that Hofstede derived in his
analyses concerned the extent to which values of
assertiveness, money, and things prevail in a society
rather than the values of nurturance, quality of life, and
people. While this scale could have easily been named
“Materialism,” Hofstede named it “Masculinity” (MAS)
because male employees assign greater weight to the first
set of values whereas females assign greater weight to the
second.
Sex Role Ideology
Rather than examining the level of masculinity/
femininity for individual participants as Williams and
Best (1990b) did, Hofstede computed a MAS index for
each of the 40 countries in his study. The five countries
with the most masculine scores were Japan, Austria,
Venezuela, Italy, and Switzerland; the five countries with
the lowest MAS indices were Sweden, Norway, The
Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland. These indices were
correlated across countries with various national comparison variables (e.g., GNP, population density). In highMAS countries there is greater belief in independent
decision making, stronger achievement motivation,
higher job stress, and work was more central in people’s
lives. In addition, societal sex roles were more clearly
differentiated and men were expected to dominate in all
settings.
Calling the scale Masculinity leads to the expectation
that scale scores may be associated with cross-country
variations in other gender-related concepts. Hofstede’s
MAS scores were available for 20 of the 25 countries in
Williams and Best’s (1990a) stereotype study and for 12
of the 14 countries in their masculinity/femininity study
(Williams & Best, 1990b). Nonsignificant correlations
were obtained between MAS scores and stereotype scores
and between MAS scores and M% scores for men’s and
women’s self- and ideal self-descriptions (Best & Williams,
1998/1994). Similarly, Ward (1995) found that Attitude
Toward Rape scores were unrelated to Hofstede’s MAS
scores.
Although the MAS dimension is important, designating this value system “Masculinity” is questionable.
Indeed, there is little evidence of convergent validity
between Hofstede’s definition of masculinity and that of
other researchers.
SEX ROLE IDEOLOGY
Finding that gender stereotype beliefs and self-concepts
are related to differences in cultural comparison variables
suggests that they may also be related to beliefs about the
appropriate roles of females and males within various
cultural groups. What is considered appropriate behavior
for males and females varies across societies, but there
are two possible cultural universals: At least to some
degree, every society assigns traits and tasks on the basis
of gender, and in no society is the status of women superior to that of men (Munroe & Munroe, 1975/1994).
17
In virtually all human groups, women have greater
responsibility for “domestic” activities while men have
greater responsibility for “external” activities. Women are
responsible for cooking, food preparation, carrying water,
caring for clothing, and making household things, and
men are involved with hunting, metalwork, and weapon
making, and travel further from home (D’Andrade,
1966). Women are responsible for child rearing (Weisner &
Gallimore, 1977), and men have major responsibilities
for child rearing in only 20% of the 80 cultures examined
(Katz & Konner, 1981; West & Konner, 1976). Such
pancultural similarities may originate from the biological
differences between the sexes.
However, in many cultures these socially assigned
duties are now being shared, with men engaging in more
domestic activities and women in more external, particularly economic, activities. Nevertheless, even in societies
where women have moved actively into the labor force,
they have not had a comparable reduction in household
duties. In the United States, Switzerland, Sweden,
Canada, Italy, Poland, and Romania, the overwhelming
majority of household work is performed by women,
regardless of their occupational status (Population Crisis
Committee, 1988). The gender division of labor is
reviewed in other chapters, but the beliefs and attitudes
about appropriate role behaviors for the two sexes which
are related to stereotypes will be discussed here.
Sex Role Studies in the United States
Researchers generally classify sex role ideologies or
beliefs along a continuum from traditional to modern.
Traditional ideologies maintain that men are more
“important” than women and that it is appropriate for
men to control and dominate women. In contrast, modern
ideologies are more egalitarian, claiming that women and
men are equally important, and dominance of one sex
over the other is inappropriate. Research in the United
States has assumed that there is individual variation in sex
role ideology. More masculine men and more feminine
women are expected to have more traditional sex role
beliefs, and more androgynous men and women would be
more egalitarian.
A number of scales have been developed to assess
sex role ideology (Beere, 1990), and one of the most
frequently used is the Attitudes toward Women Scale
(Spence & Helmreich, 1972). Scale items concern the
roles of men and women (e.g., a woman should be as free
18
as a man to propose marriage). Women more readily
endorse egalitarian attitudes than do men, and over the
years attitudes have shifted toward greater acceptance of
women’s rights (Spence & Hahn, 1997; Twenge, 1997).
Interestingly, Martin (1990) isolated two unrelated
factors in men’s attitudes toward women, one dealing
with traditional interpersonal roles and the other with
public issues of equality of opportunity and employment.
Recent studies have examined more subtle forms of sex
role beliefs, such as the importance of maintaining
balance in men’s and women’s roles (Tougas, Brown,
Beaton, & Joly, 1995).
Cross-Cultural Sex Role Studies
Cross-cultural research has examined variation in sex role
ideology between cultural groups. Using Hofstede’s
terminology, one would assume that traditional ideologies would be found in masculine cultures and modern
ideologies in feminine cultures.
Williams and Best’s Sex Role Ideology Study.
In their 14-country study of masculinity and femininity
described above, Williams and Best (1990b) had study
participants respond to the 30-item Kalin Sex Role
Ideology measure (SRI) (Kalin & Tilby, 1978) (e.g., “The
husband should be regarded as the legal representative of
the family group in all matters of law”). To date, this
study includes the largest number and variety of countries
to be examined in a single-sex role study.
Williams and Best (1990b) found the most modern
ideologies in Northern European countries (The
Netherlands, Germany, Finland, England, Italy), and the
most traditional ideologies in the African and Asian countries (Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Japan, Malaysia). The
United States was in the middle of the distribution.
Consistent with previous research (Kalin, Heusser, &
Edwards, 1982; Spence & Helmreich, 1978), women
generally had more modern views than men, but not in all
countries (e.g., Malaysia, Pakistan). However, men’s and
women’s scores were very similar in any given country,
with a correlation of 0.95 for men and women across the
14 countries. Overall, the effect of culture was greater
than the effect of gender.
More modern sex role ideologies were found in
more developed countries, in more heavily Christian
countries, in more urbanized countries, and in countries
in the high latitudes (i.e., relatively far from the equator).
Gender Stereotypes
Interestingly, sex role ideology scores were not correlated
with Hofstede’s MAS indices across the countries in the
sample.
Studies with Small Numbers of Cultural Groups.
There are several studies in the literature comparing small
numbers of cultural groups, but their findings are consistent with those above. For example, when asked about
desirable and undesirable roles for women in their culture, Indian university students expressed more traditional beliefs than American students, and women in both
groups were more liberal than men (Agarwal & Lester,
1992; Rao & Rao, 1985). University women with nontraditional sex role attitudes came from nuclear families,
had educated mothers, and were in career or professionally oriented disciplines (Ghadially & Kazi, 1979).
Similarly, female Arab and Israeli high school students were more liberal than male students (Rapoport,
Lomski-Feder, & Masalha, 1989; Seginer, Karayanni, &
Mar’i, 1990). Female college students in Japan, Slovenia,
and the United States are less traditional than men, with
Japanese students being the most traditional of the three
groups (Morinaga, Frieze, & Ferligoj, 1993). Japanese
adolescents are also more traditional than German
adolescents (Trommsdorff & Iwawaki, 1989).
Among both Japanese and American women, education and professional managerial work are strong predictors of sex role attitudes (Suzuki, 1991). Interestingly,
American women with jobs of any kind had more egalitarian attitudes than women without jobs. Japanese
women with career-oriented professional jobs differed
from all other women, with or without jobs. Furthermore,
British working-class women are more conservative than
American working-class women, but the attitudes of
upper-middle-class women in the two countries do not
differ (Nelson, 1988).
Gibbons, Stiles, and Shkodriani (1991) studied attitudes toward gender and family roles among adolescents
from 46 countries attending schools in The Netherlands.
Students from less wealthy and more collectivistic countries had more traditional attitudes than students from the
wealthier and more individualistic countries, and girls
were less traditional than boys.
Overall, research shows that sex role ideology is
more traditional in some cultures than in others.
However, across cultural groups, males generally have
more traditional attitudes toward sex roles than women.
This may not be surprising because in countries with
Development of Gender Roles and Stereotypes
more traditional male-dominant orientations males benefit in terms of status and privileges.
Social Role Theory
The different social roles that men and women play are
based on the sexual division of labor and, according to
social role theory, these role differences lead to differences in the behaviors of males and females. The division
of labor and the status hierarchy of gender result from differences in reproduction and in the physical size and
strength of women and men (Wood & Eagly, 1999), with
differences typically favoring men (Eagly, Wood, &
Diekman, 2000). Differences in position and power lead
to differences in gender roles which include both beliefs
and expectations (Cialdini & Trost, 1998) about what
men and women do. Because women more frequently
assume the domestic role, characteristics assumed to
exemplify homemakers are stereotypically ascribed
to women in general. Similarly, characteristics thought to
typify providers are ascribed to men in general (Eagly
et al., 2000). Cultural expectations promote conformity to
gender roles and influence perceptions of masculinity and
femininity in oneself and others. Indeed, gender stereotypes are often used to justify differential sex role assignment (Hoffman & Hurst, 1990; Jost & Banaji, 1994;
Williams & Best, 1990a).
19
1978; Guttentag & Longfellow, 1977). Similar gender
stereotyping of toys is found in West Africa, where girls
play with dolls and boys construct vehicles and weapons
(Bloch & Adler, 1994).
Sex-Trait Stereotype Development in
the United States
In the USA children acquire knowledge of sex-trait
stereotypes somewhat later than stereotypic knowledge
of toys and occupations (Best et al., 1977; Reis & Wright,
1982). Williams and Best (Best et al., 1977; Williams &
Best, 1990a) developed the Sex Stereotype Measure II
(SSM II) to assess children’s knowledge of adult-defined
stereotypes. In this picture-story measure children are
shown silhouette drawings of a male and a female, they
are read a story containing a stereotype trait, and they
are asked to indicate which person the story is about.
European American children show a consistent pattern of
increasing knowledge from kindergarten through high
school, similar to a typical learning curve. The most dramatic increases in stereotype knowledge occur in the
early elementary school years, with scores reaching a
plateau in the junior high years. African American children’s scores increase with age but are lower than those
of the European American children, perhaps suggesting
slightly different stereotypes for the two groups.
Cross-Cultural Findings
DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER ROLES
AND STEREOTYPES
Even though biological factors may impose predispositions and restrictions on development, sociocultural
factors have important effects. Culture prescribes how
babies are delivered, how children are socialized and
dressed, what tasks children are taught, and what roles
adult men and women adopt. The scope and progression
of children’s behaviors, even behaviors considered to be
biologically determined, are governed by culture.
Within the context of cultural stereotypes about
male–female differences, children’s knowledge of gender
roles develops. In the United States, children as young as
2 years of age stereotype objects as masculine or feminine (Thompson, 1975; Weinraub et al., 1984), and by
age 3–4 years they use stereotypic labels accurately with
toys, activities, and occupations (Edelbrook & Sugawara,
Turning to the cross-cultural literature, Zammuner (1982,
1987, 1993) found that Italian and Dutch children (ages
5–12 years) assigned different traits and activities to
males and females. British and Hungarian children’s
knowledge of stereotypes was related to parents’ gender
attitudes and father’s sex-typed behaviors (Turner &
Gervai, 1995).
Williams and Best’s Study of Children’s Sex
Stereotypes. In a more comprehensive cross-cultural
study of sex stereotypes, Williams and Best (1990a)
administered the SSM II to 5-, 8-, and 11-year-olds in 25
countries and found that the percentage of stereotyped
responses increased from around 60% at age 5 to around
70% at age 8. Strong, aggressive, cruel, coarse, and
adventurous were consistently associated with men at all
age levels, and weak, appreciative, soft-hearted, gentle,
and meek were consistently associated with women.
20
Gender Stereotypes
26
8-yr-olds
25
Mean stereotype score
24
5-yr-olds
23
22
21
20
19
18
PAK
POR
PER
CAN
ENG
US
NZ
FIN
NET
JAP
NOR
CHI
IND
ITA
IRE
SPA
GER
NIG
FRA
THA
BFA
TAI
VEN
17
Countries
Figure 2. SSM II Scores for 5- and 8-year-olds in 23 countries.
Both male and female scores were unusually high in
Pakistan and relatively high in New Zealand and England,
suggesting that children in these countries have an appreciable knowledge of sex stereotypes (see Figure 2). Scores
were atypically low in Brazil, Taiwan, Germany, and
France, suggesting that children in these countries did not
have consistent knowledge of the stereotype traits.
Although there was variation between countries in the rate
of learning, there was a general developmental pattern in
which stereotype learning begins prior to age 5 years,
accelerates during the early school years, and is completed
during the adolescent years.
Boys and girls learned the stereotypes at a similar
rate, but there was a tendency for male-stereotype traits
to be learned somewhat earlier than female traits. In 17 of
the 24 countries studied, male stereotype items were better known by both sexes than female items. Germany was
the only country where there was a clear tendency for the
female stereotype to be better known than the male.
Female stereotype items were learned earlier than male
items in Latin/Catholic cultures (Brazil, Chile, Portugal,
Venezuela) where the adult-defined female stereotype is
more positive than the male.
In predominantly Muslim countries, 5-year-olds
associate traits with the two sexes in a more highly
differentiated manner and they learn the stereotypes, particularly the male items, at an earlier age than in nonMuslim countries. Children in predominantly Christian
countries initially learn the stereotypes at a slower pace,
perhaps reflecting the less differentiated nature of the
adult stereotypes, particularly in Catholic countries.
Intons-Peterson’s Study of Adolescent Sex
Stereotypes. Looking at older children (11–18 years
of age), Intons-Peterson (1988) found that stereotypes of
men and women were more similar in Sweden than in the
United States. Surprisingly, however, ideal occupational
choices did not overlap for Swedish boys and girls;
females were interested in service occupations (e.g.,
flight attendant, hospital worker, nanny), and males were
interested in business occupations.
Stereotype findings with children are consistent with
the adult model of sex stereotypes discussed earlier.
Children’s stereotypes seem universal, with culture modifying the rate of learning and minor aspects of content.
Theories of Gender-Related Learning
Cultural universals in gender differences are often
explained by similarities in socialization practices while
References
cultural differences are attributed to differences in socialization. Children grow up within other people’s scripts,
which guide their actions long before the children themselves can understand or carry out culturally acceptable
actions. For gender researchers, one of the crucial tasks is
to unpackage broadly defined cultural variables to identify
the aspects or processes responsible for the development of
particular behaviors. Gender should be examined not only
in relation to culture (e.g., social systems, practices, myths,
beliefs, rituals), but also in the context of the history and
economics of a society (Mukhopadhyay & Higgins, 1988).
Most theories of gender role learning emphasize the
gender information readily available in the culture even
though the theories were devised primarily in the United
States. Social learning theories consider sex role development to be the result of cumulative experience. Parents,
teachers, peers, and other socialization agents shape children’s gender-related behaviors through reinforcement
and punishment, modeling, expectations, toy choices, and
other differential treatment of boys and girls. Cognitive
developmental theory suggests that the impact of cultural
factors is governed by the child’s emerging cognitive
structures. Children acquire gender knowledge in stages
and their level of understanding structures their experiences. Gender schema theory assumes that the primacy of
gender concepts in a culture serves as a basis for organizing information To date, there is little evidence regarding
these theories cross-culturally.
CONCLUSIONS
The similarity in gender stereotypes found cross-culturally
suggests that the psychological characteristics differentially associated with women and men follow a pancultural model with cultural factors producing minor
variations around general themes. Biological differences
(e.g., females bear children, males have greater physical
strength) serve as the basis for a division of labor, with
women primarily responsible for child care and other
domestic activities, and men for hunting (providing) and
protection. Gender stereotypes evolve to support this
division of labor and assume that each sex has or can
develop characteristics consistent with their assigned
roles. Once established, stereotypes serve as socialization
models that encourage boys to become independent and
adventurous, and girls to become nurturant and affiliative.
Consequently, these characteristics are incorporated into
21
men’s and women’s self-concepts, aspects of their masculinity and femininity. This model illustrates how, with
only minor variations, people across different cultures
come to associate one set of characteristics with men and
another set with women.
Pancultural similarities in sex and gender greatly
outweigh cultural differences. Indeed, the way in which
male–female relationships are organized is remarkably
similar across social groups. The relatively minor biological differences between the sexes can be amplified or
diminished by cultural practices and socialization, making gender differences in roles and behaviors generally
modest but in some cases culturally important.
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Gender Differences
Biological Bases of Sex Differences
Bobbi S. Low
Even in species in which sex is determined by
gametes, and there are clearly active sex chromosomes,
there is chromosomal information, some of which influences sex, in autosomes (Wizemann & Pardue, 2001,
pp. 51–55). In many species, sex is not genetically determined. In crocodilians and many turtles, the temperature
at which the egg develops determines an individual’s sex
(Shine, 1999). In some fish, such as the coral-reef-dwelling
blue-headed wrasse, sex is determined by the social environment. Individuals change sex depending on the local
population sex ratio: the largest individual becomes a
male (Warner et al., 1975). The social environment
changes the costs and benefits of being male or female,
setting in motion a series of hormonal and physical
changes (Lee et al., 2001).
Whether sex is mediated by the physical or social
environment, whether there are chromosomal differences
between the sexes—these are not the crucial biological
bases of sex differences. The specifics of sexual reproduction can differ, but sex differences are common and
also predictably patterned. Males and females in most
species behave differently, in predictable ways, regardless
of how sex is mediated; the number of “sex-role reversed”
species is very small. The real keys to the evolution of sex
differences are the interplay among environmental influences, genes, and expressed traits, and how these mediate
the costs and benefits of similar, versus differing, traits for
the sexes.
Sex differences are likely to be particularly striking in
gametic-sex species. When sex is accomplished by the
joining of haploid gametes to make a diploid zygote (as in
humans), anisogamy (unlike gametes) evolves with ecological cost–benefit implications. What we call disruptive
selection means that the traits that make a small-gamete
maker (male) successful (moving about to seek mates, and
making small mobile gametes that travel well) are incompatible with the traits that make a large-gamete maker
(female) successful (being risk averse, committing considerable nutrition to the fertilized zygote). Further, the fact
that there is information in the cytoplasm of each gamete
means that conflicts can arise; in part, sperm become
INTRODUCTION
A basic goal of biologists is to explain observed variation
at many levels, including observed differences between
and within the sexes.1 The biological underpinnings of
sex differences are considerably more complex than it
might at first seem. In no species are “males” and
“females” fully identical, despite huge variation in the
logistics of sexual reproduction. What, then, is meant by
“biological causes”? It is not simply “genetic” or
“hormonal” or a “difference in chromosomes.” Rather,
sex differences, however mediated, arise from past evolutionary and ecological pressures. Specific environmental pressures favor particular complexes of behavioral,
physical, and physiological traits—and these evolved
phenomena are the proximate triggers of differences.
Under most conditions, these selective pressures lead to a
(sometimes striking) divergence of the traits shown by
each sex.
Begin with the evolution of sexual reproduction
itself. There are evolutionary costs to sexual reproduction
(loss of genetic representation) (Maynard Smith, 1978;
Williams, 1975). Biologists recognize that sexual reproduction has evolved when there are counterbalancing
evolutionary advantages to sexual reproduction. These
include the production of variable offspring in unpredictable environments (a sort of bet-hedging): (Maynard
Smith, 1978; Williams, 1975; review in Ridley, 1993).
The specific mechanisms can vary greatly.
Sexual reproduction is not always achieved by the
fusion of two haploid gametes (eggs and sperm), nor is it
even always genetic (XY or XO chromosomes). In
humans the 23rd pair of chromosomes is either homogametic (XX) or heterogametic (XY); XX individuals
develop as females and XY individuals become males. In
contrast, in birds, for example, males rather than females
are the heterogametic sex. In some species, sexual reproduction is accomplished simply by exchange of genetic
material; in these species there may be more than two
sexes (e.g., 13 sexes are described for slime molds; see
reviews by Ridley [1993] and Low [2000]).
27
28
smaller and smaller by eliminating cytoplasm to avoid this
conflict (Hurst, 1991, 1992; Hurst & Hamilton, 1992).
This means that the ecology of succeeding as a male,
versus as a female, differs. Costs and benefits differ for
the sexes: roaming or staying home, seeking versus
avoiding risk. Note, too, that among the wrasses and
some turtles (see above), in which sex is mediated by the
social or physical environment, the ecology of succeeding as a male, versus a female, nonetheless still differs—
and males and females behave differently, look different,
and so forth. The ecological pressure at the heart of all
these differences is: Can males be more successful reproductively through seeking many matings (and leaving offspring care to females), or through investing in the
offspring in ways that preclude additional matings? No
matter whether the sexes are mediated chromosomally, or
change with the environment, this consideration is central
to sex differences.
Natural selection has shaped sex differences in all
species, including humans. The important consideration is
always: In the evolutionary history of each species, what
were the reproductive costs and benefits of behaving in
particular ways? These trade-offs give rise to the complex
interplay that we see: systematic behavioral differences
(Geary, 1998; Low, 2000; Maccoby, 1998; Mealey, 2000)
correlated with prevalence of particular alleles, X and
Y chromosomes in some species, and production of
hormones like testosterone that affect behavior.
In genetically sex determined species like humans,
the sex chromosomes are clear proximate influences on
many traits. For example, although both sexes produce
both androgens and estrogens, they do so in different proportions. There is still variation, of course, and the distributions of most traits overlap when the two sexes are
compared. These are always interacting with environmental pressures: the resulting hormonal profiles are
clearly associated with consistent behavioral differences,
which are differentially profitable to mate seekers and
parental investors. All this reflects the ecological and evolutionary costs and benefits.
There is, then, a complex interactive causal mediation of sex differences: external conditions—physical,
biotic, and even social—affect the costs and benefits of
different genetic, physical, physiological, and behavioral
traits for the sexes. Over time, these trade-offs result in
systematic differences between the sexes, mediated in a
variety of ways. When males and females profit reproductively from doing similar things (e.g., when males
Biological Bases of Sex Differences
gain enough from offspring-specific true parental investment, like feeding, that precludes additional matings),
males and females will be similar in size, appearance, and
behavior (e.g., Canada geese). When males profit from
seeking matings rather than investing in offspring, as in
most mammals, the two sexes will differ, sometimes profoundly, in size, appearance, and behavior (e.g., elephant
seal males are several times larger than females).
Among mammals in general, the sexes tend to differ
strikingly, because females are specialized to nurse offspring, giving expensive post-natal nutritional care, while
males tend to specialize in mating effort. As a result, male
mammals tend to have traits that aid in sexual competition: to be larger, to move about more, and to be more
aggressive and risk prone than females. In contrast,
females tend to be risk averse and more cooperative than
males (Low, 2000). In many mammals, the maximum
harem size is a good predictor of the degree of physical
sexual dimorphism.
Thus the “typical” suite of human sex differences
reflects a mammalian evolutionary history. Among
mammals, humans are moderately sexually dimorphic in
genes, physiology, physical appearance, and behavior,
reflecting a past in which moderate polygyny was probably the rule (review in Low, 2000): The following examples of human sex differences reflect the evolved
selective underpinnings of sex differences in humans.
PHYSICAL SEX DIFFERENCES
Gross Physical Differences
Many human male–female physical differences are
immediately obvious: compared with women, men on
average have more upper-body strength and muscular
development, larger jaws, and heavier brow ridges.
Women have breasts and hips. Less obvious in some
cultures, men have penises and testes, and women have
clitora, labia, and vaginas. Many of these differences have
obvious selective relevance and reflect our evolutionary
history. Women’s wider hips (as well as hormonal shifts
in childbirth) facilitate giving birth; permanently
enlarged breasts appear to have evolved in the context of
sexual selection (Low, 2000; Low, Alexander, & Noonan,
1987; Mealey, 2000). Men’s heavier facial features,
versus women’s more neotenic faces, appear to relate to
sexual selection and mate choice (review in Buss, 1999).
Cognitive and Behavioral Differences
And where it has been measured, taller men have more
children than shorter men.
Women’s and men’s waist–hip ratios differ strikingly (about 0.7 vs. 0.85). Women’s waist–hip ratio
changes, thickening with both pregnancy and menopause;
thus a ratio of 0.7 in a woman sends the message: I am
young, and not pregnant. Across a variety of cultures,
men find women’s “typical” waist–hip ratio of 0.7 most
attractive (Singh, 1993; Singh & Luis, 1995), and women
do not find wide hips in men attractive. Related physical
sexual differences may be exaggerated in specific environments; for example, in some populations in harsh
environments, women store fat on the buttocks, giving an
exaggerated shape that reflects ability to thrive in harsh
conditions (Low, 2000).
Brain
A number of sex differences exist in the physical
structure of the brain (review by Kimura, 1999). The
hypothalamus, a clump of nuclei at the base of the brain
that mediates a variety of sexual behaviors (Kimura,
1999, p. 130), differs between the sexes. Androgens
appear to affect parts of an area called the interstitial
nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus (INAH), which is
larger in men than in women, and larger in heterosexual
men than in homosexual men (LeVay, 1991). Though this
suggests that the hypothalamus and its development may
be involved in sexual preferences, of course the data are
simply correlational. Similarly, the anterior commissure
(probably involved in sharing information between
the brain’s hemispheres) is larger in women and
homosexual men than in heterosexual men (Allen and
Gorsky, 1991).
Male brains are 10–15% larger than female brains,
and have more cortical neurons than female brains
(Kimura, 1999, p. 128), in part related to sex differences
in spatial ability (see below). Because men are physically
larger than women, the brain–body weight ratio is
roughly equal between the sexes (Ankney, 1992; Kimura,
1999, p. 128). Interestingly, so far, brain sex differences
related to sexual selection (e.g., spatial differences, see
below) tend to be significantly different. Other differences (e.g., in the United States, men have a nonsignificant ⬃4-point advantage on IQ tests) tend to be
nonsignificant—the distribution of the traits may differ
between men and women, but we find no systematic or
significant differences.
29
PHYSIOLOGICAL AND HORMONAL
SEX DIFFERENCES
Hormonal differences between the sexes in humans, as in
other mammals, are so pervasive and systematic, and are
the mediators for so many other differences, that they are
sometimes incorrectly cited as the biological causes of sex
differences. It is clear, however, that these mediators have
evolved to differ between the sexes, just as in other
species, and specifics vary. Sex hormones organize a variety of sexually dimorphic behaviors, from aggression to
reproductive behavior (see reviews by Kimura [1999] and
Wizemann and Pardue [2001] for hormonal details, and by
Low [2000], Mealey [2000] and Geary [1998] for behavioral, evolutionary, and ecological comparisons).
Although both sexes have both androgenic and estrogenic
compounds, they do so in differing degrees. In general, the
baseline condition hormonally (and in resulting embryological development) is “female,” and androgens are
required to masculinize both physical and behavioral
traits. The sex chromosomes impart important information. For example, it has long been clear that the Y chromosome is necessary for the development of testes; this is
accomplished by testicular differentiating hormone (TDF)
(Vilain & McCabe, 1998). As with several other kinds of
sexual dimorphisms, much of what we know comes from
studying individuals with deficiencies or defects (below).
COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIORAL
DIFFERENCES
Some physical brain sex differences (see above) are
linked in turn to cognitive differences (Kimura, 1999).
Many of these differences are easily linked to past selection on sex differences (Geary, 1998, pp. 280–295),
although it is important to note that, with few exceptions
(noted below), most work has been done in Western
developed nations, and cross-cultural work may well add
considerable variation.
Behavioral differences are obvious between the
sexes shortly after birth. Newborn boys cry more,
respond less to parental comforting, and require more
holding than girls. Newborn girls respond more strongly
than boys to adult faces and to being held. Boys are somewhat more interested than girls in inanimate nonsocial
objects. Boys seem to begin technical problem-solving
30
sooner, and wander farther from home earlier. These
differences are seen very early and occur across several
cultures (Freedman, 1974; Kagan, 1981; R. L. Munroe &
R. H. Munroe, 1975; R. H. Munroe, R. L. Munroe, &
Brasher, 1971; R. H. Munroe, R. L. Munroe, & Bresler,
1985). It seems likely that spatial “practice” associated
with wandering farther from home may contribute to boys’
advantages by the time they are 7 or so (R. H. Munroe,
R. L. Munroe, & Bresler, 1985).
Perceptual
In all senses except vision, women appear to have greater
sensitivity than men. Women have a greater sensitivity to
the four tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salt) than men (Velle,
1987), and have a lower threshold for hearing pure tones
(McGuinness, 1972). Women have slightly larger peripheral visual fields than men (Burg, 1966). In studies done
in Western developed nations, men have a clearer
perception of true vertical and horizontal (Witkin, 1967)
and are less susceptible than women to perceptual illusions like the equal-length line with arrowheads at each
end (pointing “in” versus “out”) (Dewar, 1967). Depth
perception also appears more precise in men.
Many of the visual perception differences contribute
to sex differences in spatial abilities. Cross-cultural data
(Berry, 1976) suggest that, while the sexes tend to differ,
the degree of sexual difference varies with subsistence
mode and acculturation across cultures.
Spatial
Spatial ability differs between the sexes in polygynous
species; males, who search for mates, tend to have greater
spatial abilities than females. For example, among voles
(small mouse-like creatures) males in polygynous species
(who search for females) have better developed spatial
abilities than females, and than males in closely related
monogamous species (Gaulin & Fitzgerald, 1986;
Gaulin & Hoffman, 1988). In humans, men and women use
different cues for spatial orientation (McBurney, Gaulin,
Devinieni, & Adams, 1997); women tend to use landmarks,
while men tend to use directional cues. Scholars suggest
that this is related to past pressures of men’s hunting versus
women’s gathering (Silverman & Eals, 1992; Silverman &
Phillips, 1998). As noted above, Munroe et al. (1985) also
suggest that practice in navigating spatially (e.g., distance
from home in young children) contributes to boys’ abilities.
Biological Bases of Sex Differences
Mathematical
Consistent sex differences in mathematical abilities were
among the first to be recognized, though the role of
biological influences is still controversial. It is difficult to
disentangle social from biological influences. Differences
exist cross-culturally (expectations of boys and girls are
not identical), and girls outperform boys in some cases
(e.g., on computational tests). These findings suggest that
both biological and social components contribute significantly to observed differences (Engelhard, 1990; Low &
Over, 1993; Lubinski & Benbow, 1992; summary in
Kimura, 1999, Chapter 6).
Verbal
Girls begin to speak earlier than boys and have larger
vocabularies at each age (Maccoby, 1998). By the last
year of high school, girls retain a slight advantage in
grammatical and spelling skills (Hyde & Linn, 1988).
Even as adults, women retain advantages over men in
fluency (ability to produce words and sentences under
particular constraints) and in speed of naming colors and
forms (Kimura, 1996).
One of the most widely recognized and studied
differences between the sexes in humans is that of aggression. Here, as in many other differences, we find a general pattern mediated by both genetics and acculturation,
with some variation shaped by our evolutionary past
(Low, 2000; R. L. Munroe, Hulefeld, Rodgers, Tomeo, &
Yamazaki, 2000). Aggression, including warfare,
male–male fighting, homicide, and even child abuse,
appear to have evolutionary roots (Daly & Wilson, 1988).
Cross-culturally, in many societies and through much of
human evolutionary history, men have been able to make
large direct reproductive gains through aggressive strategies in gaining resources; women’s reproduction has typically been more limited by physiological and physical
factors (Low, 2000). Perhaps as a result of this evolutionary ecological history, there are clear genetic contributions to aggressiveness, such as abnormalities in the gene
encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme
monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) (Brunner, 1996; Caspi,
McClay, Moffitt, Mill, Martin et al., 2002). However, the
costs and benefits of aggressive behavior are affected by
societal norms, and there is cross-cultural variation in the
degree to which males and females differ (Ember, 1981;
Munroe et al., 2000). As we learn more about the genetic
Note
31
contributions to aggressiveness, we may also find crosscultural variation in the equilibrium frequency of genes
like MAOA.
SEX DIFFERENCES
IN
LIFE HISTORY
Human life histories are unusual among primates, our
closest relatives. If we followed the “typical” primate pattern (in which many phenomena vary with size), women
would nurse their children until about age 7 years, and
then their daughters would have their first children at
about age 8 or 9 years (review in Low, 2000). Human distortions of “typical” primate patterns appear to be linked
to our extreme sociality. Any glance at census data suggests that there are also significant sex differences in
human life history. Women live longer than men and have
greater life expectancy at birth. In this, humans are like
most mammals, in which males engage in risky competition for mates, and females specialize in expensive but
risk-averse post-natal care; females tend to mature significantly earlier, to be less aggressive, and to live longer
than males (Low, 2000). Of course, there are social reinforcements of these patterns (Geary, 1998; Low, 2000),
but the differences follow the general mammalian pattern
and occur across a wide spectrum of human societies.
Patterns of senescence—the failure of systems (and system repair) with age—differ between the sexes only in
reproductive senescence; menopause is more regular and
defined in females than is age-related decrease in male
reproductive function.
UNUSUAL CONDITIONS ILLUMINATE
PATHWAYS
Rare and deleterious conditions highlight some of the
causal biological pathways that yield sex differences. For
example, babies missing an X chromosome (XO rather
than XX) have Turner’s syndrome; they are 98% likely to
die before birth, and individuals who survive show mental deficiency. Similarly, XY (genetic male) individuals
born without androgen sensitivity lack androgen receptors in their cells and look superficially like females.
Their testes develop normally but remain in the abdominal cavity; the scrotum and penis do not develop. Other
related examples are reviewed by Kimura (1999).
Other pathways are demonstrated by examining
changes in brain-damaged individuals. For example,
men’s and women’s brains differ somewhat in the degree
to which functions are uni- or bilateral. Thus, after
damage to the left hemisphere, women are less likely
than men to suffer aphasia, and they recover more
quickly, suggesting that their speech functions are more
bilateral (Pizzamiglio & Mammucari, 1985). Wizemann
and Pardue (2001) and Kimura (1999) review additional
sex differences in disrupted development and health
syndromes.
CAUSAL PATHWAYS
AND
LINKS
The biological bases of sex differences lie in our evolutionary past; they are not simply “genetic” or “hormonal,”
although genes and the resulting hormones produced
mediate many sex differences. The evolutionary history
of any species (including humans) underlies all, and the
impact of natural selection shapes the differences that we
see. Differences evolve because ecological, social, and
physical/physiological factors interact in a complex way:
environmental conditions (which affect the relative benefits of traits in the two sexes) result in the differential
success of individuals with different genetic make-up;
individuals of different genetic make-up have different
hormonal profiles, and different expressions thereof.
The result is, in many species, a pattern of systematic differences between the sexes. Occasional disruptions of the normal patterns sometimes help to illuminate
the general patterns. Of course, above and beyond these
biological influences on sex differences, we have huge
sociocultural influences (Low, 1989; Geary, 1998,
Chapter 9). Although some currently observed differences in modern environments are difficult to trace to our
evolutionary past (e.g., differential abilities on SAT tests),
there is no doubt that evolutionarily based sex differences
can, even today, affect men’s and women’s lives
(Lubinski & Benbow, 1992; Wizemann & Pardue, 2001).
NOTE
1. Here, we follow the National Academy of Sciences (Wizemann and
Pardue, 2001) in using “sex” to refer to the biologically defined
categories “male” and “female”; the term “gender” will apply to
individuals’ self-representation and social roles.
32
Biological Bases of Sex Differences
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Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts
Carolyn Pope Edwards, Lisa Knoche, and Asiye Kumru
Thus the goals of earlier work were to understand
how, why, and at what age girls and boys begin to vary
behaviorally along such dimensions as “nurturance,”
“aggression,” and “dependency,” including determination
of how sex-typical dispositions are influenced by cultural
factors. In contrast, the new approach seeks to answer
such questions as the following. How are different kinds
of gender-specific social behaviors called out or elicited
by different contexts of socialization? How are gender
differences influenced by children’s relationship to their
social companions—for example, their gender, age, status, and kinship relationship? How are gender differences
influenced by different activity contexts (e.g., school,
work, play) that we know are differentially distributed
across cultural communities, depending on such factors
as adult subsistence strategies, leisure patterns, family
structures, household organizations, and forms of social
networks? Finally, how are gender differences affected
by where children are found, their location in space
(e.g., distance from home)?
INTRODUCTION
Socialization is the general process by which the members
of a cultural community or society pass on their language,
rules, roles, and customary ways of thinking and behaving to the next generation. Sex role socialization is one
important aspect of this general process. In common
language, socialization means something like “learning
to function in a social setting,” as in “socialization of
children in child care.” This usage implies that the young
children acquire social competence through the concerted
efforts of adults, who carefully train and mold them to
behave appropriately (thus we also speak of “puppy
socialization”). In the social sciences, however, the
meaning of “socialization” is more complex and does not
carry the implication that children are simply the passive
recipients or objects of the socialization process.
Rather, in recent years, concepts of socialization in
general, and sex role socialization in particular, have been
transformed along both theoretical and empirical dimensions. The theoretical aspect includes efforts to integrate
social learning and cognitivist perspectives through a
focus on self-socialization. Self-socialization can be
defined as the process whereby children influence the
direction and outcomes of their own development
through selective attention, imitation, and participation in
particular activities and modalities of interaction that
function as key contexts of socialization. For example,
many children prefer to observe and imitate same-gender
models rather than the opposite gender, and to interact
and participate in gender-typical activities. The empirical
aspect of the reconceptualization of socialization thus
involves a renewed focus on context. Whereas earlier
studies of behavioral sex differences typically involved
appraising individual behavioral dispositions across contexts, the new approach seeks ways to understand behavior within specific relational interactions and activity
settings (e.g., the conversation of boys and girls in small
or large groups) or in settings with children of mixed-age
(e.g., in neighborhood games) versus the same age group
(e.g., classmates at school).
CHILDREN’S COMPANIONSHIP: AGE,
GENDER, AND KINSHIP
Children’s companions are those individuals whom they
watch, imitate, and interact with in natural settings of
home, school, neighborhood, and community. These
social partners influence children’s emerging gender
expectations through face-to-face relationships in which
children give and receive care, help, instruction, support,
and cooperation, or where they engage in dominance
struggles, conflicts, arguments, and fights. As they interact with different companions, children learn to discriminate the different categories of people in society, such as
infants, elders, older versus younger siblings, extended
family, household guests and visitors, and passers-by.
To understand the different socialization experiences
of boys and girls, it is important to know what factors
possibly influence children’s companionship. Children
around the world have different opportunities with respect
34
Children’s Companionship
to social companions. Their cultural community, developmental age, gender, and kinship composition strongly
determine the company they keep. Cultural community
shapes children’s companionship through such macro features as the following: geographic layout, settlement pattern, cooperative networks, household composition, and
age/gender division of labors (Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
For instance, in a community where the mother’s primary
responsibilities keep her in the vicinity of the house and
adjacent garden areas, while the father’s work takes him
to a nearby town, the mother’s companionship would necessarily be more salient to young children during the day
than would the father’s. In a community where families
live in extended families with bilateral kinship, they will
often have many houses where they can freely visit and
play and a wide variety of cousins from both sides of their
family with whom to interact.
Children’s age has a strong influence on their choice
of companions, much more so than does their gender in
the early years. Age-related changes in children’s physical, social, and intellectual capacities are necessarily
related to changes in their social settings and their companions. For example, infants and toddlers require constant supervision and show dependency behaviors such as
seeking comfort, protection, and food from the primary
caregiver or designated guardians. They are more likely
to be in the company of mothers or other female adults
(grandmothers, aunts, or hired caregivers) rather than
male adults in almost all cultural communities.
Preschool-age children expand their capabilities to
do more things with more companions in a widening
variety of settings (Garbarino & Gilliam, 1980). They can
now have younger as well as older companions in their
playgroup, and they begin to learn about their position in
the “pecking order” of childhood. As they become aware
of their gender identity, they begin to show preferences
for same-sex playmates and their cross-gender interaction
decreases in settings when they can choose their
companions, as at preschool or childcare.
During middle childhood, the experiences of children
in different communities become even more divergent
according to gender, as well as according to educational
opportunities. In cultures where schooling is present for
both girls and boys, children experience the very important
transition of moving from a more home-centered to a more
school-centered existence. School-age children interact
frequently with same-age peers, the majority of whom are
not kin, during half the daylight hours. At this age, children
35
seem to seek interaction with companions who are not their
family members but who are like them in other ways. They
may show avoidant or exclusive behavior toward children
not of their gender, especially when they are playing in
large groups (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). Research shows
that children’s play in these single-gender groups involves
high proportions of both egoistic conflict and sociability/
play behaviors, as if the children are using the group as a
“laboratory” for learning how to negotiate and get along
with peers in the culturally approved masculine or feminine way (Maccoby, 1998).
The age gap between the children and their
companions is also important. When children interact
with children who are older than they are by 3 or more
years, they tend to display certain dependency behaviors
(seeking proximity, exchanging information/inquiring,
and watching/imitating) (Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
Toddlers and preschool-aged children seem especially
motivated to imitate the behavior of older children, and
learn much from contact with older siblings. When older
children interact with younger and smaller children, they
are much more likely to take on a dominant style of interaction than they are when they are with peers or older
persons. Older children (especially boys) tend to decrease
their contact with female family adults once they begin to
attend school, but their contact with fathers may actually
increase in communities where sons are allowed to help
their fathers in work (Whiting & Whiting, 1975).
Thus children’s gender interacts with their age in
influencing their preferred patterns of companionship.
Throughout the world’s cultures and subcultures, gender
segregation for play and leisure are seen during the years
of middle childhood. The same-gender peer play seems
to appear around age 3 years (Hartup, 1983; Jacklin &
Maccoby, 1978), and to become predominant during the
ages of 6–9 (Feiring & Lewis, 1989; Whiting & Edwards,
1988). These patterns may reflect in part the child’s own
preferences for friends and playmates (self-socialization)
as well as their parents’ and other institutions’ structuring
of the social environment (Cochran & Riley, 1987).
Children tend to compare their appearance, skills,
and behavior with their same-gender peers who are close
in age to them. Thus, interacting with same-gender companions may help them to establish gender identity and
roles. However, girls usually have more access to adult
females than boys do to adult males in their daily settings
(Whiting & Edwards, 1988). As a result, boys seem to
seek out interaction with boys who are older than
36
themselves, who may serve as models. Boys have more
daily contact with male playmates in their dyadic settings
than girls do with girl playmates (Feiring & Lewis, 1989).
Finally, the organization of people in space and the
social structure of households and neighborhoods affect
the availability of kin versus non-kin companionship for
children. For instance, in communities where children are
restricted to the home environment, their main companions are usually their siblings and cousins, as observed
among Abaluyia children of Kisa, Kenya (Weisner, 1984).
Instead, where they have more autonomy to explore the
neighborhood and more access to communal play areas or
schools, they have more contact with nonrelatives and
more chances to divide themselves into gender- and agesegregated playgroups, as is common in North America.
In a study of United States social networks, Feiring and
Lewis (1989) found that children aged 3, 6, and 9 years
had a greater number and more daily contacts with nonkin
than with kin. With increasing age, children significantly
increased the number of kin with whom they were in contact, but they decreased nonsignificantly in their frequency
of daily contact. Though boys and girls were not different
in the proportion of kin versus nonkin with whom they
were in contact, an increasing trend found that, with age,
girls had more daily contact with kin than did boys.
CHILDREN’S ACTIVITIES
Activity settings allow children around the world to try
out and experience different kinds of roles and occupations and to learn to navigate social relations with family
and peers. As children move around different settings,
they encounter different opportunities for work, play,
learning, and sociability, and come in contact with different standing patterns of behavior and toys, objects, and
natural materials to be manipulated. Boys and girls may
or may not engage in the same sorts of activities, resulting in divergent socialization processes. A general review
of the literature finds that parents behave surprisingly
similarly in their explicit treatment of sons versus daughters, for example, in the rules they enforce (Maccoby and
Jacklin, 1974). However, they do assign boys and girls to
different settings (e.g., work vs. play) and encourage
different patterns of companionship (e.g., time spent in
mixed-age groups containing infants). Perhaps it is the
cumulative effect of these large and small differences in
task assignments, work, and play experiences that result
Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts
in divergence of socialization experiences and outcomes
for boys and girls (Morelli & Tronick, 1991).
Children’s activities in rural subsistence communities are often focused on responsible work (e.g., cleaning,
gardening, herding, childcare), whereas in contemporary
industrial communities, children are often put into organized play settings (e.g., preschools, schools, and afterschool programs). Around the world, girls and boys
engage in different proportions of work versus play
(Whiting & Edwards, 1988), and these differences
contribute to the gender-socialization process.
Activities can be thought of as “directed” or “undirected” (Munroe et al., 1983; Munroe, Munroe, &
Shimmin, 1984). Directed activities are ones that are
specifically assigned to children by an authority figure,
perhaps a parent or older sibling. They include such
things as caring for younger siblings, household work,
and errands outside the home. The age at which children
are directed toward particular activities depends upon
their society. In communities where women take a leading role in subsistence work, children (but especially
girls) are recruited by their mothers to take on more
responsible tasks at a younger age (Edwards & Whiting,
in press). In communities where boys can be easily incorporated into the work of the adult men (hunting, fishing,
farming), and where that work is time consuming and
labor intensive, boys move relatively early into work
roles. Undirected activities are less structured, leaving the
child to set the course for the event, as for example in free
play or idle sociability. Both directed and undirected
activities can be identified across cultural contexts, and
both contribute to gender role development.
In a study of Australian youth aged 6–7 years, boys
were found to be more engaged in competitive sports, and
girls in ballet and dance (Russell & Russell, 1992). In
many studies (e.g., Edwards, 2000), girls have been more
often observed playing with dolls, handling household
objects, and participating in dress-up and art activities.
Their play activities and toy preferences more often focus
on domestic roles and nurturance. In contrast, boys are
often found playing with store-bought or handmade
vehicles, weapons, building materials, sports equipment,
or other objects considered culturally masculine. In
Senegal, the pretend play of girls focuses on domestic
activities over the course of childhood; boys engage in
domestic pretend play at age 2, but increasingly turn to
themes involving transportation and hunting as they get
older (Bloch & Adler, 1994).
The Settings of Socialization
Types of play vary considerably by context. A
reanalysis of the Six Culture data found that in locations
where work predominated over play, all children were relatively unlikely to engage in fantasy play, perhaps because
they were enacting such scenarios in real life. For example, instead of playing with dolls, young children could
care for infant siblings, tend their household fire, and
handle sharp cooking tools (Edwards, 2000). Furthermore,
in communities where children had freedom to venture
beyond the bounds of the immediate home and yard, they
engaged in considerable amounts of creative–constructive
play (e.g., building dams, making whistles and mud pies
out of natural materials, and creating slingshots). The most
“playful” children were found in Taira, Okinawa, where
their workloads were light and they were supervised by all
of the village adults collectively, giving them considerable
freedom to move around the village (Edwards, 2000).
In some cultures, gender roles are impressed upon
young children through directed, often work-related,
activities. Through work, children can learn adult roles
and skills (Nsamenang, 1992). In the Children of
Different Worlds project, boys as young as age 4 years
were trained to care for livestock (Whiting & Edwards,
1988). In fact, animal care was generally a male task,
especially with large animals such as cattle or water buffalo. In Rogoff’s (1981) study of Guatemalan children,
children were beginning to perform gender-specific work
tasks by age 5 or 6, with boys gathering firewood and
feeding animals, and girls running errands and doing
cleaning. This same division of labor was noted for an
American middle-class sample (Bloch & Walsh, 1985),
where girls at age 5–6 years were directed to perform
more housework, and again in a Caribbean sample of
youth (Lange & Rodman, 1992). Likewise, in a study of
Senegalese children, girls were assigned more responsible work than boys starting at age 5 and 6 years (Bloch &
Adler, 1994). Certainly, however, children’s work is not
always gender specific. Mothers with heavy workloads
recruit both sons and daughters to help (e.g., with gardening), and in households where there is no child of the
appropriate gender to perform a gender-specific activity,
children may be expected to cross over and do oppositegender chores; for example, boys will clean or care for
infants, and girls will tend to animals or repair fishing
equipment (Ember, 1973; Lange & Rodman, 1992).
Task assignment is thus a strong influence of
the socialization process. Ember (1981) describes task
assignment as an unconscious effort on the part of
37
caretakers to transmit gender-specific information. For
example, mothers in Senegal were found to be more
likely to ask girls than boys to do work, and more likely
to pull girls away from their play activities to perform
responsible work (Bloch & Adler, 1994). Across societies, girls are generally engaged in more responsible
work than boys (Whiting & Edwards, 1973). In a West
African community, girls aged 8–10 years were often
found caring for younger siblings, family members, and
neighbor children (Nsamenang, 1992). In most cultures,
females continue to be seen as responsible for children,
and as young females become adults they expect to take
on responsibility for children (Best & Williams, 1997).
In sum, cultures around the world socialize boys and
girls, through both direct and indirect means, to understand their gender role in society. The work activities of
children reflect gender differences, with girls engaged in
more household tasks and responsibilities than boys.
Leisure and play activities between the sexes also vary,
with girls focusing more on domestic scenarios and nurturance, and boys engaging in competitive and largemotor activities. Socialization through these activities,
while discrete, generally results in separate societal rules
and roles for the sexes. The activities in which children
engage—both work and leisure—provide important
learning opportunities for children, to help them become
knowledgeable, informed participants in their culture.
THE SETTINGS
OF
SOCIALIZATION
Just as the activities in which children engage contribute
to gender socialization, where children work and play
also has important implications. The settings in which
children spend their time shape those behaviors they can
observe, try out, rehearse, and master. The impact on
socialization is directly related to the strength of the
setting. Some contexts of development are considered
“strong” and other situations “weak” (Snyder & Ickes,
1985). In strong contexts, the range of behaviors that an
individual is permitted to display is limited. The situation
almost dictates the individual’s response. Weak contexts
allow more variability; the situation does not demand a
specific behavioral or emotional response. With regard to
gender socialization, many social situations are relatively
strong, particularly for older children who are more
aware of gender stereotypes and expectations. These
strong contexts demand gender-appropriate behaviors,
38
whereas weak-context environments allow children more
flexibility in behaving outside or beyond the bounds of
gender constraints.
Girls and boys tend to occupy different locations in
space, along with some shared venues (Maccoby, 1998).
In general, boys tend to play outdoors and in relatively
large groups. When possible, they combine undirected
play with their work, for example, interspersing roughhousing and chasing games with tending animals in the
fields. Girls are more likely to be found playing with two
to three peers in an indoor setting, or assisting inside with
household chores, or outside performing errands such as
going to the market or getting water or fuel. Girls also
spice up their work with fun, especially through conversation, games, or singing. They engage in conversations
more readily than boys do, while boys engage in more
physical activity (Best & Williams, 1997).
The school setting can be seen as both a “strong” and
“weak” context for gender behaviors, depending on the
specific location. For example, the cafeteria is a strong
context, where boys and girls separate to different tables if
given the choice. Likewise, on the playground, boy and
girl groups take over separate spaces. Girls usually play
around the periphery of the playground, while boys
occupy a larger more central space. In fact, boys take up
10 times more space on the playground and often invade
girls’ activities (Maccoby, 1998; Thorne, 1994). The
Children of Different Worlds project found that in societies
where all the boys and girls go to school together, samegender interaction was very high during free play, thereby
resulting in more gender segregation than was generally
found in the homes and neighborhoods (Whiting &
Edwards, 1988). Within the classroom, however, creative
and constructive activities, such as art, manipulatives, and
dramatic play, can promote gender integration. For
instance, in a social studies project, boys and girls can
work cooperatively on tasks and are more likely to overlook gender differences than outside in the playground.
The teacher’s presence can attract both girls and boys to
circle around nearby, causing them to mingle and interact.
Neighborhoods are generally “weaker” contexts than
school settings with respect to gender roles. Owing to the
limited number of playmates available, they often promote
play that is mixed as to gender and age, and many favorite
group games (such as “hide-and-seek,” kick ball, and tag)
attract children of all ages, boys and girls equally. Crossgender play is also common when children collect in small
groups or pairs, and when children have known one
Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts
another for a long period of time and have built up trust and
friendship. The more children are present in a space, and
the more unfamiliar they are with one another, the more
likely they will segregate based on gender.
The Children of Different Worlds spot observations
revealed boys to be generally farther from home than were
girls, in contexts that are considered weak in regard to
gender socialization but strong in terms of peer pressure.
Girls’ movement away from the home was restricted in
some societies, and they left the home area most often
when following a predictable path doing a “directed” chore
such as gathering water, collecting firewood, or going to
the shop (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). Boys had more freedom to wander beyond the home environment in undirected play where they were less accountable to figures of
authority and perhaps more free to experiment in their
behavior and follow their curiosity. On the other hand, we
know from other research that when boys play together in
groups, they strongly pressure one another toward what
they consider masculine behavior (by ridiculing boys who
do not measure up) (Carter & McCloskey, 1984; Fagot,
1984). Thus, boys turn their free play away from home into
strong contexts for gender role socialization.
The Children of Different Worlds project found that
during directed activities, boys were found farther from
home than girls in four of the six communities, and these
differences were maintained during undirected play. In
fact, it was during undirected activities that gender
differences were maximized. Boys spent more time in
locations and activities (such as rough-and-tumble play)
that accentuated gender differences. Girls were generally
nearer the home environment, more often engaged in
directed activities with specific task or supervision
responsibilities, interspersed with undirected intervals of
leisure and socializing.
CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR: NURTURANCE,
DEPENDENCY, PROSOCIAL ACTS, AND
AGGRESSION
In this final section, we discuss four categories of child
behavior (nurturance, dependency, prosocial acts, and
aggression) that appear at an early age and are important
outcomes of the kinds of socialization processes we have
described. Children’s behavior seems to have certain
similar characteristics across cultures because of their
Children’s Behavior
universal developmentally-based needs and desires.
However, there are also important differences tied to
cultural experiences. All four categories of behavior are
particularly reciprocal in the child’s dyadic interaction
with their companions, and they are subjected to a cultural channeling that specifies under what circumstances
and to whom the child can display them.
Nurturance can be defined as offering help and
support to an individual who is in a state of need.
Although there are variations in the styles and situations
in which it is expected to express nurturance, it is a recognizable universal across culture. With age, children are
more capable of perceiving, understanding, and meeting
others’ needs and wants, and then responding to them.
For example, they learn how to offer food to distract a
crying toddler or how to encourage a friend with a smile.
In almost all societies, infants and toddlers receive
higher proportions of nurturance than do older children
because of their relative helplessness and vulnerability as
well as their cute and endearing physical characteristics
(Braten, 1996; Edwards, 1986, 1993; Whiting &
Edwards, 1988). Infant crying seems to elicit nurturance
behavior from even very young children (Zahn-Waxler,
Friedman, & Cummings, 1983). When infants grow older
and become more mobile, independent, and demanding,
they still need to be watched, protected, and instructed.
However, toddlers are in many ways harder to care for
than infants. They are still small and defenseless, but they
seem to elicit many prosocially dominant behaviors from
others (for instance, commands to desist from dangerous
and annoying behaviors, and suggestions about how to
eat their food properly) rather than the pure nurturance
behavior that they formerly received (Whiting, 1983;
Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
Both older boys and girls tend to be highly nurturing toward babies. However, girls are more nurturing than
boys to toddlers, other children, and adults (Whiting &
Edwards, 1988). In most societies, girls are assigned as
caretakers of babies and have more opportunity to practice nurturance than do boys. Girls are more frequently in
the company of their mothers and more eager to imitate
the maternal role. In their play, girls are more likely to act
out scenes from familiar settings, such as the home and
school where they can rehearse and create domestic roles
involving nurturing interpersonal relationships and
nurturance (Edwards, Knoche, & Kumru, 2001). Thus,
girls seem to have more opportunities in everyday life to
practice nurturance than do boys.
39
Dependency behavior can be described as seeking
help, attention, permission, information, emotional support, or material resources. Because of the helplessness of
the human infant, dependency behavior is strong at the
beginning of life and is elicited and rewarded by caretaking adults at least some of the time. One would expect
that the dependency would then decrease as the child
becomes more mature and competent. However, research
has documented no clear-cut changes in age in overall
levels of dependency behavior during childhood.
Maccoby and Masters (1970) discussed these findings
with reference to the different types of dependent behaviors. They noted that clinging and proximity-seeking
behavior decrease with age, while help- and attentionseeking behavior remain high. Similarly, Whiting and
Edwards (1988) suggest that a child’s dependency tendencies toward mother does not so much decrease as change
in style from early to middle childhood. Children’s preferred style tends to shift from more physical and intimate
modes toward ones like help, attention, information, and
permission-seeking that rely on verbal skills and help
them act in accord with cultural values. Thus, children’s
dependency changes in format with age, becoming less
intimate and proximal, but it does not disappear.
Findings on gender differences in child’s dependency are decidedly mixed. Luo boys from Kenya were
observed to exhibit significantly more dependency
behavior than were the girls (Ember, 1973). However,
many studies from Western and non-Western societies
have shown little or no sex differences in overall dependency behavior (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Whiting &
Edwards, 1973). Ember (1981) suggested that girls and
boys might exhibit different types of dependency
behavior. For instance, in the Six Cultures data, girls
tended to seek help and physical contact more than boys
in the 3–6-year-old age range, but boys seemed to seek
attention and material goods more than girls once they
were about 7 years old (Edwards & Whiting, 1974).
Prosocial behavior can be described as voluntary
acts intending to meet the needs of others. Prosocial
behavior tends to increase with age because of developmental changes in children’s cognitive, socio-emotional,
and physical competence (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). In
most societies, children are expected to carry more
responsibility at home as they become mature and to
display more prosocial acts. Studies with Western and
non-Western samples show that older children displayed
higher proportions of prosocial behaviors compared with
40
their younger peers (Eisenberg, 1992; Eisenberg & Fabes,
1998; Whiting & Edwards, 1973, 1988; de Guzman,
Edwards, & Carlo, 2002).
Socialization pressures and learning might play an
important role in children’s prosocial tendencies. From
toddlerhood on, children experience socialization pressure to learn the rudiments of prosocial behavior
(Whiting & Edwards, 1988). In cultures where children
have more opportunities to interact with infants, they
seem to acquire capacities for prosocial behavior naturally and smoothly. Likewise, where they grow up in the
company of elders who need their assistance, they learn
prosocial values about respect and care of the very old.
Literature about gender differences in prosocial
behavior has produced mixed conclusions. For example,
studies conducted in contemporary Western societies
suggest that girls seem to perform more prosocial behavior than boys, at least during late childhood and adolescence (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). Barry, Bacon, and
Child (1957) found that socialization pressure toward
nurturance, obedience, and responsibilities was much
higher for girls than for boys across 110 societies.
However, some studies have produced contrary results.
For example, de Guzman et al. (2002) found no gender
differences in prosocial behaviors for the Gikuyu children
of Ngecha, Kenya; for these children, social contexts of
work and childcare proved to be strong socialization settings that elicited high levels of prosocial behavior from
both boys and girls.
Finally, aggression can be defined as satisfying the
actor’s own needs through an ascendant or commanding
style that inflicts some kind of injury or loss of resources
to the other. Although psychologists continue to debate
about whether aggression is innate or learned, research
has documented that positive reinforcement and permissive conditions increase the level of aggressive behaviors.
Indeed, Western research shows that parents who reward
and encourage aggression seem to have aggressive
children (Bandura & Walters, 1963). The same is true
of mothers in non-Western societies, who have high
levels of controlling and reprimanding behavior and who
uphold children’s dominant/aggressive and insulting
behaviors to meet their egoistic needs (Whiting &
Edwards, 1988). Indeed, societies where people value
and reward aggression produce highly aggressive
individuals (Chagnon, 1968; Ember & Ember, 1994).
Punitive socialization promotes rather than decreases
children’s hostility and aggression (Zigler & Child, 1969).
This can occur in cultural communities with extended
Socialization of Boys and Girls in Natural Contexts
family households where outward aggression cannot be
tolerated with so many people living together (Harrington
& Whiting, 1972).
Whiting and Edwards (1988) found that physical
teasing, assaulting, and insulting occured at similar levels
whether older children are interacting with younger ones,
or vice versa. However, there was also very consistent
evidence of gender differences in aggression, and this has
been confirmed across both Western and non-Western
societies. Past about age 3, boys generally show more
aggression than girls (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Whiting &
Edwards, 1973).
Children seem to come into the world with similar
but not identical endowments for dyadic interaction
across cultures. Cultural scripts in many societies then set
girls and boys on different courses by exaggerating,
reducing, or redirecting any emerging gender differences
through the mechanisms of constraining the company
that children keep, the activities they perform, and the
locations in which they spend their time. Children too are
active in their own gender socialization and, whenever
they can, make predictable choices about whom they will
observe and imitate, how, where, and with whom they
will play, and when and how they will contribute to the
care of others and the useful work needed to carry on
daily life in their community.
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Adolescence
Glenn E. Weisfeld
behavioral tendencies in any normal population, albeit
with some individual exceptions. Once a general specieswide characteristic of adolescence is identified, it can then
be analyzed functionally to learn why it has stood the test
of time. General statements about adolescence, to the
extent that they can be established, will provide a functional framework for viewing this stage of life.
On the other hand, it is important not to overgeneralize, to see consistency where it does not exist. Variability
exists, and is due mainly to differences in socialization by
family and culture, not genetic differences between populations. Various theories have arisen to explain these
socialization influences, including the social cognitive
theory of gender, which stresses observation and imitation, and cognitive developmental theory, which emphasizes one’s self-concept as male or female. Gender schema
theory recognizes an internal (evolved?) motive to conform with culturally based gender expectations. This cultural variability is widely acknowledged by evolutionists,
but until recently evoked little attention from them. In the
past decade or so, however, evolutionists have begun
trying to explain some of this variability by invoking the
concept of biological function. As in the case of a particular species, individuals and populations must exhibit
behavior that enhances their survival and reproduction. A
given practice can be interpreted in functional terms
whether it arises because of natural selection or cultural
selection. If a particular trait is adaptive in the species as
a whole, given enough geological time, it will evolve
genetic supports and come to have an evolved basis (the
Baldwin effect). If the trait is adaptive only locally, culture
will usually support it. The neural basis of culture and
learning evolved to permit rapid behavioral adjustments to
environmental changes. Learning would not be so widespread in animals if it did not generally enhance their
biological fitness. The same can be said of human culture.
This broad approach promises to strike a balance between
biological and cultural approaches, and to provide a
unifying construct—biological function. Language, tool
use, warfare, ornamentation, religion, and other welldeveloped biocultural capacities are increasingly being
INTRODUCTION
This article constitutes an attempt to provide some
illustrations of how the integration of biological and
cultural factors is proceeding with regard to the topic of
adolescence and gender. It will begin with a survey of
some theories and research methodologies used in studying the prevalence, causation, and function of a given
behavior or sex difference. Next, human adolescence will
be described and analyzed functionally, with special attention to sex differences of puberty and puberty rites. Sex
differences in adolescent family relations, labor, and mate
choice will then be addressed. Some illustrative individual
and cultural differences in these general patterns will also
be analyzed. The article, then, will take a functional
approach in attempting to explain why particular sex
differences in behavior occur in adolescence.
THEORIES
Understanding sex differences and sexual behavior in
adolescence requires some comprehension of adolescence as it occurs throughout the world. Statements
restricted to adolescence in the West or in industrialized
societies beg the question of whether or not they are also
true of adolescence elsewhere, whether or not they are
universal, and, if so, whether or not they are true of
adolescence in other primate species as well.
It goes without saying that human behavior is
exceedingly flexible, but this does not mean that it has no
evolved basis and is entirely learned. Consistent with the
fact that humans share 99% of their genes, universal
behaviors and sex differences have been reported (Brown,
1991; Friedl, 1975; Mealey, 2000; Schlegel & Barry,
1991; van den Berghe, 1979). Even adolescents living in
post-industrial society, an environment far removed from
the African savannah in which hominids evolved, generally retain the evolved behavioral propensities of the
Pleistocene era since 99% of our genes are still the same.
Therefore it should be possible to find a core of adolescent
42
Methodologies
analyzed in adaptive terms. The discovery of rudiments of
some of these capacities in great apes is facilitating this
functional analysis (e.g., McGrew, 1992).
METHODOLOGIES
Testing for an Evolved Basis
Every behavioral action occurs because of a combination
of interacting genetic and environmental factors. Despite
general acceptance of this notion, it is useful to learn
whether or not a particular behavior or sex difference has
a specific evolved basis. All human behaviors are genetically based because all involve a genetically programmed
brain, but only some behaviors are mediated by brain
structures that evolved for a specific behavioral purpose.
Other behaviors are incidental byproducts of our species’
domain-general capacities for perception, learning,
cognition, and movement. For example, all chickens will
peck at grain, but only some will learn to peck at a disk
for food.
Some of the methodologies used in distinguishing
between these alternatives will now be outlined. They can
provide evidence for or against the presence of an evolved
basis for a given anatomical or behavioral trait or sex difference. For further critical discussion of these research
strategies, which were pioneered by Darwin (1872/1965)
himself, see C. R. Ember (1981), Miller (2002), and
G. E. Weisfeld (1982).
Universality. The main research strategy is to distinguish species-wide traits from those that vary across populations. Species-wide anatomical and behavioral traits
have an evolved basis, as a rule. Variable traits usually
have a cultural basis and are adaptive or neutral for that
population but lack a population-specific genetic basis.
Like all statements about human behavior, these have
exceptions. If the behavior remains the same across this
cultural variability, then the behavior probably has an
evolved basis. If the behavior or sex difference varies
with culture, then genes do not effectively constrain it and
it is primarily culturally based.
Developmental Research Strategies. Similar reasoning applies to other research strategies for drawing this
distinction between traits with an evolved basis and those
that are purely acquired. Another strategy is to minimize
43
the role of culture or socialization in order to see if the
behavior still develops. For example, if newborns exhibit
the trait, then postnatal socialization can hardly be responsible. If, on the other hand, the behavior or sex difference
is absent at birth, then its later appearance is probably due
to socialization—although it may be a delayed effect of
genes, such as the changes of puberty (C. R. Ember, 1981).
A variant of this secondly strategy in analyzing a sex
difference is to hold socialization constant by concealing
the gender of infants and noting whether they are still
treated the same. If not, then an evolved basis for any sex
differences in the infants’ behavior is likely. Yet another
variant is to identify the onset of some cognitive capacity
and see if the sex difference in question appears before
this hypothesized cognitive cause. If, for example,
children exhibit a particular sex difference before they
understand gender differences, then the behavior cannot
depend on this comprehension.
Comparative and Physiological Strategies.
A third main strategy is to determine whether or not a
human behavior or sex difference also occurs in our
primate relatives. If so, then the trait probably was passed
on to our species by our forebears and is not rooted in
human culture. Similarly, demonstrating a specific neural
or hormonal mechanism for a behavior or sex difference
renders improbable a purely cultural basis. Many hormonal and brain structural differences between men and
women have been correlated with sex differences in
behavior (Hampson, 2002).
Interpretation of Data from these Research
Strategies. These research strategies are not infallible. For example, a trait that we do not share with even
our closest primate relatives, such as speech, may still
have an evolved basis because every species possesses
some unique traits. A sex difference that occurs in hundreds of cultures except one doubtless has an evolved
basis, because culture can always override an evolved
behavioral propensity.
Because of these complications, evidence from
various strategies is sought in analyzing a given behavior
or sex difference. The evidence from various strategies
for a given behavior is usually consistent, thereby
validating them. For example, cross-cultural, hormonal,
and comparative evidence converges to indicate that sex
differences in human aggression have an evolved basis
(Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993).
44
Also, demonstrating an evolved basis for a behavior
does not mean that socialization factors are not also
involved. Most behaviors are probably shaped by both
types of factor, by information obtained by our ancestors
and embodied in our genes, and by information acquired
by ourselves through learning and observation.
Methodologies for Implicating
Socialization Factors
Another methodology for examining the source of a given
behavioral sex difference is to see if boys and girls are
treated differently by parents or the general culture. If so,
the sex difference may be due to differential socialization,
although an evolved basis cannot be ruled out. Some evidence suggests that the effects of differential socialization
may have been exaggerated. Maccoby (1998) reviewed
this cross-cultural literature and concluded that when
people react to an unfamiliar infant of unknown gender,
they do not consistently alter their treatment on the basis
of the infant’s perceived or labeled gender. Furthermore,
parents deal quite similarly with their sons and daughters.
In a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies, no statistically
significant sex differences were found for warmth, restrictiveness, discipline, or encouragement of achievement or
dependency (Lytton & Romney, 1991). In many cultures
no sex difference in socialization for a given behavior is
reported, making it difficult to say that socialization
generally causes the corresponding sex differences in
behavior (C. R. Ember, 1981).
Cognitive theories of the acquisition of sex roles may
account for many sex differences. However, children begin
to conform with these expectations, or stereotypes, before
they understand about sex-appropriate behavior or even to
which sex they belong. For example, the cooperative style
of girls and the confrontational style of boys emerge before
children come to believe that girls are supposed to be
“nice” and boys “rough.” Even if children do understand a
certain expectation for sex-typed behavior, they may not
conform with it themselves (Serbin, Powlishta, & Gulko,
1993; Signorella, Bilger, & Liben, 1993), and may even
exhibit a backlash against demonstrations of nontraditional
behavior (Durkin & Hutchins, 1984).
However, Maccoby (1998) did find the following
consistent gender-specific differences in treatment.
Parents treat daughters more gently than sons, and talk
more with daughters about interpersonal events. Parents
express more approval of sex-appropriate behaviors than
Adolescence
of sex-inappropriate ones, especially for boys. Across
cultures, girls tend to be less different in their behavior
than boys, and experience a less radical transformation
upon entering adolescence (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). In
many different cultures, mothers begin training daughters
to behave properly and to help with tasks before they do
so with sons (B. B. Whiting & Edwards, 1988). Girls are
generally socialized to be nurturant, and boys to strive for
achievement and self-reliance (Barry, Bacon, & Child,
1957; Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993; Welch & Page, 1981).
Subtle socialization influences may occur and may
have profound and unexpected consequences. Girls have
been found to have more traditionally feminine occupational aspirations if they have more brothers (Abrams,
Sparkes, & Hogg, 1985; Lemkau, 1979). In a study of
young children’s interest in babies, a sex difference was
observed only when the child was asked to look after the
baby, not when spontaneous play with the baby was
measured (Berman & Goodman, 1984). This seems to
indicate the operation of sex role identification. Then too,
children may be directed to perform sex-specific tasks,
develop competence in these tasks, take pride in their
mastery, and therefore come to enjoy these activities
(Edwards, 1985).
Behavioral genetics research indicates that
nonshared environmental factors that affect siblings differently, such as peers, mentors, and illnesses, contribute
much more to individual differences in behavior than do
parents’ values and practices (Plomin, 1990; Rowe, 1994).
Our understanding of environmental influences will have
to be drastically revised to be consistent with these data.
Behavioral genetics has also demonstrated that parents’
socialization practices are themselves somewhat heritable,
showing that genes and environment interact in subtle
ways (Plomin, 1990). For example, brighter parents (intelligence is highly heritable) keep more books in the home,
an environmental influence enhancing intelligence. Also,
genetically based characteristics of the child may elicit
particular parental responses, and a child with a particular
genetically based propensity may seek out environments
with like-minded peers.
Functional Analysis
Once a species-wide evolved trait or sex difference is
identified, its biological function can be investigated. This
is attempted by determining which other species possess
the same trait and pinpointing the crucial difference
Puberty
45
between these species and those that lack the trait. For
example, M. Ember and Ember (1979) analyzed the function of marriage by showing that its analog in animals,
pair bonding, occurs in birds and mammals in which the
mother’s need for food interferes with care of her young.
Marriage thus serves to keep the father close by so as to
aid in raising the offspring. Functional analysis is not mere
guesswork; hypotheses must be tested, and are disconfirmed if the distribution of the trait proves inconsistent
with the hypothesized explanation. In the case of a human
trait, its function in ancestral hunter–gatherer society must
be identified because our contemporary genetic program
is essentially a throwback to that era. An evolved trait may
no longer be adaptive in a modern environment. The study
of function—the “why” question about a species-wide
behavior or sex difference—provides an entirely different
level of explanation from analysis of how and when the
behavior develops (Weisfeld, 1982).
PUBERTY, THE KEYSTONE
ADOLESCENCE
OF
Overview
In humans, sex differentiation in body and behavior,
although in evidence throughout ontogeny (Bjorklund &
Pellegrini, 2002), becomes most marked at puberty.
Before puberty, the sexes are relatively similar (Willner &
Martin, 1985). After puberty, hardly anything can be said
about adolescents that applies equally to boys and girls.
Yet the amount of sex differentiation in adult humans
is relatively small. Human sexual size dimorphism is
comparatively modest, suggesting that behavioral sex
differences are likewise relatively small. Indeed, most
studies of behavioral sex differences reveal a great deal of
overlap between the distributions of males and females.
Individual differences tend to be far greater than sex
differences in behavior (Schlegel & Barry, 1991).
Why is sex differentiation, to the extent that it exists,
so pronounced at puberty? Puberty constitutes sexual
maturation. It prepares males and females to fulfill their
specialized reproductive roles, like the complementarity of
sperm and egg. Primatologists define adolescence as the
period from the onset of puberty to the attainment of fertility (Pereira & Altmann, 1985). Likewise, adolescence is
recognized as a life stage in all cultures and is usually
delimited by the observable changes of sexual maturation
(Schlegel & Barry, 1991). Before maturity, the child
depends heavily on parents and others for assistance—so
much so that Bogin (1999) has asserted that humans are
the only primate with childhood, a stage of feeding by the
mother after weaning. After maturity, adolescents themselves become, potentially, the parents of dependents (see
Charlesworth, 1988; Schlegel, 1995). Given the great
amount of parental care exhibited by our species, this is
indeed a radical transformation. Accordingly, puberty
entails dramatic changes in body and behavior.
Sex differences emerge or intensify at puberty in
libido, spatial skills, arithmetic skills, verbal skills,
strength, nurturance, and dominance aggression, among
other behaviors (Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1979, 1993;
Kimura, 1999). Gonadal hormones contribute to all of
these sex differences, as indicated by research on prenatal
and adult hormonal exposure, sometimes using assays of
amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, serum, or saliva;
individuals with abnormal levels of endogenous and
exogenous gonadal hormones; prepubertal, adult, pregnant, lactating, and postmenopausal individuals; and variation across menstrual, diurnal, and circannual hormonal
fluctuations (Hampson, 2002). Some cognitive as well as
motivational sex differences have been confirmed in studies on other species (Kimura, 1999; Mitchell, 1981;
Patterson, Holts, & Saphire, 1991) and cultures
(Christiansen, 1993). Hormones can affect the adolescent’s behavior directly, not just by altering her body and
thus changing others’ reactions to her (e.g., Nottelmann
et al., 1990). Furthermore, others’ reactions to adolescents’
bodily changes may themselves have an evolved basis.
Some sex differences emerge before puberty, but
doubtless have implications for adolescence. Prenatal
androgen exposure during the second trimester, when
the brain is sex differentiating, is related to young girls’
interest in play fighting versus doll play and in motherhood versus a career, employment in male-dominated
fields, and some personality measures (Hampson, 2002;
Mealey, 2000; Udry, Morris, & Kovenock, 1995).
Prenatal androgen levels can also play a role in the development of sexual orientation, as can genes and adult
experience (L. Ellis, 1996). Methodological objections
that prenatally masculinized girls are treated differently
by their parents, and that control groups and measures
have been inadequate, have been addressed by subsequent research (e.g., Hines & Kaufman, 1994). However,
this research does not gainsay the likelihood that socialization forces also contribute to these sex differences.
46
The functions of sex differences with evolved bases
can often be understood by considering their possible
advantages for our hominid ancestors. The tentative functional analysis proposed here will begin with the changes
of puberty.
Puberty in Girls
Puberty in girls functions mainly to prepare them for
childbearing. This includes choosing and attracting a
desirable mate, and then nurturing their children.
Adolescent girls become attractive to males and infants,
and begin to evaluate males as possible mates (Tanner,
1978). Other clearly adaptive pubertal changes have been
documented that would have prepared a girl for married
life in a forager society. Women excel at remembering the
location of objects—a skill of value in gathering plant
food, their ancestral livelihood (Hampson, 2002;
Silverman & Eals, 1992). This ability varies with stage of
the menstrual cycle (Postma et al., 1999). By contrast,
males excel at finding their way and at hurling projectiles
accurately—skills useful in hunting (Kimura, 1999).
Women tend to surpass men in manual dexterity, and do
best around ovulation (Hampson, 2002; Kimura, 1999).
Manual dexterity is serviceable for gathering plants and
for delicate handiwork (Hampson, 2002). Women also
exceed men in verbal and nonverbal communication performance, skills advantageous for teaching and raising
children (Babchuk, Hames, & Thompson, 1985). These
sex differences have all been related to gonadal hormone
fluctuations (Hampson, 2002; Kimura, 1999).
Evidence suggests that girls, like other female primates, become more attracted to infants at puberty (Coe,
1990; Goldberg, Blumberg, & Kriger, 1982). Throughout
the life span females perform more parental care than
males in all cultures (Daly & Wilson, 1983; Friedl, 1975;
Schlegel & Barry, 1991; van den Berghe, 1980). Various
pregnancy and lactational hormones have been implicated
in human maternal behavior, including estrogens, progesterone, oxytocin, and prolactin (Altemus et al., 1995;
Uvnas-Moberg, 1997). Socialization of girls for nurturance complements an evolved propensity for child care.
Adolescence
in their competition (Boulton, 1992; Neill, 1985), just as
aggressiveness and mate competition increase in the
maturing males of many other species. In no culture are
adolescent girls more competitive than boys (Schlegel,
1995). Young males commit the vast majority of assaults
and homicides worldwide, most of which are related to
sexual competition directly or indirectly (Daly & Wilson,
1988). Cross-culturally, ridicule and humorous repartee
are a common form of competition among adolescent
boys and young men (Apte, 1985).
Why do males become larger and stronger than
females? When the nondominant arm (to control for
training) is tested for strength before puberty, no sex difference is found, but a sex difference emerges at puberty
´
(Åstrand, 1985). Comparative analysis suggests the main
reason. Polygynous species, in which mate competition is
intense, tend to show greater sexual dimorphism than
monogamous ones. Thus greater male size seems to have
evolved mainly to enhance competitive ability. Humans
are a mildly dimorphic species and, accordingly, exhibit
a mild degree of polygyny. Large size also aided in hunting and in defense of the family.
As boys become taller and stronger, they become
hairier—why? Again, comparative analysis helps to identify the function of a trait. Dark, thick, curly, and conspicuous hair of the type that covers men’s bodies
typically functions in male primates to inflate the apparent size of structures, such as the jaw, that serve as bodily weapons (Guthrie, 1976). Men’s deep voice, deep-set
eyes, and large jaw likewise constitute general primate
threat or dominance features that attract females and
intimidate males (Keating, 1985).
Male as well as female adolescents become romantically motivated; pubertal hormones impel them to establish pair bonds (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972). The typical
human male is not promiscuous, but rather seeks to
marry—but to remain open to the possibility of extramarital reproduction (Daly & Wilson, 1983). Men, like a few
other male mammals, are inclined to aid their own offspring. Rising levels of prolactin during his mate’s pregnancy render a man more parental (Storey et al., 2000), so
paternal behavior is not merely socially constructed.
Explaining Sex Differences in
Reproductive Behavior
Puberty in boys prepares them to compete for mates and
Puberty in Boys
to enter into married life and parenthood. Observational
research indicates that adolescent boys become rougher
Why do these particular sex differences in social behavior
occur? Why are females more nurturant, and males more
Puberty
aggressive and competitive? Why are males more interested in multiple sex partners and more prone to sexual
jealousy? Why are men the sexual initiators and women
the main choosers cross-culturally (Stephens, 1963)?
Why do adolescent girls avoid being nude around males
even in a sexually permissive society (Spiro, 1979)?
Explanations are to be found by recognizing that this
pattern of sex differences is not confined to our culture or
even our species (Daly & Wilson, 1983; Schlegel &
Barry, 1991), but occurs in almost all sexually reproducing species (Bjorklund & Shackelford, 1999; Trivers,
1972). The female of a species, by definition, produces
the larger and less mobile gamete. After fertilization, this
gamete usually develops near or within her body, so the
female is typically better situated to care for the offspring.
In mammals, the female is always present when the young
are born, but the male may not be. He may enhance his
reproductive fitness more efficiently by seeking other
females than by caring for offspring that may not even be
his own. Therefore natural selection has favored mammalian females that are successful in bearing and raising
offspring, and males that are efficient at attracting mates
and repelling rivals. Providing most of the parental care,
the female would benefit from choosing a mate carefully
so as not to waste her parental effort on sickly offspring.
On the other hand, the male would waste little effort on
an unfertile mating, and would therefore benefit from
being promiscuous.
Now, in those few mammalian species in which the
young are so helpless that they need the efforts of both
parents to survive, males tend to pursue a mixed or variable strategy of caring for their putative offspring but also
seeking additional sex partners. Thus, even in mammals
with paternal care, the male always provides less care
than the female. Males can pass on their genes with a
minimum of effort, if the female is able to bear and nurture their common offspring. Therefore male mammals
are more inclined to seek extra-pair copulations, to seek
sexual variety, whereas females have less to gain reproductively by pursuing multiple sexual liaisons. They can
only have one litter at a time.
However, males in paternal species are wary of
being cuckolded, of caring for a rival’s offspring, and so
they usually resort to mate guarding. Men’s sexual
jealousy is readily aroused by the prospect of their mate
having sex with a rival male (Buss, 1994). Women may
gain a fitness advantage by being fertilized by a man with
better genes than their husband’s, and so female marital
47
infidelity occurs with some frequency (Baker & Bellis,
1995). Women’s sexual jealousy, on the other hand, is
most strongly aroused by the image of her mate deserting
her for another woman and withdrawing his paternal
support. It is important not to exaggerate these sex
differences. Men are parentally inclined, and women are
competitive. Sexual competition is intense for adolescent
girls, since most of them are vying for the same few boys
and under time pressure to marry. As in males, female
assault and homicide rates peak in the reproductive years
(Daly & Wilson, 1988), although females compete less
violently than males, such as by insulting a rival. Even
though women will invest more care in the children than
will men, both sexes invest mightily and hence exercise
care in choosing a mate. Both sexes sustain great costs in
order to reproduce.
Individual and Cultural Differences
Adolescents within each sex also differ. Although many
intrasexual differences are due to experiential factors,
some are due to differences in hormone levels. Individual
differences in testosterone level are associated with the
strength of libido in adolescents of both sexes (Udry,
1988). Moreover, experience can sometimes affect
hormonal levels that alter behavior. Youths who live in violent neighborhoods tend to have higher testosterone levels
than those living in peaceful ones, controlling for various
factors (Mazur & Booth, 1998). In mammals generally,
testosterone rises in competitive situations to mobilize the
individual for aggression. Thus living in a dangerous environment can potentiate aggressiveness and competitiveness through a rise in testosterone. Similarly, when men
marry, their testosterone levels tend to fall as they withdraw
from mating competition, and to rise again if they divorce.
Evolutionary analysis helps to explain individual differences in maturation rate. Reproductive maturation in
mammals is accelerated by the presence of potential
mates. It is adaptive to mature more rapidly when potential mates are available. In the 19th-century Oneida
Community in New York State, prepubertal girls practiced
frequent sex and reached puberty about 2 years earlier than
girls in the surrounding area (Jones, 1991). In addition,
although most stressors slow reproductive maturation,
mild stress sometimes speeds maturation in mammals,
probably so that the organism is assured of reaching maturity and reproducing under adverse conditions (Worthman,
1993). A cross-cultural comparison indicated that painful
48
treatment during infancy can accelerate menarche
(J. W. M. Whiting, 1965). Girls also tend to reach menarche
early if they suffer from paternal absence or neglect, or
from other family stresses (Coall & Chisholm, 1999;
B. J. Ellis, McFadyen-Ketchum, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates,
1999; Rowe, 1999; Surbey, 1990). The presence of a potential mate (a stepfather or the mother’s boyfriend) can accelerate menarche independently from the effect of father
absence; in a recent study, total number of such males was
the best predictor of the girl’s tendency to engage in early
sexual behavior (B. J. Ellis & Garber, 2000).
Thus, evolutionary hypotheses are being proposed
for some individual and population differences, not just
for universals. It makes adaptive sense for organisms to
vary their development to meet different environmental
contingencies. Such evolved pluripotentiality has been
demonstrated even in insects, so it would be surprising if
it were absent from our genetically more complex
species. This variability is likely to be adaptive, to
enhance the individual’s reproductive interests. For
example, father absence is common in societies with
polygyny and frequent warfare (Chisholm, 1999), and
girls tend to marry early in polygynous societies; early
maturity may be advantageous under these conditions.
As these examples show, current evolutionary analyses do not discount the role of environment in human
diversity. In fact, functional analysis can sometimes
explain a pattern of cross-cultural diversity. To take
another illustration: adult status is conferred on young men
at different average ages in different societies, but a pattern
exists. Adult status tends to be conferred on a youth when
he marries (van den Berghe, 1980). In societies in which
men require many years to accumulate sufficient wealth or
economic skills to afford marriage, adult status usually
comes relatively late (G. E. Weisfeld, 1999). Thus, cultural
differences can sometimes be explained in functional
terms, rather than as historical accidents or consequences
of conceptual, linguistic, or other cultural features.
Cultural practices, like genes, are subject to selection pressure even if historical and other factors also shape them.
Practices that enhance reproductive success under extant
ecological conditions will be passed on across generations.
PUBERTY RITES
Just as body and behavior must be compatible, the
genetic and cultural programs must cooperate for the
Adolescence
successful survival and reproduction of the organism.
This notion is illustrated by puberty rites, which may be
regarded as a cultural growth spurt analogous to the
changes of puberty; both provide intensive preparation
for adulthood (G. E. Weisfeld, 1997). Functional analysis
of the various features of puberty rites may reveal some
general characteristics of adolescence. Although only
56% of preliterate cultures have a formal initiation ceremony (Schlegel & Barry, 1980), virtually all have an
intensive training period before induction into adulthood
(Schlegel & Barry, 1991), and so puberty rites, broadly
construed, are a constant of adolescence.
Puberty rites vary widely across cultures because different environments demand the cultivation of different
skills and behaviors, but some general patterns emerge
(J. W. M. Whiting, Kluckholn & Anthony, 1958). Initiates
typically are tutored in sex-specific adult economic, familial, and cultural skills. The same-sex parent is usually the
main teacher of subsistence skills, but the initiate is
tutored by some other same-sex adult in social and ceremonial matters (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). Puberty rites
usually entail some challenging ordeal that boys, in particular, must endure (Schlegel & Barry, 1980). Ordeals
may be used to subdue recalcitrant youths, who are more
likely to be boys, as in the Hopi (G. E. Weisfeld, 1999).
This is analogous to the more rigorous competition that
males of most species, as opposed to females, undergo to
enter the breeding pool. Boys will also have to hone their
economic skills in order to compete for a wife. Consistent
with this interpretation, the theme of boys’ initiation rites
is usually graduation, rebirth, or accomplishment
(Hotvedt, 1990; Schlegel & Barry, 1980). The theme for
girls’ rites is typically fertility or beauty (Schlegel &
Barry, 1980; Sommer, 1978). Thus, for both sexes, traits
important for reproductive success are cultivated and
extolled. Upon completing their initiation rites, adolescents are usually regarded as adults and are eligible to
marry. To signify their emerging adulthood, initiates usually have their bodies specially marked, much as primates
take on adult bodily features so they can be identified as
sexually mature.
The timing of puberty rites has been something of a
conundrum. Some sources state that the rites occur at the
onset of puberty, others at the conclusion of puberty. The
ambiguity may be resolved by recognizing a sex difference in these events. Girls are usually initiated at menarche, after most of the events of puberty have been
completed (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). By contrast, boys are
Puberty Rites
typically initiated before most of the changes of puberty
(Schlegel & Barry, 1980). Interestingly, for both sexes
initiation occurs shortly before the onset of fertility, thus
underscoring the significance of this institution as a preparation for family responsibilities (G. E. Weisfeld, 1997).
Several other features of puberty rites seem to be
functionally analogous to various pubertal changes. The
sexes are almost always segregated during the training
period, just as nonhuman primates—and children—
spontaneously sex segregate before puberty and are
drawn to older same-sex models (Goodall, 1986; Mackey,
1983). These affinities doubtless aid the learning of sex
roles, as do the bodily and behavioral changes of pubertal sex differentiation. Sex differentiation of personality
traits reaches its end point around age 11 around the
world (Beere, 1990; Best, 2001).
Initiates are separated from their parents as well, just
as mature simians distance themselves from their mothers and increasingly associate with peers. Likewise, emotional distance from parents increases in U.S. adolescents
(Silverberg & Steinberg, 1987). Parent–adolescent distancing in humans may be orchestrated by (among other
factors) pubertal hormones, as suggested by research on
family conflict. As adolescents enter puberty, discussions
between them and their parents (especially the mother)
tend to increase in acrimony (Holmbeck & Hill, 1991;
Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Sagrestano, McCormick,
Paikoff, & Holmbeck, 1999; Steinberg, 1987). Fewer
explanations are offered, and more harsh words are
exchanged. This contentiousness peaks at the height of
the adolescent growth spurt, controlling for chronological
age (Molina & Chassin, 1996; Sagrestano et al., 1999).
This suggests that contentiousness is driven either
directly by hormonal effects on behavior or indirectly by
the bodily changes of puberty triggering perceptual
changes in the parents.
Parent–child conflict tends to be harshest between
mother and son, in U.S. research (Montemayor & Hanson,
1985; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Silverberg, 1989).
After the velocity of growth peaks, conflict usually subsides. However, at this point adolescent sons tend to win
most arguments with their mothers, whereas previously
the mothers prevailed (Jacob, 1974; Steinberg, 1987). In
effect, mother and adolescent son reverse their dominance
relationship, just as happens in chimpanzees (Goodall,
1986). Dominance reversal between sons and mothers
probably occurs universally, in that in all cultures males
are ascribed higher social status than females, and youth
49
defers to age (Stephens, 1963; van den Berghe, 1980). On
the other hand, human mothers remain dominant over
daughters, and fathers over sons and daughters.
Parent–adolescent distancing and renegotiation of dominance relations may be necessary for adolescents to gain
appropriate independence from their parents.
Given the ubiquity of this adaptive problem, a
genetic basis for this separation probably evolved. It is
likely that some dependable hormonally based mechanism provided a proximate cause for this aversion,
although cultural and individual factors certainly modify
it. Fathers and sons often come into conflict, especially
over transferring wealth that the son needs for bride
wealth, as among African pastoralists (Schlegel & Barry,
1991). Hopi mothers and adolescent daughters sometimes argue over the daughter’s socializing immodestly
with boys or neglecting her chores. However, in terms of
dominance relations, Schlegel and Barry (1991) stated
that boys and girls are more subordinate to fathers than to
mothers, and that mothers have greater authority over
daughters than over sons. This implies a dominance order
of father ⬎ mother ⬎ son ⬎ daughter, meaning again that
the least clear-cut parent–adolescent relationship is
mother–son.
Another possible adaptive, or ultimate, causal explanation for conflict between parents and adolescents is a
natural selfishness in the latter. Being about to confront
the challenges of independence from parents and of mate
competition and parenthood, young people may look
after their own interests. By contrast, grandparents tend
to be quite devoted to their grandchildren and other kin.
They are past their reproductive years and so can only
increase the representation of their genes in subsequent
generations by practicing kin altruism: aiding close relatives with whom they share genes by common descent.
Kin altruism provides an indirect way of passing one’s
genes on to future generations, and therefore occurs in
many species and all human societies. For example, postmenopausal Hadza women worked even harder than
childbearing women, allowing their daughters to have
more and healthier children (Hawkes, O’Connell, &
Blurton Jones, 1989). Similarly, in other species in which
life continues after reproduction, kin altruism of various
sorts has been observed. Adolescents, being at the other
end of the reproductive span, would be expected to act
rather selfishly toward kin and others. In addition, their
lack of experience in adult society may cause them to
behave badly on occasion (G. E. Weisfeld, 1999).
50
Other widespread features of puberty rites also make
functional sense. Newly initiated young men often serve
as warriors (Young, 1965), just as young male monkeys
act as sentinels and shock troops (Chance & Jolly, 1970;
Schlegel, 1995). These youths have undergone the rigors
of puberty rites as a group, developing solidarity that will
serve them well in warfare. They are unmarried and have
no dependents, and so are relatively expendable. Girls, by
contrast, are invariably initiated singly as soon as they
reach menarche (Young, 1965). This ensures that a girl
will be initiated, and hence eligible for marriage, just as
she approaches the onset of fertility. She will be most in
demand as a bride when her reproductive value—her
expected future number of offspring—peaks (Daly &
Wilson, 1983). By marrying such a woman, who cannot
be carrying another man’s child but has all of her childbearing years ahead of her, a man maximizes his own
reproductive chances. In most societies, girls marry
within 2 years of menarche (Schlegel & Barry, 1991). In
modern society, however, women often postpone marriage or reproduction until they have completed their
education. This variation on the species-typical pattern
can probably be explained by factors that did not operate
when the human genome was evolving, such as the availability of effective contraception and the time needed to
learn the complex skills of our economy.
Adolescence
settlements were limited to perhaps 60 individuals
(van den Berghe, 1980). This would have meant that
adolescents had few age mates and therefore socialized
extensively with older and younger kin. Contact with
neighboring bands and their adolescents, that is, members
of the same tribe sharing a language, would have
occurred occasionally.
This pattern of limited age segregation would have
fostered adolescents’ assisting and teaching younger children. In turn, there would have been ample opportunity
for observing and being instructed by adults. In most
preliterate cultures, children and adolescents perform
important work for their families, especially instructing
and supervising younger children (Cicirelli, 1994). As
they grow older and more competent, they undertake
increasingly challenging and valuable tasks, and their
prestige increases concomitantly. For example, contemporary Mayan children become net producers in their
teens (Kramer & Boone, 1999). In traditional cultures
adolescents typically begin full-time work at age 10–12
and assume an adult workload at 14–16 (Neill, 1983).
The labor contributions of children and adolescents,
unique among the primates, are thought to have allowed
women to wean their children sooner and hence to bear
more children (Zeller, 1987).
Sex Segregation of Labor
THE ADOLESCENT’S FAMILY CONTEXT
Social Structure
What is known of the social situation of ancestral
adolescents? Aside from the likelihood that hominid
adolescents underwent intensive training for adulthood,
several facts can be adduced about the social context of
adolescence in our species. A virtually universal feature
of not just forager societies but all preliterate human
societies is the extended family, if we define it as three
generations of family members dwelling together or
nearby (Stephens, 1963). The great majority of ancestral
adolescents’ social contacts would have been with kin,
including clan members of more remote consanguinity.
Through the genetic benefit of kin altruism, this arrangement would have rewarded cooperation in endeavors such
as hunting, gathering, warfare, and child care. In addition,
because foraging communities tend to be small (hunting
requires low population density), ancestral human
Labor is strongly sex segregated everywhere, with males
and females specializing in tasks congruent with their
inherent interests, aptitudes, and training, and with practicalities such as distance from the settlement and compatibility with related tasks (Friedl, 1975; Murdock &
Provost, 1973). The universality of sexual division of
labor suggests that this arrangement has generally been
advantageous. In all preliterate cultures the labor of husband and wife is complementary: women perform most
of the domestic tasks, including child care, cleaning, and
cooking, and men specialize in work requiring strength,
such as handling heavy and hard materials (C. R. Ember &
Ember, 2001; van den Berghe, 1980). Women in many
forager societies provide most of the calories by gathering plants, a reliable and preservable source of food,
whereas men supply protein-rich game and fish. Of the
46 tasks analyzed in terms of which sex performed each
in how many traditional cultures (Murdock, 1965),
36 tasks were predominantly (at p ⬍ 0.001) performed by
one sex or the other (G. E. Weisfeld, 1986).
Mate Choice
Vestiges of this arrangement can be seen in modern
society in that men still predominate in occupations
requiring heavy manual labor and in the military, and
women gravitate toward the service sector, which
demands interpersonal skills at which females excel (Hall,
1984). Technical advances and changing social attitudes
can, of course, alter the sex ratio of a given occupation
dramatically, thus showing that genetic influences on
behavior always interact with and may even be overridden
by environmental influences. On the other hand, tolerance
for women and men working in nontraditional roles has
not increased measurably in recent years (Feingold, 1994;
Lueptow et al., 1995, 2001), and sex role “stereotypes” are
similar across cultures (Williams & Best, 1986, 1990).
Also, consistent with the resilience of many behavioral
sex differences, attempts to obliterate sex roles have
proven quite difficult and have been resisted by their
alleged beneficiaries (e.g., Tiger & Shepher, 1975).
Change in these expectations may occur very slowly, however; they are less pronounced in developed societies than
in developing ones (Williams & Best, 1989).
What sort of labor do adolescents provide, and how
does it aid the family? Research on the Hadza of Tanzania
has shown that the adolescent boys provide food for their
younger siblings, but also forage in order to improve their
reputations as hunters (Blurton Jones, Hawkes, &
O’Connell, 1997). That is, they practice kin altruism but
also strive to advance their social standing and, ultimately, their mate value. Hadza adolescent girls often dig
for roots while tending younger siblings. This is an inefficient foraging technique but it frees the mothers to forage more efficiently. In many preliterate cultures
adolescents do not perform arduous labor. In the !Kung
of southern Africa, for example, adolescents are discouraged from working hard until about age 15 (Blurton
Jones, Hawkes, & Draper, 1993). Evidently the optimal
reproductive strategy in this forager society is extensive
care of offspring, including prolonged breast-feeding.
This line of research suggests that cultural and individual
differences in adolescent industriousness and other traits
can often be explained by family and ecological factors.
One adolescent may be slothful because cultural selection
has favored an easy life under his or her circumstances.
Another adolescent may be industrious because she will
be fitter biologically by acquiring a reputation for industry or by aiding kin. Adolescents devote themselves to
subsistence activities, training, supervision of children,
and courtship in patterns that vary across cultures,
51
gender, and individuals, but this variation seems to fall
into functional patterns. Socialization by the family
sometimes directs an adolescent toward particular tasks.
For example, adolescents with working mothers have a
more favorable attitude toward working women than do
those with nonemployed mothers (Huston & Alvarez,
1990). Sometimes the effects of participating in sexspecific tasks can transfer to other contexts. Luo boys in
Kenya who were assigned indoor feminine tasks behaved
in a generally more feminine manner than did boys
assigned outdoor feminine tasks (C. R. Ember, 1973).
MATE CHOICE
If adolescence consists mainly of preparation for reproduction, a major “task” of adolescence must be to secure
a desirable mate. Research reveals some cross-cultural
commonalities in the criteria of mate choice.
Traits Sought by Both Sexes
Both sexes seek kindness in a mate, which makes sense
given the strains of marriage and child rearing (Buss,
1994). They also seek a mate whom they are likely to be
able to retain, that is, one of similar mate value. Likewise,
they seek someone who appears to be committed to them
emotionally. And of course, like other species (Andersson,
1994), people tend to prefer a sexually mature and physically attractive mate, who is likely to be healthy and
fertile, and to carry high-quality genes (e.g., Shackelford &
Larsen, 1999). Valid cues to genetic quality include
normality and bilateral symmetry of features, and healthy
skin; these features are admired worldwide (Ford &
Beach, 1951; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994). Naturally,
not everyone can attract someone who is above average in
desirability, and so people usually wind up with mates
who lack some ideal features, but the preferences that
most people express are often clear and specific, and
generally hold even across cultural and racial lines
(Cunningham, 1986).
Human mates, including courting adolescents, tend
to be similar in many traits, a finding that is difficult to
explain solely in terms of spousal social and ideological
compatibility because it also occurs in insects, birds, and
simians (Thiessen & Gregg, 1980). Why would genetic
similarity (or homogamy) be advantageous in mate
choice? One possibility is that it conserves locally
52
Adolescence
adaptive gene combinations that would be fragmented if
the mates were genetically dissimilar. Consistent with
this idea, homogamy reduces the likelihood of miscarriage (Rushton, 1988; Thomas, Harger, Wagener, Rabin, &
Gill, 1985) and low birth weight (Ober et al., 1987). In
any case, people tend to choose similar mates, and similar mates stay together longer (Hill, Rubin, & Peplau,
1976). Of course, extreme consanguinity risks the deleterious effects of inbreeding depression.
but the outcome actually favored the wife in each of
15 cases (Schell & Weisfeld, 1999).
These criteria for mate choice for the sexes, then,
show some consistency. But they also show some cultural
variability, as in the subsistence skills that are prized in
each sex.
Sex Differences in Mate Choice
Criteria
One frequently neglected topic is mixed-sex competition
and its possible role in mate choice. Females tend to be
less competitive and self-confident than males crossculturally (e.g., Stetsenko, Little, Godeeva, Grassof, &
Oettingen, 2000), but they also sometimes attenuate their
competitiveness when facing a male opponent. This
phenomenon is seen mainly in adolescence and adulthood, and is observed cross-culturally. For example,
C. C. Weisfeld, Weisfeld, and Callahan (1982) documented it in the Hopi and African Americans, and
also established that it occurs even in female-biased
competitive tasks such as a spelling bee (Cronin, 1980).
Interestingly, adolescent girls who exhibited this behavior tended to be unaware of it and often denied that they
were not trying their hardest. The phenomenon has also
been observed in women who use more tentative speech
but only when addressing a man (Carli, 1990), and in
women who act more submissively in mixed-sex groups
compared with same-sex ones (Aries, 1982), and toward
their husbands compared with other men (McCarrick,
Manderscheid, & Silbergeld, 1981). Women who exhibit
this inhibition also tend to differ in hormonal profile from
those who do not (C. C. Weisfeld, 1986).
The function of female inhibition in mixed-sex competition is probably reproductive, given its predominance
during the reproductive years. Callan (1970) suggested
that it enhances harmony with one’s husband, in that it
reduces competition in this relationship. Then too, a wife
may benefit from bolstering her husband’s self-esteem
and consequent performance in public arenas. Another
possibility is that female inhibition increases a woman’s
appeal by making her appear more feminine. However,
this last explanation is thrown into question by a review
of the literature by Harter, Waters, and Whitesell (1998).
They concluded that adolescent girls tended to be less
self-confident when talking with boys than with adults or
other girls, but that boys were also less self-confident
when talking with girls. Adolescents of both sexes may
In addition to seeking kindness, availability, commitment, and moderate similarity in a mate, the sexes exhibit
some differences in their respective mate choice criteria.
Worldwide, men seek signs of youth and fertility in a
bride—traits that obviously would enhance their lifetime
reproductive success (Buss, 1994). They also seek a sexually faithful wife, in order not to be deceived into caring
for a rival’s children, and a skilled and industrious one.
Women likewise exhibit definite mate preferences.
They tend to desire a man who is older than they—but not
necessarily an old man. Because of menopause and other
factors, a man retains his fertility longer than a woman,
and so youth is less advantageous in a groom than in a
bride. Most women also prefer a man who is taller and
wealthier.
These preferences suggest that many women seek a
man who is somewhat dominant over them—taller,
richer, older, and higher ranking. In traditional societies,
high-status men tend to have more children than lowranking ones (Barkow, 1989; Buss, 1999). Even in
monogamous societies, high-status men have more sexual partners (Perusse, 1993). In many other species too,
males compete among themselves and the females mate
with the successful dominant competitors (L. Ellis,
1995). Additional data confirm that male dominance in
nonverbal behavior and bodily features attracts females in
various cultures (reviewed by G. E. Weisfeld, Russell,
Weisfeld, & Wells, 1992). Moderate male dominance in
decision-making—but not extreme dominance—was correlated with marital satisfaction, especially for wives, in
a British study (G. E. Weisfeld et al., 1992). However,
male dominance in decision-making may be merely a
matter of perception, not reality—a clever concession to
the male ego, if you will. An observational study suggested that men often appeared to be making decisions
Female Inhibition in Mixed-Sex
Competition
References
53
be very concerned with how they are viewed by potential
mates.
CONCLUSION
The concept of adaptive value, or biological function, is
crucial for understanding not just what exists, but why.
However, traditional ethological analysis on the species
level alone is insufficient. Analysis on the cultural, social
class, and individual levels is essential for understanding
patterns of variability, particularly between males and
females (G. E. Weisfeld, Weisfeld, & Segal, 1997). In short,
interdisciplinary cooperation is needed for understanding
how and why a given behavior pattern emerges. Neither
genetic nor environmental determinism is consistent with
the facts.
Many aspects of sexual development and sex differences in adolescence could not be addressed in this brief
treatment. For further information, see C. R. Ember
(1981), Schlegel and Barry (1991), and G. E. Weisfeld
(1999).
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Personality and Emotion
Cynthia Whissell
INTRODUCTION
TERMINOLOGY
AND
DEFINITIONS
personality trait. The same is true for depression and
anxiety. Personality and emotion may be discriminated in
terms of their causality and their time frame, with
emotions being regarded as situationally dependent
reactive states and personality characteristics as
enduring traits. Plutchik (1980, pp. 173–198) defined
personality in terms of the characteristic emotions
displayed and experienced in interpersonal interactions.
In this view, the emotions we tend to feel and/or
express most often when interacting with other human
beings are our personality: a timid or shy person
feels and expresses fear most often in her or his
interactions with others, while a friendly person feels
and expresses friendliness or trust. Working in the
opposite direction (from personality to emotion),
Cô
téand Moskowitz (1998) demonstrated the validity of
personality descriptors as predictors of affect. As well,
Yik and Russell (2001) indicated the presence of
relationships between momentary affects described by
the “big two” dimensions of emotion (pleasantness,
activation) and the “big five” factors of personality
(extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness, and
conscientiousness).
Both emotion and personality are related to
psychopathology (abnormality), with words such as
“anxiety” and “depression,” for example, describing
emotions, traits, and pathological diagnoses. Measures
of personality are predictive of psychopathological
diagnosis (Lynam & Widiger, 2001).
OF
Definition of Personality
The areas of personality and emotion are being treated
together in this article because they are related and to
some extent overlapping. Measures of personality quantify an individual’s characteristic modes of thought and
behavior, and describe them in comparison to a normative
standard. By this definition of personality, an “aggressive
individual” would consistently think, talk, and act aggressively at a high rate or a high intensity in comparison with
most individuals from a comparative sample. In terms of
responses to a personality inventory, a “sociable person”
would choose answers reflecting sociability at a higher
rate than most people. In order to satisfy the criterion of
“characteristic modes,” the sociable person would have to
select sociable responses in preference to alternative
responses (e.g., shy responses, aggressive responses).
Definition of Emotion
Emotion is a reaction to an external or internal stimulus
event that has both subjective (thoughts) and objective
(bodily) components. Naive observers often define emotions as “feelings,” a definition that recognizes the importance of the subjective components of emotion. William
James placed the body’s viscera or guts at the center of
the emotional experience in his early theory of emotion
(James, 1891/1952, p. 744). Despite the fact that emotions can interfere with cognitive performance, it is generally held that emotions are adaptive—that they exist
because they promote survival and are useful in some
way. Emotions are assumed to focus and motivate behaviors in response to emotion-provoking situations.
Definition of Sex
There are many ways to define sex when studying sex differences, ranging from chromosomal definition through
the use of identifying bodily characteristics to selfidentification. Because most research into personality
and emotion does not begin with genetic testing, or even
with an evaluation of primary and secondary sexual
characteristics, the definition of sex employed in this
overview will be the one depending on self-identification
as male or female.
Overlap of Personality, Emotion, and
Psychopathology
Personality and emotion employ similar terminologies.
Aggression, for example, is both an emotion and a
57
58
SEX DIFFERENCES
Personality and Emotion
IN
PERSONALITY
Scales Designed to Measure Sex
Role Identification
Some scales have been designed specifically to measure
sex or gender role identification as an aspect of personality. One of the earliest of these was the Mf scale of the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI),
which was created shortly after World War II. The original
Mf scale was used to assess homosexuality in men. It was
developed by the method of extreme groups (empirical criterion keying; Anastasi & Urbina, 1997, p. 351) for which
the MMPI is famous, with male soldiers representing the
“extremely male” group and female airline employees the
“extremely female” group. Answers that matched those of
the soldiers were keyed as “masculine” while answers that
matched those of the female group were keyed as “feminine.” Many items from the original scale which addressed
emotions, relationships, and hobbies remain in the present
form of the test (MMPI-2: Hathaway & McKinley, 1989).
The extreme group identified in the MMPI-2 manual is
“men who sought psychiatric help” in respect of problems
with homoeroticism and gender role. The Mf scale is
scored inversely for men and women. In either case,
a high score is indicative of problems. The implications of
elevated scores are discussed in the MMPI-2 manual
(Hathaway & McKinley, 1989, p. 38). For men, very high
scores (T ⱖ 76) are indicative of “conflicts over sexual
identity” as well as a “passive and effeminate” character.
For women very high scores (T ⱖ 70) are indicative of
dominance, aggression, and unfriendliness (MMPI-2).
A low score for a man (T ⱕ 40) predicts a macho, actionoriented, crude, and aggressive character, while a low
score for a woman (T ⱕ 40) predicts passivity, self-pity,
helplessness, and complaining.
A more recently developed inventory focusing on
sex roles is the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1981).
Bem envisioned Masculine and Feminine sex roles as
independent dimensions, with individuals being able to
score high on one and low on the other (masculine or
feminine sex stereotype), high on neither (undifferentiated), or high on both (androgynous). Items on the Bem
Sex Role Inventory were not scored ipsatively, or in
opposite directions for men and women, so scores were
free to vary along both dimensions. Bem ensured that the
items were all of high social desirability. Men most often
scored higher on the Masculine items and tended to
receive masculine stereotyped scores. The converse was
true for women. Analyses of the language of Masculine
and Feminine items on the inventory revealed that the
Masculine keyed items were more emotionally Active
while Feminine keyed items were more emotionally
Pleasant (Whissell & Chellew, 1994).
Differences in Personality Scales
as Seen in Test Norms
It is not surprising to find sex differences in scales designed
specifically to measure such differences, but sex differences
are common in personality tests even in scales designed to
measure something other than gender role identification.
For example, on the MMPI-2 a T score of 50 (average) is
associated with a raw Depression score of 18 for men but
20.5 for women. A T score of 50 for Social Introversion is
associated with a raw score of 28 for women but 26 for men
(Hathaway & McKinley, 1989). These comparisons, based
on large samples, suggest that the “average woman” is
somewhat more Depressed and more Socially Introverted
than the “average man” (Hathaway & McKinley, 1989,
p. 55). An investigation of the norms for Cattell’s 16 PF
(Russell & Karol, 1994, p. 127) reveals, for example, that
the mean raw score for women is higher in Warmth
(F ⫽ 15.67, M ⫽ 12.83) and much higher in Sensitivity
(F⫽15.62, M⫽8.91) than that for men. On the other hand,
men have higher raw means for Dominance (M⫽13.6, F⫽
12.4) and Privateness (M⫽12.22, F⫽10.67). For the revision of the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R), Costa
and McCrae (1992, p. 55) report that women tend to have
higher scores on two of their five key scales—Neuroticism
and Agreeableness (with no differences evident for
Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness). Such differences as did exist in the NEO PI-R were adjudged small
(correlations of scale score with sex were 0.2 or lower).
Differences in Specialized Instruments
In comparison with the MMPI, the NEO PI-R and
Cattell’s 16 PF, there are tests which do not attempt to
provide a broad overview of personality, but rather
address one particular aspect of it. Feingold (1994)
performed a meta-analysis of previously examined
studies that had employed inventories and specialized
tests measuring Self-Esteem, Internal Locus of Control
(belief in one’s own agency), Anxiety, and Assertiveness.
He reported that overall males scored higher in
Sex Differences in Emotion
59
Self-Esteem, Assertiveness, and Internal Locus of
Control, while scoring lower in Anxiety than females
(Feingold, 1994, p. 438). Again, the reported differences,
though statistically significant, were small. Feingold’s
findings are generalizable because they were based on a
variety of measurement instruments including Rotter’s
Locus of Control test, the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory,
and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, and on behavior
as well as personality inventories. The meta-analysis of
sex differences in Self-Esteem by Kling, Hyde, Showers,
and Buswell (1999) confirms the conclusion that SelfEsteem is higher for men than for women.
An Overview of Sex Differences in
Personality
Differences between men and women are evident on
scales designed to measure sex role identification.
Differences for these scales occur in the obvious direction
(males are more Masculine, females more Feminine) in
part because of the way in which the scales were created.
Sex differences are also present in scales measuring
aspects of personality not directly related to sex roles.
Men, in comparison with women, obtain scores which
indicate that they are more Assertive, less Anxious, have
higher Self-Esteem and a greater sense of agency (Internal
Locus of Control).
On the basis of a meta-analysis of the norms for
commonly used personality inventories including the
MMPI, Cattell’s 16 PF, and the NEO PI-R, Feingold
(1994) reached several broad conclusions as to sex differences in personality. Scales from all tests were realigned
with the facets of the NEO Personality Inventory. Feingold
(1994) concluded that, by and large, females scored
higher than males on scales addressing Anxiety (a facet
or subscale of Neuroticism), Gregariousness (a facet of
Extraversion), and Trust and Tender-Mindedness (facets of
Agreeableness) but lower than males on scales addressing
Assertiveness (another facet of Extraversion). These differences were stable over tests, time, and a variety of samples.
SEX DIFFERENCES
IN
EMOTION
Emotion Inventories
Two of the testing instruments most frequently used in
the literature to assess emotion or affect are the Multiple
Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL-R) (Zuckerman &
Lubin, 1985) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS)
(McNair, Lorr, & Droppleman, 1992). Sex differences are
evident for both these instruments. The manual for the
MAACL-R (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1985, p. 6) reports
higher mean scores for women on scales representing
Anxiety, Depression, and Positive Affect, and higher
mean scores for men on the scale representing Sensation
Seeking. In the POMS sex differences for a college
sample show females scoring higher on the factors of
Tension/Anxiety, Depression/Dejection, and Confusion
(McNair et al., 1992, p. 21). A study of outpatients
showed similar patterns of sex differences, with male
outpatients additionally scoring higher on Vigor (McNair
et al., 1992, p. 18).
The state–trait distinction between personality and
emotionality is parallelled in two Spielberger instruments, the State–Trait Anger Expression Inventory
(STAXI-2) (Spielberger, 1999) and the State-Trait
Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger, 1983) which
address anger and anxiety in both short-term subjective
reactions to situations (states) and long-term dispositions
(traits). When one-tailed t-tests were used to assess data
provided in the STAXI-2 manual (Spielberger, 1999,
p. 10), it was determined that “normal adult” men scored
higher on both State Anger and Trait Anger than a parallel group of women, though differences were small. For
the STAI, groups of military recruits and college students
showed sex differences in both State Anxiety and Trait
Anxiety in favour of females (Spielberger, 1983, p. 5).
However, differences were missing in other comparative
groups where men and women scored alike on the
inventory.
Emotional Sex Differences Not Based
on Inventories
The assessment of personality rests largely on inventories
and other testing instruments. In the case of emotion,
however, researchers often employ a variety of additional
measurement techniques, some of which will be exemplified here.
The Dictionary of Affect is a tool developed to
assess the emotionality of language in terms of two
dimensions, Pleasantness and Activation (Whissell,
1994a). It is based on ratings assigned by individuals to
words along these dimensions. According to Dictionary
of Affect scoring, there are emotional differences in
60
descriptive words typical of the two sexes, with men
being described more in terms of Activation and women
more in terms of Pleasantness (Whissell & Chellew,
1994). Echoes of the male ⫽ more Active/female ⫽ more
Pleasant distinction were found when the Dictionary was
used to score excerpts from popular fiction (Whissell,
1994b, 1998) and similar differences were identified in
the emotion underlying the language in advertisements
directed at men, women, boys, and girls (Rovinelli &
Whissell, 1998; Whissell & McCall, 1997).
A relatively new metric for emotion in language
addresses the emotionality of the sounds that make up
words, with sounds such as l and m being emotionally
soft, and sounds such as r and g being emotional rougher
(Whissell, 2001a). This metric capitalizes on the interaction between the muscle movements used to express emotion and those used to produce sound. When the metric
was applied to several million men’s and women’s names,
men’s names were found to contain more Active sounds
and women’s names more Pleasant sounds (Whissell,
2001a). Both real and randomly created (nonsense)
names evince this difference (Whissell, 2001b). A typically Active man’s nonsense name was Mowgahk, and a
typically Pleasant woman’s nonsense name was Neera.
Sex differences are also evident in research that
involves emotion-related behaviors. For example, Widen
and Russell (2002) reported that the assignment of emotion to a figure in a story told to preschoolers depended
on whether the figure was identified as male or female
(e.g., disgust was more often attributed to the male figure
by boys). In a different domain, MacGeorge, Clark, and
Gillihan (2002) reported that women’s provision of
emotional support to a person in a troubling situation
was more person-centered than that of men, and that
women had a greater sense of self-efficacy in providing
emotional support.
Sexual Selection and Mate Choice
Evolutionary theorists view sex differences as the
outcome of sexual selection strategies (Buss, 1994;
Whissell, 1996). According to these theorists, the ways in
which women choose their mates, the ways in which men
succeed in winning the opportunity to mate, and the different strategies that men and women have for ensuring
the survival of their offspring and genes are responsible
for the sex differences evident in both humans and other
animals. This assumption makes the study of mate choice
Personality and Emotion
important to the study of sex differences. In his book The
Evolution of Desire, Buss (1994) outlined the different
mate choice preferences of men and women. Buss and
colleagues (Buss, Shackleford, Kirkpatrick, & Larsen,
2001) assessed and compared mate preferences in different regions of the United States over a span of several
years (1939–1996). Several consistent sex differences
were identified, with men, for example, valuing physical
attractiveness more than women and women valuing a
pleasing disposition and social status more than men.
Other preferences (e.g., men’s preference for chastity)
varied across time or location.
Overview of Sex Differences in
Emotion
The results described in this section on emotion suggest
that women are more emotionally Anxious, Depressed,
Tense, Confused, Positive, and Pleasant than men who
are more Sensation-Seeking, Vigorous, Angry, and
Active. Whissell (1996) performed a meta-analysis of
measures of emotion and personality that had been
aligned with the basic emotions from Plutchik’s (1980,
p. 157) psychoevolutionary theory and with a twodimensional emotional space representing Pleasantness
and Activation. The theory underlying Whissell’s metaclassification was evolutionary, and focused on mate
selection strategies and differential techniques for promoting genetic survival in men and women. Whissell
concluded that sex differences in emotion and personality could be understood in terms of higher scores for men
in the Active and Unpleasant areas of emotional space
(including the emotions of Disgust/Distrust, Anger, and
Boldness) and higher scores for women in the Passive and
Pleasant areas of the space (including the emotions of
Gregariousness, Friendliness/Trust, Fear, Surprise, and
Sadness). By far the majority of personality and emotional differences between men and women in Whissell’s
meta-analysis were in the direction predicted by this
model (the ratio of upheld predictions to contradicted
predictions was 19 : 1).
Whissell (1996) also compared sex differences
obtained on the basis of self-ratings, scales, and inventories (actual sex differences) with those obtained when
individuals were required to make stereotyped judgments
(e.g., “Is anger a masculine or feminine emotion?”).
Stereotyped sex differences were almost always in the
same direction as but larger than real ones, and it was
Cultural and Region
demonstrated that the size of a difference could predict
with considerable success (83%) whether the difference
was an actual or a stereotypical one. Differences that
were too large were almost always the result of
stereotypical exaggerations.
SEX DIFFERENCES IN
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
One of the best sources for identifying broad sex
differences in psychopathology is the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) (DSM-IV)
(American Psychiatric Association, 1994), the manual
used by psychologists and psychiatrists to diagnose
psychological problems. Under the heading of individual
diagnoses, this manual includes a check-list of diagnostic
criteria, a discussion of several related problems, and
a section entitled “Specific Culture, Age, and Gender
Features” which outlines, where appropriate, sex differences in various diagnostic categories. Major Depressive
Episodes, for example, and Major Depressive Disorders
(DSM-IV, pp. 325, 341) are reported as occurring twice
as often in women as in men. This finding echoes those
of higher Depression scores for women in personality
tests and higher Depression or Sadness scores for women
in tests focusing on emotion.
Women are also more likely to be diagnosed with
several types of Anxiety Disorder, for example, Panic
Attacks (DSM-IV, p. 399), Phobias (pp. 408, 414), and
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (p. 534), though
Obsessive–Compulsive disorder is equally evident in both
sexes (p. 421). Again, this is an extension of the finding
that women scored higher on Anxiety-related personality
scales and emotions. Males were more likely than females
to be diagnosed as having Conduct Disorder (p. 88) and
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (p. 92). Both these diagnoses involve behavior related to anger and aggression,
although both also belong to the category of problems
usually first diagnosed before adulthood. An adult diagnosis of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (one which
reflects the existence of bursts of aggressive impulses) is
also more frequent in males than in females (p. 616).
There is a continuity of sex differences along the
dimension describing emotions (reactions to stimuli of
relatively short duration, states), personality factors (characteristic manners of reacting, traits), and pathologies
(diagnoses of abnormality). That which is more typical of
61
one sex at the emotional level (e.g., Anger in men or
Anxiety in women), is more likely to be a personality
characteristic typical of the same sex (e.g., Aggression in
men or Neuroticism in women), and is also more likely to
be involved in pathological diagnoses more commonly
associated with that sex (e.g., Intermittent Explosive
Disorder in men or Generalized Anxiety Disorder in
women). This continuity is emphasized in articles, such as
the one by Lynam and Widiger (2001), that demonstrate
parallels between the NEO PI-R five-factor model of
personality and diagnoses of pathology.
One of the most serious problems associated with
the understanding of sex differences in psychopathology
is the problem of reporting bias. The DSM-IV frequently
cautions that its epidemiological conclusions are based
on analyses of individuals presenting themselves for help
with certain problems. If men are as depressed as women,
by and large, but are also much less willing to look for
help with their depression, the observed reporting rates
(more women reporting depression) would be biased, and
they would not accurately reflect the fact of depression.
The authors of the DSM-IV also recognize the importance
of culture in the reporting of psychological problems.
Culture is frequently mentioned in the segment on special
features, as well as in Appendix I. The writers advise that
“it is important that the clinician take into account the
individual’s ethnic and cultural context” in making a
diagnosis (DSM-IV, p. 843). Diagnoses such as “evil eye”,
“ghost sickness”, “koro”, and “pibloktoq” are regarded as
distinct in other cultures but are difficult to understand
from a North American point of view. It is possible that
diagnoses of “depression” and “panic attack” make
equally little sense when they are proposed in other
cultures.
CULTURAL
AND
REGION
Making Cultural Comparisons
Cultural differences are of concern in the study of
emotion and personality as well as in the diagnosis of
pathology. Although some measures of emotion (chiefly
those which rely on bodily responses, or judgments of
basic facial expressions) do not vary greatly from culture
to culture, a description of emotion in terms of language
cannot be assumed, without study, to generalize across
cultures. Authors writing in the book edited by Russell,
62
Fernandez-Dols, Manstead, and Wellencamp (1995)
include examples of many cases where emotional language from one culture does not match that from another.
Even what are considered “basic” emotions in North
American research may not have fully equivalent labels
in the languages of other cultures. On the other hand,
research into the development of categories of emotion
based on natural language suggests that these categories
may be universal (Hupka, Lenton, & Hutchison, 1999),
and Moore, Romney, Hsia, and Rusch (1999) emphasize
the universality of the semantic structure of emotional
terms (while allowing for, and describing, intercultural
differences). There is considerable evidence of the
validity of the factor structure of the NEO PI-R in many
different cultures (e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1997).
Sex Differences in Personality that
Are Relatively Stable across
Cultures
Feingold (1994) examined cross-cultural norms for the
PRF, a test related to the NEO PI-R described above. The
norms came from Canada, China, Finland, Germany,
Poland, and Russia. Overall, males scored significantly
higher than females on the facet of Assertiveness and
females scored higher than males on facets reflecting
Impulsivity, Tender-Mindedness, and Order. Costa et al.
(2001) examined cross-cultural modifiers of sex differences in the facets of the NEO, reporting that men across
cultures (e.g., Zimbabwe, Peru, Belgium, Croatia) score
higher on scales of Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas
while women score high on scales reflecting Neuroticism,
Warmth, Agreeableness, and Openness to Feelings.
Contrary to what might have been predicted on the basis
of the assumption that culture creates or constructs sex
differences, the sex differences observed were strongest
for cultures with the most progressive sex role ideologies.
This finding is also reported by Greenberger, Cheng,
Tally, and Dong (2000 ) who found greater sex differences
in depression for American than for Chinese youths,
though both were in the expected direction (higher scores
for females).
Studies based on observation rather than on reactions
to linguistic stimuli overcome several of the limitations
associated with language. Munroe, Hulefeld, Rodgers,
Tomeo, and Yamazaki (2000) observed the occurrence of
aggressive behaviors in the children of several nonwestern
Personality and Emotion
cultures (Belize, Kenya, Nepa, American Samoa), and
concluded that boys displayed aggressive behaviors
more often than girls. A similar finding had been reported
by researchers engaged in the Six Cultures Project
(children from Nyansongo, Juxtlahuaca, Tarong, Khalapur,
Orchard Town, and Taira cultures were compared)
(Whiting, Whiting, & Longabaugh, 1975). In the six
cultures as a group, girls behaved more nurturantly and
boys more aggressively (Whiting et al., 1975, p. 166).
Cross-cultural studies of psychopathology in terms of
behavioral measures include those of suicide. In almost all
cultures, successful suicide is more common in men than
in women (Phillips, Li, & Zhang, 2002), the only question
being how much more common. This conclusion applies
to many nonwestern countries (e.g., India), with few
exceptions (e.g., China).
Regional and Historical Differences
within the United States
Culture can act as a modifier of sex differences even within
a single country. Buss, Shackleford, Kirkpatrick, &
Larsen (2001) studied mating preferences in several
regions (e.g., Michigan, Texas) and across a 67-year time
span (1939–1996). The authors report significant regional
and historical modifiers of sex differences in mate preferences (e.g., men in Texas valued housekeeping, cooking, and chastity more than those in other states; mutual
attraction and love rose in women’s estimation from fifthto first-ranked criterion over time). Although there were
differences across generations and across regions, there
were also similarities or consistencies. Sex differences
that persisted across time were men’s higher ranking of
good health, good housekeeping, and good looks, and
women’s higher ranking of ambition/industriousness,
good financial prospects, and similar educational background.
An Overview of Cultural Modifiers of
Sex Differences
Feingold (1994) noted in his research that the interaction
between culture and sex (for measures of personality)
was ordinal. This implies that such differences as are
reported tend to be in a predominant direction regardless
of culture, although they may vary in size. Sex differences seldom reverse themselves across cultures
The Nature–Nurture Controversy
(with men, e.g., having higher scores on trait X in some
cultures and women having higher scores on the same trait
in others). This finding can be used to summarize the
study of cross-cultural sex differences, although it is not
without its contradictions. The underlying pattern of
differences remains the one established in the sections
above discussing emotion, personality, and psychopathology, but differences along individual measures might be
absent, muted, or exaggerated in various cultures. In view
of the evidence summarized here, though, it is best to keep
in mind that there are “tremendous diversities of human
cultural institutions” that have a “profound impact on
individual psychology,” as well as “universals of human
nature that transcend cultural differences” (McCrae &
Costa, 1997, p. 509).
SEX DIFFERENCES AND THE
NATURE–NURTURE CONTROVERSY
The nature–nurture debate remains a topical one in the
area of sex differences, with some theorists attributing sex
differences to differences in disposition (innate personality or emotion) and others preferring to attribute them to
differences in situation (culture, social construction, roles;
Eagly & Wood, 1999).
63
reaction range (a degree to which nurture or environment
can reshape a characteristic), they assume that nature
provides a significant contribution to individual differences in personality and emotion. Nature-based explanations of sex differences frequently attribute these to the
sexually dimorphic brain. There are sex differences in
brain size (men’s are larger), laterality (men’s are more
lateralized), and responsiveness (different regions of
men’s and women’s brains react differently to similar
stimuli, e.g., Karama et al., 2002) with differences being
tied to the effects of testosterone released during fetal
development. Findings that are consistent across cultures
(e.g., Costa et al., 2001; Munroe et al., 2000) suggest that
personality and emotion may be pancultural and innate,
and therefore nature based. However, the same studies
that report similar patterns of differences across cultures
(e.g., Eid & Deiner, 2001) are also quick to point out
differences within a particular culture. The presence of
such differences confirms that nurture is a contributing
factor to sex differences in personality and emotion. As
well, the appearance of the same sex difference across
cultures is a necessary condition for considering that
difference an innate one, but not a sufficient condition:
similarities across cultures may be caused by similarities
of cultures. It is relatively difficult to attribute causality
when similar cultures have one or more factors in
common (Ember, 1996).
Nature-Based Explanations
Nature-based explanations of sex differences have grown
in popularity in recent years due to the emergence of
research identifying particular genes that reflect personality traits (e.g., Egeland, Gerhard, Pauls, & Sussex,
1987). Unless these genes are located on the 23rd chromosome pair, however, they are not sex-linked and would
not differentiate men from women directly. The chromosome pair responsible for sex differences, including those
formatted in utero by means of hormones that influence
the developing fetus, is the 23rd. Hormones produced by
this pair are capable of modifying the effects of genes
from other pairs, thus making their own influence more
widely felt than one might at first assume.
The “nature” side of the nature–nurture debate in the
area of sex differences is further bolstered by studies of
heritability (e.g., Stein, Jang, & Livesley, 2002) that
examine similarities in emotion, personality, and psychopathology between relatives with varying degrees of
genetic similarity. Although such studies recognize a
Nurture-Based Explanations
Nurture-based explanations of sex differences focus on
the contention that situation is more formative of personality and emotion than disposition. With the exception of
behaviorism, psychology came late to such explanations
(e.g., Heider, 1958, p. 297). Students of personality such
as Mischel (1973, p. 162) suggested that personality does
not exist purely as a disposition and that it cannot be
defined without situational referents. The situational
viewpoint implies that there may be as many differences
between one individual’s personality from one situation
to the next as there are differences between people. The
power of schemas or roles (e.g., Tenenbaum & Leaper,
2002) and the presence of cultural, regional, and historical differences, such as the ones mentioned in various
examples above, all suggest that nurture is an important
determinant of sex differences. Tenenbaum and Leaper
(2002) illustrated the manner in which gender schemas
held by parents influenced their children’s manner of
64
thinking about gender. This suggests that there are
cultural mechanisms in place that promote thinking in
terms of sex differences.
Personality and Emotion
regions, and years). There are several more issues deserving of mention.
How Big Are Sex Differences?
Nature plus Nurture
Most researchers would not go so far as to deny totally
the validity of the complementary viewpoint (nurture/
situation or nature/disposition) in explaining sex differences, but many have distinct preferences for one
approach or the other, and these are evident in their work.
Buss, for example, who based his theory of sex differences in mate selection on the theory of evolution, clearly
favours nature-based explanations for these differences,
even though he acknowledges the importance of culture
and environment (Buss et al., 2001). Eagly and Wood
(1999), on the other hand, suggested that Buss’s own data
support a “social structural account” of sex differences
rather than indicate the presence of an “evolved disposition.” In their article on emotion and behavioral disturbance, Rutter and Silberg (2002) address the interplay of
nature and nurture. The gene–environment interaction is
important in the manifestation of various emotions and
disturbances—for example, the risk of antisocial behavior in adoptees increases only as a function of the joint
presence of a genetic predisposition and an adverse
adoptive family environment. Neither of these by itself is
predictive of antisocial behavior.
ISSUES
Summary of Previously
Mentioned Issues
Several issues in the study of sex differences in personality and emotion have been mentioned already in this
article. These include the problem of reporting bias
(observed differences may be due to differences in the
ways in which men and women report their preferences
and reactions), generalizability (results from personality
tests may not generalize to other situations or even to
other tests), attribution (observed differences tend to be
attributed—by inference—to situations, dispositions, or a
combination of the two), degree of overlap (even when
different, men’s and women’s scores still evince considerable overlap), and cultural, regional, and historical
variability (results differ to some degree across cultures,
Reports of sex differences in early research involved
merely the establishment of statistically significant differences between mean scores obtained by men and women.
Towards the end of the 20th century, researchers began to
insist on a more careful reporting of the size of sex differences. The metric commonly used to represent the size of
differences is d⬘ (d prime) or the difference between
means expressed in standard deviation units. A d⬘ of 1
suggests that the means of distributions representing
men’s and women’s scores are one standard deviation
apart. There is a total (100%) overlap between male and
female score distributions when d⬘ ⫽ 0, and an overlap of
close to zero when d⬘ ⫽ 5. Feingold (1994) reported, in
meta-analysis of sex differences in personality, that d⬘
scores for his comparisons were in the range of 0.30,
while Whissell’s (1996) meta-analysis identified d⬘ measures greater than 0.59 as stereotypes rather than actual sex
differences. With d⬘ values of 0.3, only a small proportion
of all cases occur in areas of nonoverlap between men’s
and women’s scores. An alternate manner of reporting sex
differences is by means of a coefficient of effect size (e.g.,
eta, r). All types of measures confirm the oft-stated conclusion that although there are sex differences in personality and emotion, these are not of such size as to separate
men and women completely, and a good deal of overlap is
present between scores generated by the two sexes.
Variability of Scores
Although d⬘ successfully establishes the size of sex
differences, this metric is based on the assumption of
roughly equal standard deviations for men’s and
women’s scores. In addition to, or in lieu of, differences
between means, there may be sex differences in standard
deviations. For example, 12 of the 16 PF scales have
larger standard deviations for women’s than for men’s
scores, though differences are small (Russell & Karol,
1994, p. 127). Data are not easily available to test this
hypothesis, but there seems to have been an increase in
the variability of women’s scores on tests of personality
and emotion over the last 30 years. Unequal standard
deviations might affect the calculation of d⬘, and they are
also of interest in their own right.
Issues
Sample Size
Meta-analyses reporting sex differences in personality
and emotion or cross-cultural analyses that report significant sex differences often include samples of thousands
of cases, while smaller studies conducted with n ⫽ 100 or
n ⫽ 50 may fail to report sex differences for the same
variables, even though means and standard deviations for
these variables are similar across studies. This is because
large sample sizes are associated with greater power in
statistical hypothesis testing than small ones. Power is
defined as the ability to reject correctly the null hypothesis (i.e., reject it when this hypothesis is wrong in the
population), and power rises in proportion to the square
root of sample size n. If sex differences in personality and
emotion were large, then the null hypothesis of equality
could be rejected with the use of relatively small samples,
but if the differences are small (and it has been demonstrated several times that they are), the null hypothesis of
equality of the sexes could not be rejected in small-n
projects without sufficient power.
Not rejecting the null is not equivalent to proving
that two groups are equal, and a lack of power raises the
researcher’s risk of committing a type II error (failing to
reject the null when the null is false in the population).
Sexism
To what extent does the conclusion that there are meaningful sex differences in personality and emotion leave
the researcher open to accusations of sexism or sex bias?
Glick and Fiske (2001) have argued that even benevolent
or nonantipathetic sexism—where sexism is defined as
the unwarranted acceptance of sex differences—can
influence behaviors in ways unfavourable to women. A
commentator on the original article (Sax, 2002) argued
that there were actual sex differences between men and
women, but Glick and Fiske (2002) affirmed that they
were not measuring benevolent sexism in terms of such
differences but rather by means of items that “did not
access beliefs about well-established sex differences in
personality” (p. 445).
The obvious question arising from this dialog
among researchers is: “How thoroughly must a sex difference be documented before accepting it as fact will not
make a person sexist?” To add to the confusion, Glick and
Fiske (2002) maintain that “belief in sex differences,
arguably, could be both accurate and sexist” (p. 445).
65
Because of the overlap between the sexes in terms of
most measures of personality and emotion, even those
differences accepted as “facts” do not have much power
to discriminate successfully between men and women in
a majority of cases. This being true, the person using such
facts in a discriminative manner might still be liable to
accusations of sexism.
Secondary Effects of Emotion and
Personality
Sex differences in emotion and personality do not
occur in a vacuum—they often impact on or interact with
other variables such as cognitive performance. For
example, Pomerantz, Altermatt, and Saxon (2002) noted
that girls from grades 4–6 experienced more internal
distress over school performance at the same time as
actually performing better than boys. Jacobs, Lanza,
Osgood, Eccles, and Wigfield (2002) reported that girls
have a lower sense of competence in the areas of mathematics and sports than boys, while being more confident
than boys in the area of language arts. The male–female
difference in competence beliefs with respect to mathematics was not modified by grade (1–12), with boys
always having the advantage. Emotional reactions such as
the ones outlined in these two articles may result in selfidentifications like those described by Nosek, Banaji, and
Greenwald (2002), where female college students had
negative attitudes towards mathematics and used gender
stereotypes to conclude that math was “not me” (the
article was entitled “Math ⫽ male, me ⫽ female, therefore
math ⫽ me”).
Theories Predicting Sex Differences
This article has studied sex differences by examining
measures that display such differences. An alternate
approach would be the theoretical one. Several of the
classical personality theories such as those discussed in a
classic text on personality (e.g., Hall & Lindzey, 1970)
have something to say on the issue of sex differences.
Freudian theory, for example, originally explained sex
differences in terms of penis envy, differential complexes
(Oedipus, Electra), and differential problems with
identification. A contrasting nurture-based theory, that
of Skinner, explained not only personality but most
behavior in terms of reinforcement history.
66
Personality and Emotion
CONCLUDING OVERVIEW
With the qualifications outlined above, research has
revealed several robust but small sex differences in
emotion, personality, and psychopathology. The differences
included in Table 1 have appeared with some consistency
across both times and cultures, and have been validated
in a variety of experiments. Differences are categorized
Table 1. Stable Sex Differences in Personality, Emotion, and Psychopathologya
Categories and measures
High scoring group
Femininity
Women
Masculinity
Men
Agency/Activation
Self-Esteem
Internal Locus of Control
Activation
Anger/Aggression
Diagnoses Related to Anger
Boldness/Excitement Seeking
Openness to Ideas
Distrust/Disgust
Assertiveness
Dominance
Suicide
Men
Friendliness/Gregariousness
Pleasantness
Positive Affect
Gregariousness
Trust
Agreeableness
Openness to Feelings
Tender-Mindedness
Warmth/Nurturance
Sensitivity
Women
Anxiety/Depression
Anxiety
Diagnoses Related to Anxiety
Depression
Diagnoses Related to Depression
Neuroticism
Surprise
Fear/Timidity
Women
Mating Criteria
Good Health
Good Looks
Good Housekeeping Skills
Ambition/Industriousness
Financial Prospects
Similar Education/Background
a
Countries/cultures other than North Americab
Australia, Canada, Holland, Hong Kong
India
Canada, China, Finland
American Samoa, Belize, Kenya, Nepal, Six Culturesc
25d
25
Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Russia, 25
Six Cultures
Africa, Asian Countries, India, Middle East
25
Canada, Finland, Russia, 25
Canada, Finland, Germany, Poland, Russia, 25
25
Canada, Finland, Germany, Poland, Russia, 25
Six Cultures, 25
Israel, Sweden, Canada, India, Thailand, 25
China, 25
Canada, Finland
Men
Women
This is a lexical summary of sex differences. Individual terms have been preserved in order to illustrate research findings, but there is
some overlap among terms used. Tender-mindedness, for example, is a facet of Agreeableness on one test and a distinct dimension of
another; Anxiety is both a facet of Neuroticism and a scale and diagnosis in its own right.
b
All differences in Table 1 have been reported in North American studies. Additional countries and cultures exhibiting the differences
(as per articles referenced) are cited in the third column. The list of studies employed is limited so differences may exist that have not
been included above.
c
The Six Cultures are the Nyansongo, Juxtlahuaca, Tarong, Taira, Khalapur, and Orchard Town (Whiting et al., 1975).
d
The 25 cultures are those discussed by Costa et al. (2001) and include a wide variety of groups from Croatians through African and
European South Africans to Peruvians, Estonians, and Malaysians. There were also significant intercultural differences.
References
67
into subareas representing Agency and Aggression
(where men generally score higher), Friendliness and
Gregariousness (where women score higher), Anxiety
and Depression (where women also score higher), and
Mating Criteria (where men and women score higher on
different sets of criteria). These differences are certainly
multidetermined, with both nature and nurture contributing to the observed effects, and not necessarily in the
same proportion to all effects.
Future meta-analyses might fruitfully investigate the
relative or proportional contributions of different influences to sex differences, taking their cue from work such
as that of Moore et al. (1999) that partitioned the semantic structure of emotion words in terms of culturally
shared meaning, culturally specific meaning, and individual differences and error. Researchers might also
choose to address the role that culture plays in sex differences by aligning cultures along several dimensions,
taking their cue from the Six Cultures Project (Whiting
et al., 1975) which not only studied relatively simple
cultures but also quantified them in ways that were seen
to be related to emotional behaviors (cultural simplicity
predicted nurturant/responsible actions while a more
nuclear household structures predicted greater sociable
intimacy).
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Gender Roles, Status, and Institutions
Courtship and Marriage
Lewellyn Hendrix
today and some traditional Asian societies, fit this pair of
concepts. The United States exemplifies free-choice for
bride and groom with the absence of parental veto power,
despite the call in the traditional Christian marriage
ceremony for objections to the couple’s marrying, and
despite the fact that youth want their parents to approve.
Basically, Americans believe that they have a right to
marry anyone they want, without “interference” from
other people. Traditional Japan exemplifies parental
shopping with no voice for potential spouses. Before
modern times, marriages were commonly arranged by
parents with the help of go-betweens. Offspring typically
had no voice in the decision of whom they were to
marry, and often met their spouses only at the wedding or
shortly before (Freeman, 1968).
Some other cultures have elements of both free
choice and marriage arrangement. Here is one place
where the free-choice versus arranged marriage distinction runs into trouble for these courtship systems crosscut the two categories. Some cultures with so-called
arranged marriage let offspring veto the parents’
decisions, while in others, where youth do the shopping,
parents have a veto right over the selections of courting
youth. Rhetorically, we may ask: “In which case is there
the greater freedom for marrying?” While the answer is
not clear, obviously these are intermediate categories
standing between free choice and arranged marriage.
Freeman’s (1968, p. 457) definition of marriage arrangement as a matter of degree—the extent of external
intervention in mate choice—is preferable.
We must think yet more complexly about courtship
and marriage, for the degree of arrangement of marriage—
or, conversely, the extent of freedom to choose—may be
somewhat different for men than for women. Some
cultures have more intervention in women’s choices of
spouse than in men’s. A table constructed from Broude
and Greene’s (1983) codes on 142 cultures around the
world shows that only 12 have fully free choice for both
sexes and 16 have fully arranged marriage for both. The
remainder are intermediate in level of intervention. Most
have similar levels of intervention in the marriages of
INTRODUCTION
Past and present cultures around the world have diverse
practices in selecting spouses and in the nature of marriage itself. Important variations in spouse selection
include the range of persons eligible for one to marry, the
persons having a voice in this selection, the gifts or transactions accompanying marriage, and the culturally
appropriate motives for marriage. Marriages around the
world vary in many ways, including their intimacy or
aloofness, the extent and form of violence, the level of
husband dominance, the division of labor, divorce freedom, level of divorce, and the number of permitted
spouses of either sex. Space does not permit discussion of
all of these aspects of courtship and marriage, and some
are discussed elsewhere in this volume
My focus is on the range of eligible spouses, voice
in mate selection, and in the number of permitted spouses
of either sex.
COURTSHIP
Modern Western cultures value love as the base on which
to build an intimate marriage. Personal freedom—both in
voice and in a wide range of eligible spouses—is seen as
essential to this process. In many non–Western cultures,
this love—intimacy—freedom complex is less often valued or practiced. There are a range of courtship practices
and values which are joined together in numerous ways
in cultures around the world.
Selecting a Spouse
Courtship can be thought of as shopping for a spouse. In
some cultures, potential spouses do the shopping, while
in others parents and other kin make the selection. We
usually refer to these patterns as free-choice and arranged
marriage, but these terms are oversimplifications as
efforts at cross-cultural coding show (Broude & Greene,
1983). Some extreme cases, such as the United States
71
72
both sexes. While 20 of these cultures clearly have greater
freedom for men, only two clearly have more freedom for
women. However, this statement also needs qualification:
if the groom’s parents do not intervene in his choice, but
the bride’s parents have veto power over hers, her parents
nonetheless do intervene in his choice of spouse. Thus
degree of sex difference in intervention cannot be so great
as it initially appears. The question of whether parental
intervention is really patriarchal intervention or involves
the mother, and the conditions under which these occur,
is an issue that needs investigation.
Most comparative research on courtship has used the
awkward distinction between arranged and free-choice
marriage, or has examined the place of romantic love as
a criterion. Given the conceptual problems in this
distinction, our knowledge of the structural sources of the
degree of arrangement is provisional at best. Some
research has been stimulated by the theories of family life
linking free choice to the decline of extended families and
kinship structuring of social life (Parsons, 1951; Goode,
1967). Some cultures with extended families, such as
India today, do have explicit ideologies against romantic
love and free choice which bolster the authority of family
elders in arranging marriages (Derne, 1994). Earlier
research asked whether arranged marriage is more likely
in societies in which the couple lives among kin (nonneolocal residence). This research found that, while
romantic criteria are unrelated to residence rule, they are
associated with lower subsistence dependence of spouses
in non-neolocal societies (Coppinger, 1968). Romantic
criteria do occur with more freedom of choice (Lee &
Stone, 1980; Rosenblatt & Cozby, 1972). Dances and
community endogamy appear to facilitate freedom of
choice, since these allow youth to become better
acquainted. A side-effect of this freedom of choice, perhaps due to more extensive and unsupervised interaction,
is greater courtship antagonism between the sexes
(Rosenblatt & Cozby, 1972). Unsupervised interaction
may also reflect less concern over the control of sexual
activity. Thus research also shows that romantic mate
selection criteria are related to greater tolerance for
premarital sex and for extramarital sex on the wife’s part
(de Munck & Korotayev, 1999). This suggests that equality of women and men in sexual matters could be another
factor in love-based marriage.
Further research using a larger sample of cultures
found some associations of romantic criteria and
freedom of choice to extended family structure and to
Courtship and Marriage
non-neolocal residence but concluded that these are “not
particularly strong” (Lee & Stone, 1980, p. 326). Another
study showed that greater intervention, while unrelated to
extended family, is related to other structural traits such
as transactions of substantial amounts of goods accompanying marriage, the number of social strata in the
society, and patrilineal descent (Hendrix, 2002).
Moreover, this study found no association of arranged
marriage with strong male dominance, as posited by
some theories (e.g., Collins, 1975). However, it found
that male dominance and extended family structure
statistically work together to enhance or reduce marriage
arrangement: In societies with more male dominance,
arranged marriage tends to occur in the absence of large
extended family structures. However, in societies with
more sexual equality, elders are more likely to arrange
marriages if there are extended families. Clearly, there is
a lot to be learned about the conditions under which
arranged marriage is practiced, not to mention how it
might relate to the quality of marriage itself.
Research in evolutionary psychology has examined
personal mate-selection criteria in samples of modern
nations. While this research needs to take into account
that parental intervention in mate selection is common
and ask about preferences for offspring’s mates, its
findings are nonetheless interesting. In a study of individual preferences across 37 countries, males were found
to prefer features associated with reproductive value or
fertility, such as youth and beauty, while females tended
to prefer ambitious mates with good financial prospects.
Few countries showed exceptions to this pattern, suggesting that humans may have an evolved sex difference
in mate choice (Buss, 1989). However, other scholars
have reanalyzed these data to show that the degree of sex
difference varies with social structure. Specifically, the
degree of sex difference in mate selection criteria is
stronger in less developed countries (Glenn, 1989) and in
countries with greater sexual inequality (Eagly & Wood,
1999; Kasser & Sharma, 1999).
The Field of Eligible Spouses
All cultures rule that some close kin are ineligible as
sexual partners or as marriage partners. The social norms
pertaining to these are respectively the incest taboo and
kin exogamy (Murdock, 1949). Beyond this, cultures
may restrict eligibility of partners for marriage in various
ways. Modern large-scale cultures often have further
Courtship
preferences that spouses be similar in age, race, social
standing, education, religion, and the like. These generally are not necessarily absolute or legal restrictions, but
they do result in individuals selecting spouses within their
own social categories more often than if mate selection
were purely random. The standard term for this statistical
tendency is homogamy (Kalmijn, 1998). Homogamy
occurs in part because of structural factors such as residential and age segregation in communities, but also
because of individual preferences and group pressures.
American culture, with its emphasis on love, holds a
contradiction to widespread homogamy in the phrase
“Searching the wide world over to find Mr (or Ms)
Right.” This expresses our value on personal freedom in
mate choice and suggests that mate selection is an international process in which persons of radically different
backgrounds often select each other as spouses. In reality, Americans mostly search within their own neighborhoods and communities, within their own education,
social class, race, and age brackets, and within their own
major religious denominations.
Some social theorists (Parsons, 1951) suggest that
these mate selection preferences help maintain the structure of society. Since race and ethnic groups, social
classes, religions, and age groups differ in their values
and lifestyles, intermarriage would tend to weaken or
dilute the values and lifestyles of these diverse social
categories. Group differentiation and status structures are
impossible without homogamous marriage. At the same
time, for individual couples, marriage has been conceived
as easier for mutual adjustment and more lasting when
one marries a spouse with similar values, lifestyle, and
the like.
Traditional, less diverse, cultures are often structured more along kinship lines with people being grouped
into extended families, or even larger groups tracing
descent from a common ancestor. Some of these cultures
restrict the range of eligible spouses in a different way.
They prefer, or in some cases require, that one marry a
particular kind of cousin. Typically this is a cross-cousin.
A cross-cousin is one to whom one is linked via a crosssex sibling link in a previous generation. For first cousins,
the cross-cousins are one’s mother’s brother’s offspring,
and one’s father’s sister’s offspring. Even in societies
with large clans tracing their membership through only
one sex, these cousins are not covered by the incest taboo
or the rule of exogamy, and hence are eligible to marry.
The cousin marriage rule simply adds more pressure to
73
marry into this category. Parenthetically, parallel cousins
are the other type. For first cousins, they are the offspring
of one’s father’s brothers and one’s mother’s sisters. Only
a few cultures in the Middle East have had a preference
for marrying parallel cousins.
What is cross-cousin marriage about? It helps
perpetuate relationships among kin groups and thus
stabilizes social structure. Two leaders in the anthropological study of kinship had different ideas about how
marriage relates to social structure, and what a marriage
does to social structure. The British anthropologist
Radcliffe-Brown (1950, p. 43) asserted that marriage is a
rearrangement of social structure. He had in mind that
new links between families and kin groups are formed
with each new marriage. Whereas two families may not
have been well acquainted before a marriage, they now
become in-laws, a new relationship for them, and enter
into a lasting, if intermittent, bond. This view has much
merit when we are thinking of individual families and the
personal ties between them, but it leads us to think of
marriage as destabilizing existing social structure.
However, the French anthropologist Levi-Strauss
(1969) held the antithetical view. In an examination of
cultures with cross-cousin marriage, he held that those
groups use marriage to stabilize social structure rather
than allowing marriage to change it. By having people
marry the same type of cross-cousin generation after generation, new marriages do not always create new ties
among kin groups, but may perpetuate existing alliances.
Perhaps the most interesting use of marriage to stabilize
social structure is called generalized exchange, in which
a woman marries a person in the same kinship category
as her father’s sister’s son, and a man marries into the category of his mother’s brother’s daughter. With this
restriction on the field of eligible spouses, each kin group
in the culture always receives wives from one set of kin
groups, but gives its daughters as wives to a different
group. In other words, one never gives and receives wives
from the same group (see Levi-Strauss [1969] or Fox
[1967] for details on how this and other patterns of
marital exchange work). Levi-Strauss theorized that this
type of marital exchange among groups not only helps
perpetuate cooperation among kin groups, but also
expands its scope. This perspective helps in understanding
the implications of cross-cousin marriage for relations
among the kin groups of some societies, but it can blind
one to the real changes that occur in everyday interpersonal relationships when a new marriage is undertaken.
74
What cultures are likely to include close cousins
from within the field of eligible spouses? The type of
cousin marriage preferred in a society is related to the
rule of descent. The type of cousin marriage called generalized exchange, for example, is more likely in cultures
with patrilineal descent than with matrilineal kin groups
based on female ancestors (Homans & Schneider, 1955).
A common misperception is that the very simplest smallscale societies prefer or practice cousin marriage, but
Ember (1975) has shown conclusively that this is incorrect. In a cross-cultural study, he found that marriage with
a first cousin is more likely to be permitted in societies
with a centralized political hierarchy more than in
simpler uncentralized ones. Similarly, first-cousin
marriage is more likely to be permitted in societies with
some urban aggregations than in those with no settlements of over 5,000 population. Furthermore, for societies of medium scale (with populations between 1,000
and 25,000), recent extensive population loss is associated with norms permitting first-cousin marriage. This
study suggests that cousin marriages may be allowed
under two conditions. It may be allowed in larger-scale
societies where it is less likely to occur by chance and
where peaceful cooperative relations are well established.
Second, close-cousin marriage may be allowed in very
small, especially depopulated, societies in which too few
spouses might otherwise be available. These findings fly
in the face of Levi-Strauss’s widely cited view of crosscousin marriage as establishing peace and cooperation in
small-scale societies. More research and some rethinking
are needed to reconcile this issue.
MARRIAGE
Defining Marriage
Before discussing the three major forms of marriage, it is
useful to discuss definitions of marriage itself. While marriage is often believed to be a universal feature of culture,
it is a difficult feature to define. Radcliffe-Brown (1950,
pp. 11–12, 50) defined marriage as a transfer of rights in
the new spouse. These are rights of sexual access, rights
to claim offspring, and rights to the spouse’s labor. In this
definition, Radcliffe-Brown recognized cross-cultural
variability within each set of rights while emphasizing that
marriage is a cultural creation, since it consists of rights
and obligations rather than behavior. The social and
Courtship and Marriage
behavioral tie we call marriage involves several of the
following behavioral elements, most of which were
suggested by Murdock (1949). The idea that marriage
consists of a sexual relationship plus several other traits
also makes a useful working definition. These traits
include:
a sexual relationship that is socially approved
childbirth that is socially approved
economic cooperation and sharing
coresidence of spouses
expected duration for some years, at least
a ritual or transaction marking entrance to marriage.
Some foraging societies have little or no marker for
entering marriage. In some with men’s houses in each
village, spouses do not constantly live together. In some
societies people move through several marriages and
divorces over a lifetime, so durability is questionable. For
example, among the forest period Ache, a foraging group
of South America, the average duration of first marriage
was only 7.7 months for women and 14.3 months for
men. By age 30, women on average had been in over
10 marriages (Hill and Hurtado, 1996, pp. 230, 245).
The Na, an ethnic group within China, presents the
most recent challenge to the universality of marriage. In
this matrilineal culture, most men and women live in the
home into which they were born. Most sex before recent
decades occurred through men’s furtive visits to women’s
bedrooms at night. Both women and men had almost
complete sexual freedom, except that women were
required to take a passive role, always receiving or rejecting male sexual visitors rather than going to visit on their
own initiative. Members of Na society can point out the
genitors of most children, but these genitors have no
claims over children and no obligations to them, and this
makes no difference to the status of the child. Marriage
does exist in the case of the only son in a family. Without
daughters, the family line cannot be passed down.
Complex transactions and rituals mark entrance into
marriage. The wife and her offspring are adopted into the
husband’s family. The spouses have rights of sexual
access to each other, and each is obliged to work for the
benefit of the larger family, and she can eventually
succeed to the position of female household chief, should
her mother-in-law die. It is forbidden for the wife to
return to her own home (Hua, 2001, pp. 185–236,
303–334). If we focus on Na marriage being practiced by
a minority of members we would conclude that they are
Marriage
an exception to the universality of marriage. However, if
we focus on marriage existing as a cultural institution
known by all, we would only regard the Na as unusual,
rather than exceptional. The Na have marriage in
Radcliffe-Brown’s sense of a set of rights transmitted, but
not in the sense of behaviors that are typical of the bulk
of group members.
Forms of Marriage
Marriage in all cultures sanctions a tie between persons
of opposite sex, but some cultures add to this that some
marriages can be between people of the same sex
(Cadigan, 1998; Fulton & Anderson, 1992). The heterosexual component will be the focus here. Marriages can
involve one or more males and one or more females. Thus
there are four logical possibilities. These types, and their
frequencies as ideal forms of marriage among preindustrial societies, are (Pasternak, Ember, & Ember, 1997,
p. 86, adapted from Murdock 1949, 1967):
monogamy—one wife and one husband, 16%
polygyny—two or more wives with one husband, 83.5%
polyandry—two or more husbands with one wife, 0.5%
group marriage—two or more husbands with two or more
wives, 0.0%
Although a topic of speculation within 19th century
cultural evolutionary theory, group marriage has never been
observed as the ideal or the typical form of marriage in any
culture. It only seems to occur as an alternate or secondary
form of marriage in some cultures (Murdock, 1949, p. 24).
Polygyny
It is important to distinguish between polygyny as an
ideal state of marriage and polygyny as a practice, and to
distinguish subtypes of polygyny. While all highly industrialized societies legitimize monogamy only (Goode,
1967), traditional cultures have preferred polygyny over
other types of marriage by a wide margin (Murdock,
1949). Despite this widespread ideal, the typical marriage
in many, if not most, “polygynous” societies is monogamous. Indeed, Murdock (1949, p. 28) put the dividing
line between the frequent and infrequent practice of
polygyny at only 20% of marriages in a society. He
labeled these general and limited polygyny, respectively.
This low frequency occurs in part because men ordinarily
75
marry only one wife at a time but may accumulate more
over a lifetime, and because polygyny requires more
wives than husbands. A balanced sex ratio stands in
the way of widespread polygyny. Some societies, such as
the Tiwi of Australia, offset the age at first marriage for
women and men, delaying men’s first marriage until they
are past 30 years of age. Under this condition, the majority of marriages may be polygynous (Hart & Pilling,
1960). In the New World, sororal polygyny, in which
cowives must be sisters of the same clan, is most commonly preferred (White, 1988). Restricting cowives to
close kin puts further restrictions on the frequency of
polygynous practice.
While naive libertarians might assume that polygynous sexuality involves multiple simultaneous partners,
most cultures have stringent regulations which have been
interpreted as reducing sexual rivalry and jealousy among
cowives (Murdock, 1949, p. 30) but also as preventing
cowives from organizing against the husband (Blumberg &
Pilar Garcia, 1977, pp. 137–139). These regulations
include the following:
1. The senior wife has authority over the others. This provides a
mechanism for dispute resolution, and may aid the husband in
controlling the wives.
2. The wives either live, eat, and sleep separately, or are preferentially sisters. Separate residences reduce the interaction and
interdependence among cowives, thereby abating the potential
for conflict. Some authors believe that sisters are less likely to
disagree than women who enter the marriage as strangers to
each other.
3. The wives take turns with the husband. Polygynous husbands
and wives do not sleep, eat, recreate, and have sex all together,
but most cultures specify a period of rotation in which the husband spends time with each wife in turn. In this sense, polygynous interaction in many cultures is analogous to monogamous
interaction—one on one—but in a serial manner.
Research on the structural and environmental
sources of polygyny as a frequent practice has identified
several important factors. First, general polygyny is most
common in Africa, where it is associated with female
food production (White, 1988; White & Burton, 1988).
Rather than fitting the male-provider–female-caregiver
concept, cowives both provide and prepare the food in
these societies while also caring for infants and young
children. In this way, polygyny is not necessarily a drain
on a husband’s resources, but may be a source of wealth
and status. A secondly line of research considers the sex
ratio problem and asks whether general polygyny might
76
be linked to a shortage of men, finding that general
polygyny tends to appear in cultures having extensive
male deaths in warfare (Ember, 1974, 1985). Polygyny,
then, may be an adaptive practice which keeps fertility at
high enough levels to replenish the population. If
monogamy were rigorously practiced under these conditions, many women would be unable to find husbands or
have offspring, and population might shrink. A third,
sociobiological, line of research ties polygyny to
pathogens such as malaria. With pathogen stress, it is
argued, people may want to select mates who have some
pathogen resistence and may want offspring who vary in
genetic make up since pathogen resistance may be easily
recognizable. Nonsororal polygynous marriage provides a
way for men to have offspring by different mates, thus
increasing their genetic diversity of offspring (Low, 1990).
Polyandry
Polyandry is the rarest ideal form of marriage and occurs
primarily in Asia. Because of its rarity, there is less
research on it. Just as polygyny is preferentially sororal,
polyandry is often preferentially fraternal—a woman
marries full brothers or clan brothers. Among the polyandrous Toda, a dairying caste of India, when the eldest son
married a woman, his younger brothers became married
to her also. A simple ritual identified the one brother,
usually the eldest, who would be the social father of
the woman’s children (Queen & Habenstein, 1974,
pp. 18–47). The conditions conducive to the development
of polyandry are believed to be subsistence resource
scarcity and male food production (Lee, 1982,
pp. 94–95). Fraternal polyandry allows brothers who
have inherited land or other resources to cooperate in subsistence production, while limiting their fertility by sharing a wife. The family unit thereby has more resources,
more food producers, and fewer dependents.
It seems likely that polyandry is never the most
common form of marriage in a society, as polygyny
sometimes is when there is high male mortality in warfare
or when men marry much later than women. The constraints placed on women’s fertility by pregnancy, lactation and nursing, and the menopause would prevent
general polyandry from overcoming the problems set into
play by a shortage of women or an extremely late age
at marriage for them. Rather, fertility decline and depopulation would be the likely result. We need to view
polyandry then as an aid to population limitation that
Courtship and Marriage
develops only when population threatens to outstrip
environmental resources.
Thus scholarship has shown that the different forms
of marriage are not founded upon differences in the balance of power between women and men or upon religious
doctrines. They are not arbitrary cultural inventions, but
practical adaptations, developing from a particular set of
social and environmental stressors and subsistence
practices.
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Derne, S. (1994). Structural realities, persistent dilemmas, and the
construction of emotional paradigms: Love in three cultures.
Social Perspectives on Emotion, 2, 281–308.
Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The origins of sex differences in
human behavior: Evolved dispositions versus social roles.
American Psychologist, 54, 408–423.
Ember, M. (1974). Warfare, sex ration, and polygyny. Ethnology, 13,
197–206.
Ember, M. (1975). On the origin and extension of the incest taboo.
Behavior Science Research, 10, 249–281.
Ember, M. (1985). Alternative predictors of polygyny. Behavior Science
Research, 19, 1–23.
Fox, R. (1967). Kinship and marriage. Baltimore: Penguin.
Freeman, L. C. (1968). Marriage without love: Mate selection in nonwestern societies. In Winch, R. F. & Goodman, L. W. (Eds.),
Selected studies in marriage and the family (pp. 456–469). New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Fulton, R., & Anderson, S. W. (1992 ). The Amerindian “man–woman”:
gender, liminality, and cultural continuity. Current Anthropology,
32, 603–610.
Glenn, N. D. (1989). Intersocietal variation in the mate preferences of
males and females. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 21–23.
Goode, W. J. (1967). World revolution and family patterns. New York:
Free Press.
Marriage
an exception to the universality of marriage. However, if
we focus on marriage existing as a cultural institution
known by all, we would only regard the Na as unusual,
rather than exceptional. The Na have marriage in
Radcliffe-Brown’s sense of a set of rights transmitted, but
not in the sense of behaviors that are typical of the bulk
of group members.
Forms of Marriage
Marriage in all cultures sanctions a tie between persons
of opposite sex, but some cultures add to this that some
marriages can be between people of the same sex
(Cadigan, 1998; Fulton & Anderson, 1992). The heterosexual component will be the focus here. Marriages can
involve one or more males and one or more females. Thus
there are four logical possibilities. These types, and their
frequencies as ideal forms of marriage among preindustrial societies, are (Pasternak, Ember, & Ember, 1997,
p. 86, adapted from Murdock 1949, 1967):
monogamy—one wife and one husband, 16%
polygyny—two or more wives with one husband, 83.5%
polyandry—two or more husbands with one wife, 0.5%
group marriage—two or more husbands with two or more
wives, 0.0%
Although a topic of speculation within 19th century
cultural evolutionary theory, group marriage has never been
observed as the ideal or the typical form of marriage in any
culture. It only seems to occur as an alternate or secondary
form of marriage in some cultures (Murdock, 1949, p. 24).
Polygyny
It is important to distinguish between polygyny as an
ideal state of marriage and polygyny as a practice, and to
distinguish subtypes of polygyny. While all highly industrialized societies legitimize monogamy only (Goode,
1967), traditional cultures have preferred polygyny over
other types of marriage by a wide margin (Murdock,
1949). Despite this widespread ideal, the typical marriage
in many, if not most, “polygynous” societies is monogamous. Indeed, Murdock (1949, p. 28) put the dividing
line between the frequent and infrequent practice of
polygyny at only 20% of marriages in a society. He
labeled these general and limited polygyny, respectively.
This low frequency occurs in part because men ordinarily
75
marry only one wife at a time but may accumulate more
over a lifetime, and because polygyny requires more
wives than husbands. A balanced sex ratio stands in
the way of widespread polygyny. Some societies, such as
the Tiwi of Australia, offset the age at first marriage for
women and men, delaying men’s first marriage until they
are past 30 years of age. Under this condition, the majority of marriages may be polygynous (Hart & Pilling,
1960). In the New World, sororal polygyny, in which
cowives must be sisters of the same clan, is most commonly preferred (White, 1988). Restricting cowives to
close kin puts further restrictions on the frequency of
polygynous practice.
While naive libertarians might assume that polygynous sexuality involves multiple simultaneous partners,
most cultures have stringent regulations which have been
interpreted as reducing sexual rivalry and jealousy among
cowives (Murdock, 1949, p. 30) but also as preventing
cowives from organizing against the husband (Blumberg &
Pilar Garcia, 1977, pp. 137–139). These regulations
include the following:
1. The senior wife has authority over the others. This provides a
mechanism for dispute resolution, and may aid the husband in
controlling the wives.
2. The wives either live, eat, and sleep separately, or are preferentially sisters. Separate residences reduce the interaction and
interdependence among cowives, thereby abating the potential
for conflict. Some authors believe that sisters are less likely to
disagree than women who enter the marriage as strangers to
each other.
3. The wives take turns with the husband. Polygynous husbands
and wives do not sleep, eat, recreate, and have sex all together,
but most cultures specify a period of rotation in which the husband spends time with each wife in turn. In this sense, polygynous interaction in many cultures is analogous to monogamous
interaction—one on one—but in a serial manner.
Research on the structural and environmental
sources of polygyny as a frequent practice has identified
several important factors. First, general polygyny is most
common in Africa, where it is associated with female
food production (White, 1988; White & Burton, 1988).
Rather than fitting the male-provider–female-caregiver
concept, cowives both provide and prepare the food in
these societies while also caring for infants and young
children. In this way, polygyny is not necessarily a drain
on a husband’s resources, but may be a source of wealth
and status. A secondly line of research considers the sex
ratio problem and asks whether general polygyny might
Parental Roles
Robert A. Veneziano
perspectives on fatherhood and motherhood are in large
part derived from research that concurrently studied
fathers and mothers, rather than earlier research that
focused almost exclusively on mothers. This chapter
discusses some of the literature from this vast body of
behavioral science research by first discussing similarities
and differences in fathers’ and mothers’ behavior in
Western and non-Western cultures. The chapter also
reviews research about the social, cultural, psychological,
ethnic, economic, environmental, biological, and evolutionary conditions that influence the parenting practices of
mothers and fathers, as well as the social, emotional,
behavioral, and psychological consequences for male and
female offspring of fathers’ and mothers’ practices.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most enduring elements of social and behavioral science research in the last half of the 20th century
was the scholarly reexamination of traditional ideas about
fatherhood and motherhood. For over 200 years maternal
behavior had been considered paramount in child development (Kagan, 1978; Stearns, 1991; Stendler, 1950;
Sunley, 1955), and fathers were often thought to be
peripheral to the job of parenting because children
throughout the world spent most of their time with their
mothers (Fagot, 1995; Harris, Furstenberg, & Marmer,
1998; Munroe & Munroe, 1994). Some argued that fathers
contributed little to children’s development except for
their economic contributions (Amato, 1998), and others
believed that fathers are not genetically endowed for parenting (Belsky, 1998; Benson, 1968). Indeed, even though
Margaret Mead concluded that fathers were important
contributors to childcare, and that “Anthropological
evidence gives no support … to the value of such an accentuation of the tie between mother and child” (Mead, 1956,
pp. 642–643), Mead (1949) perceived basic differences
between fathers and mothers:
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
FATHERS’ AND MOTHERS’
INTERACTIONS WITH OFFSPRING
IN
Much of the research into parent–child relations has been
informed by the belief that mothers influence children’s
physical, emotional, psychological, and social well-being
through expressive and affective behaviors, including
warmth and nurturance (Bowlby, 1969; Hojat, 1999;
Mahler & Furer, 1968; Phares, 1992; Stern, 1995),
whereas fathers have often been viewed as influencing
children’s development through the instrumental roles of
provider and protector, and as role models for social, cognitive, psychological, and gender-identity development
(Bronstein, 1988; Gilmore, 1990; Lamb & Oppenheim,
1989; Mackey, 1996; Parsons & Bales, 1955; Radin,
1981b). However, contemporary research suggests that
maternal behavior is not situated exclusively in the
expressive sphere any more than paternal behavior is
situated exclusively in the instrumental one. Indeed,
multivariate research in the 1990s demonstrated the
importance of paternal expressive and affective behaviors
despite the fact that mothers are often characterized as
“superior caregivers,” whereas fathers are viewed as “less
capable of, and/or less interested in, nurturant parenting”
The mother’s nurturing tie to her child is apparently so deeply rooted in
the actual biological conditions of conception and gestation, birth and
suckling, that only fairly complicated social arrangements can break it
down entirely. … But the evidence suggests that we should phrase the
matter differently for men and women—that men have to learn to want
to provide for others, and this behavior, being learned, is fragile and can
disappear rather easily under social conditions that no longer teach it
effectively. (pp. 191–193)
However, many contemporary scholars now cite a
growing body of empirical evidence that parental behaviors are not simply the consequence of biology and human
nature, but rather are informed by cultural, historical, and
social values, circumstances, and processes. In fact, as
gender ideologies shifted in the last half of the 20th
century, so too did researchers’ exploration of variations in
men’s and women’s behavior generally, and fathering and
mothering specifically (Rohner & Veneziano, 2001;
Sanchez & Thomson, 1997). Moreover, contemporary
78
Parents’ Interactions with Offspring
(Hosley & Montemayor, 1997, p. 175). As discussed
below, fathers’ and mothers’ behaviors are in fact multidimensional and multifaceted, and these behaviors often
vary as a result of contextual variables including youths’
age and gender.
Youths’ Age and Gender
According to Collins and Russell (1991), research in
Western societies shows that fathers and mothers interact
differently with their middle childhood (i.e., preteens) to
adolescent children than with younger children. For
example, fathers generally interact with their adolescents
through focusing on instrumental goals (e.g., school and
athletic achievement, future plans) and objective issues
such as political discussions. Mothers’ interactions with
adolescents, on the other hand, tend to be marked more
by discussions of personal issues. More specifically, in
their review of the literature on U.S. families, Collins and
Russell (1991) reported that 15- to 16-year-old U.S. adolescents spent twice as much time alone with their mothers as with their fathers. Collins and Russell also reported
that 14- to 18-year-olds, more than 12- to 13-year-olds,
spent more time alone with their mothers than with their
fathers. As for middle childhood, Collins and Russell
(1991) found that mothers tend to be more involved in
caregiving, whereas fathers are more involved in play
activities.
Parental interaction with children also varies during
infancy, and infants appear to demonstrate a biological
predisposition to respond differently to fathers and
mothers.
Alert, fed, comfortable babies, when approached by their mothers,
tended to relax, coo, and modulate their breathing and cardiovascular
responses—as if to sort of say, “Ah, here’s Mom.” Then when the father
approached, the babies’ eyes tended to open, the shoulders would go up
and the heart and respiratory systems were activated rather than calmed,
as if to say, “Here’s Dad, let’s party!” (Pruett, in Louv, 2002, ¶ 8)
Pruett (Louv, 2002, ¶ 9) also cites one study in
which American mothers picked up and held their infants
in the same manner 90% of the time, whereas fathers
were more unpredictable, perhaps picking up the child by
their feet on one occasion and by their sides on another.
In a review of the literature, Witt (1997) found that
American fathers and mothers interact differently with
sons than daughters. According to Witt, fathers and
mothers have different expectations for sons than for
79
daughters, have a preference for male offspring, and
communicate differently with their offspring, depending
on the child’s sex (Hargreaves & Colley, 1986; Hoffman,
1977; Snow, Jacklin, & Maccoby, 1983; Steinbacher &
Gilroy, 1990). Updegraff, Mchale, Grouter, and Kupanoff
(2001) found that American mothers more than fathers
exhibited traditional patterns of gendered parenting in
their involvement with their daughters’ and sons’ peer
relationships. Fathers spent more time in offspring’s
peer-related matters when they had sons, whereas
mothers spent more time with daughters and their friends
and were more involved in daughters’ than sons’ peer
relations.
Witt (1997) also found that fathers reinforce gender
stereotypes more often than mothers. Indeed, a significant body of research finds that differences in paternal
versus maternal behaviors influence different aspects of
gender-role development of both boys and girls, including offspring’s use of gender stereotypes, toy preferences,
preferred household tasks, and self-esteem (Biller &
Borstelmann, 1967; Bronson, 1959; Distler, 1965; Kelly &
Worell, 1976; Mussen, 1961; Mussen & Distler, 1959;
Orlofsky, 1979; Payne & Mussen, 1956). Goldstein
(2001), for example, reports that fathers tend to enforce
gender norms more strongly than mothers, and often
exhibit harsh responses to boys who attempt to play with
feminine toys. According to Goldstein, a large body of
empirical research shows that fathers throughout the
world use the language of dominance (e.g., imperatives
and power assertion) more than mothers in talking with
children. Mothers by comparison soften demands by
using polite language, forms of endearment, and
questions. Fathers more than mothers use depreciatory
language and do so more with sons than daughters.
Goldstein also reports that children see their fathers as
having more authority than mothers, comply more
quickly with paternal than maternal requests, and speak
more politely to fathers than mothers. Goldstein believes
that boys learn masculine imperatives from parental
figures, especially fathers, and this in turn reinforces
widely held male gender attitudes and behaviors
regarding aggression and war.
However, Martin and Anderson (1997) found that
U.S. college students’ assertiveness, argumentativeness,
and verbal aggressiveness were predicted by maternal
rather than paternal modeling of assertive and aggressive
behavior. Interestingly, Martin and Anderson’s findings
about maternal influence held for both daughters and
80
sons, rather than the same-sex modeling that Martin and
Anderson expected to find.
Verbal communications between parents and children
also vary by gender. In a meta-analysis of studies of
parent–child communication in Western societies, Leaper,
Anderson, and Sanders (1998) found that differences in
maternal and paternal communication with sons and
daughters were often dependent on contextual circumstances. Even though mothers tended to communicate
more with daughters than with sons, it is most often during
the toddler years. Moreover, mothers used more controlling styles of communication with daughters than with
sons. Leaper et al. also found that mothers and fathers communicated with both sexes in similar ways when directed
in clinical studies to discuss a problem or complete an
assigned task. On the other hand, when mothers had a
choice of topic or activity, they tended to choose a less taskoriented one than did fathers—one that allowed for more
conversation and interaction. Fathers most often chose
activities where communication was centered on directive
task-oriented communication, particularly with their sons.
As for fathers’ involvement specifically, Radin
(1981b, 1994) found that American fathers spend more
time with sons than with daughters. Moreover, Erickson
and Gecas (1991) investigated relationships between
parental behavior and family socio-economic status and
found that from infancy onward, regardless of social class
standing, U.S. fathers spend more time with first-born boys
than with first-born girls. Furthermore, by the time children reach the age of 7, middle-class fathers, as compared
with working-class fathers, are more involved with boys
than with girls (Erickson & Gecas, 1991). Other studies
indicate that U.S. fathers spend more time with sons than
with daughters, regardless of age (Collins & Russell, 1991;
Pleck, 1997). Research in Dominica, West Indies, also
found that fathers interacted more frequently with sons
than with daughters of all ages, particularly during their
sons’ adolescence (Flinn, 1992). Father–daughter interactions were also highest during girls’ adolescence, although
still less than father–son interactions, when fathers were
expected to fulfill the role of protector of young females.
Parental nurturance, discussed more specifically
later in this chapter, has also been shown to vary by
youths’ gender. Starrels (1994) reports that data from a
U.S. national survey shows that mothers tend to exhibit
affective support across the genders, whereas fathers tend
to exhibit more closeness and nurturance to their sons
than to their daughters, and tend to interact warmly with
Parental Roles
sons while doing things together rather than through
talking and confiding. On the other hand, in a study of
low- and middle-income intact Mexican families,
Bronstein (1988) reported that Mexican fathers were
more emotionally nurturing than Mexican mothers who
were more physically nurturing (i.e., caretaking tasks).
However, several gender-related differences emerged,
with sons experiencing higher amounts of paternal
authoritarian control and instrumental directives than
daughters. Fathers were not excessively harsh with sons
but scored higher on those measures relative to their very
gentle interaction with daughters.
Sociocultural antecedents of fathers’ and mothers’
behavior are explored later in this chapter, but it is worth
noting briefly Flinn’s and Starrels’ application of
micro- and macrosystemic perspectives in interpreting
their findings. Using a microsystemic perspective, Flinn
(1992) speculated that the greater interaction between
fathers and sons, particularly sons who are older, was due
in part to cooperative work and economic activities in
which sons were expected to learn mastery of skills from
their fathers that would ensure the family’s long-term
survival. Starrels (1994), on the other hand, employed a
macrosystemic perspective in concluding that fathers’
and mothers’ behavior reflect mainstream Western
cultural beliefs about appropriate behavior for men and
women. Each perspective offers important insights into
the many forces that influence and shape fathers’ and
mothers’ behavior.
Youths’ Age, Gender, and
Parent–Child Play
A consistent finding in research on samples of middleincome European American families indicates that playful
and sociable activities such as physically stimulating
rough-and-tumble play marks father–child interactions,
whereas mother–child interactions are dominated by caretaking, holding, and soothing (Collins & Russell, 1991;
Forehand & Nousiainen, 1993; Lindsey, Mize, & Petit,
1997; Parke, 1996). For example, when engaged in play,
mothers were found to play nontactile games, or predictable and contained limb-movement games, such as
peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. Fathers engaged in more
unpredictable, tactile, and arousing games. Infants were
said to respond with more enthusiasm to being held by
their fathers than by their mothers. Bernstein reported that
fathers engaged in more physical play and interactive
Parenting Styles and Behaviors
games, and encouraged visual, fine motor, and locomotor
exploration more with sons than with daughters. Fathers’
interactions with daughters were marked by verbal games
and social conversation. On the other hand, in an early
study of parent–child play interactions, Hoffman (1989)
concluded that play may be related to parents’ employment
status, particularly that of mothers. According to Hoffman,
studies have shown that employed mothers engaged in
more actively stimulating play with their infants than did
their husbands or nonemployed mothers.
However, Hewlett’s (1987) study of parent–child
relations in the Aka of central Africa demonstrates that
the rough-and-tumble play observed in some Western
studies is by no means a universal feature of father–child
interactions. Utilizing naturalistic observations of
father–child and mother–child interactions among the
Aka, Hewlett found that Aka fathers did play frequently
with their children. However, Aka fathers did not exhibit
the vigorous rough-and-tumble play representative of
American fathers. Moreover, Aka fathers also exhibited
nurturing capacities and levels of emotional support similar to that of Aka mothers. Hewlett compared this finding with Swedish and German studies where father–child
contact was marked less by vigorous play than by other
forms of contact. Hewlett suggested that these findings
demonstrate that play does not serve a critical role in
influencing father–child attachment across cultures.
Because Aka fathers and mothers had similar styles of
interaction with children, he hypothesized that Aka
fathers were more intimate and therefore more aware of
their children’s needs, and subsequently did not need to
utilize rough-and-tumble play to form attachments.
As demonstrated by Hewlett and Hoffman, fathers’
and mothers’ behaviors vary according to social and cultural circumstances. The next section examines social,
cultural, psychological, ethnic, economic, environmental,
genetic, biological, and evolutionary antecedents of
maternal and paternal practices, and the consequences for
male and female offspring of these practices.
ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF
PARENTING STYLES AND BEHAVIORS
Sociocultural Models
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, behavioral science increasingly recognizes the importance of contextual
81
factors as well as biological or genetic factors that
influence male–female behavior generally, and fathers’ and
mothers’ behavior specifically. A number of researchers
have developed models that take into account complex
processes that influence parent–child relations. For example, Rohner’s (1986) sociocultural systems model connects
the behavioral, psychological, and social development of
children to parents’ behavior and to sociocultural
processes. That is, parental behavior and children’s development are linked in reciprocal fashion to the natural environment and to a society’s maintenance systems, which
include the ways people make a living, ensure social
control, and ensure the procreation and successful rearing
of children. Maintenance systems include political structure, defense systems, family structure, household composition, social class system, and economic organizations.
Rohner’s model builds conceptually on earlier models designed by Kardiner (1945), and by J. Whiting and
Child (1953), which link primary institutions and maintenance systems to child rearing and child and adult
personality. Other models include Bronfenbrenner’s
bio-ecological approach (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994)
and Super and Harkness’s (1986) developmental niche
model that links parent–child relations to a society’s
customs and values, fathers’ and mothers’ psychology, and
the social and physical setting. For example, Moreno
(in press) found that Latino mothers’ involvement with
their children’s education varies according to their
education level and socio-economic status, language
proficiency, availability of extended family supports,
goals for their children’s futures, personal and psychological variables, and level of acculturation. A range of
contextual indicators, as discussed in the next section,
also predicts paternal involvement.
Antecedents of Parental Behavior:
The Case of Fathers
It has been well documented that fathers, compared with
mothers, spend only a small portion of their time in
day-to-day child-rearing activities, including supervising
children, feeding children, transporting children, and
so forth (Pleck, 1997; Sanchez & Thomson, 1997).
Moreover, the negative consequences for children’s
development of low levels of paternal involvement have
also been amply documented (Bacon, Child, & Barry, 1963;
Biller, 1993; Broude, 1990; Ember & Ember, 1994, n.d.;
B. Whiting, 1965). Research on fathers’ involvement
82
is instructive as it reveals the complex interaction of
sociocultural conditions that influence paternal, as well
as maternal, interactions with children.
Cross-Cultural Evidence. Katz and Konner (1981)
conducted cross-cultural comparative research utilizing a
subsample of the Standard Cross Cultural Sample
(SCCS) (Murdock & White, 1969), determined by Barry
and Paxson (1971) to be at the highest degree of confidence on the nature of fathers’ relationship with infants
and children. The SCCS includes 186 societies that
represent the world’s known and adequately described
sociocultural systems. Katz and Konner found that
increased levels of father involvement were associated
with monogamy, nuclear family structure, nonpatrilocal
cultures, and, subsistence economy, where gathering,
rather than hunting, was the primary subsistence mode.
Findings also showed that increased father involvement
occurred in societies where mothers were active contributors to the acquisition and maintenance of resources for
the family and the community. Indeed, the character of
parents’ work activities, as discussed below, has major
implications for the nature of fathering and mothering
behaviors.
Hewlett’s (1987) research of the Aka details the complex processes that influence the behavior of high- and
low-investment fathers. The high-investment Aka father
(i.e., actively involved with children) was profiled by
(1) having no brothers, (2) having few relatives in general,
(3) being married relatively late in life, (4) being monogamous, (5) having a wife from a distant clan, (6) having a
small hunting net, (7) relying more on individual as
opposed to group hunting techniques, (8) having close
relationships with nearby non-Aka villages, (9) being of
relatively low status, and (10) having a wife who was
actively involved in subsistence activities. Because highinvestment fathers often have few or no brothers, they
build alliances with other clans and with non–Akas, hunt
more on their own, and invest time with their offspring,
freeing their wives for other activities and thus contributing to the well-being and survival of the group.
On the other hand, the behavior of low-investment
Aka fathers (i.e., limited involvement with children)
develops differently than that of high-investment fathers,
but is no less important to the viability of the group than
that of high-investment fathers. That is, because lowinvestment fathers generally have several brothers, their
clans tend to be more economically viable, which in turn
Parental Roles
leads to greater prosperity for low-investment than for
high-investment fathers. Females are attracted to
prosperous males, increasing the likelihood of polygyny
and an increased number of offspring, which also contribute to the prosperity of the clan and individual fathers.
Low-investment fathers have higher social status than
high-investment fathers and are involved in more statusmaintaining economic tasks and roles, which, according
to Hewlett (1992), also help to insure the survivability of
the group.
Biosocial Models of Parental
Investment
As noted above, Hewlett (1987) addresses social and
cultural conditions and processes that influence parents’
investment in their children. Indeed, a substantial body of
research proposes evolutionary and biological explanations for variations in maternal and paternal parenting
(Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster, 2001; Fox & Bruce,
2001; Gelles & Lancaster, 1987; Hewlett, 1992). In such
evolutionary perspectives:
Individuals face trade-offs between investing in themselves (their own
human capital, physical growth or immune system, etc.), in mating
effort (initiating and/or maintaining a relationship with a sexual partner), or in parental effort (investments in existing offspring) … [The evolutionary perspective] emphasizes two reasons for parental investment
in offspring. First, parents invest in genetic offspring because doing so
increases their own genetic fitness, i.e., the number of copies of their
genes present in future generations. Secondly, an individual may invest
in an offspring because the investment influences that person’s relationship with the offspring’s other parent. (Anderson et al., 2001, p.6)
For example, Hagen, Hames, Craig, Lauer, & Price
(2001) found that when Yanomamo parents were forced to
allocate food carefully to their children during a period of
poor garden productivity, they invested in younger children more than in older ones. Moreover, boys whose
fathers were significantly invested in them were better
nourished than were girls, whereas girls who had large
patrilineages were better nourished than were girls from
smaller patrilineages. In Yanomamo society, patrilineage
size reflects the amount of local political power held by
families, thus reflecting how political arrangements influence fathers’ and mothers’ investment in their offspring.
Paternity Certainty. Fathers’ certainty about their
paternity has also been found to influence investment in
their offspring (Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992;
Parenting Styles and Behaviors
Fox & Bruce, 2001; Wilson & Daly, 1992). Indeed, in a
quotation (Byrnes, 1988) widely attributed to Aristotle
some 2400 years ago, the philosopher spoke of the importance of paternity certainty: “This is the reason why
mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers:
it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are
more certain that they are their own.” In fact, Fox and
Bruce (2001) found that fathers’ commitment to offspring
varied due to fathers’ paternity certainty and to fathers’
willingness to invest in children who will more likely
meet fathers’ needs (e.g., mating success, finances, time,
and energy) and disinvest in those children who are
unlikely to meet fathers’ needs.
Parents’ Work and Subsistence
Activities
Evidence from intracultural and cross-cultural research
also reveals how parents’ work roles affect maternal and
paternal involvement with offspring. For example, the Aka
of Central Africa (Hewlett, 1992) and the Batek of
Malaysia (Endicott, 1992) exhibit egalitarian marital and
parental relationships as well as similar and often shared
work roles. Aka and Batek fathers are involved with
their children both in their villages and homes, and in their
work tasks, where children often work alongside their
fathers. According to Hewlett and Endicott, the shared
economic activities of Aka and Batek fathers and mothers
leads to greater daily interaction between fathers and children. This interaction often leads to paternal familiarity
with a broad range of children’s needs, and thus increased
opportunities to practice and master child-rearing skills.
Similar findings were reported by Morelli and
Tronick (1992) who found that the foraging Efe of Zaire
had relatively egalitarian mother–father relationships
compared with their neighbors, the pastoralist Lese. Efe
mothers and fathers were equally involved in work activities, while there was a stricter division of labor among
the Lese. Efe fathers, like Lese fathers, were generally
physically proximate to their children, but Efe fathers
were more actively involved in monitoring and training
children than were Lese fathers.
Aronoff (1967) also found significant differences in
child-rearing practices, particularly those associated with
warmth and control, between two groups of fathers living
in St. Kitts, West Indies—those employed as cane cutters,
and those employed as fishermen. These men lived in the
same West Indian island village, but their subsistence
83
activities, male–female relationships, family structure,
and early childhood experiences differed significantly.
The differences in child-rearing, according to Aronoff,
were related to parents’ work and subsistence activities
that promoted authoritative and nurturant caretaking
behavior on the part of fishermen fathers, and closed,
hostile, and discipline-focused behavior on the part of
cane-cutter fathers.
But the cane cutter is clearly a marginal figure in the life of the child.
His most important task, beyond [financial] support, is to discipline the
child and teach him manners. Items such as “proper behavior,” “teach
them not to do wrong,” “give them licks,” and “rule the children,” are
heavily stressed. The children are very much the responsibility of the
mother, and the male is useful only in providing the financial resources
and the strong right arm … Just as the fisherman is concerned with
establishing a crew in which he is interdependent and interactive with
the other members, so too does he demand the same with his family. His
role seems to be much more nurturant, thoroughly implicating him in
the care and fostering of his children. (Aronoff, 1967, pp. 183–185)
Radin (1981b, 1994) found that middle-class U.S.
fathers who adhered to nontraditional gender-role ideology (i.e., frequently valued fathers’ involvement with
their children) were more likely than traditional fathers
(i.e., who infrequently valued fathers’ involvement with
children) to have a positive influence on youths’ intellectual and personality development. Radin (1988) found
that the non-traditional style was initially adopted when
fathers had flexible work hours or were not working at
all, and the non-traditional fathers supported their wives’
(i.e., children’s mothers) strong career interests. Also,
mothers supported fathers’ decisions to be more involved,
particularly when fathers were not positively invested in
their own careers. Predictors of long-range paternal
involvement included mothers’ growing investment in
their careers, mothers’ high salaries, and fathers’ parttime work schedule and/or flexible work hours (Radin,
1988). Furthermore, Barnett and Baruch (1988) found
that fathers’ participation was the highest when both
husbands and wives were employed, and when mothers’
gender-role attitudes were liberal toward fathers’
decisions to be involved in child-rearing.
Aronoff’s findings about the influence of social and
economic realities on men’s parenting behaviors appear
to echo Mead’s perception, quoted earlier, that
father–child attachments are fragile and highly dependent
on sociocultural circumstances. Indeed, together with
findings about the negative effects of low father involvement, or father absence (Biller, 1993; Broude, 1990;
84
Munroe & Munroe, 1992; B. Whiting & Whiting, 1975),
it is perhaps understandable that some have concluded
that fathers’ influence tends to be less positive than that
of mothers, or that fathers are less important than mothers (Amato, 1994; Hojat, 1999; Shulman & Collins,
1993; Stern, 1995; Williams & Radin, 1993). However, as
noted earlier, a significant body of multivariate research
from the 1990s shows that when fathers and mothers are
studied concurrently, both make important positive and
negative contributions to children’s development.
Nurturant, Supportive, Affectionate,
Loving, and Warm Parenting
Studying Maternal and Paternal Warmth and
Nurturance. An extensive body of research shows
that warm, nurturing, and affectionate relationships
between parents and offspring are often predictive of
positive psychological, behavioral, and social development
of both children and adults (Rohner, 1975, 1986, 2000;
Rohner & Britner, 2002). Even though most research has
focused on maternal warmth and nurturance, there is a
growing body of work that shows the importance of
paternal warmth and nurturance as well (Rohner &
Veneziano, 2001). Consequently, this section will discuss
the influence for children’s development of both maternal
and paternal warmth and nurturance.
Caring for and Caring about Children. As noted
earlier, many studies conclude that children whose fathers
spend a significant amount of time taking care of them
exhibit positive psychological adjustment and cognitive
and intellectual development, strong academic achievement, ability to empathize, flexible gender-role orientation, and competency at problem-solving tasks (Biller,
1993; Easterbrooks & Goldberg, 1984; Lamb, 1997;
Pleck, 1997; Radin, 1981b; Radin & Russell, 1983;
Radin & Sagi, 1982; Radin, Williams, & Coggins, 1993;
Reuter & Biller, 1973; E. Williams & Radin, 1993;
S. Williams & Finley, 1997). These simple correlational
studies measure the amount of time that fathers spend with
children and sometimes also included measures of paternal
warmth, often finding that the two variables are related to
each other and to youth outcomes. However, it is unclear
from these studies whether the amount of time involved
and the degree of warmth make independent or joint
contributions to youth outcomes. Indeed, as Veneziano
and Rohner (1998) argued, “caring for” children is not
Parental Roles
necessarily the same thing as “caring about” them. And
contemporary scholarship frequently asserts that qualitative factors such as paternal warmth, support, or nurturance
are more important for children’s development than factors
such as the simple amount of time fathers spend in child
care (Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bradley et al., 2000;
Lamb, 1986, 1997, 2000; Lamb & Oppenheim, 1989;
Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, & Levine, 1987; Pleck, 1997;
Shulman & Collins, 1993).
Research by Veneziano and Rohner (1998), Wenk
and Hardesty (1994), and Veneziano (2000a) illustrates
research about the relationship between the quality and
quantity of paternal involvement. In a sample of African
American and European American children, Veneziano
and Rohner found that the amount of time that fathers
spent with children across the ethnic groups was associated with children’s psychological adjustment primarily
insofar as it was perceived by youths to be an expression
of paternal warmth. These results varied by ethnicity,
however. In the European American families, paternal
warmth and paternal involvement were significantly
correlated with each other, and both were correlated with
youths’ psychological adjustment. However, in multivariate regression analysis, only fathers’ warmth predicted
positive psychological adjustment. In the African
American families, fathers’ time involvement was not
significantly correlated with paternal warmth or with
psychological adjustment, although paternal warmth was
significantly related to psychological adjustment. Wenk
and Hardesty also found that the quality of the positive
emotional involvement of both fathers and mothers, not
father’s physical presence, significantly predicted
children’s emotional well-being in a national survey of
762 U.S. children. Finally, Veneziano’s (2000a) crosscultural comparative study found that the lack of paternal
warmth and socialization for aggression predicted young
males’ interpersonal violence, whereas the amount of
time that fathers were involved with children had no
significant impact.
Outcomes Associated with Maternal and
Paternal Warmth and Nurturance. As discussed
earlier, studies of the influence of parental warmth and
nurturance have been extensively studied in Western and
non-Western societies. In recent years, the influence of
paternal warmth has been investigated but the vast
amount of empirical findings come from studies of
maternal warmth.
Parenting Styles and Behaviors
Mental Health, Psychological Adjustment, and
Emotional Well-Being Outcomes. Evidence of
mental health, psychological adjustment, behavioral, and
substance abuse outcomes of maternal warmth or lack
thereof have now been documented for over 50 years. For
example, when Australian, Chinese, Egyptian, German,
Hungarian, Italian, Swedish, and Turkish mothers exhibit
little warmth, offspring tend to exhibit significant symptoms of both clinical and non-clinical depression.
Moreover, lack of maternal warmth has been related to
depression among every major ethnic group in the United
States, including Asian Americans, African Americans,
Mexican Americans, and European Americans (Rohner &
Britner, 2002).
When paternal warmth is concurrently investigated
with maternal warmth, paternal warmth often merges as
a more significant predictor of mental health and psychological adjustment problems than does maternal warmth
(Rohner & Veneziano, 2001). Cole and McPherson
(1993), for example, concluded that father–adolescent
conflict, but not mother–adolescent conflict, was positively associated with adolescent depressive symptoms.
Barrera and Garrison–Jones (1992) also concluded that
paternal supportive behaviors were related to adolescent
depression, whereas maternal support was not. Similarly,
Barnett, Marshall, and Pleck (1992) and Rohner and
Brothers (1999) found that the quality of relationship
between offspring and fathers had a more significant
impact than did the quality of relationship between
mothers and offspring. Barnett et al. showed that the
quality of son’s relationships with their fathers, but not
with their mothers, predicted adult sons’ psychological
adjustment, whereas Rohner and Brothers (1999) found
that paternal, but not maternal, rejection (i.e., lack of
warmth) predicted self-reported psychological adjustment problems in women diagnosed with borderline
personality disorder.
Finally, Veneziano (2000b) found in a sample of
281 African American and European American families
that only youths’ self-reports of paternal warmth were
significantly related to the European American youths’
psychological adjustment when controlling for the influence of maternal warmth. Indeed, maternal warmth
dropped from the regression model altogether. However,
in the African American families, paternal as well as
maternal warmth was significantly related to youths’
psychological adjustment, making both independent and
joint contributions.
85
Behavioral Outcomes. Conduct disorder, behavior
problems, delinquency, and externalizing behaviors,
including violent and non-violent crimes, have all been
found to be significantly related to maternal and paternal
warmth. Lack of maternal warmth has been shown to
influence behavior problems in Bahrain, Mainland China,
Croatia, England, India, and Norway, as it has in all major
ethnic groups in the United States. Most studies of the
relationship between lack of maternal warmth and
behavior problems control for a host of other variables,
including family conflict, parental control (i.e., permissiveness–restrictiveness), household composition, father
absence, parental employment, social class, ethnicity,
gender, and age. Interestingly, lack of maternal warmth
continues to be significantly associated with behavior
difficulties when studied concurrently with such sources
of variation (Rohner & Britner, 2002).
Researchers have also found that fathers’ warmth is
at least as important as mothers’ warmth in influencing
youths’ behavior and conduct (Becker, 1960; Deklyen,
Biernbaum, Speltz, & Greenberg, 1998; Deklyen,
Speltz, & Greenberg, 1998; McPherson, 1974; Paley,
Conger, & Harold, 2000; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion,
1992; Renk, Phares, & Epps, 1999; Russell & Russell,
1996; Siantz & Smith, 1994). Other researchers such as
Forehand and Nousiainen (1993) and Kroupa (1988) have
reported that fathers’ warmth and acceptance was the sole
significant predictor of youths’ conduct and behavior
problems. Forehand and Nousiainen speculated, “An
adolescent may be more eager to obtain the approval of
the father than of the mother, as the father’s acceptance is
less available. Thus, the father’s acceptance, because of its
lower level of occurrence may actually play a more salient
role … than the mother’s approval” (p. 219).
Substance Abuse Outcomes. Rohner and Britner
(2002) also show that lack of maternal warmth has been
linked to substance abuse problems in Australia, Canada,
England, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Brazil,
China, Curacao, Japan, Singapore, and Venezuela, as well
as in most American ethnic groups including African
Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, and
Hispanic Americans.
As for fathers, Campo and Rohner (1992) found
a strong association between perceived parental
acceptance–rejection, psychological adjustment, and
substance abuse among young adults. The substanceabusing group as compared with the nonabusing group
86
“experienced qualitatively more paternal rejection than
acceptance in their families of origin but did not experience more maternal rejection than acceptance” (p. 434).
The nonabusers tended to perceive both their maternal
and paternal relationships as quite warm and accepting.
Perceived paternal acceptance–rejection, more than
perceived maternal acceptance–rejection, was the best
predictor of substance abuse among male and female
young adults.
Paternal and Maternal Parenting and
Outcomes in Sons and Daughters
Earlier in this chapter, differences in fathers and mothers’
interactions with their sons and daughters were reviewed,
and it was shown that researchers have found that fathers
and mothers exert a strong influence on such outcomes as
youths’ gender-role ideology. This section builds on those
findings by briefly reviewing other consequences of
maternal and paternal behavior for children’s development, including self-esteem, psychological adjustment,
and cognitive and academic competence. For example,
Rohner and Veneziano (2001) reported on the work of
Barber and Thomas (1986) who found that the cluster of
conditions predicting adolescent daughters’ self-esteem
was different from those that predicted sons’ self-esteem.
Sons’ self-esteem was best predicted by fathers’ sustained
physical contact (e.g., picking up the boy for fun and
safety) and by mothers’ companionship (i.e., spending
time with the boy, and sharing activities with him),
whereas daughters’ self-esteem was best predicted by
fathers’ physical affection and by mothers’ praise,
approval, encouragement, use of terms of endearment,
and helping behaviors. Rohner and Veneziano (2001) also
reported on Booth and Amato’s (1994) longitudinal
study, which found that marital quality influenced adult
sons’ and daughters’ feelings of closeness with their
fathers and mothers. Specifically, adult sons whose parents had a poor marital relationship felt somewhat less
close to both parents than did sons whose parents had a
good marital relationship. Daughters, on the other hand,
felt much less close to their fathers but only slightly less
close to their mothers when parents had poor marital relationships. Booth and Amato concluded that the
father–daughter tie tends to be especially vulnerable in
the context of serious marital problems between parents,
whereas the mother–daughter tie tends to be especially
resilient. Moreover, in a study of maternal and paternal
Parental Roles
warmth and control, Jones, Forehand, and Beach (2000)
found that only maternal behavior (i.e., firm control)
during adolescence was independently associated with
secure adult romantic relationships in both male and
female offspring. Although fathers’ warmth and control
by themselves did not predict secure adult romantic
relationships, a combination of paternal firm control and
maternal warmth did predict secure adult romantic
relationships for both male and female offspring.
Additional evidence about the influence of paternal
behavior on boys’ and girls’ development comes from the
work of Radin. In the early 1970s, Radin and colleagues
(Jordan, Radin, & Epstein, 1975) found that paternal nurturance was positively related to the cognitive competence
of European American middle-class preschool boys, but
not girls. For example, in the first of two observational
studies, Radin et al. investigated the influence of paternal
nurturance (e.g., responsiveness) and restrictiveness
(e.g., ordering without explanation) on boys’ intellectual
functioning. They found that paternal nurturance was
positively related to boys’ scores on the Stanford–Binet
Intelligence Scale (SBIS) and the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (PPVT) (a test of verbal intelligence). On
the other hand, paternal restrictiveness was negatively
associated with boys’ achievement on these same measures. However, after examining a subset of fathers and
their daughters from that study, Radin found that high
paternal involvement was positively related to girls’ mental age as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test (Radin, 1981b). Furthermore, she found a positive
relationship between high levels of father involvement and
daughters’ scores on the Cognitive Home Environment
Scale (CHES). The CHES measures fathers’ long-term
educational and career expectations for their children, and
fathers’ cognitive stimulation of their children’s intellectual growth (Radin, 1981b).
In a subsequent study, Radin (1981a) investigated
the relationship between paternal involvement and both
girls’ and boys’ intellectual growth as measured by the
CHES. She also investigated the relationship between
scores on the PPVT and levels of fathers’ involvement.
Her study consisted of 59 intact middle-class, primarily
European American, families living in the midwestern
United States. Radin found that for the sample as a whole,
paternal involvement was positively related to fathers’
stimulation of youths’ intellectual growth. Paternal
involvement in childcare was also positively related to
youths’ verbal intelligence. As for consequences by
References
87
gender, girls’ verbal intelligence was positively related to
paternal involvement. Moreover, paternal involvement in
decision-making was positively related to fathers’ stimulation of boys’ intellectual growth and verbal intelligence.
Thus the verbal intelligence of boys and girls was significantly affected by paternal involvement. However, these
findings also indicated that fathers stimulated the intellectual growth of sons more so than daughters, suggesting that even highly involved fathers direct more attention
to sons than to daughters.
Researchers have also found ethnic variations in
gender-related outcomes of paternal behavior. For example, McAdoo’s (1993) research of African American
families suggests that middle-income African American
fathers tend to demand immediate obedience, suppression of children’s feelings, and constraint of children’s
assertive and independent behavior. However, Baumrind
(1972, 1991) found African American fathers to exhibit a
combination of firm control, warmth, and encouragement
of autonomy in her observational study of African
American and European American fathers’ interactions
with preschool children. African American and European
American fathers exhibited similar expectations concerning the behaviors of sons, encouraging their independence, while African American fathers tended to
discourage independence or individuality in daughters.
Nevertheless, Baumrind found that these same African
American daughters were actually independent and positively involved in social interactions at school. According
to McAdoo, the authoritarian style of African American
fathers may not contain the same degree of emotional
coldness as that of European American fathers, such that
authoritarian paternal control among African American
children may be experienced somewhat differently than it
is by European American children.
SUMMARY
AND
CONCLUSION
This chapter reviewed research that suggests that fathers
and mothers often interact differently with their offspring,
and that these differences influence offspring behavior
across the life span. However, differences in fathers’ and
mothers’ behavior have often been found to be a function
of social, cultural, and economic circumstances. On the
other hand, recent findings in Western and non-Western
cultures show that fathers’ and mothers’ nurturing behaviors are similar across a wide variety of sociocultural
contexts, and that paternal warmth is at least equal to
maternal warmth in influencing offspring development.
This latter finding raises questions about how knowledge
about gender-related parenting is generated. For example,
were fathers less warm and nurturing in the past, or did
behavioral science neglect to investigate warmth-related
fathering behaviors because of adherence to cultural
constructions of fathers as peripheral to family life, or as
less important than mothers? Notwithstanding this possibility, there may be more to our knowledge-building
about fathering and mothering than can be explained by
a failure to look closely at particular maternal or paternal
behaviors, or by a failure to consider sociocultural contexts, or values, or ideologies that shape men’s and
women’s behavior. That is, evidence from biosocial and
evolutionary studies suggests that we have not heard the
last word about the relationship among gender, parenting,
and the survival strategies of our species. Indeed, the
conjoint application of cultural and biological perspectives to research on maternal and paternal behavior seems
ripe for further investigation during the 21st century.
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Economic Activities and Gender Roles
Robin O’Brian
with what constitutes the “economic” within the household remains a conundrum (Wilk, 1989). To understand
how gender roles and economics interact, particularly in
traditional societies, the household must be a focus.
However, different perspectives differ widely in their
view of economic roles in the household. World systems
theorists influenced by the work of Immanuel Wallerstein
(1974) sometimes seem to suggest that households exist
merely to satisfy the needs of industrial capitalism (e.g.,
Smith, Wallerstein, & Evers, 1984) while some Marxists
see women’s work and behavior as the result of women’s
lack of control of the means of production or their
victimization by patriarchal ideological relations (Young,
Wolkowitz, & McCullagh, 1981). Scholars with this
viewpoint sometimes suggest that the household is a sort
of patriarchal structure or device to marginalize or
otherwise control women, rather than exploring it as a
way of understanding both men’s and women’s economic
activities.
INTRODUCTION
It seems obvious that gender and economic activity are
interrelated; in every society human beings appear to
associate some activities with women and others with
men. In addition, what constitutes an “economic activity”
is open to argument. Are all productive activities economic? Are only activities that enter the commercial
realm economic?
Economic activity can of course encompass all of
that work that supplies people with food and shelter, that
is, the work that meets their basic needs. It also includes
the activities of exchange and trade, and of consumption.
Certainly, there is much written on people’s commercial
production—that most easily defined as “economic activities”. Ethnographies have explored Kuna women’s commercial production of mola, traditional appliquéd textile
panels now sold to tourists (Tice, 1995), the economic
specialization of men and women in the embroidery
industry of Lucknow, India (Wilkinson-Weber, 1999), the
interrelationship of class and gender in the weaving industry of Oaxaca, Mexico (Stephen, 1992), and women’s
specialization in the pottery industry of La Chamba,
Colombia (Duncan, 2000). Collections of similar topics
are also popular and timely, with a number focusing again
on commercial craft production (Nash, 1993; Grimes &
Milgram, 2001) but others exploring marketing as well
(Seligmann, 2001; Sheldon, 1996). What ties all these
recent works together is the theme of commercial production in the cash economy, but of course economic activities go well beyond this, and are part and parcel of
domestic life as well.
ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES
HOUSEHOLD
Cross-Cultural Patterning of
Activities Based on Gender
At the same time, scholars from a range of perspectives
(e.g., Brown, 1970; Burton, Brudner, & White, 1977)
note that women’s duties, particularly as mothers but also
as homemakers, require them to perform work that can be
easily begun and abandoned, that is relatively routine,
and that can be combined with childcare. However, while
men’s work may take them further afield, it too will
frequently be embedded in domestic life and general
routine (e.g., chopping wood, clearing, plowing, or planting fields, and building houses or outbuildings).
We might systematize some explanations offered for
the persistence of “men’s work” and “women’s work,”
even when activities take place in a variety of settings.
Some activities tend to be assigned repeatedly to one or
the other gender, as can be seen in table 1. Often the determining factor appears to be strength or physical prowess
(“strength theory”; see Murdock & Provost, 1973). Men
are certainly more efficient at plowing, clearing land, or
IN THE
Much economic work takes place in the household,
where people produce and reproduce family life. Here
economic activity is broadly defined, rather than being
restricted solely to the commercial. Indeed, grappling
91
92
Economic Activities and Gender Roles
Table 1. Cross-Cultural Patterning of Gender Assignments in Subsistence/Economic Activities
Type of activity
Nearly always male
Usually male
Either gender or both
Usually female
Primary
subsistence
Hunt and trap large
and small animals
Fish
Herd large animals
Collect wild honey
Clear land and prepare
soil for planting
Collect shellfish
Care for small animals
Plant crops
Tend crops
Harvest crops
Milk animals
Preserve meats and fish
Gather wild plants
Secondary
subsistence and
household
Butcher animals
Care for children
Cook
Prepare vegetable
foods, dairy
products, drinks
Nearly always
female
Care for infants
Adapted from Ember & Ember (1996, p. 164).
lifting heavy objects—activities that they are far more
likely to specialize in. Yet there is little strength required
in the collection of honey or in trapping small animals,
suggesting that this theory is incomplete.
Expendability theory that makes a similar argument,
bolstered by sociobiology: “… men, rather than women,
will tend to do the dangerous work in a society because
men are more expendable, because the loss of men is less
disadvantageous reproductively than the loss of women.”
(Ember & Ember, 1996, p. 164). If men specialize in the
heavy and physically demanding work of plowing or
hunting, work that is also dangerous, their loss to society
will not be as harmful as that of women, who can still
reproduce as long as they have access to some men
(Mukhopadhyay & Higgins, 1988, p. 473).
Women’s role as mothers probably does play some
role in the activities they pursue; such activities are likely,
as noted earlier, to be easily combined with childcare.
Compatibility theory suggests that women specialize in
activities that essentially do not interfere with infant care.
In many societies, where infants and young toddlers
nurse for lengthy periods and accompany their mothers
everywhere, work must fit around the demands of infant
care (Brown, 1970; see also Nerlove, 1974). Thus women
remain near home, pursuing tasks that can be taken up
and abandoned as childcare needs dictate. Such an explanation also suggests why men specialize in various forms
of hunting, and even the collection of honey, as these
activities could also be dangerous to an infant or young
child (Hurtado, Hawkes, Hill, & Kaplan, 1985). At the
same time, it does beg the question as to why women
collect shellfish or tend and milk animals, activities that
could be seen as similarly risky.
Compatibility theory and another line of argument,
“economy of effort,” share a further claim sometimes
made regarding women’s less frequent participation in
commercial activities that they pursue in the home.
“Economy-of-effort” theory suggests that specialization
is a series of linked activities; men may, for example,
specialize in woodworking and building because they
clear fields, know how to work with wood, and understand its properties, and because the fields, the wood, and
the location of the building are all near each other
(Murdock & Provost, 1973; White, Burton, & Brudner,
1977; cf. Byrne, 1994). Both compatibility theory and
economy-of-effort theory have been used to suggest that
women are less likely to pursue commercial activities
because, for example, men are more compatible with
commercial work or the extension of their activities from
subsistence to cash production is more easily made.
However, there is suggestion that men compete with and
even displace women when activities become commercially productive, a point taken up in more detail below.
Finally, if we accept that gender and activity are
strongly linked, with many tasks assigned on the basis of
one’s gender, we must also examine how activities
themselves can create or signal gender. As Murdock and
Provost (1973) have noted, some tasks, such as cooking
Commercial Activities
and heavy labor like plowing, are strongly gendered, with
women nearly always performing the former and men the
latter. Others may vary based on one’s ability, inclination,
or desire, or may vary from society to society. But the
performance of those strongly linked to one’s gender help
to define one as male or female, as has been seen among
some Native American societies. One’s gender role can
be manipulated or shifted if specific tasks are taken up or
avoided (Callender & Kochems, 1983). Among a fairly
wide range of such groups appropriate performance of a
gender role—particularly through work performed and
choice of dress—is a key part of one’s gender identity
(Blackwood, 1984). The female cross-gender role, where
males adopt female behavior and dress (often called
berdache in the literature) was widespread among native
North Americans, including the Crow (Simms, 1903) and
the Arapaho (Kroeber, 1902). Less well known are
female-to-male cross-gender individuals—females who
adopt the male role. While details differ culturally—
some such individuals identify their role in childhood
while others assume it in puberty—the overall pattern
features individual learning and performing the tasks of
the other gender and being socially recognized as a
member of that gender. Detailed descriptions of this
complex are given by Callender and Kochems (1983) and
Blackwood (1984).
RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF MEN
AND WOMEN TO SUBSISTENCE
The interrelationship of economic activity and one’s
gender is also implicated in understanding relative social
status, but again, this relationship is complex. In a
comprehensive survey article, Ember and Levinson
(1991, pp. 93–94) point out that among horticultural and
agricultural peoples, the value placed on the activities of
men and women and their social status vary. Women in
both horticultural and agricultural societies both perform
approximately the same amount of work, but agricultural
women perform less than men, as both domestic work
and fertility increase. Such changes are indirectly related
to agricultural intensification; others (Burton & White,
1984; White, Burton, & Dow, 1981), for example, adoption of the plow and draft animals and the cultivation of
grain crops, are also part of agricultural intensification
and are also related to the decline in female status.
93
Consequences of Relative
Contribution to Division of Labor
Sanday (1974) noted long ago that women’s economic
participation tended to contribute in one way or another
to their overall social status. In societies where women
and men contribute more or less equally to production,
women generally have a social status similar to men’s.
Where women do little productive work or conversely
nearly all of it, their social status is subordinate to that
of men’s. In the former instance, women are economic
liabilities; in the latter, little more than servants in their
own homes. Indeed, various studies suggest that women’s
economic activities are not directly linked to their greater
social status; for instance, Whyte (1978), in a series of
cross-cultural tests, found that name of female control
of property, control over the products of their labor,
or female economic collectivities accurately predict
women’s higher social status.
COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES
Men and women behave as commercial actors and enter
a wide number of economic activities, although, again,
these appear to fall into gendered categories. Women
enter a wide range of activities, including food processing, domestic work, and vending, while men will specialize in heavy labor. Men also produce items and vend,
although they generally make and sell different products.
Men and women both tend to extend their traditional
activities outside the home and into the market (Babb,
1989; Bunster, 1983).
What of instances where the genders occupy quite
different social spheres? Here, women extend their traditional economic work into the commercial realm while still
remaining within the home. For instance, traditional
Muslim women often live secluded in the household and
work hard to earn a living while remaining in seclusion.
Traditional Hausa women in Nigeria, who maintain complete seclusion and never leave the home, trade a variety of
prepared snacks and meals, clothing and cloth, cooking oil,
eggs, and compound sweepings that are sold as fertilizer.
These women will also prepare food and/or sew clothes on
commission, and cook at large events. They maintain their
seclusion by selling their items out of windows in their
homes, and using their children to deliver goods and solicit
customers. Hausa women may sometimes become the
94
primary support of their families, while agriculture
becomes a secondary source of family income (Hill, 1972).
Similarly, high-caste Indian women in Naraspur
make lace while remaining in seclusion. The Naraspur
women in particular are able to earn a small income
while continuing to observe seclusion and, again, are
often the primary support of their families (Mies, 1982).
Nonetheless, in this case the available skills of these
women interact with religious and gender norms to keep
earnings small; lower-caste women, who seek work as
farm laborers and who do not practice seclusion, earn far
more money and can provide more for their families.
In the Indian city of Lucknow some high-caste
women embroider, but there the local embroidery called
chikan is practiced by everyone, and higher-caste and
Muslim women aspiring to a higher social class will
observe purdah strictly and thus cannot market embroidery
or enter other embroidery-related activities that might
require them to leave home (Wilkinson-Weber, 1999).
CHANGING ECONOMICS AND
CHANGING GENDER ROLES
Murdock and Provost (1973) have also argued that
“[w]hen the invention of a new artifact or process supplants an older and simpler one, both the activity of which
it is a part and closely related activities tend more
strongly to be assigned to males” (p. 212). However, a
range of scholars (Bourque & Warren, 1981; Byrne,
1994, 1999; Ehlers, 1990; Minturn, 1996; O’Brian, 1999)
suggest that men also take up female activities when they
become commercially viable.
For men, the entry into commercial economic
activity seems to follow a superficially similar path—
men tend to perform some similar activity for cash, such
as agricultural labor construction—but beyond this men
are more likely to suffer as an ethnic or racial rather than
a gender category, and to have their status within their
traditional society rise, while women’s declines. For
example, indigenous men in the highland Ecuadorian
community of Zumbagua begin migrating to Quito for
construction work as teenagers, where they compete with
nonindigenous Ecuadorians for work. Typically, they are
hired at lower wages but more often fired, and are treated
as members of an inferior caste. The impact on gender
roles becomes clearer when they return home and
Economic Activities and Gender Roles
confront wives who manage the household and are still
rooted in agricultural work. For Zumbagua women, work
is subsistence. Life revolves around the patterns of farming and herding, patterns that themselves are part and
parcel of Zumbagua life. Still, farm life does not completely support families, who are dependent in part on the
cash and store-bought foods that men’s wages provide.
When men return from the city, where they are disadvantaged, to a community where they have status, they bring
the foreign foods, language, and ideas that create friction
between them and their traditional wives. If they have
made money, they can bring home more commercially
produced or imported foods prized by children who turn
away from the traditional meals that their mothers cook.
If men do not make enough money to bring the commercial foods on which families depend, tensions remain but
with the addition of family hunger (Weismantel, 1988).
In the small market town of Chiuchin in Andean
Peru, women are active workers in a local economy driven
by trade. Women work as cooks, kitchen assistants, waitresses, and launderers, and consider themselves shrewd
and savvy businesswomen. But their job choices are
limited by cultural ideas about what appropriate female
behavior is. Women do not attend school for long, and are
usually far more comfortable in the indigenous language
Quechua rather than Spanish. Women do not drive and
they do not travel beyond the bounds of town, effectively
marginalizing them from the more lucrative interregional
trade networks that are monopolized by men.
Byrne (1994) explored the factors contributing to
who produces pottery. Potting is a so-called “swing”
activity, as likely to be performed by men as by women
(Murdock & Provost, 1973, pp. 209–221). Byrne argued
that male specialization in pottery production rises
among those families that lack access to other subsistence
resources. In instances where men lack access to land for
example, or rights to pasturage, they turn to alternative
income strategies, among them pottery production,
displacing female kin (Byrne, 1994, pp. 234–235).
Byrne (1999) extended his examination of craft
production in his more recent analysis of clothing manufacture. In this case, he explicitly focused on the interrelationship between the gendered division of labor and
income-producing activities. Here, Byrne found that in
those cases where families are economically dependent
upon clothing production, as an item for either trade or
sale, men are more likely than women to specialize in this
activity (Byrne, 1999, p. 315).
Gender, Work, and Social Status
O’Brian (1999) pursued a similar line of inquiry in
her analysis of weaving. While weaving is similarly considered a “swing” activity (Murdock & Provost, 1973),
this is due to a high male participation in central and West
Africa. For the most part, weaving is strongly associated
with female production. While weaving production
appears to shift from “female” to “male” with increasingly complex looms, loom complexity and maleness are
both associated with increasing commercial production,
in which men are more likely to participate (O’Brian,
1999, pp. 32, 34–35).
In those parts of West Africa where women have
traditionally been subsistence farmers, men displace
them and convert land to cash cropping which they also
monopolize. In these cases the arguments of Murdock
and Provost (1973) and Minturn (1996) are both borne
out, as men adopt new processes and technologies, and
also enter commercial production (Benería & Sen, 1981).
Similar processes occur in family businesses, and
the economic changes that occur with them often leave
women behind. In San Pedro Sacatepecquez, Guatemala,
women have traditionally run small businesses of weaving, sewing, knitting, and other traditionally female skills
out of their homes, training their daughters to take them
over upon adulthood. But as the economy is increasingly
urbanized and industrialized, fewer women are able to
support themselves and their families with such earnings.
Girls and young women brought up to take over the
businesses do not have skills that translate into an urban
job market, which pushes them deeper into the home as
that arena too is devalued (Ehlers, 1990).
Similarly, vending, like many other activities, is
often highly gendered, with men and women specializing
in different segments. This has been true in U.S. society,
in the sense that people think it is somehow “natural” for
women to sell clothes and men to sell cars or refrigerators, an argument made by a national department store
chain to justify tracking sales personnel into different
areas based on gender (Milkman, 1986). But a range of
cultural norms interact to contribute to the idea of appropriateness. As in the United States, in rural Peru and
Guatemala men will sell larger items, items in bulk, or
“high-end” prestige items, while women will sell household products or extra produce, for instance, some carrots
or two or three eggs (Babb, 1989; Ehlers, 1990; Swetnam,
1988). The increasing effect of market capitalism is contributing to changes in this interrelationship. Women are
everywhere increasing participation in market activities
95
in addition to performing their traditional household
work, a pattern replicated in the United States as well
as in traditional societies (Dwyer & Bruce, 1988;
Hochschild, 1989).
GENDER, WORK, AND SOCIAL STATUS
The larger economy, the work people do in the home, the
work they conduct outside it, and ideas about status all
contribute to shifts and changes in what is an appropriate
role for a man or a woman. As market incorporation
increases women’s economic activities, those more likely
to be found in the home tend to decline in the status they
confer, while commercial activities become more desirable. Among the Zumbaguans discussed above, men’s
incorporation into cash work, even poorly paid work done
far from home, allows them the money that is increasingly necessary. The time away from home increases the
social distance between men and women who have
different interests and values. Women remain tied to farm
and home; men increasingly become oriented to urban
life. Children themselves enjoy the excitement and allure
of the urban world and may ignore or devalue their
mothers’ daily lives and routines (Weismantel, 1988).
Such a pattern is seen throughout the rural world,
although there are occasions where women may exploit
changes that allow them to benefit from a larger disaster.
Among the Ju/twasi (Kung San) people of Botswana,
women’s status declined dramatically after forced settlement into reservations. As traditional gatherers, Ju/twasi
women acquired much of the vegetal foods eaten by their
families and were regarded nearly equally with men (Lee,
1979). After they were forced into reservations, women’s
status declined markedly as they lost their traditional
tasks. Men became socially superior, generally based on
cash income they could acquire by becoming mercenaries. However, women’s status has risen as they have
entered and dominated the local production of beer that
they manufacture themselves and sell to others, primarily
men (Lee, 1979, p. 418). These examples tend to support
earlier arguments about the interrelationship of economic
participation and social status. When women, or men, as
can be seen in the latter example, lose control of their
productive activities, their status may decline as well.
While people continue to conduct their economic activities even though the economic systems in which they live
change, these processes will have a range of effects on
96
Economic Activities and Gender Roles
their own gender roles and on their participation in their
family and community life.
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Leadership, Power, and Gender
Kaisa Kauppinen and Iiris Aaltio
to the (male) boss (Pringle, 1988), and in a similar way
the supportive wife/mother looks up to the authoritative
husband/father. There are inequalities that favor men on
various criteria including salary and professional grade.
Male dominance is preserved by multiple barriers, both
psychological and structural. Feminist theory argues that
sex roles exist in patriarchal societies and organizations
where established social structures and relationships
favor men (Gough, 1998). Gender regime exists and
continues to exist (Wahl, 1992). Social roles are gendered
and determined by a variety of social, political, and
economic factors, and in addition to sex and biological
differences between men and women, there are cultural
and historical factors that create them. It is generally
believed that leadership, organizational culture, and communication are constructed with a masculine subtext, and
dominant views on leadership are difficult to integrate
with femininity (Aaltio, 2002; Lipman-Blumen, 1992).
BACKGROUND
Leadership and power are related to each other in multiple
ways. Leadership refers to public power, that is, positions
people hold in organizations and society which provide
them means to use power over other individuals, groups,
and organizations. Leadership is defined as personal
influence over other people, that is, having an effect on
their behavior with the aim of better results in their work
(Weiss, 1996). Power can be defined as a person’s ability
to influence other people (Hoskings, cited in Cornforth,
1991). Leadership is a value-laden activity, whereas
management is more practically orientated. Management
is more about administering and controlling, whereas
leadership is about innovation and inspiration (Hughes,
Ginnett, & Curphy, 1999). The main difference between
the two is that leaders lead people, whereas managers
manage tasks. However, the two do overlap, and it is often
hard to separate leadership from management (Hughes
et al., 1999). There is no management without leadership
and vice versa.
The complex relationships among leadership, power,
and gender became a research topic in 1970s, when Kanter
started the debate on the “blind spots” of organizational
analysis. The aspects of organizational life that hide gender attributes of leadership and power became topical. The
prevailing gender-neutral tradition, particularly in the
United States, was broken, and the discourse of organizations as sites where gender attributes are presumed and
reproduced, started to gain foothold, especially in 1990s
(Aaltio and Kovalainen, 2001). The underrepresentation of
women in high-status roles has been documented by feminist literature (e.g., Acker, 1992; Auster, 1993; Gherardi,
1995). Schwartz (2000) brought forward one of the early
arguments, claiming that because of maternity women
have a harder time creating a career; there is a distinct
mother track that either slows down or prevents women
from career development proper. Hewlett (2002) argues
that this claim still holds true.
Gender relations occur in roles and organizational
positions; for example, the (female) secretary is subordinate
WOMEN
AS
MANAGERS: STATISTICS
According to the United Nation’s World’s Women 2000
report, women’s share of the administrative and managerial labor force is less than 30% in all regions of the
world. In all regions, women’s share of administrative
and managerial professionals is less than their total share
of the labor market. However, women’s share of administrative and managerial workers rose in every region of
the world, except Southern Asia, between 1980 and the
early 1990s; women’s share doubled in Western Asia
(from 4 to 9%) and in sub-Saharan Africa (from 7 to
14%) (United Nations, 2000).
Even though the number of women in middlemanagement positions was 44% in the United States, for
example, 1998 (Powell, 2000), women hold only 1–5%
of top executive positions (Wirth, 2001). In the European
Union countries women’s share of top management
positions has barely changed since the early 1990s, and
has remained at less than 5% (Davidson & Burke,
2000). Women tend to hold top management positions in
97
98
areas that are female dominated; for example, in Finland,
in the hotel and catering business, human resource management, and public services. The smallest number of
women in top positions can be found in male-dominated
areas, such as heavy industry and the construction business, where the proportion of female leaders is under
10%. There are fewer female directors in an organization
that employs mostly men (Kauppinen, 2002).
Alvesson and Due Billing (1997) argue that the
number of women managers should increase not only
because there should be equality between the sexes, but
also because women can contribute to work life in a way
that men cannot. They produce four reasons to support
their case: (1) there should be equal opportunities for both
sexes; (2) women’s competencies should be fully utilized;
(3) women’s contribution as leaders should be taken into
account, especially their values, experiences, and behavior; (4) women’s alternative values enrich an organization
and work life in general.
When it comes to political decision-making, only
nine women in the world were heads of state or government during the first part of 2000 (United Nations, 2000).
The Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway,
Denmark, and Iceland) have a number of women in high
positions in government; for example, Finland has had a
female president since 2000. The Finnish people’s
attitudes towards the female president were examined in
the Gender Barometer 2001 (Melkas, 2002). The results
indicated that both women and men, and especially
women, thought that having a female president was
important for equality between the sexes and that it
signaled a change in the political climate. Iceland had a
female president during the 1990s. In the Baltic States,
Latvia has had a female president since 1999—a former
professor of psychology in a Canadian university with a
Latvian background. Studies show the same kinds of
changes in attitudes regarding gender issues in Latvia as
in Finland with the election of a female president.
On average, in 1999 one-third of members of
parliament in the Nordic countries were women (Nordic
Council of Ministers, 1999). In 2002, women’s share in
Sweden’s parliament had risen from 43 to 45%, and the
average age of members of parliament had decreased
from 50 to 48 (Manninen, 2002). Even in 1999, Sweden
had the highest percentage of women in parliament
(43%), while Finland and Denmark both had 37%,
Norway had 36%, and Iceland had 35%. The percentage
of women in municipal councils in the Nordic countries
Leadership, Power, and Gender
was somewhat higher. In Sweden, 42% of members of
municipal councils were women, and in Norway and
Finland slightly less than 40%. Iceland’s figure for 1999
was just over 30% and Denmark’s was about 25%
(Nordic Council of Ministers, 1999).
DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
BETWEEN FEMALE AND MALE
MANAGERS
Earlier management research took it for granted that
managers were men (e.g., Dalton, 1959; Mintzberg, 1973,
1989), and ignored gender issues altogether. The so-called
great-man theory is one of the earliest management
theories. It argues that persons (men) who have influenced
Western civilization have characteristics that are needed in
a good leader. Another of the early theories is trait theory.
It assumes that effective leaders have distinct personal
qualities that differentiate them from other people. Many of
these traits tend to be stereotypically male (Weiss, 1996).
Behavioral theories focus on managers’ behavior.
There are three main types of behavioral theory. The first
distinguishes between two types of behavior: taskoriented style and interpersonally oriented style. The
second distinguishes between two types of leadership:
autocratic and democratic. The third type, situational
theory, regards different types of behavior appropriate for
various situations. The behavioral theories implicitly
suggest that better managers are either masculine (i.e.,
high-task/low-interpersonal style, autocratic decisionmaking) or feminine (i.e., low-task/high-interpersonal
style, democratic decision-making) (Powell, 1993).
Powell (1993) introduces a modern approach to
management theory and claims that there are three
perspectives on the difference between female and male
managers: (1) there are no differences between men and
women as managers. Women managers try to become like
men and reject the gender stereotype; (2) men make
better managers because their early socialization experiences differ: they play more team sports than girls
(Hennig & Jardim, 1977); (3) stereotypical differences
between the sexes, where women in managerial roles
bring out their feminine characteristics which tend to be
stereotypical.
Feminist researchers, such as Rosener (1990), argue
that female and male leaders differ in accordance with
Cross-Cultural Differences
gender stereotypes. Rosener argues that femininity is
particularly needed in today’s work life and claims, along
the same lines as Powell (1993) and Gardiner and
Tiggemann (1999), that there are profound differences
between male and female leaders: female leaders concentrate on the relationships between people, whereas men
tend to concentrate on the issues or tasks. Women use
more personal power, that is, power based on charisma
and personal contacts, whereas men tend to use structural
power, that is, power based on the organizational hierarchy
and position (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). Lundberg &
Frankenhaeuser (1999), in turn, argue that there is no
difference between men and women in interpersonal style
of leadership, but that men are more task oriented than
women.
Schein’s (1973) classic study concluded that both
female and male executives believed that managers
possessed characteristics that were more associated with
men than with women. In later studies that examined the
perceptions of executive women, women no longer
describe successful managers as having only masculine
characteristics. More recent management theories, such as
the managerial grid theory, claim that both masculine and
feminine characteristics are important in a good manager.
This theory suggests that the best managers are androgynous; they combine both (masculine) high-task and
(feminine) high-interpersonal styles (Kauppinen, 2002;
Powell, 1993). Although the concept of androgyny has
received mixed support, one aspect has been agreed upon:
leadership is generally conceived in masculine terms
(Goktepe & Schneier, 1988; Kruse & Wintermantel,
1986), but also feminine features are needed in a manager.
Frankenhaeuser et al. (1989) claim that female managers
are psychologically more androgynous than men, suggesting that female managers absorb masculine features
whereas men stick more to the masculine style. Some
researchers suggest that women should adopt a masculine
style to become accepted as leaders (Sapp, Harrod, &
Zhao, 1996). Women in leading positions have been
shown to be more masculine (Fagenson, 1990). However,
Watson (1988) has indicated that masculine women’s
performance level is low, and women choosing such a
strategy often experience role conflicts (Geis, 1993).
Baril, Elbert, Mahar-Potter, and Reavy (1989) claim that
adopting one’s masculine and feminine behavior to suit
each situation separately might be the best approach.
To summarize, Powell (1993) argues that both
feminine managers and androgynous managers seem
99
preferable to the masculine manager in today’s work
environment. More often than not, management and
leadership are dependent on the local context and culture
where they are practiced, and this makes it difficult to
draw universal theories.
CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR
IN
Leadership behavior varies in different countries. Whyte
(1978) claims that even in most preindustrial societies,
men held political leadership positions. Hofstede (1980a)
has examined cross-cultural differences in work-related
values, for instance the masculinity–femininity dimension. He conducted a study on a large number of employees of a multinational corporation that has offices all over
the world. He found countries such as Japan, Austria,
Switzerland, Italy, and Venezuela to be masculine countries, where sex roles are clearly differentiated, and men
dominate and exercise power in traditional terms. In feminine countries, such as the Scandinavian countries
(including Finland) and the Netherlands, emphasis is
placed on cooperation and greater gender equality prevails in society and organizational culture: group
decision-making is encouraged, managers give greater
autonomy to subordinates, and hierarchical differences
are not emphasized (McKenna, 2000). In other words,
power distance is minimized.
Power distance is another cross-cultural dimension
in Hofestede’s (1980a) studies. In countries high in power
distance, such as the Philippines, Mexico, and Venezuela,
there is a great power imbalance between superiors and
subordinates in organizations. Decision-making is
centralized and subordinates tend to be passive. Austria,
Israel, and the Scandinavian countries represent countries
low in power distance. In these countries subordinates are
typically involved in decision-making, organization
structures tend to be flat, and there is greater decentralization of decision-making (McKenna, 2000). One of
Hofestede’s (1980b) conclusions was that participative
leadership advocated by American theorists is not suitable for all cultures. However, there have been criticisms
of Hofestede’s work, as it is likely that there are great
variations within cultures as well.
Kauppinen and Kandolin (1998) have come to the
same conclusions as Hofestede. Finland, Sweden,
Denmark, and the Netherlands had the characteristics of
100
a “feminine” society; there was a considerable amount of
interaction between the management and the subordinates, organizational structures were not hierarchic, and
the employees participated in organizational decisionmaking. The Southern European countries (Spain,
Portugal, Italy, and Greece) had more “masculine” characteristics; organizational hierarchy was strong and there
was less direct face-to-face interaction between managers
and subordinates. Organizational culture also differed in
women-led organizations as there was more interpersonal
interaction between the employer and the employees, and
the female manager tended to control the subordinates
less than the male manager. However, it is important to
note that work was also different, as women tended to
lead smaller units and organizations that employ mostly
other women (Kauppinen, 2002). Across the European
Union, only 10% or less of men work in places where
their immediate superior is a woman.
SEX DIFFERENCES IN COMMUNICATION
PATTERNS OF LEADERS
Lips (1997) argues that power difference between the
sexes is maintained by variations in men’s and women’s
communication. Men talk more than women, and maintain the difference partly by interrupting women and by
not listening or responding to women (Malamuth &
Thornhill, 1994). James & Clark (1993; cited in Tainio,
2001) have found conflicting results. After reviewing
33 research reports dealing with the relationship between
gender and interruptions, they concluded that there was
no support for the argument; both genders interrupted and
became interrupted. Interruptions may not always be
power displays or games but, for example, a sign of
enthusiasm and solidarity (e.g., Tannen, 1994). Tainio
(2002) claims that gender difference in communication
styles is mostly due to the difference in social status
rather than gender, that is, women have a lower status and
behave accordingly.
Thus studies on sex differences in language and
communication do not show uniform results. Overall, the
results tend to show that women’s verbal and nonverbal
behavior is warmer and more deferential whereas men are
more powerful and authoritative in their communication
style (Mulac, 1998). Women use more indirect influence
strategies (Gilligan, 1982; Steil & Weltman, 1992), they
speak more tentatively (Carli, 1990), and they show more
Leadership, Power, and Gender
nonverbal warmth and adaptive behavior than men
(Hall, 1984). In a study by Carli, LaFleur, and Loeber
(1995), men were more influenced by the warm and
competent female speaker than by the female speaker
who was just competent. The warm woman was considered as competent as the one who was just competent.
Gray (2002) argues that women express more feelings
in their communication in order to include the listener in
what they wish to say and to establish a connection with
them.
Women show less visual domination than men;
they maintain more eye contact than men while listening,
but less eye contact while talking (Dovidio, Brown,
Heltman, Ellyson, & Keating, 1988), particularly in
mixed-sex interactions (Ellyson, Dovidio, & Brown,
1992). Interestingly, it has been found that, in mixed-sex
interactions, women’s influence is more effective when
they display low levels of visual dominance than when
they display high levels of visual dominance. On the
other hand, men are more effective when they are visually dominant (Mehta et al., 1989; cited in Ellyson et al.,
1992 ). Carli (1990) found that women exert greater influence over a male audience when they use tentative rather
than direct speech, whereas males are equally influential
with a male and female audience whichever of these two
styles they use. These results indicate that women receive
negative sanctions for being direct, but men can exhibit a
wider range of behaviors and still remain influential
(Carli & Eagly, 1999). Because of gender stereotypes, the
same nonverbal cues that are a sign of power for men may
not work for women (Hite, 2000; Lips, 1997). There are
vast cultural differences and norms that regulate
face-to-face behavior and communication between men
and women.
Carli & Eagly (1999) claim that patterns of
interaction in groups place women at a disadvantage.
Henley (1977) argues that much of the nonverbal communication that characterizes male–female relationships
follows a pattern parallel to that of superior–subordinate
relationships, since women are more often in subordinate
positions than men. Garsombke (1988) claims that
organizational vocabulary is masculine, since many
typical expressions used in business, such as “strategy”
and “headquarters,” originate from wars and male-led
organizations. Gardiner and Tiggemann (1999) claim that
in female-dominated industries women managers were
more interpersonally orientated than men, but women and
men did not differ in male-dominated industries. On the
Patriarchal Power in Organizations
other hand, women receive attention in male-dominated
organizations because they are different. The attention
can be either positive (flattery, compliments) or negative
(e.g., sexual harassment). Gender can both hinder and
advance a woman’s career.
GENDER POWER
IN
ORGANIZATIONS
Most classic organizational texts were written from a
masculine perspective and failed to analyze the significance of gender, or the relationships among sex, gender,
organizations, and power, in any explicit manner (e.g.,
Hearn & Parkin, 1992). In many contemporary organizational texts gender is increasingly referred to. Yet it is
often included in a brief, marginalized, and unanalytic
manner (Gherardi, 1995; Green, Parkin, & Hearn, 1997).
In a classic study French and Raven (1959)
differentiated between five kinds of power sources:
expert, referent, reward, coercive, and legitimate power.
Expert power refers to the ability to influence because
you possess superior skills or knowledge. Referent power
is charismatic power—the ability to get another person
to change their behavior. Reward power means the ability
to mediate rewards, such as money and promotion, in
order to obtain change. Coercive power refers to the
ability to give punishment. Legitimate power refers to
the right to influence. Wilson (1995) argues that all of
these forms of power are perceived as belonging to men,
since traditionally men have held most of the power in
organizations, have controlled and dominated women and
also other men, and thus have been able to maintain
power.
An important source of power in organizations is
informal power. Informal power often depends on the
informal personal contacts one has inside and outside the
organization, and refers to the ability to gather information and mobilize resources and support outside official
power structures. The amount of informal power one has
is influenced by factors such as age, family background,
looks, and attractiveness. In order to gain informal power,
whom one knows is important (Drennan, 1997).
Access to informal networks of communication and
exchange is an important determinant of an individual’s
power and success in an organization (Auster, 1993; Lips,
1997). Men’s and women’s informal networks function
differently. Women’s relative lack of access to informal
networks within and outside an organization often limits
101
their influence. For instance, women may have more
difficulty in obtaining rewards for their subordinates,
which in turn may create a vicious circle where subordinates lose respect for a manager who appears powerless.
This diminishes the manager’s power (Ragins &
Sundström, 1989). In addition, lack of access to informal
networks can hinder a woman’s chances of career
advancement and limit access to resources critical to
doing her job properly (Travers & Pemberton, 2000).
PATRIARCHAL POWER
ORGANIZATIONS
IN
In western organizations the ideal of a good manager is
still implicitly included in the notion of hegemonic
masculinity that represents qualities such as competitive,
aggressive, nonemotional, goal orientated, and psychologically and physically strong (Connell, 1987). Hegemonic
masculinity is the culturally dominant and most powerful
form of masculinity. It is based on heroism, where the hero
controls and guides his subordinates (Block, 1996, 1999).
The dominant forms of masculinity, construed in aversion
to femininity, are those that dictate how organizations are
managed (Cheng, 1996). Patriarchal leadership was
common, and possibly functioning, in times when people
worked in hierarchic organizations where work was organized into assembly lines (Block, 1996, 1999), but, according to Koivunen (2002), patriarchal leadership does not fit
today’s more flexible expert organizations. Leadership by
partnership, a concept brought forward by Block (1996,
1999), where jointly agreed goals are the way to motivate
and lead people, is much more appropriate, especially in
modern expert organizations (Koivunen, 2002). Women
could have a lot to contribute in expert organizations, since
they tend to use leadership by partnership instead of a
hierarchical model of leading.
Himanen (2001) argues that computer hackers will
become heroes of the information society. He claims that
the heroes will be men. There will be no room for women
in the information society. Women will be left to perform
the invisible domestic tasks, and their main function will
be to further men’s careers. There seem to be very few
women in higher-level positions in information technology (e.g., Silicon Valley) (Ruckenstein, 2002). However,
Koivunen (2002) argues that the development of computer
networks such as Linux, where everyone is allowed to
change the code, will decrease the hierarchical system of
102
organizations and present everyone with the opportunity
to take part in developing the code.
Kanter (1977, 1993) has discussed metaphorical
male “homosocial reproduction”—how men attempt to
reproduce their dominant power relations by only uniting
with and sharing the same occupational space and privilege with those males they deem similar in image and
behavior, cloning themselves in their own image, and
forming so-called old-boy networks (Auster, 1993; Wirth,
2001). Koivunen (2002) argues that men’s physical
power and size affects their career development more
than capabilities or education. Martin (1996) shows how
homosocial male networks tend to preclude women from
high-status jobs by sex segregation and selection procedures, and seek to discredit women while elevating men.
Male homosociability not only keeps women out of key
organizational roles, but also controls the behavior of
other men and punishes men who behave differently.
Vianello and Moore (2000) conclude their cross-cultural
research report on women in top positions by saying that
executive women feel that the greatest barrier to their
career development are male networks that they have a
hard time entering. Martin (1996) has drawn attention
to men’s domination of assessment, selection, and
promotion—processes that isolate women.
Zuboff (1988) claims that male managers protect
their status and power by mystifying their knowledge and
exaggerating their abilities rather than by sharing knowledge. Women are marginalized in meetings because men
refuse to hear them, ignore the contribution they are
making, or attribute it to a male participant (Josefowitz,
1988). Women in senior management have experienced a
great deal of male hostility and misogyny because men
have felt that women are taking their jobs (Gutek, 1989).
Nicolson (1996) and Hite (2000) argue that women’s constant exposure to sexism in organizations is an overriding
reason why more women are not in authority, and those
few that do reach senior positions often sacrifice their
feminine identity and relations with other women to do
so. According to the Finnish Gender Barometer 1998
(Melkas, 1999), 30% of women claim that they experience disparaging behavior at work at least every now and
then. Nearly one-third of women claim that they have
experienced sexual harassment, ranging from dirty jokes
to proposal of sexual relations, during the past 2 years.
Women on top often feel isolated. However, some enjoy
their token positions; they consciously keep distance
from other women, do not help other women to further
Leadership, Power, and Gender
their careers, show envy and jealousy towards other
women, and prefer to work with men. This is referred to
as the “queen-bee” syndrome (Kanter, 1977).
Davidson and Cooper (1983) have shown that
female managers encounter greater sources of stress
than male managers. Women managers experience high
levels of gender stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, and report greater pressure than their male counterparts at all management levels. In addition to work
stressors, women have to deal with substantially more
domestic pressures than the majority of men (Davidson &
Fielden, 1999; Nelson & Burke, 2000). Considering
the fact that women have to balance on the “tightropes”
of traits, verbal styles, appearance, and work versus
family responsibilities (Auster, 1993), the resulting stress
reactions are hardly surprising. Despite a substantial
amount of stress, many women enjoy their leading
role, authority, and influence. A woman’s enjoyment is
increased if she has a supporting partner (Vianello &
Moore, 2000).
According to Nicolson (1996), the only way women
can fight patriarchal power in organizations is by
networking and supporting other women; according to
Nicolson, men recruit, promote, and mentor other men,
and women should support each other in the same way.
Arroba and James (1987) suggest the same: if women
are excluded from male networks, they can form their
own networks and overcome some of the effects of
“tokenism.” Kuusipalo, Kauppinen, and Nuutinen (2000)
argue that women, who themselves have passed through
the glass ceiling, claim that they are excluded from the
male world in a large part because they do not have access
to male-dominated networks and lack the informal
contacts that are vital to their career development.
GLASS CEILING
“Glass ceiling” is a symbolic term for the existence of an
invisible line in the hierarchical structures of working life
above which it is difficult for women to rise (Auster,
1993; Kauppinen-Toropainen, 1994; Wirth, 2001). Auster
(1993) claims that the glass ceiling is a gender bias that
occurs all the time and takes many forms. Women
encounter both internal and external obstacles in their
careers. It has been easier for a woman to reach a middlemanagement position in an organization than to rise to the
very top management. However, if she does that, she is
Future Perspectives and Change
still a “loner,” that is, the only or almost only representative of her own sex (Kauppinen-Toropainen, 1987).
The reasons why there are so few women in
management positions, and especially in top management,
have been addressed by many researchers (e.g., Acker,
1992; Auster, 1993; Izraeli & Adler, 1994; Oakley, 2000;
Powell, 2000; Vanhala, 2002). Though researchers
categorize the reasons differently, most divide them as
societal, organizational, behavioral, and psychological.
Izraeli and Adler (1994) use three main perspectives to
explain the fact that women are underrepresented among
the levels of management. The first perspective concentrates on individual-level differences; it claims that the
paucity of women in management is due to behavioral
characteristics and personal traits. Men’s characteristics
and behavior have been taken as a norm, thus making it
hard for women to enter male-dominated areas. Auster
(1993) argues that in order for women to be successful in
organizations, they have to be very self-conscious of their
own behavior and keep constant control of what they are
saying and how they are acting. Oakley (2000) claims
that women in middle- and lower-management positions
often play down their femininity and instead adopt a
masculine style to increase credibility.
According to Izraeli and Adler’s second perspective,
organizational context, an organization’s culture and way
of treating women often shapes attitudes and behavior
more than an individual manager’s behavior. Powell
(2000) makes a similar point by arguing that women’s
entry into top management positions is influenced by the
way decision-making is structured in an organization and
whether the decision-makers can be held accountable for
the decisions they make. Eyring and Stead (1998) claim
that women’s underrepresentation in management is due
to the fact that men prefer supporting people like
themselves to top positions in organizations.
The third perspective, institutional discrimination,
claims that organizations are not gender neutral and that
this fact leads to gender discrimination. Izraeli and Adler
(1994) and Gherardi (1995) argue that gender discrimination forms of part of managers’ basic assumptions
about society and organizational culture. Powell (2000)
refers to the same phenomenon as a societal factor; men
are more taken aback by women in top positions than in
lower positions, since men have traditionally had the
higher status in society. He claims that this norm is
reinforced in subtle ways, for instance, in stereotypes of
what makes a good leader. Izraeli and Adler also bring
103
forward a fourth perspective that focuses on senior
managers’ greater ability to influence, and limit, women’s
access to top positions. They argue that societal and organizational institutions that privilege men have persisted
simply because senior managers do not want competition
or change. Senior executives are more able than lowerlevel managers to protect their sphere of influence from
outsiders. This explains why women have succeeded in
entering the lower levels of management, but, once in,
have failed to move up into senior management.
Green et al. (1997) claim that built-in societal
structures, such as women’s role in children’s upbringing
and maternity, may help to explain why husbands do not
support their wives’ careers in the same way that women
support men’s careers by doing most of the child care and
housework (Auster, 1993). In many societies there
appears to be a tendency for high-level positions to be
occupied mainly by married men with children, while
women in the same type of positions tend to be single,
divorced, and childless (Hewlett, 2002; Vanhala, 2002;
Woodward, 1996). Women often have to make more
sacrifices in their personal lives than men do. Many toplevel jobs require long and antisocial working hours that
preclude many women with children. According to
Vanhala (2002), women still carry most of the responsibility for housework in dual-career families, and thus it is
the woman’s career that suffers more than the man’s. The
same applies to families where both parents are in top
positions. Even as a manager, the woman still has a
greater responsibility over the family.
FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
AND
CHANGE
Statistics show a slow but evident increase of women
managers in organizations. Leadership and management
roles for both sexes will change in the future as organizations change, and become lean or anorectic. Competition
for top positions will tighten in the future, so will there be
room for the participative leadership that women have
been seen to portray? Women make good experts. This is
something that should be rewarded, and encouraged in
the future. Expertise is an important strength and resource
in turbulent times. It is worth trying out new spheres, as
so-called traditional spheres are prone to change.
A social exchange analysis would suggest that,
because men are those who have occupied the most
powerful positions in organizations and have most to lose
104
Leadership, Power, and Gender
if the status quo is disturbed, a male hegemony within an
organization is naturally quite resistant to change
(Gough, 1998). Change will not occur automatically but
requires positive action which provides women with the
opportunity to break the glass ceiling to advancement and
the glass wall to equality of access. As Alvesson and Due
Billing (1997) state, there are reasons to be skeptical
about radical changes taking place in organizations leading to substantial requirements for female skills or female
managers. Much of the talk is rhetoric and behind superficial changes there is often much less actual change
(Calás and Smircich, 1993). Moore and Vianello (2000)
claim that men’s near-monopoly of powerful positions
will slowly continue to decline. They argue that women’s
elites are more likely to have less hierarchical and more
post-materialist orientations than male elites, and women
may actually make more effective leaders in the emerging society. However, there are individual differences
among women managers, as well as differences in the
demands that organizations put on their members. This
should be kept in mind, because many female managers
also face the demands of behaving in a stereotypically
female way in situations where strategic fast decisions are
made, those typically suited to males. Simplicity in
organizational culture is less supportive of female leadership than is a culture with high tolerance of diversity of
values, behavioral patterns, and self-reflectiveness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank HeljäHuuhtanen and Saara
Patoluoto, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational
Health, for their help in collecting material and preparing
the article.
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Books.
War and Gender
Joshua S. Goldstein
INTRODUCTION
The gendered character of warfare is extraordinarily
consistent across human cultures. I define war broadly as
lethal intergroup violence, and define the war system as
the interrelated ways that societies organize themselves to
participate in potential and actual wars. This war system
is among the most consistently gendered of human activities. Every known society assigns war roles differentially
by gender, with men as the primary fighters (and usually
the only ones). Since nearly every society has war in its
social repertoire, gendered war roles have broad social
ramifications.
Attention to Gender and War in
Anthropology
Anthropology has long taken gender seriously in
studying war, in contrast to political science and history
(Goldstein, 2001, pp. 34–36). Margaret Mead’s (1967,
p. 236) conclusion in the first major anthropological
symposium on war called for paying “particular attention … to the need of young males to validate their
strength and courage, and to … the conspicuous unwillingness of most human societies to arm women.”
Anthropological thinking that connects war and gender is
not limited to one ideological perspective, nor just to
female scholars. Also, anthropology engages gender
even though women are poorly represented among
anthropologists studying war. Still, attention to gender in
studying war has been inconsistent. In anthropology
volumes on war, the number of index entries concerning
gender are as follows: Fried, Harris, and Murphy (1967),
two; Nettleship, Givens, and Nettleship (1975), none;
Ferguson (1984), four; Foster and Rubinstein (1986),
thirteen; Turner and Pitt (1989), none; Haas (1990), eight;
Ferguson and Whitehead (1992), two; Reyna and Downs
(1994), none.
CROSS-CULTURAL CONSISTENCY
GENDER ROLES IN WAR
OF
In war, the fighters are usually all male. Exceptions to this
rule are numerous and informative (see below), but these
exceptions together amount to fewer than 1% of all
warriors in history (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 10–22).
Present-Day Society
Of about 23 million soldiers in today’s uniformed
standing armies, about 97% are male (somewhat over
500,000 are women). In only six of the world’s nearly
200 states do women make up more than 5% of the armed
forces, and most of these women in military forces worldwide occupy traditional women’s roles such as typists and
nurses. Designated combat forces in the world’s state
armies today include several million soldiers (the exact
number depending on definitions of combat), of whom
99% are male. In U.N. peacekeeping forces, women
(mostly nurses) were less than 0.1% in 1957–89 and still
under 2% when U.N. peacekeeping peaked in the early
1990s. These disparities persist despite women’s
having reached historically high levels of social and political power globally, and despite the world’s predominant
military forces carrying out the largest-scale military
gender integration in history, with 200,000 women
comprising one-sixth of U.S. forces (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 10–11).
Historical States
Today’s 97% male military worldwide may be the
all-time low for this variable through history—a variable
that has shown amazing consistency and robustness
against technological, military, and politico-diplomatic
evolution through history. When war shaped the rise of
states and civilizations after the Neolithic revolution, it
was already a male domain. The importance of horses in
107
108
historical warfare did not alter the gender division despite
the fact that women ride as well as men (only equestrian
events are gender integrated in the Olympics). The
introduction of firearms, and later the mechanization
of war, radically changed the importance of physical
strength in war, but still barely affected the gender
division.
War and Gender
the common factor is physical isolation from their
neighbors (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 22–34).
Thus neither gender roles in war, nor warfare
itself, result from agriculture, the state, or any particular
historical stage. They have deep roots in the human
experience.
The Diversity of Gender and of War
Preindustrial Societies
Nor do simple societies offer counterexamples. No
empirically corroborated cases are known of Amazon
societies in which all (or even a majority) of fighters were
female (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 11–19). Some archeological
evidence suggests that early Iron Age nomadic women
of the Eurasian steppes rode horses, may have used
weapons, and may even have had some political influence, though probably not dominance. But excavated
graves yielded war-related artifacts for about 90% of
men and only 15–20% of women (Davis-Kimball, 1997,
p. 47). Little evidence exists for purported Amazon
societies in ancient Greece or South America.
Among contemporary preindustrial societies, both
the very war prone and the relatively peaceful ones share
a gender division in war, with men as the primary (and
usually exclusive) fighters. For example, although gender
relations on Vanatinai island (where war is rare) are
radically more egalitarian than those among the warcentered Sambia, one commonality is war fighting—a
male occupation. In many present-day gathering–hunting
and agrarian societies, special gender taboos apply to
weapons, and special practices focus on men’s roles as
warriors. Sometimes war and hunting are the only two
spheres of social life to exclude women.
Modern nonpacified preindustrial societies are not
generally peaceful. Ember and Ember find that over half
of a sample of 90 societies were in a constant state of war
or readiness for war, and half of the remaining societies
fought every year during a particular season (C. R. Ember &
Ember, 1997; M. Ember & Ember, 1994). In only eight
societies did wars occur less frequently than once in
10 years on average. Of 31 gathering–hunting societies
surveyed in another study, 20 typically had warfare more
than once every 2 years, and only three had “no or rare
warfare” (C. R. Ember, 1978, p. 444). Nonstate societies
have as much warfare as states do. Relatively peaceful
societies can become warlike and vice versa, as the !Kung
have done. Among the very few actual peaceful societies,
The cross-cultural consistency of gendered war roles is
set against a backdrop of great diversity of both gender
roles and war considered separately. Human beings have
many forms of marriage, sexuality, division of labor in
household and child-care work, ownership of property,
and lines of descent. Overall, human societies have
organized gender roles outside war “in an almost infinite
variety of ways …” (Sanday, 1981, p. 1). Similarly, forms
of war vary greatly, except for their gendered character.
Different cultures fight in very different ways, and for
different purposes. Thus, the connection of war with
gender is more stable, across cultures and through time,
than are either gender roles outside war or the forms and
frequency of war (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 6–9).
MEN’S WAR ROLES
Norms of masculinity show great diversity crossculturally, yet various constructions of masculinity
typically serve a functional role in the war system.
Inducing Men to Kill
Killing does not come naturally to men. Combat is a
horrific experience marked by confusion, noise, terror,
and atrocity, in addition to any physical injury. Societies
historically have worked hard to get men to fight—
drafting them, disciplining them (e.g., shooting deserters), sometimes drugging them, and sometimes abruptly
breaking family and community ties and replacing them
with military bonding. After a war, many cultures honor
veterans and confer special status or rewards on them.
In some societies, war participation and war leadership
open opportunities for political leadership. By contrast,
men who do not fight may be shunned as cowards. All
these inducements to participate in combat show the
difficulty of getting men to fight (Goldschmidt, 1989,
pp. 16–17, 22–23; Goldstein, 2001, p. 253).
Men’s War Roles
Many such inducements to participate do not involve
gender. Men may believe in a cause, or strongly identify
with a country or group they are fighting to defend.
However, gendered inducements are also common. War
service is often construed as a test of manhood—primarily
of courage—that “real men” are expected to perform.
Boyhood and Coming of Age
Rites of passage into manhood vary cross-culturally but
often include common elements relevant to war preparation. Gilmore (1990, pp. 11–20) argues that a broad sweep
of cultures reflect the central theme that men are made, not
born. Men must take actions, undergo ordeals, or pass
tests in order to become men. In rites of passage, only
select men can achieve “manhood,” and it must be won
individually. Rituals typically inflict pain on adolescent
males and force them not to cry out, on pain of lifelong
shame if they fail. In some especially war-prone societies,
men have had to kill an enemy to be considered a man or
to marry. In others, near-universal male conscription
marks a passage to manhood. These various passages,
based on passing harsh tests bravely, adapt males for war
(Goldstein, 2001, pp. 264–267).
Combat Trauma and Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder
In societies that have experienced war, many survivors
suffer lasting psychological effects, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The experience of battle
is inherently traumatic. Isolation is central to this trauma.
Civilian society’s common lack of interest in hearing
about war traumas, along with survivors’ own denial,
make healing difficult (Herman, 1992). PTSD has gone by
various names in different wars, notably “shell shock” in
World War I. Women war veterans are as prone as men to
PTSD, but more men than women are exposed to combat
trauma (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 259–263).
Wartime Sexuality
Little evidence suggests that male sexuality is a key
component of male soldiers’ aggressiveness, but the
temporary dislocation of sexual norms during wartime
does change patterns of sexuality (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 333–342). For example, by one calculation, the
average U.S. soldier who served in Europe from D-Day
109
through the end of World War II had sex with 25 women
(Holmes, 1985, p. 97). The peak was reached after the
surrender of Germany in 1945. In U.S.-occupied Italy,
three-quarters of U.S. soldiers had intercourse with
Italian women; about three-quarters of these paid with
cash and the rest with rationed food or nothing. Fewer
than half used condoms (Costello, 1985, pp. 97, 99, 262).
Military prostitution has accompanied most wars
historically. Many military commanders have encouraged
prostitution in response to serious attrition caused by
sexually transmitted diseases (most recently AIDS). The
Roman Empire operated a system of brothels for its
armies. The Spanish army invading The Netherlands in
the late 16th century trailed “400 mounted whores and 800
on foot” who were like “troops” commanded by appointed
officers. The word “hooker” comes from U.S. Civil War
general Joseph Hooker, whose Army of the Potomac was
accompanied by “Hooker’s girls.” In World Wars I and II,
French and German armies set up systems of militarysupervised brothels (Costello, 1985, pp. 81–82; De Pauw,
1998, pp. 96–100; Enloe, 1993, pp. 142–160; Goldstein,
2001, pp. 342–356; Hicks, 1995, p. 29).
Conquest and Rape
Although wartime sexuality occurs behind the lines, not
in tandem with violence, gender and sexuality can sometimes encode domination in war. These aspects do not
characterize war generally, but do recur in a variety of
contexts.
Trexler (1995, pp. 1, 12–37) documents the “inveterate male habit of gendering enemies female or effeminate”
throughout the ancient world. The most common pattern
in warfare in the ancient Middle East and Greece was literally to feminize a conquered population by executing
male captives, raping the women, and then taking women
and children as slaves. Gendered massacres continue
today, notably in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in 1995. Another
way to feminize conquered enemies—castrating men
before or after killing them or taking them prisoner—was
widespread in the ancient world, practiced by Chinese,
Persian, Amalekite, Egyptian, Norse, Inca, and Dahomey
armies (Trexler, 1995, pp. 16–19, 66, 72–73, 76–78).
Symbolic and actual anal rape of men has also served
to feminize enemies in many cultures (Trexler, 1995,
pp. 14–15, 20–29).
Rape of women—actual and symbolic—recurs in
wartime (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 362–373). It expresses
110
domination and conquest, while humiliating enemy
males. Conceivably, elevated testosterone levels in victorious soldiers contribute to post-conquest rapes, though
such an effect seems weak. Most soldiers do not rape.
Rape in wartime, including forced prostitution, has long
been illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
Homosexuality
Male homosexuality has been treated differently in
different historical armies. The Theban Sacred Band, an
effective military force in ancient Greece, consisted of
gay lovers placed together on front lines to spur each
other on to courageous actions. By contrast, some
modern armies and navies have punished homosexuality
with death. Currently, the ban on openly gay men in
U.S. military forces remains a contentious political issue.
Policies vary in other countries (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 374–379).
FEMININE WAR SUPPORT ROLES
Women frequently support men’s war participation
through various means.
War Boosters
In simple societies, the role of women in warfare varies
cross-culturally, but women generally support more than
oppose war (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 301–322). No society
routinely requires women to fight in wars. But often
women “engage in ceremonial activities … while their
men [a]re away fighting”—dancing, acting out the war,
remaining chaste, and so forth. Women sometimes help to
drive the men into a war frenzy by dancing, singing, and
other supportive activities: “Rwala women bared their
breasts and urged their men to war” (Goldschmidt, 1989,
pp. 23–24). Women commonly egged men on to war in
Norse legends, among Germans fighting the Roman
Empire, and among Aryans of India (Turney-High, 1971,
pp. 160, 163–164). In the Kitwara Empire, the Zulu
kingdom, and elsewhere in Africa, women stayed at
home during a war expedition and followed strict taboos
(such as silence in an entire village) to bring magical
powers to the war party. Zulu women also ran naked
before departing warriors (Turney-High, 1971, p. 161).
War and Gender
Among American Indians, in Arikara culture, during
a 2-day war-preparation ceremony, women danced in
their husbands’ clothes and took turns praising their
husbands’ valor. In the Comanche war preparations,
women held up one side of a large drum while men held
the other. Teton women wore ornaments indicating their
husbands’ success as warriors, and Ojibway widows and
mothers received the enemy scalps (Turney-High, 1971,
p. 153). Among the Chiriguano and Chanéof Bolivia,
women performed special dances and songs to support
the warriors, both before and during battle. Apache
women did not sing for the war dance, but did see off the
departing warriors and fulfilled special obligations during
their absence, such as keeping the woodpile neat. Thus
women participate in various ways in promoting and
rewarding warrior roles for men (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 316–317).
In various societies, from Germanic tribes of Roman
times to American Indians, women have been “the sacred
witnesses to male bravery” (Elshtain, 1987, p. 181).
Women performing feminine roles on the battlefield,
such as nursing, “improve morale by enhancing a man’s
identification of himself as a warrior” (Holmes, 1985,
p. 103). Women also often actively participate in shaming
men to goad them into fighting wars. In Britain and
America during World War I, women organized a largescale campaign to hand out white feathers to able-bodied
men found on the streets. Before the 1973 coup in Chile,
right-wing women threw corn at soldiers to taunt them as
“chickens.” Apache women met successful warriors with
“songs and rejoicings” but unsuccessful ones with “jeers
and insults”; Zulu women did likewise (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 272–274).
Mothers
For young men in combat, their mothers can symbolize a
nurturing feminine sphere that contrasts with war. It is
their mothers that dying soldiers most often call out for
on the battlefield. In addition to their actual mothers,
soldiers use mother-like figures in similar ways—nurses,
sweethearts, and wives (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 309–312).
In theory, since mothers control child care, they
could change gender norms, training girls to be aggressive and boys to be passive. But in fact mothers worldwide generally reward boys for being tough and girls for
being nice. They raise warriors. Harris (1974, pp. 85–87)
argues that although women could subdue their sons,
Feminine War Support Roles
they cannot control their enemies’ sons: “As soon as
males … bear the burden of intergroup conflict, women
have no choice but to rear large numbers of fierce males
of their own.”
Nurses
The idea of using female professional nurses in war is
little more than a century old, although now widespread.
However, for centuries the job of nursing has fallen to
wives, camp followers, and other women accompanying
military forces. Modern women’s military nursing traces
from the Crimean War—Florence Nightingale’s war
(Enloe, 1983, pp. 92–116). Military nursing has most
often meant very hard work, until recently often unpaid.
The moral character of nurses has traditionally mattered
more to the military than their professional ability.
Nurses’ work generally does not entail any form of sexuality. Rather, nurses most often position themselves as
mothers or sisters (sometimes being called “sister”).
Women—as nurses, mothers, wives, and girlfriends—
also play a central role in men’s long-term recovery from
combat trauma (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 262, 312–316).
Laborers
In every society at war, women workers help to sustain
the war effort. Most of this work is unpaid, and largely
unmeasured. The armies of 20th-century total war
depended on women in new ways, not only within the
army but in the civilian work force (and in addition to the
ongoing responsibilities of women for domestic, reproductive, and sexual work). Both Britain and the United
States mobilized millions of women into the workplace.
Such new gender arrangements boost the war effort,
but are typically cast as temporary (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 380–396).
Women face additional economic hardship in
wartime. For example, Mae women in New Guinea
“detest” wars because they fear “being left to bring up
children relatively unaided … . In addition, … they have
to bear even more of the burden of food production … in
exposed gardens” (Meggitt, 1977, p. 99).
Support Troops
Despite women’s exclusion from combat, a number of
societies have routinely used women as support troops
111
(Goldstein, 2001, pp. 114–115). Cheyenne women
occasionally, though rarely, went with war parties, and
showed courage equal to the men. Shasta women also
occasionally accompanied war parties, cutting enemy
bowstrings with knives. They cooked and carried supplies, as did women of the Gabrielino, Hidatsa, Choctaw,
and Guiana Amerindians, and the extremely aggressive
Mundurucúof Brazil. Apache girls and young women
received much physical training, including riding and
using knife, bow, and rifle, and were expected to guard
camp while males were away. Adult women occasionally
joined a raiding or war party, usually to help with cooking, cleaning, and nursing. War prisoners were often
taken back to camp for the women (especially those who
had lost loved ones in battle) to torture and kill.
Women’s participation in torturing and killing
prisoners is also found elsewhere. The Konkow sometimes allowed women to participate in torturing captured
male enemies. Among the Tupinamba of Brazil, women
enthusiastically helped torture prisoners of war to death
and then dismember and eat them. Similarly, Kiwai
women of Oceania had the special job of “mangling”
enemy wounded and then killing them with knives or
digging sticks (Turney-High, 1971, p. 162). In 17th-century
colonial Massachusetts a mob of women tortured two
Indian prisoners to death after overcoming their guards.
In the 19th century, Afghan women tortured enemy
survivors of battle. In 1993, a mob of Somali women
tore apart four foreign journalists (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 114–115).
It is possible for a culture to mobilize women into
combat support without taking away their noncombatant
protected status. In Papuan warfare, women collected
stray arrows and scouted enemy movements, enjoying
immunity from attack. Kapauku warfare (New Guinea)
extended total immunity to women support troops in the
middle of the battle (Goldstein, 2001, p. 115).
In addition to their support roles at the bottom of
military hierarchies, women can make effective military
leaders. Male soldiers and officers will follow the commands and exhortations of women leaders possessing
proper authority. Most women military leaders (but not
Joan of Arc), were “warrior queens” who held political
power and exercised military leadership from that position. Different stories treat such figures differently—for
example, some emphasize their chastity and others their
sexual voracity (Fraser, 1989, pp. 11–13; Goldstein,
2001, pp. 116–126).
112
War and Gender
Women and Peace
Most women support most wars, but others often
organize as women to work for peace (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 322–331). In some simple societies, women tend to
restrain the men from war or play special roles as mediators in bringing wars to an end. For instance, Andamanese
Islands women “tried to settle quarrels and bring fighting
to a conclusion.” (However, the Ibibio of Nigeria did not
permit women to witness peacemaking rites lest they
upset them.) Among the Kiwai-Papua, after both sides
signal a desire for peace, “a number of men accompanied
by their wives make their way to the enemy village. The
women walk a few paces ahead. It is taken for granted
that bringing their wives is a demonstration of peaceful
intentions … . During the night, the hosts sleep with the
visitors’ wives—a practice known as ‘putting out the
fire’ ” (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1979, p. 213).
In modern societies, women’s peace activism
expanded with the suffrage movement in the 19th century,
In 1852, Sisterly Voices began publication as a newsletter
for European women’s peace societies. The Women’s
Peace Party, founded during World War I, grew out of the
international suffrage movement. In recent decades,
women’s peace activism can be found in dozens of
countries. In the United States, a gender gap of about
10–15% in support for military actions has persisted for
decades. However, a recurring problem for women’s
peace activism is that construing peace as feminine
masculinizes war and thus reinforces mechanisms that
societies use to induce men to fight.
WOMEN’S PERFORMANCE
IN
COMBAT
Beyond women’s war support roles, occasionally women
do participate in fighting. These cases, although rare overall, are sufficient to show that many women can fight wars.
Simple Societies
In several prestate societies, women sometimes participate in fighting. I mentioned above the early Iron Age
Eurasian steppes. Some Native American societies let
women have some participation in combat. Among the
southern Apaches, some women accompanied war parties
and a few fought (bravely). The most famous Apache
woman warrior was Lozen, who helped a force of
15–40 warriors elude a U.S. force of over a thousand soldiers and win eight battles. However, most Apache women
did not participate in war (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 113–114).
The Dahomey Kingdom
In the 18th–19th century Dahomey Kingdom of West
Africa, women made up one wing of the army, at times
contributing a one-third of all soldiers (Alpern, 1998;
Goldstein, 2001, pp. 60–64). They lived in the king’s
palace, followed special rules, and were excellent fighters
whose presence substantially increased the kingdom’s
military power. Dahomey is an important case since it
shows the possibility of an effective permanent standing
women’s combat unit making up a substantial minority of
an army. However, it is the only case of its kind.
The Soviet Union in World War II
In the Soviet Union during World War II—desperate
times—800,000 women reportedly made up at peak about
8% of Soviet forces. Most were medical workers but a few
thousand were combatants—anti-aircraft gunners, pilots,
snipers, and infantrywomen. War propaganda exaggerated
women’s exploits to cheer on a devastated society and
shame men into fighting harder. But overall, the evidence
indicates that the women fought about as well as the men.
Nonetheless, as soon as circumstances permitted, women
were purged from the Red Army. Even the official estimates make women combatants at their peak fewer than
1% of Soviet combat forces (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 64–72).
Guerrilla Armies
Women fighters are not uncommon in modern guerrilla
armies. From the Cold War and post-Cold War eras alone,
scholars have illuminated women’s crucial roles in a variety of wars, including those in Vietnam, South Africa,
Argentina, Cyprus, Iran, Northern Ireland, Lebanon,
Israel, Nicaragua, and others. In World War II, women
participated in the partisan forces of various occupied
countries (which mostly did not allow women into regular forces) including Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece, France,
Poland, and Denmark. The Vietnamese communists later
employed women guerrillas extensively, as did the
Sandinistas and FMLN in Central America, revolutionary
forces in Southern Africa, and the Tamil Tigers in
Sri Lanka (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 77–83).
Some Possible Explanations
113
Individual women have also effectively fought in wars,
contrary to the norms of their societies, in such times as
19th-century Europe, the U.S. Civil War, and World War I.
Other women of unknown number have fought wars while
disguised as men (Goldstein, 2001). These individual
cases share the quality of being exceptional and thus not
upsetting the main gender arrangements in those wars.
Peterson (1996) describe male apes as innately “demonic,”
needing restraint by females.
Empirical evidence offers mixed support for these
biological approaches. Men’s biology favors them for
fighting in several ways. On average, men are larger and
stronger than women—though men’s and women’s
bell-curve distributions overlap. Men’s spatial abilities,
modestly higher than women’s on average, might also
slightly help men in war. Testosterone does not cause
aggression, but it does play complex roles in male social
behavior regarding winning and losing (which are relevant to war) in humans and other primates. These biological differences explain why most combatants would be
male. But none can explain the near-total exclusion of
women from combat, since a minority of women are
stronger, more spatially adept, and more competitive than
most men (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 128–182).
Efforts to adduce an evolutionary basis for gender
roles in war—in terms of reproductive advantage—have
been controversial. Some scholars see male warfare as
mainly about competition for females. In Harris’s (1974,
pp. 83–107) “male supremacist complex,” war limits
population relative to scarce natural resources by putting
a premium on raising boys, and thus lowering girls’
survival rates. The idea that males are expendable from
an evolutionary perspective is problematical. In theory, in
polygynous societies a few men can impregnate many
women. But if many men die in war, labor resources
diminish and fewer babies survive to reproductive age.
SOME POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS
Women’s Status
Present-Day State Militaries
More than a dozen states—mostly industrialized countries
that are U.S. allies—currently allow women into certain
combat positions (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 83–86). The exact
number depends on how exactly one defines combat.
Eritrea and South Africa have women in the infantry,
owing to the recent integration of former guerrilla forces
into state armies there. Eritrean women fought in the lethal
ground war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s (constituting
perhaps a third of all soldiers). Some reports put women
at one-third of Eritrean combat forces. Women’s status in
NATO militaries is evolving year by year, with the policies and numbers shifting continually toward greater
women’s participation. Countries are generally moving
along a common path—though at different speeds—from
combat aviation, to combat ships, to submarines, to
ground combat. Women aviators bombed Serbia (1999)
and Afghanistan (2001).
Individual Warriors through History
Elsewhere, I review available empirical evidence to
evaluate 20 hypotheses that might help to explain the
consistency of gender roles in war (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 4,
404–405). I conclude that a complex interaction of biology
with culture best explains this phenomenon, with neither
alone being sufficient. Here, I will sketch three approaches
in anthropology that might explain gendered war roles—
biology, male dominance, and marriage patterns.
Biological and Evolutionary
Approaches
Some biological anthropologists tie war and aggression
to male biology. Konner (1988, p. 33) argues that
“testosterone is a key” to aggression. Wrangham and
Another explanation links women’s status with the
frequency of war. Feminist theories of war offer a variety
of contradictory views linked by their concern with
women’s status. Difference feminism focuses on biological (or otherwise innate) qualities that distinguish men
as a group and suit them for fighting. This approach
underlies women’s peace movements. Liberal feminism,
in contrast, portrays women as men’s equal in war,
celebrating the historical record of women combatants,
support troops, and factory workers. Postmodern feminists
also criticize the “essentialism” of difference feminism,
and show how binary oppositions based on gender operate
in wartime narratives to reinforce the power of dominant
groups. Harding (1986, p. 129) describes the “social constructionist strain of recent anthropological literature”
which argues that “absolutely nothing—no behavior and
114
no meaning—[is] universally and cross-culturally
associated with either masculinity or femininity. What is
considered masculine in some societies is considered
feminine or gender-neutral in others and vice versa;
the only constant appears to be the importance of the
dichotomy.” However, this approach does not explain the
near-universality of gender roles in war.
Empirically, across cultures, women’s status seems
to correlate with infrequency of war as difference feminists might expect, but only mildly so (Goldstein, 2001,
pp. 396–402). Measuring women’s status is difficult, and
studies suffer from assumptions about direction of
causality between women’s status and warfare (which
most likely is bidirectional).
One review of a dozen cross-cultural studies finds
that societies with frequent war tend to have wife beating,
along with warlike sports, beliefs in malevolent magic,
severe criminal punishments, and feuding (C. R. Ember &
Ember, 1997). Women’s status and power vary greatly
across 150 cultures worldwide in another study, and
gender relations are very unequal in 33% of the societies
with “endemic or chronic” war, but in only 17% of the
others (Sanday, 1981, pp. 6–7, 174). In a sample of
33 gathering–hunting societies, warfare decreases women’s
domestic and political status (Hayden, Deal, Cannon, &
Casey, 1986). In Ross’s statistical analysis of 90 “small
scale, preindustrial societies,” war seems to be more
likely in societies with high gender inequality, harsh
child-rearing practices, and the absence of fathers from
child rearing (Ross, 1990, pp. 55–56, 60). In another sample of 82 societies, low female decision involvement correlates with low internal war (between same-language
communities), high external war (across language lines),
harsh child socialization, and strong fraternal interest
groups (Ross, 1986, pp. 848–850). However, Whyte
(1978, pp. 129–131, 156–157) finds only mild mixed
effects of war on women’s status. Thus war frequency
correlates somewhat with gender inequality crossculturally, but modestly and unevenly.
Marriage Patterns
Another line of argument explains the gendering of war
by the potential disloyalty of women toward their
communities. Most cultures are patrilocal. In the event of
war between the two communities, women might have
mixed loyalties—to their current husbands and their birth
families—which could explain why many cultures
War and Gender
exclude them from war-fighting, planning, and access
to weapons (Adams, 1983, pp. 7, 198–203, 207–210;
cf. Manson & Wrangham, 1991, pp. 372–374). An alternative way to resolve the dilemma is to draw marriage
partners from within one’s own community (endogamy).
Another alternative is to fight mainly external wars, so
that marrying enemies is rare.
Matrilocal societies tend to practice endogamy and
fight external wars (Adams, 1983; Ember & Ember,
1971), so in these societies the disloyalty problem would
not occur.
Empirically, women’s participation in war is somewhat higher in matrilocal than patrilocal societies,
although still extremely limited. In a sample of
67 prestate cultures, women participated at least occasionally as warriors in nine, all of them among the 33 cultures
characterized by either exclusively external war or exclusive community endogamy. However, in all nine cases—
mostly Native Americans—women comprised a small
minority of warriors and were generally treated as
unusual. For example, Navaho war parties never had
more than two women, Delaware women “seldom”
fought, Fox women warriors were unusual, and
Comanche women just sometimes sniped from the
fringes (Adams, 1983, pp. 200–202).
The majority of communities have internal war, and
the majority are patrilocal, but all combinations of war
and marriage occur in at least a few cultures (Table 1).
Cultures with frequent internal war, patrilocal residence,
and at least some exogamy—the ones where women’s
loyalties could explain gendered war roles—are the
Table 1. Cross-Cultural Relationship of Marriage and
War in 115 Societies
Marriage pattern (exogamy; endogamy)
War pattern
Patrilocal
Matrilocal
Bilocal/other
Total
Some internal war
External war
exclusively
Infrequent war
44 (19; 9)
8 (2; 1)
5 (1; 4)
14 (2; 7)
9 (1; 4)
3 (0; 1)
58
25
15 (9; 2)
5 (1; 4)
12 (1; 3)
32
Total
67
24
24
115
Numbers in parentheses indicate cultures practicing only exogamy (marriages
from other communities) and only endogamy, respectively. The rest practice
mixed exogamy and endogamy.
Data from Adams (1983, pp. 199–200, 203). Reprinted with permission from War
and gender: How gender shapes the war system and vice versa (p. 227), by
J. S. Goldstein, 2001, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
References
115
largest single category but make up fewer than a third of
the 115 cultures in the sample. The major problem with
women’s loyalties as an explanation of gendered war
roles is that it does not explain the rareness of women
warriors in the other two-thirds of the cultures, where
marriage patterns vary (Goldstein, 2001, pp. 225–227).
Causality may run from war to marriage type as
much as vice versa (Adams, 1983, pp. 202–203). The
patrilocal marriage system, by keeping the men together
in kin groups (fathers and brothers stay together),
strengthens communities that frequently fight their neighbors. By contrast, matrilocal marriages break up such ties
and thus promote unity across neighboring communities;
this is functional when they together face an external
threat (Ember & Ember, 1971). Polygyny occurs most in
societies with high male mortality in warfare (M. Ember,
1974, 1985). Cultures with infrequent war usually lack
strict marriage residency rules.
CONCLUSION
The ubiquitous nature of both war and gendered war roles
suggests that these phenomena play central roles in social
life. However, no single or simple explanation can account
for gender roles in war. Many aspects of gender in human
cultures connect—in complex interactive ways—with
war. Not only do societies use gender in various ways to
enable successful participation in war, but war in turn
strongly influences a range of gender relationships within
those societies. Without war, cultural patterns of sex and
gender would be substantially different.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Parts of this article are excerpted and adapted, with
permission, from my War and Gender: How Gender
Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge
University Press, 2001), which also contains further
scholarly references. For more resources, see
www.warandgender.com
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Religion, Religiosity, and Gender
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
INTRODUCTION
Religion is an ideology, meaning “… that part of culture
which is actively concerned with the establishment and
defense of patterns of beliefs and values” (Geertz, 1964,
p. 64). But it is clearly different, in the nature of its
claims, from all other ideologies we know, such as leftwing or right-wing world views in politics. Religion as an
ideology involves the individual in a unique commitment
and a unique network of relationships, real and imagined.
The irreducible belief core common to all religions
contains the belief in spirit entities inhabiting an invisible
world, and our relationship with them (Beit-Hallahmi,
1989). The working definition of religion used here is the
straightforward everyday description of religion as a
system of beliefs in divine or superhuman powers, and
ritual practices directed towards such powers (Argyle &
Beit-Hallahmi, 1975).
It is the premise of every religion—and this premise is religion’s defining characteristic—that souls, supernatural beings, and supernatural
forces exist. Furthermore, there are certain minimal categories of behavior, which, in the context of the supernatural premise, [emphasis in the
original] are always found in association with one another and which
are the substance of religion itself. (Wallace, 1966, p. 52)
Similarly, William James describes a separation of the
visible and the invisible worlds, which parallels the
separation between sacred and profane:
Religion has meant many things in human history: but when from now
onward I use the word I mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as
declaring that the so called order of nature, which constitutes this
world’s experience, is only one portion of the total universe, and that
there stretches beyond this visible world an unseen world of which we
now know nothing positive, but in its relation to which the true significance of our present mundane life consists. A man’s religious
faith … means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen
order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be
found explained. (James, 1897/1956, p. 51)
We will use the presence of the supernatural
premise, or the supernatural assumption, as the touchstone for defining certain human behaviors as religious.
All religions, as ideologies, promote the idea of an
invisible world inhabited by various creatures, gods,
angels, and devils, which control much of what happens
to us. And if we believe in the existence of the unseen
world, then religion as a social institution is for us the
mediator between the invisible supernatural world and
the visible, human, and natural world; but that institution,
with the behaviors tied to it, does not exist without the
belief in the supernatural.
While this description may be too narrow to include
some traditions sometimes referred to as religious, it is
broad enough to cover what to most human beings is
connoted by religion through their concrete historical
experience. This definition has the advantages of
being concrete, historical, and close to the direct experience of the proverbial person in the street, the common
believer. The behavioral definition of religion has to be
close to that which real people experience and recognize
immediately, and such substantive definitions are in line
with the traditions of scholarship in the study of religion.
The universality of our definition is based on the
universality of beliefs in the world of the spirits. Despite
the cultural variations and the claims for uniqueness,
there is a universal common denominator to religion. The
description of supernaturalism is valid not just for
westerners, but also for Shintoists, Hindus, Moslems,
Sikhs, and members of thousands of other religious
groups.
While religion is an institution and a belief system,
what we measure in the behavior of individuals is
religiosity, which is the adherence to a particular belief
system—any one of the 10,000 religions currently in
existence. This does not imply, of course, that individuals
have much choice in matters of religion. In 99% of cases,
young humans are successfully taught to accept the tenets
of whatever faith their parents hold.
Religiosity is a continuous, rather than a discrete,
variable. The expression of religious beliefs is the main
measure of religiosity, which is then related to other
beliefs, and to psychological and behavioral indicators.
Religiosity is not randomly distributed in any population,
117
118
as beliefs and attitudes are correlated with the primordial
social roles of age, sex, and social status (Beit-Hallahmi &
Argyle, 1997).
Individuals follow cultural scripts for religion, as for
other behaviors. But we can still point to some generalizations or even universals. Despite the cross-cultural and
historical evidence for the diversity of religious beliefs,
there are also some universal features in terms of the
common belief system. Gods are envisaged as invisible
spiritual forces with some of the properties of persons,
who are good and powerful. They are usually thought of
as male. Religion is universally claimed as the source of,
and the authority for, moral codes, impulse control, and
social power arrangements. Women are everywhere more
committed to religion, and the family is everywhere
sacralized.
METHODS
Most of our data on traditional cultures come from
anthropological research, while most research on industrialized societies is based on sociological surveys and
psychological research. Anthropological and historical
studies in traditional societies do not normally look at
individual differences, and cover the structure and
contents of a whole cultural system. Representative
cultural practices and beliefs are observed and recorded
by outsiders, who normally do not question individual
adherence to them (Needham, 1972).
In the industrialized societies of the developed world
we collect our data by using as our instruments surveys,
interviews, questionnaires, and standard psychological
tests, with the emphasis being the individual’s beliefs and
attitudes. Sociologists may be interested in group differences, while psychologists focus on individual differences and the correlates of different belief systems. The
individual believer is asked to reply to specific questions
and then becomes part of a data pool. The simple and
direct question “Do you believe in God?” has become a
standard and useful measure of one’s basic stand vis-à-vis
religion. We can compare answers to this question across
cultures and we can compare the answers of men and
women. If we are going to use ethnographic observations
in the industrialized world, they will amplify the findings
we already have from studies using questionnaires or
interviews.
Religion, Religiosity, and Gender
FINDINGS
It is important to note that only a few studies have ever
been started with sex differences in religiosity as the
actual research question. While almost no studies were
ever initiated to look at sex differences, the finding of
consistent differences between women and men just
emerged from data whenever researchers cared to make
a comparison (e.g., Hollinger & Smith, 2002).
In studies of religious behavior over the past
100 years, the greater religiosity of women must be one
of the oldest, and clearest, findings. It has been reported
in comprehensive surveys of the research literature in
the sociology and psychology of religion over the past
50 years (Argyle, 1958; Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975;
Beit-Hallahmi, 1989; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997;
Lenski, 1953), but this ubiquitous difference between
men and women is rarely mentioned in the literature on
sex differences.
We will use the ratio of females to males as our main
measure of differences, so that 1.50, for example, means
that 50% more women than men are involved in a particular activity. We will start with those aspects of religion
where the greatest differences have been reported, and
work downwards.
High-Involvement Rituals
The largest differences have been reported for Catholics
going to confession (1.93; Fichter, 1952), and people
being converted in the Billy Graham crusades of the
20th century (1.8; Colquhoun, 1955). Women in an
African American independent church were much more
likely to go into a trance in services (Alland, 1962), and
the sex ratio for members of Pentecostal and similar
groups is about 2.0 : 1.
Daily Prayer
The sex ratio is higher here than for any other form
of religious activity. Gallup (1977) found a ratio of 1.57
for reading the Bible and 1.36 for prayer in the United
States, and Gorer (1955) found a ratio of 1.87 for English
adults. Anthropological reports indicate that Hindu
women are more likely than men to pray at home shrines
(Firth, 1997).
Findings
119
Beliefs
In every single case, as expected, women are more likely
than men to describe themselves as religious. The ratios
range from 1.05 in Brazil to 1.69 in Estonia (cf. Gallup,
1980). In the British Values Survey (Gerard, 1985), factor analysis produced two factors, and the scores on each
were combined to give a single index of religious
commitment. One factor consisted of items about basic
beliefs and reported religious experience, and the second
was about ritual attendance and positive attitudes to the
church. Fifteen percent of men, 20% of working women,
and 26% of nonworking women had high scores—a ratio
of 1.53 if the two groups of women are combined.
The ratio for the medium to high group was 1.61. The
American Gallup ratio for “being a religious person” was
1.45. As reported by Gallup and Lindsay (1999), women
in the United States have been found to be significantly
higher than men on all measures of religiosity used in
public opinion polls. This is the largest data pool
anywhere in the world.
Anderson (1993) reported that in the Soviet Union
the higher level of religiosity among women was found
in both the European republics, with their Christian
heritage, and the republics of Central Asia, which were
historically part of the Islamic world.
In a survey of 1172 Ethiopian students, representing
three Christian denominations and Islam, and 15 ethnic
groups, the 408 females received higher overall religiosity scores than the males (Wondimu, Beit-Hallahmi, &
Abbink, 2001).
Women are more conservative or orthodox in religion,
that is, they more often say they hold the central and traditional beliefs, in God, the afterlife, and, for Christians,
that Jesus was the Son of God. In British surveys the ratio
is about 1.50; in American surveys it is lower, about 1.2,
because of the larger percentages of believers. Surveys all
over Europe have reported similar ratios (Zulehner &
Denz, 1993). The picture is even more striking if we look
at the reality of religiosity in post-Communist Russia.
The rate of belief in God there was found to be 32%
for men and 57% for women (White, McAllister, &
Kryshtanovskaya, 1994).
Religious Experience
Differences here are smaller: the ratios are 1.32 in Britain
(Hay, 1982), and 1.20 in the United States (Back &
Bourque, 1970), although the overall percentages are
much the same in both countries at about 33%. This
gender difference is found in early childhood; at age 9–10
more girls say they have experienced “God’s closeness”
(Tamminen, 1994).
Ritual Attendance
This is the most visible and obvious source of sex differences, though the differences are lower. In the United
States, the ratio is typically about 1.20 and in Britain it is
higher at 1.50. Buddenbaum (1981) reported that women
in the United States are also overrepresented among
viewers of televangelists.
If we make some basic ethnographic observations,
and visit churches in Rome, Paris, New York City, or
Moscow, we will immediately realize that women make
up the majority of those in attendance. Anthropological
observations in India indicate that women make up the
majority of those attending Hindu temples (Firth, 1997).
In those traditions where ritual attendance by women is
discouraged, such as Islam and Judaism, the majority of
those attending will be men (Loewenthal, MacLeod, &
Cinnirella, 2002).
Overall Religiosity Measures
Stark (2002) provides data on levels of religiosity for men
and women in 49 western and eight nonwestern cultures.
Membership in Different
Denominations
In all Christian denominations in the world, with the
exception of Roman Catholicism, there are more women
than men, but the proportion varies. In a survey of
310,000 Australian churchgoers (Kaldor et al., 1994) the
following ratios were found: Anglicans, 2.02; United
Church, 1.86; Baptists, 1.38; Pentecostalists, 1.33.
American Gallup polls found the following
ratios (Gallup & Castelli, 1989): Episcopalians, 1.39;
Charismatics, 1.35; Evangelicals, 1.28; Mormons, 1.28;
Methodists, 1.23; Baptists, 1.00; Lutherans, 1.00;
Catholics, 0.96; No religion, 0.59.
In British studies the Church of England again has
a high sex ratio, and the Roman Catholic church a low one,
but there are also very high ratios for new religious movements, often between 2 : 1 and 4 : 1 (e.g., Wilson, 1961).
120
Religion, Religiosity, and Gender
Para-Religious Beliefs
Women are also higher in adhering to para-religious
beliefs, or “the occult,” such as astrology, “telepathy,” and
fortune-telling, as well as readier to believe in various
“miracle drugs” (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Markle,
Petersen, & Wagenfeld, 1978; Wuthnow, 1976; Zeidner &
Beit-Hallahmi, 1988). In 1999, a survey of 3,569
university students in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia,
Uruguay, the United States, Austria, Germany, Great
Britain, Italy, and Portugal looked at involvement in religious and esoteric beliefs and practices. It was found that
females were both more religious and more involved in
esoteric beliefs and practices (Hollinger & Smith, 2002).
ANALYSIS
AND
EXPLANATIONS
The greater religiosity of women must be one of the
oldest, and clearest, findings in the psychology of
religion, and should be considered one of the universals
in human religious behavior, but its explanation has
proved challenging. The greater religiosity of women
is often viewed as a puzzle and a paradox. That is because
religious organizations, institutions, and traditions are
developed and controlled by men. There is one aspect of
religious activity where men predominate, and that is
public worship.
In some historical religious traditions, such as Islam
and Judaism, women are not expected to take an active or
public role in most religious activities, as in many traditional cultures public activity by women is limited and
controlled (Anderson, 1993; Loewenthal et al., 2002).
Beyond the discouragement of public participation
in some cultures, clergy roles are reserved for men in
most religions around the world. Women clergy have
been the rare exception (Yinger, 1970). The social institution of religion and specific religious institutions in
different societies are in the overwhelming majority of
cases controlled by men. Cross-culturally we can say that
women are rarely in positions of power and influence in
religious institutions and organizations, and in many
cases they are formally excluded from positions of
liturgical and clerical leadership.
Weber (1968) observed that religious movements of
the underprivileged gave equality to women at first, but
as they became established withdrew it. This theory has
been found to be true of American Pentecostal sects in the
early 20th century, some of them African American.
At first they had many charismatic women preachers,
sometimes the founders of sects, but their numbers
then fell (Barfoot & Sheppard, 1980). This is true for the
rare female founders of modern religious movements
such as Ellen G. White, Mary Baker Eddy, and Madame
Blavatsky. The groups they started soon came to be run
by men.
We can describe the psychological world of the
committed religious believer as a pyramid made of three
tiers. The top of the pyramid is the religious pantheon,
made up of imaginary invisible creatures. Then we have
actual humans who constitute the religious hierarchy. The
broad base of the pyramid is made up of the followers, who
are the largest group. As we get closer to the top of this
pyramid, we find fewer and fewer females, and as we move
to the bottom tier, we find a female majority. The pantheon,
which includes gods, angels, saints, and mystics, has little
room for women (Carroll, 1979). The world of religious
figures, real and imagined, which has in it angels, demons,
saints, founders, prophets, priests, is thus a masculine
universe. It was obviously created by men, reflecting their
wishes, so why are women so willing to adopt this
masculine universe and commit themselves to it?
Here are some of the most likely explanations.
Differences in Personality
Women’s religiosity has often been explained as related
to personality factors. Thus the overrepresentation of
women in 19th-century U.S. revivalism was explained by
Cross (1965) as due to their being “… less educated, more
superstitious, and more zealous than men” (p. 178). More
recently, it has been suggested “that women’s behaviour
is more often directed by sensitivity and intuition, while
men are more likely to act according to rational and
logical considerations” (Hollinger & Smith, 2002, p. 242).
There is plenty of evidence for personality
differences between men and women; some of these may
be relevant to the differences in religious activity. Some
of them may be innate, such as greater male aggressiveness and risk-taking (Geary, 1998; Gray, 1971; Stark,
2002). Males are more likely to die violently and to
commit suicide at any age. They tend to be more aggressive and dominance oriented than females in most mammalian species, including humans (e.g., Daly & Wilson,
1983; Pratto, Sidanius, & Stallworth, 1993). Human males
are verbally and physically more aggressive than females
Analysis and Explanations
across cultures (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Rohner, 1976).
Research suggests that males tend to be more inclined
toward aggressiveness, whether physical or psychological (Cairns et al., 1989; Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Steffen,
1986). Sex differences in dominance emerge early in the
preschool years and at about the same time in all cultures
that have been studied (Maccoby, 1988). As children,
boys are observed to be competitive and aggressive. Girls
are sociable and helpful, and enjoy social contact for its
own sake (Opie, 1993). “In general, women tend to
manifest behaviors that can be described as socially
sensitive, friendly, and concerned with others’ welfare,
whereas men tend to manifest behaviors that can be
described as dominant, controlling, and independent”
(Eagly, 1995, p. 154).
Are women more emotional? They clearly are
readier to express feelings and admit dependence. They
are also readier to demonstrate interpersonal caring,
sensitivity, and warmth. Spence and Helmreich (1978)
described the dichotomy of orientations in females and
males as communion versus agency. Communion is the
tendency to be concerned about closeness to others, while
agency is the tendency to be self-interested and assertive.
It has been suggested that “the feminine (not simply
female) voice adheres to a calculus of development
through attachments and connectedness, rather than
growth through separation and substitution” (Thompson,
1991, p. 391). In most cultures males are less nurturant
and less emotionally expressive (D’Andrade, 1967),
while women are more submissive and passive, anxious,
and dependent (Garai & Scheinfeld, 1968).
J. B. Miller (1986) suggested that the subjective
experiences of women are affected by two major factors:
first, the permanent inequality in social relationships,
under which women are encouraged to be submissive,
dependent, and passive; second, the relational self is the
core of self-structure in women. Boys’ groups tend to be
larger, forming “gangs,” while girls organize themselves
into smaller groups or pairs (Thorne, 1993). Women
assume more responsibility for relationship maintenance
and social support (Belle, 1982; Turner, 1994). Empathy,
defined as the vicarious affective response to another person’s feelings, is more prevalent in females (Hoffman,
1977). Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1989) suggested that, throughout
human evolution, the social style of females provided the
basis for maintaining the long-term stability of social
groups. “Women throughout the world are perceived to
be the nurturant sex” (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, p. 215).
121
Males appear to be relatively more object oriented, and
females more people oriented (McGuinness, 1993). On
standard personality inventories, such as the Edwards
Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS), consistent differences are found, with women higher on Affiliation,
and Nurturance, and men higher on Dominance and
Aggression.
Females “express more fear, are more susceptible to
anxiety, are more lacking in task confidence, seek more
help and reassurance, maintain greater proximity to
friends, score higher on social desirability, and at the
younger ages at which compliance has been studied, are
more compliant with adults” (Block, 1976, p. 307). There
is much evidence showing that women have stronger guilt
feelings, and are more intropunitive than men (Wright,
1971). It has been stated that women experience higher
rates of childhood abuse, especially sexual abuse, which
is a predictor of later depression, and may have depressions related to hormonal changes and to sex-role conditioning that encourages patterns of negative thinking and
passivity (McGrath, Keita, Strickland, & Russo, 1990). In
the United States, it has been estimated that between
2.3% and 3.2% of men, and between 4.5% and 9.3% of
women, meet the diagnostic criteria for major depressive
disorder at any given moment (Depression Guideline
Panel, 1993). Higher levels of depression are found in
women, starting in adolescence. This has been explained
as the result of “ruminative coping,” a tendency to focus
inwardly and passively on one’s emotions (NolenHoeksema, 1990, 1995). Kaplan (1983) showed that
women were more commonly diagnosed as suffering
from disorders of internalized conflict, such as depression, cyclothymic disorder, panic disorder, and phobia,
while men were more often diagnosed as suffering
from acting-out disorders, such as substance abuse or
antisocial personality.
Many of the “female” traits could well lead to greater
religiosity. Dependence, on gods and saints, is part of the
religious attitude. Nurturance is a basic religious value.
Guilt feelings are often appealed to in sermons and
revivals, which then offer relief from them. A. S. Miller
and Hoffmann (1995) found that males’ risk preference
and females’ risk aversion were related to religiosity.
The basic difference in personality styles is
reflected in fantasy products. Women’s dreams involve
relationships and loss, while men are likely to dream
about fighting, protecting, and competing, almost always
with other men (McQuarrie, Kramer, & Bonnet, 1980;
122
A. R. Moffitt, Kramer, & Hoffmann, 1993). And when
ready-made fantasies are consumed, as in watching television, women constitute the audience for soap operas
while men watch aggressive sports (or follow political
and economic news, which are often far from fantasies).
Women live vicarious family and relationship conflicts
and happy endings through the reading of popular
romance novels. It has been noted that religious mythologies deal with family conflicts, loyalty, and betrayal, as
well as with fierce competition among men.
Religious attitudes are crystallized during adolescence, and it seems likely that sex differences in religion
are also fixed at this age. Suziedalis and Potvin (1981),
with a large sample of children aged 12–17, found that
religiosity was related quite differently to the self-images
of boys and girls. For the girls, religion was related to
aspects of extraversion such as help-seeking and sociability, and to being rule-bound rather than rebellious,
interpreted as needing external guidance. For the boys,
religion was related to an activity cluster (adventurous
and ambitious), but not to a potency cluster of “macho”
scales, and also related to a socialized cluster (nurturance,
trusting, and tolerant), interpreted as inner harmony.
It seems that males and females experience the
transition from adolescence to adulthood as a crisis
and/or an opportunity, but it is more of the former for
females. Block and Robins (1993) found that between the
ages of 14 and 23, males became more self-confident and
females became less self-confident. At age 23, women
with high self-esteem valued relationships with others.
At age 23, men with high self-esteem were more
emotionally distant and controlled in interpersonal
relations.
Psychological Femininity
Is religiosity a matter of psychological femininity, rather
than sex roles and gender? Thompson (1991) found that
both men and women who had a feminine self-image,
on the Bem Sex Role Inventory, were more religious,
especially as measured by prayer and other devotional
activities. In a study of 411 undergraduates, Mercer and
Durham (1999) found that those with a feminine or
androgynous orientation, of both sexes, were higher on
a mysticism scale.
Individuals who choose the priesthood as their life’s
work are clearly demonstrating a high level of religious
commitment, becoming the embodiment of the religious
Religion, Religiosity, and Gender
message. What we observe is that the priesthood in many
cultures presents indications of an ambiguous and
conflicted sexual identity. The idea of a third sex appeared
in both emic and etic discourse in many cultures, from the
masculine/feminine shaman to European priesthood.
Transcending normal sex roles through sex/gender
ambiguity or androgyny is tied to “spiritual prowess” or
religious authority in many cultures. The discussion of
celibacy regarding Roman Catholic priests is one modern
example.
Research on the clergy in Western cultures shows
the relevance of these notions. It turns out that Western
clergy are similar to traditional shamans. Francis (1991)
tested British candidates for the clergy (men and women)
and concluded that male clergy are more feminine, and
female clergy more masculine, than the averages for their
sexes. Clergy seem to be different from the general
population in terms of sexuality. It has only been possible fairly recently for data on homosexuality to be obtainable, and there are still no proper surveys. Wolf (1989)
concluded that about 40% of American Roman Catholic
priests are gay; this was the average estimate of the gay
priests interviewed. Sipe (1990) interviewed 1,000
Catholic priests, half of them in therapy, and 500 of their
sexual partners, and concluded that 20% were in a homosexual relationship and 20% were in a stable relationship
with a woman. Male members of the clergy not only
differ from the majority of men in sexual orientation, but
have problems in object choice, leading to pedophilia
(Loftus & Camargo, 1993). Thus it seems that a religious
career may be chosen to compensate for problems in
sexual identity and to find a shelter from normative
sexual and family commitments. Religion as an institution is thus maintained by a mass of women followers
and a group of male religious professionals who are
ambivalent, ambiguous, or deviant in terms of sexual
orientations and practices.
Coping Styles
Women’s social status, in interaction with personality
dispositions, may create a modal “feminine” coping style.
In responding to challenges, great and small, women
show a greater tendency to express emotions and seek
social support. Long (1990) showed that women are more
prone to use emotionally oriented coping and seek more
social support in stressful situations when compared with
men. Pearlin and Schooler (1978) reported that men use
Analysis and Explanations
more effective coping strategies than women, and
Folkman and Lazarus (1980) found that, on the job, men
show a tendency to use more problem-oriented strategies
than women. Ilfeld (1980) suggested that women use
more resignation and rationalization than men and are
less prone to use direct action. All these findings fit
traditional stereotypes about women’s and men’s roles in
society (Ptacek, Smith, & Zanas, 1992).
Differences in Socialization
Just as important as personality styles may be the
different ways in which boys and girls are socialized.
Barry, Bacon, and Child (1957) found that nearly all
cultures emphasize nurturance, obedience, and responsibility for girls, while boys are trained for self-reliance and
independence.
[T]he socialization of women is said to emphasize conflict resolution,
submission, gentleness, nurturance, and other expressive values that are
congruent with religious emphases. By contrast, the more instrumental
emphases in male socialization are said to make religion less consonant
with male roles, values, and self-images. (de Vaus & MacAllister, 1987,
p. 472)
It has sometimes been suggested that female socialization includes the expectation of being active in the
religious congregation, doing “religious work,” supporting and nurturing others, and being subordinate to the
clergy.
Women Are Better Socialized
This explanation, which is connected to the previous
explanation, suggests that women are on the whole much
better socialized than men, and they conform much more
to most social norms. This female conformity and its
relation to religion was noted by de Beauvoir (1949), who
suggested that it has to do with the closeness between
mother and daughter. The difference in aggressive tendencies, together with the greater conformity of women, is
reflected in the large differences that have been noted in the
occurrence of antisocial behavior, which is so much rarer
among women (T. E. Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001).
Structural Location in Society
Women are not only well socialized, but they are also the
main socializers. They are the main transmitters and
123
guardians of cultural norms and traditions, including
religion, in their maternal role. This role leads to some
deprivation. Moberg (1962) suggested that the childrearing duties of women actually lead to greater social
isolation, relieved by the involvement in religious activities. A closely related explanation is that women will be
more religious when involved in child-rearing. However,
careful analysis in an Australian survey, comparing
otherwise similar females with and without children,
has found that children have no such effect (de Vaus &
McAllister, 1987). The greatest gender difference in
this study was found for single individuals; the difference
declined during the life cycle and was lowest after
children had left home. However, in a study of 2,384
subjects in Holland, Steggarda (1993) found that men,
but not women, engaged in child-rearing were more
religious, so that there was no gender difference when
they both shared this task.
Parental Projection Explanations
None of the theories discussed so far throw any light on
the greater sex differences found in membership ratios,
especially in Protestant groups. However, Freud’s notions
of paternal projection can provide an explanation.
According to psychoanalytic conceptions of the oedipal
period (age 3–6), girls should have a positive attachment
to fathers but boys should feel ambivalent about them.
Freud then proposed that God is a fantasy and substitute
father figure. The main evidence in support of this
hypothesis is the finding that images of God are similar
to images of parents, particularly to opposite sex parents.
For women the image of God, and attitudes to God, are
more similar to those towards father, and for men to those
towards mother. For women God is seen more often as a
healer; He is also seen as more often benevolent rather
than punitive. If the culture carries an image of God as
male, as a father, this image should therefore appeal more
to women. It is also found that Catholics experience God
as more like a mother (Rees, 1967); in addition the Virgin
Mary and some female saints are very prominent in
Catholic worship. This could produce a stronger religious
response from males. For Protestants the main object of
worship is Jesus, and this should appeal to women.
DeConchy (1968) found, in a large study of Roman
Catholic children, that for boys the image of God was
more often connected with the Virgin Mary, while for
girls it was linked more often to Jesus. Also relevant to
124
women’s experience is the maleness of most of the
clergy, who are addressed as “father” in many religious
traditions.
Women Are More Deprived
This explanation looks at women’s social status and
power: “There is not a single society known where
women-as-a-group have decision-making power over
men or where they define the rules of sexual conduct or
control marriage exchanges” (Lerner, 1986, p. 30) It is
easy to conclude that women are deprived and oppressed
in many social situations. Reporting on the greater
religiosity of women in the Soviet Union and then in
post-communist Russia, Anderson quotes an unnamed
“Intourist guide, who explained that there were greater
numbers of women in church ‘because women suffer
more’ ” (Anderson, 1993, p. 209).
In many cultures, being a woman often means also
being powerless, illiterate, and poor. When being female
is tied to lack of social support, religious involvement is
more likely (Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975). Anderson
(1993) reported on “… surveys which demonstrated that
up to 50 per cent of many congregations were single
women” (p. 209). Deprivation often leads members of
oppressed groups to coping through imaginary compensation and magical acts, and religion in this case functions
as it does with other oppressed groups (Beit-Hallahmi,
1989). A 1989 study of 4,367 adolescents in 13 nations
(Australia, Brazil, China, Greece, India, Israel, Kuwait,
The Netherlands, The Philippines, Russia, Turkey, the
United States, and Venezuela), which looked at coping
styles, led to the following conclusion: “We find it a
fascinating comment on gender that females responded …
more like lower … SES groups and more like minority
than majority groups! This occurred within all socioeconomic groupings and most countries” (Gibson-Cline,
1996, p. 267).
Women Are Not Allowed to Express
Their Sexuality
Explanations of religiosity as related to sexuality are
especially relevant to women, who have always been less
free to express their sexual impulses. Some reports of
mystical experiences, especially in women, seem to
reflect diverted sexual energy.
Religion, Religiosity, and Gender
Women Suffer from Predatory
Male Sexuality
Beit-Hallahmi (1997) suggested that religion offers
women a shelter from the male way of defining and
controlling sexuality, which views women as sex objects
and regards unattached women as easy prey for male
predators. Religion also sacralizes maternity, which is
another shelter from male advances.
The Effect of Employment
Luckman (1967) suggested that those most involved in
religion are women, especially those not at work, together
with the old and young, who are also not at work. There
are a number of reasons why women who are not at work
should be more active in religion—they have more time,
they may feel that they are not filling a valued social role
or feel socially isolated, they have narrower social
contacts and so are under less secular pressure, and
they have less conflict with worldly instrumental activities (de Vaus, 1984). Large-scale surveys show that it is
indeed the case that women at work are less active in
religion, though not very much less (de Vaus, 1984; Gee,
1991). But how about men—should employment status
affect them equally? In an Australian study, de Vaus and
McAllister (1987) found that employment was a powerful explanatory variable for female ritual attendance after
many controls had been used; it explained a little over
half the variance. However, this does not explain the other
half of sex differences in religion; when men and women
both work, the sex ratio is smaller, but it is not one.
However, the main problem concerns men. In a
large-scale American study (de Vaus, 1984) it was found
that men were less religious the less they worked, as was
also found by Hertel (1988) with data from 14,900 people.
The opposite effects of work on attendance for men and
women may be because those who play the usual gender
roles also play conventional religious ones (Steggarda,
1993). Perhaps women who are independent and assertive
enough to go to work are by temperament less attracted to
religion, as a later theory will explain. Perhaps men who
are out of work are too demoralized to attend religious
services. Part of the explanation is simpler—unemployed
men are less educated and of lower social class, two
groups which are less religious (Hertel, 1988). According
to deprivation–frustration theories of religion they should
attend religious services more often, but they do not.
References
125
Differences in Deity Images
Studies have shown that women hold different images of
God. For them God is seen more as a healer, as supportive rather than instrumental (Nelsen, Cheek, & Hau,
1985), and as loving, comforting, and forgiving, where
males see him as a supreme power, a driving force, a
planner and controller (Wright & Cox, 1967). Yeaman
(1987), in a study of members of a radical Roman
Catholic association, found that 73% of the women had a
“sex-inclusive” image of God, that is, as neither male nor
female, compared with 58% of the men. Hood and Hall
(1980) tested a sex-related theory of religious experience
with 220 students. They found that the females described
both their sexual and their mystical experiences, when
they had them, in “receptive” terms; the males described
their sexual experiences, but not their mystical ones,
in “agentic” terms. Therefore the sexual model was
supported for females but not for males. These findings
indicate that women may experience the religious
message in a feminine compensatory way, thus appropriating and creating a female sphere of religiosity which
subverts the intent of the male hierarchy.
CONCLUSION
The greater religiosity of women, found in most studies
conducted over the past 100 years, is a true cross-cultural
finding which is rarely discussed or noted. It seems to
grow out of a complex of factors, which include women’s
typical personality style, their social status, their being
better socialized and in the role of socializers in all cultures, and their childhood experiences. The underlying
causes range from the innate physiology of women,
which makes them less aggressive, to their inferior social
position in most cultures. Looking at the phenomenon of
women’s religiosity and its psychological contexts
teaches us much about religion’s universal message and
its interaction with other social institutions. It also helps
us appreciate women’s unique ways of coping with both
anatomical “destiny” and culture.
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Gender-Based Social Groups
Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember
INTRODUCTION
In most of the societies known to anthropology, married
couples live with or near the groom’s or bride’s kin. Since
no existing society allows sex or marriage between brothers and sisters or between parents and children, some children when they grow up must leave their homes or home
villages and move to their spouses’ natal places of residence. But who leaves? There are only a few choices—
females only leave, which we call patrilocal or virilocal
residence; males only leave, which we call matrilocal or
uxorilocal residence; females or males leave, which we
call bilocal residence; both males and females leave,
which we call neolocal residence; neither gender leaves,
which we call duolocal residence. (Then, there is avunculocal residence—see below.) These patterns of marital
residence can have profound psychological consequences
for the individuals involved, and for the social organization of the society, as we shall see. For example, the most
common pattern of residence is patrilocal residence; the
couple lives with or near the husband’s parents. In a society with this pattern of residence, many if not all the males
in the band or village are likely to be related to each other,
but only some of the in-marrying women are likely to be
related to each other. So an in-marrying woman not only
has to deal with leaving her natal family, but she also has
to deal with the fact that she is moving into a situation
where the husband is surrounded by his kin, and her kin
are somewhere else, sometimes far away. Minturn (1993,
pp. 54–71) has published the text of a letter that one new
Rajput bride sent to her mother shortly after marrying into
her husband’s village. The letter was written when the
bride had been gone for 6 weeks. She repeatedly asked if
her mother, her father, her aunts had forgotten her. She
begged to be called home and said her bags were packed.
She described herself as “a parrot in a cage” and complained about her in-laws. Seven years later the mother
reported that the daughter was finally happy. But some
other brides had serious symptoms of psychological
distress—ghost possession, serious depression, or suicide
after their marriages.
We know of no systematic research on the
psychological state of in-marrying women, but the
anecdotal evidence provided by Minturn and others
points to considerable stress. Do men in matrilocal
(uxorilocal) societies, where couples live with or near the
wife’s parents, have similar stress? We do not know. But
there is reason to think that stress for men is not as serious
in matrilocal societies because, as we shall see later,
men in matrilocal societies usually do not move far away
from their kin; indeed, they may merely move “across
the street.”
Because marital residence is the main predictor of
the kinds of transfamily kin groups there may be, we first
address what seems to explain the variation in marital
residence patterns. Then we discuss what might explain
the kinds of kin or descent group that may develop when
people practice patrilocal, matrilocal, bilocal, or neolocal
residence. We then briefly examine some unisex associations. We close with a brief look at some of the likely
consequences of gender-based social organization.
PATTERNS
OF
MARITAL RESIDENCE
There are three gender-neutral rules of residence. They
are neolocal residence, where couples live apart from the
kin of either spouse, bilocal (ambilocal ) residence, where
couples can live with either set of parents, and duolocal
residence, where both the husband and wife remain in
their own homes. The last residence pattern mentioned,
duolocal residence, is exceedingly rare and usually
occurs where the marriage bond is very weak (see the
article on the Mosuo in this encyclopedia). Because
duolocal residence is so rare, we shall not deal with it any
further here. Most societies known to anthropology do
not have gender-neutral patterns. Bilocal residence only
occurs in about 7% of the world’s societies, and neolocal
in about 5% (see Figure 1).
While bilocal residence looks like a couple may
choose with whom they want to reside, the choice is
probably based more on who is still alive that you could
128
Male-Based versus Female-Based Residence Patterns
80
70
Percentage of societies
67
60
50
40
30
20
10
15
7
0
Patrilocal Matrilocal
4
5
Bilocal Avunculocal Neolocal
Type of residence
Figure 1. The percentage of societies with each type of
residence. Calculated from Cross tabulations of Murdock’s world
ethnographic sample, by A. D. Coult and R. Habenstein, 1965,
Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
live and work with. Service (1962, p. 137) suggested that
depopulation of indigenous populations may have been
responsible for much of the observed bilocal residence in
the anthropological record. In the last 400 years, contact
with Europeans in many parts of the world resulted in
severe population losses among the local people who
lacked resistance to European diseases. Even diseases that
were not killers to Europeans (e.g., colds, measles) caused
widespread mortality in newly contacted populations,
particularly in regions furthest from Europe (e.g., the New
World and the islands of the far Pacific). With severe
population losses, a population with a unilocal residence
rule (patrilocal or matrilocal) would not be able to maintain it. Assuming that couples need to live and work with
kin, they would be forced to be pragmatic and live with
whichever group of relatives was still alive. Thus a couple
in a patrilocal (matrilocal) society might not have enough
husband’s (wife’s) relatives to live with, and the likely
consequence would be a pattern of bilocal residence—
some couples living with the husband’s relatives and some
couples living with the wife’s relatives. We designed a test
(C. R. Ember & Ember, 1972) of Service’s interpretation,
using data from a worldwide sample of societies, and it
turned out to support Service’s theory: societies with
bilocal residence and appreciably frequent departures
from unilocal residence (multilocal residence) were significantly likely to have been depopulated in their recent
129
history. Some other factors also seem to predict bilocality
and multilocality among hunter–gatherers (unpredictable
rainfall in an arid environment and very small communities; C. R. Ember, 1975). But generally, depopulation
appears to be the most important predictor of bilocal
residence (C. R. Ember & Ember, 1972). Thus, residence
patterns that depart from gender-based patterns are
probably recent phenomena, due mostly to the depopulation that often accompanied contact with expanding
Europeans.
The presence of a commercial or a money economy,
which is also a recent phenomenon in some regions, is
probably what mainly makes neolocal residence possible.
Couples can buy the goods and services they need without having to depend much on kin. Cross-culturally,
money and commercial exchange do predict neolocal
residence (M. Ember, 1967a). Although neolocal residence
is not very common in the anthropological record in
terms of percentages of societies (see Figure 1), it has
increased in frequency as commercialization has become
more and more important in the world.
Let us now turn to the gender-based patterns of
residence.
MALE-BASED VERSUS FEMALE-BASED
RESIDENCE PATTERNS
The two most prevalent residence patterns are patrilocal
(67% of the world’s societies) and matrilocal (15% of the
world’s societies). There is one residence pattern that we
have not yet discussed. It is called avunculocal residence.
In this unusual pattern, couples live with the husband’s
mother’s brother. Although it might be that both sons and
daughters leave their homes to go to the husband’s
mother’s brother, sometimes a boy will marry his mother’s
brother’s daughter, in which case the wife remains home
after her marriage. And if a boy has previously moved to
his mother’s brother’s house, avunculocal residence may
mean that neither the bride nor the groom leaves home
after they get married. Avunculocal residence does result
in males being localized, but instead of father and son, it
is a man and his sister’s son. Avunculocal residence is
difficult to explain without first discussing matrilineal
descent, so we will come back to this pattern later.
The major contrast, and perhaps the most important
to explain, is why a society would choose to have sons
130
stay (patrilocal residence) or daughters stay (matrilocal
residence). In other words, what explains patrilocality
versus matrilocality?
For many years the traditional explanation of
residential choice was that it was a function of who the
“breadwinner” was. Presumably parents would be reluctant to let the gender contributing most to the economy
leave home. To test this explanation, one can compare
those societies with a high male contribution to basic
food-getting activities (gathering, hunting, fishing,
herding, agriculture) and those with a high female
contribution to see if degree of contribution does predict
residence. Two separate studies found no support for this
simple expectation (Divale, 1974; M. Ember & Ember,
1971). Of course, this result does not mean that subsistence contribution has no effect; it may simply mean that
subsistence contribution has no simple effect on residence (Korotayev, 2003; Pasternak, Ember, & Ember,
1997, p. 223). Indeed, the relationship between residence
and subsistence contribution may be masked by a more
important factor—the type of warfare in the society.
Most societies in the world have had warfare, by
which we mean armed combat between communities or
larger territorial units. In most societies people fight
with communities belonging to the same language group
or society—we call such warfare internal warfare.
However, some societies have purely external warfare, or
warfare only with people of a different society who speak
a different language. Usually, then, in these societies,
the “enemies” are more distant than speakers of the same
language. We have reasoned that if a community may be
attacked by one or more nearby communities, parents would
want their sons at home to protect them (M. Ember &
Ember, 1971). They would mistrust potential sonsin-law from other communities because such communities could have been enemy communities in the past or
could be in the future. Daughters might be valuable
economically if they do much of the subsistence work, but
we argue that security concerns would take precedence
over economic considerations, and so patrilocal residence
should be favored when the warfare is at least sometimes
internal, when the enemies might be coming from close by.
On the other hand, if daughters contribute a great deal to
the economy and warfare is purely external, parents need
not worry who stays at home after marriage. There is no
reason to suppose that a son-in-law would not defend the
family against people attacking from another society.
It is this situation (purely external warfare and women
Gender-Based Social Groups
contributing a great deal to subsistence) that should favor
matrilocal rather than patrilocal residence. Cross-cultural
research confirms that internal warfare predicts patrilocal residence and purely external warfare predicts
matrilocal residence (Divale, 1974; M. Ember & Ember,
1971). Furthermore, the combination of purely external
warfare and relatively high female contribution to subsistence predicts matrilocal residence even more strongly,
and patrilocal residence is predicted by internal warfare
or by males doing most of the subsistence work
(C. R. Ember, 1974, endnote 2).
It should be noted that Divale (1974) has different
interpretations for the relationship between internal
warfare and patrilocality and for the relationship between
purely external warfare and matrilocality. Whereas the
Embers argue that type of warfare is a cause of matrilocal or patrilocal residence, Divale (1974) argues that type
of warfare is a consequence of residence. More specifically, he suggests that residence will “normally” be
patrilocal because males are generally dominant. Citing
“fraternal interest group theory,” Divale suggests that
localized groups of related males are likely to get into
fights with other such groups in nearby communities,
creating internal warfare. He suggests that matrilocal
residence develops when people migrate into an already
inhabited area and the intruding society cannot afford
internal fighting, which would make it adaptive to switch
to matrilocal residence to promote internal harmony.
Divale assumes that matrilocal residence promotes
internal peacefulness because it scatters related males.
Divale’s cross-cultural research seems to support his
interpretation of matrilocality; it does seem to be associated with migration into previously inhabited areas. But
there are a number of problems with Divale’s causal
theory (C. R. Ember, 1974). First, migration and matrilocality are not that strongly associated. Only about half of
the migrating societies in Divale’s sample are matrilocal.
If matrilocality were so advantageous for promoting
peace, why did not most migrating societies become
matrilocal? Second, how would people have realized the
peace-keeping potential of matrilocal residence? It is not
until matrilocal residence is in existence that related
males are scattered. Third, size of society seems to
predict purely external warfare. Societies under 21,000
people are likely to have internal peace, perhaps because
a population of that size or smaller facilitates informal
connections between people that can minimize the risk of
fighting. Matrilocal societies are significantly smaller
Male- and Female-Oriented Descent Groups
than patrilocal societies, so perhaps they are unlikely to
have internal warfare for this reason alone.
The Embers’ theory and the Divale theory both
explain why patrilocality is much more prevalent than
matrilocality. Divale says that male dominance is responsible. But males are dominant in all known societies, so
how come patrilocality is not universal? If the Embers are
right, matrilocality occurs only with the combination of
purely external warfare and women contributing a good
deal to subsistence; patrilocality would occur either
because of internal war (more common than purely external war) or because men did most of the subsistence work
(more common than equal or high women’s contribution).
MALE- AND FEMALE-ORIENTED
DESCENT GROUPS
It is one thing to live together in the same community with
relatives; it is quite another to have unilineal descent
groups. Unilineal (literally, “one line”) descent groups
exist where people consider themselves to be descended
from a common ancestor through one gender only. If we
speak of patrilineal descent, membership in the patrilineal
descent group is passed through males only (membership
is acquired from the father); members of both sexes
belong through their fathers. If we speak of matrilineal
descent, membership in the matrilineal descent group is
passed through females only (membership is acquired
from the mother). A group is more than a category of
people, so to call it a group there must be some things that
are done or regulated by the group (e.g., collectively using
land owned by or assigned to the group, collectively
avenging an attack on a member of the group). Some close
relatives are always excluded from your own unilineal
group. For example, if a society has matrilineal descent
groups, membership in a group (usually named) is
acquired from your mother (full brothers and sisters are
always in the same unilineal group because they share the
same mother), but your father is usually not in your kin
group. If the society is patrilineal, your mother is not
usually in your kin group. Most societies with unilineal
descent have a rule of exogamy with respect to at least one
level of kin group; you are usually precluded from marrying someone in your smallest unilineal group. The rule of
exogamy often extends to the largest unilineal group.
Among the Luo of Kenya, for example, one is prohibited
131
from marrying anyone in the same maximal lineage that
might extend back 14 or more generations (C. R. Ember,
1970). Societies with parallel-cousin marriage, that is,
marriage to father’s brothers’ children and mother’s
sisters’ children, which is common in the Arab world, are
exceptional to the rule that unilineal descent groups are
normally exogamous. In the Arab world, your father’s
brothers and their children, your parallel cousins, belong
to your group, and marriage may be allowed or even
preferred with a parallel cousin.
Besides regulating marriage, unilineal descent
groups may have many different functions in a society.
Many unilineal descent groups function as corporate
landholders, allocating portions of the group’s land for
use by descent group members. Labor may be organized
by descent group. Different unilineal groups may have
their own gods, goddesses, or ancestral spirits. And
unilineal groups also often function politically, either
with elders or heads functioning as arbiters of disputes, or
as offensive or defensive fighting units.
Why do unilineal descent groups develop? It has
generally been assumed that patrilocal or matrilocal
residence is a necessary precondition for the emergence
of unilineal descent (Lowie, 1961, pp. 157–162;
Murdock, 1949, pp. 59–60; Service, 1962, p. 122). After
all, if a rule of descent is followed over time, then persons
who descend from a common ancestor will be localized
in the same neighborhood. Therefore it would be easy for
those people to conceive themselves as descending from
a common ancestor. But there are reasons to be skeptical
that unilocal residence is a sufficient reason for creating
unilineal descent. First, it may be easy to form a group,
but that does not require people to do so. Second, in a
cross-cultural comparison looking at the relationship
between unilocal residence and unilineal descent
(C. R. Ember, Ember, & Pasternak, 1974), only 72% of
unilocal societies had unilineal descent. This is a high
percentage, but 28% of the unilocal societies lack unilineal descent, consistent with the idea that the residence
pattern is not sufficient to explain the development of
unilineal descent groups. On the other hand, unilocal
residence does look necessary in order for unilineal
descent groups to develop. Of the unilineal societies in
the sample, 97% have unilocal residence!
What condition or conditions would push a unilocal
society to develop unilineal descent? Building on
Service’s (1962, p. 117; cf. Sahlins, 1961) observation
that intersociety competition favors the development of
132
pan-tribal sodalities such as unilineal kin groups to
provide fighting units for offense and defense, we have
suggested (C. R. Ember et al., 1974) that in the absence
of centralized political systems, unilineal kin groups are
the most likely solution to any kind of warfare, internal
or external. First, unilineal kin groups provide unambiguous sets of kin with no conflicting loyalties.
Everyone knows exactly who is in, and who is not in,
their unilineal group. In bilateral societies, which have no
descent groups, any transfamily kin groups are overlapping and nondiscrete, and therefore loyalties are conflicting. Second, unilineal kin groups, in contrast with
neighborhood associations, have the advantage of being
able to draw upon larger sets of people to whom connections can be remembered (or sometimes invented). (We
discuss below why age-sets, or nonkin associations, may
also develop.) The presence of warfare does improve our
ability to predict that a unilocal society will also have
unilineal descent. In contrast to the 72% of unilocal
societies that have unilineal descent (mentioned earlier),
91% of unilocal societies with warfare have unilineal
descent. Thus, although we cannot be certain that warfare
causes unilineal descent to develop, in the absence of
centralized political organization, the data are consistent
with that theory (C. R. Ember et al., 1974).
There is one kind of descent system that is gender
neutral. (Bilateral kinship is not a descent system.)
Ambilineal descent is found in some societies. Instead of
taking the descent group membership of one parent, some
societies allow individuals to join a descent group
through males or females. Ambilineal descent, however,
is probably a departure from unilineal descent caused by
a switch to bilocal or multilocal residence (C. R. Ember &
Ember, 1972).
Some societies have double unilineal descent,
both matrilineal and patrilineal groups exist. Murdock
(1940/1965) and others have speculated that these are
societies in transition from one form of descent system to
another.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MATRILINEAL
AND PATRILINEAL SYSTEMS
One of the classical paradoxes about matrilineality is that
it is not the mirror image of a patrilineal system. It differs
in one important feature that has important structural
Gender-Based Social Groups
consequences. Schneider (1961, p. 7) pointed out that the
lines of authority and descent diverge in matrilineal
societies, but converge in patrilineal societies. This is
because males are usually the political leaders in all
societies. So in a patrilineal society, descent and political
authority (if there is a rule of succession) pass through
males; authority, like membership, passes from father to
son. In a matrilineal society, descent passes through
females, but authority is passed from a man to his sister’s
son. Recall that in a matrilineal system, children take
their descent membership from their mother, so brothers
and sisters always share the same descent group membership. The father would not be the authority figure in
that descent group; rather, the mother’s brother would be.
If there is an authority position held by males, the
successor is normally the sister’s son.
Schneider (1961, p. 27; cf. Kloos, 1963) also pointed
to the greater difficulty of maintaining a one-kin group
community in matrilineal societies as compared with
patrilineal societies. The difficulty arises from the fact
that if males are to be effective authority figures for their
matrilineal kin groups, it would be better if they did not
move far away when they marry; that is, it would be better
if marital residence were matrilocal. In fact, most matrilineal societies have matrilocal residence. Accordingly,
we would expect another difference between patrilineal
societies and matrilineal societies: matrilineal matrilocal societies should be unlikely to require marriage with
someone outside the community (local exogamy). Aberle
(1961, pp. 715–717) found that matrilineal societies are
significantly less likely to have local exogamy than patrilineal societies; we also found (M. Ember & Ember,
1971) that matrilocal societies are significantly less likely
to have local exogamy. The flip side of this is that
matrilineal matrilocal societies are much more likely to
have communities composed or more than one descent
group. If a unilineal society requires marriage outside the
descent group, which is commonly the rule, there would
be no one to marry in the community unless it contained
more than one descent group.
Earlier we mentioned the psychological stress
experienced by an in-marrying female in a patrilocal society. We raised the question of whether men would feel the
same kind of stress. Although we do not know for sure,
the structural differences between the two types of society suggest that men in matrilocal matrilineal societies
would probably not be exposed to the same degree of
stress. Husbands would generally not have to move far
Age-Set Organization
away when they got married if marriages generally
involve people from the same community. Thus the men
could still retain important roles in their own descent
groups. In contrast, females in patrilocal patrilineal
societies not only generally have to move to other
communities, but they also have to move into a community whose core members belong to a descent group that
is not theirs. Ties to their own descent group would
mostly be severed or minimized by the distance from
their “home” community.
Avunculocal Residence
Now that we understand more about the differences
between matrilineal and patrilineal systems, the puzzling
form of residence called avunculocal may be understandable. Recall that in this form of residence the couple lives
with the husband’s mother’s brother. Or, to put it the opposite way, we could say that a man takes his sister’s son and
wife to live with him. This is precisely the dyad that forms
the basis of political succession in a matrilineal system. It
is also a way of localizing men who are matrilineally,
rather than patrilineally, related. Not surprisingly, all
avunculocal societies have matrilineal descent (M. Ember,
1974, p. 251). But most matrilineal societies are matrilocal, so why should some be avunculocal?
M. Ember (1974, pp. 250–251) suggested that
avunculocal residence may be favored by the same
condition that favors patrilocal residence—internal
warfare. Normally, purely external warfare is characteristic of matrilocal societies. But if warfare in such societies
should switch from purely external to at least sometimes
internal, the matrilineal descent groups that are present
might want to keep their males (i.e., their warriors) in the
same place after they are married. Avunculocal residence
would do that. Consistent with this theory, that avunculocality develops in a previous matrilineal society that
started to fight internally, all societies with either invariably avunculocal residence or alternatively avunculocal
residence have at least some internal warfare (M. Ember,
1974). There are no exceptions in this correlation.
Male Leadership
If most societies are patrilocal, it is not surprising that men
are generally the political leaders.1 A cross-cultural study
found that, in about 85% of the surveyed societies, only
men were the political leaders (Whyte, 1978, p. 271).
133
But why should men almost always be the political leaders
in matrilineal systems also? We suggest that many of the
most important political decisions made in a society are
about offense and defense. Unfortunately, war has been
an almost ubiquitous part of the ethnographic record
(C. R. Ember & Ember, 1997). Just as the “economyof-effort” theory predicts that the gender involved early in
a production sequence (e.g., lumbering) will be involved
in activities later in the sequence (e.g., making musical
instruments), so might this theory predict that those
most involved in war (e.g., the warriors) should be the
most involved in political decision-making about future
wars and therefore would be likely to be the political leaders. To be sure, in matrilocal societies women may not be
as excluded from planning war, or other activities involving war, as in patrilocal societies. This difference between
matrilocal and patrilocal societies is suggested by a crosscultural study of women’s involvement in war (Adams,
1983). In that study, societies practicing local exogamy
and societies with internal warfare were the least likely to
have women involved in war. Such societies are also likely
to be patrilocal, with single-lineage communities. Adams
(1983) suggests that the conflicting loyalties of wives
(who may come from “enemy” communities) would lead
the men to isolate women from knowledge about war
plans and access to weapons. For this reason too, we
might expect that patrilocal societies would be likely to
exclude women from political leadership.
AGE-SET ORGANIZATION
A unilineal descent rule may be a way to get a transfamily kin group to come to one’s aid, but it is not the only
possible way to do so. Some societies use age-sets for
integrative purposes. An age-set is a group of persons of
similar age and sex who move through some or all of
life’s stages together (C. R. Ember & Ember, 2002,
p. 184). Usually the transition occurs at a ceremony or
ritual. For example, every 10 years or so, males might be
initiated into one status and then move on to others
every time a new set becomes initiated or inducted
(e.g., “initiates,” “warriors,” “married men,” “mature
men,” “elders”). Age-sets are usually nonvoluntary
associations, and those initiated and “graduating”
together form close bonds with each other. Age-sets have
a limited distribution and are mostly found in Africa, the
North American Plains, and some Ge-speaking groups in
134
the Brazilian Amazon (Ritter, 1980). Ritter (1980) tested
a number of theories about the conditions that might favor
age-set systems. Contrary to the widely held idea that
age-set systems function to integrate societies whose
kinship or political groups are not equal to the task, Ritter
found that age-set societies are not less likely to have
unilineal descent groups or other ways to integrate the
actions of different local groups. But consistent with
other previous theory, age-set societies have significantly
more warfare than other societies. Ritter suggests that
age-sets will develop when warfare is very frequent and
where the size and composition of the local group fluctuates throughout the year. Usually the fluctuation is
required by the subsistence regime (e.g., pastoralists
often have to move their herds away from settlements to
find grazing). Cross-cultural tests support this hypothesis.
Age-set societies may have unilineal descent groups and
political integration of different local groups, but the
age-sets would provide reliable allies during the periods
of mobility and separation. Wherever you may be, you
could find age-mates. But you may not be close to members of your descent group or political unit. Presumably,
fully sedentary societies or fully nomadic societies would
not need age-set organization for defense or offense
because their descent groups would not ever disperse
during the year.
Many of the societies with male age-sets also have
female age-sets. For example, the Shavante have female
age-sets into which girls are inducted when males are
inducted into their age-sets (Maybury-Lewis, 1967).
However, the age-sets for females do not seem to be as
important as those for males.
OTHER UNISEX ASSOCIATIONS
BESIDES AGE-SETS
Age-sets are not the most common unisex associations in
noncommercial societies. Many societies have male associations with initiation rites that provide a dramatic (and
often traumatic) way for boys to become transformed
from “boys” to “manhood.” These men’s groups often
have a building where initiates and adult men may meet
and sleep. A number of ideas have been put forward to
explain male initiation ceremonies, ranging from a way to
help boys resolve psychological conflicts in sex-role
identification (Burton & Whiting, 1961; Whiting,
Gender-Based Social Groups
Kluckhohn, & Anthony, 1958), to promoting male
solidarity for cooperative purposes (Young, 1965), to
providing the equivalent of basic army training
(M. Ember, 1967b). There is some evidence to support all
of these interpretations.
Women’s associations are not that common in noncommercial societies. But in some partly commercialized
economies, such as in West Africa, women’s associations
are common. Many of these associations, such as rotating
credit associations (Ardener & Burman, 1995), help
women obtain money for economic enterprises. While
these associations are often for women of the same ethnic
background, in Papua New Guinea some of the associations link thousands of women from different tribal areas
(Warry, 1986).
In complex commercial–industrial societies, there
are many types of voluntary associations. Some are
explicitly unisex (like the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts), but
more often than not these voluntary associations are what
political science and sociology call “interest groups”
(e.g., political or professional associations), not restricted
to one gender.
CONSEQUENCES
GROUPS
OF
GENDER-RELATED
Unilocality and Unilineality
Aside from the psychological stress created for the
unimportant gender in a unilocal–unilineal system, which
we discussed earlier, what does research suggest about
other possible consequences of unilocality and unilineality? One domain that has been investigated is status.
Whyte (1978, pp. 132–133) has tested the hypothesis that
women will have higher status in matrilocal and matrilineal societies. He measured status in a number of
domains ranging from property control to value of labor
to domestic authority to informal influence. Matrilocality
and matrilineal descent do not predict that well. He finds
that in matrilocal and matrilineal societies women do
have significantly more control over property than men
(including inheritance of property and control over the
products of labor). But that was the only area of significant difference. Why? Schlegel’s (1972) study of matrilineal societies suggests that variation among matrilineal
societies may complicate things with respect to status of
women. For example, the degree to which brothers
References
and/or husbands have domestic authority varies across
matrilineal societies. As we noted above, a woman’s
brothers are very often important authority figures. This
may be true in the political sphere as well as in the
domestic sphere. So even if a woman is relatively
autonomous with respect to her husband, she may still be
subject to her brother’s control. Schlegel’s research suggests that women in matrilineal societies have the most
autonomy when neither husbands nor brothers are dominant (or both are equally dominant).
Frayser (1985, pp. 341 ff) points out that patrilineal
societies have some difficulty with women’s reproduction. They need to have reproduction for their kin groups,
but elevating the status of mothers is somewhat antithetical to the patrilineal principle. On the other hand, if
patrilineal societies denigrate women too much, they risk
having women who are not interested in having children.
Patrilineal systems depend upon passing membership in
kin groups through males, so it is also important for a
man to know that the children his wife gives birth to are
his. Frayser suggests and presents evidence to support the
notion that patrilineal societies are more interested in limiting a woman’s sexuality and reproduction to a particular husband by insisting on premarital and extramarital
sex restrictions and by making it harder for a woman to
obtain a divorce. Restrictive societies also tend to have
elaborate marriage arrangements and ceremonies and
honeymoons that isolate the couple.
Separate Unisex Associations
and Power
If women form their own associations and hold leadership positions within them, does that give women more
power and voice in a society? Or, does “separate” merely
mean “separate, but unequal” as in segregated schools in
the American South? There is only a little systematic
research on this question. Ross (1986) looked at the
relationship between women’s political participation and
the presence of separate associations for women. His
cross-cultural research suggests that separate women’s
organizations do not generally predict greater political
decision-making or access to political leadership roles.
Of course, this does not mean that women in organizations do not have influence. But their influence may not
translate to influence beyond their organizations. Future
research needs to consider what kind of association
women participate in. Women’s associations that are
135
adjuncts to male associations (such as a women’s
auxiliary) may have much less influence than those that
control important economic resources.
NOTE
1. Some research in selected societies suggests other factors that may
give men a leadership advantage. One is a height advantage; some
studies have shown that taller individuals are more likely to become
leaders (Werner, 1982). Greater involvement in childcare may also
detract from influence (Werner, 1984). Draper (1975) argued that
sedentarized !Kung women seemed to lose some of their influence
the less gathering they did, perhaps because they knew less about the
outside world.
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The Relative Status of Men and Women
Maxine L. Margolis
INTRODUCTION
What is meant by the “status” of men and women in
cultures around the world? Anthropologists do not agree
on what the relative status of the two sexes means in the
abstract nor do they agree on how to measure it. Does
equal status mean “equal” rights for men and women in
society? Some argue that the key to status is the relative
power and authority of men and women and the roles of
both sexes in decision-making, while others say it refers to
how a particular society values the qualities that are
defined as masculine versus those defined as feminine.
Still others look to the work that men and women do and
ask if it is equally valued. And this, in turn, leads some to
question whether separate can also be equal. Others try to
gauge if men and women have equal rights to live their
lives as they see fit. Do women have personal autonomy
and do they fully participate in the institutions of their
society at large or are they barred from public life and primarily confined to the domestic sphere? Still others
suggest that the regulation of sexual access to females is the
key to their status. Is divorce equally available to women
and men? Is there a double standard in the premarital and
extramarital sexual activities of men and women, that is, do
men have more sexual freedom than women?
Do all of these conditions co-vary? Do women have
equal rights to men in some areas of life but not others?
For example, do they have the right to inherit property but
no say over whom they marry? Do women enjoy the same
sexual freedom as men but have little influence on political decisions? Research suggests that these areas are not
always related and that status does vary from one sphere
to another. In fact, some researchers insist that so many
elements comprise women’s status that we cannot
generalize about “low-status” and “high-status” societies
(Quinn, 1977). Nevertheless, here we will take a broad
overview and suggest that in some societies women’s
status is high in many spheres of life, while in others it is
not (Whyte, 1978).
In any discussion of gender status, two central
questions are whether male dominance is universal and
whether female-dominant societies have ever existed.
Today, with very few exceptions, social scientists see
male dominance as widespread but certainly not universal, and nearly all researchers have abandoned the idea
that in the distant past matriarchies—societies controlled
by women—flourished. A consensus is emerging that
sexual inequality ranges from societies characterized by
extreme male dominance to ones in which true equality
exists between the sexes (Hendrix, 1994).
The reader will notice in the sections that follow that
theories regarding status are differentially applied. That is,
it is women’s status, not men’s status, that is seen as problematic and therefore requires explanation. The implicit
assumption is that male status does not vary a great deal
cross-culturally but that women’s status fluctuates widely.
The issue of cultural variation is crucial. Why in some
societies do women have few rights and little influence,
while in others their rights are equal to those of men?
In analyzing sexual stratification, social scientists
face two basic issues: (1) how to measure the relative
status of males and females in a given society, and
(2) what are the determinants of their relative status
(Schlegel, 1977)? Scholars do not agree on how to
measure sexual inequality. What are the exact dimensions
of female status and power and how is it to be gauged
vis-à-vis male status and power? One methodological
problem is that most studies try to determine women’s
status without measuring women’s status and influence
relative to men’s status and influence (Hendrix, 1994).
Since there is no widely agreed upon standard for
judging female status, two observers may evaluate
women’s status in the same society differently. For example, some anthropologists suggest that the Inuit (Eskimo)
are a clear case of a male-dominant society, while others
argue that Inuit gender roles are balanced and complementary (Bonvillain, 2001; Briggs, 1974). Here the issue
of ethnocentric pronouncements arises. Is women’s status
in other societies being evaluated by using the standards
of one’s own culture? Judgments about women’s status
in other societies may be colored by the concerns and
goals of anthropologists as well as their own socially
137
138
constructed views of what constitutes superiority and
inferiority. Because women have different roles than
men, does that automatically imply they are inferior
roles? Separate but equal may be meaningful in some
societal contexts, even if it is not in many Western
cultures.
In many societies, however, the clear differentiation
of roles for each sex does imply ranking. One way to
gauge if such ranking exists is the reaction to crossing
gender-role boundaries. If women take on men’s roles, are
they admired, even ambivalently? Why are men who take
on women’s roles ridiculed? The case of the “tomboy” and
the “sissy” in American society is illustrative. Girls who
exhibit predilections for sports and other “boyish” activities may be admired for their skills, or their behavior may
be dismissed as “just a stage” that they will grow out of.
But sissy (read, girlish) behavior in boys is greeted with
no such equanimity. Boys are usually actively discouraged
from such behavior; they may be teased by their peers and
a source of worry to their parents. These different
reactions to the crossing of gender-role boundaries likely
indicate a hierarchy with the roles of one sex valued less
than those of the other sex.
Before we consider theories that deal with women’s
status cross-culturally, we should distinguish between
correlational statements and causal statements in such
theories. Correlations do not “explain” female status;
rather, they suggest what societal elements or institutions
co-occur with high or low female status (Hendrix &
Hossain, 1988). For example, exclusive men’s houses
tend to be found in societies in which female status is low.
However, men’s houses may not cause the status of
women to be inferior. Rather, another factor, perhaps
population pressure, may explain the presence of both
phenomena. So it is well to bear in mind that while some
theories attempt to explain differential status between
males and females, others only seek institutional
correlates of high or low status.
PRODUCTION, CONTROL, AND PUBLIC
VERSUS PRIVATE WORLDS
The relative status of men and women is affected by their
roles in the production and distribution of important
resources, public versus private settings, the dynamics of
kinship, and the presence or absence of warfare, as well
The Relative Status of Men and Women
as other systems of inequality related to rank, social class,
and race. Such systems may produce dimensions of
power or oppression apart from gender so that men’s and
women’s gender status and power relations may be crosscut by other hierarchies and ideologies of inequality.
Some of the early theories regarding the status of
women and men have been abandoned in light of additional data, while others still hold promise for analyzing
gender hierarchies cross-culturally. Such theories ask
under what conditions are male dominance and female
subservience found? What are the social, political, and
economic arrangements that give rise to equality or
inequality between the sexes?
A once popular theory linked women’s status to their
contribution to subsistence. The assumption was that in
societies in which women made significant contributions
to producing food, their status would be higher than in
those in which their contributions were insignificant or
nonexistent. However, no systematic cross-cultural study
to date supports the notion that the size of women’s
contribution to production leads to their higher status
across several domains of social life (C. R. Ember &
Levinson, 1991).
This theory was linked to another hypothesis
suggesting that women’s participation or non-participation
in production depended upon how compatible subsistence
activities were with simultaneous childcare (Brown,
1970). If an activity placed a child in danger, required rapt
attention, was not easily interrupted, and resumed or
involved long-distance travel, it was incompatible with
simultaneous childcare. Such activities included hunting
large game animals, herding, plowing, and deep-sea fishing. But other activities, like gathering, market trading,
and many of the tasks associated with horticulture, could
be done while minding small children. According to this
theory, by knowing a society’s primary subsistence activity, one could predict the degree of women’s participation
and, in turn, their status.
Subsequent research has shown that such a straightforward link between female status and subsistence is not
supported by the data (Sanday, 1973; Whyte, 1978).
Women’s economic contribution is likely a necessary but
not sufficient condition for high female status. While in
societies in which women contribute less than 30% to
subsistence their status tends to be low, if women’s
contribution to subsistence were the primary or sole
determinant of their status we would expect that women
would have high status in societies like Tikopia, an island
Production and Control
culture in the southwestern Pacific, where women are
responsible for about 75% of the food supply. But
Tikopia women do not enjoy high status across a range of
social and political domains despite their large contribution to subsistence. In this case, while women produce a
considerable amount, they have no control over what they
produce and hence low status. One important finding is
that women seem to enjoy the highest status in those
societies in which they produce about the same amount—
neither a great deal more nor a great deal less—as men
(Sanday, 1974).
Production alone is not the key to female status; it is
also women’s right to distribute what they produce. Using
this insight, Sanday (1973) suggests that female status is
linked to the degree to which women have power to make
decisions that effect the political unit as a whole—band,
village, community—not just decisions that impact
their own families. She operationalizes this theory by
proposing four indicators to measure women’s status:
1. Material control. Do women distribute food and wealth outside
the family?
2. Demand for female produce. Is women’s work valued outside
the family?
3. Political participation. Do women express opinions or influence
policy in official ways?
4. Group strength. Do women form solidarity groups devoted to
their own political and economic interests?
Sanday assumes that if, in a given society, the answer to
all these factors is affirmative, women’s status will be
high, whereas if all four are negative, it will be low. This
is tentatively supported by the small sample of societies
she uses to test her hypothesis; it needs to be replicated on
a larger sample. Iroquois women of New York State—well
known ethnographically for their economic, social, and
political power—receive positive scores on all four indicators. In contrast, in Somalia where female genital mutilation—a definitive sign of low female status—is widely
practiced, all of the indicators are negative (Brown, 1975).
The apparent link between market trade and
women’s status also supports Sanday’s theory. When
women are involved in trade, they tend to have a significant degree of economic autonomy. While women’s
trading activities do not always result in the formation of
female trade associations or in women’s participation in
politics, trade does give women their own capital as well
as control over what they produce—conditions often
associated with female equality (Friedl, 1975; Ottenberg,
1959; Quinn, 1977).
139
Control over the distribution of critical resources is
central to another theory of status differences between
men and women: “Regardless of who produces food, the
person who gives it to others creates the obligations and
alliances that are at the center of all political relations”
(Friedl, 1978, p. 222). Friedl suggests that men’s near
monopoly over hunting and, with it, the distribution of
meat united males in a society-wide system of exchange
that may have been the first instance of the enhanced
power of males over females. Women’s gathered products
which were consumed by their families—rather than
traded—afforded them no such power base. Thus, among
hunters and gatherers, if male dominance rests on
controlling the distribution of meat, the degree of male
authority should vary with the importance of this key
dietary resource. This is why, Friedl (1975) argues, male
dominance is much more pronounced among the Inuit
(Eskimo), where men provide nearly all the food in
the form of large game, than among the Washo Indians
of Nevada, where men and women work together in
gathering activities and communal hunts.
This line of reasoning implies that a culture’s mode
of subsistence is related to female status. And, in fact,
anthropologists have long recognized that most hunting
and gathering societies have relatively egalitarian gender
roles compared with more complex societies. Aside from
women’s contribution to subsistence, foragers do not
distinguish between public and private domains, another
variable that appears to influence female status. Life is
lived in the open among the nomadic !Kung Bushmen of
the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. People eat and
sleep outside, conversations are public, and almost all
activities are visible to the band as a whole. As such, the
notion of a private or domestic sphere is absent (Draper,
1975). The same is true in most horticultural societies.
Women generally have important roles in planting and
harvesting staple crops and the division between “public”
and “private” is vague and indistinct (Boserup, 1970;
Martin & Voorhies, 1975).
Contrast this with agricultural societies in which
women’s contribution to subsistence is generally low and
the domestic and extradomestic realms are set apart. With
the appearance of intensive cultivation, women “not only
dropped out of the mainstream of production for the first
time in the history of cultural evolution,” but they were
cut off from the larger society as they became ever more
ensconced in the domestic sphere (Martin & Voorhies,
1975, p. 290). This meshes with the suggestion that
140
women’s work must be public and social for it to enhance
female status (Sacks, 1974).
Wherever women are isolated or segregated and
expected to devote their lives exclusively to domestic
tasks, they necessarily rely on men to mediate their dealings with the larger society. Having no direct access to the
public sphere, women’s personal autonomy, sexual freedom, and legal rights are also limited. Hence, wherever
the “inside–outside dichotomy” is well developed,
women’s status is likely to be low (Martin & Voorhies,
1975, p. 48).
A correlate of agricultural production is an increased
work load in the domestic realm. With the intensification
of production, larger and more permanent dwellings are
filled with more possessions that require care, the time
devoted to food preparation increases, and the rising fertility rate associated with agriculture means that women
have more children to look after (C. R. Ember, 1983). As
such, women’s relative contribution to production not
only declined in most agricultural societies, but they were
also drawn into the domestic sphere because of the
greater time and effort required to maintain it.
The segregating and isolating effects of women’s
confinement to the domestic sphere were intensified in
early industrial societies with their sharp distinction
between the home and the workplace. The home was seen
as a place of refuge from the rough-and-tumble workaday
world and the ideology that women’s “place” was in the
home, and their true calling was motherhood, flourished
(Margolis, 2000).
Colonialism accompanied by Western ideologies
concerning women’s “natural” domesticity also had an
adverse impact on women’s status and role in many
prestate societies. Colonial contact often dramatically
altered traditional gender relations, undermining
women’s productive roles and, with them, their status
(Leacock, 1975).
These interrelated factors affecting women’s status
can be summarized as follows: as societal modes of
production become more complex, sexual inequality
grows and women’s power and prestige declines (Sacks,
1979). Such a decline is not only associated with general
cultural complexity and the emergence of separate public
and private realms but with their correlates: intensive
plow agriculture, complex political hierarchies, the
appearance of private property, and social stratification.
Conversely, female power and relatively high status occur
in societies with a number of other cultural traits—female
The Relative Status of Men and Women
contribution to subsistence, male contribution to child
care, lack of a distinct domestic realm and absence of
societal complexity (Whyte, 1978; Zelman, 1977).
Nevertheless, as two researchers note, “while the
relationship with cultural complexity appears to be
important, we are still a long way from understanding just
what it is about cultural complexity that may produce
generally lower status for women” (C. R. Ember &
Levinson, 1991, p. 91).
THE ORGANIZATION
SEX ANTAGONISM
OF
WORK
AND
The organization of work also has an impact on women’s
status. In those societies in which the sexes are mutually
dependent and work together—as in husband-and-wife
teams—women’s status is higher than when work is
strictly organized along gender lines. A rigid sexual division of labor may lead to more general segregation of the
sexes which, in turn, may promote differing interests
between spouses. Research suggests that under certain
conditions an inflexible division of labor leads to marital
instability, whereas role sharing enhances cooperation
and marital quality (Hendrix, 1997; Hendrix & Pearson,
1995). In essence, extreme task segregation based on
sex may lead to distinct male and female worlds with
divergent interests.
Consider several examples here. Among the
Machiguenga of lowland Peru men and women cooperate, cultivating manioc and fishing, and they spend their
leisure time together. As a consequence, husbands and
wives feel more solidarity with each other than with their
same-sex friends and there is little friction between the
sexes (O. R. Johnson & Johnson, 1975). In contrast, in
many cultures in highland New Guinea the sexes are
segregated from one another in nearly all aspects of life,
women are thought to contaminate men, and men engage
in rituals to “purge” themselves of impure female
substances (Meigs, 1984). Similarly, the Mundurucu of
Brazil have a rigid division of labor, friendships rarely
cross sex lines, men reside in exclusive men’s houses
apart from women and children, and relations between
the sexes are strained (Murphy, 1959; Murphy &
Murphy, 1974).
The two latter cases are examples of “sex antagonism,” a complex of traits that is particularly prevalent in
highland New Guinea and the Brazilian Amazon and is
Descent and Residence
correlated with low female status. In varying combinations, the complex includes notions of male purity and
female pollution, ideologies that women pose a danger to
men, behaviors that separate women and/or their belongings from men, elaborate male rituals that exclude
females, anxiety about male sexual depletion, extreme
sexual segregation, gang rape, female subservience, male
dominance, and generally hostile relations between the
sexes (Quinn, 1977). Several explanations have been
given for the complex. One suggests that it is found in
societies in which the interests of the sexes are opposed
and, in effect, men marry their “enemies,” while another
proposes that it is a reaction to the threat of overpopulation since it may reduce sexual contact between men and
women (Lindenbaum, 1972; Meggitt, 1964). C. R. Ember
(1978) tested four theories about men’s fear of sex with
women cross-culturally. She found worldwide support
for both the “marrying enemies” theory (Meggitt, 1964)
and the population-pressure theory (Lindenbaum, 1972).
Beliefs and behaviors associated with female
pollution and avoidance are said to maximize differences
between the sexes and occur in societies in which such
distinctions are an important organizing principle. The
complex is correlated with a gendered division of labor in
which women are solely responsible for childcare, they
have minimal power in the economic and political realms,
and female prestige and personal influence are low. In
contrast, in societies that have male rituals associated
with the female reproductive cycle, gender role differences are de-emphasized and female status is higher.
The most notable ritual of this kind is the couvade—the
practice in which men’s activities are limited during their
wives pregnancies, childbirth, and post-partum recovery.
Such rituals serve to minimize the distinctions between
the sexes (Zelman, 1977).
DESCENT AND RESIDENCE:
HOW DO THEY INFLUENCE WOMEN’S
STATUS?
The pollution–avoidance complex described above has
one other notable feature; it is associated with patrilineal
descent and patrilocal residence. Certain features of
social organization, specifically descent and postmarital
residence rules, have long been known to influence the
relative status and power of the sexes. In fact, some
141
researchers suggest that the strongest associations with
equality or inequality between the sexes are postmarital
residence and descent rules. They argue that such kinship
variables may exert an effect on status independent of
economic and political organization (G. D. Johnson &
Hendrix, 1982).
Whereas women’s status varies in patrilineal
societies, it tends to be higher in matrilineal ones. Since
women are the focus of the social structure in matrilineal
societies, they define political and social relationships
(Martin & Voorhies, 1975). But the picture is complicated. While women’s position in matrilineal descent
groups facilitates their political influence and economic
control, neither is insured by the existence of such
descent groups alone (Quinn, 1977). Women’s degree
of domestic autonomy, and with it their status, varies
in matrilineal societies and tends to be higher where
domestic authority over women is divided between
husbands and brothers than in those societies where
either male relative has exclusive authority (Schlegel,
1972; Whyte, 1978).
The following example illustrates the sexual differentiation in status related to descent and its practical consequences. In most of the Arab world, where patrilineal
descent and inheritance are the norm, the children of
women who marry foreigners are not considered citizens
of their mother’s country. But the reverse is not the case.
The children of a man who marries a foreign woman are
deemed full citizens of their father’s natal land. In
essence, one’s status in society is derived solely through
males, not females. Egyptian-born children of Egyptian
mothers and foreign fathers cannot attend public schools
or free state universities without paying tuition fees, and
they cannot get jobs unless they first get work permits as
“foreigners.” But the foreign wives and children of
Egyptian men automatically become full citizens of
Egypt (MacFarquhar, 2001).
Matrilocal postmarital residence appears to be an
even more crucial determinant of women’s status than
matrilineal descent, although the two often coincide. By
describing the practical consequences of matrilocal and
patrilocal residence, we can see the daily impact that
these arrangements have on men and women. In a
matrilocal society, after a woman marries she remains in
her natal village surrounded by female kin. Her imported
husband, with no resident kin of his own, must deal
with a coalition consisting of his wife, her mother, and
her sisters. He is the outsider, the stranger. Moreover,
142
there is usually a greater degree of domestic equality in
matrilocal situations than in patrilocal ones. With matrilocality, a divorcing woman need not change residence or
locate kin willing to take her back. Then, too, matrilocality disperses related males, making it more difficult for
them to form kin-based coalitions (Friedl, 1975).
But in patrilocal societies positions are reversed and
the woman is the outsider. She leaves kin behind and
moves to her husband’s place of residence where she is
unlikely to have her own relatives nearby to provide aid
and comfort in time of need. She is faced with the scrutiny
of strangers, her husband’s relatives, who may make life
difficult for her if she does not live up to their expectations. Then, too, women’s autonomy is reduced because of
their isolation from their own close kin, and in cases of
divorce they must change residence (Friedl, 1975).
One theory proposes that it is not primarily descent
and residence but women’s kinship roles as sisters and
wives which help define their relations to production and
hence their status (Sacks, 1979). As the mode of production in society becomes more complex, the role of sister,
and with it women’s direct control of production,
declines. Women become increasingly defined as wives,
a status of reduced power and greater dependency. As
wives, women only relate to production indirectly
through the productive and reproductive activities they
perform for their husbands’ kin group. Here again,
women’s simple involvement in production is not a precondition for their high status; rather, the key to women’s
power and prestige is whether or not they control both the
means of production and what is being produced.
The sister–wife distinction can shed light on
differences in women’s status in matrilineal and patrilineal societies, since the lifelong importance of the sister
role is highlighted in matrilineal societies where women
produce and reproduce for their own natal kin groups, not
for the kin groups of their husbands.
WARFARE, POPULATION PRESSURE,
AND FEMALE INFANTICIDE
Many scholars have suggested that warfare impacts
negatively on women’s status. Anecdotally, women seem
to have fared better and their status has been higher in
peaceful prestate societies in noncompetitive environments than in state societies or in societies with endemic
warfare. However, cross-cultural studies on the frequency
The Relative Status of Men and Women
of warfare are not so clear. On the one hand, a study of
hunter–gatherers, generally egalitarian, found a strong
correlation between low female status and male combat
deaths (Hayden, Deal, Cannon, & Casey, 1986). On the
other hand, Whyte’s (1978, pp. 129–130) worldwide
comparison was equivocal; although a few aspects of
women’s status appear to decrease with warfare (e.g.,
men and women have less joint social life), more appear
to increase (e.g., women’s greater domestic authority and
somewhat greater value placed on women’s lives).
Perhaps more important than warfare itself is the
type of warfare and the degree to which population
pressure may cause endemic fighting. Warfare tends to be
found in situations where human populations compete
over resources—often the result of population pressure—
and it is associated with solidary male groups, notably
patrilineal and patrilocal ones. Warfare in such societies
tends to be local. In contrast, abundant resources and lack
of competition seem to favor matrilineal and matrilocal
systems. Moreover, one characteristic of matrilineal
societies is the general absence of internal warfare, that is,
warfare waged on the local level. Long-distance or external warfare, which takes male warriors away from home
for long periods of time, is more typical of these societies.
Under conditions of long-distance warfare and trade
which remove men from their communities for months at
a time, women take on a greater role in subsistence with
a concomitant rise in status The Iroquois are a classic
example; men were absent at distant wars for many
months, as well as on hunting and trading expeditions
(Brown, 1975; C. R. Ember, 1975; M. Ember & Ember,
1971; Martin & Voorhies, 1975).
Some anthropologists claim that because warfare
puts a premium on rearing males to serve as warriors,
females are devalued. And, in fact, female infanticide, the
selective neglect and killing of female infants, is
sometimes found in horticultural societies with endemic
warfare, competition over resources, and growing
populations. These conditions are said to result in a “male
supremacist complex” that provides an ideological justification for devaluing females. In the absence of modern
contraceptive techniques, the selective killing of female
infants helps to control population increase because,
other things being equal, the rate of population growth
is dependent upon the number of females who reach
reproductive age (Divale & Harris, 1976). A well-known
example of a society with such a complex is the
Yanomamo of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela
Ideology and Religion
(Chagnon, 1997). There the intensity of warfare is said to
be related to male dominance and female subordination,
as evidenced by female infanticide, frequent physical
aggression against women, and the glorification of male
warriors.
This complex supports the contention that when
women’s role in reproduction becomes a threat to
society because of overpopulation, women’s value
plummets and their rights and freedoms are severely
restricted (Abernethy, 1993). According to Abernethy,
practices associated with low female status, such as the
benign and malign neglect of female infants, bride burning, bans on widow remarriage, strict regulation of female
sexuality, and severe punishment of female adultery, are
found in societies where population threatens to outrun
resources.
The role that population pressure may play in
women’s status is suggested by a comparison of the treatment of women in two societies in New Guinea. Among
the Enga, plagued by insufficient land to sustain a rising
population, women and their childbearing capacities are
devalued. A high premium is put on premarital chastity,
sexual abstinence is required on many occasions, women
are killed shortly after their husbands’ deaths, and funerals
are held for men and pigs, but not for women and children.
In contrast, the Fore faced a situation of underpopulation
as a result of high mortality from an endemic disease
(kuru). In Fore society women and their reproductive
abilities were valued, premarital sexuality was not
discouraged, and widows remarried after the death of their
husbands (Lindenbaum, 1972; Meggitt, 1964).
Unbalanced sex ratios are evidence of the benign or
malign neglect of female infants and children and of low
female status. That is, in societies where males significantly outnumber females, cultural practices such as
female infanticide and the undernutrition of girls are
suspect. For example, estimates suggest that nearly 6% of
women in India are “missing” and that as many as
100 million women worldwide are unaccounted for when
demographers compare expected with actual sex ratios
(Coale, 1991; Miller, 1997). Ultrasound technology has
made the selective abortion of female fetuses in contemporary China, Korea, and India a source of concern.
For example, India has the lowest ratio of females to
males among the 10 most populous countries in world
(Dugger, 2001).
But such practices do not result from population
pressure alone. In northern India, where sex ratios are
143
very skewed, the selection against females likely results
from two additional factors. Women, particularly those of
the middle and elite castes, do not engage in agricultural
production and upon marriage their families are required
to provide their husbands’ families with large dowries.
Thus, women produce little but cost a lot so that families
see it in their own economic and social interest to limit
the number of daughters (Miller, 1997). It comes as no
surprise that these conditions make for low female status.
WHAT WOMEN ARE LIKE: IDEOLOGY
AND RELIGION
What is the role of ideology in determining women’s
status? And why do beliefs about women’s “true nature”
and “natural place” vary cross-culturally? Such beliefs
are not free floating and random but are related to
women’s actual roles in society. For example, the ideology that depicts women as immature and requiring male
protection and supervision is associated with the domestic isolation of women which, in turn, is related to the rise
of intensive agriculture and the state (Quinn, 1977).
Given the link between actual roles and ideology,
under what conditions do ideologies of male dominance
arise? Rogers (1975) suggests that such ideologies need
not reflect women’s low status but may instead occur
when women do, in fact, have a good deal of economic
importance, personal autonomy, and influence within
the domestic realm. The “myth of male dominance” is
a cross-cultural phenomenon found in societies with a
strong domestic orientation and informal sources of
power. While men have greater access to formal rights,
the sexes are equally dependent on one another economically, politically, and socially. Hence, notions of male
dominance in these societies function to mask women’s
strong, albeit informal, power in the domestic realm.
Certain religious beliefs also correlate with female
status. Sanday (1981) argues that the gender of the
creator(s) in a given society is linked to the status of
women and men in the society. Societies with egalitarian
gender relations tend to believe in a female creator or a
male–female creator pair, while male-dominant societies
have creators that take the form of human males or
animals. Myths, especially origin myths, with feminine
symbolism are charters that grant power to women, while
masculine symbols grant power to men. The egalitarian
144
The Relative Status of Men and Women
Iroquois, for example, believe in both male and female
creators, while the male-dominant Mundurucu believe
that a single male creator fashioned human beings
and also taught the Mundurucu all the essentials of
life; females had no role in creation (Murphy &
Murphy, 1974).
CONCLUSION
In summary, material and ideological factors may both
come into play when accounting for cross-cultural
variations in gender status and sexual hierarchies. As yet,
however, no single theory seems able to explain why
some societies have egalitarian gender roles and others do
not. Future lines of inquiry which might clarify this issue
include research on the societal conditions under which
women form solidarity groups and have collective
political influence versus conditions in which they do not.
Demographic variables, specifically population pressure
and its impact on the valuation of females, is another area
that demands additional research. Still, even in the long
term, it is unrealistic to expect that any single overriding
theory will successfully explain the wide variation in
women’s status around the world.
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Economic Development and Gender
Robin O’Brian
INTRODUCTION
Economic development carries multiple meanings,
ranging from improvements to the quality of life among
traditional peoples, to the harsh and rigorous demands of
organizations like the International Monetary Fund. The
continuum that constitutes economic development
always interacts with and shapes other parts of human
culture, including gender. We can understand at least
some of the impact on gender by exploring the implicit
assumptions of so-called development theory, both in its
traditional and more recent phases.
A BRIEF HISTORY
DEVELOPMENT
OF
ECONOMIC
The Rise of Modernization Theory
Development theory itself had its roots in post-World
War II redevelopment that began in Europe and was later
extended to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Less a
theory than a school of thought, its underlying assumption was that “undeveloped” (i.e., mostly rural) agrarian
nations would benefit from being incorporated into the
expanding world market. The most marginal citizens in
these countries would benefit, at least indirectly, through
an improved economy that created demand for products
and labor (Rostow, 1956). Born out of post-World War II
optimism, the so-called “modernization” perspective
provided the basis for many assumptions that persist
today. Modernization theory had its roots in neoclassical
economic theory and functionalist sociology ascendant in
the postwar period (Jacquette, 1982). The modernization
perspective presumed that individuals maximize their
self-interest in rational ways and that social relations
are in essence exchange relations. Modernization
explicitly demands the diffusion of Western capitalist
institutions and values which will absorb or replace
less “efficient” traditional patterns (Kuznets, 1973;
E. M. Rogers, 1983). Indigenous institutions, behaviors
and practices stand in the way of modernity (Holdcroft,
1984; Schultz, 1964).
The functionalist analysis of society by Parsons
(1954) also contributed to a modernist view of the family,
seeing it as the classic location of sentiment outside the
world of work (Parsons, 1954, p. 79). In a modern society,
occupational mobility allows individuals to find the work
to which they are best suited, while the family provides
the support and nurturance outside of work. Modernity
focuses more on the individual achievement typical of the
workplace and supersedes the ascribed identity traditional peoples retain as members of a specific ethnic
group. Still, Parsons assumes that women will themselves
find their greatest satisfaction in the expressive life of the
family rather than in the instrumental achievementoriented world of work (Parsons, 1954, pp. 77–69; see
also Parsons & Bales, 1955).
This argument has been adapted and extended by the
economist Gary S. Becker, who treated the household as a
small firm and argued that rational economic choice sends
men into the marketplace and keeps women at home,
since it is the logical choice for the better-paid member
of a household to work (Becker, 1974, 1981). This
perception of the family, so familiar to westerners and
reinforced by the social and economic theory of the day,
led to a preference on the part of development specialists
for households that resembled those in the West.
Liberal Feminist Critique
In 1970, agricultural economist Ester Boserup laid out the
first liberal feminist critique of such assumptions,
suggesting that women who were the clients of development programs often lost control they previously had.
Boserup (1970, p. 53) noted:
… in the course of agricultural development, men’s labor productivity
tends to increase while women’s remains more or less static. The corollary of the relative decline in women’s labor productivity is a decline in
the relative status within agriculture, and, as a further result, women will
want either to abandon cultivation and retire to domestic life, or leave
for the town.
146
Brief History
Awareness of this unexpected effect of development
upon women has prompted more recent schools of
thought to incorporate the views of liberal feminism into
their analysis of development and its affects on women.
Although this is helpful, this perspective remains firmly
rooted in the assumptions of “modernization” theory:
modernity and economic development, defined as greater
participation in the global market, are seen as a positive
goal. The difference is that women as well as men should
benefit directly. Though it may not be explicit, a Western
bias remains (B. Rogers, 1980).
The Accumulationist Perspective
A second perspective, forming a critical response to
modernization, may be called the “accumulationist” or
“capital-accumulation” viewpoint. This line of argument
draws on neo-Marxism, as well as dependency theory
influential among Latin Americanists. Briefly put, accumulationists recognize the roles of power, capital accumulation, and private ownership that are emphasized in
the modernization school of development (e.g., Baran,
1957). Dependency theorists further incorporate the ideas
of Frank (1967; see also de Janvry, 1983), who has
described the structural inequalities inherent in relationships between the West and the Third World. While these
perspectives differ in minor ways, as a practical matter
they may be considered together.
Drawing on the accumulationist critique, Benería
and Sen (1981, 1982) provide a wide-ranging assessment
of the modernization model. They note that Boserup’s
work itself is rooted in modernist assumptions, for example, in Boserup’s unproblematic acceptance of individual
choice and market economics as the means of development (Benería & Sen, 1981, pp. 282–283), and ignores
the problems arising among societies that were formerly
colonized by outsiders. Further, Boserup ignores entirely
the role of capital accumulation, often gendered, wherein
men use tools and skills acquired from development
experts to expand and concentrate their own capital (e.g.,
in the form of land). Such processes have profound
consequences for women who may be marginalized from
land or excluded from farming. Benería and Sen also
argue that this oversight neglects the issue of incipient
rank or class. For those individuals who can accumulate
capital, differences based on class rapidly develop. The
literature is rife with such examples (e.g., ColloredoMansfeld, 1999; Hogendorn, 1978; Stephen, 1992)
147
and this process can work in several ways. ColloredoMansfeld (1999) has recently described the ways that the
Ecuadorian Otovaleño movement into the world market
has intensified class differences in Otovalo communities.
The better off are increasingly likely to accumulate and
reinvest their income, while those unable to do so remain
poor (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 1999). Hogendorn (1978)
noted that the shift from subsistence farming to the
commercial production of peanuts in Nigeria intensified
rank and gender differences as increasingly large fields
were planted with peanuts. Those with more land could
increase production and acquire the land of their poorer
neighbors. Women’s best subsistence land was planted
with peanuts, leaving women to farm on less and less
productive land. Stephen’s (1992) research among commercial weavers in Oaxaca, Mexico described the ways
that weaving families mobilized unpaid family labor to
increase their production and move into a merchant class;
increasingly such “merchant” families are accumulating
capital to reinvest in the family business.
Benería and Sen further describe this process, noting
that in polygynous societies men with several wives may
use access to such tools combined with their wives’ labor
to accumulate wealth that they invest in more landholdings. In these cases, wives retained less and less control
over the land they worked, devolving into their husband’s
field hands (Benería & Sen, 1981, p. 287). Such structural
changes separate women directly from their own means
of production and increase their economic dependence
upon male kin, from whom they must now seek cash to
purchase food they previously grew themselves. With a
growing lack of borrowing power, they find themselves in
a cycle of intensifying inequality.
The accumulationist perspective criticizes modernization theory for its unquestioning acceptance of the
expanding global market, maintaining that capitalist
development in particular marginalizes women in several
important ways: it intensifies class divisions between different women through the processes described above, it
intensifies patriarchy, because women are further confined
to the household, and it concentrates women in the
informal economy—that is, working for cash “off the
books”—most often as vendors or domestics (Hart, 1973).
Nash has written widely on the impact of development, and upon development policy and its effects,
specifically upon women. Most development policy tends
to ignore women or undervalue the subsistence contributions that they make within a household or family. This
148
omission can increase women’s economic dependency
upon men because when women’s subsistence activities
are reduced or eliminated they are increasingly forced to
rely on the incomes of male kin. This itself further
pressures men to seek wage labor or to intensify such
labor, even though they might prefer subsistence-based
labor that is socially and culturally valued (Nash, 1977,
p. 152). The desire to maintain a traditional agrarian
subsistence pattern is particularly widespread in Latin
America, and is found in the Maya regions of Mexico (for
Chiapas see Eber, 2001; for Yucatán see Re Cruz, 1996),
in Ecuador (Weismantel, 1988), and in Peru (Deere &
León de Leal, 1981).
The situation is less clear in the African case, where
women rather than men are farmers. Because agricultural
development emphasizes large-scale market-driven
projects, all small farmers tend to be marginalized.
However, women subsistence farmers fare poorly since
technology projects are still generally presented to men,
who themselves may have had a wider range of experience with technology (e.g., Ferguson, 1994). Again, these
factors push women farmers to the margins and increase
their dependence on male kin (Nash, 1977, pp. 172–173).
HOW DEVELOPMENT CHANGES THE
HOUSEHOLD
The traditional modernization paradigm often overlooks
domestic production and reproduction in its projects. The
role of the household is regarded in a familiar traditional
way—households are the targets of family planning
projects, for example—but the persistent role of the
household and its members in production may be missed.
Households in subsistence economies remain production
units, making items with use-value—immediate household value—rather than value created through exchange.
Women (and men) perform both domestic services and
produce goods that contribute to the reproduction of the
household itself as children are born, raised, and mature
to begin their own families. Even subsistence agriculture
may be regarded as a form of domestic production as
crops are eaten rather than sold. When this balance is
upset, for instance when men shift land formerly used in
home production into commercial farming and increase
or monopolize cash income, women may be forced from
their larger subsistence roles to functioning entirely
Economic Development and Gender
inside the home, performing housekeeping, food processing, and childcare. Ideology that links women entirely
with the household, as does the modernization paradigm,
further concentrates them there.
GENDERING DEVELOPMENT
As a corrective to the assumptions of the larger development community, various workers and scholars have
explored ways of understanding and implementing more
gender-sensitive development projects. This “women in
development” perspective has generated a large literature
(e.g., Feldstein & Jiggens, 1994; Poats, Schmink, &
Spring, 1988) and has expanded the ways in which development can be understood. Ferguson (1994) addresses this
issue by noting that economic development that involves
women may be generally more focused on local knowledge and folk agricultural systems. Although lip service is
now paid to women’s role in economic development, practice remains depressingly static. Specialists will still
assume that behavior or work mirrors that found in the
west. Ferguson (1994) provides an explicit recent example
in her description of bean agriculture in Malawi.
Development specialists wished to discover why women
farmers (beans were a women’s crop) grew a seeming
hodgepodge of bean varieties. In their discussions, primarily with local men, the specialists assumed that the crop
mixes were designed to withstand various biological risks,
such as drought (Ferguson, 1994, pp. 541–542). However,
further research among women farmers showed that the
women themselves grew quite specific variants of beans in
their mixes, that the varieties fulfilled different purposes,
and that the range of varieties grown also differed depending on the rank or social standing of the farmers
themselves: higher-status women with larger landholdings
grew a greater variety of beans, while poor women only
grew a few, and those few had early maturity and quick
cooking time so that they could be harvested, cooked, and
eaten early (Ferguson, 1994, pp. 543–544). This not only
permitted a food supply during the growing season, but
conserved firewood. What had seemed random and
disorganized to outsiders was intentional and planned, and
further differentiated along incipient class lines. The original
intention of the project had been to formulate an appropriately introduced bean mixture for planting across Malawi;
Ferguson’s research suggested that bean agriculture was far
more involved and the range of needs more complex.
References
149
Ferguson suggests that the difficulties she described
and that occur repeatedly in development work can be
understood in part as a reluctance on the part of development workers to acknowledge that science itself is socially
contextualized. Scientists themselves may take for granted
the division of labor typical of their own culture, and
development workers, generally trained as agricultural
economists or biologists, tend to ignore the social and
cultural contexts in which they work, contexts which
certainly in this case were vital in understanding the larger
agricultural needs of the community (Ferguson, 1994).
This school of thought differs from the traditional
viewpoint by asking very different questions of its clients.
Rather than noting that, for example, men and women
specialize in different activities and that women’s activities are overlooked or devalued, these workers ask why
this should be the case. They are willing to be more client
driven, and respond more to those demands that clients
need, rather than instituting “top-down” projects. While
they provide a critical viewpoint and corrective to earlier
work, they are careful not to upset imperfect programs
that nonetheless provide some good.
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Becker, G. S. (1974). A theory of marriage. In T. W. Schultz (Ed.),
Economics of the family: Marriage, children, and human capital
(pp. 299–344). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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Benería, L., & Sen, G. (1981). Accumulation, reproduction, and
women’s role in economic development. Signs, 7, 279–298.
Benería, L., & Sen, G. (1982). Class and gender inequalities and
women’s role in economic development: Theoretical and practical
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Deere, C. D., & León de Leal, M. (1981). Peasant production, proletarianization, and the sexual division of labor in the Andes. Signs, 7,
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America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Eber, C. (2001). Women and alcohol in a highland Maya town: Water
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Texas Press.
Feldstein, H. S., & Jiggens, J. (Eds.), (1994). Tools for the field:
Methodologies handbook for gender analysis in agriculture. West
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Ferguson, A. E. (1994). Gendered science: A critique of agricultural
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Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin
America; historical studies of Chile and Brazil. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Hart, K. (1973). Informal income opportunities and urban employment
in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 61–89.
Hogendorn, J. S. (1978). Nigerian groundnut exports. Zaria, Nigeria:
Ahmadu Bello University Press & Oxford University Press.
Holdcroft, L. E. (1984). The rise and fall of community development,
1960–65: A critical assessment. In C. K. Eicher & J. M. Staatz
(Eds.), Agricultural development in the third world (pp. 46–58).
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jaquette, J. S. (1982). Women and modernization theory: A decade of
feminist criticism. World Politics, 34, 267–284.
Kuznets, S. (1973). Modern economic growth: Findings and reflections.
American Economic Review, 63, 247–258.
Nash, J. (1977). Women in development: Dependency and exploitation.
Development and Change, 8, 161–182.
Parsons, T. (1954). Essays in sociological theory. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1955). Family, socialization, and interaction
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village life. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Language and Gender
Bonnie McElhinny
THEORETICAL DEBATES IN THE STUDY
OF LANGUAGE AND GENDER
Most people, when they think of work on language and
gender, probably think of works like linguist Deborah
Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand or perhaps even
psychologist John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are
from Venus—studies of “miscommunications” between
women and men in heterosexual couples. Indeed, early
studies of gender by academics often assumed that gender
was most salient “in cross-sex interaction between
potentially sexually accessible interlocutors, or same-sex
interaction in gender-specific tasks” (Brown & Levinson,
1983, p. 53). Despite an increasing number of different
approaches, in studies of language and gender in the North
Atlantic this focus remains influential and, at its best,
insightful (e.g., Fishman, 1983; Gleason, 1987; Tannen,
1990; West & Zimmerman, 1983; Zimmerman & West,
1975).
However, there are, a number of increasingly
controversial theoretical assumptions about gender often
implicitly embedded in this approach, including the
notions that the study of gender is closely wedded to
the study of heterosexual relations, that gender is an
attribute rather than a practice, and that the study of
gender is the study of individuals (McElhinny, 2003;
Thorne, 1990). These assumptions are often highlighted
in work done outside North America or with subordinate
groups in North America. Studying gender in heterosexual dyads can suggest that “gendered talk is mainly a
personal characteristic or limited to the institution of the
family” (Gal, 1991, p. 185). A focus on interactions
between heterosexual romantic partners assumes rather
than investigates the relationship between sexuality and
gender, and also prejudges which gendered dyads are
central to the elaboration of gender in a given locale. It
also draws attention away from the importance of studying the ways that gender is a structural principle organizing social institutions such as workplaces, schools,
courts, and the state, and the patterns they display in the
recruitment, treatment, and mobility of different men and
women (Gal, 1991).
Increasingly, linguistic studies of gender adopt a
practice approach. To suggest that gender is something
one continually does is to challenge the idea that gender is
something one has. A variety of metaphors have arisen to
capture this idea: gender as activity, gender as performance, gender as accomplishment (Butler, 1990; Eckert &
McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Goodwin, 1990; West &
Fenstermaker, 1993). They participate in a wider move
within linguistic and sociocultural anthropology since the
mid-1970s to use practice-based models (Abu-Lughod,
1991; Hanks, 1990; Ochs, 1996; Ortner, 1984, 1996).
Practice theory reacts against structural–determinist social
theories (e.g., British–American structural–functionalism,
determinist strands of Marxism, and French structuralism)
that did not incorporate a sufficient sense of how human
actions make structure. A focus on activities suggests that
individuals have access to different activities, and thus to
different cultures and different social identities, including
a range of different genders. We discover that:
stereotypes about women’s speech … fall apart when talk in a range of
activities is examined; in order to construct social personae appropriate
to the events of the moment, the same individuals [will] articulate talk
and gender differently as they move from one activity to another.
(Goodwin, 1990, p. 9)
Crucial to note here is that it is not just talk which varies
across context, a point long familiar in sociolinguistics.
Gender identity also varies across context. Language and
gender covary.
However, adopting such a practice-based approach
does not always challenge approaches which focus
largely on gender in individuals. Thus linguistic anthropologists have recently begun to develop more carefully
an approach to gender which considers it as a principle
for allocating access to resources. Gender, like class and
racialized ethnicity, nationality, age, and sexuality, is an
axis for the organization of inequality, though the way
each of these axes work may have their own distinctive
features (Scott, 1986, p. 1054). Such work considers the
150
Language and Gender Around the World
role that language and gender together play in political
economy, defined here as as:
resource allocation in the sense, for example, of control over goods.
Political economy involves the generic economic processes of the
production, distribution and consumption of goods, including
“non-material” ones, and the patterns and culture of power that control
or influence these processes. (Friedrich, 1989)
Coupling studies of practice and political economy
means that sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists
who study gender are no longer simply asking how
language and gender affects politics, but instead are asking how notions of language or of gender are produced
through theories and practices of politics. Notions of politics are also approached in a more nuanced way, moving
beyond earlier debates about whether to understand gender as a product of difference or dominance (for reviews
see Talbot, 1998; Uchida, 1992) to understanding gender
as it is imbricated in complex historical, political, and
economic circumstances.
LANGUAGE AND GENDER AROUND
THE WORLD
Gender and Genre in “Egalitarian”
Societies
In societies that have traditionally been called egalitarian
by anthropologists, men and women often have their own
distinct social spheres. Participation in culturally central
rituals and concomitant verbal genres is often linked to
(though not necessarily absolutely determined by)
gender. In everyday conversation there were no marked
male or female registers among the Kaluli, a small
nonstratified society in Papua New Guinea (Schieffelin,
1987). There was some distinction, though, in other
verbal genres: men tended to tell the two major genres of
stories (trickster stories and bird or animal stories), and
women performed sung-texted weeping at funerals
and on other occasions of profound loss. Both men and
women composed songs and dances for exchange and
ceremonial contexts, although women composed a more
limited number of song types. Finally, women and girls
engaged in an interactional routine (known as ElEma
which means “say like that”) used in the linguistic
socialization of children under the age of 3.
151
Sherzer (1987) describes the linguistic practices of
the Kuna Indians of Panama. Although he notes that there
were relatively few gender differences in phonological
variation and intonation, in the speech of Kuna men and
women was linked to differences in ritual and everyday
discourse. Kuna ritual verbal genres (the chanting of
chiefs, the speech-making of political leaders, the curing
chants of healers, and the chants of puberty rite directors)
in which men, and the very occasional woman, participated had specific linguistic properties distinguishing
them from everyday speech, as do the two verbal genres
which were unique to women (lullabies and tuneful
weeping). However, the relationship between gender and
discourse was indirect: “[T]he linguistic properties of the
Kuna ritual verbal genres are not defined or viewed in
terms of gender. Rather they are associated with the
verbal genres themselves” (Sherzer, 1987, p. 104). The
genres in turn are generally linked to certain tasks which
are gender differentiated.
Recently, Briggs has argued for the need to consider
language practices and ideologies in “egalitarian”
communities as no less complex, differentially distributed,
or historically produced than those in other communities.
Ideologies and practices of groups now often incorporated
(if differentially) into nation-states as cultural minorities or
indigenous ethnic minorities need to be studied for the
ways that certain kinds of discursive authority are naturalized. To this end, he has written a series of papers about the
Warao in Venezuela, paying particular attention to gender
and politics, and how these are linked to different relationships with bureaucrats, politicians and missionaries
(Briggs, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1998). Women’s ritual wailing
after a relative dies can provide comments on recent community events. Because such laments are collectively produced, the critiques they offer and the blame they assign is
difficult for others, even those putatively more powerful, to
challenge. Men’s negative accounts of women’s gossip can
become a field in which disputes between men of different
generations with different claims to relations between state
and religious officials are worked through, though not
necessarily worked out.
Gender and Multilingualism
In settler societies, postcolonial contexts, diglossic
linguistic situations, and many other multilingual situations, it may be use of or access to certain languages
which differentiates the speech of men and women. Each
152
of these situations presents its own dynamics in ways that
can only be briefly touched upon here. Gal’s (1978) work
on the use of Hungarian and German in Austria focuses
on the effects of urbanization and industrialization on the
speech patterns of women and men. Because the urban
settings associated with use of German have different
meanings and present different opportunities for young
women and men, they use German and Hungarian differently. Young women are leading in the shift to German
because, for them, German is associated with urban
opportunities, having husbands who are workers, and
having less strenuous and time-consuming household
responsibilities, while Hungarian is associated with having peasant husbands and physically taxing household
and farm responsibilities. Younger men, for whom the
peasant life-style retains the attraction of self-employment
and some measure of personal autonomy, use Hungarian
more than young women. Because they cannot find
Hungarian-speaking women to marry, however, they
marry German-speaking women and their children tend
to speak German.
Linguistic minorities which attempt to shore up their
position against such shifts often invoke the logic of state
nationalism to try to resist state power. Heller’s (1999)
study of a francophone school in Ontario finds that it
adheres to two tenets of nationalist ideology: insistence
on French monolingualism within the school as a form of
institutional territorial autonomy (modeled on Québec’s
geographical state territorialism), and concern for the
production of un Français de qualité. Nonetheless, the
dominant group of students believe that bilingualism, not
monolingualism, best serves their aims. Going to a monolingual school allows them to become the kind of bilingual they want to be. These bilingual practices shock
monolingual francophone students (from, especially,
Québec or France), as well as immigrants from former
French colonies who accept French as the dominant
language of communication, and lead to debates about
what a francophone means. These debates drown out
debates about gender and class, though other ethnic
voices (perhaps because they can also draw on some of
the discourses of nationalism) are beginning to be heard
at the school. The voices of boys of these different groups
tend to be more clearly heard than the voices of girls.
Where girl’s voices are heard, they are confined to a fairly
limited repertoire of gendered images. Québecois are
tough and rugged and authentic; bilinguals are hip,
popular, and plugged into North American popular culture;
Language and Gender
Africans are anticolonialist, antiracist, streetwise, and
cool warriors. Boys predominate in school roles where
language use is showcased (like student councils).
Immigrant linguistic minorities may not speak a
country’s official language(s), and this too is often shaped
by and linked to gender. In Canada, working-class Italian
and Portuguese workers were heavily recruited between
the 1950s and 1970s for unskilled jobs that native-born
Canadians considered undesirable (Goldstein, 1995,
1997). Amongst Portuguese immigrants, women are 50%
more likely to speak only Portuguese. Language choices
and abilities are linked to the dynamics of the Portuguese
family and the class position the workers hold within
the Canadian political economy. Men are more likely to
have had access to English speakers in Portugual as
soldiers or in encounters with tourists. In Canada, the jobs
men are hired into also give them access to more English
speakers, and they are less likely to be restricted by
family obligations or concerns about their safety from
taking evening language classes. In addition, for some of
the factory jobs in which women work, Portuguese is an
important asset rather than a liability. Its use functions as
a symbol of solidarity and of participation in the company
“family,” and use of other languages is actively sanctioned.
Hill (1987) investigates gender differences in the use
of a former colonial language (Spanish) and an indigenous language (Mexicano) in Mexican communities
undergoing proletarianization. In these communities, use
of Spanish is believed to be crucial for access to wage
labor, but Mexicano is understood as crucial for expressing solidarity with traditional norms. Women engage in a
wide variety of nonwage economic activity, but most do
not participate in regular wage labor. Therefore one might
expect, and indeed Mexicano speakers believe, that
women are likely to use Mexicano (or at least certain
salient features of Mexicano) more than men do and to
use Spanish less (or at least certain salient features of
Spanish less), but Hill finds that women’s speech is at
once less Mexicano and less Spanish than men’s speech.
She argues that women are barred from using the full
range of code variation in the way that men do because of
the constraints of the local political economy. Local men
contest their integration into a capitalist system by
emphasizing their Mexicano identity and at the same time
manipulate Spanish to be able to participate in that
capitalist system.
Understanding the complex politics of such
postcolonial situations is crucial for understanding
Language and Gender Around the World
the resistance that both men and women might have to the
teaching of Spanish to women in such situations; the kinds
of economic advantages and mobility it might give
women could be outweighed by the loss of some parts
of the traditional culture that men and women value.
Harvey (1991), describing another postcolonial situation
in Peru, finds that women are less likely to have access to
Spanish than men and are more likely to be monolingual
in Quechua. Women who abandon tradition by changing
their style of dress and/or acquiring Spanish risk slurs on
their reputations, social ostracism, and even violence. As
in Mexico, ignorance of Spanish and ability to speak
Spanish both count against women. Women become living
symbols of tradition, but their economic mobility is limited and in some instances they become more dependent
upon men than in traditional societies. When speakers
from such a linguistic situation choose to migrate to a
country where yet another language (say, English in the
United States) predominates, there are sometimes different challenges associated with gaining access to English
for men (who might be fluent in another “world” language
with which at least some instructors are familiar) and
women (who may not be fluent in a “world” language).
In diglossic situations, that is, situations where two
varieties of the same language exist in a community, men
and women may have differential access to, different
attitudes toward, or different incentives for using the high
or officially prestigious variety. Haeri (1987) points out
that in Amman, although education is directly and positively correlated with the use of classical Arabic among
men (with the more highly educated men using salient
features of classical Arabic more than the less highly educated men), highly educated women use salient variants
of the local urban Arabic standard, which is associated
with modernity, progress, and change of the status quo. It
is not surprising that highly educated women might
choose not to adopt all aspects of the use of classical
Arabic, which symbolizes the norms of the dominant
culture and is associated with Quranic schools which
close their doors to women.
Finally, new work has begun to investigate the effect
of the rollback of socialist and social democratic governments and the increasing significance of neoliberal
governance and market economies in China and Eastern
Europe on language use. Zhang (2001, 2002) reports that
in Beijing the transition from a state-controlled to a
market-driven economy has given rise to a new group of
Chinese professionals working for foreign businesses
153
(yuppies). Yuppies use local Beijing phonological
features significantly less than state-employed professionals, and use a nonmainland (Hong Kong/Taiwan)
feature significantly more. Further, gender differences
with respect to these features are mild among state
professionals, but dramatic among yuppies, with female
yuppies leading in use of nonmainland features. Male
yuppies tend to use local features associated with being a
“Beijing smooth operator” (a native who is streetwise,
crafty, and smooth), a character type not associated with
women and which it is not advantageous for them to
associate with.
Gender and Politeness
So far, this discussion has focused on gender differences
in the use of languages, codes, or verbal genres.
Pragmatic stances are also a domain in which many kinds
of social differentiations are manifest. Politeness is:
[A] special way of treating people, saying and doing things in such a
way as to take into account the other person’s feelings. On the whole
that means that what one says politely will be less straightforward or
more complicated than what one would say if one wasn’t taking the
other’s feelings into account. (Brown, 1980, p. 114)
In societies where politeness is normatively valued or
seen as a skill, or where acquisition of politeness is not an
automatic part of language learning but requires additional training, men tend to be understood as more polite,
and women are understood as impolite (Malagasy) or too
polite (Java). In societies where directness is valued, and
politeness is seen as a form of deference rather than a
skill, women tend to be more polite, or at least are
perceived as more polite (many groups in the United
States, certain Mayan women—e.g., Brown, 1980). In
certain cases, at certain times, women challenge such
dominant views of their actions.
Keenan (1974) studied a village in Malagasy in
which there were two politeness systems, one perceived
as traditional and the other perceived as European, and in
which both men and women believed that men were more
skillful polite speakers. Men and women actually shared
the traditional politeness system, which included long
winding speeches associated with traditional values
placed on personal relationships, the use of traditional
metaphoric sayings, positive politeness markers, use
of stand-ins to make requests, indirect ways of
giving orders, and avoidance of outright expressions
154
of anger or criticism. However, since women did not,
engage in the ritually-oriented interactions that had to
do with village-to-village negotiations, dispute resolution, and marriage requests, they were perceived as less
skilled at politeness. Women were also perceived as less
polite because the devalued European politeness system
was consigned to them (men use it only when ordering
around cows). They used this system in marketplace
transactions associated with bargaining about and selling
food and at times when a village member had behaved in
an unacceptable way and had to be more directly
approached. Men deputized their wives to handle such
situations.
In Java, the politeness system is quite complicated
and elaborate, with every utterance being marked for
respect, so that properly mastering how to be deferential
means mastering a skill that allows one to control others
and express authority (Smith-Hefner, 1988). Men are
seen in this society, too, as being more adept and
skillful at using politeness forms. By producing polite
forms for an inferior, a speaker can force the interactant
to respond politely in turn—or lose face. The coerciveness of the act is hidden, and thus difficult to challenge.
Because people must be explicitly drilled in the more
intricate politeness forms (they are not learned along
with the rest of the language), an educated man who uses
politeness forms can reduce a man not so educated to
silence—or at least agreement (disagreement would
require explanation and skillful use of politeness
forms). Javanese women are understood by men as less
skillful in using politeness—not because they are not
polite enough, but because they are too polite. Women
who are mothers are often more polite than befits their
status because they are modeling the production of politeness forms for their children and are using forms which
are appropriate for children to use toward their elders.
Furthermore, in situations in which it is unclear which
politeness forms to chose, women tend to speak
(choosing the more polite forms to be on the safe side)
and men remain silent. Here again is a complementary
system similar to that in Malagasy, where men can use
women’s actions to preserve their own status. Women
interpret their own actions differently than men do, however, in ways that point out the importance of considering
how all members of a group interpret a given act. Women
take advantage of the polysemy of politeness to understand their kinds of politeness not as subservient but as
refined.
Language and Gender
Gender and Socialization
Caregivers in all societies share the dilemma of how to
talk to humans who have not yet mastered language.
The ways caregivers solve these dilemmas reflect
distinctive cultural attitudes towards children, adults, and
parenting. Ochs (1992) argues that the use of different
child-rearing strategies shapes, in considerable part,
some of the differences in how the social positions of
women are understood. Some caregivers accommodate to
children (child-centered cultures); others ask children
to accommodate to them (adult- or situation-centered
cultures). For example, European American middle-class
North American caregivers simplify their talk when
speaking to young children. They use a smaller vocabulary, shorter sentences, exaggerated intonation, talk more
slowly, and repeat themselves often. Before children are
able to talk, they may even construct elaborate dialogs in
which they take the part of both interlocutors (“You see
that squirrel outside? Yes, you do! You like the squirrel
don’t you? Look at him moving across the yard!”). In
order to do this, the caregiver must place self in the
position of the child, arguably diminishing or losing adult
status in doing so. Western Samoan caregivers do not
simplify their talk; indeed, they direct very little talk to
young children, because they believe young children do
not understand it. In traditional Western Samoan villages,
children grow up in a compound with several households,
in houses which have no internal/external walls, with
conversations taking place between those inside and
outside. Infants are thus bathed in language; they are often
talked about, but they are not seen as appropriate conversational partners. European American middle-class North
American caregivers extensively praise children for tasks
jointly accomplished (“Look at the tower you built! What
a beautiful tower!”). Samoan caregivers may also praise
children for work done, but also expect to be thanked in
return for the assistance they have offered in the completion of the task. Ochs (1992) concludes that European
American middle-class mothers have become underrated,
in part, in Western families and society because they do
not socialize children to acknowledge their participation
in their accomplishments, and because their own
language behavior makes mothers invisible. Samoan
mothers, by contrast, enjoy a more prestigious position
because they command human labor (younger caregivers)
and socialize children to recognize and accommodate to
them.
Language and Gender Around the World
The explanation for the nonaccommodation strategies practiced in Western Samoa are clear: children are
being socialized into a highly stratified society. In traditional Western Samoan society individuals are ranked in
terms of whether they have a title or not and in terms of
what kind of title it is, and people without titles are
ranked in terms of gender and age. Rank also affects the
task of caregiving. When more than one caregiver is
present, the lower-ranking caregiver undertakes most
tasks. As a result, a young child is not primarily cared for
by its mother, but by a range of younger people. Infants
are soothed, bathed, clothed, and delivered to the mother
for feeding by lower-ranked caregivers—siblings,
especially sisters, and girl cousins. Indeed, Margaret
Mead even described late childhood as the most stressful
period of a girl’s life because she was at the beck and call
of both adults and younger children. Children learn from
caregivers that lower-ranking persons are expected to
accommodate to higher-ranking ones, and not vice versa.
What, however, might be the explanation for the accommodation strategies practiced by European American
middle-class mothers in the United States and Canada?
One explanation alludes to political ideology (Ochs,
1992). People living in a democracy are uncomfortable
with asymmetry, and therefore they try to establish an
egalitarian relationship with their children. However,
such explanations seem to ignore the ways in which
Canada and the United States are also highly
stratified societies, with sharp economic and social differences between people who belong to different social
classes, nor do they seem to explain why these patterns
tend to be particularly associated with middle-class
caregivers.
One study that may give insight into what drives the
North American pattern is Collier’s (1997) study of
changes from an other-centered child-rearing pattern to
a child-centered one in a village in Spain alongside the
growth of capitalist industry and agriculture between the
1960s and the 1990s. When Jane Collier and her husband
George arrived in an agricultural village in Spain in the
1960s with a 2-month-old baby and a copy of the latest
edition of Dr Spock, they were struck, sometimes secretly
appalled, by the ways that the villagers treated children.
The villagers spoke loudly to infants and initiated actions
that ignored the baby’s response (sometimes jouncing
them harder and harder as they cried, instead of
stopping). They, on the other hand, spoke softly to
their baby and others, waited for the baby to respond,
155
and then adapted their actions to the infant’s reactions.
The villagers’ strategies were in line with what parents
thought children needed to succeed in adult life. The
future well-being of both girls and boys depended on the
inheritance of agricultural lands from their parents, so
parents were intent on making children behave in ways
that would not lead them to squander the land, would lead
to a sense of responsibility to the parents who might continue to live on the land when older, and would lead to a
sense of respectability that would allow them to marry
others of equal or larger inheritance.
When the Colliers returned to the same village in the
1980s, they found some dramatic changes. Children were
repeatedly said to have no respect, to always be talking
back to their elders. Parents seemed obsessed with helping children prepare themselves for adult jobs. Schooling
had become necessary for economic security. Unlike
inherited property, however, education was not owned
and managed by the parents, but rather acquired and controlled by children. When children’s futures depended on
their own achievements, rather than inheritance, parents
had to identify and foster children’s unique abilities.
Instead of “subjugating” them, they had to listen to discover likes and dislikes. Children had changed from
being seen as animals whose instincts needed to be
controlled to miniature humans who needed encouragement and who needed to learn to think for themselves and
make their own decisions. This led to a style of parental
interaction much like that characterized by Ochs as
accommodation. For middle-class families in the United
States that depend on education for their children’s life
chances, such accommodating practices also seem
critical. Spanish and European American middle-class
American mothers are faced with a double bind. If they
stay home, they give up the ability to become a selfsupporting adult. If they keep their jobs, they might be
seen as not giving the intense motherly care children are
said to need to realize their potential. The conflict
between the economic interests of parents and children is
thus most acute for mothers. Mothering is devalued not
because of the linguistic strategies adopted by mothers,
but instead because of a political economic context that
devalued the unpaid work of mothering.
In Canada, the United States, and elsewhere, many
middle-class mothers choose to work, for these and other
reasons, and childcare is provided by a variety of paid
caregivers. The linguistic strategies associated with caregiving for pay has, for the most part, been remarkably
156
understudied by anthropologists. One exception is a study
of West Indian nannies by Colen (1995). She develops the
theoretical notion of stratified reproduction, by which she
means that “physical and social reproductive tasks are
accomplished differentially according to inequalities that
are based on hierarchies of class, race, ethnicity, gender,
place in a global economy, and migration status and that
are structured by social, economic and political forces”
(Colen, 1995, p. 78). She highlights some of the misunderstandings that can arise in households which are crosscultural, transnational, and interracial. For example, she
found that West Indian women were often reluctant to get
down on the floor and play with children, in part because
they believed that this was not appropriate behavior for
grown women and because they felt children should learn
independence through play. A study of how nannies are
understood in Toronto suggests that Filipinas are often
understood as being too soft, as not disciplining children
when necessary (Bakan & Stasiulis, 1995). In each case,
then, whether the paid caregiver is understood as “too”
accommodating or not accommodating “enough,” the
immigrant women and their caregiving strategies are
being dismissed and devalued, while the European
American middle-class North American child-rearing
practices are treated as a universal norm. Such judgments
also appear in academic and bureaucratic discourses in
colonial and postcolonial writings (McElhinny, 2002).
Gender and State Formation
Entities understood as outside human political activity, as
part of the biological or divine order, are often used to
justify and rationalize political power (Gal & Woolard,
2001). Gender and language have, individually and
together, been summoned up to undergird or legitimate
other social formations, particularly nations or nationstates in a variety of different contexts, ranging from
18th century European states, to postcolonial nationalist
movements and postsocialist states in Eastern Europe. To
question the significance of language or of gender is often
to question an entire political edifice. The prevalence of
naturalizing accounts of language and of gender may
explain some of the challenges that have faced scholars in
linking up studies of language, gender, and political economy, since linguists themselves are not immune from such
ideologies (Irvine & Gal, 2000). Recent work on state
formations has begun to consider how notions of language
and of gender are produced in certain discourses about
Language and Gender
politics (see also Scott, 1999). For instance, Edmund
Burke’s attack on the French Revolution was built around
a contrast between ugly san-sculotte hags and the softly
feminine Marie Antoinette (Scott, 1986). By contrast,
part of the way the critique of the Old Regime was
developed during the French Revolution was by identifying
elite women with the system of patronage, sexual favors,
and corruption of power, in which they had been active
participants. Political revolution was seen to lie in excluding women and their corrupt influence from the public
sphere; the sexual virtue of women who engaged in public
speech and activities was questioned, in ways which
presented a double bind for women who were themselves
revolutionaries. In yet another example, Teodoro Kalaw, a
Filipino nationalist, critiqued American colonialism by
criticizing the effects of the teaching of English. Filipino
women reading books in English were corrupted by
Anglo-Saxon influence, he argued, and insisted on being
known as “girls” instead of dalagas or maidens. Soon,
he lamented, they would be walking out alone without
duennas, with handbags under their arms just like bold
little American misses (Karnow, 1989, pp. 201–202).
One of the most sophisticated and detailed examples
of the role that language and gender play in nation
formation is Inoue’s (2002) geneaological account of
Japanese women’s language. Linguistic scholars in Japan
and elsewhere have published countless articles describing how Japanese women are said to speak differently
from men at all levels of language—phonology, semantics, syntax, pitch. Some scholars argue that these same
differences have been transmitted largely without change
since the 4th century. Inoue demonstrates, however, that
the association of specific speech forms with gender did
not exist until the late 19th century. This period was also
critical for the development of the Japanese nation-state.
It was characterized by rapid industrialization, massive
urban migration, labor struggle, the development of mass
communication and transportation systems, a new legal
code, the appearance of representative democracy, and
compulsory education. At the same time wars with China
and Russia led to skepticism about the desirability of
rapid westernization and to an embrace of the need to
“return” to Japanese tradition. The government launched
a project to shape women into good wives and wise
mothers, a project that mixed Confucianism and the
western cult of domesticity. Women came to symbolize
the shifting boundary between tradition and modernity,
and speech forms referred to as “Japanese women’s
Language and Gender Around the World
language” emerged in serialized novels, letters in magazines for young girls and women, and advertisements for
commodities such as perfume and ointment. Inoue points
out that the social power of language in this case is such
that it constitutes reality not by naming and pointing to an
object which already existed, but by constructing that
object.
Other kinds of discourse about women can serve as
a way of constructing new notions of nation. In all the
countries of Eastern Europe, questions of procreation and
reproduction became for a time the focus of intense
public debate in the postsocialist era. In an analysis of
how a debate about abortion proceeded in Hungary in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, Gal (1997) points out that the
debate was not linked to sexuality and women’s right to
privacy, as in the United States, but instead to ideas about
nationhood, communism, and the defense of civility.
Everyone defined himself or herself against a godless,
immoral, and overly ideological communism. In conservative writings, women were portrayed as the corrupt
beneficiaries of the communist state (with maternity
leaves and favorable divorce and custody laws) and were
called on to renounce cynically materialistic motives and
produce children for the health of the nation. Doctors,
lawyers, and politicians, in making these arguments,
constructed themselves as the best judges of what was
good for women, and thus enhanced their own role in the
state and civil society as they constructed a model of a
state built around national and ethnic unity. Liberals
offered more lenient proposals for legalized abortion, but
were ultimately less concerned with women and their
rights than articulating a vision of the state as a minimal
one which did not assume or construct a unified populace,
and which left both private property and reproductive
decisions outside its own realm. Gal points out that arguments about abortion were not the means to reach already
defined political goals, but rather were constructed as
ways to justify and naturalize certain political visions, to
gain moral credit for those advocating certain views, and
thus to display and argue for certain styles of leadership.
Debates about abortion were the discursive terrain on
which other issues about the form of the state, how
leaders would be chosen, and what was worthy of political
attention, were being fought.
Ideas about language and gender were also used to
rationalize 19th century imperialist actions, especially in
the analysis of grammatical gender. Many linguists have
argued that in languages with grammatical gender the
157
nouns are placed in classes not according to their meaning, but only according to their form. Indeed, feminists
adopted the analytic concept of “gender” from these
analyses precisely because it suggests that differentiation
occurs on a social, rather than a biological, basis.
However, more recent feminist analyses suggest that
speakers often perceive a connection between grammatical gender and sex, and that connection reproduces a
covert hierarchy between the masculine and the feminine,
in scholarship and everyday life alike (see Cameron, 1992,
pp. 82–98 for an extended analysis; Munroe & Munroe
(1969) is an early attempt to correlate the occurrence of
grammatical gender with sex bias in a society (though it
should be noted that in terms of the criteria used in their
analysis, American society has no structural sex bias). In
the 19th century many scholars of African linguistics suggested that the way a language handled gender relations,
specifically grammatical gender, revealed its “family”
relationship to other languages, as well as speakers’
mentality and sociopolitical conditions (Irvine, 2001).
Linguists appealed to what were then taken to be ethnographic facts about African family life to explain linguistic structure and relationships. Early writers, influenced
by the notions of universal fraternity developed during the
French Revolution, saw in African languages the proof of
human equality. Some even found the absence of grammatical gender in Wolof more rational than the arbitrary
sex distinctions encoded in French. Later in the century,
however, during the establishment of European colonial
empires, African languages were seen to contain evidence
of the importance of sexual and racial hierarchies. In the
view of these linguists, African languages were not categorizable into language families because of the lack of
written traditions, the supposed lack of public meetings,
and the lack of the kind of family life in which children
were properly supervised by parents. Children, portrayed
as not being carefully instructed in language use by their
parents because they were largely left in the company of
peers or older adults, were thought to construct a whole
new language with each generation. Languages that put all
humans into the same grammatical class, or which showed
no noun class distinctions at all, were associated with
polygamy or promiscuity. Languages lacking sex-gender
systems were claimed to mark a mentality not able to
recognize social hierarchy or assert independence.
Constructions of family relationships based on ideologies
about gender and politics shaped the representation of
linguistic relationships. This analysis suggests the ways
158
that linguists’ own assumptions about gender and
language always also require careful analysis.
Finally, Philips (2001) has pointed out that, though it
is common for gender ideologies to be elaborated around
gender dyads, societies differ in which gender dyads are
selected for ideological elaboration. Key gender dyads are
typically drawn from cross-gender relationships within
the family, and can include wife–husband, sister–brother,
mother–son, and father–daughter relationships. In many
North Atlantic societies, the husband–wife relationship
is treated as primary, but in the South Pacific the
sister–brother relationship is much more explicitly developed, discussed, and celebrated. Philips (2001) demonstrates how the condemnation of crimes of bad language
by Tongan court officials on the grounds that brothers and
sisters might have been present projects such a relationship from the family to the nation: all Tongans are
expected to treat one another in public as if they were
brothers and sisters.
Gender and Sexuality
The study of language and gender is now about three
decades old. However, the study of language and sexuality is much more recent—most of the books and articles
on this topic have appeared within the past 5 years. Much
of this work has so far been done in North Atlantic
settings, with a few key exceptions. One of the first questions which arises in talking about people whose sexual
and gendered practices and identities fall beyond the
boundaries of normative heterosexuality is what to call
them. Debates about, and studies of, naming practices
point to a continuing concern amongst linguists and
activists about which identities are to be foregrounded.
These are not trivial issues; the overriding theme here is
that naming confers existence, and it appears everywhere,
from coming-out narratives to AIDS activism. Linguists
have considered lexical and political debates over the
usage in English of homosexual versus gay, lesbian versus dyke, queer versus gay, gay as adjective versus gay as
noun, etc. (Murphy, 1997; Zwicky, 1997). However, a
focus on lexicon alone can be quite limiting. Since the
1990s, then, linguists have largely tried to move “beyond
the lavender lexicon” to investigate intonation and phonological patterns that might be said to characterize queer
language (Leap, 1996, 1997). However, trying to find
those features which can be so labeled is problematic,
since labeling a specific feature as “gay” is both too
Language and Gender
general and too specific (Podesva, Roberts, & CampbellKibler, 2002), assuming as it does that there is a singular
way of being and speaking gay, and reifying certain features as gay though they are shared throughout society.
Studying the construction of queer identities requies a
more flexible model of the relationship of language to
acts, activities, stances, and styles (e.g., Ochs, 1992).
Indeed, recent work by some linguists suggests that
queerness will not ever be located in specific codes, but
in the juxtaposition of incongruous codes. African
American drag queens who perform in Texas bars do not
convey queerness by relying on a clearly delineated set of
features, like high pitch or lexical choice; instead, they
convey queerness by skillfully switching between a number of styles and forms that stereotypically denote other
identities (European American women, African American
men) (Barrett, 1994, 1997). Queerness is conveyed by
the juxtaposition of socially contradictory forms
(hypercorrect pronunciation while uttering obscenities).
Queen (1997) has made a similar argument for lesbian
language.
One of the areas where linguists have made the most
progress in studying language and sexuality is in studies
of discourse. Not surprisingly, given the importance of
the distinction of being out versus “closeted” in North
Atlantic society, and given pervasive presumptions of
heterosexuality, “coming-out stories,” or stories about
how people realize their own sexuality and disclose it to
others, have received a great deal of attention. Coming
out is a speech act that describes a state of affairs
(gayness) but also brings that state of affairs into being
(Liang, 1997). Weston (1991) offers a rich ethnographic
analysis of what gays and lesbians from a variety of
different ethnicities and classes in San Francisco think a
good coming-out story is, and by extension their sense of
what it means to “come out” properly. Crucially, Weston
points out that in San Francisco such stories are understood in terms of a sense of self that is distinctively
Western. There is an assumed division between inner and
outer selves, and the core self is seen as essential and
privileged. Resolving contradictions between the inner
and outer self creates a sense of wholeness between
inside and outside. What a coming-out story might look
like if a different model of self prevails has only just
begun to be investigated in groups inside North America,
or in select other countries where the notion of coming
out circulates (for Asian American coming-out stories,
see Liang, 1997). For instance, Valentine (1997) offers a
Language and Gender Around the World
historical account of lexical terms and the identities they
are seen to designate in Japan, a consideration of why
Western terms for understanding sexual identity do not
apply in Japan, and the ways Japan and the United States
define themselves over and against one another in
dialogic gestures of orientalism and occidentalism.
Valentine points out that the practice of coming out, of
having a political stance or association with a political
movement, and of feeling that sexuality defines self (the
ideas that are picked out by the Western notion of gay) are
associated with the Japanese use of that foreign term gay
but that the word is mostly used to describe westerners,
or certain aspects of the commercial gay scene (like bars
and magazines). This identification is not a common one.
The concealment of less public selves is valued, rather
than seen as being dishonest or conflicted. To argue that
this is “backward” is, Valentine argues, ethnocentric; it is
to judge Japanese culture against Western norms. Wong
(2001; see also Wong & Zhang, 1999) has also explored
the interaction between occidentalism and orientalism
in the construction of tongzhi identity in Hong Kong.
Tongzhi was a word originally used to mean “comrade”
during the Communist Revolution in China, but has been
reappropriated in recent years by the Chinese gay and
lesbian community as a term which marks for some the
cultural distinctiveness of same-sex desire in Chinese
society over and against “the west,” as it works to create
a “transnational” community for those from Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and mainland China.
In many places, notions of sexuality vary dramatically from dominant North American models, raising
wholly different linguistic issues. Consider a group in
India which have been variously called transvestites,
eunuchs, hermaphrodites, a thirdly sex, and hijras. Hijras
are known for taking on feminine dress and mannerisms,
and for acting as ritual specialists; they sing and dance at
births and weddings, and are compensated with clothes,
jewelry, and money. Most community members focus on
the asexuality of hijras, but some also describe relationships they have with men while others survive by prostitution. Many European and North American anthropologists
have pointed to their organized and extensive network as
evidence that a greater social tolerance of gender variance
exists in India than in the West, but Hall (1997) argues that
the network exists because the hijras have created it to
resist systematic exclusion from families and jobs. They
are not given respect; they have demanded it in political
arenas. Many hijras claim that they are physically
159
hermaphrodites, that they are “naturally” different, though
some community members and researchers argue that up
to three quarters of them undergo operations (castrations
and penectomies), with some dying as a result. Hijras are
contrasted with women because they tell lewd jokes, use
obscenity, and have a conversational style perceived as
aggressive. They are distinguished from men by their
putative penchant for gossip and endless meaningless
chatter. Hijras use verbal insult, a practice that underlines
and constructs the sexual ambiguity for which they are
feared, to gain immediate interactional advantages in
social situations where they might otherwise be ignored.
Their insults often use obscenity and double entendre. On
the surface, their comments may seem to be about, say, the
buying and selling of fruit and vegetables, but they are
meant to be understood in ambiguous sexual terms, as
about the buying/selling of sex. To be offended, however,
one must acknowledge understanding sexual innuendo,
crudity, gender fluidity—all the realms of activity the hijra
talk about and participate in.
In northern Nigeria, Gaudio (1996, 1997) has
described Hausa-speaking Muslim ‘yan daudu, men who
talk like women. ‘Yan daudu talk and act in woman-like
ways, engage in a woman’s occupation (cooking and
selling food), and use woman-like gestures (roll eyes,
slap thighs, swing hips). Their clothing is usually
conventionally masculine, though they may put on selected
items of female clothing (head-ties, waist-wrappers). They
do not attempt to pass as women; they have men’s short
haircuts and moustaches, and they never fully relinquish
the sociocultural perks accorded to them as men, including marriage and children. Heterosexual marriage and
homosexual behavior are not mutually exclusive. Like the
hijras, they exploit linguistic ambiguity to establish and
enhance their power to attract and criticize others in a
society that demeans them. For instance, they use karin
magana (proverbs) and habaici (innuendo). Such indirect
speech is stereotyped as female. Hausa cowives are
stereotypically portrayed as jealous, conniving, and backbiting, and the use of figurative indirect language is said
to arise from verbal sparring in polygamous households.
Their use of thigh-slaps and loud laughter is also said to
be woman-like. However, they also talk in ways seen as
flamboyant, frivolous, and shameless. Indeed, the practices of ‘yan daudu call attention to the ambiguities and
contradictions in dominant ideas about women. They use
language stereotyped as female, yet another stereotype of
married women is passive and demure. ‘Yan daudu’s
160
Language and Gender
actions undermine—and reinforce—gender, sexual, and
moral boundaries.
Finally, it is important to note that much of the early
and continuing work on language and gender is work on
heterosexuality, but it is rarely studied as such, though see
Cameron (1997) and Kiesling (2001) for discussions of
flagrant heterosexuality in the discourse of college men.
Indeed, one of the tasks which faces the field of language
and gender in general is to return to that work and place it
within larger political, economic, cultural, and historical
contexts.
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Transitions in the Life-Course of Women
Judith K. Brown
(Korbin, 1987), but some anthropologists see such
opposition as imposing our own values on certain
traditional cultures.
INTRODUCTION
The Classics
Two works have shaped the anthropological study of
life-course transitions: Les Rites de Passage (van Gennep,
1909), which analyzed the initiation into a new status as
a three-stage process and, “Continuities and discontinuities in cultural conditioning” (Benedict, 1938/1953),
which focused on the transition from childhood to adulthood. Breaking with tradition, the present essay will
assume a broader perspective and will include the entire
female life-course, and will focus less on analysis and
more on description. Ethnographic examples will be
drawn from all over the nonindustrialized world, and the
“ethnographic present” will represent a variety of time
periods.
The Controversies
The anthropological study of life-course transitions
has not been without a history of controversy, particularly
in the research on male adolescent initiation rites.
J. W. M. Whiting, Kluckhohn, & Anthony (1958) first
viewed the rituals as related to certain psychological
factors. In response to criticism of this interpretation and
as a result of further analysis, and also reflecting a
changed approach within anthropology itself, a later
publication (J. W. M. Whiting, 1964) took other, especially
ecological, variables into account. Today’s scholarship on
life-course transitions is also involved in anthropological
controversies. The first is between scholars who advocate a more evolutionary/biological approach and those
whose approach stresses the cultural. Following the
example of Ember (1981), the present essay will attempt
to present both views. The second controversy concerns
ritual observances (largely outlawed in their own
countries) such as the genital mutilation of girls and the
burning of wives. There is strong worldwide disapproval
of these customs, and they are viewed by many as
inhumane and as violations of basic human rights
Transitions: Biological and Cultural
Every female life-course is marked by dramatic biological transitions—menarche, defloration, motherhood,
menopause—but there is wide variation among nonWestern societies in the cultural elaboration of these
developmental milestones. In some societies, certain of
the biological changes are cause for extensive, costly
celebration. In other societies the same biological events
are virtually overlooked. The number of recognized
stages within the female life-course and the definition of
each category also vary greatly among different societies.
Some biologically determined transitions are shared by
all humans, regardless of sex, such as the eruption of the
first tooth; others are uniquely female, such as giving
birth. Yet other life-course stages, such as widowhood
may be of major cultural importance but have no
biological reality for women.
The transitions in the female life-course may be
joyous, as for example, wedding celebrations in our own
society. But in many societies the wedding ceremonial
can be an ordeal for the bride. Indeed, the preponderance
of celebrations of female life-course transitions are an
occasion of stress and pain for the individual; there are a
few observances which are life threatening, and there are
even some which result in death.
TRANSITIONS BEFORE BIRTH,
AT BIRTH, AND IN INFANCY
Female-Selective Abortion
With the introduction of modern medical procedures,
which can detect the sex of the unborn child, the
transition into death may actually occur before birth for
females in many parts of the world today. Female-selective
163
164
abortion is practiced among many societies in Asia and
certain Asian immigrant groups in North America, and is
motivated by “strong son preference” (Miller, 2001). This
is in turn typically related to the expense of raising a
daughter and providing a dowry payment at her marriage.
Miller’s evidence for the practice of female-selective
abortion is based on an analysis of male-biased sex ratios
at birth among certain societies, and she warns ominously
that societies with unbalanced sex ratios exhibit a
proclivity for violence.
Infanticide and Neglect
There are also more traditional causes for unbalanced sex
ratios: female-selective infanticide and fatal neglect, as
Miller (1987) has reported for rural North India (for an
evolutionary view of these customs see Ball & PanterBrick, 2001; Hausfater & Hrdy, 1984; Hrdy, 1996;
Lipson, 2001). An ethnographic example of pervasive
female infanticide is provided by the Yanomamo of South
America (Chagnon, 1977). A traditional society, noted for
its “hostile devaluation of women” and its stress on
warfare, the Yanomamo created a shortage of women
(which in turn caused much armed hostility) largely
through the practice of female infanticide. Since giving
birth to a daughter was viewed as a wifely misdeed, for
which the disappointed husband might inflict a severe
beating, mothers of female neonates frequently opted for
infanticide.
Ceremonies for Babies
Unlike the transitional observances above, those
ceremonies performed for infants tend to be benign and
are typically celebrated for both sexes. The ceremony
may mark a physiological event such as the severing of
the umbilical cord or the eruption of a first tooth. Or the
ceremony may have a purely cultural definition such as
naming (Alford, 1996). Although there are societies in
which the individual may receive new names later in life,
the choice of a baby’s name is often a serious matter,
which may be delayed for a month or longer and which
may be a necessary step in making the baby a member of
her group. Kilbride and Kilbride (1974) report that
among the Baganda of East Africa, a ceremony is
celebrated when the baby is 3–4 months old. She is seated
on a mat with other babies to establish her legitimacy
and in yet another seating ceremony, the baby is told,
Transitions in the Life-Course of Women
“Now you are a woman.” Diener (2000) reports that on
the Island of Bali a baby’s first birthday marks her
“departure from the divine world and entry into the
human world” (p. 112) by a ceremony which provides
purification and spiritual strength. And among the
traditional Walpiri Aborigines (Pierroutsakos, 2000), a
betrothal was celebrated for infant girls (and even unborn
girls)—a betrothal to the husband they would marry 9 or
10 years later.
One or more ceremonials for the infant appear to be
celebrated in every society and yet these practices remain
relatively unexplored cross-culturally. It seems likely that
such rituals are related to a society’s concepts of personhood and the self, as well as to the meaning of gender and
identity.
Weaning
Weaning is one of the major transitions in the young
child’s life and in many societies the change in diet
coincides with changed sleeping arrangements, less
indulgence from caretakers, and possibly the arrival of a
sibling. The timing and harshness of weaning vary crossculturally (J. W. M. Whiting & Child, 1953), but in many
societies the newly weaned child is reported to be poorly
nourished and susceptible to illness (Briggs, 1970;
J. W. M. Whiting, 1941). It was McKee (1985) who first
reported that within certain societies, such as the mestizos of Ecuador, there are customary sex differences in
weaning age. Girls are weaned long before boys, because
it is believed that prolonged nursing results in “qualities
of sexuality and aggression” (p. 96), viewed as inappropriate for girls. Relatively deprived of “high quality
protein and immune protection” (p. 100), the little girls
have a higher mortality rate. Cronk (1989, 1993) reports
the exact opposite for the Mukogodo of Kenya, one of the
rare societies that favors daughters.
CHILDHOOD TRANSITIONS
An Unmarked Transition
“Both folk wisdom and the findings of psychologists
agree that between the ages of 5 and 7, there is a change
in the intellectual capabilities of children” (B. B. Whiting &
Edwards, 1988, p. 241). This changed capacity is
exploited in many societies (Bradley, 1993). The child is
Menarche, Maidenhood, Adolescence, and Initiation
expected to make a genuine contribution to the economy
of the household and in many societies where this is not
the case, the child begins school. Surprisingly, these
major changes in the lives of boys and girls, which
roughly coincide with the eruption of the second teeth,
are not given ritual recognition. However, there are some
societies in which ceremonials are celebrated in midchildhood and these practices mutilate and inflict severe
pain, when the observance pertains only to girls.
Childhood Ceremonies for
Both Boys and Girls
Among some traditional Native North American peoples,
certain major childhood transitions, such as the spirit
quest, were shared by boys and girls. Both boys and girls
aged 6–10 were initiated among the traditional Hopi
(Goldfrank, 1945/1964). The ritual, which involved being
publicly whipped by masked men representing the gods
was anticipated and feared by the children. Girls were not
whipped as severely as boys, who were often left with
bleeding wounds, yet the traumatic nature of the event
was shared by all the initiates.
Ceremonies Only for Girls
One childhood transition celebrated only for girls was
the thousand-year-old practice of foot binding in China
(Gates, 2001, in press; see also Kroeber, 1948/1963).
There were regional variations in its prevalence. Girls
aged approximately 7–12 years were subjected to this
torment, which could last for as long as 4 years. Although
the practice of binding a daughter’s feet may appear
to have had an esthetic purpose, it served to prevent a
young woman from a life of performing strenuous and
degrading labor and from being sold into servitude.
In numerous traditional societies, ritual genital
mutilations are performed on adolescent initiates. Yet the
most complex and radical of these operations, infibulation, is performed on younger girls, aged 4–10 years,
among a number of societies in northeastern Africa,
including Sudan, where the practice has been outlawed
since 1945 and is opposed by governmental and religious
authorities. Nevertheless, infibulation continues (Boddy,
1989; Hayes, 1975; Hicks, 1996), perpetuated by grandmothers, in the belief that the operation is needed to
assure the initiate’s sexual purity on which, in turn, the
honor of the family is based. For the participating
165
women, it is a joyous celebration, and their clapping,
singing, and drumming drown out the screams of the
mutilated child.
MENARCHE, MAIDENHOOD,
ADOLESCENCE, AND INITIATION
Observances at Menarche
Although the first menstruation is experienced by all
women everywhere, the event is elaborated by ritual only
in some societies, such as the Maroni River Caribs of
Surinam (Kloos, 1969, 1971). Here, in traditional times,
the girl was secluded for a month in a special place within
her parental home, subjected to certain restrictions, and
expected to spin cotton to make a hammock for a member
of her family. As part of one of the rituals celebrated
toward the end of her seclusion, the initiate places her
hand into a bowl of large stinging ants in order to impress
upon her the need to be industrious like the ant. A feast
ensues, and the initiate is told by guests that she is now a
woman. The ceremony stresses the industriousness that
will be demanded of her as the adult she has become.
(For an unusually rich description of a ceremony celebrated at menarche among the Navajo, see Frisbie [1967].)
Not only is menarche given ritual elaboration in
some societies, but it also appears that certain cultural
practices actually influence the onset of menarche.
According to J. W. M. Whiting (1965; see also Landauer &
Whiting, 1981; Lipson, 2001), in those societies with
cultural practices that inflict stress in infancy, girls will
experience menarche earlier than girls in societies
without such customs. Furthermore, East African data
reported by Borgerhoff Mulder (1989) indicates that
age at menarche is a major predictor of completed
family size.
Menstrual Customs
After menarche, women must observe the society’s
customary menstrual practices, and these can range from
minimal to cumbersome. Particularly elaborate customs
are typical of societies where menstruation is viewed as
polluting (Buckster, 1996) or dangerous. Unlike Stephens
(1962), who interpreted these customs as a response to
male castration anxiety, Benedict (1934/1959) had earlier
noted that menstruation could be viewed not only as
166
a peril but also as a blessing. More recently, Buckley
(1988) has provided support for the latter interpretation,
in a reexamination of menstrual customs among the
Native American Yurok of California.
Maidenhood
Menarche can also mark the beginning of a period in a
girl’s life that J. W. M. Whiting, Burbank, and Ratner
(1986) have labeled “maidenhood.” This interval,
between “the onset of female fecundity and a wedding
[which] legitimates motherhood” (p. 273) can last up to
almost 12 years in industrial societies, but typically lasts
only 3 years or less in nonindustrial societies. In those
nonindustrial societies in which girls are married before
menarche, there is no maidenhood period at all. It is in the
maidenhood period that “post menarchial subfecundity”
and a variety of societal rules governing premarital sex
are depended upon to control premarital pregnancy. The
rules of some societies are relatively lax, while in other
societies girls are confined and chaperoned. Thus, for
example, Flinn (1988) describes the traditional “daughter
guarding” by fathers in a Trinidad village, suggesting that
it serves to enhance a man’s “inclusive fitness.” Culture
change resulting from “modernization” and schooling
can totally alter the experience of “maidenhood,” as
Worthman and Whiting (1987) have reported for the
Kikuyu of East Africa, where unwed motherhood has
vastly increased with the virtual abandonment of traditional observances. One of these, a female initiation ritual
involving a genital operation, had been an important part
of Kikuyu maidenhood. Adolescent initiation rites for
girls appear to be particularly vulnerable to the introduction of Western influence. One of the fullest descriptions
of an initiation for girls, the Chisungu celebrated by the
Bemba of East Africa, was recorded by Richards (1956)
in the 1930s. She notes that, even then, the ceremony was
already a briefer, simplified, and somewhat altered
version of the lengthy, complex traditional observance.
A recent reversal of this trend are the initiation rites
for adolescents newly introduced in certain African
American communities (Hirschoff, 2002).
Becoming an Adult: Initiation
Ceremonies for Girls
Becoming an adult provides one of many examples of
biological life-course transitions which are virtually
Transitions in the Life-Course of Women
ignored in some societies but culturally elaborated in
others. Some initiation rituals must be celebrated before
the first menstruation. Others coincide with the actual
event, and the timing of others has to do with the availability of food for feasting. Some ceremonies are for
groups of girls; others are individual. Some are large public celebrations and others are performed in virtual
secrecy. Men are banned from some rites but are active
participants in others. In some societies the rites continue
for months. In other societies, the observances are brief.
Some rituals include challenging tests of competence.
And some initiations conclude with immediate marriage.
Only a few involve painful procedures such as a genital
operation (clitorodectomy or subincision) or extensive
scarification. Many ceremonies are clearly joyous and
involve feasting, music, and dance, as the initiate parades
publicly in new finery and receives gifts. On the other
hand, many societies do not celebrate initiation ceremonies for girls at all. What accounts for their presence
in some societies and their absence in others?
One basic fact concerning all girls’ initiation rites is
that they require a society’s commitment of considerable
time, effort, and resources, warranted because the role of
adult women is of such crucial importance. Thus when
the economic contribution of women provides the basic
sustenance of a society, as among the Maroni River
Caribs, the rite (described above) is needed to assure the
competence of the initiate. According to Kloos (1969,
1971), she has already mastered the actual skills she will
need, but it is her attitude toward work (an aspect of education largely neglected in postindustrial society) on
which the ritual is focused. Similarly, Richards (1956)
reports this focus for the initiation ceremony of the
Bemba, a rite which also includes tests of competence
(perhaps somewhat analogous to American SATs). On
the other hand, in the many societies where the economic
role of women is minor or negligible, initiation rituals of
this type are not celebrated.
The expenditures of an initiation ritual for girls are
also warranted in societies where women have an important role in the social structure. Such is the case in that
minority of societies, in which the groom joins the household of his wife’s mother at marriage, and where women
remain in the household of their mothers for life (however, the residence of men is discontinuous, as they move
in and out at marriage), and where this type of household
is basic to the society’s structure. The initiation ritual
provides public recognition (as well as recognition by the
Defloration, Marriage, and Divorce
girl’s mother) of the changed status of the young woman,
despite the unchanged locus of her activities. Such initiation rituals for girls are not needed in the far more
numerous societies in which women join the household
of their husband’s father at marriage (see below) and
where the household of related males is basic to the social
structure. (For further analyses of female initiation rites,
see, Brown [1963], Schlegel & Barry [1979, 1980],
Fried & Fried [1980], Lincoln [1981], and La Fontaine
[1986], among others. An excellent succinct summary of
this research is provided by Burbank [1997].)
VIRGINITY, DEFLORATION, MARRIAGE,
AND DIVORCE
Virginity
It has been suggested that among certain societies like the
traditional !Kung of southern Africa, who were tolerant
of childhood sexual activity, the concept of virginity was
virtually absent. At the other extreme are societies
where the honor of a family depends upon the virtue of
its women, as is typical for much of the circumMediterranean area, where women are secluded, chaperoned, and severely restricted in their activities. In some of
these societies, a woman who dishonors her family is
killed (Kressel, 1981). Following Goody (1973), Schlegel
(1993) explains the emphasis on virginity in certain
societies as a by-product of property arrangements at
marriage. Where a family must part with considerable
property at the marriage of a daughter, young women are
confined and restricted to prevent “male social climbing
through seduction” (Schlegel, 1993, p. 133).
Ritual Defloration
Originally published in 1918, Freud’s (1918/1953) essay
“The Taboo of Virginity” is remarkable for its use of
ethnographic examples (limited to what was available in
a World War I Austria), and provides some indication of
the great variety of cultural elaborations of defloration.
More recently, Wikan (1982) provides a first-hand
account of the traditional (Near Eastern) Oman wedding
ceremony, in which physical evidence for the defloration
of the bride, in the form of a bloody cloth, must be
publicly displayed to the waiting guests (see also, Korbin,
1987). The consequences are grave for a young woman
167
entering upon marriage without her virginity. Similar
practices have also been reported beyond the Near East,
among certain societies in Oceania.
Marriage
Anthropology has provided a literature on marriage so
extensive that it cannot be summarized briefly. Included
are intricate arguments concerning the definition of
marriage (complicated by unusual customs such as
woman–woman marriage among the Nandi of East Africa
[Oboler,1985]) and a rich descriptive literature concerning wedding rituals and the many forms that marriage can
take (e.g., Stockard, 2002). The study of weddings and
marriage is further complicated by the existence of
various gradations of marriage within a single society.
Thus a first marriage is typically elaborate and celebrated
very fully, whereas subsequent marriages and leviratical
marriages (see below) are minor events in those societies
that practice polygyny. In societies without a great deal of
storable wealth in forms such as cowrie shells, cattle,
pigs, and (more recently) bolts of cloth and money, the
property exchanged as well as the ceremonial activity at
marriage tends to be minimal or a marriage may be
established by an exchange of sisters between two
men. In some societies, the wedding can take years to
complete, being fully recognized only after repeated
ritual activity, extensive exchange of property, and even
the arrival of children. Benedict (1934/1959) reports
that marriage ceremonials were essentially lifelong
events among the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast of
North America. Payments between father-in-law and
son-in-law, in the form of prerogatives and wealth
continued, throughout life, marking the birth and the
maturity of a couple’s children.
In most but not all nonindustrial societies, marriages
are arranged by the elder generation (aided by a
go-between in some parts of the world). If there are objections, those of a young woman are more likely to be
disregarded than those of a prospective groom. As the
structuralist theorists have pointed out, marriage creates
relationships among groups, and such weighty decisions
are not left to the personal inclinations of young people.
Furthermore, young people do not typically own the large
amounts of property required for the exchanges that legitimate a marriage. As a result of this dependence on their
parents, young people are respectful and polite toward their
elders to an extent unknown in postindustrial societies.
168
The Creation of In-Laws
One aspect of the transition at marriage, which is almost
entirely overlooked in the anthropological literature, is the
transformation of the elder generation into in-laws, a
change of status that is sometimes almost as dramatic
as that of the bride. In the area of the Old World that
Brown (1997) has designated as “the great mother-in-law
belt,” reaching from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, we
encounter societies in which the overbearing and often
abusive mother-in-law is freed from most work by the
young bride. At marriage the wife enters into a life of servitude and is expected to be obedient, submissive, and stoic
in the face of gratuitous mistreatment, both psychological
and physical, until she becomes a mother-in-law herself.
(For additional information concerning the intergenerational
relationships among women, see Dickerson-Putman &
Brown [1998], and for a cross-cultural analysis of these
relationships, see Brown, Subbaiah, & Sarah [1998].)
Post-Marital Residence and
Vulnerability to Abuse
In most of the world’s nonindustrial societies, marriage
means a change of residence for the bride but not the
groom. For example, in parts of India, the young bride
must leave her family and the village where she has spent
her entire life to take up residence in a distant community,
among people she has never seen before. On the other
hand, in some Near Eastern societies, in which the fathers
of the bride and groom are brothers, the bride’s move to
her husband’s parents’ home may just be a move across
the neighborhood or even merely across the courtyard.
Mernissi (1987) reports that Moroccan women and their
families prefer such a marriage within the neighborhood,
to insure that a wife will not be beaten and mistreated.
Similarly, Chagnon (1977) reports that women among the
Yanomamo prefer a marriage with a man of their own
village, to reduce the severity of the beatings that all
wives regularly receive. The dark side of the transition at
marriage, wife abuse, has only recently been the focus of
an ethnography (McClusky, 2001) or explored crossculturally (Counts, Brown, & Campbell, 1999; Harvey &
Gow, 1994; Sev’er, 1997). Wife-beating appears to be
virtually universal (Erchak & Rosenfeld, 1994), yet the
vulnerability of wives varies in different societies from
those in which the abuse of wives is rare to those in which
it is frequent and brutal (Brown, 1999).
Transitions in the Life-Course of Women
The Transition at Marriage:
Transformation
One of the most dramatic transitions at marriage is
described by Elam (1973) for the Hima, who were traditional African pastoralists. The unmarried maiden, nude
and physically active, helped the men with herding
activities and was expected to be chaste. After marriage,
she was no longer permitted to participate in herding.
Now physically inactive, heavily clothed, and confined to
the home, she was fattened by her husband. Her obesity
was viewed as sexually attractive and made her appealing
to other men, whom she was expected to seduce in order
to attract a work force for her spouse.
Whereas the wedding ceremonial in our own society
typically provides the bride with a shining moment, and
the prospect of “happily ever after,” such illusions do not
pertain in the wedding celebrations of many nonindustrial
societies. Girls attempt to run away to avoid not only
the ceremony itself, but the diminished and difficult
existence to which it leads. The mother of the bride also
enters a new status. In many societies, the tears mothers
shed at the weddings of their daughters are tears of true
grief because their daughters will be separated from them
and will embark on a life of toil, possible abuse, and the
dangers of child-bearing under traditional conditions.
The transition at marriage, which is so eagerly anticipated
by girls in our own society, is viewed quite differently by
young women in many parts of the world, where remaining unmarried during the child-bearing years is not an
option.
Divorce as Transition
Divorce is almost, but not entirely, as universal as
marriage. A frequent reason for divorce is a wife’s infertility, whether real or alleged (since the possibility of
male infertility is often not recognized), or failure to bear
sons. Whether the procedure is simple or complicated,
terminating a marriage is an option open only to men in
many societies. A divorced wife may be compelled to
return to her natal family, who may not welcome her
because the property which the divorcing husband and his
family expended for her marriage must be returned.
Typically the property, possibly in the form of cattle or
pigs, has already changed hands in order to establish a
marriage for the woman’s brother or to acquire yet
another wife for her father. Custody of children is not
Parenthood and Making a Living
negotiable, since a society’s rules of descent are the
deciding factor. Thus in most societies, the transition a
woman experiences at divorce can deprive her of her
children and, unless she remarries, forces her into a life
of dependency and penury.
169
CHILD-BEARING, PARENTHOOD, MAKING
A LIVING, AND DOMESTICITY
the baby (Hull & Simpson, 1985; Raphael, 1972) is only
one of the many complex activities that are involved
in motherhood, a subject for which Hrdy (1999) has
provided a particularly rich and complex analysis that
combines evolutionary, historical, psychological, and
anthropological perspectives. As for what a society views
as good mothering, B. B. Whiting (1996) has shown that,
among the Kikuyu, this definition is not fixed but has
been changed by “modernization.”
Pre-Parenthood
The Balancing Act
Possibly the most dramatic transition in the lives of
women everywhere comes with motherhood, which also
involves a transition into grandparenthood for the ascending generation. Nowhere is the birth of a child, and
particularly the birth of a first child, unmarked by cultural
observances (Davis-Floyd & Georges, 1996; Raphael,
1975). The degree to which a society allows its women
to participate in the decision-making concerning their
reproductive activities varies cross-culturally (Browner,
2000), as do the customs associated with pregnancy. Food
prohibitions are typical among the numerous pregnancy
avoidances and taboos that must be observed to assure
the well-being of the unborn child (Ayres, 1967).
Obeyesekere (1963) noted the importance of food
cravings and Fessler (2002) has recently suggested an
“adaptionist explanation” for “pregnancy symptoms,”
suggesting that these food aversions may help the expectant mother to avoid certain pathogens. In addition,
there are societies in which the couvade is practiced,
where pre- and post-partum observances for the welfare
of the baby must be performed by the father (Munroe,
Munroe, & Whiting, 1973).
Motherhood ushers in the parenting phase of a woman’s
career, which will engage her for the rest of her life,
particularly with those offspring which societal rules
concerning postmarital residence assign to her vicinity.
Furthermore, motherhood complicates the delicate
balancing act that every society demands of its female
members. Not only must the economic activity of women
be reconciled with their domestic responsibilities (Bujra,
1979; Clark, 1999; Ember, 1983), but both must now also
be reconciled with parental responsibilities (Ball &
Panter-Brick, 2001; Brown, 1970, 1973, 1978). Each
society has its own formula for how this mutual accommodation is achieved, an issue of continuing anxious
concern for women in postindustrial societies. In many
societies, the solution is to delegate the work of childcare
(Minturn & Lambert, 1964) to female relatives such as
grandmothers (see below), sisters and co-wives, or to the
youngster’s older siblings (Weisner, 1987), or to the local
children’s peer group (Draper & Harpending, 1987), or to
delegate a mother’s other activities (Bradley, 1993;
Hawkes, O’Connell, & Blurton Jones, 1989, 1997).
Parenting activities by fathers vary widely, from those in
which fathers make a major contribution to child care
(Hewlett, 1994) to the numerous societies in which
fathers have virtually nothing to do with babies and
children. J. W. M. Whiting and B. B. Whiting (1975) have
suggested that the latter pattern is typical of those societies (societies which are “mid-level” in complexity, and
have a need for warriors) in which men and women seem
to live in very separate worlds, where there is “aloofness”
between husbands and wives.
Birth and Motherhood
A society’s birth customs (e.g., Jordan, 1978;
MacCormack, 1994) dictate the birthing position of the
mother (Naroll, Naroll, & Howard, 1961), the use of
special equipment, such as a birthing chair, where the
birth will take place (whether out of doors, in a secluded
room, or in a crowded communal dwelling, as among the
Mundurucú of South America), and whether the mother
is alone or attended by a midwife or certain relatives.
The role of the father can vary from being excluded
to performing the actual delivery, as reported for the
Utku of Northern Canada (Briggs, 1970). The nursing of
Women’s Associations
As full adults, women in some societies can join
organizations such as the women’s work group.
170
Transitions in the Life-Course of Women
Ross (1986) suggests that these associations do not
provide their members with access to greater authority
within the wider community. On the other hand, Levinson
(1989) reports that wife-beating is less prevalent in those
societies that have women’s work groups.
MENOPAUSE
AND
MIDDLE AGE
Menopause
The end of child-bearing, the transition into middle age,
which typically brings empowerment to women in nonindustrial societies is ceremonially unmarked, no doubt
because menopause can only be identified retrospectively. Yet this biological change, experienced by women
everywhere, is so strongly shaped by culture that even its
physical symptoms, such as the hot flash, show crosscultural variation (Kay, Voda, Olivas, Rios, & Imle, 1982;
Lock, 1993).
Middle Age
The psychoanalyst C. G. Jung (1931/1960), and more
recently Gutmann (1987) and McCabe (1989), noted that
in middle age men and women exhibit behaviors which
would have been gender-inappropriate earlier in life.
Many ethnographers report the greater assertiveness of
older women (Jacobson, 1977; Kerns & Brown, 1992;
McCabe, 1989; Mernissi, 1987; Roy, 1975); in some societies, matrons are described as becoming like men.
Middle-aged women can even achieve the “purity” of
men, as among the Hua of New Guinea, according to
Meigs (1988). The Hua ascribe a dangerously polluting
quality to women of child-bearing age, which no longer
applies to older women who have experienced the cleansing effect attributed to repeated child-bearing. Brown
(1982a, 1982b, 1992, 1998a, 1998b) has suggested that in
the nonindustrial world, transition into middle age brings
with it three major changes in the lives of women. First,
they are freed from conforming to cumbersome restrictions such as rules of modesty, showing elaborate respect,
observing menstrual customs, and being confined within
the home. Second, they are given authority over younger
kin, making decisions for them and delegating the work
they once had to perform. Third, some matrons become
eligible for special status and recognition outside the
home by becoming a midwife, healer, or matchmaker.
The Post-Reproductive Life Span
It is difficult to reconcile the extensive post-reproductive
life span among human females with the maximization of
reproductive success and inclusive fitness (Sievert, 2001).
However, P. Draper (2002, personal communication) has
found that, among the traditional !Kung, those adult women
who had a surviving mother also had more surviving children. Similarly Hawkes et al. (1989, 1997) have noted that,
among the Hadza, the presence of grandmothers contributes
to the reproductive success of their daughters by freeing
them from the rigors of strenuous subsistence activities.
WIDOWHOOD, OLD AGE, DEATH,
AND BEYOND
Widowhood
The transition into widowhood, which is unrelated to any
biological event in the life-course of women, receives considerable cultural elaboration in certain societies, where
the widow is demeaned, compelled to change her appearance, and to engage in public acts that denote grief, such
as wailing and inflicting pain on herself. She may be
blamed and punished for her husband’s death and accused
of poisoning or sorcerizing him, unless she can prove her
innocence, as Strathern (1972) reports for the people of
Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Perhaps most dramatic (and
most controversial) is the Indian custom of sati (suttee),
which dictates that, to avoid widowhood, the bereaved
wife must throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre to
be immolated with his corpse (Hawley, 1994). Embree
(1994) explains, “… in India, as elsewhere, widows were
a special subset of dangerous women … . Not only would
life [as a widow] be miserable for her, but inevitably
she would yield to base sensual passion and bring disgrace
on her community” (pp. 155–156). In some societies, the
widow is expected to enter into a leviratical marriage with
her husband’s brother, which places her in a relatively
unenviable position, or she may be expected to return to
the household of her own people, typically her brother’s,
where her welcome is questionable.
Old Age
Becoming frail and dependent marks the transition into
old age, a difficult period in the life-course of women
References
even in postindustrial societies (see Albert [2002] for a
cross-cultural perspective). However, unlike aged men,
even frail women still have the ability to contribute to the
household by doing light domestic chores. In the tradition
of Simmons’ (1945) pioneering cross-cultural study of
aging, Counts and Counts (1985) provide an overview of
the contrasts in the lives of aged men and women among
Pacific societies, stressing the continuing importance of
the parental role for aging women. In West Bengal
(Lamb, 2000), the care adult children provide for the frail
incontinent parent is viewed as a repayment for the
nurture once received in infancy and childhood; yet it is
believed that the “moral debt” can never be fully repaid
by the younger generation. On the other hand, in some
societies the decrepit elderly are subjected to “death
hastening behavior” (Glasscock, 1983).
Death-Related Customs
Funerary customs, burial customs, and mourning customs
are prolonged and complex in certain societies. A very
full description is provided by Kerns (1983) for the
Garífuna of Belize. Although men participate in the
burial procedures and in the funeral celebration, it is
Garífuna women who actually bear the major responsibility for carrying out the complex customs ushered in
by death. This uneven division of labor is typical of
many societies, as are the more elaborate observances
at a man’s death than at the death of a woman
(Friendly, 1956).
Beyond Death
In some societies, the transition to the afterlife takes on a
unisex character (not unlike the transitions very early in
life), as among the traditional Navajo (Kluckhohn &
Leighton, 1962) where a woman, like a man, is feared
once she has turned into a ghost. However, in other societies the afterlife itself may differ greatly for men and
women. Writing under an assumed name, Sabbah (1984)
provides a feminist analysis of the place of women in the
context of Islam, noting that, whereas men are assured an
eternity of sensual bliss in the company of numerous
compliant maidens, the description of the afterlife for
women is left somewhat vague and not particularly
promising.
171
CONCLUSIONS
Transitions in the life-course of women vary from society
to society. They may be numerous or few. They may
come early in life or later. They may be joyous or painful
or even life-threatening. They may be cultural elaborations of biological changes, or purely cultural. They may
be the same as for males or for females only. However,
all life-course transitions share the fact that they are
inevitable and irreversible. Thus they serve to remind the
individual and those around her, that life is finite and that
there will be a final transition at death.
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Sexuality and Male–
Female Interaction
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
Gwen J. Broude
SEXUAL ATTITUDES
PERSPECTIVES
AND
PRACTICES:
Major Theoretical Paradigms
Sexual behavior is a cross-cultural universal. Across time
and place, the vast majority of human beings engage in
sexual relations. The biologically ubiquitous drive to
engage in sexual activity is also transparently related to
reproduction in our own and other species. Among
human beings, however, different cultures also elaborate
and interpret sexuality in different ways. Each of these
three observations regarding human sexuality motivates
one of three major theoretical perspectives regarding the
study of human sexual attitudes and practices.
The first perspective assumes that matters having to
do with sex, as with any human function, are basically a
product of learning. Individuals pick up beliefs and
customs regarding sex from members of the culture in
which they grow up and live. Theorists sympathetic to
this point of view expect to see a wide variety of attitudes
and practices exhibited across societies dictated by such
things as local values, culturally determined roles, values,
and the like. Thus, for instance, if a society places a value
on virginity in unmarried girls, this may simply be in
accordance with a culturally determined view that girls
should be chaste until marriage. This is the position of the
cultural determinist.
The second perspective assumes that sexual beliefs
and practices are systematically related to other aspects
of culture and behavior, and may generally reflect practical solutions to problems of living characteristic of
certain kinds of cultures. Thus, for instance, if a society
is large and anonymous and has no reliable birth control,
adults may place a value on virginity, especially in girls,
to minimize the chances that a man will impregnate an
unmarried female and then disappear. This represents
a practical problem in many cultures because it means
that the girl’s family is left to take care of the child. This
view that cultural attitudes and behaviors are practical
responses to some kind of problem or opportunity
presented by a culture is characteristic of cross-cultural
anthropologists.
The third perspective assumes that sexual attitudes
and behaviors are actually grounded in biology. They are
mediated by natural selection and represent adaptations.
According to this view, customs and behaviors having to
do with sex show up in societies today because they have
been successful in promoting reproduction in the past.
Variations in sexual attitudes and practices from one
society to the next just represent adaptive responses to
local conditions. Theorists who argue for a role of natural
selection in sexual beliefs and behaviors assume that
environment also influences how people think about and
deal with sex. But the effect of environment is not to
create sexual attitudes and behaviors from whole cloth.
Rather, local circumstances act to shape pan-human
sexual impulses to respond to the particulars of a given
society while still allowing individuals to reproduce most
successfully. This is the position of the evolutionary
psychologist.
Controversies and Trends in the
Evidence
A related question has to do with what constitutes a proper
context for understanding the meaning of a sexual belief
or behavior. Some theorists assume that any attitude or
behavior having to do with sex has a unique meaning for
the culture in which it is exhibited. According to this view,
it is impossible to view what looks like the same belief or
behavior across two or more cultures as in fact equivalent.
Thus, for example, if members of two cultures view
virginity as valuable in a single girl, this may in fact mean
one thing in one society and another thing in another
society. The reasoning is that members of any given
society attach unique meanings to their customs and practices despite the appearance of superficial similarities.
This point of view characterizes the thinking of cultural
determinists.
The opposing two positions assume that we can
make meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. Thus the
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178
cross-cultural anthropologist may argue that, if two
cultures believe virginity is valuable in unmarried girls,
this is because both cultures have similar causal conditions. And the evolutionary psychologist will then argue
that strategies aimed at avoiding single motherhood make
sense because a woman is often at a disadvantage if she
has to raise a child on her own.
All three positions assume that there will be some
unique features in every society. Cross-cultural and
evolutionary psychologists also assume that we will see
patterned variation in how sex is managed across societies. These patterns are borne out in a number of investigations of sex and culture, as indicated in this article. The
discovery that sexual attitudes and practices are patterned
similarly across cultures, and that the same custom or
belief is predictably associated with the same ecological,
social structural, economic, or political variables supports
the idea that the same sexual attitude or custom has a
similar meaning across societies. Further, sexual attitudes
and practices across cultures are often patterned in ways
that look like good strategies for promoting successful
reproduction.
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
Sexual activity is always considered dangerous in
15% of the sample of 34 societies (Broude & Greene,
1976). For instance, Ethiopian Konso males believe that the
vaginas of some girls can literally snap off a man’s penis
(Hallpike, 1972). Similarly, the Azande of Zaire claim that
the mere sight of a woman’s anus or genitals can have
injurious effects on a man (Leighton & Kluckhohn, 1969).
Finally, unusual or unsanctioned sex, for instance,
sex at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or using the
wrong technique, is dangerous in 26% of the same
sample. Sex is dangerous to specific categories of persons,
for instance, shamans or unmarried people, in 12% of
these cultures (Broude & Greene, 1976). (See sex taboos
below for further discussion.)
Societies also differ with regard to the meaning that
they impute to sexual activity. Thus, for example, for the
Bhil of India sex is sacred and should not be engaged in
for pleasure. For the Lepcha, by contrast, sex is merely a
diversion. And among the Cayapa of Ecuador, sex is “a
little like work” (Gorer, 1938). In some places, sex is an
occasion for expressing hostility. For instance, the Gusii
of Kenya treat sexual intercourse, even between spouses,
as a contest in which the male attempts to conquer and
cause pain to the female (LeVine & LeVine, 1966).
ATTITUDES TOWARD SEX
Range of Variation
The variation in attitudes toward sex across cultures is
striking. This variability is reflected in the degree to
which sex is viewed as a perilous or harmless pursuit.
The belief that sex is dangerous at least some of the
time is shared by a majority of societies for which
information on attitudes toward sex is available. In only
41% of a worldwide sample of 34 cultures is sex viewed
as safe all of the time (Broude & Greene, 1976). Thus, for
instance, sex is viewed as normal and natural among
societies such as the Tibetan Lepcha, who think of sexual
activity as wholesome, fun, and even necessary, much
like food or drink (Gorer, 1938).
Sexual secretions are seen as dangerous in 6% of
the same 34 cultures (Broude & Greene, 1976). For the
Kurd, is it not sex itself that is dangerous, but the body
fluids produced during sexual activity are viewed as dirty,
and therefore Kurd men bathe after sex (Broude, 1994).
The Kimam of New Guinea believe that sperm has
healing qualities, but sex can stunt the growth of boys
(Serpenti, 1965).
Correlates of Attitudes Toward Sex
Beliefs about whether sex is harmless or dangerous are
predictably associated with other sexual beliefs and
practices. In cultures where people believe that sex is
dangerous, extramarital affairs for women are condemned
and the incidence of both premarital and extramarital
sex is low. Interestingly, attitudes about sex are not
predictably related to beliefs about the desirability of
frequent sexual activity within a marriage, so that people
in a particular culture may think that sex can be harmful
but nevertheless advocate frequent sexual activity
between a husband and wife. It is common, however, to
find taboos associated with menstruation in societies that
equate sex with danger (Broude & Greene, 1976).
PREMARITAL SEX
Norms of Premarital Sex
Cultural rules regarding the sexual behavior of unmarried
individuals range from extreme permissiveness to
Premarital Sex
extreme intolerance. A slight majority of cultures tend to
disapprove of premarital sex for girls. In a worldwide
sample of 141 cultures, 45% at least tolerate premarital
sexual activity on the part of unmarried females, while
the remaining 55% disapprove of premarital sex for most,
if not all, girls. Rules regarding premarital sex are
somewhat more tolerant for boys. Thus, in a sample of
57 cultures, 63% approve of sexual activity for unmarried
boys, while only 33% disapprove of premarital sex
(Broude & Greene, 1976).
Among the Truk of Oceania, adults take it for
granted that adolescents will be sexually active and there
is a widespread belief that girls will not menstruate unless
they have engaged in sexual intercourse, a reflection of
how common premarital sex must be among young
Trukese females (Gladwin & Sarason, 1953). The Garo
of India would prefer unmarried girls and boys to remain
virgins but acknowledge that “after all, they are young so
what can you do?” (Burling, 1963).
Premarital sex is mildly disapproved of for girls in
17% of the sample of 141 cultures and for boys in 14%
of the sample of 57 cultures (Broude & Greene, 1976).
Among the Kutenai of North America, virginity is valued,
but not required, and an unmarried girl is warned that if
she engages in sexual relations, she will turn into a frog
when she dies and go to live with her ancestors. But no
punishment is meted out to the young person who
does, in fact, have sexual intercourse before marriage
(Turney-High, 1941).
Thirty-four percent of the sample of 141 societies
strongly disapprove of premarital sex for girls and 23%
strongly condemn premarital sex for boys (Broude &
Greene, 1976). In these cultures, the repercussions for
engaging in sexual relations before marriage are always
substantial and sometimes extreme. A Javanese boy and
girl are married on the spot if caught engaging in sexual
activity (Geertz, 1961). Among the Chiricahua of southwest North America, chastity is required of females until
marriage, and a girl who engages in sexual activity before
marriage will be whipped, perhaps in public. Boys are not
as severely restricted, but they are warned about acquiring a bad reputation. Fathers warn their sons not to have
sexual relations with a woman because “they have teeth
in there. They bite off your penis and have some
diseases.” If a pregnancy occurs before marriage, the boy
and girl are forced to wed if possible (Opler, 1941).
Where premarital sex is strongly condemned, death
is the most common punishment for engaging in sexual
179
activity before marriage. The Kenuzi Nubians in Egypt
will have a girl who has engaged in premarital sex killed
by her closest male relatives (Frayzer, 1985). A Rwala
girl who is caught having sexual relations will be killed
by her father or brother. Her corpse will then be cut into
pieces (Raswan, 1947).
In 4% of the sample of 141 cultures, a boy and girl
are allowed to engage in sexual relations if they are
betrothed. In some cases, adults are permissive with an
engaged couple when they view premarital sexual
relations as test of fertility. In some cultures, a pregnancy
then means that the couple must be married (Broude &
Greene, 1976).
Correlates of Premarital Sex Norms
Cultures that require or value chastity among the
unmarried appear to be responding to practical problems
associated with premarital sexual activity. People in many
societies with restrictive premarital sex norms will tell
you that they disapprove of premarital sex because they
wish to avoid premarital pregnancies. Of 28 cultures
permitting premarital sex, 38% condone sex before
marriage as long as the girl does not become pregnant
(Frayzer, 1985).
Pregnancy presents a special set of problems
for some kinds of cultures, and in fact it is in just these
societies that premarital sex tends to be prohibited.
Societies in which descent is traced through the father are
predictably restrictive because, where a child obtains his
social identity from his father, out-of-wedlock births
produce children who must live in social and legal limbo.
Similarly, where individuals are expected to marry and
then go to live with or near the kin of the husband,
children born to single mothers disrupt living arrangements. Where descent and residence are traced through a
mother and her relatives, premarital pregnancies are less
disruptive, and in fact, in these cultures, premarital sex
norms tend to be permissive (Goethals, 1971).
Cultures also tend to restrict premarital sexual
activity when a bride receives some kind of money or
property at marriage. This may be because adults worry
that some boy may want to make a girl pregnant so that
he can marry her and gain control over the property that
she will receive at marriage. Adults in these cultures want
the authority to make a match for their unmarried female
relatives and so they try to minimize the chances that a
pregnancy will interfere with their matchmaking. In fact,
180
where there is no property exchange at marriage,
societies are overwhelmingly permissive regarding
their attitudes toward premarital sex (Schlegel, 1991).
Premarital sex norms also tend to be restrictive when
class structure is fluid (Broude, 1981). Again, parents
may be trying to protect their daughters from boys who
want to form a connection with a wealthy woman.
Permissive premarital sex norms, by contrast, are
typical of small communities. Perhaps this is because
people all know one another so that the father of an
out-of-wedlock child can be tracked down and a marriage
can be arranged. Finally, premarital sex norms tend to
be permissive where women contribute to the subsistence
economy, perhaps because in such cultures women are
relatively independent and therefore have some control
over their own behavior (Eckhardt, 1971).
While premarital pregnancies are often disruptive, in
some societies pregnancy in an unmarried girl is considered to be a good thing. This is usually because such a
pregnancy indicates that the girl is fertile. Among the
Lepcha of Tibet (Gorer, 1938), a pregnancy makes girl
more attractive because it is now clear that she can
conceive. In the Caribbean, a Callinago couple will marry
only after a woman has demonstrated that she is fertile,
and often a woman will already have a number of children by different men before she marries (Taylor, 1946).
Premarital sex norms are also predictably found
alongside other customs and beliefs about sex. Where
attitudes toward premarital sex are restrictive, people tend
not to talk about sex. Homosexuality and extramarital sex
for females are condemned, and in fact women do not
typically have extramarital affairs. Societies with restrictive premarital sex norms are also more likely to practice
love magic, and marriages tend to be arranged by third
parties (Broude, 1975).
Frequency of Premarital Sex
Norms of premarital sex across cultures also reliably
predict the number of unmarried boys and girls who
actually engage in sexual activity. The patterns are similar
for boys and girls, although there are fewer societies in
which premarital sex is universal for girls and more in
which almost no girls engage in premarital sex. All or
most unmarried males have at least some premarital
sexual experience in 60% of 107 societies. Premarital sex
is practiced by many but not most males in 18% of the
sample. In 10% of the 107 cultures, some unmarried
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
boys engage in sexual relations. But in those cultures,
premarital sex is not typical. Finally, premarital sex for
boys is rare in 12% of the sample. All, or almost all,
unmarried girls engage in premarital sex in 49% of a
sample of 114 societies. In 17% of the sample, many, but
not most or all, girls have sexual relations before marriage.
Premarital sex for girls occurs occasionally in 14% of the
sample, while in 20% of these cultures, premarital sex is
rare or absent for girls (Broude & Greene, 1976).
Virginity
Virginity, especially in unmarried girls, is of at least some
concern in most cultures around the world. Of a crosscultural sample of 134 societies, only 25% place no value
at all on virginity (Broude, 1975). Among the Marshallese
of Oceania, every girl is sexually active before puberty
and virginity is a foreign idea (Erdland, 1914). The
Chuckchee of Siberia have no word for chastity (Bogoras,
1929). By contrast, in 35% of the sample of 134 societies,
virginity is very important, at least for girls, and in 75% of
these cultures, virginity is required in unmarried females
(Broude, 1975).
Where virginity is required, a girl must often prove
that she was a virgin on her wedding night. Such tests of
virginity require that a newly married couple produce a
blood-stained article of bedding or clothing. Among the
Fon of West Africa, the groom sends his new fatherin-law the mat on which the couple have slept on their
wedding night. If the girl is not a virgin, the couple may
have kept the bedding on which they first slept, and it is
that which the girl’s father receives (Herskovits, 1938).
In Afghanistan, Basseri newlyweds sleep in a tent with
nothing in it but the bride’s bedding and a white cloth.
Once the marriage is consummated, a male relative of the
new husband fires a gun and the women living in camp
respond by making a trilling sound. The next morning,
the groom’s family checks for signs of blood on the white
cloth (Barth, 1961).
In cultures where virginity is valued, a celebration
may follow proofs of a new bride’s virginity. Among the
Fur of the Sudan, if a bride was a virgin, her new husband
honors her with a feast (Beaton, 1948). In Oceania, the
Tikopian husband of a virgin bride wears a white flower
in his hair. In the past, he would have smeared blood on
his forehead instead (Firth, 1936).
Where a culture values virginity in the unmarried,
attempts are made to increase the likelihood that young
Frequency of Sex in Marriage
people will not engage in sexual activities. The Silwa of
Egypt adopt the extreme measure of removing the girl’s
clitoris when she is 7 or 8 years old, reasoning that this
will reduce her sex drive (Frayzer, 1985). Other societies
practice infibulation, a procedure that temporarily
closes the vaginal opening. In some places, girls are
accompanied by older women whenever they are likely to
find themselves in the company of the opposite sex.
Sometimes, the sexes are segregated to minimize the
opportunities for sexual experimentation.
In cultures for which virginity is important, a girl or
her family may pay a price if she is not a virgin at
marriage. In some societies, the groom or his family
traditionally present money or property to the bride or her
family upon their marriage. Where virginity in a bride is
expected or required, the value of the gifts may be less,
or they may be forfeited altogether, if the girl is not a
virgin. Sometimes, a marriage is called off if the bride
cannot prove her virginity. If the bride or her family have
presented gifts to the groom or his family, then the gifts
may be kept even though no marriage takes place. In
extreme cases, the bride may be killed. At a minimum, the
bride and groom may be humiliated.
Defloration
Defloration refers to the rupture of the hymen, a fold
of mucous membrane covering the vaginal opening.
Cultures that require proof of virginity in a bride at marriage are assuming that the hymen of an inexperienced
girl will still be intact. The blood that is taken as a test of
virginity is the result of the breaking of the hymen during
sexual intercourse. When premarital sex is successfully
prohibited, defloration often, although not always, occurs
when a marriage is consummated. But in a number of
societies, special customs surround the loss of virginity in
a girl before she is married.
In cultures with defloration customs, loss of
virginity takes place during some specific event or with a
specific male or group of males. In Australia, an Aranda
girl’s first sexual experience must be with the male kin of
her husband. At marriage, the new bride is taken into the
bushes by some of the groom’s male relatives, all of
whom have intercourse with her. She is then returned to
her husband (Murdock, 1936). Among the Marshallese of
Oceania, a girl loses her virginity to the chief at her
initiation rite (Erdland, 1914). In the Amazon, a Cubeo
girl is digitally deflowered in private at about 8 years of
181
age by an elderly celibate man from her sib. Afterwards,
an announcement is made that she is a woman (Goldman,
1963). Among the Toda of India, a man who is not from
a girl’s clan has sexual intercourse with her before she
reaches puberty. People say that the girl would be
disgraced if she were still a virgin after puberty, and she
might have trouble finding a husband (Rivers, 1906).
Palauan girls are deflowered by their mothers when they
reach puberty. Sex is prohibited for some months afterward, but then girls are educated about sex and encouraged to engage in sexual relations (Barnett, 1949).
Sometimes a girl is expected to deflower herself. In Zaire,
Nkundo girls gradually enlarge the vaginal opening by
inserting larger and larger plant shoots in the vagina.
The procedure is called “opening the way.” Sometimes
a group of girls will carry out the process together
(Hulsaert, 1928).
FREQUENCY
OF
SEX
IN
MARRIAGE
People living in different cultures report widely different
incidences of sexual activity between spouses. In part,
the differences are related to cultural attitudes regarding
how often individuals ought to engage in sexual
intercourse.
In 17% of 70 cultures around the world, frequent
sexual intercourse between spouses is viewed as highly
desirable (Broude, 1976). Among the Lepcha, who typify
this attitude, married couples claim to engage in sexual
activity five, six, or more times a day when first married,
although they acknowledge that a person would be tired
afterward (Gorer, 1938).
By contrast, 9% of the same sample of 70 societies
believe that too much sex, even between married couples,
is a bad thing (Broude, 1976). The Konso of Ethiopia
believe that sex makes men weak, and therefore only
engage in sex in moderation (Hallpike, 1972). The Yapese
of Oceania believe that too much sexual activity will
make a man ill, and tell legends of men who have died
from an overactive sex life (Hunt, Schneider, & Stevens,
1949). Therefore sexual activity perhaps two or three
times a month is recommended. The Chiricahua say that
too much sex is dangerous and sexual intercourse two or
three times a week is about the limit. In the words of one
Chiricahua male, “ ... after eleven years of married life,
when I’m home, [I have sex] about once a week. Once a
week won’t hurt a man, I guess” (Opler, 1941).
182
In cultures that worry about the effects of too much
sexual activity, total abstinence may nevertheless also be
viewed as dangerous. Thus, for example, the Kaska of
Alaska think that sexual moderation is important for a
long life and good luck. But too little sex is also dangerous especially for males, since a man who is deprived of
sexual intercourse will spend his time worrying about
girls and may even lose his brains and go insane
(Honigmann, 1949).
Fourteen percent of the sample of 70 societies not
only view excessive sex as undesirable but also promote
abstinence, even between spouses, as a positive virtue
(Broude, 1976). The Navaho of North America say that
an individual who engages in sexual intercourse too
frequently may bleed from the genitals or be struck by
lightning. Indeed, a person who has too much sex may
actually go mad. This association of sex with dangers
of a variety of kinds causes the Navaho to promote
abstinence in a variety of circumstances (Leighton &
Kluckhohn, 1969).
In the remaining 60% of the sample of 70 cultures,
abstinence is seen as desirable in a limited number of
circumstances, but in general frequent sex is viewed as
desirable (Broude, 1976).
The modal incidence of sexual intercourse across
cultures for which we have evidence is once per day,
omitting days for which specific taboos are invoked
(Broude, 1994). Across cultures, people also tend to
engage in sex less often as they grow older. The Lepcha,
who claim to engage in sexual intercourse many times
over a 24-hour period, admit that by the time they are
30 years old married people typically engage in sex only
once a day (Gorer, 1938). The incidence of sexual activity across cultures also levels off as a relationship matures
(Broude, 1994).
Attitudes toward the desirability of frequent sexual
intercourse between spouses are related to a number of
other beliefs regarding sexual behavior. Thus, where frequent sexual activity between husband and wife is regarded
as desirable, homosexuality is accepted, love magic is
absent, and extramarital sex for wives is accepted, or else
it is condemned for both sexes (Broude, 1975).
SEX TABOOS
Even in societies where frequent sexual activity between
spouses is regarded as desirable, sexual relations are
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
prohibited under some circumstances. Sex taboos are
present in 60% of the 70 cultures for which evidence is
available with specific categories of people, or at certain
ages, stages, or crises in life (Broude, 1975).
In some societies, sexual activity is prohibited
during certain times of the day. The Cuna of Panama
approve of sexual relations only at night in accordance
with the laws of God (Broude, 1994). The Semang of
Malaysia believe that sex during the day will cause thunderstorms and deadly lightning, leading to the drowning
not only of the offending couple but also of other
innocent people (Murdock, 1936). And the West African
Bambara believe that a couple who engage in sex during
the day will have an albino child (Paques, 1954).
Sometimes, sex is prohibited in certain places. The
Mende of West Africa forbid sexual intercourse in the
bush (Little, 1951), while the Semang condemn sex
within camp boundaries for fear that the supernatural will
become angry (Murdock, 1936). Among the Bambara,
engaging in sexual relations out of doors will lead to the
failure of the crops (Paques, 1954).
Sex taboos can also apply to certain activities. Often,
sex prohibitions are associated with war or economic
pursuits. The Ganda of Uganda forbid sexual intercourse
the night before battle if the fighting is likely to be
protracted (Roscoe, 1911). The Lepcha prohibit sex for
3 months after a bear trap has been set. If the taboo is
broken, no animals will be caught (Gorer, 1938). The
Cuna of Panama outlaw sexual intercourse during a turtle
hunt (Broude, 1994), the Yapese of Oceania prohibit sex
during a fishing excursion (Hunt et al., 1949), and among
the Ganda of Uganda, sex is forbidden while the wood for
making canoes is being processed (Broude, 1994). Ganda
women may not engage in sexual intercourse while they
are mourning the dead (Broude, 1994), and Kwoma men
are prohibited from engaging in sexual activity after a
cult ceremony has been held (Whiting, 1941). The Jivaro
of Ecuador refrain from engaging in sex after someone
has died, after planting narcotics, when preparing a feast,
or after an enemy has been killed (Broude, 1994).
Sex taboos can also apply to certain categories of
people. The Marshallese prohibit sex with a person taking
or dispensing herbal medicine or else the sick person
will become worse and perhaps die (Broude, 1994).
The Yapese comdemn sex for all religious figures (Hunt,
Schneider, & Stevens, 1949).
Sexual relations may also be forbidden at certain
times of life. Some societies prohibit sex until a person
Extramarital Sex
reaches puberty or has undergone an initiation rite.
Sexual relations are often prohibited while a woman is
menstruating or pregnant or after she has given birth.
Sex taboos during menstruation are reported in 20% of
a sample of 44 societies. In the 117 societies for which
a post-partum sex taboo is reported, the prohibition
lasts for under a year in 80% and for over a year in the
remaining 20% (Broude, 1975).
EXTRAMARITAL SEX
Norms of Extramarital Sex
In every society around the world, the overwhelmingly
majority of men and women marry, and married couples
are expected to engage in sexual relations. Sexual activity
outside marriage is also condemned in many societies.
However, in a number of cultures, extramarital affairs are
at least tolerated, and a majority of societies accept and
even expect husbands to engage in them. Fifty-six percent
of a worldwide sample of 112 societies do not officially
condemn extramarital sex for males, while extramarital
liaisons are condemned and may be punished in only 44%
of these societies. By contrast, extramarital sex is overwhelmingly condemned for women across the world.
Extramarital sex is condemned in 88% of a sample of
114 societies, while is accepted in only 12% of these
cultures (Broude & Greene, 1976).
As these statistics demonstrate, there is a clearly double standard when it comes to the extramarital sexual
behavior of husbands versus wives. The double standard is
magnified by the tendency of cultures to sanction more
severe punishments for wives than for husbands, even
when extramarital affairs are condemned for both sexes.
For example, among the Chiricahua, a husband whose
wife has engaged in extramarital sex is permitted to whip,
mutilate, or kill his spouse, and pressure from the community provokes extreme responses even in husbands.
A wife, by contrast, may scold an adulterous husband, but
she may in fact ignore infidelities altogether for fear of
otherwise chasing away a future potential husband. In
matters of infidelity, a wife is not considered to be as greatly
wronged as is a husband, since people think unfaithfulness
is always the woman’s fault anyway (Opler, 1941).
Similarly, among the Crow, a husband might beat a wife
who is unfaithful or slash her face with a knife. He might
also instigate gang rape by his older clansmen. Men, on the
183
other hand, are expected to carry on a number of affairs
while they are married, and a man who remains faithful to
his wife loses respect (Lowie, 1912, 1935).
Whereas it is usually the unfaithful spouse who is
blamed and punished for acts of infidelity in most cultures,
sometimes the lover is the target of reprisals. In Malaysia,
an Iban wife can collect a fine from the partner of an
unfaithful husband. She can also thrash the guilty woman,
but then forfeits half the fine (Roth, 1892). Among the
Igbo of Nigeria, a husband may demand compensation
from his wife’s lover, or he may rape the lover’s female kin
as retribution for the infidelity (Uchendu, 1965).
Even when extramarital sex is condemned, some
societies selectively lift the restraints on extramarital
sexual activity. Sometimes, extramarital sex is permitted
with certain specified categories of people. The North
American Haida allow husbands and wives to have sexual
relations with the clansmen of the spouse (Murdock,
1936). Similarly, the Siriono of South America permit
husbands to engage in sexual relations with anyone
whom his wife calls sister, while a woman may engage in
extramarital sexual relations with anyone whom her
husband calls brother. This means that any married person
is permitted to have perhaps 10 partners other than the
spouse. Affairs of this kind are common and accepted, but
do tend to be thought of as adulterous (Holmberg, 1950).
Sometimes, the normal constraints on extramarital
sexual activity are also lifted on certain occasions. The
Orokaiva of New Guinea allow married people to engage
in extramarital sex during initiation ceremonies, although
the same relationships would be condemned at other times
(F. E. Williams, 1930). The Fijians permit husbands and
wives to have extramarital sexual encounters when prisoners are brought home (Williams & Heylin, 1860).
A minority of cultures also have institutionalized
wife-sharing, in which a husband is allowed to lend his
wife to a particular other man or category of men.
Sometimes, two men exchange wives. Wife-sharing is
present in 34% of 101 cultures around the world (Broude,
1981). Typically, a man will share his wife with his kin or
with a good friend. In cultures where wife-sharing is
practiced, the husband can be expected to reap some kind
of benefit from the exchange. Thus, wife-sharing is sometimes practiced to consolidate relationships between two
men. For instance, among the Kimam of New Guinea, the
feeling of obligation between friends who have lent each
other wives is increased so that the men are now expected
to help each other in times of need (Serpenti, 1965).
184
Wife-sharing can also ease tense relationships among
men. In Australia, Aranda men will lend wives to
members of an enemy village in an attempt to defuse
hostilities (Murdock, 1936). Among the Lesu, a wife
receives money from her lover and turns it over to her
spouse (Powdermaker, 1933).
Correlates of Extramarital Sex Norms
Norms regarding extramarital sex for women may be so
overwhelmingly restrictive because husbands wish to
avoid having their wives become pregnant by some other
man. Unless a man then divorces such a wife, he will be
investing time, energy, and resources in a child who is not
genetically his own, a situation that evolutionary theory
predicts men will vigorously attempt to avoid. In fact,
infidelity is a very common reason for divorce across
cultures and men are far more likely than a women to
seek divorce from an unfaithful spouse (Broude, 1994).
Often, societies view infidelity on the part of a wife
as an infringement of the property rights of the husband.
For instance, the Wogeo of New Guinea say that a man
who engages in extramarital sex with someone else’s wife
is “the same as a thief.” Similarly, a woman who has sexual relations with a married man is a “receiver of stolen
goods” (Hogbin, 1970).
Norms of extramarital sex are predictably related
to other sexual beliefs and practices. Restrictive rules
regarding extramarital sex for wives are associated
with restrictive attitudes toward premarital sex for girls,
restrictions on talk about sex, the belief that too much sex
is undesirable, the belief that sex is dangerous, condemnation and punishment of homosexuality, and male
boasting about sex and other exploits (Broude, 1975).
Frequency of Extramarital
Sexual Behavior
Norms of extramarital sexual behavior are not predictably
associated with how many married husbands or wives
actually engage in extramarital sex. Thus, whereas a
slight majority of societies condone extramarital sex for
males, extramarital sex is universal or at least common in
78% of 107 cultures and uncommon or absent in only
22%. The discrepancy between extramarital sex norms
and actual behavior is even more striking in the case of
women. While societies overwhelmingly condemn affairs
for wives, extramarital sex is universal or common for
Sexual Attitudes and Practices
women in 66% of 114 cultures and uncommon or absent
in only 34% (Broude, 1981). The fact that men and
women engage in extramarital sex despite of cultural
condemnation suggests how powerful the impulse is to
give into sexual temptation. Women seem to be especially
motivated to conduct affairs, given that the punishment
for a wife’s infidelity in some societies is so extreme.
Evolutionary theory suggests a reason for these patterns.
For males, sexual relations with more women means
a greater chance of producing more offspring. Males may
not be consciously thinking about their reproductive
success while planning an affair, but the result of engaging in sex outside marriage is nevertheless an increased
likelihood of fathering more children. For women, extramarital affairs may mean producing children with genes
superior to those of the wife’s own husband. Ideally,
a woman might even attract a man who can provide a life
for her and her children that is superior to the one that her
current husband can provide. Research indicates that
a woman who has an affair has an easier time breaking
up with her current mate and finding a new partner that
is, in her opinion, more desirable than her present mate
(Buss, 1999).
Correlates of Extramarital
Sexual Behavior
Extramarital sexual activity is predictably associated with
other sexual attitudes and practices. Where extramarital
sex for males is uncommon or absent, sexual relationships include foreplay and women tend to have a say in
the choice of a marriage partner. These correlations
suggest that where marital relationships are characterized
by choice and intimacy, males do not look outside
marriage for sexual gratification. However, extramarital
sex for males is also absent in societies where female
modesty is valued, rape is punished but also present, and
wife-beating is common. These associations suggest that
the absence of sexual activity outside marriage on the part
of males reflects a certain hostility toward, or at least
devaluing of, women more generally. Where extramarital
sex for wives is uncommon or absent, males are likely to
be sexually aggressive and even hostile in their sexual
approaches to women (Broude, 1975). This set of
relationships may represent a reluctance on the part of
women to engage males in sexual activity simply because
male sexual aggression is an experience that women wish
to avoid when possible.
References
185
OVERALL PATTERNING OF SEXUAL
ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES
Folk wisdom leads us to expect a certain consistency
regarding how an individual culture will manage human
sexuality. This intuition is only moderately borne out by
the evidence. Certain aspects of sexual belief and behavior do tend to be predictably related within and across
societies. But some sexual attitudes and practices also
tend to be independent of others.
Cultures across the world do appear to be consistent
with regard to some aspects of premarital and extramarital sexual behavior. Thus a society that is permissive
regarding premarital sex for boys will also have permissive norms for girls. The same society is also likely to
have high incidences of both premarital and extramarital
sex for males and females. Similarly, a society that
restricts premarital sex for boys will also do so for
girls, and both premarital and extramarital sex will be
uncommon (Broude, 1976).
Interestingly, extramarital sex norms are not related
to these attitudes or behaviors. Neither are premarital and
extramarital sex norms and behavior predictably related to
another cluster of behaviors related to sex. In particular,
male concerns about or incidence of impotence, male
boasting about sexual exploits, and incidence of homosexuality are all unrelated to the patterning of premarital
and extramarital sex. However, these three aspects of
human sexuality are related to each other, so that in societies where male impotence is a theme, males boast about
their sexual exploits and homosexuality is absent, while,
by contrast, where male impotence is not an issue, homosexuality is present and boasting is absent (Broude, 1976).
Thus there seem to be three independent clusters of
sexual attitudes and practices: one concerned with premarital sexual norms and behavior and with extramarital sexual
activity, a second concerned with attitudes toward extramarital sex, and a third concerned with male sexuality.
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Modesty and Sexual Restraint
Celia E. Rothenberg
INTRODUCTION
Notions of modesty and sexual restraint are found across
all cultures, but in no cases are these notions defined or
practiced in exactly the same ways. In a survey of the
modesty practices of 92 societies, Stephens (1972) found
great variation in the following: the perceived need for
copulation to take place in private (although in all
societies surveyed none is completely indifferent to a
need for privacy); notions of appropriate clothing as well
as the perception of which bodily parts are in need of covering; the presence of sex and/or sexuality in ceremonies,
including erotic song or dance, sexual talk, or sexual
intercourse outside ordinarily permitted relationships; the
presence and tolerance of sex talk and sexual humor; and
degrees of avoidance (in terms of touching, eating,
joking) due to notions of “respect” or “shame.” Stephens
concludes that modesty practices are most elaborate in
preindustrial civilizations, and are associated with all the
major religions and with the presence of premarital and
extramarital sex restrictions.
Today the concepts of modesty and sexual restraint
are most highly elaborated and central to daily life in the
Islamic cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.
These concepts play a significant role in shaping local
practices related to veiling, female seclusion, female
circumcision, premarital virginity, and marital fidelity.
Three theoretical approaches to understanding modesty
and sexual restraint in Middle Eastern Islamic cultures
are commonly used and discussed here, including
(1) “Islamic principles” or the Great Tradition versus the
Little Tradition approach, (2) honor and shame or a structuralist approach, and (3) personhood and self approach.
Specific ethnographic examples drawn from the Islamic
societies are offered to demonstrate the insights gained
through attempts to study and understand better the issues
surrounding modesty and sexual restraint.
Studying modesty and sexual restraint, particularly
in the Islamic Middle East, offers one way to explore
the relationship between biological sex and socially
constructed gender roles, religious beliefs and practice,
and men’s and women’s lives. In terms of sex and gender,
examining the practices of modesty and sexual restraint
allows us to see how biological sex is elaborated, in some
cases literally constructed (e.g., through female circumcision), and thus given meaning. Modesty practices
further suggest that ideas about gender are not constructed
only from the facts of genitalia; rather, parts of the face,
the hands, and the feet may also be highly meaningful and
believed to require certain modest acts. The parameters of
exactly what constitutes the most meaningful aspects of
the body are therefore greatly expanded, allowing us to
reflect on the western preoccupation with genitalia as the
sole source of gender identity (cf. Butler, 1990).
Looking at modesty and sexual restraint practices in
the Islamic Middle East also adds to our understanding of
the relationship between religious beliefs and practices.
In the ethnographies discussed in this article, all the men
and women believe that they are acting in accord with
proper Islamic belief. Yet this does not mean that men and
women act in the same way; indeed, one striking feature
of the ethnographies discussed here is the variation in
practice and belief in the name of Islam. Thus modesty
and sexual restraint are excellent windows for viewing
the complex nature of religious interpretation and
practice, and for understanding that these issues are not
static but continue to change to meet new demands and
challenges.
Finally, examining the issues of modesty and sexual
restraint allows for a consideration of the highly variable
nature of the relationship between men and women
across cultures. While the evidence presented here may
seem to support the theory that men are symbolically
associated with culture and women with nature (Ortner,
1974), this evidence also complicates and deepens this
formulation and addresses the central issue of who determines and challenges this symbolic association. Also
challenged here is the notion that practices associated
with modesty and sexual restraint—in particular the veil
and female seclusion—are necessarily demeaning to
women and indicative of men’s control over them.
Rather, women often assert that they voluntarily adhere to
187
188
these practices in order to gain both self-respect and
the respect of others, including men. While women’s
relationships with men may at times be antagonistic over
these practices, this is certainly not necessarily the case.
THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Islamic Principles, or Great Tradition
Versus Little Tradition Approach
One approach to understanding the issues of modesty and
sexual restraint in Islamic cultures has been to focus on
Islamic principles as explained in Islamic texts, such as
the Quran and Hadith. This approach can be understood
as part of the Great Tradition versus Little Tradition
approach; scholars in this vein of analysis look at the
tenets of Islamic texts—the Great Tradition—and
compare local practices—the Little Tradition—with them.
The best-known study in this vein was done by
Antoun (1968). He examined prescriptions for modest
practices, including appropriate sexuality, in the Quran.
He then looked at a variety of modesty practices and
beliefs about women’s sexuality in a village in Jordan
for their “accommodation,” or lack of “accommodation,”
to these textual dictates. In a well-known critique of
Antoun’s argument, Abu-Zahra argued that his focus on
legalistic terms and arguments and dictionary definitions
of commonly used words would not be familiar to
“illiterate peasant communities”; in addition, the same
words would have highly variable meanings in different
contexts (Abu-Zahra, 1970, p. 1084).
It is important to underscore here the points raised
by Abu-Zahra in a discussion of the concepts of modesty
and sexual restraint. It is central to any analysis of these
behaviors to recognize that the existence of Islamic texts
and their widespread use as references for proper moral
behavior in many cultures does not mean that individuals
within and across cultures understand these texts in
identical ways. What is considered to be within the
realm of proper Islamic practice in one place may be
understood quite differently—even as un-Islamic—in
another setting. For example, Palestinian village women
in the West Bank who experience possession by the jinn,
or spirits, believe their possession experiences to be well
within the realm of appropriate Islamic practice;
Palestinians in typically urban settings, such as Toronto,
Canada, argue that, while the jinn are known to exist
Modesty and Sexual Restraint
due to their mention in the Quran, such possession
experiences are significantly contrary to proper
Islamic belief and practice (Gibb & Rothenberg, 2000;
Rothenberg, in press). Thus singling out a particular
Islamic tradition as normative is arbitrary, as exactly what
should constitute the “normative tradition” is the subject
of great debate in many Muslim societies (Eickelman,
1989, p. 203). Identifying a single Islamic normative
tradition as a yardstick for local practice is not only
arbitrary and homogenizing, but also ahistorical, creating
a decontextualized view of both Islam and Islamic
women (cf. Kandiyoti, 1991).
Honor and Shame, or “Structuralist”
Approach
A second approach to understanding modesty and sexual
restraint in Islamic cultures can be described as a
“structuralist” approach, or an approach which sees these
issues as part of a pan-cultural complex of “honor and
shame” (Eickleman, 1989, p. 204). For these scholars,
modesty and sexual restraint are part of a strict code of
maintaining men’s honor by avoiding shame through the
strict regulation of women’s behavior, including in
particular their modest comportment and sexuality
(e.g., Peristiany, 1974). Honor is thus primarily understood
as men’s achievement, at the expense of women’s lives
because of their identification as potentially dangerous
sources of shame.
However, honor and shame must be carefully defined
in local contexts and may not always be easily identifiable with men and women, respectively (Delaney, 1987;
Herzfeld, 1980; Wikan, 1984). While locally specific
concepts of honor and shame are typically central in
shaping the practices of modesty and sexual restraint (as
discussed in the examples in this article), the former
concepts must be carefully contextualized before the
latter practices can be properly understood.
Personhood and Self
Finally, numerous scholars, including many feminist
analysts, have looked at the issues of modesty and sexual
restraint as part of an individual’s sense of personhood
and self which is shaped and acculturated by relevant
social mores. This approach allows scholars to look at
how an individual negotiates and defines his or her sense
of self with respect to locally defined Islamic dictates,
Ethnographic Examples
other local practices and beliefs, and political economic
forces. Thus these authors avoid both understanding the
practices of modesty and sexual restraint as a simple
result of “Islamic beliefs” or locating honor as most
relevant to men and shame most significant for women,
as the structuralists discussed previously. Rather, honor
and shame, when relevant to the lives of women and men,
are viewed from multiple perspectives within a society
and believed to have a variety of implications and definitions for different social actors. This allows for an understanding of honor, for example, as relevant to the lives of
both women and men, although their paths for achieving
it may differ (see Abu-Lughod, discussed below). This
approach further allows for understanding modesty and
sexual restraint as complex practices that are highly
symbolic and often pragmatic strategic resources (rather
than necessarily restraints) for women and men in a
variety of societies.
ETHNOGRAPHIC EXAMPLES
Each ethnographic example discussed here addresses the
issues of modesty and sexual restraint in a particular
Middle Eastern or North African society. These examples
demonstrate the variability of these concepts in practice
and thought; they can be primarily characterized as utilizing
the “personhood and self” approach described above.
Bedouin Women in Egypt:
Lila Abu-Lughod
A highly influential argument concerning modesty and
sexual restraint is that women’s adherence to the code of
modesty is a means of obtaining honor (Abu-Lughod,
1986). Based on fieldwork with a group of Bedouins in the
Egyptian desert (1978–1980), Abu-Lughod argues that,
for Bedouin women in Egypt, demonstrating modesty and
denying sexuality are key ways to obtain honor. While
men obtain honor through demonstrating their autonomy,
women obtain honor through voluntarily adhering to the
modesty code. Hasham refers to a voluntary grouping of
behaviors, including veiling, modest dress (dress which
covers the hair, arms, legs, and curves of the body),
downcast eyes, and demonstrated restraint when
eating, smoking, talking, and laughing (Abu-Lughod,
1986, p. 108). Thus, while Bedouins idealize the qualities of autonomy and equality—qualities women are
189
largely unable to achieve as men can—women, by
demonstrating their voluntary adherence to the modesty
code, display their independence and thus gain honor. The
modesty code further demands that women deny their
sexuality before others; this voluntary denial is a further
way for women to obtain honor.
Although clearly concerned with issues of honor and
shame, Abu-Lughod avoids the simplicity of structuralist
arguments that associate men with honor and women
with shame. Along the lines of the personhood and self
approach, Abu-Lughod demonstrates how women strategically use the resources available to them, such as
variably positioning their veil to cover more or less of their
faces to reflect appropriate degrees of deference to others,
to earn honor in the eyes of others and themselves.
Elite Urban Women in Saudi Arabia:
Soraya Altorki
In a careful study of the lives of three generations of
women in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Altorki (1986) demonstrates that modesty practices, although always legitimated in terms of Islamic doctrine, change over time
(fieldwork periods included 1971–1973, 1974–1976, and
numerous visits until 1984). Avoiding the Great Tradition
versus Little Tradition dichotomy, Altorki shows how
women’s own understandings of the same Islamic teachings have changed over time. In the oldest generation
(between the ages of 50 and 80), girls began veiling when
they began menstruating. The veil consisted of a black
cloak which hung from the shoulders to the ground and a
chiffon shawl wrapped several times around the head and
face. This veil was to be worn at all times by women in
public places and at home in the presence of men other
than their grandfathers, fathers, brothers, sons, grandsons, and men they could not marry due to a existing affinal link. The middle-generation women (born during and
after the World War II), many of whom spent long periods
abroad, modified this dress, while their daughters have
further changed it. Appropriately modest dress in public
is now defined as a shorter cloak that ends just below the
knee and a headscarf. At home, married women may not
veil in the presence of a variety of people, including
friends and servants (although unmarried women veil
before older men and men of their own generation). The
covering of the face in all public places has also changed,
so that even young unmarried women may not do so in
certain areas, such as western-style shopping centers.
190
Rural Sudanese Women:
Janice Boddy
The practice of female circumcision is often popularly
understood in Western contexts as simply intended to
enforce female sexual restraint resulting from “Islamic”
beliefs. Indeed, many scholars have analyzed the practice
of female circumcision, arguing that the operation is
intended to curb female sexual desire (Boddy, 1989,
p. 53). In an important analysis of the issue based on
fieldwork in rural Sudan (1976–1977, 1983–1984),
Boddy argues that understanding female circumcision as
an attempt at controlling female sexuality represents a
primarily male perspective and “confuses causes with
effects” (Boddy, 1989, p. 53). While the procedure does
effectively restrain women’s sexuality, women assert that
its intent is to prepare girls for womanhood by making
them “clean” and pure. Further, women emphasize
through circumcision their fertility potential over their
sexuality. By removing parts of their genitalia, women
demonstrate that their value stems from their ability to
give birth rather than simply be sexual partners for men.
In terms of the operation as an “Islamic” practice, its
regional variability—including radical Pharaonic circumcision to an absence of its practice at all—demonstrates
once again the necessity of exploring rather than assuming what is considered to be proper Islamic practice in
specific contexts (Boddy, 1989, p. 52).
Boddy avoids any consideration of Islam as separable
(in the vein of a Great Tradition) from the way in which a
group of Muslims practice it. Indeed, Boddy points out
that even within the village, opinion on appropriate Islamic
practice was highly variable. For example, women view
their practices of spirit possession and trance as absolutely
compatible with their identities as Muslims, while local
religious authorities and many village men understand
women’s interactions with spirits as “reprehensible and
abhorrent,” even if they are not entirely forbidden in Islam
(Boddy, 1989, p. 142).
Yemeni Town Women:
Anne Meneley
Among Zabidi women in Yemen, women’s modesty
practices are closely linked to their understandings of
morality and appropriately pious behavior (Meneley,
1996). Based on her fieldwork (1989–1990), Meneley
(1996, p. 81) argues that modesty is at the root of
Modesty and Sexual Restraint
moral personhood and female gender identity. Istihya,
translated broadly as modesty, captures a range of
emotions, including piety, deference, and self-control
(centrally including the denial of sexuality), and a number
of practices, including gender segregation, female
circumcision, veiling, and the control of one’s physical
appetites and self-expression. Rather than understanding
modesty practices as simply in the interests of men’s
honor, women view them as in the best interests of their
families, including themselves. They are an appropriate
demonstration of propriety and piety, which are intimately
related to women’s behavior, that lend force to a family’s
claim to status in village life.
Town Women in Oman:
Unni Wikan
What is considered to be a modest face covering varies
widely in the Middle East. In Sohar, Oman, women first
wear the burqa facial mask when they marry (Wikan,
1982) (fieldwork during 1974 and 1976). The burqa,
unlike a face veil covering the face from the eyes to below
the chin, looks like a sideways H, covering only the upper
lip, the center of the nose, and the lower section of the
forehead including the eyebrows. A married woman must
wear the burqa in any situation in which she could be
seen by a marriageable man; women remove the burqa
completely only before God and their husbands. As
Wikan points out, a striking feature of Sohari women’s
wearing of the burqa is not that they wear it in situations
when they must in order to appear appropriately modest
(e.g., before men), but that they wear it in many instances
when it is not necessary such as in all-female gatherings.
Women often argue that the burqa greatly enhances their
beauty—a beauty achieved through a demonstration of
modesty. Modesty practices further demand the practice
of sex segregation in almost all aspects of daily life; the
fact of women’s sexual restraint is an absolute requirement to be considered an honorable moral person.
However, in cases where it is well known that a woman
does not practice sexual restraint, such as a prostitute,
Soharis practice tact and avoid insulting or offending her.
In short, Soharis’ sense of personhood is deeply entwined
with their sense of beauty, diplomacy, and graciousness,
and demonstrated through tact, wearing of the burqa, and
other modesty practices. It is this strongly developed
sense of appropriate selves which guides women’s
actions and practices in daily life.
References
191
CONCLUSION
Scholarly approaches to understanding modesty and
sexual restraint in Islamic cultures in the Middle East and
North Africa are increasingly nuanced and sensitive,
privileging the view of these issues from the perspective
of those who practice them. Such perspectives are
complex, ever-changing, and shaped by a variety of forces,
including most centrally an individual’s sense of self,
religious understanding, and historical context.
Stephens’ (1972) argument concerning the association of the most elaborate modesty practices with preindustrial societies is to some extent borne out here. Indeed,
the ethnographic examples discussed here are drawn
primarily from peasant societies that are not industrialized (although other areas in their countries may be)—
societies in which Islam plays a major role, and there are
premarital and extramarital sex restrictions. Yet this argument cannot effectively explain why, for example, urban
educated working women in Cairo are adopting the veil
in increasing numbers (Macleod, 1991), or the growing
appeal of Orthodox Jewish practices and their accompanying modesty practices for women (Kaufman, 1989).
It remains to be seen what, if any, generalizations can be
drawn from the resurgence of modesty practices among
particular segments of urban educated women in varying
parts of the world.
REFERENCES
Abu-Lughod, L. (1986). Veiled sentiments: Honor and poetry in a
Bedouin society. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Abu-Zahra, N. M. (1970). On the modesty of women in Arab villages:
A reply. American Anthropologist, 72(5), 1079–1088.
Altorki, S. (1986). Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and behavior
among the elite. New York: Columbia University Press.
Antoun, R. (1968). On the modesty of women in Arab Muslim
villages: A study in the accomodation of traditions. American
Anthropologist, 70(4), 671–697.
Boddy, J. (1989). Wombs and alien spirits: Women, men, and the
Zar cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of
identity. New York: Routledge.
Delaney, C. (1987). Seeds of honor, fields of shame. In D. Gilmore
(Ed.), Honor and the unity of the Mediterranean (pp. 35–48).
Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
Eickelman, D. (1989). The Middle East: An anthropological approach.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Gibb, C., & Rothenberg, C. (2000). Believing women: Harari and
Palestinian women at home and in the Canadian diaspora. Journal
of Muslim Minority Affairs, 20(2), 243–259.
Herzfeld, M. (1980). Honour and shame: Problems in the comparative
analysis of moral systems. Man, 15, 339–351.
Kandiyoti, D. (Ed.). (1991). Women, Islam, and the state. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Kaufman, D. R. (1989). Patriarchal women: A case study of newly
orthodox Jewish women. Symbolic Interaction, 12(2), 299–314.
Macleod, A. E. (1991). Accomodating protest: Working women, the
new veiling, and change in Cairo. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Meneley, A. (1996). Tournaments of value: Sociability and hierarchy in
a Yemen town. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ortner, S. (1974). Is female to male as nature is to culture? In
M. Z. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere (Eds.), Woman, culture, and society
(pp. 67–88). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Peristiany, J. G. (Ed.). (1974). Honour and shame: The values of
Mediterranean society. Chicago: Midway.
Rothenberg, C. (in press). Spirits of Palestine: Palestinian village
women and stories of the jinn. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.
Stephens, W. (1972). A cross-cultural study of modesty. Behavior
Science Notes, 7, 1–18.
Wikan, U. (1982). Behind the veil in Arabia: Women in Oman. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Wikan, U. (1984). Shame and honour: A contestable pair. Man, 19(4),
635–652.
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness
Gwen J. Broude
INTRODUCTION
When a man and woman enter into a socially sanctioned
relationship recognized by themselves and their community to be more or less permanent, they are said to be
married. All known societies, past and present, recognize
the institution of marriage, and, as far back as historical
references go, virtually every human being who has lived
to adulthood has gotten married.
But it is also the case that the nature of the relationship between husbands and wives varies widely across
cultures. Spouses may live together or separately.
They may share meals or eat at different times and in
different places. A couple may sleep in the same bed or in
different rooms or even different houses. They
may perform chores side by side or engage in different
kinds of tasks and carry them out in different locations.
A husband and wife may spend their leisure time together
or apart. The relationship between spouses may be egalitarian, or one spouse may be subordinate to the other.
Husbands and wives may provide each other with
concrete and emotional support during important or
stressful times, or each spouse may look outside of the
marital relationship in times of need. And their marriage
may be the primary source of emotional fulfillment for a
man or woman, or the marital relationship may be
eclipsed by other, more important, bonds to parents,
friends, or others.
What is more, husband–wife day-to-day interaction
tends to be consistent in its overall nature. Thus, crosscultural evidence indicates that husbands and wives who
eat together are also likely to sleep, work, and spend their
leisure time together, and to be available to each other for
help and support during momentous occasions such as
the birth of a child. By contrast, where spouses eat apart,
they also tend to sleep, work, and spend their leisure time
apart, and to participate in momentous events separately
(Broude, 1983). Where marriages are characterized by
frequent husband–wife interaction across a variety of
activities, the marital relationship is described in the
literature as intimate. Marriages that are typified by
husband–wife segregation are identified as aloof. In a
worldwide sample of 73 societies, 56% are characterized
by intimate marriages and 44% by aloof marriages
(Broude, 1983).
The Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea nicely
illustrate the intimate marriage. Husband, wife, and
young children live in a house of their own. Opportunities
for marital closeness in Trobriand marriages are
increased because, once they demonstrate some measure
of independence, older children, as well as adolescents,
live in separate huts. Husbands and wives eat, sleep, and
spend the better part of their work and leisure hours
together, talk and joke with each other, and share household tasks, including baby tending. Spouses are devoted
to one another, frequently give one another gifts, call
each other lubaygu, “my friend,” and in general lead a
“common life of close companionship” (Malinowski,
1929, p. 109). Similarly, interactions between spouses
among the Garo of India are intimate. Households are
typically composed of parents and their children, and
even when relatives live with the family, the oldest
married couple have a private sleeping room. The family
cooks, eats, and entertains visitors together in the large
front room of the house, and husbands and wives work
alongside each other in the fields. Couples sit together,
talking and laughing with each other, when they are
alone, although, by custom, men and women sit apart in
public. Overall, Garo husbands and wives rely on each
other for companionship and support, and as the marriage
matures, each spouse is regarded as the most important
person in the life of the partner (Burling, 1963).
At the opposite extreme are the Rajputs of Khalapur,
India, who represent the aloof marriage. Separation of
spouses is promoted by the custom of purdah, which
requires the seclusion of women. Rajput women spend
their time in an enclosed courtyard, performing chores
and tending the young children. It is here that women
also eat, sleep, and cook. Meanwhile, when they are not
working, the men sit talking and smoking with other
male relatives and friends in the men’s quarters of the
house, where a husband may also sleep. The household
192
Theoretical Controversies
arrangements are consciously designed to dilute the ties
between a husband and wife in order that the attachment
of mother and son can be maintained. The result is that
husbands view the role of a wife as essentially sexual and
reproductive. Only after her mother-in-law dies may a
woman become a real companion as well as advisor to
her husband (Minturn & Hitchcock, 1966). Traditional
Chinese marriages are also characterized by aloofness.
Even after they are married, a young husband and wife
are kept segregated from each other by their parents.
During the day, couples rarely have the opportunity to be
alone together in their crowded households and, at night,
wives sleep in the women’s quarters of the house and
husbands sleep in the men’s quarters. Males and females
are customarily segregated during formal functions, such
as weddings or funerals, and it is considered improper for
husbands and wives to be seen together in public. Perhaps
because males and females have so little contact with
each other, interactions when spouses are alone are not
characterized by emotional intimacy (Headland, 1914).
THEORETICAL CONTROVERSIES
Researchers interested in the patterning of marital
interaction have correctly assumed that marriages are
generally intimate or generally aloof. The antecedents of
marital intimacy and aloofness, on the other hand, have
been a focus of some controversy. The fact that research
on marital interaction has sometimes used indirect or
partial measures of husband–wife intimacy and aloofness
has complicated the interpretation of research on the
origins of variations in patterns of marital interaction.
Psychodynamic Approaches
Anxiety About Sex and Women. Initial attempts to
account for variations in patterns of marital interaction
across cultures focused in particular on marital aloofness.
The goal was to explain why husbands and wives in some
societies tended to avoid one another and to devalue the
importance of their relationship. The most influential
explanations of marital aloofness, in turn, relied on a prior
commitment to psychodynamic theory, which assumes
that human motivation is influenced by unconscious
mechanisms meant to minimize anxiety. With regard
to marital interaction, the assumption was that aloof
marriages prevail in societies where men are anxious
193
about sex and/or women. To deal with their anxiety, men
simply avoid their wives. As is characteristic of psychodynamic theory, the source of male anxiety was traced to
childhood.
Slater and Slater (1965) and Stephens (1963)
proposed in particular that males who ultimately opt for
aloof marriages have been raised by mothers who are
seductive and/or hostile toward their sons. Maternal
behavior was itself explained by marital aloofness. Thus,
where women have little opportunity to form an intimate
attachment with their husbands, they turn to their sons for
emotional and sexual satisfaction, but also exhibit hostility toward their male children because their sons unconsciously symbolize their husbands, whom they resent. In
turn, boys who are raised in such a climate become unconsciously anxious about sex and women. As a consequence,
their own marriages are aloof, resulting in the tendency of
their wives to turn toward their sons for emotional and
sexual satisfaction. The cycle is thus perpetuated.
Cross-Sex Identification. Whiting and Whiting
(1975) proposed an alternative psychodynamic explanation for marital aloofness. Their focus was on the need for
male warriors with accumulated wealth. In such societies,
males guard the family property, which means that
husbands and wives often eat and sleep apart. The Whitings
reasoned that, in such circumstances, little boys, raised
largely by their mothers, would come to view women as
the source of power and form an initial identification with
females. When, later in their development, boys came to
recognize that it is the men who have the power, they
would unconsciously turn away from their original identification with females. Further, as a way of compensating
for their initial cross-sex identification, males would begin
to exhibit extremely masculine behavior, for instance in the
form of aggression and pursuit of military glory, and also
avoid women, especially their wives.
Researchers attempting to test psychodynamic
theories of the origins of marital aloofness have used
partial or indirect measures as indices of marital interaction. These included polygyny, exclusive mother–child
sleeping arrangements with fathers sleeping elsewhere, a
long post-partum sex taboo, wife-beating, and eating
arrangements in which spouses do not share meals. Each
index has been used as a separate measure of aloofness
between spouses. Using this methodology, researchers
did report significant relationships between marital
aloofness and other measures that they took to represent
194
male fear of sex, male fear of women, cross-sex identification, and hypermasculinity (Slater & Slater, 1965;
Stephens, 1963; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). However,
Broude (1987) constructed a composite measure of
marital intimacy and aloofness, which allowed marriages
to be coded as intimate or aloof on the basis of a number
of variables considered simultaneously. These included
whether or not husbands ate, slept, worked alongside
of, and spent their leisure time with their wives, and
whether or not they attended the birth of their children.
This composite scale failed to correlate with individual
measures of aloofness used in other studies, suggesting
that earlier research on the antecedents of marital aloofness were not really coding for overall marital interaction. Further, the same composite measure of marital
interaction failed to correlate significantly with measures
of male fear of sex or women, cross-sex identification, or
hypermasculinity, suggesting that marital aloofness is not
caused by the intrapsychic dynamics suggested by
psychodynamic theories.
Attachment Theory. Adult interpersonal relationships have also been explained as an outcome of childhood experiences with attachment. The idea here is that
babies construct working models of what they can expect
from other people based upon their experiences with
their first attachment figure, who is usually the mother
(Ainsworth, 1967; Bowlby, 1973; Erikson, 1963).
A mother who is consistent, available, and indulgent
teaches her baby that people are trustworthy and relationships are gratifying. Such a baby will grow up to be
a person who embraces the opportunity for an intimate
relationship in marriage. By contrast, a caretaker who is
inconsistent, unavailable, and cold teaches her child that
people are untrustworthy and relationships disappointing.
Such a person will avoid marital intimacy in adulthood.
However, cross-cultural evidence, does not support
the theory that patterns of marital interaction originate in
experiences with childhood attachment. The composite
scale of marital intimacy and aloofness constructed by
Broude (1987) is not significantly related to caretaker
availability or to the degree to which caretakers are
indulgent toward babies.
The Social Environment Approach
Marital intimacy and aloofness have also been explained as
a response to the larger social environment characteristic
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness
of a society. Evidence does suggest that patterns of marital
interaction are predictably associated with certain features
of a couple’s overall interpersonal environment. Thus
marriages tend to be intimate in societies where people
frequently move from place to place or live in communities in which neighbors are not kin. Where people are
sedentary and also live near kin, marriages become
overwhelmingly aloof (Broude, 1987). The connection
between marital relationships and social environment has
been interpreted psychologically. The grounding assumption of this interpretation is that human beings everywhere
seek membership in a secure interpersonal network.
Ideally, that network is composed of kin simply because
relatives typically act as a more trustworthy support group
than do people who are unrelated by blood. Living
arrangements in which people remain in the same location
and surrounded by kin provide this ideal support group,
with the result that married people look, not to their
spouses, but to their kin as their source of interpersonal
embeddedness. Hence, we see aloof marriages. Where
couples move around a lot and where their neighbors are
unrelated individuals, a husband and wife will fall back on
the marital relationship for interpersonal security. Intimate
marriages are the result (Broude, 1987). This hypothesis
regarding the sources of marital intimacy and aloofness
suggests that social structural features of a culture can
influence the way in which universal psychological needs
are met in specific social contexts.
FEATURES
OF
MARITAL INTERACTION
Importance of the Marital Relationship
While all societies expect men and women to marry,
cultures vary widely with regard to the importance that
they place on the marital relationship. In some cultures
it is assumed that one’s spouse will be the most important
person in one’s life, while in others the marital bond is
marginalized in favor of other human associations.
Attitudes regarding the importance of the marriage
bond influence the degree to which other people encourage spouses to develop a close relationship. The Khalka
Mongols view the marital relationship as the primary
attachment in the life of a man or woman and support
a new marriage by prohibiting a bride from making
a formal visit to her natal family for 3 years after she is
married. Therefore, a young wife only sees her parents if
Features of Marital Interaction
they come to visit her in her new camp (Vreeland, 1953).
Contrast this with the experience of a wife among the
Truk of Oceania, who value the relationship of a woman
and her mother over that of a wife and her spouse. A Truk
wife is also required to move away from her natal home
after she is married. But here, a wife will visit her mother
for a month each year if she lives far away, and will make
frequent informal visits to her mother if she lives closer.
A Truk mother gives comfort, aid, and advice to a daughter even after she is married (Gladwin & Sarason, 1953).
In cultures where a relationship other than the
marital bond is viewed as primary, people may actively
try to obstruct intimate interactions between a husband
and wife. Thus, for instance, a traditional Hindu husband
is warned not to look at his wife while she is eating,
sneezing, yawning, breast-feeding, or relaxing comfortably, the idea being to encourage continued distance
between spouses (Mace & Mace, 1959).
The expectations of spouses will also be influenced
by cultural assumptions regarding the importance of the
marriage. Where a culture views marriage as the primary
source of emotional gratification and support in the life
of an adult, men and women will bring these same hopes
to their own marriage. The results of this attitude are
captured in the words of an Omaha widower, who
remarked that “no one is so near, no one can ever be so
dear as a wife; when she dies, her husband’s joy dies with
her” (Dorsey, 1884). By contrast, in societies where the
marital bond is viewed as secondary to the bonds between
other people, a husband and wife will expect less from
their marriage. When asked about their expectations
regarding marriage, men living in many different regions
of India agreed that a wife provides sexual satisfaction
and sons and a smoothly running household. Similarly,
women agreed that husbands provided financial security,
protection, and children. But neither sex looked to
marriage as the source of emotional support. Rather, both
men and women named relatives or same-sex friends as
the people to whom they would go in times of personal
distress (Mace & Mace, 1959).
Where the husband–wife bond is viewed as primary,
this can lead to disruptions in the relationships between a
spouse and other family members. This is the case among
the Iban of Borneo, where the marital relationship is
assumed to be uppermost in the life of a man and woman.
Iban newlyweds sometimes move in with the family of
one of the spouses. When a couple lives in the house of
the groom, conflicts may arise between the groom’s
195
brothers and his new wife. In such cases, the young
husband’s loyalties shift to his bride and the couple move
into their own house (Freeman, 1958). By contrast, among
the Bemba of Zambia, where a woman’s relationship with
her mother remains the most important bond in her life, a
bride will occasionally refuse to leave own community to
go and live with her husband if he wishes to live in his
own village after their marriage (Richards, 1940). Among
the North American Hidatsa, the attachment between a
son and his mother remained strong throughout life, and
was expected to do so. A new groom visited his mother
whenever he liked and friends and kin at her home, not
his own. A husband often ate at his mother’s house and
never stayed in the house that he shared with his wife if
she happened to be away. Married men kept their own
belongings at their mothers’ lodges, and younger members of the mother’s household looked after a man’s
horses. A son was expected to see to his mother’s wellbeing even after he had married and moved away
(Matthews, 1877). Among the matrilocal Navaho of
Arizona, a husband lived with his wife’s family and
participated in the activities of that household. But he was
also expected to meet certain ceremonial and economic
responsibilities with respect to his natal household.
A married man made long frequent visits to his mother’s
house. Wives, for their part, were more influenced by
their brothers or uncles than by their husband, and were
likely to side with their parents against their husband in
the case of a disagreement between them (Leighton &
Kluckhohn, 1969). The Creek were representative of
societies in which a man’s loyalties toward a spouse were
less profound that those toward the natal family. Among
these people, the word “home” referred to the household
of a husband’s own female kin, even if he had built
the house in which he and his wife lived (Swanton,
1924–1925).
The marriage bond tends to be viewed as important
in societies where men are particularly interested in establishing paternity. In societies of this sort, a woman’s sexual activity is often restricted to the marital relationship
and the marriage celebration is elaborate. In turn, male
concern with paternity recognition is found predominantly in societies where descent is traced exclusively
(unilineal descent) or at least partially (nonunilineal
descent) through males (Frayzer, 1985). The connection
between descent systems and emphasis on the social
recognition of paternity can be explained by the fact that,
where a child’s membership in a descent group depends at
196
least in part on the identity of his father, recognition of
paternity becomes critical to assigning each person to the
proper descent group.
Newlywed Customs
The transition to the married state is marked in many
cultures by special treatment of newlyweds. A new bride
and groom may be treated specially for just a few hours
(e.g., through the wedding night) or for days, weeks, or
longer. Further, newlywed customs tend to come as a
package, so that if newlyweds are treated as special in one
way, they are treated as special more generally. For
instance, if the wedding night is considered special, then
the couple are also likely to be sent on a honeymoon,
excused from routine tasks for some period of time,
and so on.
Newlywed customs are predictably related to other
aspects of courtship and marriage. Thus it is uncommon
to see newlyweds treated specially in societies where
males and females choose their own spouses, where
husbands and wives eat together, where special houses
dedicated to male activities are absent, where males do
not exhibit sexual aggression, and where wives do not
tend to engage in extramarital sexual affairs. Newlywed
customs are present where marriages are arranged by
thirdly parties, where a husband and wife eat apart, where
men’s houses are present so that married males eat, sleep,
and/or spend their leisure time away from home, where
males are sexually aggressive, and where wives typically
carry on extramarital affairs. Thus newlywed customs
seem to represent a strategy for allowing a newly married
couple some time alone under circumstances where they
have had no opportunity to become comfortable with
each other prior to their marriage and where, further, their
married life will not be characterized by agreeable
contact. In a worldwide sample of 62 cultures, 47%
regard the wedding night as special and accommodate a
newly married couple in other ways, while 53% do not
regard the wedding night as special and do not make any
other special arrangements on behalf of a new bride and
groom (Broude & Greene, 1983).
The Middle East Rwala provide a newly married
couple with a special tent on their first night together, or
else they are left to themselves in a corner of the family
tent (Musil, 1928). A Khalka Mongol couple live in their
own tent in the camp of the new wife for up to a month
(Vreeland, 1953). Among the Wogeo of New Guinea,
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness
it is inappropriate for a newly married couple to sleep
together if they do not have a house of their own. Under
such circumstances, the bride and groom will sleep in
different beds, or the bride may sleep in a corner of the
family sleeping room while the groom stays in the men’s
house. But the older family members will see to it that the
couple are by themselves for a few hours during the day
(Hogbin, 1970).
In 11% of a sample of 53 societies, a newly married
couple are sent off on a honeymoon. A Somali couple
receive a new house as a wedding gift and will live there
during their marriage. It is expected that the bride and
groom will remain in the house by themselves for a week
after their wedding, devoting themselves to consummating their marriage (Lewis, 1962). Similarly Mexican
Huichol newlyweds seclude themselves for 5 days.
During this brief honeymoon, it is hoped that they will get
to know each other. When bride takes food from groom,
this means that she accepts the marriage (Zingg, 1938).
In 51% of the same 53 cultures, the newly married
are excepted from participating in at least some of the
responsibilities of normal married life. Among the
Quiche of Guatemala, a young wife sits and watches for
2 days while members of her new family go about their
daily tasks. The goal is to permit the girl to become
accustomed to her new home (Bunzel, 1952). For an
Orokaivan bride in New Guinea the transition to her new
household is made easier by a similar time out. For as
long as a month, instead of performing her routine chores
the young wife sits on a platform in the village for a part
of each day and receives gifts (Williams, 1930).
On occasion, a newly married couple are required to
avoid each other for some period of time. In India, it is
understood that a young bride and groom should not see
too much of each other because “new love is delicate, and
gets easily destroyed, unless nurtured with care” (Nanda,
1950). In China, a new groom is teased if he pays too
much attention to his bride or wants to be with her for any
length of time (Mace & Mace, 1959). Among the Kimam
of New Guinea, a groom continues to sleep in the men’s
house for perhaps 2 weeks after he is married. Finally, his
father comes and reminds him that he needs to begin to
live with his bride. Then, the new husband goes off to his
parent’s house, where his bride is staying. After eating
with his family, the man then spends the night with his
wife (Serpenti, 1965).
In 15% of the 53 cultures, it is customary for a
groom to stage a mock courtship after his marriage.
Features of Marital Interaction
After the wedding ceremony, a Nigerian Hausa couple
are provided with their own hut, where the bride stays
with some of her female friends for a number of nights.
Meanwhile, the new groom goes off with the men. When
a week has passed, some friends of the husband try for a
number of nights to force the groom to enter his bride’s
hut, but he runs away. At the end of another week, the
groom finally goes into his wife’s hut and sleeps there,
but now the bride runs away. The new groom begins to
send her gifts and eventually the two remain in the hut
together. At this point, the marriage is said to have
“taken” (Smith, 1954).
Sometimes, a newly married couple engage in a
genuine courtship after marriage. In India, for example, it
is said that love comes after marriage. As a result, a newly
married couple court each other in private. One Indian
woman recalled being allowed into her newly married
aunt and uncle’s rooms when she was a child and
witnessing the couple flirting with and kissing each other
and behaving rather foolishly (Mace & Mace, 1959).
Husband–Wife Eating Arrangements
The nature of the husband–wife relationship is influenced
in part by how eating arrangements are patterned in a
society. Spouses may eat meals together or apart, or a
wife may keep her husband company and serve him while
he has his meal but not eat with him.
In 65% of a sample of 117 societies around the
world, husbands and wives eat their meals together
(Broude & Greene, 1983). This was the pattern among
the North American Papago, where husbands and wives
not only shared meals but also ate out of same dish as a
symbol of the intimacy of their bond (Underhill, 1939).
Husbands and wives may eat together even when
marriages are polygynous. For example, among the
Tanala of Madagascar, a man and all his wives eat
together. On any given day, one wife cooks for the entire
household (Linton, 1933).
In 35% of the 117 societies, spouses eat their meals
separately. In roughly a fourth of these societies, a wife
will serve her husband his meal, and perhaps chat with
him, but women do not eat their own meals in the
presence of their husbands. In New Guinea, a Manus
husband and wife do not eat together until they have
had a few children together or else they have been
married for some years. Instead of eating with his spouse,
a Manus husband may have meals at his sister’s house.
197
Meanwhile, the sister’s own husband will eat elsewhere
(Mead, 1930). Among the polygynous Katab of Nigeria,
all wives eat together, the junior wives joining the senior
wife on her porch, while the husband eats elsewhere
(Gunn, 1956).
Eating arrangements tend to reflect overall patterns
of husband–wife interaction. Where spouses eat together,
they are also likely to sleep and spend their leisure time
together. Men’s houses tend to be absent in such cultures.
Conversely, where spouses eat separately, they also sleep
and spend their leisure time apart and men’s houses are
likely to be present (Broude, 1983).
Husband–Wife Sleeping
Arrangements
Husband–wife sleeping arrangements also differ
dramatically from one place to the next. Spouses may
sleep next to each other, or in the same room but in
different beds. Some married couples sleep in the same
house but in different rooms, while some sleep in separate
houses altogether. A New Mexican Zuni couple sleep in
their own room alone. If they have a baby, the infant will
sleep with them, but in a cradleboard that is placed near
the mother (Stevenson, 1901–1902). Among the Kwoma
of New Guinea, the entire family sleeps together in the
same room. But each spouse has a separate bark slab on
which to sleep, as spouses would be ashamed to be found
in the same bed (Whiting, 1941). In Oceania, an entire
Pukapuka family may sleep in the same bed in the sleeping house if there is only one mosquito net. Otherwise,
everyone sleeps in same house but under different nets
(Beaglehole & Beaglehole, 1938).
A husband and wife among the Manus of Oceania
sleep apart and, indeed, the Manus like it best when a
family has two children, one to sleep with the father on
one side of the house and one to sleep with the mother on
the other side (Mead, 1930). Men and women among the
Maria Gond of India sleep in separate quarters. A woman
and her grown daughters sleep in the angadi, which also
doubles as a kitchen. Her husband lives and sleeps in the
agha. A boy who is still too young to stay in the bachelors’ house may also sleep in the agha (Grigson, 1949).
Among the Azande of Zaire, everyone has his or her own
hut and sleeps there. A small child will sleep with the
mother (Baxter & Butt, 1953).
Where marriages are monogamous, a couple are very
likely to sleep in the same room. Ninety-four percent of
198
a sample of 116 monogamous societies have same-room
sleeping arrangements for spouses (Broude & Greene,
1983). However, such a sleeping arrangement does not
guarantee a husband and wife privacy. First, the couple
may share sleeping quarters. Sleeping companions may
range from only small infants to all prepubescent children,
to all nuclear family members who are not themselves
married. In 6% of a sample of 95 societies, a husband and
wife sleep with their infants, in 15% they sleep with all
prepubescent children, and in 32% at least older unmarried family members also sleep in the same room as their
mother and father (Broude & Greene, 1983). Second,
partners who share the same room may not sleep in the
same bed. In at least 41% of the 116 monogamous societies where spouses sleep in the same room, they also
share the same bed or blanket or use adjacent sleeping
places. But in at least 13% of these cultures, a husband and
wife do not sleep in close proximity even though they are
in the same room. Rather, spouses sleep in different beds,
different hammocks, different sections of the room, or the
like (Broude & Greene, 1983).
Husbands and wives are most likely to sleep apart
where marriages are polygynous. Sometimes, cowives
have their own houses and the husband either has lodgings of his own or rotates between wives. Spouses may
also sleep apart when a society has men’s houses, that is,
separate structures where only men congregate and where
they may also sometimes sleep. Husbands and wives also
tend to sleep apart when social institutions favor the segregation of the sexes more generally. In some societies,
spouses are expected to sleep apart as long as there is an
infant sleeping with the mother. This arrangement can
last for some years.
Sleeping arrangements are also related to climate.
Husbands and wives predictably sleep together in colder
climates, where the temperature falls below 50 ⬚F in the
winter, and apart where the weather is mild or warm for
the entire year. Interestingly, temperature also predicts
where a baby will sleep, so that infants sleep with the
mother in warmer climates but in their own crib, cradle,
or sleeping bag where the climate is cooler. The association between ambient temperature and sleeping may
reflect a pragmatic way of trying to achieve temperature
control. Adults will benefit from the body warmth of the
partner when sleeping together in colder climates, and
babies will be kept warmest if sleeping in their own bed,
especially as the sleeping schedule of a baby does not
coincide with that of its parents (Whiting, 1969).
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness
Husband–wife sleeping arrangements are predictably
associated with other aspects of married life. Where
couples sleep together, they also eat and spend their leisure
time together and men’s houses tend to be absent. Where
they sleep apart, a husband and wife also eat and spend
their leisure time apart and men’s houses tend to be present
(Broude, 1983).
Husband–Wife Work Activities
Because many of an adult’s waking hours are devoted
to subsistence activities, the nature of husband–wife
interaction in a society is significantly related to the way
in which work activities are allocated by sex. A husband
and wife can work side by side or they can conduct their
subsistence activities independently. In the former case, a
couple will find themselves spending some or much of
the day together, while in the latter case, they may not see
one another for much of the time.
Among the Bhil of India, spouses perform many
tasks together. This includes weeding, manuring, and
harvesting their crops side by side. A wife may also spend
time with her husband when he is in the logging camp,
helping him manufacture the charcoal and cooking for
him (Naik, 1956; Nath, 1960). In Okinawa, everyone in a
Tairan family lumbers and works the rice patties together
(Matetzki & Malone, 1966).
When spouses do different kinds of work, they are
also likely to be separated for most of the day. In Arizona,
Navaho men were responsible for building the corrals and
fences, did most of the farming, took care of the horses,
cattle, and wagons, hauled the water, and cut the firewood. It was the job of the women to butcher the mutton,
cook, gather farm crops for meals, keep the house clean,
and take care of the children. As men’s and women’s
chores were performed in different places, husbands and
wives did not spend much time together during the day
(Leighton & Kluckhohn, 1969).
Sometimes, men and women work on the same
overall task, but each specializes in a different aspect of
the job. When this assembly line strategy for accomplishing tasks is employed, husbands and wives may work in
the same location and therefore spend much time
together, but they may also work in different places.
Among the Gururumba of New Guinea, husbands and
wives both participate in gardening activities, but each
focuses on a different set of chores. Husbands break the
soil for the garden, put up fences, and dig and drain the
Features of Marital Interaction
ditches. Meanwhile, wives prepare the broken soil and
weed. Men see to the sugarcane, bananas, taro, and yams,
while women are responsible for the vegetables and
sweet potatoes. Men build the houses, and women cut and
carry the thatch (Newman, 1965).
There is some indication that cultural patterns of
allocating work are related to male–female relationships
more generally. In societies where husbands and wives
perform different tasks, sex is predictably viewed as
dangerous, premarital sex norms for both sexes are restrictive, and extramarital sex norms for males are permissive.
Division of labor by sex is also correlated with male sex
aggression. So the tendency to segregate the sexes, including husbands and at work, seems to reflect an overall attitude of caution and even hostility regarding intimate and
committed opposite-sex interaction. Where husbands and
wives perform the same tasks, people choose their own
marriage partners as opposed to having their future
spouses chosen by thirdly parties. Thus, where marriages
are based upon personal preference, spouses organize
their work days in such a way as to be able to spend time
together (Broude, 1983, 1987).
Husband–Wife Leisure Activities
In many cultures, a husband and wife who are not engaged
in work activities usually spend their discretionary time in
each other’s company. This is the case in 47% of a sample
of 104 societies (Broude & Greene, 1983). Sometimes, a
couple will spend their leisure time together but in the
context of a larger group. This occurs in 21% of those
societies for which information is available (Broude &
Greene, 1983). Thus, for instance, when not engaged in
subsistence activities, Southern African !Kung spouses
remain together, but are surrounded by members of their
band. !Kung life is communal, with a local group living in
a clearing of perhaps 20 feet in diameter. Each family has
its own hut, but these are used mainly for sleeping and
storage of property. Therefore everyone lives out in the
open. A family may sit near its own fire in front of its own
hut, but everyone faces centrally and within seeing and
hearing distance of everyone else (Marshall, 1959). Thus
married couples are together, but in a crowd.
In another 21% of the sample of 104 cultures,
couples also spend their leisure time together, but often
alone, although they also participate in group activities
(Broude & Greene, 1983). In Kenya, a Kikuyu husband
and wife like to sit and talk around the fire at home while
199
dinner is cooking. A couple will also visit neighbors or
attend dances and ceremonies, and a wife will help her
husband entertain guests in his hut (Cagnolo, 1933).
In 5% of the same sample of cultures, husbands and
wives almost always spend their discretionary time
together and alone or only with family members (Broude &
Greene, 1983). Among the Nambicuara of Brazil, for
example, individual families gather around the fire
singing, dancing, and talking until it is time to go to sleep
(Levi-Strauss, 1948).
Husbands and wives spend at least a large proportion
of their leisure time separately in 53% of 107 cultures
(Broude & Greene, 1983). In such societies, men and
women tend to congregate instead with members of their
own sex. This can mean that a husband and wife virtually
never see one another during their leisure time. The
Mbundu of Angola have a men’s house, which serves as a
school, dining room, recreation facility, and hotel. It is
here that men and boys spend much of leisure time.
Women congregate in the kitchen. There are dances on the
last few days of each month, but even at these events men
and women, including spouses, separated from each other,
with males on one side of floor and females on the other
(Childs, 1949).
Where husbands and wives spend their leisure time
together, they also tend to eat together. Husbands are also
likely to attend the births of their children and men’s
houses are unlikely to be present (Broude, 1983).
Deference Customs
The nature of the husband–wife relationship is not only
reflected in the number and kinds of activities in which
married partners engage together or separately. The tone
of the marital bond is also influenced by cultural values
regarding the relative status of spouses. Ideas about relative husband–wife status are, in turn, mirrored in what are
known as deference customs. These are culturally agreed
upon behaviors that a person of lower status directs toward
a person of higher status in acknowledgement of this
difference between them. Deference behavior includes
such actions as bowing, kneeling, standing, speaking in a
low voice, remaining silent, and using a special language
in the presence of the dominant individual. Walking
behind the dominant person, reserving a seat of honor for
the dominant person, and saving the dominant individual
the choicest foods are also examples of deference customs
found in some societies (Stephens, 1963). One person
200
may also show deference to another by asking permission
to engage in certain behaviors. Status differences reflect
inequality between people with respect to power, privilege, and the like. A number of cultures expect wives to
show deference in the presence of their husbands. In
contrast, it is rare for husbands to show deference to their
wives. Even when men display such behaviors, their
actions do not signify submissiveness to their wives but
rather something closer to politeness. Thus, in some
cultures, a wife is viewed as subservient to her husband
and required to demonstrate this outwardly multiple
times a day.
A traditional Hindu wife is prohibited from speaking
her husband’s name. Rather, when she talks to him, she is
required to call him “my lord.” A wife who wants to refer
to her spouse to other people calls him “the master of the
house” (Mace & Mace, 1959). In Korea, women of the
upper classes remain in seclusion at home and must ask
their husbands for permission even to look out at the
street (Griffis, 1882). Among the Ganda of Uganda, a
wife washes her husband’s feet every night (Stephens,
1963). A rural Ukranian wife will walk behind her
husband in public and will enter the house after him
(Wilber, 1964). In traditional Japanese families, the
husband is the first to be served at meals and first to take
a bath (Stephens, 1963). Among the Chuckchee of
Siberia, the husband gets the choicest food. His wife eats
what is left behind (Bogoras, 1909).
A wife’s subordination to her spouse can also be
communicated by behavior on the part of the husband. It
is customary for a religious Hindu to refer to his wife
using such labels as “my servant” or “my dog” instead of
calling her by her name (Mace & Mace, 1959). Traditional
Japanese husbands are proscribed from speaking gratefully or respectfully about their spouses. Instead, they use
such terms as “my old hag,” the idea being to demean the
women in the presence of other people. Japanese men also
use the impolite terms for “you” when talking to their
wives, while women are required to use the polite form of
the pronoun when speaking to their spouse. A man who
uses the polite form of “you” is assumed to be henpecked
by those who hear him (Mace & Mace, 1959).
Outwardly deferent behavior on the part of a wife
more accurately reflects a woman’s informal status more
in some societies than in others, as in many cultures
women who are required to indicate their subordination
to their husbands by various gestures nevertheless have
some, sometimes considerable, power. Even where
Husband–Wife Interaction and Aloofness
customs reflect overall real subordination, wives can, in
fact, have some amount of power. While a Javanese
woman shows formal deference to her husband, she
retains most of the control and makes most of the
decisions with regard to household matters (Geertz,
1961). The Saharan Tuareg husband has all of the power
outside of his household. However, wives own their own
property and have no responsibility for household
expenses, with the result that they can amass considerable
wealth in comparison with their husbands, whose
resources are likely to remain stable or even to diminish
over the course of the marriage (Lhote, 1944). While a
Burmese girl understands even as a child that she must
treat men with supreme respect and always defer to a
man’s judgment, in fact, husbands ask for and take the
advice of their wives in both public and private matters
(Scott, 1910).
There are also cases where deferent behavior on the
part of a wife reflects a real lack of power. A Gandan wife
not only displays deference but is genuinely subordinate
to her husband. She is expected to plan household activities around his schedule, make meals when convenient for
him, visit only with his permission, and stay away from
home only as long as he permits. If she does not obey her
husband, she can expect a beating (Stephens, 1963).
Behavior indicating deference of wives toward their
spouses, then, is sometimes a reflection of genuine
differences in power, privilege, respect, freedom, and so
on between a woman and her husband. Sometimes,
deference behavior on the part of a wife masks a level
of status that is higher than these gestures indicate.
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to conclude that a
marriage characterized by expectations of frequent deference behavior on the part of a wife will be different from
marriages in which such gestures are not expected and are
not witnessed.
In some cultures, husbands do display behavior
toward their wives that has a superficial similarity to
deference behavior. Among the Brno of Czechoslovakia,
a wife is seated before her husband is at meals and
also begins eating first (Stephens, 1963). In Madrid,
aristocratic wives walk to the right of their husbands,
which is considered to be the honored position.
A husband also holds his wife’s chair while she is being
seated and stands when she enters room. These gestures,
which are reminiscent of the code of chivalry, seem to be
indications, not of a man’s subordination, but of good
manners (Stephens, 1963).
References
MARRIAGE AND OTHER ASPECTS
MALE–FEMALE INTERACTION
201
OF
Around the world, married couples tend to be consistent
with regard to their day-to-day interactions. That is, a
husband and wife tend either to engage in a variety of
activities together or to conduct their daily activities
independently. This is why marriages are characterized as
either on the whole intimate or on the whole aloof.
Patterns of day-to-day marital interaction are also
related to certain other features of male–female interaction. Marriages tend to be intimate in societies in which
there is a greater range of things over which women have
power. This may be the result of the fact that, as women
gain more status, there is less male–female segregation in
a culture. This means that males and females have more
opportunities to get to know each other on a personal
basis. And it means that day-to-day contact between
spouses becomes a possibility. In cultures where the
sexes are segregated, husband–wife intimacy is, by
definition, not an option for a couple (Broude, 1990).
Day-to-day marital interaction is also related to
ideas regarding whether or not sex is dangerous. Where a
society endorses the belief that sex is a dangerous activity, marriages tend to be aloof. Where societies do not
subscribe to the belief that sex is dangerous, marriages
tend to be intimate. Intimate marriages are also associated
with uninhibited talk about sex, whereas in societies
where marriages are aloof talk about sex is regarded as
inappropriate, shameful, and the like.
Interestingly, patterns of marital interaction are not
related to certain other features of male–female interaction. Thus there is no predictable connection between
husband–wife day-to-day interaction, mode of choosing
marriage partners, honeymoon customs, beliefs about
the desirability of frequent sexual activity in marriage,
frequency of premarital or extramarital sex for males or
females, incidence of or concern about impotence,
attitudes toward or frequency of homosexuality, male
sexual aggression, rape, or frequency of divorce. There is
one exception to this overall pattern. Husband–wife
eating arrangements are predictably associated with
honeymoon customs and divorce, so that where spouses
eat together honeymoon customs are absent and divorce
is relatively rare, while where spouses eat apart honeymoon customs are present and divorce is more common.
However, the overall lack of a connection between
marital interaction and other features of male–female
relationships leads to the perhaps surprising conclusion
that day-to-day interaction between spouses is unrelated
to courtship customs, sexual attitudes, concerns, behavior, or the likelihood that a marriage will be terminated by
a spouse. In short, day-to-day contact between spouses
seems to operate independently of other aspects of
male–female interaction (Broude, 1983).
The relative independence of patterns of day-to-day
interaction and other features of opposite-sex relationships suggests that the degree of daily contact between
spouses is determined by factors different from those that
influence other aspects of male–female interaction. This
is not surprising, as customs for choosing marriage partners, norms regarding sex, actual sexual activity, daily
contact between spouses, and patterns of divorce all have
different functions in the life of an individual and the
operation of a culture. Therefore, we should expect them
to vary independently, as indeed they do.
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Baxter, P. T. W., & Butt, A. (1953). The Azande, and related peoples
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Bogoras, W. (1909). The Chukchee. Memoirs of the Museum of Natural
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Homosexuality
Fernando Luiz Cardoso and Dennis Werner
INTRODUCTION
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India
We might define “homosexuality” simply as sexual
relationships between people of the same sex. Yet behind
this simple definition lie many different phenomena.
People vary tremendously in their same-sex behaviors, in
their sexual desires, and in the ways they define themselves.
Cultures also differ widely in the ways they define and treat
these relationships and the people who engage in them.
Our knowledge has grown tremendously in recent
years. But for several reasons, this literature has dealt
mostly with male homosexuality. Written reports have
come mostly from men, who may not have cared about or
been fully aware of what women do. Also, women’s
sexuality has usually been restricted to a more limited
private sphere of acquaintances that is less visible, or
considered less important. Finally, female sexuality may be
more difficult to distinguish from “affection,” or may, in
fact, be less common than male homosexuality. Although
parallels and contrasts with male homosexuality may be
drawn, readers should be aware of the disparity in available
information.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
HOMOSEXUALITY
OF
Probably since the beginnings of human culture people
have been thinking about homosexuality. Records of these
reflections have come to us in the form of myths, political
histories, legal documents, literature, and religious injunctions. Even attempts at explaining homosexuality date
from ancient times.
Pottery from the Peruvian Mochican culture more
than 2000 years ago shows homosexual acts (Gregersen,
1983), and rock drawings of homosexual intercourse
from the African Khoi-San culture may be thousands of
years old (Epprecht, 1998). However, it is the written
records of early civilizations that are most informative
about how people conceptualized homosexuality.
Sumerian temple records from the middle of the third millennium BC mention gala priests, who for centuries served
the goddess Inanna/Ishtar. These priests and their later
equivalents in Babylonia and Assyria adopted female
dress and manners and engaged in passive anal intercourse
with other men. The written word for gala combined the
symbols for penis and anus. Babylonian and Assyrian
omens even instructed men to have sex with these priests
to bring good luck. But not all types of homosexuality
were considered positive. Middle Assyrian laws from
1250 BC decreed severe punishments for men who falsely
accused others of passive homosexuality or who raped
companions (Roscoe, 1997). Similar associations of
passive homosexuality with humiliation come from
Egypt. In one ancient myth the god Horus rapes the god
Seth to humiliate him (Roscoe, 1997), and in the Book of
the Dead (after 2000 BC) a dead man argues that the god
“Atum has no power over me, because I copulate between
his buttocks” (Gregersen, 1983). Records of homosexuality from India date from a much later period. Law books
from the 4th century BC refer to eunuchs occupying
important posts in Indian courts. Later records show that
some had affairs with their masters, and may have been
castrated specifically for sexual purposes. The Kama
Sutra (5th century CE) gives instructions on how to be
fellated by eunuchs (Murray, 2000).
China and Japan
In China and Japan homosexuality also appears in some
of the earliest surviving texts. In one story from the
Chinese Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BC) the Duke
Ling of Wei falls in love with a boy named Mizi Xia. The
boy finds a peach that is especially sweet and shares it
with the Duke. From that time up to the present the term
“shared peach” has referred to male homosexual ties
(Hinsch, 1990). In Japan, ambiguous references to homosexuality appear by the 8th century CE, and unambiguous
records appear in personal diaries from the 11th century
204
Intellectual History
(Leupp, 1994). Most of the Chinese and Japanese texts
describe love affairs between a ruler and his younger
favorite, and were probably recorded because they had
political implications. Rulers often attempted to provide
land and other gifts to their protégés.
Ancient Greece and Rome
It was with the Greeks that conjectures on the origins of
different homosexual activities became common. The
Cretan customs of segregating boys and encouraging
homosexual relations between boys and men were attributed by Aristotle to a desire to hold down the birth rate.
Plutarch suggested that Theban pederasty resulted from a
conscious policy of channeling the “natural ferocity of
adolescent males to socially useful purposes” (Murray,
2000). Xenophon contrasted the transitory couplings
between men and boys of Elis with the more permanent
pairings common in Thebes. Whereas in Thebes, Sparta,
and Crete physical relations between a mature mentor
(erastes) and a beardless youth (eromenos) were encouraged, Plato argued that in Athens the relationship ideally
avoided physical sex at least until one’s partner had
proved his worth (Murray, 2000, p. 105).
When Alexander the Great conquered most of the
western world a period of wider cross-cultural comparisons began. Observers noted the homosexual use of
eunuchs and effeminate boy slaves in different parts of the
Hellenic empires, and in fact, even before Rome conquered Greece, the old Greek system had given way to
systems more like those in the conquered territories. By
late Hellenistic times Charicles thought the idea of women
having sex with women was so ridiculous that he used it
to clinch a reductio ad absurdum argument.
In Rome what a man did with his slave was considered his own business, but freemen were ridiculed if, as
adults, they engaged in “receptive” homosexuality. In the
5th century Caelius Aurelianus argued that homosexuality
was an inherited disease (Murray, 2000).
The Age of Discovery
The European discovery of the New World greatly
enhanced curiosity about homosexuality. Explorers’
many accounts of “sodomy” in the newly discovered
cultures were often used to justify the subduing of native
peoples. In the early 1500s Cieza de León complained of
homosexual temple prostitutes among native cultures
205
along the Peruvian coast, and these complaints reinforced
the conquistadors’ will to stamp out native religions
(Murray, 2000). In the early 1500s Balboa sent wild
dogs to kill homosexual shamans in California tribes
(Grahn, 1986).
Explorers, traders, and missionaries continued to
report on the homosexual activities of newly discovered
cultures well into the 20th century. Over time the moral
judgments diminished and the descriptions became
richer. The 19th-century English explorer, Sir Richard
Burton (1967), based many of his detailed descriptions of
homosexuality in different countries on “participant
observation.” Although he left us with many valuable
texts, his widow burned many more (Rice, 1990).
Anthropological Accounts
Up to the 1980s anthropologists’ incidental references to
homosexuality were typically no more detailed than those
of explorers, missionaries, or traders. Ford and Beach
(1951) compiled and quantified some of this information
from other cultures, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s
the Human Relations Area Files busily indexed accounts
from hundreds more. Most accounts were brief, and often
ambiguous, but by the late 1960s cross-cultural researchers
were able to use statistical analyses to examine psychological and other theories about male homosexuality.
By the 1980s the gay liberation movement had made
it possible for Herdt (1981) to initiate a new age in
anthropology in which fieldwork was dedicated primarily
to homosexuality. At much the same time the social
historian, Michel Foucault, published his influential
History of Sexuality (French edition, 1978; English translation, 1980), making the study of homosexuality one of
the central themes of academic research.
Foucault argued that prior to the 19th century people
may have talked about homosexual acts, but there was no
notion of the “homosexual” as a separate social category.
For some of his followers this meant that “homosexuals”
themselves did not exist until very recently when they
were socially “constructed.” Other scholars pointed out
that the lack of a category does not mean that “homosexuals” did not exist, any more than the lack of a concept
for “gene” means that genes did not exist prior to Mendel.
Still other scholars went further and tried to show that
most societies did, indeed, have concepts for “homosexual” that, in essence, were the same everywhere. Thus
was born the great “essentialist–constructivist” debate
206
Homosexuality
that permeated gender studies throughout the 1980s and
1990s and resulted in far richer descriptions of homosexuality in different cultures (DeCecco & Elia, 1993).
Attempts to reconcile our knowledge of crosscultural variation with studies on the biology of homosexuality clarified a need to make greater distinctions
with regard to what is explained, whether homosexual
behaviors, identities, or desires. Several recent studies
have once again used cross-cultural statistical studies to
test some of these ideas.
THE DIVERSITY
OF
HOMOSEXUALITY
Cultural Systems of Homosexuality
Most scholars of the 1980s and 1990s emphasized the
uniqueness of homosexuality in every culture. Of course
in some respects every culture is different from every
other culture. Still, we can classify cultures on many
different characteristics. One popular typology, originally
suggested almost 40 years ago, groups cultures into one
of three male homosexual systems (Gorer, 1966). The
first, and by far the most common, has been labeled
the “pathic” (“passive”) or “gender-stratified” system.
The second, also very common, has been called the
“pederasty” or “age-stratified” system, and includes
societies with “mentorship” or “ritualized” homosexuality. The third system, much less common, has been
labeled “homophilic” or “egalitarian,” and may be subdivided into “adolescent homosexuality,” “comrade,” and
“gay” systems.
Systems of female homosexuality are similar but not
exactly parallel to the male systems. Examples of each
system can illustrate the cross-cultural variation.
Male Homosexual Systems
Gender-Stratified Systems. In gender-stratified
systems men who take on a pathic (passive or receptive)
role in sexual relationships are culturally distinguished
from typical men, but the men who take on “active” (insertor) roles are not. Unlike “gays,” pathics do not typically
have sex with other pathics. This system is widespread on
all the world’s continents. In many societies pathics are
known for their special ceremonial roles. Among the
Siberian Chuckchee a youth begins his transformation
when he receives a “shamanic calling.” He gradually
adopts female characteristics—hairstyles, then dress, then
female tasks, and finally female speech. At this point he
begins to seek the “good graces of men” and may eventually marry one of his lovers. Pathic shamans, called “soft
men,” also communicate with supernatural husbands, The
pathic’s human husband is not differentiated from the
other men in society, but he may have to follow the orders
of his cross-gendered wife’s supernatural husband. Many
non-pathic Chukchee also become shamans, but the “softmen” are considered special (Murray, 2000).
Gender-stratified homosexuality is also common in
Latin America. Although some pathics may adopt special
religious roles, like the Brazilian pai de santo, most do
not, and homosexuality is not necessary for these positions. In his study of a Brazilian fishing village Cardoso
(2002) found that most men had had sex with the village’s
paneleiros (pathics), some of whom were transvestites.
Lack of heterosexual opportunities could not explain why
men turned to the pathics. The men who had sex with
paneleiros were actually somewhat more popular with
the women than other men. Nor did these men appear to
have “bisexual” personality profiles. The local culture did
not distinguish them from other men, and they were not
intermediate between pathics and other men on childhood
precursors to homosexuality (Cardoso, n.d.).
Age-Stratified Systems. Age-stratified homosexual
systems have been identified on all the continents except
the Americas. One of the most common forms is the
“mentorship” system, in which an older male takes on a
boy as his protégé to teach the arts of politics, religion, or
warfare. In most of these societies relationships are
monogamic, and much care is taken to select the
proper mentor. Boys may become apprentices as young
as 7–10 years, as among the New Guinea Sambia, and
may continue with their “passive” role until as old as 25,
as among the New Guinea Etoro. At this point a man may
take on a boy apprentice of his own until he eventually
marries a woman. In some societies, as among the ancient
Greeks, the men may continue their mentorship roles
even after marrying women. In some societies, like the
Etoro, these homosexual activities were more common
and considered far superior to heterosexual sex that might
be totally prohibited for two thirds of the year. Lengthy
and complex rituals assured that insemination would give
the boys male strength (Herdt, 1984; Murray, 2000).
From the 13th to the 17th centuries in Japan older
Buddhist monks maintained (active) homosexual
Diversity
relations with (passive) younger acolytes or postulants.
Although these nanshoku relationships were attributed to
the founder of Japanese Buddhism in the 8th century, the
custom probably drew more from Shinto and Confucian
traditions. At the same time, older Samurai maintained a
similar tradition with younger warriors. Sometimes these
relationships continued throughout adult life and led to
heroic tales of the “comrade loves of the Samurai,”
similar to the ancient Greek myths of Achilles and
Patroclus or Apollo and Ametus (Ihara, 1972; Leupp,
1994; Murray, 2000).
In both Japan and Greece these “mentorship”
systems eventually transformed into “catamite” systems
(similar to those of the later Roman emperors and Turkish
sultans) in which kept boys were made more effeminate
for the sexual pleasures of powerful older males, with no
pedagogical aims. Among the West African Mossi, chiefs
kept boys for sexual purposes, especially for Fridays
when sex with women was taboo (Murray & Roscoe,
1998). Among the Ashanti, some male slaves were treated
as female lovers. In many societies (China, Korea, Japan,
Rome, Egypt, Iraq) boys took on women’s roles in
theatrical productions and served as prostitutes, a practice
which led some (including possibly Shakespeare’s
England) to denounce the theater (Murray, 2000).
Egalitarian Systems. In egalitarian systems power
differences between “active” and “passive” partners do
not exist, or are downplayed. In many societies adolescent friends engage in homosexual play. Among the
African Nyakyusa boys live apart in separate villages
from adults. They sleep together and commonly have
interfemoral intercourse with each other. Informants said
that an adult male may have sex with boys, but never with
another adult male (Murray, 2000). Among Yanomami
Indians intervillage homosexuality is encouraged and a
youth is likely to marry his “best friend’s” sister. Some
Australian aborigine adolescents similarly have sex with
their future brothers-in-law. Adolescent homosexuality
has also been common in many Melanesian and
Polynesian societies like Tikopia, Samoa, Tahiti, and
Hawaii.
In a few societies an adolescent sexual relationship
may develop into a “comrade” relationship that lasts a
lifetime and continues to include sex, although both men
also have heterosexual relationships and marry women.
Although never typical of all the men in a society, such
relationships have been reported among ancient Greeks,
207
Romans, and Japanese (Murray, 2000), and among the
more modern Pashtans of Pakistan (Lindholm, 1982).
The rarest of homosexual systems in the ethnographic literature is our modern “gay” system, in which
exclusive homosexuals engage in sex with other exclusive
homosexuals throughout their lives. This system may,
indeed, be unique to modern society as claimed by
Foucault. In any case, the “gay” system appears to be
increasing recently. Murray and Arboleda (1995) noted
changes over time from “pathic” to “gay” systems in
Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. In the 1970s, only 50% of
their informants had heard of the term “gay,” and only
23% thought it referred to both “passive” and “active”
partners. In the 1980s, 76% had heard of the term and 58%
applied it to both “passives” and “actives.”
Other Male Systems. Although this classification
system may be useful, it cannot account for all of the
ways homosexuality occurs in different societies. For
example, Duerr (1993) points out that homosexual rape
has often been used to humiliate defeated enemies.
Greek vases show Persians submitting anally to their
conquerors. The losers in Yanomomi club fights were also
victimized in this way. Homosexual rapes in prisons
throughout the world have been well documented (see
www.spr.org).
Also, different types of homosexuality may be found
in different sectors of the same society. “Gay” systems
may characterize most of the homosexual activity found
in today’s northern European cultures. Still, genderstratified systems occur in prisons, and age-stratified
systems may occur in private schools or street gangs
(Duerr, 1993). In ancient Greece age-stratified systems
may have received most of the attention, but genderstratified homosexuality also occurred. The Greek terms
kinaidos, europroktoi, and katapygon referred to men
who engaged in passive anal intercourse even as adults.
Although their behavior was tolerated, these men were
not allowed to hold public office or participate in citizen
assemblies (Murray, 2000).
In addition, especially in small-scale societies,
rather ad hoc social adjustments may be confused with
long-standing cultural traditions. Crocker (1990) reports
the presence of three elderly cross-gendered men among
the Brazilian Kanela Indians he studied, but states that the
group had no tradition for transvestites to follow. Native
research assistants told Crocker that these men were not
active sexually, but one had previously allowed Kanela
208
men to have anal intercourse with him. Similarly, Clastres
(1972) describes a transvestite among the hunting and
gathering Aché of Paraguay. His account ties traditional
structural characteristics of Aché culture to the transvestite’s behavior (including his sexual relations with his
own brothers), but it seems more likely that these behaviors were ad hoc rather than traditional since a closely
related band of Aché reported never having heard of
transvestites.
Female Homosexual Systems
In her study of lesbian relationships in Lesotho, Kendal
(1998) pointed out how easy it is to ignore female homosexuality. Basotho women simply say that sex is impossible without a penis. Women “have sex” with their
husbands, but simultaneously maintain affective ties with
women (including “grinding” genital contacts) that they
describe as “loving.” This has made it difficult for crosscultural researchers to ascertain just how “sexual”
women’s relationships are. For example, women taking
on the typically male roles of “warrior” or “husband”
have been reported for many societies, but it is unclear
whether these involved lesbian sex.
Still, there are clear descriptions of gender-stratified
female homosexuality. Among the Chuckchee, two women
who adopted male dress, speech, and work activities
eventually married girls, and one of the wives became
pregnant by a cohusband. Records of gender-stratified
female homosexuality also appear from ancient
China and Japan. A chronicle of the Han emperor
Cheng (32–7 BC) reports that his wife had a dui shi
(husband–wife) relationship with a female student who
then became the emperor’s concubine so that both could
enjoy the girl’s sexual favors (Murray, 2000). During
the Tokugawa period (1615–1867 CE) lesbianism was
common in the shoguns’ harems, and there are references
to women dressed as males who sought female prostitutes. Japanese theater companies also included women
who took on male roles and became enamored of their
female counterparts (Leupp, 1994). Gender-stratified
lesbian relationships have also been described in Sumatra
and Java (Murray, 2000).
Age-stratified female homosexuality occurred as
part of initiation ceremonies among the Kaguru of
Tanzania, and in the form of “mentorship” systems in
ancient Greece. A Spartan text mentions women’s
intercourse with girls before their marriage, and Sappho,
Homosexuality
the poet from Lesbos, addressed women in the language
of erastes/eromenos used for male homosexual relations.
Since Sappho had a daughter, she obviously also had sex
with a man. Female homosexuality also occurred in the
form of a reverse “catamite” system in Japan, where girl
dancers imitated men’s behavior and served as prostitutes
for female customers (Murray, 2000).
Accounts of non-“gay” egalitarian female homosexuality have been ambiguous. Big Nama women of
Malekula (Melanesia) commonly practice homosexuality,
but it is unclear whether this is age structured. Similarly,
the lesbian relationships described in early 20th century
Chinese sisterhoods and in the “mummy–baby” relations
of Lesotho women appear to have been egalitarian, but we
cannot be sure (Murray, 2000).
As these examples illustrate, homosexual activities
occur under many varied forms, and may be given vastly
different meanings in different cultures. For some this
diversity is great enough to invalidate any attempts at
explanation.
Animal Homosexuality
As Bagemihl (1999) points out, zoologists and ethologists
have often been reluctant to label animal behaviors as
“homosexual.” Often these activities are listed as
dominance/submissive gestures or “mock” courtships,
even though the same behavior with a heterosexual couple
would have been called sex. Bagemihl suggests that this
reluctance sometimes stems from negative attitudes
toward human homosexuality, but in part it may also
reflect a recognition that human behavior simply is not the
same as animal behavior.
When comparing different species it is important to
distinguish “analogous” from “homologous” behaviors.
Analogous behaviors may appear similar but are phylogenetically unrelated, while homologous behaviors are
similar because they share an evolutionary past. When
a bedbug forcibly deposits his own sperm in the sperm
ducts of another bedbug, he helps pass along his own
genes whenever his victim copulates with a female.
Although scientists might label this behavior “homosexual rape,” it really has nothing to do with human
sexuality (Sommer, 1990). On the other hand, when a
male gorilla mounts another male and ejaculates in his
anus (Bagemihl, 1999), this behavior is more likely to be
homologous to human homosexuality. Whether we
decide to call the gorilla’s behavior “homosexuality”
Explaining Homosexuality
is less important than recognizing that it is similar enough
to human same-sex behavior for us to postulate an evolutionary connection.
Many primate behaviors might be homologous to
human same-sex sexuality. Examples might include the
male–male mounting, with anal penetration but no apparent ejaculation, of stump-tailed macaques and squirrel
monkeys, or perhaps the simple mounts without penetration so common in langurs, pig-tailed macaques,
baboons, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos—or the
mutual masturbation and fellatio reported among stumptailed macaques—or the genital–genital contacts of
female bonobos and male gibbons (Bagemihl, 1999;
Werner, 1998). If we classify these behaviors as homologous with human homosexuality, why not include the
sniffing and inspecting of another male’s anogenital
region among stump-tailed macaques, or the displaying
of erections among vervet macaques or baboons, or the
deposition of urine drops on subordinate males among
squirrel monkeys? Could the preference of some rhesus
monkeys for homosexual partners indicate primate
homologs for “pathics” (Werner, 1998)?
Deciding these questions requires theory-driven
comparisons of different primates, but our growing
knowledge of homosexual-like behaviors among primates
has revealed such complexity that some researchers seem
to think that we should eschew all attempts at explanation
and simply appreciate all the glorious exuberance of
nature (Bagemihl, 1999).
EXPLAINING HOMOSEXUALITY
No single argument could possibly account for all aspects
of homosexuality in humans and animals. However,
attempts have been made to explain some of the variation.
Evolution of Homosexuality
Many scientists have puzzled over how homosexuality
(especially exclusive homosexuality) evolved. How could
a behavior that appears to reduce reproductive success
survive the rigors of natural selection? Many researchers
have suggested some hidden adaptive value: (1) exclusive
homosexuals may help their relatives raise more offspring (kin selection, parental manipulation); (2) genes
that are maladaptive in males might be especially adaptive in females, and vice versa; (3) genes for exclusive
209
heterosexuality may be less adaptive than combinations
of genes that permit some homosexuality (balanced
polymorphism, heterosis, hybrid vigor) (Kirkpatrick,
2000; Sommer, 1990; Werner, 1998). Clear evidence for
or against these different ideas is still lacking.
Most theorists have considered only adaptation, but
evolutionary arguments must also account for how
changes might have arisen throughout our phylogenetic
history. Werner (1998) suggested an evolutionary
sequence of ever greater male–male cooperation among
primates that progressed gradually from systems that
marked territories in more solitary animals, to systems
that marked dominance and subordination in multimale
groups, to systems that marked alliances in more complex
social animals.
Only small changes needed to occur to move from
one system to another. The scent deposits in urine or other
bodily secretions that marked territorial boundaries
began to mark some animals as subordinate “guests” in
a dominant’s territory. In addition to “paying homage” to
dominant individuals by inhaling their markings, subordinates also had to hide or avoid penile erections while
observing the erection displays of the dominant males
(who had exclusive sexual rights to the group’s females),
and perhaps also tolerate the dominant’s mounting behaviors. In many of these groups adolescent males practiced
these dominance displays by alternating roles with each
other. In more complex animal societies this adolescent
behavior continued among adult males who could mark
alliances by alternating subordinate and dominant roles.
As these alliances became more complex, the same-sex
behaviors came to resemble human homosexuality more
and more.
In a complex animal society a male with genes that
encouraged only submission might fail to reproduce for
lack of trying, but a male that could act only as a dominant might also fail to reproduce. A little submissiveness
helps avoid dangerous fights and facilitates the formation
of alliances. In every generation some males may be too
dominant and others too submissive to reproduce, but
their genes will be passed on through those who have a
little of both personalities.
In line with this theory, one of the most peaceful and
cooperative of primates, the bonobo, probably also has the
highest incidences of “homosexual” behavior, especially
among females. As De Waal (1989) points out, sex is
probably the major way that these animals reconcile
conflicts and maintain peace.
210
Cross-Culturally Recurrent Themes
If homosexuality is not a totally arbitrary construct of
symbolic culture, then we should find some recurrent
themes behind all of the cultural diversity. For example,
are “pathics” like “gays”? What about the typical men
who have sex with them? Are there perhaps universal
cognitive associations with homosexuality?
“Cross-gendered Individuals” versus Typical
Men and Women. People with experience in both
gender-stratified and modern gay systems often compare
“pathics” with “gays,” under the assumption that a man
who became a “pathic” in one culture would become a
“gay” if he had lived elsewhere. Williams (1985) interviewed Lakota Sioux Indians who automatically associated their traditional winktes with modern “gays.” They
noted, however, that winktes would have sex with men,
not with other winktes like gays do, and one Indian
complained: “It makes me mad when I hear someone
insult winktes. A lot of the younger gays, though, don’t
fulfill their spiritual role as winktes, and that’s sad too.”
Just how similar are modern gays to the receptive
partners in gender-stratified systems? At least with regard
to early cross-gender behaviors, like playing with girls,
engaging in girls’ play activities, and avoiding fights,
American “gays” are very similar to “pathics” from the
Philippines, Peru, Guatemala, and Brazil (Cardoso, 1994;
Whitam, 1983; Whitam & Mathy, 1986; Whitam & Zent,
1984). Psychoanalytic theories often attributed homosexuality to hostility with fathers, but the U.S. correlations
between hostile fathers and homosexuality did not appear
in the more accepting cultures of Guatemala and the
Philippines. This finding suggests that fathers’ hostility
may be a consequence, and not a cause, of homosexuality in more intolerant cultures.
In their comparison of Brazil, Peru, the Philippines,
and the United States, Whitam and Mathy (1991) also
found that cross-gendered females were more likely than
other females to have engaged with boys’ in boys’ play
activities, and to have adopted men’s clothes during
childhood.
Typical Men Who Engage in Homosexual
Activities. Research on the characteristics of typical
males who engage in homosexual behaviors is much rarer
and the results are more ambiguous. In his study of
prisoners in Brazil, Silva (1998) found that it was those
Homosexuality
most concerned about their positions in status hierarchies
who spoke most favorably about raping other prisoners.
Looking at homosexual activities in a Brazilian fishing
village, Cardoso (1994, n.d.), found that the men who had
sex with the village’s pathics were more fond of aggression during sex. Perhaps these findings are related to U.S.
studies that show high-stimulus-seeking males are more
likely to engage in bisexuality (Ekleberry, 2000; Udry,
2002), or to the finding that U.S. males expressing more
hostility towards homosexuals are more likely than other
males to show sexual excitement (measured by penile
volume) when viewing films of male homosexual
activities (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996).
Cognitive Associations of Homosexuality. For
centuries scholars have puzzled over how our concepts
are constructed. Plato thought that we are all born with
very specific ideas (like “horse”) which we later attribute
to empirical phenomena. Kant reduced these inborn ideas
to a few basic building blocks (categories like “time,”
“space,” or “causality”) that he thought necessary to construct any intelligent system. Piaget followed Kant, but
more recently, developmental psychologists have discovered that babies are born with some very specific
concepts (McKenzie, 1990; Pinker, 1994) and that (as
etymologies and pidgin languages show) more abstract
concepts are built up from earlier more concrete concepts
(Givon, 1989). This ontogenetic process may reflect
phylogenetic changes in cognition as thought becomes
more complex.
Do humans have any elementary concrete ideas
regarding homosexuality? The psychoanalyst Arango
(1989) suggests that our “dirty words” reflect some of our
most basic concepts. These words seem to be stored in a
different part of our brain, and may continue to be
remembered and used even after brain damage destroys
the rest of our conceptual thinking.
Many of the dirty words mentioned by Arango seem
to derive rather directly from primate markers for dominance and submission. For example, in most, if not all,
human languages, typical primate “homage-paying”
behaviors are used to insult people thought too anxious
to please their superiors. Brazilians call such people
puxa-sacos (literally sack-pullers), recalling the behavior
of subordinate vervet monkeys. More common is the
subordinate’s gesture of sniffing the dominant’s behind.
The association of “active” (insertor) homosexual
roles with domination and “passive” (insertee) roles with
Explaining Homosexuality
subordination also appears to be almost universal,
although the nature of the domination may vary from
cruel demonstrations of power (as in prison rape) to more
fatherly “mentorship” roles.
Explaining Cross-Cultural Variation
Every culture has some characteristics that are unique and
others that are shared by all, but it is those characteristics
that only some cultures share with some others that most
interest anthropologists concerned with explaining
cultural variation. So far anthropologists have tried to
explain why societies vary in their frequency, acceptance,
and type of homosexuality.
Frequency and Acceptance of Homosexuality.
Early cross-cultural studies of homosexuality dealt almost
exclusively with the closely related variables “frequency”
and “acceptance” of male homosexuality (Broude, 1976;
Minturn, Grosse, & Haider, 1969; Werner, 1979). Although
intercoder reliability coefficients were high, some later
scholars (e.g., Bolton, 1994; Gray & Ellington, 1984) complained that these ratings were invalid because they failed
to distinguish “homosexual behavior” from “homosexuals.” They pointed out that most of the cultural variance
comes from the homosexual behaviors of heterosexually
identified men. Thus, cross-cultural comparisons of
“modal” psychological characteristics would be irrelevant
to theories about differences between homosexuals and
heterosexuals, although they might tell us something about
heterosexual males who engage in homosexual practices.
Most of the cultural variation in homosexuality
recorded in these early studies probably had to do with
gender-stratified cultures. Gray and Ellington (1984)
showed that societies coded as having more homosexual
behavior were also generally coded as having transvestism, and Werner (1975) found that societies with
positive attitudes toward exclusive homosexuals also had
positive attitudes toward the homosexual behaviors of
typical males.
Here are the principal correlations found in these
studies.1 First, homosexuality is more frequent where
there are mixed-sex play groups (Werner, 1979), and
transvestites are more common where there are fewer sex
distinctions within a society (Munroe, Whiting, & Hally,
1969). As the authors explain, these findings suggest that
social tolerance of “pathics” is at least partly a function
of a more general tendency toward sexual equality.
211
Homosexual behaviors are also more acceptable
where heterosexual outlets are less available or less attractive. They are more common in polygynous societies,
where some males have difficulty attaining wives, and in
societies where males marry at a later age (Barber, 1998;
Werner, 1975). Homosexuality is also more common
where there are arranged marriages (Minturn et al., 1969),
perhaps reflecting less sexual satisfaction with wives.
Homosexual behaviors are rare in societies with
monogamous nuclear families where husbands and wives
sleep in the same room, and where there is close
father–child contact. Homosexuality and transvestism are
also rare in societies with the couvade (Carroll, 1978;
Munroe, 1980). Although early researchers explained
these findings with neo-Freudian theories about sex identities, a more parsimonious explanation might be that
they simply reflect a society’s attitude toward paternal
investments. By spending more time with the children of
just one wife, a father automatically devotes more of his
resources to his children. And by submitting to couvade
taboos around the time of birth he demonstrates to all of
society his willingness to assume his paternal responsibilities. In societies with the couvade, fathers are more
likely to sleep apart from their wives during the first
months or even years after birth. Rather than indicate less
paternal investment, this may in fact indicate greater concern with the new-born’s welfare since the mother’s
attention would not be divided between her husband and
her child during this critical period. Werner (1979) found
homosexual behaviors to be less acceptable in societies
where married women are punished for committing
infanticide or abortion with legitimate offspring. Werner
originally attributed this correlation to a “pro-natalist”
social policy in which women are encouraged to bear
more children. However, in light of these other studies, it
may be more accurate to see intolerance of homosexuality as reflecting a desire to invest more in children rather
than simply bear more. One correlation from these early
studies seems to require at least some psychological theorizing about sexual identity formation: more accepting
societies, and those with more homosexual behaviors, are
more likely to perform male genital mutilations (Minturn
et al., 1969). Bolton (1994) suggested that this might be
part of the ritualization of age-stratified homosexual systems. But, as the next section shows, genital mutilations
are actually associated with gender-stratified homosexuality, not with age-stratified homosexuality. Perhaps
males living in gender-stratified systems are more
212
intrigued or anxious about male genitalia because of the
ever-present contradiction between the gender roles and
the biological sex of their “pathics.”
Different Cultural Forms of Homosexuality.
Crapo (1995) and Murray (2000) coded societies for the
presence of the three principal homosexual systems. For
male homosexuality, Murray was able to code 120 societies as gender-stratified, 53 as age-stratified, and 30 as
egalitarian. For female homosexuality he was able to
code only 19 as gender-stratified, seven as age-stratified,
and six as egalitarian. Crapo and Murray compared the
different types of homosexual organization with regard to
other aspects of culture.
Crapo found that gender-stratified societies generally had fewer overall sex distinctions, sleeping arrangements in which husbands and wives stayed together, and
more female power. Murray found that gender-stratified
societies were more likely to be matrilineal, somewhat
more likely to have equal participation by males and
females in the principal subsistence activity, less likely to
have segregation of adolescent males, and more likely to
practice male genital mutilations. These associations
confirm the earlier studies on male transvestism (Munroe
et al., 1969) and suggest that acceptance and frequency of
“pathic” homosexuality is related to greater equality
between the sexes.
Crapo found age-stratified systems more common in
societies with patrilocality and patrilineality, where
polygyny is preferred but limited to older and wealthier
men, and where boys are segregated from others. Murray
noted that in age-stratified systems male age-mates are
more likely to live apart from others, and people are more
likely to consider virginity necessary for brides. These
societies are also more likely to have social classes, and
somewhat more likely to have cities. Neither Murray nor
Crapo distinguished between “mentorship” societies and
“catamite” societies. It seems likely that the “mentorship”
systems may be part of a more general sexual segregation
in society, while the “catamite” system may result from
class differences that allow the wealthy and powerful to
subordinate younger males for sexual purposes.
In both age- and gender-stratified systems, Crapo
noted that fathers are less involved with infant care than in
societies with neither of these systems, perhaps reflecting
once again a less pro-natalist social policy.
In egalitarian systems most typical males (after
adolescence) do not usually engage in homosexual
Homosexuality
relations. Murray found that, for males, egalitarian
systems are most likely where premarital sex is most permissible, where post-partum sex taboos are longest, and
where there are fewer wealth distinctions. Perhaps more
generally open attitudes toward sex coupled with more
egalitarian ideologies make equal male–male sexual ties
more acceptable. The taboos on post-partum sex may have
more to do with respect for the new mother and encouragement of fatherhood than with any sexual repression.
Murray’s correlations for female homosexuality are
more precarious, since he could code far fewer cases. But
it is worth noting that female gender-stratified systems
are most common where men and women participate
equally in the major subsistence task, where there is less
segregation of adolescent males, where there are fewer
wealth distinctions, and where female premarital intercourse is more acceptable. These correlations are based
on very few cases but do seem to indicate, once again,
that fewer overall sex distinctions within a society make
cross-gender roles more acceptable.
Murray found that female age-graded systems are
most likely where women participate more than men in
the major subsistence activity. Perhaps the importance of
women’s work makes it more crucial for girls to receive
closer guidance from older women. His data on female
egalitarian systems were based on very few cases (six or
seven) and percentage differences so small that any
conclusions regarding cross-cultural correlations would
be premature.
These findings may lead to some tentative speculations that, of course, will require further confirmation.
First, we might observe that typical males are more likely
to engage in homosexual activities in age-stratified and
gender-stratified systems. In egalitarian systems the
homosexual behaviors of most males is usually limited to
adolescence, and the number of “comrade” relationships
is few. Greater general repression of homosexual activities among typical males may be partly a function of a
society’s natalist policy, including paternal investment in
offspring. Perhaps the major question facing males is
whether to invest directly in offspring or in male–male
competition/cooperation. If male–male relations are
more important, the next question is how they might
be organized. Sexually segregated societies appear
to favor age-stratified homosexuality as a way for men
to compete/cooperate, while sex with cross-gendered
homosexuals may be a part of male camaraderie where
sex distinctions are few.
Scientific Study and Social Policy
Just why the gay system appeared is under debate.
Besides questions of paternal investment, Werner (1999)
suggested this change may partly be due to changes from
a “patron–client” political system to a “meritocratic” system in which personal qualifications are valued more than
personal ties in getting ahead. In line with this theory,
Cardoso’s preliminary data from 79 male Brazilian slum
dwellers showed that 85% of those who adopted the
“pathic” homosexual ideology thought personal ties were
most important to getting ahead, while only 60% of those
adopting the “gay” ideology agreed with this statement.
As to the different systems for female homosexuality, data are much more precarious. Women everywhere
invest more in their offspring than do men, and cooperation/competition between women is usually limited to a
smaller and more intimate group. That female genderstratified systems are more common where sex and
wealth differences are fewer, and where premarital sex is
more common, may simply imply a more relaxed attitude
toward their behavior.
As for the more limited homosexual activities
typical of “egalitarian” systems, there is still a great deal
of variation with regard to tolerance. These activities
appear to be most acceptable where social equalities and
sexual freedoms are greatest, probably reflecting a
greater sense of equal “justice” for all.
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF
HOMOSEXUALITY AND SOCIAL POLICY
One of the most common philosophical mistakes is to
confuse what is with what ought to be. One variation of
this confusion is known as the naturalistic fallacy—the
idea that if something is natural, then it is good (i.e., ought
to be). As Sommer (1990) points out, the presence or
absence of homosexual behavior among animals has been
used since ancient times either to defend or to condemn
the practice. The contradictory conclusions of different
authors illustrate well the problems in trying to conclude
from what is “natural” (found among animals) to what
“ought to be”: In Laws, Plato argues against homosexuality because it does not occur among animals. But the
2nd century Pseudo-Lucien defends homosexuality by
arguing that “lions have no homosexuality because
they have no philosophers,” and “bears have none because
they know not beauty.” On the other hand, the 2nd century
213
author of Physiologus argues that impure hyenas
do exhibit homosexual characteristics and thus humans
should not engage in homosexuality, while the 20th
century author, André Gide, argues that homosexuality
does occur in animals and thus is “natural” and so “good.”
As these arguments make clear, simply knowing whether
animals do or do not engage in homosexuality tells us
nothing about whether human homosexuality is good or
not. The same holds for arguments about evolutionary
adaptiveness.
Likewise, knowing whether homosexual behavior is
common or highly regarded in different cultures tells us
nothing about whether it ought to be common or highly
regarded there or anywhere else. This confusion is known
as the relativistic fallacy. In 1986 Chief Justice Burger of
the U.S. Supreme Court argued that historical evidence of
proscriptions against homosexuality in different cultures
justified upholding the Georgia sodomy laws (Bowkers vs.
Hardwick, 1986). More recently, the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, initiated a violent antihomosexual
campaign in his country with the justification that
homosexuality did not exist there prior to European
colonization (Murray & Roscoe, 1998). Actually, both are
wrong about history, but even if they had been right on
the facts, they would still be committing the relativistic
fallacy.
The confusion of “is” with “ought” is so common
that some scholars have fallen into the reverse error of
concluding about what “is” based on what they think
“ought to be,” thus committing the moralistic fallacy. For
example, the Soviet scientist Lysenko decided that the
theory of natural selection must be wrong because it
implied that reality was based on unjust non-Marxist
principles. Some more contemporary scholars have
attempted to conclude that men and women, or gays and
straights, “are” equal because they “ought to be” equal.
Science deals with what “is,” not with what “ought to
be.” How, then, can science help us to draw conclusions
about what social policy “ought to be.” The answer
depends on the principles we accept (for nonscientific
reasons) as the basis for our moral, ethical, or political
decisions. For example, one of the most respected principles sees “increasing well-being” as the basis of moral
decisions. Many religions have adopted similar principles,
such as “love thy neighbor as thy self.”
If we accept “increasing well-being” as our moral
aim, then science can help us establish what policies
enhance both physical and mental well-being. In the
214
Homosexuality
study of homosexuality we need to understand what can
be done to increase the well-being of all involved. Many
topics are amenable to this type of research. For example,
can we predict beforehand who will benefit from transsexual surgery? What kinds of programs diminish problems like bullying behaviors in school? What social
policies can help reduce AIDS contamination? What
kinds of domestic arrangements lead to most happiness
for different kinds of people? What kinds of laws most
encourage these arrangements? As we learn more about
homosexuality and its many possible manifestations, we
will surely be able to answer these and other questions
with greater confidence.
NOTE
1. We did not include the correlations in Broude’s (1976) matrix
because some appeared to be contradicted by statements in the text.
We suspect that there may be misprints.
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Transgender and Transsexuality
Tarynn M. Witten, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, Ilana Berger, Richard Ekins,
Randi Ettner, Katsuki Harima, Dave King, Mikael Landén, Nuno Nodin,
Volodymyr P’yatokha, and Andrew N. Sharpe
BRIEF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
TRANSGENDER
OF
Ancient Greece and Rome
Plato, in his Symposium, allows Aristophanes the
opportunity to speak on the concept of the power of love.
In that speech, Aristophanes says:
… For one thing, the race was divided into three; that is to say, besides
the two sexes, male and female, which we have at present, there was a
third which partook of the nature of both, and for which we still have a
name, though the creature itself is forgotten. For though “hermaphrodite” [now called “intersexed”] is only used nowadays as a term of
contempt, there really was a man–woman in those days, a being which
was half male and half female … The three sexes, I may say, arose as
follows. The males were descended from the Sun, the females from the
Earth, and the hermaphrodites from the Moon, which partakes of either
sex … (Harvey, 1997, p. 32)
The Greeks, forerunners of modern medicine,
believed in the concept of more than one sex. It was well
within their mythological construct and cultural norms.
However, somewhere in between then and now, this
concept of a “third sex/third gender” (Herdt, 1996) has
been lost. It is not hard to conjecture how this loss came
to be. The imposition of Judeo-Christian monotheism
replaced the pantheistic view and brought the associated
gender/sex continuum of the Greco-Roman era into the
digital age (on or off, male or female). Perhaps the more
amazing aspect of this disappearance of a conceptual
construct is the fact that we now know that there is a population of individuals, currently living in Western cultural
environments as well as other locations, whose birth sex
should be defined as a third choice “intersexed”—even
within the realm of the Western dual-sex perspective.
Defining the Body
The body exists as a shell (we see the body). It exists as a
container (the person’s body). Meaning and metaphorical
reality are inferred from and transmitted through this
shell. The body can act and be acted upon. The body can
be active (initiating action) or reactive (responding to
action). The body both displays and participates in the
creation of the self (self-identity). It contains the brain,
supposed seat of the mind, and yet the mind and spirit are
also viewed as both part of and yet not part of the body.
To a certain degree, the body is plastic in its ability to
alter its physical construct to meet assorted needs, both
internal as well as external. These alterations can lead to
alterations that become learned behaviors, increased or
decreased capabilities, and eventually even embodied
actions that transcend the conscious attempt to understand them. The body can be viewed as separate from the
mind or unified with it in a holistic fusion. The body has
location in space and time. Fausto-Sterling (2000)
addresses the complexity of the issues associated with the
interplay of the body and sex.
The advent of political correctness added to the
problems of dealing with this terminology by creating
increased confusion over sex and gender and by creating
an atmosphere of increased confusion wherein the two
words became interchangeable. Further, the conservative
religious backlash could not deal with sexuality or sex in
any form. Therefore, all reference to “sex” was squashed.
The politically correct world provided the perfect atmosphere for the conservatives to squelch the use of “sex” in
any document and to replace it with “gender.” For the fun
of it, the first thing that I did, while writing this introductory section, was to ask MS Word to look up the word
“sex” in its built-in dictionary. As it is programmed to do,
MS Word automatically gives synonyms and it provided
the word “gender” as a synonym for “sex.” One of the
most widely used word-processing programs identifies
sex and gender as interchangeable. Even the online
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, which yields
three entries for gender, lists entry 2 as “sex.” Pryzgoda
and Chrisler (2000) ask the question: “Do people actually
know what the word gender means?” In their paper, they
216
Brief Intellectual History
report that for a sample of n ⫽ 137 study participants a
“variety of understandings and beliefs about gender that
range from the common response that ‘gender’ is the
same as ‘sex’ to less common responses that associate
gender with females or discrimination” occurred.
Defining Sex
We live in a Western culture. That culture is dualistic,
when it comes to looking at the subject of sex. When we
ask a person “What sex are you?”, the implied/understood
question is “what birth sex are you, what is the genitalia
between your legs?” As a consequence of our evolution as
a Western Judeo-Christian cultural environment, we are
immersed in the cultural norm of the “Adam and Eve”
mythology and hence, of there being only two birth-sex
possibilities. This perspective is known as the biblical
norm of sex. When we say “birth sex,” we are making the
hidden assumption that we are saying the “sex defined by
the genitalia seen, by a person authorized to interpret the
genitalia as displayed at birth.” It is clear that this definition is made within the cultural context of the baby’s birth.
In Western culture, which has the biblical norm of sex
already deeply and incontestably embedded within it
(embodied norm; Cassell, 1998), the only way to interpret
the genitalia is within this biblical norm and hence as
either anatomically male or female.
As has already been illustrated, even the ancient
Greeks recognized that there was a “third sex.” They called
it hermaphrodite, which is now considered a pejorative
term for an individual who displays both sexual organs at
birth (actually, the anatomical presentation can be quite
varied and does not necessarily require both complete
organs to be displayed). The preferred current terminology
is “intersexed.” The prevalence of intersexuality is estimated at 1 in 2,000 births. Additionally, it is estimated that
there are nearly 65,000 intersex births worldwide per year.
Because Western medical culture specifically, and
Western culture in general, is steeped in the biblical norm
of sex, the concept of multiple genitalia or atypical genital anatomy has been deeply and profoundly problematic
for the medical establishment. Up until very recently,
intersexed children were “sexed” as soon after birth as was
medically reasonable, a practice that continues to be sanctioned by the American Pediatric Association, despite
voluminous protestation on the part of the Intersex Society
of North America (ISNA) (http://www.isna.org) and other
agencies.
217
The tie between sex, gender, genitalia (the body),
and stigmatization/destigmatization via labels is also
important here. For example, intersexed children have
been sexed without parental permission or even with the
parents’ knowledge of the fact that their child is intersexed. It is almost as if it is “unspeakable.” Additionally,
the forced sexing transfers the burden from the parents of
the child to the child. Therefore politically correct language or medicalization terminology, such as nondominant genitalia or micro-phallus, is used to remove the
stigma of the intersexuality. On the other hand, transsexuality and transgenderism are immediately stigmatized.
Words like neo-clitoris, neo-phallus, pseudo-testicles,
and neo-vagina disenfranchise the transsexual from the
contragender status they so strongly desire to attain. This
disenfranchisement and stigmatization are best illustrated
by terminology used by the radical lesbian feminist
movement. While they are willing to stretch their
metaphor of reality to allow a male-to-female transsexual
to be classified as a “woman,” they do not consider her a
real woman. Rather, she is labeled as not “woman born
woman.”
Current estimates are that sexing operations are
performed five times per day across the United States
alone. The term “sexed” is a verb that is used to mean that
these children were subjected to genital surgery to
remove the “non-dominant” genitalia. Hence a baby with
a “micro-phallus” and a predominant “vaginal canal”
would be sexed as a woman, and the micro-phallus
removed surgically or surgically “sized” (thereby risking
permanent sexual response reduction). This “sexing”
operation has led to many problems for these intersexed
children; the most famous of them is the very recent case
of John/Jane (Goodnow, 2000).
Defining Gender
Gender is, perhaps, a far more elusive concept. If we look
up the definition of “gender,” we find that it states “an
individual’s self-conception as being male or female, as
distinguished from actual biological sex. For most
persons, gender identity and biological characteristics are
the same. There are, however, circumstances in which an
individual experiences little or no connection between sex
and gender …” (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2001).
This last point, concerning the connection between sex
and gender, or the lack thereof, will be crucial when we
address issues of sexuality. Other definitions of gender
218
(e.g., Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2001) provide
constructions that are more complex. Perhaps the most
common understanding of gender may be found in
Perry (1999, p. 8) who states that “gender is defined here
as the cultural construction of femininity and masculinity
as opposed to the biological sex (male or female) which
we are born with.” Observe that both of these definitions
are based upon the biblical norm of sex and hence of
the associated construct that Witten (2004, in press) calls
“the biblical norm of gender.” Contrast these definitions
with the 1984 definition (Webster, 1984), which states
that gender is “any of two or more [italics added] categories, as masculine, feminine, and neuter, into which
words are divided and that determine agreement with or
selection of modifiers or grammatical forms.” This viewpoint is further supported in the following statement from
the Oxford English Dictionary Online (2001):
b. By some recent philologists applied, in extended sense, to the “kinds”
into which sbs. are discriminated by the syntactical laws of certain
languages the grammar of which takes no account of sex. Thus the
North American Indian languages are said to have two “genders,”
animate and inanimate. With still greater departure from the original
sense, the name “genders” has been applied to the many syntactically
discriminated classes of sbs. in certain South African langs.
Hence, gender does not necessarily have anything to do
with the discriminated classes of male and female.
Rather, it can be used as a descriptor for any syntactically
discriminated set of classes within a language.
Defining Sexuality
The Western biomedical model of sex and gender,
coupled with the Judeo-Christian model of reproduction
and sexuality, provides for only one socially acceptable
model of sexuality, namely heterosexuality. The concept
of heterosexuality is based upon a sexing of the body that
forces the body to be seen as either male or female (based
upon the observed genitalia) and either masculine or
feminine (based upon the individual’s self-perception),
and is coupled with the expected reproductive role
required of those two states of being. The tacit assumption is that a male (genetically XY), with masculine selfperception and social role acceptance—in the best of all
reproductive worlds—when having sexual intercourse
with a female (genetically XX), with feminine selfperception and social role acceptance, will produce a child
having either of these two states. Such a construction is
Transgender and Transsexuality
consistent with Cassell’s (1998) “right mind/right body”
concept. With this construct as the socially accepted norm
of reality, it is clear that any deviance would be dealt
with as just that—a deviance—and handled within the
resources of the social system’s mechanism for dealing
with deviance. In the case of intersexuality (right
mind/wrong body [confused body]), the system medicalizes the problem and deals with it as a body issue. In the
case of transsexuality (confused mind [wrong mind]/right
body), the system medicalizes the problem and deals with
it as a “mind” issue, as we have already discussed in a
previous section.
As Western biomedical medicine holds to a bodyoriented philosophy, it is easy to see how “intersex,”
which is body oriented, easily visually identified with the
senses (body-oriented detectability), and remediable with
“surgery” (body-oriented intervention consistent with the
biomedical way of thinking) is far more acceptable than
“transgender,” which is in the mind (mind oriented), not
readily verifiable via any sort of Western biomedical
rational means, and remediable with a set of counterintuitive surgical interventions that violate the visceral
sanctity of the body public and private. Intersexuality is
concretized within the “medicalization of illness,” as is
understood through the western cultural norm of somaticizing medicine. It is not listed in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text
revision) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In
fact, the intersex condition is an explicitly stated
contraindication for diagnosis of gender identity disorder.
On the other hand, transgenderism is too elusive; it is
culture bound, a deviation at a visceral level of gender
role “embodiment” (Cassell, 1998), inaccessible, and
confounding.
DEFINING TRANSGENDER AND THE
DEMOGRAPHY OF TRANSGENDER
Defining Transgender/Transsexual
The terminology describing the “gender” community is
extremely dynamic, not just in the descriptors of gender,
but also in the body/sex/sexuality and medical status
terminology associated with a given gender identity. This,
along with certain components of the population being
unwilling to allow themselves to be labeled or categorized by labels fixed by someone else, makes it extremely
Definition and Demography
difficult to obtain an accurate census or description of this
population. For example, an individual who is born
genetically female (XX), but states that she is actually
male, might describe himself as an FTM (femaleto-male) transsexual, while another woman might claim
the label transman. Others might choose to define themselves in terms of hormone usage (lo-ho, hi-ho) transman
and still others might use their “operative status” as a
description (pre-op transsexual, post-op transman). Yet
others might claim that they were MBT (men born trans).
Thus, categorizing the membership of the transgender
community is exceedingly difficult.
Although they are frequently invisible and highly
stigmatized within our society (i.e., marginal legal protection, noninclusion in hate crimes legislation and Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission/Affirmative
Action, and inclusion in DSM IV-TR (Currah & Minter,
2000; Witten & Eyler, 1999a) transgender individuals
form more than a negligible percentage of the U.S. population. Understanding that there are labeling and power
concerns of importance that surround any issue of subdividing a population, Witten and Eyler (1999a) address the
definition of transgender stating that:
The gender community includes cross-dressers (men and women
who take on the appearance of the other gender, often on a social or
part-time basis), transgenders (people whose psychological selfidentification is as the other sex and who alter behavior and appearance
to conform with this internal perception, sometimes with the assistance
of hormonal preparations), and transsexuals, both male-to-female
(MTF) and female-to-male (FTM), who undertake hormonal and/or
surgical sex reassignment therapies. In addition, it includes others
with gender self-perceptions other than the traditional (Western)
dichotomous gender world-view (i.e., including only male and female),
such as persons with “non-Western” gender identities (Langevin, 1983;
Godlewski, 1988; Hoenig & Kenna, 1974; Sigusch, 1991; Tsoi,
1988; van Kesteren et al., 1996; Wålinder, 1971a,b; Weitze & Osburg,
1996).
It is also important to mention that there are overlaps
between the transgender and intersex communities with
respect to the aforementioned definitions. As was pointed
out earlier, because the majority of intersexuals have
been and still are forcibly reassigned to the female gender
at birth, the majority of intersexuals that seek sex
reassignment are FTM. However, this does not mean
that there are not some who are MTF as well. Thus the
confluence of both gender and sex issues further adds to
the problem of counting both the intersex and transgender
populations.
219
Estimating the Prevalence of
Transgenderism
With regard to population estimates of transsexuality,
Tsoi (1988) has noted that, “A … problem confounding
an epidemiological survey is that transsexuals tend to
congregate in cities and in certain parts of cities, and most
of them do not want to be identified.” Much of our own
research work has further substantiated this phenomenon.
Nonetheless, Tsoi (1988) has also noted that, in
Singapore (where sexual reassignment surgery [SRS] is
well established and transsexuals are not “suppressed”)
diagnosed transsexualism is more than eight times more
prevalent than in any other country for which estimates exist. Witten (2002a, 2003) has pointed out that
estimates of the number of individuals claiming to have
“alternative gender identities” in the United States, as
well as in other countries, are confounded by the lack of
a control group by which to test prevalence and incidence
estimates. Even so, in an international random survey
performed by Witten and Eyler (1999b), approximately
8% of the 300 respondents identified their gender
self-perceptions as something other than 100% male or
100% female. Taking only the international estimates for
postoperative transsexuality as a basis (1–3%) (Godlewski,
1988; Hoenig & Kenna, 1974; Langevin, 1983; Sigusch,
1991; Tsoi, 1988; van Kesteren et al., 1996; Wålinder,
1971a,b; Weitze & Osburg, 1996), and using the approximate estimate of 300 million people for the U.S. population, this would imply that there are potentially 3–9
million potential postoperative transsexuals in the United
States. While this estimate seems overly surprising,
Witten (2002a, 2003) has discussed the rate of gender
reassignment surgeries currently performed in the United
States and Europe with some of the more prominent surgeons worldwide. A number of these surgeons indicate
that they are performing two surgeries per day, 48 weeks
per year, 4–5 days per week. Some state that they have
waiting lists of upwards of 2 years. In France, the surgical waiting time is now 5 years. If we allow for the
broader interpretation of transgender as including nonsurgical and cross-dressing individuals, the estimates
increase to approximately 20 million people, depending
upon definitional criteria. Others claim that the estimates
for MTF prevalence are 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 30,000, while
FTM prevalence estimates are significantly lower at 1 in
100,000. There are simply no statistically significant data
from which one can draw strong conclusions. It is also
220
important to recognize that each of these individuals
touches numerous others in his or her life—family,
friends, employers, employees, acquaintances, and random individuals on the street. Consequently, support
services may well be necessary for many other individuals other than just the actual transgendered persons. This
insight identifies the impact of the transgendered population and its needs as being significantly larger than the
immediate population of the transgendered alone.
For brevity, in the upcoming discussion, the term
transgenders will be used to signify the entire gender
community, unless otherwise specified. It should also be
pointed out that many indigenous peoples recognize
genders other than male and female. For example, Tewa
adults identify as women, men, and kwido, although their
New Mexico birth records recognize only females and
males (Jacobs & Cromwell, 1992). See also Elledge
(2002) and his discussion of transgender myths from
the Arapaho to the Zuni, as well as the work of Matzner
(2001) discussing Hawaii’s mahu and transgender
communities. Persons with such “non-Western” gender
identities will also be considered as belonging to the
gender community.
Etiology of Transgender
What do we actually know about transgender and
transsexuality in terms of its origins and risk factors? The
answer is quite simple—not very much. The state of
being “transgendered or transsexual” is classified
by DSM IV-TR as a psychiatric disorder and given the
name gender identity disorder (GID). A detailed discussion of GID can be found below in the section on diagnostic criteria.
Biological. There is no known biological reason for
GID. Anecdotal discussion among some evolutionary
biologists has looked at the GID issue as an evolutionary
experiment in adaptivity of the human being. Some argue
that it could be embedded within the “junk” DNA about
which we know next to nothing. There is no scientific
evidence to show that anything is true.
Social/Environmental. There is no evidence to
indicate that there are social causes of GID, although
social environment, roles, etc. are clearly implicated in
GID. There is a psychosocial argument that GID may be
Transgender and Transsexuality
induced by abuse in childhood and that GID is an extreme
avoidance/dissociative response to the sexual, physical,
and/or emotional abuse subjected upon such individuals
(Devor, 1994). There are some studies in this area; none
are conclusive one way or another. This particular theory
is a chicken or egg first theory, and most data are
anecdotal, at best, as accurate on violence against transgendered individuals is not readily available (Witten &
Eyler, 1999a).
Medical/Psychological Aspects of
Transgender
Medical. There is no known medical reason for GID.
Suggested possibilities include possible in utero
hormonal effects that create a vulnerability or propensity
that is then exacerbated by subsequent environmental
factors. Some argue that there are morphological changes
in the corpus callosum, but evidence is ambivalent (some
studies say yes, others say no, some find it inconclusive).
Some argue that other areas of the brain are altered. In
particular, one study by Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, and
Swaab (1997) argues that the central subdivision of the
bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in transgendered individuals does, in fact, have features of the
contragender brain structure. However, these results
are based upon post-mortem analyses of a very small
sample of transgender brains. Additionally, there are
androgenic factors such as partial androgen insensitivity
syndrome (PAIS), Turner’s syndrome, or congenital
adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) that may or may not play into
the biomedical mix.
Psychological. Axis II disorders such as schizophrenia can play a part in a person’s self-perception and therefore need to be ruled out, along with environmental factors
such as drug abuse, depression, etc. Depression does not
rule out GID as a diagnosis, but needs to be considered
within the GID diagnostic context. Multiple personality
disorder issues must be resolved, so that all the different
personalities agree on the sex change procedures. Axis III
disorders are also critical and need to be rigorously
addressed before GID diagnostic assignment. A recent
study from Scandinavia (Haraldsen & Dahl, 2000) has
demonstrated that transsexual persons selected for sex
reassignment show a relatively low level of self-rated
psychopathology before and after treatment.
Cultural Diversity
Significant pressure to remove GID from DSM is
currently mounting. In order to understand the reasoning
behind this pressure, let us examine the current diagnostic criteria for GID.
Diagnostic Criteria (DSM IV-TR). GID is diagnosed
via four criteria that must be met:
1. Evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification
(the desire to be or insistence that one is the other sex. The identification must not merely be a desire for perceived cultural
advantages of being the other sex).
(a) Repeated stated desire to be, or insistence that he or
she, is the other sex.
(b) In boys, preference for cross-dressing or simulating
female attire; in girls, insistence on wearing only
stereotypic masculine clothing.
(c) Persistent preferences for cross-sex roles in makebelieve play or persistent fantasies of being the other sex.
(d) Intense desire to participate in the stereotypic games
and pastimes of the other sex.
(e) Strong preference for playmates of the other sex.
2. There must be evidence of persistent discomfort about one’s
assigned sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role
of that sex.
(a) In boys we see assertions that penis or testes are disgusting and will disappear or assertion that it would be
better not to have a penis, or aversion towards roughand-tumble play and rejection of male stereotypical
toys, games, and activities.
(b) In girls, we see rejection of urinating in a sitting position,
assertion that she has or will grow a penis, or assertion
that she does not want to grow breasts or menstruate, or
marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing.
(c) In adolescents and adults the disturbance is manifested
by symptoms such as preoccupation with getting rid of
primary and secondary sex characteristics (requests
for hormones, surgery, or other relief-based procedures), or the belief that he or she was born the wrong
sex (born in the wrong body).
3. Intersex conditions and metabolic conditions such as PAIS or
CAH rule out GID as a diagnosis.
4. To make the diagnosis there must be evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other
important areas of functioning.
A detailed discussion of the pros and cons of the
DSM IV-TR GID diagnosis can be found at the website of
the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria
Association (HBIGDA) (http://www.hbigda.org), along
with the current standards of care document. In the
upcoming sections, we present a discussion of transgender and transsexuality in a number of countries as
reported by researchers from those countries.
221
THE CULTURAL DIVERSITY OF THE
TRANSGENDER POPULATION
Transsexuality and Transgender in
Sweden
In 1972, Sweden was the first country to pass special
legislation regulating surgical and legal measures required
for sex reassignment, thereby granting the sex-reassigned
person the rights and obligations of the new sex
(Wålinder & Thuwe, 1976). Ever since then, unmarried
Swedish citizens are allowed to obtain publicly financed
sex reassignment if they are diagnosed as transsexuals.
The patient applies to the National Board of Health and
Welfare. An extensive medical certificate, in which documentation for the diagnosis is elaborated, must accompany the application. Because these data are always
collected, this procedure implies that all data from all
applicants for sex reassignment are on file, which facilitates phenomenological studies. Given that legislation is
known to influence moral values in a society (Monteith,
1993), the Swedish law is likely to have boosted the
public’s positive views on transsexuals, as seen in a recent
Swedish poll. Interestingly enough, this survey of attitudes towards transsexuals also demonstrated that those
respondents who believed that transsexualism is caused
by biological factors had a less restrictive view of transsexualism than those people who viewed transsexuality
as a psychological problem (Landén & Innala, 2000).
A review of the annual frequency of applications for
sex reassignments in Sweden between 1972 and 1992
showed a stable rate of, on average, 11.6 applications per
year with an MTF/FTM sex ratio of 1.4/1.0 (Landén,
Wålinder et al., 1996). Since then, however, the annual
frequency has almost doubled in Sweden, an escalation
attributable to an increase in MTF applicants, and this has
changed the sex ratio accordingly. Phenomenological
studies of the Swedish cohort have shown that transsexualism manifests itself differently in MTF and FTM
(Landén, Wålinder et al., 1998). The MTF group are
older than the FTM group when requesting sex reassignment surgery and have less cross-gender behavior as
children, more frequent heterosexual experience, more
frequent occurrence of fetishism, more frequent history
of suicidal attempts, more often a history of marriage and
parenting of children, and a lower level of education and
socioeconomic status.
222
Most importantly, an outcome study of the Swedish
cohort demonstrated that family opposition against the
sex reassignment, belonging to the secondary group of
transsexualism, and a history of psychotic disorder
predicted regrets of sex reassignment (Landén, Hambert
et al., 1998).
Transgender and Transsexuality
in the United Kingdom
Transpeople now have a higher profile in the United
Kingdom than ever before. There are popular transvestite
entertainers (Eddie Izzard), prominent drag entertainers
(Lily Savage), celebrated soap opera “transsexuals”
(“Hayley” of Coronation Street), extensive media coverage of most aspects of trans, and a plethora of informal
networks and support groups, formal organizations, and
commercial ventures to cater for the needs of transsexuals, cross-dressers and transgendered people.
Sex reassignment surgery was pioneered in the
1940s by U.K. surgeon Sir Harold Gillies who operated
on transman Michael Dillon (1944) and transwoman
Roberta Cowell (1953). The first U.K. “gender identity
clinic” was pioneered by psychiatrist John Randell at the
Charing Cross Hospital in London in the 1960s, and has
remained the most consistent source of medical intervention in the United Kingdom. Sex reassignment procedures are available through the National Health Service,
but long waiting lists increasingly result in the use of
private health care.
A number of U.K. transsexuals, namely April
Ashley, Jan Morris, and Caroline Cossey, have become
prominent internationally. Most notable of those who
pioneered self-help groups for transpeople have been
Alice (Beaumont Society, 1967 to date), Judy Cousins
(Self Help Association for Transsexuals, 1979–1989),
and Stephen Whittle (FTM Network, 1991 to date). From
these beginnings emerged today’s gender identity clinics
and networks of support and activist groups. Currently,
the major trans support groups are the Beaumont
Society (http://www.beaumontsociety.org.uk/), the Gender
Trust (http://www.gendertrust.org.uk/), the Gendys
Network (http://www.gender.org.uk/gendys/index.htm),
and the FTM Network (http://www.ftm.org.uk/). This last
organization reflects the greater visibility, more recently,
of transmen within the transgender community.
Since 1970, the legal status of transsexuals has
been determined by the judgment in the case of
Transgender and Transsexuality
Corbett v. Corbett, [1970] 2 All ER 33. That judgment
decided that transwoman April Ashley was still to be
considered a man for the purposes of marriage, although
it has been used to decide sex status in many other areas.
The situation now looks set to change following two
rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (July
2002, Christine Goodwin v. UK Government, Application
No. 28957/95 [1995] ECHR; I v. UK Government,
Application No. 25608/94 [1994] ECHR) which have
held that the U.K. government’s failure to alter the birth
certificates of transsexual people or to allow them to
marry in their new gender is a breach of the European
Convention on Human Rights. Press for Change (PFC)
(http://www.pfc.org.uk) has been the major U.K. pressure
group lobbying for transgender rights since 1992, and
the past decade has witnessed a gradual improvement
towards equal rights and opportunities in areas such as
employment, marriage, and parenting.
Most recently, radical transgender activists who
have been a small but consistent undercurrent in U.K.
transactivism since the 1960s have come to some prominence in the confluence of transgender politics and
radical transgender writings in sociology, cultural studies,
and queer theory. These developments have been documented by U.K. transgender theorists Ekins and King
(1996) and More and Whittle (1999).
Transgenderism and Transsexualism
in Portugal
Transgenderism is widely unknown in Portugal. There
are no statistics concerning the transgender population,
and investigation in this field is limited by the standard
difficulties in accessing transgender individuals, as
addressed earlier in this article. Transgendered individuals lack legal support and are stigmatized by society in
general. There are many commonly accepted myths
concerning transgenderism in Portugal. For example, one
myth is that all transsexuals are prostitutes or that they
have some other nightlife activity such as strip tease or
drag show performance. In this way, Portuguese transgendered persons are frequently socially disregarded and
made fun of in public, as well as discriminated against.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the traditional
Portuguese “tolerance” (not true acceptance) towards
what is considered different (homosexuality, ethnic
minorities, etc.) is usually inclusive of the members of the
Portuguese transgender community.
Cultural Diversity
Some important issues concerning the Portuguese
transsexual population were identified in a recent study
(Bernardo et al., 1998). These authors conducted a smallsample study involving of 50 transsexual individuals,
most of whom were sex workers (86%). The great majority of the sample came from rural parts of the country
(72%), and many individuals had moved away from their
birthplace because of their sexual orientation (28%).
Some started to work as early as age 11. Additionally, the
study identified some serious health problems in this
sample. For example, 30% of these transsexuals knew
they were HIV positive, although only 61% always used
a condom. More on the subject of HIV/AIDS in transgender/transsexual populations can be found in Warren
(1999) and Bockting, Rosser, and Coleman (1999). A significant percentage (70%) of the sample abused alcohol,
tranquilizers, or heroin on a regular basis.
There are no specific laws in Portugal regarding
transgenderism or transsexualism. Only a few court
decisions serve as references, and they are sometimes
contradictory (ILGA-Portugal, 1999). Until 1984 it was
not possible to go through a legal gender identity change.
That date marks the court decree regarding the case of
a transsexual individual whose request for legal gender
identity change was granted by the court. However, if
this decision marks a completely new attitude of the
Portuguese law towards these situations, this same attitude
was not the rule for other judgments that followed it.
Currently, the legal system is more liberal towards change
of gender identity requests and all of the requests for a
legal sex change have been granted. The major problem is
that, in general, the legal system in Portugal is very slow
and it can take nearly 4 years for a decision to be given on
a case. As it is only possible, in Portugal, to begin the legal
process after the surgical sex change is completed, it can
take over a decade until the whole process, both medical
and legal, is completed.
Apart from the legal sex change procedure, any
Portuguese citizen can change his or her name through a
rather simple procedure. However, this change can only
occur if the new name belongs to the same gender
category as the previous one or the change is to a genderneutral name. This last option is frequently chosen by
many transgender individuals as a means of avoiding the
more complex procedure required to have their gender
identity legally recognized.
Until 1996 any surgical sex change was expressly
forbidden by the Portuguese Medical Order (PMO).
223
After that date, surgical sex change was allowed.
However, it is the only medical procedure that requires
the prior authorization of the PMO. In order to address
this issue, a commission composed exclusively of medical doctors was created. Unfortunately, the commission
was considered biased, given the fact that transsexualism
is a multidisciplinary issue that requires the technical
evaluation of nonmedical specialists, such as psychologists and social workers. Consequently, an ad hoc group
of specialists with expertise in the field was formed,
including psychologists and other professionals. This
ad hoc group has a consultative role in regards to the
PMO, in that it first evaluates each request of sex change
surgery that is made to the PMO.
In the meantime, no information is available regarding the true number of sex-change operations performed
in Portugal. The Santa Maria Hospital, Lisbon, has the
greatest experience in these surgeries. The process of
having a sex-change operation is long, and carries with it
the requirement of stringent psychological and psychiatric
evaluation in order to verify whether or not the candidate
is eligible for the surgical reassignment process. This
evaluation period often takes about 2 years. However, it
can take longer. Some transsexuals, confronted with the
time they have to face in order to have their gender change
completed, opt to medicate themselves with hormones
and to go abroad to have the sex-change operation. Before
1996 and even to this day, many Portuguese transsexuals
go to Morocco, or more recently to England, to have their
operations. Unfortunately, the surgery is not always
performed under the best sanitary and medical conditions,
leaving the postoperative transsexual with serious health
problems.
In conclusion, it can be stated that some important
steps have been taken in Portugal toward the recognition
of transsexualism as a condition that requires special
medical and legal procedures, even if the process is not
always simple or quick. Despite this progress, transgender individuals still have to face a social and cultural
reality that has difficulty in understanding their condition
and thus can be transphobic.
Transgender: The Israeli Experience
The discussion of the Israeli transgender experience is
based on a survey of the transgender population members
who consulted the Israeli Center for Human Sexuality
and Gender Identity between 1997 and 2001.
224
The survey included 86 participants; 67 of them
were genetic males and 19 of them were genetic females
(the ratio of male to female is 3.5 : 1). The age range of the
participants was 8–71 years with median of 31.4. Most of
the participants (65%) were single, 23% were married,
and 12% were divorced. The educational background of
the participants was relatively high: 52% of them had
obtained college degrees (42% had graduate degrees),
24% had high-school diplomas, and only 16% had not
obtained a high-school diploma.
Occupationally, most participants were academic
professionals (74%) with a high percentage of representation in the high-tech industry (24%); 16% held bluecollar jobs, 3% worked in the sex industry, and 5% were
unemployed. In terms of ethnic background, 65% of the
participants were Ashkenazi Jews, 30% were Sephardic
Jews, and 4% were Palestinian Arabs. Most of the
participants in the sample (96%) were Jews, with only
4% Muslims and Christians.
Thus one can characterize the population of transgender clients in the Center as highly functional on personal,
interpersonal, and occupational levels. Additionally, most
of the clients in the Center expressed interest in exploring
gender identity issues before pursuing genital surgery.
In Israel, one can obtain free surgery for sex change
through the national health system, following an evaluation and approval by a specialized gender identity committee. Other features, which may be unique to the Israeli
society, are army service, the dominant influence of religion, and the strong nationalistic sentiments. These
features impact the discourse on sex and gender and tend
to be more transsexual confirming and less focused on
identity politics. Despite the open and liberal nature of
Israel towards the transsexual/transgendered person,
there is a rigidity and polarization of femininity and
masculinity in Israeli society.
Transgender and Transsexuality
in Ukraine
Ukraine is located between Central Europe and Asia.
Before integration with Russia in 1654, communication
between Ukraine and Europe encountered few obstacles.
Additionally, there was a strong influence of the East on
Ukrainian culture. Christianity came to Ukraine in 988.
Before the arrival of Christianity, Ukrainian religions
were based upon polytheism or many gods. Upon
reading many of the writings by the old authors, it can
Transgender and Transsexuality
be discerned that there were many holidays in which it
was commonplace to wear the dress of the opposite
gender. Moreover, there were performing artists called
schomorochs and, based upon the ancient writings, it is
possible to find some elements of transvestism appearing
in their performances.
Traditionally, the head of the Ukrainian family has
always been male. It was the male’s duty to hold the
power in the family and to provide sufficient means for
the family. The women’s duties were to take care of the
home and the children. The woman’s role changed, to
some extent, with the appearance of one of the first
leaders of the Ukrainian state (then called Kyiv Rush),
Queen Olga, who ruled from 945 to 969. With her appearance, the precedent for a woman to have a leading
role was established. On the death of her husband, King
Oleg, she finally became Queen of Ukraine. Olga was
famous as the first woman to become a Christian Queen
of Kyiv Rush.
The emergence of Queen Olga encouraged women
to become highly educated, engendering a deep respect
within the Ukrainian social structure. For example, in the
Middle Ages, one Ukrainian woman prisoner became a
wife of the Turkish Sultan and played a significant role in
governing this Islamic country. Despite the acknowledged abilities of Ukrainian women during these times, it
was not until the end of the 19th century that we begin to
read about the leading roles of women in state life in
Ukraine. Thus, like many of the Central European countries at that time, while women’s knowledge and roles
were highly respected, the traditional gender roles
predominated in Ukrainian society.
During the Soviet period (1917–1991), homosexuality, transvestism, and transsexuality were considered to
be psychiatric disorders. Moreover, people who had one
of these “diagnoses” were forced to obtain treatment in
psychiatric hospitals. Additionally, these disorders were
persecuted under an assortment of Soviet laws.
In 1994, a special commission addressing questions
of transsexuality was organized within the Ukrainian
Ministry of Public Health. This commission decided to
legalize transsexuality. As a result of this new legalization, a number of Ukrainians decided to undergo sex reassignment. According to the rules of the commission,
patients who wish to change their gender must be
observed by a sexologist in an outpatient setting for a
period of a year. Additionally, a psychiatrist in a hospital
must see them for a period of at least a month. After these
Cultural Diversity
specialists diagnose the individual as being transsexual,
he or she is allowed to have gender reassignment surgery
upon submitting an application for the surgery to the
commission. Once the commission has given a positive
decision, it is also possible for the gender of the individual to be changed on his or her passport.
Reconstructing Sex: Australian and
New Zealand Transgender Reform
Jurisprudence
Australian transgender jurisprudence now represents the
frontier of transgender law reform, for it is in Australia
that the most radical legal reconstruction of sex has
recently occurred. In order to understand this claim it is
necessary to sketch the background to this reform
moment. Transgender jurisprudence is of relatively recent
origin. It emerged in the postwar period and coincided
with advances in sex reassignment surgical techniques.
This jurisprudence has led to two distinct approaches to the
legal determination of sex claims. In the first approach
the courts have selected particular biological factors and
have insisted that sex is determined at birth (the biological approach), (Corbett v. Corbett [1970] 2 All ER 33).
This has led to the denial of the sex claims of transgender
claimants. Within the second approach the courts have
focused instead on present realities and, in particular, on
the fact of sex reassignment surgery (the psychological
and anatomical harmony approach), (Re Anonymous 293
NYS 2d 834 (1968); MT v. JT 355 A 2d 204 (1976) ). This
latter approach has enabled legal recognition of sex claims
for a variety of purposes.
While the reform approach appears to be gaining the
upper hand at judicial1 and, especially, legislative levels
(the sex claims of postoperative transgender people have
been recognized through legislation in New Zealand and
in many states or provinces within the United States,
Canada, and Australia, and similar legislation has been
enacted by nearly all the European Community members
and by other nation states), the biological approach continues to find favor.2 However, these two approaches
should not be thought of as mutually exclusive. Rather,
they share a number of commonalities. In particular, both
approaches have privileged the genital factor in determining sex. Thus within the biological approach three
factors are specified, namely, chromosomes, gonads, and
genitalia at birth. Where these factors are “incongruent,”
225
however, it is the genital factor that proves decisive.3
In relation to reform jurisprudence, on the other hand, it
is the surgical removal and reconstruction of genitalia
subsequent to birth that proves crucial. Moreover, it is not
merely a concern with bodily esthetics that has led to this
focus. Rather, legal analysis has also exhibited concern
over postoperative sexual functioning. In the biological
approach this has manifested itself in terms of judicial
horror at the prospect of “unnatural” sexual intercourse.
Within reform jurisprudence it is the capacity for
penetrative heterosexual intercourse postoperatively
that has been emphasized repeatedly. In New Zealand
the judiciary have dispensed with the requirement of
postoperative sexual function (Attorney-General v.
Otathuhu Family Court [1995] 1 NZLR 603). However,
New Zealand law still requires genital reassignment
surgery (see Sharpe, 2002).
Indeed, prior to a recent decision of the Family
Court of Australia, no superior court or legislature anywhere in the world had recognized the sex claims of a
transgender person whose genitalia had not been brought
into “conformity” with his or her psychological sex. In
Re Kevin and Jennifer v. Attorney General for the
Commonwealth of Australia (Re Kevin and Jennifer v.
Attorney-General for the Commonwealth of Australia
[2001] FamCA 1074) the court held Kevin, a transgender
man who had not undertaken phalloplastic surgery
(phalloplasty refers to the surgical construction of a penis),
to be a man for the purposes of Australian marriage law.
The decision is especially significant, dealing as it does
with marriage, for it has been in relation to issues of
marriage that the greatest resistance to transgender law
reform has been apparent across jurisdictions. In effect
the decision rearticulates the reform test of psychological
and anatomical harmony, one that had received
prior endorsement by Australian courts (R v. Harris
and McGuiness [1989] 17 NSWLR 158; Secretary,
Department of Social Security v. HH [1991] 23 ALD 58;
Secretary, Department of Social Security v. SRA [1993]
118 ALR 467), so as to uncouple sex claims from the
genitocentrism of law. In this respect, and while the court
placed emphasis on the fact that Kevin had undergone
other irreversible surgical procedures (in addition to
receiving hormone treatment Kevin had undergone a
breast reduction procedure and a total hysterectomy), this
decision represents a major step forward for transgender
people. For a critique of the decision, see Sharpe,
(2003).
226
Transsexuality and Transgender
in Japan
In 1969, a Japanese gynecologist was tried and found
guilty of performing SRS for three MTF transsexuals.
Since then, medical treatment, and even discussion of
transsexuality, has been practically a taboo in Japan. For
this reason some transsexuals have obtained their SRS
abroad, while others have received hormonal therapy
and/or SRS underground at home.
However, this situation is now changing. In 1998,
Dr Harashina performed the first SRS in Japan that was
legally admitted. Today, Japan has two gender clinics that
perform SRS in Saitama Medical College and Okayama
University Hospital. From 1998 to 2002 over 1000 transsexuals and transgenders came to gender clinics and
about 20 transsexuals received SRS. However, because
it takes long time to follow Japanese guidelines, there
are still many transsexuals who receive SRS in other
countries. It is estimated that there are about 500 postoperative transsexuals in Japan.
Change of sex registration of transsexuality is still
very difficult. Recently, Saitama Family Court rejected an
appeal of change of sex registration from an FTM who
had received legally admitted SRS. The main reason for
rejection is “biological etiology of transsexuality is not
clear.” In his decision, the judge stated: “I hesitate to
admit the change of sex registration.”
However, there is now a new movement in the Diet.
Some lawmakers have set up a study team to make a new
law about changing a transsexual’s sex registration. Last
year, Kinpachii Sensei, a very popular school television
drama, spotlighted an FTM student and a famous professional boat-racer came out as an FTM. These nationwide
topics teach us that Japanese have a positive attitude
toward transsexuals and transgenders. With these developments, the situation for transsexuals and transgenders in
Japan continues to improve. For additional discussion on
sex reassignment surgery in Japan, see Ako et al. (2001).
Transgender and Transsexualism
in Norway
In the western hemisphere there is a need to date all
descriptions concerning diversities in genderland. Much
change is taking place: new insights, new words, concepts,
and contexts are constantly being inspired as others are
being expired.
Transgender and Transsexuality
Norway has two organizations for transpeople. The
oldest is FPE-NE which was founded in 1968 to meet the
needs of “heterosexual transvestites.” Today members of
the FPE-NE form a continuum from classical parttime cross-dressing, through self-defined bigendered, to
transgendered, to transsexuals. By 2002 FPE-NE had a
membership of 142 individuals.
The younger organization is LFTS. It was founded in
January 2000 on three main premises. The most urgent of
these was the size of offers from the Norwegian State to
transsexuals seeking gender-confirming surgery. The
second was the willingness of some transsexuals to
display themselves as transsexual women and men, thus
generating the power to influence on most levels in
society, including the arenas of politics and media. The
third reason was the need for transsexuals to come into
contact with other transsexuals and/or other transpeople,
to generate a context where each could find friendships,
insights, and addresses of approved therapists in the field.
LFTS currently has a membership of 120 individuals.
There is the option of a supportive membership with
cheaper fees for parents, siblings of transpeople, and any
others that might find such a membership meaningful.
LFTS does receive economic support from the Norwegian
State, but is not yet securely financed.
On the public scene, during the past years several
transpeople have been extremely active in trans-advocacy.
In part, this activism has been due to the founding of the
LFTS. One of these individuals has actually been named
the “Norwegian national trans-person,” and her/his/hir (hir
is a common genderless contraction of his and her) son
has made a documentary entitled All about my Father
which has won a number of prizes both internationally and
nationally. Most notably, it won the Norwegian Amanda
Prize for the best film of the year.
Through all this openness combined with persistent
work by the LFTS and other transpeople, conditions,
especially for transsexuals seeking surgery, have
been greatly improved in the one hospital where such
surgery is performed. The standards of the HBIGDA are
followed at least to an acceptable degree, even though the
most officially recognized therapists in the field are not
members of the organization. The surgery and consequent convalescence are funded totally by the Norwegian
State.
On the legal side, transsexuals in Norway have the
right to a new birth certificate and social security number
once genital surgery has been completed. Additionally,
What We Do Not Know
couples do not have to divorce if one partner undergoes
complete hormonal and surgical treatment.
Overall, there is very little discrimination against
transgendered persons in Norwegian society. People
seem to have a great deal of respect for otherness.
Employers are very supportive of transpeople crossing
the boundary between the two gender majorities which
still exists. Families are seeking advice from well-known
therapists, who are themselves expressing gendered
otherness, instead of rejecting their children and young
adults. Presently, in some respects, Norway represents a
society that lets its members explore the diversities of
gender.
Other Countries
Many other countries have transgender/transsexual
populations ranging from those that exist in absolute
secrecy (Arab Countries, South America, Mexico) to the
open and accepting policies of countries such as Canada
and Israel. India has a population of transgendered
individuals called the hijra, while in Malaysia the MTF
transsexuals are known as mak nyah (Teh, 2001). For a
discussion of transgender in Thailand, see Winter and
Udomsak (2002). For an excellent introduction to the
cross-cultural aspects of transgender and transsexual, see
Green (1966).
WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW
Longitudinal/Cohort Studies
Currently, much is unknown about the long-term effects of
contragender hormonal treatment. In light of recent studies on increased breast cancer risk in non-transgendered
females due to hormone replacement therapy, it is critical
that longitudinal studies are undertaken in the transgender
community. Questions of increased risk of breast cancer
in MTF transsexuals remain open, as do questions of
breast cancer in the FTM transsexual community.
Questions of the effect of estrogen on bone mass in this
population are also important and go unanswered, as do
questions of the effect of estrogen on oral health and the
potential to affect cardiovascular problems. Only recently
have studies begun to address the issues of excessive
smoking in this population. Little is known about the
effects of replacing estrogen with testosterone in FTM
227
transsexuals with respect to potentiating onset of
Alzheimer’s disease due to the absence of estrogenic
protection. Comorbidity of disease states due to contragender hormone treatment and elevated stress states due
to the social stigma associated with being transgendered
(Witten, 2002a, 2003; Witten & Eyler, 1999) remain
unstudied. To date, only one study has examined the
mortality risk of contragender hormones (Asscherman,
Gooren, & Eklund, 1989). For a review of issues associated with MTF hormone treatment, see Gooren (1999).
It is also important to address life-course issues. Very
little is known about transgender and transsexual issues in
individuals under the age of 18. Studies in this domain are
complicated by strict human subject requirements that
involve consent of the parents as well as the child. Some
discussion of child and adolescent gender identity issues
can be found in Ceglie, Freedman, McPherson, and
Richardson (2002).
Additionally, very little is known about issues of
middle to later life in this community. Questions of social
support networks and other long-term quality-of-life
components of society still remain open for investigation.
Little is known about transgender and intersex elder
abuse (Cook-Daniels, 1995). The impact of transgendered parents on their children is unstudied. Family
dynamics and restructuring due to transgendering in the
family are relatively unknown, except anecdotally
(Boenke, 1999).
Issues of late life are also unstudied. The gerontological literature is replete with documentation supporting the
importance of social network structure (family, spirituality, and friends, to name but a few items [Pinquart &
Sorenson, 2000]) on the morbidity and mortality rates of
heterosexual elders. There is no reason to believe that these
results do not apply to nontraditional gender identities,
gender expressions, sexualities, sexes, and body forms.
The work of Witten and Eyler (1999a) indicates that nearly
50% of the respondents are living alone (a significant risk
factor for the elderly), and only 10% of the respondents
indicate that they are either living with or have children
(a potentially deleterious factor indicating diminished
social support networks [Everard, Lach, Fisher, & Baum,
2000; Rautio, Heikkinen, & Heikkinen, 2001]).
Among the transgendered populations, it is reasonable to assume that while spirituality may or may not be
an important component of their lives, there is little formal
outlet for religious interaction and support, as transsexuality in particular, and transgenderism in general, are highly
228
Transgender and Transsexuality
stigmatized within the traditional Judeo-Christian–Islamic
religions. Lack of access to religious support—emotional,
physical, or otherwise—is also a significant risk factor for
the elderly. Among transgenders, divorce is very high
(estimates are not available; however, TLARS results
indicate that 20% of the respondents were separated and
another 10% were divorced). This further exacerbates the
diminished social support network structures well known
to be critical in the later life.
The impact of transgender on quality of life,
caregiving and caregiver burden, longevity, wisdom,
healthcare utilization and access (Witten, 2002c), and
social isolation remain open for study. Financial issues
are equally important (Crystal, Johnson, Harman,
Sambamoorthi, & Kumar, 2000). Multiracial and multicultural issues within the transgender and intersex
populations, as they relate to life-course issues, also
remain relatively unstudied.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Richards v. United States Tennis Association 400
NYS 2d 276 (1977); Vecchione v. Vecchione No 95D003769 (Orange
County, Calif filed 23 April 1996); Re the Estate of Marshall G
Gardiner Kan App LEXIS 376 (2001); R v. Harris and McGuiness
[1989] 17 NSWLR 158; Secretary, Department of Social Security v.
HH [1991] 23 ALD 58; Secretary, Department of Social Security v.
SRA [1993] 118 ALR 467; M v. M [1991] NZFLR 337; Goodwin v. UK
ECHR [2002] 2 FCR 577.
2. See for example, R v. Tan [1983] QB 1053; Re Ladrach 32 Ohio
Misc 2d 6 (1987); Lim Ying v. Hiok Kian Ming Eric (1992) 1 SLR
184; Littleton v. Prange 9 S.W. 3d 223 (Tx App 1999); Bellinger v.
Bellinger (unreported, CA [2001] EWCA Civ 1140, 17/7/01).
3. See Corbett v. Corbett [1970] 2 All ER 33 at 48 per Ormrod J. See
also W v. W [2001] 2 WLR 674.
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Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi
RAPE AND OTHER SEXUAL
AGGRESSION
Sexual aggression occurs the world over. I begin with a
review of sexual aggression, primarily in the United States
where it is more thoroughly researched. I then discuss
perpetrators and victims, setting the stage for crosscultural analyses of causes, questions of definition and
methodology, and the relationship of sexual aggression to
other violence.
Their Nature and Extent
Acts of sexual aggression have been documented for
centuries. The statistics used here are recent and considered among the more valid by top researchers in this field
of study.
Rape and Child Sexual Abuse. In 1997, the U.S.
Bureau of Justice’s Uniform Crime Reports estimated the
annual rate of reported rapes to be 70 per 100,000 women
(Russell & Bolen, 2000, p. 51). Federal crime victimization surveys found the annual prevalence of completed or
attempted rapes to be three to four times higher. Russell’s
1978 lifetime prevalence survey of 930 San Francisco
women suggests a greater risk of rape: one in four women
were rape victims and one in two had experienced rape or
attempted rape (Russell & Bolen, 2000, p. 54). Such
statistics support the statement that “A woman is raped
every minute in America” (Koss et al., 1994, p. 112).
Thirty-eight percent of Russell’s survey participants
reported at least one experience of incestuous or extrafamilial sexual abuse before the age of 18 (Russell & Bolen,
2000, p. 163). Add in the sexual abuse of boys, and one in
two children in America may experience sexual abuse.
Sexual Aggression in Warfare and Religious
and Ethnic Conflicts. The most public rapes occur
in wars and ethnic conflicts. In Against Our Will,
Brownmiller (1975) writes of the use of rape as terrorism
and spoil of war citing Christian pilgrims’ rape of
Muslim women in the First Crusade (p. 31), Japanese
concentration camp rape and camp brothels in World
War II (p. 62), and the rape and murder of women by U.S.
soldiers in Vietnam (p. 103). Military brothels servicing
American soldiers in Thailand, the Philippines, and
Vietnam created an image of Southeast Asia as a “sex
capital” (Perpinan, 1994). Upon occupying Tibet in 1949,
Chinese soldiers raped and impregnated Tibetan women
as a means of ethnic cleansing and humiliation for
Tibetan men (Campaign Free Tibet, 1994). Serbian
soldiers did the same, raping Bosnian Muslim women
and denying them abortions so they might “give birth to
little Chetniks” (Drakulic, 1994, p. 180).
Date Rape and Acquaintance Rape on College
Campuses. A study of students at 32 American
institutions of higher education showed that 28% of the
women had experienced a rape or rape attempt since
age 14, and that 8% of the men admitted having committed
at least one rape (Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987).
Investigating a fraternity rape at the University of
Pennsylvania, Sanday (1990b, p. 9) argued that sexual
aggression is “the means by which some men display
masculinity and induct younger men into masculine
power roles.” The campus party culture that encourages
group sexual aggression against lone college women
promotes their seduction with alcohol and drugs, defines
a drunken woman as “asking for it,” and labels men who
object to this kind of behavior as wimps and faggots
(p. 11). The community supports such behavior. The Penn
case settled out of court and the fraternity house closed
for one semester. Some fraternities are more dangerous
for women than others. Boswell and Spade (1996) note
that the abusive attitudes that some fraternities perpetuate
are part of a general culture where rape is part of traditional gender scripts. Sexually active men are positively
referred to as studs whereas sexually active women are
labeled sluts. A double standard is more often applied to
nameless acquaintance or unknown women. Houses
where more of the men have regular girlfriends are less
likely to host high-risk parties.
230
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
Intimate Partner Rape and Partner Violence.
Women are more likely to be raped, injured, or killed by
current or former partners than by other assailants
(Finkelhor & Yllo, 1985). As many as 34% of women are
physically assaulted by intimate males (Koss et al., 1994).
Violence is mutual in many partnerships (Kantor &
Jasinski, 1998, p. 9), but women are more often seriously
injured and a woman raped by her partner lives with her
rapist and suffers repeated rapes and violence (Mahoney &
Williams 1998, p. 116). Official statistics do not include
same-sex partner rapes, yet violence in same-sex relationships is high, with 38% of gay and 48% of lesbian
couples experiencing partner violence. Surveys on
psychological, physical, and sexual abuse show that 50%
of lesbians are victims of previous or current partners.
When dating relationships are considered, straight
women are more likely than lesbians to be abused by
dates—19% versus 5% (West, 1998a). Other groups with
high partner violence and sexual abuse are some Latino
groups, African and Asian Americans and American
Indians (West, 1998b). African American men reportedly
abuse their wives four times as often as European
Americans (West, 1998b, p. 190) and their wives are
twice as likely to engage in severe acts of violence in
return. Puerto Rican men are reportedly 10 times more
likely than Cuban men to assault their wives. However,
intimate violence is hidden in wealthier communities,
making it difficult to be sure that the difference is so great
(West, 1998b, p. 191).
Child Sexual Abuse. State legal definitions of child
sexual abuse and incest vary as to specific acts and
ages of victims and perpetrators, the relationship between
them, and whether or not violence is used. Given
difficulties in reporting and prosecution, few cases of
child sex abuse result in conviction (Russell & Bolen,
2000, p. 144). Two difficulties are the social and economic pressures placed on victims to protect their
abusers, and children’s difficulties in recalling details of
their victimization. Researchers also disagree over what
constitutes child sexual abuse or incest, arguing over
whether or not to include peer sexual abuse or unwanted
touches on the buttocks, thereby making comparisons
difficult (Finkelhor, 1994). The National Incidence Study
is an effort of the National Center on Child Abuse and
Neglect to collect data on reported and unreported child
abuse in the United States. In 1993 there were an
estimated 300,200 sexually abused children, 198,732 of
231
whom were female (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996).
The study was flawed, however, because it limits child
sexual abuse to acts perpetrated by parents and caretakers. Other studies show sexual abuse by nonrelatives
to be more prevalent. Russell uncovered the prevalence of
incestuous and extrafamilial child sex abuse in her 1978
San Francisco study. She found that 38% of her female
respondents reported at least one experience of incestuous or extrafamilial sexual abuse before 18 years of
age, with 16% of the 930 women reporting at least one
experience of incestuous abuse (Russell & Bolen, 2000,
pp. 151, 163). When Russell added non-contact sexual
abuse, 54% of her sample reported at least one experience
of sexual abuse before 18 years of age. In Los Angeles,
Wyatt (1985) found no significant differences in prevalence rates for child sexual abuse between African
American and European American women. The prevalence rate for child sexual abuse for Hispanic women in
Russell’s San Francisco sample was 45%, slightly higher
than her prevalence rate of 42% for non-Hispanic white
women (Russell & Bolen, 2000, p. 185).
Pornography. In Dangerous Relationships, Russell
(1998) reviews research showing pornography’s close
relationship to violence against women and children. She
defines pornography as “material that combines sex
and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation
in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior” (p. 3). She distinguishes pornography
from erotica, defining the latter as “suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia and is respectful of all human beings and animals
portrayed.” Adult pornography depicts women’s bodies
in ways suggesting that sexual harassment is harmless
and that women enjoy being raped and sexually degraded.
Russell argues that such images predispose some males
to desire rape and undermines their inhibitions against
acting out rape desires (p. 121). Young children are
exposed to pornography, with most boys seeing Playboy
or some other soft-porn magazine by the age of 11 years
(p. 127). An example of femicidal pornography is
the 1979 film Snuff, in which an unsuspecting
South American actress is killed, a man ripping out her
uterus and holding it up in the air while he ejaculates
(Labelle, 1980; Russell, 1998, p. 98). The selling of sexual
violence includes the glorification of killers like Jack the
Ripper. According to Cameron (1992), “ripperology”
reached its height with the 100th anniversary of Jack
232
the Ripper’s spree of killing prostitutes and his status
as a cultural hero and role model for other sexual
killers like the 1981 Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.
The rapid growth of Internet pornography has many
concerned about the impact on young people (Russell,
1998, p. 160).
Sexual Harassment. Sexual harassment is often
depicted as a lesser, even enjoyable, form of sexual
coercion. However, research shows it to be a serious
problem, affecting one in two women in the United States
(Koss et al., 1994, p. 111). Women in traditionally male
occupations are at greater risk, as shown by the Tailhook
Convention incident in which drunken male pilots
assaulted their female peers (Koss et al., 1994, p. 113).
The seriousness of sexual harassment involves not only
the physical and emotional victimization that women
suffer but also their economic vulnerability. For a long
time sexual harassment was not a crime, so it was not
included in victimization surveys. In 1980 it became a
civil rights violation when the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission issued its guidelines. In 1986
the Supreme Court made sexual harassment illegal by
including it in the category of gender discrimination.
However, few victims confront their harassers. Less than
5% file a complaint (Koss et al., 1994, p. 123). Many
victims trivialize their situations while others fear losing
their jobs. Some fear that they will not be believed or will
be accused of causing trouble, as happened publicly in
the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings (Gutek, 1985).
Studies show that younger women tend to be objects of
sexual harassment more than older women, and minority
women are less likely than European American women to
quit a job as a result of sexual harassment (Koss et al.,
1994, p. 143). In Giuffre and Williams’ (1994) study of
labeling sexual harassment in restaurants, they found that
many men and women experience sexual behavior in the
workplace as pleasurable. This is especially so in jobs
where workers are hired on the basis of their attractiveness and solicitousness—work such as receptionists and
restaurant servers. Waitpeople used complex double
standards when labeling behavior. Many claimed that
they enjoyed sexual interactions involving coworkers of
the same race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and class/
status background, but labeled as sexual harassment the
same behaviors when they involved interactions between
gays and heterosexuals or between men and women of
different racial/ethnic backgrounds.
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
The Threat of Sexual Violence. The threat of
sexual violence limits the freedoms of likely victims
and gives an edge of terrorism to likely perpetrators.
Men on Rape (Beneke, 1982) looks at the effects of the
threat of sexual violence on women. Talking to women,
Beneke found that the threat of rape alters the meaning
and feel of the night and nature, with women fearful of
walking late at night or alone in the country or wooded
areas. Limiting mobility at night, the threat of rape
limits where and when one works, making it harder for
women to earn money. It makes solitude less possible
and women more dependent on men and other women.
It inhibits expressiveness, making women fearful of
seeming “too friendly” or “sexy.” It inhibits freedom
of the eye, forcing a woman to worry about her safety
over enjoying the view. Add to this the fears of women
in abusive marriages. Others become exasperated
with women who stay in abusive marriages, but the
women (and researchers) know that it is dangerous
leaving abusive men, many of whom stalk and kill
wives who leave.
Perpetrators and Victims. Most victims of sexual
aggression in the United States are women and children,
with 95% of the perpetrators being male. There are three
times as many female child victims as male child victims
(Russell & Bolen, 2000, pp. 150–151). Two-thirds of
sexual assault and rape victims know their assailants.
Women are more than twice as likely to be murdered by
an intimate partner than by a stranger (Hatty, 2000,
pp. 4–5). Low-income urban females between 16 and
19 years are the most likely to be sexually victimized, and
their attackers are mostly young themselves. The majority of attacks are not reported to the police. While adult
males in general are rarely rape victims, they are at risk
in prison and other male institutions. Favored victims are
gay and heterosexual youths forced by their attackers to
play girls or gal-boys. Attackers are called protectors or
wolves, names highlighting power positions in hierarchical relationships (Brownmiller, 1975). Children are at
risk for sexual abuse in relationships with male authority
figures, some related (fathers, uncles, brothers) and
others not (teachers, police, priests). Rarely discussed
are rapes by females on females and females on males.
While the latter are rare, such rapes can be committed by
a woman using a weapon to force a male into having
intercourse with her and include the statutory rapes of
underage males (Russell & Bolen, 2000, p. 23). There are
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
also statutory rapes of underage females by adult women
and the rape of women by their female partners.
Universal Phenomena or
Cultural Variables?
Rape and sexual aggression occur everywhere in the
world. However, they do not occur to the same extent in
every society, nor are they everywhere judged the same.
Social and cultural configurations account for much of
the variation. Generalizations are difficult.
Egalitarian Societies. In societies where resources
are shared or accessible to able-bodied adults and where
both sexes play important roles in the production of food
and other necessities, sexual aggression is rare. Rape is
reportedly rare among the Ituri forest foragers in Africa
(Turnbull, 1961), the Kalahari desert foragers in southwest Africa (Lee, 1984; Marshall, 1976), and the Kaulong
gardeners in New Guinea (Goodale, 1980). Rape is
common in some tribal societies, especially those “faced
with depleting food resources, migration, or other factors
contributing to a pervasive sense that human beings are
dependent on male efforts to control … natural forces”
(Sanday, 1990a, p. 8). Among the Yanomamo and
Mundurucu in South America, warfare is endemic and
gang rape and the abduction of women in raids are
common (Chagnon, 1997; Murphy & Murphy, 1974).
Child sexual abuse is rarely reported for egalitarian societies. However, it is not uncommon for children to engage
in sexual play, and for girls to be married and sexually
active before they are 18 years old. Among the Tiwi in
Australia, husbands instruct prepubescent wives in sexual
techniques, deflowering them with their fingers and
gradually moving on to full intercourse (Goodale, 1971).
A striking variation is the Kaulong. The Kaulong believe
sex drains a man’s life force and is to be engaged in solely
to have children—that it is females who aggressively
seduce men into having sex with them. Should a man
initiate courtship, it is considered rape, and in the past
marriage or death was the expected result (Goodale,
1980, pp. 133–135).
Nonegalitarian Societies. Sexual aggression is
common in nonegalitarian societies. Violence against
women is part of power complexes in which men use
violence and sexual aggression to display their masculinity and induct younger men into masculine power roles.
233
Victims include women, children of both sexes, and men
in subordinate ethnic groups, classes, or other statuses
who suffer sexual abuse directly or indirectly as men who
cannot protect their families from those in power. Again,
there are differences among societies in levels and acceptance of sexual violence that are not the result of inconsistencies in measurement or reporting. Rape rates in the
United States are among the highest in the world, even
when compared with other nations that keep good statistics. Rates are three times higher in the United States than
in England, Sweden, or West Germany, and 5–10 times
higher than in France, Belgium, or Japan (Ellis, 1989,
pp. 6–7). Theorists associate high levels of sexual aggression with America’s violent society. There are many
kinds of sexual aggression, however, and it is noteworthy
that workplace sexual harassment is common in France
and Japan (Louis, 1994) where gender roles have been
slower to change than in the United States. For many reasons, the sexual abuse of children is poorly documented
and widely denied in many societies. Nonetheless, studies done in the United States show that the sexual abuse
of children occurs in every group, including African
Americans, Anglo-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Asians,
Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, and gays and lesbians
(Fontes, 1995). Cultural variables exist in the family
climates in which children can be abused, how the culture
hinders disclosure, and how the culture plays a role in
seeking or accepting social services or mental health
assistance for victims and their families. Latina women,
for example, enjoy more power at home than AngloAmericans. However, Latina women are expected to be
sexually passive and not to enjoy sex. Latina victims of
rape and child sexual abuse are considered “whores”
because they had sex outside marriage. Victim blaming
silences most Latina victims (Fontes, 1995, pp. 41–43).
Societal contexts also play a role. For example, an
African American mother may not report the rape of her
child because of her fears of police brutality against her
group. Poverty makes participating in therapy sessions
difficult or impossible. A child’s vulnerability to sexual
aggression may be increased—as with Asian children—
by pressures to sacrifice their needs for their families and
fears of reporting abuses by dominant persons within or
outside their subculture such as elders or employers.
Colonization and globalization bring cultures together,
often violently and unequally. Cultures in which rape and
wife-battery were rare see increases in violence and
sexual aggression in the context of change and the violent
234
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
edge of empire (Davies, 1994; Ferguson & Whitehead,
1992). The young migrate to towns to work in the new
economies and find themselves in social environments
where poverty and the absence of extended families
encourage conjugal violence and new patterns of sexuality. Studies from Latin American countries show that
more than 60% of rape survivors know their rapists—
employers, boyfriends, spouses, or other family members
(Cox, 1994, p. 122). Such women’s situations are further
complicated when their families force them to marry their
rapists, an expectation in many Latin American countries.
Domestic violence rates range in the vicinity of one in
two women.
CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES
SEXUAL AGGRESSION
OF
Folk theories of sexuality and aggression vary. In some
cultures, women are temptresses entrapping men. In
others, men are the aggressors held in check by chaste
women and their male protectors. In yet other cultures,
both sexes are seen as sexually aggressive and in need of
rules to keep their sexuality in bounds, or both need help
in firing up their sexuality to ensure a next generation.
Many cultures are mixes of all of the above.
Sociobiology
Despite strong evidence attesting to cultural variability,
there is a large literature that presumes that human males
are sexual aggressors and human females are by nature
sexually passive or very selective in their mating choices.
Sociobiology is the perspective that widespread social
behaviors are the result of natural selection and are to some
degree genetically controlled. Sociobiologists do not
suggest specific genes for rape, but do argue that genetic
factors contribute to sexual aggression. Basing their
theories on aggression in other species and the belief that
evolutionarily ancient behaviors are embedded in our
genes, they point to acts of forced copulation by male
animals (Ellis, 1989, p. 45). Forced sex is not typical in
most species, however, with young males more likely to try
to copulate with resisting females. In Men in Groups, Tiger
(1969) argued that males are genetically wired to bond
with other males and to exhibit aggression and that females
tend to be excluded from aggressive organizations and kept
separate in subordinate relationships with adult males who
protect them when the group is attacked. Tiger (p. 190)
believe that it is the lonely deviant individual who rapes.
Crucial to a sociobiological approach is the notion that
males enhance their reproductive success by copulating
with many females and preventing other males from
copulating with those same females. Females are thought
to enhance their reproductive success by selecting the
strongest male protector and engaging in an exclusive relationship with that male. Such arguments do not account for
cultural diversity, the facts of rape, or the sexual behavior
of female primates. Feminist critics remind us that for a
genetic propensity for forced sex to have evolved, there
must be a high probability that rapists impregnate their victims. Reviewing evidence on the risk of pregnancy from
rape, Ellis (1989, pp. 46–49) found that 3% of rapes are
reported to result in pregnancy. Rapes involving several
rapists or child-abuse cases where there are repeat copulations over extended periods of time do result in higher incidences of pregnancy, 6.3% and 11.6% respectively. Data
are lacking on whether or not such pregnancies might be
aborted or result in increased infanticide in cultures where
those options are available, and it is unclear what advantages accrue to rapist-fathers in cultures where a women’s
children belong to their “husbands” regardless of biological origin and where sexual predators are ostracized or executed for their acts. In Female Choices, the anthropologist
Small (1993) shows that females and males are not that different in sexuality and mate choice, and there are variations
among primates that make simple sociobiological arguments incapable of explaining human behavior. Small
(p. 202) cites studies showing that nonhuman female
primates are neither passive nor choosy when males do not
restrict their behavior, and that over three-quarters of the
world’s cultures believe both male and female sex drives
are strong. She also cites the Kinsey studies and Playboy
and Cosmopolitan surveys showing that American women
are sexually active, with their sexual interest increasing
with age and their rates of extramarital sex approaching
those of men. Small (p. 208) argues that it is male power
that compromises female choices, with males convincing
women that they are less sexual as a means of controlling
female sexuality for their own ends.
Psychology of Sexual Aggression
Early psychologists saw rape as the act of degenerates
and imbeciles. Freud and his disciples said little on the
Causes and Consequences
subject, other than noting female fears of rape and female
rape fantasies. Freud (1896/1961) believed that humans
are innately incestuous and for a time argued that
female hysteria was the consequence of incest. However,
the Victorian society that Freud worked in believed
incest to be rare and the act of primitives. Freud
repudiated his theory less than a year after proposing it
(Meigs & Barlow, 2002). Wilhelm Reich briefly considered a “masculine ideology of rape” (Brownmiller, 1975,
pp. 11–12), but it was latter-day feminists who explored
the cultures and social conditions of rape and other
sexual aggression. Even today, many psychologists treat
sexual aggression as deviance, focusing on the reform or
medication of perpetrators and on the consequences of
sexual aggression for victims. Psychologists differ on
causes, but most side with nature in the nature–nurture
controversy, assuming dominance and sexual aggression
to be natural male traits that are exaggerated in some
males. Psychologists have done thousands of studies to
determine sex differences that may be linked to various
behaviors. In Brain Sex, evolutionary psychologists Moir
and Jessell (1991) warn that there are biological facts of
life that we cannot buck. Such “facts” include the views
of sociobiologists E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins
who believe that female exploitation begins in the fact
that females perpetuate their genes by lengthy nurturance
of embryos and that natural selection favors traits that
encourage sexual hierarchy: physical strength, aggression, and promiscuity in men; caretaking and fidelity
among women. Like sociobiologists, evolutionary
psychologists ignore variations among human societies in
patterns of aggression and nurturing and the fact that, in
a wide cross-section of cultures, both male and female
children exhibit nurturant behaviors (Whiting & Whiting,
1975). They also ignore psychological research demonstrating few sex-linked differences in brain structures
and functions. In The Psychology of Sex Differences,
Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) reviewed over 1200 works
covering areas such as intellect, perception, learning,
memory, cognitive styles, achievement motivation, selfconcept, temperament, and power relationships. They
found that boys in the primarily western cultures studied
are slightly more aggressive than girls and excel slightly
in visual–spatial ability, while girls tend to excel in verbal
abilities. The differences were extremely small and unstable with a 1–5% variation in mathematical, verbal, and
visual–spatial skills. Theories focusing on a hormonal
(testosterone) basis for male dominance and aggression
235
also disregard cultural variation, certain forms of female
aggression, and the fact that women have been aggressive
in work situations as well as violent with their children
and other family members. Given mounting cultural and
sociological evidence, many psychologists now attribute
American men’s heightened aggression to the genderspecific ways in which parents teach children about the
acceptability and uses of aggression.
Sociology and Feminism
The dominant social science explanation for rape and
other sexual aggression is that they are social phenomena.
Social feminist theories consider rape to be the result of
traditions in which males dominate political and economic
activities, and women tend to be treated in subservient and
degrading ways (Brownmiller, 1975; Dworkin, 1981).
Rape is seen as the use of sexuality to establish or maintain dominance and control of women, with some feminists seeing it as a pseudosexual act motivated out of
desire for power and hatred for women rather than by sexual passion (Ellis, 1989). According to such theories,
reducing rape requires political and economic equality for
men and women. More pessimistic feminists believe that
a reduction in disparities could trigger a backlash, as
frustrated males use rape to reestablish their supremacy.
Social stratification theories also see a connection
between economic structures and the status of women.
Engels theorized that the development of private property
and men’s desire to protect lines of inheritance resulted in
the monogamous nuclear family and women’s oppression
and economic dependence on men. Anthropologists have
faulted the latter view, arguing that it ignores precapitalist
societies where property is owned and utilized by women,
but where women do not oppress men, and that economic
equality does not prevent political inequality. Working
mothers burdened with childcare and double workdays
have no time for politics, and women in tribal societies
who provide most of the family subsistence are not
thereby free of sexual aggression against them. The social
learning theory of rape, in common with feminist theories,
sees rape as aggression against women learned through
mass media, rape myths, and violent pornography, and
made less offensive by the desensitizing effects of
frequent exposure to scenes of violence against women.
Social learning theorists are less insistent than feminists
that rape is a nonsexual act and more open to seeing both
sociocultural traditions and individual experiences
236
combining to propel males toward aggressive behavior
toward women (Ellis, 1989, pp. 13–14).
Anthropology
Cultural anthropologists have long understood rape and
incest from the perspective of the rules surrounding them,
and the roles that rules play in structuring social life and
making culture possible. More attention has been paid to
how incest taboos promote “networks of social relations
and economic exchange that are constitutive of the social
world” than to the potential for incest taboos to protect
the young against incestuous abuse (Meigs & Barlow,
2002, p. 39). The rape of an enemy’s women is more
often seen as a means by which leaders encourage bonds
among groups of young males than as acts of physically
and emotionally devastating aggression against females.
Biosocial explanations are mixed, with some arguing that
inbreeding avoidance is evolutionarily old and others that
the learning of taboos and genetic transmission are not
mutually exclusive alternatives. The latter view dovetails
with the biosocial perspective that sexual aggression and
male dominance are natural male traits. Social inequality
between the sexes is more often offered as a primary
reason for more aggression being committed against
females than against males and for sociocultural variation. Arguing that a sexist mentality cannot be explained
in terms of universal unconscious process in men and
that, in many societies, demeaning women and negating
the feminine in boys are not evident in the larger social
ideology nor are they strategies for male bonding, Sanday
(1990a, p. 183) points to the matrifocal Minangkabau of
West Sumatra (Indonesia), among whom the most salient
social bonds are with mothers and between brothers and
sisters. Unlike the Mundurucu of South America, who
use gang rape to dominate women (Murphy & Murphy,
1974), Minangkabau men do not display masculine invulnerability by oppression or sexually abusing women.
Early cross-cultural studies of the relationship between
fraternal interest groups and the frequency of rape
support Sanday’s argument, showing the frequency of
rape to be higher in societies where power groups of
related males use aggression to defend members’ interests (Otterbein, 1979). The frequency of rape was highest
in societies where there is no punishment for rape; something university administrators might take into consideration in efforts to curb fraternity rapes. In a pioneering
article, Ortner (1974) explored the question of why
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
women and their work are devalued in many cultures.
Her answer was that all people value objects that are
under human control (culture) more than unregulated and
frightening events such as childbearing that are closer to
nature than culture.
Anthropologists were quick to challenge the universality of the notion that female is to male as nature is to
culture, and the idea that “nature” and “female” are less
under cultural control than the things that men do and
believe. The articles in Nature, Culture and Gender
(MacCormack & Strathern, 1980) disprove women’s
universal lower status and association with nature. That
culture won in this debate is reflected in the rapid growth
of the anthropology of gender and a focus on male and
female ideologies as key elements in explanations of
sexual inequality and aggression. A more reflexive
anthropology reveals that many early studies of societies
in which males allegedly dominate females were biased
by male anthropologists with little access to or interest in
what women did or had to say for themselves (Goodale,
1971; Weiner, 1976).
METHODOLOGICAL CONTROVERSY
Reliable cross-cultural comparisons and making sense of
particular national statistics are nearly impossible given
the wide variations among and within societies in definitions of rape and other sexual aggression. Government
and nongovernment sampling techniques vary significantly, and survivors’ reluctance or inability to disclose
incidences of rape or other sexual violence contribute to
compromised data collection and lower than actual rates.
The Law and Definitions of Rape
In the feminist classic Against Our Will, Brownmiller
(1975, p. 18) declares that a female definition of rape can
be contained in a single sentence: “If a woman chooses
not to have intercourse with a specific man and the man
chooses to proceed against her will, that is a criminal act
of rape.” While this may suffice in cases of bride-capture
or the rape of conscious women, it does not protect children, men, or victims who are unable to protest acts of
sexual aggression against themselves. Many legal definitions of rape are narrower. The Czech legal code defines
rape as the use of violence, the threat of immediate
violence, or the misuse of a woman’s inability to defend
Methodological Controversy
herself to force her to consent to sexual intercourse
(Siklova & Hradlikova, 1994, p. 112). Not protected by
this definition are men and victims of domestic and child
sexual abuse and violence.
FBI’s Definition of Forcible Rape. The definition
of forcible rape used by the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) excludes many victims of rape and
sexual abuse:
The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. Assaults
or attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included;
however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offences are
excluded (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1998, p. 25).
With this definition, children and adolescents who are
forcibly raped qualify for inclusion in FBI rape statistics.
As Russell and Bolen (2000, p. 21) point out, since carnal
knowledge is understood to refer to penile–vaginal sexual
intercourse, the FBI’s definition excludes oral and anal
penetration and penetration when a woman is unable to
consent because she is unconscious, drugged, or incapacitated. It also excludes forcible rape by males on males,
females on females, and females by males. Statutory rape
is intercourse with a female who is below the age of
consent. Although the inhabitants of different states are
subject to state and not federal rape laws, the FBI’s
definition of rape determines which cases are included in
their national crime statistics.
Searles and Berger’s More Inclusive Definition.
Encouraged by feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, state
level reforms include redefinitions of rape in line with the
more inclusive definition of rape proposed by Searles and
Berger (1987, p. 26):
Rape is defined as nonconsensual sexual penetration of an adolescent or
adult obtained by physical force, by threat of bodily harm or when a
victim is incapable of giving consent because of mental illness, mental
retardation, or intoxication. Included are attempts to commit rape by
force or threat of bodily harm.
This definition omits child rape, but uses sex-neutral
terms and covers domestic rape and the inability to
protest. States still disagree on how to define rape and its
victims. In 1987, the cut-off age for statutory rape varied
from 13 to 18 years with 16 years being the age of
consent in 61% of states; 26% of states defined rape as
sexual assault involving penetration, and another 20%
as sexual assault that includes sexual touching as
237
well as penetration. Such differences make statistical
comparisons impossible (Russell & Bolen, 2000, p. 23).
Other Definitions. Researchers disagree over the
sex-neutral terms in the Searles and Berger definition.
Koss and Harvey (1991) argue that rape is applicable to
men only when penetration occurs. They believe that an
assault by a woman using a weapon to force a man to
have sex with her should be disqualified as rape because
she is the one to be penetrated. Russell and Bolen (2000,
p. 23) disagree, asserting that the full range of rape
offenses should be included regardless of how rare
women’s rape of men is, pointing out that women can
rape men anally with fingers, hands, or foreign objects.
Researchers also differ over the use of the term sexual
assault instead of or in combination with rape. Many
definitions of sexual assault include less severe nonpenetrative acts, such as forcible touching of the genitals, than
are covered by the Searles and Berger definition. Russell
and Bolen argue that lumping rape with sexual assault
results in the noncomparability of survey findings.
Sampling Techniques and
Methodological Limitations
Variations in quantification and sampling techniques,
along with survivors’ reluctance to report sexual abuses,
also challenge our ability to compare studies. The FBI’s
Uniform Crime Reports give the number of rape incidents
that are reported each year and the rate per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States. A number of reported rapes are
“unfounded” by police every year as “false” or “baseless.”
No explanation is given for why many more reported
rapes are unfounded by the police than other major crimes
of violence. Russell and Bolen (2000, p. 49) suggest that
some policemen subscribe to the same rape myths as the
general populace. One such myth is the belief that most
reported rapes are invented by women to protect their
reputations. In recognition of the fact that most crimes are
not reported, a second annual measure is the Bureau of
Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey
(NCS) to assess the extent and character of criminal
victimization in the United States. A representative
sample of male and female household residents aged
12 or older are interviewed. The NCS’s 1974 San Francisco
incidence rate of 5.0 per 1,000 female residents was
higher than the FBI’s 1978 San Francisco incidence rate
of 1.7 per 1,000 female residents. Russell, avoiding some
238
limitations of both federal surveys, found an incidence
rate of 36.7 per 1,000 female residents in her 1978 study,
more than seven times higher than the NCS rate. Some of
the methodological differences that resulted in Russell’s
obtaining a truer picture of the San Francisco rape incidence include collecting qualitative data on how respondents understood the questions, using rape-appropriate
methods such as face-to-face interviews, pretesting interview schedules, not farming out the fieldwork to other
professionals, rejecting victim-blaming interviewer applicants, and conveying a non-victim-blaming attitude by the
interviewers (Russell & Bolen, 2000, pp. 41–46). Survivor
reluctance to disclose sexual abuse is a universal problem
for researchers. West (1998a, p. 163) found that, while
partner violence is as prevalent among gays as it is among
heterosexuals, many gays are afraid to report incidents to
the police who, for their part, do not count same-sex violence in domestic violence reports. Russell and Bolen
(2000, p. 27) list 13 factors discouraging women from
reporting their rape experiences to the police. The top
reasons were survivors’ concerns about their families
knowing that they had been raped, people blaming them
for the attack, and people outside their families knowing
about the rape. Many minority women do not report
attackers who belong to their ethnic group out of a sense
of loyalty. Minority women raped by men of the majority
culture may opt not to report because they anticipate
no justice from a racist system. In post-Communist
Czechloslovakia (Siklova & Hradilkova, 1994), women
do not report rape for many of the same reasons, including distrust of the authorities and the social damage
inflicted on victims in public trials.
Backlash Against Feminists,
Real and Imagined
In the 1970s, feminists and rape survivors spoke out
about their experiences, challenging any notion that
rapists and child molesters are a small group of pathological males. A backlash erupted against their claims
that the United States suffered an epidemic of rape.
Ignoring the facts that not all those who study sexual
aggression are feminists or women, and not all feminists
exclude violence against males from their studies, critics
accused researchers of being man-hating females assaulting American society and encouraging sexual assault by
angering men. Paglia (1992, p. 63), who criticizes feminists for not seeing “what is for men the eroticism or fun
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
element in rape, especially the wild, infectious delirium
of gang rape,” writes for a public who would rather hear
that sexual violence is the work of predators and not
endemic to American society.
MASCULINITIES, VIOLENCE,
AND CULTURE
Locating sexual aggression within particular political and
cultural contexts reveals the close connection between
high levels of sexual aggression and societies organized
around masculine violence and hierarchy. The more
complex a violent society, the more sexual aggression
and other forms of violence will also be complex in
victims and expression.
Engendering Violence
In Masculinities, Violence, and Culture, Hatty (2000)
notes that violence is not a deviant act, it is a conforming
one, and that violence against women is part of a larger
context of normative male violence. In the United States,
cultural ideals promote violence in the service of the
masculine self, preserving individuality and forestalling
fusion with the dangerous nonself, the other, the feminine
(Hatty, 2000, pp. 10–11). Sexual aggression and violence
are means of social control, hierarchy, and inequality.
Domestic violence, rape, sexual slavery, and sexual
harassment, whether in the United States, Zimbabwe, or
the Philippines, are located in relationships of power,
dominance, and privilege (Davies, 1994). Such relationships are supported by hegemonic masculinity—
unattainable by most men and by definition all women.
Brownmiller (1975, p. 309) claimed that women are
trained to be rape victims. Examining the popular and
“scientific” cultural imagination of American society, we
find that violence is masculine and acceptance and nurturance feminine. Women are told that they do not bond
naturally and that they are in competition for high-status
men. Sadly, researchers have found that violence against
women is more prevalent when alliances between women
are weak, and alliances between men are valued and
strong (Hatty, 2000, pp. 55–56; Smuts, 1992). If women
are taught to be rape victims, the opposite is true for men.
Surveys in the United States show that many males might
commit rape if they thought they would not be caught or
Masculinities, Violence, and Culture
punished (Ellis, 1989, p. 6). Among high-school boys in
Los Angeles, almost half believed it is acceptable to force
a girl to have sex if she sexually teases her date. The
culture of violence has many training grounds, the more
effective being sports, the military, and the movies.
In organized sports, boys learn a “masculine” ambivalence
to intimacy and an affinity for instrumental relationships
(Messner, 1990). In all three, men’s bodies are presented
as hard, dangerous, and dominant. In adventure films and
Westerns, men are portrayed as fearless discoverers and
builders of society—men at the edge (Hatty, 2000).
Female characters like voluptuous hard-bodied guntoting archeologist Lara Croft and Charlie’s Angels
mimic the invulnerability of the masculine mystique, but
their rarity in film and life exaggerates women’s alleged
softness and passivity. When real women commit
violence, it carries cultural shock value by going against
the cultural imagination.
Violence and the Other
Violence in America and other complex societies has
many inflections. Gender and race combined in stereotypes supporting sexual aggression against female slaves
and Native American women, while myths of the voracious sexual appetites of African American men and other
minorities condoned mob justice in the American South.
Congolese leaders and soldiers cast the rape of Belgian
women in the newly independent Congo as acts of
vengeance against Belgian men rather than sexual assault
(Brownmiller, 1975, pp. 138–139). The link between
sexuality, gender stratification, and violence against the
other is clear in aggression against homosexuals and
other sexual anomalies in Western societies. In “What
Price Independence?”, Weitz (1984) explores social reactions to lesbians, spinsters, widows, and nuns. Weitz
(p. 455) argues that as more women live lives independent of men, men see their power in society threatened and
all unmarried women face a risk of stigmatization and
punishment, one punishment being rape. Sanctions
against male homosexuality are stronger because gay
males appear to reject masculine values and privileges.
While gender diversity is accepted in many societies
(Nanda, 2000), in places where patriarchal gender
systems operate sexual diversity is expressed as those who
penetrate and those who are penetrated. In the Brazilian
sex/gender system, men may penetrate both male and
female bodies without their virility or heterosexuality
239
being challenged (Nanda, 2000, pp. 44–45). Men who
prefer same-sex sex do not regard themselves and are not
regarded as homosexuals as long as they are the penetrators. This structure mirrors prison hierarchies where
victims of prison rape are “womanized” and perpetrators
valorized as “double-males” regardless of sexual
preference (Brownmiller, 1975, pp. 257–268).
The Politics of Masculinity
Gender hierarchies extend to the level of the nation and
beyond. In Nationalisms and Sexualities, Parker, Russo,
Sommer, and Yeager (1992) describe eroticized imaginary
communities in which love of country is expressed as
comradeship or brotherhood with a willingness to defend
the homeland—often feminized as the Motherland—
against outsiders and “improper” insiders who threaten a
nation’s stability. Historically, women’s movements have
challenged the inequalities concealed in such visions of
common nationhood. In anticolonial struggles, feminist
interests have been sacrificed to the cause of liberation.
With independence, male leaders have often strived to
keep “their women” pure and more conforming than the
perceived man-threatening and promiscuous western
feminists or, in some cases, to make their women more
educated and sophisticated so as to fit in with the West.
Either way, the politics of masculinity and nationalism
require women to conform to versions of ideal femininity
that support men’s relations with one another. Women and
men who do not conform risk sexual abuse and other
violence. In Iran, reformers promoting capitalist development and nuclear families with educated and employable
women recalled Zorastrian traditions that accorded
women a high status and many of the same freedoms
of men (Jayawardena, 1986, p. 15). In 1979, despite
women’s participation in the Islamic populist movement
and the left’s promise of continued equality, Iranian
women were rendered dependent minors by laws enacted
to make gender relations as different as possible
from gender norms in the West (Moghadam, 1992,
pp. 427–430). With a new government, men attacked
women seen in public without the veil, calling them
“whores, bourgeois degenerates and un-Islamic.” While
few countries have criminalized feminism, anger against
liberated women can be seen in the growth of the international sex and mail-order bride industries. Power and
gender relations radiate across the globe as men from
wealthy countries like Germany or Japan demonstrate
240
Rape and Other Sexual Aggression
their masculinity and privilege on young sex slaves in
Southeast Asia who will never be given medals for serving
their nations’ economies. Young women seeking work in
foreign lands suffer human rights violations, rape, and
physical assault. In the years following Kuwait’s liberation in 1991, 2,000 women domestic servants from
Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines fled
abusive Kuwaiti employers (Beasley, 1994, p. 53).
SEXUAL AGGRESSION
IN
OCEANIA
Violence against women and children is a development
issue in many Pacific islands nations. Pacific islanders are
reluctant to report such crimes to the police, preferring to
solve problems peaceably by bringing the families of
victims and offenders together and exchanging custom
money, food, and Christian forgiveness. In the words of
one Solomon Islander, “In custom days, a man who played
around with a child would be beaten up. Then his tribe
would put him into exile. Now, because of Christianity
that kind of thinking has changed” (Davies, 1994, p. 98).
Whether or not Christianity aids the cover-up of child sex
abuse, many women fear coming forward, citing threats
from offenders and beatings by husbands and male relatives who wish to avoid prosecution. Drawing on her
experience as a Principal Project Officer for the Papua
New Guinea Law Commission (1986–1990), running a
national program on violence against women, Bradley
(1994) argues that “development can be dangerous to
women’s health.” While wife-beating and sexual abuse are
not new in Papua New Guinea, she argues that the severity of wife-beating and other violence against women is
greater in towns, where alcohol is readily available and
women are more dependent on their husbands with fewer
avenues of escape or sources of support than village
women have. Women’s frustrations are captured in Papua
New Guinean Mary To Liman’s “Bia botol longlong” and
Solomon Islander Jully Sipolo’s “A man’s world” (Sipolo,
1981; To Liman, 1979; Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1995).
The Sexual Politics of Rape
and Domestic Violence in
Papua New Guinea
Alarmed by increased violence against women, in 1982
the Papua New Guinea government—in an unprecedented
move for a developing country—directed its Law Reform
Commission to investigate domestic violence. Resulting
publications revealed that a majority of Papua New
Guinean wives have been hit by their husbands, most
more than once a year, with urban wives suffering a higher
level of violence than rural women (Toft, 1985, 1986a,
1986b; Toft & Bonnell, 1985; Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 2001).
Papua New Guinea has a reported rape rate of 45 rapes per
100,000 persons, similar to the U.S. rate of 35 per 100,000
persons (Dinnen, 1993; Herman, 1984), although this is
less systematically researched. Many of the rapes, counted
as single incidents in police reports, were committed by
gangs. Like everywhere else, rapes go unreported, especially those committed by victims’ partners or relatives
(Dinnen, 1996; Finkelhor & Yllo, 1985; Russell & Bolen,
2000; Toft, 1985, 1986a; Zimmer, 1990). While traditional
attitudes contribute to the acceptance of violence, research
shows that the pressures of development and inequality
fuel violence against women. Men in town fear their
wives’ potential independence and their own uncertain
situations. Urban life-styles, including alcohol abuse
and reduced social support networks, adversely affect
male–female relations. Increased eroticism and the breakdown of old taboos place unfamiliar demands on couples
(Bradley, 1994; Rosi & Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993).
In several publications (Rosi & Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993;
Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993, 1995, 2001), I have explored a
political dimension in order to understand better violence
against women in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the
Pacific. While individuals experience the dislocations of
change and development, sex and class politics also fuel
sexual and domestic violence. In Papua New Guinea, only
a small number of men and women enjoy an elite life-style.
With the male leadership under pressure from the grassroots to bring about an economic miracle, elite women are
targets of disaffection from both the lower classes and
men in their own class. Educated women have opportunities for expression and independence not shared by the
grassroots and often rivaling their male peers. Violence
against women is rife among the elite, and is partly motivated by class and sexual tensions that paint elite females
as symbols of all that is wrong with today’s society. In a
weak state such as Papua New Guinea, men who want to
can assert their dominance over women with little fear of
resistance as long as there is widespread envy or fear of
those women, and state officials charged with protecting
them are unable or unwilling to do so. Rape and domestic
violence are not traditional in every New Guinea society
References
(Goodale, 1980), but gang rape and mutilation of women’s
genitals were ways men “used to” punish errant wives and
daughters (Zimmer, 1990; Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 2001),
and attacks against the enemies’ women in warfare were
common. In some areas, men’s cults celebrated masculinity and new entrants with the sexual abuse of widows and
other women without male protection (Bradley, 1985).
Gang rape and the achievement of manhood have been
linked not only in New Guinea (Herdt, 1982) but in many
cultural contexts such as crack dealers in New York City
(Bourgois, 2001) and the world over (Gilmore, 1990).
Today, initiates into Papua New Guinea’s urban raskol
gangs replicate such attacks in gang rapes, the most prestigious being the rape of women of European descent or
their Papua New Guinean analogs—elite women. While
violence against women occurs throughout Papua New
Guinea, the intersection of elite and urban sexual politics
with nationalist and class interests and rhetoric targets
women of privilege. Holding elite and educated women—
meri universiti—responsible for all that is wrong is a
political maneuver to ease class and ethnic tensions in
Papua New Guinea’s culturally diverse society and a
satisfying fiction for Papua New Guineans who feel left
out of “progress” and “development.” Unlike their male
counterparts, who come from all parts of the nation, Papua
New Guinea’s small class of elite women come from
coastal and island areas that have been long involved with
the outside world. Elite women are more likely than their
male peers to come from educated and economically privileged backgrounds, and are, as a group, more western in
demeanor and appearance than most Papua New Guinean
women. Increasing the distance between elite men and
women, some elite women have married foreigners or
foregone marriage to avoid the violence that mars many
Papua New Guinean unions. Examples include two of
the three women ever to sit as members of National
Parliament and a former president of the National Council
of Women. Elite women’s marriage to expatriates embarrasses male leaders as most Papua New Guineans see
them as signs of elite immorality and elite men’s inability
to control their women. Attempts to limit elite women’s
freedoms include public censure, violence, the refusal of
citizenship rights to foreign spouses, and threats to disenfranchise the children of mixed marriages. Although, in
the mid-1980s, a male-dominated government supported
the Law Reform Commission studies and a public awareness campaign on violence against women, politicians
soon lost interest as economic and other issues pushed to
241
the forefront of public concern. The shift was brutally
apparent in 1987 when an all-male Parliament booed
lawyer Rose Kekedo and other women from the floor
when they tried to present the Law Reform Commission’s
interim report on domestic violence. Women’s groups
continue to wage the campaign against violence against
women, but victories have been few. Female leaders
throughout the Pacific are beginning to realize that half the
battle is to get other women to join them in the fight.
Vanuatu poet Grace Mera Molisa spoke for women
throughout the region in “Delightful acquiescence”
(Molisa, 1989, p. 24):
Half of Vanuatu
is still colonized
by her self.
Any woman
showing promise
is clouted
into acquiescence.
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Sex and Gender in the World’s Cultures
Abaluyia
Maria G. Cattell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Abaluyia are also known as Baluyia or Luyia, or by the
alternative spelling Abaluhya/Luhya. During the colonial
occupation, the British called them Bantu Kavirondo or
WaKavirondo—derogatory terms today. Abaluyia is a
social and political identity claimed by 17 Kenyan ethnic
communities: Bukusu (Kitosh, Vugusu), Idakho (Idaxo),
Isukha (Isuxa), Kabras, Khayo, Kisa, Marachi, Maragoli
(Avalogoli, Logoli), Marama, Nyala, Nyole (Nyore),
Samia, Tachoni, Tiriki, Tsotso, and Wanga (Bahanga).
(Songa, in Nyanza Province, speak a Luyia dialect but
claim a Luo identity.) The Bantu prefix “ba” or “aba” (or
“ava,” indicating the unvoiced “b”) signifies “people”; for
example, Babukusu are “Bukusu people,” and so also
with Banyala, Bamarachi, Abawanga, and the rest. (Ba ⫹
Idakho or Isukha produces Bidakho and Bisukha.) One
person is indicated by the prefix “mu” or “omu,” as in
Mukhayo or Omukhayo. Place is indicated by the prefix
“bu,” as in Busamia, and language by “lu,” as in Luluyia
or Lutiriki.
LOCATION
Abaluyia numbered around 3 million in 1999. Kenya’s
Western Province, the home area for most Abaluyia, is
crossed by the Equator. It is bordered on the south by
Lake Victoria, on the west by Uganda and the Sio
(Suo) River, and on the east by the Kenya Highlands. The
northern slopes of Mount Elgon (Masaba) define
northern Luyialand.
Western Province is a land of steep hills, minor
scarps, and undulating valleys cutting across the high
plateaus of the downwarped Lake Victoria basin.
Elevations range from about 1,100 m on the shores of
Lake Victoria to about 4,300 m at Mount Elgon. Soils are
of high to medium fertility and in most years rainfall is
adequate for agriculture, though droughts are frequent
and even in good growing years there may be a “hungry
season” between harvests. Since temperatures are
equable year round, there are two growing seasons, one
fed by the long rains of March to May, and the other by
the short rains of August and September. Most people are
peasant farmers, with high male participation in labor
migration. With high population densities, marginal lands
are cultivated, deforestation and erosion are growing
problems, fuelwood and thatching grass are scarce, and,
increasingly, farms are too small to be economically
viable.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Bantu-speaking Abaluyia ancestors, migrating from what
is now Uganda, entered the area roughly 500 years ago.
Long-range and local migrations of Bantu and Nilotic
(Kalenjin, Luo, Nandi, Teso) peoples continued well into
the 19th century, making Luyia history a story of many
migrations and numerous cross-cultural contacts and
exchanges. Among Abaluyia there are uniformities and
diversities, beginning with the Bantu dialects, some
mutually intelligible only with difficulty, that unite the
subgroups. There are widespread similarities (though not
uniformity) regarding clans and kinship, ancestor spirits,
religious beliefs, economic activities including labor
migration, architecture and technology, land tenure, patriarchy and the subordinate position of women, gender
roles, patrilocal residence, behavioral propriety, and child
socialization—and marked differences in some areas
such as male circumcision, tooth removal, and the age
group system of the Tiriki. Along with many changes,
there is much cultural persistence.
The precolonial Luyia economy was agropastoral,
with intensive food crop cultivation and grazing of cattle
and goats. People made everything they needed, from tools
and weapons to houses. Goods and services were bartered
or purchased with livestock, Samia-made hoes, and baskets
of grain. It was a sustainable subsistence economy, integrated with the sociopolitical–religious–moral system in
which it was embedded. Patrilineal exogamous clans
(groups of persons descended from a common male
247
248
ancestor) were the basic unit of social organization.
Marriage outside one’s own clan and the clans of one’s
mother for two generations up (clan exogamy) encouraged
alliances across clans, with women residing patrilocally (in
their husbands’ homes) after marriage. The belief system
of most Abaluyia included a creator god, Were or Wele,
and spirits that inhabited rocks, trees, and other objects. In
each homestead, shrines were constructed for ancestral
spirits who could be approached for help with words and
gifts (food and beer). There were no organized churches or
priests.
Status differences among individuals were based on
gender, age and seniority, kinship status, wealth (especially cattle), special abilities, and personal qualities.
Land, held communally, was readily available for farming and collecting water, fuelwood, and wild foods.
Elders allocated plots to men, who in turn allocated plots
to their wives. Men were warriors, rulers in homes and
clans, with superior access to resources (including
women’s labor) and therefore power. Women, though
subordinate to men, had their own spheres of agency and
decision-making. They controlled their farm plots and
crops and the kitchen, that is, the preparation and distribution of food, and they had their own social hierarchy, with
senior wives, mothers, and mothers-in-law at the top.
Ritual and craft specialties enabled individuals to gain
wealth and prestige. Only men could follow the most
prestigious and lucrative specialties of ironworking,
woodcarving, and rainmaking, but in many groups
women were potters and also herbalists, tooth removers,
healers and midwives, diviners, and spirit mediums.
In mid-19th-century Abaluyia took to fortifying
their homesteads or living in small fortified villages
because of cattle raids and land grabs by new Luyia
immigrants and groups such as Baganda, Maasai, Nandi,
and Teso. The walled villages constituted basic sociopolitical and defensive units, though with no centralized
authority. At times some villages were united under the
vigorous leadership of a particular man (omwami, in
many Luyia dialects) who was likely to strengthen
alliances through marriage (polygyny being common
practice), but these affiliations were loose and shifting.
British explorers, missionaries, doctors, and soldiers
arrived in the late 19th century. By about 1910 the British
were firmly in control, appointing local men as chiefs in
the colonial administrative system, introducing money
and taxes, cash crops and wage labor, Christianity, formal
education, and medical services. In western Kenya land
Abaluyia
was not alienated to Europeans, but Abaluyia were under
great pressures to produce cash crops, work on colonial
projects and in wage labor for colonists, and accept
Christianity, Europeanized life-styles, and a standardized
Luyia orthography. In response to such pressures,
Abaluyia emerged as an ethnic and political identity in
the 1930s. (Closely related Bantu speakers in Uganda,
including many Abasamia, do not identify themselves as
Luyia and are not included in this discussion.)
Many changes occurred in Kenya during the
20th century with transformations from a colonial to a
modern independent state and from a kin-corporate mode
of production promoting interdependence and reciprocity
to a globally connected capitalist economy encouraging
individual accumulation rather than collective wellbeing. Elementary education is now nearly universal,
though more males than females continue beyond
eighth grade. Many imported ideas and ideologies have
become dominant—for example, most Abaluyia today are
Christians. With the commodification of work and other
aspects of life, the agropastoral subsistence economy has
yielded to a dual system in which family survival depends
on having members in the rural home raising food and
cash crops (still using hoes and other hand tools) and
other members away from home in wage employment,
each supporting the other. Residence after marriage
remains patrilocal—the wife goes to live in her husband’s
home. However, more and more women are going to
other rural areas and to cities, accompanying husbands
and themselves seeking employment. Land has been registered to individual owners, mostly to men, with no legal
provisions for women’s rights to land. Cattle retain their
cultural significance as visible wealth, and indigenous
views persist in other ways, for example, in explanations
of events, the division of labor, the ways work defines the
self and an individual’s social status, and the complex
ways in which gender is implicated in social and
economic relationships across the life course. Overall,
indigenous patriarchy melded with imposed British patriarchy, making women invisible and favoring men in
access to productive resources, education, employment,
and political power.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Gender differentiation is a strong characteristic of
Abaluyia culture and society. Females and males are
Gender over the Life Cycle
differentiated physically by attire, body ornament
and posture, in work roles, in family and marital
relationships—in almost every aspect of life.
Early European accounts described Abaluyia as
“naked” because their clothing left large areas of skin
exposed. To Abaluyia, clothing and ornaments signified
sexual modesty and also social and ritual status. Babies
and small children went naked. Older children wore
genital coverings, men added a leather cloak, and older
girls and women added a fringed “tail” of plant fibers that
indicated their status as unmarried, married without children, with children, or postmenopausal, or widowed.
From infancy, jewelry made of various materials was
worn by both genders, mostly by females. Jewelry was a
woman’s personal possession and indicated her social
status and her husband’s wealth. Scarification of face and
body, especially of females, was done for beauty, ritual
protection, and men’s sexual pleasure. Bodies were
painted and hair was removed for esthetic and ritual
purposes. For war and ceremonies, men wore elaborate
headdresses. Male elders and political leaders wore
clothing and ornaments indicating their high status.
Christian missionaries brought Victorian attitudes
toward the body and clothes to cover it. Pressured by
fines, taxes, and the requirements of missionaries and
employers, Abaluyia abandoned most of their body arts
and adopted European clothing by the 1930s. Now small
children usually go naked, older boys wear T-shirts and
shorts, and older girls and women wear dresses and
sometimes earrings. School children wear uniforms:
dresses for girls, shirt and shorts for boys. Footwear
(if any) tends to be sandals. Men wear trousers, shirts,
sometimes jackets and hats, and often a watch. Women
often wrap a kanga (a cloth rectangle that originated on
the Swahili coast in the 19th century) around their
dresses; kangas are also used as baby slings, headwraps,
and to sit on. In the 1980s girls and women sometimes
wore trousers in Nairobi, but were subject to negative
comments (“Does she think she’s a man?”) in rural
Luyialand. By the mid-1990s wearing trousers in Buluyia
had become more acceptable. Most people have short
hair but since the 1970s some women plait their hair in
elaborate patterns, an ancient African custom. For both
genders, looking “smart” (well dressed and up to date) is
considered attractive, and also being “fat,” for fatness
(especially of female breasts and buttocks) is associated
with health, fertility, and prosperity. Physical strength is
admired in men.
249
Posture is another marker of gender. Girls are
expected to show deference (bowed head, lowered gaze,
soft voice) to almost everyone, but postures of deference
are also expected of women when in the presence of
men. Conversely, men exhibit postures of domination.
Domination and subordination are enacted in seating
arrangements: men sit on chairs, and women (unless of
high status) on the ground, legs straight out in front of
them and crossed at the ankles—though in her own home
a woman may sit on a chair in the presence of the men of
her family.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
For Abaluyia, life moves from prebirth or birth through
various stages to death and ancestorhood. Transitions
between stages are not abrupt but take place through
processes of gradual maturation and decline. Even in
groups that have (or had) circumcision and initiation
rites, full maturity did not arrive in the twinkling of a
knife cut initiating boys into a warrior phase, but through
a process of social advances involving marriage and
having children. Many indigenous life cycle rituals for
childbirth and naming, tooth removal, circumcision and
initiation, marriage, death, and remembrance of ancestors
have become attenuated or are no longer practiced,
having been replaced by European and Christian
practices.
Since different Luyia communities conceive of the
life cycle in differing patterns, one group, Abasamia, are
presented as an example. Samia conceptions of life stages
vary, with a range of opinions about stages, ages, indicators, and transitions. For example, many Samia think that
a fetus is a “thing” (esindu), not yet a person or human
being (omundu), and that life begins at birth; others say
that life begins at conception. For the first day of life, the
infant is “just born” (omwana omwibulwe); for a few
weeks it is “newborn” (omwana ori olwesi), physically
dependent, and morally pure; thereafter it is a “small
child” (omudoto). Omudoto develops physical skills,
mental ability, and moral capacity, and is considered “to
know reason” (okhumanya amakesi), to be able to think
and know right from wrong, somewhere between ages 3
and 8. Such a child passes from childhood (obuyere) to
youth (oburaga), and then to puberty, a state of being a
“ripe” person (omwangafu), a person who is physically
mature and ready for marriage. Marriage marks the
250
beginning of adulthood (obukhulundu), a long period
followed by old age (obukofu), and finally death and
becoming an ancestor spirit (omusambwa).
Socialization of Boys and Girls
To be childless is a tragedy. Abaluyia value sons highly;
men want sons to insure generational continuity of self
and clan, and women want sons to insure support in their
old age. However, girls are also valued for their labor and
for the “wealth” (cattle and money) their bridewealth will
bring to their family when they marry, which in turn
makes it possible for their brothers to pay bridewealth so
they can marry. Increasingly, daughters are also being
seen as providers of support for elderly parents.
Malnutrition, though fairly common, affects girls and
boys about equally, seeming to be more the result of
poverty and marital conflicts than gender discrimination.
Until recently, people wanted a large family with many
sons and many daughters. However, in the past decade
Kenya’s birth rate has dropped drastically (even in
Maragoli, long known for its high fertility), suggesting a
new ideal of smaller families in a context of some
improvement in women’s economic empowerment.
During infancy and early childhood, girls and boys
are treated pretty much the same. Infants are breast-fed
and held almost constantly, usually receiving much
warmth and affectionate indulgence. When they are a few
years old children begin helping their mothers with childcare and household tasks. Young girls and boys often play
together with simple homemade toys and in games such
as hide-and-seek and guessing riddles; they may also
forage for snack foods such as grasshoppers and fruits.
By age 8 or 9, play is more often in same-sex groups.
Girls stay closer to home, working for their mothers,
while boys are freer to roam around with brothers and
friends, a pattern that continues through adulthood. All
children learn—primarily by imitation and experience—
work appropriate to their gender; all are trained to respect
and obey anyone older than themselves, to practice
emotional self-control, and to behave properly. Boys
are encouraged to greater independence, while girls are
expected to be modest and shy. Any child may be disciplined with harsh words and sometimes beatings, though
girls are more likely to be beaten (as are wives).
A major change in children’s socialization is school
attendance. For much of the 20th century girls rarely and
perhaps a quarter to a half of boys went to school,
Abaluyia
but today elementary education is nearly universal.
Schoolchildren learn English and Swahili. They receive
some instruction about indigenous cultures, but the
emphasis is on knowledge different from the local knowledge of parents and grandparents. Schools encourage
swiftness of thought and openness to innovation, in
contrast to the indigenous emphasis on slow deliberate
thought. This may indicate an emerging shift in cognitive
style that is no doubt reinforced with television viewing.
Thus in school and through television, children are
exposed to new ideas about gender roles and, in the person
of teachers and school heads, nontraditional role models.
Puberty and Adolescence
When youth (oburaga) shades into puberty, the Samia life
course divides sharply along gender lines, with sharp
distinctions in work activities and the social and spatial
separation of females and males. A girl (omukhana
omuraga) becomes a “ripe” or “mature” person
(omwangafu) physically and socially when her body
matures and she begins to menstruate. In indigenous society, she was ready to marry. However, a boy (omusiani
omuraga) does not become omwangafu until he reaches
full physical maturity and has the strength to do a man’s
work along with the ability to manage a home. Only then
is he ready for marriage. In indigenous society girls
married quite young, while male youth spent years as
cattle herders and warriors before marrying. With the
colonial suppression of warfare, male youth became
migrant laborers. Today education has brought further
changes in life patterns.
In the past about half the Luyia subgroups, including Bukusu, Idakho, Isukha, and Maragoli, had male
circumcision and initiation ceremonies and named agegrades that served to reckon age or seniority among men
(only Abatachoni circumcised females); a few communities still circumcise, though the ceremonies are much
abbreviated to fit school schedules and are increasingly
controversial. Tiriki, borrowing from Nilotic Terik neighbors, had male circumcision and initiation plus a formal
age-group system that was the basis of Tiriki sociopolitical organization. Many Abaluyia, influenced by Nilotic
peoples, removed one to six lower incisors of all children
around age 6 or 7; for females, the resulting gap was
regarded as a mark of beauty. In groups without circumcision, including Abasamia and Banyala, tooth removal
marked the early stage of adulthood. All such practices
Gender-Related Social Groups
were or are only the beginning of the long process of
achieving adulthood.
Attainment of Adulthood
Adulthood (obukhulundu) is a time of meeting responsibilities to others. For girls it begins with marriage.
A married Samia female is addressed as omukhasi,
“wife” (also “woman”). However, a wife’s early years of
marriage are ruled by her mother-in-law; it is not until
she has been married for several years and has two or three
children that she gets her own kitchen and is considered
to be truly adult (omukhasi mudwasi), able to manage her
children and make her own decisions about food preparation and her work schedule. Some women today are
refusing their mother-in-law’s domination by setting up
kitchens when they marry or going with their husband to
live where he works away from home. When a man
marries he is addressed as omusacha, “husband” (also
“man”), but he too achieves full adult status through
parenthood. Children make him omusacha omukhulundu,
an elder of his family and clan. In the past, most women
became fully adult in their twenties, men not until their
thirties or even forties. Now, with earlier marriage for
men and later marriage for women, this is changing.
However, though women become socially adult, they
remain jural minors and must be represented by male
relatives in formal situations such as court cases.
Middle Age and Old Age
The transition from adulthood to old age (obukofu) is
associated with the end of childbearing and decline in
physical strength for everyone and, for women, the end of
menstruation. There is little association with chronological age (many older people do not even know their
chronological age). Most women in their fifties call themselves “old,” while many men that age and even older say
they are “mature” (omwangafu), not old. In old age,
women and men become more alike, respected for their
years and wisdom, able to carry out rituals and advise
their juniors. Often these activities are referred to as “the
work of old people,” but this work has been diminished
by the geographic dispersal of families under capitalism,
literacy and its associated body of new knowledge, and
other factors.
A very old person (omukofu muno), physically or
mentally frail, can do little productive work and thus no
251
longer meets the responsibilities of adulthood. This is a
time of dependence on others for the essentials of life,
a time of waiting to die. The very old are generally
regarded as being close to the ancestors and therefore
possessed of ritual powers; after their deaths, they join
the ancestor spirits (emisambwa) and continue to play a
role in family life. As emisambwa women finally achieve
equality, for the spirits of women are as powerful as those
of men.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Sociability is highly valued by Abaluyia, and both men
and women are highly sociable, talkative among friends,
and happy to welcome visitors in their homes. Most
Abaluyia are soft-spoken and polite. Good manners are
valued; speaking loudly and getting angry are not.
However, boys and men are more independent and
authoritative, more likely to be aggressive or express
anger, while girls and young women are usually selfeffacing and shy, very deferential to men, especially
certain categories of men such as fathers-in-law, and to
older higher-status females. Older women are likely to
stand straight, look people in the eye, and speak firmly
even to men—thus behaving like a man, a socially
acceptable shift in behavior. For everyone, emotional
restraint is characteristic, though women tend to be more
emotionally expressive and far more nurturing than men.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Gender-related social groups are common. For example,
patrilineal descent groups tend to be localized, with
fathers and sons, brothers and uncles concentrated in
particular areas. Individuals belong to the clan of their
father; at marriage women go to live with their husband
and his kin but do not become members of their
husbands’ clans, remaining strangers in the home though
they will be buried there. Though rare today, in the past
adult men and old women (those “like a man”) attended
frequent communal beer drinks.
Work activities separate females and males during
much of the day. Women spend most of their day with
young children, older daughters, and other women.
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Abaluyia
Men spend much time with other men, working or relaxing and socializing. Some cooperative work groups and
self-help groups are single sex, especially women’s
groups for revolving credit, income generating, and other
purposes. Such groups help some women with their
family responsibilities of providing food and clothing for
their children and are also an important source of moral
support. Church-based groups are likely to be mixed.
Funerals (and there are many in this time of AIDS) bring
together men and women of all ages.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Men’s work includes clearing fields and other agricultural
work, herding livestock, and building houses, granaries,
and stock shelters. Abaluyia women (like many African
women) work much harder and longer hours than men.
They are the primary producers of both subsistence and
cash crops, though they do not always control the products
of their labor. Reproduction—the bearing and raising of
children—and household maintenance activities are
almost exclusively women’s work. Women are also the
major caregivers for sick, elderly, and disabled family
members.
In the first half of the 20th century, missionary
training in domesticity, including cleanliness, crop
cultivation, and self-reliance, was aimed at “mission
girls” and enabled a few educated women to fashion—
with difficulty—new roles for themselves. Today in
Buluyia some women are employed, mostly as nurses and
teachers; some make and sell pots or other utilitarian
items or practice indigenous healing arts or modern midwifery. Many men are labor migrants, thus withdrawing
from the domestic economy for months or years, and then
retiring in their forties or fifties to resume farming. Even
if present in the homestead, few men will do women’s
work. Children’s contributions to the family economy—
mostly doing women’s work—are substantially reduced
by their school attendance. Women, expected to feed and
clothe their families and provide school fees if the father
fails in that duty, have little choice but to take up the work
roles forgone by men and children, even if it means doing
men’s work. These factors, along with educational disadvantages and persisting patterns of patriarchal oppression
(indigenous and colonial), have severely limited African
women’s roles in the formal economy, leading to heavy
participation in the informal economy, especially as
agricultural laborers and micro-entrepreneurs, and to a
degree in craft production and ritual specialties.
Women are further disadvantaged by changes in land
tenure from the precolonial communal control of land to
the contemporary situation of individualized land tenure,
with most land registered to men who inherited it from
their fathers and will divide it among their sons. Women
may “inherit” skills such as divining, but rarely inherit
land or other material property. Lack of a land title deed
makes it almost impossible for women to obtain loans to
start income-generating projects. The many women
managing farms in their husbands’ absence, or because
they are widowed, are less well served by agricultural
extension services than are men who manage farms. Many
Abaluyia women live on the edge, working long and hard
under conditions of gender bias that severely limit their
economic opportunities and threaten their health and the
health and educational opportunities of their children.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers are responsible for childcare, but the actual care
of small children is often provided by older siblings
(girls and boys) or hired girls who are not in school
because their families are unable to pay school fees.
Mothers are usually warm and affectionate with children,
and their punishments are likely to be verbal; mother–son
and mother–daughter bonds are often very close. Fathers
tend to be authoritarian and distant, are more likely to
punish with beatings, and spend relatively little time with
their children except for older boys, who usually eat the
evening meal with their father if he is at home.
Grandparents, especially grandmothers, tend to be indulgent with all their grandchildren, joke with them, teach
them about sex, and give them treats. Many grandmothers are primary caretakers of children born to unmarried
daughters or in situations where AIDS affects the parental
generation; they, like younger women, struggle to make
ends meet.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
The public–private distinction was imposed on Abaluyia
(and other Africans) through the processes of colonialism
and capitalism and the “gospel of domesticity” of
Relative Status of Men and Women
Christian missionaries, resulting in greater male salience
in many spheres, women’s increased workloads, and loss
of indigenous mechanisms to protect women’s interests.
In contemporary Buluyia, leadership in public arenas is
almost entirely by men; most politicians, government
administrators, and church and clan leaders are men.
Women do have leadership roles as teachers, school
heads, and community health workers, in church groups
and religious orders, and in women’s self-help and cooperative work groups. Women also have roles in their own
clans (e.g., in funeral rituals) and participate in clan
discussions about important matters such as marriage.
While women, especially older women, are outspoken in
their opinions, they are likely to let males make final
decisions, thus maintaining a deferential attitude and
saving face for men.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Women take leadership roles in many church activities,
though almost none are priests. For example, women
religious are heads of Roman Catholic girls’ schools,
offering to the girls a different model of womanhood
from their cultural models. Among saved people (bornagain Christians), many group leaders are women, and
saved women sometimes succeed in rejecting customs
such as widow inheritance with the help of other saved
people including men. The Luyia high god, Were (Wele),
is male, but ancestor spirits (emisambwa) are of both
genders and equally powerful. Other gods and spirits are
not gendered, except for the Christian God (Nyasaye),
whose maleness is not questioned as it sometimes is by
Euro-American feminists.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Men of all ages have a fair amount of leisure time, but
until women reach old age, most have little time to relax.
Men spend much of their leisure time socializing with
other men, discussing politics, listening to the radio, and
drinking. Women socialize mostly with other women,
often in a work context; their conversations revolve
around their activities and the people in their lives. Older
women, with fewer home duties, may use their leisure
time for community-oriented activities such as serving on
school committees, participating in prayer and dance
253
groups, and being community health workers. Children,
often in mixed groups, enjoy storytelling, singing, and
playing a great variety of games. Boys love to play
soccer. Groups of youths, single-sex and mixed, stroll
about, conversing; they also like to attend dances.
Watching television (as people acquire television sets and
run them off car batteries) is growing in popularity and
opens a window on different worlds, including programs
from England and the United States.
Luyia arts consist primarily of the making of
utilitarian objects such as tools, baskets, clay pots, and
four-legged stools. This is not art as self-expression, but
functional art to produce familiar objects for practical,
economic, symbolic, and ritual purposes. Traditional
body decorations (jewelry and scarification) and modernday plaited hair and women’s jewelry, the occasional
house wall painted with floral designs, and the use of
flowers as house decorations are viewed as maridadi,
esthetically pleasing or beautiful. Men and women have
their own artisanal specialties, though their products must
compete with imported goods such as aluminum cooking
pots and plastic containers that have reduced the
desirability of clay pots.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Women are “only women”; they are strangers in the home
and not to be trusted with family secrets, their political
discussions are about “kitchen politics,” and they need to
be beaten from time to time to teach them proper behavior. Such is the opinion of many Luyia men about women.
Yet those same men may honor and respect their mothers,
and mothers may have considerable influence over sons.
Most women do not have much authority, but they have a
great deal of influence, often behind the scenes, especially as they grow older. Women (often older women)
who are leaders of religious, self-help, and other groups
speak their minds even when men are in the groups.
Women know how to lead, how to make decisions—not
surprising, because in their own female spheres of work
and childcare, women make decisions independently of
men. Educated women, women with jobs (often as nurses
or teachers), are respected for their achievements. But in
the end, most women come out a little—or much—lower
than most men. Furthermore, patriarchal structures in
land ownership and access to productive resources,
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Abaluyia
education, and employment help keep women lower
than men.
SEXUALITY
In indigenous Luyia society, sexuality was regarded as
healthy and natural. Fathers’ sisters (senge) and grandmothers instructed youth in sexual matters, which could
not be discussed with parents. Premarital sex play (but
not intercourse) was allowed. A bride was expected to be
a virgin and her family was rewarded for her virginity,
though there seems to have been no lasting stigma for a
pregnant bride. Christian missionaries demanded the covering of bodies with voluminous clothing and condemned
any sexual activity among unmarried youth, probably
contributing to today’s attitude that even holding hands or
a brief kiss in public is tantamount to having intercourse.
Today modesty demands that genitals be covered and also
women’s breasts (except when a mother is breastfeeding
her baby), but not arms and legs (except for upper thighs).
It is, in fact, a terrible curse for a woman to expose her
genitals deliberately.
In the latter 20th century sexual controls loosened
considerably, at least in part because of the erosion of the
roles of grandmothers and fathers’ sisters as instructors in
sexual behavior and the increased vulnerability of schoolgirls, especially those in boarding schools who are away
from family control for long periods. Premarital pregnancies are common, bringing problems to the girls
(stigma, dismissal from school, family conflict) but not to
the boys or men who impregnated them. Wives are
expected to satisfy their husbands’ sexual needs, but not
vice versa. Women are also expected to be faithful to
husbands, and many are, but men engage in much
extramarital sex—no doubt a factor in the current AIDS
epidemic. Clearly there is a “double standard” regarding
sexuality. Asked about homosexuality, most people say
nothing or insist that homosexuals are found “only in
Mombasa.”
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Formerly, parents (the father alone or in consultation with
his wife) chose spouses for their children. For daughters
they looked for a responsible strong man from a respected
family; he could be an older man with other wives.
For sons they sought a girl of childbearing age who was
hardworking and obedient. Negotiations were conducted
between the families, bridewealth was paid (though perhaps only part of it to start with), and various ceremonies
were carried out, culminating in a procession to convey
the bride to her new home. Girls married young, sometimes even as small children, and often against their will,
while men were likely to be in their twenties or even
thirties at their first marriage. Often the bride and groom
did not meet until the wedding. Once the protracted
wedding ceremonies ended and the bride was left without
her supportive bridesmaids in her new husband’s home, it
was a difficult and often lonely time for her as a stranger
in her husband’s home, socially inferior to almost
everyone else, and expected to work hard for her
mother-in-law.
Today young people are likely to choose their own
partners, with sexual attraction and love playing a strong
role and premarital sex likely. They may elope or the
young woman may just move into her husband’s house. If
the family accepts her presence, the couple are considered
to be married, though bridewealth is likely to be negotiated at some point and the birth of children makes the
relationship stronger. With the traditional ceremonies no
longer being performed, the couple may choose to have a
church wedding or a civil wedding before a magistrate.
In the past marriage was universal, but today some
women are choosing single parenthood over marriage.
Women who are widowed (and most women are at least
by the time they reach their sixties) would ordinarily be
“inherited” by a male of the late husband’s family. With
younger women, such a marriage might become a
“real” marriage; with women past childbearing it might
involve little more than the purification rituals. Today,
however, some widows are rejecting widow inheritance.
Sometimes younger women choose their second husband
themselves, and some older women (especially older
women who are “saved,” i.e., born-again Christians) are
rejecting remarriage altogether and with it the possibility
of domination by a new husband.
It is unusual to find a man, even a very old man,
without a wife, since wives tend to be younger (sometimes much younger) than husbands and a polygamously
married man will not be left without a wife even if one of
them dies. In any case, a man (widowed or not) is free to
marry when he wishes, constrained chiefly by his ability
to pay bridewealth and (especially if he is old) attract a
woman willing to marry him.
Other Cross-Sex Relationships
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The rule is simple: a husband rules his wife. If she is disobedient or behaves improperly (in his view), he may
punish her. A man may beat his wife—though he should
not seriously injure her—in order to teach her proper
behavior. If he comes home late, he expects his wife to
get up and cook him a meal and have sex with him, even
if he is drunk and disgusting. He cannot cook his own
meal, for it is shameful for a man to cook when a female
(even a small girl) is present. Though women often do
men’s work, especially in a husband’s absence, men
rarely do women’s work.
Marital relationships run the gamut from hostile and
abusive to companionable and cooperative. The former
may involve marital rape and frequent beatings; the latter
may even see a husband going into the wife’s kitchen
(usually off-base for men) to discuss something with his
wife or make a mutual decision.
Spouses usually sleep together, though a polygamist
sleeps with each wife in turn if he is treating his wives
fairly. He should also give equal presents to his wives, eat
each wife’s food, and pay school fees for the children of
all his wives. The first wife a man marries is his senior
wife; she is the manager of junior wives. Relationships
among cowives may be congenial and cooperative, or
antagonistic and hostile; whichever, their atmosphere
pervades the homestead. Though the cultural myth is that
cowives are always jealous and quarreling, in fact many
get along well and cooperate with each other. Widowed
cowives can be extremely supportive of each other.
Sometimes cowives unite against the husband in a campaign to get him to do something they want, a situation
men dislike intensely (no doubt because they do not feel
in control).
Under customary law, divorce usually requires nothing more than for a wife to leave the homestead, though
her family may try to persuade her—or even force her—
to go back so they do not have to return bridewealth. In a
sense a woman’s first marriage is never dissolved, even if
she marries someone else. When she dies, even many
years later, the first husband or his heirs will be expected
to bury her on his land. If it is the man who wants a wife
to leave, and she is reluctant, he will pressure her to go,
perhaps by ignoring her, or a hostile cowife can make life
very unpleasant for her. Children belong to the father’s
clan; if very young, they may accompany their mother
when she leaves, but will be returned to the father when
255
they are older. In any case, few men are willing to have
another man’s children in their home, so if a woman
remarries, she is unlikely to find a welcome for her
children. If the marriage occurred in a civil ceremony, a
court case is necessary for divorce; if it is a church
marriage, then church law applies.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Respect is a fundamental value in Luyia cultures. Though
the nature of particular relationships varies with the individuals involved, relationship styles can be categorized
along a continuum ranging from hierarchical relationships of respect, formality, and restraint to relationships
among equals marked by familiarity, informality, and
joking. In the former, obedience and deference are
expected. Only the latter may include discussion of
sexual matters and lewd joking.
Respect relationships occur in hierarchical dyads, as
between parents and children. Fathers are the most
respected, especially by daughters, while relationships with mothers are more free and emotionally
warm—though one must always respect one’s mother.
Disobedience to a parent is a failure of respect—a
challenge to the status and authority of the senior person—
and is quickly punished. Mother–son and mother–
daughter bonds tend to be strong throughout life. Many
women say they “fear” their fathers-in-law (husband’s
father and his brothers and male cousins) and avoid them
by not shaking their hands (the usual greeting), sitting in
their presence, eating with them, and so on. Sons-in-law
are similarly respectful to mothers-in-law. The one person
in the parental generation with whom junior females (and
males too) may have a joking relationship is a father’s
sister (senge), who can be a confidant and sexual adviser.
In contrast, brothers and sisters—linked by the
bridewealth that makes the marriages of each possible—
enjoy a more free and open relationship. Sisters often go
to their brothers when they have marital difficulties and
other problems. A woman may be very free with her
brothers-in-law, who are potential husbands if her
husband dies and she is inherited by one of them. Even in
these relatively egalitarian relationships, however, sex
and age make males “more equal” than females, and
older “more equal” than younger.
Grandparents and grandchildren are usually very
free with each other. They make sexual jokes and, if of
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Abaluyia
opposite sex, call each other “husband” and “wife.” A
grandfather and grandson call each other “brother,” and
grandmother and granddaughter call each other “cowife.”
Traditionally, children slept in their grandmother’s house,
listening to her stories and advices, and many still do.
However, grandmothers’ roles as educator and adviser
have diminished greatly as schools, churches, and other
institutions provide alternative ideas and practices that
grandmothers (usually with no formal education or much
experience outside their home areas) often know little
about. Nevertheless, children enjoy being with grandparents, perhaps in part as a relief from sterner relationships.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Women in precolonial Luyia societies were far from
equal to men, though as women grew older and moved up
in kinship hierarchies, their status improved considerably
over that of young girls and young wives. Colonial policies and practices imposed sweeping changes in all
aspects of life including the household division of labor,
gender roles, and childhood socialization. Colonial and
capitalist processes swept men into wage employment
and labor migration and greatly increased women’s work
burdens, diminished their access to productive resources
and others’ labor, and transformed gender relations.
Today Abaluyia, with other Africans, are engaged in
reevaluating and renegotiating their family systems of
shared social support, their economic opportunities and
other life chances, and gender roles and relationships in a
contemporary political economy of scarcity, poverty, and
powerlessness that affects men as well as women.
NOTE
ON
SOURCES
On Luyia history, see Sangree (1986), Wagner (1949), Wandibba
(1985), and Were (1967). For gender issues, see Abwunza (1997),
Cattell (1997, 2002), Kilbride and Kilbride (1990), Mutongi (2003),
Thomas (2000), and Were (1990). Life cycle discussion is primarily from
the author’s research among Abasamia. For material culture, see Burt
(1980). Weisner, Bradley, and Kilbride (1997) has chapters on many
aspects of contemporary Luyia family life. Lijembe (1967) describes his
growing up in an Idakho community in the 1930s and 1940s. Soper
(1986) provides an overview of Abaluyia in Busia District.
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Nairobi.
Abelam
Richard Scaglion
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Abelam are also known as Abulas, Ambelam, Ambelas,
Ambulas, and various subgroup names including
Kamukundi, Mamukundi, Manjekundi, Samukundi and
Shamukundi.
LOCATION
The Abelam live on the grassy plains north of the middle
Sepik River and in the foothills of the Prince Alexander
Mountains in the East Sepik Province of Papua
New Guinea.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Owing in part to ecological variation, there are some
minor differences among Abelam subgroups. This article
concentrates on the foothills-dwelling Samukundi
(or Manjekundi) Abelam. The ethnographic present is the
early 1970s.
The Samukundi are primarily swidden horticulturalists, growing yams, taro, and sweet potatoes as staples.
Sago, coconuts, bananas, and breadfruit are other popular foodstuffs. Women do a large part of the gardening.
Agricultural products are supplemented by keeping pigs
and hunting, the latter activity being almost entirely the
purview of men. Men net, spear, or shoot large game (pig,
cassowary), while boys snare smaller game (small birds,
wallabies, bandicoots, and opossums). Villages are selfsufficient in subsistence production.
Much of Samukundi Abelam life is structured by an
elaborate ritual complex involving the growth and display
of huge ceremonial yams (Dioscorea alata), which may
attain lengths of 3 m or more. Ceremonial yams are grown
only by men. The best tubers are given to ritual exchange
partners in a competitive exchange process linking neighboring villages. To a large extent, male status, prestige,
and power are dependent on the size and quality of the
ceremonial yams grown. This yam-growing ritual complex, including its accompanying taboos during the growing season, acts to structure and synchronize many
aspects of Abelam society, including the timing of births,
the expression of conflict and violence, and the organization of trade, visiting, courtship, and marriage.
Village leaders are the well-known Melanesian “big
men,” who have no formal authority but achieve influence
through ceremonial yam-growing and success in ritual
activity, warfare, and oratory. Social organization is based
on kinship and residence. Descent is nominally patrilineal and residence nominally patrilocal, but there is much
variation. Extended families of about a dozen persons live
in small hamlets. Nearby hamlets share a kurambu or
spirit house, and together constitute a ceremonial group
of about a hundred persons. Villages consist of loose
confederations of ceremonial groups.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The culturally constructed categories of female and
male are quite distinct and clearly marked socially.
Traditionally, both sexes went nearly naked but wore
gender-associated ornamentation. Until approximately the
1950s, Abelam women were scarified at puberty. Gender
is strongly marked linguistically; it is virtually impossible
to address a person without using gender identifiers (e.g.,
you [female] ⫽ nyéné; you [male] ⫽ méné). There were no
other socially recognized gender categories apart from
male and female. Division of labor by sex is very
pronounced (see below), with many tasks considered
appropriate only for men or women. Work and ritual
activities frequently result in sex-segregated groups.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Females come of age with a public ceremony marking the
first menses. Afterwards, for a month or two, an adolescent
257
258
girl is naramtaakwa, or “decorated woman,” and wears
particular shell ornaments, follows certain taboos, and
refrains from work activities. Afterwards she is considered
to be a woman (taakwa) and eligible for marriage. Males
come of age more gradually in a series of elaborate initiation ceremonies that typically begin when they are only a
few years old and end in their twenties. However, only in
their forties, when they have acted as initiators of other
males in another ritual cycle, are they considered truly
mature men. Consonant with the gradual nature of the male
maturation process, there is no clearly marked period of
male adolescence. Males who have passed through various
stages of the initiation process are entitled to wear particular ornaments and carry string bags adorned with decorations distinctive of their initiation grades. There are specific
names for males who have completed each initiation stage.
Generically, men are called ndu; young, unmarried men are
called kwinémbéndu and recently married young men are
némbikarandu.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
From the earliest age, females and males are encouraged
to engage in gender-specific behaviors. Because small
boys spend much of the time with their mothers, there are
relatively few tasks for them to perform and most pass
their days in play. Small girls, by contrast, are expected
to help their mothers with food preparation, cooking,
watching smaller children, etc. as soon as they are able.
Thus girls continually learn gender-suitable behavior
from their female relatives, whereas boys are introduced
to gender-appropriate comportment through the male
initiation process that begins when they are only a few
years old. Initiation is divided into two broad stages, but
the details of initiation and the names and particulars of
various grades vary considerably from village to village
(McGuigan, 1992; Schroeder, 1992). However, the initiations that all boys undergo involve seclusion, physical
deprivation, beatings, and penis hazing. During the
initiation process, boys are instructed in male-appropriate
behavior and esoteric knowledge by initiated men.
All male initiation ceremonies include viewing and
learning about sacred objects generically termed mayéra.
In Neligum Village, in the first initiation grade called
Wulkétakwa (bullroarer-woman), novices are introduced
to certain sound-producing instruments (including the
bullroarer) (Scaglion, 1998). In the secondly initiation
grade, called Kutakwa (witch), which itself has several
Abelam
parts, the initiates view certain wooden carvings. It is
appropriate that the names Wulkétakwa and Kutakwa
involve female imagery, because the rituals serve to separate boys from their mothers and other female relatives
(from whom the rituals are kept secret) and to put them
in the company of other males. Food taboos are in force
during periods of seclusion and for roughly a year after a
particular ceremony. Sexual taboos are reinforced by
painful penis bleeding and penis hazing with stinging
nettles and thorny leaves and vines.
Puberty and Adolescence
For girls, socialization continues gradually up to first
menarche. Because preadolescent girls (némbataakwa)
are in the company of older female relatives throughout
the normal course of the day, continually assisting their
mothers and other women in gender-related tasks, they
receive instruction on a continuous basis. Preadolescent
and adolescent boys, on the other hand, spend much time
in the company of their age-mates (naawi) and undergoing the various grades of the secondly stage of initiation
ceremonies, collectively called Ngwalndu (ancestral
spirits). In Neligum Village, there are two grades of
Ngwalndu, the abbreviated names for which are Lu
(wooden carvings) and Puti (“discard” skin/be reborn). At
the climax of the Lu ceremony, initiates are ushered into a
chamber lined with Lu carvings in the center of the men’s
house. The culmination of the Puti ceremony involves the
viewing of a very large seated figure. Both the Lu carvings
and the Puti figure are representative of ancestral spirits.
During the seclusion period for these rituals, which also
involve various sorts of hazing, novices are instructed in
and exhorted to think about men’s activities like growing
yams, engaging in ritual activity, obtaining pigs, etc.
Attainment of Adulthood
For males, puberty generally occurs at some time during
the Ngwalndu stages of initiation, but is not marked in
any particular way separately from the initiation ceremonies themselves. Thus boys come of age collectively,
with their age-mates. For females, maturity is recognized
individually. When a young woman has her first menstrual period, she enters the menstrual hut to begin a brief
period of seclusion, and her mother or other female
relative notifies the girl’s father and mother’s brother.
After several days, a feast is prepared in the young
Gender Roles in Economics
259
woman’s honor. Her paternal and maternal relatives all
contribute yams, coconuts, and other foodstuffs. Yam
soup containing shredded coconuts is the most common
fare. Guests are given yams and other provisions to carry
away with them when they leave. While in the menstrual
hut, the young woman is instructed in women’s affairs,
and rites are conducted from which men are banned.
Traditionally, the young woman would have been scarified. A female specialist would cut standardized patterns
on her breasts, stomach, and upper arms. After several
days, the young woman emerges from the menstrual hut
and is ritually washed in public. Standing naked, she is
struck with stinging nettles and washed with special
water from the forest (banguréngu). The next day, she
leaves the menstrual hut, is decorated, and becomes
naramtaakwa. She is given a special bowl-like haircut in
which the hair is shaved from her sideburns and the back
of her neck. She wears wristlets of shell and other shell
necklaces and decorations, and carries a special string
bag with shell valuables. Traditionally, the young woman
would follow a series for taboos for some months, gradually removing the shell decorations and resuming her
normal diet, although a taboo against eating meat continued until she was married. Nowadays, she usually
resumes her normal activities after just a few days.
Traditionally, many women were married soon after
becoming naramtaakwa.
Middle Age and Old Age
The prestige of both men and women generally increases
with age so long as they remain physically fit and able to
work. Once they become too frail for effective labor, and
have to depend on the care of others, they may still be
respected for their knowledge, but their prestige declines.
However, the elderly are treated well and looked after by
their families for as long as they live.
expected to be more collaborative than argumentative. As
a result, women’s groups seem to work out problems
more efficiently and cooperatively than do men’s groups,
particularly men’s groups containing political rivals.
Boys and girls emulate the personality traits expected of
their same-sex elders.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Abelam are nominally patrilineal and patrilocal, but there
is a great deal of flexibility in these arrangements.
Members of patrilineal lineages (subclans) usually live in
close proximity, often in the same hamlet. Clans are
named exogamous totemic groups, with each clan having
a bird totem (njambu). There is also a moiety system
(ara) based on patrilineal descent. A woman remains a
member of her clan of birth even though she moves upon
marriage. This kinship idiom of social organization is
essentially a social construct. Another construct is
geographical–political, consisting of hamlets, ceremonial
groups, and village segments that can be plotted on a
map. Women normally marry close to home and in most
cases remain closely affiliated with their natal clans,
although they are also associated with the geographical–political units in which they reside. Accordingly,
children grow up with ties to both father’s and mother’s
groups. If resources are scarce in his father’s group, a
young man may choose to reside with his mother’s group,
or with his wife’s group after marriage, becoming
gradually associated with their residence group (although
he remains a member of his natal clan). In practice,
geographical–political residence groups are of considerably more importance in everyday work groups, politics,
and ritual than are the kinship-based groups.
GENDER ROLES
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
“Good” Abelam men and women are hardworking, kind,
good-humored, and generous to relatives and to others.
However, men cannot allow others to take advantage of
them, particularly in political affairs. Thus men are also
expected to be strong and forceful, exercising leadership
as circumstances dictate. In contrast, “good” women are
IN
ECONOMICS
Division of labor is an organizing principle of Abelam
society, and men’s and women’s roles are clearly defined.
Women collect firewood and water and do the everyday
cooking. Occasionally they may be assisted by males
(especially by boys) in food preparation, such as in
scraping coconuts, but the major responsibility belongs to
the women. Women are also responsible for taking care
of the children, although they may be assisted by men.
Women sew and weave string bags, which are used for
260
carrying most everything. They also care for the pigs,
which are butchered and cooked by men. Men do the
hunting, build the houses and fences, weave mats, and cut
timber. They also do the majority of arts and craft work,
including carving ritual wooden objects, painting with
clays and ochers, making spears, adzes, and other tools,
and decorating utilitarian objects.
Although division of labor is pronounced, men and
women can be seen working together on many economic
activities, each laboring at their own tasks. In gardening,
for example, women and men often cooperate. Men clear
the heavy brush and cut down trees, while women cut the
smaller or secondary undergrowth. Men build trellises
and make and repair fences. Women do the weeding as
needed and harvest most of the crops. Certain cultivars
are more associated with certain genders. Women plant
and harvest taro (mayé) and, generally, greens, bananas
and sugarcane. Men are solely responsible for the planting of the ceremonial yams (waapi) and, generally, for
planting the shorter food yams (njaambi). Taro gardening
and taros themselves are particularly rich in female
imagery and symbolism, while the ceremonial yams
personify maleness.
There is no explicit prohibition against one gender
performing most of the labor assigned to the other, but it
is thought to be inappropriate. People feel sorry for a
person forced to perform the duties of the opposite
gender, and make disparaging remarks about the laziness
of opposite-sex relatives who make this necessary. Once,
before I fully appreciated the “femaleness” of taro, I publicly remarked about planting some in my garden. Several
of my adopted female relatives immediately offered to do
it for me to spare me (and themselves) from embarrassment, and later chided me for offending them in public.
In the daily round, women and men are often separated. Wives and husbands, and less frequently brothers
and sisters, often sit together in the mornings, discussing
plans for the day as they eat a simple breakfast prepared
by the women. During the day, women may garden and
men may tend ceremonial yams, engage in ritual activities, or hunt. At times, families garden together. People
normally return to the village in the evenings. Women
usually gather around the cook houses as they prepare the
evening meal, while men gather around rest houses or
yam houses to gossip, smoke, and chew betel nut. In
small groups, men and women may eat and chat together
in the evenings, but larger groupings are usually sex
segregated. A husband and wife may sleep together,
Abelam
although the more common pattern is for women to sleep
in a cook house with the small children and for men to
sleep in yam houses or rest houses.
Occasionally, men will travel afar for extended
periods for wage labor, trade, and exchange, or to attend
ceremonies in other villages. It is less common for
women to travel away from their own villages. Ritual
activities involve gender cooperation, with each attending
to its assigned tasks. Women generally prepare the food,
which men distribute. The actual performance of the
ritual is the obligation of the men.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
For the first few years of a child’s life, the mother and
other close female relatives are the primary caretakers.
Fathers may be very loving with their small children and
play with toddlers of both genders, but their time with
them is limited. Abelam of both genders are generally
very affectionate with their children and very indulgent of
them. Disciplining small children with physical punishment is very unusual in Abelam society (Scaglion,
1999a). When discipline becomes necessary, scolding or
withholding food are more common punishments, and, as
the primary caregivers, females are usually the disciplinarians. After the first several years, men take a more
active hand in parenting boys, while women continue
their primary role in socializing girls. When young girls
are of an age to be sexually active, men again take a
strong interest in their socialization. Abelam believe that
sexual activity may be harmful to yam growth (Scaglion,
1998), and fathers and brothers are accountable for controlling the sexuality of their daughters and unmarried
sisters. Men also share with women concerns to assure
good marital matches for younger female relatives.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in public political arenas is almost exclusively
restricted to men. This is not to say that women do not
have power and do not make decisions. Women have
considerable influence over the timing of major festivals
(which depend on produce which the women control),
over reproduction and child-rearing, and over subsistence.
Relative Status of Men and Women
Often, women meet informally in gender-exclusive
groups and discuss these matters. But women’s deliberations and decisions, whether individual or collective, are
not aired in public village meetings.
In contrast, almost all of men’s political discussions
are conducted publicly in full view of both genders. An
exception involves the aforementioned men’s initiation
complex, which excludes women. But political meetings
and litigation are public. When “trouble” ( paaw) breaks
out in the village, big men call together informal meetings of concerned parties for talk, or simply show up at
the scene of a dispute. Soon a crowd gathers, and public
discussions (moots, literally “talk” or kundi) are held.
Although women are permitted to talk at these meetings,
and sometimes do so when urged, men dominate.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
If Abelam women are the primary custodians of children,
men control ritual and religion. Women have secrets
related to birth, but men have ritual secrets. Each gender
is excluded from the specialized knowledge of the other.
A supernatural life force called ngwaal (soul substance)
is thought to animate nature. This force is personified in
ancestral spirits called ngwaalndu (literally, “spiritperson” or “grandfather-person”), normally male. Initiates
are introduced to the ngwaalndu in the tambaran cult, the
series of male initiation stages described above, from
which women are barred. Each clan has an important
ngwaalndu associated with it. Other lesser supernatural
beings, such as waalé (water spirits), are equally known
to both genders. Sorcerers (kwisndu), male magicians
who learn to control ngwaal, and kutakwa, female
witches who harm others, often involuntarily, are also
thought to exist. It is thought that, when the world began
people lived in a hole in the ground near the Sepik River.
They were starving, having nothing to eat but dirt, even
though there was a garden of plenty growing above on the
earth. A dog found its way to the surface. Later its (male)
owner followed the dog, discovered the way out, and led
the people to the surface of the earth.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
While any judgment about leisure time is somewhat subjective, a formal time allocation analysis
261
(Scaglion, 1986b) revealed that Abelam of both genders
have a reasonable amount of spare time. Basic subsistence is accomplished without undue exertion.
Collectively, Abelam average about 3 hr a day gardening
and 1 hr hunting. They sleep an average of 9 hr 24 min per
day. Males spend about 10.4% of their time idle, compared with 9.5% for females; women spend about 6.0%
of their time visiting compared with 4.5% for men. Much
leisure time is spent in the company of persons of the
same gender because of gender segregation during the
workday. Both genders like to gossip, chat, and tell
stories. Men often discuss politics, yam growing, and
ritual matters. Personal relationships are more frequently
the topics of conversation for women. Much visiting
and socializing takes place after dark, when possibilities
for economic activities are more limited, and people
come together in both mixed and same gender groupings.
Abelam do not normally engage in “games” for
recreation.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
The overall relationship between Abelam women and
men has been described as one of “duality,” “balanced
opposition,” or “complementary opposition” (Losche,
1982; Scaglion, 1986a). Here, “opposition” should not
necessarily be understood as adversarial or antagonistic,
but rather as a dialectical process. In traditional Abelam
society, reproduction and ritual are equally significant.
Both are thought to be crucial for the continuance and
well-being of humanity. One is the domain of women,
and the other of men. Each gender has secrets relative
to its own realm. Each is excluded from the other’s area,
but neither seems to feel unworthy because of it. Men
are barred from menstrual (birthing) huts; women are
excluded from spirit houses. For this reason, both women
and men enjoy relatively high status in Abelam society.
Influenced by other literature, I have previously
described certain relationships between the sexes,
especially during the yam growing season, as potentially
“polluting” (Scaglion, 1986a). More recently, I have
come to understand these relationships somewhat differently, and I now use this term in a more limited sense.
In general, nubile females are powerful and can upset
the balance of certain male activities. Likewise, virile
young men can upset female activities. For this reason,
262
the genders are often segregated. “Pollution” has a
denotation of uncleanliness that is not always appropriate
for these situations. “Power” and “danger” might be more
accurate renderings of the ideas involved. For instance,
sexual intercourse is thought to be inimical to yam
growth. Thus, to insure good ceremonial yams, it is better
to keep males and females apart to avoid temptation.
Consequently, women are kept out of ceremonial yam
gardens. This taboo does not apply to all females, though.
Adolescent girls and elderly women are permitted entry
because their sexuality is not considered dangerous.
There are many areas of Abelam life in which the
rights and privileges of men and women are equivalent.
Both may inherit gender-specific property from their
relatives, for example. Both have comparable rights in
land, and both control the fruits of their labor. However,
despite the overall principle of gender equality in Abelam
society, there are some specific areas of inequality in
which women are disadvantaged. One involves a sexual
double standard. Since Abelam practice polygyny, it is not
always considered wrong for a married man to have a sexual relationship with an unmarried woman who might be
a potential marriage partner. On the other hand, it is always
considered wrong for a married woman to have an affair.
In this sense, a husband controls his wife’s sexuality, but
not the reverse. Furthermore, there is a facade of male
superiority in which women, particularly young ones, are
thought not to be able to control their own actions, and particularly their sexuality. Therefore it falls to male relatives
to look after them for their own good. In “controlling” the
unseemly behavior of their female relatives, it is sometimes considered culturally appropriate for husbands to
“discipline” their wives and for brothers to “discipline”
their sisters by employing physical punishment (Scaglion,
1999a). Therefore the greater proportion of Abelam family
violence is directed against women. Also, in legal matters,
women were traditionally considered to be “jural minors”
and were normally represented by male relatives, whereas
men routinely represented themselves. While these
patterns are changing (Scaglion, 1990), women have not
yet achieved equality in the legal realm.
SEXUALITY
Sexual relationships, while recognized as enjoyable, are
thought by the Abelam to be potentially dangerous and
harmful. Consequently, there are many occasions during
Abelam
which sexual activity is prohibited. The most important is
throughout the yam growing season, a period of roughly
6 months, when there is in fact very little sexual activity,
even between spouses. Apart from being detrimental to
yam growth, sex distracts men from their important tasks
and is therefore considered dangerous. It is also thought
that sex robs men of their strength. Men who are physically small are thought to have engaged in sexual activity
too early or too frequently, preventing them from growing properly. Some of the reasons for penis bleeding
during certain male initiation rituals include eliminating
“bad blood” resulting from sexual intercourse and limiting possibilities for intercourse for some time afterwards.
Men’s penises are routinely bled after their honeymoons
because of increased sexual activity. It is thought that
women can purge themselves regularly through menstruation; penis bleeding is the male functional equivalent.
Both genders are recognized as having sexual
appetites, and both may make sexual overtures. However,
because sex has more potential danger for men, it is
thought that women often seduce men. Because any sort
of sexual activity is equally prohibited during taboo periods, autoeroticism and homosexuality do not substitute
for heterosexual activity during these times. Owing in
part to the strict sexual division of labor, individuals of
ambiguous gender are uncommon, but nonconformity is
not socially censured.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
There are two forms of courtship and marriage, one
formal and one informal. In the formal type, a male suitor
makes his intentions known to the family of his intended
during her naramtaakwa period. The suitor will cook a
yam and send it to the girl and her family. If the family
does not approve of the match, they will send it back. By
accepting the yam, the family indicates consent for a
marriage. If the young woman likes the suitor, she will eat
the yam and the couple are formally engaged. If she
refuses the yam, thereby rejecting the suitor, the family is
shamed and they eat the yam themselves.
If an engagement results from formal courtship, the
couple are married some months later. The man’s family
prepares a house to which the newlyweds retire. For a week
they stay in the house, leaving only to relieve themselves.
Food is brought to them. When they emerge, the man’s
penis is bled and he is washed; the woman’s family washes
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
her. Subsequently, the couple observe taboos against
certain foods. They do not drink cold water or eat coconut,
meat, and certain other foods. They plant a garden
together, and when it is harvested, the taboos are lifted.
If no marriage is contracted in this formal way, many
informal arrangements are possible. The young woman’s
parents may arrange a match for her and urge her to
accept it. She may simply begin living with a man she
likes and try to get her parents to accept it. A couple may
elope. But regardless of how a couple comes together,
when a child is born some sort of formal arrangements
must be agreed upon with the woman’s family in order to
legitimize the child as a member of the man’s kinship
group. Abelam would call this brideprice, since they see
it as formally recognizing the marriage, but it also acts
as progeny price, legitimizing this and subsequent
children. A typical brideprice might be six or seven shell
rings (yéwaa), a sort of general-purpose currency. Sister
exchanges are also common. If no agreement about brideprice can be reached after the birth of a child, the trial
marriage usually breaks up, the woman returns home, and
the child becomes a member of the mother’s kinship
group. There is no prohibition against premarital sex, and
no shame attaches to a child who becomes a member of
the mother’s group in this way.
Unmarried people are allowed a great deal of sexual
freedom so long as they pursue their courtships at
culturally appropriate times and places. Both genders
may make sexual overtures or indicate an interest in a
potential partner. Marriages are thus a combination of
arrangements between families and a couple’s inclinations. Clan and moiety exogamy are observed in considering appropriate partners. Widows and widowers are free
to remarry, and often do.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The early years of many marriages, especially polygynous ones, are marked by sexual jealousies and strife
(Scaglion, 1999a), since a new cowife represents a threat
to her counterpart. New marriages of all types frequently
fail. Either gender may decide to terminate an unsatisfactory relationship. If brideprice has not yet been paid
(see above), the wife and any children return to her
family. If brideprice has been paid, the children,
especially if they are older, typically remain with their
father. If a woman for whom brideprice has been paid
263
remarries, the new husband pays brideprice to the former
husband. Women always have a place with their natal
families, where they will be looked after by their father,
uncles, and brothers. Similarly, single men will be looked
after by their female relatives. But, marriage being a
desirable state, few adults remain single.
Once a marriage becomes stable, it typically lasts
until the death of one partner. A great deal of love, affection, and cooperation can be observed between many
married couples. A wife and husband often sit together in
the morning and evening, discussing the day’s activities
and making plans for the future. Men and women
complement each other in many ways, and single adults
are thought to be incomplete.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Besides marriages, the most significant cross-sex
relationships are between brothers and sisters. Sisters
always have a home with their brothers. If their marriages
break up, if their husbands are ill, or during whatever
sorts of crises, women can count on the help and support
of their brothers who will perform all the male tasks
necessary for their welfare as needed. Similarly, brothers
can count on sisters to feed them when their wives are
away in menstrual huts and to perform whatever female
tasks are necessary for their welfare as needed. This
strong relationship provides a ready alternative to bad
marriages, such that Abelam women and men do not have
to tolerate domestic strife or abuse.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Many changes have occurred in Abelam society since the
ethnographic baseline presented here. Increasing exposure to western culture and the continuing education of
both genders has resulted in social change that has generally been in the direction of western patterns. Polygyny
is much less common today, for instance. The sexual division of labor has become less marked. At the same time,
family violence seems to be increasing. Young people’s
families have increasingly less say in whom they marry,
and marriages appear to be less stable than before. Belief
in the tambaran cult has declined, and male initiation has
264
Abelam
been abbreviated where it still exists. Many children
attend school, and the long periods of seclusion during
adolescence have been eliminated or greatly attenuated.
Ceremonial yam growing is still important, but many
taboos have been relaxed. As a result, sexual activities
are more frequent and less carefully controlled, and
the Abelam population has burgeoned. Wage labor
has opened up new opportunities for women. The
Constitution of the Independent State of Papua New
Guinea and the National Goals and Directive Principles
both explicitly recognize the rights of women in various
realms, including political behavior. It will be interesting
to see what changes in Abelam gender ideology result.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hauser-Schäublin, B. (1995). Puberty rites, women’s naven, and initiation: Women’s rituals of transition in Abelam and Iatmul culture.
In N. C. Lutkehaus & P. B. Roscoe (Eds.), Gender rituals: Female
initiation in Melanesia (pp. 33–53). New York: Routledge.
Huber-Greub, B. (1988). Kokospalmenmenschen: Boden und Alltag und
ihre Bedeutung im Selbstverständnis der Abelam von Kimbangwa
(East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea). Basel: Ethnologisches
Seminar der Universität und Museum für Völkerkunde.
Kaberry, P. M. (1940–41). The Abelam tribe, Sepik District, New Guinea:
A preliminary report. Oceania, 11, 233–258, 345–367.
Losche, D. B. (1982). Male and female in Abelam society: Opposition
and complementarity (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University,
1982). University Microfilms International 8307604.
McGuigan, N. D. (1992). The social context of Abelam art: A comparison of art, religion and leadership in two Abelam communities.
Doctoral dissertation, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.
Scaglion, R. (1976). Seasonal patterns in western Abelam conflict
management practices: The ethnography of law in the Maprik
Sub-district, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (Doctoral
dissertation, University of Pittsburgh). University Microfilms
International 77-15,238.
Scaglion, R. (1981). Samukundi Abelam conflict management:
Implications for legal planning in Papua New Guinea. Oceania, 52,
28–38.
Scaglion, R. (1986a). Sexual segregation and ritual pollution in Abelam
society: implications for data collection. In T. L. Whitehead &
M. E. Conaway (Eds.), Self, sex and gender in cross-cultural fieldwork (pp. 151–163). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Scaglion, R. (1986b). The importance of nighttime observations in time
allocation studies. American Ethnologist, 13, 537–545.
Scaglion, R. (1990). Legal adaptation in a Papua New Guinea village
court. Ethnology, 29, 17–33.
Scaglion, R. (1998). Abelam: giant yams and cycles of sex, warfare and
ritual. In M. Ember, C. R. Ember, & D. Levinson (Eds.), Portraits
of culture: Ethnographic originals (Vol. 4, pp. 277–300). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Scaglion, R. (1999a). Spare the rod and spoil the woman? Family violence in Abelam society. In D. A. Counts, J. K. Brown, & J. C.
Campbell (Eds.), To have and to hit: Cultural perspectives on wife
beating (2nd ed., pp. 137–152). Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. (Adapted and reprinted from Pacific Studies, 13, 537–545.)
Scaglion, R. (1999b). Yam cycles and timeless time in Melanesia.
Ethnology, 38, 211–225.
Schroeder, R. (1992) Initiation and Religion: A case study from the
Wosera of Papua New Guinea. Fribourg, Switzerland: Studia
Instituti Antropos.
Armenians
Armine Ishkanian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
In Armenian, Armenia is called Hayastan and Armenians
are known as Hai.
LOCATION
Armenia is a small (29,800 km2) landlocked mountainous
country (37.2% mountains) in Eurasia. The remainder of
the land is a combination of pastures (29.8%), woodlands
(12%), farmland (3.2%), and arid plains (17.8%). The
highest peak is Mount Aragats, with an elevation of
4,090 m, and the largest body of water is Lake Sevan. The
Arax, Akhurian, Medsamor, Razdan, Azat, Arpa, Vorotan,
Debed, and Agstev are the primary rivers running through
Armenia. Armenia shares a border with Georgia to the
north, Azerbaijan to the east, Iran to the south, and Turkey
to the west. Armenia has a population of approximately
3.8 million (3,754,100) and a territory of 11,490 square
miles. The largest city in Armenia is the capital, Yerevan.
The population is 96% Armenian and the other 4% is
made up of various minorities: Russians, Kurds, Yezidis,
Greeks, Jews, and Assyrians. Armenian (Hayeren) is the
official language and the official state religion is the
Armenian Apostolic Church (Hayastaneayts Ekeghetsi).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The 3,000 year history of Armenia has been filled with
a continual cycle of wars, violence, and loss of independence, interspersed with brief periods of renewal,
renaissance, and autonomy. When the last independent
Armenian kingdom of Cilicia collapsed in 1375,
Armenians became scattered around Anatolia, Persia,
Transcaucasia, and other smaller communities across
Europe and South Asia. Over the next five centuries
Armenia would be successively ruled by the Mameluks
of Egypt, Mongolian Tartars, the Ottoman Turks, Safavid
Persians, and the Russians.
By the 19th century and in the first two decades of
the 20th century most Armenians were peasants living in
the Ottoman Empire, where they were identified as the
Ermeni Millet (the Armenian Community, which was
identified upon a religious basis), and in the Russian
Empire under a system of polozhenye (statutes). In these
scattered communities the Armenian Apostolic Church
was the center of communal life and, along with the family, it was the only means by which a distinct Armenian
ethnic and religious identity was maintained. Extended
families (gerdastan) were patriarchal with patrilineal
descent. The family was not only the source of identification and support for Armenians, but it also served as a
protector during periods of famine, feud, and warfare. In
villages, homes were built directly next to one another to
provide greater security. Children were taught to honor
and obey their elders and to develop a sense of duty,
obligation, and loyalty to the family and other relations.
Obligations and loyalty were first to family members,
kinsmen, friends, neighbors, and lastly strangers
(Hoogasian & Matossian, 1982).
Extended families were a part of exogamous clans
and wives could be taken from different clans within the
same village or from clans in other villages. Clans were
led by the patriarchs of extended families, and within
these families power and responsibilities were divided
according to age, gender, and position within the family.
Children and new wives (especially those who had not yet
given birth to a son) had the lowest status. In some areas
in Armenia a girl lost her individuality after marriage, and
in some villages these new brides (nor hars) had to
remain mute for several years after marriage as a sign of
their modesty and respect for their elders. In many families, the young woman was never addressed by her
Christian name, but was always referred to as “bride”
(hars). These women could only communicate with their
older children and husband if no one else was around.
If they wished to convey a message to anyone else in
the family, including their mother-in-law, they would
tell the children who would then act as messengers.
The release of the bride from her muteness was at the
265
266
discretion of the mother-in-law who could do so as early
as the birth of the first male grandchild or as late as
10 years after the marriage. This muteness reinforced the
lower status of women both within the household and in
the larger community. The symbolic subordination of
girls began as early as birth when the umbilical cords of
girls were buried in the front yard to insure that the girl
would grow up to be a respected homemaker (dahn
deegeen), whereas the umbilical cord of boys was buried
outside the fence to insure his success in worldly affairs
and that he would not grow up to become a homebody.
At that time, it was also common for people to express
condolences at the birth of a daughter. During this period,
women’s only path to power was if they lived long
enough and had sons in whose homes, in old age, they
would be regarded as powerful matriarchs (Hoogasian &
Matossian, 1982).
Between the 15th and 19th centuries there were
many unsuccessful attempts by individuals and organized
groups to reestablish an independent Armenian state.
These national aspirations eventually led to organized
resistance and rebellion beginning in the late 19th century, when Western-educated Armenian intellectuals
pursued an agenda for national independence, individual
freedom, and political rights. However, beginning in
1915, the nationalist struggle evolved into a struggle for
sheer survival as the Ottoman Turks began a systematic
genocide that included mass killings and the deportation
of over 1.5 million Armenians living in the Ottoman
Empire. Those who survived fled east and settled in
and around Yerevan. On May 24, 1918, Armenian
troops were able to hold off the Turkish eastward
advance at Sardarabad, a town 25 miles east of Yerevan,
and 4 days later the Armenians declared their independence and established the Republic of Armenia. The new
government attempted to establish a parliamentary
democracy, but its efforts were complicated by the severe
internal and external difficulties facing the nation after
World War I. Independence came to an abrupt end in
December 1920 when the Soviet Red Army marched into
Yerevan, annexing Armenia to the Soviet Union
(Hovannisian, 1967).
When Armenia became part of the USSR, the Soviet
government, in an effort to consolidate its power, began
to challenge the traditional values and “break the cake of
custom” (Matossian, 1961). Breaking the cake of custom
meant that Communist/Soviet culture was to supersede
Armenians
all ethnic cultural beliefs and traditions. Since the family
was and continued to be the focus of conservative
resistance against the new communist regime, the
communists sought to “emancipate” women and develop
loyalties outside the traditional patriarchal household.
In the Soviet constitution the political equality of the
sexes was mandated and women were given the same
rights as men.
The Soviet period brought many changes: arranged
marriages were banned, divorce became easier to obtain,
the state provided free health care (including abortions),
childcare, and even counseling for women. In the 1920s
several women’s organizations, including the Women’s
Division of the Communist Party (Kinbazhin) and the
Commission for the Improvement of the Way of Life of
Women (Kanants Kentsaghe Barelavogh Hantznazhogove),
were established to encourage allegiance to the state and
promote its communist projects.
Women were encouraged to enter public life, and by
1931 more changes had begun to take place to facilitate
the entry of women into the work force. Many nurseries,
kindergartens, and day-care centers were established to
allow women to work. Consequently, in the 1930s
women constituted a larger proportion of the work force
than had previously been the case. Beginning in the 1930s
girls were also entering technical and higher educational
institutions in large numbers. The state attacks upon traditional families and gender roles only abated during and
immediately after World War II, since the Soviet Union
had suffered great human and material losses. To recoup
these losses, the state encouraged couples to have many
children (four or more) and rewarded them with subsidies
such as free milk, living stipends, and better homes.
Although women made gains in public life, attitudes
about the family and women’s role within the family
continued in a traditional patriarchal pattern.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, women
have suffered many setbacks in the political and economic realms. It is now apparent that gender equality in
the Soviet Union was due to legislative quotas rather than
to changes in beliefs about gender roles and relations.
Although there has been a return to patriarchal beliefs,
contemporary attitudes regarding gender roles are a
mixture of Soviet and pre-Soviet beliefs, as women who
enjoyed certain rights and privileges during the Soviet
period have been reluctant to surrender them in the
post-Soviet period.
Cultural Construction of Gender
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
267
OF
GENDER
In Armenia, men and women are believed to be physically
and psychologically different. The culture recognizes both
genders as equally important to the survival, preservation,
and success of the nation and people (azaga bahbanoom).
Although the Armenian homeland is referred to as the
“Fatherland” (Hayrenik), the symbol of the nation is
“Mother Armenia” (Mayr Hayastan).
As far back as the pre-Christian period, the family was
considered to be the most sacred of all institutions and an
individual’s identity and social status depended on their
belonging to a particular family and their role within that
family (Zeitlian, 1992). Family is still perceived as being of
the highest value in its capacity as an intermediary, located
between the individual and the state. People in Armenia
feel isolated, economically vulnerable, marginalized, and
unable to advance socially, economically, or politically
without strong family ties. Armenians explain the centrality of family in the culture as being due to the fact that
Armenia was not independent for many centuries and that
in this absence of statehood, the concept of “Nation-as-aFamily,” a sui generis “familism,” evolved in Armenian
society (United Nations Development Program, 1998).
Within the family men are supposed to be strong,
assertive, decisive, and firm in their convictions and
opinions. The father, as the head of the household, is
considered the “keeper of the household flame” (dahn
odjakhi tsooghuh bahoghuh) because he goes out into the
world and works and/or fights to protect his home and
family. The mother, meanwhile, is considered to be the
hearth (odjakh) of the home because she selflessly tends
to the home built by and supported by her husband. The
gender roles and stereotypes ascribed to men and women
within the family apply in the public sphere as well,
where men are the leaders and decision-makers in the
political, economic, and military realms, while women
are the self-sacrificing nurturers and supporters of the
nation (i.e., the family writ large).
Attractive women are those who are slender, have
clear unblemished skin and large eyes and lips, and are
chaste, reserved, soft-spoken, and modest. Although many
women in Armenia have careers and work outside the
home, their primary concern should be their family.
Women should refrain from being aggressive, overly
ambitious, and assertive as these are “masculine”
(dkhamartkayin) traits and mark a woman as being a
“manly woman” (dkhamart-geen). Attractive men are
those who are confident, self-sufficient, hard-working,
and ambitious, and who are able to provide for their
families and protect their honor.
Following Sovietization, Armenians adopted
modern forms of dress and men wore pants and suits,
while women wore dresses and skirts with hemlines
below the knee. Until the mid-1990s, most women did
not wear pants or shorts. In the post-Soviet period young
women in Yerevan have adopted a more liberal style of
dress, and they wear shorts, pants, miniskirts, and highor platform-heel shoes. Rural women and women in
provincial cities continue to abstain from wearing pants,
shorts, and short skirts. Men in both rural and urban areas
wear pants all year round and short- or long-sleeve shirts.
Gender over the Life Cycle
Childhood (mangootyoon) is supposed to be one of the
happiest times in a person’s life. Boys (dghaner) and girls
(aghchigner) are both given a great deal of love and care.
In both rural and urban areas children are cared for by
their mothers, grandmothers, and less frequently their
older sisters or aunts. Although most couples wish to have
a boy as their first child, once born, girls are treated
equally; they do not receive less food, love, or care than
boys. In urban and rural areas girls and boys attend school
until age 17 and are expected to learn to read and write.
Since Armenia has a 98% rate of literacy, it is clear that
the majority of children successfully acquire these skills.
In urban areas a university degree is considered a part of
a woman’s dowry, and a university-educated woman is
considered a more desirable spouse and mother because
she will be able to educate and discipline her children better and assist her husband to advance politically. In rural
areas the majority of men and women marry immediately
after graduating from high school and very few villagers
attend universities or technical schools.
The passage from childhood to adolescence
(badanegootyoon) is not publicly marked, but following
puberty boys and girls begin to act and to be treated by
differently by their parents and others.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Mothers and grandmothers are primarily responsible for
early child-rearing. During infancy and early childhood,
268
breast milk or food is not withheld from children of either
sex. Depending on the socioeconomic and educational
background of the family, girls are often given music and
art lessons. Urban Armenian families strive to bring up
their daughters to be cultured and courteous young woman
who will one day become respected homemakers (dahn
deegeen). Regardless of whether or not a woman has a
career, and many urban women in Armenia have careers,
a woman must also be a good homemaker and be able to
keep an immaculate home, cook traditional meals, and
bake exquisite pastries. In rural areas, where women do not
pursue careers, girls are taught to cook, clean, grow vegetables, and tend to the farm animals; they are not given
music and art lessons. In urban areas, boys are encouraged
to play sports and chess, and to take music lessons. In rural
areas, boys work as shepherds or help their fathers in the
fields. Boys in urban and rural areas are discouraged from
helping their mothers with household chores because
parents believe that this will make them less masculine.
Parents and grandparents purchase most of the toys
children play with. Girls are given dolls, teasets, paint
sets, and craft sets, while boys are encouraged to play
with building sets, cars, trucks, toy swords, and bows and
arrows. From the age of 6, boys are allowed to play
outside in the communal yards ( pag) or public parks with
other boys, but from a very young age girls are discouraged from spending too much time playing in the
communal yard and often spend most of their time
indoors. When girls are allowed to play in the yard and
parks, they are supervised and only allowed to play
games such as hopscotch or jump rope with other girls.
Children of both sexes are expected to behave and
listen to their caretakers, but boys are expected to be more
adventurous and to engage in more daring activities.
When boys misbehave, parents explain their sons’
misconduct by saying, “He is a boy and this is how he
learns about life” (dgahe, ayt bes e sovorom gyanki
masin). Although the type of disciplinary methods used
varies among those families who believe in and practice
corporal punishment (generally spanking) to those who
prefer to discipline children verbally, girls are generally
spared corporal punishment and instead are verbally
reprimanded and “shamed” by their parents. Very often a
girl who misbehaves or does something which is thought
to be unseemly for an Armenian girl, she is told, “It is
shameful” (amot e). By constantly emphasizing the
importance of being proper and avoiding “shameful”
behaviors, girls learn to censor their actions in order to
Armenians
avoid being reprimanded by their parents. Parents rarely
use this strategy in disciplining boys, and there are very
few behaviors that are considered “shameful” for boys.
Puberty and Adolescence
In adolescence (badanegootyoon) boys have more
freedom than girls. A girl’s freedom of movement,
already limited in childhood, is further restricted in
adolescence. Teenage girls are expected to come home
directly after school and to keep their parents informed of
their whereabouts at all times. If a girl has older brothers,
she is expected to obey them as she obeys her parents and
to respect their opinions. Meanwhile, a boy regardless of
age, is expected to protect his sisters and to guard their
honor, which often means fighting with other boys.
During adolescence, boys begin to smoke cigarettes and
drink alcohol. Since there is no enforced legal drinking
age, boys spend a great deal of time drinking with friends
in cafés and bars. Increasingly, girls are also beginning to
spend time in cafés and bars either with their boyfriends
or with a group of girlfriends. However, girls generally
frequent bars and cafés where parents, neighbors, or
relatives will not see them and, unlike boys, avoid smoking in outdoor cafés and abstain from drinking alcohol.
Adolescent girls are constantly warned about the
dangers of being harassed by boys or men on the streets
or of being kidnapped and forced into a marriage by an
undesirable suitor. This leads many girls to travel in
groups to avoid unwanted advances.
Attainment of Adulthood
Graduation from high school at age 17 marks the entry of
adolescents into adulthood. Attainment of adulthood
means that a young man or woman is able to marry and
attend college, but it does not mean that he or she may
move out of the parental home. Single men and women
in both rural and urban areas rarely live independently of
their parents; they only move out of the parental home
after marriage. Therefore, while graduation from high
school marks the end of adolescence, marriage marks the
entry of women and men into independent adulthood.
Men and women stay with their parents because of financial and cultural considerations (i.e., it is shameful to live
alone). When living with their parents, adult children are
not expected to contribute to the family budget, except
when one or both parents is unemployed or deceased.
Gender Roles in Economics
269
Middle Age and Old Age
Until recently many urban Armenian men and women
looked forward to middle age because it meant that they
could retire and spend more time with their families and
on leisure activities. As pensions have dwindled and
social services have disappeared in the post-Soviet
period, women and men no longer look forward to retirement, because it has come to mean impoverishment and
powerlessness. However, in rural areas, where patriarchal
traditions are more prevalent and where pensions were
never an integral part of one’s retirement income, women
still look forward to middle age because it brings a gain
in stature. In old age, men and women become equal.
Elders are respected in Armenian society and are referred
to by family members and strangers as “father” (hayrig)
or “mother” (mayrig).
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Men are expected to be decisive, outspoken, clever,
ambitious, and firm in their decisions and opinions.
A weak man is one who bends to his wife’s will and is
unable to make his own decisions in life. Such men are
ridiculed and not respected. Women, on the other hand,
are supposed to be patient, kind, modest, sweet-tempered,
and flexible. Although Armenian women are not
assertive, they have developed strategies that allow them
to pursue their objectives without appearing to be aggressive and confrontational. Armenian women often feign
agreement in order to avoid an argument, and use
subterfuge and subtle manipulation to achieve their
objectives. Avoiding conflict is a priority for Armenian
women, and from a very early age girls learn how to
achieve their goals surreptitiously.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The family is structured around and relies upon the
presence and active participation of both parents. Divorce
is taboo and discouraged in Armenia except in cases
where there is an extremely abusive husband or when a
wife is caught having an extramarital affair. Until
recently, most married couples in urban areas lived with
the parents of the groom. If there was more than one son
in a family, the eldest lived with the parents while the
younger sons rented or bought their own homes. Since
1991, between 700,000 and a million people have
emigrated from Armenia; departing families often sell
their homes. Young married couples are beginning to take
advantage of the better housing market to purchase their
own homes, and few couples now live with the husband’s
parents, except in rural and more traditional urban families. It is still shameful for a man to move in with his
wife’s family. Such men are called “house groom” (dahn
pessa) and are thought of as being weak.
Relations with both matrilineal and patrilineal kin
groups are maintained, and the relationships individuals
have with matrilineal and patrilineal kin varies from
family to family. Generally the closest relationships are
between same-sex cousins.
For most urban women, their nonkin gender-related
social groups are comprised of their friends from high
school and college. Until marriage, most young urban
women maintain these relationships and consider their
friends as confidantes and helpers. After marriage, young
women have a difficult time maintaining their friendships
because of the double burden of housework and work
outside the home. After marriage, women develop friendships with their female neighbors. Female neighbors
drink coffee together, smoke cigarettes, and trade gossip.
Neighbors also often lend money to one another, baby-sit
one another’s children for short periods of time, and help
each other in preparing feasts.
Nonkin gender-related social groups for men are
comprised of their friends from high school and college,
as well as their friends from their neighborhoods (tagh)
and/or yards. Men are expected to maintain their closer
friendships well beyond marriage because these friendships serve as the basis for political advancement and
business networking.
In rural areas most women only associate with
same-sex cousins and aunts until marriage, and with
neighbors and their husband’s female cousins after
marriage. Rural men associate with their uncles, same-sex
cousins, and neighbors both during and after marriage.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In rural areas there is a gendered division of labor among
men and women. Women in the household do much of the
work on the farm: they milk the cows, feed the chickens
270
Armenians
and pigs, bake the bread, make cheese, butter, and yogurt,
and tend to the small household gardens. Although men
work the large agricultural lands, build structures, and dig
wells, the division of labor is uneven because women
work throughout the year while men only work in the
planting and harvest seasons.
In urban areas, there is also a gendered division of
labor. Depending on a man’s educational and socioeconomic background, he can choose from a variety of
professions including law, medicine, academia, politics,
government, engineering, law enforcement, trade, and
service work. With the same socioeconomic and educational restrictions, women can choose from the following
professions: law, medicine, education, academia, engineering, and the arts. In the home, women are responsible for all household chores, including cleaning, cooking,
laundry, shopping, and making preserves. Men, however,
are only responsible for maintaining the family’s
automobile.
With the transition to a market economy, many men
and women have become involved in trading. Both men
and women have become shuttle traders, traveling to
foreign countries to bring back goods to sell in Armenia.
Traditionally, men were the ones who were absent from
home because of work, trade, and warfare. With the globalization of the economy, the number of women who
leave Armenia to work abroad as labor migrants or shuttle
traders is increasing. Both men and women can equally
inherit land, money, and property.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Women are the primary caretakers and motherhood is
seen as being sacred (soorp). “Sacred” motherhood refers
to the Armenian belief dating from Armenia’s preChristian past when the primary deity in the pantheon
was Anahit, the goddess of fertility, morality, and maternity (Zeitlian, 1992). The role of mothers in Armenia
has traditionally been to transmit and perpetuate the
Armenian culture, Christian faith, values, and traditions.
As the hearth (odjakh), pillar (syun), and light-giving
lamp ( jrak) of the family, the Armenian mother is
expected to love and nurture her children and to sacrifice
her own needs and desires for those of her family. Women
who are not mothers are pitied because they have not
attained the highest status a woman can achieve.
Meanwhile mothers who do not sacrifice their own needs
for the needs of their own children are looked down
upon and criticized. The mother–child relationship is
the closest relationship among Armenians, regardless
of the gender of the child, and mothers act as confidantes
to both their sons and daughters. They view their
sons as their protectors (bashban) and their daughters
as their helpers (ogknagan). In Armenia, the most
common pledge is “mors arev” which means “upon my
mother’s life.”
Fathers are mainly concerned with providing for
their children, protecting them from strangers, and disciplining them. Fathers strive to set a positive example for
their sons and endeavor to make them physically and
mentally strong. They also assist their sons to advance
politically and in their chosen careers. Fathers make
every effort to protect their daughters and to provide them
with a good education and cultural training. Children are
supposed to love their mothers and to fear their fathers.
While this is true in rural areas and in most patriarchal
households, in most egalitarian families children love
and respect both parents.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men dominate in the realms of politics and government.
There are very few women involved in over 50 political
parties registered in Armenia and, following the 1997
parliamentary elections, there are only eight women in
the National Assembly. Armenians believe that women
are not supposed to be involved or interested in politics
because politics is believed to be “men’s work” and inherently corrupt. Therefore most women are less inclined
toward an active involvement in politics and public life
except for the nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have emerged in the post-Soviet
period. Even though women are active in the NGO sector,
where they lead two thirds of these organizations, they
have not yet been able to advance in the realm of politics
and in the Armenian government.
Although a number of Armenian women fought and
defended their homes during the Turkish Genocide of the
Armenians (1915–18) and the Nagorno Karabagh conflict (1988–94), men have traditionally been the warriors
and military leaders in Armenian society. Currently,
women do not serve in the Armenian army.
Sexuality
GENDER
271
AND
RELIGION
Until the adoption of Christianity as state religion in
301 CE, Armenians worshipped various deities. The primary
deity in the Armenian pantheon was the goddess Anahit,
a morally pure and virtuous goddess who nurtured her
worshippers, provided them with guidance, and comforted them in their times of need. After Armenia adopted
Christianity, Armenian society became more patriarchal
and the beliefs related to Anahit were transferred to Mary
(Astvatazin) (Zeitlian, 1992, p. viii). Today, Armenian
women play a marginal role in the Armenian Church, and
although there are male and female saints, Armenians do
not have any monastic orders for women nor are there any
female priests.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
In rural areas single and married men have more leisure
time than women. They either spend this time with
friends and male kin in family gardens, where they are
served food and drink by the women of the household, or
at the village social club playing chess, checkers, dominos, or backgammon. In rural areas women spend what
little leisure time they have catching up on secondary
chores (e.g., sewing, knitting) or, if they are relatively
well off, watching television, drinking coffee, and gossiping with neighbors. In urban areas, men also have
more leisure time than women because they do not have
the double burden. Urban men, depending on their
socioeconomic status, spend time at friends’ homes,
cafés, or restaurants eating, drinking, and networking.
Older men, or men who cannot afford cafés or restaurants, spend their time in public parks reading newspapers, playing dominos or chess, or discussing politics.
In the home, men spend their leisure time watching television (news or sports events) or playing cards, dominos,
or backgammon with their sons and male neighbors or
friends. Urban married and single women spend their
leisure time drinking coffee and gossiping with female
friends and neighbors in their homes. Increasingly,
however, single women are beginning to spend their
leisure time at cafés with their girlfriends. During weekends families spend time on country outings or visiting
relatives. On weekends and weekday evenings married
urban couples also visit each other and spend time
playing cards, drinking wine, vodka, or cognac, and
discussing politics, arts, and culture.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Men have a higher status than women in the economic
and political spheres. In the family, men are seen as the
“head of household,” and in rural areas or more traditional urban families men are the primary decisionmakers. In urban educated middle-class families men and
women participate equally in decision-making.
Although women are also able to voice their
marriage choices and initiate divorce, men have more control over their sexuality and marriage choices. However,
in educational matters men and women are equal, because
their choices are heavily influenced by their parents who
not only advise their children regarding career choices,
but also assist them in getting accepted by a university.
SEXUALITY
Women are supposed to be virgins at marriage, but men
are expected to have had some sexual experience prior to
marriage. How they gain this experience varies from
individual to individual; some boys have their first sexual
experiences with prostitutes, others with their girlfriends.
From puberty, children are taught that sex is a private act
between two people, and that it is a dangerous act that is
only sanctified by marriage. Sexual experimentation is
forbidden and children are warned about the dangers of
sex and masturbation. Because sex education courses are
not taught in schools and parents are too ashamed to
speak with their children about sex, girls and boys learn
about sex from their friends and older siblings. Although
premarital sex is still considered taboo, following
independence more and more young Armenian couples
are having sex before marriage.
Within marriage, sex is considered a marital duty
(amoosnagan bardaganootyoon); men are obligated to
satisfy their wives and women are obligated to have sex
with their husbands whenever the husband wishes it.
Armenians believe that if a man’s sexual needs are not
fulfilled, he may have physical problems and become
272
Armenians
seriously ill. Although extramarital affairs are not
condoned for either gender, men are usually forgiven
while women are punished, stigmatized, and, in extreme
cases, murdered. If a man learns that his wife is having
an extramarital affair, he must divorce her or risk losing
his position and respect in society. Homosexuality, crossdressing, and cross-sex identification are considered
deviant behaviors.
status of sacred motherhood. “Infertile” women in rural
areas either leave their villages and move to cities, where
they attempt to remarry, or they live quiet unassuming
lives with their parents. In some cases, especially in urban
areas, “infertile” women marry widowers and begin to
care for their husband’s children.
COURTSHIP
In the Armenian Church marriage ceremony, the bride
promises to be obedient (hunazand) to the husband and
the groom promises to protect (der gangnel) his bride.
Rural husband–wife relationships are more traditional
and patriarchal, as the wife is expected to be submissive
and obedient. While there is still a degree of inequality in
most marriages, many urban marriages, particularly those
among educated couples, are far more egalitarian than
marriages in rural areas or in lower-working-class uneducated urban families. Married couples share a bed and
they eat their meals and spend their leisure time together.
Divorce, except in cases of infertility or infidelity,
is to be avoided at all costs for the sake of the children.
If there is a divorce, children younger than 10 stay with
mothers and those that are older than 10 may live with
either their mother or their father. The court decides and
grants custody of the children in divorce cases.
Women who are divorced or widowed describe
themselves as ander (without a protector) and believe that
they easy targets for the sexual advances of other men.
Very few divorcées or widows remarry and in the few
instances when they do, they tend to marry divorced men
or widowers.
AND
MARRIAGE
Armenians are monogamous and there are very few
arranged marriages. Most couples in urban and rural
areas marry for love. In rural and urban areas, most couples marry shortly after both families agree on the union;
long engagements are rare. Men initiate courtship and
marriage. Courtship leading to marriage begins when a
young man, who is in love with a young woman, goes to
her house and asks her father for his daughter’s hand in
marriage (aghchig oozel). If the father agrees, the young
man and his relatives bring gifts, including jewelry,
cognac, and flowers, to the bride-to-be and celebrate
the couple’s khosgap (tying of words). Following the
khosgap, the couple date for a few weeks or months and
either become engaged (nshanvel) or immediately marry
(amoosnanal). Given the difficult socioeconomic conditions in Armenia, most couples no longer follow these
steps and formalities in the courtship process. Instead,
most couples nowadays marry shortly after receiving the
bride’s father’s blessing. Couples can marry in a church
or at the state office for marriages. Either partner can call
off the engagement by returning or asking for the return
of the engagement ring (nshani madani).
In rural areas, villagers maintain the “red apple”
(karmir khnzor) tradition in which the groom’s family
must display the bloodied sheets from the marriage bed
on the day after the wedding. However, urban residents
do not maintain this tradition; they perceive it as backward (hedamnatz).
Many couples in Armenia begin to have children
soon after marriage. If a couple fail to have a child during
the first 2–3 years of marriage, families on both sides
become concerned. In rural areas and in some urban
families, a couple’s infertility is blamed on the wife and
it often leads to divorce. Women who are divorced
because of infertility rarely remarry. They are pitied and
looked down upon because they are unable to achieve the
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The closest cross-sex relationship is between brothers
and sisters. Brothers are considered their sisters’ protectors, and sisters are the caretakers and nurturers of their
brothers.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Although in the post-Soviet period there has been a partial
return to patriarchal beliefs, contemporary attitudes
References
273
regarding gender roles are a mixture of Soviet and
pre-Soviet beliefs as men and women in Armenia attempt
to redefine their roles with the family and in society in a
constantly changing socioeconomic and political climate.
REFERENCES
Hoogasian, S. V., & Matossian, M. K. (1982). Armenian village life
before 1914. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Hovannisian, R. (1967). Armenia on the road to independence.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Matossian, M. (1961). The impact of Soviet politics in Armenia.
Amsterdam: Leinden Press.
United Nations Development Program. (1998). 1998 Armenian Human
Development Report: The Role of The State (p. 17). Yerevan,
Armenian: UNDP Press.
United Nations Development Program. (1999). Armenia: Women
Status Report—The Impact of Transition. Yerevan, Armenia:
UNDP Press.
Zeitlian, S. (1992). The role of Armenian women in the Armenian
revolutionary movement. Los Angeles: Hraztan Sarkis Zeitlian.
Aymara
Winifred Mitchell
LOCATION
The Aymara live throughout the rugged altiplano (high
plain), a series of semiarid basins surrounding Lake
Titicaca, in southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia in
South America. There are approximately 2 million
speakers of the Aymara language in this region.
The altiplano lies between two massive ranges of the
Andes and is described as one of the world’s most difficult environments; its altitude ranges from 3,800 m above
sea level at the lake shore to over 4,100 m near the
foothills. The soil is loose and spongy, allowing moisture
to disappear rapidly from the surface, but rainfall agriculture is possible due to adequate summer precipitation.
Its tropical location at only 18⬚ south of the equator
moderates the climate and makes the growing season
sufficient even at such high altitude. Lake Titicaca is the
highest navigable body of water in the world, with an area
of 8,290 km2. Its shoreline of over 700 km is lined with
Aymara villages. The people use the lake for various
economic pursuits including fishing, collecting fodder for
livestock, harvesting reeds for basketry, and commercial
transport.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Economy and Settlement Patterns
Highland Aymara communities consist of scattered sod
house compounds with tin or thatch roofs separated by
tiny plots of agricultural and pasture land. On their landholdings of 5–20 ha, families coax a living using laborintensive agriculture and careful animal husbandry. The
most common household unit is the nuclear family, but
the more traditional patrilineal extended family unit is
also quite common. Many people raise most of what they
need to eat, relying on the staple crops of potatoes,
quinoa, and barley, and keeping a few pigs, chickens, and
guinea pigs and small herds of sheep, cattle, and the native
Andean species of llama and alpaca. Communities with
access to some land at lower elevations (below 3,200 m)
also produce corn. There is little surplus for sale in some
regions, but others specialize in producing onions or
other small cash crops or in fattening cattle for sale.
Drought, flood, hail, and frost are all possible impediments to successful farming, so families and communities
must be well organized and resourceful in managing
production.
Centuries of adaptation have resulted in distinctive
subsistence patterns, social organization, and ideology
that enable the Aymara to survive in their harsh environment. Special subsistence patterns involve the use of
multiple ecological zones (from lowland agricultural
zones that produce such crops as corn, coffee [Collins,
1988] or coca to regions that are too high for agriculture
and are used exclusively for herding llamas and alpacas).
The people have developed labor-intensive agricultural
techniques such as cultivating between rows of crops and
building up planting areas to facilitate drainage and
protect the plants. Their inheritance pattern, which
divides the land among all heirs, results in each farmer’s
numerous tiny plots being dispersed through multiple
micro-ecological zones to maximize chances of some
successful harvest.
The Aymara have traditionally relied on the reciprocal labor assistance of the kindred for many agricultural
tasks, but modern dependence on temporary wage labor
to generate cash has reduced the extent of this ancient
system (Brown, 1987; Collins, 1988). Fictive kin are
also important sources of mutual help. Compadrazgo
(literally, co-godparenthood) is established among adults
for assistance with various ceremonies and special events,
and the relationship, once entered into, remains important
for life.
Social Organization
In pre-Spanish times (and through the colonial period in
some regions) the Aymara were organized by ayllu, a
local patrilineage that held land communally. The political and economic head of the ancient ayllu kept careful
274
Cultural Construction of Gender
account of usufruct landholdings and periodically
redistributed land and produce when a family had more
than its share.
The modern Bolivian and Peruvian republics have
legislated bilateral inheritance, with all children inheriting. This inheritance pattern functions somewhat as a
haphazard redistribution pattern. Landholdings are
rearranged and consolidated somewhat by allocation of
plots according to the marriage choices of the children.
For example, a family may include a plot of land in a
particular daughter’s inheritance because she marries a
man whose family has a contiguous or nearby plot.
Today’s communities are the rough equivalent of the
ayllu in the spatial arrangement of land and families.
They are organized politically with a group of elected
officials who lead periodic town meetings, settle minor
disputes, and represent the community to the larger
political units of districts, departments, and the nation.
The rural Aymara are a socioeconomic class
occupying the bottom of a hierarchy rigidly controlled by
the tiny minority of whites (mestizos) who live in the
altiplano, and they are allowed only slight participation in
the social and economic affairs of Peru and Bolivia. The
land reform and revolutions of the 20th century have
removed the legal statutes preventing the upward social
mobility of the Aymara which were still operative in the
1930s. Today, the barriers are economic, cultural, and
ethnic. People who speak little Spanish and read less and
who wear indigenous dress are marked as country bumpkins. They are targets of discrimination, rudeness, and
financial trickery by people from more sophisticated or
powerful social classes.
Communities vary in their character, depending on
their size and their proximity to the lake or the foothills,
roads, market towns, or the cities of La Paz, Bolivia, or
Puno, Peru. Rural villages may have fewer than 300 people,
often descended from a few founding families (Brown,
1987; Mitchell, 1986), but can have as many as 800 or
more people (Lewellen, 1978). Communities closer to
roads and market centers are larger; for example, Compi,
the community in Bolivia studied by Buechler and
Buechler (1971), had a population of 1,230 during their
study period. The people were involved in production
of onions as a cash crop and in many market ventures
in nearby La Paz. Since the 1980s, many lake-shore
communities have become involved in (and prospered
considerably from) the international smuggling of coca
products between Bolivia and Peru.
275
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
Male and female are the basic gender categories for the
Aymara, who see the two genders in an ideal balance
referred to as the chachawarmi, the man–woman, a cooperative household unit that is the base of Aymara culture.
The formation of a household by a same-gender pair is
not evident in the countryside, and homosexuality is
denied or not referred to directly. A woman who prefers
not to marry a man might stay with her parents, or she
might adopt children and form an independent household. A man who does not marry a woman would only
have the option of remaining with his parents or leaving
the village.
Gender identity is expressed by clothing and
hairstyle throughout life. A baby’s apparel may indicate
gender by the shape of the cap if the family is wealthy
enough to make such a distinction. Boys ideally wear the
typical Andean chullo, a knitted cap with ear flaps, while
a girl’s knitted cap is more conical with a soft floppy edge
and brighter colors. Other baby clothes are quite unisex,
with swaddling rags and open diaper skirts for all
toddlers. Beyond infancy, headgear always differs by
gender, with feminine and masculine styles of brimmed
hat added as the children become marriageable adolescents. (Men simply put their brimmed hats over their knitted caps.) Perhaps the best-known Aymara woman’s hat
is the bowler worn by the women of the Titicaca basin,
but styles vary by region.
Boys and men wear trousers which may be homespun and short for daily work or purchased and tailored
for a more formal or urban look. Ponchos or Europeanstyle coats may be worn. When men carry burden cloths,
they are slung over one shoulder. Men’s colors are mostly
the muted earth tones of undyed wool or the gray or black
of manufactured clothing. Boys sport very wild tangled
mops until the first haircut, after which their hair is
always kept short.
Girls and women wear the pullera, the distinctive
full skirt of the Andean woman, and wool sweaters or
blouses. An adult woman’s costume is completed with a
shawl and burden shawl tied around both shoulders for
carrying everything from babies to potatoes. Everyday
wear may be plain undyed natural wool, but dress-up
clothes are bright and colorful. As soon as it is long
enough, a little girl’s hair is captured into the two braids
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Aymara
that all traditional adult women wear. Adult women tie
their waist length braids together across their backs with
a wool tassel and are very proud of their long hair as a
statement of their femininity. Except for girls’ school
uniforms, any deviation from the pullera and long braids
indicates that a girl or woman is hoping to take on a less
indigenous identity.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
All phases of Aymara life are explicitly gendered.
A baby’s gender is its first identity after birth. Even
gestation is believed to be different, with boys requiring
8.5–10 months and girls only 7 or 8 months (Buechler &
Buechler, 1971, p. 21). The word for baby, wawa, applies
to both genders, but the new infant may be described as
either a “little man” or “little woman.” The child will not
receive a formal name until its first haircut as a toddler
when the soul is considered to be firmly established in
the body. Until then, various gender-appropriate names
may be tried out. Neither the soul nor the first haircut
and naming ceremonies are differentiated by gender,
however.
Beyond infancy, children are referred to by the terms
yokalla (boy) and imilla (girl). La Barre (1948) collected
a detailed list of other age-grade terms, but these are not
in common use today. Puberty is not publicly marked by
ritual, but true adulthood is ceremonially signaled by
marriage.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Children of both genders are welcomed at birth, but
Aymara women say, “A girl is only born to suffer.”
Everyone agrees that a family with only daughters would
be cursed, but that all sons would not be so bad.
Demographic figures show better survival rates for boy
infants than girls, suggesting that they may receive
better care.
“As soon as they are able to run about steadily,”
(Tschopik, 1951, p. 164) both boys and girls are put to
work. They fetch water, herd sheep, and care for younger
siblings. Girls as young as 6 years are left to baby-sit
alone in the house and may be expected to have meal
preparations underway when adults return.
Children are assigned to help their same-sex
parent more often as they get older. Men expect sons of
age 10 or older to work beside them in the fields or travel
with them for temporary wage labor, and girls of the same
age are mastering the jobs of adult women such as cooking, knitting, spinning, and livestock care. A distinction
that emphasizes the greater importance of boys is that they
are referred to as “working” beside their fathers in the
fields, but girls “help” their mothers. Punishment for
slacking responsibilities is harsh, but children find some
time for games and fun, especially while they are herding
together in groups of boys and girls. Most women say that
men should administer physical punishments, but adults
tell stories of being beaten by either parent for not doing
assigned chores.
Both boys and girls attend school, but girls are
more likely to be kept at home intermittently to help
their mothers and to drop out of school sooner. Thus
boys become more fluent in Spanish, the language of
education, politics, commerce, and city life.
Families may give away or loan a child to a relative
or compadre who may take the child to work for them in
another rural community or in town. “Extra” daughters
are more likely than sons to be given away in this manner.
Children are often harshly treated at the hands of their
new guardians. They sometimes run away or may be
eventually rescued by their parents.
Puberty and Adolescence
Transition to adolescence is not officially or ritually
marked in Aymara communities, but there are new terms
for the stage: waynito (teen boy) and tawako (teen girl).
Children’s work changes into adult gendered tasks with
responsibility increasing by age until a person in the late
teens is doing all the work of an adult. Adolescents drop
the games of childhood and associate more with young
people of their own genders. They also begin to attend
fiestas splendidly dressed in adult-style clothing. Young
people begin to look at each other from afar with laughter
and flirtatious looks.
During adolescence, boys often accompany their
fathers or other male relatives to seek temporary wagelabor jobs. They may be apprenticed in town to learn a
trade such as baking, pottery-making, or bricklaying.
Girls may also leave home with a female relative or
fictive kin (but usually not their mothers who stay at
home) to work or to be engaged as a maid with a family
in town. These absences may become permanent
out-migrations, but usually begin as temporary.
Personality Differences by Gender
Attainment of Adulthood
To become fully adult in Aymara society, a chacha (man)
or warmi (woman) must be married. In fact, Hardman
(1976) observes that the Aymara word for marriage,
jaqichasiña, translates literally as “to cause oneself to
become a person.” In the countryside, no one lives alone.
Young men who are not married will live with their
parents; widowers either quickly remarry or live with
relatives who can help raise the children. A woman may
become an independent householder (and hence a functional adult) without a husband if she has children to care
for. These may be her own biological children, orphaned
siblings, or adopted children. As a householder she is
viewed with the same autonomy as other heads of household. Without this independent household status, young
people may be well into their twenties and still be seen as
not fully adult. For young men, military service is often
also part of their transition to adulthood (Buechler &
Buechler, 1971, p. 35).
Once married, young adults begin to develop some
independence from their parents but, like marriage itself,
this is a process. Newlyweds who live with the husband’s
parents (the most common pattern) are subject to the
direction of the older adults; the bride is given all manner
of domestic chores by her mother-in-law and is admonished not to be lazy and just sit around caring for her
baby. Her husband and father-in-law may be encouraged
to beat her to emphasize her inferior status and teach
her to obey. The young man works with his father on the
family lands or other economic pursuits.
After 2 or 3 years, the couple receive some or all of
their inheritance from both parents and begin to construct
a separate house compound. Ties with parents ideally
remain close enough that family members frequently
drop in unannounced for a meal or to borrow a tool.
An increasingly popular alternative to this patrilocal postmarital residence is a neolocal option in which the young
couple relocate (or elope) to an urban or coastal location
where one or both already have contacts or employment.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle age is a time when householders achieve their
highest level of prosperity (although they are still quite
poor by standards outside the countryside). Children are
grown up enough to contribute real labor power to the
family, so they can obtain the most production from their
277
lands, livestock, or even wage-labor and market efforts.
Their ayni (reciprocal labor relationships) are well established and maximally productive. Middle-aged men take
on positions of responsibility in their communities and
sponsorship of prestigious fiestas. Middle-aged women
have informal reciprocal networks to call upon for help
with cooking and hosting such events and other economic
exchanges they may require. They can also expect to have
new daughters-in-law who live with them and provide
almost an indentured servant level of domestic service
(Mitchell, 1998). Women who may have borne nearly a
dozen children experience the relief of declining fertility.
The achievement and prestige of middle age slowly
give way to the reduced responsibilities and lower prestige of old age. As children mature and marry, older
adults begin to retire from their farming responsibilities
and turn more land over to their children. A favorite child
will marry but remain in the parents’ household and eventually take responsibility for caring for the aging parents.
Some older people of both genders continue to be active
in managing small amounts of their land, caring for
grandchildren, or serving the community as a yatiri, or
shaman. When they relinquish these active roles, old
women may help care for babies, tend the kitchen fire,
gather brush for tinder, or sit quietly spinning or knitting.
They seldom offer their opinions in family discussions
and may be ignored if they do. Very old men, fewer in
number, often complain that they are not receiving proper
respect from their grown children, but their complaints
seem to fall on the deaf ears of their busy middle-aged
offspring.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Allowing, of course, for individual variation, Aymara
men’s and women’s personalities reflect their different
status and roles. Women in the countryside are usually
very shy, quiet, and deferential to men and to outsiders.
They are easily moved to tears as they speak in muted
tones about the hardships of their lives. Men, on the other
hand, are suitably respectful to people of the more
powerful social classes, reflecting centuries of oppression, but they are more dominant and outspoken within
the community and household. A virtuous woman is
hardworking, and her hands are never idle. She may defer
278
to her husband, but she can be quite sharp-tongued and
impatient with her children and rough with her livestock
without being criticized. Being completely nonneighborly and hostile to passers by is not condoned, however.
Men and women earn respect in very different ways.
A man is considered successful if he prospers at his
agricultural or other work efforts and is dependable, especially with regard to his ayni obligations. Women do not
derive prestige from these economic spheres unless they
are independent heads of household. A married woman is
respected for her submissiveness to her husband and her
resourcefulness in keeping her family together against all
the challenges of rural poverty, including an abusive or
drunken husband. An informal village hierarchy honors
the most long-suffering women (Mitchell, 1993).
The manner of urban market women contrasts
sharply with that of the country people. The market chola
(someone of indigenous background who has become a
town dweller and aspires to a higher social class) is all
business. Her voice can be strong and argumentative and
her body language likewise as she assertively pushes her
way onto a bus or truck, elbowing people energetically to
make room for herself and her bundles (Buechler &
Buechler, 1996).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Aymara kinship terminology is a modified Hawaiian type
which gives equal importance to relatives on both sides
of the family (Carter, 1964). The patrilineal heritage of
preconquest times is evident in today’s preference for
virilocal postmarital residence, but children of both
genders inherit land from their parents under modern law.
Land is not strictly passed mother to daughter or father to
son but is instead allocated to offspring according to
parents’ favoritism and considerations such as quantity
and location of children and their spouses.
Cooperative relationships are very important for
Aymara women and men, and most of these are with
people of the same gender. Men maintain ayni (reciprocal labor relationships) with other men and keep careful
track of labor and cash contributions from one another.
A woman head of household may also have ayni relationships with male relatives who plow or harvest for her,
but this labor would be repaid with the loan of a team, not
with a woman’s work, which is not considered equal to a
man’s. Women maintain many reciprocal exchanges for
Aymara
food and services, such as raising a cow for another
woman or weaving for her or helping her cook at a fiesta,
but these exchanges are not considered ayni, just mutual
help. As such they are more flexible than the specific job
equivalencies required in traditional male exchanges
(Brown, 1978).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Division of labor by gender is the basic organizing
principle of work in an Aymara community. Aymara
women say, “The woman is the soul of the family;
without her a hearth grows cold and husband and children
scatter.” She is responsible for the myriad domestic tasks
of subsistence farm life. As in many cultures, a woman’s
tasks are more numerous than a man’s. His work is
defined by agriculture and other economic pursuits, while
she does everything else including helping her husband
with planting, weeding, cultivating, and harvesting. The
man is considered to be doing the real work, with a wife
or older sons assisting. A woman may delegate some work
to children of both genders, but without their help, she
must do everything from watching livestock and hauling
water to cooking, caring for children, and maintaining the
house, with any otherwise unoccupied moments filled
with spinning, weaving, or knitting. It is interesting that a
16th century writer observed that Andean women were
“so fond of spinning” that they carried their spindles
everywhere and spun as they walked, just as they do today.
Some women learn to weave beautiful complex
textiles, while others make only simple homespun or do
not weave at all. A few men weave the long simple bolts of
bayeta, homespun wool, which is then dyed and sewn
(also by men) into various utilitarian articles of clothing.
During the agricultural off-season, many Aymara
men migrate temporarily to the cities and lowland plantations for wage labor. The cash income from this work
(often only U.S.$1000) supplements the farm family’s
subsistence living, enabling them to purchase supplies
such as kerosene, sugar, flour, and some processed foods
and manufactured items. Men who migrate may be heads
of household or young unmarried males. Some unmarried
women also go to cities to work, often as domestics, but
married women with homes and farms in the countryside
remain there. As in many parts of the developing world,
this arrangement results in a heavy but undervalued
workload for these women.
Gender and Religion
279
More women than men participate in marketing,
another source of cash. They usually travel to a nearby
weekly market and buy and resell goods, such as wool or
fruit, and occasionally sell or barter farm products, livestock, or textiles. Women who only work in the markets
1 or 2 days a week earn much less money in a year than
a man can bring home from a few months of wage labor,
reinforcing the traditional notion that it takes a man to
really bring wealth into the household. The market work
of women who leave the countryside and make a career
of marketing in the city is much more lucrative, however
(Buechler & Buechler, 1996).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Parenting is mostly a woman’s job, but major physical
discipline may be left to fathers. Children nurse through
their toddler years, and women carry their children
wherever they go. Both men and women are affectionately
tolerant with children, their own or those of relatives, but
will sharply correct their own children or grandchildren
when they are not quiet or respectful. Neither gender
cultivates an especially nurturing style with children.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Public leadership is a male domain in Aymara rural
communities, but women are occasionally elected to a
public office. Some jobs, like the Promoter of a Mother’s
Club, are designated for women by outside agencies.
Traditionally, men were the sponsors of fiestas, with their
wives helping with food and hosting, but today a woman
who is a head of household may take on the host role for
a day of festivities. One representative from each household speaks at community meetings, so these speakers are
mostly, but not exclusively, men. Women tend to sit on
the sidelines at community meetings and throw in short
frequent comments, while men stand in the center and
make longer speeches.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Aymara cosmos is a world where balance must exist
between the natural and supernatural, earth and sky,
men and women, and life and death. As the chachawarmi,
the man–woman, a married couple complement each
other’s efforts and achieve a successful balance that will
foster the success of their household. Indigenous and
Catholic beliefs are intertwined, with some flourishing
regions of Protestantism as well (Lewellen, 1978).
The Earth Mother, Pachemama, rules the land and its
fertility and live-giving qualities. She is not automatically
generous and nurturing but must be paid for her bounty.
Ceremonies and offerings at harvest and during events that
mark life transitions, such as the child’s first haircut or the
construction of a new house, include burying of offerings
(e.g., the blood of sheep slaughtered for the harvest
festival, or the child’s shorn locks) to “pay the earth.”
Also, any drinking of alcohol is preceded by a libation to
the Earth Mother. The Catholic Virgin Mary often serves
as her syncretic symbol. For example, the grieving Mother
of Christ who follows his coffin through the streets in
Good Friday processions (which is during autumn in the
Southern Hemisphere) is seen by the indigenous people as
a symbol of the earth entering into its bereft winter period.
The male counterpart of the Earth Mother is the
Christian God-the-Father who occupies the heavens and
may mete out punishments for wrongdoings through
Santiago, the Lightning Spirit (Mitchell, 1993) or other
means. He too requires appeasing with ceremonies when
his displeasure is expressed. This punishment seems to fit
with the more prominent role in punishing children and
women that men have, but the earth is also a stern
taskmistress, not to be trifled with. The two deities do not
seem to have much interaction, but complement each
other with separate roles just as earthly men and women
should do. It seems to this writer that the Earth Mother’s
role is more ubiquitous in country life than that of the
male Father-God, a fitting parallel to the gendered
division of human labor.
Place spirits and ghosts also have roles in Aymara
culture and can be quite malign, stealing souls and causing sickness and death. Such spirits (Tios, which translates
as “uncles”) exhibit male characteristics like fighting with
their victims.
An Aymara shaman, the yatiri or wise one, performs
ceremonies to appease these various deities and spirits
and to divine their reasons for causing trouble. Herbal
curers (Spanish: curanderos) also treat illnesses that
require less supernatural intervention. Most rural yatiris
and curers are men, but a woman may (theoretically) also
be called to this role by visions and dreams, just as a man
280
Aymara
would be. There are many women practitioners of magic
and curing among the La Paz market women with Aymara
roots (Buechler & Buechler, 1996). Pastoral workers
trained by the Catholic or Protestant missionaries are
men. The male bias in ceremonial roles, especially in the
countryside, is clearly parallel with human politics.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
The yearly round of farming tasks occupies the time and
energy of each household member and leaves little time
for leisure or recreation, especially for the ideal warmi
k’apawa, the hardworking woman. When people gather
to relax and eat together, it is often as members of work
parties. Some of these work groups, such as a threshing
team, might be exclusively male, but other tasks such as
harvesting or sorting potatoes could include both genders.
Similarly, fiestas and the earth-paying that accompany
them are attended by both genders. Both men and women
dance at fiestas, but dancers are grouped together by
gender more than they are arranged as individual dancing
couples. Music-making is a male leisure pursuit that
women rarely engage in except as singers. Festive occasions are a time to relax and talk, laugh, and eat together,
but women are kept busier with cooking and have less
real leisure than men.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Male dominance pervades rural Aymara society. Men
dominate in the economic, political, and religious spheres
both within the household and in the community and its
relations with the outside world. Rural men are more
fluent in Spanish and better educated, averaging more
than twice as many years in school as women. Even when
inheritance for both genders and moderate premarital
sexual freedom for both are taken into account, the
balance of cultural custom still seems to favor men.
The force of male dominance is felt most strongly
by married women. Women may express their opinions to
their husbands about household economic matters, but
ultimately defer to a man’s choices. Wife-beating is
nearly universal in rural areas, but varies in intensity
depending on a couple’s relationship. Women often say
that they were beaten more by their husbands as young
wives “for not obeying” or for not having cooked food
ready at whatever time he arrived home. They may say
that their husbands rarely beat them, except when they
have been drinking. The suffering ethic of Aymara
women dictates that the best course a woman can take
in an abusive marriage is to stick it out and keep her
family together. The emotional and economic risks of
running away, giving up their married status and (often)
leaving their children, are so great that few women
attempt it.
Early in the marriage process, a young woman may
choose to leave an excessively abusive husband and
return home to her parents without shame, even with a
child. She may marry someone else or remain a single
mother in a semi-independent relationship with her
parents. Similarly, widows have the choice of whether
to remarry, and very few choose to do so for fear of
mistreatment of themselves or their children. They may
be poor and subject to some sexual harassment, but they
are free to function as heads of household more or less
equally with their male peers.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is not openly discussed. In describing an ideal
marriage partner, both men and women mention personality rather than physical traits. Despite this apparent
prudishness, sexual relations are a normal part of life and
not shameful or polluting. Children engage in sex play
and adolescents seek sexual opportunities, especially
during fiestas when their parents are less vigilant.
Adolescent and young adult women and men may exercise moderate sexual freedom without the dire consequences that a middle-class town dweller might face. A
young woman is said to have “found her husband” when
she is suspected by her friends of having a sexual
encounter, but she is not required by society to marry
this partner if their marriage process does not proceed
successfully. The marriage ceremony is often an acknowledgment of the couple’s already established relationship,
rather than its beginning.
Rural people are very modest, never totally undressing, even when changing clothes or bathing. Modesty
extends to bodily functions which are done at a distance
from the house. However, personal modesty is not an
issue when it comes to women’s breasts. Women nurse
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
their babies and toddlers on demand in a no-nonsense
manner wherever they happen to be.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
As the previous sections have indicated, marriage is the
key to full adulthood in rural communities. The beginning
of marriage may not be marked by ceremony because
marrying is a process that takes approximately 3 years
during which at least one child is born. Described in a
classic article by Carter (1977), the marriage process
begins with sirvisiña, living together. Young men and
women have considerable independence in choosing a
spouse and in deciding whether to break off an unsatisfactory relationship early in sirvisiña. If their families
agree with the relationship, they acknowledge it by
ceremonially locking the couple up together for the night
in a vacant room. Couples can also be pushed into marriages that their parents desire by a surprise lock-up.
Bride capture, practiced through at least the first half of
the 20th century, involved the kidnapping and transport of
a young woman (often with her relatives’ assistance) to
the lock-up site. While less common than mutual choice,
this method of beginning marriages also resulted in
long-term commitments.
Parents prefer that their children marry people from
the same or nearby communities—people whose families
are known or related, but not too closely. Young people
are strongly discouraged from marrying while working
out of the community, and many comply with their
parents’ desires. Marriage within one’s own or a nearby
community is the ideal among people who continue to
reside in the countryside.
The newly married couple usually live with the
young man’s parents, but living with the bride’s family or
alternating between the two also occurs. Bride and groom
frequently visit their birth families, even if in a nearby
community, so brides are not forcibly isolated from their
original homes. Isolation of new brides did occur
formerly with bride capture. Increasingly, couples choose
neolocal residence, especially if they are employed away
from the community.
As previous sections indicate, remarriage is possible
for both genders, but much more common for men. The
informant’s statement that a “woman is the soul of the
family” accurately explains a widower’s need to seek a
new wife. Widows, on the other hand, have achieved the
281
adult status of married woman and mother, and often
choose to stay single.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Increases in population, out-migration, communication,
and transportation throughout the 20th century have
drawn rural people into more relationships with the rest
of the world. The Bolivian and Peruvian Aymara were
as affected as their compatriots by the political and
economic turmoil of the late 20th century. Terrorism in
Peru, the growing, trading, and processing of coca and
cocaine in the Bolivian lowlands and its trade through
Peru, dizzying rates of inflation, and many changes in
governments have affected many aspects of Aymara life
including gender roles.
The increase in women’s work with so many migrating family members is as noteworthy among the Aymara
as elsewhere in the developing world. Economies that are
based on seasonal wage labor would flounder without the
unacknowledged work of the stay-at-home women who
keep the work force provisioned. The balance of the
chachawarmi, the man–woman dyad, must always be
renegotiated to maintain the rural subsistence part of the
national economy. Returning migrants may bring mestizo
cultural notions of female frailty and worthlessness which
conflict with the notion of cooperation between genders
(Collins, 1985) and with the warmi k’apawa value—the
hardworking woman who keeps her family together at all
costs. While this arrangement is not an equal partnership
between spouses, it is the basis for women’s self-respect.
On the other hand, some ideas that transfer to the
country from the city have a positive effect on women’s
status. Rural education campaigns are increasing
women’s literacy, Spanish fluency, and knowledge of
their civil rights. Peruvian Aymara women believe that
these campaigns have lowered the rate and severity of
family violence in their communities. Girls who spend
more years in school than their mothers did become interested in life outside the rural areas. They wear school uniforms instead of pulleras and sometimes decide to adopt
town clothing styles and cut their long hair. Marketing
also enables rural women to step out of their submissive
roles and avoid what they consider the traps of male
dominated campo life (Buechler & Buechler, 1996).
282
Aymara
When the colonial chroniclers’ accounts of indigenous customs are compared with those of 20th century
ethnographers, the cultural persistence is striking.
However, the key to Aymara cultural longevity may be its
flexibility. The Aymara have never been isolated in their
rural villages—the outside world has required their labor
or produce since pre-Inca times. Gender roles can shift
and readjust to the new demands of a global economy as
they did in the past with changes in inheritance and fiesta
sponsorship. The rapid changes of recent decades will
take a while to reach a new equilibrium in campo households, but some new version of the chachawarmi balance
is bound to emerge during the 21st century. How such
changes may affect the relative status of men and women
will indeed bear watching.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the hospitality of
the Aymara villagers and the support of the Fulbright
Commission and the InterAmerican Foundation for
fieldwork in Peru.
REFERENCES
Brown, P. F. (1978). Fuerza por fuerza: Ecology and culture change
among the Aymara of southern Peru. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Brown, P. F. (1987). Population growth and the disappearance of
reciprocal labor in a highland Peruvian community. Research in
Economic Anthropology, 8, 225–245.
Buechler, H. C., & Buechler, J.-M. (1971). The Bolivian Aymara.
New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Buechler, H. C., & Buechler, J.-M. (1996). The World of Sof ’a
Velasquez: The autobiography of a Bolivian market vendor.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Carter, W. E. (1964). Aymara communities and the Bolivian agrarian
reform (University of Florida Monographs in the Social Sciences
No. 24). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Carter, W. E. (1977). Trial marriage in the Andes? In R. Bolton &
E. Mayer (Eds.), Andean kinship and marriage (Special
Publication No. 7, pp. 177–216). Washington, DC: American
Anthropological Association.
Collins, J. L. (1985). Gender, labor markets, and peasant productions
in Southern Peru. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC.
Collins, J. L. (1988). Unseasonal migrations: The effects of rural labor
scarcity in Peru. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hardman, M. (1976). Andean women [film essay]. In Faces of
change: Bolivian series. Hanover, NH: Wheelock Educational
Resources.
La Barre, W. (1948). The Aymara Indians of the Lake Titicaca
Plateau. Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association,
No. 68.
Lewellen, T. C. (1978). Peasants in transition: The changing economy
of the Peruvian Aymara: A general systems approach. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Mitchell, W. L. (1986). Male and female counterpoint: Gender relations
in an Andean community. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of Colorado, Boulder.
Mitchell, W. L. (1993). Lightning sickness. Natural History, 102(11), 6–8.
Mitchell, W. L. (1998). Women’s hierarchies of age and suffering in an
Andean community. In J. Dickerson-Putman & J. K. Brown (Eds.),
Women among women: Anthropological perspectives on female
age hierarchies. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Tschopik, H. (1951). The Aymara of Chucuito, Peru. Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 44.
Bakairí
Debra Picchi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Alternative names are Bacaeri, Bacaery, Bacairi, Bacayri,
Bakaeri, Bakaery, and Bakaire.
The Bakairí economy is dependent on a combination of
gardening using slash-and-burn horticulture, farming
with modern technology, working for wages, and receiving government stipends. By far the most significant
aspect of their livelihood are the household gardens that
they make in the forests that lie along the rivers in the
reservation. Harvests provide the Indians with such staples as manioc, as well as other important foods such as
rice, corn, banana, squash, and beans.
LOCATION
The Bakairí are located in the state of Mato Grosso,
east of Rondonia, central Brazil, South America (see
Figure 1).
Figure 1. Rondonia and Mato Grosso in relation to other Brazilian states.
283
284
Bakairí
Their traditional diet is augmented with rice grown
using industrial agricultural techniques in the cerrado,
the prairie-like part of the reservation. In 1980 FUNAI
(the National Indian Foundation in Brazil) began a development project on the reservation (Picchi, 1991). They
showed the Indians how to use tractors, fertilizers, and
pesticides. The harvests are distributed to households in
the reservation, and the surplus is sold in nearby towns
for cash. Other sources of cash include nearby ranches
where men work for wages and government social
service stipends received by some families. The Bakairí
also raise cattle herds. In the middle of the 20th century,
FUNAI agents began cattle herding in the reservation,
and in the 1980s FUNAI distributed these herds to indigenous families.
Traditionally, the Bakairí depended upon headmen
to lead their communities. Headmen used to inherit their
titles from their fathers, but during the era immediately
following contact when large numbers of Bakairí died
from diseases, such successors became more difficult,
and ultimately impossible, to find. Today, consensual
leaders emerge from the ranks of the villagers as they are
needed. Those men with large extended families are more
likely to assume leadership roles. Headmen use a variety
of techniques to lead their communities, but in general
they are more persuasive than authoritarian.
In 1999 about 500 Indians inhabited seven villages
in the reservation. The largest settlement is called
Pakuera which is the name for the Paranatinga River
on whose banks the village is located (Figure 2).
The 20th century was marked by dramatic changes in the
population size and in the number of settlements. In
the first part of the century, the Bakairí migrated into the
Paranatinga River area from the headwaters of the Xingú
River. Epidemic diseases caused their population to
decrease, a trend that was exacerbated by out-migration to
towns in search of wage-paying jobs. During the second
half of the century, better medical attention became available and the number of Indians increased. Simultaneously,
as a result of a downturn in the regional economy in the
Figure 2. Bakairí villages in reservation.
Gender over the Life Cycle
285
1970s and 1980s, some Bakairí returned to the reservation to live. Between 1979 and 1989, the number of
people in the reservation grew by 36.8%, from 288 to
394 individuals. Between 1989 and 1999 it increased by
26.9%, from 394 to 500. The growing number of people
in Pakuera contributed to tension and conflict, and eventually to the division of this settlement in the 1980s and
the formation of other villages (Picchi, 1995).
The Bakairí used to practice polygyny. However,
FUNAI agents and missionaries actively discouraged this
tradition, and the Indians now practice monogamy. Their
marital unions tend to be village endogamous, but some
marriages with Indians from other reservations and with
non-Indians takes place. The Bakairí also prefer
marriages to occur within extended families. When such
a marriage occurs, it is between cross-cousins, defined as
first cousins who are children of opposite-sexed siblings
of parents. Immediately after marriage, couples live with
the wife’s family until the birth of their first child. Then
the couple build their own house, usually near one or both
of their parents’ homes.
The Bakairí are in regular contact with Brazilians.
They frequently leave the reservation to travel, work, and
make purchases. Some Indians have family members
living outside the reservation, with whom they visit. In
1999 the reservation was informed that the government of
Mato Grosso planned to provide electricity to remote
parts of the state, such as the region in which they lived.
They reported looking forward to having televisions and
to watching soccer programs.
The Bakairí practice animism—the belief in supernatural spirits who inhabit the world. These spirits can be
contacted and even manipulated by shamans, who are
village semispecialists capable of curing diseases and
practicing sorcery. According to the Indians, guardian
spirits of animals and fish exist. The Bakairí make huge
oval and square masks to represent these guardian spirits,
and men dance inside them during the dry season. Other
village festivities celebrate such events as garden
harvests.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Bakairí recognize two genders: male and female.
Since the 1930s, they have worn clothing, having adopted
the typical regional Brazilian style of dress. Men wear
shorts or slacks and shirts, and women wear skirts or
dresses. Men’s hair is cut short, and women let their hair
grow long. Recently some younger women have started
to wear make-up. Red and black body paints are used by
both men and women during festivities. Adults used to
file their front teeth into points, but they have discontinued this tradition (Petrullo, 1932). Scarification of the
arms and legs of individuals takes place. When young
women begin to menstruate and young men are in their
teens, they undergo the procedure of scraping the legs or
arms until blood is drawn with an instrument called a
paiko, which is made of fish teeth. This tradition is continued into adulthood to strengthen the body. Although
height–weight studies found no evidence of obesity in the
reservation, the ideal body image of the Bakairí man or
women tends to be more robust than the North American
body image. Strength and endurance are admired in both
men and women.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Bakairí recognize infancy, childhood, coming of age,
young adulthood, and oldness. The coming-of-age period
is punctuated with a puberty ritual for both men and
women. Young adulthood is publicly marked with a
marriage ceremony in which the men of the village escort
a young man to the home of bride and hang his hammock
underneath hers. Most work is done by adult men and
women; however, children and elderly people make
important contributions to the household economy.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
There is no preference for either male or female children,
and the sex ratio in the reservation is remarkably even.
Indigenous informants point out the importance of having
the same number of young men and women for marriage
purposes, indicating that they have a general awareness of
the significance of balanced sex ratios. Bakairí children
are typically indulged, although corporal punishment of
children occurs. Disciplinary action tends to be verbal,
with public shaming, although physical punishment of
adolescents in the form of scraping the body with fish
teeth or hitting takes place. As is common in many societies, girls are encouraged to play a quieter and more
demure role, while boys are allowed to be louder and
more aggressive. Mothers care for infants, and both
parents contribute to raising older children. Siblings,
286
grandparents, and other extended family members
participate in the process. Older women past the age of
child bearing frequently adopt children of relations.
By the time a child is 4 or 5, it is considered toilet
trained and is expected to excrete outside the house. It is
at this juncture that children begin to learn what will be
expected of them in life. Little boys begin by learning to
clean the home—a skill that will later be transferred to
the garden. They get milk from the stable where the cows
are milked by older men, collect firewood, help their
fathers hunt and fish, make their own bows and arrows
with which they kill lizards and birds, and run errands. By
the time they are 12 years of age, they can stay out nights
and learn the mask songs. Girls help their mothers get
water from the river, make fires, carry firewood from the
garden, wash clothes, and prepare food. They learn early
in life to process bitter manioc and to turn it into manioc
flour. They also learn to spin cotton into twine, with
which they make hammocks, and to thresh rice with huge
wooden pestles. Some Bakairí households now have
sewing machines that are powered by a foot pedal. Older
girls learn to make shifts for themselves and other family
members out of fabric purchased in town. Both boys and
girls run errands for their parents. Children go to school
in the morning for part of the year. They learn to read and
write in Portuguese and to do some arithmetic. Prior to
the 1980s, teachers were Brazilians who spoke no
Bakairí, but since the 1980s all teachers in the reservation
are young Bakairí men and women.
Puberty and Adolescence
During their teens a few of the better male students, who
have families that are supportive of them leaving the
reservation, are chosen to study in boarding schools in
nearby towns. Women are rarely chosen for this. These
young men study in the equivalent of North American
high schools and sleep and eat in religious hostels where
nuns and priests supervise them. They come home for
holidays and for the summer months.
However, they are a minority. Between the ages of
16 and 17 most young men learn the ear-piercing songs
in preparation for adulthood, prepare to take full responsibility for a garden, and go on multiple-day hunting trips
with the men where they practice using guns. They play
soccer with others their own age, perform mask dances,
sit in the men’s house listening to their elders, flirt with
young women, and travel. Some men learn to ride horses
Bakairí
and work with the cattle herds, while others learn to drive
the FUNAI truck and the villages’ tractors. Young men in
particular travel a great deal, using the truck to go to the
city where they make purchases for their families,
take messages to FUNAI offices, and visit relatives.
Sometimes they have adventures which lead to problems.
For example, some drink alcoholic beverages, have sex
with women, contract sexually transmitted diseases, and
are robbed.
Young women do not have these kinds of experiences because they travel less frequently outside the
reservation and are discouraged from experimenting in
this way. Women’s adult routines are established earlier
than men’s, and by 15 or 16 they are married with their
first child and managing their homes. However, the role
of women in Bakairí society is changing. They currently
have more choices, and young women in particular are
considering the value of getting an education, working
outside the reservation, and earning wages.
Attainment of Adulthood
Boys in their late teens and girls in their early teens pass
through puberty rituals that mark their gradual transition
to adulthood. Young men go through an ear-piercing ritual which lasts for 2 days. The ritual takes place in the
caduete (the men’s house) which is a ceremonial and
political center for male activities. Men are required to
observe food taboos during this time.
When the onset of menses occurs, young women are
confined to their houses for a week where they are
expected to remain silently in their hammocks. Their
bodies are scraped with the paiko, the instrument made of
fish teeth, and a hot cloth with oil on it is placed on the
girl’s stomach. During the first and subsequent menstruations, women abstain from eating fish. It is believed
that if they do not abstain, their bodies will swell up
and become distorted. They also are not allowed to have
sexual relations. An early-morning purification bath ends
this seclusion.
Full adulthood is typically realized when a man and
woman have married, seen the birth of their first child,
cleared their own gardens or partnered the clearing of a
garden with a kinsmen, and built their own house close to
or attached to a parent’s house.
Men sometimes drink alcohol, but there is no
evidence that women do so. Both men and women may
from time to time perform violent acts, but men are more
Gender-Related Social Groups
287
likely to do so. Men fight each other with fists, knives,
and guns, and they sometimes hit their wives. Women
also attack their husbands physically.
Middle Age and Old Age
As Bakairí men age, they may assume the roles of
shaman, headman, political counselor, and/or extended
family leader. Middle-aged women help with household
organization and childcare. They tend to be more outspoken than younger women. Both old men and old women
remain as economically productive as they are able. In
old age, they live with or near their adult children, preferably their daughters. Elderly women especially do not
feel comfortable living with their sons because of the
tradition of restraint in relations with daughters-in-law.
Women are not allowed to address their son’s wife by
name and call her by her kin name. Interactions between
the two women are minimal.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Young people are expected to be reserved, quiet, and
obedient. As they age, they become more assertive. More
men than women speak Portuguese, and men are notably
more assertive in interactions with non-Indians. Both men
and women report being possessed by spirits, and shamans
treat them. Sometimes this occurs when individuals have
spent long periods of time outside of the reservation or
when they have consumed alcoholic beverages, something
that men experience more than women. However, possession can also take place in the reservation.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The Bakairí recognize extended families that consist of
two or more individuals related by blood and their
spouses and children. In the past these families lived
together in large elliptically shaped communal houses,
but today the Indians reside in small square houses made
of clay with tin or palm thatch roofs. Nuclear families,
sometimes with an older relative, occupy these homes.
Nonetheless, extended families remain important, and
they are organized around the female side of the family.
Women, their married daughters, and granddaughters
make up a tightly knit core of individuals who are loyal
to each other. They tend to have homes located near each
other, accompany each other to the river several times a
day to bathe and wash clothes, work together in the
gardens, and defend each other’s interests in the community. Nuclear families, consisting of a married couple and
their children, are important for reproduction, childrearing, and economic activities. Although embedded
in the larger extended family, they operate in a semiautonomous fashion.
In Bakairí extended families, members distinguish
two kinds of cousins: cross cousins and parallel cousins.
Cross cousins are the children of opposite-sexed siblings
of parents, (i.e., children of either mother’s brother or
father’s sister), while parallel cousins are those of samesexed siblings of parents (i.e., children of either mother’s
sister or father’s brother). Parallel cousins tend to be
lumped together with siblings, and marriage between
them is forbidden on the basis of incest rules. Cross
cousins, on the other hand, are encouraged to marry, a
tradition that reinforces solidarity within the extended
family. Although not all Bakairí marriages are between
cross cousins, many are.
Bakairí women are not organized into nonkin
groups; rather, their solidarity is based on kin connections, which are strengthened through a lifetime of cooperation and shared experiences in the domestic sphere.
Men are organized into two different nonkin groups.
Those who pass through the puberty rite of ear-piercing
at the same time make up a loosely organized age-set.
Although their responsibilities toward each other are not
rigidly defined, they tend to fraternize, hunt, and assist
each other in garden projects more frequently than with
those in younger or older cohorts. They compose a type
of political interest group in that they share common
experiences, aims, and concerns that are different from
other men’s. They marry and have children at about the
same time, and move simultaneously through other developmental stages such as the death of parents. Their
demeanor towards each other is playful. This is quite
different from the respectful way they must interact
with the elders, and the instructive way they act toward
those younger than they. Men in the same age-set may
find their sense of solidarity temporarily affected by
village disputes and rivalries, sexual jealousy, and
personal animosity. Yet relationships between members
remain strong and usually endure until death. On the
288
Bakairí
other hand, they never eclipse, or even compete seriously
with, those blood relationships that claim an individual’s
allegiance.
Bakairí men also belong to a men’s association that
plays a dominant role in the political and religious lives
of the villagers. Following the ear-piercing ceremony,
they are allowed to participate in the key activities that
take place in the caduete (men’s house) which is located
in the center of the village. The caduete is shrouded in
secrecy, and women are forbidden to enter it on penalty
of rape. Inside the men store sacred and/or musical
artifacts and ritual masks, and they perform rituals.
Unlike age-related ceremonies that divide men into
groups, the men’s house unites them and places them in
opposition to women.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Time-allocation studies showed that the Bakairí spend
most of their time engaged in three major types of activities: (1) interacting with each other in some kind of
social activity, (2) engaging in an economic activity, and
(3) doing housework. About 47% of Bakairí time was
spent on tasks that involve productive labor, which
ensured the survival of the household, or reproductive
labor, which allowed society to continue over generations. The former included activities such as gardening,
hunting, wage labor, and fishing, while the latter involved
childcare, cooking, and household construction. About
43% of the rest of Bakairí time was spent resting, socializing, and attending to personal needs (Picchi, 2000).
Men, in general, are three times as likely as women
to be found doing garden work. One reason that women
are not involved more in these activities is that most
Bakairí gardens are located far from the village. Women,
who are generally the primary caretakers of young
children, find it difficult to travel such long distances
regularly. If they did, they would either have to carry their
children or leave them with others for long periods of
time. In addition, only men leave the reservation to work
for wages on nearby ranches. They tend to be gone from
the village for about 2 weeks at a time.
Gender determines other kinds of economic contributions. Men are responsible for hunting, fishing, manufacturing certain goods such as baskets and bows, and
dancing inside ritual masks. In addition to child-rearing,
women plant, weed, and harvest crops, and they process
food, cook, wash clothes in the river, fish, manufacture
goods such as hammocks, keep the house clean, and teach
male mask dancers the songs of the masks.
A clear distinction exists between most work done
by men and women, and there is little overlap in these
cases. Women do not perform such activities as cutting
down trees or hunting, and men do not cook or wash
clothes in the river. There is also a distinction between
work done by adult men and young men. Boys under
the age of 15 are not involved in heavy farming work or
ritual dancing. These activities are the sole purview of
men—15 years and older.
The cycle of a day is organized differently for men
and women. Bakairí days begin early by most American
standards. People wake up at about 4 a.m., and by the
gray light of dawn they are on their way to bathe and get
water from the river. Women heat up coffee and food such
as rice or manioc from the day before. By 7 a.m. the men
have gathered at the men’s house or are on their way to
the gardens. They clear their fields of brush, weed, plant
new crops of cotton, move manioc cuttings around, and
harvest manioc tubers to take home with them. If they do
not need to go to the garden to weed or harvest crops,
then they go fishing or work on projects such as basketmaking. Women do housework, sweeping a layer of dust
from the hard dirt floors with palm fronds. They may go
to the gardens with their husbands if there is weeding
or harvesting to do. If not, they go down to the riverbank
where they spend hours washing clothes, watching the
children play, and visiting with their kin and friends. By
noon, most people return to the village to eat something
and then to rest during the hottest part of the afternoon.
Women and men both work on projects such as
hammock-making and bench-carving.
By about 3 p.m., it begins to cool off and the pace of
the village noticeably quickens. Everyone goes down to
the river to bathe before engaging in mask dancing, if they
have ceremonial obligations, or in visiting friends and
family. A light meal is usually eaten as twilight sets in. If
it is a moonless and rainy night, people turn in early, sometimes at 7 p.m. right after it becomes dark. They rest, chatting and swinging in their hammocks. Elderly men and
women tend to smoke a cigarette they have rolled themselves from tobacco they grow in their fields. They smoke
only at night, using the substance as a soporific. If it is a
bright moonlit night, people sit out in front of their houses
and visit with each other. Young men gather in front of the
men’s house and sing, and children run around and play.
Gender and Religion
289
Land in the reservation is communally owned.
However, during the last 20 years, FUNAI cattle herds
have distributed to families and kin groups now own
them. It is not clear how they will be passed down from
generation to generation since there is no precedent for
this type of situation.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Both men and women play important roles in childrearing. Women are the primary caregivers during the
first 4 years of life while the child nurses on demand.
After the child is weaned, men play an increasingly
significant role with both male and female children.
Grandparents and classificatory parents are important
influences on children. All children are encouraged to be
obedient, respectful, and quiet, and thus do not tend to be
rambunctious. Parents and older kin model gender roles
and economic tasks associated with each gender.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in the political arena is controlled by men and
is dominated symbolically and practically by the caduete,
the men’s house located in the plaza in the center of
the village. The literature from the late 19th and early
20th centuries, when the Bakairí were first contacted, indicates that older women in particular, but women in
general, were important authorities in the village and that
they openly participated in the public arena in ways that
are not seen today (Petrullo, 1932; von den Steinen,
1886/1966). It is probable that contact with Brazilians
during the 20th century affected the role of women, making it more subservient to the man’s role. Today women
influence public events through their husbands and sons.
Men and women control different parts of the
village. Men control the central plaza, the caduete, and
the soccer field. Women avoid these areas. Maintaining a
low profile, they skirt public areas and use the back paths
that connect the houses to the gardens and the river. If
they inappropriately venture into the plaza, they are
socially sanctioned by gossip. At times, when there are
important ritual events in the plaza, the women ring its
periphery, making sure not to move off the sidelines.
Women control the back areas of the village. Men avoid
these back yards except to set up clandestine meetings
with women, and if they are found there too often, they
are teased.
The mobility of men distinguishes them from
women. Men in general, but young men especially, have
many opportunities to take trips outside the reservation.
When they are young, they travel out of curiosity, and
when they are older, they go to Cuiabá, the capital of the
state of Mato Grosso, and even to Brasilia, the nation’s
capital, for political and financial reasons. They also go
to ranches to earn wages. They remain there for days or
even weeks before returning home. Talking about their
experiences is frequently converted into status and prestige in the village. Women are discouraged from traveling
outside the reservation. Child-rearing responsibilities,
their inability to speak Portuguese as well as men, and
their alleged shyness prevent them from leaving the
reservation. Recently this has changed among the
Bakairí. In the late 1980s and 1990s, women began to
work for wages both inside and outside the reservation.
Some work in Cuiabá in shops and at FUNAI headquarters as domestic helpers, and a smaller number have
assumed more responsibility, working as teachers and
medical attendants.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Men and women play complementary roles in religion
although the public role of the male is more developed.
The Bakairí are animistic in that they believe in the existence of a sacred realm that is inhabited by supernatural
beings who live inside such things as animals and plants
and who behave in much the same way as humans.
People are able to see these beings, but they typically stay
hidden. Spirits can sometimes be contacted and even
manipulated by shamans who are religious semispecialists. Shamanism is the exclusive domain of men who
learn to contact and direct spirits with whom they have
special personal relationships. They learn to do this
through long and arduous periods of training and through
the use of tobacco which induces a trance. These supernatural beings intercede on behalf of shamans, enabling
them to cure diseases and to perform sorcery against their
enemies.
One of the enduring traditions of the Bakairí noted
by many researchers who visited them in the last century
290
concerns the way both men and women traditionally pass
through rites of passage during which time they are in
great spiritual danger (Altenfelder Silva, 1950; Oberg,
1953). These periods are at birth, puberty, and when
someone close to them dies. To defend themselves individuals go into ritual seclusion, which is called wanki.
Following seclusion and fasting, the individual rejoins the
community. The end of the wanki period is marked with
a festival called a tadaunuto.
Another aspect of their religion is mask dancing.
Bakairí masks are 1 m long and a 0.5 m wide. Kwamba
masks are oval, and yakwigado are rectangular. They are
made of wood or tree bark and decorated with black, red,
and white colors. The black is derived from crushed
charcoal or genipapo, a berry, and the red is from another
berry called urucu, which the Bakairí cultivate. The white
is from chalk that the Indians scrape from deposits in
the nearby river. The masks are attached to “hair” and
“clothes” made from palm. Although the women are the
owners of the masks, preserving them and handing them
down from generation to generation through the female
side of the families, the men make the masks and dance
inside them. The women also prepare the palm costumes
for the mask dancers to wear, choose the men who dance
inside of their masks, and teach them the mask songs.
Men and women play complementary roles in mortuary practices. After a death, the husband of a daughter
of the deceased does the actual burying unless he has
small children or a pregnant wife. The spirit of the dead
person is considered dangerous, and can cause illness or
even death of those who are weak or small. The Bakairí
traditionally buried the dead wrapped in a hammock
marked with red paint inside the house, but FUNAI
agents convinced them to bury them in wooden boxes in
areas away from the village. These de facto cemeteries
are not visited after the burial, nor are markers of any kind
set up. Families go into a mourning period for several
months after the burial. They cut their hair, remain
secluded indoors, and observe food taboos. If a man has
died, the men of the village gather and beat the inside
walls of the house to chase the spirit away from the home,
and if a woman has died, the women villagers do the
same. Eventually a time to end mourning is set, and
the villagers accompany the dead person’s kin to the river
where they take a special ritual purifying bath.
Some Bakairí claim to be Christian and make efforts
to have their children baptized or to assume the role of
godparent of Brazilian children in the area. Evidence of
Bakairí
syncretism exists in that they traditionally believe in twin
culture heroes who are identified with the sun and moon.
According to some Indians, the Christian God is synonymous with the sun culture hero.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Men and women have substantial amounts of leisure time
during which they visit with each other, do crafts, and
rest. Time-allocation studies indicate that about a third
of their waking hours are spent in such activities. Some
gender differences include the constant involvement of
women in watching young children and processing food,
and of men in political discussions with other men and
playing soccer. Young women are also allowed to wrestle
with each other in public. Kinds of gender segregation
that exist include the two sexes using different bathing
areas and only men being allowed to frequent the men’s
house and to dance inside the masks.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Men and women share the responsibility of performing
many tasks. The historic literature on the Bakairí suggest
that this is not new. A marked egalitarianism and/or
complementariness has long characterized most aspects
of village life (Petrullo, 1932). Both men and women
manufacture crafts, such as baskets and benches in the
case of the men and hammocks in the case of women.
They both fish, participate in gardening, play important
roles in child-rearing, have a say in family and community decisions, and make recognized contributions to the
religious dimension. They control their own sexuality in
that they decide with whom to have sex, and although
parents play an important role in choosing marriage partners, they are able to express their own wishes in affecting how the relationship works out. Both men and women
can initiate divorce. However, only men hunt, become
shamans, dance in masks, work in the men’s house, and
leave the reservation to work for wages. In contact situations with Brazilians, men are favored by the non-Indians
and thus have assumed a more dominant role in such
interactions.
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
individuals loudly proclaim the union while the bride and
groom look extremely embarrassed.
SEXUALITY
Men and women view sex as a natural process. They
frequently joke about it and tease each other about their
lovers. Premarital sex is viewed as normal. Young men
and women begin having sexual relations at an early age
and are expected to have many sex partners before they
marry. People are allowed to be involved sexually with
more than one person at a time. Extramarital sex occurs
frequently. Nonetheless, extramarital affairs can lead to
quarrels, violence, conflict between families, and even
divorce. Sexual taboos exist during pregnancy and after
the birth of a child. Men and women are expected to
abstain from sex for 2–3 years while the woman is nursing
or the child may not learn to walk or talk. Sex occurs
rapidly in hammocks in houses or in the gardens where
there is more privacy. Both male and female orgasms are
recognized. There is no evidence of oral and anal sex, and
genital–genital sex with a variety of positions is practiced.
Adult men and women tend to be modest and do not
expose their genitals to the opposite sex. They bathe and
excrete in separate areas. Women wear dresses and are
careful to keep their legs together when sitting. There was
no evidence of cross-sex identification or cross-dressing.
Male homosexuality does not appear to exist, and a
rumored lesbian relationship between two adolescent
women was publicly denounced.
COURTSHIP
291
AND
MARRIAGE
Almost all Bakairí men and women are married or
have been married. Single people tend to be widows or
widowers, and they express the desire to remarry. One
typical pattern of male–female courtship and marriage is
young people having sex with each other and gradually
becoming closer and ceasing sexual relations with others.
They then marry. Another equally acceptable pattern is
parents deciding on unions between two adolescents who
have known each other all their lives. The Bakairí report
that love is part of a marriage, but that the degree of relatedness and the industrious nature of the individual are
also important considerations. Males and females consider that they have a choice in when and with whom they
can marry. When a marriage occurs the men and kin of
the groom accompany him to the house of his bride where
he hangs his hammock below hers. The fathers of the two
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship tends to be characterized
by affection and companionability, although some
couples are clearly in conflict. Husbands and wives sleep
in the same house in separate hammocks unless the husband is traveling. They frequently go to the garden
together and eat together when food is prepared.
Although the man and woman perform complementary
tasks, in some areas, such as hunting and clothes washing, there is a strict division of labor. If the marriage is not
satisfactory, either the husband or the wife may initiate
the divorce. Children up to the age of 4 go with their
mothers, and older children are distributed between the
father and other kin. Infidelity is not automatically
grounds for divorce; however, if an affair goes on too long
or if the woman becomes pregnant, then divorce may
take place.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Men–women friendships do not appear to exist. Those
who are potentially sexual partners tend to have joking
and teasing relationships. Grandparents play an important
role in raising their grandchildren, and siblings defend
each other in the community.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Contact with non-Indians, especially Brazilians, has
affected the role of Bakairí women. When the Bakairí were
first contacted in the late 19th century and later visited
by ethnographers in the early part of the 20th century,
women reportedly played a much more assertive and
significant role in public village life (Petrullo, 1932; von
den Steinen, 1886/1966). Today, they tend to influence
village politics and decision-making through their male
kin. On the other hand, women are being formally
educated in schools on the reservation. Jobs as teachers
and medical attendants are available to them. A small
292
Bakairí
number of women have left the reservation to work for
wages in towns.
Attitudes towards men have also changed as a result
of contact with non-Indians. Traditionally, men are
expected to be respectful of their elders, especially of
older kin. Relationships between other men are characterized by a casual comradeship. However, the hierarchical nature of relations between Brazilians has introduced
the concept of subordination versus dominance in personal relations that did not exist previously. This concept
is strengthened by emerging differences in wealth
between Bakairí families.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altenfelder Silva, F. (1950). O estado de wanki entre os Bakairí.
Sociologia, 12(3), 259–271.
Brown, M. (1993). Facing the state, facing the world: Amazonia’s native
leaders and the new politics of identity. L’Homme, 33, 307–326.
de Souza, C. F. M. (1994). On Brazil and its Indians. In D. L. Van Cott
(Ed.), Indigenous peoples and democracy in Latin America
(pp. 213–233). New York: St. Martins Press.
Freidl, E. (1975). Women and men: An anthropologist’s view. New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1948). The tribes of the Upper Xingú River.
In J. Steward (Ed.), Handbook of South American indians: Vol. 8 The
Tropical Forest Tribes (pp. 321–348). New York: Cooper Square.
McKee, L. (1997). Women’s work in rural Ecuador: Multiple resource
strategies and the gendered division of labor. In A. Miles &
H. Buechler (Eds.), Women and economic change: Andean
perspective. (Society for Latin American Publication Series,
Vol. 14, pp. 13–30.) Washington, DC: Society for Latin American
Studies/American Anthropological Association.
Morgen, S. (1989). Gender and anthropology: Introductory essay.
In S. Morgen (Ed.), Gender and anthropology—Critical reviews
for research and teaching (pp. 1–20). Washington, DC: American
Anthropological Association.
Oberg, K. (1953). Indian tribes of Northern Mato Grosso, Brazil
(Publication No. 15). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Petrullo, V. (1932). Primitive peoples of Matto Grosso, Brazil. Museum
Journal [Philadelphia, University Museum], 23, 83–173.
Picchi, D. S. (1982). Energetics modeling in development evaluation:
The case of the Bakairí Indians of central Brazil (Doctoral
Dissertation, University of Florida). Ann Arbor, MI: University
Microfilms.
Picchi, D. S. (1991). The impact of an industrial agricultural project on the
Bakairí Indians of central Brazil. Human Organization, 50, 26–38.
Picchi, D. S. (1995). Village division in lowland South America: The
case of the Bakairí Indians of central Brazil. Human Ecology, 23,
477–498.
Picchi, D. S. (2000). The Bakairí Indians of Brazil: Politics, ecology,
and change. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Schmidt, M. (1947). Os Bakairí. Revista do Museu Paulista (NS),
1, 11–58.
Sponsel, L. (Ed.). (1995). Indigenous peoples and the future of
Amazonia: An Ecological anthropology of an endangered world.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
von den Steinen, K. (1966). Through central Brazil: Expedition for
exploration of the Xingu in the year 1884 (F. Schütze Trans.).
Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. (Original work published 1886.)
von den Steinen, K. (1966). Among the primitive peoples of central
Brazil: A travel account and the results of the second Xingu
expedition. (F. Schütze Trans.). Berlin: Reimer. (Original work
published 1894.)
Bakkarwal
Aparna Rao
LOCATION
shepherds (Rao, 1995) or manual laborers, the well-to-do
have annual surplus budgets.
Positions of authority within the community are
occupied by several wealthy men of influence who, by
common consent, are the “most capable”; known as “big
men,” they have specific units of social organization
linked to them (Casimir & Rao, 1995).
The Bakkarwal are located in Jammu and Kashmir (in the
western Himalayas).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
An alternative name used in government records and
some scholarly literature is Gujar-Bakkarwal.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Bakkarwal of Jammu and Kashmir are a patrilineal
Sunni Muslim community of nomadic pastoralists
consisting of 39 preferentially endogamous descent
groups or “patrilineages” known as zaat or khel (Rao,
1988/1995). Zaat derives from the same Indo-Iranian
root as the jaati of the Hindu varna-jaati system, while
khel denotes units of social organization in areas of
Pashtun influence. Although taxonomically different,
Bakkarwal zaat and khel are organically and functionally
indifferentiable, but they indicate different origins.
Despite preferential endogamy and concepts of intergenerationally transmitted zaat- and khel-specific characteristics, these units cannot be glossed by the term “caste,”
since a formal ideology of social ranking is absent.
Thirty-six zaat form one subdivision (that of the
Kunhaari); the remaining zaat and two khel form a
second subdivision (that of the Allaiwaal). These two
subdivisions are named after the two valleys of Allai and
Kunhar, in present day Pakistan, from where the ancestors of all Bakkarwal are said to have migrated into their
present area (Rao, 1999).
The Bakkarwal herd mainly goats, but also sheep,
and use horses and mules as pack animals. Some of the
very wealthy also have cows, buffaloes, and land. There
is increasing economic stratification within the community (Khatana, 1992; Rao, 1998a). Whereas the poorest
must often supplement their income by working as hired
OF
GENDER
All creation is considered to belong to one of two sexes
and genders (male and female), only God being conceived of as sexless and genderless. Among all mobile
beings, be they animal, human, or superhuman (such as
fairies), the fundamental process which takes place at
conception is the mixing of male semen with female
blood (Rao, 2000).
Major aspects of one’s inherent nature and innate
temper are determined at birth (at age 0 years) by one’s
sex. Females are considered imperfect from birth, and
this inherent imperfection precludes every female attempt
to reach certain social and moral standards. It restricts a
woman’s capacity and ability to be responsible and
accountable and has lasting consequences for her access
to information (Rao, 1998a). This, in turn, is largely why
she is perceived by others (and ideally also by herself) as
incompetent to choose and take decisions.
Gender markers vary over the life cycle and are
indicated through dress, make-up, etc.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Bakkarwal divide the human life (cycle) into seven
major phases (Rao, 1998a); terminological gender differentiation begins at about 4 years of age. In the first three
phases girls and boys are referred to as baalak (child),
and thereafter as jawaan until they themselves have a few
children. After this no specific term of classification
exists until one reaches old age.
293
294
Four phases are distinguished within childhood; the
first four years of life are said to constitute roughly the
first of these four subdivisions. Although passages from
one stage to another are not publicly marked by specific
ceremonies, there are subtle markers that are expressed
through the body, body behavior, and apparel.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Children are highly valued; great care is taken to protect
them from all evil influences and infants are exposed as
little as possible to the stares of strangers. For roughly the
first 2 years of their lives, both male and female infants
are nursed regularly on demand and then only very occasionally during the day. At night, every infant is given the
breast as long as it does not have a younger sibling. There
is no regular toilet training and infants of both sexes are
carried around, either piggyback in a sling or in arms.
A youngest child sleeps with its mother either until the
birth of the next child, or until it is at least about 7 years
old. If a younger sibling is born, the older child sleeps, if
male, with its father, if female, with an older sister, or
with its father’s mother if she is a widow, or failing this,
close to its own mother. As a baby girl or boy grows,
notwithstanding the presence of a younger sibling of
either sex, the physical and verbal expressions of affection toward it by its mother continue and are supplemented by those of grandparents, father, and older
siblings.
Infant boys and girls are clad in long shirts reaching
down to their ankles, but whereas from the age of about
2 years a girl must wear trousers to keep her private parts
covered, little boys run around without trousers for much
longer, sometimes until they are circumcised. Over their
trousers, girls wear a shirt which stretches to a little below
their knees. However cold it may be, girls wrap only a
shawl around themselves, like their mothers and elder
sisters, whereas men and little boys whose families can
afford it keep themselves warm in woolen coats.
Being properly clad is part of being well mannered
and well behaved, and really good manners are attributed
only to the wealthy, especially to wealthy men. The learning of basic good manners begins in early childhood and
goes on till after puberty. The basic elements relate to
dress and body postures—notably the hair and headcovering—and are gender specific in their details.
Covering the head can be an expression of social
power; but it can equally underline the acceptance and
Bakkarwal
acknowledgement of reduced autonomy for women—a
phenomenon which is closely linked to concepts that
have often been glossed as “shame,” “shyness,” and
modesty.
At 6 months, every infant receives its first haircut, an
event celebrated by cooking a sweet dish for the entire
camp. At this stage, the head is considered “pure” and this
hair, which is also pure, is hidden away from evil creatures
in a hole. There is no gender differentiation as yet, but a
little girl’s hair is never cut after she is about 2 years old,
whereas boys and men are expected to have their heads
shaved regularly.
Around a week after its birth, every infant receives a
tiny cloth cap, with two earflaps, tapered at the back and
embroidered colorfully. This type of cap is worn (in larger
sizes) by the child until it is about 4 or 5 years old. After
this, however, a gender-based difference marks the caps of
boys and girls. Ideally, boys are shaved and given a flat
white flapless cap, which resembles that of adult men and
is embroidered like these with white needlework; on this
a turban is ideally tied. Usually, however, boys wear either
a cap or a turban, and sometimes neither; girls, on the
other hand, are rarely seen with their heads uncovered.
Unlike men’s caps, all those worn by females after infancy
are made of black cotton cloth and embroidered with
colored silk thread.
While covering the head is more explicitly associated with community tradition and Islamic prescriptions,
body postures are associated with secular social morals,
summed up in a concept that encompasses a complex
range of norms and values impinging on social responsibility, sexual control, modesty, the domestic space, and
well-being. As they grow older, gender differentiation
expressed in body postures and body movement prepares
boys and girls for their future social roles.
Bakkarwal children are brought up with great indulgence. From their earliest years, children of both sexes are
left to develop a certain physical autonomy. If food is
available, children—especially boys—of all ages eat
without waiting for others. Children below the age of 7 or 8
are never beaten or even severely scolded, since they are
considered too young to undertake purposeful action and
comprehend punishment. It is only from the age of about 7
onwards that increasing cultural competence is expected,
and it is now that every little boy and girl is increasingly
involved in the daily tasks of a herding household.
In early childhood work and play are intertwined.
Toys are unknown, but when out herding, children weave
Gender over the Life Cycle
grasses, construct toy tents, and play games individually
and in twos, rather than in groups. Throughout the year
Bakkarwal camps are small and scattered, and playgroups
are very small. Children are not allowed to wander off on
their own, for example, to other camps. A child’s world
consists primarily of its own camp members, and at this
stage its access to social knowledge is still very reduced.
In summer, young children accompany their mothers who
collect fuel wood and wild vegetables; in winter they go
with their siblings and neighbors to fetch fodder, tend
animals, or wash clothes at the nearest stream. Whereas
mixed groups of little boys and girls go gathering and
collecting wood and fodder, fetching water is a purely
female task, although a brother in arms may be taken
along. Children start joining such work groups by the
time they are about 3 years old, but are taken to steeper
places only when they are about 5. Until they are about 8,
most tend to play more than they work; this is especially
true of boys, who are considered more immature than
girls. But all children learn to recognize the right plants
and trees, and practice how to handle the forests and
negotiate the mountain slopes. Later in life, men forget
much of this knowledge, especially that pertaining to
medicinal plants.
Milking and churning are arduous but essential
tasks; while the latter is done only by adult women, older
children may milk if their mothers are sick, and younger
children help their mothers. Herding is basically a male
job, but in less wealthy families little girls herd near home
from the age of 6 or 7 until they are about 10 years old;
after this they may also graze animals during the day, but
only if accompanied by their fathers or male siblings.
Boys start herding when they are a little older, since as
children they are considered less responsible than their
sisters. Particularly fathers tend to praise their little
daughters and de-emphasize the importance of their
young sons’ labor in herding. Mothers, on the other hand,
often praise their sons and defend them when their fathers
accuse them of laziness.
As they grow older, the mixed work and play groups
split according to gender, with girls increasingly helping
their mothers with domestic tasks and boys spending
more time herding. Girls with younger siblings spend
more time caring for them and practicing their future role
as mothers. By the time a child is about 10 years old, the
biological and social foundations are said to be laid for
the capacity which develops to fend for him/herself and
be responsible. There is now no need for elaborate care
295
and tending. From now until they reach puberty, a girl and
a boy are termed betki and laraa respectively, and this
change of terminology marks the entrance into the next
phase of the life cycle.
A child younger than about 10 is still considered
fairly vulnerable and delicate, but prepubertal boys and
girls are thought of as basically sturdy, strength being one
of the elements circumscribed by the term jawaan.
Children in the phase in between are neither baalak nor
jawaan. A betki and a laraa have crossed one set of dangers which threatened mainly their physical life; they will
face a second set when they are around 16 or 17, and they
must be prepared for this confrontation. These dangers
are more social than physical, and must be manipulated
through socialization. While this manipulation is required
for both girls and boys, it is generally felt that girls are
“less of a problem” than boys, if one is “a little careful.”
Girls are also said to “to grow up much more quickly”
than boys. This is partly because—although by nature they
end up with less capacity for reason than boys—in the
early years they have more of it than do boys of their own
age, and partly because they are not as easily exposed to
bad influences from outside the family.
In this phase gender differentiation is often publicly
marked by male circumcision, which usually takes place
between the ages of 6 and 12; it may not take place after
this, but also not before the child is at least 10 days old.
This act finally confirms the boy as a Muslim, but it is
also said to affect him physiologically and prepares him
gradually for puberty, when his seminal level will greatly
rise. The occasion is celebrated with food being cooked
for the camp members.
Puberty and Adolescence
Bakkarwali language does not explicitly designate the
period preceding sexual maturity or full adulthood, but
conceptually this period is distinguished from other
phases of life. Both girls and boys are deemed to become
jawaan when they are between about 10 and 16 or 17 years
of age and are also terminologically distinguished from
those younger and older and are known as gadri and
gadro, respectively. They are considered to develop and
change physically, a process that intensifies after marriage.
These changes are considered to be the outward manifestations of an internal psychological process, for now the
levels of blood in a girl and semen in a boy start to rise—
slowly in some and faster in others, all depending on their
296
innate temper or inherent disposition. They rise to reach
a certain plateau, the level of which, again, varies individually. The attainment of this plateau manifests itself in the
phenomenon of menarche and ejaculation, but is not
synonymous with the maximum, for the levels of blood
and semen are said to spurt at regular intervals all through
the adult phase. When these spurts take place regularly,
one is considered a young adult. Girls who had reached
menarche, but did not have regular menstrual cycles,
were not thought to be fully jawaan, and hence, even if
married, they were not considered ready for sexual
intercourse.
To help his “strength ripen” a boy must now start
accompanying the family’s herds to the high pastures. In
these expanses he can test his mettle and experience the
beauty and hardship of a herder’s life. And yet this phase
is in many ways ambivalent, and this ambivalence is built
into the term jawaani which is associated, exclusively in
men, with what may be described as a carefree disposition. Romance and adventure are part of it, but so too are
thoughtlessness and the lack of a sense of proportion.
Jawaani in a young male who is physically jawaan is
accepted as perfectly normal, but it is not considered
befitting those who are much older. If the potentially
negative aspects of jawaani are not curbed in time, they
may lead to a man becoming too “hot” later in life.
“Heat” must always be regulated, since it has negative as well as positive effects. In the phase in which they
gradually become jawaan every boy and girl tends to be
humorally hotter than ever before, and to avoid problems
in later life their intake of “heat” must be carefully tuned
to their gender-specific requirements. The level of “heat”
socially accepted in boys and men is considerably higher
than that in girls and women, who are supposed to be
“hotter by nature.” Thus, while girls should avoid “hot”
foods, such as raw onions, eggs, and too much salt or fat,
there are no similar restrictions for boys. Excessive salt
can dehydrate a girl and render her barren. But “hot”
foodstuffs, and especially fat, also symbolize wealth and
a good life. “Heat” thus conjures up luxury which, however, connotes self-indulgence and passion on the one
hand and infertility on the other, and to abstain from
“hot” foods is a metaphor for self-control. In keeping
with this logic, the annual fast enjoined by Islam and first
observed by girls at menarche and boys at around 15, is
also said to help “cool them down.” The general increase
in heat in boys and girls leads to a rise in the levels of their
body fluids, and this in turn to the levels of physical
Bakkarwal
strength achieved in the years to follow. But this rise is
also associated with the development of certain negative
desires in them, and hence special care must be taken to
achieve and maintain a highly sensitive equilibrium
between “hot” and “cold.” Excessive heat could make a
girl sexually too demanding, and this in turn could make
her ill and even barren; alternatively, later in life she
could become so egocentric as to become a witch, turning others ill and barren. A boy with excessive heat is
likely to become too power-loving and hence cruel. It is
in this phase that character forms and beauty develops,
and so, if a girl’s parents are not careful enough, a pretty
girl could grow so “hot” as to become too aware of her
own beauty, and a sturdy boy overly conscious of his own
strength.
With the onset of menarche, a girl attains a new
social status and participates in new productive activities.
Most women remembered their first menses because they
also kept the first ritual fast following this. An adolescent
girl is now expected to possess modesty and the sense of
shame (laaj). If necessary, she may now milk and churn,
except during her monthly periods, but until she herself
marries and becomes a mother she may no longer go to
the highest pastures, nor may she be present at the birth
of a baby or at a burial (Casimir, in press; Casimir & Rao,
in press), since she herself is no longer pure. With menarche, a girl may no longer be careless about wearing her
cap, and indeed her mother now makes her a new cap.
From now on it would be shameful for her to be seen
bareheaded.
Attainment of Adulthood
There are no specific rites of passage marking the
transition to adulthood, but generally boys and girls are
married when they are considered adult. For girls this is
at around 16 years and for boys at about 18 years of age
(Rao, 1998a, 2000). Most girls are engaged shortly before
their first menses. The formal engagement ceremony
seals an agreement which may have been reached either
shortly before or several years earlier between the respective (officially male) guardians of the girl and the boy.
The social and public importance of engagement is
symbolized for a girl by her outward appearance; for a
boy there are no such symbolic status markers. An affianced girl applies collyrium to her eyes and henna to her
hair. The combination of red (henna), black (collyrium),
and white (considered to be the girl’s own ideal skin
Gender over the Life Cycle
color) serve an apotropaic purpose, but are also the colors
of matrimony.
Ideally a girl’s father, the latter’s father and brothers,
the girl’s elder brother, and her mother’s brother have the
right to bestow her hand on whomsoever they consider
most suitable. At least officially, the agency of the future
bride and groom is entirely denied. Of paramount importance in the choice of prospective brides and grooms is
social identity represented by zaat/khel and links of kinship. Partly from these follow two additional criteria,
namely the reputation of the respective mothers in terms
of character, and the economic status of the two families.
In other words, women are considered as criteria in
decision-making, even if they are not acknowledged as
decision-makers.
In this phase, girls and their parents are anxious
about the prospect of the bride’s having to leave the natal
home; this anxiety stems not only from the role changes
that accompany the transition from unmarried daughter to
married wife, but also from the often great physical
distance between natal and marital homes. Bakkarwal
children and youths are brought up in relative seclusion.
It is only during migration that young girls have a chance
to meet persons from beyond their nuclear or immediate
extended family. Thus they are often not familiar with
even close relatives. Therefore, leaving the natal home
entails entering a whole new world and meeting one’s
parents and younger unmarried siblings only infrequently—often after the autumn migration, or at other
slack periods of the pastoral work cycle.
In the early stages of her wedded life in her conjugal home, a woman tends to identify herself with her natal
family; she is now identified by others also through her
husband and his family. It is her duty to look after her
husband and her “household,” which may include his
parents and siblings. If, for any reason, she fails to
comply, her husband may even take another wife, and
while this may not be appreciated, it is nevertheless
considered “in a way natural for a man” in such circumstances. Outward markers of a married woman are a pair
of special bracelets, eyes ringed with collyrium, and
strands of henna in the hair. No such markers distinguish
a married man, nor is he defined through his wife or
affines—unless he is a live-in son-in-law, in which case
his father-in-law acts as the defining person. Until he sets
up his own “household,” a married man is socially
defined exclusively through his father, and even thereafter he is contextualized through his elder agnates.
297
Middle Age and Old Age
“By 40 one should be able to sit back and let the children
and grandchildren do the work” is a wish commonly
expressed by Bakkarwal women and men, and indeed by
the time they are about 40 most do have sons and daughters who in their turn have become parents. Grandparents
are entitled to greater respect within the family and, if
they are wealthy, to greater control over resources. This
also endows them with considerable status within the
larger community, and many life histories collected
among older men reflect this romantic and idealized
phase of life.
Women and men, whether middle-aged or old,
married or widowed, wear basically the same kind of
clothes; there are no formal restrictions on color, but
elderly women and men tend to wear less bright colors.
Older men tend not to trim their beards, and while there
is no formal age or statuswise restriction on wearing
jewelry, older women generally wear less jewelry than
young married women. In old age a woman is free to gift
her jewelry to whomsoever she pleases; usually she
distributes it among her daughters.
The entire process of life is conceived as a gradual
increase and then decrease of bodily strength. This in turn
is related to the gradual rise and fall of body substances
which rise in youth to reach a certain plateau in maturity
and fall slowly thereafter. Graying hair, pain in the joints,
weak vision, loss of teeth, failing memory, general slowness, bad temper, etc. are all symptoms of this decrease.
Menopause (there is no specific Bakkarwali term for this)
is not considered a symptom of old age but rather its
consequence, and a woman is considered old when she
reaches this stage. It is explicitly connected to weakening
vision and lack of strength, which themselves are the
result of the decrease in the level of blood in the body. No
chronological age is attached to climacterium, but it is
believed that among men the level of blood (manifested
in semen) sinks later than it does in women.
Ideally, at least one adult (young or middle-aged)
woman is required in a household to take care of the elderly, and at no stage in the domestic cycle do old men or
women live entirely alone. The Bakkarwal distinguish
terminologically between being budo/budi (old, aged)
and being bujurg (old, venerable, great), a distinction
which appears to be closely related to gender and perceptions of power and well-being. Ideologically, one is
considered budo/budi at the latest when one’s eldest
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Bakkarwal
grandchildren have married and reproduced—that is, at
around 60 years of age for both men and women. By this
time a man must have long distributed his property
among his inheritors; whether he still retains control over
them symbolically or not depends on his social status—
on whether he is considered budo or bujurg. A woman is
never called bujurg, but whatever their biological age,
wealthy old men in full possession of their mental and
physical faculties are categorized as bujurg.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
All social roles are subject to gender differentiation.
Especially for boys from well-to-do families, these roles
are imbued with sociopolitical meanings such as hospitality and control over one’s large family. The more
numerous a man’s descendants, the larger his potential
camp, and the greater his prestige. Physical control over
humans (with their herds) coupled with social expansiveness, expressed in the generosity of a host and the kindness of an employer, are the hallmarks of good manners.
For males, a certain expansiveness, coupled with the
capacity to control, circumscribe the moral exercise of
choice when shouldering responsibility for oneself and
for others.
For girls and women, physical and social expansiveness are, on the contrary, considered undesirable as they
contravene norms of shyness and modesty. Thus, not only
are women expected to “crowd together,” they should not
laugh loudly or sit with outstretched legs in the presence
of men. Women dropping in for a chat are not expected
to be offered refreshments; men always are. At community feasts men are specially seated and served; women,
even guests, sit wherever space is left.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Throughout the year Bakkarwal settlements are small,
varying from one to nine tents/dwellings and not consisting of more than three generations. Hence the size of a
person’s local social group is limited to campmates, most
of whom are siblings or other close relatives. However,
the children of a camp are of various ages, so that genuine
peer groups hardly exist.
Larger social groups, all of which are kin based, are
formed around rich and important men. The largest of
these groups is a tolaa, which is a migrating unit at its
maximum; the smallest is a kumbaa, a term denoting a
collection of nuclear or extended families descended
from one living man. Thus the term kumbaa denotes a
specific type of descent group, headed by a man who has
many living married progeny and male siblings, all of
whom recognize his authority over themselves. If this last
requirement is not met, the Bakkarwal speak of a man’s
deraa rather than his kumbaa. The principle of the
Bakkarwal kumbaa is one of segmentation; while several
deraa compose a kumbaa, these in turn make up a tolaa,
which in turn generally consists of several kumbaa, represented by the units of humans and herds which actually
move and camp very close together during the spring and
autumn migrations. Like a kumbaa, a tolaa is usually
explicitly linked to a living adult male, and also often
named after him. No such larger social groups are formed
around women.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Herding is basically a man’s job, and only males go to the
highest pastures. If there are no sons, shepherds are hired
by the well-to-do; in less wealthy families little girls herd
near home from the age of 6 or 7 until they are about 10;
after this they may also go to graze during the day, but
only if accompanied by their fathers or siblings. Adult
men are also exclusively responsible for negotiating the
sale of herd animals and the access to pasture in farmers’
stubbles or fallows. However, the contribution of women
to subsistence—through processing milk, gathering food,
tending the ewes, lambs, and kids, etc.—is about as much
as that of men (Casimir, 1991; Rao, 1998a).
Following Islamic norms, all children must
inherit their share of all parental property, a daughter’s
share being half that of a son’s (Rao, 1992, 2003).
Intergenerationally transmittable parental property
consists primarily of herd animals, access to pasture,
cash, and, among the very rich, jewelry. Theoretically
then, only the paternal herd size and the number of children are of importance. In practice, however, a herd is
divided primarily among the sons, with each son’s share
depending on the size of the father’s herd and the number
of unmarried male siblings at the time of separation
from the parental household. While men obtain herd
Relative Status of Men and Women
animals through anticipatory inheritance, women get
only a few through dowry (Rao, 1998b), the greater
part of which consists of cash and jewelry. When the
paternal herd is divided, so also are the rights to pasture.
These are transmitted along the male line, since married
daughters usually shift residence and move out of the
paternal area. However, a daughter’s son or an only
daughter’s husband can obtain pasture rights if he is
adopted as heir.
The animals that a woman receives as dowry form
the core of her theoretical herd and are legally considered
her exclusive property, but in practice there is no separation between husband’s and wife’s property. However, the
cash obtained from the sale of these animals is retained
by the woman. She is also free to gift these animals and
in case of a divorce they remain her property. On death a
woman ideally leaves 40% of her animals to her sons and
60% to her daughters.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Although the overall ideology is patrilineal, mothers are
considered to be the exclusive transmitters of blood and
crucial in the formation and development of children of
both sexes. The father’s semen, which acts only as a
catalyst, bringing on conception, determines a baby’s sex
and hence also partly its inherent disposition or temperament. Sex and hence gender, it is said, tends to repeat
itself along the paternal line. Thus semen, whose specific
qualities are transmitted vertically from father to child
(and especially to the son), is an important element in
determining many basic characteristics of a community,
and within this of a patrilineage.
Both mothers and fathers, and adults in general,
spend a great deal of time with their infants of both sexes
and also show their affection. But only mothers and other
women and older siblings of both genders care for them
physically—washing and dressing them, etc. In the
mother’s temporary absence, an aunt or even an old
grandmother may put an infant to breast. Fathers, elder
brothers, grandfathers, and uncles also participate in
feeding toddlers and little children and putting them to
sleep; they also play with them. However, as boys grow
older, their fathers become less playful with them, while
they continue to indulge their daughters.
299
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
There are several forms of semi-institutionalized leadership in the public arena, but women do not hold any of
these positions. In this largely patron–client system only
males are recognized as able to control and protect (Rao,
1995b). Leaders in this sphere are all men of influence,
whose capabilities and authority are recognized at one or
more levels of the patrilineage. Some positions of leadership are not necessarily hereditary, but if a leader’s son is
thought to have the proper personality, he is likely to be
recognized as his father’s successor when the latter dies
or grows too old to fulfill his duties.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Bakkarwal are Sunni Muslims, distinctly influenced
by Islamic mystic traditions (Rao, 1990), and they conceive of God as sex/genderless. Muslim traditions are
observed with regard to male circumcision, notions of
modesty, concepts of inheritance, marriage and divorce
rules, wedding and mortuary ceremonies, concepts and
practice of sexuality, etc. However, Islamist influences
are impacting on many traditional practices.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Compared with winter, which is the lambing season,
summer is a time of relative leisure for both women and
men. There are no major differences in the ways females
and males of all ages spend their leisure, nor is there any
segregation of sexes. Husbands and wives spend much
of their leisure time together and with other members of
their family, chatting, singing, and telling stories. Young
unmarried men and older boys occasionally wrestle with
one another.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
The intrinsic imperfection of female nature limits drastically the degrees of freedom and autonomy to which she
may even hope to aspire. These are further limited in
practice by many patterns of social organization, such as
residence which is generally patrilocal. Although women
300
Bakkarwal
do take part in many decision-making processes, they are
rarely acknowledged as decision-makers. This negation is
also linked to notions and norms of shyness and modesty,
which are far more rigid for women than for men. These
notions also play a role in defining women through men, as
is evident, for example, from the markers that distinguish
women, though not men, who are engaged or married.
SEXUALITY
Religion regulates many attitudes towards sexuality,
while the experience of daily pastoral life acts as a mirror in which to learn, understand, and interpret sexual
practice. Male and female homosexuality and cross-sex
identification find no expression.
Premarital sex for both girls and boys is considered
extremely evil, and the vast majority of boys and all girls
are virgins when they marry for the first time. Sexuality
within marriage is considered natural and healthy for both
men and women, provided that both partners are adults;
intercourse with a girl who may look grown-up, but is not
yet regularly menstruating, is considered sinful. Islamic
injunctions are followed insofar as no intercourse takes
place during menstruation and in the post-partum period.
Sex within marriage is considered normal, but extramarital sex is frowned upon for both men and women,
and provides grounds for divorce. This is especially so for
women, for female sexuality is considered to be potentially dangerous and needs controlling. Hence young
widows are looked upon with ambivalence, since there is
no one to legitimately control their sexual “heat.”
Rape within marriage is an alien concept, for rape is
perceived of, not as a brutal imposition on the woman’s
wishes, but only as the illegitimate alienation of sexual
resources. The humiliation and shame inevitably associated with rape stem from this illegitimacy and from her
helplessness to prevent the alienation; these can, of
course, never happen within a legally recognized marriage where the husband is considered the legitimate
“owner” of these resources.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage is considered essential for all men and women,
and indeed all women and almost all men are married at
some point of time. All (first) marriages are arranged by
the families of the bride and groom and wife-givers and
wife-takers are considered of equal status. Theoretically,
engagements can take place even at birth; suckling babies
can be engaged and even married, and until divorce is
declared these unions are valid. Invalidation can take
many forms and have several reasons, but a man can repudiate his wife only after he has reached or completed
the pubertal phase. In such early engagements the
bridewealth is very low. Unlike a boy, a girl does not have
the formal right to dissolve an engagement; if her family
wants to annul an engagement, a community decision
must be taken, and her father then has to pay the boy’s
family whatever amount they ask for as compensation. In
practice, however, depending on how influential her family is and how resourceful the girl’s mother is, engagements are annulled.
Proposals are always sent by the boy’s family; it is
for the girl’s family to accept or reject. It is said that “it’s
the boy’s side which goes asking,” but it is also said that
“a man takes a woman, and not the other way around.”
Once two families are genuinely interested in entering
into a marriage alliance, they begin negotiations in
earnest. These center around the financial transactions,
which depend largely on the economic status of both
families. This is the time to raise the question of the
bridewealth and the compulsory Islamic mahr or dower.
The latter is reserved for the bride in case of divorce
and is related to the actual economic status of the
groom’s family. The amount of bridewealth is related to
the intrinsic “worth” of the bride and her family. Thus a
virgin “fetches” much more than a widow, a beautiful girl
more than an ugly one, and generally a rich man’s
daughter more than a poor man’s. In order to reach a
compromise between financial ability and individual and
family honor bargaining, both unofficial and official, can
go on for months, but before the agreement is finally
reached the amount of the bridewealth must be fixed. For
the wedding to take place, it must be paid in cash or kind,
or in the form of brideservice over a stipulated period
of time.
A young widow may marry beyond the kin group of
her former husband only if she has no young children
by her deceased husband; if she does, junior levirate,
though not compulsory, is preferred by his family.
No similar restrictions or preferences are imposed on
widowers.
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
A woman is expected to fulfill the physical (sexual,
nutritive) and psychological (caring) needs of her
husband, as long as he fulfills her physical (material,
sexual) needs. Although most forms of public demonstration of affection between husband and wife are
frowned upon, such affection is very obvious in many
cases and there are several subtle expressions of it which
are approved of. Although in the public domain most
decisions regarding both herds and households are
projected as decisions taken by men, in practice husbands
and wives take many such decisions together.
Depending on domestic and herding schedules,
season, and household size, a couple may or may not eat
together. Except when separated by herding schedules,
husbands and wives sleep together. As they grow older,
sexual desire is thought to decrease. Besides, it is thought
improper to indulge in sex when one’s own children have
sexual relations. But the sleeping arrangements are not
adjusted to meet such requirements. Monogamous
couples continue to sleep in the same dwellings, which
are rarely shared on a regular basis by other family members. Elderly women whose husbands are polygynous
generally move out of the conjugal household to live with
one of their sons. Of 285 unions, only 13.7% were found
to be polygynous and men entering such unions came
largely from wealthy families. Following Islamic
practice, women cannot officially initiate divorce, but in
practice they do so by deserting their husbands, who then
grant them a divorce on the payment of monetary
compensation.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Numerous cross-sex relationships among kin are of
importance. Cousin marriage, for example, is fairly
frequent, and so are exchange marriages between sets of
brothers and sisters. While a man may marry his deceased
wife’s sister, in keeping with Islamic norms, he may not
marry two sisters in a polygynous relationship. Similarly,
a man’s widow may marry his younger brother in a
levirate marriage, but she must always be deferential, and
ideally even veil, before his elder brother and father. The
relationship between grandparents and grandchildren is
301
always affectionate, and if an elderly widow lives alone,
she sometimes adopts a grandson as her heir and leaves
him her property.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS,
AND PRACTICES REGARDING
GENDER
As in most countries, here too, rural communities are
regarded as “backward,” and their women specially so.
As nomads, the Bakkarwal are considered to be even
more backward than other rural communities in the area.
The increasing exposure of the entire community to
government programs and, through these, to the norms
and values of middle-class sedentary urban society is leading to changes in many gender-related norms, attitudes,
and practices. Traditional dresses and caps are being abandoned, and widow remarriage is on the decrease, for in the
wider society in which the Bakkarwal live, those to be
emulated (no longer) practice widow remarriage.
Greater formal schooling is also bringing about
change. Bakkarwal children who had attended schools for
longer periods spoke with contempt about their community, and notably about their mothers. Yet, most parents
favor schooling, as they hope that at least their sons could
then get government jobs. Fathers who wanted to send
their daughters to school cited various reasons, all of
which related to imbibing the culture of what they considered domesticity in the dominant culture; the mothers’
arguments for schooling girls were economic. Those who
did not favor schooling their daughters mentioned their
fear of the child’s learning evil ways.
The general upward social mobility is also leading
to a certain Islamization. This is evident from the fact that
wedding songs and brightly colored clothes were beginning to be frowned upon by some.
The ongoing armed violence in Jammu and Kashmir
has affected Bakkarwal society over the last decade.
Migration patterns have been impacted drastically, and
several Bakkarwal families have been physically targeted
by both terrorists from Pakistan and Indian military
personnel—men, women, and children have been mutilated and killed, and there have been cases of rape.
Further studies will be required to ascertain the impact of
these events on gender relations.
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Bakkarwal
REFERENCES
Casimir, M. J. (1991). Flocks and food. A biocultural approach to the
study of pastoral foodways. Köln, Germany: Böhlau Verlag.
Casimir, M. J. (in press). Of liminal states and uncontested faith:
Religious elements and mortuary practice in the Kashmir Valley.
In T. N. Madan & A. Rao (Eds.), The valley of Kashmir: The
making and unmaking of a composite culture? Oxford/New York:
Berghahn Books. Delhi, India: Manohar.
Casimir, M. J., & Rao, A. (1995). Prestige, possessions and progeny:
Cultural goals and reproductive success among the Bakkarwal.
Human Nature, 6(3), 241–272.
Casimir, M. J., & Rao, A. (in press). The dog’s gaze: Insights into the
mortuary rites and conceptual transformations among the Gujar
and Bakkarwal of the Kashmir Valley. In N. Balbir (Ed.), Penser,
dire et representer l’animal dans le monde indien. Proceedings of
an International Symposium, Paris; Editions du CNRS/Universit
de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle.
Khatana, R. P. (1992). Tribal migration in Himalayan frontiers.
Gurgaon, India: Vintage Books.
Rao, A. (1990). Reflections on self and person in a pastoral community
in Kashmir. Social Analysis. Journal of Social and Cultural
Practice [special issue, Ed. P. Werbner], 28, 11–25.
Rao, A. (1992). The constraints of nature or of culture? Pastoral
resources and territorial behaviour in the western Himalayas. In
M. J. Casimir & A. Rao (Eds.), Mobility and territoriality: Social
and spatial boundaries among foragers, fishers, pastoralists and
peripatetics (pp. 91–134). Oxford: Berg.
Rao, A. (1988). Levels and boundaries in native models: Social
groupings among the Bakkarwal of the western Himalayas. In
T. N. Madan (Ed.), Muslim communities of South Asia. Culture,
society, and power (pp. 289–332). Delhi, India: Manohar. (Revised
and reprinted from Contributions to Indian Sociology, 22(2),
195–227.)
Rao, A. (1995). From bondsmen to middlemen: Hired shepherds and
pastoral politics. Anthropos, 90(1–3), 149–167.
Rao, A. (1998a). Autonomy: Life cycle, gender, and status among
Himalayan pastoralists. Oxford: Berghahn.
Rao, A. (1998b). Prestations and progeny: The consolidation of wellbeing among the Bakkarwal of Jammu and Kashmir (western
Himalayas). In T. Schweizer & D. White (Eds.), Kinship, networks
and exchange (pp. 210–233). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press.
Rao, A. (1999). The many sources of identity: An example of changing
affiliations in rural Jammu and Kashmir. Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 22(1), 56–91.
Rao, A. (2000). Blood, milk, and mountains: Marriage practice
and concepts of predictability among the Bakkarwal of Jammu
and Kashmir. In M. Böck & A. Rao (Eds.), Culture, creation, and
procreation: Concepts of kinship in South Asian practice
(pp. 101–134). Oxford: Berghahn.
Rao, A. (2003). Access to pasture: Concepts, constraints, and practice
in the Kashmir Himalayas. In A. Rao & M. J. Casimir (Eds.),
Nomadism in South Asia (Oxford in India: Readings in sociology
and social and cultural anthropology series, pp. 174–212). Delhi,
India: Oxford University Press.
Balinese
Lyn Parker
LOCATION
The Island of Bali is located in Indonesia.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Bali is famous for its rich, predominantly Hindu, culture.
However, animist, Austronesian traditions prevailed in
Bali until the beginning of the Christian era, when Indian
and Chinese influences began to be felt, and the Balinese
developed their own version of Hinduism. Wet-rice
agriculture, organized around irrigation societies and
with important royal ritual patronage, was practiced
during the first millenium of the Christian era.
Precolonial Balinese society was stratified and
organized in kingdoms based on wet-rice cultivation.
Trade, especially in slaves and rice, has long been important, and Bali has never been as isolated as its tenure of
Hinduism in the face of Islamization might suggest.
There is a long history of culture contact, not only of
Indianization and European colonization, but also of a
strong Chinese presence in administration and trade, and
Arabic and Indian influence. The literature has differentiated between the “lowland” mainstream society of
courts and castes, and the “highland” Bali-Aga society,
with tendencies towards gerontocracy, principles of
precedence, and bilateral kinship organization, but recent
research suggests a more complex situation.
Bali was finally pacified and colonized by the
Netherlands from 1908. Following the Japanese interregnum and the revolutionary war for independence
(1945–49), Bali was incorporated into the nation-state of
the Republic of Indonesia. Internal administration has
been in line with the homogeneous model implemented
nationwide; the province has eight districts, each with
subdistricts and administrative villages.
The careful cultivation of the “Bali as paradise”
image by the Indonesian government and tourism industry has wrought an explosion in international tourism
in Bali, with an associated process of export-oriented
industrialization. There have been dramatic socioeconomic transformations in Bali since 1970, involving
a shift from a predominantly familial peasant mode of
production to a wage-labor mode of production, urbanization, and incorporation into the global capitalist
economy.
Population growth, caused mainly by declining
mortality rates, has been dramatic. Bali’s population
increased from 800,000 in 1817 to 3.15 million in 2000
(BPS, 2000; Raffles, 1817/1978, Vol. 2, p. ccxxxii).
However, there has been a recent sharp decline in fertility; the total fertility rate dropped from 5.96 in the period
1967–70 to 2.28 in the period 1986–89 (Hull & Jones,
1994, p. 135). The majority of the population still lives
in the rural villages of the southern rice-bowl areas.
Increasingly, prime farming land is giving way to roads,
hotels, art shops, golf courses, and urban sprawl.
The affluence of Bali, compared with the poverty of
other (especially more easterly) islands in Indonesia, and
the attractions of the tourist industry have led to internal
labor migration as well as urbanization; urban and
periurban areas are increasingly heterogeneous, with
mosques and churches now not unusual sights and a
cosmopolitan life-style in the main tourist areas. The
Balinese too have spread out across the archipelago,
participating in processes of religious colonization, transmigration, and the bureaucratization of the nation-state.
Bali is often characterized as a caste society, divided
into the four great Hindu divisions. The “high castes”
comprise the priestly caste (brahmana), the royal rulers
(satria), and traders/administrators (wesia), and are
commonly known as the “three groups” (triwangsa) or
“insiders” (wong jero). They are distinguished from the
“outsiders” or commoners (wong jaba), who comprise
perhaps 90% of the population. The triwangsa have their
own descent groups and ideally marry endogamously.
Caste differences are most obvious in levels of language
used, personal names, respect behavior (e.g., seating
positions), and in some social separation (e.g., in eating
and some rituals). Wong jaba are optionally organized in
descent groups, calculated from an apical ancestor.
303
304
Balinese
Arguments over caste and status have dominated
Balinese public discourse since the late 19th century,
perhaps as a reaction to the Dutch “freezing” of what was
once a more fluid and contestable social structure.
There is a patrilineal kinship system, a patrilocal
residence pattern, and agnatic inheritance. Everyone in
Bali must marry. Endogamy within a variety of groups
(descent groups, caste/status groups, and villages) is
desirable.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
Only two recognized gender categories—male and
female—are accorded full social acceptance. The genders
are seen as complementary. Men are supposed to be
active and dominant, rational, intelligent, virile, and
physically strong. Women are ideally passive and subordinate, emotional, less intelligent, and less confident than
men. The gender ideology is based upon the assumption
of biological determinism, for example, that it is the
nature of women to be docile and nurturing, that men are
susceptible to unrestrained lust, and so on. These qualities translate into social roles. Men are seen as having the
qualities that make them ideal as heads and masters of
their families, responsible decision-makers, and public
leaders. Men are supposed to play a strong role in
community life, working in reciprocal labor arrangements and promoting village unity. Women are valued for
their reproductive roles, their caregiving natures, and
their contribution to custom, particularly through their
intensive ritual (offering) labor. They are seen as the
emotional heart of the family, the principal supports of
their husbands, and as practical, efficient, flexible, and
diligent. They are expected to be hardworking and good
at coordinating activities.
There are alternatives to this dominant binary
construct, especially for men, but such identities cause
social marginalization. The most famous and accepted
are the banci, an “indigenous” transgender category of
feminized masculinity found not only in Bali but throughout the archipelago. The waria, an emerging national gay
male identity, is usually associated with a modernized
urban life-style. Some men participate in the gay tourism
scene for money; simultaneously, they participate in
mainstream village life.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The life cycle is perceived as describing a downward arc
of purity, with the beginning and end of life the times of
highest purity, and the active middle period of life the
most profane period. Perceptions of gender through the
life cycle follow a similar arc. The new baby is an undifferentiated male–female entity, like a god, but created out
of the union of differentiated male and female. At adolescence there is a redifferentiation of male and female,
allowing for the creation of a new male–female being
through sexual congress. Gender differences are most
apparent at adulthood, when married couples are producing children, are most active economically, and lead more
or less separate lives in public. With old age, men and
women again become more androgynous as they approach
the purifying transition of death.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Although boy babies are generally more welcome than
girl babies—for reasons of family- and kin-group maintenance, performance of death rituals, inheritance, and so
on—there is no great difference in their treatment; babies
of both sexes are treated “as gods” and are much loved.
By the age of 6 or 7, however, there are quite perceptible
gender differences, as expectations of the different future
roles and responsibilities of men and women shape children’s upbringing. Boys are generally free to play and
they roam around the village and further afield with their
friends. Girls are expected to help at home, minding
younger siblings, doing domestic chores, and running
small errands. Nowadays this difference is not quite so
stark because almost all children aged 7–12 years attend
school. Nevertheless, by the end of primary school,
models of ideal femininity and masculinity have been
absorbed: girls are usually modest, quiet, and shy, while
boys tend to be bolder, noisier, and more “forward” in
their socializing.
Puberty and Adolescence
With menstruation and the onset of puberty, girls are
expected to become models of female decorum and
beauty. “Woman” is the object of male desire, but is herself
to be passionless. The principal goal of female adolescence
is to land a good husband, so it behooves a young woman
to keep her good reputation lest she materially damage her
Gender over the Life Cycle
marriage prospects. Young women are supposed to be like
flowers or dolls: beautiful, restrained, passionless, and
passive. However, young men are likened to bees: attracted
to spirited and flirtatious pretty young women. So it can be
difficult for young women to balance the twin demands of
keeping a good name and attracting the right partner.
There are different emphases according to
caste/class: the feminine ideal of docility, stillness, and
inactivity can really only be an upper-caste/class ideal;
poorer girls are expected to be modest and restrained but
also to grow into useful and hardworking young women.
All young women are expected to put up a show of
chastity; the loss of virginity and a sexual relationship
prior to marriage are not uncommon, but should be the
prelude to marriage, not the beginnings of promiscuity.
In practice, if a girl becomes pregnant, she must marry.
Boys are supposed to be manly and brave, active,
keen to project themselves in the world, passionate, and
lustful. While there is a strong “macho” streak to Balinese
masculinity, this is tempered by the ideals of politeness,
restraint, and respect which are expected of all civilized
human beings.
There is a ritual to mark menstruation but it is not
often celebrated these days. It is often only a small private
ritual. A more public, and more important, ceremony is the
tooth-filing ceremony. Traditionally performed for boys
between the ages of 6 and 18 and for girls after menstruation, nowadays, because of the high cost and the rationalization of ritual in Bali, tooth-filing often piggy-backs
on other larger ceremonies which would happen anyway—especially weddings or death ceremonies. Toothfiling is one of the ceremonies that every Balinese Hindu
must perform in order to ensure the smooth transition of
the soul from birth through death and reincarnation. It is
a beautifying and humanizing rite.
Attainment of Adulthood
The Balinese consider that adulthood comes with
marriage and parenthood. Marriage is virtually compulsory, not only for the perpetuation of the patrilineage and
for attending to the deified ancestors, but also for the
performance of social duties. Men begin to participate in
the banjar 6 months after marriage—they attend monthly
meetings, make financial contributions, and contribute
their labor to communal working-bees. Upon marriage,
women take up their responsibilities for making and
presenting offerings at village rituals, fulfilling death
305
ceremony obligations, and so on. The performance of
public duties is triggered by marriage, and marks the
arrival of adulthood and the acceptance of responsibility
for community obligations.
Marriage is inextricably intertwined with
parenthood—a childless marriage is usually blamed on
the woman and is cause for taking a second wife. The
purpose of marriage is the creation of children: lust and
sex for procreation, fertility, reproduction, and sexuality
are indistinguishable aspects of marriage.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle age—the time from marriage until the marriage of
children—is a time of maximum social obligation, involving work, family, and ritual responsibilities. The raising of
a family is the principal task. Mature citizens are sensible
hardworking members of a community, conscientious
with ritual duties, and bearing the heaviest burdens in
society. Gender roles are at their most differentiated.
Adults who have not married, particularly women,
are suspect. Spinsters are highly anomalous—their
sexuality is uncontrolled and their social usefulness
limited. Spinsters are often accused of being witches. The
only exceptions are very high-caste spinsters, who find it
very difficult to find an appropriate husband in a small
catchment population.
If a woman initiates divorce, she must leave home;
if the man initiates it, the women will be evicted. Usually
divorcees have to return to their natal home; there is
stigma attached to their “used” status. Widows usually
rely on the goodwill of their affines (preferably their sons
or, failing that, their brothers-in-law) and try to stay in the
marital house-yard.
Spinsters, divorcees, and young widows are
problematic in ways that single men are not. Single men
can remain in their father’s house-yard, living out their
days as productive bachelors or as divorced or widowered
men. Single women, on the other hand, are entirely liminal.
Their sexuality and reproductivity are not under the control
of men, as is proper, and they do not have a proper ritual
place in the community. Most famously, they are suspected
of witchcraft, forever associated with Rangda, the fierce
widow-witch of Balinese exorcistic drama.
Once sons are married, men “retire” from official
duties in public life and gradually reduce their farming
activities. Elderly women are typically engaged in
helping with their grandchildren and are usually the
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Balinese
offerings experts in the village. With old age comes
economic dependence, decreasing community obligations, and a growing androgyny. Ideally, the elderly
command respect by their quiet dignity. Death requires
elaborate preparations and the mobilization of all human
and material resources; sons and daughters scrimp and
save and sell off land, and plan the long and elaborate
death ceremonies that will purify and deify their parents.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
“Personality” is quite a problematic concept to apply to
Balinese ideas of personhood. While differences between
individuals are perceived and commented upon, there is a
very limited range of possible types and individualism is
not encouraged. There is an idea of karma—that one’s
present position is the consequence of past actions and
that present actions have implications for the future—but
this is not an understanding akin to Western-style personality formation as a result of formative psychological
experiences. The social ethos is one of group activity,
social conformity, and cooperation to get things done.
Further, the exigencies of life in very crowded living
conditions, where virtually every activity takes place in
public, and where the consequences of every action will
rebound within one’s moral community, are such that
people downplay “personality” differences. That said,
differences do attach to gender, as described above for
ideal masculinity and femininity.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Typically in village Bali, an extended family lives in a
house-yard which is a subset of a patrilineal descent or
ancestor group. The house-yard is usually allocated by
the hamlet (banjar) or customary village (desa adat).
Rights to residence entail ritual responsibilities related
to community obligations for death ceremonies, upkeep
of the village temples and respect for the ancestors, stewardship of the territory, public works, and obedience to
the community’s rules.
Residence rights require that a responsible married
man occupies the house-yard. (This is an increasing
problem as many younger men participate in the urban
economy.) Such a family consists of a senior male with
wife/wives and sons, each with wife and children living
around their own kitchen. Daughters marry out. The basic
social unit is a father–mother united in marriage.
The patrilocal residence pattern and agnatic inheritance tradition mean that women are marginal to the core
structure of kin groups and residence units. Upon
marriage, if it is exogamous, women take leave of their
natal ancestors and adopt and honor their husbands’
ancestors. Endogamy within a variety of groups (descent
groups, caste/status groups, and villages) is desirable.
Social life outside the family is generally conducted
in gender-segregated groups. Men are active in sports
groups such as badminton, football, and snooker, and in
neighborhood patrols. Women do not generally congregate for leisure, and have less leisure time than men. Both
men and women often work cooperatively to make offerings and prepare for ceremonies, but always in gendersegregated groups with specific functions. Women rarely
form corporate groups. However, both men and women
participate in ephemeral purpose-specific groups known
as sekehe—these are sometimes gender-specific (e.g.,
men go squirrel hunting) and sometimes open (e.g., men
and women form a harvesting sekehe to raise money for
an upcoming religious festival). Intergender social interaction is traditionally rare, to the extent that it is difficult
for strangers to work out the families and married couples
in a community. Increasingly, schools, work-places,
shopping malls, and tourist venues provide sites for new
types of social mixing; Western tourist behavior, television, and other global media provide new social models.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
There is a very clear gendered division of labor in Bali,
with economic and noneconomic roles allocated along
principles of gender complementarity. The “conjugal
economy” (Jennaway, 2002, p. 80) means that both men
and women need to marry—there is no socially
respectable alternative, and indeed no material alternative.
Public life requires input from husband–wife couples.
Subscriptions for temple maintenance and support of
village priests are calculated on the basis of the husband–
wife unit; public works are performed by gender-specific
work teams with participation and contributions counted
in terms of husband–wife units; obligations for village
ritual cycles and certain life cycle rituals (notably death
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
ceremonies) are calculated in terms of husband–wife units
and performed according to gender (usually for weeks
before ceremonies women prepare offerings individually
at home, and men prepare meat offerings communally and
eat communally). In the absence of a state welfare system,
it is the family that supports the needy, sick, or aged. Sons
are seen as the principal source of support for the aged, and
the principle of male inheritance is justified in terms of the
expectation that sons will sponsor the ceremonies that will
eventually transform parents into deified ancestors. Hence
procreation within marriage is the guarantee of security in
old age and in the afterlife.
Some public roles have male and female counterparts; for example, the position of priests for village temples (pemangku) is occupied by a married couple. Much
public and private work is divided along gender lines:
women harvest, thresh, and carry the rice crop, and men
plant, plough, irrigate, and weed; women raise pigs and
chicken, and men raise cows, buffaloes and ducks;
women carry sand, rocks, and bricks to serve the men
building temples, houses, and public buildings; women
spend an inordinate amount of time preparing incredibly
ornate offerings from rice cakes, fruits, flowers, and
leaves, while men spend much less time preparing
offerings made of meat.
Some scholars have seen a high level of female
autonomy in economic matters. Certainly, women enjoy
personal sources of wealth—raising pigs for market, weaving or other handwork, the operation of food stalls—they
dominate village markets, which are largely a female territory, and they control the household purse strings. This
means that they are in charge of everyday family finances
for food, clothes, amenities, schooling, and so on, but also
it often means that they have to support their families.
Since men control expenditure on large items (e.g.,
cars and motorbikes), kin-group rituals (especially cremations), and public buildings (e.g., village temples), inherit
land and house-yards, administer the markets, dominate
cash-crop markets, and are notorious for their lack of financial responsibility (being famous gamblers), women’s economic “power” often does not translate into any significant
control of resources. Further, women’s economic work is
ultimately the production of wealth for the patrilineage.
This is perhaps less obvious today as inherited
land becomes less important as an economic resource.
Now there is much investment in education for young
people and in more ephemeral sources of income
(minibuses, motorbikes, businesses). This can have the
307
effect of shifting resources away from the patrilineage to
nuclear families and individuals, though status competition between these larger groups remains a feature of
Balinese social life, much in evidence at huge wedding
receptions and internationally televised cremation rituals.
In the more modern and formal sectors of the
economy, there is a gendered division of labor which bears
much similarity to international patterns. In the government sector, women work primarily as nurses, teachers,
and lower officials in the bureaucracy; men tend to work
as doctors, teachers, engineers, managers, and higher officials. The national pattern of male domination of the
higher ranks of the civil service obtains in Bali, and is
partly the product of educational disparities. Educational
levels in Bali have been low compared with national
figures, with gender differences more pronounced than
national averages indicate. It remains to be seen whether
the dramatic improvements in literacy and schooling levels for girls will translate into more rewarding employment
opportunities compared with those available to boys.
The growth in tourism and other tertiary industries
has enhanced female labor force participation and
income-earning, but men dominate control and ownership of businesses, decision-making, and more formal
authority. Gendered divisions of labor are more apparent
in the higher-class hotels and more specialized businesses
such as diving and cruise charters, with women dominating housekeeping, restaurant, and accounting sections,
and men taking up positions as guides, waiters, managers,
drivers, guards, and maintenance and grounds staff. In the
more informal sector of home-stays, handcraft businesses, and art shops, there are opportunities for women
to be joint owners of family businesses with their husbands, and much expanded opportunities for mobility and
income-earning, but these are often offset by heavier
workloads, the reinforcement of existing gendered divisions of labor, and the persistence of male-dominated
access to and control over decision-making and community management (Long & Kindon, 1997, p. 107).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Motherhood and fatherhood are key social roles.
“A Balinese [sic] feels that his most important duty is to
marry as soon as he comes of age and to raise a family to
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Balinese
perpetuate his line” (Covarrubias, 1937/1972, p. 122).
Men have duties both “upwards” to their parents and
ancestors and “downwards” to their children. Men who
inherit the family land and house-yard in turn bear responsibility for supporting their parents in old age and for
cremating their parents. They are also responsible for the
upkeep of family temples and the “remembering” and
honoring of the ancestral spirits. Fathers are regarded as
the principal breadwinners, and are the moral authority in
the family and the moral guardians of their children,
particularly of their daughters. Fathers have the final word
on all discipline and decision-making in the family, though
in practice it is more usually mothers who allocate tasks,
dispense resources, adjudicate on squabbles, discipline
children on the rare occasions it is necessary, and otherwise
deal with them on a day-to-day basis. Fathers are often
very affectionate toward their children, and are often to be
seen holding and playing with young children. They are
usually regarded as a “soft touch” for extra pocket-money,
lollies, and other favors, but as the children get older,
during primary school, fathers become more distant and are
gradually transformed into figures of authority who command a mix of fear and respect, especially from their sons.
Women value and are valued for their reproductive
capacity, which is seen as a source of unique power. The
ideal woman was primarily a mother, and secondarily a
faithful wife and hard worker at home, in the fields, and
in the performance of ritual offerings. Mothers are perceived to be the emotional heart of the family, and are
held informally responsible for the health and happiness
of the relationships therein. Their principal duties are
domestic tasks associated with cooking, washing, and
housework, childcare, including extended breast-feeding
(up to 4 years), the provision of clothing and food, and
moral teaching. Mothers usually find ways to combine
income-producing work with mothering and domestic
work, and bear a heavy burden of multiple roles (peran
ganda—domestic, ritual, and productive work).
Women forfeit their children upon divorce, and perceive this as an extremely strong deterrent to divorce.
Many women stay in unhappy marriages in order not to
lose their children.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men are the heads of families and represent their families
in the public domain. The primary public institutions in
Bali are the hamlet (banjar) and customary village (desa
adat). Married men attend the monthly meetings and
often decide policies and implement regulations on
issues, such as family planning or village water supply,
that directly affect women. Men and women alike say that
women are shy and reluctant to engage in public political
debates; some women say that they reject participation in
local decision-making because they are already too
busy. This ideology of male leadership is very much in
line with state gender ideology, which assumes male
leadership and headship in public institutions, government departments, and organizations, and advocates a
domestic role for women.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The cosmology of the Balinese links dual spheres: the
heavenly sphere of the gods, the sun and the mountain,
and the earthly sphere of the goddesses, the earth and
crops. In esoteric contexts, maleness (purusa, penis) is
associated with the spiritual dimension, with the heavens,
the god Akasa, provider of water and symbol of the
fertilizing element, and with essence. In contrast, femaleness is associated with the chthonian dimension, with the
earth and the goddess of the earth, Ibu Pertiwi, provider
of food and symbol of fertility, and with substance
(perdana). The fecundity of women is associated with the
fertility of soil and with agricultural fertility generally. It
is the fusion of the two complementary sexual principles
(rua-bhinneda, the two that are different: the purusa and
the perdana) which ultimately creates and maintains the
cosmos and animates all life.
Priests and healers are sakti (supernaturally powerful)
because of their ability to mediate between the realms of
the supernatural and the everyday. Both men and women
can be sakti, but women are associated with dark chthonian powers and are thought to be more likely than men to
practice black (or left, pangiwa) magic. Women’s reproductivity is a double-edged sword; they are valued for their
fertility, but considered both powerful and dangerous, and
subject to transformative change—through menstruation,
conception, parturition, and menopause. At these times
women are rendered impure (sebel), and hence vulnerable
to bewitchment and able to wield ambiguous power.
There are various types of priests, ranging from
pedanda, who must be of brahmana birth and have
undergone a long training, initiation, and baptism under
Relative Status of Men and Women
309
the tutelage of a senior pedanda, to the more humble
village temple caretaker priests, pemangku, who can be
of any caste and are chosen and supported by the local
temple congregation. A priest is generally perceived as a
male person, but the position is held by a married couple,
and the wife (mangku isteri, e.g.) can officiate at rites,
sacralize holy water, etc.
Healing is traditionally dominated by men and
includes a wide range of occupational specializations such
as bone-setting, spirit possession, massage, midwifery,
herbal treatments, exorcism, divination, dispensing of
charms (especially for love magic), and textual knowledge.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
See above in “Gender-Related Social Groups.” In the
performing arts, the genders have for the most part been
separated, with men dominating positions requiring leadership, knowledge, and authority. Men play the gamelan
(percussion orchestra), perform as dalang (puppetmasters, narrating the epics and operating puppets), and
participate in chanting groups ( papaosan), an activity
which requires knowledge of the epics and other arcane
texts. Most dances and dramatic roles are identified as
either male or female, and qualities of ideal masculinity
and femininity are embodied in these dances and roles.
Women’s main participation in the arts is as dancers.
Tourist patronage of the performing arts has radically
changed genres, roles, ideas of sacred and profane, and
patronage, as well as the practical organization such as
length of time of performances, choice of libretto,
costuming, venues, and costumes.
The most prominent female actors and, to a lesser
extent, dancers, are usually the daughters of the grand
masters. In everyday life, they often take on the male role
as the breadwinner of their families and, these days, are
highly mobile and often travel overseas. There are recent
government-sponsored moves to break down some of the
gender stereotyping in the arts, with competitions for
female gamelan and, in schools, mixed competitions for
oratory and chanting.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
In Bali, women are generally subordinate to men, and
considered to be socially and culturally inferior to men.
Balinese society is strongly gendered: “The most
important point is the complementariness of the sexes,
male and female together making up an entity, complementing each other” (Belo, 1949, p. 14). However, gender
complementarity does not mean equality; in community
and family life men hold a superior and commanding
position over women, and women are defined in relation
to men. Men are the heads of households and families,
and they occupy the apical position of patrilineages.
Women should respect and honor men. Sons are more
highly valued than daughters and to an extent receive
preferential treatment and enhanced access to resources
(education, inheritance, etc.).
Balinese gender ideology is in general reinforced by
the state gender ideology, which also sees men as the
heads of households and the heads of public institutions,
female state president notwithstanding. The state gender
ideology is based on the idea of the state as a family writ
large. The apical position is taken by the father (bapak),
who leads the family in furthering their common interest.
Since the late 1960s, the common interests identified by
the national government have been national unity, stability, and economic development. In this “family model,”
women’s duties are to be, in order, producers of the
nation’s future generations, wife and faithful companion
to her husband, mother and educator of her children,
manager of the household, and, lastly, citizen.
Balinese women are often said to be good managers,
to be financially astute and independent. However, as we
have seen, their economic activity does not necessarily
enable them to become economically powerful and it is not
associated with high status; indeed, women’s very “getting
and spending” enables men to operate on a “higher” plane
of existence. The image of the “fishwife” or market
woman—bossy, brassy, loud, shrewd, even wealthy—has
its counterpart in the image of the intimidated “henpecked” man, but ultimately the highest-status behavior is
that which is restrained and refined. Men’s distance from
the grubby business of the market and women’s need to be
shrewd, practical, and careful in economic management
justify men’s higher status and women’s lowlier status.
In the formal political arena of local politics, hamlet
households are represented by married men; women are
largely absent. However, the principle of rua-bhinneda,
the two that are different, is often invoked as a principle
of complementarity and equality, and some commentators have perceived the husband–wife relationship as a
relationship of equality (Geertz & Geertz, 1975, p. 56).
310
Balinese
The patrilineal basis of the kinship system means
that men are central while women are marginal to the
structure of social life. Of course, women are absolutely
central to the operation of social life through their fertility, ritual and domestic work, and productive labour.
Among the triwangsa, inheritance of the descent group’s
wealth is usually by primogeniture (i.e., the oldest son of
the primary wife); among the wong jaba it is sometimes
the youngest son who inherits, though this can be a bone
of contention. The practice of nominating substitute heirs
when a patriline cannot be otherwise continued is called
nyentana and is reasonably common.
SEXUALITY
A heterosexual model is hegemonic. The Balinese
acknowledge male homosexuality, but have a hard time
imagining what lesbian sexuality might consist of. Male
homosexuality is often regarded as a frivolous and passing whim, and is often associated with Westerners—
Balinese partners often being regarded as just in it for the
money. However, banci (effeminate males) have an
anomalous identity which is accepted but never desired,
for instance, by parents for their children, not least
because of the probability that no marriage and therefore
no children will be produced.
Sex is ideally initiated and controlled by men. Men
talk of conquest in love; the usual expectation of young
men is that women have to be pursued for some time until
finally worn down by persistent flattery, cajoling, threats,
etc. The model is of male activity, female passivity. There
is almost no discussion of female sexual desire, orgasm, or
of what women want in sex. For young women, passionlessness and chastity are ideals, though they talk extensively of their sweethearts and of love, and express erotic
desires. Their great need is to find a marriage partner;
hence there is a need to flirt and “shine,” but this is dangerous as it might send the wrong message of sexual availability and spoil a reputation for modest marriageability.
On the other hand, young women are afraid that if they say
“no” the boy will leave for someone who will say “yes.”
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Opportunities for courting are quite restricted because of
the gender-segregated patterns of socializing described
above. Boy–girl “dates” do not happen, and young people
have to find covert opportunities to make contact.
Traditionally this happened at night during or after
performances, rituals, and festivals, or, more risky, in the
kebun (gardens or crops). While boys have great freedom,
and are really expected to be sexually experienced at
marriage, girls should be secluded or accompanied at all
times. This protocol encourages duplicity. Athough
premarital sexual relationships are probably common, it
is also the case that some claimed “boyfriend” and
“girlfriend” relationships amount to no more than carrying a passport photo in a wallet. While fathers, especially,
can act as puritanical guardians of their daughters’ virtue,
they tend to discourage daughters from marrying late,
fearing the greater risks of premarital pregnancy the
longer the wait.
Traditionally, marriages were arranged by families
or conducted by elopement. The latter allowed young
people to skirt parental and/or community disapproval,
and also allowed persistent young men to prevail over
unwilling brides-to-be. Nowadays probably most marriages are not arranged, but the conjugal alliance is still
very much a partnership of families as well as a working
partnership of individuals. Of course, triwangsa marriages were usually strategic alliances informed by considerations of interstate politics, economic relations,
comparative status, and so on. Parental approval is still
essential. Elopement remains fairly common, and fits
well with contemporary Western and Indonesian notions
of cinta (love).
Age at marriage seems to have been quite high by
Indonesian standards and is rising. In 1964, women’s age
at marriage was 21.7 years; by 1985 it was 22.3 years
(Hull & Jones, 1994, p. 137).
Endogamy is the desired pattern. The closest and
most desirable marriage for a man is to marry the daughter of his father’s brother; this keeps the patriline pure,
the family strong and united, and minimizes problems
of inheritance, house-yard division, and so on. However,
there is also the idea that this can be a tenget (hot)
marriage because of this very closeness. Failing this,
marriage within the house-yard, or further patrilineage,
is desired—the bride will not have to take leave of her
ancestors and on leaving her natal house-yard she has relatives looking out for her. In some areas, the percentage
of patrilineage–endogamous marriages can be up to 60%;
certainly there are banjar which consist entirely of one
patrilineage and high levels of endogamy in those cases
Other Cross-Sex Relationships
are assured. However, among commoners, the endogamy
ideal is not so frequent and most women marry out of
their patrilineal descent group.
Polygyny is quite common among wealthy and
especially high-caste (triwangsa) men, though the
Indonesian state strongly encourages monogamy. One
study found that 5% of marriages in North Bali were
polygynous, but in socially conservative areas with a
preponderance of higher castes, polygynous marriages
can constitute a quarter of marriages. A polygynous
marriage, even with an older man, is considered preferable to spinsterhood. Women may not have more than one
husband.
Intercaste marriages are generally discouraged, and
there is a strict prohibition upon high-caste women
marrying “down” (i.e., to a lower-caste man). Such a
marriage would upset the hierarchy of male : female,
high : low. If plans for such a marriage were known about,
the girl’s family would take passionate, often violent,
preemptive action to try to avert the catastrophe. A highcaste woman who makes a hypogamous marriage is cast
out from her family (makutang) and is socially and
ritually “dead” to them. In times past, the couple could be
killed (Geertz & Geertz, 1975, p. 137).
Newly married women move into their husband’s
house-yard, coresiding with parents-in-law and brothersin-law and their families. Until they produce a baby, especially a son, brides are in a rather weak and powerless
position. The new wife is expected by her mother-in-law
to take over the greater part of the housework, cooking,
shopping, and laundry, so for many brides, marriage
means work. Mothers-in-law often perform much of the
ritual work of the house compound, especially the making of offerings. Thus there is considerable pressure on
new brides to become pregnant quickly.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Men are the heads of households, have authority over
their families, and are responsible for the economic
well-being of the family. Men seek to control their wives’
sexuality and fertility. Women are generally subordinate
to men, and wives are properly subordinate to husbands.
A sexual double standard operates by which sexual
promiscuity is valorized for men, making them appear
strong, potent, and attractive in the eyes of both men and
women, but is never condoned for women. For women,
311
sexual activity must be confined to the marital relationship. Of course in practice this rule is disobeyed, but
never publicly flaunted.
Women value and are valued for their reproductive
capacity. The ideal woman was primarily a mother of
sons and secondarily a faithful wife and hard worker at
home, in the fields, and in the performance of ritual offerings. Indeed, women are perceived to be responsible
for fertility, and an unreproductive marital relationship
is blamed on the woman. This is an Indonesian-wide
perception, enshrined in the Marriage Law of 1974: an
infertile marriage provides legitimate grounds for a man
to acquire a second wife, but a woman may not seek a
second husband.
Polygyny is frequently viewed by men as a status
marker—signifying not just sexual virility but also
wealth—but it is also considered a tricky arrangement to
manage. Separate households must be established, and
wives and children kept apart—it is well known that
cowives are bitter enemies, and that it is all but impossible to satisfy the requirement that a polygynous man
treat his wives and respective children equally. Polygyny
is sufficiently common that the possibility that a husband
will seek another wife is a very “tangible threat undermining the matrimonial security of the currently married
[woman]” (Jennaway, 2002, p. 80). Marriage as a cowife
is a very real possibility for the young unmarried woman,
especially if she becomes pregnant.
In many ways the marital relationship is a working
partnership. The aim is the material and social well-being
of the family, and ideally both husband and wife are
united in working for this.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
There are no public signs of boyfriend–girlfriend
relationships; it is difficult to work out husband–wife
relationships from public behavior. By contrast, same-sex
friendships and family relationships are marked by public
signs of casual intimacy—holding hands, arms draped
across shoulders—that are without sexual meaning.
Brother–sister relationships can be quite strong and
affectionate, as can father–daughter and mother–son
relationships. In contrast, older brother–younger brother
relationships are often conflicted due to inheritance and
status rivalry; father–son relationships are also often
difficult and strained. Resident grandparents are respected
312
and looked after; increasingly in villages, grandparents
are in loco parentis as the primary mother–father are
away working.
Outside the family, relationships between people of
the opposite sex are rare except for strictly work-related
purposes.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Balinese gender relations are in flux, as mass compulsory
education, national state ideologies and development
programmes, global popular culture and media, Western
tourist culture, urbanization, and capitalist employment
patterns all bring changing expectations and desires. The
transformation of the economic base of Balinese society—the shift from a familial peasant mode of production
to a wage-labor mode of production, with incorporation
into the global capitalist system—has had gendered consequences. Declining infant mortality rates, improved
educational opportunities and enhanced employment
opportunities, higher ages at marriage, changing attitudes
towards the value of children, state family-planning programmes, and the easy availability of contraceptives have
combined to produce dramatically falling fertility rates.
Ideals of masculinity and femininity have shifted in
tandem. The traditions of boys roaming the villages,
having adventures, now find expression in older boys
playing snooker, hanging out at shopping centers, playing
arcade games, going to the beach to look at the topless
tourist women, and mucking around with motorbikes.
Young men are supposed to leave villages in search of
employment, adventure, and experience. As men move
out of agriculture, villages, and house-yards of extended
patrilineal families, and into waged or salary work, cities,
and rented suburban houses occupied by nuclear families,
notions of the ideal man have shifted. Masculine ideals of
physical strength and endurance, community participation, leadership, and responsibility are in decline; men
are increasingly identified with, and measured by, the
economic well-being of their nuclear family.
Young women, on the other hand, are still largely
expected to be modest stay-at-homes, helping mother,
being good girls, and waiting to get married. The persistent demands for sex by boyfriends, the strong pressure
on them to find marriage partners, the boredom and
Balinese
poverty of their humdrum village lives, and the exciting
possibilities of leaving home can lead to compromising
situations. New public issues are appearing: demands for
sex education in schools and for easy contraception outside marriage (both argued as public health policy
responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic), for safe and legal
abortions, and for public discussion of sexual harassment
and domestic violence.
The ideal woman of the advertisements and of
government is the beautiful, responsible, and consuming
housewife—buying toothpaste, using contraception,
sending children to university, getting her aging mother’s
eyes checked for glaucoma. Balinese women are no
longer workers, sexual partners, and reproducers of their
husbands’ patrilineages; increasingly they have identities
based on their nuclear families and new reproductive,
sexual, and consuming duties. Once-fused notions of
fecundity and sexuality are becoming separated, but
ideas of women as independent workers and citizens, as
leaders and decision-makers, are still largely absent.
Most recently, the resurgence of Islam nationwide
and the rise of identity politics as part of the democratization process have triggered a new consciousness of
Hindu identity. With this has come a new retreat into
“authentic” Balinese adat and gender conservatism, as
vigilante male youth gangs patrol streets and enforce a
newly created tradition as the moral guardians of young
women.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bateson, G., & Mead, M. (1942). Balinese character: A photographic
analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
Belo, J. (1949). Bali: Rangda and Barong (American Ethnological
Society, Monograph No. 16). Seattle: University of Washington
Press.
Belo, J. (1970). A study of a Balinese family. In J. Belo (Ed.),
Traditional Balinese culture (pp. 350–370). New York: Columbia
University Press. (Original work published 1936.)
BPS (Biro Pusat Statistik). (2000). Retrieved from http://www.bps.
go.id/sector/population/pop2000.htm
Connor, L. (1983). Healing as women’s work in Bali. In L. Manderson
(Ed.), Women’s work and women’s roles: Economics and everyday
life in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore (pp. 53–72). Canberra,
Australia: Development Studies Centre, Australian National
University.
Covarrubias, M. (1972). Island of Bali. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. (Original work published 1937.)
Eiseman, F. B., Jr. (1990a). Bali: Sekala and Niskala. Vol. I: Essays on
religion, ritual and art. Periplus Editions.
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Eiseman, F. B., Jr. (1990b). Bali: Sekala and Niskala. Vol. II: Essays on
society, tradition, and craft. Hong Kong: Periplus Editions.
Geertz, H., & Geertz, C. (1975). Kinship in Bali. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Hull, T. H., & Jones, G. W. (1994). Fertility decline in the new order
period: The evolution of population policy 1965–90. In H. Hill
(Ed.), Indonesia’s new order: The dynamics of socio-economic
transformation (pp. 123–144). Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Jennaway, M. (2002). Inflatable bodies and the breath of life:
Courtship and desire among young women in rural north Bali.
In L. Manderson & P. Liamputtong (Eds.), Coming of age in
South and Southeast Asia: Youth, courtship and sexuality. (Nordic
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Miller, D. B., & Branson, J. (1989). Pollution in paradise: Hinduism
and the subordination of women in Bali. In P. Alexander (Ed.),
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3, 497–516.
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K. Ram (Eds.), Borders of being: Citizenship, fertility and
sexuality in Asia and the Pacific (pp. 178–202). Ann Arbor:
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79–96.
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Reprints). Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. (Original work
published 1817.)
Bamiléké
Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Bamiléké is a collective term referring to the people
of some 100 chiefdoms in the Western Province of
Cameroon, and their descendants now living throughout
the country and overseas. Bamiléké often use this collective term to refer to themselves, but also use the names of
their specific chiefdoms. In these names, the prefix “ba”
means “the people of.” Scholarly literature often refers to
the culture using the names of specific Bamiléké chiefdoms or locales. These include Aghem, Babadjou,
Bafang, Bafou, Bafoussam, Bagam, Baloum, Bamaha,
Bamendjina, Bamendjou, Bamenkoumbit, Bamenyam,
Bana, Bandjou, Bangangté, Bangoua, Bangwa, BangwaFontem, Bapi, Batcham, Batchingou, Bati, Batié,
Dschang, Fe’e Fe’e, Fomopea, Fongondeng, Foto,
Fotouni, and Mbouda.
The name “Bamiléké” has been associated with a loose
agglomeration of some 100 chiefdoms of what is now
the Western Province of Cameroon since at least 1910,
and possibly since the 1890s. The term derives from
a colonial German mispronunciation of a Bali (western
Grassfields) interpreter’s designation, “Mba Lekeo,” or
“the people down there [in the valleys].” Since
Cameroon’s independence from French and British
trusteeships in 1960, Bamiléké people identify themselves as Bamiléké when interacting with members of
other ethnic groups, but refer to themselves as descendants of specific chiefdoms or villages when conversing
with other Bamiléké. Starting in the 1990s, as ethnicity
has become increasingly politicized, collective Bamiléké
identity takes precedence over village and chiefdom identity in ever more contexts.
Bamiléké political organization is highly stratified,
with a divine king (or sacred chief) and queen mother at
the apex, followed by title-holding nobility, royal retainers, commoners, and (in the precolonial era) slaves. In the
precolonial era, Bamiléké chiefs had power over the life
and death of their subjects. They received counsel, as well
as aid in the execution of orders, from the nobility, royal
retainers, and members of secret societies (masked associations with particular religious–political jurisdiction).
Chiefs currently have jurisdiction over civil court cases
in rural areas, serve as justices of the peace, and are
consulted and honored at many occasions. As in the past,
Bamiléké chiefs and nobles practice active interchiefdom
diplomacy, and visit the home-boy and home-girl associations of their urban-dwelling adherents. Increasingly,
differences in wealth and power based upon commerce,
education, religious affiliation, and participation in
national party politics exist alongside the chiefdomcentered system of social stratification. There is no traditional overarching Bamiléké political organization.
Bamiléké are active in several contemporary political
LOCATION
The Bamiléké region encompasses most of the Western
Province of the Republic of Cameroon, a country located
on the hinge between West and Central Africa. More
specifically, the 6,196 square kilometer Bamiléké region
extends roughly from 5⬚N to 6⬚N and from 10⬚E to 11⬚E.
Part of the Grassfields, a mountainous plateau spanning
the Western and Northwestern Provinces of Cameroon,
the Bamiléké region is bounded by the Bamboutos
Mountains on the northwest and by the Noun River on the
southeast. It is made up of five administrative divisions
within the Western Province: Bamboutos, Haut-Nkam,
Mifi, Menoua, and Ndé. At an average elevation of
1,400 m, the region is characterized by its irregular hilly
relief, basalt and other volcanic outcroppings, and a
striking mixture of high-altitude prairie and forest.
Temperatures range from 13⬚C to 23⬚C, and rainfall tops
160 cm per year.
314
Cultural Construction of Gender
315
parties, but are particularly associated with the major
opposition party.
Rural Bamiléké are primarily farmers. Women grow
maize (the preferred staple), beans, peanuts, cassava,
tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, and condiments, tilling with
iron hoes. Men grow plantains as well as coffee (the
major cash crop) and some cocoa. The chief is the titular
owner of all land, but through his quarter chiefs distributes usufruct rights to male heads of patrilineages, who in
turn distribute plots of land to their wives, their noninheriting brothers, and their sisters. High population density (125 persons per square kilometer on average) and
lack of land has contributed to high rates of rural to urban
migration. A tradition of both male and female participation in trade, combined with a work and achievement
ethic, has helped the Bamiléké gain a reputation as
successful, even “aggressive,” entrepreneurs.
Family and kinship provides the basis of ongoing
rural–urban ties, the organization of labor, and childhood
socialization. Bamiléké practice a system of dual descent,
recognizing the importance of both patrilineages and
matrilineages for each individual. Descendants seek to
insure their good fortune by venerating the skulls of their
ancestors and ancestresses. Marriage is lineage exogamous and virilocal; brides always come from another lineage than the groom, and relocate from their natal homes
to the house or compound that the groom has prepared for
his new bride. Polygyny is culturally valued, but it is
increasingly beyond men’s means to pay bridewealth and
construct houses for more than one wife.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
Bamiléké recognize two gender categories, male and
female. Gender is conceptualized in a strictly binary fashion; there are no third genders in Bamiléké society, and
no culturally recognized diversity of sexual orientation
associated with multiple genders. In Bamiléké thought,
male and female share their basic humanity, being made
through the mystery of Nsi (divine creation) and through
the mixing of male and female “waters” and/or “bloods”
through sexual intercourse. Both have spirit (or “breath”),
and after death both male and female skulls are exhumed,
protected in clay pots or in tombs, and venerated. Both
Bamiléké men and women consider themselves to be
hardworking and shrewd.
Bamiléké believe that males and females differ in
their anatomy and reproductive capacity, in their relative
strength, and in their emotionality. In terms of reproduction, men contribute substance to the making of a
new fetus (usually termed “water,” the same word used
for semen, but occasionally termed “blood”). If the
child is born in wedlock, it is said to physically resemble
its father. Women likewise contribute substance (usually
identified as “blood” but occasionally as “water”) to
the new being, as well as actively forming the fetus
through their transformational (“cooking”) skills during
gestation. Women further form the child through
breast-feeding. Women are responsible, through both
inheritance of traits and child-rearing practices, for the
personality of the child. Women are considered to be
physically less strong than men, but to have greater
endurance. Bamiléké women are still expected to display
considerable physical strength and fortitude, especially in
their agricultural labors. According to Bamiléké cultural
stereotypes, Bamiléké men are assumed to display
self-control (“to hold their hearts”), while Bamiléké
women are assumed to be emotionally volatile. In
practice, Bamiléké men are emotionally forceful orators,
and rage within marriage is considered normal and
“within men’s nature.” Bamiléké women, by contrast, are
highly suspicious of witchcraft attacks, and prudent in
the information they share and the emotions they reveal.
Postmenopausal women gain some of the privileges of
manhood (e.g., right of way when walking on narrow
forest or prairie paths) and are assumed to gain the
emotional self-control characteristic of Bamiléké
maleness.
Men and women distinguish themselves by dress
and ornamentation. In the pre-colonial era, Bamiléké men
wore loin cloths, while women wore a band of braided
vines around the hips and a simple cloth or bark-cloth
cache-sexe. Hats marked nobility for men, while circlets
of cowrie shells marked royal parentage and, more
frequently, royal marriage for women. Currently, men
and women wear Western attire, or modern African
fashion. Most men wear their hair close-cropped, while
women display a creative variety of hairdos. Strength,
proud bearing, and fashionable clothing are considered
attractive in men, while hardworking endurance, humility, and fashionable dress are considered attractive in
women. Despite these gender stereotypes, most Bamiléké
women are relatively forceful and resolute rather than
humble in their relations with men.
316
GENDER
Bamiléké
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
While childhood is distinguished from adulthood, there
are no cultural names for stages in the life cycle among
the Bamiléké. There are also no organized age-grade
societies for boys or girls. In the past nja, translated as
“circumcision” but in reality referring to puberty rites,
was practiced for both boys and girls as a prelude to
marriage. Male circumcision was (and still is) universal.
Families who could afford it would enclose their daughters in a fattening house or fattening room (nda nja) at
puberty, followed by a public display of the now nubile
girl. This female initiation rite did not involve genital
surgery. Adulthood is attained gradually for both men and
women, through building a house and the establishment
of marriage for men, and through marriage and the birth
of children for women. Marriage, parenthood, and
heirship all bring with them increased rights and responsibilities for men and women.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Bamiléké prefer and actively praise a balance of male and
female children. Special rituals performed by the queen
mother (the mother of the chief) aim to insure a balance
of male and female children in the royal family. Boy and
girl infants are treated equally, and traditional given
names do not distinguish among male and female children (although praise names, ndap, do distinguish among
the male and female descendants of a particular village).
Infants are frequently bathed, held constantly, and passed
from mother to visitor to sibling and, occasionally, to
father. They are encouraged to sit and to walk, and to play
give-and-take games with simple objects. Small rituals,
associated with bathing, are performed by caretaking
adults (especially mothers and grandmothers) to prevent
convulsions, colic, and witchcraft attack. Once they reach
toddlerhood, both boys and girls begin to practice the
tasks of adulthood (carrying bowls of water and other
objects on the head, learning to handle a hoe and
machete). As childhood progresses, play and household
work act as training for the gendered division of labor in
adult life. Gender differentiation in work and play
increases as children reach school age, and even more so
for prepubescent children. Good behavior, especially
polite and quiet hospitality, and prudence (not reporting
what one has seen or heard) are expected of both
male and female children. Mothers and older siblings,
especially but not exclusively sisters, are the most
frequent caretakers of young children. Fostering of
children over the age of 6 years is a common practice,
considered to contribute to a well-rounded socialization
and providing for some distribution of resources within
broader kinship networks. Formal schooling is now the
norm for both girls and boys, although more boys than
girls continue on to secondary and university education.
Formal education is now highly valued among Bamiléké,
while in the past (especially during the colonial era) an
early success in business was most valued.
Puberty and Adolescence
While Bamiléké do not identify puberty and adolescence
with a specific term, they do recognize this period as an
important stage in a child’s transition toward adulthood.
Socialization practices of childhood continue, but expectations of maturity and reflection and of contribution
to the household economy increase. Girls are closely
watched for signs of physical maturity. If a mother or
grandmother fears that a girl is developing breasts prematurely, she will massage the child’s breasts with grinding stones to “keep them from growing.” Girls are also
closely supervised to prevent precocious sexual activity.
In the past, some pubescent girls were fattened by being
enclosed in a special hut or room, fed rich foods, and
prohibited from physical labor for up to 6 months. This
participation in nda nja was considered a privilege that
not all families could afford. There is no genital modification for girls. Boys, now circumcised soon after birth,
were circumcised at puberty. No particular rites are associated with male circumcision. Male adolescents were
organized into work and warrior societies called manjo
during the precolonial and early colonial eras, but these
associations now exist only in memory. More informal
work parties, in which kin or neighbors work on each
others’ fields or help with house construction, may
involve either adolescent girls or boys, depending upon
the type of work involved.
Attainment of Adulthood
No specific rites are associated with the transition to
adulthood for males and females. Education, but particularly marriage and child-bearing, mark a gradual transition into adulthood. The transition into manhood included
expectations of building (or, in urban areas, buying) one’s
Gender-Related Social Groups
317
own house (a precondition for marriage). Men and
particularly women are increasingly respected as adults if
they bear many children, and even more so if they are
parents of twins.
Middle Age and Old Age
Both parenthood and increasing age confer increasing
respect on Bamiléké men and women. “Having seen a lot”
because of one’s age and experience is highly valued,
and considered a precondition of sagacity. Middle-aged
women, like their younger newlywed counterparts, are
expected on the one hand to work hard and manage the
household and farms independently, and on the other hand
to demonstrate humility and submission to their husbands.
Postmenopausal women are freed from some of these constraints of modesty. Postmenopausal members of the royal
family may even counsel the paramount chief. Bamiléké
men likewise gain more respect and power with increasing age. Cadets, or young, unmarried, and often noninheriting men, have little say, but they gain status as they
establish households and families. In an impartible inheritance system, heirs gain status when they inherit the property, wives, and titles of their recently deceased ancestor
(usually their father). Personal achievement, especially for
men, is often marked through membership in title societies tied to the royal house, and through working one’s
way up through a system of ranked titles. New monied
elites now “buy” neotraditional titles in some Bamiléké
chiefdoms. Thus, age and rank combine to grant higher
status, but are not equivalent.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
In Bamiléké child-rearing practices, parents and other
adults tolerate some wildness in boys, but expect more
poised behavior from girls. These differences in expectations increase as the boys and girls approach puberty. For
adults, women and especially men state that women are
more emotionally volatile than men, and thus are not to
be trusted at upsetting events such as public autopsies
(now rare). This stereotype is belied by Bamiléké
women’s careful management of information and refusal
to practice hearsay, based largely on fear of witchcraft.
Both genders characterize Bamiléké as hardworking,
forward-seeing, and “prudent” when comparing their
own ethnic group with others. The only strongly
gendered culturally recognized mental illness is that of
the megni nsi, or spirit mediums. Megni nsi are almost
always women. Their initial spirit possession follows a
set pattern of trembling, patting the ground, unintelligible
speech, and running off into the bush. When properly
treated through initiation into the role of spirit medium,
the woman is not only “cured,” but also highly respected
as someone practicing a religious–medical calling. Lack
of treatment/initiation is believed to lead to madness.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Two main types of gender-related social groups exist in
Bamiléké society: (1) kinship groups; (2) nonkin associations. Kinship relations organize religious duties of men
and women, inheritance of property and titles, and access
to land. Bamiléké practice a system of dual descent,
recognizing each person’s patrilineage and matrilineage
and honoring ancestors from these two distinct lineages.
At the center of each descent group are lines of heirs
or heiresses who inherit the property, titles, and skull
custodianship of their ascendants. Patrilineal descent
determines village membership and the inheritance of
titles, real estate, usufruct rights to land obtained from
the paramount chief, and wives. Matrilineal descent
determines the inheritance of titles, movable property,
and moral and legal obligation to lineage members.
Descendants’ most profound religious duty is to venerate
the skulls of their ancestors and ancestresses, offering
food sacrifices, libations, and prayers to increase success,
to ward off misfortune, and to seek relief from illness.
Heirs and heiresses thus become conduits to sacrificing at
ancestral skulls for their noninheriting relatives. Marriage
is exogamous, preventing individuals from marrying
members of the same matrilineage or patrilineage. Most
marriages involve the exchange of bridewealth, which
grants the groom reproductive, sexual, and domestic
rights. In cases where no bridewealth is exchanged, the
bride’s father retains rights over the marriage and patrilineal identity of his granddaughters. Contemporary
Bamiléké may also choose Christian (and occasionally
Islamic) marriage, marriage by justice of the peace,
elopement, or single parenthood. Traditional marriage is
virilocal (the bride moves to the groom’s residence),
and men prefer to settle near their father if there is
318
Bamiléké
enough land. Population pressure on the land make this
increasingly difficult for couples where the groom in noninheriting. Thus Bamiléké couples increasingly exhibit a
neolocal postmarital residence pattern. Polygyny is a goal
that fewer and fewer men can afford. In polygynous
households, each wife has her own kitchen-house.
Construction of this house is the groom’s responsibility,
and is a prerequisite for marriage. The term for marriage,
nâ nda (to cook inside), condenses the symbolism of a
married woman’s confinement to her kitchen, cooking
meals and producing children for her husband’s lineage.
Nonkin associations include those associated with
traditional Bamiléké royalty, and all the pomp and
etiquette that entails, and those that are independent of
royal control. Traditional title societies constitute the first
type of nonkin association. While there are title societies
for both men and women, most are for men, and all are
gender segregated. These title societies mark both inheritance of rank (e.g., for heirs of nobility) and achievement. Rotating credit associations, dance societies, and
churches form the most important nonroyal nonkin
associations. The first two are almost always sex segregated. Bamiléké are famous throughout Cameroon for
developing rotating credit associations into “an art,” and
organizing both modest farmers or merchants and elite
professionals into mutual aid groups based on a combination of gender, ethnicity, and income or occupation.
These rotating credit associations or tontines (also called
ncua) exist both in the Bamiléké homeland and among
Bamiléké migrants to cities and other commercial centers
in Cameroon. For Bamiléké “exiles,” these rotating credit
groups form the core of home-boy and home-girl mutual
aid and cultural associations in the urban setting.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Rural Bamiléké are primarily farmers, but also keep
pygmy goats and sheep, and engage actively in commerce.
Since precolonial times, women have been the major producers of food crops, including maize, beans, peanuts, and
cassava. Men have been responsible for tree crops (plantains, and since the colonial era the cash crops coffee and
cacao), clearing women’s fields, and building fences.
Hunting, small-animal husbandry, and war were also
precolonial male pursuits. They have been replaced by
cash-crop cultivation, shopkeeping, and taxi and truck
driving. Women continue to grow food crops, and began
commercializing their food crop production as early as the
1920s (before men become involved in cash-crop production). Women and men are both involved in marketing;
until recently, men were more often involved in longerdistance trade, while women sold foodstuffs (both raw and
prepared) at local markets and roadside stands. In the
current economic crisis, women are particularly involved
in the informal economy, making ends meet by selling
foodstuffs, soap, cooking oil, and other items at small
roadside stands.
Women can inherit movable property and traditional
titles from any matrilineal female relative as long as they
are the designated heiress. Likewise, men can inherit real
estate, wives, and titles from any patrilineal male relative,
as long as they are the designated heir.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers and older siblings take care of babies (playing
with them, encouraging development by propping them
in a sitting position, frequently bathing infants to
“fortify” them, and, of course, feeding them). When the
child can talk, its father begins to correct its behavior and
to discipline larger transgressions through shaming or
corporal punishment. As they grow, children spend less
and less time with their parents. They help in the fields
and household, but otherwise spend most of their time
with other children. Gender roles are already important in
early child-rearing—parents indicate which games are
important to their male and female children. In the rural
area, these games often replicate the gendered division of
labor. Among urban Bamiléké elites (the salaried middle
and upper class), parents might help children with school
work. Since these elite parents are often at work, they hire
tutors and nannies for their children. Household help
might watch out that children do not hurt themselves,
while doing other duties; they are not expected to be
engaged in children’s games or schoolwork, reflecting the
separation between the worlds of children and adults.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Bamiléké chiefdoms are highly stratified, with sacred
chiefs and queen mothers at the apex, followed by various
Relative Status of Men and Women
levels of title-holding nobility, royal retainers, and
commoners. Although the queen mother and councils of
title-holding women had some rights and responsibilities
to counsel the (male) chief during the precolonial era,
Bamiléké women have gradually lost their political rights
and duties. Most title-holding nobility and royal retainers
are men. The most important of these are the nkam be’e,
or council of the nine highest nobles, who are responsible for the investiture of new chiefs. Men have more, and
increasingly more, authority in the public arena than
women. In the national context, Bamiléké men have
easier and greater access to state bureaucracies, and thus
to credit and markets, than women.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Traditional Bamiléké religious practice focuses on the
care and reverence of ancestors and on etiquette surrounding the sacred chief. All Bamiléké share obligations
to sacrifice to the skulls of their patrilineal and matrilineal ancestors. A complex calculation determines the
extent (in terms of generations of antecedents) to which
male heirs and nonheirs are responsible for sacrifices to
patrilineal ancestors. All matrilineal ancestors can hold
sway over their descendents, and thus require placation
through sacrifice and prayer. Heirs and heiresses, as custodians of ancestral skulls, can sometimes wield considerable power over their noninheriting relations who need
access to the skulls to perform sacrifices. The secret society ba nda nsi, or the people of the house of god, is a male
title society associated with the ritual aspects of royalty
and with maintaining the spiritual health of the entire
chiefdom. Spirit mediums, by contrast, are usually
women. Bamiléké women are very involved in a variety
of Christian churches, with the great majority being either
Protestant (Evangelical Church of Cameroon) or Roman
Catholic. However, men hold the highest positions of
authority within church hierarchies.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Children’s play becomes increasingly sex segregated as
they grow older. Adult men spend their leisure time
socializing with friends and discussing chiefdom politics,
particularly in the context of title societies. Male youth
and adults are both enthusiastic soccer players or fans.
319
Bamiléké women engage in storytelling when they are
preparing and eating meals with their children, evoking
warm memories of the emotional as well as kinship ties
among full siblings and their mother. Bamiléké women
also discuss local affairs while walking to and from association or rotating credit meetings, when they meet at
market, and while fixing each others’ hair.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Both men and women hold formal positions in the public
arena, including political offices and secret and title
societies, and positions in church hierarchies, but men
have considerably more opportunity than women to
exhibit public leadership. The paramount chief (mfen,
mfo, or fon), his council of nine nobles (nkam be’e), royal
retainers, and most other title-holding nobility are all
men. The duties of the queen mother (ma mfen) and titleholding women included advisory roles in statecraft in
the past, but are increasingly limited to ceremonial and
honorary roles. Over time, men in these public positions
have gained more authority, while women’s opportunities
for formal participation in the public arena have
diminished. Highly educated Bamiléké women, mostly
migrants to the major cities, who are developing successful careers in the Cameroonian civil service and the
liberal professions (medicine, law), are the exceptions to
this trend. Women’s position in church hierarchies is
ambiguous; they are the most frequent and dedicated
churchgoers in all denominations and practice considerable leadership there, but do not hold the highest positions within any of these churches. Within subsistence
and the economy, men’s and women’s activities and
budgets are quite separate, giving both considerable
autonomy in many realms of economic decision-making.
Among rural agricultural Bamiléké, men and women
control the fruits of their labor, with men selling cash
crops to parastatal coffee and cocoa cooperatives and
women selling surplus food crops in local markets (occasionally in wider regional and national markets as well).
However, owing to deeply felt responsibilities, Bamiléké
women tend to invest in the immediate needs of their
domestic group while men invest in longer-term business
ventures or building a house. This leads to inequalities in
men’s and women’s access to resources, as well as to
320
authority within the household. Men have final authority
within the household and kin group, and expect deference
from their wives and daughters in particular, but also
from junior men. Women, particularly wives in a polygynous household, do exercise some informal power
through symbolic acts such as serving meals prepared
without oil, cooking strikes, or refusing sex. Both men
and women can initiate divorce, and there are no rules
regarding child custody following divorce. However,
there are strong societal pressures against divorce, and it
is relatively rare among Bamiléké couples.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality among the Bamiléké was traditionally considered to be for procreation. Social mores insured that
sexuality was exposed to others; sexual acts were kept
very discrete. Daily life consisted of rather distant relations between men and women, including between sexual
partners. Spouses did not share a bedroom; instead, the
wife came to the husband’s room only when he called.
Sexuality between a husband and wife was rather hidden,
and there were no public displays of intimacy. Currently,
daily relations between men and women are less discrete;
even older people now share a bedroom with their spouse,
while before that was unthinkable. Women now have
more (but not absolute) decision-making power in the
household, including regarding their own sexuality.
Kissing and hand-holding are now done in public (even if
less demonstratively than currently in the United States).
Urbanization contributes to this increasing daily proximity and intimacy between Bamiléké men and women. In
rural areas, the division of labor still inhibits men and
women from much daily contact.
The sex act is considered “hot” and full of transformative power. However, only menstruation is surrounded
traditionally by clear restrictions (“taboos”): a menstruating woman cannot prepare food, cannot walk freely in
public or stray far from home, and should have no sexual
relations. Although Bamiléké do not practice menstrual
seclusion (and are shocked by the suggestion that other
peoples do!), a menstruating woman is expected to retreat
somewhat from public life. Extramarital sex among those
already married is considered polluting. A woman who
has had sex with a man other than her husband is spiritually marked for life. She is not allowed to visit her
husband if he should become sick, because her presence
Bamiléké
has the potential to aggravate his illness or cause death.
Women’s infidelity has consequences for her own health
as well, especially regarding difficult labor or a complicated pregnancy; she is only cured through rites of public confession to “open” the way. These consequences
can last throughout a woman’s lifetime. There are no
parallel consequences for men’s extramarital affairs, with
two exceptions. If a man has an affair with a paramount
chief’s wife, he is sent away in exile (and in the precolonial era could have been buried alive with his paramour).
All culturally defined incestuous relationships (including
a man having sex with a relative of his wife) are polluting and cause illnesses such as edema, other swelling, and
infertility.
In the past, premarital sexual relations were not
accepted for girls, but tolerated for boys after circumcision (which was performed shortly after puberty, around
the age of 17–18 years). In general, there was a much
stronger control of sexuality of children. Boys and girls
were often kept rather separate. Girls were subject to even
more control than boys. The virgin marriage of a girl,
announced through the display of a bloodstained sheet,
was celebrated. In contrast, a non-virgin bride was called
“oversalted,” and her family received an oversalted meal
from the groom’s family. Premarital sex is now expected
for boys, and even for girls (although virginity at marriage is still valued). It is now very rare that Bamiléké
girls or boys enter into marriage without having experienced premarital sex. Among the Bamiléké, premarital
pregnancies are still considered shameful, even though
they prove fertility in a society that fears infertility. The
main concern with premarital pregnancy is that it reflects
badly on the family, and leads to conflicts between the
parents of the pregnant girl. Children conceived outside
marriage are often adopted by their maternal grandparents, and call their mothers Tata (auntie). Premarital
pregnancy is one of the primary reasons for abortions,
with grave secondary consequences for women’s health.
Bamiléké regard themselves as conservative with regard
to premarital sex and child-bearing; perceptions appear to
be changing faster in other parts of Cameroon.
Most Bamiléké assume that menopausal women do
not have sex, even though the current reality is that
elderly men and women do continue their sexual lives.
Norms are that after a certain age, husband and wife will
have separate rooms and end their sexual relations.
Bamiléké women are subject to norms regarding social
menopause, which state that a woman should not have
Husband–Wife Relationship
sex or conceive after one of her children has had a child.
However, elderly men often continue their sexual life
either with younger wives or outside marriage, regardless
of the existence of grandchildren.
In the past, modesty was considered part of the
social protection of body, and these ideas were reinforced
through early missionization and the introduction of
clothing made of imported cloth. Nowadays the female
body is much more exposed, especially among youth.
Although there is little expression in gesture or talk
about sexuality among the Bamiléké, some festivals (such
as royal enthronement and weddings) allow for the
expression of sexuality, and even jokes about sexuality,
through dance and song. These are specific situations
where one can go against norms. Making jokes about
sexuality outside these special occasions is frowned upon.
Cross-dressing and same-sex sexual attraction is interpreted by most Bamiléké as an illness. Cross-sex identification is considered a kind of madness, or possession by
a demon, and a person exhibiting such behaviors or
tendencies is taken to a healer or diviner. Homosexuality,
although it does exist, is not recognized in Bamiléké
society. Currently, many consider homosexuality to be an
urban phenomenon, an import from the West, or the result
of grinding poverty (reflecting an association that many
Bamiléké make among homosexuality, promiscuity, and
prostitution).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
In the past, nearly all Bamiléké parents arranged the
marriages of their children, although both the groom and
bride had the right to refuse. Arranged marriage served
two purposes: preventing unintentional incest (in the case
of close lineage relations separated and masked by the
passage of many generations), and the wish of the
groom’s family to be able to control their son’s bride.
After a period of covert investigation, the process of
courtship was initiated by the groom approaching his
future father-in-law with the expression, “I have no one
to cook for me.” As a prerequisite to marriage, the groom
needed to build a house, including a kitchen, for his new
bride. The Bamiléké term for marriage, na nda, means “to
cook inside,” symbolically referring to the containment
of the wife’s productive and reproductive labor “inside”
the literal walls of the kitchen and metaphoric boundaries
of the marriage contract. A series of prestations
321
(gift exchanges) would be made from both sides,
culminating in a marriage ceremony that emphasized
fidelity, fertility, and the alliance formed between two
families. Bridewealth was paid by the groom and his
family to the bride’s father, his heir, or occasionally to her
grandfather or ta nkap (if no bridewealth had been paid
for her mother). The payment of bridewealth ensured that
the children of the union would be members of their
father’s patrilineage. Bridewealth payments were often
spread over long periods of time, and disputes over
bridewealth and resulting ancestral wrath were interpreted as a major cause of reproductive illness. These
customs persist to the present day, although youths
currently choose their own spouses. Marriage is expected
of everyone, and if youths wait too long, family members
will choose spouses and exert considerable social
pressure to marry. Bamiléké expect that the marriage will
quickly result in a child; when pregnancy does not follow
marriage within a few months, family members will start
to suggest traditional medical practitioners and even
hospital infertility treatment. Infertility is usually blamed
on the woman, and leads to many problems with her
affines (members of her husband’s family).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Except in economically and educationally elite or middleclass families, husband and wife eat separately. They
spend little time together, and are discrete in their expression of intimacy. Even in monogamous marriages, extramarital relations are rather common for men. Divorce is
discouraged (see “Relative Status of Men and Women”),
was rare in the past, and remains less frequent among
Bamiléké than among the other major ethnic groups of
Cameroon. Nonetheless, increasing numbers of Bamiléké
couples get divorced. These divorces are rarely completed legally, but rather are considered like permanent
separations. Most only seek out an official state divorce
if they want to remarry. Because of the exchange of
bridewealth, if a divorced or separated woman dies, she
will still be buried in her husband’s village. Bridewealth
is not returned to the groom’s family in cases of divorce
unless the wife is infertile. Once a marriage is consumated, the bridewealth stays. In the case of a woman’s
remarriage, the bridewealth of her daughters by the
secondly marriage still goes to first husband.
322
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Outside marriage, the most important social relationships
are with people of the same gender. For example, an
uncle and his nephew may share names, creating
material, moral, and affectual rights and responsibilities.
Friendships and associational life also occur mostly in
homosocial environments. Cross-sex relations are mostly
discouraged.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Changes over time in attitudes, beliefs, and practices have
been discussed in previous sections. Taken as a whole,
these changes paint an ambiguous picture regarding the
relative values, rights, and privileges accorded to men and
women within Bamiléké society. During the precolonial
era, women practiced extreme deference toward men and
were subject to capture in interchiefdom raiding. On the
other hand, women had their own secret societies, were
major actors in the local market economy, and held
important titled positions within the royal hierarchy.
Women’s expected deference toward men currently is
much milder than in the past, and they no longer need to
fear capture. They enjoy expanded economic opportunities, and in some ways are more successful in the rural
economy than are men. Nonetheless, they have considerably less access to the state bureaucracy for permits and
credit, and attend secondary and higher education less
frequently than men. Women in the rural areas often
need to fulfill not only their own expected duties in the
gendered division of labor, but also those of absentee
husbands who have gone to urban areas in search of
wage labor. Urban Bamiléké women must struggle due to
their responsibility to feed their families during an
extended period of economic recession. Inequalities
within genders, for example between senior inheriting
men and their junior noninheriting sons, nephews, and
brothers, persist in present-day Bamiléké life. Old
inequalities between genders and among Bamiléké of
varying statuses in the traditional title system persist and
Bamiléké
have been overlaid with new inequalities in economics,
politics, and even sexual relations in the era of the AIDS
pandemic.
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Beng
Alma Gottlieb
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The name “Beng” is the term by which Beng people refer
to themselves. Akan-speaking people usually call them
the “Ngan” or “Ngen,” and Mande-speaking people tend
to use the term “Gan.”
LOCATION
There are about 12,000 Beng people, the vast majority
living in the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire. Most
Beng live in villages on the northern edge of the rain
forest; a smaller number of Beng live in towns, and some
work as laborers on commercial plantations. Currently,
only a tiny diaspora of Beng have left the country.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Beng are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Côte
d’Ivoire. The Beng language is part of the Mande
language family. Most Beng are multilingual so as to
communicate with their neighbors, whereas few nonBeng learn to speak the Beng language.
The majority of Beng practice a mixed economy of
farming, hunting, and gathering. Since the 1980s, crop
prices have dwindled precipitously, diminishing the cash
base for smallholder farmers. Beng households consist
typically of a man, his wife or wives, all their unmarried
daughters, all their sons, and their married sons’ wives
and children. Until the 1960s, such families shared a large
round house. The newly independent government
required smaller square houses for all new constructions,
but extended families still inhabit adjacent buildings
surrounding an open courtyard. A two-layered system of
clans (“dual descent”) crosscuts the family structure, with
each individual belonging to one clan traced in the female
line and another traced in the male line. Neither men nor
women change clan membership on marriage.
In theory, most villages are ruled by a male and
female chief. Male chiefs hear cases of disputes that can
be resolved at the local level. The villages are grouped
into two regions, each of which is ruled jointly by a king
and queen who, as with village chief pairs, are usually
cousins belonging to the same matriclan and are classified as siblings (Gottlieb, 1989). The king hears legal
cases that involve intervillage disputes or crises. Serious
crimes such as grand theft or murder are referred to the
national court system.
Until recently, nearly all Beng were adherents of
their indigenous religion, which highlights the role of
ancestors, partially independent bush spirits, and spirits
affiliated with the earth, with all these entities seen as
loosely subordinate to an overarching but distant sky god
(eci) (Gottlieb, 1992/1996; Gottlieb & Graham,
1993/1994). Traditional religious practitioners communicate with these various spiritual entities on behalf of individuals or groups who seek protection from witchcraft,
relief from sicknesses caused by spiritual disruptions,
thanks for wishes granted or good luck experienced, or
atonement for past sins.
In the past few decades, many Beng have embraced
Islam and a smaller number have endorsed Christianity.
However, some devotional practices of their traditional
religion remain.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The Beng recognize two gender categories, leŋ (female)
and gɔŋ (male). In the first few years, the only visual
signs of gender difference are that girls nowadays
(although not traditionally) have their ears pierced a few
days after birth, and baby boys and girls may also wear
different necklace and hair styles. Otherwise, all babies
wear a variety of jewelry and face and body paints, undistinguished by gender, to prevent disease. Until approximately 5–7 years old, the gender of children is not
significantly distinguished by clothes. Boys and girls
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Beng
enjoy playing with one another in mixed-gender groups
throughout childhood (play-cooking, building play
houses, dancing, playing a variety of physical games such
as leapfrog). However, after they can walk confidently,
young children begin spending progressively more time
with the parent of their own gender (see “Socialization of
Boys and Girls” below) and less time in play groups.
Flirtation begins during adolescence. Traditionally,
some teenage girls elected to have cicatrices cut into their
body for beautification, but this is rarely done today. Large
beads wrapped in thick strands around a girl’s or woman’s
waist, and worn underneath her long skirt to hold up her
underwear, are sexually alluring to men. A young woman
may attempt to refuse an arranged marriage if she judges
that her intended has a “rotten face.”
Married women typically wear scarves wrapped
around their hair for events such as dances, weddings, and
funerals. Women and, even more, men have adopted some
Western fashions. Men often wear Western-style pants and
T-shirts for working in their fields. Women still wear
traditional wraparound pagne-style skirts exclusively, but
the brightly colored patterns are now made of industrially
produced light cotton. On special occasions, men now
dress in colorful pants and matching shirts, or longsleeved robes if they are Muslim; for festivals, women of
the same village may organize among themselves to buy
matching sets of colorful long pagne skirts and sewn
blouses.
Some Beng cultural beliefs imply antagonism
between the sexes. For example, elders say that when a
sleeping infant boy laughs, he is dreaming of his mother’s
death and indifferent to the event, whereas if he cries, he
is dreaming of his father’s death and upset that he will not
have his father to accompany to the fields, and conversely
for a sleeping infant girl. Infant boys are said to breastfeed longer than infant girls, as boys are said to be
unmoved by women’s difficulties in breast-feeding
whereas baby girls naturally sympathize with their mothers’ labors. Nevertheless, such explicit statements of
male–female antagonism are not the basis of a thoroughgoing world view; instead, they are frequently shrugged
off as amusing beliefs that belie other more cooperative
relations between the sexes.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The early stages of life are undifferentiated by gender;
later stages are differentiated as shown in Table 1.
The duration of adolescence differs between the genders,
reflecting that girls but not boys are initiated and that they
marry at an earlier age.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Adults generally say that they value boys and girls
equally. Many couples desire an equal number of daughters and sons so that each parent later has sufficient help
for their work tasks. However, women may value daughters more and fathers may value sons more.
All babies are cared for primarily by women—the
mother as well as other females. Sometimes one girl or
Table 1. Named Stages of the Life Cycle
lŋ dr kro: fetus and young infant
lŋ yatrɔli: infant who can sit up
lŋ gbõlí: infant who can crawl
lŋ yalí: toddler; child who can walk, up to 3 years old
lŋ gbe gble gbe: middle childhood, approximately 3–11 years old
Girls
tonaŋ leŋ kákání kro: young girl,
11–13 years old
tonaŋ leŋ: young teenage girl, 13 years
old to initiation (around 15)
leŋ da: married woman capable of giving
birth, a mother
leŋ gbɔ kró: old woman, female elder, from
when she gets white hair
Boys
zanaŋ gɔŋ kákání kro: boy/young
man, 11–20 years old
zanaŋ gɔŋ: young man, 20 years
old until he marries
gɔŋ dá: man able to procreate
gɔŋ sia: physically fit mature man
gɔŋ gbɔ kró: old man, male elder, from
when he gets white hair
Gender over the Life Cycle
woman (usually a relative) is designated as the official
baby-sitter; this person carries the baby to and from the
fields daily and/or cares for the baby in the village, and
may develop a close relationship with the infant
(Gottlieb, in press). Fathers and other male relatives
enjoy playing with babies but rarely perform routine
daily care.
By the time they are 2–3 years old, girls are expected
to walk to the fields, while little boys often ride on the
handlebars of their fathers’ bicycles to their fathers’
fields. In the fields, the youngest children nap, rest, and
play around their parents, but they are soon encouraged
to help in simple tasks.
In addition to agricultural work, girls learn domestic
tasks. Between 1 and 2 years of age, girls begin by
watching their mothers and other female relatives.
What begins as play slowly transforms to helpful assistance. By 6, most girls can independently sweep, wash
some dishes and laundry, carry light headloads, and do
some food preparation tasks such as pounding corn in
small mortars.
Boys and girls are not raised to become substantially
different from one another. Children of both genders are
taught to work hard, to share food, to value social ties
with relatives and neighbors, to respect elders, ancestors,
and (except for some Muslims and Christians) earth
spirits, and to respect members of the other gender.
Puberty and Adolescence
Adolescence is a period during which boys and girls
prepare actively for their adult roles as farmers.
Nowadays, many teenagers are given their own fields to
farm; even if they are not, as long as they are not attending school, they perform near-adult levels of work daily.
Because of rural poverty, some teenage boys and girls
now leave the villages to work for a contracted term,
often a year or more, on a commercial plantation. They
generally send home most or even all of their (usually
meager) earnings to their parents, rarely returning with
much cash for themselves. Beng teenagers have
sometimes been compelled to work so hard by their
bosses that they were given marijuana as a means of
alleviating the mental and physical pains produced by
the grueling schedule. Recent exposés of Ivoirian
child labor practices in the Western media have put
pressure on the Ivoirian government to reform such
abuses (Greenhouse, 2002).
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Toward the end of adolescence—usually between
15 and 18 years—girls of traditional (non-Christian) families in the villages are generally engaged by arrangement. Boys typically marry their first wives in their early
to middle twenties.
Attainment of Adulthood
Boys do not undergo any gender-specific ritual passage
into adulthood; for girls, the engagement ceremony
mentioned above partly serves this purpose. In some
ways, marriage inducts both genders into adulthood;
parenthood continues this transformation. Expectations
for adults include the following: adults should not run
except in cases of emergency; adults should share
resources with appropriate kin; adults should generally
try to maintain their composure and practise self-restraint
in the face of temptation.
Middle Age and Old Age
Elderhood is generally respected among the Beng.
Children are taught from an early age to show deference
to anyone older than they, and with the exception of
joking behavior with grandparents (see below in “Other
Cross-Sex Relationships”), this behavioral pattern continues through adulthood. Gender is generally irrelevant
here; it is usually age that matters. Age may be the source
not only of respect but also fear. Some old women who
are widely feared by children because of ugly bodily features (e.g., chin hair, goiter, etc.) may be used to frighten
young children if they are misbehaving. The mother or
caretaker threatens to call over such an old woman to eat
a misbehaving child; the child usually reforms his or her
behavior immediately.
Despite the expectation that elders merit respect, the
Beng recognize that the passage of age does not necessarily convey wisdom. When pressed, they may point out
men and women who have become more foolish as they
have aged. Nevertheless, no elders are ever completely
abandoned—they are always fed and cared for by a
relative who feels sorry for them.
There is no word for “menopause” in the Beng
language. After they have stopped menstruating, the
two changes that women may discuss are the cessation of
the menstrual period itself, and an increase in energy
levels and strength. Given the extremely active lifestyle
of all healthy girls and women, osteoporosis and its
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Beng
debilitating effects seem to be unknown. According to the
Beng, there are no emotional changes associated with
menopause.
At death, funeral rituals vary by rank and age more
than gender. Transformation into the state of respected
(same-sex) ancestor occurs for all adults who die a
normal death. Any ancestor may become reincarnated
in a fetus of the same sex; they may or may not be
related.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
A few culturally attributed differences between the sexes
are said to exist innately. For example, it is thought that
girls and women naturally feel more shame than do boys
and men. However, many intervening factors are also
recognized in personality development, including birth
order, twinship, and patriclan membership.
In some recent cases of mental illness, madness has
taken the form of exaggerating gender differences.
Several madmen suffer from delusions of grandeur, imagining themselves wealthy and powerful urban men, and
uttering absurd commands to relatives and neighbors;
some madwomen carry absurd head loads, mocking a
central female work task.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Daily social life is more segregated by gender for the
Beng than it is in Western societies, but far less so than in
societies that enforce a virtually complete separation of
the sexes. After being married, couples typically live with
the husband’s family. However, men who work in distant
cities may be unable to afford having their wives live with
them, or their wives may prefer to remain in the village.
Matriclans and patriclans serve as organizing groups
for both men and women. Male and female members of
patriclans who are of the same generation see one another
as siblings and may not marry. They tend to have an easygoing and comfortable relationship with one another.
Men inherit yam fields from their fathers, whom they
generally respect and sometimes fear. Male and female
members of matriclans who are of the same generation
also see one another as siblings, but they are not only
permitted to marry, they are often expected or even forced
by relatives to do so. In such cases, the couple may
already have been living near one another, and the bride’s
day-to-day life will barely be disrupted by moving in with
her husband and his family, to whom she is already
closely related. Men (and nowadays some women) inherit
fields for cash-producing crops such as coffee, cocoa,
palm, and kola trees from their elder brother (in the case
of men) or from their mother’s brother (in the case of men
or women).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The Beng divide labor tasks to some extent by gender;
however, many work tasks are somewhat flexible. In
families with only boys, a mother who has failed to find
a girl to adopt or foster-raise may train one or more of her
sons to do women’s work. Such a boy would never be
teased by other children and in fact might be admired and
praised by other women. As an adult, a man raised in such
a household may be particularly helpful to his wife and/or
sisters in domestic tasks. In any case, all boys learn to
cook from their fathers while working in the fields—men
often cook lunch for themselves and their sons while
working if their wives are not available.
Many agricultural tasks are divided by gender,
although not always rigidly so. For new fields, men and
older boys clear the larger trees, and women burn the
underbrush. Women and older girls sow, weed, and
harvest most crops, such as corn, rice, tomatoes, eggplants, chili peppers, okra, and onions; they also collect
wild foods such as mushrooms, berries, and edible tree
leaves. Men and older boys may plant and harvest cash
crops such as rice and peanuts. Men and boys exclusively
build soil mounds in which to plant new yams, sometimes
working in formally convened work parties for the task.
In the villages, men make cords from the stripped bark of
lianas; they use the cord to trail the growing shoots of new
yam plants upward so as to catch the rays of sun through
the gallery forest. Men do all gun hunting (notable
success is said to require large amounts of both physical
and spiritual strength), and boys and men do most trap
hunting; women occasionally set traps as well. Adults and
children of both genders may collect forest snails.
Women and teenage girls fell small trees for firewood and
chop them for hearth logs. Boys and girls between the
ages of about 3 and 15 years join together for several
Leadership in Public Arenas
weeks each year to protect ripening rice from marauding
birds (a new problem since the colonial introduction of
monocropping); all day, the children dance, sing, and
play homemade instruments, and the boys use stones with
slingshots, to scare away the birds. In polygynous
marriages, cowives work side by side, since their fields
are allotted next to one another as adjoining “slices” of a
round “pie.”
Traditionally, men owned all subsistence crop fields;
nowadays, women may own some, generally given by
their maternal uncles, though men still own the majority.
Men also own the land on which cash-producing trees are
planted (kola nut, palm, cocoa, coffee), and they plant all
fruit trees. Although they do not own the land itself,
women may own such trees, and they keep the profits
from sale of their fruits or nuts. Out of modesty due to
their skirts, they do not climb trees to harvest them.
Men and women engage in some gender-specific
crafts. Men make bark cloth, build houses, and carve
wood. Women make beaded jewelry for decoration or
magical protection against diseases (Gottlieb, in press).
Many men and women are petty traders in their spare
time. Women sell firewood that they chop, crops that they
grow and harvest (especially rice, corn, peanuts, fruits,
and various vegetables), and cooked dishes. Men sell
crops that they grow and harvest (especially yams, rice,
corn, and peanuts), palm wine that they tap, a sugar-based
alcohol that some men distill, and game meat. Much of
this trade occurs in village markets that occur weekly in
the larger Beng villages, although some Beng travel to
nearby towns or cities when they have large quantities of
goods to sell.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
For the first 2 years of a child’s life, mothers carry out
much of the work of childcare (Gottlieb, 2000a). They
breast-feed their infants frequently, engage in a lengthy
bathing routine twice daily, and carry their babies on their
backs for many hours each day, though they are
frequently helped by female relatives in this task
(Gottlieb, in press). The occasional father who enjoys
the basic caretaking tasks of feeding, carrying, bathing,
and clothing babies is much appreciated by his wife, and
no one would think of making fun of such a helpful
husband.
327
As explained in the section on socialization, fathers
become responsible for their sons. After the age of about
2 or 3 years, and by 5–7, most boys accompany their
fathers to the fields nearly every day. Mothers bring their
daughters to the fields with them, where the girls learn
women’s agricultural work tasks.
Both parents may serve as disciplinarians to their
children; additionally, the mother’s brother always looms
large as a potential disciplinarian and may be feared even
more than the father, although he may also be the source
of much affection. Beyond this immediate circle, any
adult may legitimately discipline a wayward child—the
notion of collective responsibility for childcare is strong
at the village level.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
To a greater extent than in many societies, political power
is divided fairly equally between the genders among the
Beng. Ideally, each matriclan has a male and female
chief, each village has a male and female chief, and each
political region (savanna and forest) has a ruling king and
queen. The two members of each pair are expected to rule
cooperatively. It may happen that there is only one member of the pair ruling at a particular time because of
unusual circumstances. During such periods, it is said
that misfortunes may occur to the group at large—
drought, childhood disease, and so on—that can only be
rectified when a new officeholder is inaugurated.
Each king (but not queen) has a formal speaker, who
must be male. Moreover, the king generally speaks during
public occasions, holding trials and announcing decisions, whereas the queen (as with the female village
chief) remains somewhat on the sidelines at such events,
although she frequently advises the king privately. Beng
explain the lack of a female speaker by claiming that
women’s “hearts are hot” or “heat up quickly,” predisposing them to become angry and engage in disputes
more quickly than men, making them poor leaders.
Generalizing from this attributed quality, many adult men
and women alike claim that women “can’t rule in
Bengland.” Accordingly, during public meetings, men
often sit at the center of a decision-making circle and
women stand on the periphery. Nevertheless, women
often make their ideas known about an issue at hand from
the sidelines; their opinions may be decisive in some
cases. Men acknowledge that although they appear to be
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Beng
in charge of political decision-making, they must always
consult with the women involved in a case. Some men
claim that, despite their imputed innate tendency toward
disputatiousness, women naturally have more force
(lŋ dr kro) than men. In general, a tendency toward
male dominance of the political sphere is somewhat offset
by a more gender-egalitarian model of power.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Some religious roles are open only to men while others
are open to both genders. Masters of the Earth are virtually always male. These highly regarded specialists are
regularly consulted by large numbers of Beng who adhere
to the traditional religion, and occasionally by Christian
and Muslim Beng as well. By contrast, diviners may be
male or female, and both genders employ the same techniques to consult with spirits and convey their messages
to human clients. Male and female diviners may be
equally respected and renowned; some attract non-Beng
clients from distant cities.
The sky god (eci) is gendered female but generally
considered remote: people address prayers but not sacrifices to eci. The earth (ba) is gendered male, but spirits
associated with the earth are assigned either a male or
female gender. These spirits are said to lead lives parallel
to those of humans. As with the classic Greek gods, they
are said to marry, have children, argue, work, and eat.
Both male and female ancestors may be propitiated.
Both men and women may be witches, although
people tend to suspect women more than they suspect
men. For either gender, the ability may be inherited from
the mother’s line or bought from other witches. Both
genders may use the powers of witchcraft for good or
evil. Village chiefs (male and female), as well as kings
and queens, must all constantly use the powers of
witchcraft to protect their constituencies (Gottlieb, 1989).
Many taboos (sõ pɔ) concern sexual matters (see
“Sexuality” below). Some taboos that affect the genders
differentially include menstrual taboos, which forbid
menstruating girls and women to enter the forest to
perform agricultural work. However, menstrual blood is
a sign of a woman’s fertility rather than a polluting
substance (Gottlieb, 1988, 1990). Other taboos affect
both genders equally. For example, adults are forbidden
to brush their teeth after nightfall, otherwise their first
spouse (whether or not they are still married) is at risk of
death. Additionally, all Beng observe food taboos that
they inherit from their patriclans; these do not change at
marriage, although wives also adopt their husbands’ food
taboos to protect their breast-feeding children.
In general, Beng religion includes some elements
that favor men more than women. However, it also
includes opportunities for spiritual practice by women,
and in general is more gender-egalitarian than other
religious traditions.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
All able-bodied adults work hard most of the year, though
both men and women acknowledge that women tend to
work harder due to their double work burden of being
full-time farmers and carrying out the majority of childrearing and domestic work. The original Beng calendar
operates on a 6-day schedule, with one day designated a
rest day, when work in the fields is forbidden. Many
adults use the day to relax in the village or to perform
craft or repair work (men strip vines to make string for
yam plants, or repair thatched roofs; women replaster
their house walls, repair broken jewelry, or tress one
another’s hair); others travel to nearby villages or towns
to visit relatives or friends. Chiefs hold trials, and people
consult with diviners and offer earth sacrifices via the
Masters of the Earth.
Most evenings, there is an hour or two after dinner
for relaxing around the courtyard. Villagers spend time
with relatives, friends, or neighbors of their own or
opposite sex—the groups are casual and evanescent, with
much visiting back and forth between courtyards. The
time may be passed recounting the day’s events, gossiping, or telling stories, the latter always with children
present.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Since men own most subsistence and cash crops they tend
to have higher incomes. Thus husbands generally buy
presents and necessities for their wives rather than vice
versa. Men sometimes claim that men “rule” women in
general, and especially in the case of spouses. Thus wives
Courtship and Marriage
cook and wash laundry for men—especially husbands but
also, as circumstances dictate, fathers, brothers, and other
male relatives. Certain arenas of daily social life require
formal deference by women to men. For example, wives
walk behind their husbands, and wives ask their
husbands’ permission to travel long distances. More Beng
boys than girls now attend public schools at all levels of
formal education.
However, age trumps gender in nearly all arenas of
social life. Thus old women generally receive deference
from younger men. In the family, women and men have
some separate decision-making spheres. For example,
each parent consults with her or his own family in arranging marriages for half the couple’s daughters. In general,
Beng society is nominally, and sometimes in fact, male
dominated, but many spheres of social life also accord
women privilege and status.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is considered a powerful energy that may be
used for good or for harm. For example, following the
death of a pregnant woman, other pregnant women dance
nude to propitiate angry spirits and protect their own
pregnancies; a traditional ritual remedy for drought
involved old women dancing nude at midnight. It is taboo
for men to observe these dances, on pain of death.
The power of sexuality is hedged by numerous rules
and taboos. Certain categories of relatives may not
discuss sexual topics with one another, including parents
with children, and nephews/nieces with their maternal
uncles. Many rules specify when, where, and with whom
sex may occur. A central rule is that no couple may have
sex in the forest, including in the fields; violation of this
rule results in a shaming ritual in which the couple are
required to have sex in front of jeering and fire-wielding
male elders. A permanently polluted state (zozoa) results
for both the guilty parties. If they are single, it will be
difficult for either to find a willing spouse. Sex may legitimately occur only in villages in which a kapok tree has
been ritually planted by a Master of the Earth (Gottlieb,
1992/1996). For traditional adults, sex is at least in theory
forbidden between approximately 11 p.m. and 3 a.m.,
when dangerous spirits are said to travel through the
village; if conception were to occur at this time, the spirits
might cause a monstrous infant to be born.
329
After developing breasts, most young girls feel
modest about revealing their chests and generally wear
shirts or at least brassières. However, once they begin
breast-feeding their first baby, young women breast-feed
readily in anyone’s presence and may walk around with
no shirt—the breast is no longer a sexual body part but a
nutritional one.
All adults must bathe every morning in case they had
sex the night before; anyone (male or female) who
violates this rule is said to be polluting (zozoa) the next
day and risks making sick any infant whom they contact
that day. Another sign of the dangerous nature of sex for
both men and women is that during sexual foreplay, both
partners may only use their left hands to touch the other’s
genitals (Gottlieb, 1990).
In theory, girls should be virgins when they marry.
Girls who have sex before they are engaged/initiated are
said to be “dirty” and it is said that they may cause illness
in infants they contact. It is a sin for a girl to become
pregnant before she is engaged; traditionally, if she
violated this rule, the newborn would have been killed,
although the mother would not have been punished in any
other way.This practice is no longer common. Moreover,
there is no virginity check on the wedding night, and no
punishment if a bride is discovered not to be a virgin.
Despite such rules and taboos, Beng openly discuss
and even joke about sexuality with friends, and some
categories of relatives, especially grandparents/
grandchildren, and cross-cousins. There is a small
repertoire of bawdy jokes (e.g., Gottlieb & Graham,
1993/1994, pp. 267–268) and a large repertoire of sexually oriented teasing insults (which, however, sometimes
become more serious insults). Sex is considered a source
of pleasure as long as rules and taboos are not violated in
the pursuit of such pleasure. Old people may continue to
be sexually active, although they may be teased if they
make the fact known.
Rural Beng profess ignorance of homosexuality
(both male and female). The only known instance of
cross-dressing occurs during the funerals of some
respected elders, when women may dress as men to the
general hilarity of all present.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
All able-bodied and mentally competent people are
expected to marry although a few, nearly always men,
330
remain single. Some sculptors inspired by spirits may
never marry; it may be said that they are actually married
to an invisible spirit wife who jealously prevents them
from marrying a human. Depending on the severity of
their infirmity, those with significant physical or mental
impairments, or who are alcoholics, may not marry.
Traditionally, virtually all first marriages of girls
were arranged by their families; this is still the case for
the majority of non-Christian girls. If it is an arranged
marriage, the girl is expected to oppose her family’s
choice and must ritually wail her apparent displeasure,
even if she happens secretly to approve the choice. A new
couple may or may not begin their marriage with some
degree of affection; in rare cases, they may not even know
one another, although more frequently they are at least
acquainted if not close relatives.
A couple’s engagement is announced by male
relatives in the prospective groom’s patriclan in a highly
ritualized series of formal speeches requiring an eloquent
speaking style. The wedding itself is a large and joyous
week-long event. Women from both families spend much
time cooking and feeding villagers and visiting relatives.
Treating her as a queen on the last day of the wedding,
the bride’s friends and young female relatives gaily wash
all the bride’s laundry from the previous week.
The existence of arranged marriage means that not
only will some women be married against their will, but
this is also the case for some men. In some cases, a plan
for a second wife leaves both of the prospective cowives
miserable, and the husband may be unhappy at the
prospect of bitterly arguing cowives. Husbands are in
theory allowed to reject a proposed wife; however, in
deference to the authority of the family elders who have
arranged the marriage, men normally accept the offer of
an unhappy bride and hope for the best. A son receives
from his father a new yam field during the first January
following the wedding, when new fields are allotted for
the slash-and-burn season.
Widowhood traditionally involved a long and
elaborate series of rituals of mourning for both men and
women. The levirate (a widow marrying her deceased
husband’s brother) and sororate (a widower marrying his
deceased wife’s sister) are both prohibited by Beng
marriage rules. Many widows and widowers remarry new
spouses of their own choosing. However, before they do
so, at the end of the long period of mourning, nonChristians are ritually required to have sex with a stranger
(Gottlieb, n.d., forthcoming).
Beng
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Whether or not a marriage begins with affection, having
children is considered the catalyst for love to grow
between husband and wife. If a Beng couple find themselves incompatible, only after they have had at least one
child together, and ideally two or three children, is
divorce readily agreed to by their families. A childless
couple who are not getting along are generally advised to
wait until they have had children—perhaps their relationship will improve because of their shared parenthood
(Gottlieb & Graham, 1993/1994).
The lines of authority within a marriage are partly
determined by the prior relationship between the spouses.
Normatively, husbands have authority over wives.
However, husband and wife must also normatively
respect and exhibit shame toward one another, and each
should fulfill expectations for proper conjugal behavior.
A wife should plant and harvest corn, rice, and vegetable
crops, cook for her husband daily, wash his laundry
weekly, bring him bathwater twice daily, and find him
medicines when he is sick; if she has enough cash, she
may buy him clothes. A husband should grow and harvest
yams, sow rice, clear old fields, kill snakes in the
compound, buy his wife clothes, give her meat to cook
after having given specified parts to certain relatives, find
her medicines when she is sick, and carry her to the
bathhouse to wash if she is too sick to walk.
In one form of cousin marriage—the union of a
woman with her mother’s brother’s son—the wife has
considerable authority over her husband insofar as she is
considered a sociological replacement of sorts for her
maternal uncle, who has authority over his son. Men
often try to avoid such marriages to avoid being a
“henpecked husband.” Such marriages, while uncommon, do exist and may be quite amicable.
When a couple argue, despite the ideology that
husbands normatively have authority over their wives, the
husband should apologize to his wife. If the argument is
serious, he must appoint a male spokesman (relative or
friend) to apologize on his behalf to his wife. One reason
concerns the Beng view of conjugal relations; the Beng
say that men need wives more than women need husbands,
and women will more readily leave an unhappy marriage
because they are able to get along without a husband without much trouble, whereas men cannot do so. Specifically,
women’s cooking and hospitality roles are invoked; when
Husband–Wife Relationship
visitors arrive, it is thought, only women can adequately
welcome them with properly cooked food and pleasantly
heated bathwater. By contrast, men say that a single man—
whether bachelor, divorcé, or widower—is incapable of
entertaining guests properly. The greater sense of shame
that women are said to feel may lead them to divorce, if
they are judged publicly in the wrong after a marital dispute; by contrast, men are said to bear public censure more
easily. Men say that they will usually apologize after a
marital argument even if they are convinced that their wife
was at fault. If he does not apologize after having insulted
his wife, the shame a husband feels may make him fall
sick. If, during a marital dispute, one spouse throws a
chicken at the other, the marriage is said to be ruined
unequivocally. They may never sleep together again, and
no apologies can be accepted. It is said that the couple’s
children, and later their grandchildren, will go mad.
Polygyny is accepted widely by men and variably by
women. Men say that they endorse polygyny for one simple reason: after a woman bears a child, she must remain
celibate until the child is weaned and can walk properly
(Gottlieb, in press). During this long period of a wife’s
post-partum celibacy, men prefer a second wife so as not
to have to look elsewhere for a sex partner.
As with many societies, the Beng observe a double
sexual standard: married men are permitted to have
affairs with unmarried women—in anticipation of a possible polygynous marriage—but unmarried women are
not permitted extramarital liaisons. Husbands who know
that their wives are conducting an adulterous affair enlist
several male patriclanmates to beat up the lover, and then
hold a male-only trial in which the lover apologizes and
pays a fine in palm wine. Pregnant women who commit
adultery are said to be at risk for miscarriage or a very difficult delivery—an excess of sperm is said to crowd out
the fetus. If the infant does survive, the husband becomes
the legal father. The natural father forfeits all rights and
is said to suffer 7 years of bad luck if the child survives,
and a lifetime of bad luck if the child dies. It is said that
adultery by wives can produce impotence in their husbands; in such cases, a public trial may be held to judge
the wife’s guilt and the fine she must pay. Adultery by a
politically important woman—a queen, female chief, or
wife of a king or male chief—can produce a regional
drought, which can only be alleviated by the lover being
publicly judged and required to pay a hefty fine. In all
cases, the adulterous women themselves may be beaten
once by their husbands but are rarely further punished.
331
Some Beng women welcome, or at least accept, a
cowife with little complaint or even gratitude—for the
shared labor in domestic tasks such as cooking and childcare and/or the security of knowing that this second sex
partner precludes her husband having affairs during her
postpartum periods of celibacy. By contrast, other women
rebel passionately against a husband’s intention to take a
second wife; in such cases, bitter disputes, often accompanied by accusations of witchcraft, may rule the household. Unless they are Muslim or Christian, the Beng do
not observe any legal upper limit to the number of wives
a man may marry; however, in practice, few polygynous
men have more than two wives, and many Beng men are
never married to more than one wife at a time.
In polygynous families, each wife cooks in a separate kitchen and sleeps in a separate bedroom. A strict
rotation schedule for eating and sex is established; the
husband visits each wife for a given period (usually 3 or
4 days) during which time she has sex with him and cooks
his meals.
During the daytime, depending on the agricultural
calendar, spouses may work separately. They may also
travel separately and rarely dine together—instead, adults
usually eat in same-sex groups with friends or relatives.
In the evenings, however, husbands and wives may sit
outside in their courtyard, often as part of a small gathering of relatives or friends, and chat quietly and even intimately. This is especially the case for couples who have
been married happily for many years.
Reasons for divorce are multiple and, unlike in more
patriarchal societies, do not discriminate significantly
against women. Indeed, some men claim that only
women and not men have the right to divorce in the case
of arranged marriages. A husband who neglects his yam
fields, who overly privileges another wife, who is an alcoholic, who beats a pregnant wife, who is a known thief,
who bewitches the couple’s children, or who is considered to have a “rotten character” is a legitimate candidate
for his wife divorcing him, so long as at least one of her
parents is agreed. For her part, a wife who neglects to
cook or do laundry for her husband, does not work in his
yam fields, or has an adulterous affair, may in theory have
divorce proceedings instituted against her by her husband, although the husband must gain the consent of his
patriclan members who usually try to convince him to
remain married.
Following divorce, children typically remain with
their mother; however, the father has the right to take any
332
or all of them to live with him, or with his brother and
sister-in-law, though the mother may visit the children
whenever she wishes. A father who has substantially
participated in raising a child will pass on his patriclan
food taboos to the child, and he retains rights to arrange
half his daughters’ marriages, whereas a father who has
not substantially participated in raising a child forfeits
these rights. Certain Masters of the Earth are forbidden
ever to divorce, no matter what the circumstances.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The system of arranged marriage has a complex set of
rules specifying who may, may not, or should marry
whom. These rules color cross-gender relations significantly. Those who are considered legally eligible or even
preferred spouses often maintain a sexual teasing relationship with one another even if there is a difference in
age of several decades between them.
Brothers and sisters have an easygoing relationship
and may be quite close. In the rare case of a dispute
between brothers-in-law, a woman supports her brother
rather than her husband.
Another especially significant cross-sex relationship
is that between grandchild and grandparent. These
individuals normatively have a joking relationship that is
especially pronounced in the case of a cross-sex pair. The
joking is frequently insulting and/or sexual, even for
young children. In fact, babies sometimes learn their first
words from their cross-sex grandparent who teaches the
tot lewd insults that the baby is expected to repeat. “You
black testicles,” “You red vagina,” and other such sexual
insults are not infrequently a toddler’s first mangled
words, aimed with good effect at the opposite-sex
grandparent, to the general delight of all present.
Due to the modified “Omaha” style set of terms used
to refer to family members, certain kinds of cousins are
classified as grandparents or grandchildren. This is the
case for the children of one’s “cross-cousins” (children of
one’s mother’s brother or one’s father’s sister). Given that
these relatives are addressed as “grandchildren,” mock
teasing defines their relationship as well. By contrast,
“parallel cousins” (children of two sisters or two
brothers) are considered siblings and treated in much the
same way.
A mother’s sisters are called “little mothers” or “big
mothers” (depending on birth order) and have a similar
Beng
relationship with their nephews and sons. A mother’s
brother is very close and may discipline his sister’s
misbehaving children.
Sons- and daughters-in-law should never discuss
anything to do with sex in front of their parents-in-law,
and a man should not eat in front of his mother-in-law; if
he insults his mother-in-law, he would be publicly tried
and fined a sheep or chicken, plus a bar of soap to wash
off the insult. If a man’s mother-in-law is also his father’s
sister, this is a particularly difficult relationship for him,
as his mother-in-law has double authority over him (see
“Husband–Wife Relationship” above). A man also feels
shame toward and fear of his wife’s sister, as he knows
she will criticize him if he argues with his wife. For her
part, a woman must never insult her husband’s brothers,
on pain of public trial. Her respect for her father-in-law
usually leads to near-total avoidance.
Males and females among the Beng, especially if
separated significantly by age, may count one another as
friends in the Platonic sense.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Soon after the French conquered the region in the early
1890s, they forced Beng farmers to plant new crops
(especially coffee, cocoa, and new varieties of rice and
cotton) that were sold to the French in order to pay colonial taxes. The growth of a cash–based economy has
resulted in more labor-intensive farming techniques
based on monoculture; in turn, this has reduced the time
available for hunting. The rising prices of bullets and
trapping line have also reduced the amount of available
animal protein.
Until recently, many Beng elders have consciously
endeavored to maintain a certain independence from the
West and its imports. For example, until about 15 years
ago, many parents refused to send their children to
government-run schools. Nowadays more and more
young people are rejecting this conservatism of their
elders, and an increasingly larger proportion of children
are being sent to elementary school for at least a few
years, although the dropout rate even at the elementary
school level remains quite high. Many parents nowadays
would like to send at least some of their children to school
but are not able to afford all the expenses associated with
Bibliography
333
the nominally free school system (including uniforms and
school supplies). More Beng boys than girls attend
schools, and more continue longer before dropping out.
However, a small but growing number of Beng girls are
continuing on to high school; the future may bring
significant changes in village mores from the growing
number of urban Beng, many of whom maintain close
relations with their village-dwelling relatives.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful for the financial support of the following
agencies which has made possible my Beng research and
writing over the years: Social Science Research Council,
National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner–Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, American
Association of University Women, Woodrow Wilson
Foundation, U.S. Information Agency, John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and several units at
the University of Illinois (Center for African Studies,
Center for Advanced Study, and the Center for the Study
of Cultural Values and Ethics). For very helpful comments on this chapter, I am deeply grateful, as ever, to
Philip Graham and Bertin Kouadio.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gottlieb, A. (1986). Cousin marriage, birth order and gender:
Alliance models among the Beng of Ivory Coast. Man, 21(4),
697–722.
Gottlieb, A. (1988). Menstrual cosmology among the Beng of Ivory
Coast. In T. Buckley & A. Gottlieb (Eds.), Blood magic: The
anthropology of menstruation (pp. 55–74). Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Gottlieb, A. (1989). Witches, kings, and the sacrifice of identity; Or,
the power of paradox and the paradox of power among the Beng
of Ivory Coast. In W. Arens & I. Karp (Eds.), Creativity of
power: Cosmology and action in African societies (pp. 245–272).
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Gottlieb, A. (1990). Rethinking female pollution: The Beng case (Côte
d’Ivoire). In P. R. Sanday & R. G. Goodenough (Eds.), Beyond the
second sex: New directions in the anthropology of gender
(pp. 113–138). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gottlieb, A. (1996). Under the kapok tree: Identity and difference in
Beng thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original
work published 1992, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.)
Gottlieb, A. (1997, Summer). Fabrication d’un premier dictionnaire de
la langue Beng: Quelques considérations éthiques [Construction of
a first dictionary of the Beng language: Some ethical considerations]. Journal des Anthropologues, 70, 147–162.
Gottlieb, A. (1998). Do infants have religion? The spiritual lives of
Beng babies. American Anthropologist, 100(1), 122–135.
Gottlieb, A. (2000a). Luring your child into this life: A Beng path for
infant care (Côte d’Ivoire). In J. S. DeLoache & A. Gottlieb (Eds.),
A world of babies: Imagined childcare guides for seven societies
(pp. 55–89). New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Mande Studies, 1(2), 129–151.
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of infancy in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gottlieb, A. (n.d.). Stranger anxiety or stranger love? Sociable Beng
babies (Côte d’Ivoire). In P. Frietzsche & M. Steinberg (Eds.), The
stranger, the strange, and estrangement. unpublished manuscript
(forthcoming).
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and a writer encounter Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. (Original work published 1993, New York: Crown
Publishers.)
Gottlieb, A., Graham, P., & Gottlieb-Graham, N. (1998). Infants, ancestors and the afterlife: Fieldwork’s family values. Anthropology and
Humanism, 23(2), 121–126.
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text, revisioning the field: Reciprocity over the long term.
Anthropology and Humanism, 24(2), 117–128.
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Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.
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Cocoa exports questioned. New York Times, pp. A(1), 3.
Blackfoot
Alice Beck Kehoe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names for the Blackfoot are Blackfeet, Siksika,
Kainai, Blood Indians, Pikuni, Piegan, and Peigan.
LOCATION
Blackfoot occupy the Northwestern Plains of
North America (southern Alberta, Canada, and northcentral Montana, U.S.A.). The region is short-grass prairie
in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains, with conifer
forests in the mountain foothills. Principal rivers include
the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers with the latter’s
tributaries the Bow and Oldman Rivers, and the Milk
River which flows into the Missouri River. Winters are
cold, but relieved occasionally by warm chinook winds,
and summers are short with some hot days.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Blackfoot are an alliance of three principal nations:
the Siksika or Blackfoot, the Kainai or Blood, both in
Alberta, and the Pikuni or Piegan, which is divided into a
northern branch in Alberta and a southern branch in
Montana. The nations are composed of a number of
independent bands, formerly nomadic but settled on
reservations since the 1870s. Their language is classified
in the Algonkian stock. Its syntax distinguishes animate
from inanimate, but not “sex” (male, female, neuter).
Before the extermination of wild bison in the 1870s,
Blackfoot depended on bison herds for subsistence and
trade materials. The people lived in conical tipis sewn of
bison hides, grouped in camps of about 100 persons,
moving camp about 17 times each year. Large dogs bred
to carry loads were used to help transport tipis and gear,
either packed on the dogs’ backs or on travois (pairs of
poles with the upper ends fastened to the dog’s shoulders
and a hide or net across the lower portion to hold goods,
and the lower ends dragged on the ground behind the
animal). After the middle of the 18th century, horses
became available to the Blackfoot through trade from the
Southwest where they had been introduced by Spanish
colonists. Horses were then used for transport, for war
raids and battles, and to hunt bison.
The traditional method of hunting bison was to drive
a herd into a corral built against a bluff or at the end of a
ravine. Corrals continued to be used until the extermination of wild bison in the 1870s, although pursuit from
horseback was an alternative method for the final century
of Blackfoot independence. Once the bison had been
slaughtered in a corral, teams of six (men and women)
butchered the kill. Hides were tanned for tipi covers,
winter robes, and bedding. The meat was sliced thin and
air-dried for preservation. Pounding dried meat with
berries and rendered fat made pemmican, a highly nutritious compact food that could be stored in hide bags for
months. Bison bones were made into cutting blades,
scrapers, and tool handles. Bison wool could be spun and
woven, although historically Blackfoot preferred to
purchase woven bags from neighboring nations and cloth
from European traders. Blackfoot made pottery before the
European trade introduced more durable metal kettles.
Elk, deer, antelope, and smaller game were hunted,
as well as bison. Blackfoot disdained fish but do eat trout.
Berries, prairie turnips (an indigenous root vegetable),
and camas bulbs (a lily) were significant carbohydrates in
the diet, with a stew of meat. Women had the responsibility of collecting vegetable foods from carefully
sustained fields, and of preparing family meals. They also
tanned hides, cut and sewed clothing and tipis, made
containers (mostly of hide), collected firewood, and
packed and set up camps. Men had the responsibility of
providing the animals to be processed, defending the
nation, and learning and performing often lengthy rituals,
assisted by their wives.
Blackfoot religion recognized an Almighty Power
that manifests in a multitude of forms, from thunder and
the sun to animals and rocks. Humans depend upon the
benevolence of the Almighty, and beg its blessing through
prayers; tobacco incense offered in pipes is pleasing to
334
Cultural Construction of Gender
the Almighty. The principal annual ceremony is the Sun
Dance or Medicine Lodge (Okan), held in the summer for
all the community. This ceremony is led by a woman,
assisted by other women and by men. Other rituals center on “medicine bundles,” sets of objects that serve as
icons for narratives linking ancient blessings to contemporary generations. Praying or dancing with the objects is
expected to heal illness and misfortune, and the sets are
kept inside bags rolled up in shawls or blankets, hence
“medicine bundles.” Individual Blackfoot own these bundles, but are obliged to hold their rituals upon petition
from people in need, and to transfer ownership so that
other families may have the privilege of caring for these
holy shrines.
A number of associations carry out duties such as
policing camps, organizing war raids (before the imposition of U.S. and Canadian rule in the 1870s), performing
ceremonies, or holding secular dances. Most of the
associations require members to be couples, normally
husband and wife. Band membership was based on kin
relationships, but individuals and families had the option
of leaving to live in another band if they were dissatisfied.
Sons-in-law were expected to provide meat for their
wife’s parents, an obligation implying that a young
couple would live in the wife’s family camp, but early
reservation census records indicate that postmarital residence choices were quite varied. Certain families are
considered to be of leadership status, bringing up their
children to assume this responsibility; the position of
band leader must be earned through good character,
wisdom, and generosity. Respected leaders worked to
bring prosperity to their bands, hosted visitors, and provided for band members unable to maintain themselves.
Adult children assisted the elderly, and orphans would be
adopted by relatives or family friends. In the 19th century,
a period of heavy loss of fighting men in endemic frontier
wars, polygyny was common, but whether this was so
earlier is not known. Cowives ideally were sisters or
cousins; foreign women captured on raids were kept as
concubines and household help. A few persons did not
marry heterosexually, instead feeling a vocation to live as
the other gender. Men with this calling dressed and
worked as women; women applied themselves to war and
hunting. Each might share a tipi with someone of the
same sex who fulfilled a spousal role, although women
war leaders are said to have usually been celibate.
Blackfoot traded widely before Europeans entered
their country in the 17th century (they were first contacted
335
by a European, an employee of the Hudson Bay Company
fur traders, in 1690). Some bison corral sites near river
transport routes contain such large kills that archeologists
infer that they were used to produce surplus meat to be
traded to farming towns on the Missouri River and its tributaries in North Dakota. The entrance of European traders
increased the market for pemmican, to which Blackfoot
responded with vigilance over territorial rights. In 1801, a
Blackfoot leader called Akai Mokti (Old Swan) visited the
Hudson’s Bay Company trader Peter Fidler in what is
now southeastern Alberta, and at Fidler’s request drew
detailed maps of the country. Akai Mokti showed detailed
familiarity with a vast territory from central Alberta to
Wyoming, and from central North Dakota to Idaho; he
knew the Snake River would lead to the Pacific coast,
and drew that. Fidler sent a copy of Akai Mokti’s maps to
his superiors in London, who had them professionally
redrawn and published. It was Akai Mokti’s map that
Thomas Jefferson gave to Lewis and Clark, with orders to
follow it on their western exploration.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
Blackfoot understanding of gender references a popular
legend describing the initiation of marriage:
The women . . . made buffalo-corrals. Their lodges were fine. . . . They
tanned the buffalo-hides, those were their robes. They would cut meat in
slices. . . . Their lodges all were fine inside. And their things were just as
fine. . . . Now, the men . . . were very poor. They made corrals. They had
no lodges. They wore raw-hides . . . for robes. They wore the gamblejoint of the buffalo for moccasins. They did not know, how they should
make lodges. They did not know, how they should tan the buffalo-hides.
They did not know, too, how they should cut dried meat, how they should
sew their clothes. The women’s chief told them [the women]: Over there
near the corral are the men sitting in sight. All these women were cutting
meat. Their chief did not take off the clothes, she was [wearing] cutting
the meat. They were told by her: I shall go up there first. I shall take my
choice. When I come back, you will go up one by one. Now we will
take husbands. Then she started up. Then she went up to all those men.
She asked them: Which is your chief? the men said: This one here,
Wolf-robe [Napi, Dawn-of-time or “Old” Man]. She told him: Now we
will take you for husbands. And then she walked to that Wolf-robe. She
caught him. Then she started to pull him up. Then he pulled back. Then
she let him loose. He did not like her [work] clothes. (While the other
women were picking out their husbands, the chief of the women put on
her best costume. When she came out, she looked very fine, and, as soon
as Old Man saw her, he thought, “Oh! there is the chief of the women.
I wish to be her husband” [Wissler & Duvall, 1908, p. 22]). Wolf-robe
336
Blackfoot
was standing up alone. He was told by that chief-woman: Turn into a
pine-tree, right there where you stand. He got angry. He commenced to
knock down that buffalo-corral. And then he turned into a pine-tree
(C.C. Uhlenbeck, 1912, pp. 167–169) . . . And he is mad yet, because he
is always caving down the bank. (Wissler & Duvall, 1908, p. 22)
Women’s innate reproductive capacity creates not
only children, but also culture. Men lack this capacity so
that, bereft of women, they are little more than beasts,
incapable of creating homes, clothing, or properly prepared food. Women pity men and generously take them
into their homes. In this, women are to men as Almighty
Power manifestations are to humans, responding to pleas
moving them to pity.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys could go naked until the onset of adolescence, while
little girls were given a simple tunic dress. David Duvall,
half-Piegan collaborator of anthropologist Clark Wissler,
wrote about 1910, “Girls are taught to be kind and helpful,
to be always willing to lend a hand, to be virtuous and
later, to respect their marriage vows” (Wissler, 1911,
p. 29). Girls carried firewood and water for the home,
took care of younger children, and assisted their mothers
and grandmothers with household tasks, hide dressing,
making clothing, and preparing food. Boys were hardened by daily morning baths in streams, even in winter;
an elderly man would remind or take the boy. Boys
learned weaponry and hunting tactics, and upon entering
adolescence, accompanied war parties, serving the men in
camp chores. These contrasts in child socialization
described by Duvall (Wissler, 1911, pp. 29–30) were tempered by expecting girls as well as boys to snare small
animals and to become familiar with weapons and hunting,
historically riding out with male relatives to hunts and, as
part of the entire band, cooperating in driving bison herds
through marked drive lanes to corral entrances. Young
married women not infrequently rode with their husbands
to battle, participating in attacks and earning particular
admiration through seizing enemy fighters’ weapons.
Puberty and Adolescence
There were no puberty ceremonies as such. When
adolescent boys joined a war party, they were given a
nickname that they should erase by gaining respect through
valor, receiving a new and more serious name in recognition. During a lifetime, men could receive a series of
names signaling prestigious deeds or status achievements.
Babies were ceremoniously given names by respected
elders, more often men but sometimes women, who perpetuated illustrious deceased persons’ names or referred to
a notable event at the time of the child’s birth, or a relative’s accomplishment. Girls usually kept this name for
life; no surnames were used. After the reservations were
established, children were recorded with English Christian
names followed by their father’s name (e.g., Mountain
Chief’s son was recorded as Walter Mountain Chief) and
married women recorded with their husbands’ names as
surnames. It should be noted that the English translations
of Indian names were often inept to the point of disrespect;
for example, the great Lakota leader Young-Man-They
[enemies]-Are-Afraid-of-Even-His-Horses was officially
recorded as Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses.
Attainment of Adulthood
Adulthood, like adolescence, was achieved rather than
formally bestowed. Girls seem to have been married soon
after menarche, in their mid-teens, to young men a few
years older selected by their parents. The couple would
get their own tipi or, on the reservation, cabin and the
young husband expected to work with his father-in-law in
providing food for both generations, with the young wife
continuing to work with her mothers (cowives in a polygynous marriage were jointly mothers to the children of
the household). Later, a couple often moved to live with
the husband’s band. From early reservation period
records, first marriages seem to have often ended after a
few years, with the more mature spouses then selecting
new partners. Either wife or husband could initiate
divorce; the wife traditionally retained her tipi, furnishings, and household equipment. If a marriage had
involved the groom’s family giving bridewealth to the
woman’s parents, and the marriage had not lasted long or
produced children, the husband could request his gifts
of horses and goods returned. (Bridewealth was a sign of
the groom’s respect for his bride and her family.) People
expected men and women to settle down, in their late
twenties or thirties, with a spouse to whom they were
committed to raise a family. Men could take additional
wives and/or concubines if the senior wife/wives
approved—sometimes demanded, to gain extra hands in
Gender-Related Social Groups
family maintenance—while women properly had only
one husband; however, a young woman married to an
older man might have a lover, and there were cases where
the elder husband openly gave his young wife to her lover
if the younger man demonstrated ability and willingness
to support her. Cuckolded husbands might punish and
stigmatize offending wives by cutting off their noses.
Middle Age
Middle age, after about 40, was the period when one’s
children were young adults. No longer engaged primarily
in childcare, middle-aged people might begin apprenticeship to spiritual leaders and healers. Apprenticeships
could require the younger person to live with the mentor
for weeks, assisting in preparations for rituals and memorizing plants, formulae prayers, and dances. Taking over
custody of a medicine bundle involved a formal ceremony,
but a bundle owner could request a qualified priest to carry
out the bundle’s ritual. Each “bundle opening” ceremony
needed a woman to handle the bundle and its contents,
unwrapping, presenting the icons to the officiating (male)
priest, and rewrapping the bundle. In other words, women
mediated between Power embodied in the bundle and men
who invoked it; this seems to be part of women’s innate
reproductive power. Ritual sodalities recruiting mature
(middle-aged) members, particularly the Horns for
couples and Ma’toki for women, taught powerful religious
knowledge and performed public ceremonies.
Old Age
Elders (grandparents) were privileged respite from daily
labor, although elder women usually continued household work. The fact that a person had lived so many years
that he or she had grandchildren proved that the person
had been blessed with spiritual strength. Therefore elders
were sought after to bless babies and people setting off on
risky endeavors such as war. A postmenopausal woman
ceremoniously helped a new mother put on fresh clothes
and return to the household routine—an opportunity for
the experienced woman to advise the young one. The
greatest deference was, and is, given to “Old Ladies,”
senior matrons who have raised families and gained a
reputation for skills and wisdom. Even more than elder
men of repute, Old Ladies are respected and obeyed, in
continuation of the superior position of women vis-à-vis
men exemplified in the legend of the First Marriages.
337
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Many stories are told about Napi, “Dawn-of-time Man”
or “the Old Man.” As in the legend of the First Marriages,
Napi is impetuous, short-sighted, foolish, greedy, and
lustful, but good-hearted. He is considered to personify
men’s innate nature. Women, again as in the First
Marriages legend, are innately empowered to reproduce
good homes, constantly working to process raw material
into manufactures, including food. Boys, having Napi
natures, roam around until able, in adolescence, to undertake responsibility. Girls have time to play but are
expected to help with home tasks from about the age
of 5 or 6. Groups of children play house, with the girls
taking the role of homemaker and boys bringing them
gophers to cook—although girls, too, snare small game.
If girls are not playing with a group of boys, the boys will
themselves skin and roast the gophers they catch. Each
gender has an ideal and complementary role and personality, but pragmatically both men and women were capable of each others’ tasks; before the reservations, parties
of men were out at war for months, leaving camps of
women to carry on provisioning themselves as well as
processing raw materials. Settled on reservations, men
might be away for days on ranching tasks.
Men talked about desiring docile modest wives, yet
women were, and are, expected to be physically,
mentally, and emotionally strong—partners with their
husbands. A phrase, “manly-hearted” (translated also as
“leader-hearted”) applied to matrons known for strength
of character and admirable accomplishments.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Consonant with their strong respect for individual autonomy, Blackfoot did not construct formal unilineal kinship
units. Related women and cowives formed task groups
for women’s work, as men formed war parties and the
core of hunting parties. Men composed ad hoc police
forces, commanded by band leaders, keeping order in
multiband camps and hunts. As mentioned, at the multiband summer rendezvous where the Sun Dance was
performed, a women’s sodality, the Ma’toki or Women’s
Buffalo Society, carried out both secluded and public
rituals to reinforce the community’s intimate relationship
338
Blackfoot
with bison herds. Men auxiliaries assisted the Ma’toki.
The so-called men’s societies were actually for couples,
with each man bringing his wife or, if not then married, a
sister. Only the societies for adolescent boys omitted
enrolling women. For the adult “men’s societies,” women
helped with food and sang for the men dancing. Because
the men in these societies were up front dancing and leading rituals, non-Indian observers overlooked women’s
importance, as they overlooked the critical role of women
in mediating the opening and rewrapping of medicine
bundles.
There was little enforced gender segregation, since
it was the individual’s choice in residence, work, recreation, and worship that was respected. Normally, women
attended births, but male healers as well as the father, if
he wished, were admitted. Both men and women participated in handgame teams (a favorite gambling game).
Women played shinny (field hockey); apparently there
were no men’s ball games aboriginally, at least not
described, but men did gamble on a game involving
throwing lances at a rolling hoop and, historically, men
raced horses. On the reservations, schools taught baseball
to boys.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Following the model of the legendary First Marriages,
women created and maintained the camp, which required
working hides as well as all food preparation, making
furnishings, containers, bedding, clothing, and making
and setting up tipis. Men made their weapons and gear,
and provided slaughtered big game; both men and women
cooperated in butchering it. As the legend implies,
women were fully capable of fulfilling all needs; men
were considered dependent although useful. Historically,
endemic wars related directly and indirectly to U.S. and
British imperialism kept Blackfoot men on constant
defensive alert; to what degree this distorted previous
economic and social patterns cannot be discovered.
Western scholars gave much attention to the
so-called berdache, a man who dressed and worked as a
woman. The term, originally designating a North African
boy prostitute, is distasteful to First Nations people and
should not be used for American Indians. Observers of
late-19th-century Blackfoot do not describe men living as
women. There was one religious practitioner whose power
came from the moon, gendered female in Blackfoot
cosmology, and who therefore wore a woman’s dress
when performing his ritual for young men seeking good
fortune through him. This “medicine man” otherwise
dressed and behaved as a man.
Trade was open to both men and women, with each
person trading their own products. Thus men usually
traded furs and women their manufactures. European and
European American traders liked to select one leading
man to bargain for his party, often naming him “captain”
and presenting him with an officer’s coat. Blackfoot
recognized band leaders (“chiefs” in English), who hosted
visitors to a camp if they did not have relatives in the band,
but a band leader did not control economic enterprises.
Because processed bison robes and bags of pemmican
were the joint product of a household, the husband in a
household traded these goods on behalf of the household.
Women traded what they individually produced: ethnographer Clark Wissler remarked, “Even today [1910] . . . a
man seldom speaks when his wife bargains away her own
hand-work, bedding, and house furnishings” (Wissler,
1911, p. 27). Wissler noted:
In pre-reservation days a woman was judged by the number and quality
of skins she had dressed, the baskets she had woven, or the pottery
moulded; and her renown for such accomplishments might travel far.
When by chance you met a woman who had distinguished herself, it was
proper to address her in a manner to reveal your knowledge of her reputation, as: “Grandmother, we are happy to look upon one whose hands
were always busy curing fine skins.” (Wissler, 1938/1971, p. 290)
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Women were the primary caregivers for babies and young
children—only they can nurse babies and, before the
reservation was established, no other nourishment was
available for infants. A memoir from the early reservation
period mentions the innovation of canned milk brought
from the trading post by a European American employee
married to a Piegan woman. Fathers and everyone else
enjoyed playing with babies and children. Striking or
speaking harshly to a child was considered abhorrent and
unnatural. Instead, children were encouraged to be quiet
and observant of adults, ready to assist elders. Children
might be teased; the appropriate response was to smile
and remain calm.
Because the kinship system is “generational,”
extending the terms for brother and sister to what in
Gender and Religion
339
English are cousins, a Blackfoot child likely has several
“mothers” and “fathers,” “elder brothers” and “elder sisters,” as well as grandparents. All of these are concerned
for their relative’s welfare. High mortality, from war,
accidents, epidemics, and, after the bison herds disappeared, malnutrition, orphaned many children. If relatives
did not take the child into their family, another family
would do so. There are cases of an abandoned non-Indian
baby taken by a Blackfoot family and raised as their own.
During the first century of the reservation period, missionaries took children, often forcibly (backed by reservation police), to raise in boarding schools. Adoption of
Indian children by non-Indians who removed them from
their people was similarly encouraged, the principle being
that a European American upbringing civilized the child.
Elderly Blackfoot expected to be supported by their
children; one could call it “assisted living” as the elderly
couple or widow remained in their own tipi or cabin, near
the home of adult children. Legends describe “old
women’s tipis” where one or two elderly women lived
alone. The hero of the tale is the old woman’s grandson
or adopted child, or a youth generously seeking to help a
neglected elder. In real life, a granddaughter often went
to live with the grandparent. Grandparents often cared for
young children while the parents went on extended hunts
or, after the bison were gone, for off-reservation jobs.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men appeared to be band leaders and principal chiefs of
band alliances. To what degree this can be attributed to
European observers’ expectations, traders’ selection of
spokesmen, and conquering governments’ appointment
of spokesmen at treaties and on reservations, cannot be
evaluated. Wissler remarked that when a White man
stepped into the Indian’s world . . . it was a red man who met him at the
threshold because it was his habit to stand between his women and the
stranger. Two or more centuries of experience had convinced him that
the white man rarely looked upon an Indian woman disinterestedly and
he had accordingly built up a set of rules and regulations which forbade
his women to speak to a strange man. (Wissler, 1938/1971, p. 205)
In another passage, Wissler described an elder
couple, both of them leaders:
Wolf Chief [the husband] had a methodical mind [and was] . . . a
keen questioner. . . possessed of a superior mind . . . “Mother-of-all”
was [his wife’s] real name, and appropriate . . . the finest of women.
Her countenance was feminine, but with the stamp of leadership. Her
carriage was graceful but always expressing dignity. . . . Though always
dignified and high-minded had a sense of humor. . . . Wolf Chief also had
a sense of humor. . . [He] was obviously proud of his wife, but like many
a man married to a genius, was not always comfortable when she held
the center of the stage . . . [At a feast for two girls of prominent families]
Mother-of-all whose presence had been conspicuous during the proceedings of the morning . . . standing to one side upon a little eminence,
leaning upon a long staff. She wore an elk-skin dress, decorated with elk
teeth, the prized jewelry of her culture. . . . Apparently she was wrapped
in meditation and about to begin a harangue . . . it was expected that some
one, preferably an old woman, address the assembly at this time. . . . She
began, speaking slowly and in well-formed sentences . . . on the level of
oratory. (Wissler, 1938/1971, pp. 277–289)
It seems that the principle of respect for personal
autonomy allowed both men and women of ability and
self-confidence to act as leaders in appropriate situations.
Demonstrated knowledge and skill, self-disciplined
dignity, restraint, and generosity, and what Wissler
termed a mind keen to grasp and analyze, were qualities
of leaders, man or woman.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The religious arena reflected Blackfoot conceptions of
male and female human nature. As mentioned above,
women are superior to men as mediators between Power
and human life. Because women are born with this capacity, they do not need to actively seek enhanced power.
Men did, in adolescence going out alone to a secluded
place to hold vigil, fasting, and praying until vouchsafed
a vision experience of some manifestation of cosmic
power promising to aid the youth in his endeavors.
Historically, these visions tended to focus on success in
war. It is important to note that in seeking blessing,
people humbly made themselves pitiable by showing
themselves alone, minimally clothed, hungry, thirsty, and
pleading for benevolence.
Blackfoot Sun Dances require a respected woman to
vow service as high priestess. She goes on retreat, fasting
inside a tipi. In earlier times, the Holy Woman and her
small entourage of women and men attendants moved
camp four times (four is the ritual number, like three is
for Indo-European cultures), ending in the place where
the Sun Dance lodge would be constructed. When the
lodge is ready and the congregation assembled, the Holy
Woman walks from her tipi to the lodge. Weak from
fasting, she is supported by her women. The Holy Woman
340
wears an elkskin dress said to have been given to the
priestess by the legendary Elk Woman, wrongfully
accused by her husband of adultery and vindicated by
displaying superior power. The Holy Woman wears a
headdress with icons of Elk Woman and other legendary
figures, and leans on a digging stick said to have been that
used by Woman Who Married Morning Star. The costume
and accoutrements form the Natoas (Sun) medicine
bundle. An important ritual during the Sun Dance calls
forth women of good character to come forward and slice
meat to be given to elders; supposedly, a woman who had
not lived honorably would be unsteady and mess up the
cutting, revealing unworthiness.
During the Sun Dance encampment, several of the
sodalities perform dance dramas. Today, that of the Crazy
Dogs receives most attention and balances the Sun Dance
itself; the Crazy Dogs are led by men (although women
participate) and run like a pack of yelping dogs around
the open ground surrounding the Sun Dance lodge,
contrasting vividly with the solemn quiet inside the
lodge. In the lodge, there is a portion of the ritual proceedings for war veterans to stand forward to recount
their battle experiences, emphasizing that survival was
due to the Almighty’s benevolence. These veterans then
dance; I have seen a woman dancing with them, who told
me she was dancing in place of her two deceased husbands, both veterans. Kainai still perform, at the Sun
Dance, the Women’s Buffalo Society (Ma’toki) to invoke
prosperity for the nation.
Medicine bundles and holy pipes can be owned by
men and by women, and transferred through either inheritance or purchase (a person wishing to obtain blessing
through caring for the holy icons gives gifts to the owner
in honor of the bundle’s power). Medicine bundles are
hung on a wall in the home, high enough that they will
not be jostled, or, if the family is living in a tipi, kept on
a tripod frame. The woman of the household is responsible for keeping the bundle safe and handles it when
moving or during rituals. Officiating priests at bundle
rituals are men; the woman sits quietly and modestly
behind the priest, although without her mediation the
bundle should not be opened. Women prepare the feasts
usually provided to celebrate rituals. They tend to sit in
the outer circle of audience, but some ritual dances are
performed by women. Men drum and play rattles; both
men and women may sing, depending on the ritual.
Healers may specialize in herbs or in spiritual
therapy. Women are more likely to be herbalists, in line
Blackfoot
with women’s responsibilities for plant tending and
gathering, but men may also train in herb knowledge.
Upon collecting a medicinal plant, the herbalist prays and
may leave a small offering, and the practitioner prays
again in administering the herb (or herb mixture).
Blackfoot belief that parents of young children are
properly preoccupied with family care; leaving spiritual
matters for the more mature middle-aged, who are free of
such cares, means that women healers are likely to be past
child-bearing years. Men, too, are likely to be older, in
part because it takes years to complete apprenticeship to
a ritualist. “Medicine men” are more often noticed, but
the ethnographers Oscar and Ruth Lewis, with the
Blackfoot in 1939, noted, “A woman could have more
power than a m[e]d[icine] man,” citing a narrative of a
curse nullified by a Sun Dance Holy Woman (Lewis &
Lewis, 1939, August 18).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Both boys and girls were encouraged to race and play
actively, with more stress placed on boys’ endurance,
strength, and speed as preparation for war. Historically,
everyone rode and could care for horses. Everyone could
swim—children enjoying frolicking in streams and adults
bathing. Young boys roamed about in little groups;
girls would play with each other closer to home. Boys and
girls together played house, taking appropriate gender
roles. Children had miniature tools and dolls, making
their own little play figures with sticks or clay in addition
to the sewn dolls that women made for girls.
A variety of gambling games are popular entertainments. Best loved is the handgame, accompanied with
lively songs, a game of skill where two teams oppose one
another to guess which hand of which person hides a
marked stick. Bingo became popular in the late 20th century; men and women alike participate, with women
predominating. Horse racing and rodeos are dominated
by men and boys, except for rodeo barrel racing where
girls ride. Aside from American games taught in schools,
such as football, basketball, and baseball, Blackfoot had
their own ballgames including shinny and catch. Women
were more likely to play these games.
Social dancing, singing, and storytelling brought
men, women, and children together. Powwows, the major
Sexuality
secular celebration today, evolved during the 20th century
from social dances combined with Independence Day
(Fourth of July or Dominion Day) festivities encouraged
by government Indian agents during the early reservation
period. Powwow music is performed on European-style
bass drums by groups of about half-a-dozen men sitting
around the instrument, singing in unison and each
pounding with a drumstick. Every year new powwow
songs are added to the older repertoire. Women’s “drums”
(drum groups) are occasionally allowed in powwows—
increasingly by the turn of the 21st century—against
opposition by “traditionalists.” Basically, drumming was
considered a man’s activity; women have always sung for
ritual and social performances.
Visual arts include rock petroglyphs and pictographs,
so far as is known done by men, painting on tipis and
parfleches (large rawhide envelopes), and embroidery.
Tipi covers and hide robes were properly painted by men
in stylized realism, parfleches by women in geometric
designs. Women assist men on tipi covers, which cannot
be painted according to one’s fancy but must either be
icons of medicine bundles bestowed by a vision power, or
exhibit a man’s war record. Women decorated clothing,
including horse ornamentation, embroidering with flattened dyed porcupine quills, native-made or trade-glass
beads, shells, elk teeth, and colored threads. Clothing
could also be painted and hung with strips of fur, fringes,
tinkling dewclaws or metal cones, woven wicker ornaments, or whatever caught the sewer’s or wearer’s taste.
Both men and women made necklaces, bracelets, and hair
ornaments. Men and women were equally concerned with
carefully groomed personal appearance, both genders
devoting time to coiffures, clothing in good condition, and
face and body painting (some painting for ritual rather than
decorative purpose). Anecdotes about non-Indian portrait
painters and photographers frequently tell of Blackfoot
men or women stalking away from someone trying to take
their picture when the Blackfoot person was wearing work
clothes or had not been permitted to dress according to his
or her own preference. Before the reservations, men wore
tanned hide breechcloths, adding leggings, tunics, and fur
robes in cold weather or for dress, and women wore long
dresses, two tanned hides tied together at the shoulders or
sewn, with or without sleeves. Both genders wore leather
moccasins, and women wore wrapped leggings on the
lower legs. Women were and are physically modest, averse
to revealing their bodies, while men were accustomed to
wearing little, facilitating body painting.
341
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Conceptually there were men’s and women’s domains,
complementary rather than ranked. The First Marriages
legend and innumerable foolish Napi stories imply higher
status for women, as does women’s vital, mediator role
with medicine bundles and the Sun Dance. Perhaps one
could say that Blackfoot women’s status, based on innate
reproductive capacity, was more secure, and men’s status,
based on accomplishments, was less so.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality, as distinguished from gossip about affairs, was
not a proper topic for discussion among Blackfoot, except
for joking with sisters’ husbands/wives’ sisters—potential
spouses in polygyny. Parents’ instructions to their children
were minimal. On the other hand, living in tents in camps
and caring for, hunting, and butchering animals exposed
children to inadvertent observation of adults’ and animals’
sexuality. Men and women were expected to form marital
relationships, for complementary household tasks as well
as for sexual intimacy. Presumably some persons engaged
in homosexual activities, but these are not discussed with
outsiders. There does not seem to have been any explicit
postpartum intercourse rule, but women felt “afraid of
husband” for a month or 6 weeks after delivery, fearing
another pregnancy too soon. Ten days after birth, a postmenopausal woman would dress the mother in new
clothes and take away her old clothes and bedding; this
ritual was supposed to prevent immediate pregnancy. For
contraception, women seem to have been advised to use
symbolic means such as not lending anyone else her
shawl, not picking up young puppies, or wearing a copper
bracelet with a hole in it around her neck, tied by a buckskin thong through the hole. Becoming pregnant while
still nursing a child was considered a problem, because it
was believed that the mother’s milk would no longer be
abundant enough to nourish the child.
Girls’ parents discouraged premarital sexual intimacy,
and an arranged marriage in the mid-teens, soon after
menarche, was ideal. Youths were encouraged to sneak
under a tipi cover into the bedding of a young woman, on
a parallel with sneaking into an enemy’s camp and
stealing their horses. If the young woman did not wish the
342
Blackfoot
relationship, she could awaken her family sleeping around
her. Rape was strongly disapproved, with gang-rape a
possible punishment for an adulterous wife. Women captured in war raids, or traded as slaves, could be prostituted
(leading some European travelers, failing to distinguish
between these alien women and their hosts’ families, to
consider Indian women promiscuous).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
As noted, forming households through marriage was the
norm. Parents selected adolescents’ first spouses, allowing the young person to refuse if strongly upset by the
choice but expecting obedience. The groom’s family
expressed honor to the bride and her family by presenting gifts; the bride’s family outfitted her with a tipi
(or, later, cabin) and household equipment. She herself
was expected to have sewn and embroidered trousseau
clothing and moccasins for her man.
Young men courted young women by waylaying
them as they fetched water or firewood for their families,
speaking to them on the margins of camp (later, near their
family cabins) or at public gatherings, or daring to sneak
under the tipi cover into the maiden’s bed. Should the man
be discovered in the tipi, the couple were considered married. A charming custom was for young men to ride around
a camp singing love songs, taking the maidens of their
choice up behind them on the horses as the circuits continued. Young women could court men by choosing to dance
with them or in their honor if the man had performed an
exploit to be celebrated. Propriety required the parents of
the courting couple to meet formally to arrange a marriage.
respect by not speaking directly to one another or remaining together in a room or tipi. On this account, a widowed
woman would not move into a married daughter’s home
but occupied a small tipi (or cabin) near it. Fathers-in-law
were not obliged to avoid sons’ wives but treated them
respectfully, as fathers did their adult daughters.
According to early reservation ethnographers,
divorce was frowned upon. Census records of the time
reveal multiple serial marriages, some due to the high
mortality of the time, but others apparently couples’ moreor-less voluntary separations. One is told that “So-and-so
stole” or “ran away with” X’s wife. Men who abused their
wives were ordered by her family to desist, or the woman
returned to her family. The notorious 1870 massacre of a
Piegan community by U.S. troops under Colonel Baker
was precipitated by a woman’s male relatives murdering a
European American husband who persisted in abusing
her, disregarding warnings by the Piegans.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
A person’s comrade and confidante was expected to be
of the same sex. Boys were encouraged to bond with
a chum, sharing boys’ activities and later adult employments, and girls with a sister or female cousin (English
terminology). The only traditional cross-sex familiarity
was between potential polygynous spouses, a man and his
wife’s sisters, between whom lewd joking was obligatory.
A man’s chum (there is a Blackfoot term for these comrades) might enjoy relaxed conversation with his chum’s
wife, but this extension of familiarity was not obligatory.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIPS
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Husbands and wives were expected to respect and support
one another, socially and with complementary contributions to the household. Neither was permitted adultery,
although men’s extramarital sexual adventuring could be
condoned and polygyny allowed men to keep more than
one wife. Because polygyny ideally involved sisters married to one man, sisters- and brothers-in-law not only were
permitted, but were expected, to joke lewdly with one
another. Otherwise, propriety required avoidance of lewdness, even of telling obscene Napi stories, in the presence
of in-laws. Men and their mothers-in-law showed extreme
Imposition of European American/European Canadian
rule after the 1870s abolished polygyny, although households of older people might continue with more than one
“housewife,” as politely termed. Boys and men were
compelled to dress more fully than had been customary.
Otherwise, there were relatively few changes regarding
gender for Blackfoot. Missionaries perpetuated the
homemaker role for girls and outside worker for boys.
Women were less visible in leader roles; for example,
few were elected to the Tribal Business Council. Unlike
some reservations, the Blackfoot did not go through
Bibliography
343
a period in the mid-20th century of predominantly
women elected and appointed leaders, creating a backlash
among men who felt disenfranchised.
In the last third of the 20th century, English rapidly
replaced Blackfoot in daily use. This meant that
Blackfoot were using Indo-European “sex” gender syntax
(he–she–it), disregarding the animate–inanimate distinction used in Blackfoot speech. Whether this affected
attitudes is difficult to evaluate, since much else
changed—families moved from hamlets on the range to
clustered housing in the agency town, a community college was created, network television came to homes, and
an increasing proportion of the growing population is
employed and living off-reservation.
Not a change, but indicative of continuing recognition
of “leader-hearted women,” the Montana Blackfeet reservation member Elouise Cobell achieved national recognition when she instituted a lawsuit in 1996 against the U.S.
Department of the Interior, demanding accounting for the
millions of dollars it held in trust for U.S. Indians.
Mrs. Cobell had studied accounting in an off-reservation
college, been appointed treasurer for the Tribe, and had
taken over the defunct local bank, managing it to success.
When her requests for documentation of Blackfeet trust
funds were consistently ignored, she found an attorney to
pursue the case. Mrs. Cobell’s outstanding ability brought
her a 1997 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, which
she used for legal fees. Contemporary with Elouise Cobell,
revitalization of Blackfoot heritage on the Montana reservation is forwarded by men and women such as Darrell
Robes Kipp, who holds a Harvard graduate degree, his
colleague in language revival Dr. Dorothy Still Smoking,
the native plant expert Wilbert Fish Sr., and faculty of
Blackfeet Community College. On the Canadian side, men
and women of Red Crow College in Alberta similarly carry
on the Blackfoot heritage.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I am grateful to Ruth Lewis for providing excerpts from
her field notebooks.
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Blackfoot kinship (Monograph 9, American Ethnological Society).
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Hungry-Wolf, B. [Little Bear]. (1996). Daughters of the Buffalo Women.
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University Press of America.
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of New Mexico Press.
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Mythology of the Blackfoot (pp. v–xxxiii). Lincoln: University of
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Blackfoot
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American Museum of Natural History.
Canela
William H. Crocker
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names are Canella, Kanela, Ramkókamekra,
Rankokamekrá, Rancocamecra, Kapiekran, Mehim, but
not Canelo (eastern Ecuador). The Apanyekra-Canela are
neighbors.
LOCATION
The Canela are located in Brazil, 600 km southeast of the
mouth of the Amazon River and 70 km south of the city
of Barra do Corda in the center of the state of Maranhão.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Canela Native Americans speak Gê, a subgroup of
Macro-Carib. Gê speakers live in the central to eastern
interior highlands, south of the Amazon River. The
Canela are one of the Timbira nations that fought each
other annually. These peoples lived in large circular
villages accommodating 1,000–1,500 people, interacting
almost every day with each other. They intermingled
through participation in unusually extensive rituals,
social activities, sports, and twice-daily meetings of the
elders. Most of these tribes lived in savannah woodlands
(cerrados), characterized by bushes and stunted trees
rising no higher than 30 feet above poor sandy soils with
grass cover. Only by the streams or small rivers, where
forests enabled sufficient soil fertility, was their slashand-burn horticulture marginally successful.
The Canela (i.e., the pre-pacification Kapiekran)
surrendered to a Brazilian/Portuguese military garrison at
Pastos Bons, Maranhão, in 1814. They had had devastating skirmishes with settlers for some 30 years. Decimated
by smallpox during 1915, they hid in the hills of their
former lands until about 1840, when the backland settlers
of the area allowed them to live on about 5% (about
1,200 km2) of the territory they had controlled. Owing to
their drastic loss of lands and their being primarily
hunters and gatherers with very little horticulture, they
had to adapt to far more intensive slash-and-burn agricultural methods using the settlers’ axes and machetes. Even
by 2001, they had not fully adapted to settled agriculture.
Thus, even in current times, the Canela do not
produce enough on their farms to feed their families
during the entire year. The values of the hunter, as
formerly those of the warrior, are still highly prestigious,
while the values of the farmer are merely respected. They
put in about a 1 ha-size farm while the settler cultivates
about 3 ha. In these farms, the Canela produce principally
bitter manioc, rice, and beans.
Another vestige of their food-collecting past is the
unusual extent to which the Canela relied on sharing
to distribute the few products of their economy.
Aboriginally, if you did not give freely and willingly
when someone wanted a piece of your venison or a drink
of water, you were considered stingy and evil. Currently,
the unproductive person (disabled through illness,
mourning, taboos, child-bearing, or by temperament)
“begs” from the productive person. This general begging,
and the compulsion to share, makes it difficult for any
individual to raise sufficient foods. The production of a
surplus to trade with other families or to sell on the open
markets of surrounding communities or the city is infrequent and not economically significant. The backlanders
surrounding the Canela reservation feel that since the
Canela do not contribute to the common good of the area
commercially, they do not deserve to retain their lands.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The Canela gender categories are just male and female.
They distinguish males from females—besides through
physical attributes—through clothing, body adornments,
and roles in life. Men wear shorts or long pants while
women use wraparound cloth to below the knees with no
top. Away from their reservation, women cover their
breasts with cloth or a blouse, and men put on shirts.
345
346
Canela
Aboriginally, both sexes went naked, but young girls
wore belts securing leaves to cover their genitals during
festival situations only.
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, articles, and other
parts of speech are not gender distinguished, but personal
names are at least 95% distinguishable. A suffix (-khwèy)
is sometimes added to a woman’s name to indicate
gender, but men do not have an equivalent designation.
The sex of an animal, bird, or fish is indicated by the male
suffix (-tsũm-re) or the female one (-kahãy).
The Canela are relatively dark-skinned, tall, and
long-headed for Amazonian Indians. They prefer lighter
shades of skin, straight long hair (not kinky), and relatively high speaking voices. These preferences are not
differentiated for gender or age.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The major stages, I call “life markers.” The Canela
distinguish them by the use of the suffix -tsà. They
are: birth, pèm-tsà (falling-occasion); puberty, ram
ipinin-tsà (already sex-occasion); childbirth, pèm-tsà
(falling-occasion); and death, tùk-tsà (death-occasion).
The terms apply to both genders. Between these life
markers are a number of minor stages that are either
descriptions or social events. These stages are described
through their translations in Table 1. The Canela apply
most of these stage terms to both genders, but those
between puberty and childbirth are gender differentiated.
Two of these stages refer to male age-sets, when first
formed (7) and when graduated (9), and so are gender
specific. Stage 8 for men, which I gloss as “youths,” pertains until these men are no longer raising “vulnerable”
children (stage 10), while the same stage 8 for women
pertains only up to childbirth (marker 3). Stage 9 for
both men and women describes the free period of their
lives—for men activities with their warriors’ age-set
(hakhrã-ntúwa) and for women their time of unrestricted
sexual freedom (nkrekre-le).
The first three life markers are not publicly attended.
They are family experiences. The fourth life marker,
Table 1. Canela Life Stages
Life marker 1: pèm-tsà (falling occasion) ⫽ birth
Stage 1: tetet-le
new and whitish
Stage 2: kaprêk-le
small, red, weak; drinks milk only, then later, solid foods
Stage 3: ka?pôt-le
they go on all fours
Stage 4: kapôt-tèy-tu
crawlers fully strong, get up but fall
Stage 5: halíya ntúwa
runs, but falters, falls
Stage 6: a?khra-le
children: viable young people who can talk, run, present, and
understand well
Stage 7: kô-ntúwa
boys caught in the initiation festivals, including two girl associates
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
Life marker 2: ram ipinin tsà ⫽ already having had sex
Stage 8: ntúwayê
youths (rarely women); through when children
still “soft” (through Stage 10)
Stage 8: kuprè
girls; from loss of virginity to childbirth, life marker 3
Stage 9: hakhrã-ntúwa
men’s graduated initiation age-class; warriors, now mature young men
Stage 9: to ?pre
women now wear maturity belts
nkrekre-le
women free, loose, having fun
(⫹)
Life marker 3: pèm-tsà ⫽ childbirth
Stage 10: khra-?tàm-túwa
Stage 11: khra ?tèy tu
Stage 12: hĩĩtèy
Stage 13: khà-le
Stage 14: khà
Stage 15: wey
Stage 16: kêtyê
their children still raw and vulnerable to pollutants
all their children strong
their condition firm/tough
well hardened, mature, about 45
well established, about 55, rarely applied to women
very old, about 70
does no work any more, over 80
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
(⫹)
()
(⫹)
(⫹)
Life marker 4: tùk-tsà
death
(⫹)
Adapted from Crocker, 1990, p. 181.
(⫹)
()
()
()
()
()
()
Gender over the Life Cycle
death and its funeral, is witnessed by the extended family
of the deceased and by any others who chose to do so.
The first three markers differ by gender, obviously, but
funeral, burial, and mourning procedures are the same for
either gender, though women are involved more extensively in mourning activities.
Puberty transforms boys into youths whom their
uncles can sharply discipline. Her first sexual intromission, not puberty, transforms a girl into a married woman.
First parenthood forces both genders from free living into
serious responsibilities for the first time—the wife more
completely than the husband.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The Canela raise infants and babies of both sexes
similarly, but by age 5 or 6 they treat boys quite differently
from girls. They allow boys to go about quite freely, while
they keep girls by their mothers and female relatives to
carry out domestic chores. Boys roam the savannahs in
groups, hunting and playing by the streams, and associating with their initiation-training age-set members.
The Canela value boys and girls equally; however,
the genders have their own particular qualities, which are
valued for themselves. The expectations are that boys will
grow up to be good economic providers, especially of
meat, and that girls will be good housekeepers and child
raisers. Before pacification, they expected boys to avenge
the death of an uncle by an enemy tribe. They raise boys
to be obedient, respectful of elders, and generous. They
especially valued the traits of hunters, such as agility,
endurance, patience, and fast running. Girls should be
gregarious and outgoing in personality, and they should
quickly join in the merriment of groups, especially the
sing-dance lines in the plaza.
While girls work continuously with their mothers
and female relatives, helping on the farm and in the
house, boys take more time for play and age-set activities,
until their fathers involve them in farm work when they
are approaching puberty.
You see both genders playing “house” together in
the yards behind the houses until the boys are 5 or 6,
when it becomes just girls playing house with miniature
utensils and food. Fathers make toys for sons from the
balsa-like stem of the buriti palm frond. Mothers made
daughters dolls from the same material.
The early rites are similar for the genders, except for
naming. A boy’s uncle (his MB or M “B”) ceremonially
347
shouts to announce his birth at sunrise, but a girl’s birth
is not called out. When a boy is 7 or 8 years old, his
naming uncle brings him a small bow and arrow, while a
girl’s naming aunt brings her a small head-carried basket.
Between 8 and 11 years of age, a boy has his earlobes
pierced to inculcate obedience and the learning of
customs, while a girl experiences no equivalent rite until
her loss of virginity. Ear-piercing and defloration are seen
as an opening up to society.
The Canela have no formal education except
perhaps in festival singing for which the elders summon
the boys of an age-set with their two girls. Each individual sings alone before them for daily criticism.
Shamans do not have apprentices; the young of
either sex learn to be shamans on their own. The maraca
sing-dance masters do not conduct serious apprentice
training. The young men (no women) learn by listening
and learning by heart what the masters are doing.
Puberty and Adolescence
The Canela do not speak of adolescence, but they mark
the two first sex occasions emphatically with special
events. I find that the terms, kuprè for the girl and
ntúwayê for the boy (both stage 8), express the beginning
of adolescence. They consider that a girl is a kuprè from
loss of virginity up to childbirth. For the youth, the
expression ntúwayê extends further than his first fatherhood. It goes through stage 10, until his last child is no
longer “soft.” By then he may be 45 or 50.
The boy experienced a sharp discontinuity in socialization at puberty. His uncle had been permissive and
encouraging, but now, suddenly, he became tough, scolding, and demanding. When he heard that his nephew had
had first sex, he ordered him to leave his maternal house
to sleep in the plaza. There he had to avoid the women in
their free period and commence his postpubertal restrictions against most foods and sex.
The adolescent girl experienced similar severity from
the elders. Her aunts and uncles had been permissive and
encouraging, but at puberty they became severe. The
elders assigned her to a men’s festival society as one of
two girl associates. These men had sex with her sequentially several times. If she objected, she found no sympathy with even her female kin. This training served to make
her generous with her body for most of the rest of her life.
Special rites for the girl were the following. Upon
giving her virginity she had become married, so her
348
family before or after this experience assembled to counsel her with her husband. They believed that sex brought
on menstruation, so seclusion for her first menstrual
period was her next rite, but one of little significance.
Then her female kin secluded her for months to teach her
the use of restrictions against certain foods and sex to
enable her to grow up strong—a very important rite.
Special postpuberty rites for the youth are the
following. Besides sending him to sleep in the plaza and
hazing him before the elders, his disciplinary uncle
ordered him to maintain restrictions against certain foods
and sex for several years.
Attainment of Adulthood
They say that childbirth makes a young woman an adult,
but she is still living in the same house with her mother
and some of her close female relatives, who dominate her.
Nevertheless, a Canela woman of this age and status must
have her own farm. Thus she obligates her husband to
prepare a field for her, which her female kin require their
husbands to help establish.
A distinct move of independence comes to some
Canela mothers when they leave their mothers’ house and
establish one of their own, next to or behind it. Older
sisters with many children do this.
They say that a boy becomes a man when he fathers
his first child. Formerly this occurred when he was 20–30
but now when he is 16–20. The other customary maturity
indictor for becoming a man is his age-set’s graduation
from their final initiation festival, formerly when they
were 17–27, but now when they are 12–22.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle age for the Canela may be from about 50 to about
65. I suggest that their steps for entering middle age were
menopause for women and retiring from racing with logs
for men. Middle-aged women dominated their hearth
groups, and middle-aged men entered the council of
elders.
During old age for men, which begins at about 65,
they continue their membership in the council of elders in
the plaza, where they meet with the younger men in congenial conversation each day. Few men beyond 75 come
to the plaza, but they may do so. Old women tend to lose
their status in their extended families by 75. They do odd
jobs as service to the younger women who are in charge.
Canela
Both genders continue to work in the fields until possibly
their eighties. Such old men spend much time fishing,
contributing in this way. Since the late 1970s, some older
people receive government pensions as retired farm
workers—women after 55 and men after 60. This
minimum-wage income helps their relations with the
younger members of their families.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Boys are clearly allowed to be more aggressive than girls.
I have seen little boys act in ways that only could be
called “fierce,” while their adult female kin felt proud of
such warrior tendencies. “Gleefulness” describes the
frequent self-presentation of little boys, while little girls
are likely to be coy but charming.
Women are allowed to be less generous or less quick
in responding to requests for food. They can be more
retentive. They can also be more expressive about
complaints, especially against their husbands. In contrast,
men are more likely to put up with their wives’ complaints,
bear up under trying duties, and say less that is negative.
The Canela allow women to be more emotional and
individualistic. Their female kin may control them to
some extent, while an age-set controls its male members
more definitively. It is telling that social pressures almost
always forced a man back to his wife, but that no pressures
could force a woman to take back a husband she had come
to dislike. Women can be more headstrong and stubborn.
Men tend to be more dominant and aggressive,
while women are more nurturing and dependent.
Nevertheless, women do not go around looking repressed
and with subservient attitudes, nor do they lower their
gaze for men. They can be straightforward and demanding should the situation call for it.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The Canela sociocultural system involves male versus
female oppositions. The male place is in the central plaza,
while the female one is the ring of houses which line the
outer side of the village’s circular boulevard.
The Canela are not lineal; they reckon kinship bilaterally with a matrilateral emphasis, and they are matrilocal.
Gender Roles in Economics
The principal social structure in the circle of houses is
that of matrilines descending from a single female ancestor. An arc of houses on the village circle that is formed
by such matrilines is called a longhouse. Longhouses
have no names. In 1971, the village of Escalvado was
composed of 13 longhouses ranging from 12 houses in
length to one house. While brothers and mothers’ brothers of the women of these houses visit them each day to
govern certain activities, the women largely control most
activities in their houses.
In contrast, the men dominate the activities that take
place in the plaza. The elders, composed only of men,
hold meetings there twice a day, led by the first chief of
the tribe, a man. Decisions of many sorts emanate from
the plaza. Judicial settlements of disputes between
extended families take place there or in the house of the
plaintiff or the defendant along the village circle of
houses. In either location, men dominate the resolution of
such problems. Thus the genders structure the principal
social institutions to a very considerable extent.
Upon marriage, a young man moves in with his
wife’s family, with her mother and a number of her female
kin and their spouses and children. Since divorce was
almost impossible before 1975, the young man most likely
stayed in this house past grandfatherhood until death.
The Canela are outstanding for their number of male
societies. They maintain two daily active age-set moieties
that are formed according to the age of their male
members, not through their kinship. They also have three
festival moieties that are formed through male nametransmission, the names passing from naming uncles to
their named-nephews (from MBs to their ZSs). In addition,
they maintain a high-honor society, which passes membership through male name-transmission, and a low-honor
society, which acquires membership through its members’
reputation for individualism and joking behavior.
Women do not form daily active societies or
ceremonial societies that are occasionally active. They
maintain female memberships—two young women—in
almost all of the men’s societies. The two men’s societies
that are of highest ceremonial honor have no women or
only one female member.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The gender roles in economics are distinct, but
women take on male roles when necessary, to the
349
extent that they can, and men carry out female roles when
circumstances require them to do so. Thus men tend
babies and fetch water from the stream and firewood
from the savannahs when their wives are ill, and women
work at building houses and cutting down woods for a
farm, when they cannot get men to do this heavy work
for them.
The sons-in-law are especially responsible for
earning the family living. They obtain meat for their
nuclear families and their hearth-oriented extended families. The wives of the sons-in-law are more responsible
for bringing grains and vegetables from the family fields
and for processing these staples into meals for the nuclear
families as well as for the extended family hearth groups.
Thus, women spend a great deal of time processing bitter
manioc, the basic staple, while men spend days away
from home hunting or arranging to bring meat from
backland communities.
Before pacification, men went away in groups to
attack the enemy to reduce their numbers, preventing
future attacks, while women stayed home. The men were
probably not away for more than a month at a time. Until
the 1960s, men went away to distant large cities of Brazil.
They went for several months at a time to obtain goods to
give away at home, as they had gone on trek for collecting foods before pacification. They seldom took women
on these trips to cities.
Aboriginally, the Canela were involved in very little
trade that took them outside their territorial boundaries.
Groups of men went on trading trips without women,
because such incursions into enemy territories were dangerous. Today, neither sex specializes in trading; both
genders sell artifacts in the city. However, since men go
to backland communities and cities more than women do,
and since more men than women speak Portuguese,
the men are the negotiators even when their women are
with them.
Generally, women make most kinds of baskets while
men make most kinds of mats, and women roll and make
items out of tucum string, while men make items out of
buriti cord. Men make their personal carrying pouches
(mõ?ko) and bags (paptu), and they also carve staffs and
ceremonial lances out of hard woods, while women do
not carve.
Women own the houses and farms. Each gender
owns the items they make. Women had few festival body
adornments, while men had many, including the most
colorful ones (pàn-yapùù, arara tail-feathers).
350
PARENTAL
ROLES
Canela
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
The mother of a child is the one who gave birth to it,
though a child calls his or her mother’s sister “mother” as
well as most of the latter person’s sisters or classificatory
sisters. Several of these many other “mothers” are actual
part time caretakers, and one of them takes over the full
care of a closely related orphan.
The same pattern potentially exists for fathers, but
since these men’s brothers, and their other classificatory
fathers, live in other households, their care is seldom
sought. The child’s mother’s husband is the primary
father (MH ⫽ F), but the Canela also have “contributing
fathers.” They believe that semen introduced into a
woman’s womb after she has become pregnant becomes
part of the fetus. Thus, the men who have contributed in
this way become ethnobiological fathers to the fetus,
sharing common blood, in addition to the mother’s
husband. Contributing fathers occasionally give their
contributed-to children food, but they are not significant
caretakers, and they do not assume the care of orphans
related to them in this way.
The fathers who provide significant care and sustenance are the child’s mother’s husbands, whether presumed genitors or stepfathers. Such fathers live in the
same house with the child’s mother and spend considerable time taking care of their children, sometimes with
great love and affection. Nevertheless, only the MH who
is the presumed genitor can spank or hit his child, not its
stepfather, because only shared “blood” (kaprôô) will
give the hitter sufficient compassion to carry out the
punishment constructively.
Besides the parental roles, the other significant caretaker roles are those of the father’s sister and the mother’s
brother, immediate and classificatory. These uncles and
aunts together handle the disciplinary matters of their
nieces and nephews, since the children’s parents are too
soft on them, they believe. The parents handle daily
matters, but if children get out of hand, they summon
the uncles for both sexes and maybe the aunts for girls.
The young people fear scoldings from their uncles and
start obeying the moment their parents threaten to
summon them.
The parents are ashamed to face the sexual matters
of their children, so they leave such education to the
uncles and aunts who have little sexual shame before their
nieces and nephews. Uncles talked nephews out of sexual
jealousies, and aunts coaxed nieces into sequential sex
situations and private trysts.
If a youth was intransigent, his disciplining uncle
saw to it that he was called before the female dance line
in the late afternoon to be hazed cruelly by one of the
toughest and most warlike elders. A girl who appeared to
be menstruating before she had lost her virginity was
accused of hiding the name of her lover. Sex brought on
menstruation, they believe, so she must have had sex, but
who was the young man? To find out, they summoned an
aunt to examine her genitals, forcefully if necessary.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Public leadership among the Canela is primarily male.
The first chief (only male) and the council of elders
(all male) determine almost all political, social, ceremonial, and judicial matters—internal and external.
Female power lies in the houses, but does not extend
even to an entire long1 longhouse. Thus, while male power
extends from the plaza to the whole tribe, individual female
power does not extend far 1 beyond the hearth unit.
The Canela have one festival, the Festival of
Oranges, during which they invert the gender roles. In it,
two or three men accompany perhaps 100 women on
their warlike expedition to obtain food from a backland
community. The woman who assumes the full leadership,
due to her own powers of persuasion and the respect the
women have for her, holds this role only for the few days
of the festival.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The original Canela human beings were Sun (Pùt) and
Moon (Putwrè) who walked in the savannahs together.
Sun found the ideal forms for living, while Moon
changed them to create workable forms. One day Sun
plunged into a stream’s pond and came out with a file of
beautiful young Canelas behind him, both men and
women. He had made the genders together. Thus, Moon
had to do the same thing, but he came out of the water
with less than perfect men and women—the origin of
physical differences.
Star Woman (Katsêê-ti-?khwèy) came down from
the sky and showed the Canela corn and other vegetables
Relative Status of Men and Women
already growing in the woods. A Canela boy stole fire
from a female jaguar. Awkhêê, a man, brought the
concept of social hierarchy to the Canela. He offered
the Canela the choice of the shotgun (the Brazilian world)
or the bow and arrow (the Indian world), and when the
Canela chose the latter, they had to remain subservient to
the Brazilian, while the Brazilian had to support the
Canela forever.
The Canela have several other culture heroes, all
men, who visited the worlds of the skies, ghosts, fish, and
alligators, and they came back with festival-pageants as
models for the Canela to live by. While Star-Woman is the
only female culture hero, they did not rate her stature as
different from that of the men. However, Awkhêê has
special status, because he is the only one whom they call
upon today. He is their savior in the messianic movements and, as such, he has become synonymous with God
and Jesus.
Canela shamans are largely men, though two women
appear in Canela myths and I knew one female shaman
during the 1970s. They said that women rarely had the
strength to carry out extensive restrictions against certain
foods and sex during their postpubertal years so that they
seldom obtained sufficient purity of blood to attract
ghosts who could make them shamans. Ghosts are
recently dead Canela, so when ghosts come back to
bother living Canela, their names are usually reported by
living shamans. Thus, ghosts are of either sex.
These days, the Canela seem “addicted” to messianic
movements to resolve their economic problems instead of
relying on hard work in the fields to furnish sufficient
staples. They had significant movements in 1963, 1980,
1984, and 1999, and about six lesser movements between
1984 and 1995. The prophet of by far the greatest movement, the one of 1963, was a woman, Maria Khêê-khwèy,
but men led the other three significant movements.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Visitors to the reservation are likely to comment that the
Canela appear to be playing all the time. This is because
they have a lot of leisure time and work in a playful
manner, chatting and joking.
Men have more leisure time than women, because
women’s work is daily while men’s work, like clearing
351
fields, is more seasonal. Men hunt and fish during all
months of the year, but such activities are sporadic.
Leisure time for men is spent at daily age-set
gatherings or, when older, council of elders’ meetings,
where they talk about amusing experiences, rumors,
scandals, and politics. Young men and women often
dance three times a day—dawn, late afternoon, and
evening. The Canela seldom work more than 5 hours in
their fields (about 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.), and then, after
sequential sex, the men race carrying heavy logs back
from the fields to the village in the mid-afternoon.
They hold track and sing-dancing events around the
village circle in the late afternoon during the meetings of
the elders and during the morning meetings of the elders
as well.
It is hard to detect when women have leisure
moments, because their family duties keep them occupied
most of the time. However, during the afternoons, they
may sing between naps while rocking their babies, and
down by the stream they may have long enjoyable
discussions with other women while washing clothes.
None of their work seems hurried or pressured.
While the social singing and dancing in the plaza
three times a day involves both genders, as do the
personal trysts, the genders spend most leisure time apart,
not because custom segregates them, but because of the
nature of their activities.
Old men, but not old women, formerly gathered
large groups of children and youths in the plaza during
the late afternoon, while they told stories about the
ancestors.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Ceremonially, the Canela place high value on certain of
their young of both sexes. They compare the ceremonially
high girls (the wè?tè—aged 6 to 12) to beauty queens
(reinas) in the Brazilian world. Similarly, the young male
ceremonial chiefs (mẽ hõ?pa?hi and tàmhàk) receive deference, but command nothing. However, the mere arrival and
presence of such honored persons of either sex before individuals or groups in conflict influenced them to stop their
hostility and resolve their problems quickly out of respect.
The elders, men, award artifacts of honor to the
best young festival performers of both sexes. They also
352
assigned most girls, ages 12–14, to serve as girl associates to men’s societies, involving them in sequential sex.
Thus, older men controlled the development of the sexuality of young women to a considerable extent. Clearly,
great status accrued in these ways to older men.
Economically, at the family hearth level, the man in
the role of the senior father-in-law (pàykêt) is likely to
dominate his sons-in-law (mẽ ipiyõyê) in determining
what they do each day. The women of this hearth group,
all close kin, clearly dominate their junior married-in
husbands, (mẽ iwawè), but they may or may not dominate
the senior male by the time he is a grandfather.
In kin-group matters, women dominate the domestic
scene for food preparation and distribution and for simple
childcare, but for questions affecting the kin group as a
whole, the women’s brothers, uncles, or great uncles
determine most matters.
The Canela do not limit rights to important material
resources to either gender. Economic commodities pass
freely between the sexes. Fruits of the labor of either sex
pass to the other one.
These days, the status of a young married man has
risen because he can threaten to divorce his wife, and he
does so increasingly.
SEXUALITY
Expressing sexuality was the great joy in Canela life, and
the genders were equally involved. Sex for the Canela is
natural, healthy, and a great pleasure, and to be undertaken for enjoyment and not just for procreation. It is only
dangerous when it is “polluting.” They believe that such
pollutants come from rich meats and other “loaded”
foods, and not the sexual fluids of either sex.
Premarital sex for girls does not exist, because her
first act of intromission means that she has become
married. Extramarital sex, both trysts and sequential sex,
was compulsory for both sexes. Today, they hold the
same belief about first marriage for a girl, but trysts
and sequential sex are no longer compulsory for her.
Extramarital trysts have become dangerous because they
arouse the jealousy of husbands. Sequential sex has
become rare, and may exist only for a group of men in a
festival, when they pay for it. Thus, it has become more
like prostitution.
Extramarital practices become less frequent over the
lifetime of a woman, because after first childbirth, she
Canela
found her domestic responsibilities too time consuming
to have many trysts or sequential sex.
Such practices diminished over the lifetime of a man
with the weakening of his sexual desires. Today, it is hard
for a man to find sex partners outside of marriage without his having to compensate women considerably, even
as a young bachelor. Women in general now have the
sense that men must pay for sex, whereas formerly they
gave sex as good women from a sense of sharing and
generousity.
The cultural conception of male sexuality differs
from the cultural conception of female sexuality, currently,
in that men need sex more than women do and therefore
they must take the initiative. Formerly, however, women
took the initiative as much as men. Male informants say
that, while having sex does not excite most women very
much, having sex excites some women to an extreme
extent. They may become far more excited than men do.
Nimuendajú reports that women were careful not to
sit or stand so that they exposed their inner labia. A similar shame for men is for anyone, male or female, to see
their glans penis.
The Canela used to allow young children of both
genders to hear the sexual intercourse of older people at
night. Young children also listened to the joking relationships taking place between somewhat distant classificatory uncles and nieces, and aunts and nephews. Also,
aunts would say sex-loaded phrases for their little nieces
of 4 years to repeat in the faces of their uncles. The same
would happen between tiny nephews and their aunts.
Nevertheless, they did not allow sexual experimentation
between the sexes before a girl was 11 or a boy had
reached puberty.
In earlier times, the elders limited the sexuality of
both sexes during adolescence to infrequent sex with
much older people, because they believed that frequent
sex between young people was weakening due to the softness of youth. Building their own strength through the
practice of food and sex restrictions was also a factor in
limiting adolescent sex, more so for the man than the
woman.
Limitations on adult sexuality were household
duties for women and economic activities for men,
especially work in the family fields. Nevertheless, during
festivals and even during ordinary domestic life, joking
between adults—aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces,
or classificatory spouses—could result in mock acts of
sexuality.
Husband–Wife Relationship
353
There were no stories or myths about earlier homosexual relationships among the Canela. However, I found
three examples of this orientation during the 1950s and
1960s.
Two of the three homosexuals were born during the
1910s. They wore wraparound skirts like women, except
that they did not cover their knees while the women
always did. They gave up racing with logs and hunting,
and they worked hard in the fields and in domestic work,
preparing food along with the women. I was not aware
that they took care of babies. Both married. One of them
had children, but his wife made him leave. Occasionally,
they met with the council of elders in the plaza, but were
not active there. As individuals, they were tolerated and
respected, but they were not cultural models.
The younger homosexual, who was born during the
1930s, sewed clothing at the Indian Protection Service’s
post and carried out duties more characteristic of women,
but he did not wear a wraparound skirt. He married and
had a baby in 1972, but others said that the child’s contributing fathers had made it. However, since then the
expression of such activities has been socioculturally suppressed, in keeping with encroaching backland Brazilian
attitudes.
The Canela have a number of marriage ceremonies,
each securing the relationship more completely. They
start with the interfamily hearings before and after
virginity loss, which they call marriage. Later, the young
wife’s family “buys” the husband by carrying meat pies
to his family’s house. Still later, the wife takes her maturity belt to her female in-laws so they can paint it and her
body red with urucu, in further acceptance of her.
The new wife had a brief “honeymoon” just after she
gave her virginity to her husband, when she could be
alone with him sexually. After 3–6 weeks, her classificatory husbands came asking her for sex, as this was their
right. If she was too stingy, they arranged with her female
kin for a special time and place when they could have sex
with her in sequence to teach her the tribal lesson of
generosity to all.
Both genders tend to remarry on the death of their
spouses, but men do this more consistently than women
do. When a woman dies, her family tries to retain her
widower for their children by marrying him to one of
them. The sororate is their preference. If a man dies, his
widow undergoes a long period of mourning. The man
who breaks her mourning has to stay with her, married,
unless he pays a large fine.
COURTSHIP
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Formerly, the Canela contracted marriages. The mothers
of the potential couple got together because they wanted
a connection between the two families. These contracted
marriages were between a man aged 15–20 and a girl
aged 5–7. However, most of these engagements, did not
result in marriages.
More recently, the Canela had family hearings for a
young couple to help them get together sexually, but currently they get together first and then have the family
hearing after. All men marry and most women do. Only a
few women choose to remain unmarried as a way of life
(mẽ mpíyapit). A single woman lives with her sisters and
helps support her extended family through contributions
and the work she requires her lovers to do on her farm.
A special role for a single woman was to go out on the
community-work days to reward the workers with sex.
These days, marriage is the personal choice of both
parties. Love is a primary factor, but women think of the
hunting abilities of men and are concerned with their
money-earning abilities.
Most Canela couples have affection if not romantic love
for each other, even though marriage is principally for
raising children and family matters. Some young couples
clearly have romantic love for each other. However,
almost all Canela judicial hearings are about marital disputes. Considering that extramarital sex was extensive, we
might expect that spouses were jealous of each other. At
times they surely were, so that the uncles had to suppress
their nephews’ bad feelings. Nevertheless, I consider that
the Canela cultural attitude of favoring fun, joy, and
presenting oneself as a generous person has had a lot
to do with keeping spousal relationships light-hearted
and warm.
Spouses eat together with their children, apart from
the rest of their hearth group. They also sleep together,
though sometimes a baby or a child may be between them.
Since the Canela way of life accentuates group living,
amusements, sports, and festivities, couples are not
together most of the time. However, they may bathe
together, farm almost alone with each other for weeks, and
354
occasionally take time for trysts in the savannahs. Spouses
make certain decisions together, but the hearth-group
leaders make some other decisions and the wife’s brothers and uncles make still others. While there is a gender
division of tasks, most tasks are interchangeable when
necessary.
The Canela practice strict monogamy. In 1959, a married man who took the virginity of a young girl thereby
became married twice. The other Canela teased him mercilessly, but he finally paid the girl’s family almost everything he possessed to get out of his secondly marriage.
Until 1975, the elders and the chiefs of the tribe did
not allow a man to leave his wife while they both had
children growing up, except for very unusual reasons.
Currently, young men leave their wives and children for
simple matters—sex jealousy being the principal one.
A woman may want her husband to leave because he
drinks too much and becomes abusive while drunk,
because he does not bring in enough meat, or because he
does not treat her female kin respectfully. These days,
either the husband or the wife can initiate divorce, but the
wife rarely does this. After divorce, the children always
remain with their mother, but she allows their father to
visit them at any time.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The aunt–nephew and uncle–niece relationships are the
great joking institutions in Canela society, but this
joking occurs only when the kinship is not immediate.
Individuals related in this way feel that they have to joke
sexually whenever they meet. Classificatory spouse relationships are similar unless the individuals happen to be
living in the same house.
Informal friendship relationships involve lifelong
camaraderie, but include playing practical jokes on each
other as well as sexual humor. Women seldom became
informal friends with men, and never with other women.
Primary formal friends carry out complete avoidance. They do not look each other in the eye and they
scarcely speak to each other. They must come to each
other’s aid whenever necessary. They paint each other on
ceremonial occasions and the survivor buries the other
upon death. Women are involved in formal friendship
relationships in the same way as men. These relationships
are both same sex and cross sex.
Canela
The most serious consanguineal relationship is
between uterine brothers and sisters. They respect each
other and never joke, though they can carry out full communications. Classificatory opposite-sex siblings put
names on one of each other’s children of the same sex.
This name-exchange relationship strengthens the tie
between the classificatory siblings so that they are almost
as close to each other as uterine siblings.
A naming uncle has a close relationship with his
named-nephew. With the transferred set of names goes
ceremonial membership in men’s societies and rights to
carry out certain ritual roles. While a naming aunt is
equally close to her named-niece personally, she has little
to pass on to her ceremonially.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
I believe that in pre-pacification times, when a warrior’s
strength was vital, the Canela woman’s position was
considerably lower.
Nimuendajú writes only of men being made ceremonial chiefs. However, in 1966 I saw a husband and his
wife made ceremonial chiefs together, and this has
occurred regularly in later years.
The Festival of Oranges gives women a temporary
leadership role. After the performance of one of these
festivals during the mid-1990s, the first chief appointed
the female leader to “permanent” status as a chief, but this
position was not maintained by later chiefs.
These days the Canela even allow a talented female
singer to chant around the village circle in the same style
as men. I think that the elders would not have tolerated
such behavior during the late 1950s.
The most conspicuous and significant general
change over the decades is the loss of the control of the
older generations over the younger ones. Thus the elders
of today cannot, and do not, challenge the new initiatives
of women, so women are succeeding in improving their
status in relation to men.
NOTE
1. It would extend to an entire short longhouse, i.e., most cases today,
and female power extends beyond most hearth units to the extended
family in some situations, not all.
Bibliography
355
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crocker, W. H. (1984). Canela marriage: factors in change. In
K. Kensinger (Ed.), Marriage practices in lowland South America
(pp. 63–98). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Crocker, W. H. (1985). Extramarital sexual practices of the
Ramkokamekra-Canela Indians: An analysis of sociocultural factors. In P. Lyon (Ed.), Native South Americans: Ethnology of the
least known continent (reissued ed., pp. 184–194). Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Crocker, W. H. (1990). The Canela (Eastern Timbira), I: An ethnographic introduction. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology,
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Crocker, W. H. (1994). Canela. In J. Wilbert (Ed.), Encyclopedia
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Crocker, W. H. (2002). Canela “other fathers”: Partible paternity and its
changing practices. In S. Beckerman & P. Valentine (Eds.),
Cultures of multiple fathers: The theory and practice of partible
paternity in lowland South America (pp. 86–104). Gainesville, FL:
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Crocker, W. H. & Crocker, J. G. (2004, forthcoming). The Canela:
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Gregor, T. A. (1985). Anxious pleasures: The sexual lives of an
Amazonian people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gregor, T. A., & Tuzin, D. (Eds.). (2001). Gender in Amazonia and
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Maybury-Lewis, D. (Ed.). (1979). Dialectical societies: The Gê and
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(R. Lowie, Ed. & Trans.) (University of California Publications in
American Archaeology and Ethnology, 41). Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Schecter, S., & Crocker, W. H. (1999). Mending ways: The Canela Indians
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Suggs, D. N., & Miracle, A. (Eds.). (1999). Culture, biology, and sexuality. Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings, 32.
Cherokee
Mary Jo Tippeconnic Fox
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Cherokee are Iroquoian-speaking people and call
themselves Ani-Yun’wiya, the principal people.
Cherokee, the name, is most likely derived from the
Choctaw word for them, Tsalagi, meaning people of the
land of caves. The Delaware version of the name is
Tallageni and the Creek version is Tisolki or Tciloki
meaning people with different speech (Waldman, 1999).
LOCATION
The aboriginal homeland of the Cherokee is, today, the
southern Appalachians of North America. Western North
Carolina was the heart of their homeland, but the
Cherokee also lived in South Carolina, northern Georgia,
northeast Alabama, and eastern Tennessee. In 1838–39,
the Cherokee were removed to Indian Territory
(Oklahoma). The journey from their homelands to Indian
Territory is referred to as the “Trail of Tears” (Perdue,
1989). Today, Cherokees live mainly in Oklahoma
(Western Band) and North Carolina (Eastern Band).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Cherokees were primarily farmers and hunters. They
grew corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, and
tobacco, and were skilled hunters of wild life such as
deer, bear, rabbits, squirrels, and turkeys. Women were
mainly responsible for the agriculture, and the men
provided the meat. The society was matrilineal and
matrilocal. The primary landholding unit was the household, and the crops produced from their fields went to the
household. Households consisted of an extended family
linked by women and usually included an elderly woman,
her daughters and their children, the woman’s husband,
and unmarried sons. A husband and wife lived with the
wife’s family. The homesteads had several buildings
including those for storage. Each household had a garden,
but most of the food came from large communal fields
(Perdue, 1989).
The Cherokee lived in villages that often stretched
for several miles along rivers and streams where they
could farm and fish. Each village had a council house
(town house) and plaza. The council house was a large
circular building with walls constructed of interwoven
saplings called wattle and covered with plaster substance
of mud called daub. In the summer, the Cherokee lived in
wooden shelters and in the winter in a conical house
called asi, which had a hearth. Summer shelters were
rectangular with peaked roofs, pole frameworks, cane and
clay walls, and bark or thatch roofs. The asi or winter
house was placed over a pit with a cone shaped roof of
poles and earth. A wall of vertical logs for protection
often surrounded the villages (Waldman, 1999).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
The recognized gender categories were male and female.
Kana’ti was the first man and Selu the first woman
according to Cherokee tradition. Kana’ti provided meat
for the family and Selu provided vegetables. The products
from hunts were used for clothing and other household
items. Cherokee women helped men dress skins and
made them into clothing with bone needles. Traditional
Cherokees wore little clothing with children wearing
nothing at all. Men and women dressed similarly with
short skirts and in the colder months added a skin
cloak and moccasins. Both men and women wore jewelry
of shells, bones, and copper. Capes from turkey and
eagle feathers and bark were used for ceremonial
purposes and feather headdresses. By the late 18th century, Cherokee women adopted the modest skirts,
blouses, and shawls worn by Anglo-American women
(Perdue, 1989).
Cherokee men and women had separate and distinct
responsibilities. The tasks performed and the contributions of men and women were essential to the society and
356
Gender-Related Social Groups
the integrity of the universe (Perdue, 1998). As Perdue
(1998, p. 13) states:
Men did not dominate women, and women were not subservient to men.
Men knew little about the world of women; they had no power over
women and no control over women’s activities. Women had their own
arena of power, and any threat to its integrity jeopardized cosmic order.
So it had been since the beginning of time.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
As soon as a child was born, the mother and other
relatives took steps to form the child’s personality and
character. The mother’s brothers and her other female
relatives had the responsibility for the children. It was the
family of the mother that controlled the lives of the children. A female child was considered the proper daughter
of female relations. It was the maternal grandmothers or
oldest female clan relative that named infant girls. Men
assumed other responsibilities for clan children such as
training and educating their sisters’ sons. It was the uncles
or mother’s brothers who trained the boys to hunt and
determined when they were old enough to go to war. The
maternal uncles were the persons to whom the children
owed their greatest respect. Each clan’s specializations
and customs moved through time and across generations
in this way (Hill, 1997).
The relationship between parents and children was
one of respect, which extended to aunts, uncles, nieces,
and nephews. In kinship terms the relationships extended
to all members of one’s clan. If a child’s parents died,
clan members cared for the child. Mother was a social
rather than a strictly biological role (Perdue, 1998).
Attainment of Adulthood
Once girls and boys learned the necessary skills to
perform their roles in Cherokee society and they were of
age, they became adults. Girls learned the necessary skills
from their mothers and female clan members by helping
in the fields and the household. Girls watched their
female relatives and learned by example how to be mothers, sisters, daughter, storytellers and agriculturalists.
Girls were taught the knowledge and skills needed to
become a Cherokee women from the past, present, and
for the future. They learned to make meals, baskets,
357
clothing, pottery, and other household goods as well as
gaining knowledge about plants, crops, seasons, and
weather (Hill, 1997).
Some of the skills required of boys were to master
the blowgun, bow and arrow, and fishnets to become
hunters and warriors. Boys learned by example and
observation. Traditionally, young men had to demonstrate
martial skills and prove their valor to become a man
though warfare or hunting.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle-aged women cared for children, farmed, gathered
firewood, carried water, and cooked food, as well as
maintaining their households. Cherokees ate when hungry
and did not have designated meals. Men of this age were
hunters and warriors with clan uncles teaching sons of
their sisters the skills needed to hunt and war. Older men
were respected because of their valor in war or hunting
and because of their age.
Postmenopausal women were held in high regard
and performed tasks that required purity such as making
the war ark that accompanied military expeditions,
dancing–singing with the priests and warriors and
delivering medicine to the ill during the Green Corn
Ceremony. In addition, they brewed ceremonial medicine, nursed wounded warriors, and assisted with the
purity rites of high priest. Elderly women, unable to
perform heavy labor, helped in the fields by sitting on
scaffolds and chasing away animals raiding the crops
(Perdue, 1989). Both older women and men helped with
the caring and education of children.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The basic kinship unit of the Cherokee was the clan, and
lineage was traced through the woman (matrilineal).
People belonged to the clan of their mother. Their
relatives were those who could be traced through her,
including siblings, maternal grandmother, maternal
uncles, and maternal aunts. The children of maternal
aunts were kin but those of maternal uncles were not.
Children were not blood relatives of their father or grandfather. The total clan did not live together but the core
members of a household belonged to the same clan.
Matters of kinship affected social interaction,
demography, internal order, and foreign policy, which
358
Cherokee
gave women status and power. The Cherokees of the 18th
century had seven clans. The seven known clans were
Anaiwahiya (Wolf), Anikawi (Deer), Anidjiskwa (Bird),
Aniwodir (Paint), Anisahoni (Blue), Anigotigewi (Wild
Potato), and Anigilohi (Twister) (Perdue, 1998). Most
villages had members from each of the seven clans.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Men and women lived very separate lives. Women
farmed, cared for children, cooked, made household
goods, and performed other domestic chores. Men were
hunters and warriors and helped the women occasionally
with clearing fields, planting and harvesting. Women had
status and economic power because corn was depended
upon for subsistence, and it was the women who were the
agriculturalists and owned the use of the fields. Access
to land and crops came to men through the women.
Also, Cherokee women coordinated the redistribution
of produce for feasts and to aid those whose crops failed.
In fact, during the 18th century Cherokee women held
special dances to obtain crops for those in need.
The men were responsible for providing meat to the
household, warfare, and foreign policy. Traditionally,
Cherokee men hunted wild game such as deer, bear, and
turkey. Hunting parties would often be gone for months.
When not hunting, men spent much time playing games
to improve coordination and to keep fit.
After contact with Europeans, economics came
under control of warriors because deerskins and captives
became trade items, and men were responsible for foreign
policy. The 19th century brought the federal civilization
policy which Cherokee women believed validated their
role as farmers and expanded their responsibilities to
animal husbandry, spinning, weaving, and sewing.
Many Cherokee men continued to hunt because it
was one of the things that defined masculinity in their culture. As wildlife disappeared, Cherokee men restocked
their hunting grounds with cattle and hogs. Horse stealing also became a substitute for war and a medium of
exchange in the first decade of the 19th century (Perdue,
1995). In 1828, after 30 years of the civilization program,
Cherokee men still had not fully adapted to farming.
Throughout this time, men handled foreign policy and
served as intermediaries between women and the federal
government. Cherokee women and men adapted to new
circumstances according to old definitions.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
The women tended to their children with the assistance of
their extended families, which included mothers with
children as well as older women. Child-rearing was a task
shared with other Cherokee women. Cherokee children
went to tend the fields with their mothers and if the child
was old enough he or she helped with infants bound to
cradleboards. Cherokees did not use physical punishment
with disobedient children except a light scratching with
thorns. Instead naughty children were shamed into good
behavior by teasing (Perdue, 1989).
Civilization policies of the United States encouraged
isolated nuclear families to replace extended kin groups
and close-knit villages. The result was severed ties to the
mother’s brother and extended family that traditionally
provided for divorced spouses and their children. Some of
these children ended up in missionary schools.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
In Cherokee society, the clan traditionally fulfilled the
responsibilities of government through retribution and
retaliation. Those of proven ability provided the leadership and men and women participated in decision-making.
Cherokee women held power within their families
and within the village. In council, Cherokee women freely
voiced their opinions as well as men. There was no shame
attached to men who listened and severe public tonguelashings to anyone who did not (Sattler, 1995). Issues
were debated until a consensus was reached. A chief or
national council did not rule the Cherokee until the 18th
century. Men held these positions. At this time, each village had two chiefs, the White Chief or Most Beloved
Man who helped make decisions concerning farming,
lawmaking and disputes, and the Red Chief (who attained
his rank through many victories) who gave advice about
warfare (Waldman, 1999). It was a common language
(three or four dialects), kinship system, and shared beliefs,
not government, that unified the Cherokees of approximately 100 villages (Perdue, 1989).
One of the most serious issues a town council debated
was whether or not to go to war. The reason for war was
to avenge deaths of Cherokees who had been killed by an
enemy, and the decision to participate in war was up to the
Gender and Religion
individual. The council determined responsibility for
fatalities and rallied support for a war party. War parties
were made up of men, often with War Women to accompany them to cook and to carry water and firewood. Some
of these War Women (Beloved Woman) distinguished
themselves in battle and were responsible for captives.
Children and female captives were often adopted, but
warriors were usually killed (Perdue, 1989). It was importance to the Cherokee to seek vengeance for the death of a
fellow tribal person to keep the world in balance. Families
held the responsibilities associated with police and courts
in today’s society, and crime and punishment were
understood in terms of kin and clan vengeance only. The
matrilineal clan was the arbiter of justice (Perdue, 1998).
At the end of the 20th century, Cherokee women
re-emerged onto the public stage. In 1985 Wilma
Mankiller became the first Principal Chief of the
Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and in 1995 Joyce Dugan
became Principal Chief of the East Band of Cherokees in
North Carolina. These women succeeded a series of men
and were acclaimed for their service to community. They
became chiefs because they embodied the values of generations for Cherokee women still honored and respected
by men and women (Perdue, 1998).
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Sustaining harmony was at the center of Cherokee
religion. The Cherokee did not separate spiritual and physical realms, and they practiced their religion in private and
public ceremonies. Purification rituals cured and prevented disease and prepare individuals for war, hunting,
fishing, planting, childbirth and other activities. Most
Cherokee dances honored spirits or commemorated
important events while others were farcical. One of the
most important ceremonies was the annual Green Corn
Ceremony, which marked the social and spiritual regeneration of the community and redistribution of goods and
produce. The role women played in this ceremony symbolized their role in Cherokee society. Selu was the first
woman and the spirit of the corn. By honoring corn,
respect was paid to Cherokee women. Villagers cleaned
their houses and the council house, discarded any food and
broken items from the preceding year, and extinguished
old fires as gestures of renewal. Unhappy marriages were
dissolved and all wrongs, except murder, were forgiven.
Cherokee women presented new corn, prepared a feast,
359
and redistributed goods. The New Year began with order
restored (Perdue, 1989). The ceremonies took place in the
council houses or seven-sided temples (Waldman, 1999).
Cherokees believed that harmony and balance were
necessary or disasters might occur such as droughts,
storms, disease, or other disasters. It was their major
purpose to keep everything in harmony and balance
(Perdue, 1989). Traditional Cherokees did not have
policemen or law courts, and it was up to the injured
person or their clan to seek vengeance. Harmony also
meant that nature was not to be exploited, which resulted
in Cherokees never accumulating wealth.
Beliefs about purity and pollution explained
Cherokee attitudes toward menstruation, childbirth, and
menopause. They believed that the periodic contact with
blood was powerful and dangerous. During menstruation
blood was outside its appropriate place in the body and
women had to take precautions such as retiring to menstruation huts, not participating in ceremonial activities,
avoiding contact with the sick, or performing normal
tasks. Cherokees believed that the power of blood would
neutralize all the treatments of medicine people.
Husbands also had regulations to observe, such as dancing behind others in ceremonial occasions and not having
intercourse (Perdue, 1998).
When pregnant, a woman had to curtail many tasks
such as not tending ceremonies, ball games, or visiting
the sick. Cherokees did not eat foods prepared by pregnant women or walk on a path she traveled. In addition,
foods eaten were restricted. There were also precautions
for husbands such as not playing ball, dancing apart from
other men in ceremonies, and not digging graves, loitering in doorways, or wearing hats with folds. Some
evidence suggests that men did not hunt, fish, or fight
during their wife’s pregnancy (Perdue, 1998). These
restrictions with ceremonies were to protect the baby and
aid the mother’s delivery.
Cherokee men went through rituals, which could
last for days, that purified them before and after hunting
or warfare. In war, the Cherokee believed that victory
would happen only if they were spiritually pure. In hunting, the men apologized to the spirit of the animal for
taking its life and never took more animals than needed.
To do this could cause terrible things to happen such as
disease (Perdue, 1989).
The distinct ways (menstruation, childbirth, hunting,
and warfare) in which human blood was encountered
helped to define women and men in Cherokee society.
360
Cherokees also believed in witchcraft. Witches were
human beings with special powers used for evil purposes.
Misfortune was attributed to witchcraft and conjurors
(medicine people) were sought to counter the evil.
Conjurors had a range of skills from naming a baby to
resolving marital problems. The spiritual and physical
realms were not separate and illnesses had spiritual
causes and cures. Both men and women could be
medicine people and conjure cures (Perdue, 1998).
In 1799, the Moravians sought permission to open a
school both to civilize and to Christianize the Cherokees.
Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist missionaries soon
followed the Moravians. Many Cherokee accepted
Christianity in the 18th century while others practiced
traditional spirituality. Today, Cherokees continue to
practice nonnative religions or traditional beliefs, and
some do both.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Women were the farmers, cooks, and manufacturers, and
had little free time. What spare time they had was spent
at the homestead with other women. Cherokee men were
hunters and, when not hunting, they spent their time
playing games to keep fit and improve their hunting
skills. Some of these games were arrow-shooting contests, hurling sticks at a rolling stone, and stickball.
Preparing to play stickball required the same rituals as
going to war, which were fasting and scratching the skin.
Villagers liked to watch these contests and often placed
wagers on them (Perdue, 1989).
Crafts included plaited basketwork, stamped pottery,
carved wood and gourds, masks (Booger masks represented evil spirits), and animal figure stone pipes
(Waldman, 1999). The task of furnishing the house was
the responsibility of women. Benches were crafted for
sleeping and sitting from saplings, and baskets were
made from river cane and strips of maple, oak, and honeysuckle. To decorate their baskets, the women created
dyes from bloodroot, butternut, walnut, and other plants.
Baskets had many uses and some had double layers to
make them strong. Pottery was made from native clay and
hardened in open fires, which darkened it (Perdue, 1989).
Men used bows and arrows, traps, blowguns, darts,
hooks, and nets to hunt and fish. These had to be
crafted by chipping flint, other stones, bone, and other
materials.
Cherokee
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Kinship was traced solely through women and this gave
them considerable prestige because kinship affected
social interaction, demography, internal order, and
foreign policy (Perdue, 1998). Kinship in Cherokee society was the clan. An entire clan did not live together but
generally the households were quite large. A whole
village could be made up near relatives. The only permanent members of the household were women, and
husbands were considered outsiders. The brothers and
sons of the female members had a permanent connection
to the household. Occasionally, brothers challenged the
domestic authority of their sisters, uncles, or nieces, but
never their wives. Male presence in the household was
irregular at best because husbands, brothers, and uncles
belonged to different clans, which was awkward and
caused conflict. Men made appearances at their homes
and the houses of their wives but frequented communal
sites (council house) in the company of other men.
Besides, men were most likely hunting, at war, or in the
council house (Perdue, 1998).
With Cherokees, relative age carried more weight
than sex or gender in determining moral character.
Maturity, reliability, and valued characteristics developed
with seniority (Sattler, 1995). Demonstrated success in
warfare, hunting, oratory, and similar activities
contributed to prestige and personal power for men as
well as age.
SEXUALITY
Within their clan system Cherokee women exercised
considerable autonomy and sexual freedom. Some took
partners for love and life, while others changed partners
with ease and none suffered punishment for divorce or
adultery. Both men and women enjoyed sexual freedom
tempered by concern for the well-being of the society as
a whole. Unmarried women controlled their sexuality as
long as they observed the incest taboos and did not have
intercourse with members of their own clan or those of
their fathers. Married women also had sexual freedom.
Husbands of unfaithful wives sometimes resorted to
conjury, but most husbands ignored the infidelity or took
another wife. Husbands that strayed caused considerable
Husband–Wife Relationship
361
disharmony in the community (wife and her extended
family) and were considered irreconcilable. Divorce and
remarriage were the normal ways to resolve these sexual
rivalries (Perdue, 1998).
Even though the construction of gender was rigid in
Cherokee society, some men and women did cross the
line by choice or circumstance. Both were anomalies, but
only women acquired prestige by doing so. It is unclear,
but men may have been ostracized or prompted jokes,
which did not imply scorn but may have been used to
recognize deviant behavior and incorporate it into the
repertoire of acknowledged behavior (Perdue, 1998). In
contrast, war parties often included women who carried
water and prepared food, and in some cases became
warriors (War Women or Beloved Women) if they distinguished themselves. They were exalted in political and
ceremonial life, sat apart from other women and children
at ceremonial events, and ate foods not normally given to
women. Also, War Women decided the fate of captives,
possessed extraordinary power through war and menstruation, and had male and female contact with blood.
In a Cherokee wedding, the couple step toward each
other and meet in the middle of the council house. The
groom presents venison, the bride presents corn, and
their blankets are united. The ceremony symbolizes the
centrality of tasks to the construction of gender (Perdue,
1998). In a society that is matrilocal and matrilineal, the
couple live in the household of the mother, sisters, and
her sister’s husbands and children.
As a result of traders entering Cherokee country in
the early 18th century, intermarriage occurred. The
children from these unions were Cherokee as long the
mother was Cherokee regardless of the race of the father.
Yet, intermarriage upset the traditional Cherokee social
organization because the woman lived in her husband’s
house; their children took the father’s name and inherited
the father’s property, but affiliated with the mother’s
clan. In addition, the children often spoke English and
Cherokee, received some education, and adopted the
customs of Europeans (Perdue, 1998).
COURTSHIP
Men and women lived very separate lives. Women farmed,
cared for children, cooked, made household goods, and
performed other domestic chores, while the men hunted
and participated in warfare. Men at times helped in the
fields but this was usually the responsibility of women.
Since the society was matrilocal, the husband lived with
his wife’s extended family. The fields belonged to the
matrilineage that used them, and they were inherited
through maternal kin to succeeding generations of women.
Marriage of men to more than one woman (polygyny) of the same lineage, often sisters, was common and
practical. In this case, the man did not have to divide his
time between two households. Sororal polygyny was
primarily practiced by Cherokees, which strengthen
bonds among women and added to the status of women.
No evidence of multiple husbands existed. If a marriage
proved to be unsuccessful, the couple parted (divorced).
This was preferred to not living in harmony. The man had
no right to the property of his wife. If a spouse died, their
partner had to observe a mourning period of no more than
a year of seclusion before remarrying. Missionaries
discouraged polygyny and the Cherokee National
Council outlawed it in the 1800s (Perdue, 1998).
In Cherokee society, if a husband and wife divorced,
the husband moved. The children always stayed with the
AND
MARRIAGE
Embedded in the clan system was the regulation that
clan members were forbidden to marry one another. To
do otherwise was considered incestuous and carried
a penalty of death. Marriages formed alliances among
clans and guaranteed survival (Hill, 1997). It was the
clans not the marriage that united Cherokees for life.
Marriage was a family affair and a couple had to obtain
consent from their relatives to marry. Relatives strongly
encouraged marriage but never forced couples to marry
against their will. Out of respect for their parents,
children sometimes married someone they did not
prefer.
If a couple wanted to marry, they would visit and
make promises to each other. The couple’s relatives
would be notified of their commitment and, if there were
no objections, the man cut cordings of wood to lie at
the woman’s door. If the young woman made a fire from
the wood, it symbolized her acceptance and she would
feed him. Publicly, the families reenacted the joining of
the clans by building a fire from the wood provided and
prepared a feast. This ritual signified the woman’s
willingness to be responsible for food and fire and the
man’s willingness to provide game (Hill, 1997).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
362
mother because they were not related to their father. Yet,
the children did know and respect their father. The man
left his wife’s house and returned to his mother’s home.
No stigma was attached to Cherokees who dissolved their
marriages and later remarried.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
In Cherokee society, a special bond existed between
sisters and brothers of the same clan. The brother had
responsibility for his sister’s children. In addition, all
female clan members assisted with the raising of the
children, and the uncle especially helped with the training
of his sister’s sons. Clan relations were extensive. Clan
members always welcomed each other when traveling to
other villages (Hill, 1997).
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Europeans and their culture impinged upon the Cherokee
in the 18th century when traders came into Cherokee
country and eventually established year-round trading
posts. Also, the crown and colonial governments called
upon the Cherokee to form political alliances that became
military alliances. Soon, Cherokees found themselves
embroiled in wars. These developments impacted gender
roles of the Cherokee, with trade and war elevating men
above women. As hunters, the men provided the deerskins
that become the currency of 18th-century Indian trade, and
as warriors, they made the war alliances with Europeans.
In addition, Europeans had their own construction of
gender, which Cherokee women did not fit. They came to
conduct men’s business and expected women to remain on
the periphery. This relationship between Cherokee men
and the Europeans threatened to undermine the status of
Cherokee women. As a result, Cherokee men became
more central to life and livelihood, and women became
more dependent on men for items wanted such as metal
tools, pots, and fabrics. The focus was more on individual
prowess than communal productivity. This shift in gender
relationships grew out of the need to meet the challenges
of European contact. Economic and political life moved
toward individualism, hierarchy, and coercive power
rooted in male culture. The status of Cherokee women was
Cherokee
jeopardized with the rise of warriors as a governing body
delegating authority and power. Foreign policy was
dominating Cherokee politics, and gender not kinship
determined participation (Perdue, 1998).
By the end of the 18th century with a new government (United States) in place, the task was to civilize the
Indians culturally into Anglo-Americans. The federal
government led the effort to change Cherokee men into
industrious republican farmers and women into chaste
orderly housewives. It was the belief of the government
that women in civilized societies belonged to men who
headed the household and nation. This did not go well for
Cherokee women as the remaining traditional divisions of
labor were threatened. To civilize Cherokee men from
hunters to farmers required the transformation of gender.
Another motive for civilizing Cherokees was the notion
that farming took less land, which would make land available for use by non-Cherokees. Some Cherokees believed
that civilization was the best protection against removal.
According to Perdue (1998), these Cherokees were the
minority but they dominated Cherokee economics, political life, and history, with women mentioned incidentally.
In practice, the civilization program was adapted to
the Cherokees’ own expectations of men and women. The
program was used to embellish the culture but it did not
transform it. New crops such as cotton were added and
new skills (spinning and weaving) learned. Yet, Cherokee
women continued to farm, keep house, and tend children
just as they always had. Hunting and warfare continued
to be the basic ethic of men’s culture. What the emerging
civilized economy generated was native wealth, internal
inequality, and problems never confronted before. As the
19th century ended, Cherokees were forced to face issues
of individual ownership, state protection, legitimate
enhancement, and inheritance (Perdue, 1998).
Some Cherokee men and women embraced change
while others continued to adhere to traditional beliefs
though they were impacted. Trade and war disrupted
Cherokee lives in the 18th century, and the United States
civilization programs restructured their lives in the
19th century.
Cherokees needed a more formal legal system in
order to protect their holdings. Yet these laws of the new
Cherokee Republic usurped the prerogatives of clans and
undermined the principle of matrilineal kinship, especially those regarding property which replaced maternal
blood ties with paternal material ties (leaving a husband’s
possessions to his wife). The Cherokee government
References
also assumed responsibility for punishing murder and
protecting a person’s life by establishing a national police
force. A sacred duty has passed from the matrilineal clan
to a male council (Perdue, 1989).
A true national government was created which made
the traditional town council obsolete. The town council
was the venue for women’s participation in government.
These actions renounced blood vengeance. In 1827 the
Cherokee wrote a constitution which provided for
a General Council, a legislature, a National Council, and
a National Committee. The Cherokee directly elected
members of both houses but neither women nor descendants of African slaves could vote (Perdue, 1989).
The Cherokees established a national police force,
reordered inheritance patterns, abolished clan vengeance,
extended citizenship to descendants of intermarried white
women, disenfranchised women, and made polygyny and
infanticide illegal. Yet the evidence shows remarkable cultural persistence by some Cherokees, including women.
In 1838–39, the Cherokee were removed to Indian
Territory in present-day Oklahoma. On the two journeys
about 4,000 Cherokees died and others died upon arrival
because of epidemics and a shortage of food. Other
Cherokees hid in their homelands and were not removed.
Women protested this removal as well as men. Allotment
was forced on the Cherokee at the turn of the 20th century
and Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Piece by piece,
Indian lands were taken. In 1934, the policies of assimilation and allotment ended and tribes began to rediscover
their cultural heritage. The 1950s brought termination,
363
and Cherokees and other tribal peoples were encouraged
to move to cities and join the economic mainstream. Since
the 1960s, the federal government’s policy has been
self-determination which means Indian self-government
and tribal identify (Waldman, 1999). All these federal
policies have impacted the Cherokee and their gender
identification.
Today, the Cherokee people are diverse, with some
embracing traditions and language and others choosing a
different path. The roles of men and women continue to
be important for the survival of the Cherokee Nation.
REFERENCES
Hill, S. H. (1997). Weaving new worlds: Southeastern Cherokee women
and their basketry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press.
Mankiller, W., & Wallis, M. (1993). ManKiller: A chief and her people.
New York: St Martin Press.
Perdue, T. (1989). The Cherokee. New York: Chelsea House.
Perdue, T. (1995). Women, men and American Indian policy: The
Cherokee response to “civilization.” In N. Shoemaker (Ed.),
Negotiators of change: Historical perspectives on Native American
women (pp. 90–114). NewYork: Routledge.
Perdue, T. (1998). Cherokee women: Gender and cultural change,
1700–1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Sattler, R. (1995). Women’s status among the Muskogee and Cherokee.
In L. F. Klein & L. A. Ackerman (Eds.), Women and power in
Native North America (pp. 214–229). Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press.
Waldman, C. (1999). Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes.
New York: Checkmark.
Chinese Americans
Xiaojian Zhao
LOCATION
Most early Chinese immigrants lived in Hawaii and
California. In the early decades of the 20th century, the
majority of Chinese Americans resided in segregated
ethnic communities in urban areas, especially in the
Chinatowns of San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and
New York. After World War II most second-generation
Chinese Americans moved out of Chinatown. Today, the
state of California has the largest Chinese American
population, followed by New York, Hawaii, Texas,
New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Virginia, and
Massachusetts.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Chinese Americans, the largest Asian group in the United
States since 1990, are Americans who or whose ancestors
have come from China. Most of the early Chinese immigrants came directly from China. In recent decades, in
addition to those from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,
many immigrants of Chinese ancestry have also come
from Southeast Asia and Latin America. There are many
ethnic groups in China, but the immigrants in the United
States are predominantly Han Chinese.
Chinese immigrants began to arrive in California
shortly before the Gold Rush in 1849. By the time the
United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882,
about 125,000 Chinese lived in the United States; the
majority of them resided on the West Coast. In addition,
about 50,000 Chinese landed in Hawaii between 1852 and
1900. The Chinese who came to California during the Gold
Rush were mostly independent laborers or entrepreneurs.
After gold mining declined, they worked to construct the
western half of the first transcontinental railroad. They also
contributed to the early development of agriculture in the
Pacific Northwest and light manufacturing industries in
California. A significant number of Chinese specialized in
laundry businesses, although washing clothes was not a
traditional occupation for men in China.
More than 90% of the early Chinese immigrants
were men who did not bring their wives and children with
them. Before 1870, most female Chinese immigrants
were young women who were imported to the United
States and forced into prostitution. Chinese prostitutes
were most visible in western cities and mining towns.
As the western population increased, the presence
of Chinese laborers aroused great antagonism among
European workers. Gradually Chinese workers were
forced to leave their jobs in manufacturing industries.
Harassment and mob violence also forced Chinese farm
laborers to move to Chinatowns in San Francisco and
other large cities.
In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted,
which suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years (the
law was extended twice in 1892 and 1902, and it was
made permanent in 1904). During the exclusion, the
only Chinese who could legally enter were members of
the exempted classes: merchants, students, teachers,
diplomats, and tourists. Later, Chinese who had left the
country to visit their families in China were not allowed
to reenter. Because there were few Chinese women in the
United States and interracial marriage was illegal at the
time, it was almost impossible for most of the Chinese
immigrants to have families.
Largely isolated in segregated ethnic neighborhoods
in urban America, Chinese Americans formed many
associations based on kinship, native places, and economic and political interests. Two most important immigrant organizations are clan and district associations.
These associations had a great impact on the day-to-day
lives of the Chinese Americans before World War II.
Hierarchically above the clan and district associations
was the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association,
which provided leadership for the entire community.
Another important organization, the Chinese American
Citizens Alliance (CACA), was organized by Chinese
Americans who were born in the United States.
During World War II, a large number of Chinese
American men and women served in the U.S. military or
found employment in defense industries. For the first
364
Gender over the Life Cycle
time in the 20th century, they had the opportunity to work
outside Chinatowns. In 1943, all the Chinese exclusion
acts were repealed. The repeal changed the status of alien
Chinese from “inadmissible” to “admissible,” although
a quota of only 105 per year was allocated to Chinese.
Legislation after the war helped the growth of
Chinese American families. The 1945 War Brides Act
allowed the admission of alien dependents of World
War II veterans without quota limits. This privilege was
extended to fiancées and fiancés of war veterans in an Act
of June 1946. The Chinese Alien Wives of American
Citizens Act of August 1946 further granted admission
outside the quota to Chinese wives of American citizens.
As women constituted the majority of the new immigrants and many families were reunited, the sex ratio of
the Chinese American population underwent a significant
change. In 1940 there were 2.9 Chinese men for every
Chinese woman in the United States. By 1960 this ratio
was reduced to 1.35 to 1.
The 1965 Immigration Act established a new quota
system and the principle of family unification. In the
late 1960s and the 1970s, Chinese immigrants came
largely from Taiwan and Hong Kong. After the United
States recognized the People’s Republic of China in
1979, China became a major source country of immigrants. In addition, immigrants of Chinese ancestry
also entered the United States as refugees from Vietnam
and other Southeast Asian countries. A very high
percentage of Chinese American women worked outside
the home in garment industries, restaurants, and domestic
services.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Gender differences were specified in Confucian classics.
Accordingly, men and women, like Heaven and Earth,
should occupy their correct places. The Book of Rites,
which sets rules of correct behaviors, stated that to be a
woman meant to submit. Confucian ideology was the
basis for gender-specific norms and expectations, which
remained unchanged until the establishment of the
People’s Republic of China in 1949.
In traditional Chinese society, family was continued
through male descendent lines. Only sons had the right to
inherit family property, and the head of the house was
always male. At marriage a woman would move from the
365
house of her father to that of her husband. Her primary
obligation was to bear sons, providing for the continuation of her husband’s family. Patrilineal inheritance and
patrilocal marriage were the foundation of a patriarchal
society that subordinated women to men. Although the
process of immigration led to changes in the family unit,
traditional norms, customs, and practices had a great
impact on the lives of Chinese Americans.
Chinese girls usually wore long loose dresses to
avoid their body being seen in public. In the summer boys
could be seen stripping down to their waist, but the girls
had to remain fully clothed, with their body parts, except
hands and heads, properly covered. It was improper for
girls to wear short pants or dresses that would show off
their legs or shoulders. The practice of footbinding, which
applied to girls only, further differentiated men from
women in their appearance. Small feet were associated
with family status and beauty; it was an essential prerequisite for an advantageous marriage. Most immigrant
women who came in the late 19th centuries had bound
feet, but footbinding was not practiced by the immigrants
in the United States. Footbinding was outlawed in
China in 1911.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
According to the Chinese Classic for Girls (Nü er Jing),
the ideal qualities of women over the life-cycle is the
“three obediences and four virtues.” The “three obediences” prescribe that a Chinese woman obeys the authority of her father when young, her husband when married,
and her sons when widowed. The four virtues required
her to behave in total compliance with the rules, speaking
properly, knowing her place, and performing her
domestic duties.
A girl learned at a very young age that she would
eventually marry and move to another household. To a
large extent she was raised to become the wife of a
stranger and daughter-in-law of another family. Marriage
was the most important event in a Chinese woman’s life;
it entailed the transformation of a young girl to a mature
woman. A successful marriage would provide the woman
with security and happiness.
If marriage marked a girl’s passage to womanhood,
it was also the beginning of the most difficult phase over
her life cycle. In rural China parents usually arranged
blind marriages for their children. It was common for a
366
young woman to marry a man whom she had never met
until the day of their wedding. The marriage arrangement
usually included a payment from the groom’s family to
the bride’s family. By paying a “bride price” the groom’s
family reimbursed her family for the expense of raising
her. Through the marriage ceremony the bride left
her own family, gave up all the protections and affectionate ties that she had been accustomed to, and entered the
family of her husband. The woman was expected to
assume obligations that include domestic labor, childbearing, and child-rearing under the supervision of her
mother-in-law.
It was not unusual for a Chinese man to take
concubines and he could divorce his wife, but the movements of a married woman were closely watched by the
husband’s family. It was almost impossible for a woman
to escape from an unhappy marriage. Even after the death
of the husband, she would still be expected to remain
faithful to him and his family. The traditional Chinese
society honored faithful wives and encouraged the ideals
of lifelong widowhood and widow suicide. If she remarried, a widow had no right over her children or her
husband’s property. Her deceased husband’s family
might even request a payment of “bride price” from her
new husband’s family.
A woman began to gain some status and respect in
her husband’s family after she gave birth to a son. As the
mother she had some control of child-rearing and played
an important role in making arrangements for her
children’s marriages. When she became a mother-in-law
she had the power to supervise wives of her sons.
However, immigration broke the system of
traditional family structure. Few Chinese American
women shared the same roof with their parents-in-law.
Since the immigrant man did not have affectionate ties
with members of his family, the conjugal relationship
between husband and wife strengthened. Working outside
the home helped improve immigrant women’s positions
within the family. She was consulted on major family
decisions, and she usually had the authority of supervising daily activities of the children.
Before World War II, most American-born Chinese
women attended school. After the war, an increasing
number of them received a college education and were
economically independent. This new generation of
Chinese American women challenged traditional norms
and concepts, and most of them would not let their
parents select marriage partners for them.
Chinese Americans
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The birth of a girl was less welcomed than that of a boy
by families in traditional Chinese society, because the
status of women was low in the patrilineal and patrilocal
kinship system. In a traditional Chinese family, the sons
had a permanent place in the house and could inherit
family property, because they would carry on the family
line. Daughters, who would eventually leave their own
families at marriage, were not permanent members of
their parents’ house. Their place in the family was
secondary compared with that of their brothers.
Matrilocal marriage, in which the husband settled in the
wife’s family home on marriage, was negotiated under
unusual circumstances, often in cases when the bride’s
family had no male offspring.
Chinese parents had different expectations for their
daughters and sons. Only at a very young age could
Chinese girls play with their brothers or other village
boys. Like the boys, young girls would run in the fields,
climb trees, or catch bugs. But as they got older, the
girls were reminded that they were different from boys.
While boys were praised for their physical strength, girls
were discouraged for any boyish behaviors. Young
girls were taught to walk slowly and speak softly. It was
improper for them to run with their brothers and get
muddy.
The practice of footbinding, which can be traced
back to as early as the 10th century and was outlawed in
the beginning of the 20th century, was widely practiced
for a few hundred years among girls of all families except
the poorest and certain ethnic groups. Parents would
tightly wrap the feet of their young daughters with bandages to compress and restrict the growth to a few inches
in length. Big feet were thought to be a sign of poor
breeding.
Girls with bound feet had difficulties in playing with
their brothers outside the house. They could not run or
walk fast. While their brothers attended school or helped
out in the fields with their fathers, the girls stayed at home
under the supervision of their mothers.
A very small number of girls, mostly from gentry
families, did learn to read, but until the late 19th century
tutoring for girls was mostly accomplished at home. Not
until the early 20th century did an increasing number of
Chinese girls gain access to missionary schools or
public schools for girls. As most of these schools were
located in large cities, the majority of the girls in rural
Gender-Related Social Groups
China remained illiterate during the first half of the
20th century.
The early Chinese immigrants also favored sons
over daughters. Though girls who grew up in the United
States before World War II were taught proper behaviors
according to Chinese tradition and were expected to
perform domestic duties, few were confined to home.
Footbinding was abolished in China in 1911 and was
rarely practiced by the immigrants in the United States.
Most Chinese American girls played games with their
brothers at home and with classmates in school.
Beginning in the early decades of the 20th century, traditional gender concepts were the subject of criticism
within the Chinese American community. Even the most
conservative immigrant parents found it impossible to
confine their daughters to domesticity, and attempts at
arranged marriages were often rejected. At school,
church, and workplace, young Chinese American men
and women had greater opportunities to socialize, and the
majority of Chinese American men and women enjoyed
the freedom of selecting their own marriage partners.
Puberty and Adolescence
In traditional Chinese society, young girls could be
married off shortly after puberty. Once they reached
adolescence, girls were usually confined to domesticity,
while their brothers would join their fathers to work in the
field. Farming and construction were jobs for men.
Sewing, embroidering, washing, cooking, cleaning, or
feeding family livestock were female-specific chores.
Although washing was usually done in the river and occasionally adolescent girls were sent out to buy merchandise
from peddlers, these activities took place near the home.
Usually, adolescent girls would not have much contact
with men outside the family. Socialization between
adolescent boys and girls was disapproved. In Southern
China, women sometimes worked in the rice fields during
the busy transplanting and harvest seasons, but their work
in agriculture was subsidiary, and their activities in the
fields were supervised by male family members. Only
after the Communist revolution in 1949 did large numbers
of women join agricultural and industrial labor force.
Attainment of Adulthood
Marriage marked the passage to adulthood for both men
and women. After the marriage ceremony a woman
367
moved from the household of her father to the household
of her husband. As a girl her hair was braided into one
or two pigtails. Once married, a chignon replaced the
pigtails. She was no longer under the protection of her
parents. Supervised by her mother-in-law she was
expected to do domestic work and give birth to heirs of
her husband’s family.
Upon marriage a boy entered manhood. No longer
sharing rooms with his brothers, he and his young wife
occupied a quarter of his parents’ house. A married man
was expected to take family responsibilities and provide
for his wife and children. He would join his father and
other adult male members of the family in business
dealings and decision-making.
Before a young man’s journey to America, his
parents would usually find a wife for him. It was believed
that a married man would be more responsible to his
family. The new wife stayed in the village taking care of
her children and parents-in-law. When the husband settled
down in America, he wanted to send for his wife and children. However, after 1882 harsh laws were passed in the
United States which made it extremely difficult for the
Chinese women to immigrate. As a result, a large number
of early Chinese immigrants had transnational families.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal residence were the
foundation of patriarchy society. This social structure
made women dependent on men. A married woman’s
subordination to her husband was reinforced through his
kinship, which imposed various economic and social
restrictions on her.
In the United States, a young man was away from
his parents and free from the control of his kin. Instead of
seeking advice from the elders of his family, the man
consulted his wife on business and family matters. In
a family-operated small business, the wife was the
husband’s indispensable partner. If the man worked as
a laborer, his wife would most likely bring money
home from her job in a garment shop. Their daughters
and sons had equal rights as heirs according to the
laws in the United States. The daughters went to school
and gained independence economically; they stayed
close to home after marriage. The aged immigrant
couple helped care for grandchildren—children of their
sons and daughters. The daughters assumed the same
368
Chinese Americans
responsibility as the sons in taking care of their old parents.
GENDER ROLES
IN
child-rearing, cooking, and washing, but it became
common for Chinese American men to share household
responsibilities with their wives.
ECONOMICS
One of the central features of the patriarchal Chinese
society is the division of labor between men and women.
In rural China, men primarily worked outside the home;
they provided agricultural labor and brought food to the
family. Women primarily worked inside the home. In
addition to child-bearing and child-rearing, they cooked,
washed, and tended livestock. Peasant women sometimes
helped in the fields during the rice transplanting and
harvest seasons, but their work was done under the supervision of male family members. The division of labor
between men and women did not change until 1949.
Immigration changed the structure of the patriarchal
family. Many women stayed in China for many years after
their husbands left for America. In the absence of their
husbands and other male members of the family, these
women became heads of their families. In addition to
domestic responsibilities, they delegated and supervised
the work of the hired farmhands and made day-to-day
decisions. Women in families that could not afford to hire
farm laborers had to till the land themselves. When the
Japanese military forces invaded China in the 1930s and
1940s, many peasant families went into hiding. Some
women took their children to live with their own parents.
They also looked for work outside the home. Some
immigrants’ wives engaged in trade and other business
activities in China.
In rural China it was unusual for men to perform
domestic tasks. Once in the United States, however, they
had to avoid competition with European Americans and
make a living in whatever trade was available. Some male
Chinese immigrants took traditional women’s jobs and
operated laundry businesses, even though they had never
washed their own clothes in China. In towns and cities in
the American West, where women were few in the 1860s
and 1870s, some Chinese men worked as domestic
servants.
Wives who joined their husbands in America usually
worked outside the home. Before World War II, most of
them worked as seamstresses, shopkeepers, or domestics.
Women’s participation in the labor force helped improve
their social status. When they became income providers,
their importance within the household was elevated.
Married women still had to work at home for most
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
As parents, the roles played by Chinese men and women
were different. The job of a father was to bring food to his
family. Because he worked outside the house, the time he
spent with his children was limited. The mother was in
charge of the activities inside the house; she took care all
the needs of young children.
When sons were old enough, the father would teach
them different types of agricultural skills. The father also
made decisions regarding his children’s education,
although sometimes with input from his wife. Some men
of gentry families tutored their children, including daughters, at home.
Except in the area of education, a father spent little
time with his daughters. It was the mother’s duty to teach
a daughter proper behaviors and domestic tasks. She
would set the rules for the daughter, making decisions on
when and how to bind the girl’s feet and how to limit her
activities. To keep a daughter from public observation by
confining her inside the house was an important means of
securing her marriageability.
Parents believed that it would be shameful for
unmarried boys and girls to think or talk about selecting
marriage partners; they took it as their duty to make
marriage arrangements for all their children.
Immigrant women often took jobs that could accommodate their household responsibilities, which allowed
time to take care of the children. An immigrant mother
would try to instill in her daughter traditional concepts
about women’s proper place, but confinement of the
daughters became increasingly difficult. As the daughters
entered high school or college, it became impossible for
the mothers to watch their comings and goings.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
The traditional Chinese society was a male-dominated
society where men usually occupied leadership positions
in the political arena. The immigrants carried this
tradition to the United States. Before World War II, men
Courtship and Marriage
369
dominated almost all major Chinese American community organizations. Most of the organizations did not
accept female members.
Starting in the 1920s, an increasing number of
Chinese American women became active in the public
arena. They participated in community work, organized
their own clubs, joined the labor movement, and involved
in politics in both China and the United States. They
made important contributions to the war effort in China
against Japanese military invasion in the 1930s. Many
Chinese American women joined the U.S. military and
took jobs in defense industries during World War II.
Beginning in the 1970s, a small number of Chinese
American women also held important political posts.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Because sons were favored over daughters, boys and girls
had different status within the family. Before public
schools became available in China, opportunities for
education were mostly for boys. When a family or kin
group decided to send a member overseas, the person
selected was usually male. Except for the prostitutes and
slave girls of the late 19th century, before 1950 most
Chinese women immigrants came to the United States as
dependents of their fathers or husbands. Only after 1965
did Chinese American women with U.S. citizenship gain
the privilege of sponsoring their own partners, parents,
and siblings.
Because few of them were gainfully employed
outside the home before coming to the United States, the
status of women within the family was low. A male head
of the family was usually the decision-maker. However, a
married woman did have some control over her children.
She supervised the young children’s daily activities,
taught the daughters proper behaviors and domestic
skills, and worked to arrange the children’s marriages
when they were older. Once she raised her son to maturity and found him a wife, she became the mother-in-law
of the new wife and could exercise supervisory power
over her.
The status of Chinese women greatly improved after
they were able to work outside the home, in both China
and the United States. As immigrants, women often had
to work outside the home and contribute to the family
income, which also helped improve their status within the
family. Many immigrant women became business
partners of their husbands; their labor and earnings were
indispensable to their family.
The custom of patrilocal residence was no longer
practical once the immigrants came to America; this
helped improve the mother–daughter relationship.
Mutual support between immigrant women and their
daughters helped the younger generation of Chinese
American women to have a career and family at the
same time.
SEXUALITY
Confinement of young women was an important means
for parents to regulate their daughters’ sexuality in traditional Chinese society. Virginity was very much associated with a young woman’s marriageability. Adolescent
girls were strictly forbidden to mix with the opposite sex,
but no such restriction was applied to adolescent men.
While married women were also required to stay close
to home, their husbands could enjoy greater freedom of
movement. Concubinage was an accepted practice in
China until 1950. However, to avoid disapproving gossip,
a married woman would not want to form any friendship
with men outside her own family.
Immigrant parents were concerned about protecting
their daughters’ virginity. However, maintaining control
over their daughters’ comings and goings was difficult in
the United States. Strict parents were only confronted with
stronger resistance from their daughters. Once in college,
young Chinese Americans were free from parental supervision. Influenced by their peers and American culture,
they rejected traditional moral standards on women’s
sexuality.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
In traditional Chinese society marriage was virtually
universal for men and women. Chinese girls were usually
married off shortly after puberty by arranged blind
marriage. The brides and grooms often took no part in
selecting their own partners. Negotiating the “bride
price” and other financial transactions, setting a date for
the wedding, and deciding how the marriage ceremony
would be conducted were the jobs of the family elders.
The practice of blind marriage arrangement left no
room for courtship. It was believed that love could only be
370
created between husband and wife after their marriage. To
have love before they were married was wrong. It was
common for a couple not to meet each other until they wed.
In the early decades of the 20th century, better
education for the young in China brought challenges to
the custom of arranged marriage. In the United States,
children of Chinese immigrants also rejected this
traditional practice.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
An old Chinese proverb says, “A woman married to a
rooster has to follow the rooster, and a woman married to
a pig has to follow the pig.” Once married, a woman in
traditional Chinese society was expected to obey her
husband and remain faithful to him and his family. The
husband and wife ate and slept together, but they had
different responsibilities in the family. He labored outside
the house with other male members of the family, while
she worked inside the house under the supervision of her
mother-in-law. They were not to show affection to each
other in public. When the husband traveled, the wife
usually stayed at home performing domestic duties.
Concubinage was accepted, especially if the wife
failed to give birth to a son. The wife and the concubine
might have lived in the same house in separate quarters.
The concubine did not have the status as a wife and was
sometimes treated as a servant. A concubine of a wealthy
man might have lived in a separate house. Only after she
gave birth to a son could a concubine gain some status in
the family.
It was almost impossible for a woman to escape an
unhappy marriage. Widows were encouraged not to
remarry and to remain faithful to the families of their
husbands.
As the 20th century progressed, marriage by free
choice was advocated in China. Opportunities to attend
school away from home helped young men and women
escape blind marriage arrangements. The marriage law of
1950 in the People’s Republic of China abolished the
custom of arranged “buying and selling” marriage and
prohibited concubinage and polygyny. It also gave
women the right to sue for divorce and protected widows’
rights to remarry.
Few early Chinese immigrants had the opportunities
to select their own marriage partners, but in America the
Chinese Americans
husband was away from his family and kin, making it
possible for him and his wife to form close relationship.
Most children of the immigrants denounced blind
marriage arrangements and sought marital relationship
based on love, affection, and companionship.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The traditional patriarchal Chinese society made women
inferior to men. Through the practice of footbinding and
the customs of patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal
residence, women were confined to domesticity and
became dependents of men at different stages of their
lives. Not until after the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949 did large numbers of Chinese
women enter the public arena and join the labor force.
They also gained rights to select their own marriage
partners and to get a divorce.
Changes in attitudes toward women also occurred
after immigrants came to the United States. Immigration
changed the traditional family structure and allowed
Chinese women a greater degree of freedom and independence. Away from the patriarchal kin, Chinese
American couples were able to strengthen the relationship between them, and the opportunity to work outside
the home helped improve women’s status in the family.
Children of Chinese immigrants challenged traditional
gender concepts and made it difficult for traditional practices such as arranged marriage to continue. As more and
more women demonstrated that they were no longer
dependents of men, the relationship between mothers and
daughters also underwent significant changes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Croll, E. (1995). Changing identities of Chinese women: Rhetoric,
experience, and self-perception in the twentieth century.
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Ono, K. (1989). Chinese women in a century of revolution, 1850–1950.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Yung, J. (1995). Unbound feet: A social history of Chinese women in
San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zhao, X. (2002). Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, family, and
community, 1940–1965. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Chipewyan
Robert Jarvenpa
and adjacent portions of the Northwest Territories in
north-central Canada.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
In their own northern Athapaskan language the
Chipewyan refer to themselves as Dene (“the people”).
“Chipewyan” itself derives from the language of neighboring Cree Indians who used the term as a pejorative reference to the pointed tail-like caribou-skin ponchos worn
by Dene men. In vernacular English, the abbreviation
“Chip” has become a common expression of self-identity.
Several major regional groups of Chipewyan have
been known historically, including the Etthen eldili dene
(“caribou eater people”) along the forest–tundra transition
west of Hudson Bay, the T’atsanottine (“copper people”
or Yellowknives) in the forest–tundra zone east of Great
Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake, the Kkrest’ayle kke
ottine ( “dwellers among the quaking aspens”) in the full
boreal forest between Great Slave Lake and Lake
Athabasca, and the Thilanottine (“dwellers at the head of
the lakes”) in the full boreal forest near the headwaters of
the Churchill River (J. G. E. Smith, 1975, 1981). Some
persisting regional group or band identities derive from
early fur trade associations, such as the Kesyehot’ine
(“aspen house people”), those southern Chipewyan who
began trading with Europeans at Ile à la Crosse (a fort built
of aspen logs) in the late 18th century (Jarvenpa, 1980).
LOCATION
Geographically and demographically the Chipewyan are
the largest of the northern Athapaskan groups with
approximately 10,000 people of federally enrolled Treaty
status, but there are many others of Chipewyan ancestry
and cultural background who lack federal recognition.
Most Chipewyan live in or near 16 major communities
distributed between Hudson Bay to the east, Great Slave
Lake and the Athabasca River to the west, and the
Churchill River to the south. This region of subarctic
boreal forest and tundra is roughly the size of Texas
and embraces the northern sections of the provinces
of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, northeastern Alberta,
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Chipewyan culture is profoundly influenced by these
peoples’ historical experience as subarctic hunter–fishers.
An adaptation to hunting herds of barren-ground caribou
(Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) which migrate long
distances across the forest–tundra ecotone involves
strategies of mobility, scheduling, and communication
over immense territories. Those Chipewyan groups
which moved southward with the expanding fur trade in
the late 18th century retained aspects of this basic hunting economy while also learning to exploit moose (Alces
alces), woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou),
and other resources more common in the full boreal
forest. The southern Chipewyan also developed complex
interethnic relations, both positive and negative, with
neighboring Western Woods Cree groups and with the
“mixed-blood” or Métis peoples who occupied a niche as
servants and laborers in the fur trade industry (Brumbach &
Jarvenpa, 1989).
The prevailing social organization of the Chipewyan
has been the band, that is, a geographically mobile
community of closely related kin which is relatively
egalitarian, politically autonomous and marked by shortterm de facto leadership rather than formal centralized
authority. Regional bands were rarely face-to-face
communities except for short durations at summer fishing
stations or, as became increasingly common in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, at Hudson’s Bay Company trade
gatherings and at French Roman Catholic mission assemblages. For the bulk of the year between fall freeze-up
and spring break-up Chipewyan were scattered in local
bands, small clusters of five to ten interrelated families
(about 20–50 people). These eyana’de or “winter staging
communities” (also referred to as “hunting units” or
“hunting groups”) were distributed over vast territories
and served as points for further dispersal into winter
371
372
hunting teams. In the early 1900s, for example, the
Kesyehot’ine, a regional band of about 150 people,
ranged over 49,700 km2, an area the size of West Virginia
(Jarvenpa, 1998; Jarvenpa & Brumbach, 1988).
Bilateral kinship ties, that is, tracing descent from
both father’s and mother’s relatives, were important in the
formation of the winter staging communities. For example, the families were often linked to one another by
sibling relationships (often brother–sister ties) and by
parent–child relationships (often parent–daughter bonds)
(Irimoto, 1981). At the same time, most people had some
close relatives in their silot’ine, or “personal bilateral
kindred,” scattered across a number of eyana’de or winter
communities in a region. Activating such ties was a
means of gaining access and residency in these other
communities, an important form of social insurance
during times of food shortage, illness, and other stressful
events.
Some Chipewyan have retained a remarkable degree
of geographical mobility despite political–economic
changes ushered in by federal treaty provisions in the
early 20th century and a new era of settlement nucleation,
service centralization, and wage labor emerging after
World War II. In this context, the notion of a mobile
“bush” life-style takes on added weight as a primordial
characteristic of Chipewyan culture and identity. The seasonal exchange of trapping camp for fishing camp, longdistance travel by water routes and forest trails, and the
eating of freshly procured caribou, moose, or whitefish are
not simply mundane activities. These are among the most
highly valued cultural experiences. Moreover, a delicate
material–spiritual symbiosis between humans and food
animals is a fundamental means of interpreting causality.
For example, there is a tendency to interpret major historical changes in animal distribution or abundance as
withdrawals or withholdings due to flagrant “disrespect”
by hunters. One’s ability to hunt, to cure illness, and to
engage in sorcery is affected by the state of one’s “supernatural” knowledge and power, or what the Chipewyan
term inkonze (Jarvenpa, 1998; D. M. Smith, 1973).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Chipewyan gender ideology flows from the basic
distinction between man (deneyu) and woman (ts’ekwi),
or between male (deyani) and female (ts’udai). Traditional
Chipewyan
clothing was the most overt visual signal of gender roles.
Men wore hoodless thigh-length caribou skin ponchos
with distinctive points or “tails” in front and back over
their leggings and moccasins. Women wore knee-length or
ankle-length caribou skin dresses over their leggings and
footgear (Oswalt & Neely, 1996; J. G. E. Smith, 1981).
With the introduction of textiles and other trade goods,
clothing became more westernized in the 19th and
20th centuries. In recent decades the apparel of Chipewyan
men and women has resembled that of general rural and
working-class Canadians. However, certain items of
clothing are still made by Chipewyan women from locally
procured furbearers and from the hides of moose and
caribou. For special occasions, men may wear fancy
beaded moosehide vests and coats. Footwear continues to
serve as a visible gender marker, particularly for elderly
Chipewyan. Women wear low-cut moosehide moccasins
decorated with open beadwork designs, for example,
while men wear high-cut moccasins with prominent
ankle flaps and toepieces covered with solid beadwork panels of floral or geometric design. Moreover,
unadorned moosehide work moccasins worn inside rubber
boots are ubiquitous apparel for men working in the bush
(Jarvenpa, 1980).
Oral lore and linguistic conventions continually
draw a symbolic boundary between men and women.
These include proverbs commonly recited in a jesting
fashion by the opposite sex when observing others
engaged in some strenuous activity. Thus a man butchering a moose or caribou who cannot remove a hindquarter
or forequarter with one well-placed cut from his knife is
judged “not ready for marriage.” More ominously, a wife
who pokes a hole in the thin-cut sheets when preparing
smoke-dried meat is deemed fit to be “killed by her
husband” (Jarvenpa, 1999).
Similar tensions and contradictions are expressed in
more complex fashion in folklore. The battles of the
magician Labidsas with an elderly Cree medicine woman
and his eventual killing of her may be interpreted as a
commentary on both Chipewyan–Cree and male–female
conflict. Yet, the tale of Betsuneyenelshai (“his grandmother raised him”), a diminutive Chipewyan culture
hero who proves his prowess to an old woman who
adopts him, reveals the durability and resilience of
women and underscores the complementarity of male and
female roles as part of a comprehensive system of
hunting. In their own origin myth, the Chipewyan people
were borne of a union between a primeval woman and
Gender over the Life Cycle
a dog-like creature. Also noteworthy as both a symbolic
and literal commentary on the fortitude of Chipewyan
women is the tale of Thanadelther, an early 18th century
female Chipewyan captive among the Cree who helped
Hudson’s Bay Company traders negotiate a peace
between Chipewyan and Cree groups competing for
access to the fur trade at York Factory (Brumbach &
Jarvenpa, 1989; Jarvenpa, 1998).
Gender differences are encloded in the physical
landscape as well. In some Chipewyan settlements log
smoking caches (loretthe kwae) are de facto women’s
spaces. Generally, each female head of a family household manages the smoke drying and storage of meat and
fish in one of these detached structures. Located within
10–20 m of her family’s dwelling, the same cache also
serves as a center for safekeeping important pieces of a
woman’s personal processing gear such as pounding
stones for pemmican, hide-making toolkit bundles,
stretching racks, hatchets, knives, and babiche cordage
(Jarvenpa & Brumbach, 1995).
By the same token, somewhat larger log storehouses
or storage sheds (t’asi thelakoe) are implicitly men’s
spaces. Also located within 10–20 m of the family
dwelling, each male head of a household generally
maintains his own storehouse for protecting and
occasionally repairing his personal hunting equipment—
traps, snares, axes, rifles, outboard motors, and related
gear. A key behavioral distinction is that men’s spaces
serve basically as storage for gear which is deployed or
activated by men outside the village in distant, nonvillage, or bush settings. Women’s spaces, by contrast,
signal both storage and active use of gear by women for
processing food animals in the village landscape
(Jarvenpa & Brumbach, 1999).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Prior to adoption of European Canadian practices, the
Chipewyan life cycle was unadorned by ritual observances. Families were limited to two or three children
with births spaced several years apart. Young boys
(deneyuaze) and girls (ts’ekwaze) alike became useful
working members of the family and camp at an early age,
fetching water and firewood, and helping carry supplies
on trails and portages, among other chores. While girls
373
assumed a larger burden of the unremitting domestic
work, tasks were not strongly differentiated by gender
prior to adolescence. Children of both sexes were
expected to help their parents by looking after their
younger siblings, and play groups of younger children
generally included both girls and boys. Despite some
occurrences of female infanticide during the early historic period, Chipewyan infant girls and boys alike
received considerable nurturance and attention from both
their mothers and fathers. Young children were comparatively free to explore their immediate environment and
handle a variety of adult tools and possessions, with
subtle guidance or interventions by parents or older
siblings to prevent harm.
Puberty and Adolescence
Between the ages of 13 and 16, Chipewyan adolescents
received more intensive training in the economic skills
they would need as adults. Young men (cilikwi or
denegodhe) became partners and apprentices to older
brothers, fathers, or uncles in various long-distance
hunting, trapping, and fishing operations. While young
women (ts’kwiaze) continued their mastery of a range of
domestic and camp maintenance skills, they also began to
learn hunting, trapping, and fishing skills from their
mothers, grandmothers, and other older female relatives
which could be conducted within modest distances
from camps, as well as specialized butchering, foodprocessing, and storage techniques. Other than becoming
an apprentice hunter, there was no ceremonial recognition of a boy’s puberty. However, at first menstruation
girls were briefly segregated from the camp and required
to avoid men’s equipment and game trails (Brumbach &
Jarvenpa, 1997a; J. G. E. Smith, 1981; VanStone, 1965).
Attainment of Adulthood
Marriage (hanits’udeli) signaled the most visible
transition to full adult status for a Chipewyan man
(deneyu) and woman (ts’ekwi). Often marriages were
arranged by the parents to build a network of useful
affinal ties within and between winter staging communities. There has been a tendency toward short-term
matrilocal residence. It was not uncommon for a newly
married couple to reside with the wife’s family for a year
or two before moving elsewhere, and often this arrangement involved camping in adjoining tents or attaching
374
Chipewyan
a second room to the bride’s parents’ log dwelling. This
may have represented a form of bride service, that is,
compensation to the wife’s family for the eventual loss of
a productive daughter.
The weighting toward maternal relatives seen in
residence behavior may also reflect differences in age and
maturity between men and women at the time of marriage.
Women in their teens often married men in their middle
to late twenties or older. In part, the age gap is linked to
the necessity for men to establish some economic independence from their natal families. Acquiring the skills,
and particularly the capital and equipment, to operate
one’s own fishing and trapping ventures may take years
beyond the apprenticeship period of adolescence. Women,
on the other hand, are socially mature or marriageable
when they have accumulated the child-raising and domestic skills, and hunting and food-processing knowledge
needed for maintaining orderly homes and camps
(Brumbach & Jarvenpa, 1989; Jarvenpa, 1980).
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
Middle Age and Old Age
With the exception of a tendency toward short-term
matrilocal residence, the general organization of
Chipewyan society is based on flexible bilateral kinship
with no strong weighting toward networks of male or
female relatives. Moreover, there are no formal associations for males or females based on nonkin principles.
During middle age, a married couple focused their energies upon raising their children into their apprenticeship
years when the latter’s assistance in providing a livelihood for the family became increasingly significant.
Another major concern of middle-aged Chipewyan was
finding good marriage partners for their young adult
children from compatible families who would become
sources of helpful in-laws during stressful times of need.
As suggested previously, extending the network of one’s
personal bilateral kindred, or silot’ine, in this manner was
an important form of social and economic insurance for
an older Chipewyan man (enekwi) or woman (ts’akwi).
Even so, old age was often an unenviable time when infirmity and the inability to contribute to the food quest or
travel from one seasonal camp to the next could result in
abandonment. In recent times, however, older Chipewyan
women and men may become respected sources of moral
authority, wisdom, and lore which they impart to growing
numbers of grandchildren and great grandchildren. Even
so, men who no longer remain physically active in bush
livelihood may be regarded pitiably as “elderly,” rather
than merely old, a condition less likely for women who
often display prowess in processing skills, such as hide
manufacture and meat drying, well into their advanced
years (Jarvenpa, 1999; Sharp, 1981a, pp. 106–109;
VanStone, 1965).
BY
An age gap of 6 years or more between marriage partners
may be enough to produce different social–psychological
conditions for men and women vis-à-vis their natal
families. The new groom, who is beginning to test his
status as an independent producer and provider in the
community, may be somewhat less emotionally attached
to his parents than his young bride, who has had less
opportunity to develop a social identity and persona
outside the environment of her natal family. As noted
previously, the full transition to adulthood and married
status for women is made less abrupt and less traumatic
by bringing their new husbands into their parent’s home
for a short period (Jarvenpa, 1980).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In the context of work, “partners” refer to one another as
sits’eni, and when they derive from different family
households, or when kinship connections are distant or
obscure, the relationship may involve friendship and
reciprocity far beyond the domain of work. All-male
partnerships, especially in winter, hunt and trap in farflung zones often dozens of kilometers and many weeks
removed from family households in the winter staging
communities of past decades or the centralized villages of
recent times (Jarvenpa, 1980).
All-female teams hunt virtually year round, on a
nearly daily basis, on short snare-lines radiating out a few
kilometers from villages as well as via canoe paths within
a day’s or overnight trip’s travel from staging communities or villages. Finally, mixed male–female teams occupy
an intermediate position wherein husband–wife pairs and
their children, especially during the summer and fall
Gender and Religion
375
months, conduct moose-hunting forays of 2 days to
2 weeks duration in a radius of 10–45 km of staging
communities and villages (Brumbach & Jarvenpa, 1997a).
Political–economic changes since World War II,
including the emergence of permanent centralized settlements, have increasingly altered the patterns of livelihood
noted above. While all-female teams continue to operate
much as they have in the past, the mixed male–female
teams have declined in importance over the past several
decades as women and school-age children are tied
increasingly to new services, schools, and other institutions in centralized settlements. Hunts for large game and
commercial furbearers are now conducted increasingly
by young and middle-aged males who, in many cases,
travel longer distances and endure longer periods of
separation from their family households than in any
previous historical period. Chipewyan have adapted to
the demands of the modern world by constructing gender
roles that are increasingly divergent and specialized.
Stated another way, men have become far-ranging logistically organized collectors, while women have become
foragers who operate on a nearly daily basis from a
central residence (Brumbach & Jarvenpa, 1997a).
Since the 1980s incursions of mining, commercial
forestry, and road-building in Chipewyan territory have
created new wage-labor opportunities, particularly for
younger adults who commute to new mine sites and work
on road crews for extended periods. While many of these
jobs are occupied by men, some women are pursuing
advanced schooling and employment as teachers, nurses,
and constables away from their home communities. The
historically familiar division of labor tied to subsistence
hunting and commercial fur trapping and fishing is
being transformed in subtle and unforeseen ways by this
emerging industrial and service economy.
adolescence and can be socialized in hunting and other
bush-living skills. Sometimes a father will train both sons
and daughters in these matters.
It is not uncommon in Chipewyan society for aging
grandparents to adopt one of their grandchildren either
temporarily or on a permanent basis. Many Chipewyan
women, in particular, have come of age learning vital
bush-living skills from their grandmothers rather than
their mothers.
LEADERSHIP
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
As the primary food processors and tenders of camps and
households, women have also assumed the major responsibility for nurturing and caring for young children.
Women are assisted in this by older daughters and by
their parents or husband’s parents who frequently live
nearby. Men begin taking a more active role in their
children’s everyday lives when the latter attain early
PUBLIC ARENAS
Historically, formal authority took a back seat to highly
flexible, short-term de facto leadership wielded by successful male hunters or other charismatic individuals
(known variously as dene gan kaltharae or gothare)
within the context of winter staging communities or hunting groups (D. M. Smith, 1982). Men who became outpost
managers at seasonal trading posts, or who were otherwise
prominent in the evolving fur trade economy, also had
influence in local-level politics. With the rise of band
governments (“First Nations” in current language) under
federal Treaty provisions in the early 1900s, a formal
authority structure of elected chiefs, councillors, and other
community officials has emerged. Typically, these overt
positions of power have been occupied by men, although
some young educated Chipewyan women have been pushing for more active involvement in band or First Nations
government. Moreover, elected officials are always
subject to the “backstage” power of influential women, the
competing interests of major families and kin alliances,
and older notions of leadership based on individual
competence, knowledge/power, and moral authority.
GENDER
PARENTAL
ROLES
IN
AND
RELIGION
While all Chipewyan have access to (super)natural
knowledge and power (inkonze or inkoze) there is some
evidence that men and women may exhibit different
means of acquiring and utilizing it (D. M. Smith, 1973,
p. 8). For example, Sharp (1981b, 1988, 1991) argues that
men obtain inkonze from spirit-animal beings in dreams
and demonstrate the extent of their power in hunting
success. The social divisiveness implicit in differential
hunting prowess, in his view, is tempered within the
hunting group by women, whose sharing activity binds
376
the membership and occurs largely without direct
reference to their men’s inkonze. D. M. Smith (1982,
p. 38) notes that women’s inkonze was most often manifested in curing. However, these interpretations refer to
northern Chipewyan groups where women appear to be
less active in the direct harvest phases of hunting than
among their southern relatives. It is true that southern
Chipewyan men also acquire inkonze through dreaming,
and they refer to the actual process of obtaining power
from animals as biu’aze (Jarvenpa, 1998). While more
research is needed in this area, preliminary information
suggests that southern Chipewyan women’s prowess in a
variety of hunting, fishing, gathering, and processing
contexts is, no less than men’s, an overt manifestation of
inkonze.
Since the mid-19th century Chipewyan magicomedicinal and religious knowledge has been in syncretic
interaction with French Roman Catholicism and other
Christian teachings and customs. However, involvement
in church masses, choirs, pilgrimages, and related activity
has not resulted in specialized men’s and women’s roles.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
It is generally accepted by both Chipewyan men and
women that the latter have less leisure time. While men
are involved in bursts of intense work during longdistance hunts and travel, women have an unremitting
schedule of daily short-distance food procurement and
processing plus the bulk of domestic and childcare duties.
Casual visiting between households is often a male activity, with men seeking out their current work partners
(sits’eni) for relaxed conversation. Women are more
likely to incorporate visits with female friends into their
work activities, whether making moosehide, cleaning
fish, or caring for children.
Yet many leisure activities are not gendersegregated. Card-playing parties and bingo games are a
favored activity of the middle-aged and elderly which
invariably include both women and men. The same is true
of the community dances popular among younger men
and women. The short summer season often finds entire
families or groups of families traveling together to
various recreational festivals and pilgrimages in other
communities.
Chipewyan
RELATIVE STATUS OF
MEN AND WOMEN
Much scholarship on northern Athapaskan societies,
including the Chipewyan (Oswalt & Neely, 1996, p. 94),
has noted the inferior or subordinate status of woman in
traditional or historical circumstances. The vivid experiences of the Hudson’s Bay Company explorer Samuel
Hearne (1795), who traveled and lived with the
Chipewyan extensively in the late 1760s and early 1770s,
has become part of the received wisdom on female–male
relations in that society. While certain behaviors, such as
wife beating and female infanticide, might be taken at
face value, others require judicious interpretation. Much
of the discussion on “status” and “subordination” flows
from an external European male perspective, with
perhaps too little insight on gender differences, their
meanings, and arenas of female and male influence from
an insider’s or Chipewyan view.
During the early historical period, some successful
hunters or charismatic leaders, like Hearne’s guide
Matonabbee, had as many as seven wives. While this may
be viewed as pronounced male dominance, stated another
way, such individuals were maintained by as many as
seven wives. Recent interpretations of Chipewyan gender
relations have sought to temper harsh historical stereotypes with models of the complementarity of male and
female behaviors in a comprehensive system of hunting
(Jarvenpa & Brumbach, 1995) or as “asymmetric equals”
in terms of power, influence and value within society
(Sharp, 1995).
In recent history a patriarchal facet of Canadian
federal Treaty law allowed a Treaty woman to lose her
registered status simply by marrying a non-Treaty man
or, conversely, for a non-Treaty woman to gain registered
status by marrying a Treaty man. Treaty men kept their
status regardless of marital history. Beginning in the
1980s this legal inequality has been rectified by Bill C-31
which permits any woman with prior Treaty status, who
had become disenfranchised through marriage, to have
her federal status restored.
SEXUALITY
With many people living in the confined quarters of tents,
cabins, and other dwellings, children are exposed to
Husband–Wife Relationship
sexual matters at an early age. Young men are expected to
take the initiative in gaining sexual experience prior to
marriage. Until recently, however, families were rather
protective of their unmarried daughters. This creates a
pattern of adventuring for some young men who seek
sexual encounters when traveling to other communities,
who acquire magical insurance such as Cree “love medicine,” or who are accommodated by older women, often
widows (Jarvenpa, 1998). Seeking privacy for premarital
or extramarital affairs requires ingenuity in finding
rendezvous spots in the bush or on the hidden sides of
islands, or waiting for a lover’s family or spouse to depart
on a hunt or an errand (VanStone, 1965).
Pollution, at least historically, was a markedly
negative aspect of women’s sexuality. Without caution, it
was thought that menstrual blood could contaminate dog
harnesses, hunting equipment, and game trails, and
thereby destroy a hunt or, at least, men’s ability to hunt.
The reverse side of this coin was that women’s sexuality
and fertility represented the power to reproduce
Chipewyan society. While some Chipewyan women also
took part in the direct harvest phases of hunting it is
unclear how, if at all, their menstrual blood was thought
to impact upon their own hunting activity.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
As noted previously, parents often play a significant role
in arranging marriages which will create or reinforce
useful ties between families and kindreds, such as hunting partnerships between brothers-in-law or between
father-in-law and son-in-law. Often this involves encouragement or approval of a choice initiated by a son but
eventually agreed upon by a prospective bride and her
parents. In some cases, grandmothers or other older
female relatives may have an influential role in encouraging and/or approving particular marriages. While there
is variability among Chipewyan communities in these
matters, marriage in the absence of parental approval has
been unusual until recently (Sharp, 1979, pp. 52–53;
VanStone, 1965, p. 63).
Preferential patrilateral cross-cousin marriage (i.e., a
man marrying his father’s sister’s daughter, or a woman
marrying her mother’s brother’s son) apparently was
practiced by some eastern Chipewyan groups while
avoided by those in the west. At the same time, southern
Chipewyan groups have valued the sororate, the
377
preferential marriage of a man to his deceased wife’s
sister, viewing it as a way of maintaining previously
established relationships between two linked families.
Northern Chipewyan groups have resisted this practice
(Jarvenpa, 1999; Oswalt & Neely, 1996; Sharp, 1979;
J. G. E. Smith, 1981; VanStone, 1965).
Polygynous mariage was fairly common well into
the 19th century when nearly 30% of married men in
some communities had more than one wife. In the
mid-19th century, however, Catholic missionaries began
condemning first-cousin marriages and would sanctify
only European-style monogamous unions. By the early
20th century monogamy was all but universal among the
Chipewyan. This was a dramatic transition from a century
before when skillful hunters or charismatic leaders, like
Hudson’s Bay Company explorer Samuel Hearne’s
Chipewyan guide Matonabbee, were maintained by as
many as seven wives (Hearne, 1795).
In early historical times, there was no formal
ceremony marking marriage and a union was regarded as
somewhat provisional until the birth of the first child.
There was also an institutionalized practice of wrestling
to retain one’s wife whenever challenged by another man,
and a husband could lose his spouse to a stronger or more
agile opponent (Hearne, 1795). As grim as this appears,
women, perhaps, could better their own situations by
influencing this system of challenges (Sharp, 1995,
pp. 59–61). Since the introduction of Catholicism, formal
wedding ceremonies (haniyidihi) have become part of the
life cycle rites administered by church officials. In some
communities, the conclusion of the wedding vows and
mass may be punctuated by celebratory volleys of rifle
shots. Shortly thereafter, dozens of kin and friends step
forward to shake the hands of the newlyweds, and the
rest of the day may involve much of the community in
dancing, drinking, and feasting (Jarvenpa, 1999).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
While some notion of romantic love may be involved in
courtship, this quickly gives way to a rather formal, if not
austere, marriage relationship based upon the necessities
of livelihood. That is, whether or not friendship and intimacy flourish, Chipewyan marriage is first and foremost
a hunting enterprise requiring complementarity of work
roles and performances to sustain the family unit. In some
cases, adult cross-sex siblings may provide a reliable
378
source of support and affection not easily attained
between the marriage partners themselves. A further
complication is that sexual jealousies can be ignited
by patterns of community gossip which highlight
infidelities, whether actual or imagined (Sharp, 1979,
pp. 53–55).
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The importance of brother–sister ties has been discussed
in the previous sections on “Cultural Overview” and
“Husband–Wife Relationship.” While more information
is needed in this regard, some feelings of reserve and
shyness between adult sisters and brothers, and between
various in-laws of opposite sex, probably limit the
frequency of contact and work between such individuals
(D. M. Smith, 1982, pp. 20–25). On the other hand,
avoidance behaviors, as between mother-in-law and
son-in-law, appear to be neither as formalized nor as
stringent as among some Athapaskan peoples of the
Yukon and Alaska. Themes in Chipewyan folklore
suggest that strong feelings of self-sufficiency and
dependency create a fundamental tension in personality
which applies to both men and women (Cohen &
VanStone, 1963). Interethnic lore and imagery portray the
Chipewyan as more reserved, but also more provident
and enterprising, than their Cree neighbors, but again
there is no apparent variability by gender (Brumbach &
Jarvenpa, 1989).
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Chipewyan family size increased concomitantly with
expansion and intensification of the European fur trade
economy in the 19th century, and there have been
dramatic increases in the 20th century. For example,
census data for southern Chipewyan communities reveal
a significant historical increase in the number of children
reared per adult woman. The statistic has increased from
an average of 2.8 children with a range of 1–5 in 1838, to
3.1 children with a range of 1–8 in 1906, to 4.8 children
with a range of 1–12 by 1974. A dramatic increase in
the child-bearing and child-rearing responsibilities of
Chipewyan women, particularly in the past 70 years,
Chipewyan
may go a long way toward explaining the decreased
participation of some contemporary women in hunting
and other tasks that occur some distance from home.
Such demographic trends also raise questions about
models of work and gender based on synchronic ethnographies conducted in recent decades. Stated another
way, prior to European contact and even quite late into the
historical period, Chipewyan women bore fewer children,
reared and cared for smaller families, and were more
fully integrated into a comprehensive range of hunting
activities (Brumbach & Jarvenpa, 1997b).
A pattern emerging in the 1980s and 1990s, and
perhaps reflecting national Canadian trends, has been an
increased number of out-of-wedlock children and a reluctance on the part of young Chipewyan couples either to
formally marry or to form independent family households
(Jarvenpa, 1999). While this is vexing for church officials
and some older Chipewyan, children from such unions are
often raised by one or the other set of grandparents. In
some respects, this appears to perpetuate historically familiar forms of adoption in Chipewyan society (Sharp, 1979),
but in the contemporary context it also contributes toward
a socially isolative inward-looking stance. By not creating
new family households, the network of silot’ine, or bilateral kindreds, collapses rather than spreading outward
among a potential of opportunities and resources within
and between communities across Chipewyan territory.
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Czechs
Timothy M. Hall
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Bohemian, Moravian (Czech: Čech, Moravan).
LOCATION
The Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia), is
located in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Germany,
Poland, and Slovakia. Most of the borders are formed by
hills or low mountain ranges, surrounding the rolling
plains of Bohemia and Moravia (the western two thirds
and eastern third of the country, respectively). The climate
is relatively mild, with temperatures in the lowlands
typically ranging from about 20⬚C in July to about ⫺1⬚C
in January.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
According to the 2001 census, the Czech Republic has a
population of approximately 10.2 million (4,982,071 men
and 5,247,989 women), of whom some 93% are Czech or
Moravian, 1.8% Slovak, and less than 1% each ethnic
Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, or Vietnamese. Romani
(Gypsies) are the most visible ethnic minority but
make up less than 1% of the population. The predominant
language is Czech, a West Slavic Indo-European
language closely related to Slovak and Polish. Some
1 million ethnic Czechs also live abroad, mainly in
Canada, the United States, Australia, and various parts of
Central Europe.
The Czech lands have been inhabited since the
7th century CE by Slavic peoples. Christianity was introduced by saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century,
and the Czech lands reached their political height in the
14th century when Prague became the capital of the Holy
Roman Empire. Power later passed to the Austrian
Habsburgs and the Czechs were subordinated to Germanspeaking Austria until the end of World War I. The
Czechs and the closely related Slovaks were united in an
independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 as the only stable
democracy in Central Europe between the wars. This
First Republic ended with the infamous Munich
Agreement in 1938, when the Allies handed the Czechs
over to Hitler as a protectorate and Slovakia became an
autonomous fascist puppet state.
Czechoslovakia was reunited again in 1945 after liberation by Soviet troops, and a Soviet-backed Communist
coup took power in 1948 under Klement Gottwald. A
brief experiment with liberalization, the Prague Spring,
was crushed by the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in
1968, beginning a period of repressive “normalization.”
Communism finally fell with the Velvet Revolution in late
1989, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully
separated with the so-called “velvet divorce” in 1993.
The current government is a stable parliamentary democracy with several major parties ranging from reformist
Communist to Christian Democrats.
Czech society is highly secularized, though with a
visibly Roman Catholic past. Culturally, the Czech lands
occupy a transitional space between Central and Western
Europe. During the Communist period, Czech society
became more “Eastern” under Russian influence; since
the end of Communism in 1989, Czech society is once
again approximating Western European patterns. Family
structure is predominantly nuclear and of a Western
European type.
From 1948 to 1989, Czechoslovakia had a “real
socialist” economy with extremely effective income and
wealth equalization and a strong emphasis on the development of mining (mostly brown coal, but also uranium
and some metals) and heavy industry. Since the end of
Communism and through an ongoing process of privatization, capital has turned back toward the more profitable
light industry (glass, ceramics, leather, and textiles), and
the service industries are growing. Social classes are reemerging after the end of Communism, but are not yet
highly differentiated. The economy is generally regarded
as one of the strongest in post-Communist Central
Europe, and the Czech Republic expects to join the
European Union within the next few years.
380
Gender over the Life Cycle
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
381
OF
GENDER
The recognized gender categories are male and female.
There is no culturally elaborated intersex category. Male
and female heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality are recognized as orientations. The general cultural
conception of gender categories is largely similar to
traditional patterns in Northern and Western Europe. Men
are expected to be strong, to be initiators of sex, to be the
head of the family, and to be the main source of a family’s income. Women are expected to devote themselves
to their husband and children, to be more emotional then
men, and to be sexually attractive, less assertive, and
more interested in family than in politics or career. With
the social changes of the last few decades and the high
divorce rate, this ideal is often honored more in the
breach, leading to widely voiced complaints that Czech
father-breadwinners are absent and Czech women are too
dominant in comparison with the cultural ideal.
Czechs dress similarly to their Western European
counterparts. Men usually wear their hair fairly short
(except among some teenagers and some subcultures).
Under Communism, facial hair was associated with
Russian/Communist identity and was avoided by nonCommunist men; since the end of Communism, older
men often now have short beards or goatees. Women tend
to have longer hair than men.
Being slender and sexually attractive is important
for Czechs of both sexes, at least through their twenties,
and for women for some time thereafter as well. A slim
athletic physique is preferred in men, and a slender figure
in women. Dressing to be sexually attractive begins gradually during adolescence, and continues throughout
young adulthood for men, and through to middle adulthood for many women.
Homosexual orientation is not as clearly marked by
specific dress or hairstyles as in many Western countries.
Jewelry such as hoop earrings and necklaces, and tattoos
and piercings, are relatively common among young
Czech men (as in contemporary Western Europe) and do
not by themselves indicate sexual orientation.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age are all
recognized as stages in the life cycle, but the transitions
are usually gradual and are not typically marked by
public ceremonies. Both males and females receive their
citizenship card (občanka) at age 15, but this is not
marked by any special ceremony and the rights and duties
of legal adulthood are obtained gradually. The legal age
of consent for sexual intercourse is 15 for both males and
females, heterosexual and homosexual. At 18, one can
vote and can legally purchase alcohol and tobacco. There
are several transitions in schooling, from kindergarten to
basic school, and then to gymnasium/college preparatory
school or a technical/vocational school in the teenage
years, but all of these are the same for both sexes, and
differ more by class and one’s ultimate profession than by
gender. The military is almost exclusively male. Men are
expected to serve several years of military service or
substitute civilian service at some point in their late teens
or twenties; many try to avoid it. Women can enter the
armed forces, but it is not required and most do not.
Compulsory military service is expected to be discontinued soon.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys and girls are valued roughly equally, and the ideal
Czech family is a married couple with two children, one
boy and one girl. Parents do tend to identify more with
the same-sex child in early childhood. Many mothers pay
extra attention to their sons, continuing into adulthood.
For instance, many adult bachelors regularly bring their
clothes home to mother for washing and mending. This
close relationship between mothers and sons can result in
later competition between mothers and their sons’ girlfriends or wives.
The mother is usually the primary caretaker. Paid
maternity leave is now 28 weeks at 69% of the previous
salary, but unpaid leave can last up to 4 years, during
which the family continues to receive a small “parental
subsidy” (rodičovské přídavky, previously mateřské
přídavky). While either parent is entitled to take “parental
leave,” in the vast majority of cases it is taken only by
women. Grandmothers, both maternal and paternal, also
often provide a significant amount of additional childcare
(Nash, 2003).
Socialization of children differs less now by gender
than in the past, though there are differences. Children
wear clothing similar to that worn by adults of the same
sex, i.e., shirts and pants or shorts for boys, and shirts or
blouses and skirts or shorts for girls. Boys’ hair is usually
382
cut very short, especially in summer, while girls usually
wear their hair longer, often in braids or a ponytail. Girls’
clothing tends to be of brighter colors and girls are more
likely to wear flowery patterns. Boys’ games often
involve guns, cars, and pretending to be soldiers (highly
romanticized during the Communist era as a role model
for boys). Under Communism, a major experience for
both boys and girls was the strongly encouraged participation in the Young Pioneers (pionýři), the Communist
replacement for the Boy Scouts. Girls more often play
with dolls or otherwise imitate maternal or domestic
activities. Children are disciplined in approximately the
same way for similar misbehaviors, though parents
react more strongly to gender-atypical behavior in boys
than in girls.
Puberty and Adolescence
Adolescence and puberty are named stages, but the words
used for them suggest a relatively recent import of the
concepts: adolescence, puberta, teenager (there also
exists a calque of “teenaged”—náctiletí). Puberty is not
specifically recognized by any special rites or dramatic
changes of status; on the whole there is continuity in
socialization from late childhood. The major change that
occurs is the division of secondary school students into
those preparing for university, who study in a gymnázium,
and those preparing for some sort of trade, who study at
one of a variety of technical and vocational schools. The
decision to follow one path or the other is made sometime
around the ages of 14 or 15, based on a combination of
individual wishes, advice from the parents, and one’s
grades.
Sex education begins in the schools around the age
of 12 or 13, and is usually preceded by some discussion
of sexuality by one or both parents. Mothers seem to be
more comfortable discussing sexuality with their children
than do fathers. Fairly explicit depictions of sexuality are
shown on television and substantial nudity is shown in
advertising and magazines. Nude sunbathing and swimming are common at many lakes in the summer. Children
around the ages of 7 or 8 often play “doctor,” and there is
some (largely speculative or hearsay) discussion of sex in
the schoolyard in later childhood and early adolescence.
Thus most children have some knowledge of adult
anatomy and sexuality by puberty.
Homosexuality was illegal throughout most of
the Communist period, and was not discussed in sex
Czechs
education texts. Teachers and other students joked about
homosexuality and teased students, especially males,
who exhibited gender-atypical or homosexual behavior.
This has decreased somewhat since the end of
Communism and the legalization of homosexuality.
Contraception and sexually transmitted diseases are also
discussed in the sex education texts.
Early adolescents, ages 13–14, begin having crushes
and also talking about sex, though usually their claims of
actual experience are exaggerated. Some 12% of adolescents have had sexual intercourse by age 15. The majority of adolescents begin sexual activity between 16 and
18 years of age; the numbers are similar for boys and girls
(Weiss & Zvěřina, 2001). Around the age of 15–16,
Czech adolescents begin actual dating, and also drinking
and smoking. (Though the legal age for drinking alcohol
and for smoking tobacco is 18, this is not strictly
enforced and adolescents can easily obtain both.) During
the period of dating, parents tend to be more protective of
the opposite-sex child.
One of the few remaining rituals that clearly marks
sexual differences takes place on Easter Monday, and for
most Czechs is the highlight of the Easter festivities.
Boys and young men in their teens and early twenties go
around to the houses of girls and young women of
roughly their own age group and switch them on the
buttocks with a braided willow switch decorated with
colored ribbons (pomlázka). Adolescent girls then give
their persecutors colored eggs; these days older girls and
young women often give out shots of liquor instead. This
custom is not much observed in the cities, but every
Czech who can returns to a village for the Easter Monday
festivities. In former times, the more attractive and popular young women used to boast of how many boys had
come to switch them. There was an associated practice in
which young men would capture young women and
throw them into tubs of water or into ponds or streams, or
would splash them with buckets of cold water. This still
occurs, but is less common than the pomlázky.
Attainment of Adulthood
Full legal adulthood comes at age 18, but recognition of
social adulthood is more complex, as in Western societies, and comes through a combination of completing
one’s education, starting a career, and starting a family
and an independent household. Under Communism,
with artificial wage equalization and various pronatalist
Gender-Related Social Groups
policies, there were few incentives to delay starting a
family. During the 1970s and 1980s, Czechoslovakia had
one of the youngest average ages of marriage in Europe,
about 21 years for women and about 3 years older for
men. With the increasing value of higher education, a
decrease in economic benefits for having children (such
as subsidies for children’s clothing and preference in
housing), increased personal freedom, and a general
shortage of housing, the marriage age is rising rapidly
and more young Czechs are delaying starting a family
(Nash, 2003; Večerník & Matějů, 1999). This also means
that a larger number of Czechs are living with their parents or in dormitories well into their twenties, and the sort
of prolonged semidependent, semi-independent young
adulthood seen in many Western countries is becoming
more common in the Czech Republic. Even so, there has
been a cultural lag, and many young Czech women in
their middle or even early twenties express concern over
their marriage prospects if they are not in a relationship
with a reasonable chance of eventually leading to
marriage.
Economic responsibilities for both boys and girls
start in adolescence, as both look for part-time employment and summer jobs. Under Communism, there were
few legal jobs for school-aged adolescents; with the
advent of capitalism, many more opportunities are available and both boys and girls often begin working in
part-time jobs at 16 or 17. Full employment starts around
age 18 or 19 for those who have completed vocational or
technical schooling. Parents expect both young men and
young women to contribute financially to the household
if they are still living at home and have completed their
schooling.
Middle Age and Old Age
There are few substantial differences by gender in the
aging process throughout adulthood. Older Czechs now
feel out of touch with the changes since the end of
Communism, and are faced with pensions and savings
that are worth far less than they had expected.
Consequently, they have neither the cultural nor the
economic capital that they would have had in previous
generations.
Younger Czechs of both sexes are expected to show
a certain deference and consideration for older persons,
especially older women and individuals who appear to be
less physically able, for instance, opening doors and
383
giving up seats on metros and trams. This is partly based
on a realistic assessment of physical ability, and similar
consideration is often given to pregnant women, parents
with small children, or disabled individuals. Young
men are expected to take the initiative in these acts of
deference, but young women and older men also help.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Most Czechs see gender differences as rooted in biological differences between men and women (Holy, 1996,
p. 175). Males in general are expected to be more
assertive, less “emotional” (more level-headed, less likely
to cry, more logical), firmer in their opinions, and more
ready to assume leadership. (Strong assertiveness is not
highly valued for either sex, and putting oneself forward
or boasting is frowned upon in both men and women.)
Open physical violence is much less common among
Czechs than among their eastern or southern neighbors,
but physical aggression is more common among men
than women. Czechs of both sexes spend much time
discussing and analyzing “feelings” or the emotional
component of intimate relationships.
Women are expected to be more nurturing than men
and are expected to defer to men. Many Czech males
complain that Czech women are too dominant and
aggressive; this is not immediately apparent to non-Czech
observers.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Men have historically been more active in the public
sphere, and consequently dominated much of business,
political life, and academia; however, this situation is
changing as women increasingly enter economic and
political life, and there are few single-sex institutions
per se.
Marriage is ideally neolocal, with husband and wife
setting up a new household separate from their parents.
Many married couples live with one set of parents for a
year or more while looking for housing. The location of
the new household and connections with the husband’s
and wife’s families depend mainly on personal idiosyncrasies and economic opportunities (e.g., if an aged
384
Czechs
parent moves in with a married child and his or her
household, it will typically be to the household of the
child to whom that parent is closest, or the child who can
best afford it).
Historically, the basic unit of association was the
nuclear or extended family, which existed within a village. There were no large kin-based or gender-based
associations beyond these. Under Communism, concerns
about privacy and safety from informants, as well as a
general material scarcity and lack of funds for outside
recreation, led most Czechs to associate mainly within
the family or a close circle of relatives and friends. Today,
the divorce rate is high, and young Czechs are marrying
at a later age and are more geographically mobile than
their parents’ generation. Young Czechs still often
socialize at least occasionally with their families, and
a weekend at the family cottage (chata or chalupa) in
the country is quite common, but many Czechs now
comment on the erosion of the family associations which
held under Communism.
As in most of Western Europe, kinship is recognized
bilaterally, but surnames are typically patrilineal. Women
bear a feminine form (ending in -ová or -á) of their
father’s surname until marriage. Czech law requires that
women take the feminine form of their husband’s name
upon marriage; an exception was made in 2000 for Czech
women who marry non-Czech men, and who now have
the option of using their husband’s surname without
modification. The surnames of women foreign writers
and celebrities are typically feminized (e.g., Danielle
Steeleová, Hillary Clintonová), although this practice is
slowly decreasing. Historically, Czechs typically had two
or three given names, often taking the name of the samesex godparent as a middle name. Most Czechs now have
a single given name, except for some individuals from
German or historically prominent families. Czechs do not
have a Russian-style patronymic.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Men have traditionally played the role of breadwinner,
and have also filled most of the more physically demanding jobs, as well as the more prestigious ones. Men and
women have had equal rights since the abolition of the
old Austrian legal code in 1948 (Nash, 2002), but the
so-called “emancipation of women” by the Communists
often meant in practice merely that women had to work
outside the home in addition to continuing in their
traditional roles as housewives and mothers. Generous
maternity leave benefits and guaranteed jobs under
Communism often acted to maintain this division of
labor, as many women would stay home full time from
the birth of their first child until their youngest child
entered school. Economic pressures have now changed;
with the loss of guaranteed jobs, many women now feel
forced to choose between career advancement and having
children (Nash, 2003). This is not a problem for men,
who typically have minimal childcare responsibilities.
An effect of Communist wage equalization was that
some professions typically dominated by men in Western
countries were instead dominated by women, and were
accorded less prestige. A majority of pediatricians,
gynecologists, and other primary care physicians in
Czechoslovakia were female, and a general physician is
often assumed to be female. Nurses (zdravotní sestry) are
almost exclusively female. The majority of teachers in
elementary and secondary schools are female, while the
majority of teachers at the university level are male.
Men and women have equal rights in inheriting
property. Under Czech law, all children are entitled to a
roughly equal inheritance. Both sexes participate in business and the professions, and the percentage of women in
management positions is slowly approaching parity.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers are the primary caretakers for children, often
assisted by both maternal and paternal grandmothers.
Many Czech children now grow up in blended families,
in which their biological mother provides most of the
actual daily caring and disciplining, and a stepfather or
mother’s boyfriend is present but does not play a major
role in the daily lives of the children. For Czechs who
grow up in the more traditional nuclear family, the father
is still not present in the home much of the time, being
away at work during the day and sometimes socializing
with his male friends or business associates after work.
Discipline of the children may come from either father or
mother, depending in part on the temperaments of the
parents, though mothers seem less willing to punish sons.
Children do not typically help much around the home, as
the mother is expected to do most of the housework.
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Women occupy some leadership roles in the political
arena, and several prominent politicians are female.
However, this is one domain in which men are clearly
advantaged, and fewer than 10% of the Parliament since
the end of Communism have been women (Holy, 1996).
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Although survey numbers are rapidly changing and
difficult to interpret, most Czechs are effectively atheists
and highly secularized. The Czech lands were historically
Roman Catholic, but the early reformer Jan Hus inspired
a rebellion against clerical abuses in the 15th century. The
Czechs were aggressively re-Catholicized when the
Austrian Habsburgs regained control during the Thirty
Years’ War. All religious observances were discouraged
under Communism. In the 2001 census, 27% of Czechs
gave their religion as Roman Catholic, 2% belonged to
the largest two Protestant churches together, and some
59% claimed no religion at all. As in most Catholic countries, few young people are now entering religious orders,
and an increasing percentage of Catholic clergy and religious are coming from other countries, notably Poland.
The general religious conception is thus post-Catholic:
God is conceived as male, and the first humans were
Adam and Eve. At present there is no strong cult of the
Virgin Mary, though there was in historical times.
Czechs also have their own legends of pre-Christian
times, in which Ur-father Čech led his tribe of Slavs into
present-day Bohemia. Čech is a patriarchal figure clearly
influenced in conception by the biblical Abraham. Čech
was succeeded by his son, who died without male heirs
and left the kingdom to his three daughters, each of whom
possessed divine talents. The youngest daughter, Libuše,
had the gift of prophecy and ruled over the Czechs until
people began to complain that women made judgments
more on the basis of emotion than justice. To make her
people happy, she told them to go to a certain place where
they would find a man hewing a threshold (prah); this
man Přemysl would become her husband and king and
legendary founder of the first Czech (Přemyslid) dynasty,
and the place where they found him would be the
foundation of Prague (Praha). Afterwards, a number of
women complained at their loss of power and began
to fight the men in the so-called “Maidens’ War.”
385
After several battles and much loss of life, the women
were eventually subdued and were forbidden from ever
again holding power in the Czech lands (Demetz, 1997).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Women and men both have a fair amount of leisure time,
though working women have slightly less because they
still do most of the housework and childcare. Vacation
time is generous (4–6 weeks a year for most people, not
including frequent state holidays). Under Communism,
restrictions on travel, scarcity of consumer goods, and a
general retreat from public life into the safety of the family
meant that much free time was spent with members of
one’s immediate family in activities that required only
minimal financial resources: hiking, swimming, spending
time at the family cottage, playing card games or board
games, and drinking alcoholic beverages at home with
friends and family or in a pub (beer and liquor prices were,
and still are, artificially low in comparison with food
prices). Both women and men enjoy singing songs,
traditional Czech songs and more modern ones, while
sitting around a campfire or during evenings at the cottage.
More men than women are found in the typical
Czech pub, and groups of male friends or male business
associates often gather there. Women also go to pubs,
either alone or with a male partner or with other friends
of either sex, but married women with children are more
likely to stay at home. Young single women are more
likely to go to dance clubs or bars, while older women
will sometimes enjoy a beer at a neighborhood pub.
Formal dancing, both traditional Czech dances such as
the polka and classical ballroom dancing, is popular
among young people of both sexes, and constitute major
events during the social year for adolescents and young
adults. In the villages, dances for people of all ages are
still a major form of entertainment during festivals and
holidays.
Certain games are associated more with one sex than
the other. Men in pubs traditionally played a card game
called mariáš, but the game is much less commonly
played now. Women are more likely to play bridge. Boys
usually play rougher games: soccer ( fótbal), ice hockey,
floorball, etc., while girls play sports such as badminton.
Boys also played marbles (marmany) and collected
various kinds of trading cards (čéčka), though these have
now largely been displaced by video games.
386
RELATIVE STATUS OF
MEN AND WOMEN
Czech women and men have equal rights under the law,
with the major differences centering around the highly
valorized role of women as mothers. Most women take
advantage of maternity leave and are expected to devote
much of their time and energy to their husbands and children. Women who succeed in the public arena are
respected, but women in positions of authority are often
regarded with ambivalence or resentment by men.
Western-style feminism is often seen as alien and
threatening to the family and to male–female relations,
and is not well received by most Czechs (cf. Holy, 1996;
Nash, 2002).
SEXUALITY
Overall, the Czech Republic is one of the more liberal
societies in Europe in regard to sexual matters, though
this varies by age, residence, and religiosity. (Older,
nonurban, and actively Catholic or Protestant individuals
are more likely to approve of sexuality primarily for
reproductive purposes within a monogamous heterosexual marriage, and are more likely to have negative attitudes towards premarital, extramarital, or homosexual
sex, as well as towards contraception and abortion.)
Survey data (Weiss & Zvěřina, 2001) show the following
attitudes of the general population: more than 50% of
men and more than 60% of women believe that a woman
has the right to decide whether to have an abortion, with
only 3–4% absolutely opposed to abortion under any
circumstances; more than 40% of men and about one
quarter of women endorse the statement that “extramarital sex is natural and normal” and fewer than one in three
individuals strongly condemn it; more than two thirds
of men and more than 70% of women have favorable
attitudes towards contraception, with only 4% of women
and 5–7% of men strongly opposed; roughly two thirds
of men and women consider masturbation to be natural
and normal.
Younger Czechs are behaving in many ways more
like Western Europeans with each generation, a trend that
is increasing since the end of Communism. Age of first
intercourse is decreasing, age difference between partners
at first intercourse is decreasing, and use of condoms or
Czechs
other methods of contraception is increasing (Weiss &
Zvěřina, 2001). In addition, an extended period of sexually active life before marriage is now common among
young Czechs, and the age of marriage and first childbirth
is rising. Among young Czechs, divorce and abortion are
both considered undesirable in comparison with a happy
marriage and a wanted child, but are considered better
than the alternative of an unhappy marriage and an
unwanted child (Fialová et al., 2000).
Women are expected to be more modest about
showing their bodies than men, but sexual modesty is not
emphasized to a great degree for either sex. Modesty
about the body in single-sex situations, such as dormitories or changing rooms, or at home among family members, is almost nonexistent. Open displays of affection in
public, such as kissing and petting, are common, especially among young adults in their late teens and twenties.
Frank depictions of sexuality are common on television,
and nudity (especially female nudity) is common in
magazines and billboards. Nudity is common at beaches,
though usually in a separate section from the nonnude
bathing area, and children are sometimes taken to nude
beaches with their parents.
Sexual harassment (sexualní harašení) is a concept
recently imported from the West, and is still seen as a
foreign word for a foreign concept. It is regarded with a
certain amount of amusement by both men and women
(cf. Holy, 1996, pp. 172–176). Women are expected to
take care of their appearance and to be flattered by sexual
attention from men. They are also free to say no, and are
expected to be able to handle sexual situations without
recourse to legal action.
Homosexuality was illegal under the Austrian
criminal code and during most of the Communist period,
but the situation became slightly more liberal in the
1980s, and there had been discreet gay establishments in
the larger cities since at least the early 1900s (Fanel,
2000). Since 1989, Prague and some other cities have
developed relatively large gay and lesbian communities,
and same-sex registered partnership has been considered
by the Parliament and narrowly defeated three times.
Prague has also become a major destination for international gay tourists.
Czech society on the whole is quite tolerant of
homosexuality, both male and female, though lesbians are
far less visible than are gay men. Czechs living in the
larger cities, and younger and more educated individuals,
are particularly likely to have more favorable attitudes
Other Cross-Sex Relationships
towards homosexuals, and more information about
homosexuality (Janošová, 2000). Cross-sex behavior in
one’s children is a cause for concern, but most families
other than those from strongly religious backgrounds
accept homosexual adult children without much comment. Transvestite theater is relatively popular for heterosexual audiences in the cities.
Prostitution is outside the law and therefore effectively legal for both males and females over 18 years of
age. Since the end of Communism, the Czech Republic
has become a destination for sex tourists, both heterosexual and homosexual, especially from neighboring
Germany and Austria. The Czech government has
considered fully legalizing prostitution in order to tax and
regulate it, but is prevented from doing so by European
Union rules.
387
with an average age of 21 (with husbands about 3 years
older); in the late 1990s the age had risen to 26.
Traditional weddings before Communism were
large affairs, involving large extended families and
an entire village, with a Catholic (or more rarely
Evangelical) religious ceremony and a large wedding
feast afterwards, in which the two families would be
seated and symbolically joined around a U-shaped table.
Under Communism and since, partly as a decline of
extended community ties and partly through a decrease in
material resources (and a disinclination to conspicuous
consumption), urban weddings in particular tend to be
smaller events, with immediate relatives and close friends
at a reception following a civil ceremony.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Both males and females have a relatively free choice in
whom they can marry, and widows or widowers and
divorcées are free to remarry. The typical pattern
under Communism was that a couple would date
for some period of time, become pregnant, and set a date
for the wedding (Fialová et al., 2000; Nash, 2003).
Rates of marriage and birth both fell during and after
the Communist takeover in 1948 and again after the
Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968. In response, the
Communist government promoted a strong pronatalist
policy during the 1970s, under which nearly all men and
women eventually married and more than 94% of women
had at least one child (Večerník & Matějů, 1999, p. 110).
Marriage was also desirable because married couples
with children received preference in housing and larger
families were eligible for larger apartments. Love was a
major factor in choosing a spouse, because economic
potential was roughly equal for everyone and class
differences were minimal (Večerník & Matějů, 1999,
pp. 99–101).
With increased opportunities for single individuals to
work, travel, and study since the end of Communism, and
with decreased government benefits for children, the age
of first marriage and first conception are rapidly rising.
Extended cohabitation has become more common, with
the decision to marry often precipitated by pregnancy or
the decision to have children (Fialová et al., 2000). In the
1980s, Czechs had some of the youngest brides in Europe,
The husband–wife relationship is similar to the traditional Western model. Husbands and wives eat together
and sleep together (though the sleeping arrangements are
slightly separated; double beds are typically made of two
single mattresses rather than one large mattress, and each
person has their individual blanket and pillow). Cooking,
cleaning, and other housework are typically done by
women. Most Czech men do not contribute significantly
to the housework.
The husband–wife relationship is ideally characterized by love, affection, and companionship; ideally also
the husband is the primary breadwinner, has slightly
more education than his wife, and is slightly older
(typically, about 3 years older). Decision-making is
shared to some degree, but men are expected to take some
leadership in making decisions, especially decisions
about money or other significant matters. Women,
because of their presumed greater devotion to their families, often have a greater say than their husbands in regard
to decisions about the welfare of the children or the
household budget (Čermáková, 1995). Divorce is legal
and common, and may be initiated by either partner. After
divorce, children typically stay with their mother.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Other cross-sex relationships are not highly elaborated
culturally.
388
Czechs
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The major historical periods for Czech society are
(1) traditional village life, up until World War II and
the Communist revolution of 1948, (2) Communism
(1948–89), with collectivization of farms, a planned
economy and pronatalist government policies, and active
undermining of older Catholic/Christian or “bourgeois”
attitudes and customs, and (3) the period of privatization,
liberalization, and social differentiation since the fall of
Communism in 1989.
See Salzmann and Scheufler (1974) for a description
of social relations in a traditional Czech village and some
of the changes that came with collectivization, Nash
(2002) for a review of attitudes towards women and
feminism in different periods, and Večerník and Matějů
(1999) for an overview of changes in Czech society
during the first decade after the end of Communism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
⁄ obodzińska (Ed.),
Čermáková, M. (1995). Women and Family. In M. L
Family, women, and employment in Central-Eastern Europe
(pp. 75–85). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Čermáková, M., Hašková, H., Křížková, A., Linková, M.,
Maříková, H., & Musilová, M. (2002). Relations and changes
of gender differences in the Czech society in the 90s. Prague:
Czech Academy of Sciences, Sociology Institute.
Demetz, P. (1997). Prague in black and Gold: The history of a city.
London: Penguin.
Fanel, J. (2000). Gay historie. Prague: Dauphin.
Fialová, L., Hamplová, D., Kučera, M., & Vymětalová, S. (2000).
Představy mladých lidí o manželství a rodičovství [Ideas of young
people about marriage and parenthood]. Prague: Sociologické
nakladatelství.
Hajnal, J. (1965). European marriage patterns in perspective. In
D. V. Glass & D. E. C. Eversley (Eds.), Population in history:
Essays in historical demography (pp. 101–143). Chicago:
Aldine.
Holeček, M., Rubín, J., Střída, M., & Götz, A. (1995). The Czech
Republic in brief. Prague: Czech Geographical Society.
Holy, L. (1996). The Little Czech and the Great Czech nation: National
identity and the post-Communist social transformation. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Hraba, J., Pechačová, Z., & Lorenz, F. (1999). Deset rodin po 10 letech,
1989–1999 [Ten families after ten years, 1989–1999]. Prague:
Academia.
Hupchick, D., & Cox, H. (1996). A Concise historical atlas of Eastern
Europe. London: Macmillan.
Janošová, P. (2000). Homosexualita v názorech současné společnosti
[Homosexuality in the opinion of contemporary society]. Prague:
Nakladatelství Karolinum.
Možný, I. (2002). Sociologie rodiny [Sociology of the family] (2nd ed.).
Prague: Sociologické nakladatelství.
Nash, R. (2002). Exhaustion from explanation: Reading Czech gender
studies in the 1990s. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 9(3),
291–309.
Nash, R. (2003). Re-stating the family: Reforming welfare and kinship
in the Czech Republic. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Salzmann, Z., & Scheufler, V. (1974). Komárov: A Czech farming
village. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Sayer, D. (1998). The coasts of Bohemia: A Czech history. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Večerník, J., & Matějů, P. (Eds.). (1999). Ten years of rebuilding
capitalism: Czech society after 1989. Prague: Academia.
Weiss, P. & Zvěřina, J. (2001). Sexuální chování v ČR—situace a trendy
[Sexual behavior in Czech Republic—situation and trends]. Prague:
Portál.
Eastern Tukanoans
Janet M. Chernela
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names are Tukano, Wanano, Desana, Bara,
Barasana, Piratapuya, and Tapuya.
LOCATION
The Eastern Tukanoans are the Northwest Amazon,
comprising the Uaupés River basin and adjacent areas in
Brazil and Colombia.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
A cluster of approximately 10 named tribes speaking
Eastern Tukanoan languages is found in the region of the
Uaupés River basin and adjacent areas in Brazil and
Colombia. The area, referred to as the Northwest
Amazon, is part of the Amazon river basin. The Uaupés
River is an affluent of the Rio Negro, the Amazon river’s
largest tributary. The region is densely forested, yet the
soils are poor, with the tree cover thinner than elsewhere
in the basin.
Here, each named group possesses a distinct identifying language, yet no one group is autonomous. Rules of
exogamy (out-marriage) require that one marry outside
the “language group,” so that the region is united through
ties of intermarriage and may be said to share one
common culture.
A language group consists of several villages
arranged along the river edge. Generally speaking,
villages are about 5 miles apart and contain up to
150 residents. According to preferences expressed by
Eastern Tukanoan speakers, the villages of a language
group should form a geographic unity. However, the
more common pattern is one where villages of one
language group are interspersed by villages of another
language group. Villages are located on high ground at
the river’s edge, with paths leading to gardens deep inside
the forest. The principal forms of livelihood are fishing,
carried out by males, and root-crop horticulture, carried
out by females. Males cut and burn new gardens, after
which women plant, weed, and harvest several root crops,
including manioc and sweet potato.
Because each group speaks a recognizable linguistic
variant (a language or dialect within the Eastern
Tukanaon family of languages), the groups have been
called “tribes” (Sorensen, 1967) or “language groups”
(Jackson, 1983) in the ethnographic literature. Members
of a language group consider themselves to belong to one
family, based upon an overriding principle of patrilineal
descent from a single mythical ancestor. Each language
group is in turn subdivided into patrilineal descent groups
which have been called sibs (Goldman, 1963) or patriclans. See studies by Chernela (1993), C. Hugh-Jones
(1979), H. Hugh-Jones (1979), and Jackson (1983) for
groups that conform to the norms described here; see
Goldman (1963), Århem (1981), and Chernela (1988a,
1989) for a discussion of departures from these norms.
On marriage, a bride from one language group must
leave the village of her birth and reside among her husband’s relatives, who are members of a different language
group. Marrying inside her own language group would be
considered incestuous. In this broad regional network,
marital and kin ties unite some 14,000 speakers of diverse
languages over an area of approximately 150,000 km2.
In addition, Eastern Tukanoan descent groups are
also ranked according to seniority, so that every patriclan
and every individual within a language group has a
distinct ranked relationship to every other.
The result is a uniquely coherent culture complex,
with unilineal descent, rank orders, and cross-cousin
marriage acting as major integrating structural principles.
The linguist Arthur Sorensen (1967) identified
13 languages as members of the Eastern Tukanoan
language family: Tukano, Tuyuca, Yuruti, Paneroa,
Eduria, Karapana, Tatuyo, Barasana, Piratapuyo, Wanano,
Desano, Siriano, and Kubeo. He suggests that the member
languages of the Eastern Tukanoan family are less closely
interrelated than those of the Romance or Scandinavian
groups.
389
390
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
Eastern Tukanoans
OF
All Eastern Tukanoans regard themselves as descended
from ancestral brothers born of the body of a primordial
anaconda. Each founding brother is the focal ancestor of
a sib, whose members are spoken of as the “grandchildren
of one man.” One generation of brothers generates another
through the name exchange. Men structure descent and
generational time, linking descendant with ancestor, present and future with past. Although women participate in
synchronic linkages, connecting different descent groups,
they are absent from the descent model of reproduction.
A local village consists of a core of male relatives
(called agnates by anthropologists), their in-marrying
wives, and their unmarried daughters. The practice of
patrilocality—when a bride takes up residence in the village of her husband—furthers the solidarity of a resident
male brotherhood and exacerbates the political subordination of women.
The outsideness of women in the villages into which
they marry is exacerbated by the combined practices of
patrilineal exogamy and patrilocal postmarital residence.
As a result, males inhabiting the same settlement are
members of one language group, while in-marrying
wives are speakers of other, “foreign,” languages. In the
Wanano village of Yapima, in which I conducted fieldwork, the eight in-marrying wives spoke five different
languages. Conversation among wives is characteristically multilingual, while discourse among males and
unmarried Wanano females is monolingual.
“Femaleness” and “maleness” are considered to be
fundamentally different concepts. Moreover, a daily division in practical life between male and female activities
still maintains a different, but concrete, separation
between the genders.
Woman’s anatomy is thought to be polluting and men
feel they must protect themselves from female contamination. Males practice purging rituals and aspire to states
of mental and physical control, including control of sexual impulses, thought to be outside the potentials of
women. It is believed by men that women’s bodies can
endanger and defile the intellectual rigor and spiritual
discipline practiced by men. In short, the dominant male
ideology associates men with the head and the cerebral
functions of speech, intellect, and leadership. It associates
women with the body and the sensate (Chernela, 1988a).
Women began wearing cotton dresses in 1920, as
a result of missionary influence. Yet there is no modesty
regarding the upper body, and women occasionally go
about in only skirts. Women smoke pipes, and maintain
their hair long and straight. On ritual occasions women
paint their bodies with fine geometric black designs, yet
wear no colorful ornaments. In contrast, men’s ornamentation in the same rituals involve colorful feather
headdresses, body paint, and floral ornaments.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The birth of a boy or girl is marked by the parents by
abstention from certain foods and activities. These
practices and abstentions are both public and private; they
culminate in a ritual bath for the parents, presided over by
a shaman, who applies protective substances intended to
bless the couple as well as the child. This ritual may be
seen by all, as it takes place at the river edge. Until they
are able to walk, infants remain in a body sling at
mother’s side; they sleep with mother in the same hammock. Toddlers stay close to mother, but young boys soon
venture out to join the village horde of children. This
group roams through the village without organized supervision; it contains children of all ages, with the oldest
taking the responsibility for overseeing and protecting the
youngest.
Language learning is an important vehicle for
socialization. For speakers of Eastern Tukanoan
languages, language is not only a matrix of symbols, it is
itself a symbol, a marker of identity, and a primary
definer of category. In the multilingual communities of
the Northwest Amazon, speakers are competent in both
mother’s and father’s languages but must supress
mother’s language as they mature.
In the processes of language acquisition a child must
be socialized to perform but one language in a context of
many. In the transfer of knowledge from one generation
to the next, every attempt is made to avoid the mixing of
languages, since it is considered essential that linguistic
identities remain distinct and linguistic boundaries be
kept stable.
A child is raised learning both mother’s and father’s
languages but is socialized not to speak one of them. The
situation is modeled for the child when people speak back
Gender over the Life Cycle
and forth in two languages. Yet the child must learn to
distinguish the two languages and discern which is appropriate for him to verbalize and which not. Overt instruction provides the child signals that mother’s tongue has
no social or public value.
For all children speaking competence, and for males
rhetorical skill, are prized in father’s language—the
language of the speaker’s descent group. Public demonstrations of mother’s language, however, are strongly
sanctioned. The result is a set of equivalences in which
father-language is social and outside, and motherlanguage is private and inside (Chernela, 1997).
One part of this elaborate and socially embedded
ideology of language is the belief that the well-developing
child learns to speak his/her father’s language with consistency, and will have the self-discipline to refrain from
speaking mother’s language, a language it is well understood that he or she knows. The well-bred and mature child
speaks only father’s language, and any deviation from this
detracts from the child’s respect among adults and peers.
Therefore language learning for the Tukanoan
speaker is an early form of mother-separation. Apart from
whatever emotional correlates may or may not attach to
this process, the distinction between self and mother has
social–structural implications and consequences. It distances and separates, at an early age, that which is mother
from that which is self. As the alignment of like and unlike
self is established in the course of Eastern Tukanoan
language acquisition, mother becomes quintessential
“other.”
For Eastern Tukanoans, emotional alliances shift in
the course of language acquisition and development. In
effective linguistic socialization, a child learns to accept
the differential values placed on mother’s and father’s
languages and to fear the negative consequences of
uttering mother’s language.
The specific barrier to spoken bilingualism among
the Tukanoan Wanano is the fear that if one speaks one’s
maternal language, one will be ostracized. Implied is the
sense that a child who speaks mother’s language is infantile. Furthermore, to speak mother’s language is to be like
mother, and therefore unlike one’s peers. More explicitly,
a child is threatened with open reproach if he or she utters
mother’s language or mixes it with father’s language.
In addition, boys are socialized to speak openly and
assertively. In general, women refrain from public speaking. Both sexes are hardworking, although boys, who do
not participate in the strenuous work of garden cultivation
391
and food processing, have far more time for play.
A girl who played to the same extent as boys could be
admonished.
Girls and boys accompany the same-sex parent in
economic activities from the time they are able to do so.
From the time they can walk, girls, like their mothers,
carry backpack-style baskets supported by strong
tumplines running along the forehead. Girls assist their
mothers in the arduous work of preparing, planting,
weeding, and harvesting the gardens daily. The size of the
harvest basket and the weight of material in it carried by
a girl increases as she becomes older. When she is a
young adult, she will, like her mother, carry about 40 lb
of newly harvested manioc roots, firewood, and a small
child from the gardens to the house. Girls and mothers
work together to process the poisonous manioc roots.
These tubers must be peeled, grated, and boiled until they
are edible. Between morning garden work and afternoon
preparations, girls and mothers work all day, every day.
Prepubescent boys, in contrast, have more free time
to spend in play. They may set up a line of baited hooks
at night and fetch their catch the next morning. Or, they
may fish with hand line at dawn or dusk. But these activities are far less labor intensive than female tasks. Also,
boys play no role in preparing the food they catch. They
may pass the day among the clusters of young boys who
run freely through the village and its surroundings,
collecting edible fruits as snacks while they play.
Puberty and Adolescence
For both boys and girls the transition to puberty is marked
by rites of passage. Although in some villages highly elaborate complex rituals are still carried out, in many other
villages the ceremonies have become simplified (see
S. Hugh-Jones [1979] for an in-depth discussion of male
initiation rites). Where the full ceremony for boys is carried out, it is held in secret over several days. The simpler
versions are shorter. Yet, no matter the length or level of
fundamentalism, in all cases boys, guests, sponsors, and
chanters are adorned in ritual paraphernalia. Long flutes,
thought to carry the specialized powers of men, are
played. (In the most traditional ceremonies sight of these
flutes is tabooed to women, who either leave the premises
or move to a secluded zone.) The sib ancestors are invoked
by the flutes and by chants sung by specialized chanters.
Formerly, boys were whipped with branches as part of the
ceremony; I have not seen this in recent times. Sacred
392
substances, including the hallucinogen ayahuasca, are
imbibed and sacred tobacco smoke is blown on the young
males as each receives his sib name. Through this process
the boy becomes a social being, a member of his patriline. The recipient of a sib name is thought to be endowed
with the particular social status and identity of the ancestor
whose name he bears. In a sense, the bearer of an ancestral name is the exchange (kototaro) for that ancestor—
his incarnation or transformation in the present.
When a girl reaches puberty a ceremony of equal
import is performed. Yet the purpose, emphasis, and
participation in the ceremony differ from the male puberty
ceremony. A girl’s initiation occurs at the time of her first
menses, and she experiences her own ritual as the only initiate. At this time she is considered to be in a vulnerable
state and must be shielded behind an enclosure. Guests
travel great distances to attend. The girl is painted with the
red plant urucu and secluded behind a screen in the corner
of a large dance house. While in seclusion she may eat
only a few specially prepared substances. During the ceremony the girl is not visible to visitors. As in the boys’ initiation ceremony, specialized chanters invoke protective
spirits. However, while male initiations invoke the supernatural ancestors that emerged from the anaconda-canoe,
Pamori Busoku, female initiations invoke a different
supernatural creator spirit known as First Woman. First
Woman, a powerful shaman, is said to have given birth
and breath to herself at the Lake of Milk, origin of all
Tukanoan-speaking peoples. From there she journeyed
along the same path as the ancestral canoe; but whereas
Pamori Busoku traveled below water, First Woman glides
above ground, stopping at each village and sacred site to
rid it of dangerous spirits. Her accomplishments are essential in protecting vulnerable menstruating girls and
women. The chanter narrates in detail First Woman’s voyage from Milk Lake to the girl’s village, naming at each
site her exploits and victories. These are the same challenges and dangers that might harm the menstruating girl,
and by invoking them the young women is herself
protected. Thus the female initiation ceremony stresses
the powers of reproduction and the dangers associated
with the powers, whereas the male ceremony emphasizes
naming and place in the ancestral line.
Attainment of Adulthood
Once they have passed through the requisite puberty
ceremonies, boys and girls are able to marry and have
Eastern Tukanoans
children. Boys are formally ready to parent, and, in doing
so, to pass on clan identity.
Girls are by this time skilled horticulturalists, having
worked for years alongside their mothers. Upon marriage
a girl moves into the home of her husband and gardens
alongside her mother-in-law. Eventually she will have a
garden of her own, although she is likely to be adjacent to
her mother-in-law, work with her in preparing meals, and
eat together with her in-laws in a multigenerational unit.
This pressure on males to be good fishermen
increases as they move into adulthood and marriage. If a
wife does not believe that her husband is providing
enough food she can publicly humiliate him (Chernela,
2002). When fishing is especially difficult, males sometimes go to fish in groups and remain away from the
village for several days. Although most activities are
divided by gender, fish poisoning is an activity in which
everyone, including children, takes part.
Since the incest regulation forbids marriage with a
member of one’s own language group, and a woman
moves to her husband’s village upon marriage, women
will live their adult lives in the villages of speakers of a
different language group. Therefore women are marked
by difference, even as they act as agents of articulation
between groups.
Middle Age and Old Age
When a woman first arrives in a village she is relatively
powerless. She may be a stranger to the other wives of the
settlement, or even to her husband’s family, with whom
she lives. She has few manioc plants and must accrue
these as she ages. At first she may share a garden with her
mother-in-law.
Over time, as she comes to know her brothers-in-law
and her cowives, and produces and raises children who
“belong” to the village sib, she feels more secure in her
position and gains more say in village life. A woman
whose sons have married and brought new wives into the
household may be quite powerful within that household.
Although males may be said to have a level of prestige not held by women, they do not abuse their privileges.
Males do not harm women physically, and are generally
not aggressive to women or to children.
The elderly may remain at home while their adult
children carry out demanding chores. The elderly show
signs of rheumatism, arthritis, and cataracts. An older
woman who no longer wishes to work in the garden may
Gender-Related Social Groups
393
stay in the house overseeing a toddler. Likewise, an elderly
man who no longer wishes to fish may remain at home.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Men alone are privileged to speak formally and publicly.
Tukanoans place extreme value on speaking skill and
rhetorical abilities. Women neither have authority to speak
for a group nor are they considered to have the capacity of
producing “correct” and clear thought and speech. Men
distinguish between the eloquent decorous speech of men
and what they regard as the undisciplined chatter of
women. Men are expected to engage in dominant and
highly visible speech activities, while women are expected
to remain quiet and to attend to the children. The greatest
opportunities for women to express themselves are on the
occasions of exchange ceremonies. Then, women chant
spontaneous songs among themselves. In these songs they
share personal details of their lives (Chernela, 1988a).
Eastern Tukanoan men view women as divisive and
chaotic influences, especially through their uncontrolled
critical gossip. Although in-marrying wives form bonds
with each other, numerous factors limit their impact as a
formal cohesive political power. For most women, input
into village-level politics takes the form of gossip and
other informal social criticism (Chernela, 1993, 1997).
When a child misbehaves, it is the mother who is
assumed to be at fault. However, it may be another
woman—the mother-in-law—who is the first to reprimand her son’s wife. Both men and women enjoy joking
and teasing. There is greater latitude in what women say
as they become older.
Weeping, both spontaneously and performatively, is
regarded as appropriate for women but inappropriate for
men. The “Welcome of Tears,” a departure ritual noted
since earliest European visitors to the New World and
involving texted weeping, is expected of women in the
north of the Amazon basin. The same practice is performed by both sexes in the southern portion of the basin.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Rules of incest and exogamy produce an overarching
unity among diverse and sometimes distant language
groups so that 14,000 Indians inhabiting some
150,000 km2 are related by either kin (agnatic) or in-law
(affinal) ties.
Eastern Tukanoan society provides one of the few
known cases of strongly patrilineal societies in lowland
South America. Members of a patrilineal clan speak a
single signifying language and conceive of themselves
as a group of agnates descended from ancestral brothers
born of the body of an anaconda. Each of these founding
brothers is the focal ancestor of a patriclan or sib, whose
members are spoken of as the “grandchildren of one man.”
This ideology of descent consitutes a unisexual
model of social order and continuity. One generation of
brothers generates another through the name exchange;
men structure descent and generational time, linking
descendant with ancestor, present and future with past.
Although women participate in synchronic linkages,
connecting different descent groups, they are absent from
this descent model of reproduction.
Women are outsiders. Among Eastern Tukanoans,
a local village consists of a core of male relatives, their
in-marrying wives, and their unmarried daughters. (The
few nonsib members found in most villages are relegated
to visitor status, and are barred from local decisions.)
Although in-marrying wives form strong affective
bonds with each other (often based on language commonality), numerous factors limit their impact as a formal
cohesive political power. For most women, input into
village-level politics takes the form of gossip and other
informal social criticism. This “subversive” form of
politicking undoubtedly has a substantial, though unmeasurable, impact. If a woman’s comment is critical, yet
made in a jesting satirical style, it is not considered
provocative in the way that outright criticism would be.
With patrilocal residence, the rapport established
between a wife and her in-laws is critical to her wellbeing. Ideal circumstances for both marital partners occur
when the preferred practice of patrilateral cross-cousin
exchange is followed. Then, a man marries his father’s sister’s daughter. In these marriages, a woman marries her
mother’s brother’s son—a man who is a member of her
mother’s language group. In this home her father-in-law is
a speaker of her mother’s language. He calls her by an
especially affectionate term and speaks to her in the
cadences of her mother’s tongue, although she responds in
her father’s, that is, her “own” language. In such marriages, a woman is said to be “marrying back” (Chernela,
1988a, 1993). Women who “marry back” are said to be
394
Eastern Tukanoans
“belongers” in the villages into which they marry, in
contrast to wives whose husbands are not of the mother’s
group, and who are said to “mix” among “others”
(Chernela, 1988a).
In the single case that I know of where a woman continued to live in her own village after her marriage, she
was the last remaining descendant in the line of founding
ancestors, known as the “Firsts.” She was considered to be
“First of the Firsts.” By virtue of her location in the
descent structure, she was recognized as having an authorized link to the ancestors. Her unique position within the
social structure was manifest in her residence practice.
Since she remained in the village of her birth, and her
husband’s family resided in the village, the case constituted a singular instance of regularized uxorilocal residence in the region. This woman was described to me as
being “like a man” (Chernela, 1993, 1997).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Males are fishermen, while women are engaged in root
crop production. Although men cut and burn new gardens, afterwards it is the work of women to plant, weed,
and harvest the crop daily. Since manioc (Manihot
esculenta) can be left in the ground and harvested as
needed, women collect it on a daily basis. The poisonous
manioc planted by Tukanoan women must be thoroughly
detoxified by means of extensive cooking in which the
soluble prussic acid is eliminated. Women prepare the
manioc into a variety of dips, soups, beverages, breads,
and flour. The last procedure is laborious but the flour is
light and does not spoil; it is used in journeys and may
also be traded or sold to passers-by. (See C. Hugh-Jones
[1979] for a thorough discussion of food processing.)
Garden work begins just after breakfast at dawn and
continues into early afternoon. Preparing the harvested
roots, served as bread and drink at sundown, may take up
most of a woman’s afternoon. Before serving dinner at
sundown, she always bathes herself and her children.
Since the Tukanoans are patrilocal, a new wife
receives her garden and her first manioc seedlings from
her mother-in-law and the cowives of the new village into
which she marries. When she visits her own birth village,
she finds other manioc cultivars, and brings them back to
distribute or trade among cowives (Chernela, 1986).
Men specialize in making baskets and carved wood
items for domestic use and for trade. These differences in
gender specializations are strongly adhered to. Each
language group specializes in a single craft product, made
by the men of the group, that will be formally circulated
throughout the basin (Chernela, 1992). Among these
objects are shaman’s benches, manioc graters, sieves, and
baskets.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers hold infants in a simple shoulder sling or carry
them on the hip until the child is ready to explore by
crawling or walking short distances. A boy stays close to
mother’s side until he is mature enough to join the active
band of village children. From early age, girls accompany
mother at work in the fields or at home. Gardening is a
daily task lasting 4–6 hr, and girls generally accompany
their mothers far from their peers.
Fathers, by contrast, spend far less contact time with
their children. Until adolescence, male work is not
considered children’s domain, even for young boys.
Although Eastern Tukanoan men are affectionate and
conscientious fathers, raising children is considered by
household members—and by the husband and husband’s
mother in particular—to be the responsibility of the
child’s mother. A husband may reprimand his wife if he
observes that his children are not behaving properly.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in the political arena is restricted to males.
Women have no leadership roles (including social/
political movements), nor do they have equal authority.
For example, I know of no female shamans, despite the
importance of First Woman as a powerful shamanic spirit.
Men alone are privileged to speak formally.
Tukanoans place extreme value on speaking skill and
discourse style. Women neither have authority to speak
for a group nor are they considered to have the capacity
of producing “correct” and clear thought and speech.
Men distinguish between the eloquent decorous speech
of men and what they regard as the undisciplined chatter
of women. Men are expected to engage in dominant
and highly visible speech activities, while women are
expected to remain quiet and attend to the children.
Gender and Religion
Eastern Tukanoan men view women as divisive and
chaotic influences, especially through their uncontrolled
critical gossip. Although in-marrying wives form bonds
with each other, numerous factors limit their impact as
a formal cohesive political power. For most women, input
into village-level politics takes the form of gossip and
other informal social criticism.
Authority and certain types of knowledge are
associated with the head. Authority is vested in the most
senior man who is referred to as “our Head” (dahpu); the
term refers not only to his leadership role, but also to the
anatomical head which “leads,” “organizes,” and “speaks
for” the body (Chernela, 1993). The term also refers to
the head of the ancestral anaconda, from which the
descendants of the first ancestors originated. Without a
“head,” a group cannot “speak” and is therefore mute or
powerless.
Women are not prohibited from hearing stories, as
they are prohibited from hearing ritual ancestral flutes.
Yet, women may not tell stories. Women typically overhear the stories told by men, and although they may be
attentive, that interest is not usually acknowledged. The
body of oral literature that pertains to ancestral times has
a distinctly male cast of performer–interpreters, resulting
in a text shaped by a distinctly male gaze. Ancestral
myth-telling is an activity that falls within men’s roles.
The exclusion of women either as ratified speakers or
listeners reaffirms the male monopoly over ideology and
ritual.
Occasionally a woman may “take the floor,”
creating, for a moment, a distinctly female space within
the public sphere (Chernela, 1997). When this occurred
once it was at the periphery, not the center of the dance
house. The center is reserved for the rhetorical ceremonial
speech of males.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Religious specialists, known by the anthropological label
“shamans,” are males. A powerful shaman is thought to
be a transformation from a jaguar spirit. The power and
reputation of a shaman among his own people rests upon
his command of an extensive repertoire of songs, spells,
incantations, and charms, many of which are in languages
not understood by his clients. These sacred texts are accumulated in distant apprenticeships and are the secret
specialized knowledge of shamans.
395
By spatial or imaginary passage, through dreams,
smoke, hallucinations, and visions, through the mediations of animal spirits, images, and masks, the Tukanoan
shaman physically bridges domains and attempts to
restore violated integrities. As a mediator between social
and supernatural worlds, between inside and outside, the
body and those forces which govern the state and condition of the body, he is an advocate on behalf of his group,
kinsmen, and clients against evil: enemy sorcerers,
disease, malevolent spirits, and other threats to the wellbeing of those in his care (Chernela & Leed, 1996). His
mediation is accomplished through his knowledge and
skill in powerful foreign spells and drugs. A powerful
shaman is capable of making his body a vehicle and
a conduit of exchanges between domains.
The shaman carries out procedures that delineate
a “world set apart”; he establishes the proper and rulegoverned means by which it is entered, and its powers
engaged and channeled. For example, the shaman masters
the skills of separating, defining, protecting, and offsetting. He creates enclosures, shields, or other barriers
that protect the vulnerable, whether persons or places.
A shaman may encircle a threatened individual, house, or
village with a protective wall of tobacco smoke, woven
like a fish fence, and made more powerful by augmentation with power-generating incantations that function to
block out invading spells and influences.
The shaman not only marks the boundaries that set
apart and establish the integrity of a body, collective or
personal, he also sets himself apart. A specialized compartment within the long house separates the shaman
from the polluting influences of coresidents and visitors.
This “separation” of the shaman from the group he serves
renders him sacred, special, and powerful. He spends
much of his daily life behind a screen that is intended to
protect him from pollutants. He is brought mild foods by
his wife or daughter and maintains a hearth apart from
the rest of the household. This separation from the
group is one of the precautions taken by shamans in the
communal homes of the Tukanoans.
A Tukanoan shaman bridges domains through both
thought travel—using a hallucinogen to experience
travel—and active travel. Apprenticeship to a shaman of
a different tribe or language group is one means by which
the novice practitioner obtains foreign songs, spells, and
incantations which are often considered more powerful
and effective than those recited in comprehensible
tongues.
396
It is clear that the shaman specializes in communicational actions—uttering words, “seeing” the normally
unseen, defining, naming, explaining, singing, manipulating ritual objects, defending—and takes a moral
responsibility for the physical condition of the patient.
The wielder of the power of words and symbols appears
to “cause” the change in condition of those who submit,
physically, to his ministrations. And yet the “cause” of
the cure is neither in the utterances of the shaman nor in
the body of the patient, but in the union of the two, and
in the relations the shaman embodies between worlds
carefully kept separate.
Of extreme pollution and therefore danger to the
shaman is the presence of menstruating women. For this
reason men and women bathe in separate sections of
the river, with the shaman farthest from the female
bathing area. The level of threat brought about by menstrual blood is a measure of its power (albeit not benign)
over men.
First Woman, invoked at the initiations of pubescent
girls, is, by one set of interpretations, the most powerful
of Eastern Tukanoan supernaturals. Yet she is not designated to a specific patriline and is not invoked in most
clan rituals.
Myths recount the discovery of agriculture by
women. A group of female farmers, painted red, are said
to have been discovered by ancestral brothers while hunting. The subsequent union is attributed with the origins of
agriculture, marriage, and family among the population
of Eastern Tukanoans.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Adults, whether men or women, have little leisure time.
However, each does have greater and lesser periods of
intensity in the work schedule. The most demanding
work can provide an opportunity for “recreation.” When
women prepare flour, for example, many women work
together for long hours. When gardens are cut the whole
village works together and creates a festive occasion with
drinking and joking. Fish poisoning, in the low-water season, is an occasion for festive communal work. On a daily
basis, men who are not out fishing or setting traps may
weave mats or baskets, play with young children, or converse with other villagers. Early evenings are generally
times for relaxation. At these times, people gather in the
cleared plaza at the center of the village, joking and
Eastern Tukanoans
quietly talking. During these gatherings the sexes,
ordinarily segregated in their work chores, are now
brought together.
RELATIVE STATUS
WOMEN
OF
MEN
AND
Patrilineal descent reckoning and the practice of patrilocality assure the political subordination of women.
Formal positions in the public arena are always assigned
to men. This conforms well to the kinship composition of
the residential unit since it is occupied by one or several
patrilines. Decision-making and influence in subsistence
and economy requires no authority, merely obedience to
tradition. Collective work days, such as the cutting of a
garden or the building of a house, may be called by the
village chief who is always a man. However, his power is
limited and if he encounters opposition he can be ignored.
In family and community matters women have power by
virtue of their obligation to tend to the upbringing of their
children. It is they who are held responsible for the comportment and well-being of a child. This carries power,
but not of the sort recognized as overtly political. It is
important to recognize that there is no consolidation of
power within one individual within a village.
Only men have rights to resources within their own
villages by virtue of patrilineal descent. For example,
men of the patriline may inherit certain fishing areas suitable to trap placement. Women may be said to own their
own manioc plants. Males and females have similar
access to plant resources as both depend upon the same
rotating plots of land in which to plant their gardens.
There is no ownership of these lands in the Western sense.
Women control or influence their choices of sexual
partners and, along with their parents, marital partners.
However, women are not the owners of their own
children, who belong to the patriline of the husband. If a
woman leaves her husband she may not take her children
with her. If her husband dies and she chooses to remarry
outside her husband’s descent group, she may not bring
her children with her.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is considered natural and healthy under
normal conditions. However, the bodily fluids of women
Courtship and Marriage
may endanger or pollute a male’s state of health.
Premarital and extramarital sex are both widely practiced, yet they are always carried out with discretion
and at a distance from the shared domestic areas
(Chernela, 2002).
Some Tukanoan men may view women as divisive
and chaotic influences, especially through their uncontrolled critical gossip. Tukanoans place extreme value on
style of speech, and men distinguish between the eloquent decorous thought and speech of men and the undisciplined unthinking chatter of women. Lack of restraint,
in the male view, extends to female sexuality: woman is
the seductress, the seeker of sex, and, to use Murphy’s
phrase, “the reservoir of libidity.”
Tukanoans appear to present an exception to the
gender stereotype in which men are endowed with great,
if not irrepressible, sexual appetites and, relatedly, are
“natural sexual aggressors.” Tukanoan models of sexuality are the opposite. Men view female sexuality as abundant and women as uncontrollably licentious. In contrast,
they see themselves as rigorously protective of their own
fragile chastity (Chernela, 1993, 1997, 2002).
Motives in myths suggest that woman’s anatomy is
seen by men as threatening. The ravenous female of an
important myth devours a man’s penis in her vagina. The
literature on the Northwest Amazon mentions male purging rituals associated with cultural emphasis on strenuous
mental and physical control, including control of sexual
impulses. Woman’s body endangers and defiles the intellectual rigor and spiritual discipline practiced by men. In
short, the dominant male ideology associates men with
the head and the cerebral functions of speech, intellect,
and leadership. Women are associated with the body and
the sensate.
Gender imagery is a subset of the larger ontological
duality of self and other. Together, the two sexes constitute a totality, irreconcilably polarized by the fact that
each confronts the other as object. There is therefore no
single “conscious model” for gender; instead, men and
women have different though complementary ways of
representing gender.
Women do not see themselves as ravenous. As men
claim to feel endangered by women, so women feel
endangered by men. Women claim that the intelligence
they once possessed was lost in ancestral times when
a man disguised as a woman stole the powerful
head ornaments (siompuli) from his mother-in-law,
divesting women of their control over certain types of
397
knowledge and authority. Women say that nowadays
they do not “know” but that at one time they did
(Chernela, 1997).
Complementing the male image of female as body
is the female image of the male as expropriator of powers
associated with the head. This opposition reflects the
political relation of the sexes: males dominate descent—
an ideology of reproduction—and fear loss of their reproductive powers. Females “speak too much”—exercise
social sanctions through gossip—and fear loss of intellect
and, ultimately, of political power. Each sex views the
other as a dangerous usurper.
In fact, female sexuality is scarce to the extreme
among Tukanoans. The extent of this scarcity rests on the
simultaneous practices of linguistic exogamy and patrilocality, and on strongly restrictive, intensely enforced
conditions for suitable marriage partners. For men, as we
will see, the most proximate women are the wives of his
uncles and sibmates. For an umarried woman, the most
proximate males are sibmates with whom sexual relations
are prohibited.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Each sex is expected to give thought to marriage and
begin, with their parents, planning a conjugal life. For
boys this consists of finding a wife to move to his village.
For girls it involves a move to the village of her husband,
and entails careful consideration of the relatives among
whom she will live. Girls are expected to be hardworking
and, indeed, the attribute of hardworking is a principal
criterion in considering a spouse. A girl who is strong and
hardworking is considered a desirable and attractive
spouse. Many marriages are arranged by parents whose
families have exchanged daughters in marriage over
generations.
Acquiring a wife can be problematic. Incest regulation forbids marriage with anyone in one’s own language
group and, conversely, requires that one marry into a different language or kin group. Furthermore, marriage
practice is governed by two strongly felt preferences:
marriage with a patrilateral cross-cousin, and sister
exchange. Hence, a proper marriage requires that a man
have a marriageable sister to exchange, and that his father
(or father’s brothers) have sisters with daughters of
marriageable age.
398
Eastern Tukanoans
The difficulty of finding such a mate is expressed in
the lament of a bachelor who cannot find a marriageable
tanyo—a female cross-cousin:
Isn’t it strange?
I have no cousins;
I am alone and I haven’t any cousin.
Fortunately for me,
I have Fathers of my Fathers;
But I have no cousin.
A Tukanoan male need not marry to find sexual partners. However, like rules of exogamy, Tukanoan incest
prohibitions are restrictive, forbidding sexual relations
with members of one’s own language group. Occasional
breaches of the far-reaching incest regulations might
evoke intense criticism.
Thus, if the rule of patrilocality is strictly followed,
as it most often is, all of one’s age-mates in a village will
be classificatory siblings and intercourse with them is
forbidden. The only women not prohibited by the incest
regulations are the in-marrying wives. These women are
few in number, relative to the total population of the village, and highly sought after by their husband’s sibmates.
If we may speak of sexuality in terms of supply and
demand, competition is acute for these few available
women. Access to these married females is further
obstructed by the threat of reprisals by jealous husbands or
sorcery aimed at punishing paramours (Chernela, 2002).
A wife with lovers is expected to be discreet.
However, women can and do commit indiscretions to
humiliate and manipulate husbands. A dispute between a
chief and his wife that occurred during my stay exemplified this practice. Females are given full responsibility for
illegitimate relations; these confirm the belief that women
are sexually ravenous.
The broad extension of incest rules creates a scarcity
of nonincestuous sexual partners. As a result, the few
sexual partners permissible to a man are the same ones as
those permissible to his brother. And, the only nonincestous partners locally available to a bachelor are his brothers’ wives. The bachelor in search of sex is faced with two
problematic alternatives: adulterous nonincestuous relations, or nonadulterous incestuous relations. He is caught
between two evils: incest, which is strongly prohibited,
and adultery, which threatens solidarity among sib
brothers.
To portray males as pursuers, then, would acknowledge competition among males. For the dominant ideology
to proclaim this social reality would rupture male solidarity
and in this way threaten social stability.
In this case, culture does indeed create an “artificial
and untrue shortage of female sexuality.” If we accept that
women’s value and related power derive from scarcity,
we must conclude that the limited availability of female
sexual partners, created by wide-ranging incest taboos,
should place these women at a premium. The male view
of woman as sexual pursuer denies scarcity by declaring
female sexuality to be abundant. Whatever value would
be expected to accrue to women from scarcity is
effectively denied.
HUSBAND-WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The relationship between spouses is characterized by
love, affection, respect, and companionship. I never saw
hostility, antagonism, or aloofness. Husbands, wives, and
children share a common hearth around which sleeping
hammocks are arranged. With the exception of infants,
who sleep with their mothers, each person sleeps alone in
his or her hammock.
The strict division of tasks requires a strong interdependency among couples. Either husband or wife can
initiate a separation if the marriage is not satisfactory,
but this is extremely rare. However, if a woman leaves the
village of her husband’s sib she may not take her children,
who belong to that sib, with her.
Extramarital relationships are not unusual. They are
carried out with utmost discretion unless intended to
openly provoke a spouse. Almost all sexual activity takes
place in a woman’s garden. The presence of visitors to a
garden is usually indicated by the canoe that is left at the
river-edge nearest the path to the garden.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship between an in-married woman and her
brothers-in-law is expected to be characterized by
generosity and harmony. As her own family is distant, the
closest relations a woman has in her adult years are with
her husband’s family and the other in-marrying wives in
her village. She retains ties to her own birth family and
visits them whenever possible. When two families
exchange daughters as wives over generations, a woman
Bibliography
399
will find the comfort of having as her in-laws her own
uncles and aunts.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
All villages have elementary schools nearby. However, if
boys or girls wish to continue their studies they must
travel away from their home village and enter a mission
school in a town. Some young women travel to large cities
where they obtain employment as domestic servants or
factory workers. Some of these women will return to the
villages to marry and raise families. Others may marry in
the city, and visit their rural relatives on occasion. Many
of the women who remain in the city will never marry.
Some take up residence together when they become elderly. In 1990 some elderly Tukanoan women had taken up
residence together in the outskirts of the city to which they
had migrated as girls. In 1982 Tukanoan urban migrant
women formed an association known as the Associação de
Mulheres do Alto Rio Negro (AMARN). It is the first
indigenous women’s association and the longest-running
autonomous indigenous organization in Brazil.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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(Ed.), SUMA: Etnológica Brasileira: Vol. 1, Etnobiologia
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(pp. 177–196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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(pp. 160–177). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
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cosmology in Northwest Amazonia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
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American Anthropologist, 69(6), 670–684.
Germans
Jakob M. Pastötter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The German name is “Deutsche” from Germanic thiot
(“nation/people”). It does not go back to an ancient name
or term but was developed following the line: deutsche
(German) language—Deutsche (Germans)—Deutschland
(Germany). The term was first coined as “theodiscus” in
768 under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles
the Great, or Charlemagne, in the context of language to
make a distinction from the Romance-speaking people.
Thus, even today, deutsch strongly relies on culture and
language, although the term deutsche Kulturnation
(German Culture Nation), which is a phrase of the
18th and 19th century to describe the fact that Germanspeaking people share a common cultural heritage but do
not live in a single state, is rarely used nowadays.
LOCATION
Today, Germans live in three states located in Central
Europe: the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), which
embraces 357,021 km2 following the reunification of
West Germany and the former Communist East Germany
in 1990, Austria with an area of 82,738 km2, and
Switzerland with an area of 41,293 km2. There is also the
small Dukedom of Liechtenstein between Switzerland
and Austria with an area of 157 km2. German minorities
live in all adjoining countries, but few German settlements in Eastern Europe, some going back to medieval
colonies, have survived the expulsions following World
War II and 50 years of Communist and nationalist rule.
Denmark and the Baltic Sea mark the borders in the
north, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France,
and French-speaking Switzerland in the west, Slovenia,
Italy, and Italian-speaking Switzerland in the south, and
Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary in
the east. Germany’s terrain includes lowlands in the
north, uplands in the center, and the Bavarian Alps in the
south. Austria includes the Austrian Alps and
their foothills in the western and southern parts and
the Danube River basin in the north and east, while
German-speaking Switzerland includes uplands in the
north and the Swiss Alps in the south. The climate is
temperate and marine. In 2001, Germany had an estimated
population of 83,000,000, Austria of 8,000,000, and
Swiss Germans accounted for 4,000,000 of the total
Swiss population of 7,000,000.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Although there are many aspects affecting the individual
habitus as the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the
three German-speaking countries, it may be acceptable to
neglect those in favor of a broader and more general
picture, especially since the largest country, the Federal
Republic of Germany, is in many cultural aspects
heterogeneous. Differences between, for example, an
East Berliner, who was socialized in the Communist
German Democratic Republic, and a rural Catholic
Bavarian are greater than those between a Bavarian and
an Austrian (although they have lived in different states
for many centuries). However, all Germans share a long
history and tradition of paternalism and patriarchalism,
which is still prevalent today. The main differences
among the different regions are first based on a difference
of the main denominations (or, of course, the absence of
religion): Lutheran in Northern Germany; agnosticism in
East Germany; Catholicism in South Germany and
Austria; Reformed Protestantism and Catholicism in
Southwest Germany and German Switzerland. Also,
regional differences are rooted in the historical German
“tribes” (Alemanni, Bavarians, Franks, Friesians,
Saxons, and Thuringians), which refer to the migration
era in late antiquity.
The most important historical and political developments in Germany are the unification of a dozen of
medium-sized and small states when the German Empire
was founded in 1870, followed by what one might call the
“militarization” and bureaucratization of German society
under Prussian predominance together with rapid and
400
Gender over the Life Cycle
401
successful industrialization. With regard to Austria, her
long history as the heartland of the Habsburg monarchy
and the transition into a small state after World War I
should be mentioned, and Switzerland has a long
tradition as the oldest democracy with strong federal
elements.
Today, all Germans live in democratic and industrialized states; farming exists only as heavily subsidized
part of the economy. Environmentalist groups are strong;
one of the reasons for this is that “nature” is highly valued by Germans, which shows that Romanticism as well
as German Idealism left their marks. The majority of
Germans live in cities or suburbs; in Germany the urbanto-rural distribution is 85% to 15%, with a higher balance
in Austria and Switzerland. The literacy rate (those aged
15 and over who can read and write) is about 99%, with
up to 100% attendance in 9 or 10 years of compulsory
schooling. The per capita gross domestic product
(purchasing power parity) is $23,400 in Germany, and
even higher in Austria and Switzerland. The unemployment rate is highest in Germany at 9.9% and lowest in
Switzerland at 2.6% (in 2002).
Although birthrates are well below the substitution
rate with about 9% births but 10% deaths per 1,000 population, only Switzerland has an active immigration policy. Of the 7 million people in Switzerland, 2 million are
immigrants, while the net migration rate in the other
states is just 2.45 migrants per 1,000 population, also due
to stressing the ius sanguinis over a more pragmatic
approach. Immigrants are generally supposed to integrate
or to live in their own areas, which has resulted in the
development of a ghetto culture, especially in the largest
group of immigrants in Germany, the Islamic Turkish
(2.4% of the population). However, the “visibility” of
immigrants is high, since ethnic restaurants (Chinese,
Croatian, Greek, Indian, Italian, Vietnamese) can be
found in even the smallest towns. The Turkish “döner” is
the favorite fast food, more popular than the traditional
sausages. “Salsa parties” in bars are a meeting point for
German women and Arabic immigrants.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The recognized gender categories are male and female.
The existence of intersex people plays no role in public,
although awareness is slowly growing. Some transvestites
have gained media fame, for example, Lilo Wanders as
the moderator of the sex show Wa(h)re Liebe (True
Love/Love as Consumer’s Item) on Private TV. Crossdressing is very popular during Carnival. In primary
schoolbooks the men are pictured as earning the family
income, whereas women stay at home, preparing hearty
meals and caring for the children. This is surprising, since
the laws have been much more progressive for decades,
and offer the opportunity for both mothers and fathers to
take paid leave of absence from work for childcare until
the child’s second birthday.
Apart from make-up and skirts, there are few differences between genders. Even same types of make-up and
dyed hair can be seen in ultra-fashionable youths at techno
music parties, like the millions of so-called “ravers”
attracted to the “Love Parade” in Berlin or the “Street
Parade” in Zurich. Shaving of the body hair has slowly
become fashionable with women, and more slowly by
men, though only a minority wear beards. Piercings and
tattoos are in favor with both genders, if done at all.
However, the more conservative and/or distinguished people have more traditional visual gender differences, such
as short hair for men and long hair or permanent waves for
women (regarded as feminine and sexually attractive).
When it comes to certain hair colors and body shapes,
opinion polls show that all types of hair color, breast sizes,
and figures are accepted, with the exception of the obese.
However, nearly half of German men would prefer a
blonde women for sex, although there is no clear preference when it comes to a future wife. German women seem
to prefer a dark complexion in men.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The cultural names for stages in the life cycle are
neutral: Neugeborenes (new born) up to the 10th day
after birth, the neutral Säugling (baby) for children up
to the 12th month of life, the neutral Kleinkind (toddler) or Spielkind (playing child) from age 2 to 5, the
neutral Schulkind (schoolchild) or Schulmädchen
(schoolgirl) and Schuljunge (schoolboy) from age 6 to 14,
Jugendliche (female young person) and Jugendlicher
(male young person) (also “Teenager”) up to majority
at 18, Erwachsene or Frau (female adult or woman)
and Erwachsener or Mann (male adult or man), Greisin
or Seniorin (very old woman), and Greis or Senior (very
old man).
402
As in other Western postindustrial societies, there are
only small traces of rites of passage left like baptism/
name-giving, first day in school, confirmation/initiation
(the latter is the agnostic ceremony in which 14-year-olds
are given adult social status), driver’s license, school
degree, entering the job market, and retirement. If they are
marked at all, it is only by the appropriate Christian
ceremony and by gifts. As in all modern states there are
certain legal rights and obligations connected with
each age.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
In rural areas it is still common for friends and relatives
to decorate the home of a newborn child with a wooden
stork, baby clothes, and toys hanging on a line. While
there is nothing special to announce the birth of a boy,
if a girl has been delivered tins and a sign reading
Büchsenmacher (tin-maker) referring to the father
(Büchsen stands for the female genitals as well as the
girl), are added to the line.
When surveyed, parents tend to state that they value
girls and boys alike. However, when asked about the
gender preference of their first (and often only) child, a
change can be observed: no longer a son (as son and heir)
but a daughter is preferred. One explanation is that, owing
to welfare and social security systems, parents in Western
societies do not depend on male heirs to support them
financially when in old age but on daughters to do household and nursing tasks and to care for them emotionally.
Also, the valuation of “masculine” aggressive behavior
and “female” soft skills have changed. The first is
regarded as more of a problem because boys attract attention as ruffians or trouble-makers with poor social skills
as early as in kindergarten and elementary school (both
domains of female teachers), while girls fit in better and
do better in this environment because of their soft skills.
There are different emotional expectations of boys
and girls, which also show in the color blue for boys and
pink for girls in baby garments, as well as more technical
toys and computer games for boys and dolls for girls.
However, it is usually not regarded as a “problem” for
girls to behave as tomboys or for boys to enjoy playing
with dolls. At first glance, childhood seems to be a more
or less “gender-free” phase, but nevertheless behavior
judged as “natural” for boys or girls is either enhanced or
discouraged. Girls must mind their manners, that is, be
more disciplined and less noisy, but compassionate and
Germans
generally “friendly”. It can be observed, though, that
some mothers are encouraging their daughters to be as
aggressive as boys. Nevertheless girls are still supposed
to help with household tasks, while only a minority of
boys are expected to do cleaning, wash dishes, cook, and
do the laundry. Such chores are considered to be girls’
work; only taking the garbage outside is regularly done
by boys. More than three quarters of men and women of
the younger generation think that boys and girls should
both help in the house.
Only few open differences in the upbringing and
education of boys and girls exist, but there are still a number of smaller and less conscious signs which send clear
signals in one direction or the other. Germans clearly tend
to bring their children up and “educate” in an informal
rather than a formal way about “proper” gender behavior.
Puberty and Adolescence
Owing to the earlier onset of puberty (compared with the
parents’ generation) many parents see their children still
as “little ones” when in fact they are adolescents. The
blurring of the differences in the behavior of young age
groups under the influence of media is the most significant
trend in German society. Peers are more important than
the family when it comes to dealing with the specific
changes of puberty. A remarkable development is that it
has become more acceptable for girls to be more aggressive, while boys are expected to be less so. Although the
so-called “girlie” (young woman behaving and dressing in
a “self-assured” “girls just wanna have fun” manner) was
a short fad, and positively judged as “postfeminist”, at the
end of the 20th century, self-assertive behavior has survived to a certain degree. Pubescent boys feel insecure and
sometimes dominated by girls, partly because girls of their
own age tend to prefer to date older boys. The gap
between boy and girl becomes wider during “teenage”
years (an English term also used in German). While girls
do better in the social environment of school, boys
develop an inferiority complex. A few rebel and
revenge by developing a “macho” habitus (Nickel, 1992).
Interestingly, some apparent “natural” sex differences
disappeared over time in the German Democratic
Republic. For example, while mathematics was despised
by girls in the 1960s, over the next 20 years mathematics
became their favorite subject, as it had been previously
only for boys. This change also showed in the good
achievements of girls in mathematics, as well as in other
Gender Roles in Economics
403
intelligence and creativity tests (Starke, 1992). At this age,
both genders stress love as the reason for becoming sexually active; both share a view of relationship based on partnership. There is now little difference between the genders
regarding the start of sexual activity or number of intimate
partners; however, female university students seem to
have rather more partners and earlier sexual activity than
boys (Dekker, 1999). Only the Scandinavians among
postindustrialized nations show a similar pattern.
Attainment of Adulthood
Attainment of adulthood varies with social and
educational levels. For apprentices, adulthood is reached
when the 3 years of apprenticeship training is finished (or
at the earliest at the legal age of majority of 18). A student,
possibly living at home and on a parental allowance, may
be aged 25 or more before being considered an adult.
Other “indicators” for adulthood are obtaining a driver’s
license, making a living, and renting one’s own apartment; in other words, “standing on one’s own feet”. The
Kohabitarche, i.e., the onset of sexual activity, is not an
indicator of adulthood.
Middle Age and Old Age
Germans regard “youthful” behavior in middle-aged and
old people as awkward and embarrassing. This is also
true for sexual behavior. Men and women of a certain age
are still widely thought of as asexual. Germans generally
have difficulty in accepting that older people can fall in
love and experience sexual arousal. The more the population ages, the more this attitude is likely to be discussed;
so far, there is little discussion of these topics.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Many psychological problems are gender specific. While
boys and men tend to suffer from aggression-related
problems, women are more apt to experience depression.
Substance abuse and alcoholism are also gender specific.
While men form the majority of heavy drinkers and
alcoholics, women form the majority of psychiatric drug
abusers. While male alcoholics attract public attention
because they usually behave noisily and aggressively,
female addicts are much less visible. Most bulimics and
people with eating disorders are female, although males
are slowly catching up. Obesity affects both genders
equally, with increasing numbers of children affected.
As in other Western societies most obese people are
generally from lower social classes.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
There is one social group that seems to be self-explanatory
at first glance—mothers. However, since the law gives
fathers the opportunity to care for a baby at home, but
experience the same kind of “exclusion” from this group as
women of childbearing age with no children, it may be
assumed that it is not just the fact of being a mother that is
the reason for a certain exclusiveness of this group. There
is little research on this matter yet, but the so-called
Müttergruppen (mother groups) that the majority of
German mothers form show that at certain periods in the
life cycle groups can become a major factor even in highly
individualistic societies. The activities of these mother
groups vary: some just meet at one mother’s house,
discussing child-raising issues and giving each other
advice while watching the children play; others organize
short trips or even lectures on education. A high degree of
social control can be observed in all of them.
Every third German is a member of some kind of
society, association, or club, most of which are open to
both genders. However, clubs attract more men and
associations more women.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The constitutions of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
forbid any discrimination in the job market (including the
armed forces in Germany since 2001) because of gender;
however, differences still exist. In particular, qualified
women experience an “invisible glass ceiling” at some
time in their thirties or forties, and their career advancement stops. Because lower positions in the corporate
hierarchy receive proportionately lower compensation,
the “glass ceiling” means that women in West Germany
earn about 78% of the gross salary per hour that men
receive. In the former Communist East Germany, where
many more women held full-time jobs and where they
were paid equally before the Union, their salaries are now
404
Germans
about 90% of those of men. The average income for
women in all of Germany was 2297 Euro (about the same
in US dollars) in April 2002, which is 21% less than that
of their male counterparts. Although the proportion of
female professors at German universities increased in the
1990s, they still constitute less than 10% of all professors.
Only 5.9% of university professors of the highest and
best-paid rank are women. Even if they work outside the
home, most household tasks are still performed by
women.
There are clear preferences in occupations that
require training. Women prefer jobs that require mainly
“soft” skills such as office administrator, retail saleswomen, hairdresser, doctor’s receptionist, dental nurse,
and industrial manager. Men prefer jobs that require predominantly manual skills like motor vehicle mechanic,
painter, electrician, carpenter, cook, and metalworker. At
university, women prefer humanities and social sciences,
and men prefer natural sciences. Law, economics, and
medical courses are gender equal.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers play the dominant role in child-rearing although
more and more young fathers are unwilling to neglect
their children in favor of a career. In divorce cases, fathers
fight for their right to see their children; however, in most
cases mothers obtain custody. There are only small
differences regarding disciplining, education, physical
care, affection, or how fathers and mothers spend time
with their sons and daughters.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Although men and women enjoy the same rights in the
public and political sphere, men are still predominant in
leadership positions. Some of the reasons may be the lack
of extensive female networks, the predominance of
women in service jobs, the high degree of informal social
“rules” that decide about a career in political parties
(which cannot be taught or learnt because they favor and
promote a certain social and communicative habitus that
is predominantly male), and the high average age in
traditional political parties. Women may also have some
physical disadvantages, such as their generally lower
tolerance of alcohol. Alcohol consumption still seems to
be a very important social “lubricant” in the traditional
German political party and public administration networks—a tradition that goes back at least to the early
modern age. This makes it understandable that the proportion of women in politics is highest in the relatively
new Green Party. This party had a high share of female
membership from the very beginning and the average age
of party members is low.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Traditionally, the majority of churchgoers are female,
while the majority of priests are male. The example of
female saints in Catholicism is that of a very traditional
female life model: maternal and social qualities are
favored. This also shows in male and female orders: the
latter are predominantly engaged in teaching early
grades, in hospitals, and in nursing homes. Informal
religiousness, like the different forms of so-called “new
age” religion, does not show much difference; women are
presented as maternal, devote, patient, and passive. Here
also the majority of followers are women.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Employees in the Federal Republic of Germany have the
highest rate of leisure time of all Western countries; they
spend just over 35 hours a week at work (4.5 days a week)
and enjoy about 30 days of paid vacation. Nevertheless,
Germans do not relax much; they are as busy in their
leisure time as at work. Favorite pastimes are socializing
at bars and visiting one of the numerous public festivals
and funfairs. In the summer, sunbathing, water sports,
and roller-blading are enjoyed, while in the winter,
all kinds of winter sports are popular. In surveys of
leisure-time activities, listening to music is often mentioned, while reading is only occasionally mentioned.
Germans spend an average of 3–4 hours a day watching
television and playing computer games. The latter
attract more boys than girls. Men prefer to watch sports
and women prefer to visit art galleries and attend
seminars. Also, more women than men are involved in
charities.
Sexuality
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
405
OF
MEN
There are no legal differences between the value attached
to men and women by the state or in authority, rights and
privileges. Even informal differences are very difficult
to pinpoint. Only the still very common “obsequious”
behavior of girls and young women towards male leadership in organizational or technical matters may point in
this direction, but it might also only be the result of a
hierarchical gradient. Usually even these women who
show a distinctive obsequious behavior deny, if asked,
that they think that men in general are of higher value.
However, in this context it is surprising that more female
employees (6%) take the chance of a Seitensprung (a “bit
on the side,” (little) affair) at company parties than men
(1%) according to a Forsa survey in 2000. Only the
Catholic church is still a stronghold of formal male
supremacy, although this might be changing because the
German Catholic Church suffers a severe shortage of
priests and so more and more tasks are taken on by female
lay helpers. However, although they gain some informal
influence because of these activities, they are not paid or
distinguished with a hierarchical rank.
SEXUALITY
Together with the Benelux and the Scandinavian nations,
Germans may have the most liberal attitude towards
sexuality of all industrialized countries. Although many
complain about what they see as the “typical German
inhibition” and regard Asian or Latin American societies
as more sexually fun loving, this view ignores the fact
that actual knowledge about sexuality is very high, while
social taboos connected with sexuality hardly exist at all.
This is the case not only at the legal level but also in
media and everyday lives. While a third of all men and a
quarter of all women still have difficulties talking about
sex, the majority have no inhibitions. The body, bodily
functions, and sexuality are widely seen as “natural” and
have positive connotations. However, 80% still say that
they prefer to be alone in the bathroom. In contrast with
many societies where others prohibit and proscribe
sexual partners, there is a high degree of individual
decision-making about with whom and when one would
like to have sex. However, the main “reason” for having
sex is the conviction that one has fallen in love.
Differences between the concept of male and female
sexuality are diminishing. Neither quality nor quantity
are decisive, and only 37% of women say that they would
not have sex on a first date, while 36% of them would
neglect their conviction if they felt that the right moment
had come already. This also shows that there is no longer
a negative attitude towards premarital sex; the distinctive
factor for sexual activity is falling in love. Nevertheless,
fidelity is an important value, which leads to so-called
“serial monogamy” or “chain marriage”. The main
reasons given for breaking up or divorcing are the lack of
conversation topics and drifting apart.
Sexual expression during childhood, like touching
and fondling the genitals, or so-called “doctor games”
(where children discover each other’s bodies and sometimes even pretend to have sex with each other), are
widely accepted and regarded as “natural” at this early
stage of life. Things change in prepubertal and adolescent
years; parents seldom realize that children develop sexual
interest in their early teenage years, which has resulted in
a growing number of teenage pregnancies and abortions
due to a lack of sex education by the parents. Parents rely
on sex education taught in school. However, teachers
have no formal training in sex education beyond the
biological facts of life. In informing their children about
sex, parents tend to be biased. Sons are usually less well
informed than daughters. Morality standards are higher in
Catholic regions and in the countryside, especially
regarding girls. Adults are more or less free in their sexual
activities as long as no sexual harassment takes place.
Only total nudity is still regarded a taboo in public,
notwithstanding the fact that nude sunbathing is very
popular and legal even in city parks. However, this takes
place in special zones, designated for nudism or FKK
(Freie Körperkultur—Free Body Culture), which are not
regarded as being in the public sphere. Naked breasts are
common at the Love Parade and other Techno festivals, as
well as Christopher Street Day festivals. Cross-dressing
is very popular at these festivities and during the long
Carnival season from November 11 to Shrove Tuesday.
The extent of expected modesty is gender equal.
Most Germans see themselves as tolerant towards
homosexuals. More than 70% of Germans under the age
of 40 accept homosexuality and, in a 1996 survey, 49%
said they were in favor of a registry office marriage for
homosexuals, 93% wanted homosexuals to have the same
job opportunities, and two thirds suggested a law to
406
Germans
protect homosexuals against discrimination. Austria and
the German Federal State of Bavaria, which are the most
Catholic regions, are also the most adverse to homosexuality. In 1994, Section 175 of the German Penal Code,
which prohibited male homosexual activity (female
homosexuality had never been prosecuted), was removed.
Since 2001, homosexual couples can enter into a
Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft (registered cohabitation). About half of all German homosexuals cohabit and,
although not every such couple will decide for an
Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft, the legal possibility is
widely seen as a good thing. The argument is that all
social commitments and responsibilities should be
strengthened in a time of progressive social fragmentation. In the Swiss German speaking canton of Zurich a
majority of 62% voted for a similar law in 2002; since
1999 the new federal constitution prohibits discrimination because of one’s lifestyle. In Austria, homosexuality
has not been punishable since 1975.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Dating is informal in the German countries. There are no
rules. Few women expect men to pay for restaurant bills
or cinema tickets. However, the majority of women expect
men to initiate the first step. Going steady and often
cohabiting for some time is the main reason for a later
marriage; men and women want to feel comfortable with
each other, trust and fidelity are important, many men
prefer a “buddy-like” wife, and hold caressing (62%) in
much higher regard than sex (19%). Seventy-three percent
of all Germans see marriage as a lifelong commitment—
men and married couples even more so at 77% and 81%,
respectively. Seventy-three percent think that marriage is
a symbol of love, 59% say that it is important because of
the children, 42% say that it serves the purpose of providing support, and 16% marry for a more regular sex life.
There is also a trend towards a new high regard of
the family as an emotional home. Surveys show that 72%
hope to find Mr./Ms. Right and 33% think that finding an
ideal partner is the most important thing in life. Ninetyfour percent of young people say that they believe in true
love, 70% hope for a single lifelong relationship, and
only 4% say that they are not interested in an intimate
relationship.
Despite the ideal of the family as an emotional home,
in 1999, only one in 25 Germans lived in a household with
five or more individuals. Single households have
quintupled since the beginning of the 20th century. In
1999, 36% of Germans were living alone. A third were
living with one other person, 15% living with two others,
12% with three others, and only 4% in households of five
or more. Most of the latter are located in small communities of less than 5,000 people; most of the former live in
the big cities with more than 500,000 people. Nearly half
of the 1.2 million Berliners between 25 and 45 are single.
In the early 1990s, 20% of Germans between ages 25 and
35 lived in a single household; in 2000 this rose to 25%.
It appears likely that by 2010 a third of this age group will
be living alone. In 1998 17% of all children under age
27 lived with a single parent. One third of all Germans
experience the single life-style as being forced on them.
Marriage ceremonies vary from a simple civil
wedding with just two witnesses to a traditional farmer’s
marriage (although the couple do not have to be farmers)
with hundreds of guests, beginning days before with a
marriage messenger walking to each guest’s house and
inviting them with a poem. In the traditional marriage, the
day of the wedding would start early in the morning with
a wake-up call by a traditional brass band and a first
opulent meal with all guests. All go to church together.
After the ceremony the newlywed couple and the guests
go to an inn where dinner is served. The expenses are
shared evenly by the parents of bride and bridegroom.
After dinner some traditional “games” are played, which
aim at showing that the bridegroom has lost his freedom
and the bride has to be a good housekeeper and mother.
The texts are often sexually explicit, though not pornographic. In the afternoon, some male guests “kidnap” the
bride and hide her. The bridegroom has to find her,
assisted by the guests. After the search, people gather for
wine and more games before the crowd goes back to the
inn where another meal is prepared. Dancing, drinking,
and eating can last until the early morning. Such a
traditional marriage is followed by a honeymoon vacation
of 1 or 2 weeks. There is no restriction regarding the
remarriage of widows or widowers.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Love is the main reason for getting married, and so
couples consider love, affection, and companionship as
being essential. For the majority, it is a sign of diminishing love if a couple do not share the same bed or spend
Bibliography
their leisure time together. Many wives still depend on
their husband for financial matters like insurance and
retirement plans, but more and more young women have
become responsible in these matters. When it comes to
sharing household tasks, women still take on the greater
workload, although they often have full-time jobs.
A partnership model of equals is most in favor with East
German girls and women with an academic education,
and is least favored in Catholic rural regions.
Divorce can be filed by any gender, usually with
reference to the principle of irretrievable breakdown. One
in three marriages does not last; in the big cities it is one
in two. The 1998 divorce rates were 85.7 per 10,000
marriages in West Germany and 105.7 per 10,000
marriages in East Germany. More than half of the
divorces involved minor dependents, with the mother
usually being granted custody. Four out of five divorced
husbands had another partner within 10 months, while
half of all women were still single after 3 years. Two
thirds of all divorce petitions were filed by wives.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
No significant male–female relationships—brother–
sister, grandparent–grandchild, uncle–niece, aunt–nephew,
or others—seems to exist.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Although traditional German paternalistic and patriarchic
persistence is strong in public as well as private life, many
aspects point to a slow change towards female predominance: the communication style has become less authoritarian, a growing number of girls are better educated
(more than half of all students today are female), “soft”
skills are gaining importance in the job market, and
women are less dependent on their husband to earn a
407
living. On the other hand, men have come to realize that
there is no birthright for male dominance. Men also
accept that aggression can be destructive, and that it is
important to engage in discussion to solve problems.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (BzgA), Abteilung
Sexualaufklärung, Verhütung und Familienplanung (1995ff).
Forschung und Praxis der Sexualaufklärung und Familienplanung
[Research and praxis of sex education and family planning]
(Vols 1–17). Köln, Germany: Editor.
Dekker, A. (1999). Veränderungen des Sexualverhaltens von
Studentinnen und Studenten 1966–1981–1996. [Changes of sexual
behavior of male and female students 1966–1981–1996.] In
Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (BzgA) (Ed.),
Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen: Teil 2, Jugendliche [Scientific
fundamentals: Part 2, Adolescents] (pp. 141–155). Köln, Germany:
Editor.
König, O. (1990). Nacktheit. Soziale Normierung und Moral [Nudity:
Social standardization and morality]. Opladen, Germany:
Westdeutscher Verlag.
Lautmann, R., & Starke, K. (1997). Germany. In R. T. Francoeur (Ed.),
The international encyclopedia of Sexuality (Vol. 1, pp. 492–518).
New York: Continuum International.
Mayer, K. U., & Baltes, P. B. (1996). Die Berliner Altersstudie [The
Berlin study on aging]. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Nickel, H. M. (1992). Soziologische Aspekte männlicher und
weiblicher Identität oder Rekonstruktion des Patriarchats durch
Sozialisation [Sociological aspects of male and female identity,
or reconstruction of patriarchy through socialization]. In
K.-F. Wessel & H. A. G. Bosinski (Eds.), Interdisziplinäre Aspekte
der Geschlechterverhältnisse in einer sich wandelnden Zeit
[Interdisciplinarian aspects of gender relations in a changing time]
(pp. 218–224). Bielefeld, Germany: Kleine Verlag.
Schmidt, G. (Ed.). (2000). Kinder der sexuellen Revolution. Kontinuität
und Wandel studentischer Sexualität 1966–1996 [Children of the
sexual revolution: Continuity and change of student sexuality
1966–1996]. Giessen, Germany: Psychosozial-Verlag.
Starke, K. (1992). Unterschiede im Partner- und Sexualverhalten
männlicher und weiblicher Jugendlicher [Differences in partnership and sexual behavior of male and female adolescents]. In
K.-F. Wessel & H. A. G. Bosinski (Eds.), Interdisziplinäre Aspekte
der Geschlechterverhältnisse in einer sich wandelnden Zeit
[Interdisciplinary aspects of gender relations in a changing time]
(pp. 225–240). Bielefeld, Germany: Kleine Verlag.
Glebo
Mary H. Moran
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names are Grebo, Gedebo, Nyomowe, and
Kuniwe.
LOCATION
Numbering under 10,000 people, the Glebo are one of
many ethnolinguistic groups living in the Republic of
Liberia on the west coast of Africa. They occupy a series
of 13 towns along Liberia’s southeastern coast, close to
the international border with Côte d’Ivoire, and farm tracts
of interior forest up to 30 miles inland from the shore.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Most Glebo are shifting rice farmers with a relatively
egalitarian form of social organization in which the major
status distinctions are age and gender. The Glebo language belongs to the Kwa or Kruan subfamily of the
Niger–Congo group. Like the rest of Liberia’s indigenous
peoples, they reckon kinship through patrilineal descent,
which means that children “belong” to their father’s family in terms of the inheritance of rights to land and other
privileges. Ideally, a woman moves to her husband’s home
town at marriage and farms land to which he has access.
However, married women do not lose their affiliation with
their own families of birth and can claim land for farming
through their fathers and brothers. Despite a formal ideology of patriarchy, local-level political organization
includes parallel public offices for men and women, and a
series of checks and balances ensures that women have a
voice in community-wide affairs. Although the coastal
towns are important for social and political identity and
are the sites of significant ritual events, they are fully
occupied for only a few months of the year. Most people
spend the majority of their time on their upland farms in a
dispersed settlement pattern in which extended families
farm adjacent land. The coast, with its sandy beaches and
lagoons, is used for fishing and collecting shellfish.
Between the coast and the forest is about 10–15 miles of
open grassy savannah, where cattle are pastured and
cassava is grown. Rice, the primary crop, is grown in rainfed fields in the high forest (mostly secondary growth) farther to the interior, where game animals are hunted and
palm nuts, rubber, and other forest products are collected.
The Glebo move constantly between these environmental
zones as they carry out their subsistence activities.
Like other tropical forest-dwelling horticulturalists,
the Glebo fall within what has come to be called “the
female farming” belt of West and Central Africa. As the
name implies, most of the work of subsistence agriculture
is performed by women, and the status of family breadwinner is central to feminine identity. The most common
occupation reported by women in my 1983 census of the
Cape Palmas community was “farmer” (Moran, 1990).
International development workers, conditioned to see
men as farmers and women as “farmer’s wives,” have
often introduced inappropriate and even damaging agricultural programs because of a failure to understand this
basic division of labor. Men’s occupations are often a
combination of seasonal labor, cash cropping, hunting,
and gathering forest products, but provisioning the household is not seen as a male responsibility. Where both
spouses are involved in the cash sector, as with women
who have gone into full-time market trading, the responsibility for providing food on a daily basis is still defined
as female. Only among the “civilized,” or educated,
Western-oriented Glebo community is a married woman
ideally to be supported by her husband, and even here, a
woman will often have a small business selling baked
goods or surplus produce in order to have her own income.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
As mentioned above, gender categories are closely
related to economic roles, with the provisioning of the
household an essential aspect of femininity. If women are
identified as “farmers,” the male equivalent is “warrior,”
reflecting the long history of intergroup conflict in this
408
Gender over the Life Cycle
region. Women are also said to be warriors in some
contexts, such as childbirth, which demand courage and
endurance. The funeral dances conducted for both men
and women are referred to as war dances, although the
men’s version actually mimics the techniques of warfare
while the women’s focuses on complex steps and drum
patterns. There are no culturally recognized third genders
or cross-gendered persons, but transvestism is common in
ritual contexts like the men’s war dance and another
funeral dance performed for women of child-bearing age.
In the case of the men’s war dance, transvestite elements
signal the transcendence of the warrior over all normal
social categories, including gender (Moran, 1996).
Liberia has been incorporated into the global economy for centuries through the trans-Saharan and Atlantic
trade in salt, ivory, pepper, and slaves. Since the late 15th
century, when European ships first made their way down
the west coast of Africa, local communities have integrated Western items, including clothing, into their way
of life. For everyday dress, men wear shirts and pants or
shorts of foreign manufacture, usually purchased in
second-hand clothing markets. When relaxing at home
or in certain ritual contexts, men wear a length of cloth
wrapped around the waist, sometimes with a second cloth
draped over the shoulder. Women’s attire is differentiated
by status; uneducated farmers and market vendors wear
the cloth wrapper, or lappa, with a blouse tailored from
the same material or an imported T-shirt. Married women
signal their status with two lappas, one of which is used
to cover a baby that is tied to the mother’s back. Educated
or “civilized” women wear Western-style dresses in most
public contexts, but may dress in lappas while doing
housework at home. Local tailors produce elaborate
“lappa suits” for urban professional women in which the
wrapped cloth is replaced by a long skirt with a zipper.
Ideals of physical attractiveness include defined
musculature and “smooth” (closely cut) hair for men, and
smooth skin, beautifully arranged hair, and a full figure
for women. Extreme slimness is taken as a sign of illness
(translated into English as “looking dry”) for both sexes.
Both men and women are also admired for their ability to
work hard, govern their emotions, and use discretion.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Like many of their neighbors, the Glebo have an elaborate
system of named age grades for men that functions as part
409
of the local political structure. A set of age categories for
women describe different aspects of the life cycle but do
not have the same corporate or political functions as those
of the men. Babies and toddlers are not distinguished by
gender but are simply called kyinibo or pede nyinibo
(“those who fail to look after their own excrement”).
Young children who are fully mobile are collectively
referred to as wodo yudu or “town children.” Girls begin
to have more household duties at this age, collecting wood
and water and looking after younger siblings. Such tasks
are not gender specific, however, since boys who have no
sisters or who are simply available when the need arises
will also be pressed into service.
Adolescent and young men who are not yet married
constitute the kinibo, and in former times acted as a kind
of police force, carrying out the judgments of older men.
With marriage, a man enters the age group known as
sidibo or “soldiers.” This is a corporate age-based organization, with internal officers, shared ownership of ritual
equipment and drums, and their own meeting house, the
tiba kae. Based on the accounts of 19th century missionaries, historian Jane Martin (1968) has concluded that the
internal politics of Glebo communities was dominated by
an ongoing power struggle between the sidibo and the
council of elders (the gbudubo or takae), made up of the
oldest living male member of each resident pano, or patriclan, in a town. This council is not technically an age
grade, since neither cohorts nor individuals are automatically promoted into it at a certain age or life stage; rather,
some very elderly men remain “soldiers” all their lives
due to the longevity of a slightly older kinsman (Moran,
1990, p. 30).
Women pass from the category of “town children” to
“town women” (wodo nyeno) with marriage. Like men,
they are recognized as “fully grown” about the age of 50;
before that time they may be classified with adult men of
similar age as gofa, or “youth.” The women’s council of
elders, also known as takae, consists of a representative
chosen by the women of each kin group in a town, either
a resident daughter of the kin group or an in-marrying
wife. The primary qualifications for election are demonstrated leadership and speaking abilities. All the women
of the town choose one member of the council to hold the
position of blo nyene, the “woman’s president” (see
below). The women’s council meets jointly with the
men’s takae on community-wide affairs and separately on
issues relating only to women. In general, both men and
women gain in status and prestige as they age, although
410
gender remains a significant means of stratification;
a widely cited proverb holds that “men are always older
than women.”
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The birth of a girl seems as highly valued as that of a boy
in Glebo society; since women are economically productive, bring bridewealth to their families at marriage, and
remain members of their patrilineage for life, this is not surprising. Children of both sexes are given tasks to do as soon
as they seem able, including sweeping the house and surrounding yard, fetching firewood and water, and minding
younger siblings. Boys have more freedom of movement
than girls and, unless there are no girls of appropriate age
in the household, seem to be less burdened with household
work than their female kin. Parents sometimes complain
that it is not worth the trouble to find and compel young
boys into work; girls are believed to be more compliant.
Yet, domestic work is not strictly gender segregated and
young unmarried men are expected to be able to cook for
themselves and wash their own clothes if the need arises,
skills which they undoubtedly learned as children.
Boys and girls usually play in gender-segregated
groups. In coastal towns, soccer (football) is the preferred
team sport for boys and almost any round object that can
be kicked will be used as a ball. Girls may practice dance
steps and chase each other in games of tag. Occasionally,
a mixed-sex group of children will enact some adult
activity, such as a development rally or witchcraft investigation. If family resources are limited, only the boys, or
one boy, may be chosen to attend formal school. Parents
fear that girls who are sent to school may become pregnant and leave before they acquire enough education for
the wage sector. This common scenario is responsible for
the very disparate numbers of boys and girls in the educational system. In general, boys are expected to be more
active, aggressive, and mobile than girls. Although all
young people are expected to behave with great respect
towards their elders, girls are instructed to cast their eyes
down and sit with their legs pressed closely together as a
sign of modesty and deference.
Puberty and Adolescence
The Glebo have no formal initiation rites into adulthood,
although one has been reported for men entering
the warrior age grade among the neighboring Sabo
Glebo
(McEvoy, 1971, p. 181). In contrast with the Mandespeaking peoples to their north, none of the Kwaspeaking groups practice genital cutting as a mark of
initiation into adulthood. There is little formal emphasis
on virginity for either males or females. A text contained
in Innes’s grammatical description of the Glebo language,
contributed by an informant in London, describes the
“sweetness” of youthful sexual experimentation: “lovemaking does not wait for maturity and old age, hence children make love, just as adults do” (Innes, 1966, p. 132).
Attainment of Adulthood
Marriage is an important means of attaining adulthood
for both men and women, although there is little in the
way of public ceremony to mark the event. Bridewealth
negotiations and payments may be extended over many
years, during which the couple live together and have
children yet consider the marriage “not yet” completed.
Men join the sidibo and begin to have community-wide
responsibilities at this time, as women are recognized as
members of the “town women” and are expected to
contribute to funeral dancing and generally take an interest in community affairs. A long tradition of male wagelabor migration, going back to the 18th century, exists
along the coast and many young men put off marriage
until after a period of “seeing the world” and accumulating
trade goods for bridewealth (Brooks, 1972).
Middle Age and Old Age
Fifty years of age is considered an important milestone
among the Glebo, although it is not marked by a public celebration of any kind. At 50, a man or woman is considered
“fully grown” and to have the wisdom and experience to
advise others. Before this age, adults will continue to
describe themselves as “small girls and small boys,” particularly in relation to their older kin and teachers. “If the
man who was my teacher is still alive, how can I consider
myself his equal?” asked a 45-year-old Glebo Episcopal
priest, commenting on the relative nature of who could be
described as “old” or even adult. Adults who achieve and
pass the age of 50 are honored at death with a “war dance”
(doklo for men and nana for women), performed by all
adult members of their gender in their own and related
communities. Dances formerly existed to commemorate
the deaths of younger adults; boya for a woman who died
in her childbearing years and kobo ta woda for a young
Gender Roles in Economics
411
man (also performed for men leaving on periods of labor
migration, in case they died while away), but these have
rarely been performed since the 1970s. The most important
rite of passage celebrated for any Glebo individual is that
which marks the transition to the afterlife and the status of
ancestor. Funerals are the largest, most expensive, and
most elaborate ceremonies the Glebo practice.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Generally speaking, the Glebo believe that all people
have the capacity for purposeful work, and hard-working
practical qualities are looked for in both men and women.
Women are expected to be most concerned with the
welfare of children and of households in general, while
men are more free to debate theoretical issues and argue
the fine points of politics or witchcraft. Men are expected
to be more articulate than women and to be masters of
elliptical and indirect oratory, often using proverbs to
avoid saying what they really mean. Women are sometimes disparaged for simply blurting out what they are
thinking, or seen as lacking in refinement and discretion.
Yet good speaking ability is highly valued in women and
is one of the criteria for election to the female council and
the position of blo nyene. Women will often show public
deference to men, but quarrels between spouses are
known to become heated and even physical on both sides.
Adult women are recognized as physically strong and
able to stand up for themselves.
Men and women spend much of their time in
gender-segregated groups, and demonstration of affection
between same-sex friends is common and implies no
sexual intimacy. The sight of two men or two women
holding hands or walking arm-in-arm is much more likely
than that of two people of the opposite sex, which would
be considered slightly scandalous, even for spouses. Yet
men demonstrate much public affection for their babies
and young children, often holding them on their laps and
cuddling them in the evening.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence demand that a
woman move to join her husband’s family and that her
labor and children will contribute to their overall wealth
and prestige. Yet the proverb, “a woman does not perish
in marriage” (Herzog & Blooah, 1936, p. 179) recognizes
that she will maintain membership in her natal group
and continue to fulfill responsibilities toward her own
patrikin. In addition to the age-based associations
mentioned above, men and women join a variety of other
sex-specific groups including dance and masquerade
societies, church groups, burial insurance societies, rotating credit associations, and sports clubs. Glebo who are
living away from Cape Palmas in other Liberian towns or
cities (or abroad) form development associations to raise
funds for infrastructure projects “back home.” These
groups sponsor fund-raising events such as beauty contests, dance performances, and “rallies” to benefit their
home communities. Although dedicated to a common
cause, these urban-based associations usually have the
parallel gendered structure of the rural town, with
separate men’s and women’s officers and decisionmaking groups.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The division of agricultural labor in the production of
rice, the staple subsistence crop, assigns the clearing of
new fields and the burning of brush to men, while women
are responsible for hoeing, planting, weeding, scaring
away birds and small predators, and most of the harvesting. Since the period of their involvement with the major
crop is quite limited, men are free to pursue other
economic activities, such as growing cash crops (rubber,
citrus, coffee, or sugar), hunting, and wage labor. Indeed,
it is possible that the long history of male labor migration
from this region is a consequence of the fact that women
have a greater role in agriculture in the southeast than in
other parts of Liberia (Moran, 1986). Women also grow
cash crops, such as maize, peppers, eggplant, pumpkin,
greens, and other vegetables, interplanted in rice fields.
Very little domestically produced rice reaches the market
(urban populations subsist on rice imported from abroad),
but women sell other surplus crops and keep the profits
for their own use.
Women dominate the wholesale and retail trade of
locally produced foodstuffs in Liberia, while men may
specialize in selling raw materials to foreign firms
(particularly rubber and palm oil). Professional market
women travel long distances on their own to bulk products from many small female producers and transport
412
them to the urban centers along the coast. For many
women, the transition from farming to marketing comes
with divorce or widowhood; once freed from the obligations of a lineage wife, they can manage their own affairs,
support their children, and maintain their own households. Often these women enter informal nonresidential
relationships with “husbands” who have not paid
bridewealth and so have no legal claim over them. As one
woman put it to me, “If my husband sees money, he gives
me a bag of rice. If not, the market feeds me” (Moran,
1990, p. 128).
However, “civilized” Glebo women are unable to
sell in the public marketplace without jeopardy to their
status. In fact, local gossip often circulates about women
who “used to be civilized” but are now, due to economic
adversity, selling in the market. The most visible sign
of such a loss of prestige is when a woman exchanges
Western-style dresses, which are never worn by market
vendors, for the two wrapped cloths or lappas. Many civilized women contribute to and even support households
with an almost clandestine marketing system of selling
surplus produce from a small table by their back door.
Others send their children to sell homemade cookies and
similar treats in schoolyards or at major intersections
(Moran, 1990). A few highly educated women occupy
professional positions as nurses, clerks, or teachers in the
cash sector.
Movable property can be inherited by both men and
women, with personal items like cloth, household equipment, tools, and furniture transmitted from father to son
and mother to daughter. Use rights to farmland and house
plots are activated through membership in a patrilineal
clan. Upon the death of a man, conflicts sometimes
emerge between the claims of his wife and those of his
patrilineal kin; in theory, the widow has no right to the
house or the communal property of the marriage unless
she can demonstrate that items were bought with her own
earnings. At one time, a widow was “inherited” herself,
coming under the protection of a male relative of her
deceased husband, usually a younger brother, unless she
preferred to refund part of the bridewealth and return to
her own kin group. If the house and other property are
inherited by an adult son, he is responsible for the support of his mother and any other cowives in their old age.
Liberian women married under statutory law or in one of
the Christian churches are entitled to inherit property
from their husbands, but often their legal rights are not
enforced by local officials. Various attempts have been
Glebo
made to pass national legislation regulating spousal
rights, most recently in 2002.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Maternal care of children is idealized in the notion of
“feeding”; whatever else she may do for them, the primary role of a mother is to feed her children. This does
not imply that she should spend all her time with them
personally or even play a major part in their upbringing.
Rather, it is through her economic activity that children
are fed and nurtured. This pattern is similar across West
Africa, where it has been noted that a woman who stays
at home with her children all day instead of leaving them
for the workplace is seen as a lazy and even unfit mother
(see also Clark, 1994). Fathers are expected to be stern
disciplinarians although, as noted above, they may be
very affectionate with babies and young children. Both
parents take part in “training” or preparing children for
the rigors of the world, which is expected to involve some
suffering and hard work. Fostering children out to other
households is a common practice and is the primary route
to Western education and “civilized” status for rural
youngsters. Parents use bilateral kinship links to place
children in households where they can attend school and
acquire the behavioral traits of educated, civilized people.
Sometimes these children are defined as servants (even
if they are very young and not yet economically useful to
the household), particularly if the placement is made on
the basis of friendship or patronage rather than kinship.
A servant is expected to “suffer,” yet the host family is
under strong obligation to see that their schooling continues and that they have at least a chance of attaining
upward mobility. Prosperous families on the coast use
this institution to enhance their domestic workforce and
fill in gaps in their personnel; for example, one family
took in a teenage girl as a servant when their only daughter died in childbirth, leaving them with four sons and an
infant granddaughter (Moran, 1992).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Glebo political organization is a classic example of
the “dual-sex” system described by Okonjo (1976) for
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
West Africa in general. Each town or cluster of related
towns has a male official, the wodo baa or “town’s namesake” whose lineage is understood to have been among
the founders of the community. Under the system of local
administration imposed by the Liberian state, this office
became the “town chief,” with the power to collect taxes,
hear civil court cases, and impose fines. The corresponding woman’s position, the blo nyene, has no such official recognition. Neither the wodo baa nor the blo nyene
hold executive power over decisions affecting the entire
town; they depend on the gbudubo, or council of elders
(both male and female, discussed above), for advice and
attempt to reach consensus on anything of consequence.
The blo nyene has veto power over any decision made by
the men; in former times this was an important way in
which women exercised control over men’s ability to
declare war on neighboring communities. Since a large
proportion of the adult women in any town had married
in from elsewhere, their support was crucial to any military campaign that might pit their husbands and sons
against their fathers and brothers. Women are also known
to use mass boycotts and labor strikes (leaving town en
masse or refusing to cook or sleep with their husbands) to
impose their will on male authorities (Moran, 1989).
Other leadership roles include the officers of the sidibo
age grade for men and of dancing and performance societies for women. Among “civilized” Glebo, leadership
roles exist for men and women in numerous church-based
and voluntary organizations. Leadership roles in the
indigenous religious system are discussed below.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Missionaries from the Episcopal church of America
established themselves among the Glebo as early as the
1830s and many people are at least nominally Christian.
Although the Anglican church recognizes the ordination
of women as priests, there have not been any female clerics among the Glebo to date. The indigenous religious
positions, like so many other aspects of Glebo society,
have parallel roles for men and women. The high priest
(bodio) and his wife (gyide) have much in common with
the “divine king” complex recorded elsewhere in Africa.
Unlike the secular wodo baa and blo nyene, who are
essentially farmers like everyone else, the bodio and
gyide are true ritual specialists. They are supported by the
agricultural efforts of the rest of the community, who give
413
them rice and other crops according to their needs. Their
lives are tightly constrained by restrictions and taboos,
for they must never leave the town for more than a few
hours during daylight. They live in the cult house or
shrine which houses the “medicines” on which the health
and continuation of the town and its occupants depends.
Their deaths cannot be acknowledged and they are buried
secretly; in former times, they were probably ritually
killed if they became seriously ill or infirm. They are
highly respected for their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community and are assumed to
control awesome spiritual powers. They are frequently
called upon to settle disputes and to preside at witchcraft
trials.
Within the Christian churches, the civilized–native
dichotomy stratifies participation and leadership, particularly for women. The local Episcopal congregations set a
higher tithe for civilized women than for “lappa women”
and expect them to take the lead in the altar society, in
women’s prayer groups, and in organizing wakes, funerals, and other ceremonies. The other major source of spiritual power, witchcraft, is available to anyone whose
“heart is strong,” regardless of gender. Experienced elders are usually assumed to be powerful witches (otherwise, how could they have lived so long?) who can be
both guardians of the community or a threat depending on
how they are treated. Much of the respect and deference
accorded to the elders stems from a fear that they will
either actively harm young people who anger them or,
at the very least, withdraw their spiritual protection.
Women and young men are often accused of using witchcraft to harm others, an acknowledgement of both their
subordinate status and their agency in resisting it.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
It is undeniable that men have more leisure time than
women. In addition to their work of provisioning the
household as farmers, market vendors or cash-sector
employees, Glebo women are responsible for domestic
tasks such as cooking, cleaning, supplying firewood and
water, washing and ironing clothes, and supervising
young children. These tasks are often done by children
and teenagers of both sexes, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the female head of the household. The need
for many hands to contribute to this work drives the
system of child fosterage described above.
414
Glebo
Men spend their leisure time in sex-segregated
groups, talking local and national politics or listening to
the radio, if available. Women spend what little free time
they have in groups of other women, often braiding each
other’s hair and exchanging news. Younger people who
are in school or otherwise considered civilized have more
gender-mixed activities; church groups and school
classes sponsor “disco dances” and video showings using
a gas-powered generator to supply electricity. It is
considered odd, and possibly indicative of witchcraft, for
anyone to spend their leisure time alone.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Men have formal authority over women in Glebo society.
Women, through their role as producers and distributors
of food, hold a great deal of informal power and can
generally act effectively in their own interests. Women
speak of “fighting with food,” letting their husbands
know they are displeased by giving them small portions
of rice with little or no meat in the sauce. Women also
withhold food, sometimes for weeks at a time, from
adolescent or adult children who have offended them.
A woman expects to be consulted in all major decisions
affecting the family, including whether or not her husband should take an additional wife or wives. Because
“a woman can make a rice farm without a man, but a man
cannot make a rice farm without a woman” (Carter &
Mends-Cole, 1982, p. 37), men have a strong incentive to
keep their marriages intact. A woman who has divorced
her husband can very easily get a new one, or support herself through market vending, but a man who has a poor
reputation for satisfying his wife will find it difficult to
marry again. The practice of polygyny also means that
there are more men looking for spouses than women.
Civilized Glebo women are in a much more difficult
position since they cannot publicly participate in the
market and are often literate but not educated enough for
the wage sector. Such women may end up as secondary
non-residential “wives” of prominent men.
SEXUALITY
All Glebo adults are assumed to be sexually active and
celibacy for any extended period is believed to cause
illness and “dryness” for both men and women. There is
recognition that unrestrained sexuality can lead to
conflicts and even violence or witchcraft; “woman
palaver” refers to the competition between two men
over the same woman. A 2-year postpartum taboo on
sexual intercourse was common in former times; the
milk of a nursing mother could be “spoiled” by the heat
and exertion of sex and also by exposure to semen,
endangering the child. Glebo men cited this belief as a
justification for polygyny to disapproving missionaries in
the 19th century.
Male-to-female transvestism is an element of
masquerade, although I have never observed the reverse
(i.e., women dressed as men). The men’s funeral dance,
or war dance, always includes some aspects of crossdressing by one or two younger men, who add a bra or
negligee to the warrior costume of raffia skirts and shredded animal skins. This warrior transvestism was common
among rebels during the Liberian civil war of 1989–96
and was commented on at length by foreign reporters
(Moran, 1996). Men also impersonate women in full
costume at liminal moments like New Year’s Day, or in
the funeral dance performed for a young adult women.
There is widespread denial that homosexuality exists at
all, although public affection between people of the same
sex is considered normal and natural.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Although there are reports of the practice of child
betrothal in earlier times, contemporary Glebo marriage
requires the consent of both parties. A period of engagement, symbolized by the man placing a sliver of bamboo
in his intended’s hair, was followed by a trial period
during which the couple lived together to “get to know
each other’s ways” (Innes, 1966). A series of gift
exchanges, with specific payments to the brides’ mother,
constitute bridewealth and may continue for many years.
Husbands and wives who have been together for decades
may disagree publicly on whether or not they are “really
married yet;” it is in the wife’s interest to assert that all
the payments are not complete. On the other hand, a
wealthy man who makes a big show of bringing “two
bulls” (or their cash equivalent) to his father-in-law can
expect a lavish feast and high prestige for both his wife
and himself. Civilized Christian Glebo aspire to a “white
wedding” in a church with Western-style dresses,
Bibliography
attendants, printed programs, and a cake-and-punch
reception afterwards.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
In general, Glebo hold high romantic ideals for marriage,
although they acknowledge that these are often not met.
Managing a large harmonious household, especially a
polygynous one, is recognized as requiring luck, wisdom,
and a good sense of humor on the part of all. Family
etiquette holds that a woman should serve her husband
his portion in separate dishes at mealtimes; a loving relationship is signaled by his asking her to join her portion
with his so that they can eat together. A couple make their
relationship visible to the community by eating together
outside the house in full view of passers-by. Women also
cite a man’s willingness to “show me the pay slip” if he
is employed in the wage sector as a sign of his love and
devotion. Men are expected to provide the physical structure of a house and to pay rent if necessary, but their other
income is for use at their own discretion. Therefore
divulging the full amount to a wife when they are not
required to do so is an indication of trust.
Polygynous households are said to work best if each
wife has her own separate kitchen and bedroom. They can
then take turns cooking for the husband on different days
of the week and he can “visit” them in privacy. Husbands
are advised that they should avoid favoritism and treat
multiple wives with absolute equality, especially when
buying them gifts. A group of three women wearing suits
of identical cloth was once pointed out to me as an example of an especially well-run household, in which the
women signaled their solidarity by wearing their husbands’ gift at the same time. Friendly relations among
cowives can backfire on a man, however, if they “gang
up” to sanction him by withholding food or sex.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Brothers and sisters usually maintain close relations
throughout their lives, although they may reside some
distance from each other. Both have responsibilities to
each other’s children; the mother’s brother is expected to
be a friendly advisor, while the father’s sister has a disciplinary and rather judgmental role in the lives of younger
lineage members. Women continue to see themselves as
415
in-laws to their husbands and children and feel close
solidarity with patrikin. They expect to share in the inheritance of deceased kinsmen and loudly berate widows
who try to claim “our property,” even as they may try to
make claims on conjugal resources when they become
widows themselves.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Mission activity and colonization by American settlers in
the 19th century certainly introduced new ideas into
Glebo society, particularly surrounding civilized domesticity and the exclusive roles of male breadwinner and
female homemaker that still finds expression in the
economic restrictions on civilized women. However, it is
important to realize that these were not the first changes
introduced from abroad, and that the Glebo and other
coastal peoples had been assimilating new practices,
materials, and ideologies through centuries of trade, first
with savannah societies to the north and later with
European ships along the coast. In the 1990s, political
unrest and civil war introduced new forms of militarization and hypermasculinity drawn from Western action
films like the Rambo series (Moran, 1996). As men have
been pulled into new forms of violence, women have
suffered disproportionately as refugees and internally
displaced persons (IDPs), unable to carry out their
highly valued roles as providers for their children.
With peace still elusive in Liberia, the future of sex and
gender constructions among the Glebo remain to be
determined.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooks, G. E. (1972). The Kru Mariner in the 19th Century: An
historical compendium. Newark, DE: Liberian Studies Association.
Carter, J., & Mends-Cole, J. (1982). Liberian women: Their role in food
production and their educational and legal status (Profile of
Liberian Women in Development Project). Monrovia, Liberia:
U.S. AID/University of Liberia.
Clark, G. (1994). Onions are my husband: Survival and accumulation
by West African market women. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Herzog, G., & Blooah, C. (1936). Jabo proverbs from Liberia. London:
Oxford University Press.
Innes, G. (1966). An introduction to Grebo. London: School of Oriental
and African Studies.
416
Johnson, S. J. (1957). Traditional history and folklore of the Glebo
Tribe. Monrovia, Liberia: Bureau of Folkways.
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Grebo-speaking peoples. Philadelphia: Institute for Liberian
Studies.
Martin, J. J. (1968). The dual legacy: Government authority and mission
influence among the Glebo of eastern Liberia, 1834–1910.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, Boston, MA.
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Moran, M. H. (1989). Collective action and the “representation” of
African women: A Liberian case study. Feminist Studies, 15,
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Moran, M. H. (1990). Civilized women: Gender and prestige in
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for status among the Glebo of Liberia. In K. T. Hansen (Ed.),
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transvestism in the Liberian civil war. In C. R. Sutton (Ed.),
Feminism, nationalism, and militarism (pp. 73–88). Arlington, VA:
American Anthropological Association and the Association for
Feminist Anthropology.
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the Glebo of Liberia? Liberian Studies Journal, 25, 25–41.
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and economic change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Greeks of Kalymnos
David E. Sutton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The alternative name is Kalymnian Islanders.
LOCATION
Kalymnos is part of the Dodecanese island chain, at the
eastern edge of the Aegean Sea. The Dodecanese islands
(which include Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos) were incorporated into the modern Greek State in 1948. Kalymnos lies
about 3 miles off the coast of Turkey.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
While Kalymnian Islanders are Greek by background and
citizenship, and the vast majority are practicing Greek
Orthodox Christians, certain aspects of their history and
social structure make their gender system quite distinct
from that which has been described for other parts of
Greece. Kalymnians make the claim that “we used to
have matriarchy on the island,” referring to the perceived
female power over key decision-making that sets the
island off from a more patriarchal mainland Greek tradition. From an anthropological perspective, Kalymnos and
a few of the other Dodecanese islands are extremely
unusual in that they are not only matrilocal in their residence patterns, but they traditionally practiced a system
of female primogeniture in inheritance, which I will
examine further below.1
The Dodecanese islands have long been separated
historically from the fortunes of the rest of Greece.
From the 13th century, they were ruled successively by
Venetian and Genoese merchants, by the Knights of
Saint John, by the Ottoman Empire, and, for approximately 30 years prior to World War II, by the state of Italy
as part of its attempt to develop a colonial empire.
Foreign rule, however, was fairly light during most of this
time, and islanders developed an elaborate system of
local government known as the Demogerontia or council
of elders, an annually elected body that administered the
affairs of each island. It was during the Italian period
(1913–42) that protest against foreign rule reached its
zenith and took on the interesting gender dimensions
discussed below.
Kalymnians, who number about 15,000 in local
residence, refer to their home as “the barren island.” It is
49 square miles of rock, of which less than a fifth is arable
land. Thus, Kalymnians have a long tradition of seafaring, and have become known in the past century as “the
island of sponge fishermen” (Bernard, 1976; Warn,
2000). Sponge fishing in the Mediterranean, which
required male absence for 6–8 months of the year, has
been an important factor in shaping the island’s gender
structure.
The sponge industry has been in decline since the
1970s, and the island economy has shifted to rely more
on fishing, the merchant marine, tourism, and migrant
remittances. Kalymnians practice seasonal and more permanent migration, and have established large migrant
communities primarily in Darwin, Australia, and Tarpon
Springs, Florida (U.S.A.). Tarpon Springs has been
dubbed “little Kalymnos,” and some Kalymnians continue sponge fishing off the coast of Florida. There are
also over 100 non-Greek-born permanent residents of
Kalymnos, many of whom are British, American, and
Scandinavian women who are married to Kalymnian men
(and more uncommonly, the reverse [Sutton, 1998a]).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS
OF GENDER
Kalymnos is similar to the rest of Greece insofar as
constructions of gender are heavily influenced by
Greek Orthodox Christianity. Ideal gender images are
closely tied to marital and reproductive roles. To be a
complete man or woman you must be married with
children. Older and married women tend to wear modest
dress. Widowed men, and particularly widowed women,
are traditionally expected to wear black for the rest of
417
418
Greeks of Kalymnos
their lives. Until recently, sexual attractiveness was only
a concern for unmarried women. Western influences and
tourism have had some impact on dress styles, appearance, and make-up, especially among youth, and affect
ongoing debates about proper/improper swimwear and
beach decor. While dark hair is the norm, blond hair,
because of its association with Western Europe, is often
desired in both men and women. One woman described
her newborn blonde granddaughter to me as having
“specification from the European Union.”
boys and girls go to Athens or further abroad to pursue
their education. One 18-year-old who had moved to
Athens on her own at age 16 to study at a beauty school
told me that she had won out over her father’s hesitations.
Although her parents had heard comments from neighbors about allowing their daughter to go to Athens on her
own, such things were occurring much more frequently
now, so had none of the air of scandal that they might
have in the past.
Attainment of Adulthood
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Before the 1970s, education beyond primary school
tended to be a luxury of the well-off on Kalymnos. Now
it is desired by all groups as a strategy for upward mobility. Education is highly valued for both boys and girls,
and both are expected to achieve at school, although
matrilocality means that mothers also hope that at least
one of their daughters will not get a job, but rather share
household duties with them. Parents are eager to find
traits of intelligence and diligence in young children, and
will reinforce them by calling attention to them on a
regular basis, while upbraiding children for perceived
laziness. The word “shame” (dropi) is used to enculturate
modest dress and expression in young girls, and to discourage rambunctious behavior in boys. While parents
and other caretakers commonly make threats of beatings,
these are rarely carried out. Grandparents play a major
role as caretakers (see below), and tend to seek personality traits (such as intelligence) which they can claim to
have passed on to their grandchildren.
Puberty and Adolescence
This is a period where in the past boys enjoyed relative
freedom in relation to girls. Girls, it is said “were locked
up in their houses” in the old days on Kalymnos to protect
their reputation. In the past a larger number of boys than
girls attended school into adolescence, and those who did
not attend school (boys and girls) were apprenticed to
their mothers and fathers in various occupations (i.e., care
of animals, running a store). Now almost all children
attend school at least through 9th grade, and many strictures on girls’ movements have been lifted, as unmarried
There are no special rituals associated with the attainment
of adulthood, apart from the marriage ceremony.
However, given that many Kalymnians in the past, and in
some cases still today, marry quite young (14 was not an
uncommon age of marriage for females, slightly older for
males), marriage did not mark a definitive transition to
adulthood, which is a more fluid process involving other
markers such as childbirth, work, etc.
Middle Age and Old Age
Grandparental status is very important on Kalymnos.
Maternal grandmothers often are the de facto heads of
matrilocal households, caring for children and organizing
household tasks with their married daughter(s).
Grandparents are congratulated on the birth of a child,
especially if the child has been named after them (see
below), since this means that their name has been carried
on into the future, and this in some sense insures their
immortality.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Such differences are not in evidence in Kalymnos to the
same degree as reported for more patrilineal/patriarchal
areas of Greece, where men are expected to be aggressive,
to “perform their masculinity,” and women are expected to
be modest, reticent, and deferential (Campbell, 1964;
du Boulay, 1974; Herzfeld, 1985, 1991). Women’s words
are not seen as a threat to the matrilocal group in the way
that they would be in patrilocal situations, where women
at marriage are outsiders who must prove their loyalty to
the group (Hirschon, 1978). Thus women are voluble and
“hold the floor” with men on a panoply of topics from sex
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
to politics. Kalymnian women are considered to be “hard”
like men, and are proud of their ability to perform hard
labor and, in extraordinary circumstances, of their martial
prowess (see below and Sutton, 1999).
419
inheritance, and to first daughters over subsequent
daughters, but retains few of the vast inequalities of
the past.
GENDER ROLES
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
While there are no extended lineages on Kalymnos, and
kinship is reckoned bilaterally, there are a number of
aspects of Kalymnian practices that show a strong
matrifocal bias. Matrilocality is the standard postmarital
residence pattern, with the husband moving into a house
owned by the wife, often attached to the residence of her
natal family. This house is usually built through the labor
of fathers and brothers, on matrilineal land, though
increasingly women themselves contribute to the building. The house traditionally reverts to the wife’s family in
cases where the wife dies without offspring. Houses and
land are transmitted matrilineally as well, associating
women with the symbolic capital of family tradition.
Thus, women are the stable elements in Kalymnian
kinship, and men are “exchanged” between groups of
women.
Perhaps the most noticeable feature of Kalymnian
practice is the tradition of first-daughter inheritance, or
female primogeniture. Under this system, the first daughter received the lion’s share of the matrilineal inheritance.
If the family owned 25 fields, the first daughter would get
20 and subsequent daughters would receive one each. If
the father owned a boat, or less commonly a store, he
would pass this on to one of his sons. But in terms of
items associated with the home, sons would not inherit at
all under this system, except under unusual circumstances. Ideally, the first daughter would have a dowry
house built for her from the family income. However, if
this was not possible, the first daughter often claimed the
parental house upon her marriage, and the rest of the family was forced to rent a house. This system was tied to
baptismal naming practices by which the first daughter
received the Christian name of her maternal grandmother,
and was thus linked to the ancestral inheritance of that
grandmother (see Sutton [1998a] for a full discussion).
This system can be documented at least back to the
17th century (Sutton, 1998a). It was officially ended
when Kalymnos was incorporated into the Greek state in
1948, with its laws of equal inheritance. It is still reflected
today in the favoritism shown to daughters over sons in
IN
ECONOMICS
Up until the 1980s, the majority of the male population
was absent from the island for 6–8 months of the year on
sponge expeditions. Some claim that it was this male
absence, as well as the tendency of divers to “live it up”
when they returned, that accounted for “women’s rule”
on the island. One woman, commenting on women’s
power over the “purse strings” and other critical family
decisions, described it to me as follows: “The divers spent
all their time at the coffee shops—music and retsina. And
not home ’til the next morning. They said “we’ve been so
long at sea, let’s celebrate.” And thus there was women’s
rule on the island” (Sutton, 1998a, p. 104). Thus women
had control over household management, as well as
involvement in informal small-scale animal husbandry
and small-scale agriculture. Women control the kitchen,
and often do not let their husbands enter kitchen spaces,
claiming that they are incompetent at cooking, and would
just mess things up.
The decline of the sponge industry has led men into
other occupations, such as seasonal migration and the
merchant marine, which continues their pattern of
absence. Both men and women work in retail trade, and
women are increasingly entering the professions on
Kalymnos, as well as the increasing number of jobs
provided by tourism. Women have an advantage here, as
they own the houses that may be set up as “rooms” for the
tourist trade (see Galani-Moutafi [1993] for other Greek
islands). Women also dominate in the growth of tutorial
schools, which supplement the local high-school system
in areas such as foreign languages (Sutton, 1998a).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Having done fieldwork accompanied by my wife and
6-month-old son, I was privileged to many discussions of
the theory and practice of childcare on Kalymnos (Sutton,
1998b). I had initially assumed that my own participation
in childcare might provoke negative comments in a
“Mediterranean” culture. However, it coincided with
420
Greeks of Kalymnos
a recent shift in values on Kalymnos toward fuller paternal participation. For the younger generation the ideal of
sex-role equality was widely accepted. While the occupational structure which favored men still meant that
women provided the majority of childcare, in cases in
which wives worked and husbands, for various reasons,
stayed home, it was seen as perfectly natural for them to
care for and raise the children. Whether present or not,
fathers are ideally seen as disciplinarians, and may be
evoked as a threat (“wait till your daddy gets home …”),
though in fact mothers engage in everyday verbal and
occasional physical reprimand of young children.
What seemed most distinctive about childcare from
my “American” perspective was the way that responsibility was distributed over a three-generational family,
and not vested exclusively in the parents. Thus, we would
often receive advice from 15-year-old boys on how to
care for our baby, reflecting the fact that older children
are expected to look after their siblings on a regular basis.
Furthermore, because of matrilocal residence, a woman
often relies on her parents for advice and for regular dayto-day care. This was even more true in the past, when
teenage marriage was common. But it also reflects the
strong bond felt between grandparents and grandchildren,
which is reinforced through the baptismal naming system
(Sutton, 1998a). This means that a grandmother may have
a particularly strong bond with the grandchild who bears
her name (or a significant family name), and the same is
true for grandfathers. Uncles and aunts often play an
important caretaker role, and childless uncles and aunts
who are well off financially can often adopt a child from
their siblings. “Uncle” and “Aunt” are used by children as
terms of respect to neighbors and other adults on
Kalymnos.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men have long controlled the official political structures
of Kalymnos, as no woman has ever been elected mayor,
vice-mayor, or regional governor, though women appear
with increasing frequency on the town council. The
church hierarchy is completely male as well, as is the case
for Greek Orthodoxy at large. However, women often
hold considerable influence, power, and leadership roles
on Kalymnos through more unofficial channels. Never
was this more the case than with Katerina Vouvali, the
wife of one of Kalymnos’ wealthy sponge merchants,
who outlived him by several decades and wielded her
economic power to control the labor market on Kalymnos
and to become, from the 1920s through the 1950s, the
most powerful person on the island. Memories of “The
Lady,” as she was known, are mixed; some remembered
her stinginess in relation to her workers. But both men
and women also remember her for her intelligence in
economic affairs, and employ the word for “legitimate
intelligence” (eksipsi), rather than the word “cunning”
(poniri), which is a trait often associated with women in
Greece.
Vouvali is not the exception that proves the rule, as
there are many other examples of women on Kalymnos
in the past who have risen to prominence and influence
economically, or in the fields of education, local scholarship, or religion, and whose names resonate in local
memory (e.g., Vakina Soulounia, “The Teacher”). This
continues to be the case today.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Many have noted a lack of fit between the official
androcentric ideology of Greek Orthodoxy, which is
similar to Western Christianity in its unequal treatment of
males and females, and actual everyday religious practice
(Dubisch, 1995; Hart, 1992; Hirschon, 1998). While men
have strong anticlerical views, and do not generally
attend church except on high holy days, women are active
participants in church liturgies, in caring for chapels
dedicated to different saints, in caring for gravestones and
cemeteries (Kenna, 1976), and in taking religious excursions to various miracle-working sites, such as the
Church of the Virgin Mary on Tinos (Dubisch, 1995).
Women are responsible for the religious “health” of their
husbands, children, extended family, and ancestors. They
fulfill this duty through mundane acts such as bringing
home communion bread for nonattendees or arranging
for the proper memorial ceremonies and other significant
ceremonies focused around the house and the extended
family and ancestors, as well as through caring for saints’
chapels in the belief that the saints will likewise take care
of their family. Thus, women play a crucial role in this
key domain of spiritual life on Kalymnos and in Greece
more generally.
One event that encapsulates the significance of
women’s relationship to the church on Kalymnos is the
famous Rock War of 1935. Over the course of 3 days,
Sexuality
the women of Kalymnos, armed with rocks, fought the
Italian occupying army to a standstill in a successful
attempt to thwart Italian plans to transfer control of the
church administration of the Dodecanese to the Pope. The
Rock War was the largest and most successful protest
during the 30 years of Italian rule over the Dodecanese
islands. It became a point of reference in the consciousness of future generations, who for many years after
would say, “He or she was born or died at the time of the
Rock War” (Sutton, 1999). While local history provides
different interpretations of men’s absence from the
protest, I would argue that it simply reflects the fact that
Italians were laying claim to control over Kalymnian
women’s central domain of collective activity.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
If there is an area of life where men do exert control over
women, it is that of movement outside the home and “free
time.” While men can spend their leisure time talking
with friends (other men) at coffee shops, or on hunting or
fishing expeditions, women tend to need to legitimate
their activities away from the home. The restriction of
women’s movement is a phenomenon widely reported in
the literature on Greece. When she leaves the house a
woman opens herself up to comments by the community
on her behavior: where is she going, how is she
dressed, is she meeting a lover? (e.g., du Boulay, 1974;
Seremetakis, 1991). Thus trips downtown for shopping or
to the church on various religious duties are often a
chance for married women to find time to socialize with
friends, although they are often expected to give an
account of their movements when they return home.
However, this perspective has been contested and has
shifted over the past 15 years, as young women move into
new spaces such as the Kafeteria (a non-sex-segregated
coffee shop; see Cowan [1991]). Going to the beach is
one leisure activity that seems to be respectable and
justifiable for women of all ages. Young women often go
to the beach in groups unchaperoned by adults, while
married women are often accompanied by their children
if not their husbands as well. Beach excursions are, from
all accounts, a long-standing Kalymnian tradition,
although many people remember earlier times (before the
1960s) when men and women were expected to bathe at
separate beaches.
421
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
The issue of the relative status of men and women is
a difficult one, given that Kalymnians themselves
constantly debate “who’s in charge,” and whether they
used to have “matriarchy” or “patriarchy” on the island.
The fact that Kalymnos is part of Greece, a country with
a largely androcentric dominant ideology, cuts against the
grain of local practices of matrilocality and matrilineal
inheritance. And Kalymnos’s history of resistance to outside control—Ottoman, Italian, and in some cases the
Greek state—make all claims to “authority” ring somewhat hollow. Thus sexuality is an area in which, at least in
the past, men have had greater freedom than women. By
contrast, women clearly predominate in economic and
family decision-making, and they gain symbolic status
given their more direct association with family continuity.
The vagaries of status and control are illustrated in
the following joke, popular among Kalymnian men when
I conducted fieldwork:
A study is being conducted of whether men or women run things. The
researchers offer a horse to each household where the man is found to
be in charge and a chicken to each household where the woman is found
to be in charge. The researchers go through the entire village rewarding
chickens, only chickens. Finally, they reach a house off on the mountainside where a large, heavily mustached man sits in traditional dress,
sharpening his knife. When they ask him who runs his household, he
responds with great offense that it should be perfectly clear that he is
the boss—whatever he says, goes. The researchers tell him that he will
be awarded a fine horse, would he like a white or a black one? He asks
them to wait a minute, calls to his wife, and says “Wife, which horse
shall we take, the white or the black one?”
SEXUALITY
Although men tend to be more sexually forward than
women on Kalymnos, talk of sex is not taboo for either
men or women, and I often heard ribald tales told by
“respectable” married women. In part, this reflects the
fact that sexuality (and other bodily pleasure) tends not to
be stigmatized in Greek Orthodox tradition as long as it
is channeled through proper kinship and marriage roles.
Homosexuality is stigmatized largely insofar as it
interferes with these demands. As in the rest of Greece,
however, it is only the passive male partner who is labeled
“homosexual” (omofilofilos, colloq. poustis). One can be
422
Greeks of Kalymnos
an active male partner as an extension of male virility
(Loizos, 1994). While there were several “known” homosexuals on Kalymnos, lesbianism is seen as an anomaly
and as a foreign importation.
Control over sexuality has long been the source of
tension between generations, and in particular between
fathers and daughters. People still talk of “the old years”
when fathers “kept their daughters locked up in their
houses” in order to keep them from shaming the family
honor through even the hint of premarital sexual behavior. Indeed, when people spoke of male power and
control on Kalymnos, they generally did so in the context
of the father–daughter relationship rather than the
husband–wife relationship. This is also reflected at
the level of island identity in claims that men on other
neighboring islands “don’t care if you sleep with their
daughters.” While other islanders “let their daughters”
have relations with Italian men during the Italian
Occupation, Kalymnians claim that their resistance to
Italian rule was expressed in the fact that any Kalymnian
women who had sexual relations with Italians were killed
or exiled (see Doumanis [1997] for women’s “countermemories” on this topic).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Traditionally, there were three types of courtship on
Kalymnos: arranged marriages ( proksenio, synekesio),
marriages of “familiarity” (tis gnorimias), and “love marriages” (tou erota). Arranged marriages were controlled
by parents, but occasionally involved intermediaries such
as aunts or uncles. In these cases courtship could be quite
short—only a period of several weeks. Marriages of
familiarity could be initiated by the couple themselves,
with their parents’ approval, and often involved neighbor
children who had grown up nearby and knew each other
over a long period. These two types could blend into each
other: neighborhood parents could arrange marriages
between children who had grown up together, and
courtships might be longer, extending until after the man
had performed military service. One woman boasted of
choosing the best of five sons that her neighbor had
offered to marry to her daughter. Because of their long
acquaintance, she knew which son was most honest and
upright. The final type, the “love marriage,” was initiated
through sexual desire, and might involve the couple
“stealing away” without the knowledge of one or both
parents to get married on a nearby island. Though parents
still play a role in spousal selection, arranged marriages
are growing increasingly uncommon on Kalymnos. With
the advent of “dating” over the past 15 years, couples
themselves have an increasingly larger role to play, and
love becomes an important if not decisive factor in
decisions.
Weddings often involve a day of celebrations before
the actual ceremony. These celebrations include an
opening of the couple’s house to the guests of the family,
firing of guns, or throwing of dynamite (Sutton, 1998a).
The guests throw money on the nuptial bed as a gesture
to symbolize the couple’s future fertility. Often the wedding party walks in a procession through town to the
church. The ceremony itself is conducted in the Greek
Orthodox tradition (although political marriages were
legalized by the socialist government of Andreas
Papandreou in the early 1980s, they are uncommon).
This involves the setting of crowns on the heads of the
couple by a man and women chosen by the groom and
bride respectively (the koumbari). The koumbari are
close friends who often become godparents (nonoi) to the
couple’s children.
Until recently, divorce was highly stigmatized, and
the prospects of remarriage were slim because both men
and women would be stigmatized by gossip. While gossip
still goes on, divorce and remarriage have become much
more common. In cases where an affair leads to divorce,
the partner having the affair (husband or wife) may leave
the island to avoid criticism, leaving the remaining
spouse to care for the children.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
While “companionate marriage” has become more common under Western influence, spouses still may retain
primary allegiance to their natal kin, facilitated for
women by matrilocality. The recent downplaying of
dowry transmission at marriage reflects more “romantic”
ideas about marriage. Young women feel that they do not
want to be reduced to “something to be bought and sold”
as the symbolism of dowry implies. By contrast, their
mothers were among the most outspoken continuing
advocates of the dowry during my fieldwork, as they see
it as protecting wives from being financially dependent
on their husbands. The control over everyday and significant decision-making is highly variable among couples.
References
However, there is a general tendency to give husbands the
benefit of publicly seeming to be “in charge,” while, in
fact, wives are making key decisions “behind the scenes.”
This can be tied in part to male absence on spongediving expeditions. As one woman remembered, her
mother sold their house while their father was gone and
then found ways of sugarcoating the news to him when
he returned.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The importance of grandparents as caretakers and as
providers of inheritance and names has been noted above.
One result of this inheritance system, which led to
favoritism toward eponymous children, and toward
women more generally, has been that brothers and sisters
may often come into conflict over the unevenness of
property distribution. In former times, brothers were
responsible for working for their sisters if their father
could not provide a dowry house, and many dowries have
provisions in which brothers promise to provide a certain
sum of money for the new couple after a specified time.
While this could lead to close bonds, it could also lead to
cross-sibling resentment as well. In recent times, with
equal inheritance becoming more the norm (although
many still show favoritism toward daughters), there are
increasing possibilities for property disputes. For example, a brother and sister were having a long-running
disagreement over their mother’s proposed distribution of
her property. When the sister gave birth to her first daughter and named it after her mother, the brother angrily
complained that the little baby had stolen his part of the
property because now his mother would be more disposed
to transfer the property to her eponymous grandchild
through her daughter.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
In the past the practice of female primogeniture meant that
a class of women (first daughters) derived high status from
both their economic preeminence and their symbolic
association with the continuity of the family line, as
expressed in houses, land, and baptismal names. As
female primogeniture was replaced by equal inheritance,
with marginal preference shown to first daughters
423
over subsequent daughters, and to daughters over sons,
women have been able to retain an important source of
status and power, but now must compete with men in an
unequal job market for the money which buys access to
consumer goods. At the same time, Western influences
have led to increasingly greater freedom for young women
to date and to travel unchaperoned by fathers, mothers, or
brothers. Thus, the “double standard” in sexual behavior
has eroded.
Clearly young women (and young men) have gained
“freedom” in relationship to parental control, a phenomenon reported throughout Greece and Europe as parents no
longer control the key resources and knowledge that
children need for their adult life (e.g., Argyrou, 1996).
However, the influence of Western ideals of romantic love
and spousal companionship may increasingly separate
women from their female kin who provided the day-to-day
support to counter controlling or abusive husbands. As
land and houses become less symbolically linked to
family continuity, women potentially lose another key
source of their previous status. The relationship between
“freedom,” “power,” and “status” raises tricky analytical
questions that are the subject of my ongoing research.
NOTE
1. Other islands which have been described by anthropologists in terms
of their “matriarchal” practices include Karpathos (Vernier, 1984)
and Fourni (Dimitriou-Kotsoni, 1993).
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and Cyprus: Toward a perspective on the ethnography of modern
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institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community.
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Dimitriou-Kotsoni, S. (1993). The Aegean cultural tradition. Journal of
Mediterranean Studies, 3, 62–76.
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Doumanis, N. (1997). Myth and memory in the Mediterranean:
Remembering fascism’s empire. London: MacMillan.
Dubisch, J. (1995). In a different place: Pilgrimage, gender and politics
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Contested identities: Gender and kinship in modern Greece
(pp. 79–97). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Hirschon, R. (1998). Heirs to the Greek catastrophe (2nd ed.). Oxford:
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Greeks of Kalymnos
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masculinity: Comparative ethnographies (pp. 66–96). London:
Routledge.
Seremetakis, C. N. (1991). The last word: Women, death and divination
in Innner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sutton, D. (1998a). Memories cast in stone: The relevance of the past
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Sutton, D. (1998b). “He’s too cold”: Children and the limits of culture
on a Greek island. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 23,
127–138.
Sutton, D. (1999). Rescripting women’s collective action: The cultural
politics of gendered memory. Identities, 5, 469–500.
Vernier, B. (1984). Putting kin and kinship to good use: The circulation
of goods, labour, and names on Karpathos (Greece). In H. Medick &
D. W. Sabean (Eds.), Interest and emotion: Essays on the study of
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South Woodham Ferrers, Great Britain: Guardian Angel Press.
Hadza
Frank Marlowe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names are Hadzabe, Hadzapi, Hatsa, Tindiga,
Watindiga, Wakindiga, and Kangeju.
LOCATION
The Hadza live around Lake Eyasi, North Tanzania,
Africa, located at latitude 3°S, longitude 35°E.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Hadza are nomadic hunter–gatherers who live in a
savanna–woodland habitat around Lake Eyasi in northern
Tanzania (Woodburn, 1968a). They number about 1,000
(Blurton Jones, O’Connell, Hawkes, Kamuzora, &
Smith, 1992), of whom many are still full-time foragers,
and the others are part-time foragers with virtually none
practicing any kind of agriculture. Men collect honey and
use bows and arrows to hunt mammals and birds. Women
dig wild tubers and gather baobab fruit and berries.
Camps usually have about 30 people and move about
every month or so in response to the availability of water
and berries and a variety of other reasons, such as a death.
The Hadza are very egalitarian and have no political
structure, indeed they have no specialists of any sort
(Woodburn, 1979). A slightly greater respect is afforded
to older people, but it is not very marked compared with
that in other East African societies. One manifestation of
this respect is the fact that camps are usually referred to
by the name of some senior man, usually in his fifties or
sixties. The core of a camp, however, tends to be a group
of sisters, one of whom the man has long been married to.
There is no higher level of organization than the camp,
and people move into and out of it with ease. Postmarital
residence is best described as multilocal. Of those
marriages where one spouse had parents living in the
same camp, in about 60% it was the wife, 40% the
husband (Woodburn, 1968b).
There are no clans, or unilineal kin groups of any
kind. Descent is traced bilaterally with overlapping kin
ties, so that any Hadza can usually decipher some kin
connection to any other. Generation and gender are distinguished. For example, gender is distinguished among
grandparents but matrilineal and patrilineal grandparents
are not distinguished (though a suffix can be added to
distinguish them). Cousins are distinguished by gender but
matrilineal and patrilineal are not distinguished, nor are
parallel cousins distinguished from cross cousins. The term
for a female cousin is the same as for sister and male cousin
the same as for brother, though in both cases they can be
distinguished from siblings with a prefix. A distinction is
made between maternal and paternal aunts and uncles.
Father’s brother is called by the same term as father, which
may be related to the fairly often practiced levirate in
which a man marries his dead brother’s widow. Mother’s
brother is called by a different term than father. Maternal
and paternal aunts, on the other hand, are both called by the
same term as mother. When personal names are used, there
is only a given name (and this is often changed). However,
in recent times, when government officials, missionaries,
or researchers ask for a surname, Hadza use the first name
of the father as the child’s second name.
The Hadza language, Hadzane, has clicks, and for
that reason has often been classified with the San
languages of southern Africa, but it may be only very
distantly related (Sands, 1995). There are several different neighboring tribes of farmers and herders, the Niloticspeaking Datoga and Maasai, the Cushitic-speaking
Iraqw, and the Bantu-speaking Isanzu, Iramba, and
Sukuma. Since Hadzane is in a completely separate linguistic phylum, this means there are four different
language phyla represented, which is a high degree of
linguistic diversity for such a small area. Some of these
neighboring tribes have been in the area for a long
time, the longest being the Iraqw, who moved down
from Ethiopia 2,000–3,000 years ago (Ochieng, 1975).
Relations between the Hadza and their neighbors
are somewhat hostile but do involve some trading.
For example, the Hadza give the Datoga honey which is
425
426
made into beer and the Hadza in return get some beer or
meat. The Hadza also trade meat and snakebite medicine
for iron, cloth, and food. The Hadza resent the encroachment of the pastoralists, especially during the dry season
when their herds can drink up all the water and eat up the
plants needed to support the wildlife that the Hadza hunt.
In days past, Hadza would occasionally hunt a cow
belonging to the pastoralists but, if caught, would be
hunted down and killed by a posse of pastoralists. When
the first European explorers traveled in Hadza country,
the Hadza would hide, which was probably their response
to many outsiders (Marlowe, 2002).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Two genders, male and female, are recognized and
homosexuality is apparently absent, except perhaps for
the sex play of youngsters according to informants. The
language, Hadzane, does not have a different way of
speaking for males and females but different nouns do
take two different genders and different suffixes.
Men and women wear skirts made of skins, though
nowadays most wear factory-made used clothes they
receive as gifts from researchers or missionaries. Men
usually wear short pants and no shirt, while women wear
shukas (a small sheet) or kangas, a piece of cloth worn by
women in East Africa. Women usually cover their breasts.
Both sexes will often wear bead necklaces they make from
organic materials, though they prefer glass beads they get
in trade. They will also wear bead headbands. Both sexes
have scars, small vertical or horizontal slits, on their
cheeks which they get when they are around 2–3 years of
age. These are done by the mother, uncle, or grandfather,
as a way to mark them as Hadza. Both cut their hair very
short. Females also sometimes cut off their eyelashes.
The trait most often cited by women as important in
a potential mate is “good hunter,” followed by “character.”
The trait most often cited by men as important in a woman
is “character,” followed by “good looks” (Marlowe, n.d.).
When asked what good looking is, the answer is often “a
woman who looks like she can have lots of babies.” The
frequent mention of good hunter is interesting, given the
fact that meat is so widely shared without an equal amount
being paid back to the good hunter (Hawkes, O’Connell, &
Blurton Jones, 2001a). Therefore it is not obvious what
the benefit is to a woman who marries a good hunter.
Hadza
Men feel some pressure to keep supplying meat to
their wives and mothers-in-law to keep the mother-in-law
from counseling her daughter to look for someone better.
This pressure manifests itself in the storytelling tradition.
Only men tell these stories and they often contain a motif
of menacing mothers-in-law, for example, turning into
monsters and chasing a man, biting off chunks of his
flesh.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Though there are no formal age-sets as such, there are
terms for the various stages in life. Ola-pe is the term for
children from birth to about 4 or 5 years old. Tsetseya-pe
refers to those from about age 6 to 12 or 13. Elati-nakwete
refers to boys during their teens and up till they get
married at about 18–20. Tlakwenakweko is the term for
girls in their teens up until they marry at about 17. Elati is
the term for adults of both sexes, elati-ka-eh is the term
for someone who has already had two or three children,
pa-nekwete is the term for a person about 45–60 years old,
pa-nekwete-ka-eh refers to someone in their seventies, and
balambala is someone who is really old and becoming
frail.
Girls undergo a puberty ritual. To become men
(epeme men), males should kill a large game animal.
There is no noticeable generation gap. Teenagers get
along with older men and women. The absence of tension
between younger and older men is less than in many other
cultures because polygyny is rare and so competition
between them for women is less intense. In addition,
since there is no wealth, there is no threat of disinheritance that older men can hold over their sons to control
their behavior. However, there is some tendency recently
for males in their late teens and early twenties, especially
in larger camps, to try to act tough, for example, in negotiations with outsiders, to cultivate a reputation and gain
status as an alternative to being a good hunter. This
can lead to disagreements with the elders who are less
confrontational.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Adults express no gender preference but welcome a male
or female equally. Although men spend more time with
boys, women spend slightly more time with girls, so that
overall there is not a significant difference in how much
Gender over the Life Cycle
care young children get (Marlowe, 2002a). Both boys and
girls are reared with very little discipline. During the
“terrible two’s” children throwing tantrums will pick up
sticks and beat adults with impunity. The adults will
simply fend off the blows and laugh or, at most, make
some noise of disapproval rather than take away the stick.
However, when the 2-year-olds hit slightly older children,
those children do take revenge. Once children have
reached 4 or 5 years of age, they are in play groups with
similar aged and older children and it is probably those
older children who teach the younger ones that they
cannot get away with spoiled behavior. By age 5, all children are well behaved and wait on adults without even
being asked; for example, when seeing a man getting out
his pipe and tobacco, a child will grab an ember from the
fire and take it to the man to light the pipe.
Boys usually go naked until the age of 4 or 5 but
girls are given a pubic apron or skirt around 3 years of
age. They may also be taught modesty, for example, to
cross their legs so others cannot see beneath their skirt.
Otherwise, there is not much difference in the ways boys
and girls are treated by adults, but differences in their
behavior begin to emerge nonetheless. For example,
while 3 or 4 years old, boys and girls often play together.
By age 6 or 7 they more often play in same-sex groups.
By age 8–10, boys go foraging or playing with other
boys, while girls begin to go foraging with their mothers.
Young girls do more work, such as food processing and
tending younger siblings.
Puberty and Adolescence
At about age 16, females reach menarche and undergo
a puberty ritual, which coincides with the ripening of the
main species of berry. Girls are normally tlakwenakweko
when this occurs, though they may be much younger
(11 or 12), if there are few girls of appropriate age nearby
and a larger group is needed. During this ritual, called
Mai-to-ko, girls wear few clothes and are smeared with
animal fat and adorned with many beads from head to toe.
They may chase boys and try to hit them with a fertility
stick, a 3-foot-long stick carved by males and thought to
enhance a woman’s fertility if she carries it around. They
also undergo clitorectomy, with about half of the clitoris
cut off with a knife. This is performed by the only real
specialists that exists among the Hadza, a few old women
who know how to do this. Males are not allowed to
observe, but all women nearby attend. If men were to
427
watch, it is said they may die. Men say the reason why
women are clitorectomized is that babies would otherwise
have difficulty during delivery since the clitoris would
protrude and obstruct the birth canal. However, at least
one Hadza man also says that, without cutting off the
clitoris, a woman will move around too much and make
too much noise during sex.
Males are not circumcised and there is no ritual for
male puberty. When a male is in his early twenties and
kills a big game animal, he becomes an epeme, or adult
man. Certain parts of the larger game animals can only be
eaten by men. Females and subadult males cannot even
see the men eat this meat or they could die.
Attainment of Adulthood
Occasionally, a boy may kill a big animal, such as a
giraffe or buffalo or kudu when only 18 or so, and in this
case he may join the epeme men early. However, it is
usually not until about 20 years old that boys become
epeme men. All men over the age of about 25–30 are
considered epeme men, however, whether they have
killed a big animal or not. Once they have reached this
age, they join the other men in eating the epeme meat.
After a girl has had her Mai-to-ko, she is in the
mating market but usually does not marry for another
year or two. Girls in the late teens appear to shop
around a bit before they get married. This is the cause of
most violent disputes and murders, which are usually due
to males competing for one of these single young
females.
Middle Age and Old Age
As is the case generally throughout East Africa, respect is
shown to elders, both men and women, but especially
men. By comparison, the amount of respect shown
among the Hadza is not as marked, but is still noticeable.
One way that this is noticeable is that camps are referred
to as the camp of one of these older men. He is usually in
his fifties or sixties. By the time men are in their late
seventies their status has dropped and camps are rarely
called by their names. The man whose camp it is said to
be is usually someone who has long been married to one
of the women who belongs to a group of sisters that
actually forms the core of a camp. When one looks at the
relationship between people in a camp, most are related
to one of these women and her parents or children.
428
Hadza
Many postmenopausal women are single, either
widowed or left by their husbands some time after
menopause. They remain important in caring for and
feeding young children. These older women usually
remain hardy up until their seventies and bring in more
daily calories of food than any other age–sex category.
Hardworking Hadza grandmothers have received attention, especially in connection with the evolution of long
life-span (Blurton Jones, Hawkes, & O’Connell, 2002;
Hawkes, O’Connell, & Blurton Jones, 1997).
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Both sexes have excellent abilities to navigate their way
on forays, but males are clearly better at this. Women are
very hardworking and hardy. “Hardworking” was the
third most often cited trait that men said is important in a
wife. Hadza women speak their mind and often have long
loud bouts of bickering with other women in camp.
Compared with men, they are modest when it comes to
sexual matters. Women are very nurturing with their
children, but they are also quite willing to pass them off
to anyone who will hold them. Men are affectionate to
children, and play with them more than women do. Men
seem to be slow to anger but when they do become angry,
they can quickly kill with poisoned arrow. All murders
I am aware of were committed by men, and all were
apparently disputes over women.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
In small camps, there is usually no segregation by gender;
everyone sits and talks together. Men still hunt alone or
with one other man, and women still go foraging with
other women, but in camp all socialize together. A couple
will spend much time together as well, especially in the
early morning and once it starts to get dark. In larger
camps, couples also spend those hours together, but
during the rest of the day, the sexes are often segregated
not just while foraging but in camp. Men will sit together
at the men’s place, usually the best shade tree, sharing a
pipe of tobacco and working on arrows, while women sit
together under another tree sewing, or grooming children
and one another, and chewing tobacco. Much of the time
in camp women are alone or with other women pounding
baobab on large rocks.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Women go foraging everyday for an average of 4 hrs,
usually in groups of about three to eight but never alone.
Both sexes gather baobab and berries, but women take
more of these back to camp than men or children do. Men
spend an average of 6 hours foraging every day, usually
alone, though sometimes in pairs, especially in the dry
season when they hunt at night waiting to ambush animals that come to drink (Marlowe, 2003). Men always
carry their bow and arrows and so are always ready to
hunt, even when they are specifically going out for honey.
They will climb tall baobab trees to get honey and sometimes fall to their death.
Husband and wife will often go foraging together
once they get older, in their sixties. Even younger couples
will forage together some during the honey season. The
husband will look for honey while his wife is digging or
gathering baobab nearby. The wife will take an infant
with her, and sometimes even older children will accompany their parents. Toddlers are almost always left in
camp because they are too young to walk far and too big
to carry.
In camp, women do the food processing and cooking
for the most part. However, men butcher large animals
and will then sometimes put the meat on a fire to roast it.
On rare occasions women kill some small animals, and
they often butcher smaller animals and roast or boil the
meat. Women (and children) fetch water and firewood
every day. They usually tend the hearth, and it is interesting that they say they do not know how to make a fire
with a fire-drill like men, but rather need to carry embers
if no matches are available. Women do the sewing and
also build the grass huts.
Females of all ages provide 55% of daily kilocalories
brought into camp and males 45%. However, among
married couples with children under 3 years of age, men
provide 58% of the daily kilocalories brought into camp
(Marlowe, 2003). The foods men bring into camp, especially large game, but also honey, is shared more widely
outside the household than the foods women bring home,
and therefore it is not clear how much men’s food represents household provisioning (Hawkes, O’Connell, &
Blurton Jones, 2001b). When a child’s mother dies it is
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
more likely to die, but it is not more likely to die if its
father is not living with it (Blurton Jones, Marlowe,
Hawkes, & O’Connell, 2000).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
In the first year of life children are held by their mothers
50% of the time, and 2.9% of the time during daylight
hours by their biological fathers, which is 5.4% of the
time their fathers are in camp (Marlowe, 1999). The rest
of the holding is done by a variety of others such as
grandmothers, siblings, and other female kin and friends.
Nursing is on demand, with infants carried in a skin or
cloth on the mother’s back. There is no noticeable difference in the way male and female children are treated by
men and women. Men spend more time with male
children than they do with female children, but since
women spend slightly more with female children, overall
the two sexes appear to get about the same amount of
care, though males do nurse more frequently (Marlowe,
in press). Men provide more care to their own children
than they do to stepchildren (Marlowe, 1999).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
There are no formal leadership roles among the Hadza;
egalitarian is the only way to describe them (Woodburn,
1979). The elderly are dominant over the young and men
over women, but even these differences are slight. This
does not mean that individuals never try to boss others
around. This does occasionally happen when someone
has some link to outsiders, such as missionaries or
government officials, that gives them some leverage.
Others tend to simply ignore them once the outsider who
leaves.
While men may talk about moving camp, it is
usually not until the women are ready to move that a
move occurs. Moves often occur because women are
forced to go too far to get tubers, or because berries have
just ripened elsewhere. Old people who are not senile are
often called upon to make decisions and settle disputes.
Men do most of the public oratory and decision-making,
but women voice their opinion, sometimes in public and
plenty at home, often loudly.
429
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
There is no organized religion and no belief in an
afterlife. There is a creation myth that explains how
people came to be, and how there came to be different
tribes. The sun (Ishoko) is female while the moon (Seta)
is male. The stars are their children. The Hadza have a
rich storytelling tradition. Stories are always told by men.
There is a story about a woman long ago who was an
expert hunter with bow and arrow. The men were getting
none of the meat so they decided to sneak up and watch
her and saw that she was eating meat. She saw them and
gave them the epeme meat, certain special parts (heart,
kidneys, genitals) of larger animals, so that they would
go away. From then on, the epeme meat is only for men
to eat.
There is a ritual epeme dance performed at night. It
must be pitch black, with no moonlight or firelight. Men
perform one at a time, stomping and singing and
whistling to the women who sit and return their calls. The
man attempts to rouse the women into getting up and
twirling around him. The women try to guess who the
man is through the call and shout, and his anonymity
allows them to interact with him in a way they would not
do otherwise, suggesting sexual overtones.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Hadza men sometimes play a gambling game called
lukuchuko, in which they toss pieces of bark against a tree
and determine winners based on how they land, using
arrows as the stakes. Girls (and to a lesser extent boys)
sometimes play a game like jax using small rocks. Young
girls play with dolls made out of old cloth or clay. Young
boys often play with a tin lid found thrown away which
is attached to a stick so they can roll it along on the
ground like a wheel.
The main form of art is body adornment. Women
make bead necklaces out of organic pods, bones, shells,
and little sticks. They also sew skins into skirts which are
also sometimes adorned with beads. For many years the
Hadza have been getting glass beads from their neighbors
such as the Maasai. They will use these to make headbands, which they were doing as long ago as the earliest
photographs in the 1930s. Men will carve various items
430
Hadza
such as a fertility stick or arrow, or will sometimes carve
geometric designs in a gourd used to carry water or
honey. Another form of art is singing and dancing, which
the Hadza do often. The only musical instrument is the
voice. A few men occasionally play a zeze, a stringed
instrument made with a gourd, or an mbira, a finger piano
made from wood and metal, both of which have been
adopted from their Bantu neighbors.
Men will sit making arrows and talking for hours
while in camp. Women will sit together talking, sewing,
and processing food, for example, pounding baobab
seeds, or grooming each other and children. They will
pick lice out of other’s hair and eat them. They will also
cut each others’ hair and eyelashes. Men do not groom or
get groomed as much, but sometimes a wife will groom
her husband and men will groom a child.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Men are only slightly dominant over women. A man may
occasionally hit his wife, though others may disapprove
and her kin may intervene. Wife-beating appears to be
rare, but increases whenever men drink alcohol which
they sometimes get from their agro-pastoralist neighbors.
They make no alcohol themselves. Hadza women speak
their mind, especially at home. They are quite independent and capable of feeding themselves and children,
especially since they usually live with their kin.
SEXUALITY
Sex is considered natural. Women are modest and do not
talk openly about sex, though some will answer questions
about sex in private. Men are less private but still do not
talk about sex publicly very much. There is usually
premarital sex before a man and woman start living
together. In fact, sex play occurs from an early age and by
10–12, males and females may actually copulate.
Certainly in their early to mid teens some are having sex.
This continues until a girl becomes pregnant or gets married. Very often, girls become pregnant before they get
married and there is no disapproval of this.
All murders of Hadza by Hadza (prior to frequent
alcohol consumption) appear to be related to male
jealousy. This may be when a man discovers that his wife
has had an affair, in which case he may kill the other man
and beat his wife, or kill both of them. More often,
however, it is when two men are competing for the same
single woman. Since marital infidelity is dangerous for
females, and they never leave camp alone, it is probably
fairly rare. Men, according to Hadza opinion and
practice, are more likely than women to philander.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
During their teens, girls and boys begin courting. This
often begins with a boy sending a go-between, such as his
sister, to let the girl know he likes her. If he receives a
positive response, they will sneak off at night for a sexual
rendezvous. If they like each other enough, they begin
living together and are then considered married. Sometimes the young man will need to talk to the young
woman’s parents and both males and females seek
parental approval. Parents rarely object strongly and a
couple can ignore their parents’ wishes if they choose to.
Good hunters find it easy to get married because women’s
parents want them as sons-in-law and encourage them
to move to their camp and marry their daughter.
Occasionally, parents will object to their daughter marrying a man if he has a reputation as a bad hunter and honey
forager and if he sleeps around too much.
Age at first marriage is 17 or 18 for females and
19 or 20 for males. Median age at first reproduction is
19 (N. Blurton Jones, personal communication). Women
experience far fewer menses than American women since
they are usually pregnant or nursing an infant and thus
less likely to be ovulating. One is not supposed to marry
anyone who shares 12.5% or more of one’s genes (parent,
child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, uncle, aunt,
nephew, niece, half-sibs, first cousins). However, as with
the few other rules the Hadza have, this is sometimes
ignored and one man married his granddaughter with no
repercussions. The practice of the levirate is common.
When a man dies, his brother, especially if unmarried,
often marries his widow and takes on his children.
There is no overt polyandry, and in fact, when some
young woman has two male suitors at the same time, it is
seen as a problem that affects everyone. A meeting may
be called to tell the woman to choose one because there
is a danger that one man may kill the other. Many women
say that polygyny is acceptable, even if their husband
References
wants a second wife; however, when women catch their
husbands pursuing another woman they get mad and yell
and throw things at them. Only about 4% of marriages are
polygynous and these usually last only a year or two.
Divorce is fairly common, especially in the first few years
(Blurton Jones et al., 2000), and serial monogamy is
the rule.
About 5% of women marry non-Hadza men.
However, many of these return to live in a Hadza camp
and bring any children from that marriage with them.
They appear to experience little if any stigma. The reason
they return, and perhaps why there is not more female
exogamy, may be because Hadza women cannot put up
with the sort of treatment they get from non-Hadza men,
where they are forced to work long hours and may be
beaten, and not just on the rare occasion when their
husband is drunk, as with Hadza men.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Husbands and wives sleep together on a skin on the
ground close to a hearth with their young children. Once
a child is about 12, he or she may begin sleeping with
other similar-aged same-sex groups. Husbands and wives
show no outward signs of affection, no hugging or kissing, but they say that they feel love for each other. When
they sit together they often talk at length.
Women never go anywhere out of camp alone,
except to relieve themselves. They are either with other
women, or with a brother, father, or husband. This is
probably less because there is any danger of being raped
by a Hadza than being raped by a non-Hadza, or even
captured and taken off. It may also be partly simply
because without bows and arrows, women would be
vulnerable to predators. At least when they are in a group
and have their digging sticks, they can cooperate to
defend themselves.
Women often do not know exactly when they have
reached menopause since they are nursing their last child
and so would not be menstruating anyway. After a woman
is a few years beyond menopause, her husband may leave
her for a younger woman. A very low percentage of
women over 60 have husbands and some of them express
bitterness that their husbands have left them. However,
most postmenopausal women appear to embrace wholeheartedly their role as an important provider of food and
care to their grandchildren.
431
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
A man usually wants to impress his mother-in-law. If she
thinks that he is not bringing in enough meat, for example, she may advise her daughter to look for someone
else. The pressure men feel shows up in the stories they
tell. Several stories feature mothers-in-law who transform
into monstrous beasts, chasing them and biting hunks of
flesh from them as they flee up a tree. A woman tends to
talk little to her father-in-law.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
These days, especially near the one large village in Hadza
country, women are becoming much more promiscuous.
They sometimes become quasi-prostitutes, sleeping with
non-Hadza men in exchange for money or gifts. Near the
village, men are drinking alcohol more and more. This
results in more wife-beating, even wife-killing occasionally. Some men go into the village with their wives and let
them sleep with village men in exchange for free alcohol.
This promiscuity is bound to result in increasing rates of
sexually transmitted diseases and death from AIDS.
REFERENCES
Blurton Jones, N., Hawkes, K., & O’Connell, J. (2002). Antiquity of
postreproductive life: Are there modern impacts on hunter–
gatherer postreproductive life spans? American Journal of Human
Biology, 14(2), 184–205.
Blurton Jones, N., Marlowe, F., Hawkes, K., & O’Connell, J. (2000).
Paternal investment and hunter–gatherer divorce rates. In L. Cronk,
N. Chagnon, & W. Irons (Eds.), Adaptation and human behavior:
An anthropological perspective (pp. 69–90). New York: Elsevier.
Blurton Jones, N., O’Connell, J., Hawkes, K., Kamuzora, C. L., &
Smith, L. C. (1992). Demography of the Hadza, an increasing and
high density population of savanna foragers. American Journal of
Physical Anthropology, 89, 159–181.
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. F., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1997). Hadza
women’s time allocation, offspring provisioning, and the evolution
of long postmenopausal life spans. Current Anthropology, 38(4),
551–577.
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (2001a). Hadza meat
sharing. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 113–142.
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (2001b). Hunting
and nuclear families: Some lessons from the Hadza about men’s
work. Current Anthropology, 42, 681–709.
432
Marlowe, F. (1999). Showoffs or providers?: The parenting
effort of Hadza men. Evolution and Human Behavior, 20,
391–404.
Marlowe, F. (2002). Why the Hadza are still hunter–gatherers. In
S. Kent (Ed.), Ethnicity, hunter-gatherers, and the “other”:
Association or assimilation (pp. 247–275). Washington, DC:
Smithsonian University Press.
Marlowe, F. W. (2003). A critical period for provisioning by Hadza men:
Implications for pair bonding. Evolution and Human Behavior,
24(3), 217–229.
Marlowe, F. W. (in press). Who tends Hadza children? In B. Hewlett &
M. Lamb (Eds.), Culture and ecology of hunter-gatherer children.
New York: Aldine.
Marlowe, F. W. (n.d.). Mate preferences among Hadza hunter-gatherers.
Unpublished manuscript.
Hadza
Ochieng, W. R. (1975). An outline history of the Rift Valley of Kenya up
to AD 1900. Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam: East African
Literature Bureau.
Sands, B. (1995). Evaluating claims of distant linguistic relationships:
The case of Khoisan. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
California, Los Angeles.
Woodburn, J. (1968a). An introduction to Hadza ecology. In R. B. Lee &
I. DeVore (Eds.), Man the hunter (pp. 49–55). Chicago: Aldine.
Woodburn, J. (1968b). Stability and flexibility in Hadza residential
groupings. In R. B. Lee & I. DeVore (Eds.), Man the hunter
(pp. 103–110). Chicago: Aldine.
Woodburn, J. (1979). Minimal politics: The political organization of
the Hadza of north Tanzania. In W. A. Shack & P. S. Cohen
(Eds.), Politics in leadership (pp. 244–266). Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Han Chinese
William R. Jankowiak
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The alternative name is Han.
LOCATION
China is located in East Asia and with a land area that is
larger than the United States. There are geographical
differences between eastern and western China. Eastern
China borders the Pacific Ocean. It is sometimes referred
to as China Proper due to the high concentration of Han
people (who make up 94% of contemporary Chinese
ethnic population). The western region has been historically less populated and it is the home of some of China’s
largest ethnic groups (e.g., Tibetians, Mongols, and
Uygurs). Since the 1950s China has sought to “fill up” this
region through encouraging internal Han migration. The
policy has been successful. Today, the Han outnumber
local minority populations in every autonomous region.
There are 22 provinces and five autonomous regions
(e.g., Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Zhuang, and
Ningxia). The capital is Beijing, located in northern
China. Shanghai, located in the lower Yangtze region, is
the largest and most developed city in China.
China’s climates are seasonal. In the north the
winters are long and are characterized by extreme cold,
while in the south (all land south of the Yangtze River) the
climate varies from a persistent damp chill in the high and
low desert environments to mild and frost free along the
southern coast. The Pearl River plain around Guangzhou
(Canton) is the most important as well as the most
densely populated in the region. With over 1.4 billion
people, China’s population is the largest in world.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
China is an agrarian civilization in the process of
becoming a urbanized society. Its image of the ideal family
is intertwined with a rural heritage organized around the
principles of patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence.
In many parts of China, there were surname organizations,
based on descent from a common ancestor that was reckoned exclusively through males, with memberships ranging from several hundred to over ten thousand. These
associations provided the foundation of community organization (Johnson, 1983, p. 8). On the maternal side, kinship
ties had significance primarily among the very rich (who
use marriage to foster political and economic alliance) and
the very poor (who needed mutual cooperation networks
to survive) (Johnson, 1983, p. 8).
In practice, family structures varied geographically
and with social class. Nevertheless, there were a few
commonalities that are pan-Chinese. Women who left
their natal family at marriage were viewed by the male’s
family as outsiders. It was not until the birth of a male
child that a woman’s status became more secure. Even
then, she embraced her children as the primary source of
emotional comfort and future security. Men, on the other
hand, were linked to their father’s patrilineage while
remaining emotionally bonded to their mothers. Many
Chinese mothers were perpetually anxious about being
emotionally replaced by their daughters-in-law.
The urban Chinese family is organized primarily into
two different forms: nuclear and stem. While the nuclear
family is the preferred form of family arrangement, most
Chinese, at one time or another, will enter into some form
of stem family arrangement (i.e., a family with a married
couple, children, and another relative, usually a parent). In
urban China the family is organized around notions of
bilateral descent and neolocal residence practices. The
conjugal bond is embraced over the extended family.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Contemporary China is striking in its emphasis on gender.
Masculinity and femininity are clearly defined social categories. In fact, people assume that the traits associated
with a particular sex are innate qualities of a particular
433
434
gender. This is a recent phenomenon. Historically, gender
was one principle among many (e.g., kinship, generation,
age, and class) that determined a person’s position in the
family and in society.
In traditional cosmology men and women were
assigned values referred to as yin (female) and yang
(male) which were regarded as opposite through not necessarily in opposition to one another. Together they form
an integrated whole. Although the yin–yang construction is linked to a particular gender, it is not absolute.
Women as mothers were seen as having more yang
essence in relationship to her children, while a greater yin
essence in relationship to their husband. In this way
yin–yang construction is more about hierarchy than it is
about an immutable gender essence. This cosmological
assumption did not mean that the Chinese were incapable
of perceiving sex differences. They did. It only means
that they did not, as today, make a linguistic distinction
between masculinity and femininity.
Every culture makes tacit, if not explicit, assumptions about the relations between genitalia and behavior.
The Chinese recognize that there is sexual dimorphism,
that females reach sexual maturity earlier and that males
may have a longer reproductive career, and tend to have
a higher preferred rate of copulation.
In Imperial China, femininity was intertwined with
notions of virtue. A husband’s sexual prerogative as head
of a patriarchal family was closely linked with a moral
interpretation that defined women’s behavior as based in
obedience (Mann, 2002, p. 53). In this milieu, women
were expected to be chaste and obedient. The state did its
part in upholding this ideal. For example, the Qing
dynasty (1644–1911) promoted a cult of female chastity
through giving honorific plaques and money to women
who did not remarry (Mann, 2002, p. 47). The state also
constructed ceremonial arches and shrines for widows
who refused to remarry or committed suicide upon the
deaths of their husbands.
Today, there are clear gender categories that are
organized around promoting sexual difference. It is
appropriate to acknowledge sexual attractiveness. Nubile
women with symmetrical faces and a pale complexion are
considered physically attractive. It is fashionable for
women at any age to wear their hair long or short (in the
1980s young women wore braided hair and married
women wore short cropped hair); short skirts, dresses,
and pants are also deemed appropriate. These images of
contemporary femininity are readily found on billboards
Han Chinese
and in magazine and television advertisements. For
women, a man’s relative age is not a primary factor in
accessing his relative physical attractivess. Women
appear to use a more complicated calculus that includes
facial symmetry, relative age, and social position in
assessing a man’s overall physical appearance.
Masculinity is organized around a notion of wen–wu.
Wen is based on the ideal of cultural attainment or gentility, whereas wu is anchored in the qualities of martial
valor. Historically wu qualities were favored over wen.
However, the advent of Confucianism contributed to
promoting wen attributes which were embraced by the
scholarly educated government officials. During the
1960s, the wu ideal which favored the worker and peasant
over the scholar was promoted. Contemporary actors such
as Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan are representative of
non-scholarly wu tradition. It is the dynamic tension
between wen and wu that allows for numerous forms of
masculinity to be expressed in Chinese society (Louie,
2002, p. 20).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Women and men move through various stages in life from
the youngest to teenagers to youth to married and old age.
People in the countryside readily acknowledge that girls
mature faster than boys but that in the end boys surpass
girls in talent and accomplishments. In China’s larger
cities this distinction, especially among young people, is
no longer firmly held. Most young men believe that
women are equal to men in most things. For males and
females, marriage and motherhood are the primary markers signifying the transition from youth to adulthood. In
the past, marriage was central to defining adulthood so
that women in their late twenties were referred to as old
maids, while unmarried males were not teased until their
mid-thirties. However, both sexes were expected to marry
and have a child. In old age women tend to have greater
authority due to the emotional bonds they have developed
and maintained with their children. On the other hand,
once they retire, men tend to have less authority within
the family. During ritual occasions they are treated with
respect, and then all but ignored.
In the Chinese family the status of women varies
with the different phases of their lives. For rural women,
there are two phases that are most critical. The first is
marriage and subsequent entrance into her husband’s
Gender over the Life Cycle
family. The next phase occurs during middle age when
her son takes a wife. In both phases women, first as brides
and then as mothers-in-law, perceive a loss of control
over their lives. The fragility of these transitional periods
is reflected in the high suicide rates for women in their
early twenties and mid-forties.
Because a woman is an outsider and only gains status
through bearing a son, there is a strong incentive for her to
form a kind of “uterine family” (Wolf, 1972) that is organized around an intense emotional bond between mother
and child. It serves as a kind of a private shelter from the
structural restraints imposed by patriarchal ideology.
Men’s change in status is more gradual. Marriage is
an important identity marker as in obtaining a good job in
the city. A man’s responsibilities gradually increase as he
gets older. The measure of a man is often determined by
how well he fulfills his numerous family duties.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Throughout the history of Imperial China males were
preferred over females. Female infants suffered infanticide at a higher rate than males. Today, female infanticide
remains high in the countryside but not in the city. When
a girl is born, people will call the event “small happiness,”
but when it is a male the event is called “big happiness.”
In China’s largest cities this distinction is less apparent.
Given the realities of the one-child policy combined with
new residence and descent practices, urban girls are
highly valued.
A “long life celebration” ritual for 100-day-old
infants, regardless of gender, is practiced in the countryside. In this ritual close female kin gather together for food
and conversation that ends with them lifting the infant
through a large circular loaf of bread (mantou) calling out
as they do so: “Have a long life.” In northern China, some
mothers might prepare an ordinary dish of noodles in
which an extra long noodle is placed to signify “have a
long life.” This event is private and only the mother and
father are present. Today individual birthdays, especially
in the urban areas, are increasingly celebrated in the home
or in upmarket public restaurants. In place of kin there are
now classmates, and family friends are the primary people
invited to attend the event.
Boys are given greater freedom and are not controlled in the same way as girls. Obedience is emphasized
in rural China and, after the age of 5, corporal punishment, especially for boys, is pervasive. In larger urban
435
settings there is less use of corporal punishment. Parents
emphasize guidance over obedience in child-rearing
practices. Daycare/preschool starts for most urban
children when they reach 30 months of age. Teachers
acknowledge that they discipline boys more than girls
because boys misbehave more than girls. In the late
1990s teachers started to acknowledge that girls were
becoming as mischievous as boys.
Puberty and Adolescence
Adolescence (nianqing) is regarded as a youth stage. This
stage is between early teen years and extends to the midtwenties. There are three paths of socialization into adulthood. In the countryside the most common is learning
how to farm (Chau, n.d.). Some young women might be
able to marry into a wealthier home. If not they marry
locally and prepare for a life of farming. The second path
is to receive schooling and then obtain a state-assigned
job. Girls and boys are sent to primary school in equal
numbers, but middle school, which is more expensive,
usually finds parents investing more in their son’s education. In addition, education investment seldom pays. It is
more difficult for rural residents to obtain nonfarm
employment. The third path is to run a business or to seek
employment in the service sector (Chau, n.d.). For rural
residents this means leaving the village to work in small
township or moving a great distance to nearby cities.
For urbanites there are only two paths.Most prefer to
attend primary and middle school and then be assigned to
a state enterprise corporation. The college educated prefer
to obtain employment as a manager in an international firm.
Attainment of Adulthood
The most notable shift to adulthood is marriage, which
begins in countryside when a girl turns 21 and a boy is
23 years old. In more remote regions, girls often marry at
16 or 17. In this way, girls reach adulthood earlier than
boys. In the cities obtaining a job and a separate apartment away from one’s parents marks adulthood.
However, complete adulthood is not truly gained until the
urbanite marries and has a child.
Middle Age and Old Age
Except for major political leaders, retirement comes
relatively early in China. Women retire at the age of 55 and
436
Han Chinese
men at the age of 60. Old age is celebrated symbolically
with the eldest person being placed in the center of picture.
In the countryside, once an elderly person can no longer
function, he is relegated to the level of symbolic status
with the day-to-day affairs being managed by his son.
Unlike their rural counterparts, urban married
couples, in setting up a household, start by forming a
nuclear family. Later, upon the death of one of their
parents, the family structure changes to incorporate the
living parent. However, this reincorporation does not lead
to the elderly parent becoming the head of the family.
While an elderly parent is referred to as the head of the
family on ceremonial occasions, and given the seat of
honor whenever a photograph is taken or a special dinner
is cooked, the fact is that he or she is perceived to be an
important but, sometimes, burdensome duty.
Elderly persons often lament that, although their
physical needs are taken care of, they still do not receive
the respect they desire or feel they deserve. Some elderly
even talk as if their children have abandoned them.
Significantly, fathers complain more often than mothers
about the loss of their children’s active attention and
freely given respect. Observations of elderly parent–
offspring interaction found that mothers were, in fact,
treated with greater tenderness, attention, and respect
than fathers. Obviously, mothers, and not fathers, are able
to draw upon the strong intimate child–parent bonds
which they established and maintained throughout their
life span. Without property and other “resources of
power,” fathers who took little or no interest in their
children’s development are unable to command their
children and therefore receive only a ritualistic admission
of deference and a nominal articulation of love. The new
emphasis on the market economy and the value of money
will enable some elderly to command respect from their
family and strangers.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The Chinese believe that the difference between men and
women is a byproduct of biological and cultural forces.
Masculine attributes are rough (culu), crude language
(maren hua), “absent mindness” (madaha), self-confident
(zixin), serious (yansu), adventurous ( furou jishen), clever
(congming), easy-going (madaha), quiet (anjing), aggressive (haoshun xinsheng), hide emotion (han shu), strong
(shang zhuang), and ambitious (for a promotion) (you ye
xinde).
Feminine attributes are pretty (piaoliang), soft voice
(rou sheng), not very strong (rou wo), gossip (chuan xian
hua), dress well (daban), timid (paixu), use polite language (limaohua), gentle (wen rou), anxious (danshide),
sentimental (you yu), slim figure (miaotiao), incline to
make a fuss out of nothing (cheng suifu), and cannot do
hard work (taizhaoqi).
The sum of women’s images for an ideal husband
(hao zhangfu) were as follows: a man who is tall (over
1.6 m), healthy, handsome, strong, intelligent, brave,
well-mannered, and kind; a man who has status and could
provide for a family. In the late 1990s, more in response
to the forces of globalization, another trait was added:
the absence of a double eyelid fold. The sum of men’s
images for an ideal wife (hao qizi) were as follows: a
woman who is beautiful, tall, healthy, soft, kind, wellmannered, loyal, and virtuous; a woman who is skilled
in domestic crafts (e.g., sewing, cooking, etc.) and can
take care of children.
Whenever men and women engage in casual flirtations the gender traits are dramatized and exaggerated,
and they strive to present an image that the opposite sex
finds most attractive. Outside the sexual context (in their
interactions with siblings, parents, classmates, and the
public at large), men and women are more prone to assert
non-gender-relevant traits. It is in these contexts that
women do not, nor are they expected to, act timid, passive,
mild, or coy; likewise, men are not expected always to
appear confident, ambitious, and work-oriented. The central difficulty for individuals, of course, is living in social
settings that are devoid of the other gender’s participation.
An enjoyable activity for young Chinese men is to
rank a woman’s relative physical beauty. The sexual
delight that men take in being aroused visually often leads
them to buy pornography or, sometimes, make their own.
The male’s ability to become sexually aroused by visual
stimuli can often result in extremely inappropriate social
behavior. The male preference for beauty also affects the
pace and growth of their involvement. Chinese men, like
American men, fall in love quicker than women.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
For much of Chinese history, the social landscape was
gendered. The villages were organized around families
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
that were often organized into lineages that extended into
clans. In every way this was a patriarchal-based society.
Women exerted indirect influence only within the family.
There was, and continues to be, a pronounced sexual
division of labor.
Unlike their rural married counterparts who usually
live their entire lives in the same village with or near the
husband’s parents, urbanites tend to live scattered
through various neighborhoods. The neolocal (new) and
not patrilocal (father’s) residence norm is the most
common. Because housing units are packed so closely
together, living space cannot always be expanded to
embrace a new nuclear unit. When there is a shortage of
available housing, any apartment is better than no apartment. This pragmatic concern contributed to the Chinese
rejecting the traditional patrilocal resident rule in favor of
the more flexible neolocal norm.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
There is a clear-cut sexual division of labor that is
organized around a notion of complementary. In rural
China women were and are busy all day—cooking food,
drawing water, pounding rice, minding the farm, serving
their mother-in law, suckling babies (Mann, 2002,
p. 109). In the north, there is seasonal work. In the
summer women sell produce in the local markets, while
the men harvest the crop. In the winter most of the sellers
in the produce market are men. In south China, which has
three growing seasons a year, women work in the rice
paddies as well as in the produce markets, small clothing
shops, or restaurants. Most long-distance traders are men,
though there are unmarried groups of females who sell
various products. If married women participate, it is
usually with their husbands who will be staying in a
particular location for a considerable length of time.
Recently, many rural young women who want to
increase their autonomy have migrated to other regions.
Most of the young factory workers (commonly referred
to as maiden workers) in south China are women (Lee,
1998). Throughout China the majority of shop assistants,
waiters and waitresses, and hotel employees are rural
migrants. Urban women and men generally refuse to take
what they considered demeaning jobs. Instead, they hope
to obtain a position in a state-run enterprise or work in an
upmarket business.
437
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
For much of Chinese history, the family was organized
around an ideology of filial piety that encouraged total
obedience, respect, and loyalty toward the father. By
controlling the distribution of the family inheritance, a
father could affect a special, if not psychological, dependency on the part of the child. On the other hand, a
mother’s parenting style was seen as much a result of
being considered an “outsider” as it was of a “natural”
attachment fostered through childbirth and early childcare. Given her lower status in her husband’s family, the
mother needed a friend, an ally, and what better one than
her own child. In this way, the different access to and use
of economic and psychological “resources” contributed
to the elaboration of the two complementary parenting
styles: the father as an aloof spouse and disciplinary
provider, and the mother as an equally aloof spouse but,
toward her children, an intimate nurturer.
Chinese have a clear sense of gender-specific duties.
This sense is patterned by the setting, timing, and manner
of parental interaction with the child. A child’s age and sex
affected the frequency and style of parental interaction.
There are several developmental stages of parent–child
interaction: early infancy, late infancy (yinger), and early
childhood (ertong). During the infant stage the mother is
the more involved parent, whereas the father’s involvement increases when the child reaches the childhood stage
(3–6 years old). This is especially so if the father is highly
educated.
There are gender differences in parent–child
caretaking styles. For example, women typically hold a
child close to their body, while men hold the child away
from their body. Mothers and fathers also differed in their
degree of patience toward a stubborn child who refuses to
move. Mothers waited twice as long before picking up a
recalcitrant child. Men and women also differ in their
style of walking with their child. Women rarely walked
ahead of the child, while men did. The style of conversation also differs between mothers and fathers. If a mother
holds the child she rarely talks to it, but as soon as she
starts walking, she breaks into a continuous mode of verbal coaching and patter (this pattern is less common in
southwest China). The mother cares for a sick child,
dresses the child for school, and scolds the child when he
or she misbehaves. The father remains somewhat aloof
438
Han Chinese
and only enters into the disciplinary role when something
serious occurs. As a child enters late childhood parents
are sensitive about touching him or her in public. This is
especially so for father–daughter relations but not for
mother–son interaction.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Within the village the major leadership positions are
male. In the cities it varies. At national, regional, and
local levels the top political leaders are male. Within
various governmental departments there are some mature
women officials who occupy an intermediate position of
leadership. There is also a Women’s Federation that is
designed to transmit Communist Party doctrine to
women. It is run by and for women. It has several administrative tiers and can be found at all levels of society
(e.g., village, neighborhood, county, province, and
national). Its ability to counter policy instituted by other
branches of the government is minimal.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Chinese folk cosmology reflects ordinary society.
With the exception of the goddess of mercy or health
(guanyin) and the mother ancestor (masu), the most
significant deities are male (e.g., the war god (guan gong),
the god of wealth (caitse), the earth god (tudi gong), the
kitchen god (jiao yangye), and the laughing Buddha). The
fox spirit is a mischievous female deity that assumed the
shape of a pretty female in order to seduce men, killing
them only after they had fallen in love with her.
At the community level, rural residents continue to
practice ancestor worship (or reverence) that may or may
not be linked to a lineage or ancestor association.
Ancestor worship is based on the notion that there is an
ongoing reciprocity between the living and the dead.
At the level of the lineage, membership is determined
by land and/or monetary contributions that are used to
upkeep the ancestor hall. In this setting, only men occupy
positions of leadership. In the family, ancestor reverence
focuses only on immediate deceased kin or ancestors
(i.e., those who have died in the last five generations). It
is overseen entirely by women who are responsible for
the upkeep of the family altars.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
In the city, men’s and women’s activities tend to overlap
so that there are few exclusive all-male or all-female
activities. There are activities that one gender tends to
favor or the other. For men, it is basketball, soccer, and
video games, while for women it is window shopping.
Both genders prefer to hang out either as a couple or in a
unisexual group at a restaurant, play cards and mahjong,
go to the movies, play pingpong, and, in rural areas,
attend temple fairs. Some of the more solitary activities
favored by men and women are talking on the cell phone,
window shopping, watching television, browsing the web
in an internet café, reading, and going to a dance hall. In
northern China, both genders enjoy singing and story
telling.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Men formally occupy a higher social position in rural
China. In the cities, men informally occupy more leadership positions (e.g., government and business corporations) than women. Within the domestic sphere there is an
enormous difference between rural and urban women’s
ability to command influence. Prior to and after marriage,
a rural woman is instructed to obey her mother-in-law and
husband. The emphasis is on obedience and deference.
A newly married woman is reminded that, in time, she
will become a mother-in-law and thus gain authority and
independence over the incoming wife. Before this time, a
woman must rely on deception and guile, whereas men,
secure within their natal family, do not hesitate in openly
expressing their opinions and demands. In effect, the
prevailing view in the countryside is that women can only
gradually, over the course of a lifetime, expand their
authority in the family.
In urban China the theme of a powerful woman and
the henpecked husband is a source of much joking.
Chinese men believe that, in the past, husbands had an
easier time controlling their wives than they do today.
One man remarked that, “In the past the mother-in-law
was fearsome, now the wife is fearsome”. The frequency
with which this expression is invoked suggests that males
are more ambivalent and less secure than in the past with
their position within the family and society.
Sexuality
The idea that relations between spouses should be
based on equality and parity is increasing among rural
and urban youths. However, marriage still places greater
restrictions on women’s behavior. On the other hand, men
also regard marriage as restrictive. Whenever a man
leaves or enters his home, for example, his wife will customarily ask him where he is going or has come from.
This is not, by any means, a polite ritualistic expression
but is motivated by an unspoken but palpable concern that
their husband might be seeing someone else.
Because women are saddled with the double burden
of working and handling domestic chores and childcare,
they often feel overworked, exhausted, and numbed by
their duties. Men, on the other hand, believe that it is
more their responsibility, and not that of their wives, to
gain promotion, increase household income, and expand
personal connections. It is a responsibility, an expectation,
that they find demanding and take seriously. Failure to perform satisfactorily often results in their wives complaining
that their husbands “let the family down.” It is a complaint
that men do not want to hear because it is perceived as
a stigma attacking the core of their gender identity.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality was traditionally regarded as a natural,
dangerous, and potentially polluting act. From a naturalistic perspective, sex was conceptualized as an exchange
of body fluids necessary to restore health as well as to
reproduce. An orgasm was viewed as potentially harmful
in that it resulted, especially for the male, in the loss of
bodily fluids and thus the depletion of yang. However, if
a man could prolong an orgasm or not have one at all, he
would obtain valuable yin essence while not giving up
any yang essence. It was also deemed dangerous as the
loss of too much yang essence (or semen) could result in
a weakened body, making it vulnerable to illness. This
cosmology gradually gave way to a more scientific or
Western-based interpretation of the sex act that saw it as
a healthy and important activity. The transformation was
gradual. For example, it was only in the 1990s that
masturbation was no longer considered harmful; now,
like all things sexual, it is deemed immensely healthy.
Until the 1990s virginity was an ideal state that
applied equally to females and males in rural and urban
China. In the 1980s sexual intercourse took place only
after a couple had agreed to marry. A nationwide sex
439
survey, conducted in 1987, found that 62% of all married
couples had their first sexual intercourse on their wedding
night (Liu, Ngg, Zhou, & Haeberle, 1997, p. 243). By the
late 1990s this percentage was significantly lower due to
the increased tolerance of premarital sex. Unlike early
generations, where premarital sex was usually with one’s
fiance, the single-child generation (born after 1979)
changed the moral code. Sexuality is no longer regarded
as a tacit agreement to marry, but instead is perceived to
be simply a pleasurable experience that may or may not
result in marriage.
Chinese society, though not necessarily the betrayed
spouse, has historically been more tolerant of extramarital sex for men. Many men have had concubines,
mistresses, and girlfriends and have visited prostitutes.
Women have been under tighter community control and
thus the opportunities have been less. Today, sexual
pleasure is regarded as a fundamental aspect of married
life. In China’s largest cities, it is easier for women to
engage in extramarital sex than at any time in history.
This corresponds to increased reports of sexual disharmony among married couples.
The sexual behavior survey in 1987 (Liu et al., 1997)
found a pronounced difference in men’s and women’s
response to sexual arousal.
1. Male students reported being more aroused through live visual
stimulation, whereas females found sexual situations depicted
in movies more stimulating.
2. Educational level and not occupation is the more critical
predictor of attitudes toward sexuality (e.g., people with more
education change sexual positions more often).
3. Marital satisfaction appears to be similar among farmers and
urban couples. However, city women appear to be more disappointed than village women, suggesting that they have higher
expectations.
4. Village couples had a higher frequency of sexual intercourse
(5.43 vs. 4.66 times a month, or a little more than once a week).
5. There was a relationship between changing sexual position and
sexual enjoyment.
Throughout China’s history there has been an enormous
variation in the attitudes held toward homosexuality. In
Imperial China it was not unusual for an emperor to have
male and female concubines. However, during the Qing
dynasty (1644–1911) this attitude was replaced with a
more puritanical view that regarded all forms of extramarital sex as unacceptable. Male homosexuality was
regarded as a threat to patriarchal authority, while female
homosexuality was not (Brownell & Wasserstrom, 2002).
440
Han Chinese
This attitude continued through much of the 20th century.
By the 1990s, homosexuality became tacitly tolerated,
albeit with misgivings. There are known homosexual
(gay and lesbian) bars in China’s largest cities.
As in Mediterranean cultures, homosexuality has
clearly defined roles of passive and active sexual roles.
The active partner engaged in penile penetration of the
passive partner. Unlike in the United States, where older
men yield to the wishes of the younger partner, in traditional China, where principles of social stratification
shaped people’s relation to one another, the younger
partner yields to the wishes of the senior partner (Hinsch,
1990, p. 12) .
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
In the early decades of China’s post-revolutionary period,
marriage required parental approval. However, by the
1980s that was changing. In China’s largest cities, a new
generation had come of dating age and, through their ideas
and actions, had expanded the customary notions of
courtship, generating new expectations and demands for
emotional satisfaction within marriage. Part of this
thinking suggested that if dating could provide some
emotional excitement and satisfaction, marriage could do
the same. In this way marriage is no longer seen as
primarily a vehicle for procreation, but rather it is regarded
as the primary institution for achieving happiness,
contentment, and emotional security.
The folk notion that love and romance could be
combined within marriage is not a recent phenomenon.
The two were not perceived as antagonistic or mutually
exclusive, barring unfavorable circumstances. What is
new is the state’s legal endorsement of free choice, and
thus love, as a basis for marriage and, more importantly,
the eagerness with which that endorsement is being
embraced by the younger generation who demand that
love and marriage be synonymous or, at least, possible
bedfellows.
In the early 1980s dating existed in urban but not
rural China. It was organized around two different dating
styles involving different conventions which can be called
formal and informal and are complementary. Both were
entered into with the intention of realizing an immediate
practical gain, enjoyment, or marriage. Formal dating
(or courtship) differs from informal dating in its emphasis
on normative rules, social judgment, and conventional
standards for articulating romantic involvement. It is
conducted according to rules that organize dating into a
semiritualistic sequence of private and semipublic meetings, characterized by incremental increases in the public
expression of commitment, usually resulting in marriage.
Informal dating, however, is pursued according to
very practical rules, based on shrewd common sense and
situational standards. These rules are sometimes provisionally formed by the parties to avoid the pressure of
social expectations or the disapproval of one’s community. Informal dating may or may not culminate in
marriage. Informal dating begins in secrecy, appears to be
ad hoc or accidental, and is characterized by public denial
of any intimate involvement. In general, informal dating
is conducted by individuals who truly love one another
but are restricted by prior obligations (e.g., already
married, parental or work-unit disapproval, etc.) from
publicly acknowledging or expressing their involvement.
Within the formal style there can be what we call
courtship (a relationship oriented toward marriage) or just
plain going out with no stated intent to marry. Although
in the case of formal dating an individual may use the
services of an introduction agency or friendship networks
to find a suitable mate, it should not be construed that this
style is devoid of romantic excitement or aspirations.
Once a person decides that a particular individual
fits their “ideal,” or comes close to most of their criteria,
there is a pronounced tendency to fantasize about the
other, which can often result in one becoming overwhelmed with romantic anticipation. It was common for
individuals who entered into a more formal courtship to
become infatuated after a marital agreement had been
reached. Romantic infatuation may arise in either form of
courtship and is characterized by emotional intensity, a
kind of anxiety, expressions of romantic endearment, and
the idealization of the other. The two styles differ only in
the domain of public expression but not necessarily the
intensity of involvement. In the countryside, the two
forms of dating continue.
By the 1990s, in China’s large and mid-size cities,
informal dating had moved away from secrecy to a new
ethos of openness. Dating is now regarded as a public
declaration of one’s independence. It is not usual to see
young couples openly hugging and kissing in public. In
many ways, the adolescence or youth stage has been
pushed back. People no longer marry as easily as they
once did. And if they do, they delay starting a family.
Today, urban youth regard dating as an opportunity
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
to play, to seek pleasure, and to delay assuming the
responsibilities of marriage.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
There are a range of responses to the meaning of marriage
and family life. This was not always so. In Imperial China
marriage was regarded as an alliance between families
with the junior generation serving the senior generation.
Thus, children continued to defer to their parents. By
the early 20th century this ideal had been modified in
the largest Chinese cities. In rural China it was not till the
1990s that marriage and family life was redefined to
emphasize conjugal unity over the ideal of the larger
extended family. Today, young couples in rural and urban
settings share many similar values and life orientations.
In an urban arena there are a wide ranges of response
to the meaning of marriage and family life. As a rule, if a
couple love one another, they repeatedly strive to maintain mutual consideration. Thus marriage, is seen as
“a bond between equals who do not keep secrets and who
enjoy each other’s company and should prefer to do
everything together.” Consideration and mutual respect
are values used by spouses and outsiders to evaluate
the quality and success of a marriage. They are not
gender-specific traits. Sacrifice and compromise are not
constitutionally foreign to either spouse.
The majority of Chinese assume that the loss of
romantic intensity is an inevitable aspect of marriage.
Typically, the intensity lessens following the birth of a
child, which results in the couple’s redefining their roles
from lovers to parents. Other Chinese, especially young
intellectuals, do not believe that romance has to wane,
and tend to resent its waning deeply.
Those couples who enjoy one another’s company
and accommodate, if not actually enjoy, their spouse’s
personality style and individual quirks seem to have the
more couples in satisfactory marriages. In addition to
acceptance of a spouse’s personality, couples in satisfactory marriages communicated their anxiety, especially
fears of losing the other’s love.
CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
In rural China, the kinship idiom continues to be a primary
means by which individuals organize their daily lives.
441
Relationships between cousins, uncles, and aunts are
deemed important. In contrast, in urban areas, kinship is
clearly regarded as much as a potential burden as a potential benefit or a familial necessity. Upwardly mobile kin
often deliberately cut of blood ties which bind them to
their more economically humble relatives. Parents,
children, siblings, and other kin tend to work at different
kinds of jobs, developing individual skills and thus unconnected networks of job-related friends. As a result, the
dependence upon one’s kin is greatly reduced in favor of
increasing reliance on friends in the workplace. This
change requires that Chinese pursue a broad-based strategy of social interaction that includes both kin and nonkin.
One insightful informant, when asked to make a distinction between kin and friends, acknowledged that “friends
are for mundane matters, family is for ritual affairs.”
The rural ideal of the joint or “big family” as the
preferred family organization no longer exists in urban
China or, if it does, only in small numbers. Within the
nuclear family, relations are ideally warm and supportive
and, in truth, this ideal is more often honored than
breached. In contrast to brothers, who display a great
deal of sibling rivalry, brothers and sisters cooperate
more than compete, with the closest ties being between
an older sister and younger brother. For these ties it
appears that a wide age gap is conducive to promoting
a type of mentor–apprentice relationship which continues
throughout an individual’s life.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
In urban China the gradual expansion of women’s
influence within the home has enabled contemporary
women to achieve a sphere of power and domestic
independence faster than had been the case in their
mother’s generation.
In the countryside the increasing value of female
labor combined with a shortage of female marriage
partners (due to the preference for male children) has led
to rapid inflation in marriage-related expenditure by the
groom’s family but not by the bride’s family. Before 1949,
wife-givers incurred the major expense involved in marriage and families with more daughters than sons tended
to become poorer. Now families fall into debt if they have
more sons than daughters (Min Han, 2001, pp. 147–167).
442
Han Chinese
There is a pronounced expansion of women’s rights and
overall respect that is as much due to the government
one-child policy as it is to the expansion of economic consumerism and with it a greater emphasis on individuality.
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Stanford University Press.
Hma’ Btsisi’
Barbara S. Nowak
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Btsisi’ are also known as Ma’ Betisék and Mah Meri.
LOCATION
Btsisi’ live along the coast in the districts of Kuala Langat
and Kelang in the State of Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Btsisi’ are an Orang Asli (Malay, “original people”) tribe,
who speak Btsisi’ or Hma’ Heh (“we people”), a South
Asiian language belonging to the Mon-Khmer family of
Austro-Asiatic languages. Traditionally, moving in and
out of various ecosystems including the inland rain
forests, mangroves, and the littoral, Btsisi’ carried out
opportunistic foraging in these environments. In the rain
forests Btsisi’ hunted and gathered; they would also
cultivate small patches of cleared forest with hill rice and
other food crops. In the mangroves, Btsisi’ fished using
nets, hook and line, and poison tubers. They also crabbed
using a variety of techniques depending upon the tide.
The mangrove forests also provided wood for houses and
firewood. Along the strand, Btsisi’ gathered clams, cockles, and other bivalves, and fished using long stationary
barrier nets raised and lowered with the incoming and
outgoing tides. In the Straits of Malacca, Btsisi’ fished
with long lines and palisade traps. Many of the traditional
subsistence activities are no longer practiced, as a result
of deforestation and mangrove clearing by commercial
agricultural plantations, and commercial overfishing.
While Btsisi’ still fish and collect mangrove fauna, it is
less productive and results in smaller catches. Modern
Btsisi’ work as wage laborers harvesting oil palm for
plantations, while others work at the new international
airport and nearby resorts as cleaners and baggage
handlers. Cash cropping is now a major economic activity with oil palm, coffee, and fruit as the major crops.
One village has a well-established wood-carving cottage
industry marketed to tourists.
Traditionally, Btsisi’ lived along the upper reaches
of mangrove rivers which gave them easy access to the
various ecosystems they exploited. People built stilt
houses along the tidal banks and others resided on small
boats wandering in the mangroves. Today, a few Btsisi’
still live in the mangrove, but most have opted to live
inland and travel to the mangroves. With increasing
integration into the cash economy, wealthier Btsisi’ are
beginning to build their houses with cinder blocks on
cement floors. Poorer Btsisi’ continue to build their
houses on stilts using materials from the mangrove; however, building materials are becoming scarce due to the
commercial oil palm plantation draining the mangroves.
Villages vary in size but most are no more than
60 households. There are seven island communities,
and four mainland villages situated near the coast. There
are also a scattering of Btsisi’ who still opt to reside in
the mangroves in small clusters of two to three houses.
The Malaysian government census places the Btsisi’
population at around 1,300 people.
Most decisions are reached at the household and kin
group level. When a village meeting is called, everyone
knows the issue or problem, thus allowing time and
opportunity for extensive informal discussions before the
formal meeting. People reach their opinions prior to the
meeting; a married couple usually reach a joint opinion
which the husband presents. Women rarely participate
since they do not speak with appropriate decorum. There
is no proscription on women learning proper behavior
and speech, but they leave this to the men. Women attend
meetings sitting amongst themselves, listening to the
men. Meetings always end in consensus, highlighting the
unity of the community.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Btsisi’ recognize two gender categories: hma’ kdoh
(woman) and hma’ lmol (man). Humorally, Btsisi’
443
444
Hma’ Btsisi’
categorize females as “cool” while men are “hot.” This
makes females healthier than males. The biological role
in reproduction requires females to have more strength
than men. Since females have different needs than males,
they are born with more ribs; they have more nabi
(“prophets”) to assist them and give them strength.
Females are therefore born “cooler” or “healthier” than
males, giving them more strength. A consequence of this
is that females are also perceived of as being “more intelligent” (akal) than men. This belief does not translate in
any obvious way in daily praxis.
Modern Btsisi’ dress similarly to rural Malays.
Women wear a sarong and blouse when working around
the house or travelling into town. In the mangroves or
when sea-fishing women wear a sarong or homemade
pants and a blouse. Men wear running shorts and T-shirts
during the day and sleep in shirts and sarongs.
Traditionally, women went bare breasted, but when outsiders began coming into their communities, they became
timid and embarrassed, and began covering themselves.
Men keep their hair relatively short, although some
younger men are now wearing long hair. Most women
wear their hair long, preferring to put it in a single braid
or tied up in a clip. Older women can often be seen wearing their hair in a bun at the back of their head.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Babies and children are called budek; if qualification is
necessary, people say budek kdoh (“female child”) or
budek lmol (“male child”). Adults are known simply as
kdoh and lmol (“female” and “male”), while elders are
manggew and, if qualification is necessary, the male or
female describer is added.
During a person’s life cycle, birth, marriage, and
death are the only stages publicly or privately marked.
Seven days after a newborn’s birth, family and friends
come together to celebrate. The ritual to purify the newborn, its parents, and midwives is followed by the
bestowal of a name and payment to the midwives. The
ceremony is no different for a male or female newborn.
Marriage (nikah) is the point a person enters adulthood. Slowly, over time a young, newlywed couple begin
to accrue the rights and responsibilities of adults. The
couple’s parents will initially guide them, making sure
they learn their new roles. Once they begin separating
their household finances out from their parent’s or when
they begin residing in their own domicile, the couple are
considered an independent household with all rights,
responsibilities, and power that accompany the adult
status. The final life cycle stage Btsisi’ mark is death
(kibuis). Death and mourning rituals are marked the same
way for males and females.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Btsisi’ value all children and feel great joy when a child,
boy or girl, is born. There is no feeling of failure if a family has only boys or only girls. However, there is a cultural
preference for a girl to be the firstborn. Girls are born
“cool,” and hence stronger and more likely to survive.
Boys at birth are deficient in strength; humorally, they are
“hot” and thus weaker and less likely to survive. A “hot”
person is in supernatural danger. A girl’s coolness will
help her survive being born, whereas a boy’s natural heat
makes his entry into the world precarious and dangerous.
A firstborn male child is “lucky” to survive because he
was probably a “sickly” child.
Early in a child’s life there is little difference in
parental care, but once a child begins walking and gains
some independence, slight differences in parental
responses to boys and girls begin. Parents ask girls to do
little tasks around the house, while boys are given more
freedom to do what they want. This difference becomes
more obvious as children become older. Girls begin to take
responsibility in the house—cooking and cleaning. Boys
may also be required to take responsibility for younger
brothers and sisters, especially if no girls are available to
help. It is not unusual to see boys carrying a younger
brother or sister on their backs when their parents are busy.
As children reach 10 or 11 years of age they begin to
play more consistently in same-sex groups. Boys go
wandering around and beyond the village. They build little
boats to float in the village drainage ditches and catch
small fish in the larger ditches outside the village bounds.
Boys begin playing with the older teenaged boys, learning
soccer and baseball. Girls, when they can get away from
household duties, sit and talk in or around the village community house or at one of their homes. Girls frequently
look at magazines and talk about all the images they see.
Puberty and Adolescence
Puberty goes unmarked for boys or girls. Even
the commencement of menses occurs without note.
Gender-Related Social Groups
445
The absence of circumcision for a boy and girl distinguishes Btsisi’ from their Muslim Malay neighbors.
Btsisi’ highlight this as a critical difference between
themselves and the Malay community.
Both boys and girls go to local state schools. Parents
do not restrict girls from going to school, and strive to
find the money to send girls to secondary school where
they live in a dormitory setting.
Attainment of Adulthood
Adulthood is reached upon marriage. It is one of the few
life stages ritually marked. A tooth-filing ritual performed
in the early stages of a wedding ceremony marks the
transition into adulthood. The tooth filing occurs for boys
and girls who have never been married, marking their
transition into the world of adults.
If, by chance, a boy or girl marries before his or
her elder sibling, the elder sibling must first have his or her
teeth filed since it would be presumptuous for a younger
sibling to enter adulthood first. Even though the older
sibling’s teeth are filed and he or she is technically an adult,
the person’s behavior, roles, and responsibilities do not
alter. Thus, while the tooth-filing ceremony symbolically
marks entry into adulthood, the real entry into adulthood is
marriage when the youth’s roles and responsibilities
change.
Middle Age and Old Age
As a person grows older they command more respect from
those younger than them. It is tolah (a “curse”) to be disrespectful to elders; thus the older a person is, the more
respect they garner. At community festivals, Btsisi’ give
men, and especially older men, a position of respect. Men,
in general, and older men in particular, are always served
food first. As there are usually more plates than people,
older women will also eat in the first sitting of a
meal, indicating their respected position in the community
as well.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Btsisi’ believe that all people should be kind, gentle, and
nonaggressive. Fear of outsiders is instilled in both young
male and female infants, but with time boys overcome
their fear while girls’ reticence increases. As girls pass
through puberty they begin to fear sexual advances and
sexual assaults by men from other ethnic communities.
Btsisi’ women talk in front of their daughters about
“outside” men, passing on their fears and anxieties.
Btsisi’ women have always been more apprehensive
of leaving the village. Traditionally, men are characterized
as being involved in activities that take them outside the
village, while women’s center of activity was inside the
village. When women left the village on gathering
expeditions, they went in large noisy groups to scare away
the dangerous animals such as tigers. Btsisi’ culture
has numerous metaphors highlighting a male–female/
outside–inside dichotomy.
As discussed in the section on leadership, women
today do not play a central role in community meetings.
They remain quiet and listen to the proceedings and rarely,
if ever, contribute in an open public forum. Women do not
know how to speak in public. They do not speak halus
(“refined”). This is not perceived as an inherent biological
difference but rather a value orientation. Women do not
speak halus because they do not care to learn how to speak
halus. If a woman wanted to learn to speak properly and
learn appropriate protocol, she could. But women do not
care to learn and become a titled elder. They do not desire
to speak in public. They leave this to men.
While there are people suffering from mental illness,
data suggest that it is not gender specific, although
quantitatively more women than men seem to suffer.
Alcoholism is an extensive problem for both men and
women. Impressions are that more men than women
struggle with alcohol abuse, although alcoholism among
women is increasing.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
When a young couple first marry, they reside ambilocally.
After shifting back and forth for a few months, the couple
settle in the bride’s parent’s house. If there is insufficient
room they will opt to reside with the groom’s family. The
couple remain under the watchful eyes of their parents,
learning their new roles as husband and wife. They may
join the parental household or form their own household,
keeping their finances and resources separate. Following
the birth of one or two children, the family establishes its
own residence. Traditionally, village exogamy prevailed,
446
Hma’ Btsisi’
but today nearly 80% of all marriages are endogamous;
hence, neither bride nor groom is very far from their
parents and kin.
Modern preference is for children not only to marry
within the village but also within the opoh (“family”), the
filiative cognatic descent group. Membership in an opoh
is based on parallel filiation; technically, therefore, brothers and sisters belong to different opoh (“family”). Girls
belong to their mother’s cognatic descent group and boy’s
to their father’s. Preference is for boys to marry their
fathers’ younger sister’s daughter. By doing this, a boy
is marrying into his father’s opoh and a girl into her
mother’s; therefore they are both marrying kin and
reuniting their grandparents’ opoh.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Btsisi’ division of labor is prescriptive rather than
proscriptive. An ideology of cooperation between husband and wife means that women and men do whatever
is necessary for the smooth productive functioning of the
household. While ideally women are responsible for
household maintenance and men for the provisioning of
the household, in reality both men and women work
jointly, as a team, cooperating for the household’s
success.
Women traditionally performed activities occurring
within the village area while men took responsibility for
those activities outside the village. This meant that
women, besides doing the household and childcare activities, were also responsible for taking care of the swiddens and harvesting the fruit from village trees. Men, in
contrast, hunted and did wage labor. The inside–outside
dichotomy means, for example, that women sell fruit
within the village. However, if the same fruit is sold to a
middleman outside the village, it is the men who are
responsible. Cash from the fruit belongs to whoever, man
or woman, owns the trees, but in reality the cash, as all
income, is controlled by the women of the household.
While there is a normative gendered division of
labor, with men and women assigned different activities,
in reality husbands and wives work together as a team.
While women do not go gill- and seine-net fishing by
themselves or in partnership with other women, they do
go with their husbands. Similarly, men go bivalve
collecting and hook-and-line fishing with their wives,
even though they typically do not go on their own. No one
wants to do things by themselves without a friend, and
who is your best friend but your spouse!
In their free time, women may weave sleeping mats
and baskets. Preparation of the material is time consuming but, once done, the weaving occurs at a leisurely pace.
While weaving is categorized as “women’s work,” a few
men, in the privacy of their own homes, might do some
weaving on their wife’s mat. Wood carving is an important handicraft both traditionally and today as an incomegenerating cottage industry. It is an activity only men
perform.
Traditionally, Btsisi’ did not “own” land. There was
a notion of usufruct, but people shifted their swiddens
and with sufficient land no one was concerned about
inheritance. Today, this is not the case. Land scarcity is
severe. Most land traditionally used for hunting, gathering, and swiddening is no longer available as it is owned
by a large multinational oil palm plantation. Land on the
mainland is under pressure from national and state development projects like the new international airport. Land
values are skyrocketing and village land is now under
threat of state government revocation.
Village exogamy with uxorilocality (matrilocality)
is no longer the norm. In the past men were not concerned
about next year’s swidden land, but today land is planted
with cash crops and houses are permanent. Upon the
termination of a marriage, men no longer want to return
to their natal villages, abandoning their fields planted
with cash crops. Village exogamy has been replaced with
endogamy; therefore, even with marital dissolution, a
man maintains control over land he or his father planted
and cleared. Women and men can both own and control
land; there is no difference, although fewer women seem
to own oil palm trees.
Oil palm harvesting has become an important
economic activity. Harvesters, using long bamboo poles
with sharp sickle-shaped knives lashed to one end, cut
down the fruit bunches which can be as high as 15 ft.
Palm fronds are also cut from the trees. Harvesting oil
palm is not an activity performed by one person.
Typically, it is the work of whole families. While men cut
the fruit down, women and children collect the 40 kg
bunches into a pile and pick up the small individual fruits
which have fallen away from the bunch. While whole
families work at this activity, if employed by the commercial agricultural plantation, the employment rosters
typically only note the men. Women and children do not
receive any separate income for their work.
Gender and Religion
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
447
OTHER CARETAKER
Btsisi’ recognize the nurturing role of mothers. Mothers
carry a fetus for 9 months and 9 days, and then bring a
child into the world with great effort. Mothers feed and
carry the newborn almost single-handedly. Unlike single
mothers, single fathers will foster their children out to
relatives. However, if a widowed man wishes to keep his
children, it is his right. But, unless they are sufficiently old
and relatively independent, men find caring for children
difficult. Upon remarriage following divorce, men only
infrequently take their children with them because their
new wives are guardedly jealous of their own children’s
position in the household. Women are pleased and proud
if their stepchildren consider them to be “good” mothers.
While people should respect their fathers and grandfathers, Btsisi’ do not believe that children must take care
of them in old age or sickness, as they believe they must
do for their mothers and grandmothers. Fathers do not
nurture children as do mothers; consequently, no supernatural punishment occurs for “forgetting” them.
Yet, men are very loving and nurturing of their children. Fathers’ child-tending supplements their wives’
childcare activities. Time studies found men average
approximately 15% of their day performing childcare
activities compared with women’s 62%. Men’s participation in childcare varies according to the developmental
cycle of the household. Where there are only young
children, men’s contribution is greatest. Toddlers whose
mothers have younger siblings to care for will spend
extensive periods under their fathers’ care.
While a father plays an active role in finding his sons
a spouse, he must demonstrate caution when organizing
his daughters’ marriages. It cannot be said that a father
“sold” his daughter into marriage; thus a man must show
care this does not happen. A man typically leaves his
daughter’s marital arrangements to her mother’s cognatic
descent group.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
As mothers nurture their children and sisters nurture their
sibling group, the Batin (village leader) nurtures the local
group. Traditionally, with uxorilocality (matrilocality)
and village endogamy, women formed the central core of
the local community. The centrality of women in the local
village is expressed in women’s traditional role as holder
of the political office of Batin. As a direct matrilineal
descendant of the local group’s founding ancestor Batins
symbolize the local descent group. Btsisi’ elders remember the last two women Batin, both of whom died without
heirs. Thus their line was lost and there are no longer
any women in the position. But elder women still have
an important unofficial role in maintaining community
peace and unity. Women will informally come together
under the informal leadership of a female elder in the
community to discuss issues that directly affect the
women of the community.
While women’s role was to maintain village life, men
maintained external relations. Traditionally, men married
into a community. Being “outsiders” they performed
activities which took them beyond the village. This
outward-looking view was reinforced by men holding the
leadership position of penghulu’, whose job was to maintain relationships with other Btsisi’ communities and the
wider outside world.
Today, all titled positions are held by men, inherited
through the patrilineal line. However, if the elders
consider a man unsuitable for the position, such as being
too concerned about his and his family’s welfare to the
detriment of the community or drinking too much, his
consanguineal relative, such as a brother or patrilineal
cousin, will fill the position.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Btsisi’ place great emphasis on the couple as the most
important relationship in Btsisi’ society. This notion is
followed through in the belief system with God being
both female or male. “How could it be anything other
than this?,” Btsisi’ say. Ancestors (Moyang), who can be
male or female, also have spouses. Two of the most
prominent Moyang, Moyang Mlur and Moyang Lunyot,
are husband and wife. This couple is responsible for
providing Btsisi’ with the rules of humanity (adat), which
prescribed who people can and cannot marry. The emphasis on couples persists in the ideology of the shaman’s
spirit familiar. Most often, the spirit familiar is of the
opposite sex of the shaman and has a metaphorical
marital relationship with the shaman.
Btsisi’ trimbow (“sacred origin stories”) relate the
creation of the world and humanity. The trimbow begins
448
by describing the creation of humanity when God and
God’s assistant, a jin (genie) were alone in the world. The
jin molded “heavenly earth” into a figure which God
gifted with “life’s breath.” The jin then made a second
figure to be a “companion” to the first. Both figures were
molded from the same substance even though they were
created separately. The story is unclear as to whether
the male or female figure was made first. These figures
were the parents of Pagar Buyok and her younger brother
Busuh, the “original siblings” whose descendants populated the world.
Following a great deluge, the original sibling pair
circled a mountain, the last remaining dry land, in search
of mates. They discovered that they were the only
remaining people in the world, so God allowed them to
marry. Btsisi’ celebrate the sibling couple by singing and
dancing the main jo’oh. People dance around a busut
(“mound”) symbolizing the center of the world, the
mountain the siblings circled around. Women dance in an
inner circle around the mound with men in a circle
outside the women’s. Women in the inner circle are closer
to the busut, suggesting that they are closer to the cosmic
center than men. Women and men dance around the
mountain in the same direction to avoid the possibility of
brother and sister symbolically meeting.
Shamans are essential to rituals such as weddings
and curing ceremonies. Women do not desire to become
a shaman. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is
because women have another more direct route to the
spirit world through their menstrual blood. Menstruating
women do not bathe in rivers. Their blood opens a
path directly to the spirit world. Thus women have an
innate ability to communicate with the ancestors. Women
do become midwives although, as is the case for
shamans, fewer and fewer desire to learn the body of
knowledge.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Women and men both work very hard. Time spent in
subsistence and income-generating activities changes
seasonally and monthly with the tides and weather.
Btsisi’ who fish and collect animals in the mangrove and
on the strand schedule their activity to the tides, leaving
in their boats before the tide ebbs and returning with its
rise. This might require a 3 a.m. departure.
Hma’ Btsisi’
Leisure time varies depending upon the developmental cycle of the household and people’s livelihoods.
Women with young children have substantially less
leisure time than their husbands, but if women have the
help of older children, especially daughters, they have
more time to spend working or socializing and resting.
Evidence indicates people who work as oil palm
harvesters rather than fishing, have more leisure time.
However, people who fish have greater flexibility to take
a day off if tired.
When men socialize they are more likely to go off to
the local toddy house and have a few drinks with their
friends. Women also go, but usually not without their husbands. When women go to the shop on their own, they
typically buy what they need and then return home,
whereas when men go to the store they will linger, talking with friends and relatives.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Even though there are titled elders, all of whom are men,
Btsisi’ should be viewed as an egalitarian society in
which women and men are both considered valued,
important, and equal members of the community. Women
and men who are knowledgeable about maintaining the
health and well-being of people are respected for their
knowledge and recognized as valuable community members; however, they do not receive any special rights or
privileges as a result of their roles.
Women and men jointly reach decisions that affect
their lives. What wage and subsistence activities people
do are determined mutually by those involved. Control
over resources is shared among owners. If a brother and
sister jointly own land, they will jointly determine what
the land will be used for. In terms of marriage choices,
both young men and young women have a similar ability
to control the selection of their partner. The influence a
person has is dependent not on whether they are male or
female, but on their personality.
While there is officially no “head of household,”
people say that, if there is one, the woman of the household is the leader. Women are the household financial
controllers. Men hand their income to their wives who in
turn give their husbands “pocket money.” Decisions on
household purchases should be reached after discussion
between a husband and wife, and a mutually agreeable
solution is reached.
Courtship and Marriage
SEXUALITY
The topic of sex rarely comes up in everyday conversation
with people of the opposite sex, except when people are
drinking. While people do not approve of blatant bawdy
behaviour, they do not express disapproval of sex or conversations about sex. Btsisi’ myths of the origins of sex
highlight the fact that sex is fun, and divine intervention
was involved in making it easier. Btsisi’ do not view sex
as debilitating, nor do they perceive women’s sexuality as
threatening to men. Women seem to dislike sexual activity more than men, but this is because they fear pregnancy.
While some women use birth control, not all do. Women
who do use contraception say that they enjoy sex. Sexual
activity among married couples is limited to no more than
once a night otherwise, couples say, “they would be too
tired in the morning.” Both men and women remain fully
clothed during sexual activity.
Extramarital activity occurs often. Men and women
are both equally involved in extramarital activity. Men are
the primary initiators of sexual activity, verbally alluding
to or suggesting a liaison. If women are interested in a
man they will attempt eye contact through winking or
using other suggestive facial poses. Extramarital relationships do result in conception, which sooner or later
becomes public knowledge, even if it is 20 years later. To
accuse a spouse of adultery requires “catching” him
or her in the act. Hearsay is unacceptable. If caught,
the offending parties do not deny the act and give the
wronged spouse “evidence” of the wrongdoing. The
affronted spouse, whether the husband or wife, has
the same rights. The accused lovers have the same rights
and obligations. Adultery is insufficient cause for initiating a divorce unless the offending spouse is “caught” at
least three times. The wronged spouse can then receive
a divorce without being fined; if the injured spouse wishes
to leave the marriage without catching his/her spouse
three times, he/she will have to pay a fine to the elders.
Notions of modesty have changed with the
encroachment of the outside world, especially with
Malay morality. Traditionally, Btsisi’ women did not
wear clothing on their upper body. Today they do. During
daylight hours, women no longer walk around their
homes wearing just brassieres and sarongs. With more
outsiders coming and going in villages, women have
altered what they consider modest. Women will no longer
even breast-feed outside the village, believing that the
Malays will consider this immoral.
449
Little information is available concerning Btsisi’
views on homosexuality; there are no ethnographic
examples in the literature. While people seem willing to
talk about children born out of wedlock and adulterous
relationships, Btsisi’ never speak of homosexuality.
Cross-dressing is also a topic that is not discussed.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Btsisi’ youth have ample opportunity to get to know each
other. At school, around the village, at the store, on the
road, and at festivals youths mingle. Weddings, which are
all-night activities, provide young couples great leeway to
go off together and get to know each other. Today, youths
own motorcycles, giving them the freedom of mobility to
visit other villages.
Btsisi’ women say that both they and men are
attracted to light-skinned people. Fair skin is a sign of
beauty. When preparing for a celebration, young women
take great care in presenting themselves in an attractive
way. They will powder their faces to lighten their
complexion, put on red lipstick, oil and scent their hair,
and put on their finest clothes. Women say that what most
attracts them to a man is his heart, if it is good and kind.
Women as well as men say a person’s physical appearance is only of minor significance.
There is an expectation that all youths will marry.
Extensive census collecting found only one middle-aged
man who never married. His rationale for this was that he
did not want to provide for a woman’s superfluous and
expensive desires. This man was never ostracized and he
was never considered particularly strange. However, it is
atypical.
Over half of all primary marriages are arranged by
the couple’s parents or grandparents. Girls have as much
or as little to say over arrangements as boys. The ability
to refuse an arrangement depends upon the child–elder
relationship, but if a marriage has been arranged, in most
cases it is a fait accompli. Youths rarely say no to their
elders’ arrangements. Primary weddings are expensive
and youths (and parents) need the financial assistance of
their families. Refusing the choice of an arranged marital
partner will negate the possibility of financial assistance
when the youth wishes to marry later.
Most marriages are arranged between kin. Families
arrange for boys to marry into their father’s opoh
(cognatic kin group) and girls into their mother’s.
450
Thus, a boy ideally marries his patrilateral cross cousin.
Village endogamy is also a common occurrence in over
80% of all marriages.
Marriage ceremonies between dara (“never married”)
are very elaborate, something unique among Orang Asli.
Ceremonies begin on a Friday night of a full moon. Gifts
(minang) pass from the groom’s family to the bride and
her family. The minang includes a token amount of
money, a small woven basket of cigarettes, and betel nut
quid makings which go to the bride’s family; clothes and
other items that the bride will need to beautify herself for
the following days’ ceremonies go to the bride. On the
following morning, both the bride and groom’s teeth are
filed, indicating their entry into adulthood. They are then
separately sequestered until the night, when an elaborate
ceremony takes place to ritually cool the couple, thus
ensuring good luck and good health. Celebrants dance and
sing through the night. On Sunday morning the groom and
his kin, using martial arts, symbolically break through a
line of bride’s male kin protectors. The groom then
“captures” his bride. The couple are then greeted by their
parents who wash the feet of their new child-in-law. The
couple then learn through action and lecturing what it
means to be a wife and husband. They learn what their
roles are and how they need to work together as a team.
The couple then receive a new married name (glaw odo’)
which they use to address and refer to each other; the same
name is also used by the community. This highlights the
cooperative joint status of a conjugal couple.
Widowed and divorced people ( janda’) remarry. This
is particularly the case for widowed men. Older widowed
or divorced women will normally wait longer than men
before remarrying. Men need the help of a wife more than
women seem to need the assistance of a husband. People
are free to establish their own secondary marriages. Elders
cannot control widows or divorcees as they can young
couples. “Customary law” only requires providing a meal
to kin and villagers for secondary marriages. But many do
not even bother with this.
Btsisi’ have a marriage institution called tukah kdoh
(“wife swapping”). This is when two married couples
exchange partners for either a predetermined period of
time or permanently. This arrangement is typically the
result of an extramarital relationship which a couple
wishes to make public, thus ending the worry of “being
caught.” In permanent swaps, the offended man and
woman agree to the swap to avoid the divorce fines they
would both otherwise have to pay.
Hma’ Btsisi’
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Ceremonies on the third day of a wedding focus on teaching the couple to work together in unison and to share the
products of their labor. They are no longer two separate
individuals but rather one unit with a shared identity and
a shared purpose. They are an odo’, a couple, who have a
cooperative relationship with shared goals. The relationship between husband and wife is a major venue of
male–female relations, shaping the lives of both women
and men. Ideally, a married couple should not argue. Life
should be harmonious, with spouses helping each other,
working together as best friends. A husband and wife
must be companions collaborating for success. The traditional Btsisi’ word for marriage, kuyn-hodong, is the
compound of the words kuyn (“husband/man”) and
hodong (“wife/woman”). There are many metaphors
symbolizing the joint cooperative relationship necessary
between husband and wife.
While there is a conceptual scheme dividing men’s
and women’s work into a complementary division of
labor, flexibility characterizes the sexual division of
labor. Few, if any, restrictions prohibit a person from
performing tasks assigned to the opposite sex. Many of
the activities Btsisi’ perform require a partner. People
prefer this partner to be their spouse. In this way
resources remain within the household rather than being
divided. Even if an activity can be performed individually, who would want to be alone? People want to do
things with a friend, and their spouse is their best friend.
If he/she is not, then why stay in the marriage? The lack
of a rigid sexual division of labor and the need to have a
partner reinforces interdependence and cooperation
between husband and wife. A Btsisi’ man said: “There is
no difference in the work women and men do. We all do
the same thing and we work together. This way it gets
done faster.” Working together means that women and
men have mutual areas of discourse.
A good wife cares for her children and house, works
with her husband in the fields and at sea, and she loves
her husband and remains faithful to him. In turn, a good
husband should not be lazy, he should be a good provider,
and he should love his wife and remain faithful to her.
Polygyny is infrequently practiced. Women do not
like their husbands to take a second wife and in most
instances the man’s first marriage will fail. Cowives do
not get along and most often the wives will reside in
Bibliography
different villages. Sororal polygyny is the only type of
polygyny which is truly successful. Who can be angry
with her sister? Polyandry is prohibited. If caught in such
a relationship, the punishment is for the three people to
be tied to a stake in the sea and drown with the rising tide.
Divorce is possible for both men and women.
Reasons why women and men divorce do not differ nor
do the fines for initiating a divorce. It is easier for men to
initiate a divorce because they are more likely to have
access to the funds needed to pay the fines, but this does
not seem to inhibit women, who receive financial support
from their families. If old enough, children decide with
whom they want to reside. Usually they spend time with
both parents, since village endogamy prevails. But
fearing stepmothers, children prefer living with their
mothers.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Sibling bonds, especially the brother–sister bond, are
central to Btsisi’ culture. The original married couple in
Btsisi’ trimbow (“sacred origin story”) were older sister
and younger brother. Customary law does not allow
brother and sister to marry as the original siblings did.
While the relationship between all siblings is very
close, same-sex sibling relationships are generally closer.
With parallel filiation, sisters and brothers are not “kin”;
they do belong to the same opoh (“kin group”). By
arranging their children’s marriage, especially when it
entails a boy marrying his patrilateral cross cousin, the
brother–sister pair ensures that their grandchildren will
be siblings as they are.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Although Btsisi’ culture is undergoing dramatic changes
with land loss, resource depletion, and wage labor, the
relationship between women and men remains constant.
Women and men remain true partners sharing in their
451
work and sharing in their play. This is atypical, but Btsisi’
culture has buffered the most common negative impacts
of colonialism and development on women’s relationship
with men. However, there is slight linguistic evidence
suggesting that changes are beginning to occur in the
cultural construct of the gender balance in Btsisi’ society.
In the past, terms of reference and address for affinal kin
were the same regardless of the sex of the person speaking or the person being addressed. In 2002, the terms of
address and reference for men and women are no longer
the same; the terms of address and reference for females
have altered. Whether this linguistic change foreshadows
behavioral changes is not yet known.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Karim, W.-J. (1981). Ma’ Betisek concepts of living things. New Jersey:
Humanities Press.
Karim, W.-J. (1993). With Moyang Melur in Carey Island: More endangered, more engendered. In D. Bell, P. Caplan, & W.-J. Karim
(Eds.), Gendered fields: Women, men and ethnography (pp. 78–92).
London: Routledge.
Mathur, S. (1982). The Besisi and their religion: An introduction to the
people, the beliefs and the ritual practices of an aboriginal
community of coastal Selangor, Malaysia. Contributions to
Southeast Asian Ethnography, 5, 137–181.
Nowak, B. S. (1985). Can the partnership last? Btsisi’ marital partners
and development. Cultural Survival, 8(2), 9–12.
Nowak, B. S. (1987). Marriage and household: Btsisi’ response to a
changing world. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, State
University of New York, Buffalo.
Nowak, B. S. (1988). The cooperative nature of women’s and men’s
roles in Btsisi’ marine extracting activities. In J. Nadel-Klein &
D. Davis (Ed.), To work and to weep: Women in fishing economies
(pp. 51–72). St. Johns: Institute of Social and Economic Research,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Nowak, B. S. (2000). Dancing the main jo’oh: Hma’ Btsisi’ celebrate
their humanity and religious identity in a Malaysian world.
Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11(3), 345–557.
Nowak, B. S. (under review). Religion and the paradigm of domestic
relations: The Btsisi’ Odo’. In P. Martinez (Ed.), Gender, culture
and religion: Equal before God, unequal before man. Kuala
Lumpur, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS).
Shanthi, T. (1999). Orang Asli women and men in transition. In
K. S. Jomo (Ed.), Rethinking Malaysia (pp. 267–292). Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia: Malaysian Social Science Association.
Hmong of Laos and the United States
Dia Cha and Timothy Dunnigan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Historical Overview
Alternative names are Hmoob, Mong, Moob, Miao, and
Meo (derogatory).
LOCATION
In the 19th century, groups of Hmong engaged in largescale migrations into Southeast Asia from the region of
southern China, settling largely in the highlands of northeastern Laos. Thereafter, many Hmong fled Laos as the
Pathet Lao assumed control of Laos in 1975. After living
for a time in refugee camps in Thailand, these Hmong
resettled in France, French Guiana, Australia, Canada,
and the United States. This article focuses on the Hmong
who immigrated to the United States from Laos after the
Vietnam War, becoming Hmong Americans. These
Hmong were born and/or raised either in the refugee
camps of Thailand or in the United States.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Linguistic and Cultural Identifiers
Speakers of Hmoob Dawb or White Hmong call
themselves Hmoob, whereas those who speak Moob Leeg
(no English translation) refer to themselves as Moob. The
presence versus the absence of preaspirated nasals is only
one of the many differences, phonological, syntactic, and
lexical, that distinguish these two major and, for the most
part, mutually intelligible varieties of Hmong spoken in
Laos and North America. Common ethnonyms used by
outsiders for Hmong are Meo (in Laos, Thailand, and
Vietnam) and Miao (in China).1 The latter term is a
general “nationality” label that applies to a number of
groups with distinct languages and cultures (Schein,
2000). Western reporters who covered Laos during
the Vietnam War followed the lead of Lao sources in
using the denigrating term Meo when writing about the
seemingly exotic Hmong or Mong.
Hmong began moving into Southeast Asia during the
19th century to escape political instability and conflict in
southern China. They established villages in mountainous northeastern Laos where they had to deal with Lao
and French demands for tribute and labor. In reaction to
these oppressive demands, a Hmong man instigated a
rebellion that lasted from 1918 to 1922 by prophesying
the return of the ancestors and the miraculous expulsion
of the French from Indochina. Although French colonial
authorities suppressed the uprising and executed its main
leaders, they granted the Hmong a greater degree of selfgovernance. Becoming part of the official government
created new problems for the Laotian Hmong when influential individuals and their followers took opposite sides
in the political struggles that followed (see Quincy [1995]
for more extensive history).
In the 1930s, two powerful Hmong families competed for French recognition near a key Laotian trading
center situated near the border with Vietnam. The rivalry
led to the formation of pro- and anti-French factions. The
former transferred their allegiance to the Westernsupported constitutional monarchy when it was established in 1949, and fought in defense of the Royal Laotian
Government with extensive help from the Central
Intelligence Agency of the United States (C.I.A.) beginning in 1961. The smaller anti-French faction joined with
the Lao Issara (Free Lao movement) after World War II
in agitating for complete political independence from the
West. They subsequently became part of the communist
Pathet Lao movement at the time of the Vietnam War
when the Laotian military and the C.I.A.-assisted Special
Guerilla Units, which were predominantly Hmong,
opposed the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese Army.
Other Hmong tried to encourage the formation of a
coalition government, but compromise proved impossible. Almost 15 years of warfare, which was conducted
primarily in northeastern Laos, devastated the Hmong
population. After the Pathet Lao assumed control of Laos
in 1975, a great many Hmong fled to Thailand where they
452
Cultural Overview
were placed in camps and forced to live under harsh
conditions. Most of these refugees were eventually resettled in Germany, France, French Guiana, Australia,
Canada, or the United States (Cha & Livo, 2000;
Hamilton-Merrit, 1993; Pfaff, 1995).
Economy and Politics
The Hmong who first migrated to Laos were swidden
farmers. They created small tillable plots in the highlands
by cutting down and burning the forest vegetation. The
principal food crop was originally maize, but dry-land
rice became increasingly important over time. Wet
(paddy) rice farming was practicable in only a few areas
accessible to the Hmong. They grew a variety of vegetables in house gardens, and kept chickens and pigs.
Farmers with sufficient land raised horses and cattle. The
Hmong planted poppies to obtain raw opium that could
be bartered for salt, silver, and a variety of manufactured
goods. The production and trading of opium carried no
stigma or threat of legal sanctions. It was used domestically as a medicine and an analgesic. Addiction to smoking opium occurred, but was not very common except
among ailing elders (Cooper, 1984; Cooper, Tapp, Lee, &
Schworer-Kohl, 1996).
Hmong villages tended to be fairly small and
temporary. When soil fertility declined and the fields
ceased producing good crops, entire villages moved to
new areas of virgin or regenerated forest. Where Hmong
managed to establish more permanent settlements closer
to urban centers, the boys could commute weekly to the
city and live together while attending school. Catholic
missionaries established an academy that trained several
generations of Hmong boys. In order to garner greater
political support in rural areas during the period of the
Pathet Lao insurgency, which coincided with the Vietnam
War, the government provided the Hmong and other nonLao minorities with more educational opportunities.
Hmong boys were encouraged to attend rural schools for
at least 3 years, and a few progressed through the system
until they received graduate degrees from foreign universities. Hmong girls were much less likely to be sent to
school, although women from politically prominent
families did graduate from high school in the capital of
Vientiane (Yang & Blake, 1993).
The fighting that occurred in Laos between 1961 and
1975 created a large number of internal refugees.
A majority of Hmong retreated to more secure areas near
453
military bases. Loyalist Hmong families who stayed in
embattled areas came to depend upon food dropped from
C.I.A. planes (Garnett, 1974). A great many fathers and
sons left their families to serve as soldiers. They learned
how to operate modern military equipment, and a select
few were given English lessons so that they could
communicate with American support personnel.2 Educated
Hmong males were hired by the Laotian government
and by international agencies to help carry out economic
and social development programs. Comparatively high
pay and other perquisites of power were available to men
who ascended through the military or administrative ranks.
The U.S. government tried to minimize the impact
of refugee resettlement by scattering Southeast Asians
across the country. Refugees were pressured to find
employment and attain economic self-sufficiency as soon
as possible. Rather than staying put, Hmong migrated to
mostly urban areas where they could reestablish extended
kinship networks, find jobs, and get an education.
Former military officers, government officials, and
staff members of international programs were among the
first to find employment, often with resettlement agencies. The vast majority of Hmong lacked the language
and work skills required for jobs that provided a living
wage with adequate benefits. The men engaged in a
national Hmong debate about the wisdom of undergoing
training in the present in order to qualify for a good job
in the future. Some chose vocational training over immediate employment, and became more dependent on the
incomes earned by wives for performing unskilled work.
Despite efforts to find jobs for Hmong men and women,
and the willingness of husbands and wives, including
those with small children, to work in shifts at full-time
jobs, welfare dependence remained high for many years
(Cha, 2000; Lo, 2001; Yang & Murphy, 1994).
Being educated largely or entirely in the United
States has not insured economic success for the younger
Hmong, but many are fulfilling the aspirations of parents
by earning advanced degrees and embarking upon highstatus careers. During the early years of resettlement,
Hmong parents tended to encourage sons more than
daughters to acquire a post-secondary education. This
bias appears to be lessening as the economic value and
prestige of academically successful daughters is increasing as they assume leadership roles in the community.
Drawing upon their experiences in Laos and
Thailand, Hmong have started a variety of businesses in
the United States, often by pooling the financial resources
454
Hmong of Laos and the United States
of related families. The possibility of owning a profitable
business holds great appeal for Hmong, especially those
who have little hope of ever earning high salaries in the
corporate world. By contributing their business acumen
and labor to these ventures, sometimes as the principal
owners, a small number of women have become a force
within the Hmong business community.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
In Hmong society, only two genders are recognized, male
and female. Hmong men are most admired for being tough,
intelligent, wise, generous, and commanding. Above all,
they must materially support, morally guide, and resolutely
defend the family and sublineage. In order to achieve these
ends, they also have to negotiate and maintain reciprocities
with other kin groups. In this strategy lies a paradox for
would-be civic leaders and politicians. They must be
perceived as loyal family members who will not use their
positions in the community to favor relatives. The appearance of kinship bias in the performance of public duties can
seriously undermine a leader’s support.
The ideal Hmong woman of one or two generations
ago was nurturing, patient, forbearing, industrious,
mature, quiet, and not given to gossip. She modestly
avoided joking, or even talking, about sex. When faced
with a serious tragedy, such as the death of loved ones,
she displayed great emotion, but muted her feelings when
dealing with the aggravating problems of everyday life.
Rather than being assertive, she tended to withhold opinions that might contradict the views of others, particularly
those of male leaders. Most of these qualities continue to
be valued by Hmong in the United States, but the ascent
of women into public positions of authority reflects a
trend toward greater gender equality with respect to
opinion sharing and problem solving (see Donnelly,
1994; Rice, 2000; Symonds, 1991).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Guided by the concept of hlub, “concerned love of
others,” Hmong parents are permissive and tolerant
toward children younger than 7. Once they demonstrate
that they can start assuming productive roles within the
family, children receive explicit guidance, and are subject
to corporal punishment for serious misbehaviors.3 More
responsibility and discipline are imposed as children
mature, and they are expected to be very well mannered
by the time they reach adolescence.
In the poetics of Hmong ritual language, the
placenta is referred to as the “silver and gold jacket” or
the “silk shirt” that a baby sheds at birth and a deceased
person puts on again before traveling back to the village
of the ancestors. When they lived in dirt-floored houses
in Laos, the Hmong buried the placenta of a male child
around the base of the central house post, the tus ncej tas
(“the post of all ancestral relatives”); many rituals were
conducted near that post. His early physical association
with the main support of the house indicated that he
would help continue the descent line, maintain clan and
lineage rituals, guide household members, and represent
them in dealings with the larger community. The placenta
of a female child was buried at a bedpost or under the bed
to symbolize her future role in domestic affairs, particularly reproduction. Of course, these symbolic practices
have been discontinued in the United States. What has not
changed is the fact that Hmong females learn very early
that they will leave their natal families and become “other
people’s daughters” when they marry.
Hmong children in Laos were encouraged to participate in activities appropriate to their sex. Boys began
imitating their fathers and older male relatives by playing
with miniature agricultural and hunting implements. By
the time they were 8 or 9 they had regular farm chores to
perform, and sometimes accompanied the men on hunting forays. The adolescent sons of farmers labored in the
fields, and learned the wood- and metal-working skills
needed to maintain the family operation. Businessmen,
typically itinerate traders, kept their sons in school until
their mathematical and literacy skills became a business
asset. Late adolescence was a time when the importance
of learning how to perform family rituals was impressed
upon boys. Those who showed musical talent were
encouraged to take up instruments like the ceremonially
important multipiped qeej. Ancestor spirits sometimes
brought illness upon a youth as a means of calling him to
a type of curing known as ua neeb, “working with spirit
familiars.” He usually waited until adulthood before
apprenticing with a txiv neeb.
Very young girls began their roles as caretakers and
teachers of domestic skills by playing with nkauj nyab,
Gender-Related Social Groups
handmade “daughter-in-law” dolls. At 6, or even 5 years
of age they started sweeping the house floor and feeding
the chickens. Before reaching adolescence, girls know the
rudimentary aspects of cooking, keeping house, taking
care of young children, maintaining the garden, and
tending the smaller animals. Among their female peers,
they sometimes spoke lus rov, a kind of reversed language that males did not know or bother to learn. This
created a gender-exclusive social space that girls maintained until suitors began to show an interest in them.
In the company of their mothers, grandmothers, and
aunts, they sewed, wove textiles, and plaited baskets.
A vast knowledge of domestic medicine was passed down
within families from older to younger females. Such
information was extremely valuable because a woman
who is recognized as a kws tshuaj, or “expert in medicine,” could command high prices for a variety of treatments, the most important being to increase a woman’s
fertility. A comparatively small number of women learned
the arts of the txiv neeb.
Puberty and Adolescence
Late in childhood, brothers and sisters begin to sleep
apart. The advent of puberty makes sexual privacy very
important. Hmong in the United States, like their parents
before them, try to monitor the activities and peer choices
of their adolescent children. The prevailing attitude is that
girls need close supervision, whereas boys can be permitted greater freedom of movement. Boys are expected
to initiate flirting and take the lead in serious courting, but
Hmong girls in the United States are becoming considerably less passive in these relationships (see Courtship and
Marriage).
Attainment of Adulthood
There is no specific marker or rite of passage to attain
adulthood in Hmong society. However, Hmong generally
consider a married person, no matter how young he or she
may be, as laus or old. In other words, marriage seems to
mark adulthood or maturity.
Middle Age and Old Age
A woman enters marriage knowing that she must be
compliant before her new parents and accommodating to
all the kwv tij of her husband. (Given the pressures of
455
adapting to, and winning the acceptance of, a new set of
kin, it is not surprising that Hmong American women
prefer to establish their own independent nuclear families
as soon as possible after marriage.) She will be expected
to bear at least one son, and preferably two or three. Her
status increases as the family grows, and she comes to be
regarded as nurturing mother and loyal wife. When a man
has shown that he is a reliable family provider, kind
father, and considerate husband, the neej tsa had a special
ceremony to confer upon him a npe laus, an elder name,
which he afterwards proudly used in conjunction with his
given name.
Upon reaching 50 years of age or so in Laos, a
couple looked to the youngest son and his wife to take
over most of the duties of running the household. The
institutionalization of elder care in the United States has
caused Hmong to worry a great deal about the depressing
prospect of being forced to live with strangers during
their declining years. Rather than placing all of the
responsibility on the family of the youngest son, infirm
parents live, sometimes serially, with daughters as well as
older sons. This has increased the value of daughters
inasmuch as they and their families might become a
major source of support in the future. When parents must
be sent to a facility for specialized medical treatment or
hospice care, members of the extended kin network,
including the neejtsa as well as the kwv tij, arrange their
schedules to be with them as often as possible.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Every Hmong identifies with the xeem, exogamous
patrilineal clan, of his or her father. (The French colonial
administration used xeem names as surnames.) A xeem is
a large descent category rather than a social group. The
number of xeem distinctions has varied over time, but at
least 18 are recognized in the United States. Hmong who
are related through males to a common historical ancestor or who practice the same rituals as part of their
patrimony consider themselves ib caj ces, that is, of “one
root and trunk.” A caj ces could be technically called a
lineage. Families headed by males of the same caj ces
frequently form a durable alliance and refer to themselves
simply as a pawg/pab neeg or “group.” They constitute a
localized sublineage. The most influential members tend
to be males belonging to a tsev neeg, a family or “household,” headed by a particularly capable leader. This male
456
Hmong of Laos and the United States
elder functions as the primary spokesperson for the entire
group and mediates disputes. He is “one who guides” or
“one who puts out fires.” Non-Hmong Americans often
refer to all of these kinship structures, from xeem to tsev
neeg, as “clans,” and mistakenly assume that the pawg
neeg leader exerts authoritarian control over all members.
Patrilineal relatives refer to themselves collectively as
kwv tij, “younger/older brothers.” When a woman
marries, she retains her xeem identity while following the
cultural norms and practices of her husband’s family. Her
children are of the father’s xeem and belong to his kwv tij
(see Dunnigan [1982] and Leepreecha [2001] for more on
Hmong kinship).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Before war disrupted the Hmong economy in the 1960s,
women managed the house and garden, cared for the
chickens and pigs, and worked in the fields. Men cleared
land, built houses, manufactured tools, helped with
cultivation and harvesting, tended the larger animals, and
hunted wild game. If traders did not come to their
villages, men took their horses, cattle, and opium to
distant markets. Because they were in contact with outsiders, Hmong men had many opportunities to learn other
languages, particularly Lao (Cha & Chagnon, 1993).
During wartime, the wives of soldiers and war
widows functioned as family heads and were very
resourceful in supplementing the family income. They
became entrepreneurs who ran small restaurants or clothing stores. Others took over commodity trading from their
husbands, and even expanded operations.
The period of internment in Thailand further reduced
differences in the economic and educational statuses of
Hmong men and women. Both attended language and literacy classes in order to prepare for the time when their
families would be permanently resettled in another country. Since economic activity was restricted to the boundaries of the refugee camps, there was limited opportunity
for agricultural activity. Everyone became dependent
upon food and other basic necessities distributed under
auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, but there were ways for camp residents to earn
money (Cha & Chagnon, 1993; Cha & Small, 1994;
Long, 1993).
Already adept at needlework, women started up
full-time commercial sewing ventures that generated
much needed income. The value of their work persuaded
husbands to assume more cooking and childcare responsibilities. Some men took up sewing, and worked alongside the women. Both men and women set up candy,
clothing, produce, prepared food, and tailor shops.
Blacksmiths made money by forging knives and other
tools from the leaf springs of junked military vehicles.
Silversmiths fashioned jewelry, mostly necklaces and
rings, from silver bars brought from Laos or purchased
from Thai merchants. When silver became scarce, they
learned how to work aluminum into the same forms of
jewelry.
Older men who once held prestigious jobs in the
Laotian military, civil service, or private commercial
sector had the hardest time adjusting to the new economic
realities of camp life. They could not wield as much of
influence or demand the same degree of respect as they
had in Laos. Their leadership skills, while still useful, no
longer guaranteed the security of their families. Younger
men, those with a command of English, had a much better
chance of being employed by United Nations and private
relief organizations that ran clinics and schools in the
refugee camps. They were also in a position to sell their
services as language and literacy tutors to Hmong preparing for relocation to the United States.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
In Hmong society prior to the resettlement in the United
States, young girls are socialized at an early age to engage
in poj niam hauj lwm, or “women’s work.” This includes
cooking, cleaning, sewing, and caring for younger
siblings. The Hmong female spends most of her time in
such child-rearing activities as feeding, holding, carrying,
supervising, furnishing love and encouragement, clothing, and giving shelter to children. The Hmong mother is
also responsible for the welfare of any orphans left by her
husband’s brothers or male relatives, the care of elderly
parents, especially in-laws, the care of her husband, both
when well and when ill, the care of sick family members,
and the care of any and all guests. Mothers and other
female relatives are also expected to instill in their
daughters a sense of discipline suitable to their future
role, and to teach their daughters the sort of behavior
appropriate to their gender. The Hmong female may also
Gender and Religion
457
be called upon to assume responsibility for the care of all
domestic affairs of those related through blood and
marriage.
Such activities, while crucial to the child’s survival
and to the continuity of Hmong society, are “only
women’s work,” and, in a male-dominated society, a
man’s tasks are ipso facto more important than those
of a woman. These tasks are solving family and clan disputes, hunting, and performing rituals. The Hmong
father, by his example and the force of his personal
authority, engenders for the family a model of respect,
prestige, and recognition, all essential to the community
status of the family and thus the welfare of the children.
Hmong males look after public affairs, devoting themselves to meetings, the purpose of which is the general
welfare of the Hmong: hlub kwv tij neej tsa.
The young Hmong male without older siblings may
occasionally find himself helping parents with childrearing and household activities, but should he have any
siblings who are female, he will be given a wider latitude
for play than the girls. To the Hmong father, a son is more
valuable than a daughter, and therefore he will not treat a
daughter with the respect and high hopes accorded to a boy.
In the United States, these roles are changing as the
Hmong confront and come to terms with the social
pressures generated by American society, and it is possible to find daughters whose lives are every bit as
respected, and even privileged, as those of sons, while
there are sons who are accorded neither the variety of
privileges nor the latitude of behavior enjoyed by their
counterparts in Laos.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
During their early years in the United States, from 1976
to 1980, Hmong utilized the services offered by various
volunteer resettlement agencies (Volags). They also competed with them by establishing nonprofit mutual assistance associations (MAAs) that provided some of the
same kinds of help directly to refugees. The officers and
board members were initially exclusively male. Hmong
females educated in Laos formed affiliated organizations
that focused on the needs of women. Cooperation
between the male- and female-run organizations was
sometimes tense. New female leaders began to emerge
from a widening base as more women acquired the requisite education and experience in the United States.
Governmental agencies and private foundations
pressured their Hmong grantees to give important roles to
women. Hmong MAAs responded by recruiting female
board members and upper-level staff. Women now exercise considerably more authority within these organizations, but men continue to hold most of the top leadership
positions.
Males functioned as the heads of Hmong villages.
They also received appointments to district, provincial,
and national offices from a government that needed
Hmong political and military support after 1961. Several
Hmong, including one woman, were elected seats to the
National Assembly in Laos. The bureaucratic and legal
structures that Hmong instituted at their military bases in
Laos and later in Thailand refugee camps were male dominated. Hmong in the United States are just beginning to
run for political office outside their local communities,
and women are leading the way. A Hmong woman was
elected to the St Paul, Minnesota, Board of Education in
1992, and was succeeded by a Hmong man 3 years later.
A Hmong female attorney, who is also a wife and mother,
became a Minnesota State Senator in 2002.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Hmong ideas about the supernatural represent the
confluence of many religious traditions. Some individuals and families claim to practice just one religion, while
others conduct ceremonies to solicit help from ancestral
and domestic spirits (ua coj dab), participate in Buddhist
rituals, and worship as Christians depending upon the
circumstances. A woman is generally expected to follow
the religious practices of her husband’s family and lineage. However, men have given up ua coj dab and joined
the Christian churches of their in-laws.
Hmong who ua coj dab divide reality into yaj ceeb,
the normally visible and material domain, and yeeb ceeb,
the spirit realm. The latter is also called dab teb, a world
where tame spirits (dab nyeg) protect the house and
garden, while dangerous wild spirits (dab qus) menace
from beyond the pale of human settlement. Hmong also
recognize a supremely powerful spirit for whom they have
several names. All entities, both human and nonhuman,
have spirits called ntsuj plig. After a person dies, his or
her ntsuj plig is said to travel back to the village of
the ancestors. Hmong also talk about a deceased’s spirit
being reincarnated and remaining at the place of
458
interment, but this does not ordinarily occur within the
same discourse.
Hmong say that the span of life is “inscribed” before
birth, but do not see it as absolutely fixed. Life can sometimes be extended with the help of txiv neeb, who are
mostly males (txiv) who work with spirit familiars (neeb)
to keep ntuj plig from leaving the bodies of ailing clients.
Txiv neeb also treat individuals when the ntuj plig either
flees the body due to a traumatic experience or is captured
by wild spirits, the dab qus (see Lee [1995] and Lemoine
[1996] on Hmong spiritual beliefs and practices).
The cosmology of those who ua coj dab reflects the
patrilineal descent system and family-oriented structure
of Hmong society. Like Hmong Christians, they refer to
the greatest supernatural being as a male, but one who has
a wife. They are the Guardian Couple, Nkauj Niam Txiv
Kab Yeeb, who bring children to their earthly parents and
protect them throughout their lives. Ntxwg Nyug is an
imposing and frightening male spirit who, from the highest mountain top in the spirit world, sends illness and
death to the living when their allotted time has expired.
With the help of Nyuj Vag Tuav Teem, his assistant, Ntxwg
Nyug examines how each dead person treated others during his or her earthly existence, and determines what
material form the ntsuj plig will join in the next life, and
for how long. Several ranks down from these top male
spirits is the female Njauj Iab who, before allowing the
dead to pass into the spirit world so that they can be reincarnated, cleanses them of all memories with pure water.
The rarity of important female spirits is paralleled by
absence of woman from the performance of dab qhuas,
rituals that express the unique identities of patrilineal kin
groups. Women are rarely txiv neeb, and only a small
number have become marriage negotiators (mej koob).
Similarly for Christian Hmong, relatively few women are
pastors, choir members, or church soloists.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Hmong needlework is becoming more of a specialty in
the United States as fewer females grow up knowing how
to produce the ornately paneled clothes that they are
expected to wear at weddings and public celebrations.
Interest in male crafts and ceremonial roles is also declining. Alarmed by these trends, Hmong MAAs and cultural
centers are recruiting recognized experts to instruct
youths, both males and females, in a broad range of
Hmong of Laos and the United States
heritage practices. Although cultural maintenance is the
stated goal, new forms of art and entertainment are
emerging from a mix of programs that reflect a long and
complex history of acculturative experiences.
Hmong boys were introduced to the game of soccer
in Laos, and it is probably their most popular organized
sport in the United States. Major tournaments are held
throughout the country during the summer. Teams also
continue to play kab taub, a game with both volleyballand soccer-like elements. A wicker ball is volleyed over
a net with head and foot strikes. Measured in terms of
total participation, volleyball is eclipsing kab taub in
popularity. Boys compete at spinning tops less often now
than was the case in Laos. Possibly the most dramatic
change in Hmong sports activity in the United States is
the participation of girls. Unlike in Laos, it is considered
normal, even desirable, for girls to spend time playing
games like volleyball and badminton, and they have
excelled at these sports at interscholastic competitions.
Music associated with courtship is discussed in the
section on Courtship and Marriage.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Although the construction of gender in Hmong society
varies regionally, as well as over time, the privileged status of males within the family appears to be a constant.
Because they perpetuate the descent line and remain
closer to the parents, sons were, and still are, considered
more valuable than daughters. When a boy was born in
village Laos, the parents announced that he would be “the
little one to shoulder fire wood,” that is, he would remain
with the parents and carry on the family traditions.
A female newborn was called “the one to pluck greens for
the pig” and “the other people’s daughter.” Said more
directly, she would help the family until old enough to
marry and move out. Patrilocal residence tended to keep
male siblings and their male offspring closer together,
whereas married females usually resided with their husband’s kin group. Ideally, the families of close male
patrikin formed pawg neeg (see above) in order to share
resources and to help one another solve problems.
According to one Hmong proverb, “Nine fireplaces are
not as warm as the sun; nine daughters do not equal
one son” (Vang & Lewis, 1984, p. 71). Metaphors that
Courtship and Marriage
downplay the value of daughters are heard less often in
the United States, but sons are still considered essential
to the completion of a family.
In Laos, men performed the clan- and lineagespecific rituals while women functioned in supporting
roles. The handling of a family’s most prestigious goods
in public was the prerogative of males. For instance, at
large feasts associated with funerals and New Year
celebrations, women were restricted to preparing common
staples like rice and vegetables, even though they prepared
all types of food at home. Men assumed the more important task of cooking the meat dishes, which symbolized
family wealth and success.
Hmong family celebrations in the United States are
becoming smaller as kin, affines, and friends find it
increasingly difficult to coordinate their busy schedules.
At these increasingly intimate affairs, the women usually
prepare the food while the men socialize with guests.
This role shift may reflect the fact that the provisioning
and preparing of meat has lost some of its symbolic value
inasmuch as it is no longer difficult to obtain nor particularly expensive. Hmong men may also be responding
to what they see as a prevalent cultural pattern in the
United States, that men do not cook inside the home.
Some kin groups continue to have male cooks prepare the
meat dishes at large celebrations.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Courtship
Daily life in Laos presented limited opportunities for
romantic contacts between single Hmong males and
females. When a young man developed a fondness for a
particular girl he tried to work near her in the field and
assist her in performing chores such as collecting firewood, fetching water, and gathering pig fodder. Doing
these tasks together, usually in the presence of a female
relative of the girl, allowed them to gradually learn about
each other before making any definite commitment. By
helping the girl in an energetic way, the boy demonstrated
his industriousness to the girl’s parents.
At night, single males circulated through the village
trying to engage girls in conversations whispered through
the bamboo or loose board walls of the girls’ bedrooms.
Visits by a boy to a particular girl could become frequent
and gradually more intimate. The boy might try to
459
persuade the girl to meet him elsewhere for a tryst, but
success was unlikely. If the relationship developed into a
strong romantic attachment, the boy asked his father and
other close males relatives to visit the girl’s family
formally to propose marriage. Boys tried to act out their
sexual desires, while girls were expected to resist and
remain virgins until married. If caught in an apparent
tryst, and even if sexual intercourse has not occurred, a
couple will often be pressured by their respective families
to marry in order to prevent scandal. As an alternative, a
compensation payment may be demanded by the girl’s
side for damages caused to the reputation of the girl and
her family.
The arts of courtship in Laos included flute playing,
serenading as well as antiphonal singing between all-boy
and all-girl groups, using a mouth harp or leaf reed to
hum intimacies, competitive riddling, and various forms
of stylized teasing. These genres are rarely practiced in
the United States, but older Hmong occasionally demonstrate some of them at community celebrations. The
get-acquainted game brought from Laos and performed
in connection with New Year festivities involves the
tossing of a stuffed sack or ball between opposite-sexed
partners. Volleyball games between mixed teams at kin
group picnics do more in the United States to facilitate
intersex bonding.
Hmong boys in the United States still go out at night
in groups in order to visit girls, but the encounters must
take place in living rooms where there is less privacy.
Under these circumstances, the exchanges must be more
circumspect, and it is often unclear to the parents which
boy is interested in their daughter. Youths, particularly
boys, are less inclined to dress in distinctive Hmong
clothing and jewelry while participating in the balltossing game at New Year celebrations. They see little
value in singing Hmong folksongs or playing Hmong
musical instruments. When elders speak about the beauty
and utility of such accomplishment, young Hmong
respond with indifference, and even bewilderment. They
prefer listening to popular American music emanating
from portable radios, CD players, and computers. Rather
than improvising rhyming couplets to fit standard folk
melodies, a talent highly valued in Laos, they are more
comfortable singing the lyrics and tunes provided by
karaoke machines.4
Up until the mid-1990s, Hmong males took the
initiative in telephoning, writing, and visiting their
usually younger love interests. If a Hmong female agreed
460
to attend a public event with a suitor, she was chaperoned
by a family member. It was the male’s prerogative to
propose marriage, and his fiancée had little to say in the
planning of the wedding. Hmong females are now much
less hesitant to call boyfriends, and they see nothing
wrong in encouraging the attentions of same-aged or
younger males. An increasing number are neither
abashed nor restricted from going out unescorted with
boyfriends. They are more assertive about whom they
wish to date and marry, and about how their weddings
should be celebrated.
Hmong Americans who have come of age in recent
years tend to see marriage not as a joining of families
embedded in larger kinship networks, but as a union of
two individuals who share a romantic love. Parents and
grandparents wonder whether “a house built on two
supporting poles can be as strong a one built on four or
six supporting poles.”
Marriage
Hmong do not want their children to “remain in the
garden too long” (like ripening fruits and vegetables)
before marrying. Single females risk being viewed by the
first generation of Hmong immigrants as nkauj laug (old
maids) after the age of 18, whereas single males do not
start to be considered nraug laus (old bachelors) until
they reach 30 or so. It is becoming more acceptable for
Hmong females to marry in their early twenties as an
increasing number see the advantages of first finishing
college and starting a career.
Whether they honor the spirits or practice a form of
Christianity, Hmong want the marriages of their daughters to be respectfully arranged in their homes. A suitor
asks his father and other close male relatives to present
a proposal of marriage to the family of his intended bride.
This is done through a mej koob who advocates on behalf
of the suitor’s family. The family receiving the proposal
enlists their own mej koob. If the two sides, including the
couple, agree that marriage is a good idea, the mej koob
negotiate the nqis tshoob, a marriage payment that the
suitor’s relatives make to those of the intended bride. It is
in the house (tsev) of the bride that marriage is discussed
(hais). Thus, the phrase nqis tsev hais describes the
manner in which most Hmong enter into marriage.5
Betrothals can be formalized before youths are old
enough, or are otherwise prepared, to marry. If oppositesexed relatives, affines, or close friends want their
Hmong of Laos and the United States
children to marry in the future, the boy’s side makes
a down payment on the nqis tshoob. Marriage between
first cross cousins is considered by Hmong to be advantageous because it further strengthens relationships
between already close kin groups.
Either side may later ask to be released from the
agreement (qhaib). If just the girl’s side is reluctant to go
forward, the amount already given must be returned with
interest. The family of a replacement suitor usually pays.
If the boy’s side wants to abrogate the qhaib, they forfeit
their investment and are charged a fine.
When a young woman wants to get married against
the wishes of her family, she elopes or “goes quietly”
(mus ntsiag to) with her lover to his kwv tij (patrilineal
relatives). Two male emissaries are sent by the kwv tij to
the woman’s parents requesting a future marriage negotiation. They may refuse but, when their disappointment
and anger subsides, the woman’s birth parents are likely
to accept their new status as neej tsa, the family who
provided a wife to others, and indicate that they are open
to a payment of nqis. It is difficult for a young man to
defy his parents when choosing a mate if he expects to
reside patrilocally after marriage, and to pay a respectable
nqis tshoob to the neej tsa. When faced with parental
resistance, he can ask other relatives to help argue
his case.
The expression zij poj niam, which literally
translates into English as “seizing a woman,” had a much
more restricted meaning before the 1961–75 war in Laos.
It applied to instances where a man intercepted a single
woman outside her home and held her by the arm at the
location of the encounter until her father and other male
relatives could be summoned. The intention of the man
was to extract a promise that he would at least be allowed
to begin the process of nqis tsev hais, although his
proposal might later be rejected. When a man forcibly
carried away a woman whom he wanted to marry, the act
was called nyiag (zij) poj niam, or “secretly stealing a
woman.” The old and less violent stratagem of zij poj
niam is no longer practiced, but many Hmong continue to
use the expression as a synonym for nyiag (zij) poj niam.
What happens after a woman is taken against her
will depends upon whether the captor sends word right
away to the woman’s parents about what has happened
and where their daughter is being held. If the parents are
so informed, they have the choice of doing nothing, or
going directly to their daughter and bringing her back if
she does not want to stay with her captor. Another option
Courtship and Marriage
is to hold the woman incommunicado for 3 days or longer
in order to convince her parents that the marriage has
been consummated and must be accepted. Some women
“stolen” into marriage have learned to accept their fate
and develop loving relationships with their husbands.
Others have endured miserable lives or committed
suicide.
It is difficult to say how often nyiag (zij) poj niam
has occurred in recent times. Although relatively rare,
anecdotal evidence suggests that it happened with greater
frequency during the 1961–75 Laotian War when men had
more opportunities to assert power over others and intimidate the parents of women they desired. A number of
“bride captures” were reported in the newspapers during
the early years of Hmong resettlement in America. Some
of these turned out to be elopements where runaway
brides regretted their rash acts and sided with vengeful
parents when they complained to the police. In other
cases, women held by suitors against their will were not
physically violated before being allowed to return home.
Actual cases of Hmong men taking young single women
by force and having sex with them did occur, but media
stories gave the impression that Hmong generally accept
such behaviors. In fact, the vast majority regard them as
deplorable acts most often perpetrated against vulnerable
women whose relatives are too few and weak to retaliate.
In the late 1980s, school authorities in the
United States became alarmed over what they assumed to
be a “traditional” Hmong practice—adolescent marriage.
Compared with other ethnic groups, a surprising number
of Hmong high-school students, mostly girls and some
younger than 16, were living in marriage-like relationships. Hmong attending U.S. high schools have been
pressured into marriage after being discovered in a real or
apparent romantic relationship by their parents. Youths
may also see marriage as a means of leaving troubled
childhoods and assuming positions within the family
and kin groups that confer respect and a measure of
independence.
Older immigrants have tried to persuade their young
people to wait until they finished high school or even
college before becoming involved in a permanent relationship. Young people, especially girls, actually receive
mixed messages. Besides being advised to wait and get a
good education, they also hear that (1) it is a mistake to
be single too long because it embarrasses parents to have
apparently unmarriageable children, and (2) older and
more educated women can expect to have difficulty in
461
finding suitable mates. They are also aware that elders
sometimes resent unmarried professionals for being
viewed as role models by younger Hmong. Fortunately,
the so-called “early marriage problem” seems to be
fading as youths realize the advantages of waiting longer
before attaining full adulthood, and Hmong parents
become somewhat more comfortable with the American
concept of unsupervised dating.
When the head of a family died in Laos, it was
considered proper for one of his younger brothers or
younger paternal parallel cousins (called brothers) to
marry the widow and raise the deceased’s children.
Technically known as the junior levirate, the practice kept
important affinal linkages intact and insured the continuation of the descent line. The sons and daughters of immigrants are reluctant to continue this custom, but elders still
look within the sublineage to find replacement husbands
for young widows with children.
Men able to afford multiple marriage payments and
support several households have sometimes added a
second or third wife to their families. These can be compatible unions, but conflict-ridden marriages involving
multiple wives have resulted in long-lasting enmities
between kin groups. When tried in the United States,
polygyny has seldom resulted in stable marriages or
cooperative joint households. Men have come to see such
arrangements as causing more problems for the kwv tij
than they return in benefits, and women generally regard
them as oppressive.
Divorce
Senior male members of the husband’s kwv tij are
expected to intervene when a couple are having serious
marital problems. The wife’s birth family, the neej tsa,
becomes involved, short of a divorce action, only when
the husband’s side either invites their help or ignores the
problem entirely. If a marriage cannot be repaired, elders
representing both sides must determine fault, decide the
disposition of the marriage payment, and levy additional
penalties if warranted. Every attempt is made to avoid
divorce because of the threat it poses for relationships
between the kwv tij and neej tsa. In Laos, a woman risked
losing everything, including her children, if she insisted
on divorcing despite efforts at appeasement made by
the husband and his kwv tij. Access to the courts in the
United States has given Hmong women more rights with
respect to child custody and support (Thao, 1986).
462
Infertility or the lack of a male heir has been used by
some husbands as justification for divorce or taking a
second wife.
In Laos, a Hmong family erected a small house in
preparation for the return of a divorced daughter who no
longer had any ties to her ex-husband’s kwv tij. At
marriage, her spirit had been placed under the protection
of the caj ces (lineage) spirits of the husband. If she
became ill or gave birth after divorcing, she could not be
properly treated within the house of her parents, nor
could spirit rituals be performed on her behalf without the
involvement of her ex-husband’s male relatives. So long
as she remained divorced, a woman was considered tu caj
tu ces, cut off from lineage rituals. If she died in this state,
no kin group could give her a proper funeral. Hmong
parents in the United States are still uncomfortable taking
divorced daughters back into their homes, although it
is done.
A woman of good character is often encouraged to
remain with the kwv tij after separating from her husband,
especially if she has a grown son who can provide her a
home. This arrangement protects an ex-wife from the
stigma of spurning the kwv tij and living without spiritual
protection. In Laos, the kwv tij could claim the right to
raise the offspring of women who wanted to leave them.
However, a divorced woman who returned to the neej tsa
was sometimes allowed to keep young children, even
boys. In the event that the ex-husband’s relatives gave up
all claims to the children and the women remarried, the
kwv tij of the new husband could adopt the children into
their xeem (clan).
More Hmong are divorcing in the United States than
was the case in Laos. It has been difficult for older men
to share decision-making responsibilities with their
wives, although younger couples are finding a better
balance. Wives are now less tolerant, or more openly critical, of male infidelity, while some husbands tend to be
uneasy about the kinds of contacts that their wives
unavoidably have with other males in the course of their
daily activities. The process of marriage dissolution still
begins with the involved relatives, and stays there even
when a parallel civil action is progressing to a conclusion
in the courts. Hmong women are still expected to endure
marriages that are loveless and even abusive. Those who
resort to divorce can be called a tus siab phem, an
“evil/wicked liver.”
Hmong Americans are trying to deal with cases of
domestic abuse by participating in innovative community
Hmong of Laos and the United States
circle and restorative justice projects where men and
women contribute equally. Hmong mutual assistance
associations are experimenting with “clan councils” like
those established in the refugee camps of Laos and
Thailand for the purpose of resolving interfamily disputes. Complaints voiced by Hmong women about the
all-male character of these tribunals have prompted
funding agencies and non-Hmong advisors to insist on
female representation. Although there is still some resistance to this idea, women have been recruited to fill key
administrative posts.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Hmong gender relationships began to be profoundly
altered 40 years ago as Laos became embroiled in a civil
war that was fed by superpower politics. We briefly
covered this and earlier periods for two reasons. We felt
it important to delineate the origins of important changes
that are today strikingly evident in the United States. We
also wanted to counter the common presumption that the
Hmong exchanged a static custom-bound, traditional
existence in Laos for a dynamic life in the United States,
requiring adjustments that were totally novel to refugee
families. Space limitations prevent us from saying more
about the ways in which Hmong culture was affected by
global trends before the great migration to the West.
Instead, we will simply refer to remarks made by Dr. Yang
Dao, who earned a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and served
as a Hmong representative to the short-lived Laotian
coalition government before the communist Pathet Lao
victory in 1975. On a number of occasions he has told
a story about Thai government officials being greatly
surprised that Hmong refugees from Laos not only knew
about rock and roll, but they also performed it! During an
episode of the U.S. television drama The Trials of Rosie
O’Neill, which aired on November 22, 1991, the leading
character claimed that the Hmong did not know about
incandescent light and other electrical appliances before
coming to the United States.
We have eschewed certain English terms, such as
tribal, traditional, animism, ancestor worship, etc., to
avoid applying culture-bound and inappropriate concepts
to the Hmong. Expressions like these are frequently used
to describe Southeast Asian immigrant groups who were
References
463
cultural minorities in their homelands. Unfortunately,
they project American folk theories on cultural others. We
thought a better approach would be to impose on the
patience of readers by using Hmong labels for key
concepts and providing brief explanations of these terms.
Better ways of interpreting Hmong culture in English are
still in development.6
NOTES
1. In the following description of Hmong culture, White Hmong terms
are provided for key concepts whenever English glosses might, if
used alone, obscure important meanings or connote ideas not
intended. We will employ the most widely used system for spelling
Hmong, the Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) devised by Christian
missionaries in the 1950s for White Hmong (see Heimbach, 1979). In
RPA, word final b, j, v, d, s, m, and g represent, from highest to lowest,
seven of eight distinctive tones. Words ending in any other letter are
pronounced with a mid-tone. Double vowels indicate a vowel plus
an angma or –ng. Thus, the spellings Hmong and Mong fairly well
represent how Hmoob and Moob are pronounced, except for the
high b tone. Inasmuch as the American public is familiar with the
term Hmong, we will use it as the general cover term.
2. Hmong who attended school beyond the third grade before the
middle 1960s acquired some knowledge of French, but English
became a more popular subject as American military and economic
aid to the country increased.
3. In the United States, allegations of excessive and inappropriate
corporal punishment have caused legal difficulties for many Hmong
parents and other responsible elders who have struck adolescents and
young adults for persistent misbehavior, such as “dating” a clanmate.
The seriousness of transgressions like intraclan sexual relations is
often difficult for non-Hmong to appreciate.
4. Reliance on high tech forms of communication has helped, as well as
frustrated, preserve Hmong culture. Families began keeping photographic and documentary records before leaving Laos, and cassette
tape recorders were used in the refugee camps of Thailand to make
copies of oral histories for family members in case they became separated during final relocation to other countries. Dispersed kin have
continued to function as transnational groups via the telephone, mail,
and the internet. Video and digital cameras give localized family
groups additional ways of documenting their life in the United States.
Young Hmong are employing contemporary materials, techniques, and
machines to create new literary, oral, and visual art forms that celebrate
and further develop their esthetic heritage. Additional information
about the unique uses of technology by Hmong can be obtained from
websites maintained by the Hmong Cultural Center (www.hmongcenter.org), the Hmong home page (www.hmongnet.org), and the Center
for Hmong Arts and Talent (www.aboutchat.org).
5. Minnesota State legislators have been unsuccessful in trying to draft
a law that allows Hmong to marry legally without the involvement
of clergy, court officers, or other traditional representatives of the
state. The plan has been to give mej koob the authority to “perform”
marriages and the responsibility of making sure that all relevant
statutes were being obeyed. Persons who act as mej koob see their
proper role as one of merely facilitating the process by which the
involved families agree to various conditions, such as the amount of
the nqis tshoob, or “marriage payment.” These negotiators do not
want to monitor the actions of parents on behalf of the state, and
Hmong advocates for women’s rights question the fairness of a law
that privileges a status role occupied almost exclusively by men.
6. Additional information about Hmong history, culture, and social
organization can be found in Hutchinson (1997) and Keown-Bomar
and Dunnigan (2002). Koltyk’s (1998) short ethnography describes
the acculturative experiences of Hmong refugees in a U.S. midwestern city, while Donnelly (1994) focuses on the lives of Hmong
women who migrated to Seattle. The intersection gender and generation in Hmong society is the subject of a master’s thesis by
Hagemeister (1994).
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and their experience with conventional medicine. Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Cha, D., & Chagnon, J. (1993). Farmer, war-wife, refugee, repatriate: A
needs assessment of women repatriating to Laos. Washington, DC:
Asia Resource Center.
Cha, D., & Livo, N. J. (2000). Teaching with folk stories of the Hmong:
An activity book. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited.
Cha, D., & Small, C. A. (1994). Policy lessons from Lao and Hmong
women in Thai refugee camps. World Development, 22(7),
1045–1059.
Cooper, R. (1984). Resource scarcity and the Hmong response: Patterns
of settlement and economy in transition. Singapore: Singapore
University Press.
Cooper, R., Tapp, N., Lee, G. Y., & Schworer-Kohl, G. (1996). The
Hmong. Bangkok, Thailand: Artasia Press.
Donnelly, N. D. (1994). Changing lives of refugee Hmong women.
Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Dunnigan, T. (1982). Segmentary kinship in an urban society: The
Hmong of St Paul–Minneapolis. Anthropological Quarterly, 55(3),
126–134.
Dunnigan, T., & Vang, T. F. (1980). Negotiating marriage in Hmong
society: An example of the effect of social ritual on language maintenance. Minnesota Papers in Linguistics and Philosophy of
Language, 6, 28–47.
Garrett, W. E. (1974). No place to run: The Hmong of Laos. National
Geographic, 145(1).
Hagemeister, A. K. (1994). Gender in Hmong families: Voices from two
generations. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Minnesota.
Hamilton-Merritt, J. (1993). Tragic mountains: The Hmong, the Americans
and the secret wars for Laos, 1942–1992. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Heimbach, E. E. (1979). White Hmong English dictionary (Rev. ed.)
(Southeast Asia Program Data Paper No. 75). Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University.
Hutchinson, R. (1997). Hmong. In D. Levinson & M. Ember (Eds.),
American immigrant cultures: Builders of a nation (pp. 384–394).
New York: Macmillan Reference USA.
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Keown-Bomar, J. & Dunnigan, T. (2002). North American Hmong. In
M. Ember, C. R. Ember, & I. Skoggard (Eds.), Encyclopedia of
world cultures—Supplement (pp. 231–234). New York: Macmillan
Reference USA.
Koltyk, J. A. (1998). New pioneers in the heartland: Hmong life in
Wisconsin. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Lee, G. Y. (1995). The religious presentation of social relationships:
Hmong world view and social structure. Lao Studies Review, 2,
44–60.
Leepreecha, P. (2001). Kinship and identity among Hmong in Thailand.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle.
Lemoine, J. (1996). The constitution of a Hmong shaman’s powers of
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Scientific Research: Paris, France.
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Hmong people in urban America (1976–2000). Lima: Wyndham
Hall Press.
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University Press.
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Hmong of Laos and the United States
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Washington University Press.
Rice, P. L. (2000). The Hmong way: Hmong women and reproduction.
Westport, CT: Bergin & Carvey.
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culture politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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The origin and development of a Hmong messianic script.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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of birth, death, and gender in a mountain village in northern Thailand.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, Providence, RI.
Thao, C. T. (1986). Hmong customs on marriage, divorce and the rights
of married women. In B. Johns & D. Strecker (Eds.), The Hmong
world. New Haven, CT: Yale Southeast Asia Studies.
Vang, L., & Lewis, J. (1984). Grandmother’s path, grandfather’s way.
San Francisco: Zellerbach Family Fund.
Yang, D. (1993). Hmong at the turning point. Minneapolis, MN: Yang
Dao/WorldBridge Associates.
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the future. St Paul, MN: Hmong American Partnership.
Hopi
Alice Schlegel
ALTERNATIVE NAME
The name Moqui is used in very old literature.
LOCATION
The Hopi are located in northeastern Arizona, U.S.A.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The time period under consideration spans from the last
two decades of the 19th century to about 1950, although
some of the cultural features of that period were present
when I did my major field work in the 1970s. Following
this cultural overview, I shall use the present tense in
describing facets of Hopi culture.
The Hopi inhabited dry plateau country, where rain
was scanty and farming relied on trapping run-off and
tapping groundwater. Their major crop was corn, supplemented by beans, squash, and a few fruits and vegetables
that the Spanish had brought into the Southwest in
the 17th century. Men still hunted game, but by the
18th century mutton, from sheep the Spanish introduced,
was a major source of meat. Wild plants provided additional food and were used medicinally. In addition to food
crops, the Hopi grew a form of cotton that they used for
textile production, both for home consumption and for
trade with other Indian peoples.
By the 1890s, manufactured clothing was worn by
some, paid for by wage labor both close to home, as the
U.S. government began the economic development of the
Southwest, and away from home in the towns springing
up along the recently built Santa Fe Railroad. A few individuals began small-scale trading and carting enterprises,
and some made pottery and other craft items to sell to
tourists at the Santa Fe train stops. After the Moqui
(Hopi) Agency was established in 1887, Hopis were
employed at the schools and other government establishments. When government-licensed trading posts opened
up, some Hopis sold farm commodities, mostly corn for
animal feed, and some craft items.
The Hopi, population about 6,000 in the early
20th century, lived in villages on three mesas, finger-like
plateaus extending out from the high tableland of Black
Mesa. Village size ranged from about 300 to 2,000. The
houses, two or three stories high, were clustered around
one or two village plazas, where ceremonies were held,
and along the lanes leading out from them. Built of native
stone, they seemed to grow out of the rock that supported
them. A house consisted of one or two rooms for living
plus storage rooms where dried corn and meat and other
goods were kept.
With a few exceptions, the villages were politically
autonomous. Each village was composed of a number of
clans accorded different ranks, and the leading ceremonial
and governmental officers came from the high-ranking
clans. The government consisted of a village chief and his
council, all of whom held ceremonial offices as well.
Additional ceremonial officers had no official role in
village decision-making, but their influence was very
strong as they had the support of both their clans and the
sodalities (see below) in which they held office.
A Hopi village could be thought of as a federation
of clans. These clans were matrilineal. Each was led by a
woman (Clan Mother) and a man (Clan [maternal] Uncle)
who were usually actual sister and brother, although all
clan members of the same generation called each other
“sister” or “brother.” The Clan Mother trained one of her
daughters, often the oldest, to be her replacement, and
one of her sons was usually chosen by the Clan Uncle as
his heir to the office.
Clan unity was expressed in several ways. Clans
owned the best farmland, the quality of the land roughly
corresponding to the rank of its owning clan. This land
was distributed to individual clan households for their
use. Houses were owned by women, and men left their
mothers’ homes at marriage and joined the households of
their wives. They divided their time between the house of
the wife and the house of the mother or sister, where they
had considerable authority over the sons of their sisters.
465
466
Clans also controlled ceremonial offices, and some
of the highest-ranking clans controlled the sodalities
(ceremonial societies) that put on the major ceremonies
of the ceremonial calendar. While anyone could join any
sodality, and all Hopis belonged to at least one and sometimes several, only members of the controlling clan could
take on leadership roles within a sodality.
Clans often competed for political power and for
land, but the village united in producing the ceremonial
calendar. They also united in warfare. During this time
period there was no intervillage warfare, but there were
enemies from other tribes, primarily Navajo, who raided
fields and stole animals.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Like other Pueblo Indian peoples, the Hopi view their
world as oppositions in balance: night and day, summer
and winter, etc. Linked to all of these is gender: females
are associated with earth, summer, life (e.g., plants and
fertility), south and west, and soft substances; males are
associated with sky, winter, death (e.g., hunting and war),
north and east, and hard substances. These forces are in
balance. Female force, inherent in the earth and women,
contains life, but it has to be activated by male force. This
principle is dramatically expressed in Hopi understanding
of plant fertility. Crops are planted in the (female) earth,
but they do not grow unless they are energized by the
(male) celestial forces of sun and rain. These forces are
potentially dangerous, however, because the sun can burn
the crops and rain can wash them away, if not controlled.
Lightning, the most concentrated form of male energy,
kills, but the field it strikes will be very fertile.
Like the cosmic principles of maleness and femaleness, men and women have different natures. Women
have a single nature, a maternal life-giving one. This does
not mean that they are passive, for like mother animals
they can be fierce in protecting their children and home,
and a favorite mythical figure is the warrior woman who
saved the village by rousing the women to defend it when
the men were away in battle. Men have a dual nature,
being both fathers, that is, providers and protectors, and
potential killers. Since life has the highest value, killing
of enemies is a necessary evil and its effects are neutralized through ritual. Even the killing of game animals is
Hopi
accompanied by small rituals. While prowess in warfare
was respected, the most honored positions for men were
the ceremonial ones that had nothing to do with war.
Women and men are respected when they fulfill
their duties earnestly and patiently. Women’s important
role is as mothers, to their own children and to all the people, through care and feeding. Men’s role is to provide for
their families, and to a lesser degree their matrilineal kin,
and to protect the village. Both genders have important
spiritual duties that must be performed so that they, their
families, and the community will prosper.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Two stages in the life cycle have gender-specific terms.
For women, these are mano (girl) and wuhti (woman).
For boys, these are tiyo (boy) and taka (man). A girl
becomes a woman when she marries, at about age 16–18.
A boy becomes a man when he goes through an initiation
into one of the four ceremonial fraternities at about
age 18–20.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Before children are able to walk, there is little or no
difference in the treatment of boys and girls. Infant girls
are given miniature kachina dolls, representations of the
kachinas, or deities, whom the men portray in the public
kachina dances. The kachinas are believed to bring rain
and an abundance of all good things like food and fertility. The presentation of the doll to the girl infant and child
represents a wish or prayer for her future health and
fertility. However, the dolls are not sacred. Little girls
play with them as with any baby doll. Infant boys are
given miniature bows and arrows, an indication of their
future role as hunter and defender.
Mothers make little fuss over toilet training, encouraging toddlers to go outside in the lane to eliminate, and
cleaning up any mess the children make in the house.
Training in table manners begins by age 2 or 3. Children
are instructed to dip their fingers into the communal bowl
of stew only to the first knuckle, for to dig in deeper shows
greed. Little children are also sent to take a bit of the food
and put it outside the door before the family eats, so the
spirit beings can consume the essence of the food while
humans are eating the substance. Both genders and all
ages eat together.
Gender over the Life Cycle
Girls are favored over boys, for several reasons.
Ideologically, women are the repositories of life, whereas
males are more expendable. It is men’s duty to protect and
provide for women so that life can continue. In more practical terms, men and women want the women of the clan to
be fertile so that the clan will grow and prosper; thus men
are interested in the fertility of their “sisters,” that is, female
clanmates of the same generation, and these women’s
daughters. Women and men want daughters for personal
security, for elderly parents are cared for by the daughters
and their husbands who remain in or near the family house.
By the time little boys are 7 or 8, they realize that their
sisters are more favored than they are, and that they are
expected to look after the welfare of these girls. The preference is obvious when a baby is born. Even though Hopis
insist that they want children of both sexes, baby girls are
greeted with much more rejoicing than baby boys.
Girls and boys differ somewhat in their play pattern.
Groups of little girls, sometimes with toddler brothers in
tow, play house, using stones to demarcate houses and
sheep corrals, and animal bones of different sizes to
represent humans and animals. The dusty lanes between
the family houses become their playground. As soon as
boys are fairly mobile, they join other groups of boys in
rough-and-tumble play or competitive games. Older girls
also play competitive games together. Girls stay closer to
home than boys do, although they are free to go anywhere
in the village.
Children are put to work quite early in life. As young
as age 4, a boy might be sent to the cornfield to make sure
that the donkey does not get into it and eat the corn. One
elderly Hopi man told me how, as a child of 4, he was in
the cornfield watching the donkey when his attention was
attracted by some beetles. He played with them, neglecting the donkey who got into a neighbor’s field and ate
quite a lot of corn before the boy discovered what was
happening and retrieved him. He remembered that his
father did not punish him, in fact did not even reprimand
him, but loaded up the donkey with dried corn from the
family storehouse to replace the corn that was eaten. This
man remembered into old age how guilty he felt for his
negligence, which meant that his family had less corn
against the coming winter.
At about the same age, girls begin to baby-sit infant
siblings and help their mothers with various tasks. A couple of years later, her father makes her a small grinding
stone and she begins to grind corn alongside her mother.
The early results are usually rather unsatisfactory and are
467
fed to the chickens. Also at about age 6 she learns how to
make piki, a wafer bread, like large rolled sheets of tissue
paper, made from a thin batter of corn meal, water, and
sometimes additional flavorings. This requires spreading
a sheet of batter on a hot stone to cook. Little girls go
around with sore burnt fingers until they develop calluses.
Girls spend most of their time at home with their
mothers and other female relatives or playing with other
girls, in the lanes or in their houses. From about age 6 or 8,
Hopi boys start to spend some time in the kivas when they
are in use as men’s clubhouses. Usually the men, who
have gone through their initiation into a ceremonial fraternity, sit in the center of the kiva, and the uninitiated
boys sit off to the back. From time to time an elder will
recite a legend or cautionary tale, raising his voice so that
the youngsters will be quiet and learn. Boys talk among
themselves, but if they get loud or rowdy the men will
reprimand them.
Children begin to wear gender-specific clothing as
soon as they are walking, although little boys may go
about naked until age 6 or so if the weather is very hot.
Fathers make the clothing for the family, and the gift of a
woven dress from her father makes a little girl happy.
Both sexes wear their hair short.
All girls and boys go through a ceremonial initiation
when they are about age 6–8. Previous to this, they believe
that the kachina dancers, masked dancers who impersonate the spirit beings called kachinas, are the real kachinas
performing in the kivas and plazas. In this initiation into
Hopi ceremonial life, they go through various rituals to
impress on them the importance of their future religious
duties. The most dramatic part of the initiation process for
children comes when they all sit together in a kiva and the
kachina dancers take off their masks, exposing themselves
as the everyday men the children know. Some children
already suspected this, finding it odd that a kachina had a
scar or birthmark just like father’s. To many, however, it is
a great disillusionment, and some children become quite
depressed for a time at what they feel is adult duplicity.
After this initiation children begin to take a minor part in
the village kachina ceremonies, and little boys can begin
wearing the masks and dancing in the public performances
as soon as they are strong enough.
Puberty and Adolescence
While there are no specific terms for adolescence as a
life stage, it is recognized in other ways for girls. Some
468
time after menarche a girl goes through a small private initiation ceremony. She grinds corn for 3 days, after which
a kinswoman puts her hair into a distinctive style of two
large coils, one on either side of her head. This indicates
that she is now an adolescent and ready to think about marriage and courtship. At this time her life becomes much
more restricted. Her mother keeps her at home doing
domestic tasks, although girl friends sometimes have corngrinding parties in one of their homes. She is warned about
being alone with an adolescent boy or man, and that she
should not run about the village as she did earlier. At the
same time, she is supposed to attract a suitable boy for her
future husband. This presents a dilemma. The girl’s movements are restricted just when her parents and fellow clan
members expect her to find a suitor, and relations between
mother and daughter often become rather tense.
Boys, on the other hand, experience greater freedom
in adolescence than they do at any other time of life. They
are required to help their fathers and maternal uncles in
farming and herding, but they can do what they like at
other times. Groups of boys usually go about together,
playing games or just relaxing. After puberty it is quite
common for groups of boys to sleep in the kiva when the
weather is cold, along with unmarried young men and
widowers, and when it is warm, they spend the night
sleeping on a house roof.
Although parents are supposed to train adolescent
boys to be hardworking, they often indulge their sons,
rationalizing that these boys will soon be put to work
under the strict supervision of their fathers-in-law. At the
same time that adolescence is a time of restriction and
tension for girls, for boys it is a time of freedom and male
companionship.
Attainment of Adulthood
Girls become women when they marry. Boys become
men when they have gone through their initiation into one
of the fraternities. For girls, marriage results in a relaxation of the tension brought about by the pressures on her
to bring a husband into the house. She hopes to become
pregnant soon, thus contributing to the continuity of the
household and clan. Her early years of marriage are
regarded as a happy time for most women, since she has
met her goal and relations with her mother once again
become warm and close.
Once a boy is initiated, he is expected to become
more responsible and to look for a wife. Marriage itself
Hopi
represents a restriction on his freedom. He lives in a
house owned by his mother-in-law and is expected to
help his father-in-law diligently and without complaints.
He can see his friends in the kiva during leisure hours, but
to run about with them would be unseemly.
Middle Age and Old Age
Once adult, there are no terms marking different stages of
life. People age gradually, giving over responsibilities to
young people when they feel that they can no longer carry
them out. This is a slow transition and seems to come
to the elderly as a relief rather than a loss of status.
However, chronic illness or other forms of incapacity are
feared, for one loses status if one cannot contribute.
I have seen an old man, so crippled with arthritis that he
had to use a walker, hobbling from one corn plant to
another as he hoed his corn field. Old people without
children will be given some food by fellow clan members, but no one is specifically responsible for this.
Parents and grandparents may be loved and cared for, but
the elderly do not receive any particular honor or recognition. Old women may fare somewhat better than old
men, since women in general are supposed to be provided
for more than men are. There are no significant gender
differences in the treatment and burial of the dead.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Hopis of both genders are supposed to be even tempered,
hospitable, and good-natured, for “bad thoughts”—
sorrow, anger, jealousy, despondency, greed—put one’s
inner being out of balance and can shorten life. High
value is placed on humility, and Hopis are not being
disingenuous when they claim that they are only humble
persons when they are clearly people of note in the
community. Competitiveness is only approved in certain
situations, such as when groups of kachina dancers
compete to put on the best performance.
Even though women and men are expected to
behave in more or less the same way, I was often struck
by how direct and politely assertive many Hopi women
were and how mild and unassuming many Hopi men
were. Men sometimes complain that women always get
their way, and women are certainly not deferential to
Gender Roles in Economics
men. Women seem to be well aware of their centrality in
the home and clan.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Gender is a critical feature of Hopi social organization. As
already indicated, the village is made up of matrilineal
clans. Households are matrilocal. Kivas, when not used
for ceremonies, function as clubhouses where men spend
much of their leisure time. Thus, the genders are socially
located in two different kinds of structures, household
and kiva.
The household is the domain of women, who remain
in or attached to the house in which they were born. Men
have dual residence, the house of their mother, or after her
death their sister, and the house of their wife. This ambiguity becomes clear on days when public ceremonies are
held. It is proper for a man to invite guests to eat at his
home; it is the mother’s or sister’s house that receives a
man’s visitors, not his wife’s and her mother’s.
As owner of the house, the woman is its head. Her
house receives some or all of its farmland through her
clan. When her husband brings the first of the harvest into
the house, he presents it to his wife and she thanks him
formally. It is hers, even though it is the fruit of his labor.
If she wishes to barter some corn for a shawl or other
item, he has no control over her decision. If the couple
separates, he leaves and returns to his mother’s or sister’s
house.
Kivas are the domains of men when they are not
eating, sleeping, or doing necessary work in the fields or
at home. They are where men go to relax, taking their
handicrafts to work on while they chat and joke. Kivas
draw their members from all clans. A boy usually starts
attending the kiva his father belongs to. It is possible to
switch membership, although that rarely happens unless
a new kiva is built and recruits its members from existing
ones. It is the kiva groups that put on the kachina dances.
In the winter dances, each kiva selects the kachina it will
portray. Kiva groups vie with one another for the best
songs and the most polished performances. When the
men return to their home kiva after the performances,
they tell each other “we really killed them” if they
excelled, or ruefully admit that “they killed us” if their
performance fell short.
Women and men meet as equal partners within the
clan. The Clan Mother is responsible for internal clan
469
matters and prays and conducts rituals for the well-being
of its members. Important clan-related ritual paraphernalia is kept in her house. The Clan Uncle represents the
clan to the village and negotiates with other Clan Uncles
if there are disputes over land boundaries or other
matters. One of the Clan Mother’s important prerogatives
is her final authority over clan land. The men of the clan
allocate land to individual households, for as farmers they
know the plots and try to divide land fairly. However, if
any woman is dissatisfied, she appeals to the Clan
Mother. If the Clan Mother agrees with her, the men are
obliged to reallocate land to satisfy the needs of the
complainant.
Ceremonial societies are to some degree gender
based. I shall discuss this below.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The Hopi were a society without private property until the
Spanish introduced sheep. Even then, their herding was on
a very small scale, for subsistence rather than commerce,
until they began commercial cattle raising in the early
20th century. Land is owned by the clans, and land
unclaimed by clans belongs to the entire village for the
chief to allocate to those who appeal to him for use of it.
Men’s subsistence tasks are farming and herding,
along with some hunting of small and large game. They
provide the food for their wives and children, and from
the cotton they grew they weave the family’s clothing.
Women do some gardening on plots close to the village,
cultivating plants introduced by the Spanish and later the
Americans. They also gather wild plants for food,
basketry, and other uses.
Men’s crafts are principally weaving, wood carving,
and leather work. Before a commercial market opened up
for carved kachina dolls, their trade was mainly in textiles
to eastern Pueblos and other Indian peoples. Women
make pottery for home use and some local trade, and it
has become a commercial item to tourists. Basketry is an
important female craft, for large quantities of baskets
figure in the exchange of goods at marriage. Mothers
collect baskets at the time of their daughters’ weddings,
and then spend months or years weaving baskets to pay
back the lenders. Women sometimes set up small informal stands in front of their houses, trading a few baskets
of peaches or other items for something they wanted.
When Navajos enter the village with meat or pinyon
470
Hopi
nuts, women barter dried corn and other goods for these
products.
Women rarely leave the village. However, men
sometimes walk long distances to trade. They make occasional expeditions to the Gulf of California to gather salt.
The only kind of private property of any value
consists of sheep. These animals belong to individual
men. Fathers and sons often herd together, and sons
usually inherit their fathers’ flocks.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Children are believed to be the products of both parents’
bodies, the father’s semen and the mother’s uterine blood.
It is not unusual for a father to help his wife deliver the
baby. While mothers take more responsibility for childcare, fathers often mind infants and toddlers, especially
when the mother is busy, holding them and singing lullabies and kachina dance songs to them. As in many matrilineal societies, the mother’s brother is more of an
authority figure than the father, especially to boys as they
grow older. The father is seen primarily as a protector,
provider, and nurturer. Relations between fathers and children are often close and tender, and the word “father” connotes loving protection rather than authority or distance.
The closest relationship for both boys and girls,
however, is likely to be with the mother. She is all-loving
and all-giving, at least in theory. The maternal grandmother shares some of these features.
Parents begin treating girls and boys differently
when they are about 4 or 5. Girls are discouraged from
wandering too far from home, while boys are expected to
be away much of the time. Mothers train their daughters
in domestic tasks, as fathers and maternal uncles train the
boys in farming and herding. As indicated above, training
for girls becomes more systematic when they reach
adolescence. Both parents are somewhat likely to indulge
adolescent boys, rationalizing that they have only a few
years of freedom. The maternal uncles are expected to do
any necessary disciplining.
Parents seem to expect children to pick up what they
need to know, rather than giving them a lot of detailed
instruction. When children misbehave, they are reprimanded but rarely punished physically except in one way.
A parent or other adult might throw a dipper full of water
in the small child’s face, a startling and unpleasant
experience. After a time the adult has only to move
toward the water barrel for the child to stop its misbehavior. This punishment is symbolic as well as real, for
water is a purifying agent and will help cleanse the child
of any antisocial tendencies.
A much harsher punishment, generally reserved for
boys, is to smoke the child. Smoke is also a purifying
agent. The truly misbehaving boy is held over a smoking
(but not hot) fire, gagging and coughing, until his punishers feel that he has had enough. This kind of punishment
is generally administered by maternal uncles, not fathers.
Another treatment reserved for boys is something of
a punishment but more of a healing ritual. A boy who
consistently wets the bed is carried from house to house
on the back of a maternal uncle so that people can pour
small amounts of water on him. Either girls do not wet
the bed often or, if they do, no fuss is made about it.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men and women both have leadership roles in the clan as
Clan Uncle and Clan Mother. They are expected to make
decisions jointly, and one cannot supersede the other in
decision-making.
The principal public arenas are political and
ceremonial. The chief and his council members are men.
These men, in consultation with other important male
clan leaders, make the major political decisions for the
village, which consist primarily of adjudicating disputes
over land. Punishment of miscreants is mainly left to individuals to settle, there being no police force.
While political decision-making may appear to rest
in the hands of a few, it is actually quite inclusive. All men
belong to kiva groups, and it is there, in the general discussions, that the leaders get a reading of public opinion.
Furthermore, men bring to their discussions the opinions
of their wives and female clanmates. No man would be so
foolish as to make a public pronouncement that his wife
and her family disapproved of if he wanted any peace at
home, and he certainly would not go against the perceived
best interests of his female clan members. Women have
considerable political power behind the scenes, although
their men speak for them in public.
Both men and women take leadership of religious
sodalities. Most of these sodalities are led by the male
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
leaders of the clans that control them, but three are
women’s societies and have female leaders. Even those
with male leaders have female members, as the women’s
societies have a few male members whose participation is
necessary for the ceremony to be conducted.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
I have already discussed the ideology of a balance of
oppositions, two of these being male and female. In this
respect there is no distinction in value placed on the
genders: they are equal and equally necessary to the
whole. However, in one respect females have greater spiritual value than males. This will be discussed below
under witchcraft. In the pantheon of deities, female
deities are as central and powerful as male deities.
In Hopi eyes, all sodalities and their ceremonies are
important and necessary for the ceremonial year to be
complete. However, some ceremonies are more symbolically loaded than others. Probably the single most important ceremony is Wuwucim, held in November, which
opens the ceremonial year. It celebrates the emergence of
the Hopi from the Underworld and their establishment as
a people on earth. It is during this ceremony that every
boy is initiated into one of the four fraternities, each of
these symbolically dedicated to one important aspect of
Hopi life. Soyal, held in January, is when the chief and
his council meet to plan the remainder of the ceremonial
year. It is at this time that the first kachinas reappear in
the villages; after this ceremony, public kachina dances
take place in the kivas and later in the plaza. Powamuya,
held in February, is a celebration of the planting season
to come, and it is the time when young children undergo
their initiation into Hopi religious life. Niman, in June, is
also called the Home Dance, because it celebrates the
leave-taking of the kachinas until the following year.
These ceremonies are organized by male-centered sodalities, as are the Snake and Flute ceremonies held in
August.
The three women’s sodalities are Marau, Lakon, and
Oaqul. Marau is considered to be the women’s Wuwucim,
and indeed it contains parallels to all of the ritual acts and
paraphernalia of Wuwucim. Hopis say that, in earlier
times, all females were initiated into it. Lakon and Oaqul
are sodalities that put on so-called basket dances, because
the female performers dance holding elaborate woven
baskets. These dances are held in October and contain
471
symbolism of warfare and hunting, activities that are
carried on at this time. It is possible that Lakon and Oaqul
originated as women’s basketry guilds, both controlling
the production of women’s wealth and exerting moral
control over their members as craft guilds have done in
many parts of the world.
Parallel to the sodality ceremonies, and intersecting
with them at some points, are the kachina celebrations.
Kachinas are spirit beings somewhat analogous to angels,
and they bring abundance of all kinds (although there are
some whipper kachinas as well, a reminder that bad
thoughts and acts are punished by illness and shortness of
life). The kachina dances, held from Soyal to Niman, are
planned and performed by the kiva groups and thus are
male-centered, men portraying both male and female
kachinas.
The fact that men take more roles in ceremonial life
than women do does not mean that men have greater or
higher spirituality. It is part of their duty as protectors of
life, which is inherent in women and the female principle.
Through ritual, men give spiritual protection and they
propitiate the deities to grant fertility and the abundance
of all good things, not only material goods but also social
peace, harmony, and well-being.
Witchcraft beliefs indicate the spiritual value of
females. A witch is a person, it is believed, who has
bartered his or her heart (life force) to some supernatural
forces or beings—here Hopi explanations are not very
clear—in order to gain temporal power of some sort. This
could be used for personal enrichment, for political
power, or even to bring rain during a drought, with the
result that anyone above average is potentially suspected
of being a witch. Having lost his heart, the witch has to
steal the heart of another person in order to stay alive. It is
said that a child’s heart is preferred, since children have
a stronger heart, that is, they have a longer life, than an
older person. It is also believed that the heart of a girl will
give the witch twice as long to live as the heart of a boy.
This reflects the value put on females and the life they
contain.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Hopis rarely relax without busying their hands with some
handicraft or small repair task. Most leisure time, in fact
most time when not eating, sleeping, or doing some
other home-based activity, is spent with members of one’s
472
Hopi
own sex. Women, usually relatives and neighbors, gather
in someone’s home, while men go to their kiva for companionship. Women’s closest friends tend to be sisters
and other relatives, while men’s friends are more likely to
include unrelated men whom they know from their
adolescence and meet in the kiva. These times with companions, for both sexes, are opportunities to gossip and to
discuss village matters. Men acknowledge that there is a
lot of joking and teasing in the kivas, particularly about
sexual matters (“private wives,” “hunting for two-legged
deer,” etc.). This joking is a kind of verbal horseplay, each
trying to outdo the other with veiled allusions to transgressions of the other or the other’s female relatives. No
one takes this seriously, including the women who have
been so accused, and this joking competitiveness enlivens
the time in the kiva and provides a respite from the
obligations that the Hopis bear.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
This is a sexually egalitarian culture. Women are more
highly valued than men—ideologically as the source of
life, and practically for their centrality in the clan and
household (see above). Men are responsible for conducting most of the ceremonies, which they view as protecting the village, primarily the women and children. Men
also take responsibility for political decisions, but, as we
have seen, women are a major power behind the scenes.
Nevertheless, women depend on men to fulfill these
responsibilities. They also depend on men in a more
immediate sense, to farm and provide clothing and other
goods for them. Just as men’s power is checked by their
reliance on wives and sisters, so is women’s power
checked by their reliance on husbands and brothers.
A favorite Hopi expression is pi um’i, meaning “it’s up to
you.” No one should try to control another person, and
this applies to relations between women and men as well.
SEXUALITY
Sex is good, mainly because it results in children but also
because it brings pleasure. It should not be misused
in adultery or rape; nor should children be born out of
wedlock, for then they do not have the fathers and fathers’
relatives that are so important in Hopi life. However,
there is no particular value on virginity, and the ideal
feminine beauty is the young mother, not the virgin.
The general attitude toward sexuality is relaxed. No
one ever mentioned masturbation to me as a problem in
child-rearing, nor did anyone ever remark on adolescent
homoerotic play. Women are expected to cover their
bodies more than men, but there is no reluctance to
breast-feed in public. Men speak rather lasciviously about
the Marau dancers, who wear knee-length skirts and thus
expose their legs, and sometimes young women are shy
about participating because of this.
Homosexuality is regarded as odd and somewhat
ridiculous, but not in itself evil or disturbing. The few
individuals who have made attempts at cross-dressing are
socially accepted but privately laughed at.
For all the gossip and joking about sex that both
women and men relish, Hopi life gives little opportunity
for much privacy in which to enjoy it. Families sleep
together in one room, and couples wait until they think
that everyone is asleep before they make love quietly.
Suspicions are aroused if any man and woman who are
not spouses or close relatives are alone together, and
there is little opportunity for this to occur. Nevertheless,
there is gossip about men visiting women after dark when
husbands are believed to be in the sheep camp or otherwise away from home. (How they eluded others in the
household was never explained to me.)
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
In theory, people marry for love and have freedom of
choice. In actuality, the girl’s family has to approve of the
boy she is bringing into the household and who will
father children for her clan. A stubborn girl might insist
on marrying a boy she loves, but if her family really did
not approve they would make life so miserable for him
that he would leave. A girl might force an unwelcome
marriage on her family, because girls do the proposing
since they are inviting the boy to come to them.
Girls propose by presenting the favored boy with a
special small corn cake. This is a token that unmarried
girls give to any boy or man they like, and men are
extremely pleased when a favorite niece or granddaughter
presents them with one. It can be viewed as a token of
friendship as well as love, rather like a valentine. The
boy who receives it must accept, but he can choose to
Bibliography
interpret it as friendship and do nothing further. Even if he
loves the girl, self-respect demands that he not jump too
quickly. Meanwhile, the girl is tense with anticipation. If
he has not accepted the proposal within a couple of weeks,
she knows that she has been rejected. If he accepts, the
families begin the wedding preparations. There is a feast
and an elaborate exchange of gifts between the families,
the bride’s giving more to the groom’s in a kind of
groomwealth. I have heard Hopi women remark “we paid
for him” about a young male in-law.
Even if the couple are in love, the early days of marriage are hard for young men as they adjust from life with
rather indulgent parents to the authority of parents-in-law
and the need to prove themselves worthy. It is not unusual
for young grooms to return home for several extended
visits before they settle in.
Hopis only formally marry once, and the spouse in
this life will be the spouse in the afterlife, in the village
of the dead. However, informal remarriage is possible for
widowed and “divorced,” (i.e., permanently separated)
people.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship is probably at its best in
old age after long years of cooperation. It is only then that
spouses gently tease one another and openly show affection. Earlier years are burdened with responsibilities, and
men can be torn between obligations to their wives and
in-laws and to their sisters and sisters’ children. The
dependence that women have on men to provide for them
makes them vulnerable to being left, just as women’s
control of the home makes men vulnerable to being
replaced. If men leave voluntarily or under pressure, they
lose close contact with their children. They may see their
sons in the kiva, but they may not often have much time
with their daughters.
Nevertheless, the relation between spouses is
expected to be loving and close, and it often is. They sleep
and eat together and are expected to support one another
in their political and religious duties.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The primary cross-sex relationship outside of marriage is
the sister–brother one. This is at the core of the clan.
473
While discord between spouses is deplored, that between
cross-sex siblings is scandalous. The depth of feeling is
indicated by witchcraft beliefs, which hold that, since the
most precious life for a man is his sister’s daughter, she
is the preferred victim of his heart stealing.
Mothers’ brothers are gentler in exerting authority
over their sisters’ daughters than their sisters’ sons.
Fathers’ sisters (women of the father’s clan) are often
close to their brothers’ daughters and may be their confidantes, but they have a special relationship to their
sisters’ sons. This involves the pretense of sexual interest
and romantic feelings. There are many jokes and much
teasing about a man’s “aunts,” the English word used for
these kinswomen. He is expected to flatter them and
make them feel loved and attractive.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The period postdating this ethnographic sketch has seen
major changes in Hopi life. The major ones regarding
gender have been the reduction in importance of the clan
and the transition to nuclear-family households, with
increasing responsibilities for husbands and fathers and
decreasing responsibilities for mothers’ brothers and brothers. The husband–wife bond has become more central to
people’s lives over the past 60 years or so, and men spend
more time at home with their wives and families.
Some women entered wage labor in the early
20th century, and now it is commonplace. Women also
participate in modern political life. Some of the ceremonies have died out, but the three women’s ceremonies
are still held. While gender roles have undergone considerable change in the last 50 years or so, Hopi remains
a sexually egalitarian culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schlegel, A. (1973). The adolescent socialization of the Hopi girl.
Ethnology, 12, 449–462.
Schlegel, A. (1977). Male and female in Hopi thought and action. In A.
Schlegel (Ed.), Sexual stratification: A cross-cultural view
(pp. 245–269). New York: Columbia University Press.
Schlegel, A. (1979). Sexual antagonism among the sexually egalitarian
Hopi. Ethos, 7, 124–141.
Schlegel, A. (1984). Hopi gender ideology of female superiority.
Quarterly Journal of Ideology, 8, 44–52.
474
Schlegel, A. (1988). Hopi widowhood. In A. Scadron (Ed.), On their
own: Widows and widowhood in the American Southwest,
1848–1939 (pp. 42–64). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Schlegel, A. (1989). Fathers, daughters, and kachina dolls. European
Review of Native American Studies, 3, 7–10.
Schlegel, A. (1990). Gender meanings: General and specific. In
P. Sanday & R. Goodenough (Eds.), Beyond the second sex: Essays
in the anthropology of gender (pp. 21–42). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Schlegel, A. (1992). African models in the American Southwest: Hopi
as an internal frontier society. American Anthropologist, 94,
376–397. [Background reading.]
Hopi
Schlegel, A. (1999). The two aspects of Hopi grandmotherhood. In
M. Schweitzer (Ed.), Bridging generations: American Indian grandmothers, traditions and transitions (pp. 145–158). Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.
Simmons, L. W. (Ed.). (1942). Sun chief: The autobiography of a Hopi
Indian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Biography of a
Hopi man.]
Spicer, E. H. (1962). Western Pueblos. Cycles of conquest (ch. 7,
pp. 187–209). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. [Historical
background reading.]
Udall, L. (1969). Me and mine: The life story of Helen Sekaquaptewa.
Tucson: University of Arizona Press. [Biography of a Hopi woman.]
Hungarians
Barbara A. West and Irén Annus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Hungarians are also known as Magyars.
LOCATION
The Republic of Hungary is located in the center of
Europe, between Austria to the west, Slovakia and
Ukraine to the north, Romania to the east, and Serbia and
Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia to the south.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Hungarian people have had a tumultuous history
since arriving in their present location in 896 CE. They
were invaded by the Mongols, Turks, Habsburgs, and
Soviets, they had two major failed revolutions, in 1848
and 1956, and they were on the losing side of two world
wars. Yet each time the Hungarians emerged as a people
both cognizant of their differences from their neighbors
and willing to fight to maintain them. One of the most
important of these differences is linguistic. The
Hungarian language, Magyar, is a member of the FinnoUgric language family and thus completely unrelated to
the German, Romanian, and Slavic languages spoken by
Hungary’s neighbors. Hungarians are also predominantly
Roman Catholic or Calvinist, and so consider themselves
very different from their Orthodox neighbors to the east
and south.
The two most significant historical events shaping
contemporary Hungary are the loss after World War I of
two-thirds of the territory claimed by Hungarians and the
45 years of Soviet domination following Hungary’s
defeat in World War II. The first event, while it left many
ethnic Hungarians living in Hungary’s neighboring
countries, has also resulted in Hungary being one of the
most ethnically homogeneous countries in contemporary
Europe. Currently, the population of Hungary is about
95% Magyar.
The creation of a Soviet-style one-party state after
World War II provided the context for most of the political, economic, social, and cultural features of contemporary Hungary. Politically, Hungary has had four rounds of
free elections since the end of the socialist era in 1990, but
no government has been reelected and no political ideology has been able to dominate national discourse for long.
Two exceptions to this may be a push for “traditional”
Hungarian gender and family roles and the desire to “join
Europe.” Economically, Hungary was transformed during
the second half of the 20th century from a largely agrarian country to an urbanized industrial one. Today, 65% of
Hungarians live in cities or towns. Unfortunately, since
1990, both the urban and rural work forces have suffered
under high rates of inflation, unemployment, and a
restructuring of the social service benefits they had grown
accustomed to during the socialist era. Some of the most
significant of these are education funding, childcare and
maternity benefits, childcare centers, pensions, and
healthcare. Socially, many Hungarians have experienced a
diminution in the number and depth of friendships since
1989. Culturally, Hungary has been transformed by films,
television programs, magazines, advertising, pornography, and other consumer items from the West, as well as
by legal and illegal workers, shoppers, and immigrants
from the other former socialist countries.
In addition, Hungarians are now unsure about their
gender roles. While women were technically “emancipated” by the socialist state, the benefits they received
were experienced by many women as hardships
(Bollobás, 1993). While the guarantee of paid employment sounds wonderful to Western ears, to Hungarian
women it meant a tremendous burden of full-time paid
employment and full-time housework without the benefits
of most of the machines and products that ease the
workload of most Western women. In addition, public discourse critical of women, depicting them as deleterious to
men, children, and society, has left many women feeling
betrayed, exhausted, and confused about their place in
contemporary society (Goven, 1993). Like women, many
Hungarian men are also struggling to reconcile cultural
475
476
Hungarians
ideals, which depict them as breadwinners, with economic
realities that have left many of them unemployed.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
The two recognized gender categories in Hungary are
woman or girl and man or boy, depending on a person’s
age. These categories are assumed by most people to be
distinct and, despite 45 years of de jure gender equality
during the socialist era, also hierarchical. Within the
parameters of class, educational, and even regional
differences, in Hungary men and boys generally have a
distinct advantage. For example, women who are well into
their twenties and even early thirties are often referred to
as kis lany, “little girl” (West, 2002) by older people and
the generic word for person, ember, is often used to refer
to men only. Furthermore, in the past, and even today in
some elderly households in rural communities, men’s
hierarchical position is reflected in women using the
formal pronoun and verb endings to refer to their
husbands while men use the informal with their wives.
While just a very few Hungarian women continue
this practice, many other gender differences continue to
be evident throughout Hungarian society. Hungarian boys
are freer to join clubs and sports teams while girls are
expected to participate in household labor to a greater
extent. In adulthood, women’s primary responsibilities
are to raise at least one child and take care of the home.
Most women also expect to work, but in both their own
estimation and that of society at large, their economic
role outside the home is secondary to their domestic role
within it. Even during most of the socialist era, which saw
the emancipation of women based on their “right” to
work, women were seen primarily as mothers rather than
as wives or women (Haney, 1994). Men, on the other
hand, are expected to be the main economic providers for
their families. Unfortunately, the change in the Hungarian
economy has not made this cultural ideal possible for
most men, but this fact has not mitigated its social force.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The most important rites of passage that mark the life
course of both females and males in Hungary are
marriage and having the first child, although graduating
from elementary school, leaving school entirely, and
retirement are also fairly important. All Hungarian men
are also required to spend 6 months serving in the
military. Some religious Hungarians also mark baptism,
first communion, and confirmation, bar mitzvah, or other
similar rituals, but none is as important as marriage and
having children.
In addition to the differences in life course due to
men’s military service and gendered expectations for
education, work, and household participation, the life
course of Hungarian women and men also differs because
women generally have a much longer elderly phase of
life. While the average life expectancy of Hungarian
women is 75.2 years, for men it is only 66.1 (Pongrácz &
Tóth, 1999).
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Much of the socialization that takes place in the home,
childcare centers, and elementary schools in Hungary is
a process of exposing children to somewhat traditional
gender and family roles. For example, although 90% of
all children between ages 3 and 6 attend kindergartens
(Vajda, 1998) and education is compulsory for all up until
age 16 (it will be 18 for children who were 6 or younger
in 2002), boys’ and girls’ experiences are not the same.
Elementary school texts highlight the activities of men
and present no alternative to the nuclear family with its
gender-segregated roles; elementary schools also require
students to read no novels written by women
(International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights,
2000). This early socialization is very important in
Hungary because the kind of high school a student enters,
whether academic or vocation specific, depends on
choices made when children are very young. Therefore,
in a variety of ways, parents and teachers continue to
channel students into a somewhat segregated work force
(Lobodzinska, 1995), even if this segregation is not as
great as it was in the past.
Puberty and Adolescence
For the most part, the path set down for female and male
children is merely continued into adolescence, although
rural children who want to attend high school must move
to a nearby city and live in a dormitory in order to do so.
Nonetheless, adolescent girls continue to feel more
Gender over the Life Cycle
pressure from their families to conform to their family’s
and society’s constraints upon them, while boys are given
more freedom to explore the world on their own.
Mothers, particularly older ones and those in rural areas,
continue to want their daughters to entertain boys at home
rather than to go out with them (Vajda, 1998), although
most girls prefer to go out on dates. Girls generally also
experience heavier family sanctions against alcohol use
and as a result experience drunkenness less than their
male counterparts. Nonetheless, both adolescent girls and
boys do drink alcohol, so much so that by 11th grade fully
100% of the boys and 94.9% of the girls in a recent study
had tried alcohol (Swaim, Nemeth, & Oetting, 1995).
Another aspect of adolescents’ lives that is a continuation from childhood is the emphasis on different kinds
of education. Interestingly, this difference has contributed
to a positive outcome for more Hungarian women than
men during the change from an industrial to a service
economy in the 1990s. In Hungary, girls and young
women complete academic secondary school and both
3- and 4-year colleges more than boys and young men
(Hrubos, 1994). Training in such fields as accounting,
clerical work, and languages were predominantly seen as
female, while boys were directed via vocational high
schools into the industrial work force, with its opportunties for hands-on training and high industrial wages
(Koncz, 1995). In addition, currently, more women are
entering into formerly male-dominated fields such as
economics and computer science (Hrubos, 1994). As a
result, younger women make up a greater proportion of
the well-educated Hungarian population and tend to have
greater educational qualifications than men of the same
age (Lobodzinska, 1995).
Attainment of Adulthood
While young men’s military service is an important part
of the phase between adolescence and adulthood, for both
women and men the first phase in the passage to adulthood is their 18th birthday, as that is the age of legal
adulthood in Hungary. The most important social marker
of adulthood is the eljegyzés, engagement. The engagement process in Hungary generally begins with a verbal
proposal by the man and the woman’s acceptance.
Following this proposal, the couple shops together for
their wedding rings. These are first exchanged at the
eljegyzés, which is usually a lunch attended by the
couple, their parents, and sometimes their godparents.
477
At this event, the man formally asks the woman to marry
him and seeks the approval of her parents. At this point,
both the man and woman wear their wedding ring on their
left hand, to indicate that they are engaged. At the
wedding, they will exchange these same rings and switch
them to their right hands. The woman may also receive an
accompanying ring, another piece of jewelry such as a
necklace or bracelet, or nothing at all.
After the engagement and wedding, the next most
important marker of adulthood is having a child. In a
recent Hungarian survey, which has been echoed in the
works of many Hungarian sociologists, researchers
discovered that 80% of Hungarians believe that not having a child leaves one incomplete (Wolf, 2000). While
women more than men think that raising children is their
most important function, Hungarians of both genders feel
the significant social stigma of not having at least one
child (Tóth, 1999b). Indeed, the word for family (család)
is often used to refer to children, so that a married couple
generally do not acquire family status until the birth of
their first child.
Middle Age and Old Age
In terms of career development, older age begins in
Hungary for both women and men by the time they have
reached their mid-30s. At this time, most people find it
extremely difficult to change career paths because of
discriminatory hiring practices. At the same time, in her
delineation of the Hungarian woman’s life course, Tóth
(1994a) considers the period of child-rearing, late twenties through forties, as middle age. For most Hungarian
women, this is also the most difficult time of their lives.
Most are attempting to combine raising children, taking
care of their home, working outside of the home, and
possibly caring for older relatives (Tóth, 1994a).
Retirement and/or having grown children mark old
age in Hungary. As of the late 1990s, 19% of the
Hungarian population was over 60 years of age (15.8% of
the total male population and 21.8% of the total female
population) (Földesi, 1998). While there are many reasons
for the difference between men and women, a few contributing factors are that many more men than women in
this age group smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol regularly,
and remain unwilling to change their traditional diet for a
healthier one. At the same time, only 1% more of the men
in this age group (5% vs. 4% of women) have remained
physically active into their old age, which might have
478
Hungarians
helped offset a lifetime of poor nutrition and bad habits
(Földesi, 1998). However, despite the fact that women live
significantly longer than men, they are not necessarily
healthier or happier. Hungary’s suicide and depression
rates for people of this age are both amongst the highest
in the world and relatively comparable for women and
men (women’s are slightly higher) (Elekes, 1999).
In addition, a large number of elderly Hungarian
women feel that they are the losers in the recent political,
economic, and social changes because the system they
worked all their lives to support, and which in turn promised to care for them in their old age, has failed them
(Földesi, 1998). For example, women receive 23% less
pension on average than men (Széman, 1999). Other
contributing factors to elderly women’s discontent may
be that they are alone because they live longer than men
by 9 years, they are more likely to live in single-person
households, and they face a lack of wide social relations
and activities (Széman, 1999). Far more older women
(32.2%) than men (13.2%) are also unmarried (Földesi,
1998), because of their greater numbers and men’s
greater desire to remarry, particularly younger women.
While some elderly Hungarian women are experiencing loneliness and inactivity, many others continue to
contribute substantially to their adult children’s households. Many older women find themselves retiring, or
even timing their own retirement, to coincide with the
birth of their grandchildren so that they can provide
much-needed childcare (Vajda, 1998). Indeed, most older
women take on the role of active grandmother, either
taking their grandchildren into their own home or flat and
providing meals when the children’s mother is at work, or
living with their son’s or daughter’s family to provide
constant domestic support. Some women who were
mothers in the 1950s feel that they missed out on spending significant amounts of time with their own children
and use this active-grandmother phase of life to make up
for that earlier loss (Tóth, 1993).
in the late 1980s, many Hungarian men would prefer to
be more open about their positive personal feelings with
other men, but are not sure how to do that. Hungarian
women want to be less quick to show anger (Reisman,
1990).
A second area of difference concerns the guilty
feelings that Hungarian gender ideologies and society
more generally have produced in women (S. Molnár,
1999). Women are often depicted as the cause of
Hungary’s negative birth rate. They are also held responsible for any problems their children have in school or
elsewhere. The greatest area of concern, both for many
women and for society more generally, is the balancing
act that women must engage in with regard to work and
home. Since women’s wages are socially seen as supplementary to men’s, regardless of economic reality, if they
continue to work and family problems arise they tend to
feel that they are to blame (Tóth, 1997).
A third area of difference, one that seems somewhat
anomalous given the guilt that most Hungarian women
feel, is the connection many women feel to their work. In
a survey in the early 1990s, 25.1% of Hungarian women
said that they enjoy working and would continue to do so
even if they did not need to; the figure for men was only
19.3% (Tóth, 1994b). In a related survey in 1997, more
men accepted the view that work is for money rather than
for personal well-being; this difference was true for all
educational groups (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999). In addition,
women are also a bit more optimistic about the future of
their jobs than are men (Tóth, 1994b).
Finally, as might be expected in a society that tells
women that their work is less significant than men’s,
women tend to diminish the value of their work and to
explain their own successes in terms of luck or outside
factors rather than their own abilities or performance (Nagy,
1997). Hungarian men are generally more confident and
willing to take credit for valuable work and a job well done.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
On the whole, women in Hungary tend to express their
feelings more than men do. This is true of both positive
feelings such as affection and tenderness and negative feelings such as anger and frustration. According to a survey
The single most important social group in Hungary is the
family, which refers to members of one’s household who
share ties of descent or alliance. Fully 85% of the
population reside in families (Hungarian College of
Catholic Bishops, 1999). Those who do not reside in the
same household, whatever their biological relationship,
are often referred to as relatives rather than family
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
(West, 2002). Hungarians do not recognize lineal or other
forms of institutionalized extended kin groups.
Nonetheless, much of the literature on Hungary from sociology, anthropology, and psychology refers to this society
as both child centered and family centered. This is the
result of a number of factors, from the traditional value on
children to the recent economic downturn that has caused
many domestic units to turn inward for respite against the
vagaries of unemployment, inflation, and diminished
social services (West, 2002). Although this has changed
quite a bit since even the early 1990s, many households,
or families, in Hungary in the recent past were multigenerational (Buss, Beres, Hofstetter, & Pomidor, 1994). Even
in the early 1990s, 75% of young married couples lived
with either the bride’s or groom’s parents or grandparents
(Tóth, 1993); this figure is somewhat lower today with the
advent of low-interest housing loans.
Other groups that are important in the lives of some
Hungarian men are drinking groups, work circles, and
peer groups developed during childhood and early adolescence. Hungarian women participate in fitness groups
more than men, but less than men in work circles. Fewer
women also maintain friendships across the entire life
cycle (Reisman, 1990). As in most areas of gender difference, class, education, age, and region are very important
in determining an individual’s participation in these
groups. For example, it is largely young urban women
who take fitness classes.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In some ways the economic position of women in
Hungary today is stronger than that of Hungarian men
(Frey, 1996; Koncz, 1995) and than that of women in most
of post-socialist Eastern and Central Europe (van der
Lippe & Fodor, 1998). In 1998, unemployment was 7%
for Hungarian women and 8.5% for men (Pongrácz &
Tóth, 1999). There are many reasons for this difference.
First, because of their dominance in the fields of heavy
industry during the socialist era, men more than women
have lost their jobs due to factory closures. Second,
because their earnings have always been seen as secondary, women have been much more willing than men to
take advantage of the part-time, temporary, and homebased work opportunities that have opened up since 1990
(Szalai, 1998). Third, traditional gender roles in Hungary
have also allowed far more women than men to exit the
479
labor force and yet remain economically active as the
recipients of childcare and maternity benefits, “nursing
fees” to care for elderly parents and in-laws, and early
retirement (Szalai, 1998). Fourth, women in Hungary
have been more willing to take advantage of retraining
programs (Szalai, 1999). Fifth, Hungarian women began
more than 40% of the small private businesses started in
Hungary between 1990 and 1998 (Frey, 1999). Finally,
many women have been able to combine one or more of
these kinds of “supplementary” incomes to support their
entire families (Szalai, 1998); 44% of women and 41% of
men have other sources of income besides their primary
employment (Nagy, 1995). The result of all these factors
is that women generally are more likely than their male
counterparts to retain the occupational class attained by
their fathers (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999).
At the same time, despite 45 years of de jure gender
equality, Hungarian women earn only around 80% of the
salaries of men (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999), leaving women
more vulnerable if they divorce (Utasi, 1997) or, as only
rarely happens, they remain single. Younger women and
women with children suffer much more discrimination
with regard to their access to well-paying jobs and prestige (International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights,
2000). During the socialist era, women had much less
access to private economy work opportunities, usually
because of their responsibilities at home, leaving them
with fewer skills and less access to private work today. As
a result, women constitute nearly three quarters of the
state sector and only one third of the much more lucrative
private sector (Koncz, 1994). Women are also less likely
than men to move in order to take a higher-paying job
(Wong, 1995). Finally, women managers have much less
access to top positions. While almost all successful male
managers have wives at home to support their efforts,
women who are able to engage in the work activities
necessary to rise to that level are often divorced or single.
In addition, since nearly all Hungarian women want at
least one child, they must rely upon mothers and day-care
providers for childcare (Nagy, 1997).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Since Hungarian marriages have begun to occur at
later ages, the age at which women are having their
480
first child has also increased recently, from 23.1 in
1990 to 25.4 in 1999 (Kamarás, 2000). The primary
reasons for these increases are financial instability and
increased opportunities for female education and career
development.
For both men and women in Hungary, the birth of a
first child is the final step in the attainment of full personhood. In recognition of this most important of roles,
the Hungarian state allows parents (or even grandparents)
with permanent jobs to take 2 years of maternity and
childcare leave at 70% of their salary and a third year
with a flat amount of 20,000 forints per month. While
these kinds of benefits were initially provided in the
1970s to boost Hungary’s falling birthrate, they have been
maintained despite their failure to affect the birthrate
significantly (Lobodzinska, 1995). Today, almost all
Hungarian women take at least 6 months of paid leave
after the birth of a child in order to breast-feed their
infants. Unfortunately, the guarantee that a parent’s job
will remain after their leave has been eliminated.
Therefore, generally the only parents (primarily, but not
solely, women) who take advantage of the 2-year leave
are those who are fairly certain that their jobs will be
eliminated anyway (Jakus, 1993), those who are well to
do, or those who have received a guarantee that their jobs
will remain available to them.
Since 1989, childcare centers have also been cut way
back, forcing more women to rely upon their parents or
in-laws for childcare (Lobodzinska, 1995). Because some
Hungarians live in extended families anyway, due to
housing shortages and a significant lack of nursing homes
(Buss et al., 1994), this is not always difficult. However,
the contributions of active grandmothers in the household
may also encourage the lack of participation of many
Hungarian fathers in childcare, particularly with very
young children (Vajda, 1998). The presence of multigenerational households may also add to women’s workload,
since older family members may need a significant
amount of care.
Although more fathers today, particularly those with
more education, are participating in child-rearing activities
than in the past, motherhood and fatherhood continue to be
two very different social roles in Hungary. Mothers have
historically been seen, and continue to be seen, as central
figures not only in households but also in the nation as a
whole (Huseby-Darvas, 1996). In addition to providing
most of the household labor and childcare, Hungarian
mothers also largely determine the cultural level of their
Hungarians
children by exposing them (or not) to museums, art,
literature, music, etc., while Hungarian fathers largely
determine their economic level (Tóth, 1993). Mothers also
tend to determine their children’s religious affiliation and
activity (Tomka, 2000).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
During the socialist era, when the Party held all true
leadership and representation was largely for show,
women were represented at all levels of national and local
governance. In 1987, women made up 21% of Hungary’s
parliament (LaFont, 2001). With the transition, when
political power became real and representation vitally
important, women have become less and less visible in
formal governing processes. Party politics quickly
became male dominated; by 1993 women held only 6.7%
of parliamentary seats (8.5% in 1998; Lévai & Kiss,
1999) and masculine issues dominated the agenda
(Koncz, 1995). In part because of the history of the
socialist state’s concern with women and gender equality,
since 1990 men and women alike have been reluctant to
raise these as political issues. In addition, the few feminist or womanist organizations that developed in Hungary
after 1990 have changed their focus or disappeared in the
past decade (Szalai, 1998).
Nonetheless, women have not disappeared entirely
from the political process in Hungary. First, while the
more conservative political circles and parties tend to
favor and lobby for traditional gender and family roles,
others have run women candidates and appointed women
to key positions. For example, in 2002 the Hungarian
Socialist Party named a woman as Minister of the
Interior, the second most powerful person in the
government. Second, women and men have voted in
equal numbers in all local and national elections since
1990 (Szalai, 1998). Third, women participate heavily
in the professional administration of local governments.
They make up 34% of the non-elected members of
local social policy commissions (Szalai, 1998) and in
that capacity were instrumental in the national parliament’s decision in 1993 to pass the most liberal abortion
act ever seen in Hungary. Finally, women tend to
occupy leadership positions in areas where their subordinates are also women, and thus remain invisible in
the national (and international) sphere (Koncz, 1994;
Nagy, 1997).
Relative Status of Men and Women
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
A large proportion of the Hungarian population has
been baptized into the Roman Catholic church (almost
7 million members in 1998), the Hungarian Reformed
church (just over 2 million members in 1998), or some
other Christian denomination (Tomka & Révay, 1998).
Yet, aside from some elderly women, many of these
people have not had much continued relationship with a
church community. During the socialist era, the Party
State apparatus actively discouraged religious affiliation
and most monasteries and church-run schools were
closed. Since 1990, most of these institutions have
reopened and religious participation has increased somewhat, particularly at such ritual times as Christmas,
Easter, and weddings. In 1997, there were 998 monks and
2311 nuns serving in 91 monasteries and convents in
Hungary (Tomka & Révay, 1998).
Churches in general in Hungary tend to favor traditional gender and family roles; however, in 1999 Catholic
bishops in Hungary issued a statement calling for happier
families. One of their suggestions was for Hungarians to
recognize the double-income family as appropriate for
the 21st century. They also stated that women have a
rightful need to study and work (Hungarian College of
Catholic Bishops, 1999).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
As is the case elsewhere, Hungarian women have less
leisure time per day than men, an hour less on average
(Tóth, 1997). Women also have fewer friends than men,
are members of fewer organizations that would allow for
socializing outside of the home, and sleep less than men
(Lobodzinska, 1995). They spend less time on cultural
activities and have more home-based leisure activities,
such as hobby cooking, gardening, reading, needlecraft,
or listening to the radio (Wolf, 2000). However, some
younger women in urban areas do participate in aerobics
and other fitness classes. The most significant leisure
activity for Hungarian women generally, but particularly
working women, is watching television (Tóth, 1993).
Nonetheless, in 1993, men watched more television per
day (159 minutes) than women (139 minutes) (Pongrácz &
Tóth, 1999).
481
Both adult men’s and women’s friendships are
largely instrumental rather than emotional in Hungary
(Tóth, 1993), men’s even more than women’s (Albert &
David, 1998). Hungarian men also spend more time in the
company of friends and colleagues than women do and
they go out more often (Albert & David, 1998). Male
leisure activities include home crafts and building,
attending sporting events, watching television, and listening to music, and for some younger men, surfing the
internet and other computer activities (Wolf, 2000). In
addition, heavy drinking is also considered a socially
acceptable male activity. Nearly 22% of men in the late
1990s drank alcohol every day; the figure for women was
only 2.9% (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999).
Since the beginning of the transition, Hungarian
leisure time has changed fairly significantly. Hungarians
had one of the longest work days in Europe in the 1980s
(13.4 hr per day at their main jobs), but the economic
downturn of the transition has decreased that substantially so that Hungarians now spend only 11.8 hr per day
at their main job (Bod, 2000). However, for most people,
this has not meant more time for most leisure activities
but rather more time searching for work, upgrading their
education and skills, and/or working in a garden or at
some supplementary job. In addition, more households
have turned inward against the economic difficulties of
the transition, leaving both women and men with fewer
affective bonds outside their families (West, 2002). Like
their parents (Vukovich & Harcsa, 1998), children are
also now participating at far lower rates in sports activities and other extracurricular activities and watching far
more television. This increased viewing has resulted in a
broadening of children’s horizons beyond Hungary’s
borders, but has also had a negative effect on both their
desire and ability to read (Somlai, 1998).
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Although women and men have enjoyed equal status
under the law since the late 1940s, in real-life situations
men usually have a distinct advantage. They make more
money than women do, they hold the top positions in
government, business, education, and almost all other
public arenas, and they are the authority figures in most
households. As Hungary is a predominately Catholic
country, men make up the entire leadership in religious
circles, although a minority in most congregations.
482
Society and the law also tend to ignore male
violence against women, whether in marriage or not, and
whether it includes rape, battery, and/or psychological
violence. According to one Hungarian study, most
Hungarian women and girls have experienced sexual
harassment or humiliation, rape, or some other kind of
mental or physical abuse at the hands of one or more men.
This occurs in the home, at school, at work, and on the
streets, so that there are few places in which many
Hungarian women generally feel safe (Bollobás, 1993).
In addition, threats and violence against women are
largely supported by Hungarian gender ideologies.
According to Tóth (1999a), 25% of women in Hungary
believe that women are responsible for rape, 45% do not
know that rape can occur in marriage, 41% of women
with less than an eighth-grade education believe that
wife-beating should not be punished, and 65% of women
who have been raped or the victim of some other violence
are so ashamed that they never report it.
One of the few areas in which women do have an
advantage over men is in retaining custody of children
and holding onto apartments when a couple divorces.
Because women are seen by Hungarian society largely in
terms of motherhood, mothers rarely lose custody of
their children, even if their ex-husbands could provide
equal or better child-rearing. In addition, because they
retain custody of children, women are also better situated
for holding onto a couple’s house or flat upon divorce.
In 1996, only 10% of all homeless people in Hungary
were women (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999). A second area
in which women are currently better situated than men
is their ability to remain economically active. While
men who are working tend to make more money than
similarly situated women, fewer women are unemployed
(Szalai, 1998).
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is a difficult subject for most Hungarians to
discuss openly due to a number of historical factors:
conservative cultural traditions, Catholicism, and socialist morality. While sex education has been presented in
schools since the 1970s, it includes only the most rudimentary factual information. As a result, knowledge
about sexual relationships, contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and even sexuality more generally is
fairly limited (Hochberg, 1997). But Hungarian women
Hungarians
have access to a range of choices for contraception and
these are available at relatively low cost. As a result,
about 75% of Hungarian women between 19 and 41 use
birth control (Jozan, 1999). Abortion is also quite common (Kamarás, 1999), especially for teens and women
over 40 (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999). Since 1993, abortion
has been available up to the 12th week of pregnancy
almost without restriction. Prior to this time, it was legal,
available, and common, but a woman was subject to a
waiting period and invasive questioning by her doctor
(Jakus, 1993).
Sexuality is an area that has changed significantly
over the past two or three decades. While many older
women in Hungary continue to live by the double standards with which they grew up, which valued women’s
virginity, women’s sexuality only in the context of marriage, and other conservative norms, younger women
tend to see sexuality as a natural part of their relationships
with men (Kende & Neményi, 1999). Today, a majority
of young people have their first sexual experience by age
18.2 (Kamarás, 1999).
One of the most incongruous aspects of contemporary Hungary is the social and political position of
homosexuality. On the one hand, homosexuality has
been legal since 1961 and, outside of Scandinavia and
The Netherlands, Hungary has one of the most liberal
domestic partner laws in the world (Long, 1999). Samesex couples have most of the same rights as married couples (Farkas, 2000), and in Budapest and a few other large
cities gays and lesbians have formed a number of activist
and social groups. Yet, at the same time, there is no real
national organization, lobbying group, or even lasting
local organizing group for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or
transgendered people (Long, 1999). Several organizations have also been prevented from forming because
they refused to bar membership to those below 18, the
legal age of consent for homosexual sex (it is 14 for
heterosexuals) (Long, 1999). Until very recently, there
was no real gay and lesbian community in Hungary, in
part because of the refusal of gay men to work with
lesbians or feminists, in part because there was no
consensus on what the community should be or do, and
in part because of the relative silence about sexuality
more generally (Long, 1999). Despite the increasing
visibility of groups for sexual minorities, silence and
loneliness continue to be the two most devastating facts
of life for gays and lesbians in Hungary (Birtalan, 2000;
Sándor, 2000).
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage patterns in Hungary have slowly changed over
the past few decades so that few couples marry before
age 20, more couples live together prior to marriage or
without any expectation of marrying, and more couples
have their first child before marriage. Up until the 1980s,
the average age for women to become engaged was 17 or
18; for men it was their early twenties. By the mid-1990s,
only 18–20% of Hungarian women married before age 20,
primarily due to the expansion of educational opportunities for women (Tóth, 1999b). In 1998, the average
marriage age for women was 26.7, while for men it was
29.7 (Pongrácz & Tóth, 1999). Despite waiting longer,
most Hungarians marry at least once during their lifetime
and remarriage after divorce or the death of a spouse is
not uncommon, although less frequent today than a few
decades ago (Tóth, 1999b).
In addition, although marriage itself may be
modernizing in Hungary, the phrases used in Hungarian
to talk about getting married continue to emphasize its
hierarchical nature. When a woman marries, the verb
used is ferjhez megy, to go to a husband, while men either
elvesz, buy a woman, or elnõsül, get “womaned.”
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIPS
Since 1989, an important advantage of marriage,
especially for those with the least education, has been
relative financial security. Most women also value it for
providing legitimacy for their children (Tóth, 1999b).
Men should also value it for improving their morbidity
and mortality rates since married men live longer and
healthier lives than men of any other marital status.
Perhaps as a result, 71% of married men in a recent
survey stated that married people are happier than other
people; only 58% of married women agreed (Tóth,
1999b). This lower figure for women may be caused by
the double burden women experience, the increasing
financial opportunities for women without family responsibilities, or the widespread belief that fighting is
common between spouses (80% of the time, fights are
over money) (Tóth, 1999a). Hungarian husbands spend
very little time on such housekeeping chores as cleaning,
shopping, and caring for children (Lobodzinska, 1995),
although more Hungarian men have become participants
in household chores recently. In 30% of households, it is
483
even the wife’s task to manage the family finances, while
in 60% the husband and wife manage them together
(Nagy, 1999).
Another reason women are less happy in marriage
than men may be the traditional acceptance of domestic
violence. One third of married women in the late 1990s
had been beaten or threatened and only 19% of these
women had sought police help, usually in vain since only
5% of that number actually received any assistance (Tóth,
1999a). The Hungarian proverb, “Money is best when
counted, a woman is best when beaten,” continues to be
many people’s reaction to evidence of domestic violence
and even marital rape (Hochberg, 1997; International
Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, 2000).
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Perhaps the only fairly significant cross-sex relationship
outside marriage and parenting for some Hungarians is
that between a godparent and his or her godchild. This
institution only exists for Catholics and members of the
Hungarian Reformed Church, although it is much more a
cultural practice than an indication of church membership.
The two most significant events at which the institution is
visible and important are the child’s baptism or christening, when the godparent promises to act as a lifetime
moral religious guardian, and the child’s wedding, when
the godparents often serve as the witnesses.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Since the end of the socialist era in 1990, the most important changes in Hungary with regard to sex and gender
have been the almost complete erasure of women’s issues
from the political scene, an emphasis on women’s primary
role as homemaker and mother, high male unemployment,
and the development of a consumer culture.
The first two of these changes are the result of the
degree to which the socialist state made women’s
employment (as the only path toward emancipation) a
political, ideological, and moral imperative. In the
anti-communist backlash of the 1990s and beyond, any
political voice raising women’s issues has been labeled
reactionary, ideological, or anti-Hungarian. As a result,
484
Hungarians
women are as likely as men now to agree that women
should not work full time when they have small children
(in 1988, far more men than women felt this way) (Tóth,
1997). Some younger women have reacted to this change
with pleasure, since they had watched their own mothers
struggle with juggling full-time work and full-time
housework and do not want to live that life themselves
(Kende & Neményi, 1999). Yet, many other women, and
some men as well, have reacted with disgust to what is
essentially the repoliticization of women’s lives under the
guise of tradition, family, or choice.
The third change, high male unemployment, is
important because of the cultural context that constructs
men primarily as breadwinners. Like many women, who
are struggling to reconcile their early socialization that
directed them into the work force with cultural norms
about their roles as mothers and homemakers, men too are
struggling to reconcile economic reality with cultural
expectations. This struggle may be a factor in the high rates
of male alcoholism, suicide, and depression, although
women have slightly higher suicide and depression rates
than men (Elekes, 1999).
Finally, consumerism has changed most areas of
Hungarian life, including gender. Mothers are now under
pressure from advertisements that use the voice of male
doctors or other “experts” to direct them to purchase
disposable diapers, children’s vitamins and other supplements, and baby toiletries (Vajda, 1998). The formerly
state-run magazine Nõk Lapja, which had been filled with
articles on work and politics, is now equivalent to any
Western women’s magazine, including many articles on
dieting, fashion, and gossip (Haney, 1994; Tóth, 2001;
West, 2000). While women are the primary targets of
such consumer propaganda, younger, especially welleducated, Hungarian men in certain types of jobs are now
also concerned that they smoke the right cigarettes, drink
the right alcohol, wear the right clothes, and drive the right
car. Just as women are being told that beauty, femininity,
health, and popularity are available at a price, men too are
confronting a world in which masculinity is only available
to the man who can afford to buy the right accessories.
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Iatmul
Eric Kline Silverman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Iatmul are also known as the Iatmoi.
LOCATION
The Iatmul are located on the middle Sepik River, Papua
New Guinea.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Some 25 Iatmul-speaking villages line the middle Sepik
River. For Melanesia, these villages are large—upwards
of 1,200 people. They are also prosperous, with fertile
gardens, access to jungle and grasslands, and a continuous source of water for drinking, bathing, and food.1
The river, which recedes and floods in an annual rain
cycle, provides fish, prawns, and mayflies. Extended
families tend small horticultural gardens of taro, yam,
sweet potato, and fruit trees (e.g., coconut, banana).
Colonial administrations, beginning in the 1880s,
introduced beans, cucumber, pineapple, watermelon, and
other crops. Iatmul may also eat chicken, wild bird, turtle,
crocodile, snake, frog, sago grubs, lotus seeds, bandicoot,
cassowary, and, during ritual, pig, and sometimes dog.
Iatmul attribute bodily strength and cultural vitality to
sago, a starch produced from the Metroxylum sagu palm,
which is associated with maternal nurture and, say some
men, breast-milk.
Today, trade stores stock rice, canned fish and meat,
biscuits, flour, beer, cooking oil, tea, coffee, powdered
milk, cookies, and biscuits. Additionally, Iatmul—mainly
women—regularly schedule markets with bush-dwelling
Sawos-speaking hamlets to obtain sago and sometimes meat (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977). Formerly, Iatmul
exchanged fish; now, they mainly pay cash.
Iatmul villages are organized into a nested hierarchy
of patrilineal descent groups, sometimes forming totemic
moieties. Each patrilineal group justifies its existence on
the basis of an exclusive corpus of totemic names that
refer to mythic-historic migrations. Men tend to have
custodianship over these names.
Yet matrifiliation and maternal sentiment are
profound and, in some contexts such as disputes, eclipse
the androcentric social structure. Villages are acephalous.
Political leadership is male and extends only to the limits
of the descent group. Residence is normally patrilocal;
marriage generally takes place within the village. Warfare,
once endemic, is extinct. But men and women still manifest an assertive, often aggressive, ethos that nonetheless
coexists with the high moral value of mothering.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Gender influences all aspects of Iatmul culture and social
life. A major theme of the culture is the clarification of
the relationship between male and female as they are
defined in terms of a pervasive maternal schema.
Iatmul recognize two genders: male (ndu) and female
(tagwa). From one angle, these genders are exclusive,
distinct, and complementary (Weiss, 1994). Men fish
with spears, women set traps; men stand in canoes, women
sit; men carve, women weave; etc. This omnipresent
dichotomy is also natural and biological: men have penises
and testicles, women have vaginas and wombs. The traditional and modern person is unambiguously gendered
through clothing, personal adornment, treatment of the
body, and even gait and verbal intonation. Today, men
wear pants and often go shirtless, while women don skirts
and, unless elderly, mission-derived floral blouses. Little
boys run naked; girls never do. Many men are scarified, as
I discuss below, while women may tattoo themselves with
soot. During rituals too, men and women are differentiated
by ornamentation such as body paint. Even when men and
women ritually switch their stereotypical garb, as in the
famous naven rite that celebrates first-time cultural
achievements for everybody (Bateson, 1936/1958),
differentiation is preserved.
487
488
Iatmul
Yet the symbolism of Iatmul gender, especially in
religious contexts (e.g., ritual, myth, art), expands beyond
a dichotomy to a “common pool” of dispositions and
values. From this angle, both men and women define
themselves through competing claims to fecundity, reproductive primacy, and nurture—that is, to the cultural idea
and ideal of motherhood (Silverman, 2001). Therefore
Iatmul gender is dual and unitary, a matter of difference
and emphasis. Men’s ritual prerogatives signal their
difference from, and superiority over, women. Yet the
symbolism of ritual is thoroughly infused with uterine
themes (see below). Women, by contrast, never aspire to
the culturally perceived bodily capacities and qualities of
fatherhood. True, women may desire male privileges. But
the symbolism of womanhood does not disclose a wish to
become fathers in the same way that the symbolism of
manhood discloses the wish to become mothers.
For the Iatmul, dichotomous gender is pervasive and
natural. At the same time, Iatmul culture often appears to
be a grand irreducible dialogue of ambiguity and ambivalence, voiced in a maternal idiom, concerning the relationship between male and female. For men, maintaining
a divided world by excluding women is vital. Women are
far less compelled to maintain this gendered dichotomy
and often, argues Hauser-Schäublin (1977, p. 260), strive
for synthesis and unity.
Attractiveness for both men and women is largely
visual: pronounced nose, clear and shiny skin, and bodily
cleanliness. Men desire women with firm breasts, while
women desire strong muscular men.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The cultural stages of the Iatmul life cycle are relatively
congruent for men and women, with one exception. Men
traditionally underwent a male initiation ceremony,
which I discuss below. This was the only significant
regularly performed rite of passage for either men or
women.
There is a tacit sense that postmenopausal women
shift somewhat into an unnamed category that is less of a
threat to men. The female body, especially her genital
secretions, are polluting to men and male ritual—she
“cools” the magical “heat” associated with masculine
aggressiveness and potency, and the efficacy of spirits. As
Iatmul men and women move through the life cycle, they
tend to acquire increased politico-ritual rights as well as
responsibilities for overseeing a kin group and its
residential ward and resources. With age, too, men and
women gain prestige and authority, especially in matters
of ritual, magic, and, at least today, knowledge of
“tradition” or “custom.”
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Infant boys and girls tend to be socialized similarly. Both
boys and girls interact with the same expansive kin group
although grandfathers and mothers’ brothers tend to be
more interested in boys. The major caretakers and socializers of children are mothers, older siblings (typically
female), and matrikin. Infancy and childhood entail no
distinct rites for boys and girls, and there are no major
gendered expectations.
Boys are valued over girls in regard to the inheritance
of totemic names and the reproduction of the patrilineage.
Yet girls are prized, since married daughters, more so than
sons who are said to be busy with brideservice obligations,
care for elderly parents. Furthermore, a son-in-law
performs labor for his wife’s parents: hews canoes, clears
gardens, etc. By contrast, a daughter-in-law is said to be
greedy.
Below the age of about 7, there is little gendered
differentiation in the tasks of boys and girls (Weiss, 1990,
p. 339). But since women are the primary adult caretakers, boys tend to assist their mothers and women more
than their fathers and men. Additionally, Mead (1949,
p. 112), reported Iatmul boys were somewhat feminine;
their play often recalled the events of childhood rather
than their future participation in the “splendor” of male
life. At the same time, boys seem slightly masculine when
they perform female tasks.
The play of little children tends to exhibit little
significant gender distinction. Children form autonomous
groups, roaming the village and foraging for snacks.
However, older prepubescent boys and girls do often
enact the gender-specific roles of adults. But this distinction is largely informal; boys and girls do not fully
segregate their peer groups until puberty. The possessions
of older prepubescent children do somewhat reflect
gender (Weiss, 1997). Thus, boys have stools while girls,
like adult women, sit on the ground. Boys are more
aggressive in their play (e.g, athletics and shooting slingshots). Boys and girls may stage a “ritual” for themselves
(Weiss, 1983). Mirroring adults, the boys parade in
masked costumes while the girls dance in celebration.
Gender over the Life Cycle
But these youthful outings are less segregated than their
grown-up counterparts.
Prior to puberty, there is little formal education or
apprenticeship, gendered or otherwise. Caretakers tend to
educate, instruct, and discipline boys and girls similarly.
Boys seem to be hit more often than girls, and girls seem
to get into trouble more often than boys, perhaps because
they have greater responsibilities.
Both boys and girls run errands—ferrying messages,
fetching things—for adult men and women (Weiss,
1981). But girls have greater responsibility than boys for
household chores and supervising younger kin. (I have
two enduring images of prepubescents: boys wrestling,
and girls holding younger siblings.) Weiss (1990) emphasizes that Iatmul mothers can only perform all their daily
tasks (fishing, gardening) if children look after the
younger ones. Men are far less dependent on children.
Puberty and Adolescence
Older children, to repeat, begin to manifest gendered
patterns of play, games, and leisure. They increasingly
model their behavior after adults. At puberty, boys and
girls form sex-segregated groups. Today, these groups
freely roam the village, often to the annoyance of adults
who complain about the erosion of traditional authority
and public behavior. These complaints typically mention
the sexual licentiousness of young men and women.
Gendered socialization becomes increasingly
important with age, especially for boys who, as children,
spent most of their time with other youths and women.
Adolescents are more self-conscious in their gender identification. Girls continue to assume regular household
chores and obligations. Boys, too, begin to participate in
the affairs of adult men, especially in regard to ritual. But
while girls in their early teens are capable of performing
nearly all female tasks, boys do not become fully competent males until their late teens (Weiss, 1990, p. 339).
With the exception of male initiation, which I discuss
in the next section, there is general continuity in
socialization around puberty.
Attainment of Adulthood
For both men and women, adult personhood is attained
mainly on the basis of marriage and the subsequent birth
of children. Traditionally, Iatmul men were initiated into
adult manhood and the male cult. The bloody painful
489
ordeals of initiation allowed men to emulate the fortitude
of women during childbirth, and to “grow” boys into
adult males. Although men never attend birth, since they
deem it polluting, male initiation is permeated by
symbols of parturition and maternal nurture. This way,
men effectively supplant the culturally lauded role
of motherhood. Cicatrization purges neophytes’ bodies of
maternal blood, which inhibits the development of a
masculine physique. But the resulting scars, which are
visible emblems of manhood, are said by men to resemble the breasts and genitals of woman and female crocodile spirits. The rite forges exclusive masculine identity
by aggressively exaggerating birth, maternal feeding, and
moral mothering. At the same time, male initiation associates the female body with danger, pollution, castration,
and somatic atrophy. Initiation thus constructs Iatmul
manhood as an identity that opposes yet emulates
motherhood.
Women were once initiated if men judged them to be
excessively aggressive, if they espied male cult secrets, or
if a sonless father wanted a daughter to inherit his totemic
esoterica and magic (see also Hauser-Schäublin, 1977,
p. 178; 1995). But this practice was rare; it remains
poorly understood today by either ethnographers or
Iatmul.
Initiation offered novices only a little guidance about
adult behavior. However, they were admonished to avoid
adultery and practice birth spacing. Upon the attainment
of adulthood, men and women are expected to be busy
with adult activities, which are almost always gender
segregated. Men tend to gather in cult houses and related
ritual spaces unless otherwise engaged in occasional
subsistence and work activities. Women are responsible
for daily fishing, preparing meals, and maintenance of the
household.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle age offers few real changes to men and women.
However, old age confers increased respect and prestige.
Older men are the custodians of totemic knowledge, myth,
kinship, ritual rules, and overall cultural lore. They also
tend to supervise major communal labors and ceremonies.
Elderly women are also viewed with respect for their lore,
magic, knowledge about childbirth and healing, and
general cultural erudition. At the same time, elders ponder
the inevitability of death and their waning authority as
younger adults assume roles of leadership.
490
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
Iatmul
BY
Bateson (1936/1958) summarized the ethos of Iatmul men
as histrionic, aggressive, competitive, and flamboyant.
Women were more demur, nurturing, cooperative, and
practical. Male personhood is expansive and public;
women are more domestic and personal. Women, too, take
pride in male kin who uphold the showy self-important
swagger of manhood (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 130).
But since men tend to restrict their politico-ritual voice to
the cult house, one hears in the village mainly women as
they loudly talk, laugh, yell, and fight. The ethos of
masculinity notwithstanding, women are far more likely
to scuffle than men. In fact, men often attribute social
tensions between groups to women, especially female sexuality, which men regard as divisive.
When normal coping mechanisms fail, men may try
to kill the source of their frustration. Women may commit
suicide (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, pp. 128–139).
Iatmul women tend to laugh more than men. They
also seem to have greater freedom for informal sociability and emotional expression since they are less beholden
than men to the strict rules of decorum that govern the
male cult. Both men and women are ashamed by dependency. Men, more than women, are driven by dominance.
Both genders are shy, or reticent, when making requests,
which signals child-like dependence. Men are apt to be
more suspicious and guarded, especially in matters of
totemic and mythic knowledge. Yet, as elsewhere in
Melanesia, men and women habitually refuse to speculate
on other people’s unstated motivations. Men are particularly prone to prideful insults. However much they attribute conflict to women, men are the ones who constantly
require conciliatory gestures.
Men are more likely than women to think about the
world in terms of dualities and distinctions (HauserSchäublin, 1977, pp. 243–245). They tend, for example,
to divide social groups and gender. Cognitively, women
strive for unity. Men are greatly concerned with maintaining social and gendered boundaries. They fear the
possibility that women might intrude on their all-male
spaces. Women exhibit little comparable concern. While
women often desire the exclusion of men, it is not
because a male presence would threaten the definition of
Iatmul femininity. (Women, I sense, simply want time
away from male swagger!) Men, however, exclude
women from male rituals precisely because a female
presence would call into question the procreative, uterine
dimensions of Iatmul masculinity.
Iatmul men frequently conceptualize kinship as an
abstract system of rules. Women tend to think about
kinship in terms of specific relationships and actual
persons (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 152).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
All significant social institutions in Iatmul society are
structured around males or females. When men and
women form a single group, gender defines their respective social roles.
Village residence wards correspond to patrilineal
groups, which are largely exogamous. Residence is typically patrilocal. Since Iatmul villages are endogamous,
the proximity of natal kin reduces a bride’s psychological
distress when she relocates to her husband’s residence
ward. (Some men view the idea of living with affines to
be shameful.) Generally, an extended patrilineal family
inhabits the house. Men sleep near the central areas and
entrances of the dwelling, while women (wives and
unmarried daughters) reside along the periphery. This
way, the Iatmul house, like the internal spaces of canoes,
reflects the gendered spatial organization of the society.
Iatmul gender is also shaped by an opposition
between what Bateson (1936/1958) called “patrilineal
structure” and “maternal sentiment.” Although descent is
patrilineal, kinship is more fluid, with men and women
using both male and female links to determine relationships. Larger kin groups and ritual moities tend to be
patrilineal. But people do follow matrilateral “paths”
when defining group affiliation for some ceremonies and
prohibitions. There are no important, or formal, nonkin
associations for either males or females.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Married women tend to remain and work within their
husband’s residence ward, gardens, and riverbank.
Women, as noted earlier, are responsible for daily subsistence. They fish by canoe with traps and nets, tend gardens, catch prawns, and cook all meals. Because women
are associated with the warmth of houses, they also care
for the small hearths that smoulder underneath dwellings.
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
Men, too, work in gardens, but this labor, like other male
tasks—felling trees, hewing canoes, building houses,
clearing gardens—is intermittent. (I have heard some
women complain that men, for all the work they do, are
like children!) Men’s work is often collaborative, involving different descent groups. Women mainly work
individually. When they labor collectively, women generally perform parallel tasks within their natal or husband’s
group.
Men and women work together, albeit in welldefined roles, when gardening and producing sago. The
latter activity is a cultural symbol of gender complementarity. Men chop the pith, which women knead and
process through an apparatus of troughs and filters.
Women fry or boil the sago—as men say, only women
can properly cook it.
Women, reported Mead (1949, pp. 180–181), work
more willingly than men, who labor begrudgingly.
Economic independence is highly valued in women,
especially by men (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 148).
Traditionally, both men and women participated in
prestige exchanges. Women pleated baskets and sleeping
mats, cultivated tobacco and tubers, harvested fish, raised
pigs, and fed visitors. Husbands exchanged female products for shell valuables and prestige, which also enhanced
the status of their wives. However, men do consult with
female kin before transactions.
Today, men and women derive intermittent cash
income from the sale of tobacco, betel nut, fruit, fish,
chicken, pig, crocodile skins, and cocoa. Villages contain
small trade stores. They are largely, but not exclusively,
owned and managed by men. Many Iatmul men and
women migrate to towns and cities for employment as
teachers, soldiers, lawyers, mine workers, civil servants,
hotel staff, policemen, store clerks, and so forth. They
may periodically return and send remittances. My sense
is that more men are employed in these capacities than
women (in Tambunum, one third more adult women than
men reside in the village). But this may reflect more on a
capitalist division of labor than Iatmul culture.
Traditionally, neither men nor women labored
outside the village environs. Today, Iatmul who relocate
for jobs are commonly accompanied by spouses and
children. Employed women still remain responsible for
female-coded domestic tasks such as cooking (Stanek &
Weiss, 1998, pp. 320–321). Because women produce
most food in the village, Stanek and Weiss continue,
unemployed women who live in town find themselves in
491
a new position of total economic dependence on their
husbands.
Tourism is the primary source of income today in the
village. Men carve wooden objects such as masks, tables,
animals, and ornamented stools, while women create
netbags, baskets, and small rattan animals (Silverman,
2000). Often, wives and female kin decorate a man’s
woodcarvings.2 Proceeds are dispersed to those who contributed materials and labor, regardless of gender. In the
town of Wewak, women rent stalls at outdoor markets to
peddle baskets and occasionally woodcarvings. (Travel
by truck on the dirt roads to Wewak lasts anywhere from
4 to 15 hours.) Women, too, sometimes with men, vend
objects outside a Wewak hotel. A tourist guesthouse in
one Iatmul village (Tambunum) employs men and
women as security staff, grass cutters, maintenance staff,
housecleaners, and cooks. Tourists, too, occasionally pay
men as canoe drivers and guides.
Both men and women within the patriline inherit
property, which is often gender specific: houses, canoes,
outboard motors, fishing nets, cooking implements,
storage jars, kerosene lanterns, and sometimes a little cash.
Men, not women, tend to inherit totemic names, magic,
and ritual prerogatives. A widow remains in her husband’s
house and continues to have full access to his gardens,
property, and so forth. I am unaware of either major
disputes between men and women over the inheritance of
material property or any eviction after a spouse’s death.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Caretaking and custodial roles in Iatmul culture are
envisioned as forms of mothering. Mothers are associated
with food, feeding, cooking, warmth, house-cleaning,
flower gardens, dishwashing, laundering, and the like.
Mothers breast-feed infants, soothe tears, teach toddlers
to walk, bathe children, cleanse their urine and feces, and
carry them throughout the village. When men assume
these roles (e.g., the socializing mother’s brother), they
also act maternally. Motherhood is clearly idealized. Yet
mothers and not fathers are primarily responsible for punishment, which can be brusque and rough.
In ideology, the father–son relationship is tense and
oedipal. Thus it differs dramatically from the mother–child
bond. Sons are said to replace their father in the
492
Iatmul
political–jural order of society. Moreover, sons inherit
from fathers a large domestic house—a house that was not
only built at considerable expense and labor by the father,
but which also symbolizes a mother. Often, sons physically displace their father from his house-mother, consigning him to live out his days in a small shack. Why, then,
do fathers build houses only to cede them to their sons?
Because fathers fear ridicule, especially from their
daughters-in-law.
Men and fathers, far more than women and mothers,
tend to shoo children from their activities, especially at
the cult house. They encourage children to return to their
mothers. I myself was once chastised by a father to “Go
walk with your mother! You don’t walk with your father!”
Mothers abide by less numerous and restrictive
avoidance taboos than fathers in regard to children.
Mothers dominate early childhood in terms of education,
physical proximity, care, time, supervision, and affection.
Fathers have little normative role in formal child-raising
other than bestowing magic and totemic names onto sons,
arranging (and funding) children’s marriages, and ensuring that sons are initiated or otherwise integrated into the
male cult. The father is not a primary male socializer.
This role belongs to the mother’s brother, as a “male
mother,” and other men from the father’s age grade.
Iatmul describe fathers as distant, tense, and
unloving. But fathers can be, and often are, quite tender
and nurturing. For both mothers and fathers, then, the
ideology of parenting often clashes with actuality (see
also Bateson, 1936/1958, p. 76; Mead, 1949, p. 114).
Iatmul children and adults highly value individual
autonomy and initiative. Children may view daily school
attendance as an unjust constraint. If Iatmul parents want
their children to attend school regularly, which mainly
occurs in urban settings, they may experience shifts in
normative parenting. A father may become more active in
the everyday affairs of his children. But since childcare is
a female role, it is the mother who must discipline the
children and restrain their autonomy. Thus she, not the
father, clashes in a negative way with Iatmul norms for
the parent–child relationship (Stanek & Weiss, 1998,
pp. 322–323).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Most village leaders are men since women are banned
from the male cult house, the center of political debate
and ritual preparation. Leadership largely arises from
totemic erudition, which is mainly restricted to men.
Formerly, leaders were also noted sorcerers and warriors,
two social roles denied to women. While there are female
leaders among women, their prestige and authority is less
expansive than male leadership, confined to the domestic
organization of a residential ward and household. Women
leaders have no public arena on par with the men’s house
from which to mobilize resources and labor. In short,
female leadership lacks equal authority.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The central feature of Iatmul religion is the male cult,
which by definition excludes women. However, the
Iatmul pantheon is dominated by neither male nor female
spirits. The spirits mete out magical punishment to those
who transgress social and ritual norms. More broadly,
they are responsible for creating and sustaining the
cosmos. But the spirits communicate only through men
since men alone are the current custodians of magic,
flutes, ceremonies, and other sancta. Men, not women,
recollect cosmogonic events by chanting totemic names
during ritual. Men alone impersonate spirits during
religious rites in the guise of bamboo flutes and other
sound-producing objects, masked costumes, and various
artistic displays. Female religious practices, such as keening before effigies during annual funerary rites, are said
to be subordinate to rituals enacted by men.
Virtually all forms of male-enacted ritual are
intended to awe (and sometimes seduce) women with
beautiful melodies, frightening sounds, and dazzling
spirit displays. Women are not supposed to know that
spirit expressions are male impersonations. A major
concern of men is to prevent women from achieving this
revelation.
But men did not always maintain exclusive custodianship over religious rites, sacra, and sprits, at least
according to myth. Originally, women blew the flutes—
and gave birth. One day, men frightened away the ancestresses with the sound of bullroarers and stole the flutes
and ritual paraphernalia. Ever since, men have blown the
flutes—although never with the beauty of the original
ancestresses. Today, women hear the flutes during
ritual—but they must never glimpse them. Otherwise,
men say, women might steal them back! Major Iatmul
rituals are thus dangerous to men since women might
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
reclaim their dominance over cosmic forces by unveiling
the spirits as men and stealing back their sacra. Ritual,
too, is dangerous to women. Their reproductive potential
is imperiled if they glimpse the flutes or view “too carefully” the sacred art. In sum, Iatmul religion expresses yet
denies male desire for female fertility (see also HauserSchäublin, 1977, p. 147; Mead, 1949, ch. 4). While men
purloined the flutes from ancestresses, primal women
stole nothing from men. The ability to birth children is a
considerable source of pride for women. I suggest that,
through their rituals, men aspire to the same form of selfrespect.
In Tambunum village, an elderly woman must
always know the “truth” about the flutes and sacra—that
men stole them from women. In another village, all
women are knowledgeable about the primal theft and,
indeed, they are proud of this former privilege (HauserSchäublin, 1977, p. 165). There, too, some female rites
mock male ritual. Hence, Hauser-Schäublin (1977,
p. 146) describes the flutes as “secretive,” not “secret.”
Yet these women do not view this myth as a model for an
egalitarian society. Rather, suggests Hauser-Schäublin
(1977, p. 66), the primal theft expresses the cultural value
of motherhood, the dominant maternal role in childraising, and early male cross-sex identity through the
close mother–child bond.
The mythic origin of the cosmos—and its possible
demise—was aquatic. Water, especially the river, is
feminine. Trees, land, and villages, which were created
by male culture heroes in mythic history, are masculine.
The yearly cycle of rain, flooding, and dryness thus
corresponds to a cosmological tension between female
watery erosion, which is also linked to death, and masculine stability. Mythic time is also gendered: male time
moves forward, while female time moves backwards
(Silverman, 1997). Esthetic idioms of watery fluidity and
terrestrial permanence, which evoke notions of female
and male, pervade the religious system.
Witchcraft, now largely extinct, was attributed to
both men and women. Yet most witches were female.
Witchcraft was often transmitted from mother to daughter,
and menstruating women were particularly prone to this
nefarious craft (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, pp. 139–140).
Conversely, only men were sorcerers. Both men and
women know myth, but male tales contain totemic
names and are thus more “truthful.” Still, some men
ironically rely on their wives for mythic knowledge. This
way, male prestige is supported by female erudition
493
(Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 169). Both men and women
can employ magic, but male spells are more potent.
Women may call upon male magicians to assist pregnancy
and birth.
Today, men and women adhere in varying degrees to
Christianity as well as to the traditional religious system.
But this new religion tends to empower women by
extolling the virtues of cooperation, passivity, and temperance. Still, Iatmul women do not harness Christianity
to any sustained critique of the male cult and its religious
conceptions.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
If, by leisure time, we refer to activities that do not result
in material products such as food, then men have considerably more leisure than women. Men often congregate in
the men’s house, sometimes just to laze in the shade and
nap, or to chat about the day’s events. Men, too, much
more than women, discuss politics, recount myths, plan
ritual, and so forth, typically in the men’s house. In this
respect, adult leisure is gendered.
Still, neither men nor women, in my assessment, are
so burdened with daily toil that they are unable to enjoy
at least some daily leisure. Both men and women socialize with friends—who, in this society, are kin. Men often
socialize during collective work efforts—say, hewing
a large canoe. Women do likewise while engaged in
productive activity. Hence, a group of women might
individually prepare reeds for basketry while chatting
about village events.
Women may sing during the day, sometimes dirges
to deceased kin. Men may blow flutes during communal
labor. In the main, though, music and dancing is confined
to ritual, both traditional and Christian. Both men and
women sing during “prayer meetings,” but men alone
play musical instruments.
There is another gendered dimension to art. Ritual
carvings and masks, when decorated for display, are
wooden “bone,” which directly recalls the paternal
contribution to conception. The floral ornamentation is
female “skin,” which derives from the mother’s blood.
Paint colors are also gendered. Black evokes masculine
power. White symbolizes semen. Red recalls menstrual
blood or blood shed during warfare, which is masculine.
Yellow is the color of birds and femininity.
494
Iatmul
Tobacco and betel nut are currently used by both
men and women. Traditionally, some say, these substances were utilized mainly by men. Beverage alcohol is
consumed by men with very few exceptions, and then
typically during the honorific naven celebration when
women assume the demeanor of men.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
To repeat, the fundamental structures of Iatmul villages
are patrilineal: clans, lineages, and sublineage “branches,”
as well as ritual and sometimes totemic moieties.
Inheritance is also agnatic. Leadership is mainly male. It
is determined by primogeniture, and reinforced through
prestige activities such as totemic erudition, ritual prominence, magical renown, and, formerly, warfare and
sorcery. Men have greater access to spirits as well as
traditional and modern technology. Some women own
sewing machines, but only men use guns, outboard
motors, bicycles, and large canoes. Men, not women,
regularly gather at an exclusive shelter (the cult house).
The male village “path,” unlike the female “passageway,”
is privileged to run through the center of the village or next
to the river. Women exercise considerable influence over
the economic and social activities of kin groups. But men
have greater access to public decision-making processes
that affect the entire community and its relationship to
other villages. All told, Iatmul men enjoy greater rights,
privileges, and authority than women.
Women have considerable autonomy in regard to
their sexuality, modern education, marriage, and divorce—
but so do men. While elder women, too, accord respect,
senior men elicit greater deference due to their ritual,
magic, and totemic knowledge.
But the gender hierarchy that is so apparent in
Iatmul culture is called into question by the ideology of
manhood and mothering. One symbol of male leadership
is the wooden “stool.” But the real stools, men say, are
mothers since only mothers bear and feed children.
Likewise, the superstructure of the male cult is female;
the roof of the cult house is literally supported by a carved
ancestress. In this sense, the relative status of men and
women is less clear than it first appears. From one
angle, men dominate. From another angle, male superiority is compensation for men’s lack of uterine maternal
powers.
SEXUALITY
Iatmul sexuality is aggressive (Bateson, 1941, p. 52;
Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 135; Mead, 1949, p. 208;
Silverman, 2001). For men, erotic passivity contravenes
the martial ethos of manhood. Men may even compete
with female partners to see who can first induce the other
to orgasm. (Likewise, mourning women may “compete”
with men during funerary ritual to see whose sounds,
keening or flute music, are loudest.) A child’s sex is
determined by the parent with the “strongest” procreative
substance.
Linguistically and culturally, men are sexually
active while women are passive. Grammatically, Iatmul
can only say: “He (active subject) has sex with her
(passive object).” In practice, though, both men and
women initiate lovemaking. Yet while women often
refuse sexual advances, a man would be ashamed to do
likewise since a woman’s flirtations challenge his
masculinity (see Bateson, 1936/1958, p. 149). Iatmul
women often directly approach potential partners. Men
are more reticent. They rely on intermediaries and the
psychological support of love magic (Hauser-Schäublin,
1977, p. 75). Women also tend to be more bawdy than
men in joking relationships (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977,
p. 74). Men associate women with uncontrolled sexuality,
and themselves with self-restraint (Hauser-Schäublin,
1977, p. 75). But a “bad” woman, Hauser-Schäublin
continues, is not promiscuous; she is a neglectful mother.
Men and women view sexuality to be natural and
pleasurable. Carnality is neither shameful nor solely
reproductive. Sexuality is not, as in some Melanesian
cultures, banned from the cultural spaces of the village.
Yet men view any sexual contact with women to be
potentially depleting and harmful through the loss of
semen and, more seriously, contact with polluting vaginal
fluids. (Cunnilingus is anathema to men.) Menstrual
taboos, men say, protect them from female defilement.
However, women view menstruation as purifying, not
polluting (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 137).
Little honor is accorded to female or male virginity.
There are no expressed norms against premarital sexuality, and little attempts to censure children’s erotic play.
Hauser-Schäublin (1977, p. 135) remarks that Iatmul men
did not traditionally view women as sexual objects.
Affectionate touching in public occurs solely
between the same gender. Men and women deny the
occurrence of ritualized or everyday same-gender sexual
Courtship and Marriage
relations.3 Little boys who once exhibited homoerotic
interaction were made to fight (Bateson, 1936/1958,
p. 291). For men, receptive homosexuality bespeaks an
unacceptable feminine identity. What many men find
particularly shameful about homoerotism is the possibility of discovery in flagrante delicto by women.4
Still, men privately mention the homoerotic activity
of their peers. Innuendo is common, especially as insult.
Yet same-gender liaisons do occur among men, albeit
clandestinely. Male initiation lacks ritualized homosexuality but is replete with homoerotic themes and gestures.
These antics, if seen by women, would be highly shameful to men. In the male cult, though, they are shielded
from women and lent a cosmological inflection.
Today, both Iatmul men and Iatmul women fear rape
by youth gangs that prowl highways and towns (see also
Mead, 1949, p. 113). Iatmul women did not engage in
prostitution as a means to material benefit (HauserSchäublin, 1977, p. 135). Men use sex as a form of
violence to manipulate persons, while women use sex as
a means to emotional security or love.
Despite the maternal ideology of manhood and
cross-sex identification by men, Iatmul society permits
no mundane cross-dressing or transvestism. Only during
major cosmogonic ritual and the common famous naven
rite can men and women assume the demeanor of the
other gender. A naven celebration may climax when a
maternal uncle slides his buttocks down his nephew’s leg
(Bateson, 1936/1958; Silverman, 2001). This gesture
flirts with the feminine and homoerotic dimensions of
masculinity that are otherwise muted by the ideology of
manhood.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
All Iatmul are expected to marry. Nearly everyone does
so except people with physical deformities or cognitive
impairments. However, it is particularly important for
a man to have a spouse. Hence, there are more single
women than single men (Weiss, 1995). Men depend on
women for daily meals. Women need male labor only
intermittently (Weiss, 1990, p. 338). Unmarried adults
are not formally barred from politico-ritual authority. Yet,
unless they are elderly widows and widowers, they tend
to be marginal.
Iatmul practice several marriage patterns: sister
exchange, second-generation cross-cousin marriage
495
(a man weds his father’s mother’s brother’s son’s
daughter [FMBSD], a woman called iai), and elective
marriage. Only the latter formally admits love prior to the
union. The other forms of marriage are usually arranged
by the spouses’ kin. They forge alliances and, most
importantly, instance maternal sentiment since, when a
man weds his FMBSD, he marries a woman his father
calls “mother” (Silverman, 2001). The cultural sentiment
underlying iai marriage—that a man (the father) should
“get his mother back” (his son’s bride)—is equally strong
for men and women. No marriage can occur unless both
spouses consent. Men and women can, and do, refuse
betrothals. Today, romantic love and companionship are
increasingly important ideals in marriage, especially
among the young. This change is part of a wider assimilation of “modern” personhood that includes individualism, the importance of personal choice in a capitalist
consumer economy, and the rise of coeducational settings
such as schools, urban areas, and disco dances.
Many men wed polygynously—usually two wives,
but sometimes upwards of four or five. This way, the
husband can draw on a broad economic base of female
labor. Today, male prestige is largely detached from the
ceremonial exchange of female labor products such as
baskets. Therefore it is less clear, even to Iatmul themselves, why some men still desire multiple spouses.
Divorce is acceptable and relatively common.
It entails mainly the return of brideprice. The typical
divorce occurs while the spouses are young, and the
husband weds a second wife. Divorcees tend to remarry.
Sometimes, a woman’s first husband receives compensation for his brideprice from her second spouse. Widows
and widowers can remarry, but surviving spouses who are
elderly tend to remain single.
Both genders desire hardworking spouses and
complain loudly about laziness. Some Iatmul court to
raise their prestige or access to magical and/or material
resources.
There is no formal wedding. Typically, the bride
publicly spends the night with the groom in his house or
garden shelter. Later, her brothers may march to the
groom’s house to demand a preliminary token of brideprice, which is negotiated by the spouses’ kin. Husbands
also perform groomservice. Ideally, iai marriage entails
long-term balanced reciprocity between affines.
Traditionally, there was little premarital sex. Men
were initiated into the cult prior to intercourse, and they
were admonished to marry before sexual activity.
496
The brief period after marriage is awkward for both
spouses, who must adjust to new relationships, new
obligations, and, for one spouse at least, a new residence.
There is nothing on par with a Western honeymoon, or
even much public interaction between newlyweds.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
To the extent permissible in a culture that so consistently
segregates the genders and encourages an ethos of
aggression, the husband–wife relationship is marked by
affection and companionship. But matrimonial gestures
of tenderness are often muted—say, when spouses smile
while quietly uttering a few words on a village path, or
when a husband gently tosses his wife a few betel nuts.
Public tenderness is confined to same-gender relationships. Aloofness is common; cooperation is always
tenuous and, at least for men, reluctant. Hence, the
husband–wife relationship is unable truly to develop into
empathetic intimacy and companionship. Traditional
Iatmul marriages effected a kind of balance sustained by
fear. A wife’s behavior influenced her husband’s success
in warfare. If she acted immorally, he might be killed.
Conversely, the husband’s behavior influenced his wife’s
pregnancy. If he erred, she might miscarry. Perhaps it
would be best to characterize Iatmul marriage as brief
moments of loving affection in a relationship of tolerated,
even relished, antagonism.
Husbands and wives almost never eat together.
Iatmul households do not value communal dining. When
a woman prepares a meal, she offers some food to those
who are present. The rest is wrapped in banana leaves or
left in the pot for absent kin to partake later. Since women
cook, children frequently dine with their mothers. Even
then, there is a sense that each person eats alone.
Spouses do not traditionally sleep together under the
same mosquito net. Most men spend little time with their
wives since they relax, nap, and socialize at the men’s
house. Yet men and women do make joint decisions,
especially about gardening, economic matters, and those
major efforts such as ritual and house-building that
require the husband to feed other men.
A wife focuses on maintaining household
harmony while her husband is more focused on communal affairs such as ritual (Hauser-Schäublin, 1977,
p. 134). Matrimonial conflict over sexuality is common,
especially when women adhere to postpartum taboos
Iatmul
(Hauser-Schäublin, 1977, p. 127). Husbands and wives
may also fight over food.
Either spouse can initiate divorce. (Sometimes a
disgruntled cowife will simply relocate to another residence, usually with agnates, but the marriage remains
intact.) Custody is fluid. Young children tend to remain
with their mother. If a wife leaves her husband, she may
forfeit custody. Unless there is an explicit agreement of
adoption, the children of divorcees retain membership in
their father’s patriline and share the inheritance.
The cowife relationship is tense. It often erupts into
physical assault and fighting, usually over perceived
imbalances in sex, work, and food. When cowives are
hostile, suggests Hauser-Schäublin (1977, p. 132), their
husband’s role in the household becomes more secure.
Cowife hostility, too, actually reduces domestic violence
since neither woman wants to alienate her husband. Some
Iatmul contend that a man’s first wife is dominant; others
deny the presence of any such rule, or assign this role
only to an iai wife.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
There are two other significant male–female relationships. First, as mentioned above, the mother’s brother is
a key figure in the life of his sister’s children, male and
female. He constantly interacts with them in a mode of
tenderness and affection that is modeled after the ideal of
motherhood. However, the avunculate forges a closer
relationship with nephews than with nieces. Generally,
the amitate has no close relationship to either her
brother’s son or daughter. The brother–sister relationship
is also important. The sister often acts a mother-figure
to her brothers, who in turn look after their sisters’
welfare. The village is endogamous, some men say,
because brothers do not want their sisters to leave the
community.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Throughout this entry, I have mentioned the many
important changes that have altered gender roles and
relations. Despite the introduction of capitalism, modernity, Christianity, citizenship, tourists, etc., men and
References
497
women remain opposed, complementary, and antagonistic.
Pollution beliefs regarding women, and male initiation,
have waned. New economic, educational, and religious
opportunities now exist for women. But the essential
differentiation remains mostly intact. Likewise, men
continue to define themselves in opposition to, yet as a type
of, mother.
NOTES
1. Despite sociocultural variation across the Iatmul language group,
I generalize, often from my own ethnographic focus which is the
Eastern Iatmul village of Tambunum.
2. One young woman in Tambunum village assumed the clothing and
habits of men, and was rumored to engage in same-gender sexuality.
Like a man, she wore trousers, stood in canoes, and carved wooden
objects.
3. Some men report that homosexuality was introduced into the Sepik
by colonial Europeans (see also Mead, 1949, p. 113).
4. In ritual, men dramatize a fantasy of an anal clitoris (Silverman,
2001, p. 169).
REFERENCES
Bateson, G. (1941). The frustration–aggression hypothesis and culture.
Psychological Review, 48, 350–355.
Bateson, G. (1958). Naven: A survey of the problems suggested by
a composite picture of the culture of a New Guinea tribe drawn
from three points of view (2nd Rev. ed., with new epilogue).
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published
1936.)
Hauser-Schäublin, B. (1977). Frauen in Kararau: Zur Rolle der Frau bei
den Iatmul am Mittelsepik, Papua New Guinea [Monograph].
Basler Beiträge aur Ethnologie, 18.
Hauser-Schäublin, B. (1995). Puberty rites, women’s naven, and initiation: Women’s rituals of transition in Abelam and Iatmul Culture.
In N. C. Lutkehaus & P. B. Roscoe (Eds.), Gender rituals: Female
initiation in Melanesia (pp. 33–53). New York: Routledge.
Mead, M. (1949). Male and female: A study of the sexes in a changing
world. New York: Dell.
Silverman, E. K. (1997). Politics, gender, and time in Melanesia and
aboriginal Australia. Ethnology, 36, 101–121.
Silverman, E. K. (2000). Tourism in the Sepik River of Papua
New Guinea: Favoring the local over the global. Pacific Tourism
Review, 4, 105–119.
Silverman, E. K. (2001). Masculinity, motherhood, and mockery:
Psychoanalyzing culture and the Iatmul naven rite in New Guinea.
Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Stanek, M., & F. Weiss. (1998). “Big Man” and “Big Woman”—The
village elite in the town. The Iatmul, Papua New Guinea. In
V. Keck (Ed.), Common worlds and single lives: Constituting
knowledge in Pacific societies (pp. 309–327). Oxford: Berg.
Weiss, F. (1981). Kinder Schildern ihren Alltag: Die Stellung des
Kindes im ökonomischen System einer Dorfgemeinschaft in Papua
New Guinea (Palimbei, Iatmul, Mittelsepik) [Monograph]. Basler
Beiträge zur Ethnologie, 21.
Weiss, F. (1983). Une fête d’enfants masqués [A festival of masked
children]. In F. Lupu (Ed.), Océanie le masque au long cours
(pp. 187–193). Rennes, France: Ouest France.
Weiss, F. (1990). The child’s role in the economy of Palimbei. In
N. C. Lutkehaus et al. (Eds.), Sepik heritage: Tradition and change
in Papua New Guinea (pp. 337–342). Durham, NC: Carolina
Academic Press.
Weiss, F. (1994). Rapports sociaux de sex et structures socioeconomiques dans la société Iatmul. In F. Weiss & C. Calame
(Eds.), Rapports sociaux de sexe et cérémonie du naven chez les
Iatmul de Nouvelle Guinée. Lausanne, Switzerland: Institut
d’Anthropologie et de Sociologie.
Weiss, F. (1995). Zur Kulturspezifik der Geschlechterdifferenz
und des Geschlechterverhäältnisses: Die Iatmul in Papua
Neuguinea. In R. Becker-Schmidt & G.-A. Knapp (Eds.), Das
Geschlechterverhältnis als Gegenstand der Sozialwissenschaften.
Frankfurt—Main, Germany: Campus Verlag.
Weiss, F. (1997). People, not furniture: The Iatmul of Papua
New Guinea. In A. von Vegesack & L. Bullivant (Eds.), Kid size:
The material world of childhood (pp. 129–139). Milan, Italy: Skira.
Ifugao
Lynn M. Kwiatkowski
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
“Ifugao,” translated as “hill (or mountain) people”
(Barton, 1930/1978) is the term used to denote the
ethnolinguistic group of people whose ancestors are from
the area that, since 1966, has been designated as the
national political unit of Ifugao Province. Ifugao additionally refers to the set of languages spoken by Ifugao
people, of which there are three major dialect clusters
(Conklin, 1980). Ifugao languages are part of the
Austronesian/Malayo-Polynesian language group, and
they are not written languages. Prior to and during the
Spanish colonization of Ifugao, people living in the area
now designated as Ifugao territory did not conceive of
themselves as belonging to one cohesive ethnolinguistic
group. Instead, district or village names, such as Alimit,
Kiangan, Mayoyao, and Banaue, served as the markers of
identity and territory, which are still recognized today
(Dumia, 1979). The name Ifugao was a term borrowed by
the Spanish from lowland Gaddang and Ibanag groups
(Conklin, 1980). Pugao is another term that was historically used to refer to “Ifugaoland,” and other variations of
the word Ifugao currently in use are Ifugaw and Ipugaw
(Barton, 1930/1978; Conklin, 1980). Spanish colonizers
generically labeled all Cordilleran mountaineers, who
were generally uncolonized by the Spanish (including
Ifugaos), as Igorots, meaning “mountain people,” though
Ifugao people have not fully identified with this name
(Barton, 1930/1978; Conklin, 1980; Dumia, 1979).
LOCATION
The Ifugao are one among approximately eight major
ethnolinguistic groups living in the Gran Cordillera
Central mountain range of northern Luzon Island of the
Philippines. The Cordillera mountains lie on the western
central portion of Luzon Island, with Ifugao being located
on the eastern side of the mountain range (Conklin,
1980). According to the Philippine government census in
2000, 161,623 people live in Ifugao Province, the great
majority of whom are of Ifugao ancestry. Ifugao shares
a border with the upland provinces of Benguet and
Mountain Province, and the lowland provinces of Isabella
and Nueva Vizcaya, allowing for easy access to lowland
communities and cultures. Ifugao is considered a remote
province, as most areas of the province are only accessible
by footpath.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Ifugao culture has developed historically in relation to the
ecological setting of the Ifugao mountainous landscape.
Swidden agriculture and wet-rice cultivation on terraced
mountainsides are the two main economic activities of
Ifugao people, with approximately 75% laboring as farmers. Ifugao is known internationally for its grand rice
terraces, which grace the steep mountainsides. The main
staple crops produced are rice and root crops, usually sweet
potato tubers. Vegetables are also cultivated on the swidden fields, in and around the wet-rice fields, and, more
recently, in Western-style home gardens. Farmers also raise
fruit trees and plants, and gather wild fruit, vegetables, and
insects in the forests for consumption. Agricultural labor is
carried out by family groups, except during labor-intensive
planting and harvesting periods when community-wide
cooperative labor is reciprocated, or paid in kind with bundles of rice or cash. Historically, animals were hunted in
the forests, though hunting is no longer viable as a significant source of food and income. Small-animal husbandry
is an important source of protein. Ifugao farmers also manage family-owned forests. Other significant economic
activities in the contemporary period are marketing,
tourism-related employment, craft production, wage labor,
and government employment. Many Ifugao people have
migrated to areas outside the province and country to
acquire land or gain more profitable employment.
Trade with upland, lowland, and coastal ethnolinguistic groups, as well as with Chinese and Japanese
traders, has influenced Ifugao culture for several centuries. Ifugao relationships with upland and lowland
498
Cultural Construction of Gender
groups also included periodic raids, involving headhunting
and slave capturing expeditions—activities that were
curtailed during the 20th century. The Ifugao area
was contacted by the Spanish at least as early as the
18th century, and was visited more frequently by Spanish
colonizers and missionaries beginning in the early 19th
century. Historically, while the Spanish had tried to
penetrate and control Ifugao, as well as other upland
territories in the Cordillera Mountain region, they were
not highly successful (Conklin, 1980). This allowed for
the Ifugao people’s greater retention of indigenous
beliefs, practices, and forms of social organization by the
20th century. American colonizers administered Ifugao
for almost 40 years, beginning in 1903, and had an important impact on Ifugao culture, especially economics,
political organization, religion, and education. Japanese
soldiers occupied Ifugao during World War II. With
national independence in 1946, Ifugao was integrated
into the national economy and political culture.
Kinship in Ifugao is bilateral, and kinship relationships created out of consanguineal ties form the most
important social bonds for Ifugao people. Other important social bonds are derived from friendship ties based
on propinquity, patron–client relationships, and other
debt relationships (Conklin, 1980). The nuclear family
was historically the most basic and smallest social unit,
averaging about six to eight members.
Further social organization was traditionally based
on hamlets, which are clusters of homes located near
agricultural fields. Irrigation groups managing irrigation
systems within the hamlets are also important social
groups in local communities. The largest recognized form
of traditional social organization are agricultural districts,
which are composed of several hamlets that center around
the first rice field to have been cultivated in the district,
usually owned by a traditionally wealthy person and
leader, the tomona (Conklin, 1980). Today the Ifugao are
also incorporated into the national system of political
administration. A group of barangays are organized into
municipalities. Ifugao Province, composed of 11 municipalities, is part of the Cordillera Autonomous Region,
which administers Ifugao Province along with the national
government.
Ifugao traditionally had no system of government,
yet they developed an extensive set of laws that were
based on taboo and custom and linked to the Ifugao
religion. Legal procedures were carried out by and
between families, usually with the assistance of a
499
mediator, the monkalun (Barton, 1919/1969). The tomona
continues to serve as a district agricultural leader.
Historically, traditionally wealthy owners of wet-rice
fields, or kadangyan, were considered to be community
political and social leaders, who acquired their position
through birthright, possession of property, and the
performance of specified rituals (Scott, 1982; Brosius,
1988). Barangay captains, municipal mayors and councillors, and a provincial governor and board members make
up the contemporary official leadership of the province.
Today, the Ifugao are also subject to national and local
government laws and judicial system.
Ifugao religion, baki, combines polytheism, mythology, magic, and animism. Religious beliefs and ritual are
integrated into important aspects of everyday life.
Ancestor worship is an integral part of the Ifugao religion,
playing a central role in Ifugao religious ritual.
Catholicism and Protestant religions have had a tremendous impact on Ifugao religious practice and beliefs, with
80% of Ifugaos identifying as Christian by the 1990s.
However, most Christians still participate in Ifugao
religious rituals.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Ifugao men (lala-ee) and women (bfwabfwa-ee) are
culturally viewed as distinct from and complementary to
each other. Traditional modes of dress specific to each are
made from fabric woven by Ifugao women with yarn.
Women wear skirts that reach from their waists to their
knees (torkay or tapis), and men wear loincloths (wanoh)
(Barton, 1919/1969). The woven designs of the clothing
are gender specific, as well as evocative of Ifugaos’ village and social class identities. Men historically carried
a spear with them whenever they traveled from their
homes. Male farmers typically wear a machete, or bolo,
on their belt. Both men and women traditionally adorned
themselves with gold neck ornaments and earrings, bead
necklaces and hair ties, especially amber-colored glass
beads, mother of pearl, brass ornaments, and feathers.
Historically, some wore tattoos and filed and/or blackened
their teeth as a mark of beauty. Kadangyan men and
women wore special clothing and ornamentation, indicating their higher status. Men’s hair was traditionally
styled in a rounded cut above their ears, and women’s hair
was grown long, but pulled up and tied on top of their
500
Ifugao
heads with strings of beads or a piece of cloth.
Historically, some men wore headdresses at ritual events
(Barton, 1930/1978). With modernization processes and
the introduction of Christianity during the 20th century,
many Ifugao men and women wear Western clothes
specific to each gender, with women dressing in a
conservative manner. Most young women wear a Western
shirt above their torkay. Shorts and pants have replaced
the wanoh for many men. Hairstyles also conform more
to currently fashionable Western styles for men and
women of different age groups. However, many farmers
over 40 years retain the traditional style of dress.
The significance of men and women relating to each
other as husband and wife, and the importance of reproduction through their relationship, is given expression in
the popular Ifugao oral history about the first Ifugao who
populated the Ifugao territory following a massive flood.
An Ifugao woman, Bugan, and her brother, Wigan
(or other names), were the sole survivors of the flood.
While sexual relations between siblings are forbidden in
contemporary society, Bugan and Wigan conceived a
number of children, who later conceived more children
who populated Ifugao.
Today, what could be conceived of as new thirdgender categories are recognized to some degree among
Ifugao people. Men who behave in a feminine manner,
engage in both male and female activities, but still dress
as males, and, in some cases, are assumed to have a samesex sexual orientation are referred to as bakla, a Tagalog
term for a male transvestite. Women who behave in a
masculine manner, engage in both female and male activities, sometimes dress in Western male clothing, and, in
some cases, are also assumed to have a same-sex sexual
orientation, are referred to as “tomboys,” derived from
the English term.
While physical beauty is an admired attribute, it is
not one demanded of Ifugao women. A female marriage
partner is most valued for her ability to work hard,
particularly in agricultural labor for farmers.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Ifugao boys and girls are reared similarly through infancy
and childhood. Markers of gender difference are typically
hairstyles, cutting boys’ hair short and leaving girls’ hair
long, and dress, with boys wearing shorts and shirts, and
girls wearing dresses as well as shorts and shirts. Both
infant boys and girls are provided with a baki ritual
named bagor soon after birth, to introduce them to the
spiritual beings. Christian Ifugao may also, or only, have
their infant children baptized in a Catholic church or participate in a Protestant dedication ritual. Ifugao conduct a
baki ritual when naming their children. One early rite of
passage in which only boys participate is the first cutting
of their hair, which includes a baki religious ritual and
feast (Barton, 1911).
Ifugao “native” houses are one-room wooden
structures, with a loft for storage of domestic goods and
rice, built on four stilts. Traditionally, beginning at the
age of 3 or 4, children slept in a dormitory, located in the
houses of widowed women or in empty houses. Boys and
girls could sleep together in the girls’ dormitory, as long
as they avoided their relatives of the opposite sex. The
boys’ dormitory was limited to boys and young bachelors
(Barton, 1930/1978, 1938/1979). Today, dormitories still
house children, and an older chaperone usually sleeps
with them.
Young boys and girls play together within the
area near their homes, with toys fashioned from local
materials. Boys practice playing gongs, an important
musical instrument played by men during ritual and
secular feasts, at a young age.
Young boys and girls are expected to care for
younger siblings while their parents work, sometimes as
early as age 5. They are also taught to carry out simple
tasks at a young age, such as fetching water and carrying
small amounts of firewood. As they grow older, boys tend
to have more freedom than girls to roam the barangay,
visiting relatives and friends, and exploring the forest.
Since girls begin to learn domestic labor at an early age,
such as cooking, hand-washing clothes, and pounding
the husks off rice kernels, they are more restricted to the
household than boys. As boys grow older, approximately
7–10 years old, they begin to spend more time with their
fathers, learning about the labor of men in their community, such as preparing rice fields, plowing, fishing, etc.,
though boys also learn to perform some domestic chores
such as pounding rice and cooking. As girls grow older,
also approximately 7–10 years old, they begin to learn
some of their mother’s tasks in agricultural fields.
Both girls and boys are equally valued as children,
as each perform different roles that are helpful to parents.
Parents value initiative, particularly in labor, in both boys
Personality Differences by Gender
and girls, but they expect girls to be more reserved and
remain closer to home, and boys to be more assertive and
explore their larger community. Most boys and girls
acquire some formal education.
Puberty and Adolescence
The onset of puberty is marked mainly by physiological
changes that the boys and girls undergo, including their
emerging sexuality, and by new labor responsibilities for
their families. During puberty, most children decide
whether to terminate their formal education during
elementary school, or to continue their education through
secondary school. Many poor Ifugao children become
full-time laborers at this time, working with their natal
families. Most who choose to attend secondary school
must usually move from their family’s home to attend one
of the few distant high schools within each municipality.
The students live either in school dormitories, or with
relatives or other family friends, often while working as
domestic laborers for them. Through formal education,
young men and women learn modern Filipino and
Western ways of thinking and behaving, providing socialization beyond that offered by their parents and relatives.
While in the past century more young men attended
secondary school than young women, the rates of the
latter attending secondary school have increased.
With puberty, young women and men emerge into
a period of sexual development and interest. Both tend to
become more interested in beautifying themselves, wearing stylish jewelry, clothing, and haircuts.
Labor expectations for young women and men are
greatly increased with adolescence. Young girls are
expected to be proficient and industrious at domestic
labor, including cooking, pounding rice, cleaning, weaving, and hand-washing clothes. Young women also participate in agricultural labor, either full time or part time if
they are attending school. The workload for young men is
less demanding on a daily basis, though they are expected
to gather and carry firewood, fish, feed domestic animals,
and carry out agricultural labor and, for some, craft production. Sibling relationships are very significant, as elder
adolescent siblings must care for their younger siblings.
Attainment of Adulthood
Transition to adulthood usually entails becoming engaged
and marrying, between the ages of about sixteen to the
501
early twenties. With adulthood, both men and women are
expected to be serious and responsible in their full-time
work inside and outside their homes, to provide well for
their families, to move into their own home, and to begin
to sponsor rituals expected of families, either baki or
Christian. Having children confers greater responsibilities for men and women, as well as more social esteem
and recognition as adults. Adult elder siblings are responsible for providing emotional and financial support to
their younger siblings. Attending college as a single
person can also confer adulthood, since college students
are viewed as being engaged in a serious professional
pursuit as well as living on their own. A person who does
not marry but takes on adult work responsibilities, and,
for some women, has a child, is also recognized as an
adult. While Ifugao adults typically establish their own
families, they are expected to request and usually follow
the advice of their parents throughout their adult lives.
Middle Age and Old Age
Age ranking is an important feature of Ifugao culture.
Therefore, with middle age comes increased respect and
responsibility for both men and women. Men, more than
women, are expected to contribute to community leadership, though women contribute to this as well.
Middle-aged adults must care for their elderly
parents. Many older women and men must work, or
choose to work, as long as they are physically capable of
doing so, regardless of their social class position. Many
elderly women suffer from severe osteoporosis, which
results in their being bent almost horizontally. Yet, even
many of these women continue to engage in agricultural
labor (Hewner, 2001). Older women, more so than older
men, care for their grandchildren while the children’s
parents are working. For poor widows, middle and old
age can entail greater respect, but also a period of
increased poverty, since women generally earn lower
wages than men.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Generally, boys are culturally expected to be more active
and aggressive than girls. Men are expected to be more
proficient at oration than women, and therefore generally
appear to be more expressive in leadership roles at social
502
Ifugao
gatherings than women. Women are expected to repress
their anger, and instead cooperate with other family and
community members, although in practice some women
do express their anger. Women and men are expected to
rely on each other, particularly because of their complementary labor, but not to be dependent on one other.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Historically, men participated in a separate group or club,
where men would socialize, though men’s clubs are no
longer formed (Barton, 1930/1978). Peer groups, referred
to as barkadas, are often sex specific. Residence for
married couples is usually ambilocal, with a couple living
in the community of either the husband’s or the wife’s
family. Recently increasing rates of out-migration due to
population growth and limited employment opportunities
has altered this pattern of residence. Most agricultural
work is carried out in sex-specific groups, as are some
other types of work (i.e., drivers and mechanics are male,
and midwives are female). Some Christian religious
groups are sex specific. Most other aspects of Ifugao
social structure are not male or female oriented.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Ifugao farmers are almost equally male and female. Male
farmers traditionally construct and maintain rice fields,
plow rice fields (except in the Kiangan area), carry loads
of harvested rice from fields to homes, raise and catch
fish, hunt, trap, engage in carpentry work and forestry,
care for domestic animals, and collect and chop wood.
Some men carve wood to make crafts, and smith iron.
Historically, men also engaged in pot-making, warfare,
headhunting, revenge murder, and capturing and selling
slaves. Men also serve as mediators, or “go-betweens” to
aid in dispute settlements or transactions between families. Female farmers prepare rice seedlings, weed rice
fields, plant and harvest rice, carry harvested rice to
homes from fields, raise vegetables, sell food they have
cultivated, collect fire wood, and weave. Women’s agricultural work involves extensive stooping, probably playing a role in the severe bending of their spines with
osteoporosis. Women also engage in weaving, sanding
and, less, carving of wood, and other forms of handicraft
production. Both men and women perform domestic
labor, with women taking on the majority, especially
managing finances, cooking, washing clothes, and pounding rice. These gender divisions of labor are typically
adhered to, except in special cases that are well accepted,
such as widowhood, illness of a spouse, divorce, singleparenthood, single adult status, or migration of a spouse.
Both men and women obtain property, including rice
fields, parents’ houses, heirlooms, and personal property
from their parents, with no distinction being made
because of their gender. Property is obtained through
assignment while the parents are alive and by inheritance
(Barton, 1919/1969). Sibling relationships are based on a
system of primogeniture, which also influences patterns
of property assignment and inheritance (Barton,
1919/1969; Conklin, 1980). With primogeniture, the
largest proportion of property is assigned to the eldest
child, and the remaining property assigned proportionally
by age rank to younger children. Only wealthy families
can provide rice fields to all of their children (Barton,
1919/1969). When children marry and establish a new
home, they receive the assigned property from their
parents. Married men and women each retain ownership
of their own agricultural land and other heirlooms, but
jointly own property purchased after marriage. Property
is provided from both, or either, father or mother.
Both men and women create and work in swidden
fields, raise vegetables in a garden, feed domesticated
animals, make baskets, gather wild food, and fetch water.
Both have traditionally worked as short- and long-term
migrant laborers, either within the Philippines or internationally, due to differential planting and harvesting times
in various Philippine provinces, low wage rates, and high
levels of unemployment. But more men than women
work as short-term migrant laborers, usually during periods of low agricultural labor in their home regions, ranging from a few weeks or months, leaving women to
manage their households during these periods. Some men
are military soldiers or work on international ships, leaving wives for long periods of time. Married women also
work abroad for periods of 2–10 years, usually those with
school-age or adult children. Mainly men work as shortterm manual laborers on government projects, though
some women also do; both make handicrafts; and women
wash clothes for other families. Women have traditionally
dominated in marketing, working as traders, and as
business owners (Barton, 1919/1969; Milgram, 2000,
2001a,b). Women also dominate the professions, yet most
women are low-salaried teachers and nurses. Positions
Gender and Religion
503
of power, such as government officials, executives,
managers, managing proprietors, and supervisors, are
predominantly held by men.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Children’s major caretakers are their parents, and older
siblings care for children as well. While both men and
women are nurturing toward their children, women are
viewed as naturally nurturing, and men are often criticized for being less attentive to their children’s needs.
Mothers are the primary childcare providers. This is
viewed as a natural role for women due to their ability to
breastfeed children, their greater patience with and attentiveness to children, a higher value being placed on men’s
labor outside of the home, and the idea that children naturally feel closer to their mother. Still, fathers play an
important role in childcare, particularly when they do not
have work demands and their wife is working. While
parents raise all of their children, they each emphasize
socializing and educating those of their own sex to fulfill
their appropriate gender role. Mothers spend a greater
amount of time with young children than fathers.
Both mothers and fathers easily publicly display
physical affection and love toward their young children.
However, physical expressions of love are uncommon
between parents and their adolescent and adult children.
Grandmothers, aunts, and female neighbors also sometimes care for young children while their parents are
working.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in the wider community historically and
today has been dominated by men, although leadership
has never been strictly restricted to men, except in warfare. The traditional community leaders, the tomona
and a number of wealthy and powerful kadangyan, were
a group of persons who had influence but no actual
authority or power over other Ifugao people. Women
historically participated in militarily defending their
communities, but did not travel to engage in warfare or
headhunting. Headhunting success, to which women did
not have access, accorded power and leadership to an
individual. This has changed today, with some Ifugao
women participating as soldiers in the military wing of the
communist New People’s Army. Female official political
leadership is increasing today, with women having equal
authority with men in the same positions, but the great
majority of barangay, municipal, provincial, and national
political leaders are men. Men are perceived to have
naturally superior oratory skills, believed to be necessary
for successful leadership. Women typically exert leadership in the areas of business, healthcare, education, and
social work. Religious leadership involves both men and
women, with male leaders having a higher status in the
baki and Catholic religions, and male and female leaders
having generally equal status in Protestant religions.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Historically, all men became baki priests, or mumbaki,
but only certain men do so today, likely due to the influence of modern ideologies and Christianity (Barton,
1940). Mumbaki lead baki ritual ceremonies, reciting the
names of gods, other spiritual beings, and ancestral
spirits, reciting myths, becoming possessed by the spiritual beings, and making offerings to them. Mumbaki also
perform divination rituals. The rituals are performed for
most significant life events and practices.
Mama-o, or baki female priestesses, play important
roles in ritual practice, particularly that of diviners and
spirit mediums. They also pray during some baki rituals,
sometimes in a separate location from the mumbaki.
While the mama-o’s role is complementary to the mumbaki’s, women’s role in the baki religion is more limited
than men’s. Mama-o are highly respected as religious
leaders, but a higher status is usually accorded to the
mumbaki. Boys and girls learn to become baki leaders by
observation during ritual ceremonies and through apprenticeship, often from their father or mother. If a mumbaki
has no sons, in some cases he may teach his daughter to
become a mumbaki. Almost equal numbers of men and
women attend baki rituals. Exceptions are during the
harvest feast, at which men are the primary participants
since most women are in the fields harvesting rice, and
when women are caring for small children. Male and
female participants have different roles to play during
baki, specific to the type of ritual being performed.
Catholic doctrine allows only men to become priests
and only women to become nuns. Protestant religious
504
Ifugao
leaders are male and female, though fewer are female in
Ifugao. Men and women participate in Christian religious
services, prayer sessions, and rituals, some of which take
on aspects of the structural form of the baki ritual.
The pantheon of the baki religion consists of more
than a thousand male and female gods, other male and
female spiritual beings, and ancestor spirits (Barton,
1940; Lambrecht, 1962). The creator god is male and is
accorded the greatest importance and status. The primary
mediators between the greater god and human beings are
a set of male gods, who have wives. Male and female
ancestors of both husband and wife sponsoring a baki
ritual are prayed to, and each are considered equally
important, a reflection of the bilateral kinship system.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Men tend to have more leisure time than women, in part
due to women’s extensive responsibilities in both the
home and work place outside the home. Leisure time is
spent with one’s barkada, family members, or friends of
both sexes. Sex segregation during leisure time is voluntary. Men tend to spend more money than women on
leisure activities, including drinking alcohol, buying
alcoholic beverages for their friends, and gambling.
Fewer women than men drink beer or gin and become
drunk, though women do drink rice wine at rituals and
secular feasts. People commonly meet friends of the same
sex at a sari sari, or small store, to socialize, snack, and
drink soft drinks, or beer for men. While males and
females listen to music broadcast on radios, adolescent
girls especially enjoy radio soap operas. Women occasionally cook special sweet treats during their leisure
time that they share with other family and community
members.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Traditionally, no Ifugao person had authority over
another (Barton, 1919/1969). Yet, in everyday social
relations, people are ranked according to relative status
levels associated with wealth, age, kinship group,
religious affiliation, occupation, educational level, and,
historically, warfare and headhunting prowess. Power and
prestige is most strongly determined by wealth, particularly, traditionally, ownership of rice fields and the ability
to eat rice throughout the year, and, more recently, accumulation of money and other forms of capital (Brosius,
1988). Gender status relations are also constructed in
relation to these status categories. Ifugao women’s and
men’s status is situationally variable, depending on the
men and women involved, the social position of each, and
the kind of status being considered. But in some very
important social arenas, especially economic, political,
and domestic, the majority of women experience lesser
power in gender relations.
For example, Ifugao women maintain autonomy in
their work, as they are viewed as holding special knowledge and skills required for their labor. Yet, women’s labor
in a number of areas, including agriculture, wage labor,
and some professional labor, is paid less than men’s. Men
are viewed as performing more difficult and demanding
work than women, resulting in what is also perceived to
be a traditional differential pay rate. There are exceptions,
as some women are very successful businesswomen, or
professionals whose wages are higher than that of many
men, or are members of wealthy families (Milgram,
2001a).
There are situations in which women’s status can
surpass that of particular men. For example, since children acquire property from their parents through a system
of primogeniture, the eldest sibling, male or female,
who acquires the greatest amount of property and
wealth is usually considered to be the family leader,
counsellor, and advocate (Barton, 1919/1969). Upperclass women’s status position is higher than that of lowerclass men’s, and older women are highly respected by
younger men. Male and female kadangyan and
tomona are regularly consulted, and the tomona’s
agricultural decision-making for the village is usually
unquestioned.
Men generally turn most of their earnings over to
their wives, who manage the family’s finances, but
spouses do not spend the other’s earnings freely. The
majority of husbands and wives share decision-making in
family matters, and each participate in the decisions of
their own kin group. Many women feel pressured by their
husbands to refrain from using contraception and to have
intercourse when they would prefer not to. Women and
men participate in religious practices and become
educated to the extent that they each choose to.
Courtship and Marriage
SEXUALITY
Ifugao men and women perceive sexuality to be a natural
aspect of married life, one that brings pleasure to both
men and women, as well as the ability to reproduce and
generate a family. Traditionally, children were sexually
free. Sexuality was accepted among young, unmarried
women and men, with couples sometimes sleeping
together in the dormitories for the unmarried. Yet young
women had to show a good amount of modesty and indifference prior to acceding to a suitor’s advances (Barton,
1930/1978). This ideology has generally continued today.
Women conceiving children out of wedlock is not
uncommon, with a resolution being marriage if the
couple agrees. Single mothers are well accepted and integrated into the community, though they often experience
economic hardship. Traditionally, children were regularly
conceived during a long engagement period, while a
couple were living together, sometimes with their in-laws
or parents, and collecting the resources needed to finance
the marriage ceremonies.
Men are generally viewed as having a greater
interest in sexual relations than women, and are accorded
greater license to engage in sexual activity prior to and
during marriage. However, adultery is not well accepted
or widespread. Historically, a person could be killed for
committing adultery by the offended spouse. More often
a fine was required, and divorce would often occur, particularly if the offended spouse was the man because of
his jealously and lesser attachment to his wife. Women
usually did not want to learn of their adulterous husband’s
affairs, in order to be exempt from grieving the adultery.
Rape, involving spouses, acquaintances, and strangers, is
uncommon in Ifugao, along with incest, although
incidences of each have occurred there, historically and
in recent years (Barton, 1919/1969). Gang rape of a
captured enemy woman was sometimes a part of warfare,
believed to bring about a good harvest and fertility of
domestic animals (Barton, 1930/1978). A small number
of Ifugao women work as prostitutes, the practice having
begun during the Spanish colonial period, but most
commonly work outside Ifugao in nearby urban areas or
Manila (Barton, 1930/1978). A small proportion of
Ifugao men hire prostitutes.
Both Ifugao men and women are modest in terms
of their bodies, according to Ifugao cultural conceptions of
traditional or modern conceptions of modesty, both of
which include covering the genitals. Only youths who
505
have lived in urban areas express physical affection toward
the opposite sex in public, although this is very common
among persons of the same sex. A married woman must be
very modest around men other than her husband, lest other
people suspect an adulterous relationship.
There is general acceptance of persons having
alternative genders (bakla and “tomboys”) and same-sex
sexual orientations, although there is no tradition of these
forms of gender and sexuality in Ifugao. Cross-dressing
in a Western style is more typical of women than men
within Ifugao, as women wearing pants and a male-style
shirt are more readily accepted than men wearing a skirt
or dress.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage is anticipated for all Ifugao people, and the great
majority do marry, although marriage is not necessarily
expected of baklas and “tomboys” today. The duration of
a marriage union is undefined, except for Christian
marriages which are expected to be lifelong. Polygyny
and concubinage were practiced historically in Ifugao, but
only among the very wealthy men, the kadangyan. The
first wife held a higher status than the succeeding wives
(Barton, 1919/1969). Monogamy was the norm among
other men and women. Polygyny is only practiced informally by a small number of men today, who legally marry
one woman and have relationships with one or more other
partners. In these modern cases, the women have an antagonistic relationship with each other. This form of marriage
and partnership is not highly accepted, as monogamy is
the legal and cultural norm today.
Children of the kadangyan were historically married
at a very early preadolescent age, or even engaged while in
utero, to a child of another kadangyan family through an
arrangement made by their parents, with property assignment having been made at that time. This avoided what
would be deemed an inappropriate marriage in the future,
and created alliances with other wealthy kin groups. For
less wealthy families and the younger children of more
wealthy families, romance, courtship and premarital sex
more commonly led to their deciding independently to
marry, at any age. The consent of parents was not required.
Today, couples freely choose their spouses. Marriage
between siblings and first cousins is tabooed, and historically the marriage of cousins within the third degree was
tabooed, but could be overcome (Barton, 1919/1969).
506
Courtship historically involved visitations to the
dormitories by adolescent boys and young men, who
played a “lover’s harp” and chanted spontaneous romantic phrases, which were similarly responded to by girls or
young women (Barton, 1930/1978). Sexual relations
often followed a long courtship. Adolescent girls and
young women could accept or reject the advances of the
suitor, but only accept one suitor at a time. This restriction was looser for young men. Today, young men and
women usually socialize and “date” together within
a group of peers, and they occasionally meet alone.
Courtship sometimes still involves singing modern songs
to one’s love interest.
There is no traditional religious consecration of the
marriage; instead marriages were seen to be civil unions,
as well as trial marriages. But baki rituals were celebrated
throughout the marriage process to ensure prosperity and
children for the couple. To initiate the marriage and establish the engagement, a distant relative or friend of the
man brought betel nut to the woman’s parents to ask for
permission to marry her. Four baki ceremonies and gifts
from the groom’s family to the bride’s kin were required
to fulfill a marriage process. In some Ifugao areas, these
involved the groom’s family sending one pig for each ceremony to the girl’s family, who performed a baki ritual
and read the bile of a pig to uncover a good or bad omen.
The girl’s family usually returned smaller gifts to the
boy’s family (Barton, 1919/1969). These practices varied
by economic group and village, and continue to be practiced by some Ifugao people today. For Christian couples
today, a Christian ceremony is performed to religiously
consecrate a marriage, followed by a secular feast, traditional or modern music, dancing, and gift giving.
Ultimately, marriage is viewed primarily as an alliance,
wherein spouses’ ties to their own kin group remain
stronger than their marital ties (Barton, 1919/1969).
Widows and widowers can remarry any nonkin
person. But they should wait for a period of a year from
the death of the spouse, and they or their future spouse
must make a payment to their dead spouse’s family to
officially terminate the marriage (Barton, 1919/1969).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Husbands and wives generally have respectful, warm,
and loving relationships, and they relate to each other as
companions. Spouses rarely show affection or touch each
Ifugao
other in public. Husbands and wives usually eat their
morning and evening meals together, but often eat their
lunch apart from each other owing to their busy work
schedules. They sleep together, with their infant children
in the same one-room house, unless they live in a larger
“modern house” and sleep with all their children in the
home. Generally, men are expected to perform a dominant role in the household, as the “head of the household.” In practice, though, many couples participate
equally in domestic decision-making. Men and women
can each perform all domestic tasks, yet most of the
burden of domestic labor rests with women. Wife-battering
and marital rape are rare in Ifugao, although there have
been cases of each. Historically, if a couple wished to
divorce, either a man or a woman could initiate the
divorce, and a baki ritual would be performed for this
event (Barton, 1919/1969). Divorces were common and
easy, and a divorced couple could remarry, but not marry
their original spouse (Barton, 1919/1969). With the
domination of Catholicism in much of Philippine national
law, divorce is currently illegal, restricting Ifugao spouses
from legally divorcing. Instead, given the historical
acceptance of divorce, a couple may separate, initiated by
either the husband or wife, and enter a new committed
relationship that resembles a marital relationship. A couple is not required to meet specific standards of reasons
for separation today, but historically there were approximately 22 justifications for divorce (Barton, 1930/1978).
Children usually remain with their mother upon a couple’s
separation, although this is not a strict rule. Historically,
women had the right to keep the couple’s children after
divorce, though the husband could raise one or more of
their children through a special agreement (Barton,
1919/1969).
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
As discussed above, traditional Ifugao attitudes, beliefs,
and practices are changing, including those associated
with gender, as Ifugao people become more solidly
integrated into the global capitalist market, experience
increased international and national development, and
migrate outside Ifugao. The Philippine women’s
movement entered Ifugao in the 1980s, and has had some,
albeit minor, impact on women’s gender ideologies.
For example, some women have begun contesting the
References
507
unequal pay rates in Ifugao agricultural and other types
of labor. However, fundamentalist Christian ideologies
are also increasingly permeating Ifugao culture, offsetting ideas of gender equality promoted by the women’s
movement. International development projects have often
effected the reinforcement or decrease of women’s
already lower gender status in economic, political, and
domestic arenas (Kwiatkowski, 1998; McKay, 1995).
Likely, there will be greater variability in gender conceptions among Ifugao people in the future as a result of
these outside influences.
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indigenous upland community—Ifugao, Philippines. Journal of
Business Administration, 22–23, 143–156.
Milgram, B. L. (2000). Reorganizing textile production for the global
market: Women’s craft cooperatives in Ifugao, upland Philippines.
In K. M. Grimes & B. L. Milgram (Eds.), Artisans and cooperatives: Developing alternative trade for the global economy
(pp. 107–127). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Milgram, B. L. (2001a). Situating handicraft market women in Ifugao,
upland Philippines: A case study for multiplicity. In L. J. Seligman
(Ed.), Women traders in cross-cultural perspective: Mediating
identities, marketing wares (pp. 128–159). Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Milgram, B. L. (2001b). Operationalizing microfinance: Women and
craftwork in Ifugao, upland Philippines. Human Organization,
60(3), 212–224.
Scott, W. H. (1982). Cracks in the parchment curtain and other essays
in Philippine history. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day.
Igbo
Daniel Jordan Smith
ALTERNATIVE NAME
The Igbo are also known as Ibo.
LOCATION
In contemporary Nigeria, five states (Abia, Anambra,
Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo) are almost entirely Igbo
speaking, and these, along with smaller parts of several
neighboring states, constitute the geographic area colloquially known as Igboland. Located in southeastern
Nigeria, Igboland is characterized by a tropical climate,
with regular rainfall between the months of May and
October and mostly dry weather between November and
April. Igboland was once covered with thick forest (especially in the southern areas), but high population densities
have resulted in extensive deforestation and increasing
soil erosion. With one of the highest population densities
in sub-Saharan Africa, Igboland is most striking in the
degree to which human activities have extended to
and had significant effects in all parts of the region.
Gradually, the distinction between village and small town
is dissolving.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Igbo-speaking people are the third-largest ethnic group in
Nigeria, numbering approximately 20 million. Perhaps
not surprising given the large population, forms of social
organization and cultural patterns vary widely across
Igbo communities. Inevitably, any attempt to sketch an
overview will oversimplify this variation and may appear,
from the perspective of particular sections of Igboland,
to be inaccurate. With this qualification, a number of
cultural features are common and very significant across
much of Igbo society.
Prior to British colonization, Igboland was characterized primarily by a large number of self-governing
village groups. Though some of these village groups
were loosely tied through trade, marriage, and alliance
in warfare, in precolonial times Igboland was largely
decentralized and each Igbo village group was an
independent political entity. Indeed, consensus in the
historical literature is that the notion of a pan-Igbo
identity emerged only in the context of colonialism
(Isichei, 1976). The sense of Igbos as one people was
further solidified shortly after independence by the
Biafran War (1967–70), during which the predominately
Igbo-speaking southeast sought unsuccessfully to secede
from Nigeria. A number of scholars have argued that
women’s political role was greater in precolonial
times and that the legacy of the colonial system has
continued to have negative consequences for women’s
status in post-independence Nigeria (Amadiume, 1987;
van Allen, 1976).
In the wider Nigerian collective imagination and in
scholarly literature, Igbos are perceived to be economically resourceful and successful and highly entrepreneurial (Green, 1947; Isichei, 1976). Much has been written
about the Igbos’ entrepreneurial spirit, their economic
acumen, and their domination of certain sectors of the
marketplace across Nigeria. The idea that Igbo culture is
“individualistic” and achievement oriented pervades
discourse among other groups in Nigeria, and is reproduced and explored in anthropology (Henderson, 1972;
Ottenberg, 1971). Individual achievement is certainly
highly rewarded in Igbo culture, but characterizing the
society as “individualistic” misrepresents the degree to
which personal success is valued most as a fulfillment of
group expectations that wealth should be shared, with
extended family and community of origin being the most
important groups for most Igbo people.
Involvement in trade, ranging from large-scale
importation of industrial commodities to the sale of
goods in informal petty businesses, has contributed to a
huge volume of rural–urban migration in Igbo society. At
present, most Igbo communities, indeed the vast majority
of Igbo households, have members who have migrated to
cities and towns across Nigeria. But one of the most
significant features of Igbo migration and of social
508
Gender over the Life Cycle
organization in rural Igbo villages is the continuing tie of
migrants to their communities of origin and their kinship
groups (Smith, 2001a). Rural and urban Igbo communities are interdependent, with migrants and those
who reside in rural villages connected to each other politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Most rural
households rely on a combination of subsistence agricultural, small-scale trade, and often some wage labor and
employment. In addition, many households depend on
their migrant members for remittances, but also for social
connections that facilitate access to resources such as
education, jobs, business contracts, and government services (Smith, 2001a). Kinship in most of Igboland is reckoned patrilineally, though Igbo groups that are matrilineal
and that practice double descent are well documented in
the literature (Nseugbe, 1974). Even among patrilineal
groups, the importance of women as daughters, wives,
and mothers, and the strong ties to lineages other than an
individual’s own patrilineage are central to understanding
the cultural construction of sex and gender in traditional
Igbo society and in the present.
The proliferation of formal education, the almost
universal conversion of Igbos to Christianity, and the
increasing urban influence on people’s lives in both rural
and urban areas have had significant effects on the organization and meaning of sex and gender. Yet, perhaps
obviously, contemporary trajectories of ideas and practices are very much shaped and informed by the past. The
Igbo sex/gender system is complex, with gender roles
often being more flexible than they appear (Amadiume,
1987), with the statuses of daughter, mother, and wife, for
example, entailing quite different meanings for the same
gender, and with continuous social change reorganizing
the context in which beliefs and behaviors occur and are
transformed.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Strictly speaking, Igbos recognize only two gender
categories: male and female. Not only are the categories
of male and female sharply distinguished, but these
distinctions are manifest in a mostly sex-segregated social
system (Green, 1947; Miller, 1982). The structure and
character, as well as some of the contradictions, of this
system are elaborated in greater detail below. However,
it is important to note from the outset that conceptually
509
strict gender categories and the largely sex-segregated
social system are, in fact, more fluid in practice than they
appear in ideology, particularly when gender is considered in the context of social action rather than essentialized categories. In Igbo society, for example, it is possible
for women to marry wives, and daughters can undertake
many of the social roles of sons, reversing the typical
associations between gender categories and social position (Amadiume, 1987). However, even in cases of these
social role inversions, Igbos retain durable and strict ideas
about the differences between male and female. “Male
daughters” and “female husbands” do not look or, in most
respects, behave like men.
Though it is difficult to summarize briefly how
Igbos conceptualize male and female gender, perhaps the
most useful starting point is to note that the cultural
construction of gender is most significantly manifest in
the categories and roles of son/husband/father for men
and daughter/wife/mother for women. Though certain
characteristics of male and female gender connect each of
these life-course stages (with men conceived of as more
aggressive, independent, and publicly oriented, and
women seen as more nurturing, dependent, and domestically oriented), the invocation of a life-course perspective
highlights the extent to which gender is significantly tied
to social context.
Dress and hairstyle are probably the most obvious
culturally inscribed bodily markers of gender. Women
generally grow long hair that is braided or styled and men
keep short hair. Dress is more variable, but in contemporary Igboland men typically wear trousers in both traditional and Western garb and women are most likely to
wear wrappers, dresses, or skirts. Women almost always
pierce their ears; men do not. Features that make men and
women attractive are extremely variable based on individual taste, and tastes seem to be shifting rapidly with
changing fashions, but it is probably fair to say that
markers of wealth, such as fine clothing and educated
language, are most important.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Puberty initiation rituals that used to mark the transition
from childhood to adulthood for both men and women
(Ottenberg, 1989) are no longer practiced in most Igbo
communities. The introduction of formal education, now
available to and desired for both boys and girls, has meant
510
that school stages have become among the most important
markers of life stage for children and adolescents. Most
Igbo families now consider that young persons who have
finished secondary school have achieved adulthood.
However, traditional categories and roles of son/husband/father and daughter/wife/mother remain extremely
important, and it is fair to say that, even now, marriage and
parenthood mark the full attainment of personhood for
both men and women. Both marriage and childbirth are
celebrated with important social rituals, and though
marriage ceremonies and child-naming rites are not
explicitly about creating and defining gender roles, they
certainly serve that function. For both men and women,
the transition to elder status (not marked by any specific
ritual, but usually closely associated with the achievement
of grandparenthood) brings greater respect. In addition, in
some ways, elder status mitigates more polarized expectations of gender roles that apply to younger people (e.g.,
older women are typically outspoken and older men are
judicious and patient).
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Igbo people recognize that the birth of a son is extremely
important for the purpose of reproducing and maintaining
the patrilineage. For women, the birth of a son solidifies
her place in her husband’s family. Thus, in some respects,
the birth of a son (especially the first son) is more eagerly
anticipated than the birth of a daughter. Nonetheless, the
birth a child of either sex is extremely joyful, and though
boys and girls are eventually socialized quite differently,
there is little sense in Igbo society that one sex is
ultimately preferred over the other. In the first few years
of life, socialization of boys and girls is not markedly
different, with both sexes closely attached to the mother
(Ottenberg, 1989). By and large, both boys and girls
assist their mothers with (mostly “female”) domestic
tasks until at least the age of 10 or 12. However, by school
age it is apparent that adults treat boys and girls quite
differently and have different expectations regarding their
behavior. By the time children go to school (even
preschool) gendered dress is common and the use of
gendered kin terms (and even playful “sexual” banter) is
clearly observable. In general, boys are granted more
liberties than girls, especially with regard to venturing
and playing outside the domestic compound, though, as
children, boys also remain very much under the strict
supervision of adults.
Igbo
In contemporary Igbo society, much of the way
gender is socialized clearly takes place at school.
Unfortunately, this aspect of gendered socialization in
Igboland has not been adequately studied. It is clear,
however, that school curricula and social organization are
extremely gendered in Nigeria. Though both sexes attend
primary school in equal proportions and girls are almost
as likely as boys to go on to secondary school, the expectations of what each sex will do with his or her education
are quite different.
Puberty and Adolescence
As indicated above, in most parts of Igboland initiation
rituals that marked the transition from child to adult
(usually occurring at or shortly after puberty) have been
abandoned in the wake of formal education and conversion to Christianity. Related to the growing duration
of time between puberty and marriage, the concept of
adolescence seems to be of recent origin in Igboland
(Ottenberg, 1989). Though gendered differences in
appearance and behavior are apparent in childhood, they
are more significantly marked after puberty. As young
people’s bodies develop and become more sexually
dimorphic, cultural inscriptions of gender difference are
also made more elaborate. In adolescence, relations
between males and females become obviously stylized in
terms of sexuality, and this emphasis on sexuality seems
to be part of a process that fixes gender more rigidly.
Interestingly, in many secondary schools sexual maturation is marked by relaxed rules of dress and hairstyle. For
example, as they reach senior secondary school (usually
around age 16), boys are allowed to wear long trousers
(instead of short trousers) and girls are allowed to grow
their hair.
Attainment of Adulthood
Because marriage and parenthood are the ultimate
indicators of full adult status, one could argue that adulthood is being postponed to later and later ages in
Igboland. Indeed, many contemporary problems of youth
in Nigeria can be related to the erosion of socially sanctioned passages to adulthood, such that many young
people spend up to 10 years in a kind of liminal life stage
where they have the material ambitions of adults but few
of the obligations and responsibilities and little of the
recognition that come with marriage and parenthood.
Gender-Related Social Groups
511
Middle Age and Old Age
There are no universal rites marking passage to elderhood
for men and women in Igboland, though many kinds of
social ceremonies are related to aging. Generally, only
senior men are given chiefly titles, for example, and in
Igbo societies that have male age sets, the transition in
age sets is a kind of marker of seniority. As mentioned
above, aging seems to mitigate and even reverse some of
the most dramatic differences in behavior associated with
gender—such that, for example, older women become
more like men in their outspokenness and irreverence,
and older men become more like women in their capacity to mediate and act empathetically. Perhaps most
important with regard to aging and gender is that both
men and women gain increasing respect in a society that
honors seniority. Yet in contemporary Igboland, where
young people often question, challenge, and resist
tradition, the exalted place of the elderly seems to be
eroding.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
From the perspective of non-Igbos, Igbo people, both
men and women, have outgoing, even boisterous,
personalities. Compared with many other ethnic groups
in Nigeria, Igbos appear to be aggressive and outspoken,
but also welcoming and gregarious. To a first-time
observer, Igbo conversations often sound like arguments,
and both men and women are quick to defend themselves
against perceived slights. While it is certainly the case
that children are supposed to be deferential to adults, and
juniors respectful to elders throughout the life-course
(regardless of gender), Igbo adults of any age are usually
prepared to do verbal battle with someone they believe
has failed to accord them appropriate respect or recognition. Within Igbo society, women are expected to be more
deferential to men than vice versa, but the extent of this
deference is variable and often minimal. It is not uncommon for Igbo women to verbally chastise Igbo men, and
men often joke about what a mistake it is to vex women.
Perhaps the most striking personality differences by
gender are related to the importance of motherhood as the
primary locus of family nurturance and affection. Though
great variation characterizes men’s and women’s personalities, it is probably fair to say that women are generally
more nurturing and affectionate, especially in relations
with children.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Numerous scholars have noted the sex-segregated nature
of Igbo social organization (Green, 1947; Miller, 1982).
Many social institutions are structured by gender, with
men and women often participating in parallel but
separate spheres. Because descent is generally reckoned
patrilineally and postmarital residence is traditionally
patrilocal, women’s structural position vis-à-vis kinship
groups changes more fundamentally than men’s over the
life cycle. While both men and women experience significant changes in status as they pass from son/daughter to
husband/wife to father/mother to grandparent/elder, for
women marriage marks a radical change that can be both
empowering and problematic (Smith, 2001b). Because a
woman typically moves at marriage from her own patrilineal compound/village to her husband’s, she becomes,
in a sense, an outsider in her married home. This is
particularly the case until she gives birth to a son, and the
Igbo language is replete with proverbs about a woman’s
precarious status as wife and the importance of parenthood in securing her position. While the status of wife is,
in part, one of “stranger,” the status of mother is perhaps
the most valued and emotionally exalted kin position.
In precolonial patrilineal Igbo communities, men of
the same lineage group constituted one of the principal
structures of local political organization. Other more
horizontal forms of male social organization, such as secret
societies, age grades, and title societies, cut across lineages, facilitating cooperation at village and village group
levels (Ottenberg, 1971). Each of these institutions was
characterized by exclusive male membership, and notions
of secrecy were related to the perceived power of these
groups in regulating community activities—and particularly in controlling women (Ottenberg, 1989). The importance of all-male societies has waned in the postcolonial
period, as forms of state authority have usurped many of
their original functions, but lineage groups and village
development unions remain strong institutions in most
Igbo communities, with one of their chief functions now
being the management of relations between village residents and their many migrant relatives (Uchendu, 1965a).
For almost every male social group there is a parallel
women’s group. Though women move away from their
512
Igbo
lineages at marriage, they maintain lifelong ties to their
patrilineages as daughters and this relationship is formalized through daughters’ associations. Contrary to what
seems to be implied in some of the literature, and in
contrast to implicit ideas in some Igbo (mostly men’s)
rhetoric about women, as daughters, most Igbo women
remain vital members of their patrilineages throughout
their lives and their importance is ritually marked at
marriage and burial ceremonies (Amadiume, 1987).
Women also belong to associations of wives in the place
they marry, to women’s branches of the village development unions (often in both their natal community and
their postmarital place of residence), to groups of women
who have married in one community but originate from
the same natal community, and to savings–loan unions
that can be constituted along any number of lines. The
sheer number of sex-segregated social groups and the fact
that men and women maintain parallel associations at
almost every level is one of the most striking features of
gender-related social organization in Igbo society.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Perhaps the most striking aspect of gender roles in
economics among the Igbo is the heavy involvement of
both men and women in trade. As mentioned previously,
Igbos are renowned in Nigeria for being entrepreneurs—
traders who dominate major sectors of the marketplace.
If anything, women have a longer tradition of managing
the marketplace in Igbo society, as they historically dominated trade in foodstuffs (Amadiume, 1987). While men
played a role in trade even in precolonial times, it was the
growth of international trade and large-scale introduction
of nonagricultural (mostly imported) commodities that
contributed to men’s intensifying participation in trade—
a change that some have argued has contributed to a
decline in women’s economic status (Amadiume, 1987;
van Allen, 1976). However, in contemporary Nigeria, both
men and women remain heavily involved in trade, and
though women are still more involved in agricultural trade
and men remain dominant in nonagricultural trade, huge
numbers of men and women participate in every form of
commerce. The degree to which the proceeds of trade are
kept and managed by individual men and women, rather
than pooled or handed over to a spouse, is an interesting
question with no clear answer. While each sex traditionally managed the proceeds of trade independent of a
spouse, in contemporary society, with the diminution of
polygyny and the emergence of more conjugal marriages,
household budgets are more likely to be shared and more
couples embark on joint business ventures.
Though trade is an important component of the Igbo
economy even in rural communities, almost all rural
households rely significantly on subsistence agriculture.
Generally, men are responsible for clearing land in preparation for planting, but women undertake the bulk of
agricultural labor. The rise of cassava, generally considered a woman’s crop, as the staple in Igboland, replacing
yam, which is clearly considered a man’s crop, contributed significantly to women’s increasing responsibility for agricultural subsistence. Because only men inherit
land in patrilineal Igbo communities, women have access
to land through their husbands, though their rights of
usufruct are well established. The rights of women to
land (as well as to other community entitlements) are
further secured through the birth of sons, because it is
through having a son that a woman can be assured that
her “kitchen” inherits its share of the patrimony. The
domestic division of labor is strongly gendered in
Igbo households, with women (and children) being
almost exclusively responsible for tasks such as food
preparation, sweeping the compound, and washing clothes.
As Nigeria’s economy modernizes and the division
of labor becomes more specialized, modern occupations
are also gendered. For example, men dominate occupations such as drivers, carpenters, and mechanics, while
women fill roles such as nurses, hairdressers, and receptionists. Much of this modern gendered division of labor
reflects similar patterns in industrialized societies.
Extremely high levels of rural–urban migration sometimes result in women and children being left “at home”
in the village while men pursue employment or business
in cities. However, a more typical pattern is for husbands,
wives, and children to migrate as a unit. The phenomenon
of men in the city and women and children in the village
is much less frequent in Igboland than has been described
in other sub-Saharan African societies.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Gender differences in parental roles are large and
profound. In Igbo society almost all primary childrearing responsibilities are undertaken by the mother,
Gender and Religion
513
or by another women who acts as a social mother.
The maternal role is especially pronounced during the
first 4 or 5 years of a child’s life, when her/his principal
bond is with the mother (Ottenberg, 1989). Fathers are
generally more distant figures in children’s lives and are
often viewed as enforcing discipline. They typically
spend much less time than mothers do with children.
Recently, with the rise of more conjugal marriages and
somewhat more nuclear household structures (especially
in cities), many younger fathers are taking a more active
and overtly affectionate role in the rearing of children, but
the idea that child-rearing is principally a woman’s
responsibility remains pervasive and influences behavior
in even the most modern households. Generally boys and
girls are treated quite similarly during the first few years
of life, with no obvious preference by gender. Despite the
widespread idea that having a male child is essential for
the reproduction of the patrilineage, and for the rights and
recognition that come with it, in practice girls seem to be
equally welcome and valued as boys. However, beginning
around the age that children go to school, there are
marked differences in the way parents treat boys and
girls, with girls increasingly required to carry out more
domestic tasks and boys encouraged to undertake more
public activities.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
At all levels of Igbo society men dominate leadership in
public arenas. Igbo men far outnumber Igbo women in
positions and influence in Nigerian federal and state
government institutions. While some women are elected
or appointed to political office, there have been no female
Igbo governors, relatively few female ministers, senators,
and representatives at the federal level, and few female
commissioners and other political appointees compared
with males at the state level. In addition, men clearly
dominate the civil service, though less dramatically than
political offices. Given Nigeria’s postindependence political history, it is important to note that the top posts in
military are, and have always been, entirely male.
In local government, women are represented in
larger numbers, as local government chairpersons and
councilors. But even at the local government level, men
dominate. Significantly, at the nexus between traditional
community authority and the Nigerian state, where the
office of eze (chief/king) is a legacy of the British colonial
imposition of a warrant chief system, men are in charge
almost entirely. Almost every community in Igboland is
ruled by a male eze, and most eze’s cabinets (the body of
local influential leaders who advise him) are almost
exclusively male. Typically, an eze’s cabinet has one
woman’s representative and a dozen or so men. Even at
the most grassroots level, public leadership is primarily in
male hands, so that village and hamlet (the smallest unit
above the family/compound) headships are almost
universally male in Igboland.
This male dominance of leadership in public arenas
obscures two important points. First, both historical and
anthropological research suggests that male dominance
in the public arena may not have been as prevalent in the
precolonial period (Amadiume, 1987). Some evidence
suggests that the importance of female deities in traditional Igbo religion and the powerful role of women who
held traditional titles associated with these deities placed
women in strong positions of public leadership. Further,
women’s relative domination of the marketplace in the
precolonial period may have afforded them more significant public roles. Second, men’s monopoly of public
leadership positions conceals the extent to which women
influence decision-making. Particularly at local levels,
through the parallel women’s associations and the fact
that Igbo men openly acknowledge that women must consent to any decision that is to have significant effect,
women have a much greater say in the conduct of Igbo
affairs than their lack of prominence in public leadership
reveals. Indeed, the historical literature on the Igbo is
well known for incidents where women’s political action
proved effective (Mba, 1982; van Allen, 1976), and
anyone who has worked in Igbo communities in contemporary Nigeria has been told by male public leaders how
important it is to gain women’s collective cooperation.
How all this must be weighed in assessing the relative
status of men and women is considered further below.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
More than 90% of Igbos now identify their religion as
Christianity. Though men and women are Christian in
almost equal proportions, women’s church groups are
particularly active and in many, if not most, churches
women appear to dominate the everyday activities of the
lay congregation. However, men control the official
hierarchy of almost every (if not every) denomination.
514
The impact of Christianity on gender and on the relative
status of men and women is a matter of considerable
interest and debate. On the one hand, in traditional
Igbo religion a number of important deities were considered “female”, and women titleholders and priestesses
sometimes wielded substantial power. The traditional
conception of gods as both female and male contrasts
sharply with the Christian belief in a single male god.
Some scholars have argued that Christianity, in combination with colonial policies, had the effect of lowering women’s status. However, Christianity’s role in
curtailing polygyny and in promoting more companionate models of marriage may also, arguably, have provided
women with new leverage in negotiating relationships
with men (Smith, 2001b). Few of the vast majority of
Igbo women who are Christian would assert (or accept)
that Christianity is to blame for whatever discontents they
may have with their social role as women. Indeed,
most Igbo women seem to view Christianity and church
as a refuge from whatever else might be wrong about
the world.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
As Igbo people’s mode of subsistence becomes
increasingly enmeshed in the larger regional and world
economy, people seem to have less and less free time.
Balancing the continuing demands of subsistence
agriculture with involvement in trade and other demands
of more urbanized or urban-like work lives means that
both men and women spend a lot of time earning a living.
Compared with many other parts of sub-Saharan Africa,
Igboland strikes the observer as a very busy, sometimes
almost frantically paced, place, though much more so
in cities and towns than in rural village communities.
Nonetheless, leisure and recreation, particularly time
spent socializing with friends and family are important
aspects of everyday life.
In rural communities men appear to have more
leisure time than women because women must combine
extradomestic economic work (which is often at least as
intensive as men’s) with the primary household duties of
childcare, food preparation, sweeping, and washing
clothes. Women receive significant assistance in these
activities from children of both sexes, and the degree to
which women manage to combine domestic chores with
“leisure” activities such as socializing, singing, and
Igbo
storytelling is significant. But, overall, women clearly
have less pure leisure time than men. Igbo men are wont
to say that women spend an inordinate amount of time
gossiping, but the truth is that both sexes spend a considerable amount of leisure time talking about other people.
Men are more likely to spend leisure time playing games.
The board game “draughts” (checkers) is popular and
men often play it in the early evening. Boys and younger
men frequently play soccer. At very young ages, girls
sometimes also play, but by the time children reach
adolescence the games are almost always all male. Men
are much more likely than women to drink beer at local
bars or frequent village palm wine sellers, though not all
men drink and a significant portion of Igbos who are
“born-again” Christians view drinking negatively. Many
women also enjoy alcohol, but women’s drinking is less
frequent and usually not done in public settings such as
bars, though this is changing in urban settings. Like other
arenas of Igbo cultural life, leisure activities tend to be
sex segregated, with the exception of events like “disco”
dances or public cultural performances that are enjoyed
by men and women together.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Considerable consensus exists in the characterization
of Igbo society as largely sex segregated in terms of
economic, political, and social organization, with men
and women often engaging in parallel activities and associations rather than cooperating or competing in the same
arenas. However, whether the Igbo sex/gender system
values men and women relatively equally in their own
terms, or whether this system specifically favors men, has
been the subject of debate. Several scholars have argued
that colonial policy and Christian missionizing had the
effect of reducing women’s economic and political
decision-making powers by abolishing female titles associated with traditional deities, appointing all male chiefs,
and moving men into the previously female-dominated
marketplace (Amadiume, 1987; van Allen, 1976). In contemporary Nigeria, men clearly dominate public political
decision-making and, through their control of land and
ascendancy in the nonagricultural marketplace, they are
in command of key economic resources. But women
are by no means powerless in Igbo society. In addition to
the fact that Igbos strongly value women precisely in
their roles as daughters/wives/mothers—roles that are
Courtship and Marriage
culturally celebrated rather than denigrated—the fact that
Igbo women are organized collectively in associations
that parallel men’s organizations means that women can
wield considerable collective power and often do so when
they feel their interests have been compromised.
SEXUALITY
Generalizing about Igbo attitudes toward sexuality is
extremely difficult because so much variation exists based
on axes of diversity such as age/generation, education,
socioeconomic status, religious affiliation, and degree of
urban experience, but also because attitudes to sexuality
are often contradictory. Broadly, Igbo attitudes about sexuality are much more restrictive for women than for men,
particularly with regard to premarital and extramarital
relations. With rises in the average age at first marriage
over the past several decades, the length of time between
sexual maturity and nuptuality has increased dramatically.
Though many elders maintain an ideal that sexual intercourse should occur only after marriage (especially for
women), and though the association between ideas about
sexuality and beliefs about procreation/reproduction are
very strong in Igbo society, for many young people premarital sexuality is linked to the construction of a modern
identity (Smith, 2000). Most young Igbos, both male and
female, engage in sexual relationships before marriage.
Though young women’s sexuality is more closely scrutinized than young men’s, as long as a girl does not have a
child before marriage, having had premarital sex is usually no obstacle to marriage. Within marriage, Igbos
generally view regular sexual relations as healthy, and the
idea that both men and women experience and are entitled
to sexual pleasure is widely accepted. The gender disparity in attitudes about sexuality is most profound with
regard to extramarital sexuality (Smith, 2001b). Male
extramarital sexual relations are common and carry little
stigma. In fact, male extramarital sexuality is often symbolically rewarded in male peer groups, particularly in
urban and elite contexts. For women, extramarital sexual
relations are extremely risky and heavily stigmatized.
Once a woman is married, it is expected that she will
remain sexually faithful to her husband.
Igbo conceptions of male and female sexuality are in
many ways contradictory, especially in male discourse.
Men are viewed as needing sex more than women and are
supposed to be the initiators or aggressors in sexual
515
relationships. Women are supposed to be more passive,
yet the idea that women are sexually dangerous and that
men can be manipulated by women’s sexual power is also
prevalent (Smith, 2001b). Sexual banter between men
and women is relatively common, but physical modesty
is expected for both men and women. The increasingly
immodest dress that is becoming more popular in urban
areas is viewed somewhat scandalously by elders and
in village communities generally. Some scholarship
suggests that precolonial Igbo society was sexually more
liberal than during the colonial and early postindependence period, with children and adolescents provided
socially accepted avenues for sexual experimentation and
both men and women freer to take extramarital lovers
(Uchendu, 1965b). In contemporary Igboland the relative
taboo of open discussion of sexuality contrasts with the
prevalence of nonmarital sexual relations.
Igbo society is quite striking for its lack of any overt
cross-sex identification and an almost complete denial of
any form of male or female homosexuality. A study
of homosexuality in this strongly dual (hetero) sex society is badly needed, though it would be very difficult to
undertake.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Changes in courtship and marriage are among the most
significant ongoing transformations with regard to sex
and gender in Igbo society. Whereas men and women
traditionally married very young and marriages were
mostly arranged by the extended families of the husband
and wife, in contemporary Igboland, men and women
increasingly choose their own marriage partners (Smith,
2001b). Modern courtship often involves notions of love,
and most young Igbos marry with the intention of remaining monogamous. In these romantically cast premarital
relationships, gender dynamics are relatively egalitarian
because men and women are viewed as equal partners in
an individualistic (or at least dyadic) project, and the
terms of the relationship are negotiated based on ideas
of love, trust, and emotional intimacy. While couples
themselves now frequently initiate the process that leads
to marriage, once initiated, families and communities
become heavily involved in both the wedding ceremonies
and the marriage itself. Though polygyny was once
common, relatively few people practice it today.
Among young people, polygyny is almost universally
516
rejected and fewer and fewer Igbo marriages are likely to
become polygynous.
Despite these changes in patterns of courtship and
in the criteria for marriage, three elements remain
paramount: the social expectation that everyone must
marry, the importance of marriage as an alliance between
two kin groups, and the centrality of parenthood as
the foundation for a successful marriage. Traditional
marriage ceremonies, in which the extended families and
communities of origin of both the husband and the wife
participate, continue to constitute the principal rite of
passage marking marriage. Though many couples now
choose to be married in their Christian churches, as well
as in the traditional ceremony, the traditional ceremony is
obligatory, while the Christian ceremony is optional
(though, for many, highly desirable). The years after
marriage are characterized by great anticipation of pregnancy and childbirth, and nothing is more important in
establishing the stability of a marriage than parenthood.
The transformation of a couple’s relationship from
courtship to marriage, where the roles of mother/father
and husband/wife become primary, and where many
more people are socially invested in the relationship, has
significant consequences for the dynamics of gender
(Smith, 2001b), tying women to their roles as mothers.
In general, the importance of the quality of a couple’s
personal/emotional relationship recedes after marriage,
especially after the birth of children. In the case of the
death of a spouse, the likelihood of remarriage is greatly
dependent on age and whether the surviving spouse has
children. Traditional practices of levirate are now mostly
abandoned, and many women whose husbands die
remain unmarried if they already have several children.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The degree to which marriage relationships are characterized by love, affection, and/or companionship is highly
variable, though, generally, younger couples are much
more likely to emphasize these aspects of the conjugal relationship than their elders. In more traditional marriages,
affection and companionship are often quite important and
can become very deep over time. However, for older Igbos,
the idea that a marriage relationship should be the primary
locus of intimacy is much less common than among
younger couples. Even in more modern marriages men
and women spend a significant amount of time and find a
Igbo
large part of their social satisfaction in same-sex peer
relationships and in interactions with a wide range of kin.
Traditionally, Igbo husbands and wives did not eat
together, they had separate sleeping rooms, and most
social activities were sex segregated. While this is
changing in the context of more conjugal marriages
(many monogamous couples, e.g, now share the same
bedroom), even in relatively modern marriages, a man is
more likely to eat separately from his wife and children
than with them. In addition, gender roles in the household
remain quite polarized, with women almost exclusively
responsible for food preparation and childcare.
Bridewealth in Igboland is perhaps the highest of
any ethnic group in Nigeria, and once a couple has
children, there are few socially acceptable reasons to
divorce. If a couple does divorce, the children of the
union are generally considered to belong to the husband
and his lineage. A man may legitimately seek to dissolve
a marriage if his wife has been sexually unfaithful, but a
woman will be on much firmer ground seeking divorce if
she can show that her husband has failed to provide for
her and the children. She will receive relatively little
social support if she cites problems in their personal
relationship or the man’s infidelity. Though divorce is
heavily frowned on, in urban areas it is more common
now than in any recent time.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Cross-sex relationships within kin groups are common
and often highly affectionate. These relationships are not
(or are at least rarely) sexual, but warm relationships
between opposite-sex relatives of various sorts are
extremely pervasive. While opposite-sex sibling relationships are sometimes competitive, by and large brothers
and sisters (especially of the same mother) are close, and
these relationships endure over a lifetime. As adults,
siblings remain interested in and protective of each other
and each other’s children. In addition, cross-sex relationships between various assortments of cousins, uncles/
nieces, and aunts/nephews can be extremely affectionate
and are frequently characterized by some degree of
sexual allusion or joking (most often on the part of the
older member of the cross-sex pair and in contexts where
actual sexual relations are least likely—e.g., between
adult and child). The warmth that characterizes these
intrakin cross-sex relationships is clearly a source of great
References
517
joy and accounts, in part, for the affective attachment that
Igbos feel for their kinship networks.
REFERENCES
Amadiume, I. (1987). Male daughters, female husbands. London:
Zed Books.
Green, M. M. (1947). Ibo village affairs. New York: Praeger.
Henderson, R. (1972). The king in every man: Evolutionary trends in
Onitsha Ibo society and culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Isichei, E. (1976). A history of the Igbo people. New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
Mba, N. (1982). Nigeria women mobilized: Women’s political activity in
southern Nigeria, 1900–1965. Berkeley: Institute of International
Studies, University of California.
Miller, P. (1982). Sex polarity among the Afikpo Igbo. In S. Ottenberg
(Ed.), African religious groups and beliefs: Papers in honor of
William R. Bascom (pp.79–94). Meerut, India, and Berkeley, CA:
Archana and Folklore Institute.
Nseugbe, P. (1974). Ohaffia: A matrilineal Igbo people. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Ottenberg, S. (1971). Leadership and authority in an African society: The
Afikpo village-group (American Ethnological Society Monograph
Series, No. 47). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Ottenberg, S. (1989). Boyhood rituals in an African society. Seattle:
University of Washington Press.
Smith, D. J. (2000). “These girls today na war-o”: Premarital sexuality
and modern identity in southeastern Nigeria. Africa Today,
47(3–4), 98–120.
Smith, D. J. (2001a). Kinship and corruption in contemporary Nigeria.
Ethnos, 66(3), 344–364.
Smith, D. J. (2001b). Romance, parenthood and gender in a modern
African society. Ethnology, 40(2), 129–151.
Uchendu, V. (1965a). The Igbo of southeast Nigeria. Fort Worth, TX:
Holt, Reinhart & Winston.
Uchendu, V. (1965b). Concubinage among the Ngwa Igbo of southern
Nigeria. Africa, 35(2), 187–197.
van Allen, J. (1976). “Aba riots” or “Igbo women’s war”? Ideology,
stratification, and the invisibility of women. In N. J. Hafkin &
E. G. Bay (Eds.), Women in Africa: Studies in social and economic
change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Iranians
Mary Elaine Hegland
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Iranians are also known as Persians.
LOCATION
A Middle Eastern and Muslim nation located in western
Asia, Iran shares borders with a number of different
countries. Starting with the Persian Gulf to the south and
going clockwise, Iraq and Turkey lie to the west,
Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea, and Turkmenistan to the
north, and Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Only a few decades ago, Iranians engaged primarily in
agriculture, trade, herding, and crafts. Local and regional
political groups organized around control over land, trade
wealth and opportunities, and family and kinship connections. Such connections could be through patrilateral or
matrilateral lines, created partnerships, and patron–client
type relations for political protection and access to means
of production. Middle- and upper-class extended families
typically lived in large homes with rooms arranged around
a central courtyard. Members of wealthier families might
have homes located near each other, and peasant and
lower-class urbanites might well live with the husband’s
family at least for a period after marriage. Generally,
wives continue to maintain close ties with their natal
families. Typically, females socialized with each other,
while males went off to work in fields, trade and craft
shops, and to herd animals. Outside the family, the
genders segregated for weddings, mourning gatherings,
outings, religious rituals, and political and economic
interaction.
Intent on modernizing Iran, the two Pahlavi shahs
attempted to demonstrate Iranian progress and modernity
through deveiling women, educating them, and bringing
them into the public work force. To centralize political
power, the Pahlavis squelched other power centers, such
as tribes, religious leaders and organizations, and regional
leaders and large landlords. In the 1960s, and even more
in the 1970s, the oil boom brought urbanization, industrialization, construction, education, health services,
bureaucracy, and westernization. However, the Pahlavis
did not institute political liberalization and democracy.
Unhappy with the pervasive influence of Western culture
and what they saw as modern vulgarity, religious figures
with financial support from successful merchants and
business people organized to try to regain some lost
power. Students and professionals, empowered by education, joined middle- and lower-class people who were
influenced by the clergy and unhappy with repression and
increasing extremes in wealth to bring about the Iranian
Revolution of 1978 and 1979. Under the leadership of
Ayatollah Khomeini and then the Islamic Republic of
Iran, formed in 1979, governmental and societal gender
policies changed radically. Whereas the Pahlavis had
attempted to educate women and bring them into the
public work world, even making veiling illegal during
one period, the Shi’a clerics attempted to reverse these
developments. Relying on Shar’ia (Islamic law), the
Hadith (traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, provided
by his followers and passed on through chains of
authority), and cultural traditions, Islamic Republic officials have declared women and men to be different by
nature. Men are fit for the rough and tumble of politics
and economics. Women, because of their more gentle,
emotional, and nurturing characters, should devote
themselves to household, husband and children. In return
for obedience and service, women are entitled to financial
support from men. Islamic Republic clerics reversed
family laws beneficial to women and enforced gender
segregation and female veiling. However, the war with
Iraq (1980–88), gender-segregation policies, and
women’s political voice forced government officials to
recognize the need for a female labor force. Since 1979,
in the political competition among Islamists, secularists,
and modernists, women and gender have been a focus of
contention.
518
Gender over the Life Cycle
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
519
OF
GENDER
In Iran, the two gender categories of male and female are
recognized. The term hamjens parast, or those who are
sexually involved with the same sex, refers to homosexuals, but they are nevertheless seen as males and females.
Eunuchs likewise were seen as males, but as males unable
to procreate. In Iranian Muslim culture, males are seen as
stronger, intelligent, wiser, virile, able to control their
emotions, just and moral, and fit to handle political and
economic affairs. Women are seen as weaker, emotional,
susceptible to the pull of personal ties, nurturing, and
unable to control their sexuality. Males used the perception of women as weak and foolish as a rationale to forbid
them to gain literacy, education, and employment.
Men often see women as a whole as manipulative, conniving, and unreliable. However, many men think very
highly of their mothers, feel great affection for their sisters, and rely upon their wives. Women often see men as
aloof, unable to control their anger, sexually promiscuous, and socially less competent. Because women are
viewed as strongly sexed and unable to contain themselves sexually, they are required to veil in order to avoid
arousing men sexually, thus leading to family and societal instability.
Iranian men wore a form of trousers, and women
wore long skirts over loose trousers and a scarf, although
men often also wore ethnic or regional hats. Affluent men
could afford to veil and seclude their womenfolk at home,
thus demonstrating their status. However, hardworking
tribal and peasant women did not wear veils. Reza Shah
Pahlavi forcibly removed women’s veils—policemen tore
off their scarves and veils—to symbolize Iranian modernity and westernization. He encouraged Western dress.
Men took on Western clothing: trousers, suit jackets, ties,
and hats. Women more often retained ethnic, tribal, or
regional dress. Men wear their hair shorter and might
have beards and mustaches. As infants and toddlers,
mothers dressed girls and boys similarly in homemade
shirts and pants, and only began to put dresses or skirted
pullovers on girls, rather than boys’ shorter pullovers,
after the age of 2 or 3. People believe that girls should
cover their hair by the age of 7, although girls might beg
for a scarf or veil before then. At an early age, girls are
expected to stay at home and not roam around the neighborhood with friends, as boys do. Use of make-up visibly
marked the transformation of a girl to a married woman.
Particularly during the time of Mohammad Reza Shah,
middle- and upper-class urban women took to Western
fashions, make-up, nail polish, and beauty shop hair care.
In the 1960s and 1970s, girls wore uniforms to school,
and generally teachers did not wear veils. Upperand middle-class women, especially professionals,
often did not wear veils except when attending religious
gatherings.
All of this distressed Shi’a Muslim clerics. Soon
after the 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini began to
restrict clothing, social integration, and behavior of
women. It became illegal to go without veiling or to wear
make-up (Moghissi, 1999; Tabari & Yeganeh, 1982).
Women were required to wear a veil or a scarf covering
all their hair and a long raincoat-like outer garment. Men
should wear long sleeves and long, rather loose pants,
and to demonstrate that they were “Islami” wear a beard
or stubble and avoid the Western tie. Currently, women
can show hair under their scarves, and wear make-up and
nail polish. Covering tunics are becoming briefer.
Particularly for younger females from less conservative
families, they may be tailored to fit the form snugly, fall
just to cover the hips, and button only to above the waist,
allowing the front to swing open and reveal tight pants
underneath.
Standards of female beauty have changed drastically
over time. Not many decades ago, females were to be
plump, with long thick black hair. Now females want to
be slender. Middle- and upper-class women may go to the
gymnasium and aerobics classes to attain a toned slim
body. Many women dye their dark hair lighter colors.
Many females have plastic surgery to have a smaller nose,
and some even restructure other parts of their faces and
bodies.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Infants may be called by a gender-neutral term, such as
neenee, nozad, or baqeli, and then a bit later called a
bacheh or “child,” although sometimes this term has a
male connotation. From birth until marriage, males are
called “boys” or pisar and females are called girls or
dokhtar. Circumcision and marriage defined the main
stages of life for males. Circumcision, performed before
going to school, marks boys as cleaner and better Muslims,
and as moving toward manhood. Families celebrate
the occasion, and boys receive praise, gifts, visitors, and
520
special food. Boys do not show embarrassment at the
attention focused on their penises. Under Islamic
Republic laws, the legal marriage age for girls was lowered to 9 and that for boys to 16. Upon marriage, and thus
initiation into sexual activity, females are called “women”
or zan and males “men” or mard. Upon consummation of
the marriage, the status of the two changed to that of arus,
bride or daughter-in-law, and damad, groom or son-inlaw. In the past, the daughter-in-law became subordinate
to the mother-in-law and her competitor for the affections
of her son. With the arrival of a child, particularly a boy,
the young woman gained some status. The young couple
then became bachehdar, those who have children, or parents. The parents, and more often the mother, might then
be called by the name of her son: Naneh-ye Mohammad
or Mama-ne Mohammad—Mohammad’s Mother.
Generally, the bride’s mother provided the first set of
clothing for the child. Relatives, especially women, came
to congratulate the mother, bringing gifts if possible. As
the couple had more children and then married them off
and became grandparents, they gained status. In their
older years, depending on their vitality and leadership,
men could be called reesh sefid, white beard, and women,
less commonly and with less power connotations, sar
sefid, white head. Finally, the elderly were called pir zan,
old woman, and pir mard, old man. Although younger
people still demonstrated deference to them, they generally lost power and authority.
Iranians
girls (Friedl, 1997). Educated modern couples tend to
expend as much care on daughters as sons.
Mothers are the main caretakers of babies, although
fathers interact with boys later on. Anthropologist Erika
Friedl (1997) found that parents and others in a Lurish
village expected girls to be quiet, obedient, helpful, clean,
and homebound. From very early on, girls’ genital areas
are always covered, while little boys may be naked.
Mothers taught girls to acquiesce to male domination.
Although mothers complained about their sons’ devilishness, wildness, and destructiveness, they also saw this
behavior as masculine assertiveness.
Puberty and Adolescence
Many urban middle-class Iranian young people now
enjoy music, getting together with other young people,
and talking with, even dating, the opposite sex. Only a
few decades ago, Iranians did not separate out or name an
adolescent period, especially for girls, nor did they expect
teenagers to display awkwardness, touchiness, or rebelliousness. People might refer to teenage boys as javanan
or youths and expect them to go out of the house. Girls’
menarche, rather than celebrated, is private and polluting.
Menstruation makes girls ritually impure, unable to pray
or touch the Qur’an.
Attainment of Adulthood
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Not long ago, families favored boys over girls. A young
bride wanted to produce a boy which would increase her
own status. A friend told me how her mother had turned
her face away, wept, and refused to nurse her first-born
daughter in shame that she had not produced a son for her
husband, until her aunts and other female relatives urged
her to do so. When asked how many bacheh (child,
although sometimes taken to mean boy) he has, a father
may count only the boys. In my experience, when men
recited the list of their ancestors and their lineage, they
gave the names of males only. Females asked if I wanted
them to list the women too, or just the men. Traditionally,
mothers and others tended to male infants more than to
female infants, breast-feeding them longer, and responding
to their crying. Parents generally provided boys with
more food, clothing, medical care, and education than
A boy (pisar) becomes a man (mard) through marriage
and initiation into sexuality. In order to marry, he must
be old enough to be earning money to support a family. He
or his family must have gathered the money to provide
gifts to the intended wife and her family as well as to give
the bride’s father a mehriyeh or brideprice. Likewise, a girl
(dokhtar) becomes a woman (zan) through marriage and
initiation into sexual activity. In order to be eligible for
marriage, or at least before consummation of marriage, a
girl must have gone through menarche and thus be able to
produce offspring. Part of the preparation of a bride
included removal of her body hair, marking her transition
from a girl to a sexually active woman. Although customs
differ greatly among ethnic, tribal, and religious groups,
class, settlement size, and age groups, changes in hair
style sometimes mark married women. For example,
Kurdish women cut some hair on both sides to frame
the face after marriage. In Iran, women have long worn
Gender-Related Social Groups
eye make-up (kohl), and with westernization, began to use
other types of make-up, particularly for brides. After
marriage, a man is expected to act responsibly and support
his wife and children. Men should make sure that their
wives and children are respectful to them and careful
about family reputation. Married females should industriously clean house, cook, and wait on their husbands and
husbands’ parents, particularly if they live with them.
Until several decades ago, males interacted with males
and females with females. People did not expect marriages necessarily to be companionate, but rather a household and children-producing team. Now, even females
may find careers, postponing marriage, and receive
respect from others.
Middle Age and Old Age
With several children, men and women gain status and
respect. As a householder, with a wife and growing children, a man may be called upon for religious or community leadership. Mature men and women who controlled
economic, political, religious, and social resources
enjoyed the most power and influence. More recently,
when younger adults can gain influential and rewarding
positions through education, independent jobs, modern
expertise, or religious dedication, they may threaten older
people’s authority. As time goes on, and men begin to
lose their strength and abilities, their wives may gain
power. When their husbands become frail, wives who are
most often some years younger may still be at the height
of their powers, managing family and community events
and relationships. In the past, elderly parents lived with
children and grandchildren who ideally placed them at
the center of the family and cared for them with love and
compassion. Now, young couples want their independent
lives and do not appreciate interference from parents. Old
men tend to become relatively marginal and dependent
upon others to care for them. Older women are often
more resourceful, remaining active in cooking and household work as well as in family, kin, and neighborhood
affairs. Now more and more elderly live by themselves in
their own homes rather than with children. There are also
old people’s homes for those elderly whose children
cannot or do not wish to care for them. Because divorced
or widowed men, more than women, tend to remarry,
old men can usually count on wives to nurse them at
home. Far more women than men reside in homes for the
elderly.
521
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Shi’a Islam, religious leaders, myths, and rituals all teach
men to be brave, to be able to support and defend women,
children, and dependants, to be wise, just, combative, and
devoted to God and religion, to be able to control
themselves, and to participate in the public world of religion, politics, and economics. Women, in contrast,
are supposedly weak, delicate, emotional, nuturing,
unable to be objective and thus to be just, unable to control themselves and resist sexual temptation, and suited
by nature to home, household, and ministering to
men and children. In actuality, it is often women who
hold the household together and manage interpersonal
relations.
Little girls usually are more docile, obedient, and
shy. Little boys can behave in a more unruly fashion and
hit and act aggressively toward others. Little girls stay at
home, whereas boys can more easily escape the house
and their mothers’ control over them. As they grow older
girls should become increasingly deferential to males,
work hard for their mothers, behave modestly, cast their
eyes downward, keep well covered, and keep any needs
and wants to themselves (Friedl, 1997). A boy can
order mother, sisters, and younger brothers around and be
more assertive about his wishes, although required to
demonstrate respect to his father and other older family
males.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Male–female separation characterizes much of Iranian
social life. Females spend much of their time in the
company of other females. Before the employment of
many women in the public sector during the 1960s and
afterward, females (except the poor) generally stayed at
home with female family and relatives, running the
household, and interacting with kin and neighbors. Upon
marriage, a young couple typically lived with the groom’s
family, at least for a time. However, the Iranian kinship
system is basically bilateral, and wives maintained close
connections with their own families and relatives. Male
relatives, such as a father and his sons and perhaps uncles
and cousins, might well form the basis for political
groupings, particularly in tribal and rural areas, and
522
Iranians
economic endeavors. However, kinship groups in Iran
exhibit a network character of changing alliances rather
than a corporate nature. People could also utilize connections through women and partnerships with unrelated
persons to form interest groups. During kinship, neighborhood, religious, and political gatherings, wedding
celebrations and mourning ceremonies, and religious
rituals, men and women gathered in separate buildings,
rooms, or spaces. During ad hoc political meetings
and economic consultations of men, women might
find opportunities to listen discreetly while serving tea
and other refreshments. Urban middle-class men often
joined one or more dorehs or circles, meeting regularly
with a fixed membership, although more recently often
both husbands and wives attend such gatherings.
Segregation along gender lines continues to organize
social life. Since the formation of the Islamic Republic,
government officials have required the segregation of
unrelated women and men.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In nomadic tribal groups, men herded the animals.
Women milked animals and processed animal products,
such as dairy products and wool, making cheese, yogurt,
dried yogurt, and various woven products such as
tents, saddlebags, rugs, and other textiles. Now, nomadic
migrations are virtually a thing of the past. Families do
not follow migrating herds, and men handle any animal
movement with vehicles.
In agriculture, men generally prepared land, planted,
and harvested, although in some areas, such as in rice- and
tea-raising areas along the Caspian Sea, and harvesting
nuts, women work in the fields. Otherwise, village women
cared for children and home, processed and prepared food,
and cared for and milked any animals. Generally men
worked as traders or in shops. A few rural women, usually
widows, did some buying and selling, minor moneylending, and perhaps sewing to earn a little money.
Commonly, middle-class homes employed poorer girls and
women as maids, often bringing them from villages. Girls
and women knotted Persian carpets, although men usually
arranged the marketing and managed carpet workshops.
Other than knotted, woven, and knitted wool products, men
monopolized arts and crafts such as metal and woodwork,
silver work and jewelry, tiles, hand-printed cloth, tailoring,
and handmade shoes. Now, villagers are less self-sufficent.
Rural people have migrated to urban areas, and those men
who maintain their homes in villages frequently commute
to work. Village women have fewer animal-tending and
food-processing responsibilities. Factory-produced goods
have replaced handicrafts. Men dominated the arts as well,
writing the poetry so central to Iranian culture, painting
Persian miniatures, and working as professional musicians.
Since the 1960s, when women gained educational opportunities, they have begun to publish, paint, create, and
perform, although less than men. The much-loved female
poet, Forugh Farrokhzad, began publishing her poems in
the 1950s. The first female novelist, Simin Daneshvar, wife
of the outstanding author, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, published her
book Savushshun, or The Mourners of Siyavush, in 1969
(Milani, 1992). Women have become teachers, work in
government offices, and serve in medical capacities. Now
women work in virtually every type of field and position,
although as a minority in non-nurturing areas. Men
generally hold the more powerful positions.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
According to Islamic dictates, husbands and fathers must
maintain their families, providing home, food, and other
needs. Fathers procreate and their wives and children
respect and obey them. Mothers do the day-to-day care
for children, and develop more intimate and informal
relationship with their offspring (Fathi, 1985). Generally,
mothers call upon fathers’ authority for disciplinary
purposes. Mothers spend far more time in the company of
their children and are usually more openly affectionate
with them. When women had little power in a family
because of their lack of control over economic resources
and cultural expectations, women might cultivate the
affection and goodwill of children, particularly sons, to
develop some leverage. Fathers may be attached to their
daughters but have formal, distant, and uncomfortable
relationships with sons. In recent years, as children
become educated, gain employment away from the
control of fathers and relatives, and wish for more independence, conflicts may develop between fathers and
children over whether or not children should accept their
fathers’ control. Many urban middle- and upper-class
young people are finding ways to evade parental control
and sometimes associate with other young people.
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Males have generally held leadership positions in Iran, as
shahs, provincial and tribal heads, parliamentary and government officials, kinship and extended family heads, and
religious figures. Although women work behind the scenes
and attempt to influence male relatives, males led the
Constitutional Revolution of 1905 and 1906, the nationalization of oil in 1951 and subsequent conflict between
Prime Minister Mosaddeq and the Shah who was backed
by the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency
(C.I.A.), and the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79. In all of
these efforts, women played significant roles (Sanasarian,
1982; Paidar, 1995). For example, women formed some
half of the people in street demonstrations and marches,
the most crucial revolutionary activity, during the 1978–79
Iranian Revolution (Nashat, 1983). However, the roles
played by women have usually been supportive rather than
pivotal. Even the leftist movements used women as supporters and silenced feminist interests (Moghissi, 1994).
During the Reza Shah Pahlavi period, a woman, Farokhroo
Parsa, served as Minister of Education. (She was executed
in 1979 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.) Since the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, women have served as
members of parliament, and held several less significant
executive positions. Maryam Rajavi, female leader of the
Mojahedin anti-regime group is the exception to the general absence of women in leadership positions, but she
took the position after the death of her husband, the former
head. Women and youth generally voted for the more moderate cleric, President Khatemi, in the 1997 presidential
election.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Since the time of the Prophet Mohammad and his 12
successors, male imams have assumed the leadership roles
in Shi’a Islam. However, when Imam Husein, grandson of
the Prophet, and other males were martyred at Karbala, his
sister Zaynab led the womenfolk of the group as they were
taken captive to Damascus. Her mourning and speaking
kept the memory of Imam Husein and his martyrdom alive
as the central Shi’a myth. The highest religious leaders, the
ayatollahs, take charge of guiding Shi’a Muslim believers.
Very few women have qualified to be ayatollahs, and men
are the clerics and preachers or mullahs. However, women
may lead women’s home rituals of Qur’an study, mourning
523
commemorations for the Karbala martyrs, or gatherings
featuring food provided in honor of the martyrs or saints.
Women make pilgrimages to local shrines and make contracts with the saints in the interests of family members.
Older women, especially, may make government-run religious pilgrimages even to Damascus, although men still
predominate in making the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca
required of Muslims who can afford it. Since the institution
of the Islamic Republic in 1979, women have increasingly
entered into public religious activities. Now they teach and
study religion and some even attend seminaries, formerly
a male prerogative. Women sometimes speak in mosques
and mixed gatherings and lead neighborhood women’s
gatherings to discuss the Qur’an and religious issues
(Kamalkhani, 1997). Despite these advances, males control the Islamic Republic, its executive positions, and policy formation. Men sit on the Council of Experts who rule
on who may become candidates in elections and on other
proposed political moves. But many women are now studying religious sources themselves and questioning male
interpretations of Islam.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Men have generally enjoyed more leisure time than
females, as women are responsible for endless household
tasks, childcare, and hospitality. Several decades ago, very
few women had opportunities for leisure and recreation
outside of socializing with family, relatives, and neighbors. Women interacted with other women at family and
life-cycle gatherings or as individuals. Sometimes women
sang and danced together, especially at wedding celebrations. Some women might excel at singing or drumming
to entertain family and friends. Men often sought out the
company of other males, sitting and chatting in sunny
spots or teahouses, and perhaps hiking and picnicking outside of settlements. Since the 1960s, some females participated in performances and sports, and might even attend
scout camps. With modernization during Mohammad
Reza Shah’s rule, some females began to attend movies,
travel with families to hotels along the Caspian Sea or
other tourist areas, travel abroad for education and enjoyment, and participate in the arts and a wider selection of
sports. Now, Islamic Republic officials require strict sex
segregation during sports and outings, except for family
members. Males are not allowed to watch female sports,
nor do females attend male sports competitions. However,
524
Iranians
women have forced their way into the stadium during an
international male soccer match. Women have struggled
for equal access to sports facilities, and have obtained
women’s hours at government-run gymnasiums. Many
Iranian women have become sports enthusiasts. Women
are coaching, teaching, and serving as referees in women’s
sports. Women hike, ski, and ride bikes, although in
smaller numbers than men.
In general, girls and women tend to spend more time
in domestic settings, whereas boys and men are freer to
move out of the house for company and entertainment.
Even in old age, women busy themselves with household
tasks, while old men are at leisure. Outside activities,
other than family outings, must be sex segregated.
However, urban middle- and upper-class people may host
integrated parties behind closed doors. People read
novels, magazines, and newspapers, listen to tapes and
CDs, watch television and smuggled film videos, log on
the internet, and talk on the phone within Iran and to
friends and relatives living abroad.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Compared with Iranian women, Iranian men have enjoyed
much higher status and access to authority, rights, and
privileges. Men took public leadership and decisionmaking positions and control of group and family, and
females were supposed to be out of sight and uninvolved.
Even when girls and women worked or produced carpets,
their male relatives generally controlled their earnings.
Usually men owned and controlled land, animals, and
businesses. According to Islamic law, women should
inherit half the share of male children. However, most
often women turned their shares over to brothers, wishing
to avoid censure and hoping for their brothers’ support.
Widows also did not gain access to much inheritance, and
usually had to rely on assistance from grown children.
From an early age, girls were taught to control their
dress, postures, and interaction with males by the implicit
threat of shaming self and family, or worse. Men
controlled sexuality and could marry daughters off at
age 9 or even younger, although consummation should
not take place before the onset of menstruation. Fathers
and other family males controlled marriage choices,
although sons might inform parents about preferences.
Ideally, Muslim law allows girls the chance to refuse
chosen mates, but this did not happen often.
Men largely monopolized divorce decisions, but
unhappy wives might obtain a divorce in exchange for
dropping demands for their marriage settlements. Even
if extremely unhappy, most women avoided divorce
because it would humiliate them, they often had no alternative support, and they would lose their children.
Supposedly, boys could remain with mothers until the age
of 2 and girls until 7, although often husbands and their
families did not follow these rules.
Fathers decided the level to which boys and girls
could go to school, and, for those relatively few who went
to university, their majors. From an early age, a boy could
lord it over his sisters, younger brothers, and even mother.
He was expected to treat his father with the utmost
respect and deference, even into middle age. Respect and
deference for women might increase somewhat over their
life cycle. As competent housewives, loyal wives and
mothers, and kinship connection managers, they might
gain husbands’ trust and children’s and other relatives’
respect (Friedl, 1989). After modernization in the 1960s,
more women gained an education and employment in the
public sector, but this did not always translate into more
power and authority with husbands.
Since formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
government policy has attempted to control women’s
dress, activities, and mobility, insisting that proper
Muslim women must be modest and avoid attracting the
attention of unrelated men. Islamic Republic leaders
overturned laws that had improved women’s position and
influence in marriage, family, and employment. Women
have struggled to work for women’s rights and have been
able to achieve minor changes. With so many women
gaining education and employment, extended family
dynamics have changed. Now daughters-in-law are not
willing to live with their husbands’ families or tolerate
much interference from them. Educated sons and daughters do not depend on families for access to economic
resources. The ability of parents to run their children’s
lives has declined.
SEXUALITY
Muslims view sexuality as healthy and good, a necessary
part of the human experience, and the means to produce
offspring and maintain family continuity. Muslims do not
admire abstinence or consider it a way to serve God and
attain greater spirituality. Initiation into sexual activity is
Sexuality
viewed as so integral to life, especially to males, that
parents whose sons have died before marriage may construct replicas of bridal bowers as part of their mourning
activities. People relate sexuality and marriage to having
children. In-laws expected brides to become pregnant
almost immediately, and if they did not, in-laws and husband might insult them and dissolve the marriage.
Recently, however, couples often put off having children
and limit their number. Fertility rates have dropped dramatically. Sexual contact pollutes, and people, especially
women, must go through religious purification through
washing (qosl) afterwards. Female sexuality is traditionally viewed as a threat to society. A woman’s unfettered
sexuality could ruin the honor of her family, relatives,
community, religion, and nation (Najmabadi, 1998). To
protect men from temptation and society from corruption,
as well as to maintain the family’s reputation, males
needed to control female sexuality (Azari, 1983).
Mothers strictly monitored girls’ dress, mobility, and
interaction with males. Brothers might assist in the overseeing of sisters. Fathers were anxious to marry girls off
as soon as possible in order to avoid any potential gossip
or scandal. People suspected widows and divorced
women, for they had been sexually active but now had
lost the male responsible for managing their sexuality.
Females could not engage in premarital sex, or even be
seen talking with a boy on the street. During the first few
decades of the 20th century, people believed girls should
not learn to write, as they might use this skill to communicate with boys. After marriage, women should be
totally faithful to their husbands. Boys and men enjoyed
greater sexual freedom. People generally did not condemn male premarital sexual activity. Males could seek
out temporary wives, prostitutes, or loose women. Maids,
often young girls from a village, faced the danger of
sexual predation from sons of their employing families
and even married men. Although parents and others
might affectionately touch or refer to little boys’ genitals,
little girls must cover up. Parents required girls to refrain
from notice of their own bodies, except to shame nakedness. Girls could not express sexuality in any way and
were supposed to be ignorant about sexuality. Mothers
generally did not make any attempts to provide sexual
information before marriage. Expected to be a totally
asexual creature and prevented from contact with
marriageable males, even to the extent sometimes of not
seeing husbands-to-be before the marriage night, young
women found consummation of marriage on the wedding
525
night to be extremely traumatic. Often this abrupt and
forced initiation to sexuality colored their attitudes
toward sex and their husbands for some time. People
expected married women to be sexually active with their
husbands and to enjoy it. However, men dominated the
sexual relationship, and women were not supposed to
initiate sex openly or to express their wishes. Even married couples should not display affection to each other or
otherwise acknowledge their sexual relationship in front
of others. People assumed older people to be less sexually active. If a mother with almost adult or adult children
became pregnant again, she would feel embarrassed
about this evidence of ongoing sexual activity.
Parents and others reprimanded children who
behaved like or engaged in activities characteristic of the
opposite sex. People rigidly defined gender-appropriate
behavior and activities and disapproved of transgression.
But females might dress as males to play male parts and
sing, for example, to female audiences at segregated
wedding celebrations, or in school performances. Males
took the part of female members of Imam Husein’s band
being marched into slavery at Damascus in commemoration of the Karbala martyrdoms. Otherwise, Iranian
culture does not include traditions of cross-dressing, as
far as I am aware.
Given sexual segregation and close companionship
among same-sex individuals, sometimes male adolescents engaged in same-sex activity. In Iranian tradition,
especially among the upper-middle and upper classes,
some men valued male adolescent beauty and engaged in
sexual activity with male youth. Although generally not
publicly discussed, same-sex relations did not bring
shame, except to the recipient if he was past youth. If
young men did engage in same-sex relations, it was
viewed as a stage in life that would end upon marriage.
In general, very little research about sexuality has been
conducted in Iran. This lack extends to homosexuality,
particularly to female homosexual relations. Under the
Islamic Republic, homosexuality is illegal and carries the
death penalty. The problem of AIDS does not receive
adequate attention.
In the last few decades, many aspects of sexual
attitudes and activities have changed. During the Pahlavi
modernization period through 1978, some young men
and women attended coeducational universities and
might find their own mates. Especially among urban
middle- and upper-middle classes, young people might
date. People still expected girls to remain virgins until
526
Iranians
marriage, but restrictions on opposite-sex interaction
declined, especially for upper-middle- and upper-class
youth. With study abroad and the import of foreign ideas,
some married couples became more open with each other
about sexual expression and wishes, and some wives
became more equal sexual partners. Virginity tests that
produced a blood-stained white cloth after consummation
of marriage became less common, but marriage license
offices continued to offer virginity examinations as a free
service.
After the formation of the Islamic Republic, lowering the legal marriage for girls, and enforcing modesty
and seclusion for women, some of the relaxation of attitudes and practices about sexuality has reversed. Clerics
have encouraged temporary marriage as a way to support
war widows and prevent the corruption of youth, as they
say has happened in the West. Many clerics and more
conservative men take advantage of the Shi’a institution
of temporary marriage to attain a full sex life. However,
for a female, status as a temporary wife is demeaning and
will ruin her chances of a good marriage. Poorer women,
divorcees, or widows who lack other alternatives may
engage in temporary marriage to secure financial support.
More recently, some young people are finding ways
to go out together. Despite the clerical rule, sexual mores
are easing for some Iranians. Because prostitution has
increased, some clerics wish to establish government-run
prostitution or “temporary marriage” centers.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Several decades ago, when males finished education or
apprenticeship, and entered into income-generating
activities, their mothers and other female relatives looked
for suitable mates, although fathers held formal control
over offspring’s marriages. After discrete inquiries of the
other family as to the response, the groom’s family’s
made a formal visit to the bride’s family. Traditionally,
the perspective bride came into the room to serve tea. The
groom’s family acceptance of offered refreshment would
indicate their inclinations. Some families might make
marriage arrangements and not tell the girl until the
marriage date grew close. Generally fathers negotiated
about the mehr, the financial arrangements for the
marriage. Depending on class, the fathers and perhaps
other male relatives would attempt to come to an agreement about the money and property which the groom and
his family would give to the bride’s father. If a large mehr
was demanded by brides’ families, grooms often had to
wait much longer than they wished for the marriage.
Families gathered information about the health of the
potential spouses and their family standing. Grooms’
families wish for pretty, obedient, and modest brides, and
brides’ families want financially well-off grooms who
can provide comfortable lives for their wives. In the past,
families almost always arranged marriages. Although,
according to Islamic law, girls are supposed to have the
right to refuse, this was not always the case. Boys might
have more say in the choice of marriage partner.
Marriage ceremonies consist of two main parts. The
first is the signing of the marriage contract or aqd
conducted by a Muslim cleric. If the bride was present,
the cleric asked her if she consented to the marriage.
An affirmative answer, generally in a low modest voice, or
silence meant consent. Alternatively, the girl’s guardian
or representative came in her stead. The second part, the
wedding celebration or arusi, might take place shortly
after the aqd ceremony or some time later. Although
families generally kept the aqd ceremony small, they
wished to have a wedding celebration that was as extravagant as possible. Some decades ago, well-off families
might even have had a 7-day celebration. Brides’ and
grooms’ families held separate wedding parties, where
males and females sat in separate rooms or separate
buildings. People served tea, refreshments, and meals,
laying out tablecloths on the floor and setting out dishes
of rice and stews and other foods at intervals for people
to help themselves. Families hired musicians so people
could do circle dances in alley ways or courtyards. Males
and females danced in separate lines, but young people
could covertly watch each other celebrating. The bride
was not supposed to be part of the celebrating crowd, but
sat immobile, face downturned. Ideally, she should not
eat or drink or move away from her position.
On the afternoon or evening of the arusi, the
groom’s family went to the bride’s home, singing and
making noise. They brought the bride, traditionally
dressed in green, head covered with a pretty cloth, back
to the groom’s home. Particularly in tribal and rural
settings, male relatives shot rifles into the air to celebrate
the taking of the bride. The bride and groom might be
seated together on chairs for a while in both the male and
female sections. Finally, with singing and noise making,
the crowd led the couple to the bridal bower or hejleh,
decorated by the groom’s young male relatives with
colorful cloth hangings. The groom was then expected
to consummate the marriage. He felt pressured to
Husband–Wife Relationship
demonstrate his virility, and the bride was expected to
show her modesty and lack of sexual knowledge. The
latter was usually not a problem, as girls did not receive
any sex education. Indeed, girls’ parents ideally would
meticulously keep them from any contact whatsoever
with unrelated males. A white cloth bloodied with evidence of virginity and penetration might be brought out
afterwards to show to guests. In the morning, overnight
guests congratulated the groom upon his exit from the
bridal room. Ideally, the bride remained in the hejleh, and
for several days female relatives visited her there. On the
morning after the marriage, the bride’s mother and other
female relatives came to see her, and might bring special
foods to strengthen her or even penicillin to guard against
weakness or infection caused by sexual initiation. Some
time after the marriage, the bride’s male relatives traditionally came to escort her to her parents’ home, where
they would be served a meal by the groom’s family. The
bride stayed with her family for several days, and then
the groom’s family came to fetch her.
Parents saw finding suitable mates for children
as a main duty in life. Very few people failed to marry,
although the disabled faced challenges in finding a mate.
The rare single female generally remained in her parents’
home.
Husbands could divorce at will, just by declaring
three times, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.”
Further, a husband could take as many as four wives, without the permission of any of them, and he could take as
many temporary wives (sigheh or muta’a; Haeri, 1989), as
finances allowed, making an agreement for the length of
time and the money to change hands. Divorced or widowed men generally remarried within a short period of
time. Men did not like to marry divorced or widowed, and
thus non-virgin, females. Females did not remarry as often,
and remained dependents of fathers, brothers, or sons.
The last few decades have seen radical transformations in courtship and marriage. As the Pahlavi regime
developed state education, females left the house.
Although educational officials generally tried to schedule
classes so that boys and girls were let out of school at
different times, the greater mobility of girls sometimes
allowed young people to catch sight of each other. Males
and females attended university courses together.
In particular, those upper-middle-class young people who
attended university and then worked in government
positions, businesses, or services might chose their own
mates. The young people, especially the females, generally had to obtain parents’ assent for such marriages.
527
Even since the formation of the Islamic Republic,
when government clerics attempted to reinforce sexual
segregation and patriarchy, they have not been able to
recreate the social control over male–female interaction
that used to be associated with arranged marriages.
Depending on class, boys and girls might be able to talk
on the telephone or see each other. Middle- and upperclass males and females are sometimes able to co-mingle
at wedding celebrations and parties behind closed doors.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Generally brides were one or even several decades
younger than grooms. The sexual initiation on the marriage night often left brides shocked and traumatized.
Subsequent sexual initiatives by their husbands were distressing. Unless the two were close relatives, they did not
really know each other, and might well never have seen
each other before marriage. The bridal couple, and
married couples in general, did not show affection for
each other in front of other people and in fact could hardly
talk together in the company of others. Most contact took
place during the night hours while others were sleeping.
Given the fact that they barely knew each other and yet
were abruptly thrown into physical intimacy, both partners, particularly the bride, felt awkward and uncomfortable. Many couples lived with the groom’s family for at
least a while after marriage. A bride spent much more time
with her mother-in-law and other female family members
and relatives of the groom than with the groom. Generally,
after a few days, if not sooner, he returned to his work.
A bride frequently felt alone among watchful strangers
waiting to find fault with her. She had to learn to work
with her mother-in-law. Conflicts often arose between
bride and mother-in-law as they jockeyed over loyalty and
support from the groom. Husbands wanted others to realize that they kept their wives under control and that their
wives were obedient, hardworking, and competent. The
husband’s own reputation and that of his family rested on
his ability to maintain authority over his wife and children;
he needed to exact deference from them.
Producing children, especially sons, gaining household competence, and showing loyalty made her in-laws
think better of a young wife. Sometimes affection
and respect might develop between the couple. People
viewed marriage not as an institution to give companionship and intimacy, but rather for the formation of a
household and child-rearing team in order to continue the
528
family line. People favored marriage between cousins so
that they could feel more knowledgeable about the potential spouse and family, and the bride more comfortable in
her new home. The groom’s family had to give a stipulated amount of the mehr upon marriage. In theory, the
bride could demand the remaining part of the mehr
whenever she wished. If the groom decided to divorce his
wife, he was supposed to give her the remaining part of
the marriage settlement. However, brides often did not
receive the mehr upon divorce (Mir-Hosseini, 2000).
A husband who wished to divorce a wife might make her
life so miserable that she finally consented to divorce
without receiving the mehr. A wife found it humiliating
when her husband married a second wife, forcing her to
share her husband and his resources with a second
younger wife and their children. Wives were afraid of
divorce because of the shame and because the mehr, even
when they obtained it, did not support them for long.
An unfavorable marriage was sometimes the only
defense against poverty. Upon divorce, the father retained
custody of the children; often women stayed in unhappy
marriages partly because they did not wish to leave their
children. When wives divorced, they frequently cited
difficulties with mothers-in-law as a main reason.
Husbands or in-laws frequently abused wives physically
or emotionally. The Qur’an allows husbands to chastise
disobedient wives physically. However, somewhat reminiscent of the English “rule of thumb,” the physical
chastisement of wives should not be so severe that it
leaves a mark on their bodies.
When marriages survived into middle age, they
sometimes became partnerships of two people concerned
about their children and family interests. As men aged,
they often became more dependent on their younger and
more socially engaged wives. Therefore women might
gain de facto power in the marriage. Even if the husbands
had been domineering and self-centered, wives typically
nursed their husbands in sickness and old age.
The thought of their husband taking another wife or
a sigheh (temporary wife) frightened women dreadfully.
Women might threaten or even attempt suicide.
After Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s Family Protection
Act, men were required to obtain their first wife’s
permission to marry a second wife, although not to
take a sigheh. Men might find ways of evading this
requirement. Especially with sighehs, wives might not be
aware of the other woman. Generally, cowives felt angry
and suspicious of each other, resenting attention and
Iranians
resources which the man gave to the other wife and her
children. Wealthier men might provide different houses
for each wife and her children and so keep more of a
distance between them. If they lived in the same home,
each wife usually had her own room.
The average age of first marriage for females has
increased to 27, and the age disparity between bride and
groom has decreased. Because young couples are now
much more likely to live on their own, the nuclear family
has become a more significant unit. For many Iranian
wives, these changes translate into a more equal relationship with husbands. However, in other cases, couples left
to their own devices feel their dissatisfaction more.
Divorce rates have risen.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Iranian males often have close relationships with their
mothers, who usually had invested time and energy in
building their sons’ love and attachment. Given the
importance of family and relatives and separation
between unrelated boys and girls, brothers and sisters
frequently became close companions. Parents generally
expected their sons to protect their sisters and defend
them and thus the family against any potential loss of
reputation. Therefore, brothers often oversaw sisters’
behavior, dress, and contact with others, and might treat
sisters harshly if they suspected any wrongdoing. Usually
girls and women felt the need to obey and please brothers because of their dependence on them for assistance.
Although daughters should receive half the inheritance of
sons, most often sisters handed property over to their
brothers, fearing conflict and loss of family reputation if
they demanded their rights. Lacking other alternatives,
they also hoped for a possible refuge in the case of marital
difficulty. Male and female cousins often became friends.
They might even live in the same home or complex.
As cousins can marry and cousin marriage is favored,
parents generally restricted their interaction when they
approached puberty.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The last few decades have seen drastic changes in gender
in Iran, as previous sections have indicated. Mohammad
References
Reza Shah Pahlavi wanted to educate women and bring
them into the public sphere as a significant symbol of
Iranian modernization and westernization. His father
even outlawed women’s veils and scarfs for a time,
forcing most women to stay at home rather than expose
themselves. Until the Iranian Revolution of February 11,
1979, Iranian women, especially of the middle and upper
classes, were gaining literacy, education, and jobs in the
modern public sector, and even traveling abroad for
education. Many women, especially in middle- and
upper-class urban areas, wore chic Western fashions
rather than veils or even scarves. Courtship, marriage,
nuclear family organization, level of control of parents,
status and power of women, gender and family laws, and
women’s public roles were all being transformed. Then,
with the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
conservative clerics attempted to reverse the changes in
gender and sexuality, reestablishing sex segregation,
females’ family roles, and male control over females,
sexuality, family, and public space. Females caught wearing lipstick or nail polish or showing a strand of hair or
glimpse of skin under their veils or rupushes (raincoatlike covering) faced imprisonment and harassment.
Family laws did away with the rights women had gained
during the Shah’s regime. The legal age of marriage for
females went down from 16 to 9 again. Recently, more
females have been attaining an education, and the majority of university students are now female (Afkhami &
Friedl, 1994). Women have found many ways of resisting
the new stricter restrictions and to press for changes
beneficial to women. With increased access to literacy
and Islamic scholarship, some women are questioning
male misogynist interpretations of Islamic sources. The
legal age of marriage for females has risen to 15, and men
are now supposed to pay a mehr adjusted for inflation
when divorcing a wife.
Women and sympathetic males face great obstacles
in trying to modify gender constructions. Clerics point to
Iranian females’ dress, modesty, and devotion to family
and religion as the main markers differentiating Islamic
Iranian society from what they view as the corrupt and
morally bankrupt West, where women go “naked,”
sexuality is unfettered, and the family has dissolved.
Gender and sexuality lie at the center of reformers’ and
conservatives’ struggle to influence the present and future
of Iran (Mir-Hosseini, 1999).
529
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much of the information presented draws on my years of
living and conducting research in Iran (1966–68, summer
of 1970, 1971–72, summer of 1977, and 1978–79) and
extensive interviewing and participant observation
among Iranians and Iranian Americans in the United
States from 1969 on. I am most grateful to all these
Iranians and to the Social Science Research Council and
American Council of Learned Societies.
REFERENCES
Afkhami, M., & Friedl, E. (Eds.). (1994). In the eye of the storm: Women
in post-revolutionary Iran. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University
Press.
Azari, F. (Ed.). (1983). Women of Iran: The conflict with fundamentalist Islam. London: Ithaca Press.
Fathi, A. (Ed.). (1985). Women and the family in Iran. Leiden,
The Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
Friedl, E. (1989). Women of Deh Koh: Lives in an Iranian village.
New York: Penguin.
Friedl, E. (1997). Children of Deh Koh: Young life in an Iranian village.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Haeri, S. (1989). Law of desire: Temporary marriage in Shi’i Iran.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Kamalkhani, Z. (1997). Women’s Islam: Religious practice among
women in today’s Iran. London: Kegan Paul.
Milani, F. (1992). Veils and words: The emerging voices of Iranian
women writers. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Mir-Hosseini, Z. (1999). Islam and gender: The religious debate in
contemporary Iran. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2000). Marriage on trial: A study of Islamic family
law in Iran and Morocco. London, New York: I. B. Tauris.
Moghissi, H. (1994). Populism and feminism in Iran: Women’s struggle
in a male-defined revolutionary movement. New York: St Martin’s
Press.
Moghissi, H. (1999). Feminism and Islamic fundamentalism: The limits
of postmodern analysis. London: Zed Books.
Najmabadi, A. (1998). The story of the daughters of Quchan: Gender
and national memory in Iranian history. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press.
Nashat, G. (Ed.). (1983) Women and revolution in Iran. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
Paidar, P. (1995). Women and the political process in twentieth-century
Iran. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Sanasarian, E. (1982). The women’s rights movement in Iran: Mutiny,
appeasement, and repression from 1900 to Khomeini. New York:
Praeger.
Tabari, A., & Yeganeh, N. (Eds.). (1982). In the shadow of Islam: The
women’s movement in Iran. London: Zed Books.
Israelis
Marilyn P. Safir and Amir Rosenmann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Israelis are also known as Yisra’elim.
LOCATION
Israel is situated in the Middle East. It is a crossroad
between Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Mediterranean
forms Israel’s western border. It shares its northern border
with Lebanon. To the east, it borders with Syria and
Jordan, a border that ends at the Red Sea where both
Israel and Jordan have outlets. Israel shares a border with
Egypt in the south.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
In 1947 the United Nations passed a resolution to divide
Palestine into two separate national entities: a Jewish
Israel, and an Arab Palestine. Following this resolution,
Israel declared its independence (1948), declaring itself
as the homeland of the Jewish people. A war between
Israel and the neighboring Arab countries resulted from
their rejection of these developments. Although peace
treaties were signed with Egypt and Jordan in the 1980s
and 1990s, hostilities between Israel and the surrounding
Arab states, as well as with Palestinians living in territories Israel occupied following the 1967 war, have been
continuous. These hostilities have insured that the Israeli
army maintains a pivotal role in Israeli society. Hence, all
18-year-old Jewish men and women are required, de jure,
to complete mandatory military service.
The first wave of Jewish settlers fled Eastern Europe
to Palestine to escape anti-Semitism by establishing a
Jewish homeland in Zion (and hence—Zionism) in the
latter part of the 19th century. The second wave of settlers,
who were largely responsible for the egalitarian image of
Israeli society, sought personal redemption through a
commitment to both Zionist and Socialist values. They
believed that physical labor, reclamation of the land, and
the establishment of communal settlements in a Jewish
homeland would produce a society with social equality.
This utopian vision regarding a common good meant
sacrificing the rights of individuals and nonhegemonic
groups (Swirski & Safir, 1993). This Zionist–Socialist
way of life came to fruition with the advent of the
“kibbutz”, a communal settlement in which inhabitants
theoretically share all responsibilities and prerogatives.
With the gradual move towards a more capitalistic economy following the Six-Day War and the strengthening of
politics and cultural ties with the United States, Socialist
Zionism lost its hegemonic status, and other, hitherto
disenfranchised, groups started asserting their agendas.
Israel is a land of immigration. Following World
War II, Israel’s population more than tripled by an influx
of Jewish refugees. The trauma of the Holocaust in
Europe and the expulsion of Jews from Islamic countries
could not but leave a distinctive mark on the new society.
The latest major wave of Jewish immigrants has been
from the former Soviet Union, primarily in the 1990s.
During this period, there was a 25% increase in the
Jewish Israeli population.
In addition to these waves of diverse Jewish
immigrants, a fifth of contemporary Israel’s citizens are
Arabs. Within this national minority population, there are
distinct religious/cultural groups, the majority of whom
(16%) are Muslim, with about 70% living in small
villages, Christians (1.9%), who live primarily in cities,
Druze (0.9%), members of a secretive religion living in
relatively closed communities, and other even smaller
groups. These minorities have been increasingly torn
between their identification with the Palestinian people
and their identification as citizens of Israel (Suleiman &
Beit-Hallahmi, 1997).
Following the creation of the State of Israel, Jewish
religious law was integrated into state law. As a result,
rabbinical courts were granted jurisdiction over personal
status. For Muslims, Christians, and Druze too, matters of
personal status were left to the jurisdiction of the respective religious courts. While religious law is incorporated
into Israeli state law, most Israelis do not define
530
Cultural Construction of Gender
531
themselves as religious (Levi, Levinsohn, & Katz, 2000).
These are but a few of the factors that combine to make
contemporary Israel a bizarre amalgam of a socialist
welfare state with egalitarian ideology, a capitalist
economy, and strong religious/traditional influences and
institutions.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Israel is perceived by Westerners, as well as most Israelis,
as being a part of the contemporary Western world, thus
sharing its binary view of gender. Despite this Western
orientation, even secular Jewish society is relatively
traditional, resulting in a more conservative definition of
gender then found elsewhere in the West. In a comparative
study of American and Israeli subjects, researchers found
Israeli participants to be significantly more conservative,
maintaining stronger stereotypes about homosexuality,
femininity, and masculinity, and a greater gender role gap
(Leiblich & Friedman, 1985). This conservative gender
value system is rooted in Jewish traditions and religious
beliefs that impact every facet of life in Israel, and is
compounded by the centrality of the army in Israeli life
(Azmon & Izraeli, 1993).
Israeli society puts greater emphasis on the centrality
of the family, family values, and the mothering role of
women in comparison with most other Western societies
(Azmon & Izraeli, 1993; Safir, 1993a). This can easily be
deduced from the average number of children per Jewish
mother, which was 2.66 in 2000 (Israel Central Bureau of
Statistics, 2001), compared with only 1.87 for the average
American woman in the same year (U.S. Census Bureau,
2001). Current social values encourage women to structure their identity within the context of the family so that
they willingly put their careers in second place (Leiblich,
1993). Today women comprise over 54% of the labor
force, but women’s paid work is considered secondary to
their husband’s work (Fogel-Bijawi, 1999). The prototypical Israeli family generally operates well within the
framework of traditional gender roles that are supported
by social and state institutions. Whilst husbands may
share some of the burden of housework and childcare,
these areas are clearly regarded as women’s responsibility
by both women and men (Safir, 1993a).
The centrality of the traditional family is also
evident linguistically. The Hebrew word for “family”
(mishpacha) is usually applied only to the prototypical
family of mother, father, and children (excluding couples
with no children, single-parent households, and same-sex
partnerships). Another example is the Hebrew word for
“orphan” (yatom), which is applied even to a person who
lost only one parent. The death of a parent entails a break
in the prototypical family, and appears more socially
significant in Israel then elsewhere.
Given this preoccupation with traditional family
structure, infertility is considered a major tragedy. Every
Israeli woman, without regard to an upper age limit,
religion, or marital status, is eligible to request unlimited
attempts at in vitro fertilization. Complete payments for
these treatments are covered by her health insurance,
until she has two children. The number of infertility
clinics in Israel, per capita, is the highest in the world,
with 24 units available to 5.5 million Israelis in the mid1990s (Kahn, 2000). On the other hand, birth control is
not covered by health insurance. Israel also grants special
“birth allowances”; large families receive massive
monetary incentives from the state (Safir, 1993a).
The Jewish religion, and its traditions detailed in a
later section, is one of the major influences that result
in great emphasis on family values. Orthodox Jewish
patriarchal representatives hold immense political power
(Gerabi, 1996), as well as directly influencing Israeli
society and values (Safir, 1986).
An additional patriarchal epicenter in Israeli society
is the army. As Israel has been in an almost continuous
state of war since its establishment, the Israeli Defense
Force (I.D.F.) is a primary influence on Israeli society
as a whole (Gerabi, 1996). The army also overvalues
narrowly defined masculine gender roles. Research
describes this militaristic manhood as an antithesis to the
stereotypical Jew from the European diaspora, who was
viewed as feminine, weak, subservient, and helpless.
Many of the early leaders of the Zionist movement strived
to “restore manhood” to Jewish men by restructuring it to
follow idealized images of European men, healthy in
mind and body and willing to fight and die for the nation
(Gluzman, 1997). This new “Israeli” manhood, replacing
the old “Jewish” manhood, was embodied in two related
images—the pioneer, enduring great hardships to reinstate the national home, and the warrior, defending the
nation and commanding respect. In contemporary Israel,
these ideals of self-reliance, national pride, and selfsacrifice are personified in the combat soldier, whose
image constitutes this hegemonic standard of manhood
(Lomski-Feder & Rapoport, 2000).
532
However, in recent years, there have been more
opportunities for women to enter previously exclusive
masculine roles in the army (Dimitrovsky, Singer, &
Yinon, 1989), a trend that has now sparked off a political
struggle between liberal and religious parties in Israel.
Religious men have refused to serve in units in which
women soldiers serve. Regardless of this public debate,
ethnographic research demonstrates that greater integration of women in the armed forces is contingent on
their assimilation into an all-masculine value system,
while devaluating feminine gender roles to the point of
subjectively breaking away from female identity (SassonLevi, 1997).
In this prototypical masculine world, women are
viewed as contributing their part as long as they assist and
support the (male) soldier (Bloom, 1993). In this militaristic sphere, women are given voice through their relationships with men who shoulder the strain of battle, via their
positions as mothers and wives of warriors (Gillath, 1993).
Thus women’s protests had been viewed as illegitimate nor
had women been perceived as entitled to any form of direct
power or influence (Helman & Rapoport, 1997).
Zionist ethos also sustains the myth that in the early
days of Israel’s statehood, and in pre-state Israel, women
and men were truly equal—an equality that meant sharing “male” activities. They are portrayed as pioneers:
building settlements, paving roads, farming, and serving
in the army (Swirski & Safir, 1993). However, women’s
integration in these activities was only partial; often
they were rejected because they were women. Moreover,
the majority of unmarried women worked as maids in the
houses of the more affluent Jewish families during this
pre-state period (Bernstein, 1987). The overall picture
emerging here is characterized by strong pressure toward
gender conformity, interlaced with a greater value placed
on masculine gender roles (Singer, 1997).
Traditional values are even more central within the
Arab minorities. A majority of the Arab population live in
traditional cultural and social settings, a setting in which
Western ideas about gender equality are frequently irrelevant (Lobel, Mashraki-Pedhatzur, Mantzur, & Libby,
2000). This is especially true for 70% of the Muslim population, who live largely in rural areas and have relatively
little interaction with the Jewish majority (Al-Haj, 1995).
The Arab minorities are torn between two cultural
vectors. On the one hand, they are linked, with varying
degrees of intensity (Abu-Baker, 1985), to Jewish Israeli
society, with its “modern” and “Western” aspirations.
Israelis
On the other hand, they are allied with the traditional
Arab world, which often opposes and resists the values of
the contemporary West (Al-Haj, 1995). According to
Al-Haj, Arab society is a developing society coping
with changes associated with modernization and at the
same time the constraints stemming from being a
nonassimilating national minority in a Jewish state.
One result of these contradictory forces can be seen
in the cleft between the conspicuous process of individual modernization within the Arab communities, and the
persistence of conservative social values and reverential
adherence to age-old traditions. While individual
modernization is reflected in different fields (the rise of
level of education, improvements in standard of living,
wide exposure to mass media, and the development of a
nationwide leadership), many traditional values persist on
the community level (Al-Haj, 1995). The patriarchal/
traditional nature of this society is intensified by the
subjection of this minority to national, political, social,
and cultural oppression (Hassan, 1993).
In this cultural tug-of-war, gender issues are often
viewed as an important bastion of authentic Arab tradition, a cornerstone of Arab culture (Soliman, 1985). Those
who oppose the pull of Israeli Western-like values may be
adamant in their rejection of any liberal or feminist
notions. This complete rejection of Western genderrelated values can be seen in its most extreme form in
the murder of women in the name of “family honor”.
Although infrequent, such cases surface from time to time
in Muslim Arab communities in Israel (Hassan, 1993,
1999). These killings are anathema to liberal values of
women’s (or indeed human) rights, but are still seen by
some as an appropriate reaction to rumors, gossip, and
knowledge of sexual misconduct that become part of the
public sphere (Glazer & Abu Ras, 1994).
Tradition is also important in governing other less
extreme behaviors regarding gender. Many Arab women
are expected to devote their lives completely to their roles
as homemakers in their extended family or clan (Hamula)
(El-Mehairy, 1985; Lobel et al., 2000). In this cultural
system, strict adherence to such social roles is usually
expected of all individuals. In fact, poorer and less
educated Arab women may perceive mothering as the
only future role open for them (Shtarkshall, 1987).
In sum, Israeli Arab society is highly patriarchal and
traditional (Hassan, 1999). Women are largely devalued
by this social system, as is evident elsewhere in the Arab
world (Crawford & Unger, 2000; El-Saadawi, 1980).
Gender over the Life Cycle
This is most true for the majority of Arab women, living
in villages and Arab cities, who rarely have the opportunity to assert themselves in a more liberal context.
Women who attain higher education, or live in mixed
cities (where there is abundant contact with less traditional Jewish values), seem to be less willing to accept
traditional roles ascribed for them by their patriarchal
culture (Abu-Baker, 1985; Seginer, Karayanni, & Mar’i,
1990).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Israeli society, with its strong connections with Jewish
patriarchal traditions, bestows higher status on boys from
infancy. The Brit-Mila, or circumcision ceremony, held
when the infant is 8 days old, becomes a celebration of
the birth of a baby boy. This status is reconfirmed at
age 13 when the vast majority of boys participate in a Bar
Mitzva (coming of age) ceremony (described in more
detail below).
School attendance in Israel is compulsory for both
sexes from the ages of 6 to 16 and public school education
is free. However, higher cultural regard for boys is evident
in teachers’ unconscious, but pronounced, preference for
boys over girls (Ben Tsvi-Meyer, Hertz-Lazarovitz, &
Safir, 1989). This preference impacts on the pupils’
evaluation of boys and girls in the earliest years of grade
school, so that girls also view boys as more outstanding
when evaluating classmates (Safir, Ben Tzvi-Meyer,
Hertz-Lazarovitz, & Kuppermintz, 1992). These authors
have suggested that the unusual findings indicating boys’
superiority on tests of both verbal and performance
abilities (Safir, 1986), as opposed to girls’ superiority in
grade-point average throughout all levels of schooling,
may be attributed to girls’ insecurity in taking ability tests,
resulting from this continuous cultural preference of boys.
In contrast to these unusual differences between
Israeli boys and girls, the social experiences of children of
both genders are generally similar. Unlike other Western
countries, Jewish children of both sexes are encouraged,
from a very early age, to play in outdoor settings. This
early gregarious behavior, in combination with the mild to
hot Israeli climate, makes playing outdoors a preferred
activity for many girls, as well as boys. Such outdoor
games are usually physical and lively, quite the opposite
533
of what is expected of “girls” elsewhere in the West (Safir,
Rosenmann, & Kloner, 2003).
Social interaction between the sexes also begins at
an earlier age then in other Western countries, because of
socialist norms, encouraging women to work outside of
their homes (Lavee & Katz, 2003). As a result, day-care
facilities are provided throughout Israel for children from
age 6 months. For example, in 1988, 67% of 2-year-olds,
92% of 3-year-olds, and 99% of 4-year-olds were in some
preschool setting (Izraeli & Safir, 1993).
Additional factors that mitigate behavioral
differences between Israeli girls and boys are the “Israeli
ethos” and the hegemonic Israeli narrative, which emphasized the importance of enduring hardship for the sake of
the common national good. In addition, hiking throughout the country to experience it “hands on” is socially
approved, often occurring under the auspices of one of
Israel’s many scout youth movements, where boys and
girls take part in the same activities and are taught the
same national values.
These activities, in which young Israeli girls
participate, could easily be classified as “tomboyish” in the
United States, but are simply the norm in Israel (Safir et al.,
2003). Unfortunately, it appears that the ever-increasing
cultural impact of American values on Israeli society is
changing these gender-blind behavioral patterns. A recent
study provides alarming evidence of one such possible
negative cultural impact on Israeli children. This study
reported an increasing spread of dissatisfaction with body
image, as early as elementary school, in both girls and boys
(Flaisher-Kellner, 2002).
Puberty and Adolescence
While most Jewish Israelis do not self-identify as
religious, the majority participate in some religious ceremonies and traditions (Levi et al., 2000). The most notable
example of such ceremony is the Bar-Mitzva, which is a
religious rite signifying the transition from boyhood to
manhood. Following his Bar-Mitzva, a boy is considered
an adult man for all religious purposes. It is customary to
hold a Bar-Mitzva celebration, to which hundreds of
guests are invited for a six-course meal served in special
reception halls. In especially lavish celebrations, one often
hears the comment “the only thing missing was the bride.”
While the Bar-Mitzva is a grand milestone on the road
from boyhood to manhood, girls’ transition usually goes
publicly unnoticed (Izraeli & Safir, 1993).
534
Another factor that maintains the spotlight on boys
is the centrality of army in Israeli life, and in its definition of manhood. For teenaged boys, the army has a
pivotal role in their transition into manhood and inauguration into the Israeli collective (Lomski-Feder &
Rapoport, 2000). In light of looming military service,
research has revealed that Jewish Israeli adolescent boys,
unlike their Arab Israeli and American counterparts, see
their future as inextricably intertwined with the future of
their respective national collective (Magen, 1983).
In the Arab community, most teenagers do not serve
in the army (Druze and Bedouin are exceptions). However,
Arab culture is highly collectivistic because of the intense
nature of family ties within this society (Lobel et al.,
2000). This produces even greater demands for gender role
conformity (Lavee & Katz, 2003). In fact, gender
conformity is sufficiently strong in Arab adolescents to
bias dramatically their judgment of a highly qualified,
albeit feminine, male candidate. Research participants
judged this candidate less favorably than an inferior
masculine candidate. Judgment bias, based on normative
gender roles, was much more pronounced in Arab participants than in Jewish participants (Lobel et al., 2000).
For teenaged Arab girls, this highly gendered culture
demands their strict adherence to roles of sexual purity,
which becomes central with the start of menstruation.
Social supervision of these girls is meticulous, and their
behavior is constantly scrutinized (Hassan, 1993).
Attainment of Adulthood
As was previously mentioned, mandatory army service
has a pivotal role in defining the Israeli adult, and in
particular the Israeli man. Army service, usually commencing immediately following completion of high
school, replaces the American experience of “going off to
college.” For most Israeli boys, army service is the first
time they have to fend for themselves away from their
families and homes. Girls are usually stationed near to,
and continue to reside in, their family homes.
In a more substantial sense, once in the army, young
men are expected to make life-and-death decisions.
While men are assigned to combat units, women have
recently been “awarded” the privilege of volunteering for
combat units. A minimal number of women currently
serve in these units. This type of service places a great
deal of responsibility on the shoulders of the young
individual, and is a distinct break from the years of
Israelis
schooling. Because boys and girls are drafted into the
army at age 18, they are considered to be full-fledged
adults at this age and are eligible to vote, purchase
tobacco, and drink alcohol.
The army is an institution that overvalues masculine
traits, and is especially relevant to the construction of the
hegemonic Israeli man (Lomski-Feder & Rapoport,
2000). Men who serve in combat positions are viewed as
the epiphany of masculinity, maturity, and character.
These attributes supposedly make them romantically and
sexually appealing to women, and indeed, a few years ago
Shakel was a slang term widely used to denote a man’s
man, especially in a sexually context. (This slang term is
an abbreviation of “fighting combative bull” in Hebrew.)
On the other hand, men who do not serve in the army
are often ostracized by mainstream Israeli society, and are
reinstituted as the “other” (Lomski-Feder & Rapoport,
2000). Numerous job offers require completion of army
service, thus signaling clearly the line between the
normative and the “other”: the Arab, the dropout, the
inadequate, the outsider.
Middle Age and Old Age
Israeli society’s emphasis on familial ties affects the way
that elderly people are viewed and treated. The majority
of older adults live in close proximity to their offspring,
and remain involved in their children’s life as long as their
health permits. Older parents are frequently consulted
by their adult children. They also often take a role of
secondary caretakers to their grandchildren, thus easing
the load from the parents (Lavee & Katz, 2003). As
parents become elderly, they often move in with their children’s families. As a result, more then 95% of the elderly
who are in good physical shape, and 76% of the disabled,
live with their children (Brodsky, 1998; cited in Lavee &
Katz, 2003). This appears to be especially true in the more
traditional sectors of both Arab and Jewish society.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
In its construction of gender, each society assigns
different attributes for each gender, clarifying the role
each should adopt. Several studies indicate that Israeli
construction of gender-related personality attributes is
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
different to that found elsewhere in the West (Lobel,
Rothman, Abramovizt & Maayan, 1999; Safir et al.,
2003; Safir, Peres, Lichtenstien, Hoch, & Shepher, 1982).
These studies utilizing gender trait inventories find that
the range/number of gender relevant traits is more limited
in Israel. It appears to us that, while the range of behavioral traits perceived as overlapping for both genders is
greater in Israel than elsewhere, gender-specific behavior
is very narrowly defined. Thus, while many traits and
behaviors are typical for both women and men, each
gender is expected to conform to a very narrow range of
stereotyped behavior patterns (Safir et al., 1982). In these
studies, the list of masculine and feminine items was
similar to those found in the United States, but halved in
number. As the range is more limited, deviation is more
easily discernible, enabling greater social pressure to
conform. This is evident in gender role identity as well:
For instance, many more Israeli women, in comparison
with American women, self-identified as feminine and
fewer self-identified as androgynous (Safir et al., 2003).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In 2000, 77.5% of Jewish women and 29.7% of Arab
women were in the civilian Israeli labor force (Adva
Center, 2002). In contrast, 85% of Jewish men and 79.5%
of Arab men participate in the work force. Even with high
level of participation by Jewish women, their salaries are
62% of men’s wages. However, since women work
35 hours a week, on average, and men 42 hours a week,
an hourly comparison reduced the gap to 82% (Adva
Center, 2002). This occurs despite the fact that, as early
as 1965, laws were passed, for equal pay for equal work
(Raday, 1993b).
Efroni (1988), in the most extensive survey of salary
differences between male and female civil servants,
reported that women earned 78% of what men with
similar qualifications earned. She reported that if women
were paid on the basis of their qualifications, they should
have been paid 102% of men’s salaries. Efroni’s report
was widely read and sparked a public outcry. As a result
committees were created throughout all governmental
agencies to improve the status of women. Efroni (personal communication, November 14, 2002) informed us
that a recent internal examination by the Treasury found
that the relative differences in men and women’s salaries
in civil service (20–30%) remain unchanged today.
535
In addition to gender differences in earnings, women
and men also tend to work in different sectors, with more
than half of Jewish women employed as clerical and
service workers (Adva Center, 2002), as opposed to only
24.6% of Jewish men. About 35% of both genders are
employed in professional, academic, and managerial
sectors, but, as elsewhere, men tend to occupy the top
positions (Efroni, 1988).
The socialist ideology of the kibbutz viewed the
traditional patriarchal family as the cornerstone of
capitalist oppression. As a result, men and women were
accepted as equal members, and tasks which were
typically performed by women in the traditional family
became communal responsibility. However, the implicit
belief that women are “naturally” better suited to nurturing tasks meant that women were assigned to childcare
and teaching, which became long-term jobs. The less
fortunate women were rotated through nonprofessional
work duties such as laundry, kitchen, and light agriculture
work. Although this resulted in a status hierarchy, each
person received the same stipend (Safir, 1993b).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
As in other Mediterranean countries, lunchtime is the major
meal of the day, with businesses closing between 2 p.m. and
4 p.m. Although this practice of closing businesses disappeared in the 1960s, dinner remains a light meal. The short
school day reinforces the status of lunch as the main meal,
seriously curtailing mothers’ ability to take on full-time jobs
(Izraeli & Safir, 1993). However, Lieblich (1993) found that
Israeli career women were not resentful of their husbands’
lack of participation in childcare and housework when compared with a matching American group. As a result, Israeli
women experienced less role conflict. These women
reported that their careers take second place to their family
roles as mothers, wives, and caretakers, roles that are seen
as more central to their sense of identity. Mothers often
experience increases in their caretaker/nurturing roles when
their children serve in the army—especially those with sons
in combat units (Azmon & Izraeli, 1993). For example, the
army does not provide laundry service, and soldiers’
uniforms must be washed and ironed at home over the short
weekend. In addition to doing the laundry, mothers are
expected to “spoil” their children by preparing special
meals and treats that can be taken back to the army.
536
Israelis
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
In a nation that perceives itself as being under constant
threat of extinction, the major focus of Israeli politics is on
security issues (Gerabi, 1996). The discourse of national
security remains an almost exclusively masculine arena
(Gillath, 1993), dominated by men who came to the forefront of national politics following an illustrious military
carrier. Since being a general, if not Chief of Staff, appears
to be a prerequisite for most high-level political positions
in government, women are effectively excluded from the
national decision-making processes. In fact, in the 29th
Knesset (which has the largest number of women members
of Knesset (MKs) ever—16 out of 120), Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, only appointed three women ministers out of
24 available ministerial positions (Knesset Site, 2002).
This republican view of citizenship, which conjoins
combat army service and entrance into the political sphere,
also denies women’s grass-roots social movements their
legitimacy (Helman & Rapoport, 1997). When women
entered the national debate and dared to voice unpopular
antiwar views, they were seen as transgressing against
their republican duty to support the fighting men. They
were perceived as almost guilty of treason, failing in their
duties towards their men and their nation (Herzog, 1996).
The all-encompassing importance of national
security issues in Israeli politics was also detrimental to
efforts to raise a feminist or women’s rights political
agenda. These issues were seen as trivial in comparison
to the life-and-death questions of security, in particular as
they were viewed as apolitical, domestic, and private matters, not pertinent to “serious” politics (Herzog, 1996).
Once introduced into the public sphere, women’s
agendas usually collide with those of the ultra-orthodox
sectors in Israeli society. These sectors wield a great deal
of political power because no major political party has
managed to obtain a majority in the Knesset without
incorporating them into a coalition.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
As was previously noted, Israel defines itself as a “Jewish
State,” referring to both the national and the religious
facets of Jewish identity. The fact that Jewish law is
incorporated into state law lends great influence to the
views of the rabbinical apparatus, which controls all personal legal status—from birth to death. In Jewish religious
courts, children, retarded individuals, and women are not
considered competent witnesses. It is worth noting that the
elaborate state rabbinical system, and the Minister of
Religious Affairs, and political appointments in the
Ministry of Religious Affairs have been manned solely by
men (Swirski & Safir, 1993).
In fact, the religious establishment’s rejection of the
concept of gender equality is one of the major reasons why
Israel does not, to this day, have a constitution. Maintaining
the status quo between the religious and secular segments
of Israeli society has been deemed more important then
signing a binding constitution declaring that women are
men’s equals in every sense (Raday, 1993a).
This interaction between contemporary ideas and
age-old traditions is also evident in the lives of the vast
majority of Israelis, who do not define themselves as religious (Levi et al., 2000). Even in the relatively secular
portion of society it is the norm, during the High
Holidays, to attend prayer services at Orthodox synagogues (which receive state funding, unlike the small
number of Reform and Conservative synagogues in
Israel). Only men can actively participate in these prayer
services as well as perform the Kadish prayer for the
dead. In addition, men’s daily morning prayer includes
the Hebrew phrase Barukh shelo assani isha (“Blessed is
God for not creating me a woman”). In these Orthodox
synagogues, women are hidden from men’s sight and are
excluded from praying aloud, so that they do not distract
the men. Even in the traditional Orthodox wedding ceremony, the woman is not an active but a silent participant.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Since Israel is a traditional gender-conservative society,
women are disadvantaged in many public arenas. On the
other hand, the Israeli woman is glorified as the mother
of the nation and, in a family-oriented society like Israel,
such a position may provide certain privileges.
SEXUALITY
Aspects of sexuality vary drastically between different segments of Israeli society. For example, while
cohabitation is acceptable for secular Israelis, virginity is
required of brides in the religious Jewish and Moslem sectors (Lavee & Katz, 2003), and gynecologists have developed a specialization in the reconstruction of the hymen.
Husband–Wife Relationship
537
When seeking help with sexual problems, Israelis
generally emphasize issues pertaining to fertility and not
feelings of individual dissatisfaction (Safir, 1999).
Despite this, men’s potency is a major element in the masculine ideal. A private clinic that treats (im)potence, with
branches nationwide, advertises its service on the radio
and in daily newspapers. An advertisement direct at
middle-aged men has recently been appearing on
television indicating that men can be helped to regain their
masculinity by asking their doctor to prescribe Viagra.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
In the Jewish secular sector of Israel, grammar school
children use the term “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” to
designate special friends of the other sex. However, such
relationships are usually kept within the peer group, and
the early “couple” will not usually meet outside their peer
group. Later, usually in early to middle adolescence, more
romantically oriented pairs will form and dating will commence. Casual dating is not encouraged, and usually a
couple will date for at least a few months. These young
couples sometimes stay together for long periods of time,
and eventually marry. Early sexual experiences may be a
part of these committed relationships, even at a relatively
early age. Many more couples form later, during or following mandatory military service (Lavee & Katz, 2003).
The median age of first marriage has been rising
(Table 1). The only exception to this pattern is found for
Muslim women (as well as ultra-orthodox Jewish
women) whose age of first marriage has remained
virtually constant. This finding also indicates the everdeepening cultural cleavage between secular Westernoriented Israeli sectors, and the more traditional segments
of Arab and Jewish societies.
Table 1. Median Age of First Marriage, by Sex and Religion,
in Three Time Periods
1970
1985
2000
Women
Men
Women
Men
Women
Men
Jew
Muslim
Christian
21.5
24.1
22.7
25.7
24.4
26.7
19.3
23.4
19.8
23.7
20.3
25
21
27
22.4
27.3
23.1
28.3
In ultra-orthodox Jewish and Muslim communities
the family is heavily involved in matchmaking. The
young woman has veto power over the husband candidate. If she accepts him, the marriage is quickly arranged.
In these communities, special permission is often sought
to enable the young woman to marry at 17. In fact, the
minimum age of marriage was set by law at age 18 in
order to prevent these communities from arranging
marriages for girls aged 15–16, or even younger girls
(Hassan, 1993; Lavee & Katz, 2003).
Upon marriage, the wife moves to and becomes
part of her husband’s family in traditional Arab sectors.
As a result, investing in a daughter’s education was not
seen as relevant, as her family would not benefit from
this investment. This attitude is changing in the more
socially affluent sectors of Arab society (Mar’i & Mar’i,
1985).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The emphasis on family life is clearly evident, and the
vast majority of Israelis of all walks of life do, in fact,
choose to marry. The family centeredness of Israeli society also affects couples’ priorities in marriage, and many
Israelis feel that joint children are a sufficient reason to
maintain an otherwise unfulfilling marriage (Lavee &
Katz, 2003).
Since religious law governs all personal matters,
divorce is not a judicial act, and only men can grant
divorce. If the husband does not agree to divorce his
wife—she cannot remarry. If she divorces in civil courts
outside Israel and remarries, any children born from
this new relationship would be considered mamzerim
(bastards—a child born to an adulteress). Under Israeli
Jewish law, these children and their offspring cannot
marry for 10 generations. If a married man has a relationship with an unmarried woman, these children have
the same rights and standing as his children from his
marriage. There are even provisions for a man to marry a
secondly wife, if his first wife will not agree to the
divorce (Raday, 1993a). The only situation in which a
divorce might be granted to a woman without her husband’s consent would be if she could prove that her husband is infertile. The fact that the husband can refuse to
allow his wife a divorce, thereby placing her in limbo
should she wish to have a family with another man, gives
the husband great power. It should be noted, however,
538
that if both partners want a divorce, it is very easy to
obtain.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Israeli society is becoming increasing open to liberal
ideas about gender equality. This may be attributed to
the fact that the early socialist pressure to conform to the
collective’s needs and values is decreasing. Western, and
specifically American, emphasis on civil rights and
individualism are reflected in the national discourse
regarding social and economic disparities between men
and women, and other minority groups (Efroni, 1988). We
have also noted that more women are moving into nontraditional positions in the army, and into other male-dominated professions. It appears to us that, unfortunately,
these changes are often only “skin-deep.” In the case of
previously male-dominated professions, such as law and
medicine, women are concentrated in the public sector
where the work structure is more compatible with their
roles as wives and mothers, while men work in the private
sector with all the benefits that this entails (Izraeli, 1993).
As noted previously, some minor changes are also
occurring in the structure of the Israeli family, with the
rising age of first marriage and the increase of divorce
rates (Lavee & Katz, 2003). These changes notwithstanding, the family-oriented nature of Israeli society is
not presently threatened.
Perhaps the most outstanding changes have occurred
in the public sphere, with regard to both mainstream and
radical women’s movements actively and publicly
demanding changes to “right the wrongs.” Even the rightwing National Religious Party has guaranteed to hold the
fifth seat on its list for a woman in the national elections
of January 28, 2003.
As a result of the breakdown of the national
consensus following the Lebanon War in 1982, women’s
antiwar movements have begun to influence issues of
national security. Employing their legitimate, almost
sacred, status as mothers, several nationwide grassroots women’s movements have affected the national
discourse on matters of security and international
relations (Gillath, 1993). These women evoked their
powers as mothers, thus gaining access to mainstream
politics. However, they did not contest the basic tenets of
the family-oriented Israeli society.
Israelis
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Italians
Victoria A. Goddard
ALTERNATIVE NAME
Italians are also known as Italiani.
LOCATION
Italy consists of a peninsular mainland, the two large
islands of Sicily and Sardinia, and a number of smaller
islands. The physical environment of Italy is very varied,
ranging from the Alps in the north, to the fertile plain of
the Po river in the northeast, to the rugged coastline of
the Mediterranean. Rome, Italy’s capital city, is also the
location of the Vatican City, the center of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Naples, which is the focus of this chapter, is Italy’s
third city, with a population of 1.2 million. The city is
located in the region of Campania and is the major urban
center of the south. Founded by the Greeks, the city came
under the domination of many outside forces throughout
its history but it also played the role of a political and
cultural center to a number of different polities. For
example, Naples was the capital of the Bourbon Kingdom
until the unification of Italy in 1860. With its spectacular
bay, Naples has been a major tourist center since the
19th century. But the city’s grand architecture and beautiful natural location have been contrasted with the
conditions of life of much of its population, who have
gained a reputation for resourcefulness in the face of
long-term poverty and underemployment.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
In much of the anthropological literature, Italy would be
included within the Mediterranean ethnographic region,
which has been frequently characterized in terms of
a cultural system based on “honor and shame.” These
values are embedded in gender relations and local
discourses of sexuality, usually entailing a strong
emphasis on male reputation and on the control of
women’s sexuality (Gilmore, 1987). But although the
codes of honor and shame have generated an extensive
and interesting literature on gender and sexuality in the
area, they are of limited use in the Italian context
(Goddard, 1994). Indeed, any convenient characterization
of gender ideals and relations is problematic, as Italy is
highly diversified in terms of physical, cultural, and
social characteristics.
Throughout the modern period the Italian peninsula
consisted of numerous political entities, ranging from
large kingdoms to small city-states, until the Risorgimento
movement promoted and supported the unification of Italy
under the leadership of Piedmont and the House of Savoy.
Unification was accomplished in 1860, bringing together
very different kinds of economic, political, and social
structures. The incorporation of a semi-feudal south into
the new Italian nation-state did little to accelerate the
development of the area. On the contrary, the differences
between the north and the south have endured and have
long been the subject of debate and policy. Today, the standard of living of the southern population has improved
dramatically compared with the poverty that prevailed
after World War II. But the south remains different from
the rest of the country. In a country with amongst the highest rates of unemployment in Europe, the south displays
higher levels of unemployment and poverty. Here there
are also higher levels of fertility than the rest of the
country, more marriages, and larger families.
But despite the continuing significance of the differences between southern and northern regions, a simple
north–south dichotomy fails to account for the complexities of Italy. Bagnasco (1977) has made a convincing
case for the specificities of the central and northeastern
regions, suggesting that there are in fact “three Italies”
rather than simply two, each with their distinct history,
culture, and economy. These regional differences are also
evident at the level of the private domestic arena, there
being important differences in family types and in
patterns of gender relations between these regions.
Despite drives to create a coherent national whole
since the Unification, most notably under the fascist
540
Cultural Construction of Gender
regime, regional and local variations remain strong.
There have been a number of centrifugal forces at work.
Observers have pointed to the phenomenon of campanilismo, a term derived from campanile, the church bell
tower, to suggest the importance of loyalties attaching to
the vicinity of the local church. A number of political
and anthropological works have pointed to the strength of
attachment to the locality and of suspiciousness toward
outsiders, including representatives of the state (e.g.,
Silverman, 1975b). Since the 1980s, the decentralization
of government to the regions has enhanced regional
differences and resulted in significant variations in local
policy and the provision of welfare services and support
(Bimbi, 2000).
On the other hand, there have also been powerful
unifying forces. The Catholic Church and different strands
of Catholic ideology have been widely influential and
have shaped national policy, particularly with regard to the
family, sexuality, and reproduction. The Church has
upheld the centrality of the family and has exerted a strong
influence on the kind of family and the associated gender
roles that are supported by government. The influence of
the Church has meant that, in fact, state welfare policy has
never seriously challenged the “family paradigm”
whereby the family is the principal provider of care,
support, and welfare (Bimbi, 2000; Saraceno, 1994).
The term “familism” has often been used in connection with Italian society to refer to the importance of ideologies and practices that place the family unit firmly at
the center of individual and social reproductive strategies
and ideologies. Some authors have stressed the negative
effects of what they have seen as the isolationist effects of
familism (Banfield, 1958). Banfield’s analysis of a poor
rural center in the south of Italy in the 1950s argued that
“amoral familism” prevented wider cooperation and was
responsible for the backward conditions of the village.
Others have focused on the relations of cooperation, pooling, and solidarity that familism is able to sustain and
legitimize (Ginsborg, 1990; Goddard, 1996; Saraceno,
1994). Ginsborg uses the term “moral familism” to
describe forms of collective action, such as those initiated
by the families of the 110 victims of a terrorist attack at
Bologna station in 1980 or the organization of a group of
mothers to combat the sale of hard drugs to children.
Despite declining birth rates, and Italy has one of the
lowest fertility rates in the world, the family continues to
be a strong and important institution (Ruspini, 2000).
In central Italy the family has been identified as the
541
keystone of a specifically Italian version of capitalism
based on small firms and strong family-based solidarity
(see Yanagisako, 2002). In the south, the family constitutes
a refuge and a safety net in the face of unemployment and
poverty (Goddard, 1996; Ruspini, 2000). In either case, the
prevalence of the family and the influence of the Catholic
Church on the ways in which the family is conceptualized
and upheld have important implications for the opportunities open to men and women in Italian society.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Alongside the regional variations that characterize Italy,
there are striking differences with regard to gender roles
and ideals, depending on region, class, and generation.
But it is possible to make some generalizations, particularly where the connections between the family and
gender constructs are concerned. Given the centrality of
the family, it is perhaps not surprising that the qualities
associated with parenting, and especially with motherhood, shape and inspire ideal gender identities.
Men and women are expected to be different, in
terms of physical, cultural, and emotional characteristics.
So where men might be expected to be strong and
assertive, women should ideally be gentle, sympathetic,
and nurturing. But beyond these very general expectations, men and women display a wide range of characteristics and forms of behavior. In Naples, although women
may defer to the opinions of men on some subjects, or
assume a subdued attitude in the presence of their
husbands or other men, in other circumstances they will
quite appropriately express their opinions assertively and
interact freely with both men and women.
Throughout Italy there are different, or indeed
competing, ideals of masculinity and femininity. For
example, research in the city of Florence illustrates the
ways in which working-class men elaborate alternative
measures of masculinity. These enable them (or some of
them) to achieve a successful masculine identity in the
absence of the means to achieve the ideals dictated by
middle-class values and expectations and which are
largely promoted by the media (de Bromhead, 1999).
Similarly, there are women who occupy influential
positions in the public sphere (see “Leadership in Public
Arenas”), and work and career are increasingly important
542
Italians
sources of fulfillment and pride for women. However,
despite these variations and changes, it is still the case
that the family provides a crucial context for evaluating
gender performance across the divides of class and
region. In particular, ideals regarding women and
womanhood are still largely embedded in the family.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Sydel Silverman’s research, conducted in the 1960s in a
community in the province of Perugia in central Italy,
suggests that the life cycles of women are likely to differ
significantly from those of men, being marked more
strongly by and in a closer relationship with reproduction
(Silverman, 1975a, 1975b). But in Colleverde, where her
research was carried out, there were also significant
differences amongst women, particularly regarding the
points at which life crises occur and the intensity of such
crises.
Silverman notes that in general there was little
concern over the changes associated with puberty or with
menopause. Instead, the critical period in a woman’s life
was the period of courtship. Courtship initiated a crisis
and a state of insecurity that was only partially resolved
at marriage and fully resolved only at the birth of the first
child. Silverman (1975b) points to a parallel between her
findings in this rural area of central Italy, and those of
Anne Parsons who was working in Naples at the time.
Parsons (1967) also indicated that the years of courtship
were the most distressing in a woman’s life. The stress
and anxiety related to the numerous pressures that the girl
was subject to once she was engaged to be married, not
least those provoked by the turmoil of the relationship
itself. Young fiancées were also vulnerable to gossip. But
Silverman shows that in the central Italian area where she
carried out research, the intensity of the crisis varied
significantly, especially between girls in the villages,
for whom a good reputation is an important asset, and
the girls belonging to mezzadri farming families. The
mezzadria is a form of sharecropping, in which family
labor is a major resource. This meant that the girls living
on the farms were valued for their contribution as workers, and their reproductive capacity was a clear asset so
that they were less vulnerable to gossip regarding their
sexual conduct. For example, in such families a premarital pregnancy might be welcomed rather than be seen as
shameful (Silverman, 1975b).
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The socialization of boys and girls needs to be contextualized within the family and the organization of the
household. Whereas girls are likely to assist in household
chores, this would not usually be expected of boys. In
Naples even young girls might take on quite heavy
responsibilities in the home, especially when their
mothers were at work. However, this situation was
reversed in rural areas. Although girls continued to help
in the household, boys had a heavier burden of work,
helping with the agricultural tasks (Davis, 1973). In either
case, the division of labor in the household clearly
endorses the sense that boys and girls are different and
can expect to have different life experiences and rewards.
Children are highly valued in Italian families. In
Naples, babies and toddlers are treated with a great deal
of affection and indulgence. Physical affection is shown
openly and effusively. It is not unusual for a baby to be
passed around a gathering, each person in turn bestowing
some form of caress or appreciation on the child.
Differences between boy and girl babies are recognized
and elaborated. Boys and girls are dressed differently,
they are associated with different colors, and given
different toys. Boy babies and toddlers in particular elicit
a lot of attention. Playful reference to a boy’s penis is
considered quite appropriate, and a female carer such as
the mother, aunt, or older sister might play with a baby’s
penis while changing and cleaning him, or while playing.
Slightly older boys will be teased and tested for what
many considered to be desirable masculine traits, such as
bravery and defiance and willingness to stand up for
themselves and their family. One 5-year-old boy
provoked both pride and hilarity when he responded
defiantly and courageously to a mock attack on his father,
undeterred by the size and age of his opponent. Davis
(1973) recounts a similar situation that he witnessed in
Pisticci, in the south of Italy, in the 1960s, when a boy
was tested through verbal provocation. Other accounts
and observations suggest that teasing is used quite widely
as a socialization strategy to elicit the appropriate
response from a child who is then rewarded when a
suitable reaction is forthcoming.
Little girls would not be engaged in the same kind
of play as boys. Instead, jokes and comments would focus
on what are considered to be a girl’s feminine qualities.
A little girl is likely to be praised because of her prettiness or her charm, although the qualities of cleverness
Gender over the Life Cycle
and mental and verbal agility are desirable and encouraged in both girls and boys. So, although all children are
treated with great affection and receive a lot of attention,
the ways in which they are approached and the expectations expressed toward them differ so that in a number of
ways boys and girls are encouraged to develop different
strengths and qualities.
Puberty and Adolescence
For families who adhere to Catholicism, and even for
many who do not, a child’s first communion is an important ritual occasion. In theory it marks the transition from
childhood into a process leading to adulthood. But first
communion takes place when a child is young and it is
only loosely and implicitly associated with puberty. In
fact, the onset of puberty itself is somewhat unmarked
and unremarkable.
The experience of adolescents varies, not least as a
result of their family’s economic status. It was not
unusual for men and women of the poorer districts of
Naples born prior to the 1970s to have started working for
wages in some form at a very early age, some as young
as 8 or 10, many more starting paid employment around
the age of 14. Although such children would still live at
home and would be expected to show respect for their
parents, the work experience could foment a greater sense
of responsibility and maturity in them.
Men and women with children in the 1970s and
1980s showed a strong commitment to the education of
their children, and rates of completion of schooling have
been improving steadily. This means that adolescents
spend more time at school and remain dependent for
longer, although many will contribute in some way or
other. As mentioned, girls are more likely than boys to
make a direct contribution to the household by performing household chores and caring for younger siblings or
even nephews or nieces. At the same time, throughout
Italy girls have entered education and succeeded to the
extent that they are surpassing the achievements of boys.
Adolescence is a time when boys and girls may
initiate relationships with the opposite sex. Girls, in
particular, may become seriously involved in a stable
relationship by the age of 16 or 17. If this is the case, the
girl’s social life will change significantly, as it will tend
to revolve more around her fiancé and the families of the
young couple than her peer group.
543
Attainment of Adulthood
The attainment of adulthood is a gradual process and
several events can be seen as steps toward adulthood.
Earning an income is one such step, although many
Neapolitans start their work careers whilst very young
and still very much under the authority of their families.
For many others work is an erratic and unreliable basis
for building a sense of identity. A clearer marker of entry
into adulthood is marriage and in particular having a
child. With adulthood and parenthood come heavy
responsibilities, and the expectations regarding both men
and women will change. Although the situation has been
changing over the last decade or so and careers are important for women as well as men, having a family of one’s
own, and in particular having children, is highly desirable
and indeed remains a priority. This is evident in the
figures that show that many women leave work after
marriage and especially after the birth of their first child.
So, despite changes in education and the labor market,
motherhood and, to a lesser extent, marriage still represent an obstacle to the open and full employment of
women (Bettio & Villa, 2000).
For many women in particular, establishing a household of their own is a means of becoming autonomous
and exercising some control over their time and space.
Even those who were content to live in the parental home
generally aspired to having a family at some time in the
future. On the other hand, housing shortages in much of
Italy mean that many children are forced to remain in the
family home well into adulthood.
Middle Age and Old Age
Men and women whose children have grown up, and
perhaps had children of their own, continue to play an
important role in the life of their families. As mentioned,
there are several obstacles to establishing an independent
household and adult children may well remain in the
parental home for many years. During this time they are
likely to expect, and probably receive, care from their
parents, especially their mothers.
For many families, especially those that require both
partners’ involvement in wage work, having access to
their children’s grandparents can be crucial. In many
households in the poorer districts of Naples, grandparents, and especially grandmothers, would take on a great
deal of responsibility for their grandchildren. In some
544
Italians
instances meals might be shared by a group of kin to help
those who are short of income, or children might eat or
even sleep in their grandparents’ homes if their own
homes were small or inadequate.
So families continue to be an important focus for the
individual and, where physical proximity allows it, family
and kin will interact on a daily basis. Peer-group socializing is also important for many people. Women will tend
to visit friends and family and socialize in each other’s
homes. Men are more likely to meet outside the home, in
coffee bars or in one of the local social clubs associated
with political, civic, or religious organizations, where they
might play cards and chat. In the older age group there
appears to be a greater emphasis on single-sex groups, and
socializing as couples appeared to be far less frequent.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
It is important to recognize that in Italy there are currently
a number of alternative views of masculinity and femininity, not least those promoted by the media, so that a
number of different personality traits are quite acceptable
in men and women. However, a fairly “hegemonic” form
of masculinity (Cornwall & Lindisfarne, 1994) would
usually entail some quite specific characteristics, such as
assertiveness and self-confidence, virility, and the ability
to support one’s family. Depending on the context, this
might also entail a certain verbal competence, or the ability to drink without losing control, or to display physical
prowess in some field. The counterpart to such a “hegemonic” masculinity would be a gentle, submissive, and
attentive woman, a good mother to her children, and a
caring partner to her husband. The demands of such a
model of masculinity can result in a dichotomous view of
women, whereby the “good” and virtuous woman, ideally
suited for motherhood, is contrasted with the “bad”
sexually and morally loose woman whose behavior is in
direct contrast with that of the virtuous wife.
Although these various stereotypes would be
recognized in Naples, the differences between “hegemonic” and alternative masculinities on the one hand,
and good and bad women on the other were actually
blurred and contradictory. A quiet gentle man might be
respected as much as, or more than, a confident extrovert.
And although many women, wives in particular, might be
quietly submissive in the presence of their husbands or
fathers, they may equally be talkative, assertive and
humorous, and quite ribald without eliciting criticism.
In fact, both men and women are expected to participate
in, and contribute to, a social gathering. Humor, wit, and
self-confidence are qualities that are appreciated in both
women and men.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
In Italy, personal relations associated with the family and
with kinship are important resources for cooperation
and social solidarity. This was very clearly the case in
Naples, where kinship and neighborhood networks were
extremely important sources of support and cooperation,
especially for women. Neighbors might help each other
in a number of ways—with childcare, lending some
crucial ingredient for the preparation of the midday
meal, sometimes assisting with work, or providing
companionship and support when this was needed.
The relationship between a mother and her children
was considered to be especially strong and enduring.
Mother–daughter relations were especially important in
the everyday life of women, especially in the old quarters
of the city where families might live in close proximity.
However, a shortage of affordable housing means that
many young couples are unable to find accommodation
close to their families and are forced to find alternative
(and usually better) accommodation on the outskirts of the
city, making such intensive contacts extremely difficult.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
It is now widely accepted throughout Italy that women
have a role to play in the labor market (Bimbi, 1993).
However, the opportunities for paid employment are
unevenly distributed and in many regions there is an
acute shortage of jobs, so that women’s aspirations
remain unfulfilled. In Naples, a combination of limited
work opportunities and the constraints of parenting and
domestic duties encouraged many women to become
outworkers (Goddard, 1996). In Baunei, a village in
north Sardinia, women did aspire to working outside the
home but the lack of opportunities meant that only a few
managed to live up to this ideal. At the same time, the
content of housework has changed. The growth of a
Leadership in Public Arenas
consumer culture has radically altered the technology of
domestic work and shaped the aspirations of men and
women. These various changes mean that now women
who are at home feel frustrated because “to be a housewife with few cash resources of one’s own in a consumer
society is very different from the role played by the selfrespected female heads of household in a subsistence
economy” (Assmuth, 1997, p. 17).
As in other parts of Europe, the Italian labor market
is markedly gendered. Women tend to fill certain niches
and to be concentrated in certain trades such as textiles,
garments, and services. But women have played a crucial
role in another important dimension of the Italian economy: during the 1980s Italy became known as the exponent of a new version of capitalism, frequently described
as “flexible accumulation” (Piore & Sabel, 1984). The
principal characteristic of this form of production was its
reliance on the family as a basis for entrepreneurial activities. In the north and center of the country the family
provided the resources for a successful strategy of accumulation. Although families were also important in the
south, for pooling labor and resources, the different
conditions in the region tended to act as a brake on the
consolidation of successful family enterprises.
The leather trade of Naples was a particularly
important source of work for women, whether as workers
in the factories or as outworkers working in their own
homes. Although the ideal of a male breadwinner was
shared by the majority of Neapolitans, the reality of
unemployment and insecure employment meant that it was
extremely hard to rely on a single income and wives were
frequently involved in some kind of income-generating
activity (Goddard, 1996). Because the family, and in
particular parenting, remained the most valued activity,
home-based work was seen as a solution to the conflicting needs of the household, for money on the one hand
and attention, and services on the other. Another solution
was provided by the assistance of older children (daughters), mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and other relatives, who could free up the time of female relatives to
enable them to engage in wage work.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Parenting is an important and fulfilling task for both men
and women. A characteristic of most Neapolitan families
545
was the pleasure openly taken in children, who were
always treated with great affection. This attention was not
restricted to the child’s parents. Other kin, such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles, were likely to be involved in
some way in the care and entertainment of children.
Motherhood has had a privileged position within
Italian cultural representations. Neapolitans often stated
that a person’s mother is his or her most trustworthy ally
and support. This claim was sustained even by those who
had experienced serious conflicts with their mother and
their families. Despite the possible shortcomings of specific individuals, mothers were to be respected and loved:
“la mamma è sempre la mamma” (“the mother is always
the mother”) was often the concluding remark, even in a
tale of family woe.
However, research indicates that some significant
changes are afoot in parenting practices, particularly
where men are concerned. Bimbi’s research in three different regions of the country indicates that ideas about
fatherhood have changed (Bimbi, 1993). The figure of the
authoritarian father associated with prewar society has
given way to a more caring and engaged paternal involvement. Her research also shows that the domestic space is
no longer identified as closely with women as in the past
and that, just as both parents now play an active role in
the care of children, women as well as men are involved
in work outside the home.
Changes in parental practice reflect changes in the
content of parent–child relations and the aspirations of
parents where their children are concerned. Younger couples in Naples frequently expressed the intention to limit
family size so as to be able to invest more effectively in
their children’s education. Parents wanted their children
to surpass them in terms of socioeconomic status and
achievements.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
During the fascist period Italian women were defined
primarily in terms of reproduction, and their activities in
the public arena were radically curtailed. A slogan from
the period sums up the fascist regime’s polarizing view of
gender relations: “Maternity is to women what war is to
men.” However, the experience of authoritarianism and
war prompted many women to become involved in the
anti-fascist resistance. With the fall of fascism and the
establishment of the Republic, many of these defiant
546
Italians
women found a respected place in the world of politics.
It was also in the postwar period that the Unione Donne
Italiane (the Italian Union of Women) was founded. This
organization has played a crucial role in shaping policy
regarding women’s rights and legislation concerning the
family. Then, in the late 1960s, feminism became a small
but vocal and influential force and to this day continues
to provide an alternative view on all aspects of Italian
politics and culture (Bono & Kemp, 1991).
Currently, men occupy the majority of public roles
but there are a number of prominent women in parliament
and several women hold or have held ministerial positions
or other important public positions, such as in Naples
where the position of mayor is currently held by a woman.
Interestingly, Silvio Berlusconi, the current head of
government, displays many of the qualities associated
with hegemonic masculinity: he is successful, supremely
confident, his beautiful wife testifies to a successful virility, and, although not a famous sportsman himself, he is
the owner of what many consider to be Italy’s most
famous football club, AC Milan. There are also some
parallel flamboyant displays of feminine success in the
political arena. Alessandra Mussolini, Benito Mussolini’s
granddaughter, is a graduate from medical school as well
as an actress whose good looks have been widely publicized in the media. She is currently a councillor in the
local government of Naples, representing a right-wing
party. Like Berlusconi she exudes self-confidence and
has a somewhat brash manner not immediately associated
with femininity, while maintaining an aura of glamor and
feminine attractiveness.1
Other women politicians rely on their distinguished
career rather than a glamorous profile, as in the case of
Emma Bonnino, a Radical who entered the world of
politics through her involvement in the campaigns for
the legalization of abortion and divorce. Similarly,
Tina Anselmi was a prominent member of a number
of Christian Democrat governments. As Minister of
Employment and, before that, as head of the National
Equal Opportunities Commission, she exerted a great
deal of influence, undoubtedly facilitating the approval of
legislation promoting gender equality in employment.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Italy is predominantly Roman Catholic and has historically strong ties with the Vatican, not least because of the
presence of the Papal State within Italian territory. It is
undeniable that Catholicism has exercised a strong influence on Italian culture and values. In particular, the
Lateran Pacts conceded a great deal of control to the
Church, especially in relation to education. The Christian
Democrat party, which governed Italy for four decades
after World War II, did much to consolidate the interests
and values of the Catholic Church by translating them
into policies.
The social philosophy of Italian Catholicism placed
the family at the center of society and defined the
attributes and roles of men and women in relation to
the harmonious functioning of the family. Christian
Democrat governments embraced this philosophy with
varying degrees of conviction, promoting familial roles
and values through specific institutional arrangements
and policies. However, the capacity of the Italian Catholic
Church to have a direct influence on public opinion has
waned. An indication of this is the general decline in
church attendance. According to Nanetti (1988, p. 66),
80% of women and 57% of men claimed that they
attended church almost every Sunday in the mid-1950s.
By 1985, the figure had dropped to 19% of men and 38%
of women. Other indicators of the limits to church influence and the changing attitudes of the Italian public is
the overwhelming approval given by the public in the
referendum on the divorce law.2
In Naples there was an apparent contradiction
between the declared religiosity of people and their
equally open distrust of representatives of the Church.
Few men attended mass and even many women only
attended erratically. Men were quite openly skeptical
about the benefits of churchgoing, but women were more
concerned about their poor track record. Lack of time was
a factor in this and many preferred to fit in their worship
around their tasks. For example, they might visit a church
briefly while out doing the shopping. Or they might limit
themselves to worshipping in private, in their own homes.
In fact, it was quite usual for homes in the old city to have
small altars where sacred figures were displayed.
The devotion of the inhabitants of the poorer areas
of the city is evident in the care bestowed on the shrines
that dot the streets and alleys. It was usually women who
took it upon themselves to ensure that the shrines were
clean, the flowers were fresh, and bills were paid so that
the lights would always illuminate the images they encircled. Many shrines are dedicated to various manifestations of the Madonna, reflecting the importance of the
Sexuality
547
Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary was an
extremely appropriate icon for the poor women of the
city, and many said that they found inspiration in the
compassion and devotion of the Virgin as mother of
Christ. Women who were outworkers and largely confined to their homes were prepared to spend part of their
meager earnings to support the shrines, finding solace
and inspiration in the presence of their Madonnas. The
Madonna, they felt, watched over them and their families.
jovial and life-affirming approach to sexuality of earlier
generations of Italian cinema (pace Pier Paolo Pasolini),
L’amore molesto unsettles comfortable certainties and
subverts expectations of a natural order of gender,
kinship, and sexuality.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Few people in Italy would assert that women are inferior.
On the other hand, a discourse of difference may find
acceptance among both men and women. The identity of
the sexes is considered quite undesirable, and the differences between men and women and the complementarity
of their qualities and their specific contributions are
upheld and celebrated. This difference can translate into
disparate and lopsided patterns of participation in different activities and social spaces. It also allows scope for
double standards, particularly in the field of sexuality.
Hospitality is a key quality throughout Italy. In Naples the
practice of hospitality is clearly gendered. Men tend to
offer hospitality in public spaces such as cafés or bars,
while women are responsible for hospitality offered in the
home. This could take a number of different forms, ranging from offers of coffee or liqueurs to extensive offerings
of food. A special invitation required elaborate and
lengthy meals, consisting of a number of different carefully prepared courses that testified to the hostess’s
generosity and culinary skills. Food is a key component
of social interaction, especially among kin, and between
mothers and their dependants. Carefully prepared homemade food was also important as the highest form of
hospitality.
Television is an important source of recreation and
is often at the center of family meals and reunions. Italian
cinema has also flourished and has produced many very
popular films focused on questions of gender and sexuality. These same themes, with a stronger emphasis on
questions of reputation, betrayal, and revenge are common threads in the plots of the Neapolitan sceneggiata.
This is a traditional form of theater in which the audience
is presented with a moral dilemma within a highly
charged emotional situation. The audience is expected to
express their opinion as to the appropriate outcome of the
play: Should the betrayed lover forgive his fiancée?
Should he repudiate her? Should he seek revenge?
Some recent cultural products challenge the very
premise on which the sceneggiata is based, that is, the
clarity of domestic roles and the sanctity of the family
unit and especially of the mother–child relationship.
L’amore molesto (Martone, 1995) is set in Naples and
deals with the relationship between mother and daughter—so often the basis of moral and material support
among the Neapolitan population. In contrast with the
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is considered to be an integral and important
part of the identity of men and women. Sexual fulfillment
is considered an important ingredient of personal happiness. In Naples this fulfillment would ideally be realized
within established and recognized relationships, preferably within a marriage. This view clearly privileges
heterosexual relations above others, and indeed homosexual relations between men were the cause of some hilarity
rather than hostility. But circumstances—and attitudes—
varied considerably. Attitudes to those who deviated from
the heterosexual norm were difficult to predict. On one
occasion, during a pilgrimage to a site considered to be
holy and miraculous by many Neapolitans (though not by
the Catholic Church), I shared the queue with a group of
middle-aged women. They spent much of the long time in
the queue comforting and encouraging another similarly
dressed person who was in fact a transvestite who felt that
his presence in a holy site was inappropriate. Instead, the
women stood firmly by him, in the certainty that, as they
claimed, everyone is welcome in the sight of God.
Although both men and women were considered to
have sexual needs, the needs of men were often seen as
being more immediate and less mediated by conventions
548
Italians
and rules. Thus, for some, it was acceptable that married
men should indulge in extramarital relations, whereas it
was far less acceptable for a woman to do so. The explanation for the double standard was once expressed—
albeit as a joke—in the saying that “the man is a hunter”
and women were limited to being the prey.
Early research in rural areas (Davis, 1973;
Silverman, 1975b) suggests that sex before marriage was
frequent, and even accepted or encouraged as a guarantee
of successful reproductive union. In Naples too there
were many instances of jokes, rumors, and open acceptance of pregnant brides. But it was usual and extremely
important that, where a premarital pregnancy took
place, marriage would follow as quickly as possible.
Interestingly, Italy has the lowest rate of single mothers
in Europe (Ruspini, 2000).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage is a highly desirable state for men and women
and most expect and want to marry and set up a family of
their own. The aspiration is that a successful relationship
will be consolidated through marriage.
In Naples many people recognized two forms of
engagement. Engagement “outside the home” referred
to relationships that might still be on trial, or more
casual, and that did not involve the couple’s families.
Engagement “in the house” referred to an official and
recognized relationship. This was achieved through
fairly formal visits to each other’s homes and meetings
between the families. It was expected that the relationship
would result in marriage. Once formally engaged,
a young woman’s social life changes considerably and
she is expected to behave with decorum. Parsons’
research in the 1950s suggested that the period of
courtship was extremely stressful for young women as
they are vulnerable both to gossip and to the volatile
nature of the courtship relationship (see “Gender over the
Life Cycle”).
Ideally, married couples will live neolocally, but the
shortage of housing and secure jobs poses problems for
many young people and courtship can last many years.
During the courtship years the couple will prepare for the
future. The girl might well have started to put together her
corredo3 or dowry even before courtship. But once
engaged, the process of accumulating items for the home
will be accelerated. An ideal wedding is a white wedding,
held in church, although many couples opt for a civil
wedding particularly if they are not practicing Catholics.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIPS
Parsons’ work in the 1960s combined anthropological
and psychological approaches to the study of family
structures of the poor neighborhoods of Naples. She suggested that, here, economic conditions undermined the
authority of adult men as heads of a family. Families were
thus strongly matrifocal and the mother’s influence had
quite specific consequences for the kind of gender identities that were learnt in the context of family life. One of
the most significant consequences was the enduring bond
between parents and children, especially mother and son,
which lasted well into adulthood. The strong attachment
of adults to their family of origin made the creation of a
new family unit extremely difficult. Characteristically,
conflict between husband and wife would maintain a
distance between them and reinforce the tendency to
invest emotionally in the children rather than the spouse
(Parsons, 1967). Thirty years on from Parsons’ research,
many couples interviewed in Naples claimed that the
most important focus of their emotional lives was their
children. A number of the men interviewed stated that
their love for their children surpassed their love for their
partner. Many women would agree with this view,
although the comparison might not be made so bluntly.
However, the quality of relations between husband
and wife varied considerably, depending on the background and life experience of each of the partners. In a
number of married couples the wife would defer to her
husband on matters of politics or other “public” issues.
However, they retained full confidence in their superiority in the domestic sphere and could derive considerable
delight from their husband’s shortcomings in this field.
In couples where both partners had experience in the field
of work or politics, the emphasis was on equality of
participation and opinions.
In Italy as a whole, important changes have taken
place in the expectations of couples. An egalitarian ideology now informs the lives of married couples, and the
expectation is that husband and wife will share in household chores and responsibilities. In fact, men assume little
of the burden of housework, so that women still carry
most of the responsibility for it, and the input of husbands
is most evident in relation to childcare (Bimbi, 1993).
References
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
According to Parsons (1967), cross-sex relations in
the Neapolitan family are more significant than same-sex
relations. She was referring specifically to the mother–son
and the father–daughter relations that she considered to be
enduring and influential. However, my own research indicated that mother–daughter and sister relations were
strong and played a crucial role in the lives of many
women and their families. And these relationships were
not only important from a pragmatic point of view, they
were also emotionally significant. Brother–sister ties may
also be strong. Traditionally, brothers were held somewhat
responsible for the reputations and safety of their sisters,
especially if they were unmarried. Nowadays this is much
more subject to personality or specific circumstances.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Bimbi (1993) suggests that women born after World
War II have embraced a different model of female identity
than that of their mothers or grandmothers. The youngest
group of women in her research felt that having children
or obtaining educational qualifications were rights rather
than duties or privileges. In general, attitudes to the roles
of men and women in the family and to sexuality have
changed very significantly and show clear departures from
the position of the Catholic Church. This was evident in
the public support for legislation facilitating divorce and
abortion in the 1970s and for the changes in family law
that have taken place since then. Responding to changes
in the attitudes of the public and to organized public pressure, government has granted men and women greater
equality not only in public life but in the private domain
as well. Changes have taken place not only in legislation
but in everyday practice. There have been shifts in parenting patterns, and the value placed on the education of girls
has been increasingly placed on a par with the education
of boys. However, limited work opportunities in many
regions of Italy remain an obstacle for young people
despite their impressive educational qualifications.
Changes in gender relations and in the experience and
conduct of sexuality are also evident in trends regarding
marriage and family size. Marriage rates and family size
have declined, and Italy as a whole has registered zero
549
population growth. However, there are important regional
differences. Naples and the region of Campania have the
highest rate of marriage, the highest average family size in
the country, and the smallest increase in the number of
illegitimate births.4 Whilst it remains important and
valued, the family is changing in Naples and in Italy as a
whole, and, with thus change, the contents of gender roles
and the opportunities for men and women are shifting too
(Calabretta, 2001).
NOTES
1. It is interesting that Italy is one of the few—or the only—countries
where a porn star, Cicciolina, became a political figure. This seems
to suggest that the public political domain is currently a form of display or performance—rendered increasingly feasible and desirable
with the growth of the media—in which contradictory signifiers of
gender and morality have been mobilized in ways that suggest that,
although it is difficult to talk about distinct gender and sexual identities, these are nevertheless important in the perception of public life
as well as in the experience of private life.
2. In 1974 a referendum was held to measure public feeling about the
1970 bill that legalized divorce, against the position of the Vatican
on this issue. A similar situation arose a few years later with the law
that legalized abortion in 1977. A referendum in 1981 ratified the
law, again against the recommendations of the church to its faithful.
3. There has been an interesting evolution in the corredo. Up until the
1970s women in many areas, especially in rural areas, put together a
corredo that consisted primarily of linens and other household items.
In many parts of the country women were expected to produce much
of their corredo themselves, for example, by crocheting doilies,
embroidering pillow cases, and so on. In the cities and as young
women gained greater opportunities of paid employment, there was
a shift toward buying these items, although an embroiderer might be
employed to add some design or initials to customize the factoryproduced items. In the 1970s in the urban centers there was also a
marked shift away from linens toward domestic appliances, ranging
from television sets to kitchen appliances and the like. In other
words, there has been a gradual commodification of corredo items
and a decline in the value of the young women’s labor as embodied
in these items.
4. The family has declined from an average of 3.3 members in 1971 to
3.0 in 1981. Campania shows the highest average family size in the
country with 3.5 members in 1981. Marriage rates have declined in
Italy but Campania still has the highest rate in the country. The number of illegitimate children has also risen from 22 per 1000 in 1970
to 48 per 1000 in 1983, but in Campania the increase is from 21 to
35 per 1000 for the same period.
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Jamaica
William Wedenoja and Diana Fox
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The original inhabitants of Jamaica, referred to as
Arawak and Taino, are said to have called their island
Xaymaca, which supposedly meant “land of wood and
water.”
LOCATION
Jamaica is a famously beautiful island, 82 km wide and
235 km long, located in the Caribbean Sea. It is the third
largest island in the West Indies, after Cuba 145 km to the
north and Hispaniola (where Haiti and the Dominican
Republic are located) 161 km to the east. Most of the
island is hilly, mountainous, and verdant, with many
rivers, deep valleys, and a narrow coastal plain. The
tropical climate is hot and humid year round, with a
mean annual temperature of 27 ⬚C and a mean annual
rainfall of 198 cm.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Jamaica was originally settled by a Native American
group known as Tainos about 1000 CE. Christopher
Columbus landed in Jamaica on May 4, 1494, on his
second voyage to the “New World.” The estimated 60,000
native inhabitants perished during the Spanish occupation, which ended in 1655 with an invasion by Great
Britain. Jamaica was a British colony until 1962, when it
gained independence. Plantations were established in the
late 17th century, and about 750,000 slaves were brought
in from West Africa to work them. The slave trade was
abolished in 1807 and the slaves were freed in 1838.
The main industry during slavery was sugar cane.
After Abolition sugar fell into permanent decline but is
still a significant export today. A strong domestic
agriculture system or peasantry, along with an internal
marketing system, rapidly took shape after Emancipation
and is still very important. Bananas were first exported in
1866, and Jamaica rapidly became the largest producer in
the world, but the industry peaked in 1937.
Manufacturing grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s,
but has struggled since then. The most valuable export
over the past five decades has been bauxite ore and its
refined derivative alumina, the basis for aluminum.
Jamaica became a major supplier of marijuana to North
America in the 1970s, as well as a trans-shipment point
for cocaine from South America in the 1980s. Tourism,
which began with banana boats over 100 years ago,
reached 1.2 million visitors in 1998.
The population of Jamaica was estimated to be
2,665,636 in July 2001. The birth rate of 40 per 1,000 in
the 1960s fell dramatically to 18 per 1,000 in 2001, with
a growth rate of only 0.51% and a total fertility rate of
2.08 children per woman. Many Jamaicans have emigrated over the years in search of greater opportunity, and
the Jamaican “diaspora” includes 1–2 million Jamaicans
and their descendants now living in Panama, Costa Rica,
Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
According to the 1991 census, the population
is 90.5% black, 7.5% mixed, 1.3% East Indian,
0.2% white, 0.2% Chinese, 0.1% Syrian (Lebanese), 0.1%
other, and 0.1% not stated. Black Jamaicans are descendants of African slaves and mixed Jamaicans are mulatto
offspring of white colonials. Indentured servants were
brought in from India and China in the mid-19th century
to replace freedmen on the plantations. Lebanese emigrated to Jamaica in the early 20th century. The white
British population has dwindled as the white American
population has grown. The only other significant minority are Jews, who settled in Jamaica after their expulsion
from Spain and Portugal in the 17th century.
Slave society was stratified into free whites, mulattoes or free people of colour, and black slaves. After
Emancipation, this caste system was transformed into a
“colour-class system” wherein white became synonymous with a small elite upper class, mulatto or brown
with a small middle class, and black with a vast workingclass majority. The Chinese and Syrians attained the
status of “honorary whites” after gaining wealth through
551
552
Jamaica
business enterprises. Since Independence, Jamaica has
struggled to eliminate white colonial bias and privilege
and live up to the national motto, “Out of Many, One
People,” but color and ethnicity are still important symbols of status.
Jamaica enjoyed one of the highest rates of
economic growth in the world in the 1960s, when it also
had one of the highest degrees of inequality. However, the
economy has seen little real growth over the past three
decades. During this period life in rural areas basically
stagnated, while urban areas became increasingly divided
into rich and poor, and the inner city turned violent. Guns,
gangs, and drugs have led to what is now the fourth
highest murder rate in the world. The violence is generally blamed on poverty and inequality; however, the rate
of poverty fell from 30.5% in 1989 to 17% in 1999, and
the GINI index, a measure of inequality, is only 36.4,
equal to that of the United Kingdom. The gross domestic
product per capita in 1999 was $3,561 (U.S. dollars), 78th
in the world, on a par with China and Egypt.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Gender is largely constructed through an understanding of
the binary opposition of male and female—notions of
masculinity and femininity that revolve around rigid
norms of heterosexuality. There is no room for sexual
ambiguity: a “man” is masculine and a “woman” feminine
only if he or she has sexual relations with the opposite sex.
A “chi-chi man” or “batty boy” is a homosexual male, a
highly despised category. The attributes of men and
women are regarded as both distinct and interdependent.
Men and women enhance sexual dimorphism mainly
through dress, hairstyles, and bodily comportment.
Differentiation in dress begins early and is distinguished
particularly through school uniforms. Schoolboys from
“infants” through high school wear khaki uniforms, while
schoolgirls wear variously colored jumpers (depending on
district and age). In adolescence, girls are encouraged to
hold themselves as ladies by walking erect and maintaining restricted bodily movements that express sexual modesty. On Sundays, both men and women dress up; church
ladies, young women, and girls put on frilly frocks and
wide flowery hats, while men wear suits. Young women
spend a lot of time and resources on elaborate hairstyles.
Sexual attractiveness varies by class and subculture.
Generally, young men who are part of the reggae/
dance-hall culture are drawn to women who do not hide
their voluptuousness and who demonstrate sexual availability. Working- and middle-class men seek out women
who are neat and well groomed. Upper-class men seek
“ladies” who aspire to a North American ideal: well
coiffed, thin, petite, and “white.” Even working- and
middle-class men prefer women with lighter complexions,
as do women who tend to refer to “black, black” men as
“ugly.” Rastafarians, by contrast, praise “black” women in
the spirit of racial pride and “black is beautiful.”
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Having children is considered to be a normal, natural, and
essential part of life in Jamaica, where children are generally welcome regardless of one’s situation. Indeed, a
childless woman is referred to derisively as a “mule.”
Working-class children grow up in multifamily “yards” in
the cities and towns or extended family households in the
countryside. Children are cared for not only by their parents, but also by older siblings and adults, kin or nonkin.
According to Sargent and Harris (1992), there is a
strong preference for daughters, at least among women in
the inner city. Boys are said to be harder to control and
more likely to get into drugs, gangs, and crime. Girls
generally help more around the house, do better in school,
and are thought to be less likely to abandon their parents
in old age.
The yard or home is the domain of women, and men
avoid spending much time there. Their place is beyond
the home, in the fields, the streets in the city, the square
in the country, bars, and the work place. The yard is considered to be a place of safety and nurturance while the
world beyond is seen as dangerous, especially in the inner
city. Young children are closely watched and confined to
the home until they are old enough to go to school.
There is little difference in the socialization of boys
and girls until they begin “basic school” at the age of 4 or
5. From then on, however, they live in increasingly
sexually segregated worlds. Mothers are strict with
daughters and burden them with household chores such
as cooking, cleaning, and looking after younger siblings.
Consequently, girls learn hard work and responsibility at
an early age. Girls take pride in their household responsibilities but may resent the privileged position of boys.
Gender over the Life Cycle
Mothers give their sons some household chores, so they
can learn to take care of themselves, but not to the same
extent as girls. If a chore requires leaving the yard, or if
it is “rough work,” then it will be given to a boy.
Children are generally believed to be “rude,” and
are subjected to harsh discipline to teach “manners.”
Discipline takes the form of verbal threats, “bad words,”
and “floggings” by the mother or father and other adults
in the household. Mothers are generally responsible for
the discipline of young children and girls. Older boys are
believed to be particularly “rough” and therefore in need
of a father’s discipline. Although a boy may have little
contact with his father, who may not live with or near
him, boys receive significantly more punishment than
girls and physical abuse is a problem, particularly with
stepfathers (Bailey, Branche, McGarrity, & Stuart, 1998).
Puberty and Adolescence
The socialization of boys and girls diverges more sharply
in adolescence. Parents try to confine girls to the home to
avoid pregnancy, which would bring shame on the girl
and her family and interfere with her education and future
employment prospects. Boys, on the other hand, are now
hanging out on the street, the domain of men, and becoming independent. Mothers know that they should not be
too “soft” on boys. If a boy stays at home and does household chores, he risks being labeled a “mamma-boy.” Men
are expected to be strong, tough, dominant, and
providers. Boys need to move to the streets to develop
these characteristics.
Girls attend school more often than boys, generally
do better in school, and receive more education, mainly
because school is essentially a feminine institution. The
adolescent boy is learning that a man should be making
money to support women, a household, and perhaps a
flashy lifestyle. Consequently, boys tend to leave school
earlier than girls. However, there are few economic
opportunities for adolescent boys who drop out of school,
at least in the formal sector. They gather in peer groups,
on street corners or at “rum shops,” talking, joking, drinking, dancing, gambling, playing dominoes or sports, and
making advances to passing girls. Assuming they have
money, adolescent males will dress up in flamboyant
fashions and sport at dance clubs and bars in the evening.
The lack of jobs and pressure to have money lead many
in the inner city into drug dealing, gangs, hustling, and
theft at a surprisingly young age.
553
The most pressing concern of adolescence is becoming sexually active. Parents rarely discuss sex with their
children, who learn from older peers. While protecting
their daughters, parents ignore or at least tolerate the
sexual activity of their sons. Male sexual prowess is
idealized in the culture. In order to be a man, a boy must
become sexually active, preferably with several girls, and
is under pressure from his peers to do so. He must also
prove his heterosexuality, because men are homophobic.
Boys generally become sexually active between the ages
of 14 and 15, and girls between 16 and 17.
Attainment of Adulthood
A boy becomes a man when he is able to defend himself,
dominate women, and is sexually active. He can then enter
into a regular sexual relationship publicly. He becomes an
adult when he earns enough money to establish a household and support himself, a woman, and his children. This
is particularly difficult for working-class men, owing to a
lack of good jobs. Consequently, for many men adolescence is prolonged well into their twenties, during which
time they may continue to live with their parents.
A girl starts to become a woman with her first
menses. In order to be an adult, she must break free of the
generally severe restrictions of her parents. In the middle
class, this is often accomplished through marriage.
However, in the working-class majority, it is typically
achieved through pregnancy, which could be seen as an
act of rebellion or defiance. In 1996, 47% of women
having their first child were under the age of 20. The first
pregnancy for a teenager living with her parents assumes
a ritualized process akin to a rite of passage. The pregnancy is first met with strong disapproval by her parents,
causing the girl to seek refuge with kin or friends who
intercede with her parents on her behalf so that she can
return home. After the birth of the child, the girl’s mother
assumes full control over it, but it is understood that the
daughter will be responsible for the care of subsequent
children (Chevannes, 1993).
Subsequently, a young woman is freer to enter into
the world of the street and adult life and form relationships with men, both casual and long-term, including
co-residential unions. Typically, a working-class woman
will have several “visiting” relationships in her late teens
and twenties, resulting in children from several fathers.
Pregnancy sometimes seems to be an attempt to “cement”
a relationship (Brody, 1974). The illegitimacy rate is
554
Jamaica
very high—87% in 1995. Of those born out of wedlock,
the father was legally registered in only 41% in 1995,
although a majority will acknowledge paternity informally and offer some support.
Middle Age and Old Age
Marriage is an exalted state of union in Jamaica, a special
and relatively rare relationship, carrying high prestige.
Slaves were not permitted to marry, but missionaries made
marriage a priority following Emancipation, and marriage
is still a major issue in Christian churches today. In the
working class, marriage is the ultimate culmination of a
relationship, not the beginning, and so it occurs late, if at
all. In fact, marriage tends to occur near the end of, rather
than before or during, child-bearing. Eighty percent of the
total population is legally single, including 69% of those
over the age of 16. On the other hand, many adults are
involved in relatively long-term, often stable, co-residential
“common-law” unions. The marriage rate has been increasing of late, rising from 4.7 marriages per 1,000 people in
1989 to 10.3 in 1999. The average age at first marriage is
33. According to a recent report in the Jamaica Weekly
Gleaner (December 20–26, 2001), Jamaica has the latest
age of first marriage for women and the secondlatest age for men in the world. Marriage is more common, and occurs earlier, in the middle and upper classes,
than in the working-class majority. One important reason
for the low rate of marriage, and the late age of marriage,
is lack of economic stability for men in young adulthood.
Marriage is a sign of conjugal and economic stability,
and it garners respect in the community, signified by the
use of the honorific titles “Mister” and “Mistress.” It is
perhaps a prerequisite for active involvement in church
and community organizations and affairs.
Older adults often become parents again, in that a
great deal of child-shifting goes on. The most common
form is for a young working women, in a city or abroad,
to send some of her children home to the country to be
minded by her aging mother or parents.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The personality traits of men and women are strongly
influenced by sexually segregated parental roles, the
socialization of children into those roles, and widely
accepted beliefs about male and female “nature.” Color,
ethnicity, class, and residence shape children’s experiences by influencing household composition and
children’s relationships to kin and nonkin.
In working-class families, both boys and girls stay in
their yards where they receive intensive contact with their
mothers and female kin. Mothers identify strongly with
their daughters. Boys acquire a gender-appropriate identity through separation from their caretakers and active
association with older boys and men. When coeducation
begins, boys are encouraged to run errands, congregate
with other boys, and, in adolescence, acquire sexually
aggressive norms of behavior. Girls play with other girls,
continue to identify with their mothers and other female
kin, take on greater household responsibilities, and
assume the traits of a lady.
Men are expected to display dominance in the
household, independence, male camaraderie, and sexual
promiscuity. Upper-class men may be sexually promiscuous, but are predominantly viewed as caring and faithful
family leaders (Douglass, 1992). Women are taught to
keep social distance from men, although comfortable
joking and banter occurs. Jamaicans distinguish between
“women” and “ladies.” A lady is the ultimate expression
of femininity achieved through education, refinement,
attention to a well-groomed appearance, and unobtrusiveness. Hypothetically, a lady can be “white,” “black,”
or “brown,” but the lighter the female, the more likely she
will be considered a lady (Douglass, 1992).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Caribbean society is often incorrectly characterized as
matriarchal. The social institutions of Jamaica—the
family, education, medicine, politics, religion, etc.—are
generally based on strong female participation, segregation by gender, and male dominance. The family, for
example, is often referred to as “matrifocal” or mother
centered, because the mother assumes virtually the entire
responsibility for the household and childcare, but the
man of the house has ultimate authority, even though he
spends little time there.
Over 70% of Jamaican women eventually give birth,
and the average mother now has three children. In many
cases, a woman will have children by more than one
man, and maintain relations not only with those men but
also with their parents and families, particularly the
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
“babyfather’s” mother, creating an extensive kinship
network, although people generally are closest to their
mother’s kin.
Adolescent boys and young men typically form into
same-sex same-age groups and spend a great deal of time
together, simply “idling” on the streets, gambling, playing dominoes, cricket, basketball, or football. In the inner
city, they are quite likely to become involved in the infamous and violent gang underworld. Girls are less likely
to spend time in peer groups, mainly because they are
usually restricted to the home and have chores to perform.
There are many voluntary associations in Jamaican
society, particularly in the middle-class and urban areas,
including football clubs, library associations, professional
organizations, trade unions, and political parties. Some are
male, some female, and some mixed, and in the latter case
the leadership is primarily male even where the membership is predominantly female. This pattern prevails in the
church, one of the most important social institutions.
A large majority of churchgoers are women, and women
are more actively involved in church activities than men;
nevertheless, men hold most of the leadership positions.
Education is perhaps the most female-dominated
institution in Jamaican society. Sixty-four percent of
principals and 92% of teachers in primary and all-age
schools are women. The average academic performance
of girls is much better than that of boys, and the dropout
rate is higher for boys; therefore girls generally advance
farther in the system. At the University of the West Indies
in Kingston, for example, men made up only 26% of the
graduating class of 1998. Errol Miller, Professor of
Education at the University of the West Indies, warns that
this educational trend is leading to a “marginalization of
the black male” in society.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
According to the International Labor Organization,
10.3% of men and 22.3% of women were unemployed or
without paid work in 1999, and 73% of men and 55% of
women were economically active. Women predominate
in the informal sector as market women or higglers
selling farmers’ produce which they have purchased, or
homemade sweets, clothing, household goods, or school
supplies at small stands outside school buildings. Some
men are higglers as well, but it is regarded as women’s
work. Higglers play a central role in Jamaican folk
555
culture as strong independent women, but are nonetheless
of low status, along with other female-linked informal
sector positions such as domestic workers and prostitutes.
Poor women and some men engage in informal
savings institutions known as pardner, pooling their
money in a common fund and taking turns drawing from
it to pay for major expenses such as a car, school fees, or
the creation of a microenterprise. Another key strategy for
getting out of poverty is migration for both men and
women. In 1999, 47% of migrants traveling to Canada
and 49% traveling to the United States were male. Female
migrants take positions as domestics, nannies, and cooks.
Increasing numbers of Jamaicans migrate to work in
tourist communities along the north coast. Women work
as souvenir and craft vendors and as maids. They may
manage small resorts for their husbands and sons, but
men are the main beneficiaries of the big money in
tourism derived from land speculation and enterprise, as
well as drugs. Men also produce and sell woodcarvings
and jewelry (McKay, 1993).
The growth of the electronics and textile manufacturing sectors in the 1960s and 1970s led large numbers
of young women to relocate to urban areas to work in factories with low wages, few benefits, cramped working
conditions, and long hours in insecure jobs. Women continue to work on the factory floor in free-trade zones.
They have not been encouraged to join labor unions, even
though they are the most exploited workers, receiving the
lowest wages and the least opportunities to increase their
skills. Both men and women work long hours with little
pay on agricultural plantations (e.g., banana, cane,
coffee). Throughout the economy, men predominate in
managerial and executive positions, and in labor unions.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Women are largely responsible for the care of children
and they acquire significant status through mothering
activities. Many working- and middle-class women
without children take in others’ children, caring for
them as their own. Motherwork, which extends to aunts
and grandmothers, includes nurturing and affectionate
behavior, mild scolding, and instruction in sex-linked
household chores.
Girls learn feminine tasks, such as cooking, clothes
washing, sweeping, and sewing, from their mothers.
556
Jamaica
In rural areas boys help their fathers with farm activities,
hauling water, caring for livestock, and collecting wood.
In practice, sex role training is fluid in that boys and men
will help with household chores and girls also work with
their fathers in productive activities outside the home
(Fox, 1999).
Fathers are defined predominantly as breadwinners
and disciplinarians of children across class lines. Mothers
flog their daughters, but fathers protect children,
especially sons, from becoming “bad” with the threat
and occasional administration of “wicked” floggings
(Chevannes, 2001). Although households are mother
centered, fathers maintain social dominance even in
absentia. Fathers are more likely to be stable members of
households in middle- and upper-class families, but their
activities also take them away from the household and
they are rarely available as emotional resources for boys.
In Rastafarian households and communities, fathers try to
take on more nurturing and affectionate roles; however,
here too they are disciplinarians and women are nurturers.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Politics is generally considered to be a man’s world in the
Caribbean, where it is viewed as unfeminine (Senior,
1991). Women, particularly from the working class, are
overburdened with domestic responsibilities, leaving
them with little or no time for politics. Men, on the other
hand, being largely free of domestic responsibilities, can
dominate the political arena. Middle-class women are
active in political parties, especially in campaigns, but
serve mainly in supportive roles, at the lowest levels, as
in other spheres of Jamaican life. However, women are
beginning to gain greater influence in politics and other
public arenas. One reason is that feminism became an
active force in the region in the 1970s, generating much
research, raising issues of special relevance to women,
and spawning a number of organizations for the advancement of women. In addition, women are advancing into
middle- and upper-level managerial and professional
roles.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Jamaica is an exceptionally religious society. Religious
beliefs permeate every aspect of daily life, and the church
is often as important to an individual as work and family.
Although the leaders of most churches are men, women
are in the majority, in attendance and membership, and
are much more involved in church activities. As in other
areas of Jamaican life, men perform public roles that are
typically expressive, conspicuous, performative, and
status bearing, such as preaching, while women are
responsible for more inconspicuous, typically domestic,
tasks. Women are believed to be more “spiritual” than
men, that is, more often ecstatic in services, although
statistics collected by Wedenoja do not bear this out.
There are four significant forms of religion in
Jamaica today. The orthodox Christian churches, including the Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians,
were established in the early 19th century and hold the
allegiance of 25% of the population, according to the 1991
census. Their membership has declined drastically during
the 20th century. Revival, an indigenous, folk, or Creole
religion (also known as Zion and Pocomania) that developed in the mid-19th century, is not recorded in the census.
The Pentecostal Christian churches, which date from at
least 1918, have grown steadily and are now the most
popular, at 29%. Finally, the famous messianic millenarian
Rastafarian movement, which originated in Jamaica in the
1930s, has had a dramatic impact on Jamaican culture
even though it accounts for less than 1% of the population.
Orthodox Christianity brought European morality to
Jamaica where it became the bastion of middle-class
respectability, centering on the sanctity of marriage, the
nuclear family, the patriarchal role of the husband as
provider and head of the family, and the wife as homemaker and mother. The working-class was thereby
excluded, and developed Revival as an alternative.
However, when a working class woman gets married, she
often joins an orthodox church as a sign of her new status. The orthodox churches are always led by men, and
about 45% of their members are male. About half of all
Revival churches, on the other hand, are led by women,
and men made up only 37% of a large congregation
studied by Wedenoja.
Pentecostalism and Rastafarianism both developed
in the early 20th century and are markedly gendered
(Austin-Broos, 1987). According to the 1991 census,
57% of Pentecostals are women, although the percentage
of women at services is generally much greater. In
contrast, 81% of Rastafarians are male.
Pentecostal churches attract young single workingclass mothers in particular. Although Pentecostal
Relative Status of Men and Women
congregations are led largely by men, women can attain
positions of leadership, including that of pastor. The
ideology of these churches is essentially a protest against
male domination and exploitation of women, particularly
male “promiscuity” and “irresponsibility.” Women follow
strict rules of dress and demeanor associated with
modesty. Pentecostalism promises to “cleanse” women
from “fornication” and make them “brides of Christ”
with the support and protection of the congregation. Jesus
is depicted as the faithful dependable husband, apparently
lacking in “the world”, as well as an alternative role
model for male converts who have been “saved” from the
“world of sin” on the streets.
The Rastafarian movement seeks to liberate black
people from white oppression; ironically, it also promotes
male domination and female subordination (Lake, 1994).
Men are the designated spiritual leaders of the movement,
the heads of households, and the rulers of women. They
are to “spread their seed” without regard to their marital
status, while their wives must remain faithful. At the same
time, however, men should be sensitive to the needs of
their wives and develop a close relationship with their
children. A woman becomes a Rasta through her man.
She should wear a long dress and cover her head. She
should not speak in church or talk directly to God, and is
subject to menstrual taboos when she is “unclean.” One
of the main aims of the Rastafari is to reassert the dominance of poor and working-class men, perhaps in
response to a matrifocal upbringing. It also offers a new
male identity, based on Haile Selassie, the black messiah,
possibly as a substitute for the absent father.
Many revivalists practice a popular form of healing
known as balm, which is usually performed by an older
woman referred to as a “Mother,” who offers divinations,
baths, herbs, candles, incense, and prayers to cure spiritual afflictions. Therefore healing is associated with
women, and the healing relationship is modeled on the
mother–child relationship. In contrast, obeah, the practice of sorcery, is always practiced by men, as is Science,
the use of magic for good fortune (Wedenoja, 1989).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Leisure activities are structured according to class and
gender. Boys have fewer chores than girls, and learn early
on that public space is a domain for male leisure and
recreation. In late afternoons after school, adolescent
557
boys can be seen playing football or basketball in
schoolyards, while girls play netball.
Men seek leisure outside the home—including
sexual satisfaction. Men also engage in drinking, gambling, joke telling, boasting, and story telling. Workingclass adolescent boys and men gather in groups known as
“crews” or “loafing groups” on street corners and in rum
bars, or play dominoes in shops. Upper-class men meet in
yacht club bars and engage in bird shooting, sailing, and
fishing tournaments. Upper-class “ladies” devote significant time to beautifying practices such as exercising,
shopping for clothing and make-up, frequenting spas, and
going to the beauty parlor. Middle-class women devote
significant leisure time to voluntary social groups.
On weekends, young women socialize on the street
as well, since this is the time when “sound systems” are
brought out, “DJ” parties take place in town squares or
city neighborhoods, and “jerk” stations are set up.
Outdoor DJ parties draw large crowds, and usually begin
late and last till early morning hours. Many communities
also have dance halls, which are frequented predominantly by working-class men and women. Some also
house bars and strip joints, which are patronized by men
and a few women of low respectability. Many communities host weekend bingo tournaments, which draw large
crowds of working- and middle-class men and women.
Marijuana or ganja smoking is an important leisure
activity in the working class. Men enjoy smoking during
breaks at their work sites, in groups away from work, or
as a solitary experience in the mornings and late at night
in their yards. Rastafarian men engage in “reasoning”
sessions where they ritually smoke ganja, philosophize,
and reinforce male bonds. Women’s smoking is
infrequent and generally prior to sexual activity.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Women are better educated, have a higher rate of literacy,
and a greater life expectancy than men, but in every other
respect are marginalized. Men are the heads of households, the leaders in government, politics, and churches,
and the managers of businesses and industries. Men
control the major institutions of society, including the
economic and political systems and the media. Women,
regardless of class, are subordinate to men in almost
every sphere of life. The main areas in which women
558
have influence are the home, child-rearing, education,
churches, higglering, healing, and nursing.
Male dominance is particularly clear in relationships
between the sexes, which have been characterized as
“adversarial” and lacking in trust (Bailey et al., 1998).
Women are expected to cater to the needs of men. The
double standard prevails, in that men but not women can
have multiple relationships without sanction. Men also
feel free to coerce women physically, and are thought
to be “soft” if they do not, although women are not
supposed to strike men (Chevannes, 2001). Women suffer
a high rate of violence from men, including rape, with
little recourse.
Women are free to choose their mates and decide
whom they will live with and marry. The home or yard is
considered to be women’s space and, indeed, women
often hold title to the house they live in. Men feel little
obligation to help with household chores, which they
consider to be demeaning if not polluting. Spouses
generally control their own incomes and assets, and keep
them separate, at least in the working class. Women
typically use their assets for the well-being of their
children—to clothe, educate, and provide medical care
for them. Women are most highly valued as mothers;
indeed, this is a near saintly status.
SEXUALITY
Jamaica is a profoundly heterosexist society in which
homophobia is widespread. Discrimination and violence
against gays and the absence of a gay rights movement
characterize dominant Jamaican attitudes toward samesex relations. While lesbianism is decried as well, gay
men receive the brunt of virulent homophobic sentiment.
While there is somewhat more tolerance among the elite,
antihomosexuality is a key aspect of the ideology of heterosexual relations in the drawing of distinct boundaries
around acceptable definitions of heterosexual masculinity and femininity.
Children are guided toward gender-appropriate
sexuality early on. Adult sexuality is familiar to children,
many of whom, particularly in rural and poor urban areas,
live in close quarters with adults, sharing the same room
or bed where they are exposed to sexual behavior.
Parental control over boys’ sexuality decreases in adolescence when they are encouraged to seek sexual experiences. By contrast, pubescent girls are guided toward
Jamaica
modesty, and control over their sexuality tightens. They
are warned about the constant sexual desires of men and
the pressure they will receive from them to engage in
intercourse. Significant numbers of girls are introduced to
sex through rape, which is feared by girls and women.
Children grow up in a sexually paradoxical world,
where double standards abound. The church and middleclass morality constrain the sexual expression of women,
while sexually explicit lyrics permeate reggae, hip-hop
and dance-hall music, referring particularly to women’s
vaginas as the proper locus of male attention and to
chi-chi men as societal scourges. Soft pornographic girly
pictures are also rampant in advertising and public
spaces. Dance-hall culture, centering on the sexually
explicit hip movements of young women, has been
adopted by some working-class women as a form of
resistance to the constraining respectability of middleand upper-class values of feminine sexuality. Others view
dance-hall as explicitly misogynist (Cooper, 1995).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Since 1887, when civil registration for marriage was first
institutionalized, marriage rates have remained low
among Jamaica’s working-class majority. In 1988, the
rate was 4.4 per 1,000. Three forms of partnering prevail,
including legal marriage, common-law marriage and
visiting arrangements. Multiple partnering is also
common. It is culturally acceptable for a man to have
more than one woman since men are expected to be
promiscuous by nature. Women also seek multiple partners as sources of economic support.
The working class tend to marry later in life,
typically when men and women are in their forties, can
pay for the ceremony and a separate household, and have
already produced offspring from previous nonlegal
unions. Among the upper classes, marriage is hypergamous and occurs earlier in life, with women in their early
twenties and men in their late twenties (Douglass, 1992).
Christian, working-class, and middle-class marriage
ceremonies take place in churches with receptions often
occurring outdoors at a relative’s home. Amidst music
arranged by a DJ, toasts are made and “box lunches” of
fried chicken or curried goat are served, along with
“mannish water” (goat soup). Among the upper classes,
church weddings are followed by lavish receptions on the
estates of the bride’s parents, where extravagant meals of
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
traditional Jamaican fare are served and men make toasts
in honor of their wives.
When working-class women marry they do not
expect romantic love, although it does exist. Instead, they
“look money” and status, while men “look sex” (Sobo,
1993). Many men and women avoid marriage because
of lack of trust, poor communication, and economic
wariness. Women believe men will avoid financial
responsibility and men fear women’s control over them.
Common-law arrangements indicate a common household without legal sanction, while visiting relations
involve neither legal sanction nor a common household.
Common-law is by far the most popular conjugal bond of
the working class. Working-class women first enter into
visiting relationships in their twenties, but tend to move
into common-law arrangements after they have their first
child. Visiting relations are a form of extended courtship
with a sexual component, involving frequent meetings
when couples reside close by. Men are expected to help
financially with a woman’s children, particularly if the
man is her “babyfather.” During visiting meetings
couples go on outings together to clubs, parties, sports
events, the beach, and church (Roberts & Sinclair, 1978).
Children learn by early adolescence that men initiate courtship through the use of their bodies and that
women who do so are considered “bad” women, without
sexual control. Women are subject to sexual comments by
men who “lyrics them,” accepting advances by permitting
men to hold their hands (Chevannes, 2001).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Although mistrust characterizes many working- and
middle-class male–female relationships prior to marriage,
affection between men and women grows, especially
with age, as reproductive roles become less significant
and trust increases (Fox, 1999). Still, a man’s influence
extends over his family and wives are supposed to listen
to husbands. Both legal and common-law marriage are
regarded as economic arrangements to share sexually
divided work, although this ideal is not as rigidly adhered
to as it is described, and husbands and wives often assist
one another. Because marriage is a symbol of respectability, legally married couples in particular work to maintain
an image of stability, legitimacy, and propriety in the eyes
of the community by participating in community life.
Love and status are important motivations for marriage
559
for the upper classes. Middle-class families strive to
emulate husband–wife relationships in elite families.
Jamaica ranks tenth on the list of lowest divorce
rates in the world. In 1999, there were 4.4 divorces per
10,000. Women instigate divorce more often than men.
Divorce remains a stigma for women, many of whom
move abroad or away from the community to avoid social
isolation (Douglass, 1992). There is a “cultural promiscuity of violence” perpetuated by men who view wifebeating as an expected form of husbandly chastisement
for what they regard as insufficient domestic or sexual
services, or lack of respect. Men also identify women
with children, using violence as a form of punishment for
disobedience (Bailey et al., 1998).
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Caribbean feminism began to permeate public consciousness through activist groups in the 1970s. The well-known
Sistren Collective is an independent women’s cooperative
and theater group. Initiated by working-class women,
Sistren organizes workshops and presentations around
women’s work, violence against women, and women’s
history. Rising feminist consciousness and greater education have led more women to express a desire for
economic independence and the greater freedom it
affords, including the ability to move out of abusive
relationships. Organizations such as the Women’s Bureau
provide women with links to services such as medical
care, agricultural extension, legal aid, and support groups.
In the 1990s, a men’s movement led by Professor
Barry Chevannes and others at the Mona campus of the
University of the West Indies took shape. Chevannes
organized workshops for men throughout the island to
foster male responsibility, to help men learn to express
their emotions, and to discuss their fears about the challenges of fatherhood and partnerships with liberated
women. Whereas in the 1980s the popular press featured
numerous articles for women on acquiring ladylike mannerisms, newspapers in the 1990s featured the topic of
“manhood” extensively. Coverage of the crisis of masculinity, the increase in male school dropouts, crime, and
idleness reflected increasing discomfort with traditional
notions of male dominance, the turmoil created by
women’s growing economic independence, and the need
to develop new models of male responsibility. Since the
560
Jamaica
benchmark of manhood has been to provide material
support for children, men are expressing mounting frustration in their inability to find gainful employment, even
though this objective has always presented a struggle for
working-class men in particular. Men insist that they
must have work to have women. Since women’s opportunities are improving and they can afford to be more selective, tension between men and women is rising.
Shifting relations between men and women have also
given rise to new mating practices. Adolescent girls
increasingly pursue older men as sources of economic support, eschewing boys of their age by saying that “school
boy have pocket change but big man have salary.” At the
same time, older men are seeking younger girls as part of
the myth of the “virgin cure” for HIV. Unfortunately, these
relationships are contributing to rising rates of HIV among
adolescent girls. In recent years, economically successful
single women, including higglers, have sought younger
men for sexual satisfaction and status, keeping them in
new clothes, lodging, and food. In sum, Jamaican gender
relations are in flux, influenced by internal factors as well
as transnationalism, industrialism, and globalization, producing a wide range of contradictory results: confusion
over gender roles, increased opportunities, status, and
independence for women, burgeoning tension between
men and women, and a decline in perceptions of male
productivity despite of their continued dominance in
politics and the formal sector of employment.
REFERENCES
Austin-Broos, D. J. (1987). Pentecostals and Rastafarians: Cultural,
political, and gender relations of two religious movements. Social
and Economic Studies, 36, 1–39.
Bailey, W. Branche, C., McGarrity, G., & Stuart, S. (1998). Family and
the quality of gender relations in the Caribbean. Mona, Jamaica:
Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West
Indies.
Brody, E. B. (1974). Psychocultural aspects of contraceptive behavior
in Jamaica. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 159, 108–119.
Chevannes, B. (1993) Sexual behaviour of Jamaicans: A literature
review. Social and Economic Studies, 42, 1–45.
Chevannes, B. (2001). Learning to be a man: Culture, socialization and
gender identity in five Caribbean communities. Mona, Jamaica:
University of the West Indies Press.
Cooper, C. (1995). Noises in the blood: Orality, gender, and the “vulgar”
body of Jamaican popular culture. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Douglass, L. (1992). The power of sentiment: Love, hierarchy and the
Jamaican family elite. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Fox, D. (1999). Masculinity and fatherhood re-examined: An ethnographic account of the contradictions of manhood in a rural
Jamaican town. Men and Masculinities, 2, 66–86.
Lake, O. (1994). The many voices of Rastafarian women: Sexual
subordination in the midst of liberation. New West Indian Guide,
68, 235–257.
McKay, L. (1993). Women’s contribution to tourism in Negril, Jamaica.
In J. Momsen (Ed.), Women and change in the Caribbean
(pp. 278–286). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Roberts, G. W., & Sinclair, S. A. (1978). Women in Jamaica: Patterns
of reproduction and family. Millwood, NY: KTO Press.
Sargent, C. F., & Harris, M. H.(1992). Gender ideology, childrearing,
and child health in Jamaica. American Ethnologist, 19, 523–537.
Senior, O. (1991). Working miracles: Women’s lives in the Englishspeaking Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sobo, E. J. (1993). One blood: The Jamaican body. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Wedenoja, W. (1989). Mothering and the practice of “balm” in Jamaica.
In C. S. McClain (Ed.), Women as healers: Cross-cultural
perspectives (pp. 76–97). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Kayapo
William H. Fisher
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Kayapo are also known as the Mebengokre, Northern
Kayapo, Cayapo, Kaiapo, Mekranoti, Mekrãgnoti,
Gorotire, Metuktire, Irã’ãmranhre, Txukarramãe, Xikrin,
Kararaô, Gradáu, Gradaho, Tchikrin, Djore, Purucarus,
and Chicrís.
LOCATION
The Kayapo are located in the states of Pará and Mato
Grosso, Brazil.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
People of the 16 different villages embraced by the
encompassing label “Kayapo” or identified as one of the
Kayapo subgroups above all refer to themselves as
“Mebengokre” or “people of the watery depression.”
Population currently stands around 5,000 and has been on
the increase for some two decades. The communities
mentioned are also classified as Northern Kayapo to
differentiate them from the Southern Kayapo.
For some 200 years Kayapo have moved steadily
westward from the savannah regions in the state of
Tocantins toward areas of tropical forest or forest–
savannah margins. Large villages with thousands of residents are known historically. As with other Gê language
family speakers, settlement residence alternated with
treks involving groups of extended families. Subsistence
depends on a range of techniques: collective and solitary
hunting and fishing, collecting wild plant foods, and
slash-and-burn horticulture. An opportunistic orientation
that moves people to food resources predominates.
Kayapo settlements are composed of a ring
of houses occupied by extended families built up
through matri-uxorilocal residence. A men’s house
is commonly constructed upon the central plaza.
Populations average several hundred but may range from
under 100 to nearly 1,000. The village center comprises
a ceremonial area where dancing and singing occurs
almost daily. These performances are often rehearsals
leading over weeks or months to a ceremonial climax of
whatever festival is underway. That the Kayapo consider themselves to be part of a slowly unfolding ritual
much, if not most, of the time seems to make them fairly
unique.
Each village is politically autonomous, although
bonds of kinship link individuals of different villages.
Formal leadership positions exist in association with age
grades and men’s clubs. Prominent secular leaders are
males who combine a number of attributes, including a
knowledge of specialized speech and chants (ben) and
persuasive and powerful oratorical ability. Leaders drawn
from the unmarried men’s age grade should be energetic
and exemplary workers. Auxiliary women’s groupings
exist consisting of wives of associated men’s organizations, with the wife of the male chief serving as female
chief. The visibility of this role is low and appears more
as a conceptual counterpart to men’s activity and organization rather than a public leadership role. Nevertheless,
without a respected wife who exercises her own influence
over female public opinion, a man is considered unqualified to lead. Membership in age grades is calculated by
social age rather than absolute age, which, in turn, is
linked to physical and social maturity, marriage and birth
of children, and eventually grandchildren.
Marriage is monogamous and divorce is common,
although lifelong spouses are also common and may
become extraordinarily close emotionally. Kinship terminology follows an Omaha pattern, but there are no
descent groups. Pedigrees may extend back four or five
generations, and names are endlessly recycled. Names,
ceremonial ornaments, and privileges linked to a name
are more important for tracing relationships between
living persons than are deep genealogies. Genitors do not
name their own children, who receive their ceremonial
and nonceremonial names from a class of same-sex social
mentors who include genitors’ cross-sex siblings and
ascending lineal relatives. Both males and females inherit
561
562
Kayapo
formal friends from their father and this relationship may
be inherited patrilineally.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Males and females are distinguished according to their
different genitalia, as “penis ones” (me my) and “vagina
ones” (me ni). However, human growth is not automatic
and the social qualities and physical abilities that allow
one to act as an adult man or woman are built up slowly,
although transition from one age/gender category to
another is abrupt. The formation of the fetus requires
repeated intercourse and may involve different men.
Different phases of the life cycle are signaled by passage
to the next age grade. Each age grade carries distinct
standards of proper food consumption, social behavior,
including sexual behavior, and distinctive participation in
economic and ritual activities. Toward the end of their
lives, elderly men and women have acquired quite different knowledge but act in very similar ways and enjoy a
similar relaxation of dietary rules and codes of etiquette.
Attributes of gendered persons are also differentiated
according to age. It is difficult to point to any attribute
associated with genitalia that survives the abrupt age
transitions unaltered.
Formerly, boys of 7 or 8 would leave their natal
houses to sleep in a bachelor’s dormitory or men’s house;
today they sleep in their natal residences as well. Men
must marry out of their houses and also leave the village
to hunt, make war, or to travel further afield—often today
to Brazilian towns and cities. Males thus require specialized knowledge to control the eventual consequences of
the supernatural threats to which they are exposed and the
development of bodily abilities such as sureness of foot
and piercing eyesight in order to be good hunters. New
knowledge and abilities come burdened with food and
behavioral taboos in order to be effective. The development of men is thought to require more time, effort, and
guidance from elders than that of women. However,
female bodily abilities and knowledge must also be
cultivated in a fashion analogous to those of males.
Kayapo cite examples of women hunters and travellers,
including those who have made contact with far-flung
societies from which they are said to have brought
back valuable cultural knowledge. In short, whether
male or female, Kayapo can only carry out activities
proper to their gender by virtue of their own preparation
and self-transformation. Male assertions of superiority to
women, when they occur, refer to socially developed
qualities, such as greater propriety and self-restraint,
rather than to natural endowments of manhood. As in
other Amazonian societies, women do not necessarily
acknowledge male superiority, and conflicts between men
and women as groups are considered to be normal.
At birth, male and female infants have their ears
pierced and a hole is made below a boy’s lower lip. By
adulthood Kayapo men may have progressively distended
this opening to receive a lip disk. While the earlobe holes
of both males and females are both distended, only men
decorate these with earrings. After childhood, both males
and females wear their hair long. Sexually active females
traditionally shave the crown of their head, as do children
of both sexes and men on the occasion of certain rituals
and life crises. Hair is also cut by both sexes to mark
mourning periods. Women paint children of both sexes
with elaborate geometrical designs and adorn the lower
cheeks of men and women with similarly elaborate genipap designs. Formerly, male dress, apart from body paint
and ornaments such as bracelets, consisted of a conical
penis sheath fitted over the foreskin; females wore belts
around the waist. Today most women wear single-piece
shifts, and males wear shorts; plastic flip-flops are
commonly worn by everyone.
While the gendered attributes of persons shift with
age, a stark gender opposition is imposed on the village
layout: the public realm of the plaza is considered to be
associated with maleness, while the ring of houses forming the circumference of the plaza is a female realm.
There are some general behavioral differences characteristic of men and women: adult women keen both as a
lament and in welcome, ceremonial speech is used only
by adult males, there are some slight differences in male
and female vocabulary, and females of any age should
avoid contact with bows and arrows and firearms.
However, during some life phases and life crises, males,
too, should not handle firearms and do not speak
publicly.
Bachelors and unmarried nubile women are
generally thought to embody the height of sexual attractiveness. Pudginess is attractive in females and men
greatly augment their ability to attract sexual partners if
they have manufactured goods to distribute or are frequently successful as hunters or fishers. Characteristics
such as intelligence are appreciated equally in males and
females, and both males and females acquire specialized
Gender over the Life Cycle
knowledge in the use of medicinal plants and both may
become shamans. In summary, males and females are
born with different genitalia but are formed from identical components—a physical substance shared with both
male and female nuclear family relations, knowledge
gained from both males or females, and a soul-essence
that is unique to each person. Physical and social abilities
must be developed in distinct ways in order to acquire
characteristics proper to one’s age/gender grade.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Life stages are classified according to age/gender grades,
and both males and females make cosmetic alterations or
embellishments to the body proper to each grade. Codes
of conduct and alimentary rules are also correlated with
these social categories. Position in sibling birth order and
personality differences are also cited in connection with
the public persona, individual vigor, and prestige of
different individuals.
The Socialization of Boys and Girls
Before they can walk unaided, infants are never left unattended. Babies are carried in a sling that allows access to
the breast, which they are generally offered at the first
signs of crying or discontent. Small children are allowed
to crawl under close supervision. Children are highly
desired and no preference is expressed for either gender.
Ideally, a couple would alternate between boy and girl
births.
Newborns of both sexes are called “suckling ones”
(kra-karà) or simply “little ones” (meprire). Boy and girl
infants are heavily adorned with red cotton bandoliers,
cotton bands below the knees, and cotton wristbands and
ankle bands, while their faces are covered with achiote
and their bodies painted with an identical genipap motif.
Parents appear to take delight in strong personalities
irrespective of gender. After they learn to walk and
speak, even more attention is lavished on both boys and
girls; they receive yet more ornaments and have their
head crowns shaven and decorated. This stage corresponds to weaning in some Kayapo villages. Bodies of
boys and girls are painted with identical motifs which
may be seen on adult women in some cases, while
identical cheek motifs may be sported by adults and
children of both sexes.
563
From about 3 to 8 years, boys are referred to as
mebôktire and girls as are referred to as “big children”
(meprintire). Children play in public space when outside
their own household and unselfconsciously adopt postures
they have observed all their lives; boys and girls tend to
interact in groups that closely match their sex and age.
Both genders may play raucous and energetic games, but
boys are given little bows and arrows, fishlines and hooks,
and model airplanes and whirligigs made of straw, and
girls are given little baskets and baby slings. Girls begin
to accompany their female relatives to the gardens, tend to
smaller children, and carry small burdens, while boys are
called on much less frequently to help. Children of both
sexes are taught to stand up for themselves vigorously
against bullies of both sexes; they may engage in open
temper tantrums, and children as old as 7 or more may
seek the solace of the breast if they are greatly troubled.
All children are encouraged to respect their grandparents
and others of their relationship category, called ingêt
(male) and kwatỳj (female) (which includes MB (mother’s
brother), FZ (father’s sister), and MBS (mother’s brother’s
son)), and to choose to learn specific skills and knowledge
from them. The senior relative in this relation, particularly
of the same sex, should be the one to discipline the junior
one, rather than the child’s own parents. Parents comment
favorably on childrens’ signs of independence, such as the
desire to sleep separately, although children are also
encouraged to sleep with their grandparents from whom
they learn tradition and special skills. Children are aware
of the sexual activity of couples and unmarried girls who
receive lovers in the close quarters of the house. Although
boys and girls may remain unclothed, girls are taught to
sit with their legs together. Boys who have already demonstrated a propensity to aggressiveness may be given medicines to develop bellicosity further. In general, steps are
taken to make boys fierce (akrê) and to make girls tame
(uabô), though individuals may display either quality.
Formerly, it was common for a meprintire girls to be
betrothed to an older man, who, while taking other women
as sexual partners, would occasionally sleep near the girl
and give her presents, including meat, so that she would
like him. When the girl reached an age appropriate for sexual relations, the marriage would be consumated. Although
the girl was not yet fully able to assume the economic role
of wife, the son-in-law was incorporated into the division
of labor within the uxorilocal household under the direction of his wife’s parents, toward whom he would show
either deference or avoidance on proper occasions.
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Before the onset of puberty, there are radical changes
in the lives of both boys and girls. Around 8 years of age
boys advance to the meôkre grade (the painted ones) and
are inducted into the men’s house. Here, younger boys are
in close contact with older boys and bachelors to whom
they listen attentively. They watch as older males slip away
for trysts with women, and elders come at night to awaken
them with stories or counsel in tradition. Although a boy
returns to his natal house to eat, he no longer receives the
almost unlimited attention and comfort afforded younger
children. No longer is he painted by his mother, but by
men. Girls at this age also shoulder more responsibility for
subsistence and are less coddled. They begin to develop
their own skills in body painting, practicing on dolls and
playmates of the same age. The continuity in a girl’s life
can be seen in her body paint; she continues to be painted
with motifs appropriate for children and continues to wear
red cotton thread wrapped below the knees. However,
mekurêrê girls older than about 8 have their hair cut and
may begin to engage in sexual relations. They are not old
enough to have husbands or to bear children.
Puberty and Adolescence
After a boy reaches puberty, he receives a penis sheath and
becomes known as menõrõnyre (ones who sleep in a new
way). At this time, crown hair, kept cropped since weaning
or walking, may be grown out. This period marks the
height of a male’s independence from the domestic realm,
since his life revolves around socializing with other bachelors, dancing, and generally being the energetic and visible emblem of village strength and unity, and he is not yet
incorporated into a wife’s household. While he accompanies older men in order to learn needed skills, he must not
engage in many of their activities. He is susceptible to spiritual dangers of game and, although he often leads the way
clearing the trail and gathering raw materials for adornment, such as sweet-scented inner bark, he should not discharge a firearm or eat many foods he will later consume
freely. In short, his main task during this phase of his life
is to develop physically, through correct adherence to food
and behavioral restrictions, in order to develop “strong
eyes” and knowledge. As a prospective husband he should
learn to weave, among other things, a baby sling, basket,
and ceremonial mat from buriti palm thatch. Young men
should still have shame, or social reserve, in addressing the
assembly of adult men and should be concerned with learning from adults rather than debating with them. Moreover,
Kayapo
their sexual activity heightens the shame they feel, particularly in the presence of their parents. Menõrõnyre may be
scraped periodically with a comb made of dogfish teeth as
a collective discipline of their age grade. Girls are not
scraped in this way. However, an older female mentor of
the boy may be scraped along with him. Stinging medicine
is applied to the long scratches on arms, thighs, and calves
to promote speed and strength. Boys knock down wasp
nests with their bare hands and have their faces and arms
smeared with the carbonized remains of burnt nests to cultivate fierceness.
No special recognition is afforded to defloration or
a girl’s first menstruation, which is thought to result from
sexual activity. There are numerous accounts to support
the conclusion that menstruation is thought to be anomalous or akin to illness and should be controlled through
the regular use of medicines. When children are desired,
other herbal medicines are used to activate fertility.
A girl’s readiness for child-bearing is signaled by painting with a distinctive motif, mekrajtyk (those with blackened thighs). She may receive lovers in the house at night.
The shame felt by menõrõnyre of the sexual themes in the
presence of their elders does not seem to afflict the young
women age grade, and this is cited by some males as
evidence of their lower level of sociality.
Attainment of Adulthood
The birth of a child represents the entrance into both a
married state and adulthood. Either one or several fathers
share the state of pregnancy (metujarô) with the mother.
Once the umbilical cord falls, there are a series of public
symbolic procedures involving both relatives and nonrelatives by which the new mother and father are reintegrated
into full village life as mekranyre (those with new
children). However, the postpartum taboo on the woman’s
sexual relations with her husband remains in force. In past
times, it could extend up to 2 years. Nowadays, the norm
seems to be several months. During this time, the man
commonly takes on a prõ krô’ã, or substitute spouse.
The union of parental substance with that of their
offspring and the association between what the parents
ingest and the characteristics of the child that begins in
utero is thought to be ongoing and reflected in the
coordinated observances of parents on behalf of an ill or
ritually honored child. On the other hand, foods off limits
to the menõrõrnyre, such as certain fish, are perfectly
acceptable to parents. Married men are able to hunt
Gender-Related Social Groups
because they are better prepared than bachelors to deal
with the supernatural dangers entailed in killing game.
Men often know specific medicines to allow them to
override the ill effects of prohibited species and for this
reason have a greater potential range of diet than their
spouses. However, men are expected to be generous
suppliers of game and fish to their household.
Married women always have their own garden, since
one of the obligations of their husbands is to clear
forested areas and assist in preparation and sometimes
planting of crops as well. A women is commonly assisted
by her unmarried sisters or widowed mother in her
garden. Widowed or single women may prevail on a lover
to slash their garden. Game distribution is overseen by the
house’s senior woman.
Middle Age and Old Age
With the birth of three or four children, mother and
fathers become incorporated in the mekrakramtire (those
with many children grade). The social reserve and shame
that have constrained a man in both the men’s house and
his wife’s house begins to ease during this life stage, and
he may become a public orator and intervene most vigorously in discussion in the men’s council. He has probably
sponsored a name ceremony for his child which
enmeshes him in future obligations to provide food and
support to others but also gains him recognition as a
peacemaker. Wives of this grade have been ceremonial
sponsors along with their husbands and also enjoy the
respect accorded parents of honored children. With
the birth of grandchildren and the gradual recognition of
the diminuition of their own sexual potency, men and
women become part of the mebengêt (social mentors)
grade. As they cease to have young children of their own
they are less susceptible to restrictions observed by newer
parents. Men of this age are the butchers of large game,
and both sexes begin to consume many foods considered
deleterious to younger people. Social reserve may be
flaunted. Old folks of both sexes make their opinions
known, often vocally and to the discomfort of others.
Mebengêt may also make jokes and assume postures of
ridicule during solemn occasions. They are thought to be
inept as learners but finally able to verbalize fully and
demonstrate what they have learned from their own elders
over the course of a lifetime. Men may become heralds
during this life stage, exhorting the entire village in the
early morning and at nightfall. Finally, some communities
565
insist on a terminological distinction between sexually
inactive and very old men (kubêngêt) and women
(abêngêt), presumably because their own gendered
activity no longer serves to make this distinction.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Kayapo are accepting of a wide range of personality
types. The fierceness displayed by men is felt to necessarily be constantly inculcated through magic, ritual, and
oratory. Boys and young men constantly engage in verbal
and physical contests of one-upmanship, quite differently
from their female counterparts. However, by the time
men are married, such open competitiveness is frowned
upon. Men feel far more affected by rules of social
reserve and requirements to act tough and, consequently,
women show a more open and easy sociability with other
women. Women of different houses, for example, will
time their baths in the river so as to socialize together,
although this also may act as an impediment to interruptions by menfolk. Every few days women will spend
hours painting one another and also gather nightly to sit
and chat on the village patio. Men are more openly
relaxed outside the more formal constraining context of
the village and enjoy nighttime socializing in the men’s
house precisely because interlocutors remain unseen in
the darkness and may be answered with less reserve. In
private contexts, both men and women are openly sentimental, particularly when discussing close kin relations.
Men notably stress close friendships with age mates to
a much greater extent than women.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Social structure may be either male and female oriented
depending on where one stands. The major foci of social
life are, respectively, houses, or residence units, sharing
common ritual and subsistence interests formed by
groups of related women and in-marrying men, and the
men’s house, which is generally off-limits to women.
Houses are exogamous and maintain their relative
position within the village circle and also commonly
during treks. Each has an area for joint cooking by female
kin in a stone/earth oven.
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Kayapo
The men’s house serves as a sleeping place for
bachelors and divorced or separated men. It is the site of
sitting places for the various male age grades and men’s
clubs and the focus of male social life. Men may take
meals in the men’s house as well as in their residences.
Decisions affecting the entire community are taken in the
men’s house.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Married couples are expected to maintain fields in which
crops are grown, notably, corn, sweet potatoes, bananas,
squash, yams, sweet manioc, and, today, bitter manioc.
Females are in charge of harvesting and preparing food,
including meat and fish provided by men. Both genders
are extraordinarily capable of providing for their own
needs without their complement over periods of time that
may range to several months.
Various activities are carried out by each gender:
males slash underbrush, fell trees, burn the garden area,
hunt with bows and arrows and firearms in addition to
clubs, and make weapons, basketry, ritual ornaments,
household utensils, canoes and, nowadays, “craft” items
for sale. They may also collect Brazil nuts, animal pelts,
or other natural commodities for sale. Women prepare
food in the stone/earth ovens, boil and sieve manioc, make
salt from palm stalks, make cotton string (an essential item
for ornaments), collect firewood, and plant, weed, and harvest gardens. Both genders cooperate in housebuilding,
although men cut the logs needed for houses modeled
after the Brazilian backwoods style. Formerly, women
erected house structures. Both genders collect wild products, such as piqui, although males specialize in honey
(even though many, such as the menõrõny, cannot eat it),
palmito, bacaba, and assaí. Women tend to focus on other
resources, such as wild legumes and chocolate and certain
ants and grubs. Men collect stinging ants for use on hunting dogs as well as the feathers, resin, and eggshell used
in ritual ornaments. Both men and women may fish with
hook and line, although only men handle fish poisons.
Men tend to roast food, although women may do so as
well; women are susceptible to heated vapors and so will
not toast manioc flour over an open fire, although they will
participate in other steps of the procedure.
Tasks performed outside the household that involve
many people are organized according to age grades. In
making manioc flour, unmarried nubile girls may fetch
water, bachelors fish for the entire work party, and elderly
women split firewood, while younger mothers sieve manioc and collect tapioca starch, married men do the toasting,
and men with many children feed manioc through an electric grinder. The least active contributors to subsistence are
usually boys and young men (meôkre and menõrõnyre)
who may rarely hunt, fish, or garden, concentrating instead
on self-decoration, singing, and dancing.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Although childcare falls most heavily on the mother,
fathers may hold their small children although feeding and
cleaning up are left to the mother. Adults are uniformly
expansive and enthusiastic with children regardless of
their sex. Once they are weaned, small children of both
sexes may accompany their father to the men’s house. The
caretaker role extends to older siblings as well and encompasses a spiritual dimension because parents and siblings
share the vital substance thought to make up part of a person and thus must act as custodians through behavioral
restraints and alimentary practices. Children also have the
benefit of co-resident mothers and fathers (MZ and MZH),
and ngêti (MF and MB) and kwatỳj (MM, MMZ, FZ) both
lavish special attention on their tabdjwỳ (reciprocal terms)
with whom they come to be identified ceremonially. Wet
nursing is common and grandmothers as well as mothers
may nurse. Children have numerous ngêti and kwatỳj and,
especially boys, are encouraged to cultivate these relationships, actively because through them they will acquire specialized knowledge and ceremonial valuables. Boys are
also initiated into the men’s house with the expectation
that they will be mentored by older boys. The role of substitute father is prominent in men’s house induction, and
he may be an important teacher and mentor in a boy’s life.
Additionally, in arrangements of institutionalized spouse
exchange, parents regard offspring of exchange partners as
classificatory “children” and, while they may not observe
taboos on their behalf, may show them familiar attention.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Although there is a tendency today for chiefs to inherit
the role from their fathers, this is far from the rule, and
leadership roles must still be achieved on the basis of
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
special talent, ability, and energy even when succession is
weighted in favor of a leader’s offspring. Institutionalized
leadership, with the exception of wives of chiefs who act
as leaders of corresponding female age grades or
women’s clubs, is limited to males. These include benadjwyr (speakers of ceremonial speech), ritual song leaders, scouts, including those who specialize in tracking
specific enemy peoples, and ngôkonbàri (Xikrin) or
meôbadjwynh—leaders of unmarried age grade activities.
In the past, courageous raiders were acknowledged for
their ability to abscond with goods or even prisoners.
Although killing a human enemy or a jaguar is desired as
a mark of valor, no special position accrued to a killer,
although he did have to undergo a special ceremony on
his return to the village. Heralds are also male. Elderly
women may be highly respected and quite influential;
however, they exercise their influence both through
public pronouncement and more informal counsels,
particularly with other women. Public oratory in the
men’s house, where consensus decisions chart the course
for future action, is the prerogative of adult men.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
As noted previously, both men and women play parallel
roles in major great-name ceremonies; although the male
versions are more extensive and complex, the names and
rituals valuables transmitted in the respective ceremonies
are considered equally prestigious. Besides names and
ritual ornaments, females inherit the right to raise certain
animals as pets, while men inherit the right to claim
certain cuts of meat from game animals. When female
names are celebrated, females are featured performers,
and males take center stage when male children are
honored. In other ceremonies, such as the babassu palm
ceremony or the new corn ceremony, males also take the
lead. Certain ceremonial roles, such as gourd rattle bearers, are limited to males. Men may also dress up as monkeys during certain rituals at which time they make many
sexually suggestive and outrageous acts, often aimed at
female onlookers. Only mature adult men chant ceremonial speeches which feature a specialized lexicon known
only to a restricted number of specialists. The ritual
knowledge of songs, names, and ornaments held by both
men and, women is greatly valued and, in such matters,
the less knowledgeable defer to the more knowledgeable
regardless of gender. Both males and females are ritual
567
sponsors for the children involved and both contribute to
gathering the necessary foodstuffs. The kwatỳj of honored
children are expected to make themselves available
sexually to male celebrants during the night of the ritual
climax. Rituals may also feature collective sexual intercourse in which younger unmarried women maintain
relations with married men and married women do the
same with bachelors. One researcher claims to have documented spikes in the birthrate 9 months after great name
ritual celebrations.
Although shamans do not have a role in collective
ritual, they are considered to be important for the
community. They learn new knowledge from outside the
village through their contact with spirits. They are also
important actors in military campaigns and may locate
enemies from afar or provide means for warriors to instill
fear in their enemies.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Work and play are not neatly separated and a family
outing to the garden to spend the day may be considered
a leisure activity. Families may also sit together on mats
under the night sky for an hour or two in the evening.
Beyond such occasions, males and females do not socialize together. With the current demographic increase the
number of young children clearly burden women with
almost constant activity. Respite from work generally
takes the form of a leisurely dip in the river, often while
snacking on sweet potatoes, or when women socialize in
front of their houses on the central patio after dark. Every
adult woman is an accomplished body painter and has
command of a number of motifs that express both socially
correct classification of age/gender grade and life crisis
state as well as personal style and flair. Every seventh or
eighth day—or when the previous genipap application has
faded away—adult women gather to paint each other’s
bodies. During these times men and even children are conspicuously absent and these are often gay occasions when
much information is exchanged. Men’s painting of their
own bodies and women’s painting of men is much more
cursory; however, the painting of a child can take several
hours. Women also raise pets (birds, monkeys, and even
tapirs!), often as an inherited ceremonial privilege.
Hunting is valued both as a prestigious activity and
also because it allows men to relax away from the
formality and constraints of the village. Men do not hunt
568
Kayapo
or go to the gardens daily, as do women, and they may
spend idle time in conversation or doing nothing. While
sitting at home or in the men’s house they also weave
baskets or other items and make weapons, such as clubs
and bows and arrows, or ritual ornaments, such as
mollusc shell necklaces or feather headdresses. Although
such items have essential functions, they are also considered to be beautiful. The techniques for making them
are considered essential male knowledge, but some men
are noticeably more accomplished than others. It should
be noted that to remain without doing anything in the
village for an extended time invites gossip and reproach,
mainly because to do nothing by oneself is considered
antisocial. Although unmarried men seem to engage in
less work than others, they make a great show of going
around together and in this way avoid such accusations.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Males and females develop knowledge, skills, and bodily
qualities that are expressed in different and complementary ways over the course of a lifetime. The arena of male
activity—the forest and the world beyond the village and
the public men’s house—demands a rigorous and lengthy
period of restrictions and activities that both men and
women believe is more demanding than that to which
women must be submitted. Men feel that they have
earned a measure of superiority over women by virtue of
a more developed and sustained formal decorum within
the village and confrontation with dangers outside it.
There is at least one myth attributing the invention of
important ceremonies to women and the usurpation of
these by men. However, public institutions are a major
means through which men assert that male age/gender
qualities are necessary for the reproduction of the community as a whole and thus on par with or superior to the
biological fertility of females. Men coordinate activities
that ensure that the younger men will learn the right
skills, eat the right foods, and acquire the necessary
knowledge for their further development. Women also do
this for younger women, but usually in the domestic
sphere or as a less ostentatious counterpart to public male
activities. Men also defend the village militarily and from
supernatural dangers though appropriate chants. The
prestigious positions that are limited to males, principally
that of chief or “true chanter of the ben” is associated with
leadership of public institutions. Females and males
possess prestige by virtue of inherited wealth validated in
great-name ceremonials, but male institutions alone
provide a means of coalescing different kindreds (and
cross-cutting them as well). Both sexes have a good deal
of autonomy in the choice of spouse, and both girls and
boys are warned that if they are lazy or incompetent no
one will want them as a marriage partner.
Equally present, and expressed through customary
forms, is an ongoing battle of the sexes that gives voice to
the dissatisfactions felt and expressed collectively by both
men and women. This may take the form of verbal duels
or mutual ridicule between groups of men and women.
Although adequacy of males and females in pursuit of
their gender-specific pursuits is often called into question
(“incompetent hunter!” “lazy gardener!” ), the escalation
of insults can lead to deprecation of masculine sexuality
and attractiveness as lovers. Males counter in the same
vein, but their barbs do not seem to have the same impact.
Men are the ones who initiate violence, organizing mock
raids during which women are terrorized or struck with
prickly bromeliad leaves. However, women inevitably
counterattack, often with firebrands. They may enlist their
own children or tabdjwỳ, and after a male raid toddlers
may be seen stolidly planted in the doorway of their
house, minature warclub in hand, to block father’s return
home. In cases where they feel their interests slighted,
women may also act collectively to withhold their labor
and resources from activities organized by male age
grades that demand a female complement of labor, such as
the cultivation of a large garden that may require cuttings
from women’s domestic plots.
Clearly, Kayapo feel that they are treated in terms of
a common status defined by gender, in addition to and
apart from statuses of kinship, age, and ceremonial prestige. Status is relative, but both men and women may feel
themselves to be the ones having their interests subordinated to their gender opposites. Both genders operate
from different positions of strength—women as gardeners living in matri-uxorilocal residences within which
food is shared and prepared, and men within the men’s
house and public sphere. It seems precisely because male
assertions of superiority are so ineffective as ideology
that men have attempted to make women fear them. The
threat of gang rape has been reported by researchers—not
as a punishment for any particular trepass but seemingly
as an expression of male dissatisfaction with female
behavior—and customarily girls are initiated into sex by
older men, some reluctantly. The reason why accounts of
Courtship and Marriage
the relative status of men and women continue to be
differently described in the literature derives from the fact
that either side may be temporarily ascendent in the
onging war between the sexes. Collective conflict
between males and females clearly affects the tenor of
husband–wife and son-in-law–parents-in-law relations
within the domestic units. The fierceness of adult men
qualifies them for political and diplomatic preeminence
but does not compel female cooperation.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality, like gender, is thought to be created through
proper social activity, and men are thought to make a
women’s vaginal cavity into an appropriate organ for conception. Menarche, when it occurs, is thought to be the
result of sexual activity. There is no regular sexual abstinence associated with menstrual periods. The literature is
not clear on what contributes to the capacity of a boy to
have sex beyond activities to ensure growth and maturity
in general. The sexual act itself is instrumental for stimulating growth of young people of the meprintire and
menõrõnyre grades, and boys are preferably initiated into
sex by older women as are girls by older men. However,
there are also beliefs expressed in myth that sexual
contact between married women and bachelors may be
dangerous to the latter. There is no doubt that older men
may have self-interested motives to propagate this in
order to clear the field of younger sexual rivals. However,
unmarried adolescents of both sexes are expected to
engage in sex. Males can easily slip out of the men’s
house at night, and relations may be facilitated for girls
by having them bed down near the doorway of their residence where they can receive lovers while others sleep.
Males and females of all ages talk about sex in positive terms. Being attractive to the opposite sex is part of
the motive for grooming and cleanliness. Medicines or
charms may also be used to enhance attractiveness to the
opposite sex. Pursuit of sexual liaisons precedes marriage
and continues thereafter until desire subsides in the
grandparent age grade. Any time a male and a female not
sharing kin ties are alone together, intercourse is assumed
to have occurred, and sexual tension exists whenever
unrelated males and females co-mingle publicly. Sexual
jealously is held to be a major cause of intravillage
contention. As mentioned above, sexual liaisons are
common during ceremonial climax and sexual intercourse
569
is required in some ritual contexts. Females commonly
mark the arms and shoulders of their lovers (rather than
their husbands) with scratches, indicating that passion
may be heightened in extramarital trysts. Sexual relations
outside marriage entail some form of gift from the male
on each occasion. Women may inflate their demands if
not presented with a gift at the time of the act. Married
couples are expected to enjoy sex, but the post partum
taboo when a woman (but not her spouse) is enjoined
from sexual activity almost ensures that men will look for
other sexual partners as well.
Modesty demands that men keep the glans penis
covered (the scrotum and penis shaft may be exposed) and
women should not sit with their legs open. Homosexual
relations appear to be unknown between women, and
although sexual fondling among bachelors is not uncommon, it appears to occur in the context of fantasizing about
absent females.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Young couples who are openly attentive to one another
are assumed to be already married, even if they have yet
to bear a child, because public courtship is nonexistent.
Flirting, sexual liaisons, and gift-giving on the part of the
male may all precede marriage. However, a prospective
couple would not be able to spend significant time
together before actual co-residence.
Public displays of affection between the sexes are
not seen. Marriage is entered into freely by both parties.
Extensive kinship relations and relatively small village
size may reduce potential (i.e., unrelated) partners to a
small number. Marriage may be preceded by exchanges
of food between the houses of the potential spouses, and
a prospective husband may be expected to show competence in weaving and hunting to the satisfaction of his inlaws. A daughter’s mother is said to be particularly
attentive to the qualities of potential partners for her offspring but cannot override her daughter’s own wishes. The
ceremony that openly marks the marriage relationship
commemorates the birth of the first child rather than the
initiation of co-residence. Second marriages need not be
marked in any way other than a transfer of residence, a
man usually moving to his wife’s house.
Almost everyone gets married at least once during
their life, although where a demographic balance exists,
women outnumber men. Women who conceive a child
570
when no man accepts paternity are designated by a
specific term (mekupry). Although they are accommodated within extended family residences by virtue of kin
ties, they generally gain a reputation for promiscuity and
a dependence on the gifts they receive in return for sex.
Widowed or divorced people are also accommodated
within the extended family residences. There is no
levirate or sororate, and a brother would only marry the
sister of own brother’s wife in exceptional circumstances.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship is based on a complementary division of tasks between a husband and a wife,
common stewardship over the mystical substance they
share with their offspring, and overall compatibility
between them and the wife’s extended co-resident kin.
Either party may initiate divorce if dissatisfied. Divorce
is particularly frequent after the death of a child. Children
almost always remain with the mother after divorce, but
there are exceptions when the man may take them back
to his natal household. Husbands may choose to spend
their time outside the home, particularly in the men’s
house, and there is wide latitude for how closely couples
share common meals or time together. In general, couples
marry freely and are expected to like each other, but one
may observe a range of emotional involvement. Each
person makes decisions regarding his or her own sphere
of activity, and jointly when both must be present. This
means that a woman and, if co-resident, her mother as
well have quite a bit to say about the distribution of food,
including fish and game, and the comforts available to a
husband in his home. The term prõ for W or and mied
for H is used in reference to any sexual partner.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Brothers and sisters ideally should transmit their great
names, ceremonial inheritances, and knowledge to their
siblings’ offspring of the same sex. This entails continuous mutual obligations between siblings throughout their
life. Although males leave their homes to be initiated into
the men’s house, they maintain an interest in the affairs of
their sisters and may end up returning to their natal house,
particularly in the case of divorce or death of their spouse.
Kayapo
A person should joke with the spouse of a same-sex
formal friend toward while showing the latter formality
and avoidance. The public joking generally focuses on
ribald commentary on sexual comportment.
The relationship between an in-marrying husband
and his mother-in-law carries a great deal of formality.
While she may address him directly, he must channel any
thoughts through his wife, avoid looking directly at her,
being alone with her, etc.
Males have more opportunity to interact with their
mothers, aunts, and grandmothers (kwatỳj) than girls do
with their fathers, uncles, and grandfathers. This is
because men are absent from home more during childhood when the lives of both girls and boys center around
their residence. Consequently, men will cite what they
have learned from their mothers (M, MZ) and kwatỳj (FZ,
MM, FM, MBW), in addition to their fathers (F, FB) and
ngêti (MB, MF, FF, MBS), while women cite knowledge,
such as medicines, they have learned from their husband.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Several related changes are occurring in many Kayapo
villages. Trekking is becoming curtailed to shorter time
periods. With firearms, canoe travel, and cash and food
coming in from outside, as well as opportunities to get
outside the village for sightseeing and education, men are
better able to meet their economic obligations and have
access to resources independently of extensive kinship
networks or the collective male activities organized out of
the men’s house. While these opportunities by and large
do not exist for women, who continue to be dependent on
domestic relations organized by related females, some
females have begun to engage in new activities. Little
girls are enthusiastic participants in schools for literacy
and mathematics, where these have been established in
villages. They have become operators of video cameras,
and even sought opportunities to made beadwork or other
items that can be sold outside the village. Young people
may socialize more freely together and even on occasions
set up “nightclubs” where they can dance to the sounds
of Brazilian music.
There are more single mothers (mekupry) since there
are fewer reasons for males to enter into marriage. When
they do, they prefer to be less subservient to their in-laws
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and may often insist upon separate quarters for the couple
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solitary and less collective work. The raising of boys in
the men’s house, where they were thoroughly inculcated
with a distinct male ethos and pride in their fierceness to
enemies and their own women alike, has given way to
enculturation with less of a boarding-school hazing
quality. Boys spend more time in their natal homes and
are not so quick to assume fatherhood.
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of Anthropological Research, 40(3), 394–405.
Kazakhs
Cynthia Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Kazakhs are also known as Kazak (alternative spelling)
and as Kirgiz and Kirgiz-Kaisak (alternative names used
by Russians until the 1920s).
LOCATION
Kazakhs can be found in Kazakhstan, a country that
became an independent nation-state in 1991 when the
Soviet Union dissolved. Kazakhstan is located in Central
Asia, and shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Significant populations
of Kazakhs also live in Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan,
Uzbekistan, and Turkey.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Kazakhs descend from nomadic Turkic and Mongol
tribes who formerly occupied the Eurasian steppes.
According to most sources, the Kazakhs emerged as a
distinct ethnic group in the mid-15th century when a number of clans broke away from the Uzbek khanate. Over the
centuries, Kazakh culture has been shaped by a nomadic
pastoral economy, a tribal social structure, customary
laws, a blend of Islamic and shamanic religious beliefs,
and Russian and Soviet colonization.
The Kazakh economy was traditionally based on
nomadic pastoralism, the seasonal migration of livestock
herds to known pastures and water sources. The typical
household had a herd that included sheep, horses, camels,
cows, and goats. The nomadic economy influenced a
gendered division of labor, where men were expected to
care for the livestock and defend the territory while
women cooked, cleaned, took care of children, served
guests, and prepared textiles (Bacon, 1966).
The Kazakhs have a patrilineal tribal social
structure. They are divided into three “hordes” (zhuz),
which are further subdivided into a number of “tribes” or
“clans” (taipa or ru), which are further segmented into
tribal lineages (ata or ru).
Tribal leaders (khans and bais) had authority over
families who lived within their territory and managed
relations between tribal groups. Traditionally, conflicts
over land, livestock, family, and kinship were resolved
through either customary law (adat) or Islamic shar’ia
law (Martin, 1996).
Islam was first brought to the territory that is now
Kazakhstan by Arab conquerors in the 8th century, where
archeological evidence shows that it took root among some
of the sedentary peoples of the region. But it was much
later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, that Sufi dervishes traveled across the steppes and converted many of the Kazakhs
to Islam. Since many of the pre-Islamic practices remained
predominant, Catherine the Great encouraged Tatar mullahs to provide Islamic education to the nomads, in the hope
that it would “civilize” them. Although the Kazakhs have a
Muslim identity, many of the characteristics associated with
Muslim culture never took hold in Kazakhstan. For example, Kazakh women never wore veils that covered their
faces and they do not practice seclusion. Further, a number
of Islamic practices and beliefs have blended with preIslamic shamanic practices and beliefs (Michaels, 1997).
Russian influence over Kazakh culture begins with
the 18th century when a military alliance was formed
between a Kazakh khan and the Russian czar. The northern part of the Kazakh steppe increasingly came under
Russian influence as the Russians established military
outposts in the 19th century, and Russian peasants
migrated there in the early 20th century. In 1920, Bolshevik
revolutionaries gained control of the land and established
administrative control over the region that is now known
as Kazakhstan. From 1920 to 1991, the Soviet rulers
attempted to transform many aspects of Kazakh culture
in ways that conformed with communist ideology.
Traditional gender relations, tribal structure, and the
Islamic faith were all targets of social change (Bacon,
1966; Massell, 1974; Olcott, 1991).
In 1991, the Kazakh republic of the Soviet
Union became an independent nation-state. The newly
572
Gender over the Life Cycle
573
independent Republic of Kazakhstan is a multiethnic
state, with sizable minority populations, including
Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Uzbeks, Koreans, and
Uighurs. Since independence, the revival of Kazakh
traditional culture has been accompanied by less public
and government support for measures that improve the
status of women in society. Simultaneously, increased
exposure to Western cultures has brought new fashions
and attitudes that express a greater openness toward
sexuality (Akiner, 1997; Bauer, Boschmann, & Green,
1997; Michaels, 1998).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Kazakh culture recognizes male and female gender
categories. There is a rigid distinction between male and
female categories in terms of socialization, division of
labor, and dress. Men and women dress differently.
Men typically wear Western-style pants and shirts.
Women typically wear modest dresses and skirts, but new
modern fashions include feminine pants and pantsuits for
urban women, and jeans and shorts for girls and younger
women. The color red, associated with youth, is only
worn by girls and young unmarried women. In rural
regions of Kazakhstan, married women may wear a
kerchief to symbolize their marital status.
While individual preferences vary regarding hair
color, eye color, and other physical features, Kazakhs
generally consider tall strong men to be more attractive
than short weak men. Kazakhs generally consider women
to be attractive if they are of average height with pale skin
and long hair. Although robust women were preferred in
the past, younger Kazakhs today are more likely to
consider thin women to be beautiful.
Sexual preferences are not associated with visual
clues. Most homosexuals try to conceal their sexual
preferences, including through marriage to a person of
the opposite sex.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
In the Kazakh language, there are general terms that refer
to a “boy” (ul bala) and a “girl” (qyz bala), and there are
more specific terms for several life stages. Kazakh infants
of both sexes are known as bope until they are approximately 3 years old, at which point they become known as
toddlers, or nares. Around the age of 6, boys are referred
to by the general term for boy (ul bala or simply bala),
while girls are known by the general term for girl (qyz).
By the time a girl becomes a qyz, she is expected to help
with housework. Kazakhs believe that children reach
puberty around the age of 14, at which point a boy is
called a zhigit and a girl may be called a boi zhetken. The
next life stage is marked by marriage, rather than the
attainment of a certain age. Upon marriage, a girl is
referred to as a young bride (kelinshek) and a boy
becomes a young groom (er zhigit). A girl who does not
marry by the age of 25 becomes known as an “older girl”
(qary qyz). Around the age of 30, a married man is known
as an er kisi and a married woman is known as an aiyel.
Around the age of 60, a man becomes an old man (kariya
or shal) and a woman becomes an old woman (kariya or
kampir).
The transition from unmarried youth to married
adult is the only transition that is publicly marked. A large
wedding feast (uilenu toi) is held at the boy’s house and,
in some cases, a farewell feast for the girl (qyz uzatu toi)
might also be held at the girl’s house. The bride and
groom are seated at a central stage at both events, where
they are expected to stand up repeatedly as they are
toasted by each of the wedding guests.
There are two other events that are publicly marked
and represent important transitions, yet do not represent
the transition from one named life stage to another. First,
when a child takes his or her first step, the event is marked
with a small family ritual known as the tusau keser,
where a small rope symbolizing the cradle rope is
connected to each of the child’s legs and then ritually cut
by a respected adult. Second, young boys are circumcised
at the age of 3, 5, or 7. This event marks the moment a
boy becomes a Muslim. A small ceremony is held on the
day of the circumcision, and a large feast (sundet toi) is
held as early as a month later.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Kazakhs express a general preference for boy children,
because boys have the cultural obligation to help their
parents after they marry and boys pass on the family line.
This cultural preference is illustrated by several Kazakh
girl names, such as Ulbolsyn (“Let it be a boy”) and
Ulzhan (“boy’s soul”), which indicate a sex preference
for the following child. Although Kazakh families
strongly desire at least one boy child, there is a preference
574
to have a mix of boy and girl children, as girls are needed
to help their mother with household chores.
Kazakh children do not have a single set of caretakers. Parents and grandparents play an important role in
socialization, but in extended family households, aunts,
uncles, older cousins, and older siblings may also help to
socialize a child. According to Kazakh custom, a couple’s
first child is given to the man’s parents to raise. Although
this custom is not followed by all families, it is very
common to encounter Kazakh children, especially firstborn children, who have been primarily raised by their
grandparents, not their parents.
As infants, boys and girls are both traditionally
swaddled and placed in a rocking cradle (besik), which
makes it easy for older children to help care for them. Not
all families use the cradle in contemporary Kazakhstan.
Families who use the cradle may keep an infant in it for
over a year. By the time an infant leaves the cradle,
gender socialization becomes more noticeable. To begin,
boys and girls play differently. Boys are allowed to run,
chase, and wrestle each other, and they are taught to
prefer masculine toys, such as cars and trucks. Girls are
expected to play more quietly with toys and dolls.
Around the age of 5, boy children are circumcised
and the occasion is celebrated by a large feast (sundet
toi). From the Kazakh perspective, this occasion marks
the moment a boy becomes a Muslim. In the Soviet
period, the state advocated atheism and did not approve
of circumcision, which was viewed as an unnecessary
Muslim tradition. In practice, parents with strong affiliations to the Communist Party were less likely to circumcize their children, while other parents were likely to
circumcize their sons secretly and hold a small family
gathering to mark the occasion. Among Kazakhs, girl
children are not circumcized and there is no comparable
rite of passage.
Both boys and girls receive 11 years of coeducational public schooling. Families that can afford the additional expense send both boy and girl children to the
university.
Although boys and girls may receive the same level
of schooling, they are disciplined differently at home.
Boys are disciplined or scolded less frequently than girls,
who are often scolded for not behaving in a modest way
and not helping with household work. While parents want
their sons to be hard workers and to help around the
house, they expect more help from their daughters.
Kazakh parents believe that it is important for a young
Kazakhs
girl to learn how to help with all household chores and to
behave modestly. Such qualities are necessary for a girl
to find a good spouse and to have a successful marriage.
Girls are expected to help with household work to such
an extent that they are perceived negatively if they frequently leave the home for leisure activities, such as visiting friends. These expectations, which relate to a girl’s
honor and reputation, are much stronger in rural and
southern regions of Kazakhstan, where traditional gender
ideals have not changed as much as in urban and northern regions of Kazakhstan. In urban and northern regions
of Kazakhstan, young girls have become more interested
in personal appearance and leisure activities and less
interested in household chores and sexual modesty
(Michaels, 1998).
Boys and girls are introduced to sexuality in informal ways through friends and relatives, and more recently
through global television programs and local print media.
Boys often learn about sex by listening to older brothers
and cousins talk about such things. Girls are less likely to
learn about sex through conversation, and less likely to
express an interest in sexuality owing to the cultural
emphasis on female sexual modesty. On a girl’s wedding
day, the girl’s sisters-in-law and married friends will take
her aside and tell her about sex.
Puberty and Adolescence
At puberty, the general pattern of socialization continues,
and the division between the sexes becomes even
stronger. Boys, on the one hand, are allowed even greater
social freedoms than before, though they are expected to
help out with household labor. Girls, on the other hand,
are more strictly disciplined than before, as parents are
increasingly worried about their daughter’s reputation
within the community. (As will be discussed further in
the “Sexuality” section, unmarried women are not supposed to have sex before marriage.) Girls are expected to
help out with household chores and to behave modestly.
Attainment of Adulthood
Men and women are considered to be adults upon marriage. This is linguistically accentuated for women as the
word for “girl” (qyz) is the same as the word for “virgin,”
and the word for “woman” (aiyel) is the same as the general word for “wife.” A girl who does not marry by the
age of 25 becomes known as an “older girl” (qary qyz).
Gender-Related Social Groups
Older girls work and socialize as adults, but they receive
a hard time about their single status. Unmarried men
(boidaq zhigit) also receive pressure to marry by the time
they reach the age of 30.
Upon marriage, a woman takes on several new social
roles. In addition to becoming a wife and an eventual
mother, a married woman becomes a daughter-in-law
(kelin). A good kelin is expected to respect her in-laws by
providing unpaid household services for them. The expectations for daughters-in-law are higher if they are “in
hand” (i.e., living in the same household). Nevertheless,
expectations exist whether or not the young couple lives
with the groom’s parents. Further, the English term
“daughter-in-law” is somewhat misleading as the social
role of a kelin is not limited to a woman’s relationship with
her husband’s parents. In other words, the services of a
kelin can be requested by other relatives on her husband’s
side. For example, an older woman may invite any
younger kelin married into her husband’s patrilineal clan
to come and help her prepare food for guests or to perform
other tasks (Werner, in press a).
Married men and women are not expected to be
physically or economically independent of the husband’s
parent’s household. Some young couples live with the
husband’s parents, and almost all couples have some
economic ties with their parents. At first, the economic ties
might benefit the younger couple, but eventually the
younger couple are expected to support the elderly couple.
Middle Age and Old Age
As men and women reach middle age, they become more
economically independent. Instead of depending on
others, they have several dependents, including children
and elderly parents. In connection with this relative economic independence, middle-aged couples tend to have
very active social lives. Compared with younger and older
couples, middle-aged couples attend and host more feasts
and dinner parties. This is one way that they maintain the
strong social networks which are critical for household
survival (Werner, 1998b). Middle-aged women increase
their status when their sons marry and have children, and
when their mother-in-law dies.
As men and women reach old age, there is a gradual
shift toward economic and physical dependence on their
grown children. The transition occurs as they retire and
their health begins to fail. Although elderly men and
women become more dependent on their children, they
575
are highly respected by all members of society. Elderly
men (aqsaqal), in particular, are respected for their
knowledge and advice. Upon reaching old age, Kazakh
men and women are more likely to observe Islamic rites,
such as the daily prayers and fasting during the holy
month of Ramadan. Although a few Kazakhs adhere to
these practices throughout their lives, most consider these
Islamic practices to be impractical until they reach old
age and have more free time.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Kazakh women are socialized to act in a nurturing way
toward children, guests, and elderly relatives. Women
are the ones to care for hurt children and ill parents.
Compared with men, Kazakh women are much more
social and talkative around friends and guests. At the
same time, women may act shyly and modestly toward
strangers. Kazakh men, in comparison, are generally very
confident and independent when it comes to dealing with
outsiders, yet they are not as communicative as women
when it comes to dealing with personal relationships.
Kazakh men are socialized to become the dominant
spouse, the dominant parent, and eventually the dominant
head of the household. They express this dominance by
making important decisions and commanding others to
fulfill their requests.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
As explained in the “Cultural Overview,” Kazakh society
has both patrilocal residence and patrilineal descent.
Upon birth, individuals automatically become members
of their father’s tribal lineage, tribe, and horde. Upon
marriage, a woman moves to a residence controlled by
another tribal lineage and contributes labor to this new
tribal lineage, though she remains a member of her
father’s lineage. The patrilineal tribes and lineages are
loosely associated with territorial divisions and still have
importance in contemporary Kazakh culture. A person in
a position of power, for example, has some moral responsibility to help other members of the same tribe or tribal
lineage. Therefore it is easier to live in a region where
one’s lineage is a dominant group (Werner, 1998a). Tribal
576
Kazakhs
affiliation is also important when it comes to marriage.
Kazakhs are not supposed to marry a relative on the
father’s side who is less than seven generations removed.
In practice, Kazakhs marry outside their immediate
tribal lineage to ensure that they do not marry a close
patrilineal relative (Werner, in press b).
There are no important nonkin associations for
males or females in Kazakh society.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Women’s household chores include a number of daily
tasks: caring for children, preparing meals, serving tea to
guests, cleaning the house, washing clothes, and arranging the daily bedding. Many women also bake their own
bread, prepare a variety of dairy products, and sew
clothes for their family. Meanwhile, the men help with
domestic work by buying groceries and helping with
childcare. In rural areas, where there is more household
work, women also milk the cows and horses and work in
the household garden, and men also care for livestock and
help with the garden work. Compared with men, Kazakh
women have very little leisure time at home. In order to
complete their household chores, many women rely on
the help of their children and their daughters-in-law. For
children, the boundaries between “female” and “male”
household chores are much more flexible. With the
exception of food preparation and clothes washing, boys
are known to help out with household chores, especially
in households that have a shortage of female labor.
However, the expectations for boys’ help are lower than
those for girls’ help (Werner, in press a).
Women also work hard to maintain household networks by serving guests, helping others serve guests, and
preparing gifts for various occasions. With hospitality as
one of the central elements of Kazakh culture, households
frequently host dinner parties to socialize with friends and
they occasionally sponsor large feasts to celebrate new
marriages and male circumcision. These events are
enjoyed by women, yet they also burden women with
additional responsibilities. Gift exchange is another aspect
of women’s role in household networking. Different occasions call for different gifts, and women are responsible
for selecting and presenting most gifts on behalf of their
household (Werner, 1998b, in press a).
In traditional Kazakh society, craft specializations
were strictly divided by gender. Women sewed clothing,
wove rugs, and made wool and other textiles. Men made
ceramic objects, leather objects, and boots (Bacon, 1966).
In modern Kazakh society, there are also gendered
patterns for occupational specializations. On the one hand,
both men and women work as doctors, teachers, economists, and agricultural workers. On the other hand, women
dominate certain occupations, such as day-care workers,
shopkeepers, secretaries, nurses, and janitors. In urban
centers, women are more likely to be employed as translators and administrative assistants for foreign businesses.
There are a few positions that are rarely, if ever, filled by
women: policemen, firemen, and military recruits. In addition, the chief positions in any business or government
office are usually held by men (Bauer et al., 1997).
Both men and women sell goods in local marketplaces. In the post-Soviet period, as unemployment
increases and the availability of consumer goods
increases, the number of market vendors has increased
dramatically (Bauer et al., 1997). Women dominate the
sale of cloth, clothing, and food products, while men are
exclusively involved with the sale of livestock although
they can also be found selling clothes and food products.
Gender stereotypes suggest that women are better at
market trade because they have the patience to sit in the
bazaar, the skills to persuade others verbally, and the ability to resist friends and relatives who request cash loans.
While many merchants buy and sell goods close to home,
some merchants travel to distant marketplaces, sometimes in foreign countries, to buy and sell their wares.
In some cases, male and female merchants live apart from
their families for weeks or months (Werner, in press a).
According to the laws of Kazakhstan, both men
and women can buy, sell, and own property, including
livestock. In practice, property is more likely to be in the
husband’s name.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
A variety of individuals play a parenting role in the life
of a child. Mothers are the primary nurturers. They spend
the most time with the children, they socialize children to
know what is right and wrong, they provide children with
tender hugs and encouragement, and they care for
children when they are ill. Fathers play a more distant
parenting role. They pay less attention to the child on a
daily basis, but their advice, admonitions, and praise
Relative Status of Men and Women
577
carry more authority from the child’s perspective.
Grandparents also play an important role in the socialization of a child. Grandparents are generally expected
to indulge and spoil their grandchildren. In some cases,
they take on a more serious role. According to Kazakh
custom, the first child is given to the father’s parents to be
raised. This custom is followed by some families. In these
cases, the grandparents tend to be more lenient than
the parents toward the child. Aunts, uncles, and older
siblings also play a parenting role by scolding younger
relatives when they do something wrong and giving them
orders to help with household chores.
Kazakh society. Among Kazakhs, it is extremely rare for
a woman to serve as mullah, or Islamic prayer leader.
However, women frequently receive a calling to be a
traditional healer (tauyp or emshi) (Privratsky, 2001).
Kazakhs believe that the spiritual world entails a
three-tiered hierarchy. Allah, or God, is a male at the top
of the hierarchy. The second level consists of good and
evil spirits, which are primarily female. The third level
consists of ancestor-spirits, which are both male and
female.
LEADERSHIP
In general, men have more leisure time than women.
Teenagers and youth of both sexes enjoy going to discos,
bars, and cafés. There are more opportunities for those
activities in urban areas. On occasion, they might enjoy
nature by going to a park or a lake for a picnic. Grown
men spend their leisure time in a variety of ways. In rural
areas, they go to the livestock bazaar to socialize with
other men, they visit other men’s homes, and they play
horse sports such as kokpar (a polo-like game played with
a goat carcass). In urban areas, men play billiards, play
sports (especially basketball and soccer), and go to the
sauna. In comparison, women have almost no leisure time
because there is always more housework to do. Women’s
leisurely pursuits include visiting other people’s homes,
going shopping, and taking the children to the park.
Certain leisure activities, such as the livestock bazaar and
the kokpar game, are for men only.
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Traditionally, men always dominated leadership roles in
Kazakh society. At all levels of tribal organization, only
men served as leaders. Although tribal divisions do not
have the same political importance as they did in the past,
men still serve as informal tribal leaders.
Through Soviet affirmative action policies, Kazakh
women started to take on leadership roles in the modern
political system. As a general rule, women have successfully worked as middle-level managers, especially in the
educational and welfare sectors of the government, but they
have had more difficulty reaching upper-level positions.
Though women can participate in the military, this is rare
and female leadership in the military is practically nonexistent. The number of women occupying political positions
of power has decreased in the post-Soviet period (Bauer
et al., 1997). At the same time, however, women have
become disproportionately represented in the growing
number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many
of which receive funding from the international aid
community. Women have also taken on leadership roles in
business, establishing and operating their own businesses,
and organizing through an association for businesswomen.
Finally, a number of Kazakh women have served as leaders
for the growing number of charitable funds.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Kazakhs have a Muslim identity, though their
religious beliefs and practices include pre-Islamic
elements that involve shamanism and ancestor worship
(Michaels, 1997). There are no gendered orders in
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Kazakh men have more status and authority than Kazakh
women. At the household level, men make the most
important decisions, such as whether to purchase an
expensive item, whether to send a child to the university,
and whether a child’s suitor would make an acceptable
spouse. Men also have the authority to make decisions
regarding important household resources. However, all
these decisions are usually discussed between husband
and wife, so women do have an influence on major decisions. Control over individual income varies from one
household to the next; in some households all income is
pooled, while in others individuals retain control over
some of their income.
578
A Kazakh woman’s sexuality is controlled by men.
Before marriage, her father and brothers monitor her
comings and goings to ensure that she does not engage in
premarital sex and reprimand her if she does not behave
in a sexually modest way. In traditional Kazakh society,
fathers also decided who would marry their daughters.
Kazakh women today have more influence over their
marriage, but most marriages still involve final consent
from the girl’s parents. After marriage, a woman’s husband controls her sexuality, as he has the right to demand
sex from his wife. In contrast, men’s sexuality is much
less controlled. Men are not expected to be sexually modest, and they are not expected to fulfill the sexual
demands of their wives. To a certain extent, though, their
sexuality is controlled by their parents who still play an
influential role in who a boy chooses to marry. Only
rarely would a young man marry a girl without his
parent’s approval. Although girls generally marry with
their parent’s consent, they are more likely to marry
without their father’s consent, particularly if the bride is
“kidnapped,” with or without her consent, by the groom
(Werner, in press b), as described below in the section on
“Courtship and Marriage.”
SEXUALITY
Kazakh men and women believe that sex is natural and
healthy, in addition to being important for reproductive
purposes. They believe that people who do not have
regular sex may experience physical and psychological
side effects, such as headaches, bad moods, and aggressive behavior. The only time that sex is considered to be
dangerous is during the first 40 days after the birth of a
child. Although sex is considered to be important, many
Kazakh women are reluctant to discuss their sexual
preferences with their husbands.
Attitudes towards premarital and extramarital sex
differ for males and females. Women are expected to
refrain from premarital sex, though not all do so in
practice. Men do not experience any negative social
consequences for having premarital sex. Extramarital
sex is considered to be morally wrong for either sex,
though there is less stigma attached to men who have
extramarital affairs.
Sexual modesty is especially important for Kazakh
women. There is a tension in Kazakh society between
older generations, who believe sexual modesty is very
Kazakhs
important, and younger generations who are influenced
by Western images of sexuality. Teenage girls and unmarried women, especially in urban areas, often act and dress
in ways that are considered to be “sexy.”
Cross-dressing is a rare and surreptitious practice in
Kazakh society. Similarly, Kazakh society does not look
favorably toward male or female homosexuality, which is
generally viewed as unnatural and dirty. Female homosexuality is considered to be more aberrant than male
homosexuality. Nevertheless, some Kazakh men and
women identify as “gay” and “lesbian” respectively, and
gay bars can be found in large urban centers.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Traditionally, Kazakh marriages were usually arranged
by parents when the bride and groom were still young
children. The bride and groom might not have met more
than once or twice before the wedding (Argynbaev,
1978). Patterns of courtship and marriage changed dramatically in the Soviet period, in part due to the state’s
efforts to reduce gender inequality. Grown men and
women receive lots of pressure to marry, and only a small
minority of people never marry.
In the contemporary period, marriages are formed in
a variety of ways that reflect both the pre-Soviet past and
the Soviet legacy. Typically, young couples either meet in
school or at university or they are introduced to each
other through friends and relatives. Couples often date for
several months before the topic of marriage comes up.
Parents often influence who their children decide to
marry by initiating certain introductions and offering
their consent. The amount of influence that the parents
have varies from one family to the next. Physical attraction and love are important considerations for the young
couple, while parents are more likely to consider the
status of the other family, the bride’s ability to do housework, and the groom’s ability to provide for the future.
A Kazakh man is unlikely to marry a woman without his
parent’s consent.
There are three general paths to marriage in
Kazakhstan. First, there is a modern version of the
arranged marriage (quda tusu), where the bride and
groom have as much, or more, input in the marriage decision as their parents. In addition to giving their consent,
the parents are expected to deal with the formalities of
“arranging” the marriage, which involves a series of
Courtship and Marriage
exchanges between the new in-laws. Second, some
marriages are formed when the groom kidnaps the bride
(alyp qashu). This path to marriage is very common in the
southern regions of Kazakhstan, and almost nonexistent
in the northern regions. The Kazakh word for bride
kidnapping (alyp qashu, literally “to take and run”) is a
general term used to refer to both consensual and nonconsensual bride kidnappings. Bride kidnapping varies
from case to case in terms of the level of consent and the
primary motive for kidnapping. Brides who are kidnapped without their consent generally choose to stay,
rather than to return home with a tarnished reputation.
The third alternative is for a couple to get married in a
simpler fashion with an official yet simple ceremony at
the civil registry and perhaps a small celebration at home
(Werner, in press b).
Most marriages are celebrated with a series of feasts
and events, the order of which varies from one marriage
to the next. Both sets of in-laws hold a “matchmaker” or
“in-law” party (qudalyq) in honor of their new relatives.
These parties involve numerous exchanges of food and
gifts between the immediate in-laws and their core relatives and friends. A “face-opening ceremony” (betashar)
is held at the groom’s house, as a formal introduction of
the bride to the groom’s family and social network.
During the ceremony, the bride stands with her face
veiled next to two other women who married into this kin
group. A man playing the dombyra, a guitar-like instrument with two strings, sings out each guest’s name. When
their name is called, each guest walks toward the bride
and puts a small amount of money in a jar as the bride
bows her head in greeting. At the end of the ceremony, the
veil is removed and the bride begins her new life as a wife
and daughter-in-law (Werner, in press b). The girl’s
farewell party (qyz uzatu toi) is an optional event that
takes place at the bride’s house. These ceremonies range
from an intimate family dinner at home to a large feast
with several hundred guests. At the end of a meal, the girl
is escorted to the groom’s house by the groom and other
family members. It is customary for the farewell to be
accompanied by ritual wailing.
The wedding feast (uilenu toi) is a large family feast
sponsored by the groom’s family. Several hundred guests
are invited to the feast, including the bride’s family and
friends and the groom’s family and friends. In rural
regions, the wedding feast is usually held at home. In
urban areas, the wedding feast may take place in a restaurant (Werner, 1998a, 1998b). The Islamic marriage
579
covenant (neke qiyar) is a small ceremony performed by
a mullah at the groom’s house. The mullah recites verses
from the Qur’an, asks the couple to confess their faith,
has the couple and the witnesses drink from a bowl of
water (in which two coins have been placed), and then
gives his blessing (Privratsky, 2001). A civil ceremony
(ZAGS registratsiya) is held at a local administrative
building or marriage hall. This brief ceremony, directed
by a state official, ensures that the couple are legally
married. After the ceremony, an entourage of young
people travel in cars with wedding ribbons to nearby
scenic locations and take numerous photographs.
Legally, divorce can be initiated by the man or the
woman. In practice, however, divorce is usually initiated
by the man because there are fewer consequences for
a divorced man than for a divorced woman. There are a
variety of acceptable reasons for a man to initiate
a divorce: the wife is unable to bear children, she is a bad
housekeeper, she does not get along well with her
in-laws, he is in love with somebody else, or he suspects
her of infidelity. Women are more likely to initiate
divorce in situations where the husband drinks excessively, physically abuses her, or does not provide for the
family. Before resorting to divorce, a Kazakh man must
consider his parent’s opinion and the personal difficulty
of living without his children. If the woman is considered
to be a good wife, mother, and daughter-in-law, his parents will encourage him to stay in the marriage. If she is
considered to be a bad wife, mother, and daughter-in-law,
his parents will likely support his decision to divorce.
A Kazakh women has additional things to consider
before she divorces. She must consider where she will
live after the divorce, how she will cover the expenses for
herself and her child, and how she will remarry. Many
women return to their parent’s home after a divorce, but
parents do not always welcome them with open arms.
Children always stay with their mother, which makes it
more difficult economically for women to seek a divorce.
Remarriage is possible for both sexes, but there is
much less stigma attached to divorced men and therefore
remarriage is easier for them.
Widows and widowers can remarry. Young widows
are much more likely to remarry than older widows.
Widowers, on the other hand, are more likely to remarry
regardless of their age, because Kazakhs believe men
need a woman to help them with housework. Both
widows and widowers are more likely to remarry
somebody who was previously married.
580
Kazakhs
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Ideally, Kazakh husbands and wives live together in a
relationship characterized by mutual affection and respect.
Kazakh husbands and wives eat together with other family
members and any guests. Married couples always have
their own private bedroom in which they sleep together.
Infants may sleep in the same room. Couples spend a lot
of time together, though men leave the house more often
to socialize with friends. Couples vary in regard to
whether they make decisions together or not.
Polygamy is illegal in Kazakhstan, though it did
exist in the pre-Soviet past. Among the older generation,
it is not uncommon to find an occasional polygamous
marriage.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Brothers and male cousins have a protective relationship
with their sisters. In addition, a teasing relationship exist
between a girl or woman and her sister’s husband. Both
sides in this relationship tease each other verbally.
REFERENCES
Akiner, S. (1997). Between tradition and modernity: The dilemma
facing contemporary Central Asian women. In M. Buckley (Ed.),
Post-Soviet women: From the Baltic to Central Asia (pp. 261–304).
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Argynbaev, Kh. (1978). Marriage and marriage rites among the Kazakhs
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In W. Weissleder (Ed.),
The nomadic alternative: Modes and models of interaction in the
African–Asian deserts and steppes (pp. 331–341). The Hague, The
Netherlands: Mouton.
Bacon, E. (1966). Central Asians under Russian rule: A study in culture
change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bauer, A., Boschmann, N., & Green, D. (1997). Women and gender
relations in Kazakstan. Manila, Philippines: Asian Development
Bank.
Martin, V. (1996). Law and custom in the steppe: Middle horde kazakh
judicial practices and Russian colonial rule, 1868–1898.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, CA.
Massell, G. J. (1974). The Surrogate proletariat: Moslem women and
revolutionary strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Michaels, P. (1997). Shamans and surgeons: The politics of health
care in Soviet Kazakstan, 1928–1941. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of North Carolina, Durham, NC.
Michaels, P. (1998). Kazak women: Living the heritage of a unique past.
In H. L. Bodman & N. Tohidi (Eds.), Women in Muslim societies:
Diversity within unity (pp. 187–202). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Olcott, M. B. (1991). Women and society in Central Asia. In W. Fierman
(Ed.), Soviet Central Asia: The failed transformation (pp. 235–254).
Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Privratsky, B. (2001). Muslim Turkistan: Kazak religion and collective
memory. London Curzon Press.
Werner, C. (1998a). Household networks and the security of mutual
indebtedness in rural Kazakhstan. Central Asian Survey, 17,
597–612.
Werner, C. (1998b). Women and the art of household networking in
rural Kazakhstan. Islamic Quarterly, 41, 52–68.
Werner, C. (in press a). Feminizing the new silk road: Women traders
in rural Kazakhstan. In C. Nechemias, K. Kuehnast, & N. Popson
(Eds.), Post-Soviet women encountering transition: Nation-building,
economic survival, and civic activism. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Werner, C. (in press b). Women, marriage, and the Nation-State: The
rise of nonconsensual bride kidnapping in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan.
In P. J. Luong (Ed.), Transformations of Central Asian states:
From Soviet rule to independence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
Kuna
James Howe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Kuna (or San Blas Kuna) call themselves Tule (Dule),
a word that also means “people,” “person,” or “indigenous
person,” although they also use the name Kuna.
LOCATION
The Kuna live along the eastern Caribbean shore of
Panama on the coast of San Blas, as well as in and around
the cities of Panama and Colón. Other smaller Kuna
populations, who are not considered in this article, live in
the interior of eastern Panama and northwest Colombia.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Kuna, then a
riverine and forest population in the Darién region of
eastern Panama, engaged in intermittent conflict with
Spanish colonial authorities while cooperating with
Northern European pirates and traders. During a century
of peace beginning in the late 18th century, most of the
Kuna moved to the northern Caribbean coast of San Blas,
and between the middle 19th and early 20th centuries
they continued out onto nearby islands.
Today the coastal Kuna inhabit some 50 communities—six on the shore, two upriver, and the rest on coral
islets. They grow plantains and bananas, corn, rice, and
root crops on the mainland, raise coconuts for sale on the
shore and uninhabited islands, and meet their protein
needs mostly from the sea. Since 1938 the coast has been
a legally recognized indigenous reserve, now called the
Comarca de Kuna Yala. It has been governed since 1945
by three “big chiefs” (sagla dummagan) or caciques and
the semiannual Kuna General Congress. As of the year
2000, there were 31,000 Kuna in Kuna Yala or San Blas,
and 24,000 in urban Panama (Dirección de Estadística y
Censo, 2001).1
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The Kuna strongly differentiate man (machered) and
woman (ome) as cultural categories, and they say that
many things in the universe, such as panpipes and buildings, come in male–female pairs. The roles and spheres
of influence of the two genders are strongly differentiated, though men and women converse and interact
frequently with little ceremony or deference on either
side, tempering the undeniable but moderate subordination of women in Kuna society.
Male and female dress is strongly differentiated. In
the late 19th and early 20th century men wore distinctively cut home-made pants and shirts, gold earrings,
bowler hats, and, in the 19th century, long hair. Today
they wear store-bought shirts and pants, with baseball
caps and other assorted hats for work, and in the case of
senior men, fedoras for village meetings.
Women’s dress changed radically during the 19th
century. A small strip of sewn designs at the waist of a
blue blouse expanded to become a reverse-appliqué
blouse with complex colorful designs, called a mola,
today a form of indigenous art sold throughout Europe
and the Americas. Kuna women wear red and yellow
headcloths and blue, green, and white wraparound skirts,
both manufactured abroad for the indigenous trade. Their
forearms and lower legs are tightly wrapped with rows of
beadwork, and they wear large gold rings in the nasal
septum, gold earrings, and chestpieces, and necklaces of
silver coins, shells, pods, and beads.
Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, a few
villages enforce the wearing of traditional women’s dress,
but many others leave it to individual choice (see Tice,
1995, pp. 81–82). Probably a majority of girls are now
growing up wearing slacks, shorts, and skirts, but a surprising number of women still wear mola at least some of
the time, even in the city, and overall female dress
remains a key marker of Kuna identity.
581
582
GENDER
Kuna
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Kuna express a strong desire for both male and
female children, and Kuna leaders traditionally urged
their followers to dula omeloge, “increase the membership.” A couple with only male or only female children
may take medicine to increase their chances of having a
child of the opposite sex or will adopt or foster a child.2
Socialization of Boys and Girls
A baby (goe, gwarugwa “newborn”) of either gender
receives a great deal of attention and physical affection.3
Infants are nursed on demand, and they are often carried
around and sung to by older sisters and other female
housemates as well as by their mothers. Children of any
age are almost never struck or spanked, though as they
grow older they may be disciplined with shame or harsh
words, and they receive less physical affection than
before.
When female babies are a few days old, they
undergo a small ritual in which their ear lobes and nasal
septum are pierced and small pieces of string tied in the
holes. Traditionally, parents would mark the piercing by
a village-wide celebration (ikko inna) with drinking of
cane beer, though this ritual has almost disappeared.
Today some parents sponsor a long puberty ceremony
(inna suit) for a young prepubertal daughter, usually as a
stratagem to space out the considerable costs of providing these ceremonies for several female children (see
below).
In other respects, males and females begin to be
treated in significantly different ways when they are old
enough to get around easily on their own. Young girls,
who traditionally begin to wear little mola blouses as
soon as they can walk, and soon thereafter skirts and
headcloths, are kept close to home. (Today, children of
both sexes often start with factory-made underpants and
tops.) As they grow older, girls are called on to carry their
younger siblings and sing them lullabies, and eventually
they begin to help a little with other household work (see
Hatley, 1976).
Boys, in contrast, enjoy a great deal of freedom to
roam around the village flying kites, catching birds,
swimming, fishing off docks, and raising hell; during the
first half of the 20th century they went naked or wore
shirts but no pants. Sometimes beginning with diminutive
canoes of their own, they soon graduate to more serious
fishing and eventually to helping in the forest. In the past
boys were toughened and made industrious through the
bites of leaf-cutter ants and the application of stinging
nettles; the latter was also used as a punishment for both
adults and unruly boys.
Today, the experiences of male and female children
converge more than before, since both typically complete
kindergarten and several years of primary school.4 Boys
and girls should be periodically admonished and counseled by village leaders as well as their parents, and
traditionally both are administered medicine baths and
drinks to make them hard workers, good students, and, in
the case of girls, expert mola makers.
Puberty and Adolescence
Puberty is the stage at which boys begin to work seriously
in the forest with their fathers and brothers, and, during
the early 20th century, to put on long pants for the first
time. Many also go away for a year or more of migrant
labor, and today a large minority continue their schooling
through secondary or university levels (see below). As
incipient adults, these “youths” (sapingana) are exhorted
to act like a Kuna man (Dule machered) by working hard
and defending their people, and pieces of a past warrior
ethos surface in, for instance, performances in which
pairs of young men dance with stinging nettles grinding
between them. Traditionally, many youths would become
village constables (sualibgana) and within a few years
begin apprenticeships in ritual.
Coming of age is much more strongly marked for
females. As a young girl approaches puberty, she is called
a dungu, from the verb dungue, “to grow.” From her first
menses until marriage or loss of virginity, she is a
yaagwa, “maiden.” The kin term for daughter also
changes at puberty, from bunolo to sisgwa.
When a girl has her first period (sergue, “to become
mature”), her father announces the event in euphemistic
language to the village men, who arrive at her house the
following day to build a ritual enclosure (surba emakke)
in which she is isolated. During the next 3 days, she is
repeatedly bathed in seawater, her hair is cut short for the
first time, and she is painted black with the juice of a plant
(Genipa americana). The sequence ends with a community-wide feast.
Over the next few years her parents sponsor two
puberty ceremonies in her honor, both called inna after
the chicha or cane beer which participants consume
Gender-Related Social Groups
(see Prestán Simón, 1975, pp. 135–230). A 1 day affair
called inna mutiki, “night chicha” used to follow within a
couple of weeks after the rituals of first menstruation, but
today it is more likely to come last and to be understood
as compensation to the village for its efforts in the other
puberty ceremonies. The inna suit or “long chicha,”
which takes up to 4 days to complete, entails performance
of a lengthy chant cycle and numerous component rituals,
as well as feasting, dancing, drinking, and merrymaking
by villagers. A long Kuna name is chosen for the maiden,
and her hair is cut short again. Otherwise, she spends
much of the ceremony isolated outside in an enclosure
and is more or less ignored.
In recent decades, some girls have received only a
single short chicha (called an inna mutiki dummad), and
some parents avoid the major expense of puberty ritual
altogether, especially for daughters who chose to wear
Panamanian clothes, merely serving a hot drink to the
community to mark the occasion. However, amid the general decline of ritual in recent decades, villages continue
to hold a good many chichas.
Today quite a few boys and girls continue on to
higher educational levels, though boys are favored.
According to the year 2000 national census (Dirección de
Estadística y Censo, 2001), 7,272 males and 4,735
females had completed some secondary school, while 906
males and 457 females had attended university. Several
dozen individuals have pursued advanced degrees abroad.
Attainment of Adulthood
A girl is considered a full adult woman (ome) when she
marries and has her first child, which often occurs during
her middle teenage years. A boy becomes a man
(machered) when he is enrolled on the work lists for
village labor, and when he marries and has a child.
Middle Age and Old Age
Kuna men and women typically reach the height of their
influence, respect, and mastery in middle age and early old
age. If all goes well, a woman will have daughters and
granddaughters; she will be female household head,
midwife, and respected senior woman. A man will be
household head, senior ritualist, and perhaps village leader.
An individual who has gotten old (serredgusa) deserves
leisure and support from his or her children and sons-inlaw, though in fact many work hard into advanced old age.
583
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
No serious culture and personality studies have been
carried out among the Kuna. As a matter of gender stereotypes, men say that women are in general unruly, argumentative, and prone to gossip and quarreling—a male
accused of lying or spreading stories may be berated for
not acting like a Kuna man (Dule machered) (Howe,
1986, p. 231). Women are expected to express emotion,
especially during puberty ceremonies and wailing for the
dead (Howe & Hirschfeld, 1981). Men, in contrast, are
supposed to mourn with stoic reserve and, in the case of
political leaders, to maintain a mask of restrained calm in
public situations. According to Sherzer (1987, p. 103),
“differences between Kuna men’s and women’s speech
are relatively slight” in everyday conversation, though
men perform several genres of ceremonial discourse
generally closed to women.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Despite the claims of many naive observers, the Kuna do
not maintain unilineal descent groups or descent reckoning of any sort, and kinship is thoroughly bilateral. The
primary kin-based social group is the uxorilocal or
matrilocal household, governed by the rule that upon marrying a man goes to live with his wife. In recent decades
households have averaged somewhere in the range of eight
to ten members (Howe, 1985; Tice, 1995, p. 117), but
earlier in the century they were quite a bit larger (Chapin,
1983, p. 472). Mothers and coresident adult daughters,
who work together daily, can be seen as a consanguineal
household core, but (Helms [1976] to the contrary)
in-married males, except in their first tentative years of
marriage, are full members, and the senior male, just like
his wife, is seen as progenitor as well as household head.
Village communal labor (which varies considerably
from one island to the next) is organized along singlegender lines. Male groups build homes, wharves, public
buildings, and airstrips; they work in village-owned
stores and coconut groves; and they provide sugar cane,
corn, bananas, fish, and other items for communal rituals.
Women (often loosely supervised by male task leaders)
sweep the streets, tend store, serve refreshments to male
workers, and prepare food and drink for feasts and rituals.
584
Kuna
Within each village the Kuna maintain an array
of voluntary organizations, often called sociedades,
which are devoted to land-clearing, fishing, cropping of
coconuts and subsistence crops, running communal
stores, and other purposes. Though single-sex groups outnumber those with mixed membership, the effective units
in many nominally all-male sociedades are husband–wife
pairs. For the last 30 years a women’s organization for
marketing molas has fostered female leadership and
organization.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Until well into the 19th century, the Kuna followed much
the same division of labor as other lowland South
American groups: men cut and burned off the forest, and
women planted, weeded, and harvested. In roughly the
same period that the Kuna moved down to the shore and
out onto the islands (see above), men began to take over
most agricultural labor—possibly because of the longer
distances between home and fields, the great weight of
the cash and subsistence staples (coconuts and plantains),
male fears for women’s safety, and increased labor inputs
by women into their clothing (see Brown, 1970; Tice,
1995, pp. 36–38).5
Today agricultural labor is overtly recognized as a
male domain. A young woman is told at marriage that she
has acquired a machete or hand, and men are repeatedly
admonished that it is a world of work, in which they must
feed their children by raising plants (Salcedo, 1980).6
Women still participate in some activities, especially at
the eastern end of the coast (see Tice, 1995, pp. 115–177);
they go with their husbands or with other women to cut
bananas and to fetch coconuts, kindling wood, crabs,
crayfish, river snails, and tree fruit in season. Out of
choice or necessity, a very few women do more, but in
almost all subsistence tasks males predominate.
Men and women carry loads very differently.
Women bear baskets, bags, bunches of coconuts, and
other burdens over their shoulders on their backs (except
when they lug them short distances in the way that suitcases are carried), while men fasten them to either end of
a pole balanced on a shoulder.
On the water, women very seldom run outboards and
only occasionally help their husbands with sailing, but
they readily paddle canoes, often visiting the closest
mainland river with other women to wash clothes and
fetch water. Trips to the river have been important
occasions for female socializing (as have all-woman
funeral meals at village graveyards), though more than 20
communities have built aqueducts to bring fresh water
from the mainland, drastically reducing women’s
off-island work.7
Fishing is heavily gendered as a male activity—a
newborn is often announced either as a “fisherman” (ua
soed) or a “water filler” (dii baled)—though quite a few
women go out fishing once in a while. Women used to
help in catching sea turtles as they laid their eggs on
beaches (once a significant source of cash income), but
only men netted turtles in the sea, as is the case today for
hunting, lobster diving, and catching octoupi used to sell.
The home is seen as the woman’s domain, and even
more so the kitchen, a smaller structure behind the main
sleeping house. Men sometimes help in small ways, by
watching children or stirring a pot for a few moments, but
they seldom or never sweep, cook, scrub clothes, or fetch
wash water from on-island wells (see Tice, 1995, pp. 125,
147). Both men and women husk coconuts. Women spend
hours preparing food, especially in making drinks from
corn, banana, cacao, and sugar cane (now largely replaced
by coffee, cocoa, and Kool-Aid), and in cooking the staple stew based on fish, coconut, and bananas or plantains
(for details, see Prestán Simón, 1975, pp. 49–50).
As a key element in gender interdependence, the
Kuna insist that a wife or female kinswoman should meet
a returning man at the water’s edge to help him pull up
and unload his canoe and (if their house is some distance
away) to carry home its contents. According to Kuna
theory, men and women exchange raw fish and produce
for cooked food, and, once foodstuffs have passed
into women’s hands, it is for them to redistribute as they
wish (Salcedo, 1980, pp. 66–68). Interhousehold food
exchange and hospitality are overtly recognized as key
symbols of community and ethnic solidarity, though by
the late 20th century fish and bananas had entered the
village cash economy, and gift exchange of food had
fallen off sharply.
In the field of handicrafts, men make firefans and
baskets (a highly gendered activity), fashion utensils of
gourds, and carve implements and curing figures of
wood. House construction is a male skill, as is canoe
building (a semispecialized occupation). Until the middle
decades of the 20th century women spun cotton and wove
hammocks, and Nordenskiöld, Pérez Kantule, and Wassén,
(1938, pp. 38–39) note that both men and women once
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
made pottery, probably of different sorts. Men used to
make pants and shirts on hand-cranked sewing machines,
but needlework is otherwise a quintessentially female
activity—with the notable exception that in many villages
a handful of “womanish” (omegid) homosexual men sew
(but do not wear) molas.
Although fields are initially cleared by men, both
sons and daughters inherit, in roughly equal proportions.
Some farms are turned over to adult children or assigned
to them for later inheritance, but often at least a few
parcels are held back by aged parents until they die.
Although a man does not inherit from his wife’s mother
or father, he is highly conscious that his children will do
so, and in the meanwhile he typically works his spouse’s
fields together with his own as, in effect, a lifetime joint
estate.
The senior male in a household is often referred to
as the negibed “master/owner of the house,” but if he and
his wife divorce, he moves out and she keeps the
dwelling. In the normal developmental cycle, junior
couples hive off in turn, usually because of quarrels or
overcrowding, and at the deaths of the senior husband and
wife, the last remaining junior couple takes the house.
Modern homes with cement walls and composition roofs
are in many cases now being inherited by testamentary
disposition.
For a long time the elaborate costume of Kuna
women has represented a significant expense for fathers
and husbands, but in the 1960s and 1970s molas also
began to bring in income, as a national and international
market developed for blouses and blouse panels (see Tice,
1995, pp. 56–75). Today, in addition to selling used mola
panels, women make others just to sell to daytrippers,
cruise ship passengers, and middle-men who feed the
national and international market. The importance of
mola income to household economies has further
increased since the 1980s and 1990s, as blighted palms
and international market shifts have drastically reduced
returns from the coconut trade. A women’s mola cooperative (Salvador, 1997; Swain, 1978, pp. 174–182; Tice,
1995, pp. 99–114), though it controls only a fraction of
the market, has proved crucial in helping women organize and receive better returns for their labor.
Kuna men have shipped out as sailors since at least
the 19th century, and in the 20th century increasing
numbers went away for long periods to work in banana
plantations, urban restaurants, and U.S. army bases in the
Canal Zone. (A few land-poor youths also seek work as
585
agricultural laborers in other Kuna villages.) In recent
years men and women with secondary and university
educations have secured salaried positions in the city,
though unemployment is high and men are favored. For
less educated indigenous women, urban money-making
opportunities other than mola sewing are scarce. Inside
San Blas, Kuna men and women have worked as teachers
in roughly equal numbers, and (with a tilt towards males)
in other government jobs (see Swain, 1978, p. 111; Tice,
1995, p. 53). Holloman (1969, p. 132) recorded 245 such
posts in 1967. In the village economy, women, teenage
boys, and a few adult men tend radios and airstrips for
tiny wages, men work on cargo boats run by five to ten of
the villages, and males and females participate in family
businesses such as stores, bread-baking, and (for a
wealthy minority) tourist enterprises. Both men and
women deal with village stores and the crews of
Colombian merchant vessels in selling coconuts and
buying manufactured goods, and women (especially at
the Western end of the coast, where most cruise ships
visit) sell molas to tourists. However, most women have
been reluctant to speak Spanish, even if they have
attended school, and many of the Colombian sailors
know a little Kuna.
Concerning household finances, this author’s data,
mostly from the 1970s, indicate that in traditional households with significant income from coconuts, each couple pooled cash in its own box, over which the wife had
considerable say, and that the senior couple covered a
great part of household expenses, even for their married
daughters and grandchildren (cf. Holloman, 1969, p. 176;
Tice, 1995, pp. 132, 151). Tice (1995, p. 176) writes that
in recent years “Women individually control their own
income from mola sales,” and that men active in lobster
diving often fail to devote cash returns to family needs.
PARENTAL AND OTHER
CARETAKER ROLES
The Kuna place great emphasis on the mother’s role,
portraying her as the one person who will always look out
for and defend her children. In daily life, female siblings,
coresident aunts and cousins, grandparents, and fathers
often take turns caring for children, and in properly functioning households, it is expected that fathers and grandparents will provide materially for their dependents.
586
Kuna
However, only mothers are thought to give love and care
unconditionally.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men dominate Kuna politics. Each village maintains a
hierarchy of offices, with several politico–religious
chiefs, secondary officers called argar, and village
constables, as well as specialized positions for house
building and other tasks; some now have a secular administrative chief as well (Howe, 1986). Since the 1980s a
few of the largest and most sophisticated islands have
instituted women’s meetings or elected women as argar
or administrative chief, though not so far as traditional
chief. Two women have run unsuccessfully for the
national assembly; the daughter of a famous chief briefly
served as governor or intendente of Kuna Yala, and
women have played leading roles in establishing at least
one urban settlement (De Gerdes, 1995; Tice, 1995,
p. 51). In Kuna Yala, women also make their feelings
known on key issues, such as the election of a new village
leader, and a few regional women’s meetings have been
held. Nonetheless, the vast majority of office-holders and
participants in decision-making, at both the village and
regional level, are male.
Until recently most men also participated extensively in ritual, spending years or decades establishing
names as puberty chanters, medicinalists, or singers of
curing chants (see Chapin, 1987; Nordenskiöld et al.,
1938; Sherzer, 1987). One ritual specialty, that of puberty
hair-cutter, is reserved for women. Seers or neles, who are
born into their role, can be male or female, and the tiny
handful of women who actually practice as nele are also
free to master other ritual specialties. Much more significantly, senior women play important but less publicly
recognized roles as midwives, funeral mourners, cooks
and organizers of village feasts, and curers’ wives. The
latter, as Chapin (1983, pp. 172–178) shows, actually do
much of the work of diagnosis and treatment.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Kuna religion, which embodies the assumptions of
Kuna gender roles, is carried on primarily by village
chiefs called saila, who chant to their assembled
followers several times a week in a gathering house
(see Howe, 1986; Sherzer, 1987). (Today in some villages
men and women only meet separately, and attendance has
fallen off.) The deities are a married couple: Great
Mother, who inspires devotion from the Kuna, was put in
place as the earth by the more powerful and fearsome
Great Father, who animated her trees and rivers and counseled her on their functions. Individual humans go
through a cosmic life-cycle, sent to earth by a celestial
midwife Muu (another incarnation of Great Mother), and
returning at death to their heavenly parents in “Father’s
Place” above.
Among the many named actors in Kuna mythology
or sacred history, the great majority (other than heroes’
wives) are male. In one way or another, the few exceptions
reinforce traditional assumptions about gender. They
include Gikatiryai, who taught women their crafts and
duties; Nagagiryai, who taught designs for molas; a female
seer who, by inadvertently causing the death of eight successive husbands, led to the dispersal of the proto-Kuna;
and a young girl menaced by vampire peoples, embodying
the fragility of Kuna ethnicity. Even the notable starwoman Inanatili, who outwrestled her future husband,
came to earth to marry and to teach women lullabies and
mourning (Howe & Hirschfeld, 1981).
The Kuna feel that all people need frequent counseling on their behavior, and, according to men, none more
than women. Often addressed condescendingly in chiefly
chants and spoken admonishments as girls (siamarye),
women are reminded to keep their houses clean, care for
their families, and avoid gossip and arguments.
The puberty ceremonies mentioned above celebrate
female maturation and offer prominent roles to a few
women. Moreover, the occult symbolism of the puberty
chant cycle deals with female sexuality and reproduction
(Prestán Simón, 1975, pp. 135–230), as do the inner
secrets of some curing chants. Here as elsewhere, however, male ritualists predominate, and they pay more
attention to each other and the crowd at the inna than to
the girl for whom the ceremony is given. Moreover, the
symbolism could arguably be taken as a male attempt to
tame or appropriate female procreative power.
Through the early 20th century, gender roles and
many other practices of daily life were hedged around by
a profusion of taboos (ised) (see Prestán Simón, 1975,
pp. 29, 50, 86, 130–131). Today, except in a few areas
such as childbirth, these taboos have lapsed, and no
ethnographic account exists showing convincingly how
they once worked.
Relative Status of Men and Women
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Both men and women work hard, but except in cases of
special need or hardship, they enjoy daily leisure as well
as occasional days off. Women take periodic breaks
throughout the day, men take a longer free period after
their return home, most often in mid-afternoon, and both
are released in the evening from all but minor household
tasks. Men and women spend a great deal of time in
conversation (in both same-gender and mixed groupings),
and both visit friends and kin in other households. Late
afternoon visiting, however, has been strongly associated
with men, who make several stops on their peregrinations
to be given drinks and (in the past) fed meals. Teenage
boys—and more recently girls—devote afternoon hours
to basketball and volleyball, and in many communities
Sunday is now a day of rest or light work.
At sunset and into the evening, adolescents cruise
the streets, something they would have been strongly
discouraged from doing in the past. Men chat, play dominoes, and sometimes have a beer on the porches of stores
and homes. Until recently, almost everyone would attend
sacred and secular village gatherings, women on alternate
nights and occasional mornings, men almost every night.
In the past, men also devoted a great deal of time in the
evening or late at night to learning and practicing ritual,
and the more ambitious among them would make
extended trips to learn away from home. Today, however,
apprenticeship has almost ceased.
Women, especially the young and middle-aged,
devote much of their time free from other tasks to sewing,
to the extent that one of the calls to singing gatherings is
“Go sew molas!” (Mormaynamaloe!). Salvador (1997,
pp. 168–170; see also Tice, 1995, p. 124) notes that older
women often make it possible for juniors to sew by taking
on the most time-consuming household tasks. For some
resource- and worker-poor households, mola sewing has
become a demanding and nearly full-time occupation
(Tice, 1995). Almost all women sew molas, but only a
few are known for cutting top-quality designs.
Every few weeks or months, people stop work to
attend a puberty ceremony in their own or a neighboring
village. Men and women sit at opposite ends of the
innanega or chicha house, though they also mix and
converse in passing. Both drink heavily of the cane beer
(inna) and both get drunk, though men are more likely to
continue for long periods with purchased rum and
aguardiente. (Men also drink much more frequently and
587
heavily than women during national holidays.) In two
episodes during the long 4-day ceremonies, men and
women dance, both separately and together. Since World
War II, several islands have created secular dance troupes
(noga gope) based loosely on puberty dancing, with
practices and performances in the afternoon or evening.
Although women have their own forms of singing
(lullabies and mourning), men predominate in the verbal
arts. In the realm of material art, the woman’s sewn mola
blouse receives wide recognition at home (chiefs chant
that needle and cloth are women’s paper and ink) and
even more in the wider world. During the 1920s, a
program by the Panamanian government to eliminate
nose-rings and leg-bindings highlighted the importance
of women’s dress as an ethnic marker, and today molas—
and the women who wear them—are widely taken as key
symbols of both Kuna and Panamanian identity.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
In an early ethnographic study of Kuna female gender,
Reina Torres wrote that “within her culture, the Cuna
woman occupies a truly exceptional place. During all her
life she is the object of the greatest consideration, flattery,
and respect” (Torres de Ianello, 1957, p. 3). Torres’
opinion has been echoed by many observers since then,
especially naive amateurs, who typically describe Kuna
society as a matriarchy. Although few social scientists
today feel comfortable making such sweeping claims
about gender (see Swain, 1978, pp. 43–75), one can say
that Kuna women do indeed receive respect from men,
mixed with some condescension and even a little scorn.
Moreover, the consideration mentioned by Torres
constrains as well as protects women
Overall assessments of the Kuna gender hierarchy
depend to a great extent on judgments about the significance of art and dress. Kuna women are preoccupied with
beauty and fashion—with changing designs in tradecloth
skirts and headcloths, new ways of wearing headcloths,
expensive gold jewelry, and innovations in blouse form as
well as mola motifs—all of which might at one time have
struck some feminists as a diversion or form of false
consciousness. Salvador (1997), on the other hand,
speaks for most observers of Kuna society in praising the
ensemble of Kuna women’s dress as well as molas in
particular as a notable form of cultural expression.
588
Men and women are traditionally most equal within
the domestic sphere, especially the senior couple in a
household, who work in close cooperation. As mothers,
women receive devotion from their children. Although
women no longer do much agricultural labor, their domestic work is highly valued, they own land and houses, and
since the late 20th century they have been making major
contributions to household income, though they are often
exploited by foreign mola buyers and Kuna middle-men.
Women are most subordinate in the public sphere.
Men fill most political and ritual roles, and they take the
lion’s share of power and recognition, to the extent that
women’s names were often not remembered or known,
even by relatives.8 Male protectiveness has also constrained and confined women, who until very recently
were not allowed to travel away from home without a
husband or male kinsman—or at all.
In the village gatherings men work to rein in the
conduct of women, whom they depict in their speeches as
unruly and difficult (see Howe, 1986, pp. 229–233). But
such attempts at control ultimately extend to everyone’s
behavior, including their own, and in the adjudication of
disputes and quarrels, senior men enforce the rights (as
they understand them) as well as the obligations of women
and junior males. Villages vary widely today in their rigor,
from those that attempt, for instance, to prohibit divorce
and cut off rumors and quarrels, to others that have more
or less given up on social control. Quite a few communities have tried to discipline the behavior of members resident in Colón or Panama City, but with only mixed
success, and it is in urban settings that Kuna women, especially educated women, have gained the greatest freedom.9
Overall, though women use the weapons of the weak
to undermine male control, they have seldom challenged
public patriarchy directly except in the city and a in few
of the most sophisticated island communities. On the
other hand, they have great influence in the domestic
sphere, and in the game of love (see below) they are as
active as men. Perhaps most important, in the small
interactions of daily life, the egalitarian ethos of Kuna
society overrides gender hierarchy, as men and women
speak their minds in the most frank, straightforward, and
undeferential manner.
SEXUALITY
In an early ethnography, Stout (1947, pp. 38–39) depicted
the Kuna as prudish and straight-laced, which is quite
Kuna
misleading. It is true that adults use euphemisms to
discuss childbirth and sexuality, and public speeches
condemning moral transgressions can be self-righteous,
but in private the Kuna are quite libidinous. They often
joke about sex, finding it amusing as well as enjoyable,
and women in particular can be quite earthy, especially
when intoxicated or in single-gender groups on the mainland. To describe themselves in this context, the Kuna
often use the Spanish word vivo, “lively.”
Traditionally the Kuna have tried to hide the facts of
life from preadolescent children. (The author’s experience suggests they had little success, even in the 1970s.)
Women wear loose-fitting clothes during pregnancy, and
they give birth in absolute silence, either in an enclosed
corner of a house or more often in a special birth hut—
today, they frequently retire to a village maternity clinic.
As noted above, preadolescent and adolescent girls
were in the past guarded and isolated, and they married
soon after their puberty ceremonies, leaving little room
for premarital experimentation (something far from being
the case today). Adulterous affairs, on the other hand,
have been quite common, according to the experience of
ethnographers and other observers since the 1960s, and
older informants, speaking frankly, say that earlier generations were even livelier (see also Nordenskiöld et al.,
1938, p. 32). Although men are thought to be more
aggressive and likely to take the initiative, it is recognized
that both men and women enjoy sex, and that both bear
responsibility for their actions.
As for marital relations, young couples enjoy little
privacy, except in the first weeks of marriage, during
which traditionally they slept inside a temporary enclosure. Kuna sleeping houses are large undivided one-room
structures filled with hammocks, and movement in one
hammock can be felt in others and heard in the creaking
of timbers. Young couples are encouraged to visit family
coconut groves on the mainland for intercourse. They
also slip outside in the dark or arrange to meet at home
when the house is empty. In recent decades many houses
have been partitioned, and couples may be allowed to
build satellite sleeping huts. Moreover, migrant laborers
often bring home beds. Nonetheless, marital sex can be
as difficult to arrange as adultery.
No serious study has been carried out of Kuna
sexuality. The one informant who spoke to the author on
sexual practices said that couples often had intercourse
with a man sitting on a low stool, so that they could move
apart quickly if surprised. (Kuna women’s wrap-around
skirts come on and off easily.)
Husband–Wife Relationship
Kuna women often wear headcloths in public,
pulling them around their faces in bright sun, in the gathering house, in mourning, or in situations in which they
feel shy or wish to preserve their modesty and dignity.
Women go bareheaded at home, and today young women
do so even in public. When washing clothes at the river
or near their cookhouses, or at home before dawn and late
at night, women often strip to the waist, and men used to
bathe naked outside, with their genitals tucked between
their legs. Although women should not touch medicines
or engage in sexual relations during menstruation, restrictions on menstruating women are otherwise light.
Kuna men take pains to shield Kuna women from
life’s dangers, especially against sexual threats by outsiders. As Swain (1978, p. 123) notes, “The message of
male protector, dealing with the outside world, and
female progenitrix maintaining the home, are strongly
communicated as ideal Cuna forms.” Intense struggles
between the Kuna and Panamanian policemen in the early
1920s pivoted on issues of sexual access and intermarriage, and it is only recently that a very few Kuna have
begun to marry outside their own ethnic group.
A handful of overtly homosexual and effeminate
men, called omegid, “womanish, like women,” or more
slightingly, amma (a word that in other contexts means
“aunt” or “female genitals”), are found in many villages.
Many sew molas, and a few even belong to the women’s
mola cooperative, but they do not wear female dress (see
Tice, 1995, pp. 59, 72–75). They are generally accepted
in Kuna society, although the author has recently heard
them denounced in a regional meeting for allegedly
spreading the AIDS epidemic. As in much of Latin
America, heterosexual males may sometimes have sex
with homosexuals without risking much shame so long as
they take the dominant role.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
As noted above, girls were married soon after puberty, but
boys stayed single until the age of 18 or 20. As unmarried
youths, boys were expected to work with their fathers as
well as clearing and planting fields of their own. Matches
were secretly prearranged by the senior generation, with
the bride’s parents most often taking the initiative. In a
form of marriage by capture called “the dragging”
(gagaleged), the groom would be surprised and carried
off forcibly to be thrown in the hammock of the bride
chosen for him. (A young man who objected strongly
589
could flee for a few months to another island.) Then and
now, sons-in-law have worked for their parents-in-law for
as long as they remain married, though they return
frequently, often daily, to their natal households, and they
continue to work with their fathers and brothers on family
lands.
The dominance of the senior generation eroded
sharply over the course of the 20th century. Although the
dragging ritual continues in many villages, children and
adolescents see each other every day in school, young
people flirt and talk in the street, couples typically choose
each other, and quite a few girls become pregnant before
marrying (see Bonilla, 2000). Young married men still
work for their in-laws, but they break free sooner than in
the past, and many go off to the city for paid work, leaving their wives and children to be fed by the wife’s father,
or else, in recent years, taking their families with them to
the city while their children are of school age. The percentage of unmarried, divorced, and abandoned mothers
in Kuna Yala has risen to alarming levels in recent years
(see Tice, 1995, pp. 118, 128–131, 150–152, 166–174).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Kuna often ask, rhetorically, who you should save if your
wife and mother are drowning—the answer is your
mother, who is irreplaceable, whereas a new wife can be
found “like changing clothes” (mol ogwaedyobi).
Ethnographers have observed considerable instability in
early marriages; estranged husbands often return home
temporarily to their natal households, and divorce is common. Informants’ accounts suggest that this was also the
case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see
Holloman, 1969, pp. 166–168; Nordenskiöld et al., 1938,
pp. 31–32): if a young man returned to his wife after three
separations, his father-in-law was supposed to hit his
head against a housepost, to impart the essence of the
post’s stability as well as punishing him.
But the Kuna also lay great store by the marriage tie
and, over time, couples who stay together very often
develop strong affectionate relationships. Along with
their children they form a unit within the household in
terms of expense allocation, quarrels with other couples,
and potential formation of new households. The senior
man and wife work together closely in managing household labor, and many examples of strong lifelong attachments can be observed. When Panama achieved
independence in 1903, the regional chief Inanaginya
590
Kuna
urged his followers to stay with Colombia by comparing
their national affiliation with an old and mutually beneficial marriage.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Rules and expectations for behavior between kin,
whether same or opposite sex, are not strongly codified,
except in the case of parents, grandparents, and children.
Relations among adult siblings are often partly shaped by
seniority, which is linguistically marked in same-sex
sibling terms. Brothers should ideally look out for their
sisters, and in general the relationship between siblings
(gwenadgan) is projected as the model not only for kin
relations as a whole, but for community and ethnic solidarity as well. It is expected that kin who are or have been
coresident will be closer than those who have not.
Overall, however, relations between kin depend primarily
on individual likes and dislikes, as the Kuna themselves
point out.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The extensive changes in Kuna gender roles discussed
throughout this article can be summarized in the following terms:
1. a shift in the 19th century to male agricultural labor and the
elaboration of women’s dress;
2. through the 20th century, the spread of schooling for both boys
and girls, and weakening control by the senior generation of
marriage and household labor;
3. since the 1960s, the growth of an international market for
women’s handicrafts, and since the 1980s, increasing dependence on women’s cash income;
4. since the late 1960s, the growth of a female-controlled handicraft cooperative;
5. in the late 20th century, the spread of feminist ideals, especially
among educated Kuna, and the opening up of salaried employment for some women as well as men;
6. the great movement of Kuna to urban Panama in recent years.
NOTES
1. As of the year 2000, there were, in addition, 1,700 Kuna in the Darién
region of eastern Panama and another 1,400 scattered through western Panama (Dirección de Estadística y Censo, 2001).
2. In the early 20th century midwives often buried infants born
deformed or albino (the Kuna have the highest rate of albinism in the
world), but there does not seem to have been any differential infanticide favoring male or female children.
3. Some mothers play with their infant sons’ penises while nursing
them.
4. Out of a total population of 49,143 over the age of 4 in the year 2000,
4,794 males and 8,696 females were without any schooling, reflecting a past gender bias. Numbers for those who had completed some
grade school (9,859 vs. 9,643) and who had completed sixth grade
(3,818 vs. 3,453) were essentially equal (Dirección de Estadística y
Censo, 2001). See below on higher educational levels.
5. Kuna oral history takes note of this change. Brown’s (1980)
pioneering article, based on secondary sources, has a skewed
chronology. Among the Colombian Kuna the old division of labor
still held at least as recently as the 1970s. My data suggest provisionally that the San Blas Kuna went through a transitional stage in
which both men and women worked in the fields. Tice (1995,
pp. 115–177) has detailed contemporary comparisons from different
subregions.
6. By the end of the 20th century agricultural production had diminished in much of Kuna Yala.
7. On some islands far from shore or on which women now work intensively sewing molas for sale (see Tice, 1995, p. 124), men fetch all
or most of the water from the mainland.
8. Some of my male informants could not remember the names of close
female relatives, who were identified by kin terms or as so-and-so’s
wife. Today, however, as both men and women take Hispanic and
anglophone names, women are more widely known by name.
9. On the other hand, women who move to the city with their families
in search of better schools for their children may find themselves
working at home in greater isolation and with weaker support
systems than in the islands, though the situation is undoubtedly
somewhat better for the several thousand people living in all-Kuna
settlements around Colón and Panama City.
REFERENCES
Bonilla, A. (2000, March 18). El matrimonio kuna. Trasfondo,
La Prensa (Panama), p. 6A.
Brown, J. K. (1970). Sex division of labor among the San Blas Cuna.
Anthropological Quarterly, 43, 57–63.
Chapin, N. M. (1983). Curing among the San Blas Kuna of Panama.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ.
De Gerdes, M. L. (1995). Constructing kuna identity through verbal art
in the urban context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University
of Texas, Austin, TX.
Dirección de Estadística y Censo, Gobierno de Panamá (2001). Censos
nacionales de población y vivienda, 14 de Mayo de 2000: Vol. 2,
Población.
Hatley, N. B. (1976). Cooperativism and enculturation among the Cuna
Indians of San Blas. In J. Wilbert (Ed.), Enculturation in Latin
America: An anthology (UCLA Latin American Studies Series no.
37, pp. 67–94). Los Angeles: University of California.
References
Helms, M. W. (1976). Domestic organization in eastern Central
America: the San Blas Cuna, Miskito, and Black Carib compared.
Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, 6, 133–163.
Holloman (1969). Developmental change in San Blas. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Howe, J. (1985). Marriage and domestic organization among the San
Blas Cuna, In W. D’Arcy & M. Correa (Eds.), The botany and natural history of Panama (pp. 317–331). St Louis, MO: Missouri
Botanical Garden.
Howe, J. (1986). The Kuna gathering: Contemporary village politics in
Panama. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Howe, J., & Hirschfeld, L. A. (1981). The star girls’ descent: a myth
about men, women, matrilocality, and singing. Journal of American
Folklore, 94, 292–322.
Nordenskiöld, E., Pérez Kantule, R., & Wassén, S. H. (Ed.). (1938). An
historical and ethnographical survey of the Cuna Indians
(Comparative Ethnographical Studies 10) Göteborg, Sweden:
Etnografiska Museum.
Prestán Simón, A. (1975). El uso de la chicha y la sociedad
kuna (Ediciones Especiales 72). Mexico: Instituto Indigenista
Interamericana.
Salcedo, G. (1980). Un consejo matrimonial, In J. Howe, N. M. Chapin, &
J. Sherzer (Eds.), Cantos y oraciones del congreso Cuna
(pp. 54–72). Panamá: Editorial Universitaria.
591
Salvador, M. L. (1997). Looking back: Contemporary Kuna women’s
arts. In M. L. Salvador (Ed.), The art of being Kuna: Layers of
meaning among the Kuna of Panama (pp. 151–210.). Los Angeles:
U.C.L.A. Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Sherzer, J. (1987). A diversity of voices: Men’s and women’s speech
in ethnographic perspective, In S. U. Philips, S. Steele, &
C. Tanz (Eds.), Language, gender, and sex in comparative
perspective (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of
Language No. 4, pp. 95–120). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press.
Stout, D. B. (1947). San Blas Cuna acculturation: An introduction.
New York: Viking Fund.
Swain, M. B. (1978). Ailigandi women: continuity and change in Cuna
female identity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA.
Tice, K. E. (1995). Kuna crafts, gender, and the global economy. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Torres de Ianello [Torres de Araúz], R. (1957). La mujer cuna de
Panamá (Ediciones Especiales). Prestán Simón, Mexico: Instituto
Indigenista Interamericano.
Kyrgyz
Kathleen Kuehnast
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Kyrgyz are also known as the Kara-Kirgiz and the
Alatau Kirgiz.
LOCATION
A land-locked country, Kyrgyzstan is located in Central
Asia between the latitudes 39⬚N and 43⬚N. Kyrgyzstan
borders the Chinese People’s Republic to its east. On its
other borders are three newly independent states, the countries of Kazakhstan to its north, Tajikistan to the southwest, and Uzbekistan on its western border. The country
occupies 198,500 km2, and only about 7% of its land is
arable. Its climate offers extreme conditions of harsh cold
winters (⫺23⬚C) and hot, dry summers (⫹41⬚C).
Referred to as the “little Switzerland of Central
Asia,” Kyrgyzstan is located amid the Pamir and Tien
Shan mountain ranges, which are among some of the
highest in the world, with the tallest peak being Mount
Pobeda at 7,439 m. The second-largest mountain lake in
the world, and one of the most transparent, Lake Issyk Kul
(Kyrgyz for warm lake), is located in the northeastern
part of Kyrgyzstan at 1,607 m above sea level and has
brackish water that never freezes. Kyrgyzstan lies in a
highly active seismic region.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Kyrgyz (over 2 million) are primarily found in one
of the recently independent countries of the former Soviet
Union, the Kyrgyz Republic (or Kyrgyzstan). To understand the Kyrgyz and their construction of gender, it is
useful to mention their diverse historical predicaments
during the past 150 years. Until the 1920s, the Kyrgyz
were a seminomadic group, thought to have originated in
the Yenisei River region in northern Siberia around
900 CE. Throughout the last millennium, the Kyrgyz,
along with other nomadic groups, traveled vast distances
from the eastern shores of the Aral Sea to the western
border of China and south to Afghanistan for the purpose
of herding their sheep and horses. Although the Kyrgyz
cultural patterns resemble those of the nomadic tribes of
Central Asia, nevertheless some among them became
sedentary, especially in the southern areas of the country.
Here mosques and madrassas (religious schools) were
constructed in the 12th century. Among the northern
tribes, the nomadic Kyrgyz did not significantly convert
to Islam until the early 19th century.
Between 1925 and 1991, the Kyrgyz experienced
intensive Soviet collectivization. This change had a major
impact not only on their livelihood, but also on their
family structure and kinship patterns. Prior to 1925,
women were primarily illiterate. By the mid-1930s,
female literacy rates had reached 35%, and by the early
1990s there was complete literacy of men and women.
It should be noted that among the Central Asian
ethnic groups, the Kyrgyz and the Kazakh of Kazakhstan
are more closely related in terms of their language,
cultural practices, and kinship structures than any of the
other major groups (Tajiks, Turkmen, or Uzbeks).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Gender is recognized by the Kyrgyz through two
categories—men and women, or male and female. The
two categories are manifested in cultural norms and
domestic practices that divide societal responsibilities by
gender. In contemporary Kyrgyz culture, both men and
women are accustomed to modern dress; thus their clothing tends to be more European or Western than traditional
Muslim cloaks or any sort of veiling. In rural areas, some
women wear scarves to cover their head, which is seen as
a display of modesty, especially among married women.
Few women are veiled, as is customary in many religious
Muslim countries. In urban centers, women commonly
wear facial make-up, particularly on their eyes, lips, and
cheeks. Differentiation is age related in regard to visual
appearances. Young women are considered more attractive
592
Gender over the Life Cycle
if they allow their hair to grow long. There are fewer
expectations for men’s visual appearance, except that they
should maintain a sense of cleanliness in dress; despite
Muslim influence, most Kyrgyz men are clean-shaven.
During pre-Soviet times, the Kyrgyz lived in a structure called a yurt, which was divided into female and
male spaces. To the left of the entryway is a space designated for men (er jak); this includes a space for saddles
and other horse-riding implements. The right is considered the women’s side (epchi jak), an area separated by a
chiy (screen), where domestic items such as pots and
utensils were kept.
The Kyrgyz have traditionally practiced arranged
marriages along tribal lines, and thus individuals had very
little say in their actual marriages. Commonly though,
young women under the age of 18 years were considered
more attractive or “marriageable,” since great importance
is placed in Kyrgyz culture on the ability to bear
children—thus, the younger the bride, the higher the
likelihood of many children.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Kyrgyz recognize the following events as important
lifestyle passages and publicly mark each event: birth, the
first steps of a child, circumcision of a boy, engagement,
marriage, retirement, and death. Birthday celebrations are
a recent phenomenon, since prior to sovietization birth
dates were never recorded or registered. For most Kyrgyz
over the age of 75 years (in the year 2000), the date and
year of their birth are usually an approximation.
The Kyrgyz names for life cycle stages are as
follows: balalyk, childhood; ospurum, teenager; jashtyk/
jash ubak, youth; tolgonchak, mature age; karylyk, old
age. In addition, the names for life cycle events are
different for males and females. Male stages: bala, boy;
jigit, young man; jetilgen chak, man; chal, elderly man.
Female stages: kyz, girl; selki, young woman; ajal,
woman; kempir, elderly woman.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys and girls in Kyrgyz society are reared differently
from infancy through childhood by parents and others,
including extended family members, other kin, neighbors, and peers. The birth of a boy is considered more of
a celebration for a family than the birth of a girl, but the
593
difference in response is marginal. In part, boys are
preferred over girls because they are socially ordained to
care for their parents, whereas girls move away from their
natal home once they are married. The eldest male is
expected to live in the parents’ home upon marriage. The
youngest male child in the family is responsible for
caring for the parents when they are old. Thus the responsibilities and obligations of male children to their natal
family are greater than those of female children, who are
expected to care for their husband’s parents.
Different expectations exist for Kyrgyz girls and boys
in the domestic sphere. Boys are expected to have a more
leisurely childhood, to play with other boys, to ride horses,
to hunt, and to learn to be a man, whereas girls at a young
age are given household responsibilities, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, and caring for younger children or
elderly adults, as part of their training to be a woman.
The primary caretakers among the Kyrgyz are often
the parents or grandparents. Both prior to and during the
Soviet period, the extended-family living pattern usually
meant that three generations lived together in one
dwelling. Sometimes this would include aunts and uncles
of the married couple. Grandparents are highly revered
and cared for, since many grandchildren actually have a
stronger bond with them than with their own parents.
Grandparents or an aunt or uncle often take part in the
instruction and discipline of children. Boys and girls are
disciplined differently; at times girls are more severely
disciplined for misbehaviors, since the expectation for
their acting appropriately and modestly is much higher
than for young boys. Girls and boys learn informally
about sexuality and courting rituals.
During the Soviet period, coeducation for girls and
boys was normalized. Nevertheless, there were different
expectations for performance in schools. In reviewing
standardized texts for elementary education, illustrations
often equate women with the domestic sphere and men
with heavy labor. This is somewhat ironic, since Soviet
women were among the most active worldwide in the
labor force. Often it was said that women must carry a
“double burden,” that of both domestic and public work.
Because many of the Kyrgyz customary practices are
highly influenced by Muslim customs, it is expected that
male children should be circumcised by the age of 5 or
7 years of age (preferably in an odd year rather than an
even year). It is generally considered that the earlier the
boy is circumcised, the better, since it takes less time for
recovery. Even though circumcision was considered illegal
594
by the Soviets, many Kyrgyz boys were nevertheless
circumcised following Muslim practices. In some parts of
Kyrgyzstan, circumcision was performed symbolically,
and the penis of the child was only touched with a knife.
Puberty and Adolescence
The period of adolescence is recognized by the Kyrgyz,
but has only been emphasized in the last century under
the Soviet educational system. Except for moving from
elementary education into higher grades, schools are the
most formalized vehicles for marking this period of time.
As mentioned above, adolescent girls are seen as attractive for marriage. Under Soviet law, the legal age for
marriage changed from 9 to 16 years of age for girls and
from 16 to 18 years for boys.
One of the more recent concerns of adolescent
women (kyz) today is the revival of the old practice of kyz
ala kachuu or bride-stealing, which is when a young man
abducts a young woman from her home or off the street
for the purpose of marrying her. This practice can be
found among various ethnic groups throughout Central
Asia and the Caucasus. In the rural regions, bride-stealing
has long been a common feature of some marriage agreements. Even though it is considered illegal, perpetrators
are rarely brought to court, since such actions bring shame
to the young bride’s family. Furthermore, social norms
dictate that stolen brides are expected to capitulate so as
not to bring shame upon their relatives. Once a young
woman is stolen, she is married that day, so she loses her
virginity, leaving her little choice but to stay in her new
predicament. The Kyrgyz have a saying that refers to this
situation, “Tash tüshkön jerinde oor” (“Let the stone lie
where it has fallen”).
Attainment of Adulthood
The most significant rite of passage indicating a transition
from boyhood to manhood and from girlhood to womanhood is marriage, and secondly, giving birth to a child.
The latter is particularly important for recognizing a
woman as a full-fledged adult, no matter how old she is
when she gives birth to her first child.
Middle Age and Old Age
The life cycles of middle-aged and elderly adults have
changed dramatically in the last decade, as a result of the
Kyrgyz
declining economic conditions in the country. Many who
had looked forward to retirement at 50 years (for women)
and 55 years (for men) find themselves working in the
informal market instead of enjoying their leisure time.
The elderly, many of whom are women, find that the
social safety net once in place during the Soviet period is
no longer there, and they have few options but to depend
on their children for day-to-day assistance.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Men and women in Kyrgyz society are in many ways far
more interdependent in their behaviors than many other
Central Asian groups. In part, their nomadic heritage
allowed for a much more egalitarian division of roles.
While men took the herds to the higher pastures, women
were in charge of the home front. As a result, this legacy
still permeates domestic arrangements among the
Kyrgyz. Women are recognized to be in charge of all
issues related to the home and family. This is not just care
giving behaviors but also decision-making behaviors.
Both Kyrgyz men and women tend to be highly nurturing
of their children, which reflects the overall value of
children in the society. A young child is readily cared for
by his or her father (or grandfather), as much as by his or
her mother. Although there are many customary practices
that favor male dominance in the society, there is a
general mythology that the Kyrgyz share, that at one time
the Kyrgyz were a matriarchal tribe, where women had
equal or greater power than men. Reflecting this belief
system is the general mild manner of the men and
the strong presence of capable women. Sometimes
stereotypes are communicated that Kyrgyz women are
hardworking and Kyrgyz men are lazy. Historically
speaking, the Kyrgyz have been significantly influenced
by the Soviet egalitarian gender ideals, as well as by the
more Islamic gender ideals of powerful men and
cloistered women.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Ideal gender types and realities often do not coincide, and
in the case of the Kyrgyz many of the Soviet and postSoviet social institutions were structured around men.
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
Although many women made significant advancements
in politics, economics and medicine, the reality is that
women do not have as many opportunities, nor do they
receive equal pay.
Much of Kyrgyz society is geared toward the male,
including marriage residence, which is exogamous, or
living near or with the husband’s family. Kin groups are
formed through patrilineal lineage system or bir atanyng
baldary—seven generations of Kyrgyz patrilineal family.
Prior to Soviet collectivization, the economic demands of
pastoral nomadism required alliances among the Kyrgyz
patrilineal kinship groups (ayils) in order to maintain
grazing pastures and water rights for their horses, sheep,
and cattle. One way of solidifying economic relationships
with neighboring tribes was through arranged exogamous
marriages. Agreements between two groups to exchange
their daughters (kuda söök) formed the foundation of economic relations that often lasted for several generations,
since wives had to be taken from the same söök (bones)
as their mothers. Members of these two groups were
expected to assist one another. They shared grazing lands
and protected each other’s animals from raids made by
neighboring tribes. Often marriages were arranged
between tribal groups prior to the birth of children
(bel kuda). Betrothal of small children who were still in
their cradles was called beshik kuda. Agreements
between the kuda söök were honored even in the event
of a death, when the customary law of levirate required
a brother or a relative to marry the widow.
In Kyrgyz society, social structures tend to be
separated by gender. Whether it is a social club, a business association, or a wedding party, men and women
tend to seek their own sex for social affiliation.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The division of labor between men and women in making
a living, household and domestic work, and occupational
specialization is fairly well defined. Despite 70 years of
living under Soviet rule, Kyrgyz women are still expected
to maintain the household and domestic work, while at
the same time having a job outside the home. Men are
less likely to perform domestic duties. During the Soviet
period, women participated in nearly all labor arenas,
except heavy industrial work. Today both men and
women are involved in informal trade and entrepreneurial activities, in part due to the economic problems in the
595
region. Women have dominated the “shuttle trade”
markets, in which they travel to nearby countries and buy
up goods and sell them in Kyrgyzstan at local markets.
This is primarily because women seem to be less harassed
then men at customs or border stops. Thus, women have
gained a significant niche in the market. More and more,
men who are from rural villages are moving to the urban
centers to find work. This has had a major impact on
families, leaving many women to be single parents raising many children, as well as maintaining gardens for
household food reserves. Although women are legally
able to inherit land, customary law sometimes prohibits
them from actually gaining the property.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Parental roles are not necessarily preordained in Kyrgyz
culture, since birth parents do not always raise their child.
Occasionally, extended family members, grandparents, or
aunts and uncles play a more day-to-day role in parenting
than the actual birth parents. Grandmothers are particularly counted on as a primary caregiver of young children,
and many Kyrgyz have closer relationships with their
respective grandparents than they do with their own
parents. In some instances, the first-born child born of an
eldest son is given to the parents in what is called amanat.
The relationship between the “gifted” child and the aging
grandparents is seen as reciprocal, because the child
assists the grandparents’ household but in turn the grandparents help preserve Kyrgyz traditions by passing their
knowledge on to the child. In most cases the child is well
aware of the fact that his grandparents are not his biological parents, but nevertheless calls them by the names ata
(father) and ene (mother), and calls his own father and
mother “older brother” and “older sister.”
During the Soviet period, parental roles shifted from
family members to state institutions. By the mid-1950s,
the number of detskii sad (kindergartens) reached an
all-time high as children’s centers were set up throughout
the urban and rural regions in Kyrgyzstan to care for their
children. Every collective farm had its programs where
children resided for weeks at a time, while parents
worked long hours during the peak seasons of planting
and harvesting. The childcare centers addressed one part
of postwar economic issues—it helped to free women in
order to increase their productivity. Because of the type
596
Kyrgyz
of laborious work done by the most physically capable,
the parents of young children were rarely available to
raise their offspring. It was the grandparents who often
nurtured language skills, social values, shared stories, and
kept alive various traditions for the young children.
Today the difficult economic predicament means
that, typically, both parents work outside the home.
Sometimes a niece or a cousin lives with and cares for the
younger children of their relatives, or else an older sibling
is placed in charge of the younger brothers or sisters.
Both mothers and fathers are much more indulgent of
young boys then of young girls. Physical affection is much
more common with infants or toddlers than with older
children. Children are not necessarily indulged, but instead
they are considered a part of the household structure and
are expected to contribute to ensuring that the household
runs effectively. Children often have many responsibilities, particularly the girls in a family. Both mothers and
fathers expect more from a female child. A daughter is
engaged in some sort of household work at a very young
age, whereas a young boy is often left to play on his own
rather than asked to participate in household duties.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
During the past 10 years of national independence,
women’s leadership in Kyrgyzstan has declined in the
public arenas, in part because the quotas for women in
government ended with the Soviet era. Since then,
women have found that the most viable opportunities for
them are found in newly formed nongovernmental organizations, where they have proven to be extremely active.
Nevertheless, it is useful to consider that, among the
Kyrgyz, there is a mythology or a belief system that
the Kyrgyz were once a matriarchal tribe, and that women
were expected to be good warriors, fine horseback riders,
and excellent statesmen. In this light, Kyrgyz women are
sometimes a part of local government institutions, such as
village councils (aiyl okmotu), but these women tend to
be older and have garnered a great deal of respect in the
village community.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Kyrgyz are highly syncretic in their approach to
religion. They combine traditions of animism, shamanism,
and Islam into their daily lives. The legend of Umay Ene,
a female deer, tells what happened that when the forest
burned (in Siberia) and only one child survived, who was
raised by Umay Ene. Considered to be the grandmother
of all Kyrgyz and the spirit who protects children and animals, many women pray to Umay Ene. When shamans
(many of whom are women) perform a healing on a child
they often say, “It is not my hand but the hand of Umay
Ene who heals.” During the harvest or when cattle and
sheep gave birth to calves and lambs, the Kyrgyz say
“Umay Ene’s breast gives us milk.” Female Kyrgyz
shamans also officiate at life cycle celebrations, such as
birth and marriage, and conduct funeral services, but central to their role in the Kyrgyz community is the performance of public and private healing rituals. These
usually include the chanting of Muslim prayers, as well
as prayers to the deceased or to animal spirits. Infertility
and chronic pain are typical reasons for seeking out a
shaman. Shamanism, which predates Islam by hundreds
of years, survived the Islamic conversion of the Kyrgyz
because Sufism, the predominant missionary sect of
Islam among the Kyrgyz, was extremely porous and
incorporated the shamanistic practices into its Islamic
rituals.
The resurgence of Islam during the 1990s in Central
Asia has given rise to many men becoming more active
in religious practices. In some of the southern regions of
Kyrgyzstan it has also meant that the otines, the female
Muslim clergy, have been given added importance in their
role as teachers in the villages (Fathi, 1997). Within the
Islamic community, otines oversee the religious education of females from birth to adulthood and also conduct
religious rituals for births, marriages, and funerals.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
The Kyrgyz have many celebrations (toi). Both men and
women are intricately involved in preparing for such
events, which incorporate leisure and recreation, as well
as an expression of the arts for them. Elaborate displays
of food and energetic sports, such as wrestling, horse racing, and a form of polo, are all a part of making a celebration successful. At the heart of most events is the
storytelling and music. The Kyrgyz are renowned for
their epic poem, The Manas, a story of a medieval warrior
who battles his enemies and brings pride to the Kyrgyz
tribes. Both men and women sing and play musical
Courtship and Marriage
597
instruments, but dancing is not customary among the
Kyrgyz. The Soviets introduced formalized dance movements to the Kyrgyz, but these were not based on cultural
practices. The Soviets also introduced chess, which is a
popular past-time for men. Segregation in leisure time is
voluntary and based on years of the separation of women
and men due to their respective work and household
duties. Women often work cooperatively on making a
shyrdak (felted carpet) or weaving a chiy (woven reed
screen).
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Men and women in Kyrgyz society have differential
authority, rights, and privileges. As mentioned above, the
nomadic traditions and the sovietization of the Kyrgyz
contributed to the relative egalitarian status between the
sexes, especially when compared with other Central
Asian groups. Nevertheless, overall men have more status in Kyrgyz society, both formally and informally,
except for the domestic concerns, where women are given
much more control in decision-making. Men and women
are both able to inherit land, but in most instances it goes
to a male child of the woman. Kyrgyz women work outside the home and, in these instances, are often in control
of the income they make. Studies have shown that most
of women’s income goes to support the household. As
women grow older, and become mothers-in-law, their
status increases. It is usually the young daughter-in-law
(kelin) who has the lowest status in a household. She is
expected to do whatever her husband and his mother and
father tell her to do. In some instances, domestic violence
is not perpetrated by the husband against his wife, but by
the mother-in-law physically abusing the young kelin.
SEXUALITY
Attitudes toward sexuality in Kyrgyz society are generally
natural and healthy, but highly private and modest.
Attitudes toward practices of premarital sex and extramarital sex differ for males and females. It is generally
expected that men might have premarital and extramarital
sex, but it is not necessarily accepted, especially by
women. There are definite negative attitudes for women
having premarital or extramarital sex, but nevertheless it
does occur. To some degree, as men and women age there
is more acceptance about extramarital sex, but neither
gender expects it in their own marriage. In other words it
is done, illicitly. Little expression of sexuality is allowed in
childhood, and it depends to some extent on whether a
child is growing up in an urban or rural environment; the
latter is a little more relaxed about innocent experimenting.
Modesty is shown by women who cover their hair or
wear a scarf, especially after marriage. In more traditional regions, it is considered immodest for a woman or
a man to show their legs, but this is changing as Western
influences infiltrate the younger generation. Overall, the
Kyrgyz have very few outward expressions of cross-sex
identification, nor are male and female homosexuality
publicly acknowledged, although it does exist.
Sexuality is also perceived in relationship to
producing children. During the intensive Soviet campaign
after World War II, Kyrgyz women were encouraged to
produce larger families. This campaign was embraced
wholeheartedly by the Kyrgyz, since children are considered a sign of great prosperity as well as security for one’s
old age. The pressure placed on a Kyrgyz woman to
have a large family has always been great, since the
fertility of a woman—especially the birth of sons—is
considered a sign of good fortune for an extended family
(Tabyshalieva, 1997).
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Several different patterns of male–female courtship and
marriage exist among the Kyrgyz. Among rural populations, a more traditional approach toward courtship
exists, which often includes some aspects of arranged
marriage. In pre-Soviet times, marriages were often
arranged between tribal groups prior to the birth of
children (bel kuda). Betrothal of small children who were
still in their cradles was called beshik kuda. Agreements
between the kuda söök were honored even in the event of
a death, when the customary law of levirate required a
brother or a relative to marry the widow. Today, matchmakers are still used and usually attempt to link families
together. Although such arranged marriages were illegal,
during the Soviet period, as were the payments of brideprice (kalym) and dowry (sep), these practices continued
throughout the last century and are being revived in the
post-Soviet society.
Among more urban Kyrgyz, marriages are the result
of a young man and woman deciding on such a union.
598
Such an approach resembles many modern marriages.
They usually seek out a judge to perform the ceremony
and, more recently, many are also seeking the blessing of
a mullah (Islamic cleric).
Upon marriage, a young couple is often given
“guardian parents” for the newly married (ökül apa and
ökül ata—authorized or entrusted mother and father).
The parents of the groom arrange for an established
married couple to act as sponsors, confidants, and mentors to a newly married couple. It is understood to be a
very private and confidential relationship, but it was also
kept very private during the Soviet period because it had
once been considered anticommunist to have an ökül apa
and ökül ata. According to the tradition, after the ökül
parents have been identified, contact with them is up to
the young couple. If there is no contact, then it is considered a formal process and no gifts are exchanged. But if
the young couple seek out the ökül parents then the relationship has two aims. One is to provide a good model for
the couple, and the second is to make contacts stronger
between families, since they are not blood relatives.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship among the Kyrgyz is
characterized generally by duty and a quiet respect; affection is primarily given to their offspring. They tend to
approach their marriage as team members; they rarely
display public affection or hostility. The relationship is
considered private. Husbands and wives often eat
together with their family, sleep together, spend time
visiting their respective extended families together, and
often make decisions together. There is a fairly defined
division of labor when it comes to household tasks and
family concerns.
Polygyny occasionally occurs, when a man takes a
second wife, but it is unofficial as it is not legal in
Kyrgyzstan. In instances where polygyny does take place,
Islamic codes are put into effect; the first wife has more
status than the second, but it is expected that both wives
must be given similar resources to support their respective children. If a marriage is not satisfactory, divorce is
often the result and can be initiated by either the husband
or the wife. The children typically stay with the mother,
but the husband can also seek custody. In pre-Soviet marriages, children of a divorce would go to the husband’s
relatives.
Kyrgyz
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
These relationships are discussed under various categories
above. The most significant relationship outside marriage
is the grandparent–grandchild relationship.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
During the post-Soviet period from 1991 to the present,
Kyrgyz society has experienced a confluence of different
and contrasting ideologies. Although societal change
affects all age cohorts, it certainly affects each group
differently. The younger generation is less influenced by
gender and sexual egalitarian ideals from the Soviet
period, but instead find themselves confronted by two
highly contradictory ideals of men and women, that of
conservative Islam and that of Western media. These very
different approaches to sexuality and gender roles leave a
highly contradictory situation in which to examine
Kyrgyz norms definitively. The gendered expectations of
the middle-aged cohort have been shaped by years of
Soviet education, in which men and women were
professed to be equal, and in which many of the laws
attempted to bring more equality to the sexes. Among
older Kyrgyz, gender and sexuality have remnants of
pre-Soviet ideals and highly traditional approaches, as
well as Soviet expectations that women should participate
actively in society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abramzon, S. M. (1978). Family-group, family, and individual property
categories among nomads. In W. Weissleder (Ed.), The nomadic
alternative: Modes and models of interaction in the African–Asian
deserts and steppes (pp. 179–188). The Hague, The Netherlands:
Mouton.
Akmataliev, A. (1993). Baba saltiy, ene adebi [Traditions of fathers,
customs of mothers]. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: Balasagiyn.
Bauer, A., Boschmann, N., Green, D., & Kuehnast, K. (1998). A generation at risk. children in the Central Asian republics of Kazakstan
and Kyrgyzstan. Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank.
Buckley, M. (1997). Victims and agents: gender in post-Soviet States. In
M. Buckley (Ed.), Post-Soviet women: From the Baltic to Central
Asia (pp. 3–16). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Carlson, B. A. (1994). The condition of children in the countries of the
Former Soviet Union (FSU): A statistical review. Journal of
Development Studies, 31(1), 1–16.
Bibliography
Dunn, S. P., & Dunn, E. (1967). Soviet regime and native culture in
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Anthropology, 8(3), 147–208.
Fathi, H. (1997). Otines: the unknown women clerics of Central Asian
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Gorsuch, A. E. (1996). “A woman is not a man”: The culture of gender
and generation in Soviet Russia, 1921–1928. Slavic Review, 55(3),
638–660.
Kenenbaeva, K., Tabyshalieva, A., & Karasaeva, A. (1995). Current
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Kyrgyzstan: Tradition and new reality (pp. 75–89). Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan: Ychkyn.
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Demokratizatsiya, 8(2), 186–198.
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(Eds.), Women in Russia (pp. 292–305). London: Harvester Press.
Tabyshalieva, A. (1997). Women of Central Asia and the fertility cult.
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Tolmacheva, M. A. (1993).The Muslim woman in Soviet Central Asia.
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Zhdanko, T. A. (1978). Ethnic communities with survivals of clan and
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Lahu
Shanshan Du
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Lahu are also known as the Luohei, Mussur,
and Mian.
LOCATION
The Lahu are located in Southwest China, Myanmar
(Burma), Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Lahu are a Tibeto-Burman-speaking people (Chang,
1986, p. 1; Matisoff, 1988, p. 11) who are divided into
several subgroups with mutually intelligible dialects and
slightly different subcultures, including the Lahu Na, the
Lahu Shi, the Lahu Nyi, and the Lahu Shehleh (Walker,
1974). The Lahu people live in the mountainous region
that constitutes a southerly extension of the Tibetan
highlands along the border areas of the People’s Republic
of China (P.R.C.), Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, and
Vietnam. According to the 2000 census, the Lahu population in the P.R.C. was 453,705 (NBSC, 2002, p. 251),
which was about two thirds of the total Lahu population
(Walker, 1995, p. 7).
The subsistence pattern of the Lahu is typically a
mixture of farming, raising domestic animals, hunting
and gathering, and fishing. Intensive agriculture (irrigated
wet rice) and the growth of cash crops have been greatly
increased in the last few decades. Households constitute
the center of Lahu village life (Du, 2002; Hill, 1985) and
serve as basic units for production and consumption. The
Lahu people practice monogamy, and married couples
tend to own and manage their households jointly. The
Lahu kinship system is fundamentally bilateral, although
there are varying degrees of matrilineal or patrilineal
skewing in different regions or subgroups. Varying
degrees of bilocal tendency mark the patterns of postmarital residence. Most Lahu villages traditionally lacked
social stratification and there are no strict markers for
hierarchical status except that of generation and age
(Du, 2002; Walker, 1995). Similar beliefs in the supreme
parental god Xeul Sha prevail in the Lahu indigenous
religion, which is also characterized by animism. Lahu of
different regions have also been influenced to different
degrees by a wide variety of externally introduced
religions, including those of Mahayana and Theravada
Buddhism, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity,
and communist atheism (Du, 1996).
The Lahu have historically constituted part of an
“ethnic mosaic” with their neighboring groups. Since the
1980s, the Lahu people have been increasingly involved
in local, regional, national, and global socioeconomic
systems, resulting in drastically intensified interactions
with other ethnic groups. Nevertheless, at the turn of the
21st century, many Lahu, especially those living west of
the Lancang (Mekong) River, have still maintained a high
degree of ethnic homogeneity at the level of the village,
and interethnic marriage is uncommon (Lei & Liu, 1999,
p. 80; Zhang, Yue, & Zhang, 1996, p. 118). Unless specified otherwise, the following discussions focus on the
Lahu of Lancang Lahu Autonomous County in southwest
China, particularly the Lahu Na of the Qhawqhat village
cluster. Although the lives of Qhawqhat villagers can by
no means be regarded as representing a “relic” of
“authentic” Lahu traditions, their dominant ideologies
and social institutions are widely shared, in various forms
and to different degrees, across most Lahu subgroups and
regions (Du, 2002).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
GENDER
OF
The recognized gender categories of the Lahu are “male”
(awl paf ) and “female” (awl ma), which are defined by a
larger category called awl cie (“pair”) (Du, 2002). The
concept awl cie focuses on the dyadic nature of the pair
and highlights the similarities and harmony between the
two components, which identify with each other through
600
Gender over the Life Cycle
their shared membership and joint function in the whole.
A dyad is comparable to an organic compound consisting
of two elements in which neither element has an essential
nature of its own and therefore no internally bounded
identity. The dyadic orientation of Lahu gender categories
minimizes the difference between male and female.
Lahu traditional costumes tend to play down sex
differences (Du, 2002). In most Lahu areas, no sex
distinction is shown in the traditional headgear, typically
a long black cloth tied around the head as a brim. Prior to
the 1950s, Lahu men and women in China wore similar
adornments, especially silver bracelets and buttons.
Whereas traditional Lahu clothes bear obvious gender
markers—shirts and pants for males and long garments
for females—their loose-fitting styles cover most of the
secondary features of the sexes. Not only are female body
curves concealed, but also middle or even late stages of
pregnancy of Lahu women are usually hidden within their
loose garments. In the 1990s, many Lahu elders in both
China and Thailand still considered clothes that showed
female body curves embarrassing, strange, or ugly.
Nevertheless, gender differences in both headgear and
clothes have become increasingly salient as more and
more Lahu youth prefer to purchase ready-made clothes
from local markets.
Men and women are traditionally measured by
nearly identical standards concerning their physical
attractiveness (Du, 1995, 2002). To be “good-looking,”
one must first have a well-proportioned body with strong
leg and arm muscles. “Your body is as straight as the best
tree along the river bank” and “Your calves (and arms) are
as thick and solid as the base of a bamboo trunk” are
typical analogies used to express the esthetic appreciation
for a strong body build in both sexes. In addition, wellproportioned facial features combined with pleasant
expressions are considered attractive for both men and
women. Poetic phrases used to describe such physical
attractions include “You are brighter than the brightest
flower in the world that blossoms for three years and
becomes brighter and brighter every night” or “Your skin
is as white as silver, as shining as gold.” For both sexes,
personality and the capability and diligence in working,
rather than physical appearance, are considered the most
important attractions in mate choice. Nevertheless, the
concepts of masculinity and femininity have been
increasingly introduced into Lahu culture, and some
young Lahu women have begun to feel embarrassed
when older women praised their thick and firm calves
601
because such legs are considered masculine and ugly for
city girls.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The life cycle is divided into three major stages:
“red-and-naked children” (before one can talk and walk),
“young children” (before marriage), and “adults” (after
marriage) (Du, 2002). The wedding ceremony publicly
marks the transition from childhood to adulthood. In
the ideal life cycle, a married couple go through the life
journey together, sharing responsibility, prestige, and
authority.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Most Lahu people across subgroups and regions adhere
to indigenous values that greatly appreciate children
and show preference to neither boys nor girls (Du, 2002;
Lei & Liu, 1999, p. 116; Wang & He, 1999, pp. 154, 292),
who are raised similarly. Regardless of sex, infants and
young children receive enormous attention and affection,
often being carried by their parents and other relatives.
Being physically strong and “listening to the words of
elders” are the most valuable traits for boys and girls
alike. Caretakers show no apparent gender distinctions in
instructing and disciplining children. Traditional values
strongly discourage scolding, let along beating, children.
Boys and girls play similar games, including “babyholding,” “cooking,” and “hoeing” (Du, 2002). From
ages 5 to 8, children typically begin to apply their games
to real-life situations, assisting their parents in domestic
work such as baby-sitting, carrying water, and washing
their own clothes.
Puberty and Adolescence
The Lahu category that is similar to “puberty” and
“adolescence” is “unmarried young men and/or young
women.” The major markers of the onset of this stage are
shyness in front of members of the opposite sex and the
ability to understand “the talk between boys and girls,”
including romantic conversations, love songs, and sexual
jokes. Most Lahu enter adolescence at 12 or 13 years of
age, although the physical and social development of an
individual, rather than calendrical age, serves as the
essential index for the category. Socialization at this stage
602
is a continuation of childhood, showing little gender
difference.
Lahu
are believed to play a significant role in the well-being of
the households of their children, and they are appeased on
most important ritual occasions.
Attainment of Adulthood
The Lahu threshold for adulthood is the wedding, which
unites two socially immature individuals into a single
social entity and transforms them into full members of
society. Serving as a rite of passage to simultaneously initiate a boy and a girl into adulthood, the symbolism and
rituals of the Lahu wedding focus on elaborating the
sacredness, endurance, and harmony of a husband–wife
dyad. In many Lahu areas, a wedding ceremony consists
of two integral parts. The first and more elaborate ceremony is held at the house of the bride’s parents, and the
second is held at the house of the groom’s parents.
At each ceremony, a pair of beeswax candles is lit for the
paired god Xeul Sha. After the wedding ceremony, the
couple simultaneously achieve the social rank of “adult”
(chaw mawd ). Such a cultural definition of adulthood
depends solely on one’s marital status and is irrelevant to
both age and sex.
Middle Age and Old Age
A married couple is counted as a single social entity and
progress jointly through each substage of adulthood,
which is defined mainly by parental roles. The married
couple jointly hold the status, prestige, and authority of
each of the hierarchical stages and substages of the life
cycle. Revered status and prestige are intrinsically intertwined with a couple’s accomplishment of their social
responsibilities, especially their responsibility as parents.
From their wedding until the birth of their first grandchild, a couple is categorized as “married youth” or
“junior adults” (al niel, roughly between 20 and 45 years
of age). From the birth of their first grandchild until they
retire from their joint position of household coheads, a
husband and wife are categorized as “elders” (chaw
mawd in one of its narrow senses, typically between
40 and 65 years of age). When all their children are
married and have established their own households, a
couple is promoted to the status of “senior elders” (chaw
mawd qo), which is the last substage of physical life.
After fulfilling their joint responsibilities in life, husband
and wife are believed to reunite in the afterlife, jointly
holding the honorable and authoritative position of “the
parental spirits” in the supernatural realm. Parental spirits
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Lahu ideals of personality show minimal gender difference. The most important virtue, which is referred to by
the word nud (“soft,” “gentle”), is identical for men and
women. As an overarching category for most desirable
characteristics, nud involves both emotional and rational
traits, including humility and generosity in relating to
fellow villagers, respectfulness toward elders, care of
children, compassion for the sick and the weak, modesty,
and appropriate manners. In conventional Lahu courting
songs, Lahu lovers use nud as the highest praise of their
partners, addressing each other as “the good (dar) and soft
(nud) young man” or “the good and soft young woman.”
Nud is such high praise that if a family member is praised
as “nud,” other members share the pride. As the antithesis
to the positive nud, the term hie (“harsh”) describes the
most undesirable personality and social traits, including
aggressiveness, violence, boastfulness, ill manners, and
insensitivity. Hie is used to describe the negative characters of both men and women, suggesting no belief in
innate male aggression. Despite the negative perception
of harshness in the Lahu culture, violent behavior (including domestic violence) does exist in village life and has
been increasing drastically since the 1980s.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Rather than being male oriented or female oriented, Lahu
social structures are oriented towards married couples,
who serve as building blocks for kinship relations and
interhousehold networks (Du, 2002). Because of the
common practice of village endogamy, the vast majority
of couples live near both the husband’s family and the
wife’s family. Lahu kinship terminology calculates kin
relations from the perspective of a married couple (dyadic
ego), which parallels the reference point of an individual
ego. The dyadic orientation of Lahu kinship terminology
provides a married couple with circles of kin relations
accompanied by different rights, duties, and obligations,
structurally connecting them with other husband–wife
Leadership in Public Arenas
603
dyads as well as with single individuals. The bilateral
kinship networks between household-head couples regulate the forms and intensity of interhousehold reciprocity
in both economic and ritual activities, especially in labor
cooperation, assistance during food shortage, and ritual
obligations. There are no records of the existence of
nonkin associations for males or females in traditional
Lahu society.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Sexual division of labor is minimal. Social ideals expect
a married couple to jointly “work hard to eat” (kheor
cad), a phrase that connotes all the tasks involved in
feeding a household, from planting to weeding, harvesting, storing, pounding rice, cooking, fetching water and
firewood, raising pigs and chickens, and gardening (Du,
2000). Despite the extreme social emphasis on gender
unity in labor allocation, gender division still marks a few
tasks. Weaving is almost exclusively a female task, and
males dominate, almost exclusively, hunting, blacksmithing, and long-distance trade. While men are usually
more active in market exchange, which played very limited roles in Lahu village life before the 1980s, married
couples jointly engage in nonmarket exchanges. The
property of a head couple typically undergoes sequential
divisions when their children and children-in-law establish their own households. Typically, a couple divide
their farmland equally among all their children except for
their primary heirs (one of their children and his or her
spouse), who additionally inherit the couple’s share.
When the couple retire from heading their household,
they pass on to their heirs the coheadship, together with
the house and its furniture and utensils as well as grain
and small livestock. While the socialist transformation in
China has deprived head couples of their authority over
land ownership since the late 1950s, such authority was
restored to a certain degree after state policies granted
households the right of land usage in the 1980s.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND OTHER
CARETAKER
Parental roles are defined mainly by procreation,
child rearing, and varying degrees of moral, social, and
spiritual responsibility and authority over children
(and children-in-law) at different stages of the life course
and in the afterlife. Being defined as a dual-parental team,
a married couple is expected to take joint roles as much
as possible in all areas of child-related activities, including pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare, as well as teaching children moral and working skills and making
decisions for them (Du, 2000, 2002; Lei & Liu, 1999,
pp. 142–143). At the beginning of the 21st century, many
Lahu villagers in Lancang still adhere to their tradition of
husband-midwifery, which expects a husband to serve as
the midwife with the assistance of all four of the couple’s
parents and other relatives. A couple usually carry the
infant and/or young child to the field, taking caring of the
child while working together. Both parents share similar
responsibilities in discipline, education, physical care,
affection, and time spent with children. Many couples
also receive supplementary childcare on a regular basis
from their parents and older children, other relatives, and
neighbors. The nonparental caretakers are of both sexes
rather than being predominantly female. The behavior of
these caretakers towards male and female children shows
no consistent patterns of gender differentiation.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in kin groups and the political arena demonstrates varying degrees of joint gender roles (Du, 2002;
Wang & He, 1999, p. 292). The overlapping of gender
roles in leadership is derived from the cosmological and
social ideals of male–female coheadship, as expressed by
the common saying, “A pair of male–female masters rules
together.” At the beginning of the 21st century, most Lahu
villagers in Lancang still adhere to the traditional institution of “male–female masters of the household,” focusing
on the joint authority and responsibility of household
coheads in making consensus decisions (Du, 2002; Lei &
Liu, 1999, p. 246; Wang & He, 1999, p. 114). Whereas
indigenous institutions of male–female coheadship at the
village and village-cluster levels have been fundamentally
disrupted or eliminated in most Lahu areas since the establishment of the P.R.C. in 1949, it has been revived in a few
village clusters after the relaxation of state policy in China
in the 1980s. For example, parallel to the state-appointed
officials, there are three pairs of traditional village leaders
in each village of the Fulqhat village cluster. In particular,
the village head couple is responsible for maintaining
social order both within and beyond the village, especially
604
Lahu
enforcement of customary laws. The head couple of
spiritual specialists represent the villagers in serving
village guardian spirits, especially performing rituals at
the temple of village guardian spirits. The leading blacksmith couple performs rituals to assure spiritual security
for a village’s agricultural production, which is also
symbolized by tool-making for the village. At the level of
village cluster, there is also a Buddhist monk couple,
serving at the pair of Buddhist temples located at the center of the village cluster. Nevertheless, the male coleaders
of Fulqhat tend to play more important roles than the
corresponding female coleaders, and they receive nearexclusive recognition by the state and outsiders. Although
warfare seemed to be an exclusively male role in historical records, elders of some Lancang villages recollect
young women’s participation in village military defense in
the 1940s.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The male–female dyad comprises the core symbolism in
Lahu religion. Lahu people across subgroups, regions,
and countries share beliefs in a supreme god named
Xeul Sha (Du, 1996; Lei & Liu, 1999, p. 57; Walker, 1986).
According to various versions of Lahu origin myths in
Lancang, Xeul Sha is a pair of cross-sex twins, representing the primordial dyad and the ultimate cosmological
order (Du, 2002). The twin gods are often depicted as if
they were a single joint entity who created the universe
and human beings. While undertaking joint roles in creation, the dyadic supreme gods also demonstrate identical
capacity, rationality, emotions, and morality. After making
a few male–female pairs to serve as assistants, Xeul Sha
created the earth (female) and the sky (male), the sun
(female) and the moon (male), the water and the vegetation that cover the earth, and then the animals (Du & Hu,
1996; Lei & Liu, 1999, pp. 57–60). In order to solicit
offerings, Xeul Sha also created and raised a pair of
demigods called Xeul Sha’s Senior Daughter and Senior
Son, who were eventually punished with death for their
rebellion (Du & Hu, 1996; Hu, 1996). To replace them,
Xeul Sha then created the original humans, a pair of twins
who came out of a gourd, called Only Man–Only Woman.
Xeul Sha raised the first human twins, taught them how to
hunt and farm, and instructed them to marry. Xeul Sha
looked after the offspring of the first human couple, who
became the ancestors of the human population, and taught
them hunting, farming, and customs. Among the Lahu Na
of Lancang, villagers also pair the guardian deities at
various levels, including the guardian deities of the household, the village, and the village cluster. Villagers recognize the paired nature of these deities in their offerings,
which are ritually presented in pairs, as are the offerings
to Xeul Sha.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Lahu men and women have little leisure time except
during festivals, especially the Lahu New Year Festivals,
as well as some ritual occasions. Married couples are
expected to enjoy their leisure time together. The traditional ways to spend leisure time include socializing with
relatives, feasting, singing, and dancing. Prior to the
1990s, one of the most popular entertainments in festivals
and rituals was singing and listening to traditional Lahu
songs, which address topics such as origin myths, migration legends, courtship, and love-pact suicide. Such songs
are ideally sung antiphonally by a male and a female (Du,
1995) and the audience appreciates the singers’ knowledge of conventional verses and their creativity and
spontaneity. If a few equally talented singers rotate to
sing antiphonally to each other, such singing sessions
may last as long as several days and nights, drawing large
crowds of thrilled listeners. Since the 1980s, watching
television, videos, and movies, as well as playing basketball and billiards, have become increasingly popular,
especially among the youth.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Unity-based equality marks the status of men and
women. The equal value placed on males and females is
deeply rooted in the world view that unifies male and
female into dyads, in which the two sexes are evaluated
according to their joint identity rather than being treated
as separate social categories. According to such a dyadic
perspective on gender, the foreign term “gender equality”
is translated into Lahu as “men and women are the same”
(Du, 2002) and is taken as a matter of course in many
rural areas (Zhang et al., 1996, p. 119). Applying the
dyadic world view to the life cycle, adulthood is defined
by entering a monogamous marriage, in which the
husband and the wife are bound as a team, sharing
Courtship and Marriage
responsibility, authority, and prestige throughout their
lives and in the afterlife. Joint gender roles are widely
realized in labor allocation and household leadership, and
to a limited degree in terms of village leadership.
Structurally, bilateral kinship system and interhousehold
reciprocity are oriented toward household head couples,
empowering men and women as joint social entities.
The ideological and institutional emphasis on the
joint identity of male and female in Lahu tradition
minimizes differences in decision-making and the influence of men and women in subsistence and economy,
family matters, community, kin group, and religion.
Accordingly, men and women have neither different rights
to important resources nor separate control of the fruits of
their labor. As parents and elders, men and women jointly
influence the sexuality, education, marriage choice, and
divorce of their children and younger relatives. Increasing
privileges (such as deference) are paid to a couple as a
joint social entity as they are promoted throughout the
substages of adulthood and in the afterlife. Despite the
discrepancy between ideal and practice, shown especially
in the increasing marital disharmony, conflicts, and
divorce, gender equality still prevails in the social lives of
many rural Lahu at the beginning of the 21st century.
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is generally considered extremely embarrassing
and private, an attitude that seems to be embedded in Lahu
mythology that links the origin of sexuality with both
reproduction and shame. According to Lahu origin myths
(Liu, 1988, pp. 44–47), failing in several attempts to
inspire and convince Only Man and Only Woman to marry
each other in order to reproduce humans, Xeul Sha offered
them an aphrodisiac without telling them its function.
After drinking it, the original human couple copulated and
later jointly experienced intense feelings of guilt and
shame for violating the incest taboo. The cultural conception of sexuality is similar for both sexes, except that some
local beliefs portray women as having stronger sexual
desires because Only Woman took an extra dose of the
delicious aphrodisiac drink. While the Lahu people share
the moral prohibition against premarital and extramarital
sex, the degree of restrictions and punishment on such
behaviors varies drastically according to subgroups
and regions (Du, 2002; Hill, 1985; Lei & Liu, 1999,
pp. 142–143). Nevertheless, in a given local context,
605
moral expectations and punishment for deviant behaviors
are applied almost identically to males and females. For
both sexes, shamelessness is attached to public expressions of sexuality, such as making erotic remarks and
physical contact with members of the opposite sex, even
including holding hands with one’s spouse. In accordance
with the cosmological order of male–female unity, the
Lahu language has no word for “homosexuality.” All the
Lahu I interviewed in the 1990s stated firmly that they had
never heard of such behavior among the people they knew
and therefore were unable to offer any moral judgments.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Everyone is expected to marry after a certain age. In rural
areas, those who are unmarried in their late twenties
begin to bring shame to their family and those who die
before marriage are treated as marginal, if not lesser,
human beings in mortuary rites (Du, 2002). Severe
chronic health problems were usually associated with the
extremely rare cases in which individuals remained
unmarried throughout their lives. The most important
considerations of marriage choice are physical strength,
diligence and working skills, a gentle personality, and a
clean family background, especially not being accused of
possessing a dangerous spirit called tawr. Most villagers
found their own spouses. Typically between the ages of
13 and 16 in the 1990s, and between 15 and 18 prior to
the 1980s, Lahu teenagers in rural Lancang started to
“play with boys” or “play with girls,” activities serving as
a prelude to finding a spouse. A traditional courtship
ritual is to snatch the headcloth or hat from a member of
the opposite sex and run away in a joking manner.
Through such a ritual, a boy or girl initiates a semiprivate
conversation with someone he or she is interested in or
attracted to. While most Lahu youth find their own
spouses, there are varying degrees of parental intervention in mate choice. One is called “guided by parents,” in
which parents offer suggestions with no binding obligations. Another kind is called “matched (arranged) by
parents,” in which parents arrange marriages for their
children regardless of the latter’s desires. Although the
Chinese state has outlawed arranged marriage since the
1950s, it still occurred sporadically in some Lahu villages
until the 1980s, when the strict implementation of familyplanning policies required a couple to reach minimum
ages before they could marry. Widows and widowers are
606
free to remarry and there are no normative preferences
concerning who they remarry.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Teamwork and companionship characterize husband–wife
relationships. Social ideals expect a married couple to
function as a single social entity, as expressed by the
proverb “Chopsticks only work in pairs” (Du, 2002). In
other words, parallel to the two parts of a pair of chopsticks, the husband and wife should coexist symbiotically
and function harmoniously within their shared identity in
the marriage. Importantly, a married couple is defined as
a single labor team that performs a variety of tasks, ideally
functioning together as smoothly as a pair of chopsticks.
According to this principle, both productive and reproductive tasks are oriented towards the couple’s common
goal of sustaining their household, submerging the
productivity of the husband and wife within the duty of the
couple as a whole. Beside working together, husbands and
wives are also expected to eat together, sleep together,
spend time together, and make decisions together.
The moral discourse of the Lahu across regions and
subgroups tends to be against divorce because it fundamentally conflicts with the dominant ideology of gender
unity manifested in the cosmological order, the social
structure, and core ethics (Du, 2002). Nevertheless, actual
restrictions on divorce vary greatly in practice according
to local traditions. At one extreme, divorce is granted
easily with a simple ritual, and little stigma is attached to
the divorcees (Wang & He, 1999, p. 112). At the other
extreme, the spouse who insisted on divorce is fined heavily and his or her relatives often have to share consequent
strong social stigma and financial burdens (Du, 1996,
2002; Lei & Liu, 1999, p. 87). The major reasons for
divorce are that one’s spouse becomes addicted to opium
or alcohol, steals, is lazy and irresponsible, or is suspected
of possessing a dangerous spirit. According to convention,
if a couple divorces, daughters belong to the wife and sons
belong to the husband (Du, 2002; Lei & Liu, 1999, p. 87;
Wang & He, 1999, p. 113).
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
In addition to husband–wife and parent–child, brother–
sister is another significant cross-sex relationship and an
Lahu
integral part of the relationships among siblings and their
spouses. The common practice of village endogamy,
together with the principle of gender unity underlying the
bilateral kinship system, provide the structural basis for
the perpetuation of strong sibling ties throughout the life
course (Du, 2002). Particularly, marriages reinforce,
rather than weaken, the brother–sister bond by incorporating siblings and their spouses into the core relatives
who are expected to engage in the most intensive interhousehold reciprocity. Ideally, the principle of generalized reciprocity guides the economic interactions
between the households coheaded by siblings and
siblings-in-law, especially in labor cooperation and coping with food shortage. Such households are also
expected to engage in the most intense forms of ritual
reciprocity.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Whereas the Lahu people residing in the mountainous
areas of border regions retain a high degree of ethnic and
cultural homogeneity at the beginning of the 21st century,
their gender unitary system has grown more incoherent
and less influential (Du, 2002). As a result of the political and economic incorporation of Lahu-inhabited areas
into national and global systems, the isolation and cohesion of Lahu culture and society have been increasingly
undermined. Specifically, with more and more villages
gaining access to electricity, television and other forms of
mass media entertainment have replaced the singing of
Lahu folk songs in rural life. It is unrealistic to expect
Lahu youth who grow up watching Gongfu (Kung-Fu)
movies and television shows such as Baywatch to develop
a coherent world view of male–female dyads as illustrated in Lahu origin myths and other oral literature. In
addition, Lahu villagers’ increasing involvement in the
market economy has greatly intensified flexibility in
interhousehold reciprocities, undermining the structural
significance of household networks between the head
couples.
REFERENCES
Chang, H. E. (Ed.). (1986). Lahu Yu Jian Zhi [The concise annals of the
Lahu language]. Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House.
References
Du, S. (1995). The aesthetic axis in the construction of emotions and
decisions: Love-pact suicide among the Lahu Na of southwest
China. In M. Flaherty & C. Ellis (Eds.), Social perspectives on
emotion (Vol. 3, pp. 199–221). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Du, S. (1996). Cosmic and social exchanges: Blessings among the Lahu
of southwest China and the feast-of-merit complex in highland
southeast Asia. In C. A. Kammerer & N. Tanenbaum (Eds.), Merit
and blessing in mainland Southeast Asia (Southeast Asia
Monograph Series, pp. 52–78). New Haven, CT: Yale University of
Southeastern Studies.
Du, S. (2000). “Husband and wife do it together”: Sex/gender allocation of labor among the Qhawqhat Lahu of Lancang, southwest
China. American Anthropologist, 102(3), 520–537.
Du, S. (2002). “Chopsticks only work in pairs”: Gender unity and
gender equality among the Lahu of southwest China. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Du, S., & Hu, C. (1996). Xeulsha Yu Calnu Calpie de Guanxi: Lahu Zhi
Shang She de Zhangzi Zhang Nu [The relation between Xeul Sha
and Calnu Calpei: The senior daughter and son of the Lahu
supreme parental God], Minzu Diaocha Yenjiu [Journal for
Ethnographic Research], 12, 69–75.
Hill, J. (1985). The household as the center of life among the
Lahu Shehleh of northern Thailand. In K. Aoi, K. Morioka, &
J. Suginohara (Eds.), Family and community changes in East Asia
(pp. 504–525). Tokyo: Japan Sociological Society.
Hu, C. (1996). Xeu Sha de Zhangzi Zhangnü [The senior daughter and
son of Xeul Sha]. Minzu Diaocha Yenjiu [Journal of Ethnographic
Research], 12, 64–68.
607
Lei, B., & Liu, J. (1999). Lahu Wenhua Daguan [Perspectives on Lahu
culture]. Kunming, P.R.C.: Yunnan Nationalities Publishing
House.
Liu, H. (Ed.). (1988). Lahuzu Minjian Wenxue Jicheng [A Collection of
Lahu Folk Literature]. Beijing: Publishing House for Chinese Folk
Art.
Matisoff, J. A. (1988). The dictionary of Lahu. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
NBSC (National Bureau of Statistics of China). (2002). Zhongguo 2000
Nian Renkou Pucha Ziliao [Tabulation of the 2000 Population
Census of The People’s Republic of China]. Beijing: China
Statistics Press.
Walker, A. (1974). The division of the Lahu people. Journal of the Siam
Society, 62(1), 1–26.
Walker, A. (1986). Transformations of Buddhism in the religious
ideas and practices of a non-Buddhist hill people: The Lahu Nyi of
the northern Thai uplands. Contributions to Southeast Asian
Ethnography, 5, 65–91.
Walker, A. (1995). Mvuh Hpa Mi Hpa: Creating heaven, creating earth.
Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.
Wang, Z., & He, S. (1999). Lahuzu Wenhua Shi [The history of Lahu
culture]. Kunming, P.R.C.: Yunnan Nationalities Publishing House.
Zhang, Q., Yue, F., & Zhang, X. (Eds.), (1996). Lancang Lahuzhu
Zizhixian Zhi [The annals of the Lancang Lahu Autonomous
County]. Kunming, P.R.C.: Yunnan People’s Publishing House.
Maasai
Aud Talle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Maasai are also known as the Ilmaasai.
LOCATION
The Maasai inhabit the savannah borderland between
Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa, an area of approximately 100,000 km2.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Maasai (about 350,000 people) are Nilotic-speaking
pastoralists, of the eastern Nilotic branch (cf. Vossen,
1982). Their language maa is also spoken by a few other
ethnic groups in the region, such as the Samburu and
Chamus in Kenya, and the Parakuyu and Arusha in
Tanzania (Gulliver, 1963; Little, 1992; Spencer, 1965).
The Nilotic-speaking pastoralists constitute a cultural
minority within the Kenyan and Tanzanian nation states.
Until recently the Maasai lived a seminomadic way
of life, migrating with their livestock herds according to
seasonal fluctuations. Today they are less nomadic, but
livestock, in particular cattle, are still central to their economy and culture. In Kenya the traditional grazing land of
the Maasai has been divided into group and individual
ranches, and many group ranches have been subdivided
into individual holdings (Talle, 1988). In Tanzania, however, the privatization of pasture land is less advanced than
in Kenya. The land adjudication process has contributed
to make the pastoral Maasai increasingly sedentary in both
countries. Agriculture is of little importance except in the
wetter parts of their area, but maize, and to a lesser extent
other agricultural products, constitutes a major part of
their diet. Earlier, Maasai bartered pastoral products such
as livestock, milk, meat, and skins for grain and honey (for
ceremonial beer brewing) with their agricultural neighbors. Presently they purchase agricultural foodstuffs in the
shops. The traditional habitat of the Maasai has shrunk
dramatically during the last half century or so, mainly due
to adjudication of common land, land encroachment by
other ethnic groups, and expropriation of grazing land into
game reserves e.g., Waller, 1993. The contemporary position of the Maasai within the state is one of increasing
poverty, economic and political marginalization, and a
general insecurity of the pastoral pursuit (Århem, 1985;
Hodgson, 2001; Talle, 1988).
Major structural principles in Maasai culture and
society are the patrilineal clan organization (pl. ilgilat,
olgilat) and the male age-set system (pl. ilajijik, olaji). The
population are divided into several major descent groups
or clans, namely the ilaiser, ilukuma, ilataiyiok, ilmolelian,
ilmakesan, iltarro sero, and ilmamasita (Jacobs, 1965).
These groups are again subdivided into smaller segments
of agnatic subclans and lineages, which in principle are
exogamous units. The descent groups are contained in two
larger segmentary categories or moieties (pl. intaloishin,
entaloishi), “those of red oxen” (odo mongi) and “those of
the black ox” (orok kiteng). The two groups represent
a dual symbolism in Maasai cosmology (a right-hand and
a left-hand side), which is reflected at many levels of
Maasai social organization—in lineage and family structure as well as in the age-set system (Fosbrooke, 1948).
The Maasai live in large dispersed settlements
(pl. inkangitie, enkang) consisting of several families,
which together often count 50–60 people. A thick thornbush fence encloses the settlement and protects the people
and animals inside against nightly predators and livestock
thieves. Each family builds its own “gate” (enkishomi) in
the fence, where they pass to and from the homestead. The
people residing together in one settlement are usually
related by kinship ties on the male side and/or age-set
bonds between male adults (Århem, 1991).
Maasai men of some means (i.e., cattle) conventionally marry several wives, polygyny being the preferred
marriage form. The right–left dichotomy noted above is
an important structural principle in the organization of the
polygynous family and is established by the order of the
women’s marriages. Successive wives build their houses
alternately on either side of the gate coming into the
608
Gender over the Life Cycle
609
settlement; the first wife builds her house on the right
side, the second on the left, the third on the right, and so
on. The people on the right- and the left-hand side,
respectively, form a subdivision of the agnatic family into
two matrifilial groups. This division is of importance for
inheritance of the family’s livestock, social identity, and
ties of sentiments.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Maasai recognize two gender categories: male (ole)
and female (ene). Humans are born male or female, but
gendering as a social and cultural process begins as soon
as a child is born. For instance, the freshly drawn blood
given to a woman to regain strength after birth is taken
from a male or a female calf according to the sex of the
child. The gender terms also apply to livestock and other
animals. The terms are used in naming practices as “son
of” and “daughter of,” respectively, and furthermore as
suffixes of nouns to indicate the noun’s gender. The female
form may sometimes be used as a diminutive of regular
male nouns (e.g., olaiyoni, boy; enkayoni, little boy).
Maasai sometimes come across indeterminate sex
condition in livestock; the word entopis (f.) indicates
neither female nor male sexual organs or both in one.
They acknowledge that such a condition may even occur
in humans. The gendering of the androgyne human or animal will be done according to the comparative “strength”
of the two elements. Gendering must be done so that
social and moral order can be restored. Male and female
are complementary entities in Maasai cosmological and
cultural thought; the male is stronger than the female, but
both are equally important to make a complete and “beautiful” world. Maasai men and women mark gender identity by dress, ornaments, and hairstyle. However, gender
differences in personal style are not conspicuous as colors
and materials overlap cross-sexually. While the Maasai
mark gender differences, they also recognize similarities
in the two genders.
The gendering among the pastoral Maasai is most
noticeable in terms of formal decision-making power.
The age-set system is a crucial principle for the construction of gender relations in the Maasai society: it regulates
power relations between women and men as well as relations between elder and younger generations (Hodgson,
2001; Llewelyn-Davies, 1981; Spencer, 1988; Talle,
1998). This system is based upon a division of the male
population into corporate age-groups which are arranged
hierarchically within a framework of authoritative
positions and rules of appropriate behavior, and through
which men advance linearly in a highly ritualistic
atmosphere. The strikingly colorful Maasai “warriors”
(pl. ilmurran, olmurrani, anglicized form “moran”) and
their spectacular ceremonies have been amply described
in the literature (e.g., Saitoti & Beckwith, 1980; Spencer,
1988). In fact, the image of the Maasai morans is
legendary; from their earliest contact with Europeans up
to the present day they have never ceased to be a source
of wonder and attraction to outsiders.
The rules emanating from the age-set organization
pertain mainly to property rights, division of labor, eating
habits, code of dress and conduct, and sexual relations.
Women are not structurally integrated into the age-set
system since they are not divided into formal corporate
age-groups. By definition, then, women are excluded
from the control of productive and reproductive
recourses; they never reach the “age” (i.e., the social age)
whereby they might possess livestock or have full control
over their own bodies and procreative capacities.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
There are many similarities, as well as substantial differences, in how Maasai bring up boys and girls. In the early
years of their lives, youngsters, residing with their mothers in their houses, are shown considerable love and care
by both women and men. They are slowly and patiently
taught how to behave respectfully towards each other, how
to greet elders, how to eat properly, and how to tend to the
animal wealth of the family. Children of both sexes, and
as young as 18 months to 2 years old, may be given a tiny
stick and eagerly encouraged to gather kids or lambs
straying from the flock.
At about the age of 4–6 socialization practices more
clearly differentiate children into two genders: boys are
expected to tend to the livestock, bring them to distant
pastures, and endure long hours without food and drink
when out herding, while girls are attuned toward domestic work and the care of younger siblings. Also, girls are
encouraged to care for animals and they often herd
together with the boys. Boys, on the other hand, are
seldom expected to do domestic work.
610
In general, Maasai show indulgence toward toddlers
and young children, and they are rarely physically
abused. However, as children grow up and gradually
become responsible for important tasks in the household,
physical punishment becomes a disciplinary device. In
particular boys may be severely beaten if an animal is
missing from the herd of which they are in charge.
Both boys and girls are taught to bear considerable
physical pain in order to become “proper” Maasai. Young
boys and girls intentionally inflict pain on themselves by
decorative scarification patterns on arms, legs, and torso.
They employ thorns for lifting up the skin and sharp grass
blades for cutting it. There are no specific gender differences in how they decorate themselves, except that boys
may be more lavishly decorated. Children of both sexes
have their lower incisors removed twice in their lifetime
(milk teeth as well as permanent teeth). Boys and girls
alike also have their ears pierced around the age of 10.
However, the practice of ear piercing has become
unpopular among schoolchildren.
Puberty and Adolescence
Circumcision at early puberty for girls and late puberty
for boys is considered an ultimate test of pain endurance.
Beyond its physical ordeal, the circumcision rite has great
social and cultural significance for both genders. At this
stage in life boys enter the age-set system and girls enter
marriage and their reproductive career.
After circumcision (emurata) at about 16 or 17 years
of age, the young men become members of the age-grade
system as “warriors” (pl. ilmurran, olmurrani, “the
circumcized one,” anglicized form “moran”). During this
period, which may last 7–8 years, they live together in
separate settlements (pl. imanyat, emanyata), secluded
from the family homesteads, until they become “elders”
and are permitted to marry. The state of moranhood is a
transitional phase in the life of Maasai men, separating the
young unmarried men from married elders not only
spatially, but also by dress, diet, and way of life. During
this period of seclusion, age-mate solidarity and equality
are expressed and communicated particularly through
rituals of slaughter, commensality, and togetherness. The
intimate relationships evolving between Maasai men
while they are morans continue after they have terminated
moranhood and become married elders (pl. ilpayiak,
olpiayi). Until their circumcision, the boys are merely
“boys” (pl. ilayiok, olayoni) toiling with herding and
Maasai
homestead work with very limited rights of personal
independence.
Like boys, girls are also initiated into the adult
community by a circumcision rite (emurata). At about the
age of 13–14, or when their breasts are sufficiently
developed, girls’ genitals (clitoris and labia minora) are
excised. It is usually an elderly woman of the community
who performs the surgery. The operation signals a new
social role for the girl; she is becoming an esiankiki
(“young married woman”) now ready to be married and
give birth to children. For the 2 or 3 years preceding
puberty and their circumcision rites (i.e., from 10 years
onwards) Maasai girls spend time with the morans in
their settlements. The prepubescent girls and the young
morans entertain each other socially as well as sexually
(Talle, 1988, 1994).
The Maasai believe that a girl cannot conceive, or
will give birth to deformed children, if her clitoris is not
removed. Clitoridectomy transfers the sexually “free” girl
of the “sweetheart” category (pl. isanjan, esanja) into a
potential child-bearer who is subject to restrictions in her
sexual behavior. From then on, she may only associate
with her husband and members of his age group, that is,
men at least l0–l5 years her senior. Her sexual play with
the morans terminates at this stage, much to her regret;
thereafter, sexual relationships with them are defined as
illegitimate.
Attainment of Adulthood
The life cycles of men and women are more or less
parallel until circumcision, but after circumcision male
and female life career diverges. Girls attain adulthood
earlier than boys. The latter are not considered adult until
they have finished their moranhood and passed the
important age-grade ceremony eunoto into elderhood
(pl. ilpayiani, olpayian). Then they are permitted to marry
and to establish themselves as independent household
heads. At this stage in life they may have reached
25–30 years of age. Their former sweethearts have
already married men of elder age grades.
Middle Age and Old Age
As men and women grow older and begin to circumcize
their own children, they pass through new life stages.
Men are promoted into senior elders in the age-grade
system, and women become entasat (“elder women”),
Gender-Related Social Groups
611
expected to be submissive toward husbands and fathers,
and younger men must be polite and generous toward men
of elder age sets. Likewise, children of both sexes show
unqualified respect toward parents and elder siblings.
One important gender difference in personality is
that males are expected to show more aggressiveness and
physical prowess than women, particularly in the face of
danger. From an early age boys are taught to be courageous and fear nothing in order to defend property and
people. During the moran period this bravery and fierceness is tested in collective cattle raids and lion hunts.
While Maasai men never disclose any sign of fear,
women who are not experienced in fighting often express
fear of predators or thieves at nights when husbands and
fathers are away. Men are also far more authoritarian than
women in their approach toward children.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Figure 1. Schematic overview of Maasai life cycle phases.
approaching or beyond menopause. Women of entasat
category enjoy more autonomy and decision-making
power than younger women (see Figure 1 for a schematic
overview of life cycle phases).
As Maasai people come of age they become less
active sexually. At menopause, women practically terminate their sexual career, while men continue to marry
younger women and have sex up to old age. The sexuality of elderly men is primarily oriented toward marital sex
and hence toward procreation.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
In general, Maasai of both genders show great tolerance
and approval toward each other and are expected to be generous and hospitable to other fellow Maasai. Any visitor to
a Maasai homestead must be struck by the propriety of its
inhabitants. The concept “respect” (enkanyit), implying
politeness, generosity, hospitality, and sexual avoidance, is
a guiding moral principle in Maasai interpersonal relations. The age-set system and the agnatic kinship structure
to a great extent dictate who should show “respect” toward
whom. For instance, women as “juniors” to men are
The Maasai practice patrilocal residence which implies
that the newly married couple settle with the husband’s
patrilineal kinship group. In fact, the wedding ceremony
dramatically symbolizes the move of the bride from her
own kin to those of her husband (Talle, 1988). Only in the
case of poverty and lack of livestock, does the husband
move to the wife’s family. Over their life-span families
may change residence several times, but every time they
settle in a new place they seek out relatives or stock
friends of the husband. Thus the residence group is a
male-related group, but in-married women form strong
ties of sentiment and solidarity among themselves
(Llewelyn-Davies, 1979).
Married women of the same settlement organize ad
hoc cooperative groups to assist each other at delivery
and circumcision of girls. These are normally events in
a single homestead, except that the circumcizer and
individual helpers (often relatives) may come from farther
away.
Women of larger neighborhoods consisting of
several settlements gather every 3 or 4 years for fertility
delegations (olamal). When prosperity and growth in
people and cattle are said to be receding, women—
females being the incarnation of fertility in Maasai
cosmology—are instrumental in rectifying the situation
by touring the country and begging for sacrificial animals
to appease the divine. The delegations culminate in a
large and spectacular blessing ceremony (Spencer, 1988).
612
Maasai
Women of a neighborhood also collect for punitive
delegations (olkeshuroto) when husbands or wives have
failed to fulfill their reproductive obligations. For instance
if a woman, repeatedly refuses her husband sex, without
any “good” reason, the other women of the homestead will
take action and virtually carry her into bed, waiting there
for the husband to perform the act in their presence. The
refusal of a wife to sleep with her husband occurs chiefly
in the case of young women married to elderly men.
All female-related groups are formed on the basis of
proximity in residence, while male-related groups spring
out of structural ties through kinship and age-set organization. The strongest gender-related group in the Maasai
society is the moran community. During the emanyata
period, which lasts for several years, they establish a
close and intimate relationship that last for the rest of
their lives.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The age-set system has a decisive role in defining and
regulating the social relations of production and
reproduction. Maasai men are not regarded as sufficiently mature to control productive and reproductive
resources—livestock, women, and children—until they
have reached the elder age-set status and thereby acquired
the self-control and personal discipline which are held to
be needed to handle the task. The morans, recognized
to be the defenders of people and livestock and a reserve
labor force in times of distress and drought, are under
the authority of elders and are not allowed to marry and
reproduce, or to associate sexually with married women.
The agnatic lineage system formalizes property rights to
animals through inheritance and livestock allocation from
fathers to sons. Wives are allocated cattle when they
marry and move to the husband’s homestead. The foundation of the family’s economy is the livestock herd, and
the basic unit of production is the polygynous unit
consisting of a man, his wife(ves), and children.
Female work is concentrated on tending and minding
children, calves, and kids, and on milking and preparing
the milk products. All household chores fall to women:
home-building, preparation of food, hides, and skins,
fetching firewood, carrying water, and shopping. Women
also sew the beautiful beadwork for which the Maasai are
famous (Klumpp & Kratz, 1993). In most of their work
women are assisted by their daughters.
The male-defined tasks revolve around herding
and protection of the herd. Men are responsible for
grazing and watering the animals, for moving the
herds, and for castration, vaccination, and slaughter, as
well as for building enclosures and digging wells. Men
also make weapons, tools, and certain ornaments of bones
and ebony. Furthermore, it is adult men who bring animals
to the market and sell them. They also control the cash
from the sale. Within the family most of the actual physical labor connected with these tasks is performed by boys
and young men, while the elders are mainly responsible
for planning, decision-making, and management.
However, the overall gendered division of labor
between men-herd and women-house, is to some degree
manipulated according to needs and circumstances. When
for various reasons there are labor shortages in the family,
women assist in such male-defined tasks as herding and
watering the animals. For instance, it is estimated that on
some group ranches in Kenya female labor in herding
amounts to more than 50% (Talle, 1988). However, men
seldom engage in domestic work.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Children are commonly brought up by their “biological”
parents. However, they refer to other person of their
parents’ generation as “fathers” ( papa) and “mothers”
(yieyio), for instance, father’s brothers and stepmothers
(wives of father) and mothers’s sisters, respectively. If
parents die, these close relatives take over parental roles.
It is also common for relatives to periodically foster each
other’s children, or for childless women to adopt children
from relatives or in-laws. Furthermore, as men of the
same age group have access to each other’s wives, the
father of the child (pater) may not be its biological father
(genitor).
Children are nursed until approximately 2 years of
age and during this period they stay in close proximity
to their mothers. Mothers and nursing children sleep
together, and husband and wife are not supposed to
resume sexual intercourse until children are weaned.
When women adopt children, they often do so as soon as
the child is born, and as part of their maternal role, they
immediately begin to nurse the child (Talle, 1988).
Fathers usually have a gentle, but distant, attitude
toward young children. As elders, men are seldom in the
Sexuality
613
homestead during daytime, except for early mornings and
evenings before they leave or arrive in the homestead, and
it is only during these hours that they see their children
(Saitoti & Beckwith, 1980).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Political authority and decision-making power is invested
in the male age grade of “elders.” While they are in
the manyatta, the morans appoint their leaders, and
these age-set leaders (pl. ilaiguenak, olaiguenani) become
important political spokesmen when the morans are
promoted to elders. Considering the critical importance of
the age-set system in Maasai politics, women are excluded
from important public political arenas and leadership
roles. Even in the modern political setting, Maasai women
seldom participate. However, as women grow older, their
decision-making power, at least in household matters, is
enhanced.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Among the Maasai, fertile women epitomize the creation
of life. The mythical originator of the Maasai,
Naiterukop, a creature or “thing” (entoki) possessing both
human and divine qualities, has a feminine singular
relative prefix, na- (literally “she who begins the world”).
The feminine gender of the originator expresses culturally constituted cognition of the female as “an originating
source” (see Hillman, cited by Talle, 1998). In the mythological accounts Naiterukop possesses both human and
divine, female and male qualities, the two being simultaneous aspects of the same entity. Thus the duality of the
Maasai social order was laid down cosmically from the
very beginning.
The term for God, Enkai, meaning rain or sky, is also
etymologically feminine (prefix en-). God, however,
while still being somehow like humankind (oltungani) is
not comparable to a man or a woman (see Hillman, 1992;
Talle, 1998). God is two in one like a husband and a wife,
or like a mother and a father (Wagner-Glenn, 1992).
Although fixed in some objects (clouds, mountains,
sacred groves, trees, sky) Enkai does not have a materiality. Rather, God is an essence or life force that may be
invoked by, for instance, individual women’s morning
prayers and offerings of the first drops of milk from the
cows, or collective prayers for children or by offerings of
green grass and prayers at shrines.
Maasai religious prayers are for well-being
and prosperity. Women are more religious than men
are—they pray daily and more often than men do, and
the participation of women in communal religious
ceremonies is particularly conspicuous.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
During the slack working hours, Maasai men and women
both enjoy leisure time, men more than women. Men discuss communal affairs and play board games with their
age mates; women rest in the shadow of their house with
other women and children sewing bead works and
chatting. In leisure, men and women are segregated
except at dancing ceremonies, where the morans and the
young married women are the main participants. Only the
male elders are permitted to drink the ceremonial honey
beer.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
The age-set system is the ideological basis of male
hegemony in the Maasai society. The control of livestock,
the basis of economic and political power, is vested in
the elder age set. With the control of livestock goes the
control of women and children (Llewellyn-Davies,
1981). This does not mean that women are totally
subdued to men, but they have few means of overruling
the latter’s authority. This applies to daughters toward
their fathers as well as wives toward their husbands.
SEXUALITY
To the Maasai, sexuality is a physical act (erepa, “to
cling”) between men and women, or between girls and
adolescent boys. Homosexuality and masturbation are
virtually non-existent. In fact, the former is an act beyond
their comprehension. Whenever the topic is discussed, it
raises vehement reactions. Masturbation is practiced by
young uncircumcized boys; they are also said to relieve
their sexual urges by copulating with donkeys. However,
these acts are considered to be activities of children and
beneath the dignity and pride of adult Maasai.
614
The promiscuous “nature” of men is recognized.
Just like the bull in the herd, a man will search for mating
partners (women) everywhere he goes (meiki oloing’oni
enkang nabo, “the bull cannot stay in one homestead
only”). In contrast, women are expected not to show sexual desire overtly by initiating or taking a lead in the act
itself, but they are acknowledged to have their special
ways of communicating their wishes.
In Maasai thought, sexuality is closely linked to
fertility, but also to pleasure and joy. The sexual relationships practiced within versus outside marriage are
conceptualized very differently by Maasai of both sexes.
Inequality is built into the relationship between spouses,
while lovers are related as equals. Marriages in the Maasai
community are traditionally arranged by others than the
partners involved, except in the case of elderly men taking
a second or third wife. Conjugal sex is first and foremost
to have children, prosper, and metaphorically to create
“life” (enkishon). The obligation of performing marital sex
is clearly stated both by men and women; a Maasai man
who has several wives will take great care in serving his
wives equally in terms of sexual and other favors lest they
become jealous of each other. In order not to conceive an
“illegitimate” child, women, for their part, avoid receiving
their lovers during the days immediately following
menstruation, when they think they are most fertile.
While marital sex is for procreation, sex before or
outside marriage is looked upon mainly as pleasure
and entertainment without child-bearing obligations.
The Maasai claim that they enjoy sexual contacts outside
marriage because these relationships give them a measure
of freedom and choice not inherent in marital sex; people
meet secretly and small tokens of love in the form of
presents (bead ornaments, money) and love songs are
exchanged between partners. A man without lovers—an
unthinkable phenomenon in Maasai culture—would not
wear the typical Maasai beaded jewelry as it is not
common practice for wives to prepare such ornaments for
their husbands. Instead, they make them as presents for
other men.
In the Maasai culture, sexuality is associated with
physical strength, nutritious food (meat, blood), and
health. A healthy person is also sexually active. The most
“healthy” individuals in the Maasai society are the unmarried men (l6–30 years) of the moran age group. For long
periods of time, they withdraw to secluded places in the
bush (pl. ilpul, olpul, “meat camps”) where they devour
large quantities of meat, blood, and soup. To enhance their
Maasai
health and bodily strength further, various medicinal herbs
are mixed in the soup. While at these “camps,” the young
men are not permitted to indulge in any sexual activity
whatsoever, as it is held to drain their strength. When they
“come out” from the bush, however, their sperm or blood
(osarge) is said to be “hot,” indicating that they are now
sexually very potent and fertile. Infertile women seek
the company of such men, as their virility and potential
fertility may bring them luck (Talle, l988).
The sexual debut of Maasai girls occurs at a very
young age (10–12 years). From this age and up to
puberty, the girls are expected to associate only with the
moran age group. They meet to dance and sing in special
houses assigned to them in the homesteads (esoto) or at
designated places in the bush (oloip, shade), and it is
during these encounters that the girls and the morans have
sex with each other. The meetings are conducted in a
“romantic” aura, and the love relationships forged may
continue clandestinely well beyond one of the parties’
marriage to another person. However, owing to the
difference in male and female marriage age, these lovers
are not marriageable partners.
The Maasai have a rationale for the early sexual
debut of girls. They claim that the semen of the morans
helps, and is in fact almost a prerequisite for, girls to
reach maturity and develop their breasts. Thus the young
unmarried men have a direct role to play in women’s
physical development and achievement of fertility.
In comparison, the uncircumcized boys, who are often far
beyond puberty when they undergo the surgical operation, do not have any “legitimate” sex partners. They do
not dare to associate with the young uncircumcized girls
for fear of corporal confrontations with the morans, and
in addition, by not being circumcized, they are still
“impure” and girls and women shy away from them.
Maasai do not attach importance to the keeping of
virginity until marriage. A virgin bride is looked upon as
an awkward phenomenon and brings embarrassment on
her family. Her virginity signifies that she may be what
the Maasai refer to as an esinoni, a person who has no
luck with the other sex.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
The Maasai practice arranged marriages, and courtship at
young age does not normally lead to marriage (see section
on “Sexuality”). Parents, in particular the father or, if he is
Changes in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
absent, another adult guardian on the father’s side, are the
active actors in choosing marriage partners for their
children. Parents decide on bridewealth as well as the
practical arrangements of the wedding. The wedding is
divided into two sequential events: the departure from the
bride’s home, and the arrival at the husband’s. The major
ceremony is upon arrival; the husband’s family celebrates
the acquisition of a young fertile woman who will bestow
many children on their family. In the evening of the
wedding ceremony, the bridegroom, his best man, and his
age mates gather in the house to bless the girl and give her
a new name, a name of the age group to be used only by
them. The collective name giving symbolizes their
common access to the wife of an age mate.
In the first year of marriage, or until she has built her
own house, the young wife lives with her mother-in-law
or another adult female in-law in the homestead. The position of a wife in her husband’s family and the stability of
the marriage are strengthened by the birth of the first
child. The number of children a woman has and the way
she cares for them are the ultimate measure of her prestige
as a woman and of her value to the man and the lineage
into which she is married. Therefore the first sign of
pregnancy is a great relief to a young wife.
Among the Maasai practically all adults marry, even
the physically impaired (Talle, 1995). All Maasai have a
moral obligation to multiply and prosper. However, there
are a few men (olsinoni) who never marry because they
have “no luck” with women. There are also girls who
remain unmarried in their parents home and conceive by
occasional lovers. The children they give birth to belong to
their natal family. Often parents of such girls do not have
sons, and thus take the children of a daughter (preferably
sons) as legitimate heirs to the family herd. Maasai say that
some fathers love their daughters so much that they refuse
to give them away to authoritarian husbands. The “girls of
the homestead” (sg. entito enkang) are considered to be
proud and obstinate compared with other girls—the reason
for this is that they are not ruled by a husband (Talle, 1988).
After marriage, both men and women continue to
have sex with other partners. As noted above, men of the
same age groups are permitted to have sex with each
other’s wives at their discretion. Maasai seldom divorce,
except sporadically in the case of a barren wife. If a woman
runs away from her husband, she has to leave the children
behind (unless they are nursing) with the husband and his
family. Children are considered the “property” of their
fathers and reckoned to belong to their lineage.
615
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The relationship between husband and wife is one of
inequality, not only in terms of age but, more importantly
in terms of authority and power. If he so wishes, a husband
may beat an obstinate wife into submission. The opposite
would be unthinkable, as women are not supposed to exercise physical violence against their husbands; besides they
do not have sticks with which to beat them. The junior
position of wives vis-à-vis husbands is reflected in the fact
that the latter refer to their young wives by the term of
“children” (pl. inkera, enkerai).
Although ideologically and jurally subordinated to
men, women are socially and culturally important,
particularly through the occupancy and ownership of the
house as a site of cultural reproduction, and individual
women frequently stand forth as remarkably powerful
persons (Chieni & Spencer, 1993; Hodgson, 2001).
Husbands often consult their wives in family matters,
such as children’s marriages, movement of homestead or
sale of livestock.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Among the Maasai there is a close and intimate relationship between brothers and sisters, particularly those of
the same mother. As an expression of their emotional
intimacy, they kiss when they meet (which husband and
wife never do). Women often find sanctuary in the home
of their brother when husbands mistreat them.
Another cross-sex relationship of particular importance is the one between a woman and her husband’s best
man (olcepulgerra). Together with the bridegroom, he
collects the young bride from her family and brings her to
the bridegroom’s homestead at the wedding ceremony.
Traditionally, he is supposed to sleep with the bride on the
first night after she has entered the husband’s home. Later
in married life, she may always seek advice or solace from
the best man.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Formal education is gaining importance among the
Maasai. Educated men and women have begun to oppose
616
Maasai
cultural practices such as forced marriages (especially of
schoolgirls) and circumcision of girls more forcefully.
There are cases of women taking an authoritarian father
or brutal husband to court for such grievances (Hodgson,
2001). There is also an emerging opposition among
educated Maasai women to their lack of political influence. Another change is the growing evangelization
among Maasai women and the occurrence of spirit
possessions among them (Hodgson, 1997).
REFERENCES
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the Ngorongoro conservation area. Tanzania. Uppsala, Sweden:
The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.
Århem, K. (1991). The symbolic world of the Maasai homestead. In
A. Jacobson-Widding (Ed.), Body and space: Symbolic models of
unity and division in African cosmology and experience (Uppsala
Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 16, pp. 51–80). Stockholm,
Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Chieni, T., & Spencer, P. (1993). The world of Telelia: Reflections of a
Maasai woman in Matapato. In T. Spear & R. Waller (Eds.), Being
Maasai: Ethnicity and identity in East Africa (pp. 157–173).
London: Currey.
Fosbrooke, H. A. (1948). An administrative survey of the Masai social
system. Tanganyika Notes and Records, 26, 1–50.
Gulliver, P. H. (1963). Social control in an African society. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hillman, E. (1992). Maasai religion: Celebrating life, unpublished MS.
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(pp. 111–129). New York: Routledge.
Hodgson, D. L. (2001). Once intrepid warriors: Gender, ethnicity, and
the cultural politics of Maasai development. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Jacobs, A. (1965). The traditional political organization of the pastoral
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Klumpp, D., & Kratz, C. (1993). Aesthetics, expertise, and ethnicity:
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Africa (pp. 195–221). London: J Currey.
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Maasai. In P. Caplan & J. M. Bujra (Eds.), Women united, women
divided (pp. 206–237). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Llewelyn-Davis, M. (1981). Women, warriors and patriarchs. In
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Spencer, P. (1965). The Samburu: A study of gerontocracy in a nomadic
tribe. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Spencer, P. (1988). The Maasai of Matapato: A study of rituals of rebellion. London: Manchester University Press for the International
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Talle, A. (1988). Women at a loss: Changes in Maasai gender relations
and their effects on gender relations (Stockholm Studies in Social
Anthropology, 19). University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Talle, A. (1990). Ways of milk and meat among the Maasai: Gender
identity and food resources in a pastoral economy. In G. Palsson
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Talle, A. (1994). The construction of female fertility: Anthropological
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(pp. 125–149). Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press.
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London: J Currey.
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reconstructions. Berlin: Reimer.
Wagner-Glenn, D. (1992). Searching for a baby’s calabash: A study of
Arusha Maasai fertility songs as crystallized expression of central
cultural values. Ludwigsburg: Philipp Verlag.
Waller, R. (1993). Acceptees and aliens: Kikuyu settlement in
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Ethnicity and identity in East Africa (pp. 226–257). London:
J Currey.
Manjako
Margaret Buckner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternate spellings are Manjaku, Manjaco, Mandjako,
Manjak, and Mandjaque. Locally, people refer to themselves by place of origin: Bayu are people from Caió
(Kayu), Balekis are people from Kalekis (Calequisse),
Bater are people from Ter (Jeta), etc. Dialects and culture
traits vary among different Manjako lands. This description is based primarily on fieldwork in Caió, and may not
apply to all Manjako speakers.
LOCATION
The Manjako live in the coastal areas of northwest
Guinea Bissau, West Africa, between the Cacheu and
Mansoa Rivers.
live where they are born, in the courts of their fathers, and
women moving in with their husbands upon marriage.
When a headman dies, his brother (of the same mother) or
his sister’s son succeeds him, moving to his court. Just as
with residential court headmen, but on a smaller scale,
whenever a man dies, his wives, children, and much of his
property are, in principle, “inherited” by his younger
brother or his sister’s son.
Manjako kinship terms show a matrilineal pattern.
All men in one’s father’s immediate matriline (father’s
siblings, father’s sisters’ sons, etc.) are one’s “fathers.”
Even a father’s sister is called asininji-ngac, “my female
father.” All members of one’s matriline are one’s “mothers” (the generation above ego, including anininji-ninc,
“my male mother”), one’s siblings (the same generation
as ego), or one’s children (the generation below ego).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The main economic activity has traditionally been
labor-intensive, wet-rice cultivation in inundated fields
reclaimed from coastal mangrove swamps. Earthen dikes
are built to keep salt water from invading the fields,
especially at high tide. There is also an upland variety of
rice which is cultivated in cleared forested areas where
other secondary subsistence crops such as peanuts are
also grown. Over the last few decades, cashew production
has blossomed; cashews are either traded for imported
rice or sold for cash. Money sent home by emigrants
working in Senegal, France, and Portugal also contributes
to the household economy. Cows, goats, pigs, and chickens are also raised, though they are only killed on ritual
occasions.
The Manjako “lands” (ngësaak) have been referred to
as “kingdoms”; each has a “king” who, however, is probably more of a ritual priest than a political authority.
Political power is held collectively by the headmen
(basëmcu) of residential courts (isëm), whose succession is
matrilineal. Residence is patrilocal, with men continuing to
OF
GENDER
Gender in Manjako is expressed by two roots: -inc
“male” and -kaac “female.” As adjectives they are used
for humans and animals alike with the corresponding
prefix. Used alone with human prefix na-, they mean
“man” (nainc) and “woman” (nakaac or ngaac). There
are no grammatical gender categories, that is, no separate
pronouns for “he” and “she.” The human prefix na- is not
gender specific; for example, nacaf is “an elder,” whether
referring to a man or a woman.
When a baby is born, its sex has no bearing on
its welcome into the world; children of both sexes are
highly valued. Children of both sexes are also equally
susceptible of being a spirit taking temporary human
form, or a “problem child” who has died and come back
for a temporary visit. There are specific names for a
pair of boy–girl twins: the boy is always named “Kainc”
(⬍-inc, “male”), the girl “Kakaac” (⬍-kaac, “female”).
Traditional Manjako names were rarely gender specific,
though now most babies receive Portuguese names
from the Catholic stock, such as Maria, Cristina, José,
and Luis.
617
618
Manjako
Both men and women are considered important and
are respected for their contributions to society. Women
are child-bearers and tie people together, since clan membership passes through them, and since they connect their
birth family with the family they marry into. Men found
and protect households, and provide religious and social
leadership.
The distinction between “male” and “female” is
fundamental, and is reinforced both ritually and in everyday life. At dances, ceremonies, meals, and work, the two
sexes are informally segregated; the only enforced segregation is at a few principal spirit shrines and certain
rituals.
Men and women dress differently. Men wear shorts
or trousers while women wear tops and cloth wraps or
skirts, though women often wear short pants while working in the rice fields or gathering shellfish in the mangroves. Women may go topless at home in excessively hot
weather. However, on ritual occasions, such as funerals,
both men and women wear traditional locally woven
cloth wraps (bëlenj), which play an important ritual role
at funerals. Men’s hairstyles are short and plain; women
wear sculptured braids which are sometimes adorned
with beads.
Shortly after birth, girls have their ears pierced
and start wearing earrings. In the past, adolescent
girls often underwent intricate ornamental scarifications
on the stomach and chest area (Carreira, 1961), though
nowadays these can be found only in a few elderly
women.
For both sexes, character and personality are as
important as, if not more important than, physical beauty.
Industriousness, cleverness, and good humor are also
appreciated traits, as is dancing ability.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Manjako word for “child,” napooc, is not marked for
gender; the term is used for boys and girls indifferently.
After puberty, the distinction is marked: a girl is referred
to as nampili, and a boy as upas (borrowed from
Portuguese, rapaz, “boy”). Adult men and women are
referred to as nainc “man” or nakaac (alternate ngaac)
“woman.” The difference between children and adults is
evident in funerals. The funeral for a young unmarried
girl or boy, ufir, is shorter and simpler than the funeral
ceremony for an adult, pëum.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
When still very young, boys and girls are treated the
same. They play together in household groups. Children
of both sexes are allowed, even encouraged, to explore
and run around freely. Once they can obey instructions,
they are given gender-specific tasks. Girls are asked to
help with household chores and watch younger siblings;
4-year-old girls are sometimes seen carrying an infant on
their backs. Boys are often sent on errands and join in the
chores of the men of the compound (building fences,
reroofing buildings, etc). They are also responsible for
making sure that cows remain tethered during the growing season. Boys probably have more play time than girls.
Groups of older boys and girls often form work
parties. Boys prepare rice fields for planting or fish with
lines and hooks in tidal inlets. Groups of girls transport
rice seedlings from nurseries to the fields, or gather shellfish in the mangroves. It is in groups such as these that
prepubescent girls and boys start to gel into social groups
that will eventually become full-fledged age sets.
When the opportunity is present, parents send both
sons and daughters to school. However, dropout rates are
very high, especially among girls.
Puberty and Adolescence
In Caió and adjacent Manjako lands, as children reach
adolescence, they also become members of an age set
(uran). Every 4 years or so, boys of approximately 15–19
years of age and girls of approximately 13–17 years of
age symbolically “enter the pëbomën,” a communal ritual
hut located at the center of each ward. For the next
4 years, they gather there regularly to have meetings,
receive counsel from their elders (members of the age set
which preceded them), share meals, have dances, organize work parties, and keep the building and grounds clean
and in good repair. They also begin a series of traditional
rites by which they form an age set (uran). Though it is
not considered normal for age mates (baseenc-) to sleep
together during this period, couples often do form and
later marry, though this is not permitted if the girl is
already betrothed. After approximately 4 years, this age
set is “promoted,” pushed out of the pëbomën by the next
generation of youths who start the cycle all over again
and form a new age set.
Small groups of female age mates have assigned
male “guardians,” usually from the age set above them.
Personality Differences by Gender
The guardian attends the meetings and dances of the
group.
Age-set membership is permanent. Throughout their
lives, age mates frequently meet, to drink, to dance, to
work, to comfort the bereaved, to aid the needy, and to
welcome emigrants home. At certain rituals, especially at
funerals, they have special assigned roles and responsibilities. Age mates of one’s father are also fathers in a
way, as age mates of one’s mother are mothers.
Attainment of Adulthood
After the 4 years of age-set formation, a community-wide
ceremony (ka cit uran) marks the end of the age-set
initiation period. The young men, now aged 19–23, start
working for a wife (brideservice) who is often still a
young girl; they will not marry for 10 or 12 years, during
which time the girl grows up and the man establishes a
viable home. The women, now aged 17–21, will marry
their betrothed who, traditionally, are two or three age
sets above them, which means, in arranged marriages,
that grooms are 10–12 years older than the brides.
Marriage and having children mark attainment of
adulthood.
Men are not considered full adults until they have
gone through the male initiation rites, which include
circumcision (kambas). The event is held about once
every 10 years, though in the past it was held only every
25 years or so. Male initiation ceremonies take place over
a 3-month period. All the initiated men, even emigrants
living in Europe, return home to take part, thus renewing
their spiritual ties to their homeland. They gather at the
kingdom’s main spirit shrine, which is off limits to
women. There, new initiates are circumcised and acquire
the secret ritual and spiritual knowledge of adult Manjako
men. Women and girls participate in dances and singing
in honor of their sons, brothers, and boyfriends. It is a
sacred time, but also a joyous time, when emigrants
come home, when families reunite, and when much feasting is done by all. (For a historical account of the male
initiation rites in Caió, see Meireles [1949].)
Middle Age and Old Age
As men mature, they marry additional wives, have
children, and acquire titles. They are given more and
more social and ritual responsibilities, and their word
becomes more respected. Many middle-aged men
619
succeed to the headmanship of a residential court when
an aged headman dies. They then move their entire
household to the court and take over the responsibilities
of the new office; they also take part in meetings of the
council of headmen. Men who are not called to a matrilineal headmanship remain in their compound of birth,
where they acquire more and more authority and have
more and more say in clan matters.
As women mature, they are recognized as wives,
mothers, and household managers, especially if they are
their husband’s first wife. As with men, they have more
and more say in family and clan matters. They play a very
important role in organizing such collective events as
funerals.
Old age for both men and women is a time of rest.
Old people continue to live with their families, who
provide them with meals and other necessities and
consult them on family matters. They continue to play an
important role in decision-making and are treated with
great respect.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Both men and women among the Manjako are generally
outspoken and assertive. They are quick to argue and
express opinions. Men are expected to command, and
women to obey their husbands. Both can be quick to
anger, and yelling matches are not uncommon. When
young, both boys and (more rarely) girls get into fights.
When this happens, it is treated as a wrestling match.
Onlookers surround the pair, keep them from hurting
themselves, and allow them to continue until there is a
victor.
Men and women both appreciate alcoholic beverages: palm wine, cana (a locally made rum), store-bought
liquor such as whiskey and vodka, and, as a last resort,
cashew “wine”; in fact, at ceremonies all present, including men, women, boys, and girls, are required to partake
of at least a symbolic amount of the offered alcoholic
beverage. Men regularly drink in public, and a man staggering home drunk is a relatively common sight. However,
it does not seem proper for a woman to become drunk in
public. Groups of women often gather inside houses or
courtyards, especially at times of ceremonial events, and
“pass the bottle,” but rarely become inebriated.
620
Manjako
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The residential court is patrilocal; the men who head
households there are related, at least theoretically, though
the exact relationship is usually lost after several generations. They are classificatory if not real brothers, and
show solidarity in economic activities, social events, and
religious ceremonies.
While men belong to the residential court by birth,
women arrive there as wives. In the best cases, cowives
and wives of brothers form very cohesive units and share
household chores and economic and social activities.
However, women also maintain very strong ties to their
own relatives. They frequently visit their birth compound
and always participate in important events that take
place there.
Female members of age sets, especially the younger
age sets, often get together to hold dances, which include
drinking and eating and much merrymaking. The male
guardian of the group is the only man present.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Women are responsible for preparing meals, keeping the
house and courtyard in order, and most childcare. Men
are responsible for keeping the house, roof, and fences in
repair, for providing food and other necessities for their
family, for maintaining dikes year round, and for carrying
out the religious ceremonies necessary for maintaining
the family’s well-being. House work-groups are integrated, though tasks are assigned by sex. For example, all
residents will work together to build a house: women
carry the mud to the site, while the men mold the mud
into walls.
All participate in rice cultivation, but tasks are
gender specific. Men maintain the dikes, prepare the
paddies, and help with harvest. Women transplant rice
from nurseries to the fields, thresh the grain at harvest
time, and transport it to granaries.
Usufruct rights to rice fields are distributed by headmen to both men and women, although men, as heads of
households, generally have more and larger fields. Wives
often have their own rows, granted to them by fathers,
uncles, husbands, or sometimes aunts or mothers; they then
also have their own granaries. However, they also work in
their husband’s fields and contribute to his granary.
The introduction of cashew plantations has lessened
the economic importance of rice. Men plant the trees, but
women gather and transport the nuts. Men also earn extra
cash by collecting and selling palm wine. In coastal areas,
enterprising women get up before dawn to meet nonManjako fishermen, just back from a night of fishing, to
buy fish and resell it at the market. They may also sell
other produce there, such as sweet potatoes, peanuts,
eggs, or bananas.
Traditional weavers are men; traditional potters are
women.
Since the arrival of the Portuguese in the early
1900s, Manjako men have sought to profit from new
economic opportunities. Male emigration is rampant,
especially to Senegal, Portugal, and France, where men
work in factories, construction, and the service sector.
Most Manjako families have at least one member living
abroad; in some areas, a very high rate of emigration has
led to the demise of the traditional rice economy. It is also
now common to find men who retire in their home village
after working abroad for 30 years, living off a foreign
pension. Women sometimes accompany their husbands
abroad, and many women also find work abroad and
become financially independent.
Prostitution is also an option for women of the
coastal Manjako lands (Buckner, 1999). It offers an alternative lifestyle to women who do not wish to bend to a
father’s or a husband’s will. A woman may work as a
prostitute for a few years in order to earn money to compensate a man who has performed brideservice for her but
whom she does not wish to marry or whom she wishes to
divorce. Also, a woman may enter prostitution if her husband emigrates or dies and leaves her without resources.
Women may work for just a few years or may make prostitution a career. Women from families with prostitutes
are more likely to work as prostitutes themselves. At all
times, the women are in complete control of their practice; they alone decide where and how often they work,
the prices they charge, and what they do with their earnings. Manjako women who practice prostitution are
almost always at least in their mid-twenties, and they can
be as old as 60. They are mothers, grandmothers, single,
or divorced; a few are married.
In the most common scenario, a woman rents a room
in a house in a city (the women never practice in their
home villages), sometimes with other family members.
At night, she receives clients there. Exchanges are short,
and a woman may have several clients in one night.
Gender and Religion
621
This kind of prostitution has probably been going on for
well over half a century. It contrasts with a “modern” kind
of prostitution by much younger women (usually not
Manjako) who attract well-to-do clients at hotels and
discotheques and spend the entire night with a single
client.
Manjako women who practice prostitution continue
to maintain strong ties with their home villages. They
send money home and visit there for funerals and other
important events. They are not generally stigmatized,
especially if they use their economic success to benefit
their family and community. Women who once worked as
prostitutes often (re)marry and return to live in the home
village where they take on traditional roles of wives and
mothers.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Both men and women participate in child-rearing. Parents
are very affectionate with their children, with much holding and cuddling. Both parents discipline their children,
though fathers generally have the final say in disciplinary
matters. As children grow older, mothers spend more time
with their daughters and nieces, and fathers with their sons
and nephews. All adults participate in the upbringing of all
the children living in their compound and of all their
nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. Cowives, especially,
are like second mothers to each others’ children. Elder
siblings are very protective of their younger brothers and
sisters, and often play a parental role.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
In both politics and religion, men occupy the highest
rungs of authority. The king and his officers are men, as
are the heads of residential courts, shrine priests, and ritual
specialists. However, women also participate in public
debate and are listened to; they do not hesitate to speak out
on subjects that are important to them. They also participate in selecting the successors of deceased headmen.
A large number of women are diviners, though the most
prestigious ones are men. The wives of titled men, such as
the king and the head blacksmith, also have very important functions, and ceremonies such as enthroning the king
cannot take place without them. Older women are often
seen as repositories of genealogies and knowledge of past
events.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Throughout Manjakoland, earth spirits (ngësai) live in
fixed places marked by uncut groves, silk cottonwood
trees, forked sticks, or simply hollowed out places in the
soil. They perform services (protection from illness, a
good job, vengeance, etc.) in exchange for offerings of
livestock, palm wine, and rice dishes. If the contract is
broken, that is, if payment is not made for services
rendered, the earth spirit sends illness, death, or some
other catastrophe. At the more important and powerful
earth-spirit shrines, initiated shrine priests perform rites on
behalf of the consultants, while at lesser spirit shrines anyone can make a request or a payment, acting on his or her
own. Access to the major shrines is forbidden to women
and uninitiated men, who wait outside while the shrine
priest and male family members act in their behalf. Earth
spirits take the inanimate prefix commonly used for animals but also for inanimate objects; they carry no gender.
Bush spirits are also available to perform services
for humans, though, as opposed to earth spirits, they are
quite mobile and usually enter into private partnerships.
The banjanguran take the human prefixes na- (sing.) and
ba- (pl.); at least one female “bush maiden” has been
mentioned (Gable, 1990, p. 476). Entering into a contract
with a bush spirit is dangerous in that, though they are
quick to offer their services, they are also ruthless in
demanding payment, and will feed on the souls of
children of their human “partner’s” clan if the latter does
not keep them satisfied with food and drink.
Some Manjako of both sexes receive signs such as
recurrent illness or extraordinary happenings that they are
to become a healer–diviner (napene). Through a long
series of rituals culminating in “death” and “rebirth” they
develop the ability to see and communicate with bush
spirits, who help them in their practice. They are more
often male than female, though many women are
successful diviners. Female diviners tend to specialize in
fertility problems and children’s health.
Every Manjako homestead has an ancestor shrine
consisting of a dozen or so posts (isaap) representing the
souls of the ancestors, in particular past headmen.
Years after a man has died, a post is planted in his honor
622
and he joins the collectivity of ancestors. Family members constantly consult the ancestors on family matters
and offer them libations. Ancestor posts are predominantly male. In recent years, however, more and more
women are being commemorated with posts, not as
lineage elders, but as wives and mothers.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Men’s labor is intensive, but tends to come in spurts, so
men often have spare time to sit with other (usually male)
family members and chat and drink palm wine or other
locally brewed alcoholic beverages. Women’s work is
more continuous, but is often done collectively with
many breaks for rest and play. Social visits are very
common, and relatives, friends, and neighbors—usually
in same-sex groups—often sit and chat together during
the heat of the noon hour or the coolness of the evening.
Dances are a very popular form of entertainment and
are held on every available occasion, including funerals
(especially of older folks), age-set parties, weddings, and
household feasts. Men and women have different kinds of
dancing. Women dance to the untina, or water drum, a
half-gourd inverted on a basin of water and struck with
the hands to play syncopated rhythms. Their dance is
executed mainly with the feet, taking small but rhythmically intricate steps, while the upper body remains relatively stable. A semicircle of women clap in rhythm with
the drum, while a woman from the group dances solo.
Toward the end of her dance, others may join her, and
after the final steps, the woman who has danced is
embraced by her friends. When the drum begins again,
another woman steps up to dance. The dancing is accompanied by improvised songs.
At funerals, men dance to a wooden gong drum and
a leather drum, both played by men. They carry long thin
sticks, which may represent spears to confront the spirits
responsible for the death. The dance involves the whole
body, with a sort of hopping as well as gesturing and
idiosyncratic movements. There is also a slower collective ritual dance that women perform at funerals to the
rhythm of the men’s drums.
Older women also get together to dance to the
rhythm of the bell (utapi), either at weddings or among
small groups of friends.
All ceremonies—including, or even especially,
funerals—involve feasting and dances, and are seen as
Manjako
occasions for socializing and merrymaking. Usually,
however, the two sexes congregate on opposite sides of
the compound.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
The Manjako (both men and women) acknowledge the
right and the ability of men to preside over the household
and to hold the important political and religious titles
such as headmen and shrine priests. Male clan and lineage elders have authority over rice fields. During male
initiation, men acquire specialized ritual knowledge, and
only initiated men can enter the principal spirit shrines.
Some ritual paraphernalia cannot be viewed by women.
During the interrogation of the “corpse” (nowadays, a
stretcher covered with a cloth) at funerals, the four corners
are supported by male youths (though it is said that two of
the corners used to be supported by women).
But the society as a whole also attaches a very high
value to women and accords them the same basic rights
men have. Women have much say in what goes on in the
household, in kin groups, in age sets, and in the community at large; in particular, they participate in the decisionmaking processes for designating headman successors
and spouses for their children. They have a high degree
of independence, and expect and receive respect from
their husbands and brothers.
In traditional marriage, the bride has less say than
the groom. Fathers may betroth their daughters at a young
age; the daughters have very little choice in the matter.
The men perform brideservice as the girl matures, and
when she has reached marriageable age, she is more or
less forced to marry her official fiancé or be punished by
the spirits. Many young women prefer to flee the area
and/or work as prostitutes to earn money to compensate
the groom for his brideservice; they can then marry a man
of their own choosing, who is closer in age and often in
the same age set. Women are also relatively free to
divorce, as long as the husband is compensated for
brideservice and/or children remain with the husband.
Funerals also reveal the difference in status between
men and women. If a man and a woman die in the same
period, the man’s funeral will take precedence. For example, the royal drum will be played at the man’s funeral
rather than the woman’s.
Courtship and Marriage
SEXUALITY
Sex is a very important part of life, both for enjoyment
and for reproduction. Even very young children know the
mechanics of sexual intercourse and can mimic the action
involved. At least one Manjako man stated that regular
sexual intercourse helps prevent blindness. Sex during
pregnancy—especially the later stages—is discouraged;
after giving birth, the mother ideally abstains from sex for
up to 3 years during the time she is nursing.
Sex is very much discouraged among adolescents
until they have finished their age-set initiation, when
the girls are ready for marriage. Teen pregnancy is
considered spiritually dangerous. During the 4 years of
age-set initiation, many couples form, but sexual intercourse is not condoned. Since teen pregnancy is
extremely rare, either couples are indeed abstaining, or
they are taking very good care that the girl does not
become pregnant or come to term. Young wives are often
suspected of continuing to see their sweetheart (urok)
even after marriage, especially if their new husband is
15 or 20 years older.
In general, men’s extramarital affairs, though not
condoned, seem to be more accepted than women’s, with
the attitude that “men will be men.” If a man emigrates,
he will often leave a wife or wives in the village and take
a lover or another wife abroad. Yet the number of children
born to women whose husbands are away is proof that
women also seek sexual partners outside marriage.
Conflicts arising from adultery are common and lead to
heated public arguments. Physical violence rarely results;
instead, contracts are made with spirits to punish an
adulterous spouse and his or her lover (bësobar).
There is little if any cross-dressing or cross-sex
identification. Homosexuality is not readily conceivable.
(E.g., when this researcher tried to ask informants about
homosexuality, a long explanation was delivered to
incredulous listeners by a Manjako assistant, including a
reference to tourists in the Gambia. On another occasion,
a Manjako man, when asked about possible female homosexuality, asked, “But how would they do it? They don’t
have the right parts!”)
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
A man who wishes to marry a girl speaks to her father,
often when she is still a young child. If both families
623
(including the ancestors) are in agreement, the accord is
finalized by offerings of palm wine. From then on, the
girl is considered betrothed; her father and her future
husband are bayotan, in-laws. Over a period of up to
12 years, the future husband performs brideservice; that
is, he works for his father-in-law several days per year in
cultivation, house construction, fence building, or other
similar tasks. When the girl is of marriageable age, that
is, after she has finished her age-set initiation, a wedding
ceremony (bënim) is held and the bride moves into
her husband’s house. Since the wedding ceremony is
expensive—it includes feeding and entertaining many
guests for several days—it is often skipped or at least
postponed for several years until enough money is saved
to be able to afford it.
A man and women can also “marry” simply by
moving in with each other, without brideservice or
wedding ceremony. In this case, they are usually close in
age, having met during age-set initiation and become
sweethearts, or it is the second marriage for one or both
of them. These are love marriages.
The Manjako words for “husband” (ayin) and
“wife” (aar) are used regardless of whether brideservice
or a wedding ceremony has taken place. The only difference between them seems to be the woman’s freedom to
walk out of the marriage. If a woman wishes to divorce a
husband who has performed brideservice, she must reimburse him monetarily and/or live with him long enough to
bear him a child. It is often the case that a girl refuses to
marry the husband chosen by her father and who has
performed brideservice for her. “Divorce” then occurs
before marriage; that is, the betrothed girl “pays off” the
man who is performing brideservice for her even before
the marriage is consummated. Furthermore, if a husband
who has performed brideservice dies, his wife is “inherited” by his successor, usually a brother or a maternal
nephew. If a woman does not wish to marry her deceased
husband’s brother, she must reimburse him as she would
her husband.
Ideally, Manjako marriages are polygamous.
Though many men have only one wife, most have at least
two at some time in their lives, and often many more. The
first wife has authority over other wives, and a wise
husband consults his first wife before taking other wives.
Since older men often marry young brides, many women
become widows; traditionally, widows are “inherited” by
their dead husband’s successor. Divorce and remarriage
are very common. One survey showed that women had
624
Manjako
almost as many husbands in their lives as men had wives,
though the women were not married to all their husbands
simultaneously.
after their sisters’ children; their sisters’ daughters will
carry on the family line. Siblings and cousins of both
sexes have much affection for each other.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
A typical Manjako family lives in a single rectangular
house with up to 10 or 12 rooms, each with a door to the
exterior. Each wife has her own room where she and her
young children sleep. The husband also has his own
room. Other rooms may be occupied by relatives, longterm guests, or adolescent children. Each wife has her
own kitchen in which she prepares meals for herself and
her children. In polygamous households, the wives rotate
cooking for their husband. The husband eats alone or
with older male children or guests.
Among married couples, there seems to be more of
a feeling of companionship than of affection, especially
for arranged marriages. But, even within polygamous
marriages, many couples are very attached to each other,
especially when the woman has chosen her husband
herself. Husbands and wives typically show kindness and
respect for each other.
In polygamous marriages, when the husband treats
his wives and their children equitably, and when each
wife accepts and respects her cowives, the household runs
smoothly. However, if a husband favors one wife over
others, cooperation ends and the compound becomes a
very unhappy place.
In the case of irresolvable conflicts, divorce can be
initiated by either partner. Common reasons include
adultery, a woman never loving her husband in the first
place and wanting to marry her sweetheart, a man
emigrating and abandoning his family, violence or abuse,
and lack of children. In the case of divorce, if brideservice has been performed, the children stay with the father
(unless they are very young, in which case they stay with
the mother temporarily). However, if there has been no
brideservice, the children remain with the mother and her
family.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Brothers and sisters are very attached to each other, since
a woman’s children are her brother’s heirs. Men look
As more and more Manjako villages adopt a cash
economy, an economic gender gap may be growing.
More cash-earning opportunities are available to men
than to women (one consequence of which is a high rate
of prostitution among Manjako women). As men accumulate wealth, they are more inclined to follow the
Western practice of leaving it to their own children rather
than to nephews and nieces. The matrilineal system of
inheritance has already virtually disappeared in many
Manjako lands, and with it, perhaps, a certain degree of
women’s status.
The age-set system varies greatly from one end of
Manjakoland to the other. In the past, according to many
accounts (especially Carreira, 1947; Gable, 1990), only
male youths entered a ritual hut and, after several years,
were promoted to the status of young adults. The system
described here, in which male and female age-set members belong to the same set throughout their lives, has
probably only existed since the early 1900s; in it, women
are full participants.
The practice of brideservice also seems to be dwindling, and has already ended in some Manjako lands. The
disappearance of brideservice will surely affect rates of
arranged marriages and divorce.
REFERENCES
Buckner, M. (1999). Village women as town prostitutes. In C. Becker,
J.-P. Dozon, C. Obbo, & M. Touré (Eds.), Vivre et penser le sida en
Afrique [Experiencing and understanding AIDS in Africa]
(pp. 389–404). Paris: Codesria, IRD, Karthala.
Carreira, A. (1947). Vida social dos Manjacos. Bissau; Guinea-Bissau:
Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa.
Carreira, A. (1961). Mutilações étnicas dos Manjacos. Boletin Cultural
da Guiné Portuguesa, 16(61), 83–102.
Gable, E. (1990). Modern Manjaco: The ethos of power in a West
African society. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Meireles, A. M. (1949). Baiú (gentes de Kaiú). II. Kãbáxe (circuncisão),
Boletin Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa, 4(13), 7–25.
Mardu
Robert Tonkinson and Myrna Tonkinson
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Mardu (“person”) is a collective term used to designate
several dialect-named Australian Aboriginal groups,
principally speakers of the Budijarra, Gardujarra,
Giyajarra, Gurajarra, Manyjilyjarra, and Warnman
dialects, whose traditional territories surround a large salt
lake, Gumbubindil (Lake Disappointment).
LOCATION
The territories of the Mardu lie on the western side of the
Gibson Desert, straddling the Tropic of Capricorn
between longitudes 122⬚E and 125⬚E. The Gibson and
neighboring deserts are part of the vast Western Desert,
a plateau averaging 1000 feet in altitude and covering
some 500,000 square miles, almost all of which lies
within the state of Western Australia.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW1
The Mardu are part of Aboriginal Australia’s largest single
culture area, the Western Desert bloc, which is an
extremely difficult environment for human survival. The
region is notable for its homogeneity in language, social
organization, and culture, and the very low population
densities necessitated by aridity and resource scarcity.
Deriving in large part from the latter conditions, particularly the unreliability of rainfall, was a major cultural
characteristic: the open and highly permeable nature of
social and ecological boundaries that facilitated movement and access to resources across large areas of desert.
A host of norms and social conventions favored cooperation over conflict, particularly in intergroup relations,
reflecting the primacy of unfettered movement in ensuring
survival.
Traditionally, the Mardu practiced a hunter–gatherer
economy and were seminomadic. Movement was
essential for subsistence, and religious obligations also
entailed travel over wide areas. Men usually covered
more ground areas than women in fulfilling their ceremonial responsibilities, such as accompanying initiates or
transporting sacred objects. Social organization was
based on the (sometimes polygynous) nuclear family, and
several families, generally closely related, constituted the
band, which was the basic economic unit. Above the level
of the band and of kinship-based local groups that,
along with their heartlands, were people’s strongest basis
for identity, were broader identities deriving from
shared membership of the same dialect-named group—
which, however, never acted corporately. The business of
society writ large was conducted during periodic aggregations, “big meetings,” where outstanding disputes were
settled and there was much religious activity, centered
most often on rituals associated with stages of male
initiation.
Australian Aboriginal societies are notable for
their complex social organizational forms and religion,
founded on the concept of the Dreaming, the creative
epoch in which ancestral beings fashioned the landscape,
peopled it, and left behind language, culture, and rules for
living. Despite their nomadism, people were tied by
religion very strongly to their heartland “estates,” over
whose important sites they exercised guardianship, ownership, and ritual responsibilities. The Mardu live in a
universe of kin, and the blueprint for proper behavior,
obligation, and responsibility contained within the
kinship system remains a major integratory mechanism,
along with marriage alliances, shared values, and
religion. In the absence of chiefs, leadership was context
dependent and largely a function of age and gender, with
older men ultimately controlling the religious life.
However, the ethos of Mardu society is best described as
egalitarian, with all mature adults regarding themselves
as equal to all other members of the same gender, but with
hierarchical tendencies that favor male social adults
surfacing most strongly during domestic disputes and in
the conduct of the religious life.
625
626
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
Mardu
OF
GENDER
The Mardu recognise two genders, female and male.
There is gender differentiation in the nouns (pronouns are
not gender specific) used for children and adults, and for
most kin terms. Thus bundu man, wandi woman, mama
father, yagurdi mother, nyamu grandfather, nyami grandmother, gurndili father’s sister, gaga mother’s brother,
jurdu older sister, and gurda older brother, but marlaju
younger brother or sister.
Conceptions of Gender
The Mardu conception of gender entails a sharp differentiation between men and women in some areas of life,
most noticeably in the religious arena. Recognizable
male and female domains exist, spatially and in terms of
behaviors, prerogatives, and practices. Thus, while the
hearth is a shared space for the nuclear or extended family, there are designated male or (much less commonly)
female spaces from which members of the opposite
gender may be excluded. Rituals secret-sacred to one
gender are held well away from living areas, and persons
of the opposite gender, as well as the young uninitiated of
the appropriate gender, avoid even looking in the direction of those spaces when the initiated are going to or
returning from ceremonies. Severe penalties obtain for
women who, even unintentionally, enter male sacred
domains, and men avoid going near exclusively female
rituals. In public areas, avoidance rules result in certain
categories of relatives, both affinal and consanguineal,
taking care not to be in the same space. Rules govern how
people place themselves and interact in public spaces
such as meeting rooms, or open-air venues where people
may gather. Usually, men and women sit together in
single-gender groups, primarily to ensure that avoidance
rules are not inadvertently breached.
Dress and Body Adornment
Traditionally, the Mardu wore minimal clothing; women
wore pubic coverings, but many men went naked, as did
all children, and adorned their bodies only for ritual activities. Today, Western-style clothes have been fully
adopted, though women, especially older ones, seldom
wear trousers, and the upper body of both females and
males is often unclothed during rituals. Postpubertal men
sometimes have decorative scarification on their chests,
though this is now rare among younger men. Women also
sometimes had decorative scars on their arms, but this,
too, has all but disappeared. There is considerable variation among men in the length of hair and the wearing of
beards. Young men, postcircumcision, left their hair uncut
and wore it in the shape of a bun, bugurdi; this was also
the name of this stage of initiation.
Attractiveness
Mardu discuss attractiveness in terms of smooth and
healthy skin for both genders, and among women firm
breasts are admired. Plumpness was rare, but regarded
positively; today, obesity is common and is sometimes
remarked upon negatively. Both women and men would
rub their skins with red ocher mixed with fat to beautify
the skin and protect the body against illness. Love magic
was used by both women and men to make themselves
attractive to particular members of the opposite gender;
this involves the use of songs and dances as well as of
material objects.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Stages of the life cycle are named differently for each
gender, with more stages recognized for males than
females. The labels are based on physiological maturation to cover the childhood phase of life; for example,
there are separate gender-neutral terms for newborn,
unable to sit up, able to crawl, walking but only just,
walking properly, no longer breast-fed, no longer carried.
Then follows a long period known simply as ngulyi
“child,” until girls whose breasts are developing are
called durndurn “swelling breasts,” and they are considered ready for marriage; boys remain murdilya “uncircumcized” until seized as a prelude to circumcision,
around age 16. These labels, like kin terms, are frequently
used in address and reference as substitutes for personal
names. After circumcision, youths live in unmarried
men’s camps (girriji), but continue to eat with their
families of orientation. The next stage of initiation is
subincision, after which men passed through several
more named stages until, in their late twenties, they were
considered social adults and ready for marriage.
The stages through which men pass are publicly
marked by obvious separation and elaborate ceremony,
Gender over the Life Cycle
particularly at circumcision. Circumcision occurs some
time after the youth is seized, has a ceremonial hair-belt
put on him, and is taken to other communities to “round
up” people for the actual ceremony, which usually takes
place some months later. The entire host community, plus
these visitors from related communities, assemble for
days of public ceremonies that complement the secret
male rituals marking the transition to manhood of what is
usually a group of age mates. In contrast, no public ceremonial activity surrounded female emergence into adulthood. On marriage, a girl’s mother would take her
possessions and place them outside the dwelling of her
bethrothed husband. Betrothal traditionally occurs when
a boy is circumcised and one or more male relative(s)
promise(s) him a wife, who at the time would be a small
child or even unborn. Nowadays, many young people
choose their sexual partners, and traditional arranged
marriage is in decline; however, it has not been replaced
by formal Western-style marriage.
Preadolescent boys and girls enjoy considerable
freedom, with little gender distinction in their rights and
responsibilities. As they enter their teens, greater restrictions are imposed, particularly on girls who are held
primarily responsible for the maintenance of propriety in
sexual activity. Once boys enter the male initiation
process, they are also subject to greater scrutiny and
tighter limits on their activities. There is gender variation
in the status of single people, in that young unmarried
men often live together, whereas unmarried young
women live with their parents. Divorced and widowed,
particularly older, women may share single women’s
camps. In the past, there was no category of nevermarried adult women and widowhood was not a permanent state. A widow was prohibited from remarriage until
the completion of the reburial of her husband’s bones,
when a meeting would be held by her brothers and her
late husband’s patrikin to decide on her new marriage
partner, often a brother of the deceased; the older the
widow, the greater her say in the decision. After the initial
burial and surrounding rituals, a widower was free to take
other wives.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys and girls are equally valued as children, and
child-rearing practices are not noticeably different for
the genders. Infanticide of healthy infant boys or girls was
apparently rare. Mardu society is markedly child-centered
627
in that both girls and boys are greatly indulged, and are
free from chastisement and the constraints of patterned
kinship behaviors (see Hamilton, 1981). Both genders
seem to be given equal attention, affection, and entitlements while they are children. From early adolescence,
however, they are treated differently and the prolonged
transition to full adult status for boys is heavily emphasized. The rituals marking that transition (above) imply a
cultural assumption that womanhood is a natural state,
achieved unaided, whereas manhood must be defined by
physical procedures and rituals that mold boys physically,
socially, and psychologically into men.
Adult Expectations Regarding Children.
Children’s play seems to follow similar patterns for both
genders; both explore their environment and hunt small
animals such as lizards, or gather fruits and other easily
obtained foods. They simulate family relationships in
play. Toy spears, boomerangs, and other weaponry are
made for and by boys, who play at hunting and fighting.
Both genders play new ball games and traditional games
using stones. Small children generally play in mixedgender groups, but later tend to do more single-sex play.
Boys are not permitted to accompany their fathers or older
male relatives on hunting trips until they are adjudged
old enough to exercise the necessary self-control and
restrained behavior. Girls approaching puberty are
expected to shed their playfulness during the food quest
and concentrate on becoming skilled producers before
they are given in marriage; however, no such expectations
are held of boys of similar age.
Childhood Rituals, Education, Common Features
of Socialization.
Birth was not celebrated ritually, nor was there any elaboration of either postpartum taboos or magical measures to
protect the newborn from harm. Life for the first 10 or so
years of childhood was devoid of rituals for either boys or
girls, but for boys approaching their teens tooth evulsion
and the piercing of the nasal septum were a prelude to the
more serious and highly ritualized stages of male initiation.
In Mardu society, education was informal and very
largely a matter of observation, imitation, and repetition
rather than the conscious or formalized transfer of knowledge that Mardu children receive in schools today.
Children learn from adults and from their peers, but
grandparents, if present, are particularly prominent as
educators in the sense of telling them stories, singing
628
them songs, and indicating the correct kinship behaviors
that obtain between categories of kin—thus preparing
children for a time in early adolescence when a growing
self-consciousness and sense of shame/embarrassment
induces them to begin conforming to these behaviors
without any adult bidding. In all such “educational activities,” boys and girls are treated very much the same.
Attempts at sexual experimentation among small children
are treated by parents with mild amusement and muted
dissuasion. Preadolescent boys and girls alike are allowed
great freedom to test their own limits, largely unfettered
by adult demands, but they thoroughly absorb basic
values such as sharing and watching over younger
siblings in the absence of adults. Boys and girls often
carry infants and small children around and fuss
over them.
Puberty and Adolescence
The Mardu have no word for adolescence per se, and
clear gender differentiation in adult expectations occurs
at a later stage for boys than girls (see Burbank, 1988).
Traditionally, girls were married as preadolescents and
assumed the new role of wife, with full adult economic
responsibilities as food-getters from that time. However,
boys remained carefree and undisciplined until their midteens, when their sudden seizure prior to circumcision
marked a dramatic transition into silence and total
subordination.
Attainment of Adulthood
The group of male novices who are to be “put through the
Law” are subject to often harsh treatment by their older
male carers in the lead-up to circumcision, which is the
most complex and highly elaborated initiation stage in
Mardu society, when for a time the novices become the
center of attention and concern. Following the actual
operation, they experience the first revelations of
elements of men’s secret-sacred knowledge and begin to
gain awareness of the onerous responsibilities that
accompany it. The change wrought by this major rite of
passage from boys to young men is visible in their behavior and demeanor, as they exhibit a newfound seriousness
of purpose. Within a year after circumcision, they
undergo a second major physical operation, subincision,
which is the mark of full physical adulthood—but with
years of further induction and learning ahead of them
Mardu
before they are deemed ready to marry. For girls,
however, the transition from daughter to wife is accomplished without fanfare or ceremony, and was traditionally often aided by the decision of the husband to remain
in the band of his new wife for some time after marriage,
so as to ease her separation from her family and also
allow him to discharge responsibilities to his in-laws by
hunting for them.
Middle Age and Old Age
For both men and women, these life stages involve
progression through a series of named ritual statuses as
more and more religious lore is revealed to them and they
are elevated to senior levels of responsibility for the
conduct of the religious life. As repositories of vital
knowledge, they earn the respect of the community at
large, are exempted by their rank from the more vigorous
physical activities associated with the religious life, and
are valued for their wisdom for as long as their faculties
remain intact.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Regardless of gender or personality, the role any individual plays towards or on behalf of any other is dictated
primarily by kinship. As a general rule, adjacent generations interact asymmetrically, with deference and respect
owed by the lower to the higher, whereas behaviors
towards one’s own generation level members, plus those
members of the second ascendant and second descendant
generations (“grandparents” and “grandchildren”), are
characteristically symmetrical and relaxed. One exception
is adult siblings, where an asymmetry in kin terminology
suggests a status difference favoring older siblings.
Children are exempted from kin constraints of this kind,
and while boys in their play tend to be rougher and more
boisterous than girls, neither gender appears to attempt to
dominate the other.
Beyond patterned kin behaviors (modified, of
course, by differences in emotional content depending on
closeness of relationship) and personality, there are no
marked differences in the ways Mardu men and women
behave in the course of normal everyday life. Male
rhetoric proclaims men’s higher status and greater
Gender Roles in Economics
responsibility for social reproduction, particularly
amongst themselves. Women accede to men’s religiously
validated primacy, and tend neither to boast nor to deprecate men in general, comfortable in the knowledge that
their contribution to society is also essential.
With seniority achieved in matters religious,
relations between older men and women seem generally
more relaxed and symmetrical than in earlier adulthood,
when domestic disputes that invoke men’s attestations of
their greater rights in marriage are more common, as are
violent altercations in which women are likely to fare
badly. The strongest expressions of status difference,
however, occur in the context of male secret-sacred
activities when mature men violently berate silent and
downcast young novices for their ignorance and irresponsibility, while impressing upon them the enormity of
the responsibilities with which they are being invested.
The only time women’s rhetoric approaches this level of
sustained fierceness (verbal and physical) is also in a
same-gender context, when they punish young women
for sexual indiscretions with men wrongly related (in
kinship terms) to them—acts that seriously threaten the
social fabric.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Gender is crosscut by most major social institutions,
notably bands, local groups, the totemic system, and
kinship and category systems. (Mardu are divided into
four named categories, or “sections,” used largely as
labeling devices, and the major ritual moiety division is
also based on these sections.) The bulk of the religious
life also cuts across the gender divide and involves men,
women, and children in interaction. However, the realm
of men’s secret-sacred life provides the strongest basis for
single-sex groupings of initiated males (with novices
sometimes also present) to the absolute exclusion of
women and children. This constitutes the strongest and
most inviolable social boundary, though women also have
rituals exclusive to them. The division of labor also favors
single-sex groups, as men hunt, alone or in small groups,
while women and children tend to seek food in larger
groups that enable them to socialize.
Patrilocality seems to be the culturally preferred
mode of “residence,” because of an expectation that
children should grow up in their father’s territory so that
sons can assume important religious responsibility for its
629
sites, rituals, and paraphernalia. However, children
typically become familiar with sites and accompanying
mythology associated with both their parents, and Mardu
often express their claims to country via their grandparents on both sides. Local groups tend to have a patrilineal core, but multiple affiliative principles allow people
connected through other linkages (e.g., birthplace, initiation place, totemic affiliations, prolonged “residence”) to
become members. There are no matrilineal kin groups.
The most important nonkin associations for males or
females are groupings associated with secret-sacred
aspects of the religious life.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In subsistence activities, men and youths hunted large
game, such as kangaroos, emus, wallabies, and bush
turkeys, while women and children collected seeds,
fruits, and vegetables. Both hunted smaller game, such as
possums, bandicoots, lizards, snakes, small marsupials,
and birds, and gathered honey, nectar, fruit, etc. Families
tended to obtain food cooperatively, but hunting was predominantly a male pursuit, and gathering predominantly
a female pursuit. Women contributed about 60–80% of
the total weight of food collected by desert Aborigines
who exploited resource zones similar to those of the
Mardu (Gould, 1969a, 1969b, p. 258). The spear, spearthrower, and club were associated with males, and the
digging stick with females. Although these items could be
handled by either gender without penalty, women never
used spears to hunt animals. Nowadays, though subsistence does not depend on it, there is occasional hunting
and gathering, often in family groups, to augment the diet
and satisfy the desire for traditional foods such as kangaroo meat. Food preparation is done mostly by women,
though men often partially cook game at the site where it
is caught, and the preparation and cooking of larger animals are usually done by men. Mardu use vehicles to hunt
game with rifles, and supplement store-bought foods with
bush foods.
Men and women possess the full range of skills
available to their gender and there is neither craft specialization nor markets, though gift exchange is intrinsic
to the obligations of kinship, and at the time of “big meetings” may occur also in group contexts when members of
one group exchange weapons, red ocher, hair-belts, and
other valuables to foster goodwill with the other. The only
630
Mardu
part-time specialist role is that of the male Mabarn,
“diviner–curer,” who treats all those, male or female, who
request his assistance (M. Tonkinson, 1982).
Concepts of ownership attached to both individual
and group-owned property, with religious paraphernalia
of the highest value because of its close associations with
creative spiritual powers. The bulk of this secret-sacred
property was owned corporately by each local group
and maintained by male elders of the senior “caretaker”
ritual status. Additionally, every adult man had personal
secret-sacred paraphernalia, which would be inherited by
his sons or other close male relatives following his death.
Senior women also possess ritual paraphernalia. Mundane
artifacts were usually broken and then buried along with
the body of a deceased person.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Parents are the mother(s) and social fathers (i.e., legal
husband of the mother) of any given child. In the past,
no child would have been born to an unwed mother, and
a genitor not also the pater had no parental rights or
responsibilities, but these customs are now changing.
Nurturance is a major Mardu value and children are
cherished. An infant is the center of attention and has all
its wants satisfied by a range of close kin, so the social
parents, including cowives, are not the exclusive childrearers. As mentioned above, grandparents are among the
kin most heavily involved in nurturant and instructional
activities. Men keep away from the birthplace (today, this
is usually a hospital), which is a female domain, but once
the child is brought into the camp they involve themselves in parenting and show a great deal of love and
affection towards their offspring. Clearly, infants and
children spend more time in the care and company of
mothers and other women and children, but men play
caring and nurturing roles. Gender-based differentiation
is not apparent in adult behavior toward boys and girls.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
In mundane affairs, women and men participated fairly
equally, with women being involved in decision-making
that affected the band; for example, when and where to
move next, what food to gather and where, etc. There
were no chiefs or councils, so informal discussions
between all those present at any given time were the
norm, and women’s opinions counted in such contexts.
However, decisions connected with the religious life are
made by men, though sometimes in consultation with
ritually senior women, since much activity (e.g., the ritual
feasting that was integral to most major ritual complexes)
concern both genders in cooperative endeavor, but with
the men in control. Senior men schedule the timing and
sequencing of “big meetings” and their programs, so, if
women plan on performing their own rituals, these must
fit in with the requirements of the main schedule of
events. Older men seemed to enjoy “bossing” women in
the context of religious activities, and women generally
accepted these enactments of men’s political superiority
without visible reaction. Men also organize and run
public meetings, during which their voices are also more
commonly heard. However, women are free to comment
and add their voices to discussion and debate, and if, as
protagonists, they are reticent men might urge them to
speak up. Today, there are elected community councils,
and women are regularly among those elected, though
they are less active than men in this level of community
politics.
Traditionally, women did not initiate or engage in
revenge expeditions or ritual killings and were not
considered to be sorcery practitioners, though they could
be victims of such aggressive acts and could obtain the
services of sorcerers. In matters of authority more generally, both men and women consider themselves to be
“under the Law” of the Dreaming and therefore subservient to the dictates of the creative beings who founded
and structured their society and its norms and laws. It is
clear, however, that men have a greater responsibility than
women for the maintenance of this heritage, since they
control its secret-sacred enabling core.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Mardu cosmic order is markedly egalitarian in
constitution. It contains both female and male creative
beings, and they are unranked as to prominence, power,
or social importance in the human realm. Collectively,
through their endeavors they left behind the first humans
and their rules for living, including inequalities that
tend to favor men’s interests over those of women.
Relative Status of Men and Women
The religious life taken as a whole requires considerable
male–female coactivity and fosters harmony and interdependence, but, as Bern (1979) suggests, women are structurally located as a kind of antithesis because they are
permanently excluded from the secret life of the initiated
men, whereas for youths this is a temporary state. Barring
women may be men’s way of reinforcing male superiority, identity, and solidarity. Yet there is no evidence that
Mardu men or women are anxious regarding their status
vis-à-vis the other; for example, pollution beliefs are not
culturally elaborated. Mature Mardu men claim that there
are powerful and dangerous spiritual forces with which
only they can cope. In joint religious activity, senior men
revel in their “masters of ceremony” role, which includes
controlling and directing women, and they allow them
very little autonomy.
Nevertheless, women are vital to success of religious
activities. They actively participate in many rituals as
singers and dancers, provide major logistical support by
gathering and preparing food, and maintain quotidian life
while men are ritually preoccupied. They also contribute
significantly to men’s secret rituals through the preparation of “bread” for ritual feasts. The rank of “cook,”
which is usually attained by middle-aged and older
women, is one of the several grades of a female ritual
hierarchy paralleling that of the men. Mardu women
possess religious knowledge of their own, and associated
secret-sacred objects and rituals, some of which are
considered by all Mardu as highly dangerous to men. In
common with the men, an important part of women’s lore
consists of traveling rituals, shared and performed widely
across the Western Desert and acquired most often in the
normal course of intergroup exchange during “big meetings.” Yet the total body of Mardu women’s ritual does
not approach in either size or scale that of the men, and
exclusively female rituals occupy much less time and
energy than do male rituals.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Both Mardu men and women enjoyed considerable
leisure time, some of which was spent together in their
camps, resting, socializing, and visiting with other families. Traditionally, communal ritual performances featuring singing and dancing were common nocturnal
activities. Boys and girls often played in mixed-gender
groups. Initiated men differed from women in spending
631
much leisure time away from camp, in “men’s country”
in the nearby bush, where they sought respite from the
hubbub of camp life. There they carved weapons or
sacred objects and socialized with others. They spent
much time discussing the religious life or carrying out
ritual activities. This segregation was voluntary but essential to their role as managers and planners of the society’s
religious business. There was no concerted art production, and Mardu attribute most of the rock art found in
their territory to creative beings or early humans. Most
decorative activity occurred in ritual contexts, which
required specific body decorations and the construction
of a variety of ornaments and sacred objects. While some
of these patterns of activity and leisure persist, there are
changes consequent on sedentary life, school attendance,
paid employment, and other recently adopted practices.
Today, men and women travel by motor vehicles for
recreational and religious activities, as well as work.
Television, alcohol consumption, and other pastimes now
feature prominently in the lives of many Mardu.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Given the strong egalitarian ethos pervading mundane
life, men and women alike make decisions and express
their opinions freely on most matters (see the contributors
to Gale, 1978). There is relative equality of access to
resources, except for sites and areas designated as “men’s
country” and strictly off limits to women and children
(there is no corresponding female power to place similar
taboos). Men generally interrupted the status quo only in
times of conflict or during religious activities in order to
assert their superior rights over women. Women clearly
had far fewer rights than their spouses; for example, they
could not divorce their husbands, or practice polyandry,
or engage in the equivalent of “wife-lending” by men—
rights which men could exercise. Older relatives, most
often males, made major decisions affecting women,
such as betrothing them in infancy, sometimes without
the involvement of their mothers, or choosing new
spouses for them after they had been widowed.
Despite their generally greater contribution to the
family’s diet, women were not accorded a proportional
level of power. In the dominant male ideology, the ritual
acts of mature men generated the food resources, thus
symbolically alienating women from the products of
their labors. As a rule, in Mardu society gender-based
632
differences in status invariably favored initiated males.
In certain contexts and circumstances, such as during
childbirth and certain subsistence pursuits, women acted
autonomously and “equally” in their behaviors toward
members of symmetrical kin categories. Also, camp life
was typified by relaxed behavior among most band members whose kinship links permitted this. Religion, too,
brought both genders together in situations of intense
sociality aimed at dramatizing the fact that everyone was
equally “under the Law” and ultimately dependent on the
Dreaming for their well-being and that of their society.
SEXUALITY
Males and females alike consider sexuality to be a natural,
healthy, and unpolluting human attribute, but its expression must be confined to relationships not categorized as
incestuous. Women are more susceptible than men to punishment for infractions of kinship rules, because they are
accorded greater responsibility than men for sexual
propriety. Men and women as categories show no major
attitudinal difference regarding premarital and extramarital sex, both of which are tolerated as long as the couple
concerned are not in an improper kin relationship and their
behavior is not interpreted as threatening a marriage bond.
Uncircumcised boys are strongly discouraged from sexual
activity with young girls lest their uncircumcised penises
cause damage to female reproductive organs. Men are
more prudish than women and are reluctant to discuss
things physiological; they much prefer to couch discussion of reproductive matters, if it occurs at all, in strongly
spiritual terms. It is impossible to say definitively whether
Mardu were ignorant of or in denial about the role of
semen in human reproduction, but there is evidence that
both paternity and prenatal maternity were downplayed in
favor of spiritual agency (Tonkinson, 1984). Both male
and female sexuality are regarded as inborn. Traditionally,
men went naked and women wore pubic coverings,
and norms of female modesty were signaled by ways
that women sat, and by the fact that sexual intercourse
was considered a private act. Children of both genders
went naked. There was very little expression of cross-sex
identification, and no cross-dressing, though in certain
rituals male dancers impersonated female creative beings.
Male and female homosexuality seems to have been either
minimal or nonexistent in Mardu society—again, apart
from occasional dance depictions.
Mardu
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Male–female courtship was unknown since all but a small
minority of marriages were of the arranged variety, with
infant betrothal the dominant form. Elopement as a result
of love matches was apparently uncommon, and if the
female was already married it was potentially fatal to
both partners. There was no status akin to either bachelor
or spinster, and all people were expected to marry. There
was no element of choice as to when to marry for younger
adults, but as people grew older they possibly had greater
control over the timing of their remarriage and, for
women, over their choice of new partners. Arranged
marriages were of two major kinds: a “mother’s brother”
circumcisor promised a daughter (often an infant)
as compensation to the youth he had circumcised, and
public gift exchanges formalized the arrangement; or two
men would negotiate for one to promise the other a
daughter, and the intending recipient would hunt for, and
periodically give gifts to, the parents of the girl. A marriage began when a woman took her daughter’s possessions and placed them outside the promised husband’s
camp. Most girls today resist marriage to their betrothed,
so this simple ritual has disappeared. Increasingly, young
people choose their sexual partners, and traditional
arranged marriage is in rapid decline; however, it has not
been replaced by formal Western-style marriage.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Mardu spouses spend a lot of time in each other’s and
their children’s company, and in most marriages, particularly between long-married couples, considerable warmth
and companionship are evident. Husbands and wives eat
together, sleep together, spend leisure time together, and
make many everyday decisions together. Within the broad
gender-based division of labor, there is considerable
interchangeability in a range of household-related
tasks, such as child-minding and the getting of water, firewood, brush for windbreaks, and so on. In the minority of
marriages that are polygynous, relationships among
cowives are usually tranquil and mutually supportive,
especially with child-minding, but with older wives in
positions of seniority over younger and newer ones. In
the hunter–gatherer period, cowives, their husband, and
children slept within a single windbreak; in settled
conditions, similar arrangements have been observed, but
Bibliography
polygyny is now uncommon. Traditionally, divorce
appears to have been rare, and could be initiated only by
men, for a variety of reasons; women who eloped or fled
from a marriage faced punishment. Divorce occurs more
frequently today, and may be instigated by either partner.
If there were children, they normally remained with the
husband and his other wives; today, this is one of a range
of child-rearing arrangements that occur when families
break up.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Every individual is located at the center of a huge
network of kin, with patterned behaviors ranged on a
continuum from total avoidance to mandatory joking and
horseplay. Thus there are many cross-sex relationships,
such as between spouses, between grandparent and
grandchild, and between most mother’s brothers and
sister’s daughters, entailing warmth, humor, and a relaxed
interaction, and many others typified by restrained behavior that excludes sexual innuendo, touching, or even
sitting in the same area, the most extreme form of which
applies to mothers-in-law and sons-in-law who practice
complete avoidance. Restraint is also displayed among
certain adult male relatives, such as fathers and sons, and
older and younger brothers, and between cross-cousins of
opposite gender who are classed as siblings. However,
brother–sister avoidance is not marked, and within some
categories there is flexibility according to a range of
factors, particularly friendships and emotional closeness.
Women enjoy a greater number of unrestrained relationships with one another than do men, and can talk and
interact freely with most other female kin, whereas a
man’s behavior towards parents, siblings, and adult
children is more restrained.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Much has happened to the Mardu since they emigrated
from the desert and settled along the fringes on stations
(ranches) and missions between the 1920s and the 1960s.
In recent decades, the pressure towards change exerted
by the dominant society has rapidly increased. Welfare
payments to individuals, and a range of other changes,
have led to greater autonomy among Mardu women,
633
whose structurally unequal status has lessened as their
capacity for independent action and their successful (but
not uncontested) assertion of this degree of autonomy have
increased. Some younger women characterize this change
by calling themselves “free agents” to convey this sense of
greater freedom. Despite considerable expression of nostalgia for the old days in their desert heartlands, many
middle-aged and older women nonetheless seem to favor
settlement life, and one reason for this may be that they are
now less firmly under the control of men. Young women’s
refusal to marry the men to whom they have been
betrothed, the refusal of widows to remarry at all, and the
increasing incidence of “wrong” marriage among younger
adults point to an erosion of “traditional” values and the
structures of “the Law.” Such changes amount to a loosening of the control that mature men as a category can exert
over women as a category. Mindful of the many accommodations already enforced as a result of Westernizing
pressures, Mardu women are able successfully to contest
those aspects of gender relations that they consider unacceptably restrictive. Young men too are freed of some of
the strictures to which they would traditionally have been
subject, including the choice of sexual partners. However,
religiously ordained dictates continue to underpin their
identity and security. Both men and women experience
negative as well as positive consequences of change. For
example, unemployment, alcohol misuse, boredom, violence, motor vehicle accidents, and “lifestyle” diseases all
have had a significant impact on both men and women.
Mardu of both genders have been vigorous in pursuing
land rights and in identifying and adopting coping
strategies and new directions for their communities.
NOTE
1. Please note that in this account we describe enduring characteristics
of this culture in the ethnographic present, using the past tense to
describe practices that no longer obtain, and we endeavor, where
appropriate, to highlight features that have changed markedly. In
recent decades, as a consequence of colonization, the Mardu have
become sedentary and have adopted many new behaviors and
customs while continuing to speak their own languages and pursue
many of their traditions, albeit sometimes in modified forms.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bern, J. (1959). Ideology and domination: Toward a reconstruction of
Aboriginal social formation, Oceania, 50, 118–132.
634
Burbank, V. (1988). Aboriginal adolescence: Maidenhood in an
Australian community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Gale, F. (Ed.). (1978). Women’s role in Aboriginal society (3rd ed.).
Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Gould, R. A. (1969a). Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian desert.
New York: Scribner’s Sons.
Gould, R. A. (1969b). Subsistence behavior among the Western Desert
Aborigines of Australia. Oceania, 39, 253–274.
Hamilton, A. (1981). Nature and nurture: Aboriginal child-rearing in
north-central Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies.
Tonkinson, M. (1982). The mabarn and the hospital: The selection of
treatment in a remote Aboriginal community. In J. Reid (Ed.),
Body, land and spirit: Health and healing in Aboriginal society
(pp. 225–241). St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Tonkinson, M. (1985). Two women of Jigalong. In I. White,
D. Barwick, & B. Meehan (Eds.), Fighters and singers: The lives
of some Aboriginal women (pp. 161–174). Sydney: George Allen &
Unwin.
Tonkinson, R. (1970). Aboriginal dream-spirit beliefs in a contact
situation. In R. M. Berndt (Ed.), Australian Aboriginal anthropology (pp. 277–291). Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1974). The Jigalong mob: Aboriginal victors of the
desert crusade. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.
Tonkinson, R. (1982). Outside the power of the Dreaming: Paternalism
and permissiveness in an Aboriginal settlement. In M. Howard
(Ed.), Aboriginal power in Australian society (pp. 115–130).
St Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1984). Semen versus spirit-child in Western Desert culture. In M. Charlesworth, H. Morphy, D. Bell, & K. Maddock
Mardu
(Eds.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 107–123). St Lucia:
University of Queensland Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1988a). “Ideology and domination” in Aboriginal
Australia: A Western Desert test case. In T. Ingold, D. Riches, &
J. Woodburn (Eds.), Hunters and gatherers: Vol.1. Property, power
and ideology (pp. 170–184). Oxford: Berg.
Tonkinson, R. (1988b). One community, two laws: Aspects of conflict
and convergence in a Western Australian Aboriginal settlement.
In B. Morse & G. Woodman (Eds.), Indigenous law and the state
(pp. 395–411). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris.
Tonkinson, R. (1990). “Autonomy” and the changing status of women,
Jigalong, Western Australia. In R. Tonkinson & M. C. Howard
(Eds.), Going it alone? Prospects of Aboriginal autonomy: Essays
in honour of Ronald and Catherine Berndt (pp. 125–147).
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Tonkinson, R. (1991). The Mardu Aborigines: Living the dream in
Australia’s desert (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston. (First edition published 1978.)
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Aborigines. In P. P. Schweitzer, M. Biesele, & R. K. Hitchcock
(Eds.), Hunters and gatherers in the modern world: Conflict,
resistance, and self-determination (pp. 343–360). New York:
Berghahn.
Tonkinson, R. (in press). The Mardu Aborigines of Australia: Resolving
confict within the Law. In G. Kemp & D. P. Fry (Eds.), Keeping
the peace: Conflict resolution and peaceful societies around the
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in the Western Desert. In A. Anderson, I. Lilley, & S. O’Connor
(Eds.), Histories of old ages: Essays in honour of Rhys Jones
(pp. 133–139). Canberra: Pandanus.
Marquesans
Kathleen C. Riley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Marquesans are also known as Te ’Enana in the northern Marquesas and Te ’Enata in the southern Marquesas.
LOCATION
The Marquesas are part of French Polynesia in the Pacific
Ocean.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
With a population of approximately 7,700, the six inhabited islands of the Marquesas form the northernmost
archipelago of French Polynesia, an autonomous overseas
territory of France in the South Pacific. The archipelago
was settled over 2,000 years ago by peoples from Samoa
and/or Tonga who came in double-hulled canoes bearing
the necessities of life (e.g., breadfruit, taro, and pigs) as
well as trappings of their Polynesian culture and protoEast Polynesian dialects.
After the archipelago’s initial “discovery” in 1595
by the Spanish explorer Mendaña, te ’Enana “the people”1 enjoyed no further contact with Europeans until the
late 18th century when regular visits from whalers, sandalwood traders, missionaries, scientists, and military
personnel began. France staked its colonial claim in 1842,
the population dropped as much as 98% over the next 75
years, and by the end of the 19th century Catholicism had
become the official practice of most inhabitants. As a
result, many of ’Enana’s so-called “savage” practices
(e.g., cannibalism and polygamy, “licentious” singing
and dancing, “idolatrous” sculpting and tattooing) disappeared or were at least suppressed (Dening, 1980).
Nonetheless, many other traditional cultural forms
were maintained or syncretically transformed—for example, their domestic mode of production, speech economy,
and household structures. Since the 1960s, some of the
more colorful traditions (e.g., dancing, crafts, and tattooing)
have been resurrected due to ’Enana’s participation in the
global explosion of cultural pride movements and the
evolving ethnotourism market. However, some of their less
sensational cultural systems (e.g., their language, caregiving patterns, and subsistence activities) have been seriously
disrupted during this period (Riley, 2001).
Prior to contact, most valleys of the volcanic terrain
were inhabited at peak capacity by one or more tribal
groups. During the devastation of the 19th century,
’Enana regrouped into three larger towns (population
1,500–2,000) centered around French administrative and
religious activities and into a number of smaller villages
(population 100–400) in other valleys.
While a number of households now consist of patrilineal patrilocal nuclear families with six or so children,
many exceptions to this pattern can be found. Matrilocal
and neolocal arrangements are common, extended family
compounds are not rare, adoption is still much practiced,
and vestiges of polygamy exist.
The once primarily arboricultural economy is now
based on a mix of subsistence agriculture, fishing, and
husbandry and involvement in cash-based enterprises
such as copra-processing, manual and white-collar
employment, or tourist-oriented entrepreneurial projects.
Throughout the islands, the economy is artificially
inflated by French subsidies.
French Polynesians have been negotiating their
degree of autonomy from France for the last 50 years
when, following World War II, they were granted French
citizenship. ’Enana are particularly ambivalent about
total independence from France, as this would leave them
in the hands of the Territorial government which is
located in Tahiti and is largely run by Tahitians.
Locally, the government is headed by haka’iki
“mayors” who are elected via French protocol but still
derive some of their power from elite lineage and
charisma—not unlike the precontact haka’iki “tribal
chiefs” whose position was partially inherited and partially achieved. Similarly, priests and tumu pure “prayer
leaders” enjoy some of the same prestige and authority
once accorded to the traditional tau’a “shamans.”
635
636
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
Marquesans
OF
GENDER
Gender defines and is defined by the social, communicative, economic, and political roles of ’Enana (discussed in
other sections). However, one of the most obvious functions of gender in this culture is that of signaling one’s
availability for and skill at sexual activity. Thus, the terms
for the two major gender categories, vahana “men” and
vehine “women,” refer both to the man or woman one
noho “rests” with (whether for a night or for life) as well
as to all other men or women (i.e., all others one might
have sex with).
Some of the features associated with sexual attraction are applied regardless of gender (physical beauty—
understood as firm fat bodies and fair supple skin—and
olfactory appeal derived from washing frequently and
wearing perfumes and flowers). Nonetheless, a variety of
visual and performative clues were and continue to be
used to construct gender contrast (see Ferdon, 1993;
Handy, 1923; Suggs, 1966).
Prior to contact, men wore a hami “loin cloth” and
women a ka’eu “waist cloth,” both made of tapa “beaten
bark cloth.” Additionally, both sexes, but especially
women, draped themselves in a kahu “robe.” At present,
women wear a cotton cloth wrapped around the waist
(referred to now by its Tahitian reflex pareu) for informal
wear around the village, and they cover their breasts with
a brassiere, T-shirt, or fold of the pareu. Some men also
wear pareu around the house or for cultural events, but
most men prefer shorts with or without T-shirts. For more
formal occasions, men wear pants and button-down shirts,
and women wear Western dresses (either old-fashioned
missionary frocks or modern fitted dresses). Pareu,
dresses, and shirts all sport bright Polynesian floral
patterns.
Both women and men used to shave and tie portions
of their hair into ornate patterns, with “horns” being specific to males. Present styles are Western: long hair for
women (often worn in a bun), and short hair for men
(though beards and pony tails worn high on the head have
come into vogue). Prior to contact, men and women were
also tattooed—men sometimes from head to foot, and
women more sparsely on the limbs and genitalia—with a
large number of motifs reflecting issues of status and lineage. Owing to the recent revival in tattooing, many men
are once again covering their bodies and faces with
densely interwoven patterns, whereas women have so far
restricted themselves to ornamentation (e.g., anklets).
Other features distinguishing vahana and vehine,
though hidden, have served as signals of sexual
preparedness. Girls’ genitalia were manipulated and
treated with an astringent as early as infancy in order to
tighten the vagina and inhibit excretions and odors. Boys
underwent supercision—a long cut in the foreskin on the
dorsal side of the penis—before being considered ready
for sexual intercourse. Despite missionary pressure, both
of these practices have been retained into the present.
Finally, gender contrast is encoded in a variety of
linguistic forms; for example, male and female beauty are
termed po’ea and po’otu, respectively. Although gender
pronouns do not distinguish between male, female, and
neuter, many other kin terms and roles do (e.g., haka’iki
“chief” vs. ha’atepeiu “chiefess”).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Some of the traditional gender-loaded terms for males and
females throughout the life-cycle have dropped away or
been transformed. Similarly, the categories to which these
terms refer have changed. However, much has been
retained (see Handy, 1923; Kirkpatrick, 1983, 1985, 1987).
Pepe (from the French bébé) is now used for babies
of either gender (birth to 3 years or so), tama for sons, and
mo’i for daughters. To’iki covers all younger children
(birth to adolescence); one of its reflexes po’iti is applied
to boys in particular and paho’e to girls. The terms ka’ioi
and taure’are’a (Tahitian) cover the period from early
adolescence on into adulthood, with males referred to as
mahai and females as poko’ehu. ’Enana motua “mature
adults” are simply referred to as vahana “man, husband”
and vehine “woman, wife.” Ko’oua is the unmarked term
for the oldest generation (somewhere past the age of 50),
while gender is signaled by the contrast between ko’oua
for “old man, grandfather” and pakahi’o “old woman,
grandmother.”
The characteristics and expectations associated
with these age- and gender-graded identities are briefly
summarized here (but see Kirkpatrick, 1981, 1983, 1985,
1987; Martini & Kirkpatrick, 1981; Riley, 2001). Pepe
are assumed to have wills of their own and no judgment.
To’iki are expected to begin to understand social rules and
act as they are instructed, but girls long before boys. Male
ka’ioi disregard the needs of others, putting their own
arrogant desires first, while females hide their wayward
behaviors more effectively. Vehine and vahana are
Gender over the Life Cycle
expected to give up life “on the road” and be “mature
householders,” capable of “mature reflection” and of
actively caring for their growing families. Ko’oua resist
dependence on the younger generation by adopting
grandchildren and working to sustain the family for as
long as possible.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Children are much loved and appreciated; however, some
regret may be expressed if a couple repeatedly produces
girls rather than boys. The birth of a child was once
celebrated with several feasts and rituals (more so for
boys than girls), including the burying of the placenta and
planting a breadfruit tree to support the child (Ferdon,
1993; Handy, 1923; Suggs, 1966). These two rites are still
practiced to some degree, though with minimal fanfare.
Mothers are the primary caregivers for small infants
(0–3 months), but older siblings, fathers, grandmothers,
and other women begin to hold and watch out for the
child after this. As soon as they can be sat up, babies are
generally held facing outward and are socialized via
triadic participant structures. Caregivers show a lot of
ka’oha “concern” for infants and toddlers (regardless of
gender), accepting their expressions of willfulness with
only gentle remonstrances and instead attempting to
distract them (Martini & Kirkpatrick, 1981).
By the age of 3 or 4, both boys and girls are scolded
when behaving in unacceptable ways (e.g., fighting,
making a noise, or playing with others’ belongings).
However, caregivers seem more resigned to the continued
recalcitrance of boys, who by the age of 6 may begin to
show some of the wild and confrontative behaviors of the
taure’are’a (e.g., dirty language and playing further from
home). They learn some of this behavior as they accompany their grandfathers, fathers, older brothers, and
uncles to work—cutting copra, hunting, or fishing.
Through verbal jousting, older males expose boys to the
importance of hiding fear, pain, and dependence, and
teach them the art of being flexible. However, unable to
reproduce these verbal skills so young, boys resort to
verbal anger and physical violence with their peers.
By contrast, at an early age girls receive commands
and exhortations from older sisters, mothers, aunts, and
grandmothers to help out and to show ka’oha for others.
Thus, by the age of 8 or 9, girls have been socialized to
engage in household chores including the care of their
younger siblings. However, girls also learn their duties
637
and orientations through verbal play as older females
engage them in teasing and gossip. Not unlike the socialization of boys, girls are taught how to stay independent
and strong, hiding weak feelings from all but their most
intimate relations, as well as how to ferret out and take
pity on the weaknesses of others, aiding them but also
exposing their state of dependence (Riley, 2001).
As of the mid-1980s, all villages were equipped with
a preschool and primary school providing education from
2 to 14 years. Secondary schooling may commence in the
three larger towns and can be finished in Tahiti, where
there is also a university. French schooling, as well as
access to television in the home, is having a real impact
on traditional socialization patterns.
Puberty and Adolescence
Prior to contact, some ’Enana spent at least some period
of their adolescence in a grouping referred to as the
ka’ioi. In the southern islands this group may have
consisted only of a subset of young males who sang and
danced at festivals, aided in the tattooing of elite males,
and served as unranked warriors (Ferdon, 1993; Suggs,
1966). However, it appears that in the northern islands
most male and female adolescents passed through this
age grade, during which time they learned to perform
songs, dances, and sexual moves at traditional festivals as
well as at some festivals specifically created for foreigners (Dening, 1980; Handy, 1923). Ka’ioi coated themselves in eka “saffron,” wore flowers, lived together in
their own dwellings, and engaged in sexual activities both
in private and for public entertainment.
Vestiges of these behaviors are still prevalent as the
Tahitian term taure’are’a “painted in eka” has been
adopted to refer to the male youth (aged between 12 and
30 or so) who band together in the night and go out “on
the road,” drinking (and smoking pakalolo “marijuana”
since the 1970s), dancing to guitars (or boom-boxes more
recently), and attempting to engage girls in sexual intercourse either in the bush or more stealthily in their homes
(Kirkpatrick, 1983, 1987; Riley, 2001; Suggs, 1966).
At present this “night crawling” is less apparent
because of the increase in public koika “festivals” where
male and female adolescents may legitimately socialize in
the evening and go off together for sex. Sexuality is once
again more openly discussed, even by the priesthood, and
youth events are orchestrated by Christian organizations
in efforts to channel the energies of les jeunes “youth.”
638
Traditionally, supercision took place well before
puberty (ages 7–10), whereas tattooing was the marker of
puberty for elite males and their ka’ioi companions and
was accompanied by elaborate preparations and feasting.
Boys are now supercised later (between 10 and 14), in a
group but by medical personnel and without ritual fanfare
(Kirkpatrick, 1987; Riley, 2001; Suggs, 1966). For girls,
the onset of menstruation was once associated with a
ritual intended to deal with the tapu nature of the blood
(Handy, 1923); however, this event is no longer marked
or celebrated in any fashion.
Attainment of Adulthood
Males may not settle down as vahana until late in their
twenties or even thirties, and usually only after their
second child with the same woman. By contrast, females
may settle down, becoming vehine in their late teens,
frequently with an older man, sometimes with his children
by another marriage, and sometimes bringing a child of
her own into the relationship.
Thus it is not anticipated that settling down into
“mature householders” will happen overnight, and many
young adults switch households and partners (leaving the
offspring with their grandparents) several times before
attaining “mature householder” status (not before 40 for
some vahana).
“Maturity” at this time in history has much to do
with finding a way not only to provide food and housing
for one’s growing family (much of which can be accomplished through unpaid labor), but also to make money to
buy children clothes and an education (Kirkpatrick, 1983,
1985, 1987).
Middle Age and Old Age
Ideally, ko’oua “older persons” provide leadership for the
community and guidance for younger householders, and
indeed most haka’iki “chiefs/mayors” and tumu pure
“prayer leaders” are over 40. In reality, most persons over
the age of 50 have a diminished role at present, especially
given the adoption of Western values that emphasize the
acquisition of money and power early in life. However,
even prior to contact, first-born sons inherited the property
and title of their parents early in life, leaving the latter with
little official status (Ferdon, 1993; Handy, 1923).
The decline of ko’oua is characterized by their loss
of beauty and their growing dependence on their children
Marquesans
and French subsidies. Generally, as their physical strength
goes, male ko’oua have a hard time retaining their authority as capable providers, whereas pakahi’o can maintain
respect in their role of cleaning house and caring for newly
adopted children (Kirkpatrick, 1983, 1985).
Nor are ko’oua necessarily “mature” individuals.
Some are known for wandering on the road and providing insufficiently for their family’s needs (i.e., acting like
taure’are’a) while their pakahi’o are perceived as longsuffering. In other families, strong vehine are recognized
for having brought their vahana into line.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
BY GENDER
Both men and women are expected to hide their weak
feelings (e.g., pain, fear, sorrow, and dependence) and to
learn to engage flexibly in verbal play. However, men are
expected to lose control more (especially under the influence of alcohol) and resort to overt expressions of emotion (e.g., anger and jealousy), as well as some displays
of physical violence (wife-beating, fistfights, suicide).
Women, by contrast, are supposed to be more stoic, to
keep smiling and laughing, and to find covert outlets for
their sorrows and fears.
Both men and women take pride in being independent and having others depend upon them, but women are
more effusive and obviously nurturing in their offerings
of ka’oha “concern.” In dealing with outsiders, women
are now (though they were not in the early 19th century)
known for being reticent, while men come forward with
more apparent friendliness (either formal or joking).
However, within the community, women are fully as
talkative as men (Riley, 2001).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Patrilineality and patrilocality were probably the rule in the
Marquesas prior to contact, but in practice ’Enana tended
toward bilateral descent and bi- or neolocality; the formation of intertribal alliances via marriage depended on this
sort of flexibility (Thomas, 1987a, 1990). Similarly, in the
present, ’Enana draw upon or “discover” common lines of
descent, whether on the male or female side, when and if
the bond is deemed advantageous. That is, the descent
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
group is not conceptualized as a well-bounded set of
individuals, but can be flexibly extended or deflated as
needed (Kirkpatrick, 1983).
Additionally, over the course of the 20th century,
’Enana have become increasingly neolocal in their residence patterns as couples find the means to create their
own separate lodging. And while there exists a preference
for building on the land of (or at least in the valley of) the
man’s family, actual construction of new homes depends
on which family has more land (Riley, 2001; Suggs,
1966).
Thus, while one does in fact find some patrilineal
groupings living close together in villages (even some
extended family compounds), one also finds other groupings that follow the female line. In neither case, however,
does one find relations between sisters or brothers flowing
necessarily smoothly, as competition over the inheritance
of land is a constant source of friction (Kirkpatrick, 1983;
Riley, 2001).
Some of the more important (if sometimes transient)
associations are nonkin based (e.g., artisanal and dance
groups, prayer groups, and other Catholic associations)
and some, though not all, of these are gender specific. For
instance, many women of the village will play bingo
together after church on Sundays. Men go out hunting or
fishing together. Women make pareu and T-shirts; men
sculpt.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Traditionally, men left home and faced danger to bring
home food while women took care of the household. In
recent times, men’s roles still take them further from
home more often; but women are engaging increasingly
in extradomestic activities. Yet, neither now nor in the
past were specific occupations the exclusive domain of
either gender (Kirkpatrick, 1983; Thomas, 1987a, 1990).
Prior to contact, men tended to be involved in raising pigs, planting and gathering arboricultural and root
crops (e.g., breadfruit and taro), fishing, fighting wars,
and making tools and structures from stone and wood. By
contrast, women were primarily responsible for raising
children, cleaning house, and making tapa cloth and
woven mats, baskets, sails, etc. However, both men and
women contributed to the production and preparation of
foods (though women were subject to more tapu as to
when and how they could cook for whom). For both men
639
and women, one’s social class largely defined what one
did, with male and female commoners and male craft
specialists doing much more of the productive labor than
elite men or women.
At present, men fish, hunt (pigs, goats, and cattle),
and cut copra; they do at least a year of military service,
emigrate for work in Tahiti or France, work as laborers,
and make tourist crafts out of wood or stone. Women
cook, clean house, and look after the children. However,
men do not consider it degrading to help with children or
housework, especially food preparation. Meanwhile,
women sometimes cut copra, fish from the shore (seldom
from boats, an artefact of the old tapu against women
entering canoes), grow root crops, and process arboricultural crops. More and more women make money from
crafts or as salaried employees.
There is a long tradition of women gaining a better
education, being more literate, and speaking a more
standard French than men. As a result, women find betterpaid employment as teachers, nurses, social workers, and
office assistants. Nonetheless, the majority of the top
positions are still filled by the fewer men who have performed as well and stayed in school as long (Riley, 2001).
Interestingly, women had the right to own property
prior to contact (Ferdon, 1993), whereas French law gave
women no such rights until the latter half of the 19th
century. However, as the French substantially rectified
gender-based economic inequalities over the course of
the 20th century, coincident with ’Enana’s fuller incorporation into the global economy, female ’Enana are now
faring relatively well in the economic sphere.
PARENTAL AND OTHER
CARETAKER ROLES
Two indigenous social structural traditions continue to
affect parenting and caregiving in the Marquesas. First,
owing to the widespread practice of adoption, the parental
role is not a biological given. Instead, with regular
frequency children are parented by adopted parents (grandparents, other family members, or unrelated others).
Secondly, much of the daily hands-on caregiving is
provided by older children (Riley, 2001).
At present, the cultural expectations of parents
(whether biological or adopted) are that they will provide
food, housing, and clothing for their children; oversee their
education; and help them establish households of their
640
Marquesans
own (Kirkpatrick, 1983). Men bear more of the normative
responsibility for providing food as well as money for
food, clothes, housing, and education. Women are responsible for overseeing children’s nurture and socialization in
the home (e.g., instructing older siblings in how to prepare
food and feed babies, wash and dress younger children,
clean house, and do schoolwork). These norms are
artefacts of both indigenous and French systems.
However, not only do women actually provide food
and income in many families, they also participate in
decision-making about their children’s postprimary
education and plans for starting a family. Similarly, men
are also involved in hands-on caregiving and socialization
(e.g., feeding babies, teaching household chores such as
food preparation, and taking sons and tomboy daughters
out to learn to cut copra, care for animals, hunt, and fish).
Also, despite their typically “macho” characteristics,
fathers (as well as older brothers, uncles, or grandfathers)
can be very gentle with and solicitous of babies, male or
female. However, they may begin gibing even 2-year-old
boys in ways that they would not girls, whereas they will
protect their little girls from physical or emotional abuse
in ways that they would not defend boys. Mothers (and
other female caregivers), by contrast, show ka’oha equally
to male and female babies, tease young boys and girls
equally, but admonish older girls more firmly than older
boys (Riley, 2001).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Male ’Enana traditionally occupied the powerful roles of
haka’iki “chiefs,” tau’a “shamans,” tuhuka “craft specialists,” and toa “warriors.” However, women also had a
chance to occupy some (though not all) of these roles
and/or manifest their tapu status in public ways. Women
occasionally fought as warriors; more frequently they
became tau’a. They were sometimes accorded first-born
rights within chiefly landholding families and were
sometimes recognized as ha’atepeiu “chiefess” (though
not haka’iki). According to Thomas (1987b, 1990), the
post-hierarchical nature of ’Enana politics gave women a
chance to manipulate their tapu, their wealth, their kin
ties, and their skills with oratory and charisma, much as
men might.
In certain ways, then, women can be said to have
suffered a setback under French rule. Until the second
half of the 20th century, the French sociopolitical system
put men at the head of the family and the polity.
Nonetheless, since contact, women have occasionally
been appointed or, more recently, elected to the role of
haka’iki “mayor” and have taken on some leadership
roles in religious, cultural, and educational associations.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Most of the major gods were male, with Atea (“clear
space”) having created the universe and each thing in it
through procreation with a large number of female deities
(Handy, 1923). Similarly, the Marquesan islands were
created by a male deity, attended by his female mate.
Additionally, much of humans’ understanding and use of
the natural world is ascribed to male culture heroes. For
instance, women were taught by Kae, a chief, to have
sex with men instead of with pandanus roots and to give
birth by way of the vaginal canal instead of through fatal
caesareans (Thomas, 1990).
By contrast, the two types of particularly malevolent
spirits, vehine ha’e and hanaua, are female. Hanaua were
thought to possess and kill pregnant women, and vehine
ha’e “wild women” were angry ghosts (sometimes the
spirits of women who committed suicide when their
men were unfaithful) who wandered in the night, shapeshifting and attacking children, and seducing and eating
men (see Thomas [1988b] for the political significance of
these myths).
Underlying this apparent respect for male deities
and fear of female spirits is the complex gender-loaded
system of tapu (Handy, 1923; Thomas, 1987b, 1990).
Translated as both “sacred” and “dangerous,” being tapu
confers a certain status on a being, but also constrains his
or her actions in a number of ways. By contrast, being
clear of tapu or “profane” not only limits one’s status, but
also endangers and constrains one’s movements (within
a universe riddled with tapu entities).
Generally speaking, most men were tapu relative to
most women. The common explanation of women’s
profanity was based on the uncleanness of menstrual
blood. However, some men were more tapu than most
others, and a few high-ranking women were more tapu
than most men. These apparent inconsistencies can be
explained through a deeper analysis (Thomas, 1987a,
1990) of women’s contaminating power, which stems
from their role as the vaginal gateway between the world
of light and life and the tapu spirit world of night.
Relative Status of Men and Women
Although most ’Enana are now deeply immersed in
Catholic belief and practice, vestiges of this system of
tapu can be found in the behaviors of ’Enana today (e.g.,
women’s avoidance of gardening while menstruating).
Also, some ’Enana still avow a belief in the predatory
powers of vehine ha’e (or rather whisper that others
believe in them). However, just as women could once rise
to power as tau’a “shamans” in indigenous times, women
do sometimes now become nuns. Yet, only men serve as
tumu pure ‘prayer leaders’, the dignitaries who lead mass
in the absence of the priest.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Prior to contact, elite ’Enana devoted most of their time
to leisure, while even commoners enjoyed more leisure
than does the average Western worker. The younger set
engaged in ball games, top-spinning, kite-flying, making
string figures, and playing at the activities of adults (e.g.,
cleaning house and having sex). All ’Enana enjoyed
swimming and bathing frequently. Men also engaged in
mock-fighting and stilt-walking competitions. But the
single most important form of entertainment was that of
singing, drumming, and dancing. Men did much of the
drumming and singing at the large-scale koika “festivals,”
while both genders danced; women sang in other settings
(Ferdon, 1993; Handy, 1923).
At present, ’Enana enjoy far less leisure as children
attend school for large portions of the day, and mature
men and women lay constant claim to working hard.
However, when not in school, children enjoy a number of
pastimes: swimming, surfing, and imitating the occupations of their elders, as well as playing at games such as
marbles and jump rope. Youth enjoy organized activities
such as soccer, volleyball, and rowing canoes, as well as
less formal recreations: hanging out and gossiping,
listening to and playing music, getting drunk or high, and
having sex. Since the early 1990s, a growing number of
’Enana spend time in front of television sets in their own
homes. Yet all ’Enana still enjoy koika, whether these are
organized around sports competitions, religious holidays,
or cultural revival events. Music and dancing are the
highlights of festivals, whether this takes the form of
indigenous haka “dances” to drum and voice or two-step
dancing to ukulele, guitar, and spoons.
These recreations are to some degree segregated
by gender. Children play all kinds of games together,
641
but tend to team up against each other on gender lines.
Boys begin earlier and spend more time wandering
around outside home or school than girls. Coed volleyball
and soccer teams are not uncommon, and within rowing
(once an exclusively male sport) a number of girls’ teams
has recently sprung up. Bingo primarily attracts women
and girls (and rairai “transvestites”), and women avoid
men’s drinking parties (although this is changing). At the
koika, men still perform more of the music (though there
are exceptions, such as, women who are known for
playing the spoons and singing), while dancing always
involves both genders, each dancing in their own
prescribed ways.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Female ’Enana’s sexual “choices” have always been more
pragmatically constrained than men’s, their decisionmaking powers have more rarely been institutionalized,
and they have always suffered a lower status at the
ideological level. Nonetheless, individual women have
enjoyed access to a good deal of informal (and sometimes
formal) authority in ways that suggest the general fluidity of gender categories and hierarchies in ’Enana society
(Kirkpatrick, 1983; Thomas, 1987a, 1987b, 1990).
Women appear always to have taken some joy in and
had some say as to their premarital and marital partners.
However, in some situations parents or groups of males
appear to have forced the “decision” to couple and/or
cohabit. Women’s choice of extramarital partners was
once hedged by the threat of being killed if they strayed
in ways unauthorized by their husbands. Women rarely
had recourse to anything but suicide if their husbands
sought extramarital relations without their consent.
Finally, men appear to have had easier access to dissolving a sexual relationship than did women (Ferdon, 1993;
Handy, 1923; Suggs, 1966).
Although wife-beating is still prevalent and was
apparently cited earlier in the 20th century as proof of a
man’s interest in his wife, it is now classified as a “social
problem” and discussed at women’s meetings led by
social workers. In recent years, some women appear to be
enjoying a certain freedom of extramarital relations
without dire consequences. By now, French law and the
Catholic Church no longer support the male advantage in
divorce.
642
With respect to child-bearing, women make use of
both traditional and modern forms of birth control, especially since most priests no longer prohibit such interventions. But even in the past women who came to term
against their will could easily locate adoptive parents for
their offspring, thus alleviating some of the burden of
being the gestating agent.
At the ideological level, elite men clearly enjoyed
signs of deference denied to most women and commoners. For instance, owing to the system of tapu, males
probably ate better (e.g., more pork, turtle, or certain fish)
than did most females. Similarly, first-born males in elite
households were provided with more rituals and signs of
status (e.g., tattooing ceremonies). However, women of
the elite class received gestures of deference, much as
men did, and found methods of furthering their goals in
ways that may have laid the groundwork for women’s
pragmatic powers in the present.
While men are traditionally conceptualized as the
heads of households, in reality women strongly influence
household decision-making. Just as elite women once
wielded control over their land and its produce, so do
women now sometimes make more money than their husbands, oversee the household budget, and/or run businesses with or without a husband at their side. Moreover,
many women can and do decide when, where, and how
they will labor; they control the proceeds from that
labor (whether this takes the form of collecting shellfish,
drying copra, or selling pareu). While more women are
better educated and occupy more white-collar jobs than
men, more men than women fill positions of institutional
authority.
SEXUALITY
Prior to European contact, sex was explicitly taught and
was inextricably tied to other valued interpersonal
activities (e.g., singing and dancing). Parts of the body
considered sexual (mostly genitalia) were covered during
everyday activities but were exposed during ritual
performances. Quite young boys and girls engaged in
sex, and non-monogamous and extramarital sexual activity
was frequent and institutionalized. That is, marriages
sometimes involved multiple partners and pekio “secondary spouses;” and ikoa “name” relationships between men
entailed an exchange of names and rights, including access
to each other’s wives. Additionally, ’Enana openly
Marquesans
engaged in homosexual activity and cross-gender
identification, the term mahu being used to refer to
biological males who adopted the domestic roles and
semiotic styles of vehine (Ferdon, 1993; Handy, 1923;
Suggs, 1966).
While Catholic strictures have suppressed or driven
some of these practices underground, Western mores have
enlarged on others. Thus, Catholicism required that much
more of the body be covered in public, outlawed dancing
and sex at festivals, and instilled shame for most indigenous sexual activities. Nonetheless, other Westerners
introduced sexual institutions (e.g., prostitution) that
flourished in the new social order of sin and forgiveness.
The result is that sexual ability is still much valued,
although the transmission of skills has been inhibited and
the exhibition of sexual ability muted in veils of circumspection. Thus, though more covert, youthful experimentation with sex and extramarital sexual relations are still
the norm.
The mahu category now appears to be merging
with that of the raerae—the cosmopolitan homosexual
transvestite found in Tahiti. Thus, for instance, raerae
’Enana are more specifically homosexually oriented by
contrast with older mahu who have cohabited with wives
and conceived children while retaining noticeable female
mannerisms. Homosexual activity among non-mahu
males is also common (Kirkpatrick, 1983; Riley, 2001;
Suggs, 1966).
Female homosexuality may be as prevalent but is
discussed with more shame, and identification as a
“lesbian” appears to be almost nonexistent. By contrast,
the label employed for girls who dress and act like boys
is the French term garçon manqué, used much like
“tomboy” to indicate a harmless if slightly odd “stage” in
life. I met only one adult woman who dressed and acted
in this way; she was a well-educated social worker and
was treated almost like a hao’e “foreigner.”2
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
’Enana regard marriage as a natural and important life goal
on the way to establishing a household and so fulfilling
the role of the mature householder. While celibate
mihi “missionaries,” “nuns,” unmarried mahu, aging male
taure’are’a, and unmarried vahine mako “shark women”
(women available for intercourse with multiple partners)
are tolerated, they are denigrated in gossip and sometimes
Acknowledgments
openly mocked (see Kirkpatrick, 1983; Suggs, 1966).
Church marriage is the ideal for most individuals;
however, adolescents and young adults may experiment
with cohabitation and reproduction long before even a
civil marriage is considered.
Sexual attraction plays the largest role in the initial
choice of partners. Subsequently, “maturity”—that is, the
potential to support and nurture a family in gender-appropriate ways—becomes important in choosing long-term
mates (usually after producing a couple of children
together). Civil marriage may accompany this stage, while
actual marriage in the church, a costly affair, may await
years of work and the production of several more children.
Some marital choices are influenced by family
pressures in ways reminiscent of traditional times when
elite betrothals and marriages were arranged in order to
forge intertribal alliances, sometimes while one or
both partners were still children (Ferdon, 1993; Handy,
1923; Thomas, 1990). These days parents may play a role
in arranging profitable matches (e.g., with “rich” hao’e
“foreigners” or with land-rich ’Enana in other valleys);
more frequently they play a role in sanctioning relationships that are deemed incestuous (see Kirkpatrick [1981,
1983] for marital preferences and proscriptions).
Elite betrothals and marriages were once celebrated
through feasting and dancing, with provisions supplied by both the bride’s and the groom’s families.
Additionally, both families engaged in gift exchanges and
the chanting of geneologies. At present, church marriages
are marked by feasting and dancing.
Traditionally, polyandry was institutionalized. Elite
women had one or more pekio “secondary husbands”
who contributed to the household as laborers while also
performing as sexual partners. They “belonged” to both
the wife and the primary husband, and their children by
the wife were treated as the children of the primary
husband. While less discussed in the literature, men too
might have more than one wife, and sometimes households consisted of several men and women, all enjoying
mutual sexual access (Ferdon, 1993; Handy, 1923; Suggs,
1966; Thomas, 1988a, 1990).
Vestiges of polygamy persist in the way households
frequently accommodate one or more younger males who
help with copra, fishing, or hunting, and may additionally
engage in covert sexual relations with the woman of the
house. Similarly, cases of men with more than one
wife in more than one valley were still to be found in the
20th century (Suggs, 1966).
643
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The marital relationship is ideally a cooperative partnership geared toward tending the domestic unit and based
in part on continued sexual fulfillment and comradeship.
However, this partnership is, in reality, riven with some
regularity by conflict and violence resulting from the
actual or imagined “wanderings” of one’s partner.
Couples tend to share the same bed and eat at least
one meal a day together. Couples sit in church and engage
in some recreational activities together. While labor is
generally divided into male and female genres, husbands
and wives do sometimes attend to their separate tasks but
in each other’s presence. They also sometimes help each
other out with their respective tasks; for instance, it is not
unusual to see husbands and wives cooking a meal
together or going off to cut copra together. The degree to
which husbands and wives engage in joint domestic
decision-making depends on the individuals’ personalities.
Prior to contact, divorces were difficult for elites to
accomplish (given that so much intertribal business was
invested in their marriages), but for commoners cohabitation might cease without any outcry. While the dissolution of nonmarried relationships is still easily and
frequently accomplished, the break-up of married couples is complicated by the state and the Church, and the
resolution of property rights is also messy. Nonetheless,
official divorce is not unusual, while unofficial separation
is fairly common (both men and women have been known
to initiate the process). In all known cases, one of the
partners leaves the valley, the house and children are
retained by the partner who remains (usually the one
whose family owned the land they settled on), and this
partner frequently forms a new relationship though he
or she is prohibited from marrying again in church
(K. C. Riley, unpublished dissertation).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is based in part on fieldwork made possible
by doctoral research grants from Wenner–Gren and the
National Science Foundation and was written while
supported by a Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship from
Wenner–Gren. I also wish to acknowledge the institutional support during fieldwork of the Haut-Commissariat
de la République en Polynésie Française and the Centre
Polynésien des Sciences Humaines in Tahiti. For help
644
Marquesans
thinking through the intellectual problems of this
particular article, my thanks go to Nicholas Thomas, John
Kirkpatrick, and especially Robert Suggs, who at very
short notice read and provided comments on a draft
(though, of course, I retain all responsibility for any errors
to be found here). Also, as always, my gratitude for the
ka’oha of a number of people around the world but
especially in French Polynesia is boundless: Bambi
Schieffelin, Vincent Crapanzano, Neil Shepard, Pierre
Ottino, Robert and Denise Koenig, Vaha Teikitekahioho
(in memoriam), Heidy Baumgartner-Lesage, Yvonne
Katupa, Tracy Smith, Moi Tamarii, Manu Teikikaine,
Noella Teikivaeoho, Tapu Poihipapu, Teresi Pahuatini,
and paotu te to’iki ’i Hatiheu. I would like to dedicate this
article to Lucien Roo Kimitete (1952–2002): ’O te
haka’iki, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e, ’e!
NOTES
1. Owing to dialectal variation, people from the northern three islands
refer to themselves as ’Enana while southerners refer to themselves
as ’Enata. As I conducted fieldwork in the northern islands, most
terms in this article are derived from the northern dialect.
2. Thanks to Bob Suggs for confirming my perception of the ubiquitous and normative nature of bisexual activity and neopolygamous
relationships in the Marquesas, past and present.
REFERENCES
Dening, G. (1980). Islands and beaches: Discourse on a silent land,
Marquesas 1774–1880. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Ferdon, E. N. (1993). Early observations of Marquesan culture
1595–1813. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Handy, E. S. C. (1923). The native culture in the Marquesas (Bishop
Museum Bulletin No. 9). Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum.
Kirkpatrick, J. (1981). Meanings of siblingship in Marquesan society. In
M. Marshall (Ed.), Siblingship in Oceania: Studies in the meaning
of kin relations (pp. 17–51). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Kirkpatrick, J. (1983). The Marquesan notion of the person. Ann Arbor,
MI: UMI Research Press.
Kirkpatrick, J. (1985). Ko’oua: Aging in the Marquesas islands. In
D. A. Counts & D. R. Counts (Eds.), Aging and its transformations
(ASAO Monograph Series No. 10) (pp. 89–105). Lanham, MD:
University Press of America.
Kirkpatrick, J. (1987). Taure’are’a: A liminal category and passage to
Marquesan adulthood. Ethos, 15(4), 382–405.
Martini, M., & Kirkpatrick, J. (1981). Early interactions in the
Marquesas islands. In T. M. Field, A. M. Sostek, P. Vietze &
P. H. Leiderman (Eds.), Culture and early interactions
(pp. 189–213). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Riley, K. C. (2001). The emergence of dialogic identities: Transforming
heteroglossia in the Marquesas, French Polynesia. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, City University of New York Graduate
Center.
Suggs, R. C. (1966). Marquesan sexual behavior. New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World.
Thomas, N. (1987a). Complementarity and history: Misrecognizing
gender in the Pacific. Oceania, 57, 261–270.
Thomas, N. (1987b). Unstable categories. Journal of Pacific History,
22(3), 123–138.
Thomas, N. (1988a). Domestic structures and polyandry in the
Marquesas islands. In M. Jolly & M. Macintyre (Eds.), Family and
gender in the Pacific (pp. 65–83). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press.
Thomas, N. (1988b). The contradictions of hierarchy: Myths, women
and power in eastern Polynesia. In D. Gewertz (Ed.), Myths of
matriarchy reconsidered (pp. 170–184). Sydney: Oceania
Monographs.
Thomas, N. (1990). Marquesan societies: Inequality and political
transformation in eastern Polynesia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula
John R. Sosa, Brian Montes, Melissa-Ann Yeager, and Emilio Paqcha Benites
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Maya of the Yucatán peninsula are also known as
Masehual, Mayero, and mestizos.
LOCATION
The people who name themselves Maya live homogeneously throughout the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, in
the states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo.
Although they are in a subordinate socio-economic position, they represent the cultural and demographic majority, except for the hotel region in Cancun and along the
eastern coast. Even in the cities of Mérida, Chetumal,
Campeche, and Valladolid, many people speak Maya.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Maya culture is very ancient and is indigenous to the
peninsula. Thousands of ancient cities and settlements are
still to be found, some transformed into tourist attractions,
while most are overgrown collections of múulo’ob, or
mounds. Much academic study of this ancient culture and
its hieroglyphic writing, calendar system, and monumental architecture has resulted in rather famous imagery
associated with “the Maya.” However, a Spanish-imposed
system of colonial enslavement has created, for most
Mayas, a separation between their current lifestyle and
that of their ancestors. Moreover, colonially forced
cultural change since the early 1500s has removed much
of the indigenous social structure. Mayas have adapted to
this by refocusing their existence on their village-based
food production, regulated by their ancient cosmology.
Across the peninsula there is some variation from this
rural traditional lifestyle, due to a localized increase in
tourism and urbanization. Therefore it is significant to
note that this lifestyle, which is most representative of that
which is Maya and which dominates the peninsula, will be
the focus of this description of gender in Maya culture.
The most conservative core of Maya culture is found
in the “Maya zone” of the central part of the state of
Quintana Roo, where a network of villages provides a
strong regional system of both male and female indigenous leadership and responsibilities. Elements of local
leadership are found throughout the peninsula, but the
closer one gets to cities, especially Mérida and Cancún,
the more the national political system dominates. So in a
real sense, the conservation of Maya language and
culture, the isolated nature of the peninsula from the rest
of Mexico, the rocky consistency of the soil, making
Maya digging-stick kòol (milpa) agriculture the only kind
suited to most of Yucatán, and the sheer size of the peninsula (53,000 square miles), allow Maya identity to continue, even though the world economy puts increasing
pressure on young people to pursue lifestyles other than
that of their agricultural ancestors.
There are Maya doctors, lawyers, politicians, school
teachers, journalists, wage laborers, etc., who often still
faithfully conform to Maya cultural norms, although
this, of course, is not true for everyone. Those who still
go back to fulfill family obligations in the countryside
(k’àaš ), often have spiritual motivations. In particular,
those who constitute the Cancún tourist industry labor
force, as maids, waiters, construction workers, and
prostitutes, often try to reduplicate some of their village
solidarity in the slums surrounding Cancún, even bringing in traditional healers and midwives from their home
villages.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Although it is the subject of anthropological debate, it is
possible to argue that the Maya, like many indigenous
non-Western people, are organized by two somewhat
separate yet interdependent worlds for men and women.
An ability to perceive this dialectic relationship, where
two halves define each other, requires extended field
experience and ability not only to speak Maya, but
conformity to behavioral norms related to gender.
645
646
Maya language and behavior are constantly relying on
subtleties, which need to be interpreted on an ongoing
basis. Many subjects routinely discussed among men or
women cannot be publicly discussed by the other. There
is often a taboo against discussing topics related to the
other gender even in private. To do so is considered
rude and disrespectful. A core Maya concept is that of
the correctness of living life along the “correct road.”
Deviating from this, even in private, is believed by many
potentially to result in serious consequences. When
misfortune strikes, it is often interpreted as supernatural
punishment for some wrongdoing, forcing one to reflect
on one’s past violation of cultural norms.
Humans can also punish those who do not follow
Maya teachings. Until recently, Maya community leaders
would be in charge of a process for “educating” wrongdoers. Elders would speak to the person three times to try
to “reorient” them. If this was unsuccessful, an increasing series of public whippings would be the next step. If
improvement was still not seen, banishment from the
community was the last resort. Historical documentation
of pre-Columbian Maya punishments for rape or infidelity reveal even more drastic pressure to deter sexual
misbehavior from disturbing community harmony. If, for
example, a man was found guilty of rape by the council
of elders, he was given two choices—to publicly mutilate
his genitalia, making it impossible for him to commit this
crime again, or to be publicly killed. If the crime was infidelity, the man was always considered the guilty party,
and the woman’s husband was brought to the center of
town, where he held a large rock above the other man’s
head as he lay on the ground, and was given the option
of killing or pardoning him. Obviously, the public nature
of these displays went far both in deterring these kinds of
violations, and in defining appropriate and inappropriate
sexual behavior. Today, elder men can be seen publicly
admonishing younger men for not showing women the
appropriate respect at fiestas and other events, often
claiming that such tendencies come from “outside,” and
are not Maya ways. The similarity between this kind of
oratory at public events and past punishments is striking,
and reveals that it is a cultural responsibility of elder Maya
men to protect the dignity of Maya women.
As for Maya women, much more research needs to
be done to have a clearer picture of their role in setting
public behavioral standards, but there is a common
contemporary and historical image of the Maya woman
as being in charge of the household and having the
Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula
authority to impose her will on men, especially those who
are not members of the family. Today, a man visiting a
Maya home for the first time can expect to be treated
somewhat gruffly by the woman of the house, especially
if he is completely unknown. The woman may even speak
in a loud voice, thereby emphasizing that there should be
no question but that this is her domain. And when it
comes to physically defending her home from attack, the
image of the woman scalding would-be intruders by
throwing boiling water or soup on them as they come in
the door is commonplace. Indeed, the Maya home is
typically small, but a powerful symbolic sanctuary, and a
woman can be expected to be willing to defend it with
her life.
Part of this symbolism is the way that the house
represents the combination of the genders as a basic
human principle. The number three is widely regarded as
a female number, equivalent to the number of stones a
woman uses to balance her tortilla-cooking comal on the
hearth on one side of the house or in an attached kitchen,
while four is male, corresponding to the corners of the
cornfield or any other Maya space. The combination,
seven, is considered the human number as a combination
of the male and the female. In ceremonies in the home,
seven is often referred to as equivalent to it.
The words máak or winik can be used to mean a
“person” of either gender, while ši’ib is used for men and
ko’olel, or šč’úupal is used for women. The š prefix is
also added to many words, giving a combined female and
diminutive meaning. Male and female gender categories
are intimately linked to culturally defined work. One is
differentiated from the other by the clothes that each
wears, the roles that they perform, and their interaction
with one another. Women tend to wear their hair long,
usually braided, and at times wear a rebozo (most commonly seen in the northern Yucatán peninsula). Most
women have maintained the use of the traditional hipil,
which is a one-piece white cotton dress with colorful
embroidering of flowers at top and bottom; however,
some teenage girls tend not to wear it. Other women who
do not wear it are women who at some point left their
communities to go to tourist areas in search of work, or
who have converted to the many evangelical religious
orders active in the peninsula, or who seem to be making
a statement about wanting to “move up” from a Maya
image. All such women tend to wear Western-style skirts
and shirts and may have short hairstyles. Maya women
who refuse to wear Western clothes claim that such an
Gender over the Life Cycle
appearance is “of the city” and “not Maya.” Women also
wear a lot of jewelry (mainly earrings and necklaces) and
also use make-up, or talcum powder, on special occasions. Women often go barefoot while men wear simple
sandals. Indeed, it is widely regarded by Mayas that
women are much more representative of the culture
because of their dress, and men can even be heard to
comment that woman are the “guardians of the culture.”
The majority of men wear Western-style clothing, leaving
only a handful of men that still wear their traditional
kulèeš (calf-length white cotton pants) and a white shirt.
These are usually men recognized as holding a major
leadership role within their community. Women tend to
associate with women during social gatherings and the
men with the men. Each of these groups uses words and
terms that the others cannot distinguish and/or things are
said amongst one another that are not talked about with
the opposite gender.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The progression of čáampal (baby), páal (child), and
táankelem (teenager) are the same for both genders.
Historical documents reveal that before Spanish arrival
there were distinctive puberty ceremonies, that were
different for boys and girls, marking their transition to
adulthood. These have long since been lost. Today, a boy
becomes a man, ši’ib, and a girl becomes a woman,
ko’olel, upon marriage, and receives the corresponding
titles of Don and Doña. Adults who are never married
remain social children and are even buried as children,
with a headdress of flowers which marks a child’s
funeral.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
As young children, both boys and girls experience a
certain freedom from social obligations, enjoying the time
spent with family and learning daily behavior by merely
watching and playing. Children are often perceived to be
born with a destiny, and it is the responsibility of parents
to help them find it. More and more, an increasing
number of children, both boys and girls, between the ages
of 7 and 15 are now attending school either inside their
village or leaving home to attend school outside and closer
to cities or larger towns. Perhaps the primary defining
gender role in Maya children is the socialization into the
647
division of labor (Restall, 1997, p. 43). From an early age,
both girls and boys are taught a “sharp but mutually
dependent division of labor which … promotes the
solidarity of the family and the stability of the marriage”
(Cominsky & Scrimshaw, 1982, p. 48). So at a very young
age (4–7) males and females seem to be open and
playful.
The boy is permitted and encouraged to accompany the father to the
milpa as soon as he can walk distances, and early begins to help in
carrying wood and then in the task of the cornfield. The separateness of
the man’s tasks from the woman’s is reflected in the customs of the play,
for from the earliest years boys play with boys and girls with girls.
(Redfield & Villa Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 190)
Boys and girls can also often be seen playing
together: “Much of the play is an imitation of the elders’
activities: the boys play at lassoing bulls, the girls at
making tortillas, for example … every boy has his rubber
sling-shot, and it is also common to make small things
(yuntun) of henequén fiber, with which small stones are
hurled” (Redfield & Villa Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 191).
Today, many boys still have rubber sling-shots. Attending
school has changed the dynamics of child’s play by introducing ball games and team play: “until the coming of the
school, there were in villages no activities in which a
victor was contrasted with a vanquished, or in which one
child’s superiority to another was formally measured”
(Redfield & Villa Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 191).
The older children become, the more they are
expected to help with household tasks. Boys and girls of
6 or 7 years of age carry their smaller brothers and sisters
around and, at this age or even younger, the boys fetch
firewood and the girls begin to carry water (Redfield &
Villa Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 71).
From a young age, girls are encouraged to participate
in the domestic sphere and are socialized from the beginning to what their family role should be as women. This
includes caring for the house and for younger siblings.
The economic role of the young girl is that of mother’s
helper, learning from an early age to make tortillas, “the
most important and consuming of her responsibilities, the
provision and preparing of tortillas” (Redfield & Villa
Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 174). Men produce corn, and women
transform it into food. Sometimes women are referred to
as pak’ač, which is the act of making tortillas. The girl or
young woman is also taught to care for the family’s
animals and the raised ka’an če garden platforms, and to
wash, care for, and make women’s clothes.
648
Puberty and Adolescence
Once they reach adolescence, the men’s world starts to
separate from that of women. Even with strangers,
adolescent women tend to be more shy and reserved,
although shyness is very common with both genders.
Children of both genders, especially teenagers, are
expected to provide significant help with childcare. Even
young men and teenage boys are frequently seen holding
babies and caring for younger children, as well as
doing anything that their elders need them to do. Typically
they only have to be told once, and they tend to obey
without question. A 12- or 13-year-old boy is generally
making a separate milpa of his own (Redfield & Villa
Rojas, 1934/1962, p. 71). Teenage girls are also typically
very responsible in accepting a woman’s work load.
Whether it be tending the animals, caring for the house
garden, caring for clothes and children, or cooking, a
young woman essentially does all the work that grown
women do.
Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula
The Women. Most of a girl’s training is in the
domestic sphere as a preparation for marriage, which,
depending on locality, can happen as early as 16 or as late
as the mid-twenties. More recently, young women are
employed by cooperatives, mainly participating in sewing
and embroidery.
After marriage, the woman’s status changes. As a
wife she is now prepared to be a mother. Having children
is valued emotionally, economically, and socially, as a
woman gains prestige as a mother. In Maya culture,
anything that is essential for life is described as sàantoh,
kili’ich, or “sacred,” thereby giving women, as bearers of
life, a sacred quality. Upon marrying, most young women
are occupied by pregnancy, lactation, and caring for and
feeding young children. As the woman matures and her
family grows, she garners more respect and prestige. The
elderly woman is respected for her age and wisdom, and,
as a grandmother, the matriarch of the family and head of
many familial decisions.
Middle Age and Old Age
Attainment of Adulthood
As mentioned earlier, marriage essentially signifies adulthood. Both men and women are socialized to be patient,
responsible, and committed to important relationships.
Both grow up developing their own signature laughter
which identifies them socially as a public marker of a
“true person.” Laughter is perhaps the most significant
way that gender differences are bridged in social interaction. It is a safe way to exchange “happiness inside,”
which is highly valued.
The Men. Maya men cannot be separated from their
work. However, they are under increasing pressure, when
young, to choose between school work and milpa work—
to feed the family by trying to earn money or by planting
the cornfield. Corn is said to give “strength to people’s
hearts.” A man has to feed his family to have worth, either
by agricultural or wage labor, with the latter being almost
nonexistent in the thousands of villages where Mayas
live. The staple crops are maize, beans, squash, and chile,
with a wide assortment of other crops, usually in the center of the cornfield. Married women and children will also
help weed and harvest. Maya men typically continue producing and working their cornfields until death. It is not
uncommon to see men in their eighties and nineties still
vigorously engaged in this demanding labor.
Elders, grandparents, and great-grandparents are called
nohoč máak, “great people” or “big people.” A common
saying even when one is becoming elder is tz’o’ok a nohoč
máaktal, “you are finished becoming an elder.” This is not
only a potential reference to physical age, but to social
behavior, especially in terms of one’s willingness to accept
responsibility for others. Typically, elders are relied upon
for all kinds of guidance, but the recent access that children
have to school, television, and “outside culture” is widely
seen as responsible for a rapid loss of respect for elders. A
visible sadness is expressed by many elders, apparently
caused by the discrepancy between how their culture prepared them to be elders, and how they increasingly see that
young people are being socialized by Western culture to
see their own elders as primitive and vestiges of the past.
Grandfather, tatič, and grandmother, čič, are still
greatly respected, and are terms used even by young
people to refer to any given elders in respectful ways.
Again, the people of the Maya zone of central Quintana
Roo tend to be more culturally conservative, and there is
more adherence to the value of respecting one’s elders, in
how they are addressed, spoken to, and listened to, and
how their needs are tended to by the family. Indeed, in
Maya culture, one of the great values of having a family
is that one has children to provide care when one becomes
elderly. Elders who have not been so fortunate are invited
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
into many people’s homes as they walk down the street,
to feed them or offer companionship and other help.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The combination of the genders is represented by the
otoč, home, or nahil, house. This is where one’s family
lives, one’s č’íibal, one’s “people.” On a somewhat larger
scale is the kahtal, which refers either to the extended
family’s houseplot, containing several homes, or a small
community. The term literally means, “becoming life.”
These large multifamily houseplots tend to be focused on
the male lineage, but there is variation from this pattern.
Another important relationship is with one’s
compadres, or coparents, who attain this title by agreeing
to be responsible for a child and participate in appropriate ceremonies. One’s compadre, or cofather, or comadre,
comother, are extremely close relations who are relied
upon for all kinds of assistance.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In addition to what was presented earlier, it is important to
add that a harmonious home is typically characterized by
conforming to the Maya ideal that each gender performs
particular roles associated with that gender, and is responsible for making the two complementary. If there is access
to a market, women tend to go more, either for purchasing
items needed or to sell the fruits and vegetables that they
grow. It has also become more common to see men leaving
their communities and going to heavily tourist-populated
areas in search of work so that they may provide for their
families. This is also true for some women. They tend, like
the men who migrate, to speak Spanish more fluently than
the women who stayed in their communities. Women who
have left their communities also often sell handmade
hipiles or blouses in order to sustain their families. Teenage
boys increasingly leave home to find work in the tourist
industry. In general, boys are more likely to be wage
earners than girls (Kintz, 1990, pp. 14–15, 32).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men tend to have more public leadership roles, but
women can also fill such roles, especially in times of
649
crisis. In general, however, women’s power seems to be
more private, as is reported in many other indigenous
cultures. In public meetings, leadership provided by
members of either gender will have the goal of mediating
the discussion to result in consensus. Community
harmony is not always attainable, but it is highly
valued, with men, in public, and women, in private, each
contributing in their own way to harmonious relations.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Creator is referred to as Hahal Dios or Tohil K’u,
“The True God,” Ki’ičkelem Yum, “Beautiful Father,”
Nohoč Tat, “Grandfather,” or Jesu Christo, is symbolically associated with the sun, and is male. The moon, or
Mama Luna, is female and often associated with the
Virgin Mary. Both men and women can be prayer leaders
as well as shamans. In some communities, public prayer
groups, or novenas, are groups of women who pray
together in the evenings, while in others, the prayers are
attended by both genders. Men and women will also
spend time praying in private, usually at altars in the
home, or at an olatorio prayer structure outside the home
or in the milpa. Women seem to be exclusively responsible for hol če ceremonies where offerings of tortillas are
placed in trees. Communities that have colonial period
churches tend to have these as the focus for certain
religious events, often led by women. The male hmèen, or
shaman, leads ceremonies in the woods (k’àaš), in his
home, or in other people’s homes. The most important of
these, the č’a čàak rain ceremony, is a purely male event,
with women still playing a significant role in preparing
ritual foods brought to the ceremony by the men.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Men and women do not have much leisure time. Even
during fiestas, which are major social events that are
greatly enjoyed, there is often still much to do unless one
is visiting another community’s fiesta with one’s family.
Males do play sports, including baseball, fútbol (soccer),
basketball, and volleyball.
It is important to emphasize that Maya families
spend a significant amount of time together. Working,
eating, and reclining in hammocks, is almost always
accompanied by talking and laughter. Both males and
650
Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula
females spend significant time conversing, telling stories,
and gossiping, so the work–leisure dichotomy familiar
in Western culture is often difficult to see. Speaking
eloquently is probably the most easily visible cultural art
form, with speakers using sophisticated metaphors and
playing with subtle differences in meaning as the basis of
jokes, the colorful telling of stories, or to make one’s points
in the teaching of an important lesson. This kind of medium
is one of the basic essences of Maya culture, and both genders, young and old, are encouraged to engage extensively
in tz’íikbal, conversation. Indeed, an ability to speak well
enables people of either gender to gain great prestige.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Aside from what has already been presented, it is difficult
to determine in an absolute sense, the degree to which
gender asymmetry or male dominance functions in Maya
culture. Whether one is studying the imposition of
Spanish colonialism, or listening to Mayas speaking on
the subject, it is possible to imagine that there is still an
ongoing cultural conflict between two different ways of
defining male and female relations. This conflict is even
accelerating with the infusion of tourism and its Western
cash economy, which tends to accentuate males as wage
earners. Certainly more specialized research is necessary
in this area, and still one’s conclusions would be affected
by the researcher’s theoretical orientation. But it is still
important to note that many women do control their
household economy and are in charge of budgeting what
money there is. Sons who work in Cancún can give all
their earnings to their father or mother when they arrive
home every 2 weeks, and are given back their share when
they leave to return to Cancún. Perhaps what is most
significant is understanding, for a given community or
region, what factors are making it possible to adhere to
Maya cultural norms, which seem to emphasize the
complementary nature of gender relations, and which
other factors are causing Western male dominance to be
more exaggerated. In an area as large as Yucatán there is
a great range of variation in the mixture of social,
economic, political, and religious factors which will
influence the relative local status of the genders.
SEXUALITY
Given the strict rules defining appropriate etiquette, it is
very difficult to discuss these topics with people, and rare
to hear such topics being discussed. Sexuality is publicly
referred to mostly through humor, with each gender
joking about sexuality in its own way. When members of
both genders know each other very well, jokes or stories
about sexuality have a hilarious effect.
The k’àan, or hamaca, hammock, of the couple, is
where sex takes place, so jokes about sexuality often
include references to the hamaca. Given that most Maya
homes consist of one room, it is therefore normal for
parents to have sexual relations in their hamaca when the
children are sleeping. In other words, there is not much
privacy, and it does not seem to matter. Sex is therefore
seen as “natural.” The ideal time to have sex seems to be
after marriage. Although this is not followed all the time,
women are expected to wait more than men to have sex
after marriage. Female sexuality is a topic mainly for
women. Sexuality and issues pertaining to one’s body are
not openly discussed. For example, it is a sin to discuss
menstruation with a young girl before her first menses
(Elmendorf, 1976). Older women living alone, or widows, can be visited by young men seeking sexual training. If the young man, usually visiting at night, is allowed
inside, the implication is that the woman accepts his
advances.
It is not clear how Mayas view what Westerners call
homosexuality, although it seems to be considered “one’s
destiny” if one happens to be born with that sexual
orientation. A term that is used is ki u čhi, “delicious to
his or her mouth.”
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
There is usually direct negotiation between the parents
of the potential bride and groom with the parents or father
of the young man taking the lead. Gifts are brought with
the expectation that the initial visits may result in no agreement. This symbolically expresses that the young woman
and her family are to be respected, and that the young
man’s family should expect to prove their seriousness.
When an agreement is reached, including with the young
woman since no one should be married by force, a more
substantial gift is made to the bride (muhul), and an additional agreement is reached on the period of bride service
(háankàab) that the groom will provide to his parents-inlaw (Villa Rojas, 1945, pp. 87–89). Today, most couples
have a religious wedding ceremony as well as a civil one,
mirroring Mexican national practice. The padrinos or
godparents of both spouses will usually be present at one
References
or both, and will publicly lecture the young couple on the
responsibilities of marriage and the role of each spouse.
When one chooses compadres to be padrinos for one’s
child, it is in part with this day’s function in mind.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The family is an exceptionally strong institution for
the Maya, and a man will refer to his wife as in watan,
“my wife,” or in šuna’an, “my woman of high status,” or
in fáamiya, “my family.” A woman will refer to her
husband as in wíicham. The husband–wife relationship is
extremely private. Husband and wife sleep in the same
k’àan, hammock, often with small children as well, and
make decisions together. The family can eat together, but
often the men eat at a small table and the women and children eat around the hearth, partly because a woman is
making tortillas for an extended time during the meal.
Divorce is very unusual.
The depth of the husband–wife relationship is
expressed through the typical way in which a wife gives
birth. Either a midwife or the wife’s mother will be present with the woman and her husband. The husband is
expected to assist the wife throughout the birth process.
Again, the hammock is used, with the elder woman
instructing the wife to assume various positions. This
expectation is not always fulfilled, however, and women
have been known to give birth by themselves.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
One’s younger brother or sister is called by the same
name, íitz’in, while one’s older sister is called kìik and
older brother is suku’un. These terms are used as models
for social relationships in general, and in using them with
nonfamily, one is expressing closeness to others. Such
use also expresses that the Maya people can be perceived
as one large family. In essence, then, nonkin are ritually
made family through use of these terms.
651
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Despite the ongoing changes and encroachments caused
by globalization, colonialism, and acculturation, there
is still significant Maya adherence to what has been
presented above in the many villages where most Mayas
live. The Maya man, the kòolnàal, “corn farmer,” and the
Maya woman, the ko’olel, or the pak’ač, “tortilla maker,”
are probably the most powerful representations of Maya
culture. As long as Mayas remain agricultural, the male
and female principals will endure as twin tree trunks,
upon which the rest of the culture is supported.
REFERENCES
Cominsky, S., & Scrimshaw, M. (1982). Sex roles and subsistence:
A comparative analysis of three Central American communities.
In C. A. Loveland & F. O. Loveland (Eds.), Sex roles and social
change in native lower Central American societies (pp. 44–69).
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Elmendorf, M. L. (1976). Nine Maya women: A village faces
change. Cambridge, MA: Hallsted Press Division, Schenkman
Books.
Kintz, E. R. (1990). Life under the tropical canopy: Tradition and change
among the Yucatec Maya (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology
[G. Spindler & L. Spindler, General Ed.]). Fort Worth, TX:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Re Cruz, A. (1996). The two milpas of Chan Kom: Scenarios of a Maya
village life (SUNY Series in Anthropology of Work). Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Redfield, R. (1941). The folk culture of Yucatan. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Redfield, R., & Villa Rojas, A. (1962). Chan Kom: A Maya village.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published
1934.)
Restall, M. (1997). The Maya world: Yucatec society and culture,
1550–1850. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sosa, J. R. (1989). Cosmological, symbolic, and cultural complexity
among the contemporary Maya of Yucatán. In A. F. Aveni (Ed.),
World archaeoastronomy. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Villa Rojas, A. (1945). The Maya of east central Quintana Roo
(Pub. 559). Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution.
Mehinako
Ulrike Prinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Mehinako are also known as Meinaco, Meináku, and
Meinacu.
LOCATION
The Mehinako are located in the Parque do Xingu, Upper
Xingu, Mato Grosso, Central Brazil. The village is located
at the headwaters of the Kuluene River, an affluent of the
Xingu River, which is a major tributary of the Amazon.
The region of Upper Xingu is one of the typical Indian
retreat areas, which has been acknowledged as a reservation/parque indígena relatively soon (1961–71).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Mehinako live in a small village of 180 persons (in 2000),
living at the Upper Xingu headwaters.1 The village is
still mainly self-sufficient in the cultivation of bitter
manioc and fishing. Mehinako, together with Waurá
and Yawalapiti, belong to an Arawak-speaking group;
Kamayurá and Auetí are Tupi speaking, Kuikuru,
Kalapalo, Nafuquá and Matipu are Carib speaking, and
the village of the Trumai is linguistically separate. Despite
their different linguistic origins, Mehinako and their
neighbors within the Upper Xingu region have so many
cultural similarities, that they can almost be considered as
a single ethnic group (Lindig & Münzel, 1981). However,
each village is politically independent, maintaining a
monopoly on a particular craft. The predominantly peaceful association of the Upper Xingu villages emerges from
the integration of the individual contributions of each
group—cooperation, intermarriage, and kinship, as well
as the interchange of material and spiritual/intellectual
goods.
Mehinako, like their neighbors, live in a single
circular village of several communal houses surrounding
a central plaza, with a men’s house in the middle. Spatial
and social segregation of the sexes is one of the most
striking characteristics of the whole Upper Xingu region
(as well as in northwest Amazonia). This spatial segregation, together with the threat of “gang rape” for those
women who dare to see men playing the “sacred trumpets,” has lead to the assumption of a “male dominance
complex” in this area and a theory of “sexual antagonism”
(Quinn, 1977). The notion of “sexual antagonism” became
an important research concept in Amazonia and Melanesia
during the 1960s and 1970s (Herdt & Poole, 1982).
The segregation of Mehinako men and women
concerns above all the gendered village space as well as
the traditional division of labor and gender roles. The
gendered division of labor and its complementarity is
found in every sphere of life. For example, it occurs in the
production of the manioc-scraping spatula and the manioc
plant-stick. This manioc ritual in a complex interplay of
male and female agencies, letting everybody experience
the necessity for men and women to cooperate. However,
everyday subsistence depends not only on the cooperation
of gender groups, but also on kinship support.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
There are two recognized genders: female and male. The
ideal structure of Mehinako gender-relations can be
described using the dictum “separate but equal” (Etienne &
Leacock, 1980). The ideal balance of gender spheres is
also expressed in the representation of the spirits as
male–female pairs. Both ritual performance and the everyday behavior of men and women is based on the dual
vision of gender that is played out in rites of gender-role
reversal. Mehinako men and women state their equality
and feel the need for cooperation. Women actively participate in ritual life and perform their own music and
dances, although the role of official representation mainly
belongs to responsibilities of men. For example, political
decision-taking, representational and sponsor duties for
the household, and leadership functions for the village
undoubtedly belong to men. Female influence is often
652
Gender over the Life Cycle
described as informal, for example, in “trash-yard” gossip
which indeed may become a dangerous tool of female
influence and control. If the husband–wife relationship is
good, men often consult their spouses. In addition to “gossip,” Franchetto (1999, p. 218) identifies “market” and
“lovers” as further areas of (Kuikuru) women’s power.
Women are particularly influential in marriage politics, and
in the symbolic importance of situations of birth and death.
In everyday relations, the balance of power varies according to the characters and situations and can be subjected to
negotiations between the individual men and women.
Mehinako “villagers use the unconcealed anatomical differences between men and women to define
‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ and justify the differences
between the sexes” (Gregor, 1985, p. 40) However,
Mehinako do not look upon gender and the process of
growing up as a “natural development” but “regard them
like other institutions as man-made and on occasion subject to change” (Gregor, 1977, p. 254). Mehinako refer to
the growing up of their sons and daughters as an active
social and corporal process, which calls for the control of
bodily fluids (like semen, blood), and the use of emetics,
tobacco, oil and natural pigments (Viveiros de Castro,
1987, p. 32). The “fabrication” of a person in the Upper
Xingu region is more than a symbolic “rite de passage;”
it has to be acknowledged at the same time as a process
of “physical-spiritual” transformation in which the whole
village participates. In this context, the categories of age
and gender are closely linked together.
Gender differentiation becomes visible at a young age
in the different ornaments and hairstyles of boys and
girls. Girls grow their hair at least to the shoulders, while
boys wear a shorter cut in form of a pot or bowl. At the
end of puberty rites, the young women receive the ulurí
belt, made of buriti fiber, described as follows:
It consists of a single band of twine worn around the waist. To this band
is attached a pocket watch sized piece of bark in the rough shape of a
quadrilateral that sits on the pubis just above the genitals. A long thin
cord leads from this bark through the buttocks, to reappear as a kind of
protruding tail in the rear. (Gregor, 1977, p. 164)
Also it may be appreciated by men, women today rarely
wear the ulurí belt, because they find it uncomfortable.
They prefer simple belts of buriti fiber, that just go round
their waist.
Valuable shell necklaces demonstrate the status of a
young girl; they generally wear glass bead chains, which
also serve as a kind of currency at the women’s trading
sessions (uluki). For ritual occasions women paint a small
653
black sign (genipapo) on their cheeks and they may use
pequi oil to cover their face and body. Women also draw
special designs on their legs, using their own black dye
made from the juice of a special bark. They mostly apply
their own red and black dyes and their own designs. On
special ritual occasions they can use male designs or
colors; in this case however they rigidly observe the
difference in the body parts where these signs are allowed
to apply. For example, the use of red urucum paint (Bixa
orellana)—the main male color—is restricted to a line on
the upper forehead and on the feet up to the ankle in ritual
occasions.
Body decoration and dress is exclusively male or
female, but at the same time they are symbolically related
and equated to another. For example, the symbolism of
the special markers of puberty rites, the uluri belt for the
young women and the earrings for the young men (see
below), are equally valued and have the same meaning for
both gender groups.
Men’s decoration is richer in the use of different
designs, which refer to world of the spirits. Mehinako
have a high regard for well-executed designs and attractive ornaments (Gregor, 1977, p. 155ff.). When dressing
for ritual occasion, the young men put on arm and leg
bands, belts of shell, and belts of cotton as well as of glass
beads. There is a special hair design for men (teiyu) which,
as well as body paint, has a specific representational and
interactional significance. Dress and decorative ornaments
indicate the status of the person within the group.
The knee bands mark his age and whether he is a father. The color of
his belt declares how old he is, his earrings identify him as having
passed through the ear-piercing ritual, his shell belt, collar, and jaguar
claw necklace reveal him as a man of some wealth, and his hair and
body designs show him to be a shaman or a participant in a ritual.
(Gregor, 1977, p. 162)
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
During the life cycle a person passes through different
stages. These are marked by the changing of names,
which indicate at the same time the transformations of
the person/body during life. One person can have eight
or more different names, which are given to him or her
on particular occasions: when a child takes its first steps,
at the pühükã ceremony, when he/she marries and has
his/her first child, and when he/she reaches old age
(Gregor, 1977, p. 256). The names a person/receives are
654
passed on to him/her simultaneously by the maternal and
paternal sides, mostly reverting to the names of the grandparents’ generation and avoiding the duplication of
names. Since the father of a child cannot speak the name
of his father-in-law, for reasons of respect and/or shame
(the same applies to the mother), the child gains two
names at the same time—one maternal and one paternal.
During the first months of life a child is called by a
nickname which both mother and father may pronounce
without violating name taboos. There is a great deal of
flexibility in the reading of genealogies and the naming
system (Gregor, 1977, p. 256).
Every change in the stage of life-cycle concerning
social and/or corporal transformation is marked by a new
name, which will be announced to the public after an
official ritual occasion. Life stages are the same for both
sexes and the passage of puberty rites is celebrated equally
for boys and girls, differing only in symbolism (see below).
The “metamorphosis” of girls and boys at the age of
adolescence is the most important passage in the life
cycle. The girls ritual is called kaxatapa (akajatapa), and
the corresponding ceremony for boys is pühükã. Social
change and physical transformation are ritually “performed” by the whole village, including participation by
neighboring villages, and is followed by an individual
phase of puberty seclusion, which lasts from at least
3 months up to 3 years.
For both genders, puberty rites and seclusion not
only mark the change of status, but also a physical transformation. The more time the person spends in seclusion,
the more beautiful and sexually attractive his/her body
becomes. The body of the secluded person gains a new
shape through the control of bodily fluids, treatment with
emetics and tobacco, the application of special medicines
and designs, and bodily techniques such as scratching the
body with a special cuya scraper and tying the upper arms
and below the knee with cotton strings.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Mehinako appreciate children of both genders equally.
A slight preference is expressed for girls, especially as
the first born. This is because residence patterns, although
they are handled quite flexibly (Gregor, 1977, p. 266),
favor matrilocality and parents expect their oldest daughter to care for them in old age.
At the birth of the first child, both parents have to
observe strict couvade rules (Gregor, 1977, pp. 270–273).
Mehinako
These rules apply to diet and the restriction of special
actions, mainly concerning subsistence activities.
(During the couvade period the parents of the young
couple are supposed to take care of them.) The restrictions applied to the father help to stop the flow of the
post-partum blood and protect the child. It is believed that
up to 1 year of age the life of the newborn child is intimately connected to the conduct of its parents because its
“soul ()yeweku, literally, shadow) is not yet fixed and
could easily be taken away by a spirit” (Gregor, 1977,
p. 270). The restrictions are very precisely for a year
for the first child; post-partum seclusion is reduced to
3 months for the subsequent children. Illness or handicap
of a child will always be traced back to a prohibited activity by the father. For example, the father may not go out
to fish or build a house (Gregor, 1997, p. 272). After the
most dangerous period, the infant is carried around in the
rest of the house and is called by a nickname. Both parents and the elder sisters take care of the small children.
When it starts to walk it receives its first names. At about
the age of 5 years children become more independent and
begin to explore the nearer surroundings. A few years
later, when they have grown out of the control of their
older brothers and sisters, they play mostly in separate
peer groups of boys and girls. Educational ideals are the
same for both genders: they should be balanced in character and avoid extreme reactions. On the other hand,
“angry” girls or boys are also appreciated. However,
“angry” persons are not desirable for leadership, for a
good leader is supposed to be balanced and good-natured
and to abstain from gossip.
Puberty and Adolescence
When the parents become aware of the growing interest
of their boy or girl in the opposite sex, they start to
instruct them in their duties as future wife or husband.
The girl has to carry water and is instructed in craft
production and other skills. From now on she receives the
special attention of her mother. During this period boys
seem to enjoy more freedom. They can demonstrate their
abilities as good fishermen and wrestlers. However, if a
boy shows too much interest in the opposite sex without
favoring one girl, the parents may intervene and arrange
a marriage. When brideservice starts, the young men have
to comply with their duties and usually have to work for
their fathers-in-law for about 2 years. Brideservice is
called “payment for the vagina” (Franchetto, 1999,
Gender-Related Social Groups
p. 209). Extraconjugal relations also have to be “paid for”
(see below). In general, a young man moves to the house
or village of his future wife about a year before the wedding; he continues to perform brideservice for one year
after the wedding.
Attainment of Adulthood
Mehinako explain the need to arrange an initiation ceremony (pühükã) for boys when their behavior changes and
they start to become interested in girls. However, becoming a “ripe” marriageable man or woman involves a complex ritual process for the whole community. After the
ceremony every boy or girl gains two new names. The
attainment of adolescent status is the most important for
both genders, providing central personal and physical
transformation and change.
The intertribal ritual is organized by the chief’s
family when one or two of their boys reach the age
of puberty. The same is true for the girls. The rest of the
boys, whose families cannot afford such effort and costs,
take advantage of the occasion. In September 2000 nearly
all the boys in the village aged between 5 and 17 years
participated in the initiation ceremony.
The pühükã (piercing) ritual2 for boys not only makes
a social change but also their gradual corporal transformation. To my knowledge, the corresponding ceremony for
the girls (kaxatapa), when they receive their first ulurí belt,
has never been described before. The Mehinako told me
that the last kaxatapa was held for Yamuni about 25 years
ago. During this ritual the girls wear masculine paraphernalia. This indicates that the two rituals of adolescence—
similarly to the gendered rituals of yamarikumã and the
“sacred trumpets”—have a parallel construction and complement each other. They ritually invert gender roles and
play with them. As in the ritual of the “holy trumpets,” the
pühükã ritual demands exclusion of women during the
moment of ear-piercing of the initiands.
The pühükã ritual consist of three parts: the first
involves preparation of the feast and collective fishing,
welcoming the guests, exchanging goods and the climactic
hukã-hukã wrestling. During this first period the whole
village is engaged in singing and dancing.
At the beginning of the second phase the guests
should have already left. Now special importance is given
to the initiands. They shift between two opposing
situations: between rich ornamentation as celestial
birds, accompanied by singing and dancing by the whole
655
village, on the one hand, and nakedness plus silence, on
the other. This phase concludes with ear-piercing, and
passes into the third stage when the initiands are totally
cut off from the rest of village in the seclusion apartment.
The younger boys are allowed to return to their families
after a week of pühükã seclusion. However, for the main
initiands it is the beginning of a long phase of silence and
corporal and spiritual transformation.
Middle Age and Old Age
Mehinako men and women gain influence and authority
due to their experience and their abilities which they can
pass on to the younger generation. Married men and
women, who regularly participate in ritual performance,
can become special ritual leaders within their own gender
group. Rhetorical talent and the knowledge of ceremonial
forms increases with age. Elder men and women can gain
influence and authority, but reaching old age does not
seem to be specially honored. Old men are not taken
seriously because they forget and mix up everything. If
there is no daughter to look after them, old men have a
particularly hard life.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
BY GENDER
The same virtues are esteemed for both men and women:
to be well balanced, full of activity, and rich in knowledge. For men, there exist different rhetoric forms and
styles of speaking. Women are more reserved, but like to
comment on what men say. They are described as the
“owners of gossip” or “lies.” It is believed that women
“by words of mouth weave a network of alliances and
conflicts permeating the entire village” (Franchetto,
1999, p. 208).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Social structure is defined over the double relationships
in which the positions of both parents are given equal
weight (Gregor, 1977, p. 288ff.). This bilateral system
opens a field of interpretation and manipulation of
kinship, but at the same time it speaks for the ideal of
equality of the sexes. As in the naming of the children,
where both family lines are transmitted, Mehinako
656
Mehinako
society also gives equal weight to both genders in kinship
questions.
The rule of matrilocality is applied for marriage.
However, it can be relaxed in special cases, such as for
the young men who are expected to take over a political
or spiritual leadership role in the village.
The men’s house in the center of the village provides
a gathering place for men. It also serves as seclusion
chamber for future shaman aspirants and as the store for
the “holy trumpets,” which women are not supposed to
see while they are being played. Women are not provided
with a comparable institution; their gathering places are
the “trash-yards”—kitchens behind each longhouse—
where they visit one another to exchange news.
GENDER ROLES
IN
PARENTAL AND OTHER
CARETAKER ROLES
Parental roles are partly defined by the “production” of
a child, that is, the contribution of semen which the
Mehinako believe will form the fetus. The transformation
or “passage” of life is not looked upon as something
“natural” but as a process that is closely linked to the
“right” behavior of the couple. In the first months both
parents engage in the rearing of the newborn child. Later,
brothers and sisters, as well as the closest (mainly maternal) kin, living in the same maloca participate in the
socializing of the child. The ideal for both boys and girls
is a well-balanced person who does not exhibit extreme
behavior or temperament.
ECONOMICS
Mehinako division of labor does not stand out from that in
other lowland societies in South America. It comprises the
“classical” roles for men—fishing, clearing the fields,
wood carving, and feather work. Women process bitter and
sweet manioc, prepare food, and engage in the production
of hammocks, bead belts, and sometimes clay figures and
pots.3 Within the range of their economic activities, both
sexes are independent. Men as well as women have their
own bartering sessions (ulukí) and they freely make
decisions about their own products and properties.
Although labor is separated by gender, the result of
this division is the insight that cooperation is needed. Myth
and ritual display this system of reciprocal dependency. The
production of manioc tools (tunuyai and kuté), for example,
is associated with a ritual lasting several days, during which
the different gender roles and their relatedness are displayed. As the Mehinako say: “The spirit of manioc kukuhë
likes to play with the women.” Men and women engage in
ritual dancing and singing, denouncing the sexual insufficiency of the partner. These dances are repeated every
second evening and lead to insults and scolding of the
partners. During daytime men go ahead to manufacture the
manioc tools while women ritually welcome the men
returning from the woods and bring them food to eat at the
center. At the end of the ritual process men ceremonially
present the manioc tools to the women of their choice. In
this way the ritual process plays out and appeases partnership frustrations and at the same time produces manioc
tools, which are, through the spirit of kukuhë, closely linked
to the sexual activity of the villagers and fertility.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership, like nearly every element of Mehinako life,
is confined to separate gender groups, but exists equally
for both of them: each group has its own leader. However,
the official part of political leadership is clearly dominated by men. At first sight, the leadership of women
seems more for fulfillment of the needs of symmetry than
comprising real authority. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned here, because little attention has been paid to this
symmetrical structure and because the status of the male
political leader is not as “formal” as it would seem to the
Western spectator. Influence and authority, although it is
passed from father to son, is not completely due to heritage. It always depends on negotiations and decisions
taken at the men’s house. The role of the male leader is
played out in nearly every ritual, whereas the female
leader’s role seems to be confined to women’s rituals like
yamarikumã. Even in the girl’s initiation ritual kaxatapa
(akajatapa), men play the dramatically significant roles
(Gregor, 1985, p. 111). The role of women in the Upper
Xingu villages has generally been underestimated, and
until today there has been little fieldwork relating to
female ritual and musical traditions.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Religion in the Upper Xingu region involves
ritual performances and “spirits” or even “monsters”
Gender and Religion
(Barcelos Neto, 2000). Ambiguous beings can take the
forms of humans (independently of their sex), animals,
plants, or even artifacts. They are able to transform and
can cause people to become seriously ill. If the person
survives the attack, she/he builds up an intimate relationship with the spirit, which consists in feeding it regularly
and manufacturing masks or performing dances in its
honor throughout at least a year.
As to the perception of ritual and myth, the gender
representations in the Upper Xingu region, especially at
Mehinako village, have been of special interest over the
past 20 years. They have been interpreted as male dominated and antagonistic (Gregor, 1985, 1988). This position seems to be supported by the existence of a men’s
house and the so-called “trumpet cult,” where the kauka
“flutes” (a set of aerophones that are kept securely in the
men’s house and played in special ritual performances)
are not supposed to be seen by women.
Myths refer to a time when women owned these
flutes until the men discovered their “secret” and their
“fraud.” The men took over the instruments from the
women and even today the women are forbidden to watch
the Kauka being played under the penalty of gang rape.
This ritual and mythical complex provides the basis for
the opinion that there are antagonistic and even hostile
relationships between men and women in the Upper
Xingu Region (Franchetto, 1999; Gregor, 1985, 1988;
Gregor & Tutzin, 2001). However, McCallum suggests
that the interpretation that the extreme penalty of gang
rape enables the men to gain power over their women, is
a Western projection of naturalizing sexuality: “Gang
rape in the Alto Xingu—whether as an idea or as an
event—is many things: what it is not is a manifestation of
a supposed universal male desire to overpower and
humiliate women” (McCallum, 1994, p. 110).
Recent interpretations of myth and ritual of “genderwar” (Gregor, 1985, p. 119ff.) in the Upper Xingu have
gone beyond the debate of “antagonism” and the related
“male dominance complex.” Female researchers have
revealed the existence of a corresponding female tradition
that has been invisible or underestimated for a long time.
The research of Basso (1985) on the Kalapalo and
Monod-Bequelin (1982, 1987) on the Trumai emphasize
the complementary structure of the gender-related rituals
in Upper Xingu. These researches stress the existence of
a female ritual called yamarikumã.
In the yamarikumã ritual women act like men in
ritual performance, using male body design and wearing
657
their feather crowns. Both gendered rituals require the
exclusion of the opposite gender (Basso, 1985) and at the
same time complement one another. They must be understood in relation to another; both exist as a simple village
performance, as well as an intertribal ritual involving
larger groups of women, independently of their village
affiliation.
The yamarikumã ritual has been interpreted as a
reflex or answer to the male “trumpet cult.” However, it
is not just a copy of male tradition, but is acknowledged
by Mehinako men and women as the origin and model for
the male trumpet melodies. At Mehinako village there
exist at least two explicitly female musical traditions
(yamarikumã and tünexekumã) for which women are
responsible (Prinz, 2002; Prinz & Grubner, 2001).
Aggressive conduct of men towards women (by the
threat of gang rape) or by women towards men (by
scratching and beating men who dare to come too close)
during the rituals cannot be explained in terms of anxiety
about the opposite gender group, as suggested by Gregor
(1985) and Basso (1985). Why should women ritually
transform into men in order to express their sexual
aggression? I suggest that the gendered rituals have a
different role—secret play with the agency of the opposite gender/sex. In “antagonistic” gender rituals men and
women play with the agencies of the opposite sex, subverting and transgressing the strict gender roles (Prinz,
1999, pp. 270–271). Ritual escape from role conventions
allows both men and women to step out of their own position and experience the opposite one. When men play the
kauka trumpets and women dance decorated with male
paraphernalia, they not only play with gender roles, but
during the performance they also turn into the powerful
spirits of kauka and yamarikumã, respectively for the
duration of the ritual, the performers (of kauka or
yamarikumã) submit to its transformative powers.
However, transformation is a very dangerous process that
must be invisible. If it becomes visible to the opposite
sex, the limits between spirit performance and spirit condition fuse. Men transform into enraged “spirits” and this
may lead to gang rape. Such an extreme event must be
understood as transgression, and not as a powerful tool
for men to keep women in their place.
Myths show that the reason for transformation is
not hostile gender relations, but the fraud (Prinz, 1999,
pp. 273–274) of the social contract, which basically
consists in the exchange of food, handicraft, love, and
labor. Myths also tell us that women vested as men is
658
Mehinako
a fraud in the same way that the playing of the kauka is
a fraud. Nevertheless, men play with female agencies
(kauka “trumpets”) and women play with male agencies.
The play with these agencies can best be interpreted as an
attempt to gain control over the opposite agencies in the
condition of the spirit, and not as a means of overpowering the opposite sex (Prinz, 2002).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
When asked about their daily work, Mehinako women
assured us that they really work hard and that men also
work hard. They did not understand the question: “Which
sex worked harder.” Perhaps the symmetrical gender
structure inhibits comparison of the two separate contributions that are honored equally and are so intimately
linked together. In their leisure time, both men and
women engage in gender-specific handicrafts or they
may lie in their hammocks for a while to rest. Couples
converse together and go to take a bath; single people
play with their friends in gender- and age-related groups
or try to make arrangements with their lovers (see below).
In the afternoon the young men play football at the central plaza. In the evenings the men gather in front of the
men’s house. The younger generation—men, women,
and children—like to watch television (see below).
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
As stated above, the status of men and women is generally equal; they do not compete in different domains and
activities because the spheres are carefully separated.
Therefore the question of status only arises within one
gender group and is defined to a great extent by kinship.
Women wear a special tattoo to show their affiliation with
the chief family. A person also gains respect through the
attainment of special knowledge.
SEXUALITY
Mehinako men are very outspoken about their sexual
relations and extramarital affairs are one of the favorite
subjects of discussion in the village (Gregor, 1977).
Lovers who meet outside the village give each other
presents in exchange for sexual relations. During the
bartering sessions (ulukí) the sexual activity of a
particular woman is quickly revealed to the rest of the
women by the abundance of her glass bead necklaces.
Men describe the odor of menstrual blood as
disgusting, but in the village a menstruating women only
keeps away from the kitchen and subsistence activities
for a short time.
It is believed that many sexual acts, sometimes
with different men, are necessary to form a fetus. Several
Mehinako women complained about the extreme pain
during the birth of their first child; one of them decided
to take a special medicine for contraception, and another
living outside the village in Canarana choose to take the
contraceptive pill.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
According to Basso (1973) and Gregor (1977) there are
two forms of marriage. The first is called “bringing up
one’s bride.” In this form, the newly adolescent girl is
brought to her future husband’s house, where she has to
spend the time of seclusion. This implies high payments
to her relatives and is held to be very prestigious (Gregor,
1977, p. 282). In the second form the hammock of the
future husband is publicly carried into the house of the
girl. Before the second form of marriage, Mehinako boys
and girls have considerable freedom to engage in sexual
experience. Lovers give each other presents such as fish,
belts of glass beads, or little carvings in the shell of the
coconut. Ideal marriage partners are cross cousins.
Sometimes marriage is arranged by the parents to discipline their children’s conduct. If the young man, for
example, does not accept his parents’ choice, he refuses
to sleep with the girl and does not give her any food to
eat. To resolve the conflict, either the boy has to abandon
the village or he marries the girl and later takes another
wife of his own choice. Polygyny (mainly sororal polygyny) is accepted within the “chief” family. Husband and
wife can equally initiate divorce.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship depends on many individual factors: the acceptance of the (external) husband in
the house of his father-in-law and in the village, personal
ideas about love, and the sexuality of the couple.
References
Harmonious marriages seemed to be relatively common, but it is judged foolish to show love and affection
openly. Despite the strict gender division of labor,
spouses do spend a great deal time together, taking baths
together, or visiting the gardens (places where couples
can have some private conversation as well as sexual relations). A couple’s hammock positions and the taking of
meals (together or separated) reveal the conditions of
their relationship. “When enraged at her husband, a wife
may take a machete and cut down her husband’s
hammock …” (Gregor, 1985, p. 28). Various young men
complained and planned separation, although one of
them already had offspring.
Only newly married couples may express their
affection openly and sleep together in a large hammock
(Gregor, 1985, pp. 26–27). Although there seems to be no
need for conjugal fidelity, marriage is the basis of an
important economic unity and a bond to assure social
status and the ability to participate in public ceremony.
A single person is a source of disturbance to the system
of reciprocal dependency. The situation for bachelors and
widows may become difficult with increasing age if they
do not succeed in finding new partners.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Telecommunication has not stopped at the gates of Upper
Xingu. Three of the nine longhouses have a television set,
but only one of them is regularly used provided that permission is obtained from the generator’s owner. The generator and the television set belong to different people
who have to agree to and be recompensed for their use.
When there are no ritual performances, a group of young
men and women gather to watch the news, football,
and/or the “telenovela” (daily soap). Some men translate
the series for their wives, and news from the outside
world is sometimes intensely discussed. Watching television seems to compete with the gatherings at the men’s
house. The influence of the telenovela together with
experiences of Mehinako men outside the Xingu region
is likely to lead to some changes in interpersonal relations
within the younger generation. Some of the young men
express their discontent about the strict separation of gender spheres and the common rule not to show affection,
as well as the strong influence of the parents in marriage
659
decisions. However, Western-style romantic love is still
considered to be ridiculous.
NOTES
1. Mehinako village-life has been described in an outstanding
monograph Mehinaku: The Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian
Indian Village by Thomas Gregor (1977). Gregor and his wife
carried out intensive research in 1967 and various visits during the
early 1970s. For some of the issues I refer to his excellent data, trying
to update some of his information. However, with respect to gender
relations, changing research concepts of recent decades and the
focus on women’s perspective has led to some different conclusions,
particularly in the interpretation of the gendered rituals—the “trumpet cult” and the corresponding female yamarikumã ritual— which
will be discussed below.
2. This ritual is mentioned by Oberg (1953) and Murphy and Quain
(1955). A short description is given by Myazaki (1964) and a short
interpretation is given by Gregor (1985, p. 186ff.). I was lucky
enough to be invited to a pühükã ceremony in September 2000 at the
Mehinako village (Prinz, 2004).
3. Strictly speaking, the production of clay pottery is the monopoly of
Waurá village. But since Waurá and Mehinako (both Arawak speaking) are tightly linked through kinship, Waurá women like Takulalu,
the wife of Yumuin, together with some other women of the village
engage in manufacturing clay.
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Marco Zero.
Mexicans
Julia Pauli
LOCATION
Mexico’s northern border is the United States. It shares
its southern border with Guatemala and Belize. The
Pacific Ocean limits Mexico to the west while the Gulf of
Mexico is on the east.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
With an estimated 97 million people (INEGI, 2000)
currently living in Mexico, the country is the largest
Spanish-speaking nation of the world. The country has
experienced several significant changes in the 20th century, for example, a tremendous rate of urbanization and a
substantial population growth (Canak & Swanson, 1998,
pp. 141–149). However, fertility has started to decline.
Total fertility rates have dropped from 6.8 children in 1970
to 3.8 children in 1986 (Mier y Terán, 1996, p. 326).
Mexico is a highly stratified country and there are marked
differences by class, region, and ethnicity. Here the focus
will be on the so-called Mexican mestizos (Canak &
Swanson, 1998, p. 85). The term mestizo is not unproblematic. It is mainly a scientific term that is used to refer
to the great majority of Mexicans who do not define themselves as Spanish or Indian but of mixed descent. Mestizos
speak Spanish and no Indian language. The vast majority
of the population profess to be Catholics. The kinship is
organized bilaterally. Nuclear and male-headed families
are most common, although female-headed and extended
households do exist.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Two cultural concepts figure prominently in Mexican
mestizo gender imagery: the macho man and the mother.
Whereas the macho man is stereotyped as hard-drinking,
promiscuous, easily angered, violent, and aggressive, the
most important defining trait of the mother stereotype is
her suffering on behalf of her children’s well-being.
Being perceived as a macho does not only have negative
connotations. Local practices reveal that being a macho
can also mean being a responsible and respected father
and provider of the family (Gutmann, 1996; Howell,
1999, p. 105; Melhuus, 1996, p. 243, 1998, p. 360). Here,
the gender roles of men and women are viewed as
complementary, with the man working outside the home,
being the main breadwinner and protector of the family,
and the woman staying home and taking care of household and children. The opposite of this kind of macho is
the mandilón (apron wearer), a female-dominated man
(Gutmann, 1996, p. 221). Being publicly viewed as dominated and provided for by the wife is perceived as an
insult by both men and women (Del Castillo, 1993). How
influential the norm of male breadwinning on actual
behavior can be is demonstrated in a study on workingclass men and women from Mexico City (Del Castillo,
1993). Even if women de facto provide for the household
and are the main breadwinner, both husband and wife
pretend that this is not the case and continue to fulfill the
normative gender roles in public.
Female gender roles are centralized around the
Mexican concept of motherhood. When people are asked
which persons are closest to them, the mother is mentioned far more frequently than any other role independent of the origin and sex of the informant (Finkler, 1994,
p. 56; Pauli, 2000, p. 182). Also, many women from rural
and urban regions and different social strata consider
motherhood as their main gender role and source of identity (García & de Oliveira, 1997). This kind of female
gender construction is strongly influenced by popular
images of the Virgin (Franco, 1989; Martin, 1990;
Melhuus, 1993, 1996, 1998). The Virgin of Guadalupe is
not only one of the most prominent national symbols, she
also serves as a female role model. She combines the two
most valued female traits: being a virgin and being a suffering mother. Suffering is viewed as inherent in motherhood. Finkler’s (1994, 1997) study of urban women’s
pains and sicknesses demonstrates that the ideology of
the suffering mother pervades Mexican mestizo society
and is actually reinforced by women’s everyday life.
661
662
Mexicans
Women’s virtues have to be guarded constantly and
it is considered inappropriate for a woman to live alone
(Del Castillo, 1993). Being married and under the
guardianship of a husband or being unmarried and under
the guardianship of a father or brothers can, in society’s
view, guarantee a woman’s honor and virtue (Howell,
1999, p. 105; Melhuus, 1993, p. 244). Being viewed as a
respectable woman means being a decent woman
(Melhuus, 1998, p. 364). The opposite of a decent woman
is a bad or loose woman, a mujer mala (Finkler, 1994,
p. 57; Howell, 1999, p. 105, Melhuus, 1998, p. 364).
Sexual connotations, like having no shame and being
open, are inscribed in the concept of the bad woman
(Melhuus, 1998, p. 364).
The strong dichotomization of the female gender
concepts—decent and indecent women—can be understood in relation to the male gender concepts. Virility is
one important aspect of being a macho. Being a respected
husband and protector of an honorable wife and family is
another. Taken together, in order to confirm his masculinity, a man needs honorable women (his mother, his
sisters, his wife, and his daughters) and mujeres malas,
“loose” women (Melhuus, 1996, p. 244).
Clothes, make-up, and hairstyle are important ways
of visually marking gender difference. It is very common
to pierce a girl baby’s earlobes, but this is probably the
only permanent body mark to express a person’s sex
(Prieur, 1998, p. 144). Further, social classes vary in
their strength of highlighting a person’s gender. Middle
and upper classes tend to stress a more restrained and
reserved femininity (Prieur, 1998, p. 150) whereas the
working class has kept an ideal that Prieur (1998, p. 145)
describes as “Marilyn Monroe” like. Big breasts and
buttocks are viewed as beautiful, and clothes that emphasize these perceived advantages are favored. Light skin, a
straight nose, and height are also viewed as beautiful and
sexually attractive (Prieur, 1998, p. 145). To fulfill this
visual stereotype, the effeminate homosexuals studied by
Prieur (1998) manipulate their bodies through surgery,
female hormone therapy, and oil injections.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
In an idealized form, it is possible to divide the female
life cycle into four stages: childhood (niñez), adolescence
(estar señorita), married life (la vida de casada), and old
age/widowhood (LeVine, 1993). There is no publicly
marked transformation from childhood to adolescence,
but during the second stage a ritual is performed to
express a girl’s entry into the adult world. On her 15th
birthday a fiesta may be given for a girl, who is called a
quinceañera, to mark that she is now an adult and has
reached marriageable age. The beginning of married life
may be expressed through a public wedding ceremony
and fiesta. However, many women start their conjugal life
without such a ceremony and live for years in what is
called an unión libre, or consensual union. Old age and
sometimes widowhood again lack a public ritual and are
more gradual processes. Ideally, the children start to
provide for their aged parents, reversing the former support flow. An idealized version of the male life cycle
varies only slightly from this schema. The second stage
of the male life cycle lacks the public ritual, the fiesta de
quinceaños, which marks a girl’s entry into adulthood.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Both boys and girls are gender socialized early. In rural
settings, girls are taught household tasks, such as the
preparation of tortillas, as early 4 or 5 years of age. It is
common for young girls to take care of small children.
These tasks also prepare girls to become capable of
running a household on their own (Howell, 1999, p. 104).
Boys often accompany their fathers in their daily activities and learn how to work in the field. In general, girls
and boys are dressed and treated according to normative
gender roles early in life. Girls are dressed in light colors,
are scolded if they play in the dirt, and have their earlobes
pierced as babies. Boys are allowed to be noisy and get
dirty (Prieur, 1998, p. 119).
Differences between boys and girls are expressed in
everyday practices. Whereas beauty is stressed when talking about a baby girl, a baby boy is referred to in terms
of physical strength, intelligence, and even reproductive
capacity (Gutmann, 1996, p. 105). Also, it is common to
address boys and girls as little mothers and fathers
(mamacitas and papacitos). At least on an elementary
level, girls and boys are given the same educational
opportunities (Finkler, 1994, p. 64; Gutmann, 1996,
p. 163; LeVine, 1993, p. 22). Boys and girls rarely spend
their leisure time together. It is common for men to play
sports on Sundays, especially soccer and baseball. On
these occasions, fathers take their sons but not their
daughters. Daughters often stay with their mothers and
other female kin like female cousins. In general, freedom
Middle Age and Old Age
of movement is far more restricted for girls than for boys,
and it is considered normal for girls to be chaperoned and
for male kin to guard them. There are several secular and
religious rituals and fiestas during childhood. Probably
the most prominent Catholic ritual is baptism. A very
popular secular fiesta is the celebration of a child’s
third birthday. These rituals and fiestas are celebrated
irrespective of gender.
Gender preferences vary in urban and rural settings
(LeVine, 1993, p. 178). In rural areas, a preference for
sons is common. Sons, and given the diffusion of ultimogeniture, most often the youngest son (Robichaux, 1997),
are expected to take care of the parents in old age.
However, this picture changes for the urban population,
and daughters gain in importance. In the urban workingclass context, there is often no property to be inherited and
the dyad between son and father may become more superficial (Lomnitz, 1977, p. 123). But the mother–daughter
dyad remains strong after the daughter’s marriage and it is
not uncommon for a daughter’s family to reside with the
daughter’s mother or nearby (Del Castillo, 1993; LeVine,
1993, p. 179).
Women are mainly responsible for children’s socialization (e.g., Marroni de Velázquez, 1994). Sometimes
the mother exchanges help with other women, mainly kin
or fictive kin, comadres. Although most child care is still
done by women, mainly by the mother of a child, important variations have emerged. First, Gutmann (1996,
ch. 3) demonstrates the increasing importance of the
father. Secondly, working mothers are increasingly using
paid childcare, such as nannies or day-care centers
(Howell, 1999).
PUBERTY
AND
ADOLESCENCE
Becoming a señorita is marked by the onset of menstruation. When girls start to menstruate, the chaperoning by
male kin can become even stricter than before (LeVine,
1993, p. 77). Many girls are not informed about the
biological background of menstruation and they may
think that they are going to die (LeVine, 1993, p. 77).
Often, virginity is viewed as the most important trait for
an unmarried girl, and fathers, mothers, and brothers
alike guard the honor of a girl (LeVine, 1993; Melhuus,
1996). Nevertheless, there are significant variations.
Because of economic necessity, it is not uncommon for
young girls to have to work. In these cases, complete
663
chaperoning is impossible. Also, given the increased level
of education at present and thus longer time in school,
more and more girls interact with boys within the school
setting and without the observation of their families
(LeVine, 1993, p. 78).
ATTAINMENT
OF
ADULTHOOD
Only for girls is there a publicly marked ritual of entrance
into adulthood. The celebration consists of a mass
to thank God followed by a fiesta (Napolitano, 1997,
p. 281). Originally, this ritual was only celebrated by the
upper and upper-middle class and served the purpose of
presenting a now marriageable girl to society (LeVine,
1993, p. 60; Napolitano, 1997, p. 281). According to
LeVine (1993, p. 60), this custom was adopted by the
middle class after the Mexican Revolution (1917), and by
the 1950s working-class parents had also begun to celebrate the fiesta de quinceaños. Today, upper- and middleclass Mexicans often prefer not to celebrate the ritual and
instead opt for expensive presents like a car or a trip to
Europe (Napolitano, 1997, p. 282). Among the working
class and in rural areas the celebration is very common.
Girls are proud to be honored in such a way (LeVine,
1993, p. 77; Napolitano, 1997). However, their new status also involves more restrictions on a girl’s freedom
(Napolitano, 1997, p. 290). The fear that a girl may lose
her virginity is countered by protecting and watching her
as much as possible until she marries. Ideally, with
marriage or a consensual union, a woman advances
another step in her attainment of adulthood, but this passage may be viewed as completed only with motherhood.
For boys, the attainment of adulthood is even more gradual than for girls. In rural areas at least, a young man has
not reached full adult status until he is married or living
with a woman in a consensual union.
MIDDLE AGE
AND
OLD AGE
The “cult of motherhood” (Finkler, 1997, p. 1152) has
direct effects on the lives of middle-aged and old women.
To be considered a woman, it is important to become a
mother (Melhuus, 1993, 1996). Thus, children are central
to most women’s lives after marriage. It is through her
children that a woman gains respect and is able to engage
in social relations. Married women without children tend
664
Mexicans
to be very isolated (Pauli, 2000). It is often only through
the birth of children that the social networks of women
start to enlarge. Fictive kin relationships, especially
between a mother and her comothers, her comadres, are
central in middle age. These are the most important
sources of reciprocal help. In old age, fictive kin may still
be important. However, the now grown-up children
become the most important source of help. Also, a
woman’s adult sons may protect her from a violent
husband (Finkler, 1997, p. 1153).
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
In an oversimplified way, women are expected to be
nurturing and reticent whereas men are viewed as dominant and often aggressive. Again, the prominent cultural
stereotypes of the virile macho and the suffering mother
explain these gendered inscriptions. Being sociable is
generally viewed as positive. However, there are certain
limits. Women can be blamed for engaging in what is
considered as gossip (Villarreal, 1996). Husbands and
mothers-in-law often severely restrict a woman’s movements. They may explain their action as a form of
prevention against the woman’s engagement in gossip.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Patrilocal residence is common (Fowler-Salamini &
Vaughan, 1994; Robichaux, 1997). Nevertheless, the
length of time a couple may live in the husband’s father’s
household varies. If it is the youngest son, the couple will
inherit the house. For all other sons, the length of stay
depends on the economic background of the family
(González Montes, 1994). For households with alternative
income sources and no land, the period tends to be short
(González Montes, 1994; Robichaux, 1997). The incoming wives often hope for rapid establishment of a separate
household, given the fact that the time living with the
husband’s kin is often the most conflict-laden period in a
woman’s life (Pauli, 2000). In rural areas, the localized
patrilineal groups (Robichaux, 1997) are often important
support networks and pressure groups. Especially within
the ejido system, the communal land administration, large
male kin groups can be very influential.
However, more and more sons prefer neolocal
residence after marriage. With the income generated
through international migration, they are able to establish
an independent household before marriage (Mummert,
1994; Pauli, 2000). There are few cases of matrilocal
residence in rural areas (Robichaux, 1997). Living near or
with the wife’s mother’s family seems to be more common in urban areas (Del Castillo, 1993). One explanation
is the general lack of land to be inherited in this setting
and thus a weaker bond between father and son (LeVine,
1993, p. 179; Lomnitz, 1977, p. 123).
Another important feature of social structure is
the fictive kinship system, the compadrazgo system
(White, Schnegg, Brudner, & Nutini, 2002). This system
of godparenthood not only stresses the bond between
godparents and godchild but also the bond between
godparents and parents. On a structural level, groups are
formed on the basis of couples. Yet, in everyday life,
divisions along gender lines become important. Social
interaction seldom occurs between couples but more
between mother and comother (comadre) and father and
cofather (compadre).
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Stereotypically, man is the main breadwinner working
outside the household, whereas the woman is in charge of
children and household chores. Deviations from this
norm are often viewed negatively. A working woman
may imply that the husband is not able to provide, which,
in turn, can be viewed as a detraction of his honor
(Melhuuss, 1996, p. 245). There are pejorative terms to
describe men doing household chores, like mandilón
(apron-wearer).
A growing number of women now engage in
wage labor. The economic activities of women are
increasingly important for the survival of the household
(e.g., González Montes, 1994; Pagán & Sánchez, 2000).
Nevertheless, these women are often viewed as marginal
(Chant, 1997). If women work outside the home, they are
generally paid less and their jobs are considered less prestigious than those of men (e.g., Benería & Roldán, 1987;
Brown, Pagán, & Rodríguez-Oreggia, 1999; Howell,
1999; Rothstein, 1999). Aside from work in export manufacturing, women often work in commerce, such as
making and selling food. Other domestic tasks are also
done by women for income generation, such as washing,
Leadership in Public Arenas
ironing, and sewing (Chant, 1997). Besides engaging in
paid employment, most women are expected to undertake
a major share of the housework (Bennett, 1995).
The division of labor by gender is also reflected in
international migration strategies (Massey, Alarcón,
Durand, & González, 1987, p. 199). Most migrants to the
United States are men, yet a growing number of mainly
young and childless women have started to migrate internationally. Nevertheless, the majority of rural women
stay in Mexico. Duration of time in the United States
varies according to the aspired aims. Given that most of
this migration is illegal and therefore that crossing the
border is costly, migrants often stay for several years.
Migration is directly linked to the life cycle (Massey
et al., 1987, p. 200). Often the process starts when men
are young and unmarried. After marriage, many men stop
migrating but start again with the arrival of children. In
older age and when the children are grown up, international migration is normally ended.
Female migration generally takes place within
Mexico. In rural areas, it is common for unmarried
women to migrate to urban areas to work as a muchacha
(maid). A high proportion of women work in tourism and
in “maquiladorized industry” (e.g., Kopinak, 1995, p. 30;
Tiano, 1994), which is characterized as employing mainly
unskilled assembly workers not organized in unions.
Within the ejido system, mostly men hold land titles
(Brunt, 1992, p. 78). Thus inheritance of land is predominately patrilineal and all sons may be heirs (González
Montes, 1994). For a family’s house, ultimogeniture is
widely practiced (Robichaux, 1997). In urban areas, both
daughters and sons may inherit property, yet there is often
a bias toward male inheritance (Gutmann, 1996, p. 73).
PARENTAL AND OTHER
CARETAKER ROLES
Parental norms and actual behavior are not always in
accord. On a normative level, the father’s main obligation
is to provide for the family economically. The mother
should care for the children and the household (Gutmann,
1996, p. 74). Mothers in general spend more time than
fathers with child-rearing. Certain child-rearing tasks like
washing and feeding infants are mostly done by mothers.
But fathers may also play an important role in the
children’s socialization. This is especially true for
665
socialization of boys. If possible, fathers take their sons
with them to work. Mothers more often than fathers
discipline and even beat their children (Gutmann, 1996,
p. 77; LeVine, 1993, p. 159). Affection is not necessary
a motherly trait, but can even be viewed as characteristic
of a father–child relation (Gutmann, 1996, p. 76).
Supervising homework and the child’s formal education
can be done by either parent, yet religious education and
church attendance are generally the mother’s domain.
Class may affect parenting. As Gutmann (1996, p. 85)
notes, middle- and upper-class fathers are less likely to
take part in childcare than working-class fathers. This is
because most childcare in the upper and middle class is
done by a muchacha (maid, cook, and nanny).
Parent–child interactions are changing (LeVine,
1993, p. 158). Middle-aged people comment that they still
address their parents as Usted (the formal “you”) and not
as tú, as is typical for their children. Also, relations
between parents and children have generally become more
affectionate (Gutmann, 1996, p. 76; LeVine, 1993, p. 158).
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Women are excluded to a large extent from holding
political office although since 1953 they can vote and be
voted for. Formal politics are male dominated (Browner,
1986, p. 95; Brunt, 1992, p. 78; Canak & Swanson, 1998,
p. 78). Yet although leadership in public arenas, such as
an ejido commission or the governance of a municipality,
is male dominated, there are several examples of direct
female influence. Martin (1994) describes the pressure
that a group of women in rural Mexico exercised on local
politics. The women went so far as to occupy the town
hall for several days to promote a politician favored by
them. Women played a prominent role in the social
movement to secure new housing for the displaced families after the calamitous earthquake in Mexico City in
1985 (Finkler, 1994, p. 70). In the past, women participated as leaders and soldiers in the Mexican Revolution
(Chant, 1997, p. 126).
Most of women’s political involvement and leadership in public arenas is associated with female household
roles (Bennett, 1995; Martin, 1990). Several women have
led protests for better community services (e.g., FowlerSalamini & Vaughan, 1994). The numerous female
upheavals pleading for installation or improvement of
water services in Monterrey, northern Mexico, are an
666
Mexicans
example of this type of social protest (Bennett, 1995). Yet,
there are class differences. Collective action like the public water protest is more typical for working-class women.
One reason why men dominate formal politics on the
local as well as on the national level lies in the different
make-up of male and female social networks (Brunt, 1992,
p. 98). Female networks are mainly horizontal. They are
built on exchange and help within the domestic sphere.
Male networks, on the other hand, are more often related
to a man’s occupation and are more vertical in nature.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Everyday religious activities, like going to Sunday mass
or taking care of the family’s shrine (e.g., displaying a
picture of Christ and often statuettes of the Virgin of
Guadalupe or other saints), are practiced more often by
women than by men. Older women especially devote a
significant amount of their time to religious activities
(LeVine, 1993, p. 107). Yet, religious offices in the cargo
system are almost completely held by males.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Gender segregation is practiced during most leisure-time
activities. In rural areas, it is common for men and boys
to engage in sports, while women gather with other
women and girls, mainly kin. Religious or lay festivals
are the most common forms of sociability and enjoyment
for women. They are almost the only form of entertainment permitted to women beside watching television and
listening to the radio (Marroni de Velázquez, 1994).
Participation in these events is governed by the rules of
gender separation—women decorate the church and
provide the costumes and food, while men provide music
and drinks and make speeches (Marroni de Velázquez,
1994). Both male and female teenagers enjoy commercial
dances and private fiestas (e.g., the celebration of a fiesta
de quinceaños). Normally, unmarried children stay
with their families or other kin and only interact with
nonrelated girls while dancing.
Men often like to spend their leisure time with their
cuates, their drinking buddies (Gutmann, 1996, p. 177;
Lomnitz, 1977, p. 175), in a cantina, preferably a malesonly bar. Drinking with cuates within the house is almost
never tolerated by wives or mothers.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Rights and decision-making powers vary significantly
across the life cycle for men and maybe even more so for
women. Publicly, men are viewed as the decision-makers
for most of the important areas of everyday life, such as
use of resources, community representation, or family
and kinship matters. However, unmarried men and
married men residing patrilocally are limited in their
decision-making capacities by their father’s authority.
Equally, parents and in-laws often severely limit the
freedom of their daughters and daughters-in-law to make
decisions on almost all matters, ranging from the way to
perform domestic chores to the use of birth control
(Shedlin & Hollerbach, 1981). Not surprisingly, the
establishment of an independent household generally
enhances the decision-making power of husband and
wife. However, the wife remains under the control of her
husband. It is common that a woman exercises a significant amount of authority and decision-making influence
only when her sons have reached adulthood and bring in
daughters-in-law.
Female participation in the labor market does not
necessarily result in enhancement of their influence and
decision-making power. Husbands from lower-income
classes sometimes feel threatened by a wife’s entry into the
labor market as this may signal publicly that a man is not
able to provide for his wife (Benería & Roldán, 1987). One
consequence may be that, although the wife is the main
breadwinner, she does not exercise the corresponding
rights over the resources. Publicly, and sometimes also
privately, the husband remains the main decision-maker
(Del Castillo, 1993). However, well-educated working
wives of the upper-income class report an increased say
in household matters (Hubbell, 1993). International
migration can also enhance the decision-making power of
women. In the absence of their husbands, wives start to
make decisions normally considered part of the male
domain, like decisions on planting the field or supervising
house construction (Finkler, 1994, p. 65).
SEXUALITY
A widespread view held by men and women alike is that
men love to have sex and as many orgasms as possible
(Gutmann, 1996, p. 143). Women are often perceived as
not having sex for their own pleasure. Instead, they are
Husband–Wife Relationship
thought to agree to it in exchange for something else,
like affection, upkeep, or money (LeVine, 1993, p. 89;
Prieur, 1998, p. 81). Also, women’s menstrual blood may
be viewed as polluting (Gutmann, 1996, p. 122). This
logic is sometimes applied to excuse male infidelities.
The wife is expected to be devoted to her husband,
whereas the husband may be unfaithful. Although this
perception is changing, many women still knowingly
tolerate extramarital affairs by their husbands as long as
they fulfill their economic role as provider for the family
(LeVine, 1993, p. 195). Men may even maintain more
than one family, an institution called casa chica or small
house (Finkler, 1994, p. 59).
Before marriage, young men generally have had
sexual experiences, sometimes with prostitutes. Unlike
young boys, adolescent girls are often unaware of how
their bodies function. They are frightened when they start
menstruating; they do not know how to use contraception
and are thus at risk of becoming unwillingly pregnant
(LeVine, 1993, p. 66).
Talking about sexuality seems to be very common in
the working class. Men and women alike joke and tease
each other using ambiguous and sometime openly vulgar
expressions (Gutmann, 1996, p. 142; Prieur, 1998, p. 65).
To define homosexuality (and also heterosexuality),
the way that intercourse is practiced is crucial. Being
masculine implies being the one who is active and penetrates. Conversely, being feminine means being passive
and penetrable (Carrier, 1995; Melhuus, 1996, p. 240,
1998, p. 359; Paz, 1961; Prieur, 1996, 1998). Thus, the
one who penetrates is not regarded as homosexual. He is
viewed as a man regardless of the sex of his partner. The
one who is being penetrated is viewed as feminine
(Prieur, 1996, p. 86).
667
reality is that a significant number of couples live in what
is called a unión libre, a consensual union (Del Castillo,
1993). Couples may also elope without notifying their
parents in order to force a marriage of which their parents
may disapprove.
Sometimes, men maintain more than one family, an
institution called casa chica (small house) in contrast to
the casa grande (big house), which belongs to the legal
wife and children (Finkler, 1994, p. 59). Although
monogamy is the norm, this type of de facto polygyny is
common, especially for the middle and upper classes who
also have the necessary resources to finance it (Finkler,
1994, p. 59; Gutmann, 1996, p. 140). Often the man does
not take the responsibility for his out-of-wedlock
offspring and refuses either to divorce his wife or to set
up a casa chica. Accordingly, the number of single
mothers, madres solteras, has risen (LeVine, 1993, p. 92).
Expectations and realities of marriage often diverge.
Girls dream of a harmonious marriage on the basis of love
and trust (LeVine, 1993, p. 81). However, the early years
of marriage can be especially depressing due to severe
misunderstandings, infidelity, domestic violence, and
alcoholism (Finkler, 1994; LeVine, 1993, pp. 79–89).
Opportunities to meet a potential novio (fiancé) are more
numerous for girls today, although significant variations
between rural and urban areas still exist (LeVine, 1993).
Today, girls have more opportunities to meet boys
because they are in school longer.
Given the high numbers of conjugal unions, an
unmarried childless adult living on his or her own is a rare
thing. Often, widows and abandoned wives do not remarry;
rather, they stay with their children (Melhuus, 1996).
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
The vast majority of adult mestizo Mexicans are living in
some kind of conjugal union (Mier y Terán, 1996). Age
at the first birth is, on average, around 20 (Mier y Terán,
1996, p. 327). Ideally, the potential groom is expected to
visit the woman’s parents with his father and godfather
and make a formal request for her hand. If the parents
consent, the couple should be married by civil and canon
law. The bride should be a virgin. The groom’s family or
the groom himself will pay the costs. The legal age for
women to marry is 14; for men it is 16. However, the
A loving and harmonious marital relationship is an ideal
that girls hope for (Finkler, 1994, p. 60). If this ideal relationship does not occur, but instead the wife is abused,
her focus of affection will most likely shift from husband
to children (Finkler, 1994, p. 60; LeVine, 1993, p. 136).
Younger women are more willing to fight for an egalitarian marital relationship than older women, who are more
often resigned to the situation (LeVine, 1993, p. 196).
The amount of time a couple spends together can
vary tremendously. Often husband and wife eat breakfast
and supper together and sleep in the same bed. During the
day, the husband is at work. However, many men migrate
668
Mexicans
to either the big metropolitan areas or to the United
States, and thus this schema only applies temporarily.
Divorce became legal in 1917. Apart from mutual
consent, divorce is permissible for a number of reasons,
such as adultery or sterility (Chant, 1997, p. 126).
However, a significant number of women remain in
seemingly unbearable relationships (Chant, 1997, p. 126;
LeVine, 1993, p. 95). Catholic ideology and the social
and economic difficulties of lone motherhood explain this
in part. Children of divorced parents are almost always
raised by the mother.
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Bennett, V. (1995). Gender, class and water. Women and the politics of
water services in Monterrey, Mexico. Latin American Perspectives,
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Brown, C. J., Pagán, J. A., & Rodríguez-Oreggia, E. (1999). Occupational
attainment and gender earnings differentials in Mexico. Industrial
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Browner, C. H. (1986). Gender roles and social change: A Mexican case
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Brunt, D. (1992). Mastering the struggle. Gender, actors and agrarian
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Canak, W., & Swanson, L. (1998). Modern Mexico. Boston: McGraw
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Autónoma de México.
Mormon Fundamentalists
William R. Jankowiak
LOCATION
There are numerous polygamous communities located in
the western United States: the Allred group in Salt Lake
Valley and Montana (Bennion, 1998; Young, 1954), the
Johnson–Barlow group in Colorado City (Bradley, 1993;
Quinn, 1991); the Timpson–Hammon Group in
Centennial Park (Jankowiak & Allen, 1995; Jankowiak &
Diderich, 2001); the Blackmore group in Canada and the
Kingston Group in Salt Lake Valley (Quinn, 1991); the
Manti Community in Manti, Utah and the Le Baron
group in the Chihuahua Valley of northern Mexico
(Jankowiak & Woodman, 2002).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Mormon polygyny is based on the writings and teachings
of Joseph Smith who, in the 1820s, advanced the idea that
God is married and the heavenly family is a polygynous
or plural family. God is a polygynist who loves all his
children but confers on men, and not on women, an
elevated spiritual essence which insures that “righteous”
living men will obtain a higher spiritual standing. Men
occupy leadership positions in their families and on the
church council, and have the potential, in the next life, to
become a godhead with dominion over all their descendants. Women are not capable of Godhood but can elevate
their status through marrying a would-be God. Salvation
can only occur if people create in their earthly life God’s
ideal family—a patriarchal organized plural family. This
vision was further expanded upon under the leadership of
Brigham Young, and then later under the leadership of
John Taylor. In response to Taylor’s insistence on following Joseph Smith’s mandate to form plural families,
numerous fundamentalist communities were formed in
remote regions. Today, Morman fundamentalists do not
consider themselves members of the Church of the
Latter-Day Saints (L.D.S.), but rather as authentic
Mormons who follow the teachings of the prophet
Joseph Smith. They differ further from the L.D.S. Church
in their belief that Adam is not a man but rather the Father
or God of the planet earth. Fundamentalism rests on the
presumption of infallibility in scripture as the ultimate
source of moral truth. For Mormon fundamentalists this
means that the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants
and Ordinances, and, where deemed appropriate, the
Bible are the primary sources.
In the early 20th century Mormon fundamentalists
broke with the L.D.S. Church to form an underground
church. In various remote geographical regions throughout the Rocky Mountain ridge people sought to pool
their financial resources and create a United Order
through the development of strong affective solidarity
sustained by cooperative exchanges of food, money,
labor, and daughters.
Each community is governed independently and
maintains only nominal contact with the others. The
populations range from around 350 to over 10,000 (Salt
Lake City and its surrounding suburbs). The largest and
oldest polygynous settlement in North America is located
in three separate geographical locations known as
Hildale–Colorado City–Centennial Park (until the 1960s
the region was referred to as Short Creek).
Each settlement is an intentional community where
its members live, or expect to live, in a polygynous or
plural family. The percentage of contemporary fundamentalist families with more than one wife range
between 85% and 35%, depending upon the community
and historical era. This is a higher percentage than the
15–20% reported for 19th century Mormons. To date,
most communities are able to hold on to most of their
daughters, who continue to reside in the community, and
thus they have increased in population (Quinn, 1991).
Although mandated by scripture to live a polygynous
life, there is no consensus as to how best to achieve this
ideal. There is a lot of variation within and between communities. For example, some communities tolerate firstcousin marriages (e.g., Montana, Mexico, and Colorado
City), while Centennial Park is adamant in its disapproval.
Certain families have a history of child sex abuse;
others do not. There is variation in living arrangements.
670
Gender over the Life Cycle
671
“Big House” polygyny, whereby a man and all his wives
live together in a single dwelling is common among the
elite families in Colorado City and Centennial Park. The
other fundamentalist communities overwhelmingly practice “hut” polygamy, whereby each wife has her own
dwelling with the man rotating between residences.
Rotation systems range from a fixed schedule to allowing
the husband to follow his personal preference. In the latter
case, some wives have infrequent sexual relations.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Men’s and women’s characters are believed to be inherently different. Women are thought to be subservient to
males. This is due to males receiving God’s blessing or the
“priesthood” after puberty. Within the home, gender identification begins with boy and girl infants wearing genderspecific colors and clothes. In the toddler stage (2 years
old) it is common to see a boy sit next to his father when
he drives to the store, while young girls sit next to their
mother when they travel somewhere. In the youth stage,
dress style is designed to uphold an image of modesty.
Therefore tight-fitting clothes are taboo. Females wear two
pairs of panty hose under their dresses. Boys and men also
follow a conservative dress code. Many men wear the specially designed Mormon underwear (long johns coded with
religious insignia), are clean shaven with short hair, and
wear long-sleeve shirts to cover their arms even when playing a round of golf or a competitive game of basketball.
Ideally, attractiveness is based upon spiritual concerns
that are centered on a person’s character. Kindness, loyalty,
patience, and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good
are considered admirable qualities. In practice, people
recognize female beauty as having physical aspects that
closely mirror mainstream American culture. Women with
symmetrical faces, youthful complexion, large eyes, and
full lips are considered to be more attractive. Men are
regarded as attractive if they are tall (over 5 feet 11 inches
[1.8 m]) and hold an important position in the religious
hierarchy or have a significant source of income.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The names for the stages passing through the life cycle
are similar to those in mainstream culture. There is an
infant stage, with the “age of reason” beginning around
the age of 7. Baptism, which takes place at the age of 12,
marks the transition to young adulthood. For girls, it is a
time to think about marriage, while for boys it signifies that
they are no longer children but spiritual adults of the church.
After marriage, motherhood marks the next transformation in a woman’s social identity. Young women
often become more assertive in stating their needs and
desires. They will also, especially if they are from
nonelite households, more readily complain about their
husband’s shortcomings in providing for his family.
During this stage many women will seek employment to
support themselves and their children. The increase in
income enables some women a greater voice in determining how family resources are allocated.
The next transformation stage is when a husband
takes a new wife. Women have to learn to accommodate
another woman’s needs and interests. Men also have to
adjust, albeit it in different ways. The final stage is old
age. It is a time that women will readily acknowledge
they enjoy. The community tends to idealize those grandmothers it regards as exemplary. Given their newfound
status, the senior women are reluctant to criticize either
the religion or the experience of living in a plural family.
Men, especially if they are from elite families, seldom
embrace the grandparent stage of life. These men usually
have younger wives who are reproductively viable and
thus remain fathers until almost the end of their lives.
Their interaction with their grandchildren tends to be
perfunctory. Only the nonelite men appear to be able to
make the transition from a husband to a grandfather. With
the exception of funerals, most of the life-stage
ceremonies are conducted in secret.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
There are distinct differences in parenting style in every
fundamentalist community. Some styles are more laissezfaire, others stress a discipline- or obedience-oriented
approach, while others employ a more hands-on instructional approach. Women in elite households usually have
large families and thus a more obedient approach is
favored, while uneducated women living alone, or in
a household with one or two cowives, tend to adopt a
laissez-faire approach. College-educated women, living
alone or with a number of cowives, overwhelming prefer
a more hands-on instructional approach.
Young boys and girls are taught in very similar
ways. Although boys have higher religious status, in daily
672
interaction boys and girls are equally valued. There is no
evidence of female infanticide in any of the Mormon
fundamentalist communities. At the age of 5, children are
expected to be obedient. At the age of 7, children are
instructed to memorize scripture, do well in school, if
they go (many are home schooled), and be able to sing
songs (Bennion, 1998, p. 82).
In large families much of the daily childcare duties
are overseen by older siblings who tend to be less sensitive to the needs of younger siblings. Boys commonly
play with toy guns, watch football on television (especially in Centennial Park), and engage in rough-house
games of tag. Girls prefer to play with dolls, coloring
books, and household items. Both genders enjoy watching cartoon videos and jumping on large trampolines.
Young girls tend to “work inside at cooking, cleaning and sewing and outside at food producing tasks such
as tending the gardens and canning fruit. Daughters help
mothers with washing, ironing, and other chores”
(Bennion, 1998, p. 82). Fathers instruct sons in caring for
animals, carrying firewood, moving heavy machinery,
construction, carpentry, auto repair, and, at times, babysitting (Bennion, 1998).
All children eat and play together in a common
family room that may or may not be supervised by their
birth-mother, while an infant will sleep with his or her
birth-mother. Young children (3–9 years old) often hang
out in their birth-mother’s bedroom. Thus, children from
different birth-mothers often pass the day in close
geographical proximity, while spending the early mornings and late evenings with their birth-mother and thus
their other full siblings. Children evaluate a comother’s
favoritism, which serves to reinforce a sense of separateness. Teens can readily recall instances when their nonbirth-mother discriminated or showed favoritism (e.g.,
giving more candy, or letting house rules slide for their
children, but not for comother’s children). In addition,
birth mothers established borders by taking their children
to their own bedroom and reading to them, watching
television together, or talking with them. All these small,
yet noticeable, activities communicate a distinct sense
of differences and thus contribute to the formation of
a separate family identity within the larger family.
Puberty and Adolescence
There is a strong continuity between puberty and adolescence. Prior to the 1990s young women (14–16 years old)
Mormon Fundamentalists
were immediately placed, that is, married. Usually this
was to a man who already had wives. The young bride
was referred to as a plural wife. Young men, especially
those from nonelite families, had to wait significantly
longer, and in many cases forever, to prove that they were
worthy to marry. Under this system females tend to
mature more quickly. By the 1990s the marriage age in
the Salt Lake and Centennial Park communities had
moved back to 17 or 18 years, with some women waiting
until they were in their early twenties before marrying.
Until recently, and then only in some communities,
a young woman’s marital choices were limited. She could
finish high school and then get married, or leave the
community, which resulted in disgracing her family while
also condemning her to eternal damnation (Bennion,
1998). In the Colorado City and Centennial Park
communities a kind of underground support system has
emerged whereby youth who leave the fundamentalist
community can connect with other individuals who have
also left.
Boys obtain deacon status at 12, teacher status at 14,
and priest status at 16. At 19 a male has become an elder
and can now participate in the weekly Melchizedek
priesthood meetings.
Unmarried boys from elite families who decide to
stay in the community often participate in local missionary work for a few years (e.g., weeding, repairing roads,
building homes, and clearing drainage ditches). Because
the communities fear condemnation from the outside
world, they do not, like the mainstream Mormon church,
send their youth to live outside the community.
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle age (i.e., the forties) finds women less reproductively viable and thus focused on their youngest children.
Having more time, they can provide them with something
they could not give the middle children—attention.
Middle-aged women discover the pleasures of being
a grandmother and assisting their oldest daughters with
daily chores. Middle-aged men, on the other hand, are
focused more on obtaining a new wife with which to
continue their reproductive careers. Men enjoy telling
homage tales of elderly men (over 70) who father a child.
As long as a woman’s husband remains alive, she
will remain in his home. After her youngest child has
moved out, she will often be asked by religious leaders to
move into a smaller apartment so that a younger family
Gender-Related Social Groups
673
may have room to expand. The leaders are also the
administrators of the religious trust that controls
the distribution of all community property. It is in old age
that many men come to appreciate how much they are
mutually dependent upon their wives and children. In this
stage even fiercely independent and patriarchically
inspired men often become less assertive and more
tolerant of their own lives and others around them.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The Mormon polygynous communities share many of the
gender stereotypes found among other American fundamentalist groups. Men have greater strength and are
thought to be “more logical, assertive, physical aggressive, competitive” (Bartkowski, 2001, p. 40), whereas
women are regarded as more interested in reproductive
concerns which makes them more “nurturing, relational,
emotionally expressive, gentle, … and [inclined toward]
humble obedience” (Bartkowski, 2001, p. 40).
During the 19th century, women’s natural callings as
wife and mother were prominent themes in leading fundamentalists sermons. “The patriarchal family [therefore]
envisioned a divine hierarchy that featured, in descending
order of authority: God, Christ, man/husband/wife,
children” (Bennion, 1998, p. 28). In every way women’s
role was perceived to be that of a supportive wife and
self-sacrificing mother.
There is a striking difference between men and
women concerning risk-taking. Young men are overwhelmingly prone to take chances that have resulted in
serious bodily injury and death. These risky behaviors
range from taking illegal drugs, binge drinking, recklessly
driving a vehicle, flying a small one-man airplane with
two men on board, to having sex with a married woman.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Every patriarchically organized community is based on
theological axioms which uphold men as the religious
and scriptural authority in the family. In addition, the
social dynamics of polygynous family life make men, as
fathers and husbands, the pivotal axis around which
wives and children organize attention and internalize
family identity.
Although church leadership actively discourages
clanism (or the ranking of families into hierarchies of
relative social worth), status competition flourishes unofficially. Family members strive to advance their father’s
or brother’s reputation and thus, indirectly, their own
standing. There is an ongoing struggle to heighten and
diminish certain male reputations within a family and
within the community as a whole. This dynamic is at odds
with religious ideals.
High-status families continue to hold periodic
gatherings in which men and women socialize while
discussing family or clan business, and other related
concerns. These family gatherings also reveal the value
placed on family unity and loyalty, stressing cohesiveness. The value of family solidarity is further evident in
the formation of family schools, named after a founding
family ancestor, and dedicated to teaching local family
history as well as the basic skills of reading and writing.
Clanism has undermined community unity and resulted
in social fragmentation.
Given the community value placed on purity of
blood lines, there is a strong incentive to trace descent to
famous men who founded the community or the fundamentalist religion. This pragmatic concern encourages
a bilateral orientation and, when combined with the
absence of private property in the community, effectively
undercuts the patriarchical impulse to form a patrilineal
descent system. People raised in polygynous communities know to whom they are related and are readily able
to articulate their relative position within their father’s
and mother’s genealogical line. The primary reference
point is the birth-mother’s family, with the larger fathercentered family forming an important, albeit secondary,
frame of reference.
When women marry, they move to the home of their
husband or they build a new home. If the woman is
widowed and takes a new husband who does not have a
house, he will move into her house. Although the patriarchical ideology insists that once a woman is married
she is no longer to have frequent contact with her natal
family, this is an ideal that is upheld in theory more than
in practice. Most polygynous families are in constant
need of resources so that bilateral networking is tolerated,
if not encouraged.
Compared with men, women interact more often
with friends and relatives. Once the father dies, adult
siblings are less inclined to eat together but, instead, preferred to hold “family” gatherings at their birth-mother’s
674
Mormon Fundamentalists
home. In contrast, men’s friendships are more isolated
and fragmented. Apart from their children and favorite
wife, many men have no true friends they trust.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
There is a clear-cut sexual division of labor. Women are
in charge of upkeeping the home and thus take turns
cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, and vacuuming floors.
Men will chop wood and bring it into the house, take out
the trash, do yard work, and repair things around the
house that are broken. Ideally, men run the financial side
of the family but in practice mature women actively
monitor household income. If women are employed
outside the home, they often have a voice in how the
family’s income is spent. If they are on public assistance
they tend to have a diminished voice in family affairs.
Different communes are better off depending upon
the overall development of the region. Outside the home
men work in construction, metal-working, education (as
teachers and administrators), retail business, finances, and
in the insurance industry. In every plural family, with the
exception of the truly wealthy, husbands cannot always
feed and clothe their families. Women are compelled to
find employment outside the home, often working in
nearby towns to which they commute daily.
Given the limitation of finance, there is strong incentive for women to do most of the work themselves.
Therefore, women will can fruit and vegetables, stitch
quilts, sew bedding and clothes, and buy bulk foods and
goods whenever possible (Bennion, 1998, p. 29). In some
families, men are absent from home for a long period of
time, and to cope with this women form a support system
among themselves (Bennion, 1998). This is especially
true for women living in the Le Baron and Allred
Montana communities.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Because cowives are often in competition for their
husband’s attention, they contribute to the idealization
process of the husband by vying with each other for
predominance. In this struggle, the children are often
used as a means to an end—becoming the desired object
of their husband’s attention. This can be deliberate as
well as unconscious. Because the wives focus their attention on their husband, their children, wanting to please
both their mother and father, follow suit. By cultivating
father adoration, a mother hopes to demonstrate her superior worth among the cowives. A mother instructs her
children to love and cherish their father, while at the same
time she strives to fulfill his expectations of her. This
effort, along with the child’s own desire to bond with the
father, enhances the father’s stature and esteem. The
cultural emphasis on the spiritual and administrative
authority of the father serves to promote family solidarity. It is in “the name of the father” that cowives and their
offspring are told to suppress their rivalry and come
together as a cohesive family unit.
In daily socialization there is an emphasis on corporal punishment (e.g., using the belt or stick on a child that
misbehaves) and religious training. Women who live alone
with their children tend to be more actively engaged in
rearing them. Women living in plural families tend to
prefer an obedience approach to child-rearing. There is an
idealized ethos of “children are to be seen and not heard.”
Cowives care for each other’s children. However, there is
a tacit fear that a cowife might retaliate against another
wife by punishing her children. Thus, a mother pays a
great deal of attention to a cowife’s treatment of her child.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Women are excluded from the most important spheres of
social power and knowledge. The Church is the central
institution in the community, and it is organized around
an exclusive male leadership that justifies as natural
female inferiority and the male’s right to assert their opinion. In some communities women form associations that
celebrate female autonomy and female interdependence
(Bennion, 1998, p. 129). In the Allred groups in Salt Lake
and Montana, as well as in the Le Baron community in
Mexico, there are women’s prayer circles where women
meet to pray for one another’s requests. Other all-female
meetings also take place during Sunday school, the
Sacrament Relief Society, and morning community
prayer (Bennion, 1998, p. 10). These associations are
absent in the Colorado City–Centennial Park communities which tend to be more adamant in applying
patriarchical axioms to ordinary life. In every polygynous
community pain, suffering, and pioneer struggles are
Relative Status of Men and Women
constant themes that are told and retold to heighten
motivation and uphold commitment to the religion.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
There are several nonnegotiable tenets at the core of
Mormon theology that provide an ideological foundation
for promoting and securing family unity. The first holds
that the father is charged with the duty of managing and
expanding his kingdom here on earth, and ideally in the
hereafter, by entering the institution of plural marriage
(Musser, 1944).
A second tenet asserts that the father–son relationship is the core axis for the transmission of cultural and
spiritual essence (Clark & Clark, 1991, p. 286). It is based
on the belief of a Melchizedek priesthood whose lineage,
extended back to Adam, is the only legitimate religious
authority. It is also the primary legitimization of men’s
insistence that the only acceptable foundation of religious
expression is a patriarchal social organization.
A third tenet holds that a man’s celestial rank is determined primarily by his ability to live righteously and to
adhere successfully to God’s will, with the highest rank of
virtue reserved for those who enter into a plural family. In
contrast, women achieve salvation through obedience, first
to their fathers, and then to their husbands by becoming a
sister-wife (i.e., a cowife) within the plural family that is
also a celestial family. Because the family unit extends
beyond the grave into an eternal world, it is believed that
everyone, especially cowives, must learn better interpersonal skills and increase cooperative behavior in order to
achieve family harmony in this world and the next.
It the Montana Allred community it is believed
that women have unique revelations not given to men
(Bennion, 1998, pp. 51–53). In this community women
believe in the idea of an exalted spiritual sisterhood.
Moreover, they also believe in a “deity” called Mother Eve
who was the mother of all living things and thus, because
of her, women also formed a complementary relationship
with all living things. This idea is not found in other
polygynous fundamentalist communities.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
In most fundamentalist communities recreational
activities revolve primarily around religious events and
675
activities. It is common for men and women to join the
church choir, engage in long-distance telephone conversations, and attend an occasional community dance.
Events that appeal primarily to women are attending
prayer groups, quilting bees, and family gatherings. In the
privacy of their home many people listen to the radio and
CDs, and watch television (a favored activity in the Salt
Lake and Centennial Park communities). The Centennial
Park community is the most liberal of all the fundamentalist groups; they conduct monthly lecture series where
outsiders are invited to speak on various topics. The
community also produces theatrical plays with the actors
selected from the local community. Men form softball
leagues, participate in an occasional pick-up game of
basketball, a round of golf, or the annual married versus
unmarried Thanksgiving Day football game. The more
liberal families will travel to nearby city and watch the
latest film release or rent a video to watch together at
home. In both the Colorado City and Centennial Park
communities, a woman expects to be taken somewhere
special on her birthday and wedding anniversary.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
The community is organized around principles of
hierarchy and submission. In many ways it mirrors a
small corporate or military organization with its focus on
obedience to appointed authorities. In this arena, males
dominate all forms of public leadership. God holds men
accountable for exercising familial leadership in keeping
with biblical principles (Bartkowski, 2001, p. 55). The
Prophet, or leader of the community, plays a “strong role
in arranging marriages, sometimes without consulting
prospective partners or families” (Bennion, 1998, p. 89).
As young infant males are treasured above females,
but upon entering their teenage years most young men are
held in less esteem, due in large part to their being
regarded as potential competitors in a highly restricted
pool. In every polygynous society, women are a limited
good. In the 1960s local law enforcement officers in
Colorado City routinely harass nonelite young men into
leaving the community. Today this is no longer practiced
and there is a growing pool of unmarried men who
continue to live in the community.
Women do control their sexuality. Many women do
not want to become pregnant and thus refuse to have sex
with their husbands. Moreover, women know that if they
676
leave their husband, they will become available for
marriage to other men, who want to elevate their religious
status through having numerous wives. The drive to gain
greater celestial glory is an added incentive for men to
accept women into their family. This is not true in every
case; some men, especially if they have a good working
family, will hesitate in bringing in a new wife as it may
undermine the harmony of the home.
SEXUALITY
The Mormon concept of true love closely resembles that
prevalent in 19th century Victorian England. In practice,
however, sexual love in fundamentalist Mormon society
is often highly eroticized, as it was in Victorian society.
Sexual pleasure is an appropriate desire provided that it
is the by-product of spousal affection and marital love.
Most fundamentalists, while disapproving of premarital
sex, firmly believe that sexual pleasure should be an
enjoyable aspect of every marriage. This attitude is
stronger among the younger generation than among their
grandparents.
Ideally, women should never use birth control.
Rather, they should use self-control or abstinence. In the
Montana community it is forbidden to have “sexual
activity during lactation, pregnancy or menstruation”
(Bennion, 1998, p. 81). In Colorado City and Centennial
Park some women continue to have sex long after they
are pregnant or lactating. Many women and men engage
in sexuality as a communicative and pleasure-seeking
activity. However, there are examples of women who
found that their husbands were no longer interested in
sleeping with them after they had a hysterectomy.
Neither sex should engage in extramarital sex. If
a man sleeps with his fiancée before the marriage
ceremony it is considered an adulterous act. There are
cases of wives leaving their husband upon discovering
this act. Given the value placed on reproductive vitality,
it is not surprising that, as a woman grows older, she loses
some of her esthetic value. This does not necessarily
mean that she loses her influence over her husband. In
fact, in Centennial Park I never found a single family
where the favorite wife was the youngest wife. A wife’s
aging does not appear to undermine either the love bond
(provided that she has already developed one) or her
position within the family. It only affects her desirability
as a sex partner.
Mormon Fundamentalists
There is a fear of sexual abuse in the community.
Adults often suspect that children over the age of 7 years
will play with the sex organs of the opposite sex. In
Colorado City and Centennial Park this is referred to as
“doing the nasties.” This behavior is considered to be
unnatural and something that must be prevented. In these
two communities it is common for teenagers to sneak out
of the house and engage in midnight drinking parties and
dancing. A few of the youths have been known to engage
in heavy petting and sexual intercourse.
Homosexuality is regarded as a terrible sin against
the laws of God. Given this judgment, no one would
openly admit to having these inclinations. Bennion (1998)
found lesbianism to be rare, but not unknown, among
women in the Montana community. In the Colorado
City–Centennial Park communities I found only one
instance in which a man was thought to be a homosexual.
In every fundamentalist community homosexual behavior
between males is considered more threatening to the
community than that between females.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Romantic passion is not a prerequisite for marriage. In
Centennial Park, half of the marriages are not based on
romantic love. In these marriages, individuals, particularly teenage women, followed the matrimonial recommendations of their parents and the priesthood council.
Not being deeply emotionally involved with a spouse, the
individual enters marriage expecting, as in many cultures,
that in time “love will come.”
Mormon cosmology holds that, before birth, everyone lives with God as a spirit. In this preexistence state,
men and women were promised to one another for time
and eternity. Therefore individuals must strive to find
their “true love.” Failure to strive in such a way can potentially lead to an awkward situation whereby one’s earthly
spouse will differ from one’s heavenly spouse. To ensure
that death will not result in the separation of the spouses,
it is imperative that the couple follow God’s will. To this
end, the advice of priesthood’s council members as God’s
representatives is eagerly sought in matters of the heart.
One of the council’s most important functions is to help
community members find their celestial mates.
Nevertheless, dilemmas do arise. There are times
when parents disapprove of a daughter’s (though seldom
a son’s) choice or, more importantly, the priesthood
Husband–Wife Relationship
council considers the relationship inappropriate. When this
occurs, individuals must reconcile their romantic feelings
with their deep-seated religious beliefs, which include the
importance of the priesthood council in guiding the community and its members to salvation and eternal happiness.
In the face of such resistance many couples break up and
marry whomever the priesthood council recommends.
Other couples, whose love is deeper, often prefer to resist
the council’s recommendation. There are numerous precedents of individuals asserting that their romantic experience is authentic and thus sanctioned by God. Because
Mormon theology is derived, in part, from 19th century
transcendentalism, it holds that God’s will can be known
through acts of private introspection and personal revelation. Accordingly, it honors individual conviction and this
religious tenet gives romantically entangled couples solid
ground on which to argue that the council might be mistaken in its judgment. Although an individual’s testimony
of being divinely inspired is never directly challenged, the
common response is to wonder whether God or the Devil
is the real source of the inspiration. Still, the notion of
“agency,” or personal choice, serves as an effective counterpoint to the community’s formal organization—its
male-centered priesthood council.
Marriage negotiations take place between the priesthood council and the couple, with the woman serving as
both the object, and the arbitrator, of the negotiations. If
the bride-to-be cannot be persuaded to change her mind,
the council will often, albeit reluctantly, support her marital choice. For, as one informant said, “Who can deny
God and God’s love” (i.e., choice). However, in those
instances where either the parents or the council refused
to sanction the marriage, the individuals will either recognize and submit to the council’s authority or they will
elope and marry outside the community. Once a suitable
time has elapsed, they return as a duly legitimized couple.
Men maintain a stoic, if not cynical, posture toward
romantic love. Many men dismissed the emotion
altogether, stressing that it was, at bottom, an illusion and
not the best basis for a marriage. However, more in-depth
probing found that two thirds of the men interviewed had
been romantically rejected as young men in high school
(Jankowiak & Allen, 1995). The experience was so
distressing that they became determined never to become
emotionally involved again.
Younger men are more consistently concerned than
older mature men with finding their true love. Without
the financial backing of their families, young men are
677
economically unable to compete with the more
established mature males. The only resources they have,
being unmarried, are those not immediately available to
older married men: access and the opportunity to offer
exclusive attention to a particular woman. Because most
male–female relationships begin in high school, many
young men are able to form substantial emotional bonds.
Although lacking economic means of support, a young
man can often convince a woman that she would be
happier marrying him rather than a middle-aged man
with several wives. If the young woman falls in love with
the young man, she will probably marry him. If he is
unsuccessful in attracting a high-school sweet heart, he
will ultimately leave the community to find a wife.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The Colorado City–Centennial Park communities distinguish between two types of families: elite or “united
polygyny” (i.e., live together in one house) and commoner
or “divided polygyny” (i.e., living in separate homes). The
cultural ideal is to live together in one large house, but the
reality is that only the local elite families are able consistently to accomplish this.
Within the family, the religious principles are
centered on the notion of harmonious or familial love.
Harmonious love encourages respect, empathy, helpfulness, and lasting affection; therefore it often serves as
the principal means to bind and unite the polygynous
family. Its nondyadic focus stands in sharp contrast to
romantic love, a tolerated but seldom glorified emotional
experience.
There is a continuum in men’s and women’s involvement in plural marriage that ranges from shared equality
to outright favoritism. Men, as the symbolic center of the
family, must balance each wife’s emotional and economic
interests. Conscious of the impact of favoritism on the
harmony of the family, men strive to modify some of its
harmful impact. To this end most husbands are diligent in
spending quality time (e.g., dinners and trips), if not equal
time, with each cowife. In this regard, women intently
study and assess their husband’s actions and are quick to
note acts that suggest favoritism. If a husband can avoid
pursuing his interests and struggle or, in their words,
“sacrifice” in order to uphold the religious principles, the
household ambience will be relatively harmonious and
content.
678
The most delicate and potentially dangerous
situations arise when a new wife enters the family. This
is the most unstable time in a fundamentalist household
and often tests a woman’s religious convictions and, in
turn, her willingness to participate in a plural marriage.
During this liminal state, the new wife usually receives
the husband’s undivided attention, and cowives do not
complain about their husband spending a lot of time with
the new wife. It is understood that the honeymoon
intimacy will continue once the couple returns from their
trip. However, if the intimacy continues beyond a few
weeks, it will engender a round of questions and doubts
and, ultimately, generate into intense jealousy among the
cowives.
Mormon polygynous wives who are not the central
focus of their husband’s attention and love deeply resent
the “favorite” wife. If the favoritism persists, a wife will
assume that her husband has grown emotionally distant
and is no longer interested in her. When this happens, a
wife will respond in one of three ways: she will seek to
rekindle her husband’s waning interest; she will resign
herself to the loss of affection and seek emotional fulfillment exclusively in her children; or she will divorce and
seek fulfillment in another marriage. Clearly, it is imperative for all concerned that the husband and his wives
avoid favoritism and work together to sustain a harmonious family ambience. However, it is the rare plural
family where the harmonious family ideal is sustained
more than a few days.
If polygynist women are emotionally vulnerable,
particularly to psychological abandonment, so are the
men. If a polygynist husband becomes too attached, he
knows that he will disrupt family bonds and damage his
reputation within the community for being unable to
manage his family. However, if he becomes too detached,
he will live a life devoid of emotional intimacy.
A man is dependent on his wife’s (or wives’) assistance in attracting another spouse for, even if the priesthood council recommends a marriage partner, the woman
must still decide. Her decision is often based on three factors: the quality of family harmony (actual and potential)
represented in the cooperation between cowives; the intensity of affection held for the husband; and the number of
wives, especially young wives, in the family. It is cultural
given that it is often in a young woman’s short-term interest to marry a middle-aged man with mature wives.
Mature wives are not powerless. They are respected,
valued, and loved not because of seniority, but rather for
Mormon Fundamentalists
either the quality of marriage or their access to valuable
resources (e.g., a deceased husband’s retirement funds,
social security benefits, or some other forms of inheritance or income). This wealth, while not considerable, is
often sufficient to attract another wife. With this supplementary source of income, a man can buy a used car or
build a home for his new wife. If a wife withholds her
income, it can undermine her husband’s ability to attract
another wife. A polygynist husband depends on his
cowife’s (or cowives’) assistance to sustain a friendly
household environment and to provide economic aid in
helping him build his heavenly kingdom.
Men and women embrace the polygynous principle
and its call for plurality, while simultaneously seeking to
hold onto, or rekindle, the romantic passion once felt
toward a particular spouse. The tensions that erupt around
this dilemma are the source of the drama found in daily
life living in a fundamentalist community. The reality is
that the majority of polygynous families seldom achieve
genuine long-lasting harmony but remain, at best, a cauldron of competing interests that periodically rupture the
fragile balance that unites a man, his wives, and children
in their religiously inspired and unified cultural system.
CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The polygynous family is often a contentious zone of
competing interests that contribute to the fostering of full
sibling solidarity. Thus the typical sibling rivalry found in
monogamous families is often muted in the polygynous
family owing to the presence of intrafamilial strife.
This hierarchy of feeling and affection is ubiquitous
in the American polygynous family. There is a gradation
of emotional affiliation and intensity in affection and
loyalty between full and half-siblings. However, this does
not mean that half-siblings never form close bonds with
other half-siblings. Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming preference for full siblings to form more intimate
patterns of solidarity. Generally, it is the later born
siblings (i.e., a mother’s last two offsprings) who are more
likely to establish a close friendship with the comother’s
children. Thus, half-siblings attend family functions out
of friendship bonds previously established, whereas full
siblings attend for a variety of reasons ranging from
obligation to deep affection.
Outside the family, teenage girls and boys often seek
out an adult male who lives in the community but is not
References
directly related to them to serve as a mentor in advising
them about life and its goals. This relationship is usually
formed in the mid-teenage years with the mentor being
significantly older (20 years or more). The mentor serves
as a moral guide and buffer between the individual and
his birth family. The emotional bonds formed during this
time will extend through the individual’s lifetimes.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
There is greater recognition of the value of female choice
in Centennial Park community, but not in Colorado City.
Centennial Park women have greater opportunities to
select a mate from within their own age cohort. In the
Le Baron community in Mexico, many mature women
are finding that they cannot support themselves and therefore have decided to leave the community and the fundamentalist religion to find employment and security in the
United States. In other communities (e.g., Montana and
Colorado City), the change in U.S. welfare laws that has
restricted the period of time that people can remain on
welfare will have a demonstrable impact on most fundamentalist families. Many middle-income and poor men
are only able to support large plural families because of
the government’s subsistence policies. The ending of the
federal entitlement will result in more women working
outside the community. It will also mean that only the
wealthiest members will be able to form a plural family.
In a relatively short time, the percentage of men who live
in polygynous families will revert to around 20%, similar
679
to that found among the 19th century polygynous
Mormons.
REFERENCES
Altman, I., & Ginat, J. (1996). Polygamous families in contemporary
society. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Bartkowski, J. (2001). Remaking the godly marriage. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Baur, H. (1988). Utopia in the desert. New York: State University of
New York Press.
Bennion, J. (1998). Women of principle: Female networking in contemporary Mormon polygyny. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bradley, M. (1993). Kidnapped from that land. Provo: University of
Utah Press.
Clark, A., & Clark, I. (1991). Fathers and sons in the Book of Mormon.
Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Books.
Jankowiak, W., & Allen, E. (1995). The balance of duty and desire in
an American polygamous community. In W. Jankowiak (Ed.),
Romantic passion: A universal experience? (pp. 277–295).
New York: Columbia University Press.
Jankowiak, W., & Diderich, M. (2001). Sibling solidarity in a polygamous community in the USA: Unpacking inclusive fitness. Journal
of Evolution and Human Behavior, 21(2), 125–140.
Jankowiak, W., & Woodman, C. (2002). Paternal reassurance or
material reassurance? Parental investment in an American
polygamous community. In P. Davis & H. Hocomb (Eds.), The
evolution of minds: Psychological and philosophical perspectives
(pp. 271–292). Dordrecht Boston/London: Academic Press.
Musser, J. (1944). Celestial or plural marriage. Salt Lake City, UT:
Truth Publishing.
Quinn, M. (1991). Plural marriage and Mormon fundamentalism. In
M. Marty & S. Appleby (Eds.), Fundamentalisms and Society
(pp. 181–224). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van Wagoner, R. (1986). Mormon polygamy: A history. Salt Lake City,
UT: Signature Books.
Young, K. (1954). Isn’t one wife enough? New York: Holt.
Mountain Arapesh
Paul Roscoe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Ethnonyms are Arapesh and Bukiyip. At contact, the
Mountain Arapesh had no name for themselves: Arapesh
is simply their word for “friends” or “humans.”
LOCATION
The Mountain Arapesh live in the East Sepik Province
of Papua New Guinea, between 3⬚27⬘ and 3⬚34⬘S and
143⬚09⬘ and 143⬚19⬘E. At contact, they inhabited the
central peaklands of the coastal Prince Alexander and
Torricelli mountains. The following description refers to
their life in 1931–32, and derives from the writings of
Margaret Mead, who spent 8 months in Alitoa locality,
and Reo Fortune, who spent 11 months in Alitoa and
Liwo localities. Arapesh life was severely disrupted by
World War II and postwar colonial developments, and by
1960 most of the mountain dwellers had deserted the
peaklands. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known of
how these changes affected their gender conceptions and
behavior.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The staples of Mountain Arapesh subsistence were yam
and taro, cultivated separately by slash-and-burn horticulture, and sago. These were supplemented with
bananas, greens, sugarcane, bamboo sprouts, breadfruit,
coconuts, and a variety of game, including pigs,
cassowaries, other smaller mammals, birds, grubs, and
fish. Pigs and dogs were the main domestic animals.
At contact, the Mountain Arapesh were distributed
across the mountains at a density of around 15–25 per
square kilometer and loosely organized into localities of
200 or so people. Intralocality relations were rather
tenuous and joint action relatively infrequent, but under
the coordination of its senior men a locality occasionally
prosecuted war against other localities, mounted rituals
such as initiations, feasted other districts, and participated
in interlocality meetings (possibly a postcontact innovation). Localities were also linked to others by an intensive
trade conducted through long-established trade links that
spanned the mountains from the southern foothills to the
sea. Through these links passed tools, weapons, shells
and other valuables, musical instruments, magic, songs,
and dance complexes.
Internally, localities were divided into moieties, with
clans of one moiety generally living within easy distance
of one another but almost out of shouting range, across
deep valleys or high ridges, from clans of the other
moiety. Some tension existed between the moieties of a
locality. Occasionally, they battled and even killed one
another, but more usually they “fought with food,” with
the senior men of one moiety competitively exchanging
root crops and game with hereditary exchange partners in
the other.
The clans of a moiety were divided into one or more
ceremonial communities; the exact composition of these
communities depend on circumstances of geography,
history, and kinship. Each ceremonial community took its
name from a large central ridge-top settlement that served
as the locus of its social and ceremonial life and, in times
of heightened conflict, as a nucleated defensive position.
These centers also provided some community members
with their primary home and many others with secondary
homes. For most people, though, the main residence was
a sho’ubeli wabul, a “little place,” that ranged in size from
a gardening, hunting, or pig-herding camp of one or two
houses to a hamlet of perhaps half a dozen buildings.
Reflecting the mobility of mountain life, few of these
“little places” were permanent; the larger ones shifted site
from one generation to another, and the smaller camps
were even more mobile.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The recognized gender categories appear to have been
limited to male and female. Gender markers included
680
Gender over the Life Cycle
physical dimorphism, names, and gender-specific
enculturated skills. In the case of females, the netbag was
a prime symbol of feminity; the spear was possibly the
equivalent symbol of masculinity. Children of both sexes
went naked. About the age of 4 or 5, girls began to wear
skirts of shredded sago frond, though they would wear
these irregularly until they were 7 or 8. Around the age of
8 or 9, boys began to wear a loincloth made of softened
breadfruit bark.
In both males and females, a “clear” skin—one
unblemished by disease—was considered attractive. In
women, a buxom figure and breasts that fell in “luxuriant
heaviness” were esteemed. In men, height, sturdiness,
and strength were highly valued. So far as marriage
preferences were concerned, however, non-visual cues—
a partner’s aptitude and ability to fulfill his or her gender
role—were especially important. Girls and young women
were judged first by their sweet-temperedness and by
their commitment and capability in caring for their families and providing hospitality to guests. If they lived
locally, their appeal was enhanced if they brought with
them many male kindred who were good hunters,
successful gardeners, slow to anger, and wise in making
choices. Youths with many relatives were also looked on
with favor as spouses.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
It is not clear whether there were cultural names for the
different stages of the life-cycle. Several life-cycle stages
were occasions for ritual, though some practices were
private rather than public; only a few were directly related
to changes in rights, responsibilities, or power, and occasionally it is unclear whether the parent’s or the child’s
life stage was being marked. When the child’s fontanelle
was deemed to have closed, the father ceremonially bled
his own penis. Once the child possessed two teeth, its
septum and ears were supposed to be pierced, though the
actual timing of the rite varied considerably. Once the
child could walk and talk, its parents privately finished
their post-partum taboo on sexual relations with a day’s
fast and, sometimes, taboos associated with the moon. At
the first signs of sexual maturity, both sexes observed a
year of food taboos that were connected to the yam cycle
and named for their newly emergent body hair. From this
point on, they had to avoid the foods associated with
childhood and old age and observe a range of taboos to
681
protect their parents from their developing sexuality.
A few years later, both males and females began to
observe a second set of food taboos to ensure growth, a
clear skin, and—for girls—menstruation and full breasts.
Around this time, both sexes were initiated in separate
ritual sequences, girls being scarified on the shoulders
and buttocks to mark their newly nubile status. At the
birth of his first child, a father was subjected to a ritual
seclusion marking his new parenthood. When his eldest
child was initiated, the father then formally “retired”
from public life. Finally, in their old age, men and women
entered a stage when in Arapesh feeling they were placed
together with children.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Mead emphasized how important child socialization was
to understanding the warm maternal Arapesh temperament. A baby was never far from its mother’s arms
and never denied the breast until it had to be weaned, and
there was considerable tactile play between mother and
child. A crying child was given whatever it craved. Older
children of both sexes also played an important role in
holding and playing with the youngster.
The Arapesh greatly valued both daughters and sons,
and parents afforded them virtually identical levels of
affection. However, there was a preference for boys in so
far as sons, unlike daughters, would not leave their
parents at marriage but stay and care for them in old age.
Infanticide was practiced, and daughters seem to have
been killed somewhat more often than boys.
From childhood on, girls started to associate more
with their mothers, boys more with their fathers. At quite
an early age, girls were supposed to start helping with
their mother’s work, accompanying them to the gardens,
caring for younger children, fetching water, and the like.
Therefore most of their leisure time was passed in the
company of their mothers and other female relatives.
Young boys tended to follow their fathers about, sleeping
in their arms at night. As they grew older, they would also
start accompanying their fathers on hunting and gathering expeditions, but much of the rest of their time would
be spent playing with other boys.
There appear to have been no gender-specific rites or
rituals in infancy and childhood.
Up to the age of 4 or 5, boys and girls were subject
to much the same socialization. Caregivers would immediately intercede to stop quarrels. Tantrums were appeased
682
rather than curbed or disciplined. An angered child would
be allowed to kick and scream and roll in the mud, though
not to hit another child. Boys often continued with such
fits up to the age of 14 or 15. Girls learned to control their
tantrums much earlier, not as a result of discipline so much
as from the results—for example, they would discover that
rolling in the mud would dirty their new sago-leaf skirts
and their little netbags. Partly as a result of the society’s
ritual structure, in particular gender-specific attitudes to
the Tamberan (wareh) spirit, little girls learned to be
passive and not to express curiosity. Boys, by contrast,
were encouraged in curiosity and speculation.
Children played very few games, none of them
aggressive or competitive sports requiring “sides.” Most
games involved singing and pantomime, playing at being
animals, for example, or at processing sago. Boys also
played at various forms of target practice.
The main caretakers were parents, followed by older
siblings. After they reached 5, however, it was common
for children to be taken off by an aunt for a week’s stay
in another hamlet or locality, there to be handed on to
another relative and eventually returned to the natal
home. In this way, and through parental encouragement,
children learned that they had many “mothers” and other
relatives around their homes.
The Arapesh conceptualized the relationship
between caregivers and care receivers as one of “growing” the young by contributing food to build their bodies.
This ideology provided seniors with a measure of control
over their juniors. If a young man spoke rudely to an
elder, for instance, the latter might answer reproachfully,
“And think how many pigs I have fattened from which
you took your growth.”
Puberty and Adolescence
Adolescence was not apparently recognized as a named
stage of the life-cycle. The socialization processes of
childhood continued to adolescence, though as they
approached this stage boys and girls clustered together
more in their daily lives in gender-specific groups.
The socialization of girls was complicated by the
Arapesh preference for child betrothal. This practice has
attracted considerable interest from incest theorists, but
because the details are vague, they have caused considerable confusion in the literature. Girls were betrothed to a
future husband at a relatively young age, sometimes at
5 or possibly even younger. At some later date—the exact
Mountain Arapesh
sequence is unclear—she was adopted into her young
husband’s home and went to live at his settlement, though
in the beginning this might only be for a few days or
weeks at a time. An analysis of Mead’s census data
indicate that these shifts occurred between the ages of
about 8 and 15.
In Mead’s view, these moves made little genderspecific difference to the socialization process, the young
girl in essence moving from the familial amity of her
natal home to a similar ambience in her marital home. To
all of her in-laws, the young girl “becomes warmly
attached. Her feeling for her husband and his father and
brothers is practically identical with her feeling for her
own father and brothers.” However, the responsibility for
“growing” the young girl passed from her parents to her
young husband, allowing him to exercise a modicum of
control over her: because as an adolescent he had helped
feed her, he could in later life rebuke her for being sulky
or dilatory.
Attainment of Adulthood
In both sexes, initiation marked and produced the
transition to adulthood, when both sexes were expected to
assume the gender-specific roles associated with maturity. For males, this involved induction into the Tamberan
cult, which made boys into men by promoting their
physical growth and personal development. Male initiation took two forms: a stripped-down, family affair staged
for a single youth, or a communal interlocality affair that
occurred every 6 or 7 years. In either case, the initiate was
secluded, bathed, beaten, fed a meal containing the blood
of older men of the community, and shown a variety of
sacra associated with the Tamberan, including masks,
carved figures, flutes, and bullroarers. As part of the
sequence, the boy’s father also took him along his trade
road to introduce him to his future trade friends. He was
also “incised,” though exactly what this involved is
unclear.
The initiation rites for females were individually
staged at first menstruation and shared structural similarities to male initiation. The young woman—usually now
resident at her husband’s home—was secluded in a small
hut and tabooed water, food, and other comestibles for as
long as she could endure, usually 4–7 days. During this
period, older women rubbed her with stinging nettles and
taught her the “women’s tamberan,” the practice of
thrusting a rolled-up stinging nettle in and out of her
Gender-Related Social Groups
683
vagina. She was also scarified on the shoulders and
buttocks. At the end of her seclusion, she was painted and
decorated, and her husband fed her ritual foods to ensure
she would be strong, fertile, and a hard worker. The
sequence ended with presentations of gifts, rituals, and
taboo observances.
Middle Age and Old Age
In some ways, the very old and the very young were
conceptually assimilated in Arapesh society. Foods
were divided into two categories: shaloh, foods eaten by
those of reproductive age, and bonah, foods eaten by old
people and little children. As this formulation implies,
there was also an opposition between the elderly—those
passed their reproductive years—and those approaching
or in their reproductive years. Youth was a danger to old
age. At adolescence, and even more scrupulously following consummation of their marriage, the young had to be
careful to protect their elders from the polluting effects of
their sexuality. Parents could not eat sago processed by
their children, they could not eat food cooked over a fire
by which their children had enjoyed sexual relations, and
a son had to take care not to consume lime from his
father’s lime-gourd and not to step over any of his father’s
possessions. The consequences of infractions are unclear,
but among a neighboring group, the Yangoru Boiken,
similar age-related pollution is believed to cause arthritis,
blindness, and ultimately death.
For all that, elders were respected, and their juniors
felt a special responsibility to care for them.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The Arapesh are famous in the literature for Mead’s
assertion that both males and females were socialized to
be, and were, gentle, nurturant, passive, dependent,
cooperative, and maternal. Although they might lack
these qualities as children, by the time they were fully
socialized, they had become so noncompetitive and unaggressive that even warfare was “practically unknown.”
In provisioning, defending, and serving their kin and
communities, men sometimes had to be more aggressive,
assertive, creative, and productive than women. As a
result, masculinity was regarded as having a dangerous as
well as a nurturant aspect: men were associated with
hunting, destruction, and death as well as with nurturance
and life. In Mead’s rendering, this created a dissonance
that suited very few men. The rest viewed leadership, the
assumption of arrogance, and the occasional deployment
of violence as necessary evils, “onerous duties” to be
undertaken in service of the community and gladly
surrendered in old age. In many Melanesian communities, women are debarred from male cults and ceremonies
as a means of bolstering male dominance and prestige;
among the Mountain Arapesh, however, women were
excluded solely to protect them from sickness and from
bearing deformed children.
It is highly likely that the Mountain Arapesh did
view gentleness and nurturance as ideals for both men
and women. There is also little doubt that, in comparison
to many other Melanesian societies, they were relatively
gentle and peaceful. In making her point, however, Mead
probably overstated it significantly. It is simply not the
case, for example, that warfare was “practically
unknown”: in Fortune’s view, warfare was “good Arapesh
custom,” and he provided detailed information on
Arapesh fighting to support his contention.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Although gender relations were comparatively equitable,
Arapesh society was structured around males rather than
females. Clans and lineages were organized by patrilineal
descent; there were no matrilineal kin groups. Moreover,
women became strongly assimilated to their husbands’
rather than to their natal, kin. Postmarital residence was
patrilocal: at an early age, the young wife was taken into
her husband’s home, there to be “grown” and absorbed
into his family, and, as the years passed, she became more
thoroughly a part of this household than were her
husband’s sisters. She was addressed and treated as a
sibling by her in-laws, when she died she was buried on
her husband’s land by her husband’s people, and her spirit
remained with him, on his land, at the abode of his clan’s
walinab spirit.
Nonkin associations were also structured around
males rather than females. On becoming an adult, every
man inherited in the male line a buanyin exchange partner
with whom he competitively exchanged meat and crop
foods for the rest of his life. Some men, in addition,
formed ano’in relationships—relationships of competitive
animosity that usually emerged from violent incidents
684
Mountain Arapesh
such as a fight over a woman, in which the loser thereafter
tried to outdo his rival in raising pigs, sponsoring feasts,
and the like. Women participated in no such institutionalized exchange relationships. Occasionally, a girl and boy
born on the same day would be declared ano’in and were
expected to marry, but these were not “real ano’in”
relationships.
Then there was the men’s Tamberan cult. Although
Mead emphasized that it possessed none of the antagonism toward women and children found in other New
Guinea communities, it nonetheless united the adult
men of the locality in an exclusive association, and she
felt that it was an important means of socializing women
into intellectual passivity. Women did have their own
tamberans—childbirth, girl’s puberty rites, and the ritual
dyeing of skirts, but these appear to have united no
greater community than the wives of a clan.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
There was a marked division of labor. Men did the
fighting, hunting, clearing and fencing of gardens, planting and harvesting of yams and sago, and housebuilding.
They manufactured their weaponry and, in the ritual
realm, they cooked ceremonial food and produced the
ritual artwork. Women reared pigs, did the daily cooking,
and bore most of the portering. They planted and
harvested the taro, bananas, and greens, fetched water,
and gathered firewood, bush foods, insects, and grubs.
Both sexes participated in fishing and manufactured
smaller items of material culture such as ornaments,
clothing, and twine. Both men and women were supposed
to take care of children, though women appear to have
shouldered more of this responsibility than men.
The Arapesh imported much of their visual art. Of
the remainder, both sexes were likely to decorate their
own personal items, tools, and weaponry, though one gets
the impression that men did more than women. Men also
produced the formal ritual art—most notably, the bark
paintings associated with men’s houses. Women dyed
their sago-frond skirts, though, and this was considered
an important ritual act. Men were the main musicians of
the community, but both sexes sang and danced, often in
complementary concert.
Men dominated the trade links across the mountains,
and trade journeys were the main reason for them to be
absent from the locality. Although warriors mounting
a distant campaign might spend a night or two on the
road, trade journeys sometimes lasted for a week or two.
In Arapesh feeling, a clan’s land and trees belonged
to its ancestors; living members merely occupied or used
these resources. Allowing, then, that ownership was,
strictly speaking, usage, only males could own land, sago,
and coconut palms, and this property was inherited patrilineally. Very occasionally, a woman might inherit, but
the property passed via her to her husband or sons. There
was a different attitude to property that people had made
themselves. Individuals owned anything they had made
through their own “hard work,” had obtained in trade
with the fruits of their own labor, or had inherited from
such an owner. Thus, a woman owned all the pots, tools,
utensils, and so on given to her by her natal kin on her
marriage. Since people were conceptualized as “growing” young wives, children, and pigs—as making them
through hard work—there was therefore a “possessive
tinge” to relationships with these agents.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Parents were those believed to have created a child
through repeated acts of intercourse, but caring for a
child—in particular, “growing” through feeding—
defined the quintessential parental role. Therefore, since
nonnuclear kin routinely took the Arapesh child off to
care for and feed it for a week at a time, the child grew
up regarding many of its kin as “parents.” As noted, both
sexes played a role in childrearing, though mothers
appear to have borne more of the work than fathers. As
their children grew up, fathers began to spend more time
with their sons and mothers more time with their daughters, but there is little to suggest that parents differed
greatly in the ways that they educated and disciplined
their children or in the amount of time and affection they
invested in them.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Males dominated social and political affairs. They were
the warriors, they exercised control over the affairs of
their kin groups, and they were the political leaders—the
“big men” (though Arapesh big men had nothing like the
Sexuality
685
power and influence found in some New Guinea
communities). There is no evidence that women
exercised any leadership or had influence, at least in the
formal affairs of the community.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Men commanded most of the formal ritual and ceremonial of a community, much of which was staged in the
name of the men’s Tamberan cult. Women had their own
tamberans—childbirth, girl’s puberty rites, and the ritual
dyeing of skirts, but men still played prominent roles in
the first two of these.
The Arapesh had no conception of an original
human, male or female. The principle spiritual agencies
were ancestral spirits, walinab spirits, and the wareh (or
Tamberan) spirit. Ancestral spirits were male or female
according to their gender in life. Walinab spirits, which
featured as characters in myth and as spirits of the stream
and bush, were associated in a vague unspecified way
with ancestral spirits and were also either male or female.
Embodied in a noise-making device such as a flute or
bullroarer, however, the Tamberan spirit, the patron of the
men’s cult, was genderless—or, more accurately, both
male and female. There appears to have been no formal
ranking of these agencies, but the Tamberan was considered especially important as the agent responsible for
people’s growth and welfare. Although women were said
to have their own tamberans, the reference was not to
spirits per se but rather to important ritual acts.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
It is difficult to quantify the amount of leisure time.
It does appear, though, that females spent rather more
time in physical labor than men. Boys spent much of their
time playing with others of their age, while their sisters
were under greater obligations to perform domestic
chores. As they grew older, males would spend a significant amount of time in politicking, while their wives were
out working in the gardens and forest. Much of what
leisure time they had, women passed in visiting and
chatting with other female relatives and in playing with
children. Men, too, socialized with kin and friends. Both
sexes passed time in storytelling, singing, and dancing,
though it is difficult to gauge whether one sex did more
than the other. Beyond a top-spinning game that men
played at harvest time, there were no adult games or
sports.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
According to Mead, “The whole organisation of society
is based upon the analogy between children and wives as
representing a group who are younger, less responsible,
than the men, and therefore to be guided.” Thus, men controlled the formal political decision-making processes,
the important subsistence resources (land, sago, and
coconut palms), and most of the formal ritual and ceremonial. Fathers, rather than mothers or the partners
themselves, appear to have decided marital matches, at
least in the case of child betrothals.
Women were not entirely without influence or status;
as noted, they did maintain rights over the fruits of their
own labor, they controlled important elements of childbirth, girl’s puberty rites, and the ritual dyeing of skirts,
and one assumes that they could exert some informal
“backstage” influence over political affairs. To judge by
Arapesh sayings about wives taken in childhood and
those taken later in their life, the former were more dutiful towards their husbands than the latter.
SEXUALITY
In conformity with their mild passive temperaments,
according to Mead, the Arapesh viewed sex as a gentle
and peaceful act. Rape was all but unknown. At the
expense of active enjoyment of his own sexuality, a man
was taught to approach his wife gently to ensure that she
was well prepared to receive his advances. As a result of
this enculturation, sex was not viewed as arising from a
spontaneous internal desire but rather as a response to
external stimuli, arising in situations culturally defined as
sexual. There was no emphasis on satisfaction; the
emphasis was “on preparedness, the completeness of the
expectancy.” Sex with a spouse was simply a more final
and complete expression of the same affection one felt
for one’s child or sibling. That said, Fortune provided
evidence that both sexes thought sexual desire was like
a hunger.
Because sexual feelings emerged only in culturally
sanctioned contexts, the Arapesh were unconcerned
686
about young people experimenting with sex. This was
thought likely to occur only between a betrothed couple,
who were therefore lectured about the dangers of premature intercourse in stunting their growth and development. Once the pair were fully grown, this danger passed,
but sex was still associated with significant danger. On
first consummating their marriage, husband and wife had
to purify themselves of the act’s “heat” on pain of
destroying their future ability to perform their adult roles.
Once their child was born, a post-partum sex taboo was
observed until it could walk and talk in order to avoid
endangering its health. Subsequently, sex was also
avoided as dangerous during various rituals. Adultery was
considered dangerous to men because their semen could
be used for sorcery against them; it is not known whether
women entertained similar fears.
According to Mead, there was no recognition of men
as the natural initiators of sex; females were just as likely
to initiate intercourse. Indeed, the verb, “to copulate,”
could be used with both male and female subjects.
Apparently, there was no recognition of female sexual
climax; women talked of preferred sexual partners not in
terms of their ability to satisfy a desire but in terms of
ease and lack of difficulty in sex. Male climax was
phrased simply as a loss of tumescence.
Information is sparse, but there appears to have been
no excessive modesty about the body. Men, for example,
would move their loincloths to one side, even in public,
to scratch their testicles.
Boys were given to expressions of ease, warmth, and
“much giggling puppyishness,” but homosexuality was
not institutionally cultivated. Nor, to judge from the fact
that Alitoa locality was apparently undisturbed by the
homosexual behavior of two of its young men, does it
seem to have been actively opposed or condemned.
Men who had abandoned any attempt to maintain
their economic and ceremonial standing were called
alomato’in or “male women.” These men exhibited no
female manner or dress, nor were they homosexual;
indeed, one of their characteristics was heterosexual irresponsibility. They failed to observe taboos, they were
regarded as greedy and exhibitionist, they ate game which
they themselves had killed—an act tantamount to incest—
and they were regarded with contempt. It is doubtful,
however, that alomato’in represented a transgendered
category. Rather, the designation “male woman” likely
referred to their failure to live up to the expectations of
manhood. In this regard, they were like women, and
Mountain Arapesh
it is probably significant that Fortune also translated
alomato’in as “male wastrel.”
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Most first marriages, it will be recalled, were by child
betrothal, which sometimes occurred when the girl was
as young as 5. As might be expected, therefore, young
women appear to have exerted little influence over the
choice of their husband. It is not clear, though, whether
a young man had much greater freedom. As Mead
describes matters, the boy’s father selected a likely mate
for him, largely on the basis of past relationships and
other social and political considerations. The father then
approached the girl’s father, who decided for or against
the match on much the same grounds. There is little
evidence that love was a major element in the choice; the
expectation was that, as the young husband “grew” his
“little wife” with food, the pair would grow to love one
another with much the same affection as siblings raised
together.
Child betrothal involved the young girl leaving for
her husband’s home—typically, for a few days at a time,
and then for longer periods. At some point, there was a
betrothal ceremony, but little is known of its form. The
young wife’s menarche ceremony was held at her
husband’s hamlet, and he played an important role in its
ritual. Some time later, the major part of her bridewealth
was paid, usually some dozen rings and other shell valuables. Later still, at a time of their own choosing, the pair
consummated the marriage.
Virtually all females married, though a few men—
usually those with tinea skin disease or mental impairment—did not. In Arapesh ideology—and, according to
Mead, also in practice—unfortunates who remained
bachelors because of skin disease likely would revenge
their bitterness by taking up sorcery or trafficking in
exuviae.
An analysis of Mead’s data suggests that between a
half and two thirds of first betrothals failed. Major
reasons, according to Mead, included the premature death
of one partner, an age mismatch such that a young wife
matured faster than her husband, a young husband taking
an outsider for a second wife, and, very occasionally,
physical or mental defect. Although some young girls
were made miserable by an unhappy pairing, there is no
mention of them openly provoking a break-up. In fact,
Bibliography
divorce as such was virtually unknown; rather, a marital
split was camouflaged as a military abduction of the wife
by a new lover, the kidnapped woman being as complicit
in her seizure as the kidnapper and his kin. Women were
more likely to be widowed than men, and about three
quarters of widows remarried within their dead husbands’
clans, the sentiment being that they should remain with
their children, among his kinfolk.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
In the ideal, husband and wife grew up to love one
another as brother and sister, a familial amity that
diffused among all members of the husband’s home.
Mead described the young wife’s attitude towards her
young husband as,
one of complete trust and acceptance. No constraining taboo marks the
ease of their relationship. He is just another older male to whom she
looks up and upon whom she depends. She is to him another small girl,
his special small girl, whose hand must be taken in rough places on
the paths.
In practice, as noted, there were many shoals on which
betrothal founded, but there was no formal hostility,
antagonism, or aloofness between spouses. The family
usually ate and slept in the same hamlet and spent considerable time together there before and after the day’s labor.
Polygyny was practiced and commonly was the
consequence of widowhood; a man would take his dead
brother’s wife in marriage, principally to care for her and
his brother’s children. As a result, cowives were often well
known to one another, they had long-standing affection for
one another, and got on very well together. Cowives called
one another megan, “a term of affection and confidence.”
Not all polygynous relationships fared so well; in particular, if a husband took a second wife from afar, the
relationship between cowives could be rancorous.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The only significant other cross-sex relationships were
between males via a cross-sex linkage—in particular,
687
between mother’s brother and sister’s son—rather than
between males and females.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The principal ethnographic studies of the Mountain
Arapesh were conducted in the 1930s, a couple of
decades after contact and a decade or so following
pacification. Subsequently, Arapesh life was severely
disrupted by World War II, and by 1960 most of the
mountain dwellers had migrated down to the coast or to
villages in the southern foothills of the ranges—partly to
escape the wartime devastation of their homes, and partly
for greater accessibility to developments associated with
globalization. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing
of how these changes affected their conceptions and
practices regarding gender.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fortune, R. F. (1939). Arapesh warfare. American Anthropologist, 41,
22–41.
Fortune, R. F. (1943). Arapesh maternity. Nature, 152, 164.
Mead, M. (1949). Male and female: A study of the sexes in a changing
world. New York: Morrow.
Mead, M. (2001/1935). Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: Perennial.
Mead, M. (2002). The Mountain Arapesh: Vols. I and II With a new
introduction by P. B. Roscoe. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers. (Reprinted from The Mountain Arapesh, Vols. I–V, by
M. Mead, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of
Natural History, 36–41, 1938–49.)
Roscoe, P. B. (1991). Mountain Arapesh. In T. E. Hays (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of World Cultures: Vol. 2, Oceania (pp. 215–218).
Boston: Hall.
Roscoe, P. B. (1994). Settlement and sociality among the Mountain
Arapesh. Ethnology, 33, 193–210.
Roscoe, P. B. (1995). Familiar partners? The Mountain Arapesh and the
Westermarck effect. Journal of Anthropological Research, 51,
347–362.
Mundugumor
Nancy McDowell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Mundugumor are also known as the Biwat(s).
LOCATION
The Mundugumor are located on the Yuat River, a tributary of the Sepik River, Sepik River Province, Papua
New Guinea, southwest Pacific. Since this area is only a
few degrees south of the equator and not high above sea
level, the climate is tropical, and the Mundugumor lived
in an area of rainforest and lowland sago swamps.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Mundugumor were a horticultural people with a
population of about 1,000 who lived along the rich and
fertile banks of the Yuat River (the time period referred to
here is the early 1930s unless stated otherwise). Their
main staple was sago, but it was supplemented by significant garden products (taro, bananas, yams, coconuts),
fish, domestic pigs, game (pigs, cassowaries, marsupials),
and gathered items such as eggs and greens. Tobacco and
betel nuts, consumed as well as traded, were important
crops.
Although there were six villages, or more accurately
“hamlet-clusters” (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 169), the two
away from the river had begun to differentiate from the
four along the river proper. Villages were not clearly
demarcated settlements, but conceptually grouped hamlets, and it was the hamlet that was the main settlement.
Each, ideally distant from all others, was inhabited by one
or more households, which were the basic residential
units. Although actual composition was variable, each
household comprised the male head, his wife or wives,
their children, and attached others such as unimportant
unmarried men and elderly relatives.
Political organization was the type anthropologists
label “big man.” Individual men achieved powerful
positions due to their personal initiative, the manipulation
of exchange transactions, the accumulation of wives,
control over substantial garden produce and trade items
as well as domestic pigs, demonstrated leadership in
warfare, magical knowledge and ritual sponsorship, and
oratorical abilities. Conflict within hamlets and villages
as well as between villages was common, and warfare,
including raiding and cannibalism, involved shifting
alliances with a variety of neighboring groups. They were
known by their neighbors to be fierce, and there was an
unoccupied strip of land 20 miles long down river from
their settlements because others feared to encroach upon
them. From their rich riverbank location they participated
in trade networks to which they contributed coconuts,
tobacco, and betel nut; they served a mediating role in
several networks as well. From these associations they
obtained pottery, shells, stone, and a variety of manufactured goods as well as art styles, songs, and dances.
Most interpersonal relationships were based on
kinship; individuals were related to others in one way or
another. A person’s kin were divided into three types,
based on the nature of the tie and the behavior appropriate:
(1) people with whom one demonstrated some intimacy
(e.g., a man’s mother), (2) people who elicited shame and
should be avoided (e.g., affines), and (3) people with
whom joking was obligatory (e.g., distant cross cousins).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Mundugumor appear to have designated only two
genders, male and female, and did not recognize homosexuality. Each gender was associated with specific tasks
within the division of labor (see “Gender Roles in
Economics”), and each dressed in a gender-appropriate
way. Men wore a woven belt with leaves attached to the
front and back, or a flying-fox skin decorated with shells,
while women wore grass skirts. Both women and men
wore woven armbands (sometimes with shells) as
decoration, and women wore strings of shells attached
to their earlobes. Little girls were decorated with special
688
Gender over the Life Cycle
ornaments, shells, and fancy grass skirts, and, as they
grew older, were occasionally paraded about by their
fathers while mothers too took some interest in bedecking their daughters. Little boys remained devoid of decoration and remained naked until age 6 or 7. Later, girls’
ears were pierced while boys were scarified, primarily on
their backs.
Women were thought to be weaker than men physically, and the ideal woman was “tall, lithe, and slender”
(Mead, 1935/1963, p. 230). Women per se seem not to
have been polluting, that is, they did not inherently pose
a danger to men by their very nature as is often the case
in Melanesia, but some entities, such as long yams and
certain spirits, disliked the odors associated with menstruation, sexual activity (either partner), and soap.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
There is no indication that the Mundugumor conceptualized the possibility of gender shifts over a lifetime, as
do some Melanesians. Expectations of proper behavior
did change over the course of a life cycle, but these
changes were gradual shifts, not marked by ceremony or
event.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The birth of a first child was rarely the cause for celebration for a married couple (see “Courtship and Marriage”).
Children in general were not especially valued or prized,
and infanticide was not uncommon. Mead (1935/1963,
p. 191) noted that more girls survived birth because men,
including the mother’s father and brothers as well as her
husband, preferred girls more than boys because females
could later be used in exchange for wives for themselves.
Women wanted sons, and thus ensured the survival of
some male infants. Child hostages, sent to enemy groups
as tokens of good faith, were almost always boys because
girls were more highly valued by men, but it is important
to note that children were always used as hostages
because they were less valued than adults if harm should
come to them.
Although there is some evidence that women, the
main caretakers of very young children, might have cared
for sons more carefully than daughters, infants or toddlers
were not considered precious beings and were never
coddled. Mead (1935/1963, pp. 198–199) wrote that,
689
“although there is some difference between a woman’s
treatment of a boy and a girl, this difference is against
such a general background of maternal rejection that to
an observer the treatment of both seems hostile and
harsh.” Infants were fed perfunctorily only when hungry
and convenient, never for comfort. They were carried in
scratchy baskets or awkwardly and roughly by their
mothers. Weaning occurred when mothers pushed their
children away from the breast and simply refused access;
only an unusually kind woman might smear an unpleasant substance on her nipples to encourage avoidance
rather than continually and brusquely rejecting the toddler physically. Children learned quickly that they could
not expect solace or succor from anyone and that they
would find safety only in the solitude of their own
mosquito baskets, not with human beings.
Boys formed playgroups that wandered at will
through the hamlet cluster and sometimes beyond. Their
games were impromptu, competitive, and often violent.
Occasionally a group of boys would band together and
stay in the bush, stealing food from gardens during the
night and greatly enjoying themselves and their daring
deeds. Girls, on the other hand, did not form play groups
and demonstrated a somewhat greater ease with one
another than perpetually quarreling young boys.
Men wanted daughters and women preferred sons.
As the child matured, he or she spent more time with and
was instructed by the opposite-sex parent. Girls helped
their fathers in their bush tasks, and boys sometimes
assisted their mothers. A boy was expected to come to his
mother’s defense if she were being beaten by her husband. One of the most important activities that the parent
engaged in with this favored child was instruction in the
proper use of kin terms: the father taught the daughter
while the mother taught the son. In this small community,
people were related to one another in more than one way,
and to choose one kin term rather than another could
stress an inappropriate marriage and thus insult one’s
spouse. For example, marriages were supposed to take
place only between people of the same generation, and
yet many men used their daughters to exchange for wives
from that younger generation. The young wife would
teach her son kin terms that called attention to this infraction and thus embarrass and shame her husband. Children
were used in this way to “score points” against spouses.
A child (more often the less valuable boy) might be
sent as a hostage to an enemy village where he or she
remained for weeks or months at a time among strangers
690
and enemies. Mead (1935/1963, p. 211) emphasized the
strength and independence of the children by saying that
“although all children do not have this experience, and
some have it more than once, it is nevertheless significant
of the sturdiness of the children’s personality that any one
of them is felt capable of undergoing such an order.”
Enemy children were also sent to Mundugumor villages,
so local children always had before them the possibility
of being teased and bullied as these children were among
strangers.
Some boys also had the additional experience of
killing a captive. Raids yielded captives who were
brought back to the hamlet, dispatched, and eaten. Adult
men did not do the killing because they feared others
would mock them for only killing captives and not enemy
warriors during a raid. The young boy who did the killing
was not given any special honor, nor did this count as a
head he had taken; he was still expected to kill later in
raids in order to be a respected warrior.
Ideally, some time in later childhood an individual
would begin to demonstrate the ability to fulfill his or her
appropriate subsistence role, and these were important
occasions in developing intergenerational exchange
networks among kin. A girl presented her first catch of
fish or her first processed sago to her a classificatory
father’s sister; this was reciprocated at the time by a small
feast. A boy presented his first hunting trophy (pig, cassowary, marsupial) to his classificatory mother’s brother.
The exchanges begun here, especially that between the
males, evolved into more elaborate and substantial ones
that were critically important throughout their lives and
continued into later generations (see McDowell, 1991).
The father’s sister also sometimes pierced the ears of her
brother’s children, but these occasions were not always
ceremonial accompanied by ritual and feasting.
Mead (1935/1963, p. 212) described the nature of
late childhood this way: “as a result of this Spartan training, preadolescent Mundugumor children have an appearance of harsh maturity and, aside from sex-experience,
are virtually assimilated to the individualistic patterns of
their society by the time they are twelve or thirteen.”
Puberty and Adolescence
Unlike many places in the world, initiation was not
designed to turn men into boys or girls into women, nor
did there appear to be any overarching ritual cycle that
encompassed the variety of ceremonies that took place.
Mundugumor
First menstruation was not marked. Individuals were
“initiated” by viewing specific ritual objects for the first
time, and although it was better that youngsters view the
objects early on, it was not uncommon for adults not to
have seen a particular object and need to submit to the
initiation and its associated cult if they wanted to avoid
ridicule and exclusion. Thus initiation was not a comingof-age ceremony but rather a ritual that allowed an
individual to see and participate in the cult activities
surrounding a particular sacred object, usually a flute,
owned by an individual. Men who wanted to demonstrate
their largesse and power sponsored these occasions when
one of their kin (e.g., a son) was an adolescent; it was the
big man who arranged and paid for the construction of a
special cult house, who oversaw the preparations and
execution of the ritual, and who ensured that the initiates
observed the appropriate taboos.
In 1932, the Mundugumor claimed that there were
to be no further initiations, but anthropologists Mead and
Fortune sponsored, paid for, the performance of the initiation associated with the ashin or crocodile flute. Thus
they were able to observe the ritual only a few years after
it had been abandoned. One of the most unusual aspects
observed was the inclusion of girls in the initiate group.
Although they were not subject to the hazing received by
the boys (the rationale for not scarifying female initiates
was that scarification prepared boys for warfare, and
women did not go to war), they participated, if they chose
to do so, and were allowed to view the sacred objects if
they observed the appropriate taboos (especially food
taboos) and other ritual behaviors of the cult. In this
instance, about two thirds of the girls chose to view the
ritual object. The inclusion of girls in any such initiation
is highly unusual, but there can be no doubt that Mead
and Fortune did witness girls being initiated only 3 years
after pacification. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure of the
extent to which this may have been a historical anomaly
(see McDowell, 1991).
As puberty and adolescence came along, responsibilities, especially for girls, increased. Boys worked with
their mothers or senior male relative (not father or
brother), but their participation was casual and uncertain.
Girls might already be married and living with their
in-laws, or under the careful and watchful eye of their
jealous and possessive fathers. A great deal of time and
energy, especially for girls, was consumed by the numerous love affairs they conducted, despite the ideal of
female virginity (see “Sexuality”).
Gender-Related Social Groups
691
Attainment of Adulthood
There is no marked occasion after which the
Mundugumor individual was recognized as an adult—no
specific ritual or achievement. Marriage probably indicated adult status more than anything else, although the
birth of first child might also have been important.
Middle and Old Age
All adults were expected to be married and to participate
in household activities, and men spent considerable
time conducting warfare and defense. Older people
contributed what they could, but few people lived to be significantly old. There is some evidence that older women
possessed powers not available to males or younger
women. Only an old woman, for example, could perform
the ritual for the capture of a soul stolen by water spirits,
and during a funeral food set out for the ghost was sometimes eaten by an old woman of the household (everyone
else was afraid).
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Socialization produced individuals who were independent
and aggressive. Mead (1935/1963) described them as
“gay, hard, and arrogant” (p. 167), “proud, harsh, and
violent” (p. 233), and as a people who possessed an
“aggressive individuality” (p. 183) and a “ruthless
individualism” (p. 190). Mead’s description of the
Mundugumor stressed that male and female ethos were
essentially the same, and that both women and men resembled the American cultural model for the “masculine” of
the 1930s. Both genders were “actively masculine, virile,
and without any of the softening and mellowing characteristics that we are accustomed to believe are inalienably
womanly” (p. 165). Women and men alike behaved “in a
fierce, initiating fashion” (Mead, 1935/1963; preface to the
1950 edition). Despite the fact that parents treated male
and female children somewhat differently, “… behind this
difference … lies no theory that women differ temperamentally from men. They are believed to be just as violent,
just as aggressive, just as jealous. They simply are not
quite as strong physically, although often a woman can put
up a very good fight …” (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 210).
“Women did not engage in the same activities as men,
but both sexes were gay, hard, arrogant, aggressive,
charming, individualistic, positively sexed …” (McDowell,
1991, p. 298). Neither gender possessed the characteristics, such as a desire to nurture, that Mead’s generation
expected of women. Different “temperaments” were the
result of individual biological endowments combined with
idiosyncratic events in socialization. Women and men did
different things (see “Gender Roles in Economics”), but
the Mundugumor did not expect there to be personality
differences and they did not find them.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
In this society comprised of relatively autonomous
individuals, there were no active gender-related social
groups. The Mundugumor assumed the existence of
conflict and hostility among almost all people of the same
sex. Land was inherited patrilineally, but because it was so
plentiful, access to it never became an issue and patrilineal groups were almost invisible. Men, especially fathers,
sons and brothers, were highly suspicious of one another.
Sons suspected fathers of claiming their sisters to use in
exchange for wives for themselves, and brothers competed
with one another for the rights to use sisters in their own
marriages. Among men, only the mother’s brother–sister’s
son relationship was relaxed; often, the mother’s brother
sided with his sister’s son in order to oppose his brotherin-law, the boy’s father. Men did not regularly come
together for any purpose. There was no men’s house.
There were no patrilineal descent group affairs to conduct.
Men only came together for raids and the occasional feast,
and even these were fraught with interpersonal tensions.
Women were more apt to gather unceremoniously or
to work casually together even though they had no structured or enduring groups that lasted over time. Daughters
might assist one another and their mother until their own
marriage obligations pulled them away, but it was only
informally. Two women who participated in the same marriage exchange (i.e., were “exchanged” for one another)
maintained somewhat relaxed and close ties. Despite the
fact that cowives characteristically did not get along and
were constantly competing with one another for their husband’s attention for themselves or their children,
… nevertheless they form one of the most permanent semi-co-operative
organizations in Mundugumor. They live in the same compound,
they see each other constantly, and no formalized avoidance or jesting
692
Mundugumor
behaviour separates them or regulates their conduct. They call each
other “sister” and reproduce the constellation of daughters around the
father of the polygynous household. (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 208)
Groups of females—daughters, mothers, and cowives—
could be seen in a compound, working together and
quietly chatting about the events of the day. These
relations contrasted sharply with men’s.
In ordinary times [not feast times], only women gather in chattering
groups to comment cattily upon each other’s brightly coloured grass
skirts, or laugh at the older women who stubbornly insist upon dressing
in the modes of an earlier period. (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 175)
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Although women and men shared the same ethos, they
did not share the same economic obligations, and there
was a significant sexual division of labor here. The
unusually rich resources of the area allowed women to do
most of the subsistence labor while men, responsible for
warfare and defense, engaged in planning or executing
raids and battles. Men also cleared the land for gardens,
cut down sago palms for processing, grew the ceremonially important long yam, built houses, and hunted.
Women planted, tended, and harvested the gardens,
including the all-important tobacco gardens that yielded
the important trade item. Women did most of the fishing,
which provided the regular intake of protein. Women
were also in charge of childcare, cooking, and household
chores (including the relatively onerous task of firewood
acquisition). Both men and women made items of
material culture, but men were in charge of the construction of ceremonial and ritual items, and both gathered
wild products such as greens and eggs (bush fowl and
crocodile). Just after pacification, men’s energies in
warfare were being replaced by indentured labor on
coastal plantations.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
The Mundugumor were not a noticeably nurturing
people, and the caretaking of young children was an
annoying task assigned to the mother. Although the
baby’s father’s classificatory sister assisted in the birth
and helped the mother (she was repaid by a feast from
the father/brother if he wanted to increase his renown),
she was not designated as a supplementary caretaker.
Mothers were the major caretakers of infants and
very young children; rarely did a father ever hold such a
child. Sometimes youngsters were carried under the
mother’s arm, but as they grew they were placed with a
leg on each side of mother’s head and expected to hold on
for themselves. As children grew older, their independence took them away from parental control; this was
especially true for boys because girls remained under the
jealous, infuriating surveillance of their fathers.
As noted above, men preferred daughters (whom
they could use in exchange for more wives for themselves), and women preferred sons (who would support
them and cause trouble for their husbands). Despite the
lack of overall nurturing behavior, it is certain that parents and children did develop deep emotional attachments
to their cross-sex relative.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
There were no ascribed leadership statuses in this small
society; men (and only men) became leaders as a result
of their own actions (see above). These men were strong,
aggressive, and feared. Polygyny played a critical role in
the achievement of leadership status: multiple wives
meant more gardens, especially tobacco gardens for intergroup trade, and multiple wives meant multiple affines
with whom exchanges could occur. There were two such
leaders in the village of Kinakatem in the early 1930s,
one of whom had eight living wives, the other nine.
Although women did not occupy the status of “big
man,” they were not necessarily quiet and unobtrusive.
When matters pertained to them, such as their own
marriage arrangements (see “Courtship and Marriage”)
or an extended period of warfare that went on too long,
they were heard and often achieved their desired ends.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The focus of Mundugumor religion was very practical:
people used nontechnical or supernatural means to
achieve desired ends or avoid undesired ones. In addition
to a large variety of magical spells and taboos, supernatural beings of various sorts were critical in this process.
Bush and water spirits occupied the forest; these were
Relative Status of Men and Women
associated with particular territories and kin groups,
members of which had special relationships with them.
They occasionally appeared in the form of an animal
(bush spirits usually as cassowaries, water spirits as
crocodiles) or human being. These spirits lived in groups
similar to human groups, composed of husbands, wives,
and children, and it is possible that the ghosts of the dead
resided with them as well. These spirits could be helpful
or harmful to human beings, and sometimes individuals
could influence their behavior for good or ill. They also
enforced a variety of taboos associated with their territories. For example, some disliked the smell of sexual activity, and a man or woman who had recently engaged in sex
avoided areas inhabited by these beings.
Ghosts of the dead were another category of spirit
being. Skulls of dead relatives were kept, and the bones
of powerful warriors were scraped and the scrapings
eaten by distant male kin as a type of war magic. Ghosts,
too, could be influenced by the living; it was possible to
invoke the name of particular ghosts as a curse. Funerals
for the dead were elaborate for important people, especially big men, and less so for the unimportant.
There was a series of magical techniques that
produced a desired end without the clear participation of
a supernatural being. Many of these were acquired from
other people by men as they conducted trade and warfare,
so they tended to be the property of men rather than
women. Sometimes they were gender specific because
the interest was; men had hunting charms while some
women knew curses that could affect the fishing territories of other women.
Apart from death in warfare or from obvious
accident or old age, all deaths were the result of sorcery.
Although a few Mundugumor people knew sorcery techniques, they rarely used them on their fellows because the
required secrecy was too difficult to maintain. So sorcerers from up-river villages were hired if the target were a
local person, and anyone, male or female, could hire one
to harm an enemy or competitor. The sorcerer needed
only payment and some “dirt” (hair, nail clippings, etc.)
from the victim. Women did have a specific power not
available to men; they could and apparently did put
menstrual blood in men’s food to cause illness.
We know of two myths that were important. One told
of the exploits of Bilishoi, a male who traveled the countryside causing harm to people wherever he went; after his
death, he, in the form of his bones, received food from people who continued to fear him. Informants in 1981 likened
693
him to Satan. The second myth was of a woman, Gorinjime,
who was driven out of her village after her husband accused
her of being a ghost (she had been killed by enemies but her
blood coagulated again and she came back to life); in 1981,
informants continued to describe her exploits and suggested that she went off America where her descendants
and their kin continue to live (McDowell, 1991).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
There are very few data on leisure and recreation beyond
what we know of children’s games (above). Both men and
women were active in the manufacture of necessary material culture, but they preferred to exchange tobacco for
goods (e.g., pots) if possible. Men made all ritual and
military objects such as war shields, sacred flutes, and
slitgong drums. These were often elaborately decorated,
and Mead (1935/1963, p. 172) described their manufacture as “… the fine tight tradition of Mundugumor art, the
high-relief carving on the tall wooden shields, the lowrelief styled animal representations on the spears, the intricate painted designs on the great triangles of bark that are
raised at yam-feasts.” Women’s manufacture of material
objects was far more mundane and practical; their creations were usually unadorned yet important. They made
small fishing baskets and the fiber that they wove into fishing nets, string bags, and a variety of other useful items.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
In general, women and men here seemed to inhabit
separate but articulated worlds within each household.
Women had considerable autonomy in their tasks, such as
gardening and fishing, while men operated independently
from others as well. Although the public culture stipulated that men exchanged women in marriage, the reality
was that few women married men not of their choosing
(see “Courtship and Marriage”). Both men and women
were admired for their forcefulness and independence.
Although it is difficult to measure in any realistic way, it
must be said that Mundugumor women had a relatively
high status, relative, that is, to women in other
Melanesian groups. Their influence on the public arena
was significant, but from the sidelines. Girls may have
been more valued than boys, but they were valuable to
men for the purpose of marriage exchange.
694
Mundugumor
SEXUALITY
One of the reasons that young married couples were
frequently not pleased at pregnancy was that it meant the
end of sexual activity for several months both before and
after the birth. Sexual activity was important to both men
and women, and sexual taboos were felt to be an onerous
deprivation for both.
Female virginity was valued and expected, and if a
girl were known not to be a virgin, she could only be
exchanged for another nonvirgin. However, if she had kept
her affairs relatively secret, no one could be sure of her
status, and her husband, on discovering it, remained quiet.
Despite the watchful eye of fathers, adolescent girls were
very successful in conducting love affairs. Adultery by
either wife or husband was frequently a cause of conflict.
“The love affairs of the young unmarried people are
sudden and highly charged, characterized by passion
rather than by tenderness or romance” (Mead, 1935/1963,
pp. 215–216). Sexual foreplay, between married and
unmarried alike, was aggressive and violent, and often
involved biting. Mead described the usual position for sexual intercourse as “the missionary position” (McDowell,
1991, p. 204). Females were active sexual beings, and
young boys were taught that being too fast would displease their partners. A woman’s clitoris was the site for
her sexual feelings, and women generally preferred a long
penis to a short one, length being more important to them
than duration of erections.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Despite the ideal that marriages were arranged, individualistic young men and women had considerable choice of
partner.
From childhood on they [girls] were taught to make their own sentimental choices and to take the initiative in their relations with boys and
later with men. Although boys were warned about the potential sorcery
involved in playing with many women, they also used love magic to
seduce desirable women. (McDowell, 1991, p. 203)
In the face of all Mundugumor conflicts about arranged marriages
there exists a violent preference for individual selection of one’s mate.
Children who have been accustomed to fight even for their first drops
of milk do not docilely accept prescribed marriages arranged for other
people’s convenience. (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 215)
Girls dressed to attract young men, and boys were on the
lookout for interested young women. Girls did not restrict
their activities to bachelors and often had affairs with
married men.
From these sexual relationships developed the desire
for marriage, and an insistent young woman almost
always won her choice. However, the road to that marriage was not an easy one because of the serious rule
of brother–sister exchange marriage. The ideal was that
two men marry one another’s sisters, that is, two men
exchanged sisters. However, the girls’ desires often
caused considerable difficulty in these essentially public
male arrangements. Trouble resulted when a young
woman arranged to elope with her lover in order to marry
the man of her choice. Three possible scenarios were
common. First, perhaps the girl had already been promised in marriage to another man and that her elder brother
(or even father) had already stipulated her marriage road
in acquiring a wife for himself. That is, half of the
exchange had already taken place and the second half
awaited only her maturation. Her refusal to marry her
brother’s wife’s brother (or father’s wife’s brother) was
the source of considerable conflict. Second, even if she
were not already promised, perhaps her lover did not have
a sister to return to her brother (or other male kin). Fights
were then inevitable as the sisterless man tried to defend
himself against accusations of woman-stealing. He
needed to find a distant classificatory sister or other
female relative to use as a return. Only occasionally, if the
young woman’s family had more daughters than sons
(i.e., extra women), they would accept a sacred flute in
lieu of a human return, but such marriages were never as
respectable as those executed by sister exchange. Finally,
if the girl’s lover had an appropriate sister, and if the
families approved of the match, then a marriage could
be arranged but only after considerable conflict and
discussion.
Sometimes families took action to avoid the troubles
that young women caused by arranging exchange marriages among very young adolescents and sending the
young wives to the homes of their future spouses. (Such a
marriage might also be the result of one of the above scenarios; a young woman gets her man, but then his much
younger sister is sent to her brother as a wife.) These
youngsters were not ready for marriage, and they did not
have the maturity to fight for their own later choices. The
young boy found himself with a wife not of his choosing,
but he was free to add wives more attractive to him as he
matured. Despite the enormous complications, marriage
exchanges were the norm within the four river villages.
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
Marriages were even more complex because of
an additional rule: ideally, marriages took place between
third cross cousins (distant classificatory siblings). This
rule was honored far more in the breach than in the observance. However, the rule that one should not marry within
one’s own patrilineal group was usually observed.
A widow was supposed to marry a distant kinsman of her
deceased husband, but she usually exercised some choice
in the matter. Big men also frequently married foreign
women, and these women helped to strengthen their
households both economically and politically.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
To some extent the nature of the relationship between a
husband and wife depended on the way in which the
marriage was executed. If it was the outgrowth of a premarital affair, there was less conflict and discomfort than
if it was an arranged marriage between youths. However,
there existed a built-in assurance that marriages would be
conflict-ridden. When the young married couple discovered a pregnancy, both husband and wife were displeased
by the prospect of sexual abstinence and the variety of
taboos associated with impending childbirth. The husband blamed his wife for getting pregnant too soon and
wondered why his antipregnancy magic was not effective.
She resented his anger and worried that he would seek out
a second wife during their enforced abstinence. They
both rebelled against the restrictions on their freedom.
The husband feared that a boy would be born, a son who
would compete with him and cause conflicts, while the
wife feared that she would bear a daughter for her husband to dote on and prefer. Discussion ensued as to
whether the child should be kept at all. Thus, at the very
inception of a new marriage, conflict arose between wife
and husband that was unlikely to lessen much over time.
Marriages, then, tended to be rather stormy affairs.
Couples argued about a variety of things, including the
fate of a newborn child or a wife’s too frequent absences;
marital arrangements for their children were often cause
for serious conflict, especially if the husband wanted to
use one of their daughters in an exchange for an additional wife for himself, thus depriving a son of a wife.
Established wives resented a husband’s attempts to
acquire an additional wife and sometimes made it so
difficult that the husband gave up the attempt. Divorce,
especially before the birth of children, was not uncommon.
695
Few men achieved the ideal of eight or ten wives
simultaneously, but many men did have multiple wives
(11 out of 31 in Kinakatem in 1932). Cowives rarely
cooperated with one another; usually their relationship
was one of conflict and competition for their husband’s
time and resources, both for themselves and their children
(especially sons). Men had favored wives, with whom
they spent more time; sometimes these were the younger
and more attractive women, but some men favored older
and more productive wives. Cowives frequently fought
verbally and insulted one another; occasionally the
quarrels resulted in physical violence.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Cross-sex relationships were critical in the social structure.
The brother–sister tie, although marked by formality and
respect, was crucial in marital arrangements. Emotional
bonds between father and daughter, mother and son, were
predominant. The mother’s brother–sister’s son and
father’s sister–brother’s daughter ties were also critical in
the system of exchange among kin that ideally carried
down three generations and resulted in a new marital
exchange identical with the original one. Cross-sex ties
were so important that they led Mead (1935/1963) to argue
that the Mundugumor possessed a kind of descent group
called a “rope” of alternating ties: a woman belonged to her
father’s “rope,” while a man belonged to his mother’s, and
so on. Although Mead was probably wrong in seeing these
ties as forming descent groups, she was correct in stressing
the importance of these cross-sex relationships (see
McDowell [1991] for another interpretation of “rope”).
She wrote (Mead, 1935/1963, p. 176): “… social organization is based upon a theory of a natural hostility that exists
between all members of the same sex, and the assumption
that the only possible ties between members of the same
sex are through members of the opposite sex.” It is interesting to note that the only tie between men that was characterized by relaxed affection, between a mother’s brother
and sister’s son, was one mediated by a female relative.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
There are no specific data about changing gender practices
or beliefs among the Mundugumor. All available evidence
696
points to the conclusion that, despite the dramatic changes
that have taken place during the past 100 years, gender
roles and practices have been characterized by an essential continuity. Men and women are both assertive and
engaged in advancing their own interests, and both take
active roles in new public institutions such as church,
school, and sports clubs. Although attenuated, polygyny is
still practiced, and the ideal of brother–sister exchange
marriage remains, although the extent to which it is
currently achieved is not known. There is some evidence
that the role of affines has increased in importance while
Mundugumor
that of the brother–sister tie has decreased, but that is
speculation (McDowell, 1991).
REFERENCES
McDowell, N. (1991). The Mundugumor: From the field notes of
Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Mead, M. (1963). Sex and temperament in three primitive societies.
New York: Morrow Co. (Original work published 1935.)
Na
Eileen Rose Walsh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Na are also known as Mosuo, Moso, Yongning Naxi,
and Naze.
LOCATION
Na live in southwest China, in an area straddling the border
of Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces. Despite the government’s official designation of the Na in Yunnan as a
subgroup of the Naxi, and in Sichuan as Mongolian, Na are
generally referred to as “Mosuo” in China, and this name
has been used by the foreign press as well. The Yongning
area in Ninglang County, northern Yunnan, is the cultural
center of Na territory. This entry describes the Yongning Na.
Yongning Township consists of a high-altitude basin
area (over 2,600 m), and includes mountainous areas that
surround the basin (with altitudes reaching over 4,000 m).
Half of the large alpine lake, Lugu Lake (whose shores
are at 2,700 m), lies in Yongning.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Living in the foothills of Tibet, the Na have a population
of approximately 40,000. Na speak a Tibeto-Burman
language related to other languages found in this region.
Many Na consider their closest ethnic cousins to be
Tibetans, and point to shared religion and similar lifestyles. Na practice Lamaism (predominantly Gelugpa) as
well as their own shamanism, “dabaism.” Until the 20th
century, the Yongning basin area was predominantly Na.
Trade between Tibet, the Liang Mountains, and the
LiJiang area flowed through this region. In the 1920s and
1930s, trade in opium (Shih & Jenike, 2002) and other
goods carried by horse teams flourished. Starting from
this time period, other ethnic groups became more
numerous and populous in the Yongning region.
However, the Na are still the dominant group in this area
with approximately 37% of the population.
In 1956, the People’s Liberation Army entered
Yongning to establish the area firmly as part of the People’s
Republic of China (P.R.C.) and end the long-standing
feudal system. Prior to this time, social strata consisted of
the aristocracy (5%), commoners (48%), and slaves (47%)
(Yan & Song, 1983). The county is officially listed as
“impoverished” and receives development aid. However,
this aid, as well as other economic projects, is usually controlled by the county government, which is dominated by
Yi, the majority ethnic group in the county. The historically
strained relationship with the Yi affects the relationship of
the Na with their current county government.
The wetland basin is the agricultural and economic
heart of the Yongning region. Into the 1990s, over 90% of
the population engaged in agricultural production. The
area experiences a rainy season in the summer. The dry
season, the winter, is marked by intense sun, strong winds,
and very little precipitation. Primary crops in the basin
include rice and corn (used predominantly for feed), while
secondary crops include wheat, buckwheat, oats, and
potatoes. Nearly all households own several pigs.
The cultural traits for which the Na are best known
in China are their large matrilineal households and sese,
consensual visiting sexual unions. If a couple agree to
relations, the woman receives her lover at her residence
in the evening and he leaves to return to his in the morning. Both remain socially and economically attached to
their natal households, and either can end the relationship. Children normally remain with the mother, take her
family name, and are considered part of her household.
Since the 1960s the government has used both persuasion
and coercion to try to end sese and alter traditional family
structures. Sese relations continue today in Na communities, alongside legal marriages.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Ideal roles in Na society, household, and labor are divided
into those considered appropriate to men and women.
In practice, however, Na accept fluidity between roles.
697
698
Na women are also symbolically valued as the core of
Na household and religion; the primary Na deity is a
goddess, Gemu. An ideal household will have consanguineally related male and female members of older and
younger generations to ensure harmony, a labor force,
and the continuity to care for the elderly and “feed” (give
offerings to) the ancestors. The acknowledged head of the
household may be a man or woman, and the de facto head
is often a woman.
Na believe that women provide the core and continuation of the household. A household without women of
a reproductive age would need to adopt in a girl or female
mate to “continue the hearth,” and ensure that the household continues as an economic unit, and as a unit to
continue to give offerings to ancestors. Households may
adopt girls or boys if lacking in descendants, or may
incorporate fully grown members of other households.
As adults, Na men and women, both traditional and
modern, dress and adorn themselves in gender-specific
ways. In Yongning, women over 50 generally wear traditional clothing, as do some older men and younger people
for special occasions. Traditionally, children of both
sexes wore simple tunics until the age 13 (12 by
Westerner reckoning) when they gained status as an adult
member of the community through a coming-of-age ceremony. Now, children’s clothing is usually factory made,
and one can generally recognize a child’s sex by clothing.
In addition, young girls often have their ears pierced.
The traditional Na women’s costume consists of a
very full floor-length skirt, a side-buttoning shirt, a wide
waist sash, and a headdress of a long thick artificial braid.
The headdresses are made of black yarn, animal, or human
hair, and women wrap these around their crowns and
adorn them with beads or, recently, plastic flowers and
artificial pearls. Women wearing traditional dress for daily
wear will usually wear a simpler headdress of a scarf
wrapped into a turban. Women not wearing traditional
dress generally wear gendered factory-made clothes common in much of rural China, but may combine this with
the simpler headdress made of a scarf. Most women wear
jewelry; earrings, rings, and thick bangles of silver are
most common. Some women still wear the long chain for
keys attached to their clothing. In some remoter Na territory in Sichuan, men still wear, for special occasions,
trousers covered by ankle-length tunics of hand-spun
cloth, drawn in at the waist by wide sashes. In Yongning,
the tunic has given way to what Na describe as a more
“Tibetan-style” shirt of side closure similar to that of
Na
Na women, also worn with a waist sash. Some older men
still wear full three-quarter-length pants, while younger
men generally wear trousers. Wide-brimmed wool felt
hats are common. Some Na men adopt Tibetan-style decorative hats, and also wear decorative (but functional)
knives. Men not wearing traditional dress generally wear
gendered factory-made clothes common in rural China,
and will often combine this with a brimmed hat. Many
men wear rings; silver are most common.
The features thought attractive in men and women
are basically the same (see “Courtship and Marriage”).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The most important life passages for Na are coming of
age as adult members of the community and passage to
the land of ancestors (their funeral ceremony). These life
passages are equally celebrated for Na men and women,
and in a similar fashion. Since Na generally did not marry
in the past, marriage was not and still is not an important
life transition. Traditionally, a daba, a practitioner of Na
religion, named a baby within a day of the child’s birth.
A month later, the household invited elders, especially
women of the village, to celebrate the addition of the
child to the household. The rituals of naming, and
celebration a month after birth are the same for boys and
girls. More recently, the child, when a toddler, is brought
to the Living Buddha of Yongning to be named.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Na households welcome both boys and girls. However,
since girls are seen as necessary for the continuation of the
household, a household may begin to experience rising
tension if no girls are born into the younger generation.
Na boys and girls are raised similarly, and many
household chores and responsibilities are assigned to
children based on their age and ability to take them on.
However, children’s labor power is often not immediately
essential to the household, and children are granted a
large degree of freedom and playtime. Girls and boys
engage in somewhat different activities. Even small girls
may join their mothers and aunts for a day of working in
the fields. Boys will often join older men in taking livestock to pasture or attempt to join other men’s activities
such as carpentry. Girls seem to assume more responsibility for household chores than boys. Both girls and boys
Personality Differences by Gender
are taught to be responsible and respectful. Children are
not ashamed of helping with household chores of any
kind. Children of either sex will be tolerated to a certain
degree when acting out (especially if younger than 3 or
4), but they may be admonished verbally or slapped if
they create a disturbance. In general, however, there is
little or no physical abuse of children.
Because of government campaigns to increase
formal education of rural children across China, many Na
children now receive at least an elementary education.
Officials are trying to enforce children’s attendance
through ninth grade. Generally, Na girls and boys have
almost equal access to education, and girls are thought to
perform somewhat better than boys in school because
they are less rowdy and more diligent. Most agricultural
households believe that it is essential to groom one member of the younger generation to take over the responsibilities of farming. A girl is usually preferred for this task
(as she will be more responsible, and can continue the
family line).
Attainment of Adulthood
Na go directly from being children to adults. Na follow
the same 12-year animal cosmology as the Chinese. Once
a child has survived a full cycle, and the child’s animal
year is being celebrated for the second time, the child is
considered tested and ready to be accepted by the household. The household has a formal ceremony to initiate
the girl or boy as an adult member of the household
and community. This ceremony is called the “wearing
skirt” or “wearing pants” ceremony for girls or boys,
respectively.
The ceremony is similar for both boys and girls, with
several small differences (see Cai, 1997/2000, pp. 179–183;
Shih 1993, pp. 189–193). For both, a daba presides over
the ceremony, an elder of the same sex leads the initiate
through the ritual, and both stand on the staples of
Na farms—grain and salted pork. Girls stand next to the
one of the two main pillars of the house that symbolizes
all the female members of the household; boys stand next
to the pillar symbolizing the male members. The attending elder will give a girl jewelry and a shuttle to hold,
while a boy will be given silver (or cash) and a knife.
During the initiation ceremony, harmony and diligence
are stressed as key virtues. The initiate is expected to rise
early, work hard, be respectable, and respect all the
household members.
699
Once a Na has been initiated as an adult, he or she
is expected to take on the duties and responsibilities of
an adult, and in turn has gained the rights of an adult.
Within the household, these new members can take part
in household discussions and decision-making. Within
the wider community, these new initiates are now allowed
to participate in social activities and may now choose to
become sexually active.
Middle Age and Old Age
For the Na, both age and capability bring respect from
household members as well as the larger community.
Many Na areas still rely on labor exchange between
households, and so a competent sober worker with an
even temper and sense of humor is highly valued by the
community. All elders are accorded respect because of
their seniority.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
When asked to describe themselves, Na say that they are
hospitable and honest. Men are valued for courage, cooperation, and, among younger members as well as some
elders, admired for boldness. Women are valued for competence and skill in management. Na believe that household harmony stems from a combination of respecting
others, a sense of one’s place and responsibilities, and
allowing others in the household to act independently. Both
sexes should be able to get along well with other members
of the household. Both Na men and women are sociable
and expressive, and social ease and the abilities to joke and
engage in verbal parry are admired in both. Kindness is
valued in both men and women, as is a sense of propriety
and respect for elders. Mischievousness is perhaps admired
more in boys than in girls; however, girls are also expected
to be independent and bold. To the observer, girls do not
seem less mischievous, but rather more responsible.
Members of other ethnic groups (such as Han, Naxi,
or Yi) living in or traveling through Na areas often
describe Na women as very capable. Outsiders may also
comment on how free and independent Na women appear
to be. Na women are relatively comfortable traveling
alone or in small groups, staying out of doors, and interacting with strangers.
700
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Na social groups are primarily organized around household and village life. Household size tends to be from 6 to
12 members. However, in some communities there are still
large households of 20–30 members; while in towns Na
tend to live in nuclear families. Households that are related
through female consanguinity consider themselves part of
a larger grouping, and will assist each other with projects,
planting, harvesting, and the expenses of a funeral.
A household may reach out to include new members
(who are not kin related) if they believe that they are too
small or lacking in women or men. A household without
children will usually seek female children. In most of
these cases the adopted woman later becomes the head of
the household. While some scholars have represented Na
households as female centered, both men and women are
considered full members of the household.
Because of government policies during the 1960s
through the early 1980s, which pressured Na to marry
(see “Sexuality”), many Na villages now show a variety
of household structures and different compositions of
households. Most households have three generations;
however, some have only two and a few households
consist only of an elderly couple. Typical household
compositions include one or two elderly siblings living
with one to three adult children of one of the siblings and
two or three small children of the grown children.
One variety of the household that is not generally
found among the Na is a young couple living together or
married, but without children. In general, Na who do
marry will marry when they are preparing to have
children. In the village, there does not seem to be the idea
of coupledom without children, or even of intimate
relations without the desire to have children. Most elderly
villagers did not believe that young women without
children would engage in intimate relations and use birth
control, and considered this a rather strange idea.
Na generally cluster in single-sex groups. Often
groups of only women or men, but not mixed, will gather
to walk to market or to a movie, make the trip to a neighboring village to celebrate the opening of a new house or
a coming of age celebration, walk together to festivals, or
work in fields. These groups may sometimes include
members of different age cohorts, or at other times be
almost all one age (as in the case of walking to a movie
or social event). Single-sex grouping allows for easier
group relations as there is no need to respect taboos on
Na
speech (see “Sexuality”) and these groupings develop
from gendered labor activities.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Within Na household and village economies, both
genders are active and important. While gender-specific
labor is readily described, practice shows fluidity, and
men often engage in work outside the recognized domain
of men’s labor. Na men are responsible for building and
plowing; women are responsible for everything else.
Women are generally considered responsible for all fieldwork, digging, tilling, planting, transplanting, weeding,
harvesting, and food processing. They are likewise
considered responsible for feeding animals and livestock,
although men are generally responsible for herding.
Although butchering and funerary work are considered
men’s duties, most informants neglected to mention these
unless specifically asked. Similarly, virtually no respondents replied that men’s work includes protection or
soldiering. Trade within Na areas is conducted by men
and women. When speaking of the past, Na also mention
long-distance trade as men’s work. This sometimes kept
men out of the village for months on end. However, the
majority of men remained within the village. Currently,
both young men and women are migrating out of rural Na
areas to work in county or district cities. Women are
perceived as having an advantage in finding service work
in the tourism industry. However, women are generally
paid less.
One of the interesting things is how ungendered
much labor is. Men and women will both contribute to
accomplishing many of the daily tasks of farm work and
food processing (although perhaps not equally). This is
especially true as household sizes shrink. Even in domestic chores, such as bringing in water, firewood, and meal
preparation, men often contribute. Women’s work seemed
more difficult for respondents to define because it was so
all-encompassing. Respondents sometimes laughed and
said women did everything. Women still have much
longer workdays than men, and still shoulder more than
50% of the farm labor and much of the household work
(which includes long-term food storage and preparation,
preparing and storing grain supplies, animal husbandry,
and other tasks).
While Na discuss the jobs of plowing, construction,
and butchering as men’s work, usually women offer
Leadership in Public Arenas
important assistance in accomplishing these tasks, often
engaging in some of the most heavy labor involved.
Plowing seems to be the single village activity that solely
men engage in. Before farm work was collectivized,
women and men plowed together using large plows drawn
by two oxen. Women would walk behind and guide the
plow, while a man would lead the plow and guide and control the oxen. It appears that during the era of collectivized
farming, plowing shifted to being a task exclusively for
men and at the same time the type of plow changed. In the
past, hunting was almost exclusively a male task, but there
is very little hunting now due to lack of game.
In general, men will engage in “women’s work”
without shame if there do not seem to be enough women
to complete certain tasks. Women almost always serve
meals and wash clothes. One of the few activities I was
told that a man should not do is wash a woman’s garments
that have been soiled from menstruation or childbirth.
Assistance in delivering a child comes from one’s female
relatives.
Shared labor will be organized for large projects,
such as construction or planting seedlings. The woman of
the house who has senior status and is still actively working will organize the appropriate amount of neighbors
required for the activities. She keeps a mental tally of
which households contributed which labor. This tally will
be referred to on future occasions when reciprocity is
called for. The same woman will generally decide how
and when to give gifts or support to other households.
Traditionally, personal property included jewelry,
knives, occasionally tools or musical instruments, and
clothes. Clothing and other personal goods are often
burnt with a corpse, but jewelry, knives, tools, and musical instruments are inherited by the remaining members
of a household.
The position of household head will pass to a
member of the household who is perceived as competent
and stable. In practice, this often occurs while the elder
household head is still alive. She or he may retain the title
of household head, while the junior member has in effect
taken on much of the management of the household.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Households, not individual mothers, raise children. Since
women of child-bearing age are also important to the
701
household’s labor force, these women, once they have
rested after childbirth (generally 1–3 months), return to
labor. Elders in the household will watch over babies and
children. An elderly aunt or grandmother may be a
primary caregiver, but sometimes an elderly uncle is an
important caregiver. Once children become toddlers,
older siblings and cousins of either sex often assume their
care. Emotional bonds develop between children and
caregivers, and at times the bonds of affection are
stronger with aunts or uncles than mothers. Children
generally refer to all women in the household in the
mother’s age cohort as emi, and all men as ewu.
Households did not traditionally include fathers,
except in unusual circumstances (e.g., in the aristocracy),
so uncles were important and took part in providing for,
and overseeing the children of the household. Some Na
families now have fathers or grandfathers as part of the
household and these men take part in providing for and
caring for the children of the household (as do uncles in
other households). As Na households become smaller in
size there may not be as many aunts or elders to watch
over children, and, for the few nuclear families in the
area, childcare may limit women’s productive power.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Prior to inclusion in the People’s Republic of China, local
chieftains and aristocracy ruled Na territory. A chieftain
paid tribute to the imperial court, and his rule was officially recognized by the central government on the condition that he could show a clear patrilineal claim to his
title. Na describe the roles of leadership (chieftain,
administrator, soldier, and village security) as being held
by men. Religious leadership, also important within the
political arena, was also restricted to males.
Currently, within the township, virtually all officials
are men, both the elected and appointed, although some
villages have elected women as “people’s representatives.” During the years of collectivization, village- and
township-level leaders were appointed or recommended
by the Communist Party. Since the reform era (beginning
in 1982), villages have gained back some autonomy. Now
each village chooses a village head, generally a man from
a large respected household. Villagers say that they
choose village heads for their farming ability as well as
their leadership abilities. The village head is responsible
for officially representing the village to the township.
702
Na
Plans for township events or agricultural innovations may
be relayed to the village through the village head, or the
village head will call a meeting at which outside representatives can talk to the village. Village heads also
announce the beginning of agricultural stages, mobilize
workers to help maintain public works, and may mediate
village conflict.
Another form of official organization is the village
women’s representative. The women’s representative
has primarily dealt with villagers on issues of marriage,
birth planning, and child-rearing. There is currently no
women’s representative in many villages. The women who
held the position in the past could not recall actually bringing issues from the village to a higher level, but were
active in bringing outside policies to the village. During
the Cultural Revolution, the “one husband one wife” policy was introduced to the village through the women’s
representative. In Yongning, as in much of China, the
activities of the women’s representatives in the past decade
and a half have centered more on the birth planning policy
than any other issue. The policy of birth control came to
the village through the mediation of these women.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Na are very religious and nearly all Na practice their
own religion, Dabaism, as well as Tibetan Buddhism. Na
daba religion is an oral tradition which centers around
life cycles, ancestors, healing, and divination. The daba
are Na religious specialists, who traditionally led important annual events and well as major life ceremonies
(such as naming a child, new house ceremonies, and
funerals), and acted as the Na historians and cultural
interpreters. Dabas also drove away evil spirits, and
would be called on to assist with cases of illness as well
as bad fortune. Dabas were and are male, and an aging
daba generally chooses a nephew to train in his role.
There are few living dabas. According to Na cosmology,
the sun and other celestial bodies, the wind and the rain,
mountains, and caves are all divine, and most deities are
genderless. However, several important deities are gendered. The sun is female, while the moon is male. The
primary Na deity is a goddess, Gemu. The large Gemu
Mountain dominates the Yongning Plain and the most
important Na festival involves visiting mountain and
wish her well. She is believed to protect and help the Na,
but she can also withhold her benevolence. The lesser
surrounding mountains are male gods believed to be her
lovers.
Tibetan Buddhism probably reached Yongning as
early as the 14th century with the Mongol invasion. Na
were converted to Gelugpa en masse after the chieftain’s
conversion, circa 1700, which brought Na more tightly
under the aegis of Tibet (Mathieu, forthcoming 2003).
Government policy forced a hiatus during the collective
era, but Na are again sending their sons to train as lamas.
Na women rarely become nuns, unlike in other Tibetan
Buddhist areas.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Na report, and observation confirms, that Na women
work more than men. The management of the household
and farm, and care of children, while shared in by all
members of a Na household, are more women’s responsibility than men’s, and women contribute more labor
than men to the household. As a result, men have more
leisure time than women, and young men are more likely
to pursue leisure activities outside the household, and to
spend money on them.
Na report that in the past during holidays they most
enjoyed games and visiting during the day, and singing and
dancing in large groups during the evening. However, cardplaying and gambling have become prominent activities as
well. Celebrations at a household will involve food and
drink, and evening activities of community circle dancing
and solo singing performance in the courtyard. For those
communities with electricity (and even some without borrow generators), karaoke and Chinese videos have been
added to party activities as well as showing Chinese videos.
For those with electricity and access to television,
watching television is the most common evening leisure
activity. Men and women of a household watch television
together, and often neighbors visit and join in. Videos,
shown in cinemas, are also a source of entertainment. Some
young people enjoy travel and groups will form for local
walking trips to visit friends and relatives in other Na villages. Young Na are sometimes now traveling to other areas
of the province as tourists, and some take work outside the
area in part for the adventure of seeing new places.
The sexes often segregate in single-sex groups that
form for labor or leisure activities. However, during the
leisure activities, the groups often come together. So, for
example, a group of young women may go to the cinema
Sexuality
703
where there are other groups of young women as well as
groups of young men. Na involvement in these types of
activities diminishes during their twenties.
(although women may do so less directly), either can
take other lovers, and either can end a relationship at any
time.
RELATIVE STATUS
SEXUALITY
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Na generally reply to questions about status that women
and men are equally important and that both have equal
control over their lives and input in household decisionmaking. A man or a woman may head a Na household.
The term dabu is used to refer both to the head of the
household and to leaders in general (Shih, 1993, p. 157).
The head of the household is not necessarily in charge of
making major decisions for the household. Most Na report
that if a major decision needs to be made, the entire household, or the adults in it, will discuss the decision, reach an
agreement, and then proceed with the action agreed upon.
In these discussions, informants say that decisions are
reached by universal agreement. One woman, in her forties, laughed when I asked her if she liked being the head
of the household. She said she would rather have more
freedom and fewer worries, but someone needed to do it.
However, within some households, decisions related more
closely to the work of one gender or the other may fall to
a leading member of that gender.
General inability to agree is often the reason that a
Na household may divide. In the case of household division, a senior male member will often decide how household property will be divided and what resources should
be given to the new household branching off. Na say that
this is preferred because it is believed that a mother may
be partial to her siblings and so will be less fair, while an
uncle will not be influenced by such partiality.
The majority of Na have customarily been subsistence farmers. However, those men who engaged in longdistance trade in earlier times controlled the money which
they earned. While they may have contributed substantial
amounts to the household budget, which then came under
the control of the household head, they decided how
much to retain for private use. This model still continues
in many instances. In the case of young Na working at
the primary tourist village, several households reported
that young men would generally keep more of the earnings for themselves, while young women would generally
contribute almost all of the earnings to the household.
Na men and women are both in control of
their sexuality. Either can initiate sexual relations
Na men and women both appear to believe that sexuality
is natural, healthy, and private. Once a Na comes of age,
by custom she or he is free to choose or abandon lovers.
This has been mitigated by Chinese policies, which in the
late 1960s and early 1970s increasingly demanded that
Na marry and cohabit. Na saw this as a destruction of
their households, and an undesirable control of their
sexuality. Reform in the 1980s allowed Na to return to
the practice of visiting relations, sese, again. Currently,
Na may marry or pursue visiting relations. However,
birth-planning policy requires women to register a father
for each child born. Class did not and does not constrain
Na sese relations. Na culture has a strong restriction
against sese relations with people closely related matrilineally. Children of the same father but different mothers
are not prohibited from having relations, nor are children
of two brothers or a sister and a brother.
Because marriage was atypical in Na society, the
ideas of premarital or extramarital sex are not directly
applicable. Na men and women in the past were admired
for the number of lovers they may have had. Many Na
would engage in short secretive relations when young. Na
may choose to make public more stable relationships,
which often occur in their twenties. While Na women and
men in established public relationships may take secret
lovers, they risk anger, jealousy, and abandonment by
their established partner, but they are not generally censured for such actions by the community at large. In fact,
the betrayed lover generally makes no public display of
anger or jealousy. Na do not believe that romantic love is
necessarily enduring; rather, passion is fleeting. It may
last one evening, or it may combine with friendship to
bond a couple together much longer. Much of a Na’s
emotional life is lived through the household, and so Na
are not dependent on romantic relationships for emotional fulfillment. While Na women as well as men enjoy
sexual relations, the community at large seems to believe
that children are a natural and desired result of sexual
relations. Many older women in Na communities are
much more interested in whether or not a younger female
relative has a child than in who her lovers are.
704
Na
Neither women nor men (including monks) are
expected to remain celibate, although a substantial number of Na appear to have few or no sexual relations (by
their own choice). In addition, lovers are not expected to
spend every night together, even if they live a convenient
distance from each other. One story about visiting relations is that obstacles were set by a god to test who would
be more determined reach a lover—the man or the
woman. Because the woman showed so much more determination than the man, it was divinely decided that men
would visit women. The implication is that woman are
more determinedly passionate than men, and too much
time might be spent in pursuing lovers if women were the
pursuers.
Na generally keep their bodies covered from the
intense sun and wind of the winter and the rain and dampness of the summer. Modesty about the body is not
expected in front of members of the same sex, but seems
to be uniformly practiced in front of members of the
opposite sex. Expressions of sexuality such as joking
are enjoyed in single-sex groups, and in mixed groups the
most traditional display of sexuality is through song.
Individual public displays of affection between members
of the opposite sex almost never occur. When engaged in
sexual relations, lovers are generally quiet and discreet.
Taboos prohibit Na from verbally or otherwise referring
to sexual relations in front of relatives of the opposite sex.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Before the 1960s, Na did not generally marry. Chinese
policy attempted to force the Na to marry during the
Cultural Revolution, but beginning in the 1980s allowed
more flexibility. Currently, some Na marry, usually those
holding government jobs, those working out of the area,
or those whose households need members of the opposite
sex. Others choose to engage in sese relations in various
forms. Na generally describe sese today as more stable
than in the past. Most Na will engage in sexual relations
as adults, although some choose not to.
Men and women come together in a variety of ways,
and may take advantage of any of these opportunities to
develop new relationships. Through labor exchange,
village activities and celebrations, funerals, or festivals,
Na interact with people from outside their households.
In addition, through school and daily activities, such as
marketing, Na routinely come into contact with the
opposite sex. Young people go to video showings in the
evenings, and some of these include dancing (in public,
most Na are more comfortable dancing with the same
sex). Karaoke has been incorporated into many village
celebrations. Younger Na men report that one way to get
to know someone is to offer a ticket to the movie, or a ride
home on your bicycle.
Most Na believe that men approach women to
request relations. While Na customs do not prohibit a
woman from making the first verbal advances, Na
reported that this is simply not done and is perceived as
risky. A woman might develop a bad reputation or be
laughed at. Women are expected to make their interest
clear in other ways than direct verbal invitation.
When involved in sese relations, Na may exchange
gifts, but these are not prescribed. In the past, common
gifts from women to men included handwoven articles of
clothing, which women sometimes embroidered. In basin
villages, where few women weave or embroider, these
gifts are becoming uncommon. Common gifts from men
to women were and still are items of purchase—jewelry,
hair decorations, and textiles. A man who wishes to
engage in stable sese with a woman may choose to bring
gifts to the woman’s mother and elders in her household.
An elder man of his household may accompany him if he
is young. A woman is never forced to accept a suitor. The
suitor is petitioning to have his relationship to the woman
recognized and to have some access to the household,
since the woman resides there.
Both sexes describe physical attractiveness (tallness,
large eyes, high nose) as an important quality in a lover.
Na believe that personality traits are also of importance
in a lover, including a sense of humor, a quick wit and
lively tongue, a vivacious personality, kindness, and
ability. Excellence in some skill (weaving, hunting, dancing, and singing) will also contribute to one’s desirability
as a lover. Women sometimes describe lovers of longer
duration as desirable because they are responsible and
sober, and exhibit appropriate and respectful behavior.
Na sometimes describe sese relationships as
superior to marriage because only feelings are involved,
and people do not choose partners for mercenary reasons,
nor does the stress of economics come between couples.
Sese, they say, creates less conflict than marriage, as
partners do not live together or depend on each other.
Furthermore, any conflict that develops is easily diffused
simply by separation for a few days (which occurs in
most sese). Some Na describe marriage as difficult
Change in Attitudes, Beliefs, and Practices
because, if a new household is formed, the new household
is too small, and the couple may not have enough hands
and generations for all of the tasks of farm work, livestock, household, and childcare. Na believe that it is also
difficult if one spouse moves into the other’s household.
In the case of a man, there is thought to be high potential
for conflict between him and his wife’s male relatives; in
the case of a woman it is thought that she will miss her
own household.
Other respondents discussed the advantages of
marriage as bringing more stability to a relationship in
which the man takes more responsibility. In their opinion,
a man would take more responsibility for his own children than his nieces and nephews, and for contributing to
farm work and household labor when he was doing this
for his own children. These respondents felt that women
did more work than men in a system of walking marriages, and that the way to make men responsible was
through marriage. Another advantage that some married
respondents mentioned was that they could control their
resources. There were not so many mouths to feed.
However, most Na will say that both systems are good
and that the most important thing in deciding is to look at
“conditions.” In general, Na will marry when they are
preparing to have children. Those Na in the village who
did not have children were believed to have been unable
to produce children or abstained from sexual relations
because they did not desire children.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Husbands and wives in villages often married because of
earlier government policies that required it. The couples
who married several decades ago seem to have settled
into a living pattern that publicly resembles the relationship between brothers and sisters. They may be platonically affectionate, but may have separate sleeping areas
and will not publicly display romantic or sexual interest.
They generally consult on some household decisions and
not on others. Women and men work in single-sex
groups, and help each other as needed.
Among younger couples, some are marrying
because they live out of the area, hold government jobs,
their households need members, or they wish to begin a
branch household. For those living out of the area, often
the husband has much better employment. If a household
needs members, the member marrying in often has a
705
status equal to other household members because the new
member is needed. In the case of marrying to begin a new
branch household, the husband or wife whose family has
financed the venture generally has higher status in household decision-making.
Na enter into some relations with no expectations for
duration, while others include intense feelings and hopes
for continuity. In all relations, however, the man is
expected to treat the woman well while with her, and Na
have no understanding of or tolerance for physical abuse
between lovers. In addition, whether engaged in shorter
and more secretive sese or in longer and more public relations, Na believe they are individually in control of their
sexuality and free to take other lovers. This strong sense
of sexual freedom may be weakening somewhat as relationships become more stable.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Because of the nature of Na households, there can be
many other significant male–female relationships
between Na. Brothers and sisters (as well as cousins in
larger households) grow up together. Grown siblings who
reside together spend much time together, eat meals
together, consult each other on projects, and work
together. Uncles and great-uncles are involved in the care
of the younger generations, as are aunts and great-aunts.
Because of this, strong affective relationships may
develop between uncles and nieces (or nephews) and
aunts and nephews (or nieces). It is not uncommon that
when households divided because they were becoming
too large, generally a woman starts a new household with
several children. She may bring nieces and nephews, and
might leave some of her children behind. As described
above, adults (and children) in a household share in childcare, and some Na report feeling more affection for an
aunt or uncle than for their mothers.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Incorporation into the Chinese state in 1956 ended the
hundreds of years during which Na territory was locally
ruled by Na chieftains and administrators. This also
marked the beginning of waves of policy which were
706
intended to produce radical changes in Na household and
economic structures. From 1958 until 1982, land was
collectivized and households no longer controlled production or labor resources. Government policies tried to
encourage, and then to force, Na to marry and start
nuclear families with men as heads of households.
Government discourse and rhetoric told the Na that their
household structures were primitive and backward, as
well as immoral, and that they needed to change them and
end sexual freedom to become modern and civilized.
Currently, several factors are contributing to or
acting as pressures for social change. These include
education, the media, migration, and tourism. Outside
sources of information and interaction pressure the Na to
change—to modernize in both standard of living as well
as lifestyle. Educational materials in government schools
reflect the lifestyle and expectations of greater Chinese
society through the mediation of government text writers,
while teachers and school administrators marry and live
in “modern” nuclear households. Economic reforms and
greater mobility throughout China have affected growing
numbers of youth, who are trying to leave the area for
educational or economic opportunities. Television is
rapidly reaching more and more Na communities, and Na
compare their situations with the comfortable lives and
different lifestyles represented on television. In general,
these outside models involve nuclear families headed by
fathers, and a wider society and economy controlled by
men in which women have a declining status.
Since the mid-1980s, increasing numbers of tourists
have been visiting Na areas. In some Na communities the
economy is almost completely driven by tourist income.
These tourists are drawn by curiosity about descriptions
of the Na as “matriarchal,” and these descriptions have
been taken up and enhanced by travel writers, novelists,
and travel agencies to lure tourists. To maintain this
source of income, residents of tourist communities must
to some degree satisfy tourists’ curiosity and the images
they bring with them. Sexuality and gender figure prominently in representations of the Na as “matriarchal” and
sexual without marriage.
In the primary tourist area, the labor defined as
household work/women’s work seems to have increased.
Men are less likely to assist, using tales of traditional
long-distance trading and hard-working matriarchs to
claim that, for the sake of cultural preservation, they
should not do household work. Women generally have
responsibility for all household work in households
Na
which have now grown to include large guest-houses, and
in the most successful tourist households men manage the
profits of the guest-houses. Public positions of authority
are now almost exclusively occupied by men. Women in
the tourist area seem trapped in a myth of matriarchy that
holds them responsible for almost all labor, a labor imbalance that they are told should continue for the sake of
cultural preservation. Women work more than men for
the sake of preserving “traditional” culture for the
tourism on which their new wealth depends, but the
wealth produced is often controlled by men.
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Nahua
James M. Taggart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Contemporary speakers of Nahua refer to their language
as “Mexicano,” and some scholars prefer “Mexica” for
the ethnic category of Nahua speakers on the central
Mexican plateau (Berdan, 1982; Hill & Hill, 1986). The
name Aztec is commonly used when referring to the 16thcentury Nahua, a tradition attributed to the naturalist
Alexander von Humbolt (López Austin, 2001, p. 68).
Some linguists use the name General Aztec for speakers
of contemporary as well as ancient Nahua. Pipil is the
name for Nahuas living in Central America.
LOCATION
Nahua speakers live mainly in the Mexican states of
Durango, Guerrero, Jalisco, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala,
Toluca, and Veracruz, and in the Distrito Federal
(Carrasco, 1969; Nutini & Isaac, 1974; Wolf, 1959). The
Pipil settled in El Salvador (Fowler, 1989).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Dialects of Nahua or General Aztec belong to the UtoAztecan family of languages (Miller, 1983) and include
Nahuatl spoken in Tetelcingo, Morelos (Brewer &
Brewer, 1971), and Nahuat in the Zacapoaxtla region of
the sierra norte de Puebla (Key & Key, 1953). The
Tetelcingo dialect is close to classical Nahuatl spoken in
the 16th century in the valleys of Mexico, Toluca and
Puebla-Tlaxcala. Zacapoaxtla Nahuat lacks “the characteristic lateral release of TL” but is otherwise similar to
classical Nahuatl (Karttunen, 1983, p. xxi). This article
is based on fieldwork among speakers of Zacapoaxtla
Nahuat, and most Nahua words marking important
gender and sexuality concepts are in the T rather than the
TL dialect.
Contemporary Nahuas are sedentary farmers; they
support themselves by growing corn, beans, squash, and
chiles, and they live in towns and hamlets. They have
preserved their language to different degrees depending
on their historical relationship with Spanish-speaking
Mexicans, many of whom are mestizos descended from
Spaniards and speakers of Native Mexican languages.
Geographically isolated groups of Nahuas, like some
Nahuat in the sierra norte de Puebla, have remained
monolingual. The Nahuas are the subordinate group in
rigid systems of ethnic stratification, at the top of which
are mestizos who refer to themselves as “people of
reason” (gente de razón). Many Nahuas must support
themselves by working for very low wages for mestizos
whom they call coyomeh, a derogatory term implying
people with a lack of culture.
Nahuas have shown remarkable ability to preserve
their culture by telling narratives that teach cosmovision
and moral discourse that support the social order
(Taggart, 1983, 1997). Nevertheless, the political and
administrative hierarchy of the Mexican state has
replaced the indigenous corporate social structure. The
local political unit (alte-petl) and kin group (calpulli)
changed into the municipio and the barrio (Chance, 1996;
Lockhart, 1992). The most enduring indigenous social
structural unit is the domestic group which frequently
goes through a patrilocal and patrilineally extended family phase during its developmental cycle (Arizpe, 1973;
Sandstrom, 1991; Taggart, 1972). The cosmovision and
moral discourse contained in the oral narratives are aimed
at regulating conduct within the domestic group.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Ancient as well as contemporary mythology depicts a
sharp distinction between male and female cosmic forces
(Graulich, 1997; López Austin, 1997). The Nahua address
their parents with kin terms that carry deep cultural meanings and convey their contrasting expectations for males
and females. The Nahuat of the sierra norte de Puebla
use the term tahueh for father and nahueh for mother.
Tahueh means brave and connotes someone who acts
708
Gender over the Life Cycle
with strong emotions or considerable assertiveness.
Nahueh means “she who is in the center of all things” and
refers to the mother’s central position in the domestic
group. The strong emotions of tahueh mean that he is
inclined to act with Wlihuiz, an adverb that connotes excessive strength or power and a lack of consideration for
others (Karttunen, 1983, p. 104). Many oral narratives
caution men against acting with Wlihuiz and encourage
them to respect nahueh, on whom the unity of the Nahua
family heavily depends. A man who gets drunk, beats his
wife, or abuses her sexually acts with Wlihuiz, and his
behavior can tear the family, the community, and even the
cosmos apart.
Nahueh wears a red loincloth (tahcoilpilo-ni or
tahcocuetax) because she sheds blood during menstruation and childbirth, and tahueh wears a white loincloth
symbolic of semen. Nahuat men in the sierra norte de
Puebla also wear loose-fitting white cotton trousers and
white shirts. Women wear white cotton skirts (iztachueh
or enaguas blancas), beautiful woven sashes, and blouses
with intricate embroidery (pehpenalo-) around the sleeve
and collar. Ideas of beauty and sexual attractiveness are
related to dress and grooming. Men apply the term for
beauty (cualtzin) to young women who have long, shiny,
combed and braided black hair. A maiden who wants to
look cualtzin braids her hair with colorful ribbons. Men
rarely talk about woman’s breasts (chWchWhualmeh) as
erotic symbols in the same way as North American men.
Until recently, Nahuat women covered the upper body
only with a shawl (huWpWl) that gave their nursing infants
easier access to the breast. Women consider a man attractive if he grooms himself well by keeping his hair short
and dressing neatly. Young men of courting age wear
spotless white cotton trousers and shirts, and display their
masculine power by wearing long razor-sharp machetes
in handsome leather sheaths.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Gender begins at conception, when semen (oquichyo)
mixes with female sexual secretions (cihuayo) to form an
embryo (Lopez Austin, [1980], 1988, p. 297). The gender
of the child is determined by the balance between the two
secretions. At birth, an infant is either a baby boy (oquichcone-t) or a baby girl (cihuacone-t). In some communities,
the mother’s placenta is buried in the hearth in accord
with her close connection to the domestic group
709
(Redfield, 1928, pp. 135–136), as women generally work
in or near the domicile. The ancient Nahuas had a naming
ritual that merged with Catholic baptism in a rite that
purifies the infant. The Nahuat of the sierra norte de
Puebla begin their rites by washing their hands in bowls
containing water and flower petals.
The oquichcone-t or cihuacone-t usually becomes a
boy (oquichpil) or girl (cihuapil) when weaned and walking. To wean her infant, the mother puts a bitter herb
called chichicxihut on her nipples, usually in the sixth
month of her next pregnancy. Nahua women usually conceive their next child a year after their last birth because
they breast-feed their infants on demand, they observe
6 months of post-partum abstinence but appear to have
11 months of post-partum amenorrhea, and they do not
practice other methods of birth control. Thus weaning
frequently takes place when the infant is about 18 months
old. The weaned infant passes from the sleeping mat of
the mother to that of the father, where he or she remains
until puberty. A boy remains an oquichpil and a girl
remains a cihuapil until they reach puberty, the most dramatic transition following weaning. The stages beyond
childhood are marked with terms for maiden (ichpo-ch)
and bachelor or youth (telpo-ch), man (tacat) and woman
(cihuat), and old man (hue-hue-ntin) and old woman
(lamatzin).
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Some Nahua express a preference for boys and encourage their sons to live patrilocally either in the same house
or in a neighboring house so that they can continue to
work with the father on the family corn and bean plot
(milpa). Parents socialize all their children to work hard
and to avoid behaving with Wlihuiz. Boys are prone to
certain forms of Wlihuiz because they are inclined to have
strong emotions, but their tahuel nature also suits working outside of the domestic group. By the time a boy can
walk well, he accompanies his father to the milpa, if the
family is fortunate enough to have one, and he continues
to work with his father long after marriage. Boys are
taught to avoid becoming a calayo, a man who only wants
to stay in the house and have sex.
Parents instill in their daughter a strong sense of
sexual shame and discourage her from becoming ilapac,
a woman who excessively desires sexual pleasure,
another form of Wlihuiz. Oral narratives express a great
deal of fear that women who are ilapac will fall into the
710
Nahua
hands of the devil and mestizo men. Girls are taught to
work hard and be brave in childbirth. Boys have more
freedom to play in village streets, and girls are expected
to remain near the home and help their mothers with food
processing and infant care. Boys become skilled at
playing marbles with other boys, including mestizos.
Puberty and Adolescence
A cihuapil becomes an ichpo-ch or maiden when she
has her first menstruation, but maidenhood is short
because an ichpo-ch marries immediately after puberty
and goes to live with her husband’s family. The boy
usually experiences less dislocation as he passes from
an oquichpil to a te-lpo-ch (bachelor or youth). Being a
te-lpo-ch lasts 5–7 years because a youth must make a substantial contribution to his family’s economy and earn the
money to help pay for his betrothal ceremony. Youths
sleep apart from other members of the family, particularly
the mother and sisters. The ancient Nahua apparently had
youth houses, and contemporary Nahuas sometimes build
a separate sleeping house for their adolescent sons.
Attainment of Adulthood
A telpo-ch becomes a tacat (man) and an ichpo-ch becomes
a cihuat (woman) after marriage and with the birth of
their first child. The betrothal (cihuataliz) ceremony and
the ritual for the godparents of marriage mark the transition (see “Courtship and Marriage”).
Middle Age and Old Age
When a man reaches old age he becomes a hue-hue-ntzin
and, if he has done good works for his family and his
community, he may become a respected elder. A woman
in old age is a lamatzin and she may also enjoy considerable respect and be chosen as a cihuatanque, the intermediary who arranges betrothals. The line between tacat and
hue-hue-ntzin and between cihue-t and lamatzin generally
accords with the birth of grandchildren.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The Nahua expect women to nurture and feed the
members of their family. While both men and women
husk corn, women do most of the other food-processing
tasks that include fetching water, boiling the nixtamal,
a mixture of corn and lime, grinding the nixtamal on the
metate, and making tortillas and bean soup. Women are
very skilled in making many different kinds of chile
sauces to give their meals variety. Nurturing women
appear in many oral narratives that provide models for
gender behavior.
Men are supposed to represent the family to the
world outside the domicile, acting as the official host
on ritual occasions; they greet visitors and instruct the
women to feed the guests. Men distribute shot glasses of
refino (sugar cane alcohol) and cigarettes, and they
occupy the main room of the house that usually contains
the family altar. Women occupy the kitchen, a smaller
room containing the hearth and attached to the main
dwelling. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that
men are the dominant personality in gender relations.
Some women order their husbands around, speaking in
harsh-sounding tones. Occasionally men lose control and
hit their wives, but men are criticized when they act
violently toward women and they are expected to control
their Wlihuiz.
The comparison of cognate Spanish and Nahuat
folktales reveals that Nahuat men express a relational
social consciousness more than do their counterparts
from Spain (Taggart, 1997). A relational consciousness
ordinarily develops in women when the mother primarily
cares for small infant children (Chodorow, 1978). Nahuat
men define themselves as closely connected to other men,
particularly their brothers and fathers. In this respect, the
contemporary Nahuat resemble the ancient Nahuas who
told of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl avenging the death of
his father and searching for his father’s bones (Bierhorst,
1992, pp. 153–155). Men’s relational social consciousness is apparent in masculine narratives that depict a
highly connected universe that Wlihuiz behavior can
unravel.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Men have some advantages in gender relations because of
patrilocal residence, patrilineal land inheritance, and the
age difference between husband and wife. The domestic
group is frequently a patrilocal and patrilineally extended
family household consisting of blood-related men—the
father and his sons—and affinally related women—the
Leadership in Public Arenas
mother and mother-in-law. Approximately 80% of the
married couples live patrilocally for a while in the same
house or in adjacent houses on the same plot. Nahua
parents exert considerable pressure on their sons to remain
in or near the parental family after marriage so that fathers,
sons, and brothers may continue to work for the same
thing (ce- cosa tequitih). Consequently, a bride begins her
marital years working under the authority of her motherin-law, and their relationship is often troubled.
It is difficult to know for sure if mother and
daughter-in-law tensions develop entirely from the
afinally related women or if women express the conflicts
among blood-related men. Tensions among father, son,
and brothers can be quite high, particularly if the father
shows favoritism and one brother believes he is carrying
the workload of the other men and women in the extended
family. There is some evidence of favoritism to the
youngest son or daughter who inherits the house in
Tlaxcala and elsewhere (Robichaux, 1997). The Nahua
refer to the youngest child as “the spoiled one” (xocoyote
or taxocoyot). Nevertheless, conflict between mother and
daughter-in-law does occur, and the Nahua handle it by
dividing the kitchen so that the two women can work
independently. Dividing the kitchen may occur before the
men decide to fill separate granaries and purses.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Men primarily work on the milpa, a corn and bean plot
that may be next to the domicile or several hours walk
from the house. They clean their milpa, plant corn, beans,
chiles, and squash, and, with the help of women, harvest
the crops. In coffee-growing communities, women,
children, and men cut the crop. Women spin, weave on
the backstrap loom, mend, and embroider cloth. Men as
well as women weave on standing looms. Women wash
clothes, feed the domestic animals, and care for small
children. Men usually collect and cut the firewood, hunt,
and migrate to work on lowland plantations. Women join
migrant labor groups as cooks. Men cut trees in the
forests and work in carpentry. Men and women sell produce and crafts in local and regional markets. Adult men
and women become shamans and have the ability to communicate with spirits affecting the fertility of crops and
the health of humans (Huber, 1990; Sandstrom &
Sandstrom, 1986, pp. 72–73). Adult women become
midwives who assist in childbirth and perform rituals to
711
clean newborn infants (Huber & Sandstrom, 2001;
Sandstrom & Sandstrom, 1986, pp. 72–73). The Nahua
do not consider the work of one gender more important
than the work of the other.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothering and fathering are important expectations for
women and for men. Women are close to their children
because they exclusively care for nursing infants and they
nurture their children with food. Women spend more time
physically caring for all young children and they carry
infants in their shawls, while men rarely carry their
infants outside of the domicile. The concept of nahueh is
one indication of the woman’s central place in the family.
A woman’s relationship with her daughter can be very
close and affectionate, and mothers express anger during
the betrothal ceremony (cihuataliz) because the groom
and his family will take her daughter away. However,
most women marry within their village, and so many
mothers can pay regular visits to their married daughters.
Men lavish a great deal of affection on their infant
children, kissing them and calling them tahueh or
nahueh. They express a strong desire for children whom
they see as an unambiguous benefit. Nahuat in the sierra
norte de Puebla are expected to provide care and particularly comfort to their recently weaned child who, at about
18 months, passes from the sleeping mat of the mother to
that of the father. Many Nahuat men speak with pride
about the closeness they develop with their young
children from weaning until puberty. The man’s role in
parenting his son may rival that of the woman’s role in
parenting her daughter. Some boys, particularly in
isolated villages in the sierra norte de Puebla, skip school
and go with their fathers to the milpa where they spend
the entire day working together. Some men get drunk,
lose control, act with Wlihuiz, and occasionally punish
their wives and children harshly. However, some women
also punish their children harshly, and they too are
criticized for acting with Wlihuiz.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men hold most of the public positions of leadership in
their communities. They generally serve in the municipio
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Nahua
government as police, judges, secretaries, aguaciles
running errands, councilmen, and municipio president.
Some women took an active role in Social Party politics
during the 1970s in the sierra norte de Puebla and they
incurred criticism from some men.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The contemporary Nahua do not have an organization
of nuns or priests that is independent of the Catholic
Church. They do occupy a number of religious offices
that are part of a civil and religious hierarchy or cargo
system (Dehouve, 1976). The most important cargo
holder is the mayordomo who sponsors a saint’s day
celebration. Men are usually the mayordomos but women
also serve as mayordomas without enduring any criticism
from men who assert that anyone, regardless of gender,
may show religious devotion by sponsoring a saint’s day
celebration. Men in the sierra norte de Puebla usually
lead the prayers that are part of family rituals. Prayer
leaders receive training under a priest and can read the
prayer books in Spanish.
The Nahua view the cosmos as governed by the
interaction of powerful feminine and masculine forces
associated with the earth and the sky. The ancient Nahuas
had male and female creator deities, Tonacateuctli (Lord
of the Sun) and To-nacacihuatl (Lady of the Sun), and the
contemporary Nahuas continue to depict their main
creator gods in pairs (Sandstrom, 1991). Contemporary
cosmology, particularly in isolated and monolingual
Nahua-speaking communities, resembles that of the
ancient Nahuas (Taggart, 1983, 1997). While many of the
original creation myths have been lost, Nahuas of today
continue to express their belief in hierogamy (Eliade,
1987, p. 89) or the notion that divine creation is a process
on the same order as human and plant reproduction. The
Nahuat of the sierra norte de Puebla depict the gods creating the universe as masculine lightning bolts emanating
from the sun and fertilizing the feminine earth. They also
tell stories of men finding lightning-bolt women in the
forest who are goddesses that can produce vast quantities
of food from a single bean or kernel of corn. In other tales,
men transform the forest into milpas and chile plots. The
Nahua place some primacy on the masculine forces in
their universe, but the feminine ones are more accessible
to humans who appeal to them in important rituals
(Sandstrom, 1991, pp. 279–300).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Nahuat men and women in the sierra norte de Puebla
spend most of what little “free time” they have in their
homes with their families. On ritual occasions—baptism,
cihuataliz, marriage, mayordomía celebrations—men
and women tend to segregate, with women gathering in
large groups preparing the ceremonial meal and men
butchering pigs, preparing adornments, and setting up the
giant cauldron to cook tamales. Some men drink refino in
cantinas, much to the chagrin of their wives. A few men
devote a great deal of time to performing and practicing
in dance groups to express their religious devotion.
The dance groups include the flying-pole dancers or
voladores (cuauhpatanini) who represent birds descending from the sun to fertilize the earth (Graulich, 1999,
pp. 417–418). Men and women become oral narrators of
myths, legends, and folktales, although they tend to tell
their stories in groups segregated by gender.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
The status of Nahua women probably declined as women
became jural minors in the eyes of the Spanish court and
as private property replaced corporate land ownership
by kin groups (Kellog, 1995). Nevertheless, the status
of women in contemporary Nahua communities varies,
depending on their position in the domestic group. As
mentioned earlier, patrilocality clusters blood-related men
and places affinally related women in the same kitchen,
and a young married woman can have a very vulnerable
position in her husband’s family. However, 20% of the
married couples in the sierra norte de Puebla spend some
time living with the wife’s family where a bride is united
with her mother rather than her mother-in-law. Patrilineal
inheritance of land is a second practice tilting the balance
in gender relations in favor of men; Nahua who own land
as private property bequeath most of their land to their
sons. However, a substantial number also pass some land
to their daughters unless they are under severe land
pressure. Women who inherit land have a greater influence in making important decisions, and their ownership
of land may help stabilize their marriage. Married women
who own the house have a particularly strong position in
their families. The age difference between spouses also
shifts the balance toward men who are generally older
than their wives by an average of 3–5 years.
Courtship and Marriage
SEXUALITY
Sexuality is a very powerful force that can create and
destroy the human body, the family, the community, and
even the cosmos itself. The Nahua belief in hierogamy is
based on the assumption of heterosexuality between the
masculine and feminine forces in the universe. Crossdressing occurs in rituals, particularly when men put on
the attire of Spanish colonial women. Homoerotic play
occurs among boys, but the Nahuat of the sierra norte de
Puebla rarely manifest homophobia despite the tendency
of some mestizos to label as “homosexual” those Nahua
men whom they consider sexually passive with women.
No lesbians came to my attention, although lesbian sex
probably does occur.
The Nahua believe that they must manage sexuality
with a number of respect rules governing the relationship
between men and women. They convey these rules by
telling stories that describe men and women loving each
other excessively (cimi motazohtah), resulting in the
death and destruction of the family. Sometimes the man
and woman are brother and sister, and their excessive love
drives them to commit incest. Avoidance rules for managing sexuality include the separation of adolescent
brother and sister, strict rules of dress according to which
a woman conceals her pubic area from a man, and little
open expression of emotional excess. Brothers will
admonish their younger sister for showing excitement in
public (Taggart, 1992).
Any form of sexual transgression, particularly sex
outside marriage, is called tahtacol (tlahtlacolli), a word
that originally meant “to be in a state or disorder or broken” (Burkhart, 1989). With the influence of Christianity,
tahtacol (tlahtlacolli) became a synonym for sin ( pecado)
and the two words occur together in Nahua versions of
Adam and Eve. The Nahua do not place much importance
on preserving a woman’s physical virginity, although
they do fear that mestizo men will sexually take advantage of their maiden daughters. Maidenhood is extremely
short, as girls marry soon after puberty.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
The Nahua do not permit marriage with anyone whom
they refer to or address with icnWuh (sibling and cousin)
or any other term for blood or spiritual relative. Courtship
begins when a boy tells his parents he wants to marry a
713
particular girl, and his parents look for a cihuatanque, an
old and respected woman to ask the maiden’s parents for
her hand in marriage. Love (tazohtaliz) is very important
in marriage for the girl as well as the boy, although the
Nahua believe that excessive love is dangerous. Soon
after making the transition from a cihuapil to an ichpo-ch,
a maiden will become betrothed, and her family will celebrate a cihuataliz ritual in which the boy and his family
will deliver the bride-gift consisting of two turkeys,
spices for the ceremonial mole, and a small quantity of
money. The maiden’s godparents provide a complete set
of clothes including the loincloth, the billowy skirt, an
embroidered sash, a blouse with beautiful pehpenalo-,
ribbons for braids, and earrings.
The climactic moment of the cihuataliz takes place
when the cihuatanque hands the bride a xo-chicuahuit and
asks her to dance in front of her family’s altar. The
xo-chicuahuit is a hand-held wooden adornment with
three prongs decorated with flowers and tortillas or bread.
The adornment represents the tree in the ancient myth of
Taomanchan (Quiñones Keber, 1995, pp. 29, 183), vestiges of which are woven into stories of Adam and Eve as
told by the contemporary Nahuat in the sierra norte de
Puebla. According to the ancient myth, the gods in the
celestial paradise of Tamoanchan picked flowers from a
tree, a symbol for sex. The gods were expelled to earth,
and one of them, Xochiquetzal, gave birth to the corn
plant. The trees in the myth and cihuataliz ritual are
symbols of fertility (Graulich, 1997; López Austin,
1997). During the cihuataliz in the sierra norte de Puebla,
the bride’s mother sometimes interferes with the cihuatanque when she offers the xochicuahuit and displays
anger toward the groom and his family for taking her
daughter from her. However, the daughter usually accepts
the adornment, the intermediary asks the couple to
embrace, and she surrounds them in a web of incense to
seal their union.
A few years after the cihuataliz, the couple celebrate another ritual in honor of the godparents of
marriage who will become the godparents for their children. The ritual for the godparents of marriage closely
resembles the cihuataliz except that it takes place in the
home of the groom’s parents where the couple usually
begin married life. The cihuatanque again hands out the
xo-chicuahuit first to the women and then to the men, and
she conducts a ceremony called the nanahuin (the dance
of departure) in front of the family altar during which she
weaves a web of incense around the groom and their
714
ritual sponsors. Those who are widowed and divorced are
free to remarry as long as they observe the incest rules.
The Nahua do not practice the sororate or the levirate, and
the cihuataliz is held only for first marriages.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The Nahuat of the sierra norte de Puebla mention gender
interdependence as a major reason for marriage. When
widows and widowers grieve over the loss of a spouse,
they frequently anguish over how they will cope by living
alone in the future. The Nahuat place a high value on
monogamy and sexual fidelity for the man as well as for
the woman. Adultery is considered a serious form of
tahtacol (sin), and sex with a ritual coparent of marriage
and baptism is particularly heinous. Married couples
sleep on separate mats in the domicile, and they rarely
show affection in public. Married couples never hold
hands, kiss, or embrace each other in front of others.
However, some men and women reveal their deep love
with a kind gesture and by looking deeply into each
other’s eyes. Some show their affection by addressing
each other as nocihuapil (my daughter) and nooquichpil
(my son). To be sure, some marriages are filled with frustration, betrayal, anger, and violence. However, the
Nahuat tell many stories warning men against behaving
with Wlihuiz with women. First marriages are unstable,
and separating couples do not always file divorce papers
in the sierra norte de Puebla before remarrying two or
three times before settling down in a permanent relationship. The woman or the man may initiate a divorce, and
the children usually go with the mother.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Both ancient and contemporary Nahua narratives describe
the brother–sister relationship with a great deal of erotic
imagery. Seventeenth century hunting chants sung by
Nahua men depict the older sister (hueltiuh) as the object
of erotic desire (Coe & Whittaker, 1982). Contemporary
Nahua men tell Orpheus tales in which the sister is the
brother’s love object (Taggart, 1997, pp. 223–241).
Mother–son relationships are also very close, but there is
no hint that the mother is the object of the son’s erotic
desire. Rather, the mother is the model for nahueh, the
woman who is at the center of all things or a goddess.
Nahua
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The Nahua are fighting an uphill battle to hold on to their
culture because mestizos are forcing them off their land,
and there is little governmental interest in preserving the
indigenous language and culture (Sandstrom, 1991). It is
possible to see what happens to Nahua gender relations
by comparing communities where the language flourishes with those where Spanish has taken over. Language
change often occurs with landlessness and extreme economic, social, and political dislocation. Ethnographers
report a great deal of tension, sometimes breaking out in
ugly examples of incest and spouse abuse, in the more
Hispanized and former Nahua-speaking communities of
Tepoztlán (Lewis, 1964), Hueyapan (Friedlander, 1976),
Tlayacapan (Ingham, 1986), and Mixquitic (Behar, 1993;
Frye, 1996). Here the forces of change have led to a
breakdown in the rules of respect by which the Nahuas
have managed male Wlihuiz. Ingham (1986) reports that
men in Tlayacapan no longer care for their recently
weaned infants and they express a great deal of hostility
toward their wives because they cannot reconcile their
ideas of woman as mother and lover. Tlayacapan men are
a dramatic contrast to the Nahuat of the sierra norte de
Puebla who still believe in hierogamy.
REFERENCES
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Burkhart, L. M. (1989). The slippery earth: Nahuat–Christian moral
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Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley:
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Ingham, J. (1986). Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in
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López, Austin, A. ([1980], 1988). The human body and ideology:
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Nandi
Regina Smith Oboler
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Nandi are also known as Chemwal (Old), Kalenjin
(includes societies with other ethnic designations, e.g.,
Kipsigis, Keiyo, Tugen, Marakwet, Endo, Kony, Terik,
Pokot).
LOCATION
The Nandi are located in the highlands of Western Kenya,
East Africa.
The settlement pattern was and is scattered, with
each minimally extended family living in a compound of
several houses on its own land. Each married woman has
a separate house. A minimally extended family might be
an elder with wives, married sons, unmarried daughters,
sons’ wives, and grandchildren; or it could be a married
man with his wife or wives and children and widowed
mother. Descent is patrilineal, and communities are made
up of households from several patrilineal clans. The other
important feature of social organization is seven rotating
age sets for men.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Nandi are a section of the several million Kalenjinspeaking people in Kenya. Greenberg classifies the
Kalenjin languages as part of the Nilotic sub-branch of
the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Chari-Nile subfamily
of the Nilo-Saharan language family. The Nandi were
formerly semipastoralists, who kept cattle, sheep, and
goats, and planted eleusine (finger millet) as the staple
crop. In the 20th century they have become settled cashcrop farmers, who produce maize, milk, and tea for
national and international markets.
During the 19th century cattle were central to the
economy, and at times the cattle-to-people ratio was as
high as 4 : 1 or 5 : 1. Cattle were also central to social life,
a focus of cultural interest celebrated in song. The
language included an impressive cattle-related lexicon,
and men were tied together in cattle-exchange partnerships. As with other East African pastoralists, raiding for
cattle by young men of the warrior age grade was also
important to Nandi cultural identity.
Prior to colonial rule, the Nandi were tribally organized, with the beginnings of political centralization in the
role of the Orkoiyot, the most powerful prophet of the
Talai, the clan known for producing powerful prophets.
The Orkoiyot was believed to be able to foresee the
future. All cattle raids were cleared through him.
OF
GENDER
The Nandi acknowledge two gender categories, male and
female, and male is considered to be superior. Men are
said to be both physically stronger than women, and
stronger willed and more decisive. Men have a very
strong sense of pride in their manhood. It is manly to be
courageous, and also to be very decisive, particularly in
the area of herd management. The cultural ethos is
definitely one of male dominance. Women are held to be
subordinate to men. A submissive demeanor is considered appropriate for younger women. These expectations
of submissiveness, and some other gender expectations,
are suspended for older women who are widows. In fact,
when questioned, Nandi may say that the traits associated
with men, such as initiative and decisiveness, are in fact
also good in women, but not natural to them. There is a
term, chemurenyo, that denotes a woman who has these
qualities.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women wore
beaded leather skirts and capes tied together on one shoulder and passed under the opposite arm. Earlobes were
pierced and stretched to accommodate long leather beaded
ornaments. Married women also wore flat spirals of brass
wire above their breasts, suspended by a leather strap
worn around the neck. Young men (warriors) wore nothing
but the over-one-shoulder cape and some ornaments, and
black-and-white colobus monkey skin decorations for
716
Gender over the Life Cycle
fancy dress. Elders might wear a more encompassing
cloak made of leather or monkey pelts. Men’s earrings
were metal, each a horseshoe-shaped loop with a ball at
either end, so that two balls hung together just beneath the
earlobe. Men now wear trousers or shorts and shirts, and
women wear cotton dresses.
Attractiveness in men is related to decisiveness and
strength of will as well as physical fitness. It is often said
that in the past a glamorous mystique surrounded the
warriors. Physical beauty in women is important to sexual attraction. A young Nandi man told me, “We like the
same things European men like: girls who aren’t too fat
or too thin, and have nice breasts that stand up …”
Smoothly pigmented skin is positive, and a slight space
between the top front teeth is a mark of beauty.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Rotating age sets for men are a key aspect of Nandi social
structure. A group of men initiated to manhood at the
same time form a solidary group that moves together
through life’s stages: warrior, married man, junior elder,
senior elder, retiree. Though some other Kalenjin peoples
also traditionally had age sets for women, the Nandi did
not. The important status distinguisher for women is
marital status: unmarried, married, or widowed. Initiation
to adult status at puberty is a crucial life cycle event for
both sexes.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
There is a clear preference among the Nandi for the first
child to be a boy. A male heir is necessary to continue the
family line. However, an ideal family has children of both
sexes. The marriage of daughters brings to the family
bridewealth cattle that enable its sons to marry. Babies of
both sexes are welcomed, loved, and carefully nurtured.
Nandi mothers deny that there are significant sex differences in the behavior of infants and young children,
although fieldwork did not include close enough observation to determine if this reflects actual behavior. Both
child caregivers and adults are very indulgent toward
infants and young children. A baby or toddler is picked
up and placated whenever he or she cries, but as soon as
children reach the age where they can be reasoned with
they are expected to be obedient and may receive corporal punishment for disobedience. A time-allocation study
717
using broad categories found very few differences in
activities of boys and girls up to about the age of 7.
From this point, boys and girls begin to learn the
work appropriate to their adult gender roles. Girls do
household chores and childcare and help with weeding in
the fields; boys’ major chore is watching domestic
animals (cattle, sheep, and goats) to prevent them from
wandering into the crops and periodically driving them to
water.
There are gendered terms for these tasks, cheplakwet
(child nurse) and mestowot (herdboy). Still, girls do herd
animals and boys do sometimes care for smaller children.
Children of both sexes (no gender differences are
obvious) are most likely to be disciplined either for
impertinence or for failure to carry out assigned tasks.
Girls and boys both go to school, have similar amounts of
leisure, and play in mixed-sex groups. In the 1970s there
was still a bias in school attendance favoring boys, but as
more years of school are provided free by the government, this difference is diminishing.
Puberty and Adolescence
After the age of about 10, boys, but not girls, spend nights
in a “hut” (sigiroinet) away from their parents’ house. By
early adolescence, adults expect boys to take more initiative than girls. Boys of this age often take on extra work
or independent projects as a way of proving their fitness
for initiation. After the age of initiation, young men spend
many fewer hours doing domestic chores than young
women do, and have a great deal of free time. Girls
change their behavior during adolescence, but there is no
particular term for this stage. They go from being unmarried girls to married women. After initiation, young men
are “warriors.” They are considered adults, but traditionally they did not marry and begin families until attaining
the next age grade.
Attainment of Adulthood
Initiation (tumdo) is a central Nandi institution, the most
important event in the life of the individual up to that
point. The main feature of initiation for both sexes is
genital modification—circumcision for men and clitoridectomy for women. Both sexes are expected to display courage under the knife—men to prove their fitness
for the hardships of the warrior role, and women to prove
that they are able to face child-bearing without fear. Both
718
men’s and women’s initiation are public events, but men’s
initiation directly involves more of the community
because all the boys of the appropriate age, but only one
or a few girls at a time, are initiated in the same ceremony.
In the precolonial period, men’s initiation was
coordinated throughout the entire Nandi area. At about
15-year intervals (alternate flowerings of the setiot plant)
a male initiation period was “opened.” Initiation remained
open for several years, with some boys between the ages
of about 12 and 20 being initiated in each year. These
men formed an age set. Seven standard names for the sets
were used in rotation. At any point in time there would be
four sets of elders (one of which might have no living
members, and another considered “retired”), the set of the
senior warriors, the set of the new initiates, and the set of
uninitiated boys. At a ceremony marked by the sacrifice
by strangling of a white ox, each age set moved up one
age grade, taking over the duties of the set before it. The
coordination of the system broke down during the colonial period when the British cancelled three successive
saget ab eito ceremonies as events likely to arouse rebellious militaristic emotions. In the 1970s some boys were
initiated every year in different Nandi communities, and
understandings about which age set new initiates
belonged to were reached informally. The modal age of
initiation for boys is 15 or 16. It is about 15 for girls.
There are some Kalenjin-speaking societies (e.g.,
the Sebei) where girls and boys are initiated at the same
time, but for the Nandi these ceremonies are segregated
by gender, with some public parts of the ritual attended
by the whole community, and some private parts attended
only by people themselves initiated in the same ceremony. Occasionally people are allowed to attend the
opposite-sex initiation in its entirety to cure infertility.
Boys’ initiation, under the “senior warriors,” begins
in the morning. The boys sing and dance publicly all day.
They are made to behave submissively and to perform
tasks usually associated with women, and subjected to
aggressive lectures and tongue-lashings. Periodically, the
senior warriors take them into a grove for private instruction. At sunset, the boys hear last words of encouragement from their female relatives, who tie headscarves
around the boys’ necks as tokens of being with them in
spirit. Then they are taken for the final time into the
grove, where they undergo physical hazing and instruction during the night, culminating in the actual circumcision just before dawn. At dawn, the instructors appear to
return tokens and assure the waiting women that the
Nandi
initiates behaved honorably. The initiates remain in seclusion, receiving further instruction in manhood, until their
circumcision wounds heal. Today, initiation ceremonies
for boys are not always communitywide, and in some
cases Roman Catholics have incorporated Christian
religious symbolism into the ceremony.
By the 1970s, about 20% of women, mainly those
who were highly educated, were no longer initiated. The
figure has probably increased in the intervening decades.
Beginning in the 1980s, clitoridectomy became illegal by
presidential decree in Kenya. In the 1970s, girls were
dressed for their initiation in a standard costume that was
reminiscent of male and military styles—for example, a
white dress-shirt and tie, men’s shoes and knee socks,
crossed bandoliers, and colobus monkey skin ornaments
(warriors’ decorations of precolonial times). A red skirt
was also invariably part of the outfit. It is said that traditionally the warriors dressed the girls for initiation, lending them their own ornaments and other items. In the
1970s, there were men who specialized in dressing girls
and providing costumes, though women controlled the
rest of the girls’ initiation ceremony. Both male and
female initiation seem to dramatize aspects of the adult
opposite-gender role, which the initiates are repudiating.
Beginning in the late afternoon of the day before the
actual clitoridectomy, the beautifully costumed initiates
dance with a group of uninitiated girls referred to as their
“childhood friends.” The initiates are supposed to stay up
all night, and by morning they should be exhausted and
numbed to the pain to come. Friends and neighbors visit
throughout the night, and gather after dawn for the
culmination of the ritual. After distributing food, drinks,
and cigarettes to the crowd, the girls move into a circle
formed by initiated women separate from the men and
uninitiated women. This is where the actual surgery takes
place. The girl is not supposed to move or cry during the
operation, and if she proves worthy, there is much rejoicing among the women. The observer cannot help being
impressed by their emotional release as they break from
the circle and run ululating toward the guests to deliver
the news that all went well and congratulate the girl’s
male relatives.
Following initiation, a young woman is secluded in
the home of a neighbor for a period of time while she is
“fattened” and instructed in womanly lore. While she is
secluded, families of marriageable young men may negotiate for her as a bride. Technically, her seclusion should
end with her marriage. Young men emerge from seclusion
Gender Roles in Economics
719
in a group ceremony. These newly initiated warriors then
begin a period of great social freedom. In the past, they
would have engaged in cattle raids. Today they may be
students or otherwise free from many adult responsibilities. Before initiation, a boy may not engage in sexual
intercourse. After initiation, he is free to do so.
and usually are, especially in the presence of men. Older
women, especially widows, are much more assertive and
less retiring in mixed-gender social situations.
Middle Age and Old Age
Residence in Nandi is patrilocal, though communities are
not patrilineally structured. Three-generation patrilineal
extended family households are fairly common, but larger
residential kin groups are not present. People recall specific patrilineal connections only for a few generations,
and patrilineal clans are important only for the regulation
of marriage. Local communities are made up of households representing many clans.
The age-set system for men (previously described)
is the most important gender-oriented social institution.
As men age and move into the status of elderhood, they
become more important as political actors within the
community. The important decisions are made by councils of men beyond the warrior age grades. Women, too,
gain power with age, but a woman is jurally under the
authority of her husband as long as he is alive. As a
widow, however, she inherits property and may become
completely economically independent.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
When asked about ideal personality traits, Nandi tend to
describe a similar ideal for both sexes. A good person is
hardworking and “polite” or “humble” (tala). Getting
along well with others, courage, and honesty are important for both women and men. Nandi tend to be reserved
in the expression of emotions, and to avoid direct confrontation. Some points also differ by gender. Women are
believed to have a greater capacity than men for compassion (rirgei), and men are supposed to be a bit more
“sharp,” “bitter,” or “fierce” (korom).
Men pride themselves on physical fitness and feats of
endurance, for example, ability to withstand cold and rain,
and to travel for long periods and distances without food,
water, or rest. Men should be able to confront and vanquish
human enemies or wild animals; in the past, “Barng’etuny”
was an honorary name reserved for those men who had
killed lions, usually in defense of their herds. Women also
should be brave and stoic in the face of hardship, but they
are generally thought to display these virtues to a lesser
degree than men. They are also believed to have less capacity for planning and forethought than men, and to be more
apt to hold grudges. Only a few desirable qualities are
said to be more characteristic of women. Compassion,
empathy, and cleanliness are some such traits.
Women’s personality typically changes over the life
cycle. Young women are supposed to be shy and retiring,
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
The Nandi live in an area of Kenya that has been characterized as having “high agricultural potential,” with average land holdings in the 1970s that were large compared
with most of rural Africa. The economy is based on the
production of maize, milk, and vegetables for home consumption, as well as maize, milk, and tea for the market.
In the process of agricultural production, men clear
land for planting and do the plowing with oxen. All members of the household are involved in planting. Women
and men participate in routine weeding of the staple crop,
though women spend slightly more time doing this, and
women also plant and tend vegetable gardens. All members of the household are involved in harvesting. Women
and men sometimes work in the fields together, but more
frequently work separately except for planting and
harvesting. Women and men spend approximately equal
amounts of time in agricultural production as a whole,
and on maize and tea, the major cash crops (Oboler, 1985,
p. 212). Women milk cows morning and evening. The
common idea that, among agropastoralists, women are
the cultivators and men are the herders does not hold for
the Nandi. Women actually spend more time than men
caring for livestock, though neither does as much as
children (Oboler, 1985, p. 215).
When both cultivating and caring for livestock are
included, married women have an average agricultural
work week of about 18 hr, and men about 13 hr. Married
720
women in the Nandi time-allocation study also spent
about 30 hr a week doing “housework” (cleaning and
maintaining the house, carrying water and firewood,
cooking, doing laundry, etc.) and married men spent an
average of 18.5 hr on income-generating activities.
Income-generating activities include such things as cattle
trading, buying and selling farm produce, making and
selling charcoal, dredging and cleaning sand to sell for
making concrete, contract farm labor for larger land holders, and other similar activities. Most men are involved in
some form of entrepreneurial activity that earns income.
Even traditionally there were some skilled craft specialties, for example, blacksmithing and thatching for men,
potting for women, and herbalism and traditional
medicine for both sexes.
Most farm households sell some milk, tea, or maize,
or all three, to government-controlled marketing agencies.
The maize and tea crops are said to belong to male heads
of households, even though their wives also work on them.
It is also said that the milk from the morning milking
belongs to the husband and that from the afternoon milking to the wife. The morning milk is normally sold, while
the afternoon (wife’s) milk is used to feed the family. Thus
married men have much greater access to and control of
cash income than married women. Women may own
vegetable gardens and chickens outright, and can sell
vegetables and eggs. There is not much general market for
such produce; women would normally sell them on contract to institutions such as schools. In the 1970s, brewing
traditional beer was another way for women to make
money, but the sale of traditional beer has become illegal
in Kenya. Men in general have control over cash incomes
far in excess of those of women (Oboler, 1985, p. 235).
The major property besides money is land and
livestock. Traditionally, the Nandi had no land shortage,
and whoever cleared and prepared a piece of land for
cultivation had use rights until it returned to fallow. Cattle
were the major form of property with which traditional
norms of ownership were concerned.
The norms governing the ownership and inheritance
of livestock among the Nandi and some other African
peoples have been called the “house-property complex.”
Each married woman is the starting point of a house, or
line of inheritance, which holds property separately from
all comparable units. If a man has several wives, each is
the founder of a separate house. There are basically four
categories of Nandi cattle, with different norms governing their ownership: (1) those a man inherits; (2) those a
Nandi
man takes in cattle raids (or in modern times, buys with
his cash earnings); (3) those that come to a woman’s
house as gifts at her wedding, or that she acquires through
her own economic efforts; and (4) those that come to a
woman’s house as bridewealth when one of her daughters
is married. Only a woman’s sons, not her daughters,
inherit her house-property. Women acquire their major
rights in property through their husbands when they are
married. There are very strong norms that each wife’s
house is entitled to an equal share of cattle that the husband inherits, regardless of how many sons she has, and
also that bridewealth cattle stay within the house. Men
(husbands) are in charge of herd-management decisions,
including the sale of cattle, but they are not supposed to
violate these principles. Cattle that women receive as
wedding gifts or acquire through their own efforts are
supposed to be theirs, and husbands may not alienate
them without the wives’ permission. In practice, there are
some cases in which husbands have not followed this
rule, and there are also some in which wives have succeeded in having rule-violating husbands sanctioned by
the elders’ court. Men have relative freedom to allocate
cattle they earn through their own efforts.
In the 1970s there was beginning to be a sense that
inheritance of land should follow the same principles as
inheritance of cattle. It remains to be seen how circumvention of these principles by a will, for example, would
play out in the national legal system.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Adoption is a possibility under special circumstances, but
most children are reared by their biological mother.
A child’s pater is its mother’s husband. There are institutionalized circumstances in which the genitor may be
someone else, but the Nandi are clear that the pater fills
the father role, for example, in the case of a female
husband (see below).
Relations between mothers and infants are warm
and nurturing. Relations between fathers and infants in
the past were distant. The Nandi belief in feminine-child
pollution (kerek), a mystical substance emanating from
babies and breast-milk that destroys masculine character
traits, prevented fathers from having close contact with
infants. By the 1970s, most young men had given up
belief in kerek, and fathers could be seen holding and
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
playing with infants and toddlers. Still, men’s involvement in child care is minimal. Most of the work of caring
for young children is done by older preadolescent girls.
The time-allocation study showed that they spent more
time even than mothers (15–20%) in direct interaction
with young children. Mothers spend about 10% of their
time in childcare, and fathers much less (1–2%).
Fathers spend more time with older boys teaching
them the male side of the division of labor, for example,
how to drive oxen while plowing. Parental conversations
with children are not usually intimate. Children are
obedient and treat parents with respect. More intimate
relationships often exist with grandparents. Grandmothers
are the tellers of children’s tales.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Public leadership roles are all held by men. Nandi District
is divided into locations, and the locations into sublocations. The sublocation is the local community, or
“village.” The sublocation that was the main site of my
ethnography had 286 households or about 2,300 people
in 1975. The government-appointed (based on popular
preference) chief of the sublocation is a paid position,
and the most obvious leadership role. Each neighborhood
(kokwet) within the sublocation also has an “elder,”
whose main duty is to settle neighborhood disputes. All
these offices are held only by men. Decisions involving
the whole community are taken in a council of all adult
men of the community, led by the Chief. Any married
man has the theoretical right to participate in these meetings; in practice, discussions are dominated by a group of
influential elders. Discussion proceeds to consensus.
Consensus has been reached when, after a considerable
period of talk, an apparent conclusion is stated by a
leading elder, and nobody disagrees thereafter. Women
may observe at these meetings, but not participate.
Disputes and minor criminal cases are sometimes heard
and judged by a council of (male) elders. In such
proceedings, women may speak as parties to the dispute
or as witnesses.
There are no positions of leadership for the whole
community that women may hold. A local branch of the
national women’s organization Maendeleo ya Wanawake
was just beginning to become active after a hiatus as
I was leaving the field. Positions in such an organization
would be women’s only arena for leadership. However,
721
a Nandi woman from another area was a popular national
member of parliament in the 1970s.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
In traditional Nandi religion, there was no pantheon of
gods and spirits, but rather a single deity called Asis or
Cheptalel, and personified by the sun. There does not
seem to be a strong sense of gender attached to this
traditional concept of God, although the feminine name
Cheptalel, which could be translated “White Girl,” suggests that at least the deity was not unequivocally male.
Today, the majority of Nandi are Christians (Roman
Catholic, Africa Inland Church, Anglican, and Seventh
Day Adventist), and accept that the Christian God and
their traditional God are the same. In several Protestant
denominations, the name “Jehovah” is used for God. It
seems that God is conceptualized as masculine in most
Christian presentations.
In traditional religion, prayers to Asis were offered
at family shrines by both women and men. There was a
belief that spirits of deceased ancestors were reincarnated
in their descendents, and such reincarnation was not
dependent on sex. Ritual elders in charge of communitywide rituals were men, except for women’s initiation. All
Nandi Christian clergy that I encountered were men.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Men spend more time at leisure than women, but the
difference is not spectacular. In the time-allocation data
all adult men were engaged in clear-cut leisure for 42%
of observations (37% for married men) and adult women
for 30% (married women, 26%). For children under the
age of 18, there is no marked gender difference in leisure
time (35% for girls and 33% for boys).
Most adult leisure time is spent in relaxation and
conversation with other persons of the same sex. Gender
segregation is voluntary and not absolute. In the 1970s,
the “beer hall” at the sublocation center, where traditional
beer was brewed and sold, was a popular gathering place
for older men and women (widows), and one of the few
places where women and men were commonly seen
socializing together. Beer parties in family compounds
usually involved women brewing and tasting the beer in
one area and men drinking it in another.
722
Nandi
There are also “traditional” singing and dancing
groups, separated by gender, that gather to rehearse and
perform their acts at community fund-raising events.
Churches may sponsor mixed-sex choirs. There is a popular game of strategy played by distributing stones among
rows of holes in certain patterns. Men gathered in the
sublocation center can be seen playing it, but never
women. Checkers or draughts, imported by the British, is
another game played by men. Children of both sexes play
both these games. Children make their own toys. For
example, a worn-out plastic sheet (used for protecting
tea seedlings) bound up with string served as a soccer
ball for neighborhood games. Children play mostly in
mixed-sex groups. Schools sponsor track and field
contests, with separate events for male and female students. The Nandi enjoy an international reputation as
distance runners. Spectator interest is high for both male
and female events.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
The status differential between men and women, and
especially between husbands and wives, is considerable.
Women’s formal authority in community, kin group, and
religion is virtually nonexistent, though they may exercise some informal influence. Nandi wives give great
public deference to their husbands. The section on the
economy (above) explained husbands’ and wives’ rights
in property and produce. Husbands have the right to control the family herds. However, if a husband has a pattern
of violating his wife’s interests and wishes for those
animals in which her rights predominate, she can secure
from the elders’ court a judgment for him to desist.
Though wives have total control over certain economic
assets of their own (vegetables, chickens, and milk from
the evening milking), the incomes they gain as a result are
tiny compared with those derived from male-controlled
assets.
Women are active in arranging marriages. Indeed, it
is usually said that the initial contacts that lead to most
marriages are made between women, and both sexes are
members of the parties that negotiate marriages.
Young people of both sexes are at the mercy of their
elders in many life decisions. For example, their parents
will decide whether to provide money for their school
fees so that they can continue in school. There are
instances in which a mother will find a way to get money
for this purpose that a father has refused. Marital
decisions are usually partly, but not completely, a matter
of choice (see below).
Widows have much more freedom and independence
than do wives, including the right to inherit and manage
their house property, and to come and go at their will.
SEXUALITY
Despite the practice of clitoridectomy, both women and
men are supposed to enjoy sex. Young men of the warrior
age grade are allowed to bring uninitiated girls to spend
the night with them in their own personal “hut” or a communal neighborhood warriors’ house (sigiroino). Sexual
play, which ideally does not reach the point of penetration, is an expected part of such encounters. There is no
high value on virginity at marriage per se (though honor
is accorded to a girl judged to be a virgin at her initiation),
but premarital pregnancy is not approved. Traditionally,
people said, if a girl became pregnant out of wedlock the
problem would be solved either by infanticide or adoption by a barren woman, the girl would have difficulty
being married, and the young man who impregnated her
was supposed to be beaten by his age mates. In modern
times, unmarried girls sometimes have and keep their
babies, and this is viewed as a social problem. The degree
to which sexual play is present in young children and
attitudes toward it are unknown.
Modern norms of modesty are a legacy of Christian
missions. Women normally cover their thighs and breasts,
though public nursing of babies is common. Married
women cover their shoulders. In precolonial times,
adult women covered their genitals at all times, but
adult men did not. Adult women might work in the
fields bare-breasted. The most embarrassing body part,
after a married woman’s genitals, is a married woman’s
thighs.
Nandi have a generally negative view of homosexuality and are reluctant to discuss it. People sometimes
denied the existence of homosexuality among them, but
I learned that there is a word for sodomy and there were
a pair of men in the neighborhood reputed to be sexual
partners. It was viewed as shameful, but not an outrage.
I did not hear of any lesbian relationships. There was a
person in a neighboring community said to be a woman
who dressed as a man. This was thought to be exceedingly strange, but I was unable to learn more about her.
Husband–Wife Relationship
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Virtually every Nandi gets married. Exceptions are
extraordinarily rare and explained by very unusual
circumstances. The average age at marriage in 1975 was
18 for women and in the twenties for men. In marriage
arrangements, men have somewhat more choice than
women. They can urge their parents to try to arrange a
match with a particular girl in seclusion following initiation, or discourage them from doing so. If a young man
and a girl have a prior relationship, their preferences will
probably be taken into account in arranging the marriage.
The girl is supposed to observe her prospective bridegroom from behind a screen and give her consent before
a marriage agreement is considered final. Almost half of
couples report that they had “love marriages,” involving
an agreement to marry prior to the wife’s initiation. In
only three of 120 cases was the marriage totally arranged
by parents without input from either spouse.
When a woman is in seclusion following her initiation, parties of relatives and friends of young men arrange
to come to negotiate for her hand in marriage. Sometimes
more than one offer will be made to a girl’s family.
A party from the bride’s side negotiates with them. The
parties consist of both men and women, and women are
active in the proceedings. One item that is discussed is
bridewealth, but it is more a matter of descriptions and
pedigrees of the cattle that are being offered than of numbers, because bridewealth is a relatively standard number
of cattle. During the wedding ceremony, the specific
animals are ritually pointed out to the bride’s brothers,
who come later to drive them home. Modern weddings
often take place in a church in the morning (or traditional
weddings under the auspices of elders in a nighttime
ceremony), followed by a feast the next day at the
groom’s family compound. The journey of the bride to
the groom’s compound is ritualized, with the bride
refusing to go forward at certain points until promises
(e.g., gifts of cattle from the groom’s kin) are made. At
the gate of the groom’s compound there may be a mock
battle between women from the bride’s home trying to
keep her from going farther, and women from the
groom’s home trying to pull her forward. Both sides sing
ritualized songs.
Men can marry any number of wives, as long as they
can pay bridewealth. In the 1970s the incidence of polygyny was about 25%. A woman is married once and may
never remarry. Widows do not remarry, although they
723
have leviratic relationships with close kinsmen of their
deceased husbands.
A special feature of marriage among the Nandi is
the possibility of woman–woman marriage. If a postmenopausal woman has no sons to inherit her houseproperty, she may use house-property cattle to pay
bridewealth for a newly initiated woman who becomes
her wife (the older woman is the husband). The wife
has sexual relations with men of her own choosing, or
the female husband arranges a sexual partner for her.
Children born to the wife regard the female husband as
their father, and the sons become heirs of the houseproperty. The relationship between the female husband
and her wife is not sexual. The female husband is said to
become a man, and she is required to give up sexual intercourse with men. An alternative solution to the same
problem involves a daughter going through a marriage
ceremony with the center pole of her mother’s house. She
then lives at home with her mother, has sex with selfchosen partners, and her sons count as heirs of the house.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Husbands have jural authority over wives, including the
right of corporal punishment. It is an offense for a woman
to contradict her husband publicly, and it is wrong for a
woman to “try to be bigger than” her husband. Wives
must ask their husbands’ permission for many activities,
such as traveling. However, women’s informal influence
is far greater than this public image might imply. Many,
possibly most, husbands confer with their wives about
economic decisions and decisions concerning issues such
as children’s education and marriages. Relations between
spouses are normally harmonious. If a woman is very dissatisfied with her marriage, she may leave her husband
and live elsewhere, but divorce and remarriage are not
possible. Children belong to the husband’s lineage and
their inheritance rights lie there. Older children stay with
the father if the mother leaves. Younger children go with
her, but are supposed to be sent back when they are old
enough. The separated wife’s rights in her husband’s
homestead and property are secure, and there are examples of older sons bringing their mothers home to live in
the family compound following the father’s death.
Some tasks in the division of labor are interchangeable, but some wives’ tasks (e.g., cooking) are never done
by husbands. Men often eat with age mates, served by the
724
wife of one of the men. Women and children eat separately. Wives often sleep with children, and separately
from husbands. Husbands and wives spend some, but
limited amounts of, leisure time together.
The relation between cowives is expected to be
somewhat hostile, since they are in competition for
resources. It is said to be best if husbands arrange for their
wives to live on separate farms and travel between them.
Yet examples of close relationships between cowives and
widows of the same husband also exist.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship between women and their fathers and
grandfathers may be affectionate, but is also distant and
respectful. Men usually have a more easy-going relationship with their sisters, including lifelong concern for their
welfare. A woman who leaves her husband is always
supposed to be able to make a home in her brother’s
compound. Mothers often have a lot of influence over
adult sons, and a widow usually lives in the compound of
a son and his family.
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Participation in the cash economy and modern legal title
to resources has in some ways undermined women’s
traditional rights in property. At the same time, some
women have been able to acquire personal title to land
they have purchased. Traditional license to engage in sex
play, without traditional safeguards, means that illegitimacy is a growing problem. Some people suggested
(though I think not seriously) that a solution could be
Nandi
allowing daughters a share of inheritance. In the late
20th century the incidence of woman–woman marriage
appeared to be increasing because it presented a way for
women to safeguard rights in land. People often spontaneously mentioned loss in the belief in kerek (child
pollution) as a positive feature of modernity that enabled
fathers to have closer relationships with children.
However, this has also meant reduction in the long postpartum sex taboo, and larger families, leading to land
shortage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Huntingford, G. W. B. (1953). The Nandi of Kenya: Tribal control in a
pastoral society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Langley, M. (1979). The Nandi: Life crisis rituals in a period of change.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Oboler, R. S. (1980). Is the female husband a man? Woman–woman
marriage among the Nandi of Kenya. Ethnology, 19, 69–88.
Oboler, R. S. (1985). Women, power, and economic change: The Nandi
of Kenya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Oboler, R. S. (1986a). Nandi widows. In B. Potash (Ed.), Widows in
African societies (pp. 66–83). Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Oboler, R. S. (1986b). For better or worse: Anthropologists and
husbands in the field. In T. Whitehead & M. E. Conaway (Eds.),
Self, sex, and gender in cross-cultural fieldwork (pp. 28–51).
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Oboler, R. S. (1994). The house-property complex in African social
organization. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute,
64, 342–358.
Oboler, R. S. (1996). Whose cows are they, anyway? Ideology and
behavior in Nandi cattle “ownership” and control. Human Ecology,
24, 255–272.
Oboler, R. S. (1997). Nandi: From cattle-keepers to cash-crop farmers.
In M. Ember, C. R. Ember, & D. Levinson (Eds.), Portraits of
culture: Ethnographic originals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall/Simon & Schuster.
Oboler, R. S. (2001). Law and persuasion in the elimination of female
genital modification. Human Organization, 60, 311–318.
Navajo
Maureen Trudelle Schwarz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Navajo are also known as Diné and Navaho (antiquated).
LOCATION
The Navajo Nation occupies a 25,000 square mile
reservation in what is now known as the southwestern
United States. Reservation lands extend across northeastern Arizona and adjacent portions of New Mexico and
Utah. Situated in the south central portion of the Colorado
Plateau, the geographic terrain, which varies between high
desert and pine-forested areas with numerous natural
lakes, is marked by deep canyons, steep escarpments, and
prominent buttes of colorful rock layers.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
With a total population of nearing 300,000, the Navajo
are the largest native nation in the contiguous United
States. At the time of European contact, the Navajo subsisted by means of hunting and gathering supplemented
by some agriculture (Brugge, 1983, pp. 489–501).
Extended family units, centered on matrilocal residence,
lived in widely dispersed settlements. After livestock
were first introduced into the region by Spanish settlers,
a herding economy based on sheep and goats developed.
The Navajo population and their area of settlement gradually expanded as new crops, animals, and technological
innovations continued to be added to their subsistence
base during the Spanish and American periods.
Like Native people throughout the Americas, Navajo
endured many hardships at the hands of European and
European American conquerors. For example, in the
19th century an extended period of war resulted in nearly
9,000 Navajo being rounded up and forced to walk
300 miles to Hwéeldi (Fort Sumner, New Mexico),
where they were incarcerated by the U.S. Military from
1863 to 1868. On June 1, 1868, a treaty was signed which
established a reservation on a portion of the Navajo
homeland to which the captives were allowed to return.
After their return, the Navajo economy and population
gradually recovered (see Bailey & Bailey [1986] on the
reservation years). Trading posts began to flourish on the
reservation in the late 1800s and a barter economy developed wherein male lambs and items of Navajo manufacture were traded for coffee, flour, lard, canned goods,
and other food staples. During the closing decades of the
19th century, the first biomedical physicians began servicing portions of the Navajo reservation. Tracts of land
were annexed to the original reservation at numerous
times between 1878 and 1934, and separate tracts of
land were subsequently secured for outlying Navajo
groups—the Alamo (1946), Canoncito (1949), and
Ramah (1956).
The early years of the 20th century were riddled
with cultural and economic hardships resulting from
drought and overgrazing. Coupled with fluctuations in
livestock and wool prices, these factors resulted in a shift
toward increased dependence on wage labor and the
production of woven goods and silverwork for the offreservation market. To accommodate developing resource
extraction-based industries, including coal and uranium,
a federally designed centralized government—the Navajo
Nation Council—was installed on the Navajo reservation
in the 1920s (see Iverson [1981] on the development of
the Navajo Nation). Federally mandated stock reductions
diminished family herds in the 1930s, which resulted
in increased dependence on wage labor on and off the
reservation, as well as greater acceptance of non-Navajo
religious beliefs and practices such as Catholicism,
Protestantism, Mormonism, and the Native American
Church. Increased exposure to the non-Navajo world
through military service and employment in war-related
industries during World War II led to greater usage of
government-run health care and educational facilities.
The so-called “Navajo–Hopi Land Dispute” over an area
of Arizona that both tribes consider to be ancestral homeland has monopolized enormous amounts of time and
energy since the turn of the century.
725
726
In the face of these various changes and concerns,
the Navajo Nation has experienced relatively high
language retention, and Navajo tenets of philosophy are
currently taught at all grade levels, including courses at
Diné College. Navajo who are employed off the reservation or in towns on the reservation return to matrilineal family homes in remote areas as frequently as is
possible in order to participate in family activities.
Those in need of medical attention freely combine biomedical care and treatments administered in state-ofthe-art facilities across the reservation with traditional
care and treatments administered at home. Most Navajo
who have adopted non-Navajo religious doctrines and
practices still participate in traditional healing rituals
held for themselves or for members of their extended
families.
According to Navajo oral tradition, which relates
their origin as successive emergence upward through a
series of subterranean worlds, the Navajo universe
preceded human existence. Thus, to understand philosophical beliefs underlying contemporary Navajo notions
of gender and sexuality, it is necessary to consider first
the view of the universe and the place of Navajo people
within it documented in these accounts.
The Navajo origin and creation stories describe the
preparation of the physical world and the creation of its
inhabitants. Collectively they establish an ethnic identity
for all Navajo, defining meaningful relationships between
individual members of the community and between the
community and the cosmos. Navajo consider themselves
to be the Nihookáá Dine’é, having been created on the
earth’s surface by Asdzá˛á˛ Nádleehé, “Changing Woman,”
the most highly revered of all Navajo Holy People and the
inner form of the earth. Her continual maturation, death,
and rebirth are mirrored in the changing seasons of the
earth (birth is mirrored by spring, youth by summer,
maturity by fall, and old age and death by winter). As its
inner being, Changing Woman is considered the mother
of all who dwell on the earth’s surface. She directed the
Nihookáá Dine’é to live within the geographical area
demarcated by their four sacred mountains (O’Bryan,
1956, p. 112).
The space within which Navajo life is lived is organized on the paradigms established in the origin stories.
Interconnection among all aspects of the world on the
basis of these is a fundamental aspect of the “natural
order” established by the Diyin Dine’é, “Navajo Holy
People.” Relationships between and among all entities are
Navajo
based on culturally sanctioned rules governing rights,
prerogatives, and agency.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Manipulations of the bodies of infants shortly after birth
and of pubescent children indicate that desirable features
for both Navajo men and women are a long straight nose,
a flat forehead, a straight back and good posture, an
overall physically strong and fit body, and long, healthy,
and well-groomed hair. The Navajo Holy People directed
men and women to wear their hair in a bun at the back
of the neck. Women traditionally wore two-piece woolen
dresses, with sash belts, and moccasins with leg wrappings. Men wore woven breechcloths with moccasins.
In the mid-1800s women adopted multi-tier gathered skirts
of satin and pleated velveteen blouses, and men adopted
pants and shirts constructed of commercially manufactured cloth. While they may don such attire for special
occasions, contemporary men and women under the age
of 50 cut their hair and wear clothes reflecting current
European American styles on a day-to-day basis. Elderly
men, who frequently wear their hair in traditional buns,
prefer wrangler jeans, Western-style boots, hats, and
shirts. Elderly women, who almost always wear their hair
in the traditional bun, wear cotton gathered skirts and
simple blouses, with support or tennis shoes. Both
genders cherish turquoise and silver jewelry and wear an
abundance of it with pride.
Prior to European American colonization, the
Navajo recognized four main gender categories: women,
men, nádleehé, and dilbaa. Nádleehé, “a person who is in
a constant state of change,” is a feminine person born
with both genitalia who dressed and functioned as a
woman. A person born with both genitalia who in adult
life dressed and functioned as a man was classified as a
dilbaa. Dilbaa was the first of these gender categories to
disappear completely from the Navajo tribe during the
second half of the 19th century (Thomas, 1997). Some
nádleehé are known to live on the reservation today.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The sex of the child is said to be determined at the time
of conception by the type of fluid with which the father’s
sperm merges in the mother’s womb. If the man’s sperm
Gender over the Life Cycle
combines with tó al⁄’tahnáschíín, “all different kinds of
waters come together,” a biologically male child is
formed; if it combines with tó biyáázh, “child of water,”
a biologically female child results. (No information is
available distinguishing the conception of nádleehé and
dilbaa.) This sexuality is not immutable. Navajo can and
do influence the sex of their unborn children. Parents who
have a sexual preference pursue all avenues to influence
the outcome of the sex of the child. Navajo women have
knowledge of a variety of specific means that can be used
to influence the sex of a child before conception or during
pregnancy, including the application of pollens or white
shell directly to the mother’s body, the wearing of white
shell or turquoise, the ingestion of aragonite, white shell,
or particular parts of sheep, and the power of prayer.
The prenatal period is a time of intense susceptibility. As a result, both parents take precautions throughout
the gestation of a child. After birth, children are carefully
bathed and molded to take advantage of the body’s
malleability at this time. Children must be assisted in the
process of attaining full Navajo personhood. The teachings of the Diyin Dine’é dictate that particular parts of the
body—afterbirth, blood, umbilical cords—are more susceptible to effect than others, and that the human body is
more open to effect at critical times in the life cycle—in
utero, at birth, and at puberty. Although the male puberty
ceremony is not performed as frequently as it once was,
specific rites are performed shortly after birth, at the time
of a child’s first laugh, at puberty, at marriage, and at
death for both women and men.
Consideration of the various methods used to influence children—in the womb and throughout childhood—
reveals that Navajo individuals can be affected by contact
with other persons (human and nonhuman alike), with
various substances, or with dramatic events. Influence
can be transferred through a variety of means, including
person-to-person contact, contact with bodily substances
such as blood, exposure to the sensitive portions of a
ceremony, or exposure to another person’s death.
Babies of either sex are referred to as ‘awéé”
throughout the first year of life. Girls are referred to as
‘at’ééd yázhí from roughly age 1 until age 3; boys are
referred to as ‘askii yázhí during the same period. From 3
until puberty the reference is shortened to ‘atééd for girls
and ‘askii for boys. After puberty until about age 30, a
young woman is referred to as ch’ké˛é˛h and a young man
is referred to as dinééh. An adult woman between the ages
of 30 and 70 is referred to as ‘asdzáni, while a man in this
727
age group would be referred to as hastiin. A woman over
70 years of age is referred to as ‘asdá˛á˛’ sání, and a man
of this age is referred to as hastiin sání.
When infants are near the age of 4 months, relatives
begin to joke about the need to be cautious in their presence because the person who makes the baby laugh for
the first time is obligated to sponsor a ceremony in honor
of the event. The child’s first laugh marks its preliminary
step toward emotional development and expression of
empathy. Relatives use the occasion as their opportunity
to anchor the child’s emotional life firmly within his or
her social landscape by initiating the child into the
complex network of communication and reciprocity that
operates within extended families.
Throughout this rite, the sponsor holds and acts for
the baby. With the assistance of this adult, the child will
first apply a protective layer of natural rock salt to the
outside of its own body and then give a token amount of
the salt to each of its relatives, as well as to close friends
of its family who are in attendance. This giving is
designed to encourage generosity and to guarantee that
the child will not grow up to be “stingy.” As relatives walk
up individually to accept their portions of rock salt from
the baby, they ingest a small amount. A small token of
natural rock salt may be given alone or, when finances
allow, other items are also given as gifts from the baby.
In such cases, the salt and gifts are placed in a ceremonial
basket, and with the help of his or her sponsor, the child
hands these to each relative who files past. Distribution of
the rock salt and small gifts is followed by a large meal
for all relatives and friends in attendance.
All Navajo are believed to possess both male and
female aspects or qualities. This pairing is demonstrated in
the actual composition of the human body. Navajo believe
that their bodies are divided in half from the top of the head
down to the feet. The left-hand side of every Navajo is considered naayéé’ k’ehjigo, “on the side of protection,” that
is, the warrior side of the person; the right-hand side is
hózhó˛ó˛jigo, “on the side of tranquility, harmony, and
order,” that is, the female or “peaceful” side of the person
(Schwarz, 1997, pp. 94–101). Despite this shared constitution, Navajo men and women are considered to have
some different attributes and very different roles.
The primary culturally sanctioned role for women
is that of nurturer. This means that Navajo women are
to be mothers whose most important responsibilities
are to foster and sustain the development of children
(Schwarz, 1997, pp. 26–27, 238–239). The culturally
728
sanctioned role for men is that of protector (Schwarz,
1997, pp. 159–160, 162, 163). This role distinction is
symbolized by the traditional weapons for each gender—
ádístsiin (stirring sticks) for women and nádleehé, and
the bow and arrows for men and dilbaa.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
After birth, children are carefully bathed and molded to
take advantage of the body’s malleability at this time.
Formerly when children were born at home, once the
baby was born the woman supervising the birth ascertained that the child was breathing and stimulated it to cry
with a gentle circular sternal massage. She then cut and
tied off the umbilical cord, wrapped the child in an
expendable blanket or sheep pelt, and placed it with its
head toward the fire to rest, while all present waited for
the afterbirth to be delivered.
Following safe delivery of the placenta, the child
was bathed in warm water, wrapped in a blanket or sheep
pelt, and handed to its mother, who would greet the child
while shaking his or her right hand. Care was taken in
selecting the woman who would bathe the child, because
her personal attributes—industriousness or laziness—
were transferred to the infant (Bailey, 1950, p. 75).
The midwife or attending female relative dipped her
right forefinger into a mixture of pollen and water and
administered a pollen blessing. Next, the woman who
bathed the child shaped it by means of gentle molding.
She pulled on the child’s nose to lengthen and straighten
it, she pressed on its forehead to flatten it, and she pressed
and shaped the arms and legs to “make them stiff” and
facilitate future walking (Bailey, 1950, p. 75). The
bathed, blessed, and shaped child was then placed at
the left side of its mother, with its head facing east toward
the fire (Bailey, 1950, p. 77; Leighton & Kluckhohn,
1947, p. 17). Infants were placed in this position to allow
the heat of the fire to penetrate the child’s skull and thus
aid the closure of the fontanel, and to promote the
development of a round head.
In addition, Navajo parents and grandparents
carefully manipulate parts of the child’s body, such as the
blood associated with childbirth or the umbilical cord,
and this manipulation has lifelong effects on the child.
The teachings of the Holy People governing the cultural
construction of personhood dictate that the umbilical cord
be placed in a location considered by the parents and
grandparents to be most beneficial to the child’s future.
Navajo
When the family wants a boy to be good with livestock,
parents or grandparents bury his cord in a sheep, cattle,
or horse corral, tie it to the tail or mane of a horse, or tie
it to a sheep. A boy’s cord is buried in the family fields
when it is desired that he be concerned with farming
(Bailey, 1950, p. 74). A girl’s cord is buried underneath
the place where the loom is erected if the family wants
her to become an expert weaver (Bailey, 1950, p. 74;
Leighton & Kluckhohn, 1947, p. 17) or in the sheep
corral to ensure that her thoughts are with the livestock
(Bailey, 1950, p. 74). A girl’s cord is buried near the home
when they want the girl to become a good homemaker.
Many contemporary parents and grandparents
continue to bury the umbilical cords of new family members under looms or in corrals to actuate the development
of good weaving and herding skills. While recognizing the
importance of traditional skills, other Navajo, concerned
over the ways in which Navajo life is changing, believe
that to succeed in today’s world their children and grandchildren will need additional skills. To foster new skills
such as those required in the Western educational system,
elders place dried cords in dictionaries or schoolbooks.
From an early age until puberty, both boys and girls
are expected to assist with routine domestic chores such
as sheep herding and hauling of water or firewood. In
addition, boys are expected to help their fathers and other
male relatives with masculine tasks such as farming,
wood collection, making jewelry, or livestock care, while
girls are expected to help their mothers and female
relatives with feminine tasks such as cooking, basketmaking, weaving, and childcare.
Once chores and schoolwork are complete, prepubescent children entertain themselves with television
programs, toys, music, and other products of mass popular culture. In general, girls spend leisure time under the
watchful eye of relatives, while boys have more freedom
to wander and spend time with peers away from the
domestic sphere.
Puberty and Adolescence
Pubescent girls are directed to notify their mothers or
grandmothers at the onset of menstruation. In anticipation
of this important event, family members gather necessary
clothing, jewelry, and other materials so that a Kinaaldá,
the Navajo female puberty ceremony, can be begun as
soon as notice is given. This is a 4-day event involving
ritualized dressing of the initiand with traditional attire in
Gender-Related Social Groups
729
the image of Changing Woman, shampooing the initiand’s
hair, multiple moldings of the initiand’s body, and running
on the part of the initiand toward the east at dawn, noon,
and sunset on each day, as well as the communal production of a corn-based cake cooked overnight in the ground
as an all-night sing is performed over the young woman.
Approximately a quarter to half of all Navajo girls take
part in this important ceremony today. Ideally, it should be
repeated at the time of her second menstrual cycle; however, school and work schedules combined with limited
family resources or inclement weather frequently result in
young women forgoing the second ceremony.
Several Navajo people with whom I consulted
mentioned male puberty ceremonies that were performed
for themselves or their male relatives. According to most
consultants, it is change in voice that marks a boy’s
entrance into puberty. Alternately, in some families the
male puberty ceremony is triggered by a young man’s first
ejaculation, which is likened to a young woman’s first
menstrual period. Individual accounts of male puberty ceremonies closely parallel the episodes documented in oral
history regarding the pubescence of Changing Woman’s
twin sons, Monster Slayer and Born For Water. Despite
profound changes in the Navajo world, many of the old
methods for transforming boys into men endure. Today,
boys are ushered into manhood by means of ceremonies in
which they may run to the east while singing or yelling,
sweat, fast, be whitened with cornmeal, be molded, have a
giveaway, learn songs, and be educated in matters of sexuality and the proper behavior for Navajo men (Schwarz,
1997, pp. 156–173). This ceremony ensures that men will
have physical strength, knowledge of songs, and educated
understandings of male sexuality and responsibilities.
Attainment of Adulthood
At the close of the puberty ceremony, young women and
men were traditionally considered eligible for marriage.
Although early wedlock is not practiced in the contemporary world, after Kinaaldá, young men and women are
expected to assume adult roles.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The primary culturally sanctioned role for women is that
of nurturer. This means that Navajo women are to be
mothers whose most important responsibilities are to
foster and sustain the development of children. Women
are expected to act in a more nurturing and emotionally
demonstrative manner than men. The culturally sanctioned role for men is that of protector. Men are expected
to be more aggressive by way of defense but not by way
of dominance over women, for women wield vast power
over day-to-day life decisions—what food will be eaten,
when a sheep will be butchered, how funds are to be
spent.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
The first Nihookáá Dine’é were not made to live as
individuals; rather, they immediately were matched
and paired to found the Navajo social order. It is generally agreed that Changing Woman simultaneously created
four pairs of women and men by rubbing cuticle from
various parts of her body and mixing this with ground
precious stones, ground corn, and her breath. She selected
individuals from these first Nihookáá Dine’é to live as
husband and wife and thus established the four original
clans of the Navajo and the practice of clan exogamy
(Aronilth, 1985, p. 83; O’Bryan, 1956, p. 167; Yazzie,
1971, p. 74). There is no consensus in the various
accounts of this episode about exactly which clans
originated from Changing Woman’s flesh, or which
clans originated from which parts of her body, but
members of the clans believed to have come from
her flesh take special pride in their sense of being
members of an original clan. Once paired, these men
and women were directed to go forth to where Changing
Woman’s sacred cornfields were in the east, within
the sacred mountains of Diné Bikéyah, and increase their
numbers through heterosexual reproduction (Aronilth,
1985, p. 83).
Navajo reckon kinship through four matrilineal
clans—the mother’s to which they are born, the father’s
for which they are born, the maternal grandfather’s, and
the paternal grandfather’s. In addition, married Navajo
have affine relations with a spouse’s clans. Greatest
emphasis is placed on the clan to which one is born.
Coupled with matrilocal residence, this generally results
in closer ties and commitments to one’s mother’s relatives
than to one’s father’s relatives. In addition, clans are
believed to be related to each other and clan exogamy
rules extend to these related clans.
730
GENDER ROLES
Navajo
IN
ECONOMICS
The necessity of sexual desire for the continuance of
society brought with it jealousy, worry, and adultery,
which caused numerous social problems. Oral history
documents that in the last underworld men and women
disagreed about important aspects of their joint lives. The
powers of sexual attraction, in one form or another,
played a fundamental role in the initial dispute that took
place between First Man and First Woman (O’Bryan,
1956, pp. 6–7; Yazzie, 1971, p. 28).
The men and women lived apart for 4 years. Since
the women remained on the side of the river where the
agricultural fields were already prepared, they initially
fared better at procuring food from crops than the men
did. But year by year, as the men continued to hunt and,
under the guidance of Nádleehé, became increasingly
adept at farming, their subsistence base exceeded that
of the women (Fishler, 1953, p. 26; O’Bryan, 1956,
pp. 7–8). The women, who grew weak with hunger, were
soon dying for want of everything, including the
companionship of their spouses.
After consultation, they agreed to rejoin and live as
one group. The hardships and failures of life during the
separation ultimately proved that neither sex can exist
without the other, and this reunion symbolizes the
complementary roles of men and women. The “rules”
established by First Man at the time of the reunion form
the base paradigm for the complementary nature of
gender relations.
Women were given control of the domestic realm
(household, livestock, and agricultural fields); men were
given control of hunting as well as the political and
ceremonial realms. Thus men hunt, dress skins, make
moccasins, gather firewood, perform agricultural labor, and
care for horses and associated equipment, whereas women
cook, clean the home, tend to the needs of children, butcher
livestock, and gather agricultural products from fields for
immediate consumption. While enshrined in oral tradition,
these roles and duties are flexible depending on family circumstances. Men care for children and cook when the need
arises, and women assist with livestock care during lambing and sheep dipping or when needed at other times.
Women have traditionally been the potters, basket-makers,
and weavers, while men did silversmithing and other metal
work, but men and women do each of these crafts today.
Men were traditionally removed from home for
substantial periods of time because of involvement in
long-distance trade and warfare. Presently, owing to
unemployment rates far exceeding national norms on the
reservation, young men who do not hold grazing or farming permits are frequently away from home for extended
periods of time working on construction crews or
completing military service. Additionally, thousands of
Navajo are employed in the fields of health care, education, government service, and commercial farming or in
resource-based industries such as timber and mining.
Women are generally more successful in securing such
employment close to home; therefore, with the aid of
matrilineal relatives, they tend to bear more child rearing
responsibilities than their husbands.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Since after the “separation” the decision was made to
delegate political and ceremonial power to men, the
voices of male ceremonial practitioners and orators came
to embody the power needed to restore health and to
maintain social order. In accordance with this dictate and
European preferences, men assumed leadership roles in
all negotiations with European powers after contact.
Furthermore, since its inception, Navajo men have dominated the federally designed centralized government,
which they have adapted and molded to become an effective means by which to control and dispense much
needed goods and services. Although no woman has yet
served as President of the Navajo Nation, women are
making significant inroads in the political realm.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Despite the fact that there has been a long-standing
assumption that women are not ceremonial practitioners,
Navajo women can and do successfully fill this role.
While most women are diviners or herbalists, women
practitioners of Blessing Way and curing ceremonials are
practicing in communities throughout the Navajo reservation. Navajo women who choose to pursue careers as
ceremonial practitioners face complex challenges—oral
accounts dictating that men are to be the leaders of ceremonial and political matters, rules surrounding menstruation, and strict sexual continence rules. Nevertheless,
motivated to fulfill the culturally sanctioned role of
nurturer, they navigate the social and personal issues
Sexuality
731
raised by these multiple challenges to aid fellow Navajo in
times of need and carry forward time-honored traditions.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Women relatives and friends commonly spend idle hours
quietly chatting while doing craftwork, cleaning vegetables, roasting corn, or performing other household tasks
in each other’s company. Sweat bathing is a favorite
leisure time activity, and is strictly sexually segregated.
While sweat bathing, men and women entertain themselves or each other by practicing songs, discussing
politics, and telling stories, including origin stories, the
oration of which, while normally limited to the winter
months, can occur in a sweathouse during any season.
Male Enemy Way singing groups traverse the reservation throughout the summer season to entertain during
the social dancing portions of this important ceremony.
During the winter season, male teams of shoe-game
partners travel to various communities for competitions.
To supplement food resources and for pleasure, men hunt
with other men in groups of two or three. Men also drink
on or off reservation with male drinking partners.
Importantly, each of these leisure-time activities is delimited by traditional Navajo values such as cooperation with
and responsibility toward relatives.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
While arranged marriages were previously the norm, men
and women currently have personal control over their
sexuality, marriage choice, and divorce, but family
members offer input and advice to help guide personal
choices on all such matters.
Grazing and farming rights are passed through the
matrilineal line. When a parent dies, however, both sons
and daughters can and do inherit ceremonial paraphernalia, jewelry, or grazing and farming rights to a mother’s
customary use area. Matrilocal residence results in men
commonly living in situations wherein the house, household furnishings, fields, and most of the livestock belong
to the wife and her family. In-marrying men bring only
personal clothing, tools, vehicles, and weapons, when
first married. Over time, they bring their livestock to the
new residence. Only these possessions are taken back to
the man’s mother’s or sister’s house if divorce occurs.
All adults living in a collective unit have input into
decisions regarding family matters—what type of help
will be sought for an ill family member, who will take a
child to college, what will be taken to a relative’s
ceremony, or what household repairs will be completed—
but the matriarch (the eldest woman in the parental
generation of the extended family) makes the final
decision on all such matters. In some cases, even today,
she determines how each adult member’s earnings from
silverwork, weaving, or paid employment will be used for
the collective good.
SEXUALITY
While sexuality is accepted as a natural healthy aspect of
life, Navajo people maintain that it must be carefully
controlled due to the danger of individuals allowing
sexual desire to go awry. The libidinous acts and excesses
practiced in the last underworld rendered certain forms of
menstrual blood and game animal blood polluting and
dangerous in the contemporary world, resulting in strict
rules for containment and control of these substances.
Both men and women are believed to have sexual
drive, and either gender can initiate a sexual encounter.
Sexual interests are associated with visual cues. Navajo
people normally avoid direct eye contact in day-to-day
associations. To look a member of the opposite sex
directly in the eyes is a sexual overture. In addition to
cautions against holding hands with, kissing, or fondling
a sexual partner in public, Navajo people are taught that
it is inappropriate to dance with a clan relative in ceremonial or social contexts (Kluckhohn & Leighton,
1946/1974, p. 201). Sexual avoidance dictates relations
amongst cross-sex siblings, sons-in-law and mothers-inlaw, mothers and sons, as well as fathers and daughters.
In addition to using formal means of address, individuals
in these relationships must not make direct eye contact,
pass things directly to each other, or be found alone
together. Extreme personal modesty is the ideal, with
emphasis on concealment of body parts, especially the
genitalia. Even among sexual partners, exposure of the
sexual organs is considered shameful and embarrassing.
Sexual relations are to take place during the hours of
darkness, to guarantee privacy, and protect personal
modesty (Kluckhohn & Leighton, 1946/1974, p. 91).
Furthermore, it is deemed improper for Navajo people to
engage in oral sex or to use certain positions during
sexual intercourse.
732
COURTSHIP
Navajo
AND
MARRIAGE
Formerly, Navajo marriages were arranged between
families on the basis of clan exogamy and efforts to
maximize familial-pooled talents and resources as well as
to affiliate clans and build social and economic relationships (Reichard, 1928, pp. 58–73). The mother’s brother
had the final say on a niece’s partner, as did a father or
paternal grandfather on a young man’s bride (Reichard,
1928, p. 139). Bridewealth—livestock and other gifts
from the groom’s family to the parents of the bride—was
and is an integral part of solidifying reciprocal relations
between extended families. The wedding ceremony
involves washing of the groom’s hands by the bride, the
bride’s hands by the groom, consumption of cornmeal
mush from the east, south, west, and north quadrants of a
ceremonial basket by first the groom and then the bride,
and the giving of advice by elders to the couple, followed
by a feast for all in attendance. Polygamy was common
through the 1940s, with a preference for a man to marry
sisters simultaneously or a wife’s daughter from a previous marriage upon her maturity. Cowives live in separate
homes in close proximity to each other. To maintain affine
ties between families and clans, a widower was expected
to marry one of his deceased wife’s sisters. Today,
marriages result from courtship and personal affection.
Elders continually caution members of the younger
generation against having relations with clan relatives.
Spousal relationships are generally characterized by
deep affection and close companionship. Spouses eat and
sleep together and spend time in each other’s company on
a regular basis. Formerly, Navajo practiced polyandry; the
fact that cowives were frequently sisters aided maintenance
of harmony within the family. No stigma is associated with
divorce. Either spouse can and does initiate separation.
Children stay with the mother or her female relatives.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The mother’s brother plays a disciplinary role and
mentors his nieces and nephews. Joking relationships
exist between specific types of relatives. Prurient joking
is conducted between maternal grandmothers and grandsons, unmarried siblings of wife or husband with her or
his unmarried siblings, and cross cousins who are not
potential mates. In contrast, prurient joking is acceptable
between father-in-law and son-in-law, while less explicit
jokes about members of the opposite sex are regularly
conducted between maternal or paternal uncles and aunts
with nephews and nieces, respectively.
Mother-in-law avoidance on the part of sons-in-law,
which was strictly adhered to for generations, is practiced
on a limited basis today. Many sons-in-law simply make
themselves scarce and useful while their mother-in-law is
present, while others agree to drop the restriction entirely.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aronilth, W. (1985). Foundations of Navajo culture. Unpublished manuscript on file at Navajo Community College Library, Tsaile,
Arizona.
Bailey, F. (1950). Some sex beliefs and practices in a Navajo community, with comparative material from other Navajo areas. Reports
of the Ramah project. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American
Archaeology and Ethnology, 40(2).
Bailey, G., & Bailey, R. (1986). A history of the Navajos: The reservation years. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Brugge, D. (1983). Navajo prehistory and history to 1850. In A. Ortiz
(Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians: Vol. 10, Southwest
(pp. 489–501). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fishler, S. (1953). In the beginning: A Navaho creation myth.
Anthropological Papers, 13. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Franciscan Fathers. (1910). An ethnological dictionary of the Navaho
language. Saint Michaels, AZ: Saint Michaels Press.
Iverson, P. (1981). The Navajo nation. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press.
Kluckhohn, C., & Leighton, D. (1974 [1946]). The Navajo. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Leighton, D. & Kluckhohn, C. (1947). Children of the people: The
Navaho individual and his development. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
O’Bryan, A. (1956). The Diné: Origin myths of the Navaho Indians.
Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 163. Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
Reichard, G. (1928). Social life of the Navajo Indians. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Roessel, R. (1981). Women in Navajo society. Rough Rock, Ariz.:
Navajo Resource Center, Rough Rock Demonstration School.
Schwarz, M. (1997). Molded in the image of changing woman: Navajo
views on the human body and personhood. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press.
Thomas, W. (1997). Navajo cultural constructions of gender and
sexuality. In S.-E. Jacobs, W. Thomas, & S. Lang (Eds.), Two-spirit
people (pp. 156–173). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Yazzie, E. (1971). Navajo history (Vol. 1). Navajo Curriculum Center,
Rough Rock, Ariz.: Rough Rock Demonstration School.
Nepali
Mary M. Cameron
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
“Nepali” refers to the people of Nepal, who are a diverse
group both ethnically and historically. Nepalis are
sometimes referred to as Gorkhalis, though that is an
increasingly archaic term. Since approximately 80% of
Nepal’s population are subsistence farmers who live in
the Himalayan foothills called pahard, they are sometimes referred to as Parhardis. People of the far western
region are referred to as Khasiya, after some of the earliest inhabitants, the Khas. The author’s original data on
sex and gender come from a western region called
Bajhang, and the people there are called Bajhangi. Other
ethnic minorities of Nepal, mentioned briefly in this
chapter and some of whom are Hindu and others
Buddhist, include the Sherpa, Gurung, Tamang, Magar,
Thakali, Tharu, Rai, and Limbu. The Newari are the
largest ethnic minority and are considered the original
inhabitants and rulers of the Kathmandu valley, who
practice a distinctive form of Buddhism and have unique
gender practices. This chapter will primarily discuss
the majority Hindus, who are socially organized by caste,
with each caste varying somewhat in its gender culture.
Significantly varying or unique cultural practices of other
ethnic minority groups (Hindu and Buddhist) will be
mentioned.
LOCATION
The country of Nepal is located north of India and
south of the Tibetan Autonomous Region in China, in the
geographical area of South Asia. It is a small landlocked
country famous for the Himalaya Mountains which
comprise its northern border, and for its ethnic diversity.
Nepal has never been colonized, unlike its surrounding
neighbors, and its most important regional relations are
with China and India. The country’s geography encompasses the highest peaks in the world, the Himalayas to
its north, which gradually descend southward to the
foothills and into the flat, hot Tarai that borders India in
the south. The majority of people live in the Himalayan
foothills, and the south holds the largest cities, the most
industrial production, and the greatest infrastructural
development. The capital city is Kathmandu, one of three
medieval cities in the largest valley that served as an
important trade route between India and China over the
centuries.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Earliest records describe a land of separate ruling principalities that were united under large kingdoms west of
Gorkha, and smaller kingdoms east of Gorkha. King
Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha unified the country east
of Gorkha in the 18th century, and what is known today
as Nepal cites its origins to that time, even though incorporation of the western kingdoms occurred later. The
national language of Nepal is Nepali, from the IndoAryan branch of the Indo-European language family, and
numerous variations of standardized Nepali are spoken.
Nepali uses Devanagiri script, derived from Sanskrit.
Numerous languages from the Tibeto-Burman branch of
the Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken by ethnic minorities throughout the country.
Nepal has a primarily agricultural economy, and the
majority of people are subsistence farmers. It is considered one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, with an
average annual income of approximately $250 (U.S. dollars). People meet their basic subsistence needs through
farming and forms of exchange labor described below.
Tourism is one of Nepal’s most important industries.
International development has been underway in Nepal
for the past half century, and development dollars comprise a large percentage of the national budget. The
majority of Nepali people claim Hinduism as their main
religion, followed by Buddhism. Hinduism is also a way
of life that organizes society and people into ranked
groups called castes, which have religious and economic
features. Nepal is famous for its religious syncretism and
non-violent sectarianism.
733
734
Nepali
Most Nepalis live in small farming villages, and
those with land plant main crops of rice and wheat, supplemented by corn, millet, vegetables, legumes, fruit
trees, and tobacco. Nepali villages generally do not have
running water or electricity inside the homes. Water taps
and wells are shared by the community for drinking
water, for bathing, and for washing clothes. The number
of families with outdoor latrines is increasing in Nepali
villages, though the majority of people use river and
creek beds as their toilets.
Nepali houses are built from local raw materials and
are generally of stone and mud–dung construction, with
supporting wooden beams. Roofs are thatch or slate. The
number of stories depends on the family’s wealth, but
most do not exceed three, and the poor usually have only
one storey. Animals live in barns attached to the house on
the ground floor. Rooms are multifunctional, serving as
sleeping and storage spaces. The hearth and dining areas
are on the top floor.
Integrated into the agricultural economy is a traditional patronage system called the jajmani system, which
binds low-caste families to high-caste families through
economic need and Hindu religious ideology. In
exchange for low-caste artisan products, such as agricultural tools, pottery, baskets, clothing, and house construction, high-caste landowner patrons regularly provide
harvest shares called khalo to artisan families, and are
expected to meet many other subsistence needs of these
untouchable landless dependents (Cameron, 1998). Now,
lower castes seek independence from the patron–client
system by becoming small landowners in an increasingly
closed market.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
A pervasive ideology of social hierarchy—ranking based
in religious principles—is found in the caste and the
gender systems. In behavioral, material, and symbolic
ways, one’s position in the world is relational and emergent, yet is also bound by one’s birth status of caste and
gender. Nepal is fundamentally a patriarchal society, and
it recognizes only two genders, female and male
(although ancient medical texts describe ambiguously
sexed individuals). The same word for caste, jaat, is used
to refer to one’s sex, and referents share the ideas of a
common “natural state,” and common biological and
social features with others in the group, from the time of
birth. Just as an individual can never change her caste,
so she can never change her biological and social sex.
Similar values operating in caste reproduction are found
in gender hierarchy, such as ritual purity.
The Nepali family structure may be extended, stem,
or nuclear; the ideal family is one in which brothers live
with parents, wives, and children in one household.
Alternatively, brothers will live near each other, for their
economic livelihood depends on sharing patrilineal
resources such as land, animals, tools, and clients. Sexrole dichotomy is found in the household domain in many
forms. For example, men plough fields and women carry
fertilizer and weed the crops. Women cook and clean,
while men attend to political affairs. Studies show that
women work more hours than men throughout the
agricultural cycle, a finding true for lower castes as well.
The people with the greatest amount of leisure time are
high-caste men, and those with the least are high-caste
women. Within the lower-caste groups, who are primarily
artisans, a gender division of labor in the household is
similar to that in high castes, though economic activities
are more varied and complementary (Cameron, 1998).
Rural Nepalis dress in fairly traditional and similar
ways, and people’s age, life stage, and caste can be
partially discerned from their clothing. In warm weather,
infants are often naked to allow for easy cleaning, or they
are wrapped in a light cotton cloth; in cold weather, layers
of cloths are used. A cap is almost always worn throughout the year, to protect the child from the ill effects of
wind. When carried, infants are bound to a relative’s back
with a long shawl tied around the caretaker’s chest.
Everyone cares for children, even youngsters, and the
latter learn early how to sling a sibling or cousin-sibling
on their back. At night, babies are swaddled and sleep
near the mother in the warmth of the upstairs hearth.
Toddlers graduate to their own tailored garments or wear
outfits purchased at local stores. Most clothes are made
of cotton or polyester, and sewn locally by tailors and
seamstresses. Shoes are optional, depending on the
season. Young girls wear jumpers or long tunics with
loose-fitting pants, and boys wear long tunics with fitted
drawstring pants. Depending on caste, married women
wear saris, long full skirts or long tightly wrapped lungi,
and locally stitched blouses. Women prefer brightly
colored clothing, especially red, and their skirts always
cover the knees and calves. Local stores sell manufactured garments for boys and men, polyester and silk saris
for women, and wool and cotton shawls, all imported
Gender over the Life Cycle
from India or southern Nepal. Before the introduction of
cotton cloth, garments were made from locally manufactured hemp and wool. Boys and men wear small hats
called topi, which are made from Nepali hand-woven
cotton. Women and men wear sex-specific clothes. Only
recently has it become acceptable for girls to wear pants,
though married women are still reluctant to do so.
Men keep their hair short, and women wear theirs
long and in braids. Shorter hair fashions for girls are
found in urban areas, and sometimes among unmarried
girls. An attractive female is one who has shiny long
black hair, dark eyes, light skin, and plump rosy cheeks;
an attractive boy has the same features (except with short
hair) and is strong. Wealth, education, and storytelling
and musical talents are also deemed attractive. Desirable
and ideal behaviors in girls and women are subservience,
obedience and respect for elders and males, being softspoken and composed, and showing restrained laughter.
The same is generally true for boys, though greater
latitude is granted in their behavior.
Throughout life, the sexes are separated in many
ways, and people’s closest friends are those of the same
sex. Gender is a complexly articulated social signifier,
and finds many behavioral, familial, and social expectations. The symbols that organize gender relations include
purity, impurity, and honor—symbols that also organize
caste and kinship relations.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Women tend to conceal their pregnancies to family
outsiders, and although the immediate family soon learns
of a daughter-in-law’s pregnancy, her work responsibilities
do not diminish. Women fear childbirth because of the
pain, lack of emergency healthcare facilities, and high
maternal mortality. Postpartum women are considered
ritually impure and remain isolated from the family for
10 days. Then the family priest performs a purifying
naming ceremony called nuaran, during which the mother
comes out of seclusion, the baby is blessed, held by its
father for the first time, and given a name by the priest. The
new family member’s astrological chart is completed, and
the family sponsors a feast. A few months after nuaran,
the family sponsors the infant’s rice-feeding ceremony,
pasnay, during which it is given its first solid food. In some
groups, a son’s future professional life is predicted based
on which among a few items the child is attracted to.
735
Nepali children are breast-fed for an average of 2 years.
Infant mortality rates are high in Nepal, as is maternal
death, due to lack of emergency health facilities in the
mountainous country. Infant mortality rates are higher for
girls than for boys, reflected in the country’s unnatural
gender ratio and shortened life expectancy for females.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The birth of boys is celebrated, while the birth of girls is
ambivalent—sometimes welcomed, other times tolerated
or mourned. A girl is considered a financial burden, and
must be protected from men as she grows older and
matures. Contradicting this ambivalent view of daughters
is the belief that she is sacred to her family as the embodied form of the virgin goddess, and she confers religious
merit on her parents at the time of her marriage (Bennett,
1983). Nonetheless, daughters learn to work hard in the
fields before their brothers, and are often denied an
education while brothers attend school. Nepal has one of
the world’s largest gender literacy gaps (Poudel &
Shrestha, 1999).
Puberty and Adolescence
An unmarried girl is called taruni (youthful) and kumari
(virgin), and a boy is called taruna and kumar. Menarche
is a period of ritual seclusion in some ethnic and Hindu
groups, and soon afterwards, matchmakers will be asked
to begin locating a suitable husband for the girl. When a
boy reaches maturity, as seen in voice changes and facial
hair, his marriage preparations will begin. In high-caste
groups who are called “twice-born” (referring to their
induction into karmic activity), boys undergo a thread
investiture ceremony in which they are given a long
sacred thread worn across the right shoulder and under
the left arm. There is no equivalent ceremony for girls.
Some high castes encourage premenarchal marriages of
daughters so as to protect the natal home from her menarchal pollution. Newaris ritually enact marriage with a
god, represented as a fruit, for their unmarried daughters
so that they may never suffer the stigma of widowhood or
divorce (Allen, 1982).
Attainment of Adulthood
Nepalis are considered adults when they have completed
the cycle of life with marriage and the birth of a child.
736
Nepali
Individuals are expected to have attained the skills of
farming or artisan production to provide for their family
economically, and will be given increasingly more responsibility for family economic decisions. While men may
occupy positions of public authority and are the heirs of
family wealth, women are expected to be equally knowledgeable and able to make informed decisions. Women
focus more of their time and energy on the prosperity of
their marital family, subsequently decreasing the time they
spend visiting their parents and brothers at the natal home.
Adults are expected to be able to control their emotions as
they are called on to navigate the challenges of family and
community, and to foster the ties of reciprocity and cooperation essential to the Nepali rural farming life. Adults
become more interested in their spiritual lives as well,
though the greatest increase in attention to religious
matters occurs in middle and old age.
They are encouraged to be soft-spoken and reticent, and
to trust other women more than men. Boys are encouraged to be proud, almost boastful of their achievements,
and to seek help from others in fulfilling their goals.
Nepalis are generally friendly and helpful to strangers,
and they regard the guest to be an honorable person.
Public displays of aggression and other expressions of
anger and hostility are discouraged, yet husbands’ verbal
and physical abuse of wives is not considered irregular
until it becomes repeatedly violent. Other emotions that
are publicly acceptable for both men and women include
sadness and despair, pain and discomfort, and happiness
and joy. Coveting others’ good fortune is thought a form
of flattery, though the fortunate also conceal some forms
of prosperity, such as land and beautiful children, as
they fear the curses of the less fortunate. Individual
personalities may well override cultural stereotypes of
gender-based personalities.
Middle Age and Old Age
With the presumed diminished sexual interest and activity
of older people, the body is believed to become cooler and
lighter. Increased concern for their spiritual well-being
leads the elderly on pilgrimages to religious holy sites.
Older adults welcome the relinquishing of their power and
authority to their increasingly competent children, as they
move from center stage to the periphery, caring for the
grandchildren as the parents work in the fields, and tending to the animals around the farm. Their comfort and
security depends on the reliability and goodness of their
sons- and daughters-in-law, and older adults who lack such
kin ties find themselves in physically difficult positions of
having to continue farming or working for others, and the
economic insecurity that comes with it.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Nepalis frame sex-role differences in terms of social roles
more than personality differences. Still, ideal behaviors
for females and males are well known, with some overlap across the sexes that stems from general desirable
characteristics of persons. Girls and boys are taught to be
self-reliant, strong, and competent, but also respectful of
older adults, particularly their parents. Girls learn of their
lower social status fairly early, as they experience the
preference and privileges given to their male relatives.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Most social groups are gender specific, for the separation
of the sexes is a common practice, and people feel most
comfortable with others of the same sex. This organizing
principle extends to children’s playgroups, school sports,
and social activities, the division of agricultural, artisan,
and domestic labor, reciprocal labor groups, religious
groups, community and development activists, and
political organizations. Kin groups are formed through
patrilines. Married couples live with or near the
husband’s family, and also near the wife’s if they are from
the same village; some variability is found among ethnic
minority groups. Some ethnic minorities such as the
Newars have strong matrilineal ties, even though inheritance is through males.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
As an agrarian society, Nepal’s Hindu majority is
organized in quite specific gender-based economic roles.
The farmers are primarily women, and perform a greater
variety and frequency of farming functions than do men.
With the exception of ploughing and maintaining irrigation canals, women perform all other agricultural work,
such as preparing organic fertilizer throughout the year
and carrying it to the fields, removing rocks from fields,
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
sowing seeds, transplanting rice, thinning and weeding
fields, and harvesting and storing the crop. Men may help
in these jobs, but it is women who spend far greater time
in them.
Among lower-caste artisans there is also a gender
division of labor that is apparent in a variety of production functions. Women’s work here includes negotiation
and delivery of tools and other artisan products, obtaining raw materials like clay for pottery or bamboo for
baskets, weaving baskets, sewing clothes, making
wooden handles for tools, and product repairs. Artisans
who do nonagricultural work for high-caste patrons will
follow gendered economic roles specific to farming.
When additional farm hands are needed to supplement the family’s labor, subsequent differences in pay
between women and men is attributed locally to men’s
work being more difficult and requiring greater physical
strength than women’s work. Women are more likely to
be members of reciprocal labor groups, a very effective
way to ensure that seedlings are transplanted and that the
crop is harvested in a timely and cost-free manner. In
salt- and rice-trading communities near the Tibetan
border, males will be gone for several months at a time
(Fisher, 1986; Levine, 1988).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
There are few articulated gender-based parental roles in
Nepali families. Women breast-feed their babies on average for 2 years, and will usually clean the child’s toilet
and clothing. Otherwise, fathers, grandfathers, brothers,
and uncles spend equal time caring for and playing with
children, as do mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and aunts.
Since many women farm away from home during the day,
it is expedient for men to play significant parental roles.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Local governance has typically been in the hands of
high-caste men. To create greater gender representation,
the 1990 Constitution of Nepal stipulates that at least
three women be appointed to the National Assembly, considered the less powerful of the two houses of parliament.
Local and regional governing bodies must have women
on their councils. This has encouraged the emergence
737
of local women leaders. Accounts of real power and
authority by women are common, in particular locally
organized mothers’ organizations advocating and enforcing alcohol temperance.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The majority of Nepalis are Hindus, and Hindu religion
frames ideal behavior in the concept of religious duty,
dharma, and the fruits of one’s actions, karma. Whether
it is respectful obedience to parents or a wife’s obedience
to her husband or mother-in-law, people understand that
the religious valence of honor bears fruit in the form of
wealth, health, fertility, prosperity, and exceptional
rebirth. Gender-based behavioral differences found in
religious doctrine and beliefs include premarital female
virginity. High-caste women consider their husbands to
be the equivalent of deities, though this is understood to
mean that they should not remarry if widowed. Daughters
are considered living goddesses and are worshipped at
various points in the Hindu calendar. Sons carry on the
Hindu patriline.
Monks and nuns exist in Buddhist communities.
Buddhist ethnic minorities have been influenced over the
centuries by Hinduism, but tend to have more gender
equality in their religious ideology and social roles.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Owing to the gendered division of labor that assigns more
different and more frequent kinds of work to women
than to men, adult Nepali men have more leisure time
than women during the day, and variation among groups
is based on age, class, and caste (Cameron, 1998).
Socializing with same-sex friends and relatives is typical
for both sexes, and illegal and surreptitious card playing
is common among male friends, who discuss local and
national politics amongst themselves. Boys and girls
socialize in a great variety of ways, and often together;
they play games, swim in local streams and ponds, and go
fruit and honey gathering in the hills. The Nepalis relax
and celebrate life in a variety of ways that relate to
religious and agricultural seasons, themselves tied to
astrological phenomena. The Hindu and Buddhist
738
Nepali
calendars have numerous holidays when the births of
important deities are honored, significant new and full
moons are venerated, harvest is celebrated, and ancestors
are worshipped. Fasting and other purificatory rites
precede some festivals; one example is the annual
women’s festival of Tij in which the longevity of husbands
is prayed for. The most important celebration in Nepal,
Dasai, takes place over 2 weeks after the rice harvest in
the autumn, and honors the warrior goddess Durga, the
Hindu national goddess.
The most popular art form is music. Nepalis learn to
sing at home and at school, and are encouraged to create
their own lyrics and melodies. Young and old are generally not shy of singing in public, and singing is one of the
few public forms of expression that women can participate in. Other art forms that both women and men enjoy
are dancing and creating artisan products such as
decorated pottery and finely made baskets.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Women’s status relative to men is low in most areas of
social, political, religious, and economic life, and has
been the subject of much research and development
activism. An ideology and organization of male privilege
are found within kinship, economic, religious, political,
and gender institutions, such that men are considered
superior to women in their rights and privileges. Women
do not have inheritance rights, though this is soon to
change legally with the finalizing of women’s inheritance
rights legislation. Consequently, women do not generally
have rights over children in the unusual case of divorce.
In landholding families, women do not have the right to
inherit land, as it passes from father to sons. In lowercaste families, women have rights to the artisan tools
they will need to be productive after marriage, such as
sewing machines. Within religious practice, only men
may be priests, but both men and women are healers
such as shamans and herbalists, and women of low caste
are midwives. Women are considered impure during
menstruation and childbirth, and banned from religious
activities during those times. Women’s lower status is
attributed to menstrual and childbirth impurity and
lack of economic power, themselves associated with
lack of girls’ education. Examples of lower female status
are discussed in the relevant sections throughout this
chapter.
SEXUALITY
Women and men have ambivalent attitudes toward
sexuality. Following Hindu beliefs about the impurity of
bodily substances, sex is considered impure. Owing to
the strong value placed on female virginity at marriage,
women grow up regarding sex as dangerous; men, too,
consider sex dangerous, but for a different reason—
the fear of semen loss. Countering these views is the
strong desire for children, particularly sons, which
necessarily places importance on an ongoing sexual
relationship between wife and husband. Women express
distrust of men in matters of extramarital affairs. People
regard sex as being for both reproduction and pleasure,
and men are expected to be the initiators of sex in a marriage. Women are expected to be modest about sexual
matters, and rarely talk with others about sex; many first
learn of sex in marriage. Expression of sexuality is
reserved for the marital relationship, where men are
expected to be the informed experts. Contradicting all of
the above is one low-caste group of potters and entertainers found in western Nepal, whose women are dancers
and prostitutes. The women from this group speak openly
about sex.
Male cross-dressing as a form of entertainment is
not uncommon; cross-dressing by a groom’s female
relatives occurs in an openly secretive place and time,
after the groom’s party has departed to the bride’s home.
Female and male homosexuality is not discussed openly,
and it is hard to gauge people’s acceptance of it. Still,
affectionate relations between same-sex friends include
holding hands and sleeping together.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage is considered the most significant event in a
person’s life. Most people in Nepal marry, and matchmakers and other family members within the caste and
outside the clan identify potential spouses. Frequently,
people marry strangers. Love marriage is infrequent, and
may be disguised as a religious marriage if it is the
couple’s first. Marriage is often the largest expense that a
family incurs, not infrequently going into debt for years
after a daughter’s marriage as these include expensive
dowry gifts of gold and silver jewelry and livestock.
Weddings are large and expensive feasts that may
continue over 3–4 days at the bride’s and groom’s houses.
Other Cross-Sex Relationships
In poorer low-caste families, brideprice may be paid by
the groom’s family to cover marriage costs.
When a girl reaches maturity with menarche, her
public behavior is expected to conform to standards that
reduce her sexual appeal and is absent of flirtatious
gestures toward unrelated young men. However, there are
opportunities for young people to meet and fall in love.
Regular night songfests and festivals that last overnight
are widely attended. During these times there is little
supervision of unmarried girls and boys, as they perform
competitive line singing and line dances, and share
alcohol and cigarettes. It is not uncommon to hear about
flirtations and liaisons that occur during the dark night
hours. These special friends may meet in the forests,
away from others’ sight. They rarely result in marriage.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Wives and husbands have relationships that may be very
close and loving, or may be distant and antagonistic.
Because parents and other close relatives arrange most
marriages, newlyweds may be virtual strangers, or they
may be village acquaintances (Bennett, 1983; Cameron,
1998; Levine, 1988). Over time, many factors shape the
relationship, including family support, personalities of
the individuals, children, and economic security. The
wife has less power than the husband in controlling
relationship dynamics and outcomes. Her role includes
obedience to her husband and her in-laws, she owns only
property she received as dowry, her natal family may be
far away, and she is generally less educated than her
husband. She expresses subservience to her husband in
numerous ways, including eating after him, walking
behind him, carrying the heaviest load, and bowing and
touching her head to his feet. She is expected to keep
silent when the couple is around nonrelatives, and she
never uses her husband’s name to address him. It is rare
in Nepal to see wife and husband showing affection in
public, though most would claim that they are free to do
so in private. Still, the high incidence of physical abuse
against wives and its acceptance reflect the difficult
conditions for women in Nepal and the lack of social and
relational support; even today, there is no law against
domestic violence. Support for abused women can be
expected only from the natal home, and a woman whose
marriage is unhappy or abusive will spend long
periods there.
739
Married couples may gradually come to love each other
and develop satisfying intimacy. The birth of children
contributes to a family identity and satisfies strong social
expectations that can strengthen the relationship. Couples
do not generally share their problems and concerns with
spouses, but with same-sex friends and trustworthy
affines. Intimacy with one’s mate is somewhat discouraged in extended families, as it is believed to weaken
fraternal and lineage bonds; still, couples share life’s
experiences and daily problems with each other in
private, and can be potential friends in times of need.
Since divorce is rare, couples work and maintain the
household together over the decades, and develop strong
bonds that such close association engenders.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The closest and deepest cross-sex relationship is that
between sisters and brothers. Sisters are considered
sacred by their consanguinal relatives, and their brothers
ardently express this. Sisters are worshipped as goddesses
during the fall harvest festival, and at other religious
times in devout families. In return for sacred tributes such
as clothing and money, sisters confer longevity and
prosperity on their brothers. Brothers are expected to take
care of their sisters until their marriage, and even after, if
necessary.
A unique cross-sex relationship widely accepted is
that between an older married woman and her husband’s
younger brother. The latter sometimes considers her to be
like another mother, as she may show him love and kindness, and fulfill his needs for afternoon tea or a sweet
snack. People comment that this friendship is often more
affectionate than between wife and husband, and may
hint at more than just friendship. Young men are happy
when their older brothers marry, for they can expect to
find a female companion in the new sister-in-law. The
Nepalis do not discourage this friendship for they trust
that a younger brother would not damage his relationship
with his older brother, who has more power than him. The
Nepalis also recognize a woman’s need for an ally in the
family (Cameron, 1998).
Opposite to this affectionate relationship is one of
complete avoidance between an affinal woman and her
older brother-in-law and all other older male relatives.
They should not speak with each other unless necessary,
and should tenaciously avoid any contact physically or
740
emotionally. Affinal women demonstrate their avoidance
respect for elder males by covering their heads and faces
while in their presence, and leaving their presence
altogether if possible.
Nepali
Recently, a woman’s right to an abortion was signed into
law.
REFERENCES
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Nepal is an increasingly modernizing society, and
recognizes that its discrimination against women in the
form of education, economics, politics, and religion
stymies its development. While girls’ education increases
slightly each year, Nepal still has one of the lowest female
literacy rates in the world. Women’s employment in urban
areas is relatively high, though their wages are lower
than that of men; the same is true in rural areas where cash
or in-kind payments are made for agricultural work.
Perhaps Nepal’s greatest source of international shame is
girl trafficking, involving the sale by poor families of
young girls to brothels in India (Poudel & Shrestha, 1999).
Allen, M. (1982). Girl’s pre-puberty rites amongst the Newars of
Kathmandu Valley. In M. Allen & S. N. Mukherjee (Eds.), Women
in India and Nepal (Australia National University Monographs on
South Asia, No. 8, pp. 179–210). Canberra: Australia National
University.
Bennett, L. (1983). Dangerous wives and sacred sisters: Social and
symbolic roles of high-caste women in Nepal. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Cameron, M. M. (1998). On the edge of the auspicious: Gender and
caste in Nepal. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Fisher, J. (1986). Trans-Himalayan traders: Economy, society, and
culture in northwest Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Levine, N. (1988). The dynamics of polyandry: Kinship, domesticity,
and population on the Tibetan border. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Poudel, M., & Shrestha, A. (1999). Dealing with hidden issues:
Trafficked women in Nepal. In D. Eade (Ed.), Development with
women (pp. 159–164).
Northeast India
Orissa and West Bengal
Susan C. Seymour
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Alternative names are Oriya (Uriya) and Bengali
(Bangali) language and culture.
LOCATION
The states of Orissa and West Bengal constitute part
of northeast India. Both have coastlines on the Bay of
Bengal, with Orissa lying directly south and west of
Bengal.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Orissa and West Bengal are two of India’s postindependence states. Although they have distinct
languages—Oriya and Bengali, respectively—they are
closely related Indo-European languages. The histories of
these two states have been closely intertwined, especially
in modern times when the British ruled this region from
Calcutta, the contemporary capital of West Bengal.
Together, West Bengal and Orissa constitute North
India’s rice bowl, made possible by the rich alluvial
Gangetic plain that extends east to Bengal and south
along the Orissan seaboard. Both states share a similar
climate: summer monsoons (June–August) that cool the
region from its hot dry period, with temperatures reaching 120⬚F (March–May) and replenish the land, a cooling
and drying period in the fall, with temperatures dropping
into the fifties (Fahrenheit) during winter months
(December–February). Temperatures can be lower in the
hills of both states.
Both states are predominantly Hindu, and they share
similar family, kinship, and caste systems. This article
will address sex and gender among the Hindu populations
of this region, examining possible variations due to rural
versus urban residence and caste/class status.
While West Bengal is one of India’s most densely
populated states and Orissa one of its more thinly populated states, they both have extensive rural populations.
West Bengal is about 78% rural and Orissa about 86%
rural. Rural settlements in this region vary between a
dispersed layout to nucleated villages. West Bengal has
one of India’s largest and most cosmopolitan cities,
Calcutta, whereas Orissa’s cities are much smaller.
Bhubaneswar, its capital, was only established in 1948
and has grown from a population of about 10,000 to half
a million.
The ideal family system in this region is the joint
family where two or more patrilineally related kinsmen
reside together—a father and his sons or a set of brothers,
their wives, and children. Household size and structure
are cyclic. When a father dies, his sons may partition the
family holdings, breaking into nuclear units until sons
marry and have children, once again producing a multigenerational household. From an Indian perspective,
however, families are always extended. They include all
close patrilineal kinsmen regardless of residence. The
Bengali term used for family is samsar, literally meaning
“that which flows together” or the ties of bodily and
emotional attachments that bind people together through
the flux of births and deaths (Lamb, 2000).
This family system belongs to a general model
of social institutions and associated beliefs that
Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994) call “patrifocal family structure and ideology.” This system is characterized
by the importance of family generally, and of the
extended family specifically, regardless of household
composition; the subordination of individual goals and
interests to the welfare of the larger group; a complex
of structural features (patrilocal residence, patrilineal
descent, patrilineal inheritance, and succession) that
emphasize the importance of males, particularly sons,
741
742
to the continuity and long-term well-being of the family
and kin group; gender-differentiated family roles and
responsibilities that associate males with the “outside
world” and females with the “inside world”; a genderdifferentiated family authority structure that ideologically
gives same-generational males authority over socially
equivalent females; an emphasis on family control and
regulation of female sexuality and reproduction with an
accompanying ideology of appropriate female behavior
that emphasizes chastity, obedience, self-sacrifice, and
modesty; and a marriage system characterized by family
control of all marriage arrangements, including the
selection of their children’s spouses.
Families are parts of larger patrilineal kinship
structures locally known as jatis (castes and subcastes).
These are endogamous descent groups that are locally
and regionally ranked by both ritual and socioeconomic
criteria. Ritual ranking is based upon beliefs about the
relative degree of purity that one jati has in relation to
another. The Hindu principles of reincarnation, dharma
(righteousness, moral actions), and karma (fate based
upon one’s past actions) underlie this system. Jatis also
have an occupational identity and are often economically
interdependent. In urban areas the caste system is gradually being transformed into a class system where status is
measured more by educational and occupational achievement than by birth into a particular jati (Seymour, 1999).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
The patrifocal family system underlies the cultural
construction of gender in this region. There are two
recognized gender categories: males, who are central to
the patrifocal kinship and family system, and females,
who are somewhat peripheral to it. At the time of marriage
daughters leave their natal families to join their husbands’
families where, as wives and mothers, they are critical to
the continuation of their husbands’ patrilines. At marriage
a woman changes her kinship affiliation from that of her
father to that of her husband but retains her own blood and
paternal bloodline. As a wife, she passes her husband’s
blood to her children and thus preserves his patriline. She
is a vehicle for the passage of seed and blood from
male to male or, to use the Oriya and Bengali metaphor:
“A woman is the field or nourisher of the seed that a man
Northeast India: Orissa and West Bengal
provides and cultivates. They complement one another in
the creation of a child, but the child is born of the father”
(Fruzetti, Ostor, & Barnett, 1992).
Gender, however, is not conceptualized as a fixed
binary system. Bodies are considered open and composite, not self-contained entities. For example, bodily differences between the two sexes are subject to relative
differences in the amount of heat/coolness, fluidity/
dryness, and openness/boundedness that they contain at
any moment in time (Lamb, 2000). Thus they can shift
and change, although in asymmetric ways. This fluidity
of gender is reflected in Hindu mythology where there are
bisexual and transsexual deities and where males are
transformed into females and vice versa. Underlying this
fluidity, however, is a significant gender asymmetry.
While the transformed deity, whether male or female,
usually forgets his or her former gender and identity,
there is usually another male present who does remember
and who thereby acquires power over the transformed
person (Doniger, 1999).
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The birth of a boy, who continues a father’s patriline, is
more celebrated than that of a girl, who is given away in
marriage. Otherwise, there is little overt difference by
gender in the treatment of young children (Rohner &
Chaki-Sircar, 1988; Seymour, 1999). For upper-caste
males, however, there is an idealized four-stage life cycle
(the dharmasastras) outlined in Hindu ethical–legal texts:
(1) celibate student, (2) married householder, (3) disengaged forest dweller, and (4) wandering mendicant
(sannyasi) preparing for death and potential release
(moksha) from the cycle of rebirth. Women and lowercaste males have less well-defined life stages. For upperstatus females the onset of menarche marks the beginning
of restrictions on behavior and change of dress. Marriage
overtly defines the transition from childhood to adulthood,
and old age is marked by a reduction in work and the
receipt of care from others. Throughout life, regardless of
gender, one is either a caregiver or a recipient of care.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Children in general are greatly desired, although having
more daughters than sons is considered a burden because
of the costs associated with marriage. Nonetheless,
Gender over the Life Cycle
parents express special concerns for daughters who at
marriage will leave home. While a child’s gender is
marked at birth, during infancy and early childhood
gender is of less consequence than learning to be a member of a corporate group where the group’s well-being is
valued more than individual needs and desires. Gender is
not marked by such special symbols as pink and blue
blankets or by special dress or hair styles. Rural girls and
boys, if dressed at all, wear short pants and shirts. Urban
girls sometimes wear dresses.
The value of interdependence is transmitted in a
variety of ways. In extended households children learn
that they have many caretakers—mothers, aunts, grandmothers, older siblings, as well as fathers and other male
kinsmen. Someone will always be there to hold, carry,
and sleep with them. While they are nursed only by their
mothers, infants soon learn that they are not in control of
feeding. Mothers tend not to respond immediately to a
crying child and not to nurse it to satisfaction (Seymour,
1999). Delayed and intermittent responses keep mothers
in control and infants in a state of supplication and
dependence. Other forms of caretaking, such as highly
ritualized daily baths, are forced upon infants and young
children, reinforcing their position as subordinates.
Infants and young children are usually addressed as
“baby,” or by a variety of nicknames or birth-order
terms—for example, “first,” “second,” or “third son” or
“daughter.” Their personal name is given at their first
birthday but not used until adulthood. Any special identity
associated with a personal name is thereby de-emphasized.
By contrast, toddlers are carefully inducted into the world
of kinship by being taught appropriate terms of address for
all family members.
Young children are cared for and disciplined by whoever is present with no apparent gender differences. Toilet
training is handled casually, and weaning does not usually
occur until a mother is expecting another child. Children
play in mixed-age and mixed-sex groups. With few toys
available, they entertain themselves by chasing one
another, making up games, or following older children or
adults around. Some higher-status urban children do have
manufactured toys and games, and children are introduced
to group sports at school.
Although gender differences are not emphasized at
this stage, children are continually exposed to genderdifferentiated roles. They observe mostly women caring
for children, preparing food, and doing other domestic
chores, while men come and go from the outside world.
743
Women also perform daily household rituals. Depending
upon their caste or class status, children are exposed to
greater or lesser degrees of sexual segregation in the
house and to female seclusion (purdah). In multigenerational households they are also exposed to male and
female hierarchies with grandmothers in charge of
mothers and aunts and grandfathers directing fathers and
uncles.
Children of low-caste families, where both adult
men and women work outside the home, have an abbreviated period of dependence. They are cared for during
the day by elderly grandmothers and older siblings but
are encouraged to become self-sufficient as quickly as
possible. By 3–4 years they are helping older siblings
with domestic chores and by 6–7 years may be in charge
of younger siblings. Boys, more so than girls, are sent on
errands away from home and given charge of livestock.
At an early age low-status children become responsible
members of the household.
High-status children, by contrast, are rarely assigned
chores. In both rural and urban settings, where schools
are available, they are expected to attend school and do
homework. They may be tutored at home as well. While
educational achievement may be more emphasized for
boys than for girls, except among the very poor, in early
childhood both sexes usually attend school. Most schools
require uniform dress—short pants and white shirts for
boys, short dresses for girls.
In early childhood boys and girls experience
uniform rites: for example, the first feeding of rice; the
first hair cutting; etc. Between 8 and 10 years, however,
high-status boys go through the Twice Born ceremony
which inducts them into full status as Hindu males and
where they acquire the sacred thread (upanayana), worn
as the insignia of high-caste status. No comparable rite
exists for girls or lower-status boys.
Puberty and Adolescence
An old Oriya proverb states: “When a boy is 7 years old,
he will be given a sacred thread; when a girl is 9 years
old, she will be given in marriage.” There was no provision for “adolescence” and no indigenous name for this
stage of childhood. High-status boys, following their
sacred thread ceremony, moved into the student stage of
life where ideally they would live with a guru and study
Hindu texts and rituals. Now they live at home and attend
secular schools. Low-status boys work for the family or
744
are apprenticed to adult men to learn caste-appropriate
trades.
For girls, who are no longer married so young,
puberty is marked by the onset of menstruation. In some
parts of rural Orissa and West Bengal a girl’s first
menstruation is highly ritualized by a period of seclusion
followed by a public celebration (Apffel-Marglin, 1994;
Dube, 1988). The ritual marks a girl’s readiness for
marriage and the onset of restrictions to be observed
throughout her child-bearing years: for example, seclusion during her menstrual periods, taboos on touching of
people or food, cessation of bathing, hair combing, and
other acts of personal hygiene, prohibitions on entering
temples or family rooms of worship, and avoidance of
certain foods. During menstruation a woman is considered untouchable—literally, she is in a semiwild state,
symbolized by unbound hair and uncleanness. At the end
of her menses she returns to a normal state by ritually
bathing, preparing her hair, and putting on fresh clothing.
Menstrual restrictions set a woman apart and remind the
family of her reproductive powers, which must be
controlled until she is properly married and, once married, she is sexually reunited with her husband following
her menstrual seclusion.
Menstrual taboos are the prerogative of middle- and
upper-status women who do not work outside the home.
Schoolgirls and employed women cannot observe them,
and consequently they are disappearing or being transformed. Nonetheless, once a girl reaches sexual maturity,
she is considered highly vulnerable and learns that her
behavior can have adverse effects upon the family. Rules
of female seclusion and sexual segregation may be
enforced at home. She is no longer free to wander about
the neighborhood where she can be seen by strange men.
She should wear mature clothes—a sari or loose pants
and long tunic (salwa-kameez) that cover her legs—and
behave modestly and respectfully in the presence of elders. She is escorted by male kinsmen to school and, while
there, should avoid contact with boys. (Many families
consider all-girl schools safer for their daughters.) A virgin daughter is considered a man’s greatest gift, and for
that gift to become sullied brings great dishonor on the
family.
Traditionally, menstruation marked a girl’s readiness
for marriage and adulthood. If her marriage had been
arranged during childhood, it would not be consummated
until menarche. Today, with the age of marriage delayed
to the late teens or twenties for both rural and urban
Northeast India: Orissa and West Bengal
residents, menstruation marks the time a girl should begin
to practice the decorum of adult females. There is no
comparable marker for boys.
In Orissa and West Bengal there is now a transitional
period of “adolescence” between childhood and marriage
for most girls and boys. For the elite who attend college,
it has become a very protracted period, whereas for
most low-status youths it is just another period of work
(Seymour, 1999).
Attainment of Adulthood
Adulthood is symbolized by marriage—the time when
one family arranges to give their daughter in marriage to
another family with a son of suitable caste, age, education, and employment. Marriage marks a more dramatic
transition for the bride, who must shift residence to that
of her parents-in-law, than for the bridegroom. The
bride’s status changes from that of an older and cherished
daughter to a new daughter-in-law who is under the
authority of her mother-in-law and older sisters-in-law
and who may be expected to do the heaviest domestic
chores. By contrast, the bridegroom’s life may change
little. He resides at home, still under the authority of
his parents, but has entered the householder stage of life
and is expected to assume more responsibilities and to
produce children.
Middle Age and Old Age
Ideally, middle age marks the successful bearing and
rearing of children—especially sons who continue a
man’s patriline. For men, and low-status women, it means
many economic responsibilities. For women, successfully bearing children transforms their low status as new
daughters-in-law to highly respected mothers and even
mothers-in-law. They may also have become household
managers—the nurturers of family ties and overseers of
domestic work. Middle age is a stage in which both men
and women take pride.
Old age involves letting go. As one’s children reach
adulthood, there is a gradual reversal of responsibilities.
The younger generation begins to care for elders. Older
men can withdraw from work and family ties, perhaps
becoming wandering mendicants preparing for death.
Women, too, are less constrained. Their bodies, once
considered more open (vulnerable to impurities) and
hotter (sexual) than men’s, have begun to close and cool
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
745
with the onset of menopause, making them more like men
(Lamb, 2000). Freed from the constraints placed upon
them at menarche, they can leave the house, visit friends
and temples, and dress more casually. By contrast, most
men as they age remain closer to home and resemble
women in their increasing domesticity.
For women, old age and widowhood are symbolized
by changes in dress and adornment. Bengali and Oriya
brides are adorned in gold jewelry and red saris that
symbolize their heat, sexuality, fertility, and menstrual
blood, and their hands and feet are elaborately decorated
with red henna. As wives, they place red vermilion in the
parts of their hair and on their foreheads and continue to
wear colorful saris and much jewelry. In old age women
shift to mostly white saris, a cool color, and wear little or
no jewelry. If widowed, they cease to use the vermilion
markers of married status.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Most characteristic behaviors for each gender are role
specific and can change through the life cycle. A playful
and highly sociable young girl, for example, may become
shy and modest as she approaches puberty, subservient
and respectful in the early years of marriage, and increasingly dominant and managerial as she moves up the
household’s female hierarchy. Such behavioral changes
are more characteristic of high-status women than lowstatus women who work outside the home and reside in
more egalitarian households.
High-status boys are expected to be less playful and
more mature following their Twice Born ceremony.
However, because their bodies are considered invulnerable to impurities, their behavior is subject to fewer
constraints. Oriyas and Bengalis compare men’s bodies
to impenetrable brass jugs and women’s to unglazed
earthen water jugs. Men, as the dominant sex, are also
allowed to express more overt dominance and aggression
than women. However, the expectations for each gender
are always affected by age.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
See “Cultural Construction of Gender” for a discussion
of the patrifocal orientation of family, kinship, and caste
structures in Orissa and West Bengal. Traditionally,
nonkin associations for males or females were rare with
the exception of village councils (see “Leadership in
Public Arenas”). With education and urbanization this has
changed. Elite men, and some women, belong to social
clubs and business and international organizations. Many
autonomous women’s groups emerged during the independence movement and again during the 1970s to
address women’s rights and economic opportunities.
Most of these are urban based but with outreach to rural
sectors.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In the traditional caste-based system, in both rural and
urban settings, a gender-based division of labor existed
for middle- and upper-status households. Women were in
charge of domestic work while most men worked outside
the home. By contrast, most low-status women and men
worked (and continue to work) outside the home as
agricultural laborers, construction workers, sweepers,
etc. Women were not involved in marketing, local or
long-distance trade, or military service. Today, however,
educated urban women have entered most businesses and
professions.
The economic aspects of marriage negotiations
(e.g., dowry) are a major arena of nonmarket exchange.
Men are formally in charge of these but women also
participate.
In practice, all property is inherited by males except
for what is transferred as dowry to a daughter’s husband
and in-laws at marriage. Since independence, property
rights have been contested: for example, the 1965 Hindu
Succession Act gives daughters equal rights to their
parents’ “self-acquired” property, which does not include
ancestral lands. However, this law has rarely been implemented in this and other regions of India (Agarwal, 1994;
Basu, 1999).
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Indian family relationships are based upon expectations
of interdependence and reciprocity. The older generation
cares for the younger one until offspring are sufficiently
mature to assume responsibility for elders. Men and their
746
Northeast India: Orissa and West Bengal
wives are responsible for aging parents and other
patrilineal kin. It is wives and other women who are in fact
the primary caretakers of children and elders. Multiple
caretaking predominates; a woman is rarely alone to do all
the caretaking and other domestic chores. In higher status
households she may be assisted by servants as well as
by other kin. Seymour (1999), for example, found that
Orissan mothers, regardless of caste/class status or of rural
or urban residence, performed from 50% to 58% of their
children’s caretaking. Fathers participated some by holding and carrying children, but rarely fed, bathed, or dressed
them. Fathers helped with discipline and took an active
interest in their children’s—especially sons’—schooling.
Other gender-based differences in parental attention are
not noteworthy, although Roy (1972) mentions the intensification of the father–daughter relationship in middleclass Calcutta families preceding a girl’s marriage.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
In pre-independence Orissa and West Bengal, only men
participated in the public arena as representatives on village
councils (pancayats) or heads of lineages and jatis. Today,
both men and women elect representatives at the local,
state, and federal level, and women vote in about the same
proportion as men. While only small numbers of women
are elected to public positions, since independence many
urban women have been involved in the political process.
Furthermore, legislation has been passed at the national
level to enhance women’s political participation by reserving for them 30% of elected seats on village councils.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Hinduism has no single historical founder, no single
revealed text, and no centralized system of authority. One
is born into a family with a set of beliefs and practices
that are loosely known as “Hindu.” The more canonical
form of Hinduism, however, recognizes Brahmins as the
priestly caste, with a ranked set of subcastes whose male
members attend to the deities housed in temples and
perform numerous sacred rites. There are no comparable
public roles for female Brahmins, although women of
different jatis perform many rituals within the home.
It is also possible for women to acquire sacred powers by
becoming possessed by a deity.
Many Hindus believe in one transcendent God,
beyond the universe, who resides within all living things,
can take a variety of forms, and can be worshipped in
diverse ways. In this abstract sense God has no gender.
However, in Hinduism’s more canonical form there is a
set of predominant male deities: Brahma the creator,
Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. There is
also Devi, the Feminine Aspect or Divine Energy (Shakti)
that all male gods have, but who can act independently,
take different forms, and is worshipped directly. In Orissa
and West Bengal there are major temple complexes
devoted to different incarnations of Devi, as well as to
male gods, and annual rites that celebrate female as well
as male deities.
Daily worship (puja) takes place in the home in a
sacred space where icons of male and female deities
reside. Whereas male priests attend to temple deities,
women attend to these.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Most rural residents of Orissa and West Bengal spend
their limited leisure time socializing in sex-segregated
groups. In both rural and urban areas religious rituals
provide numerous occasions for extended kin to gather,
visit temples, and share feasts.
The arts include numerous classical forms of music
and dance, much of it originating in temple rituals, with
roles for both men and women. Orissa is the home of a
highly regarded dance form known as Odisi. Folk music,
dance, painting, and other regional arts are rich and
numerous in both Orissa and West Bengal and are often
associated with specific jatis.
For recreation, urban settings have restaurants,
cafes, theaters, and movie houses that provide family
outings and hang-outs for young unmarried men. Women
rarely frequent them unescorted by male relatives.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
This region of India is characterized by a variety of
patriarchal beliefs and practices that are gradually
changing with increased education, urbanization, and
commercialization of the economy. Men, as the heads of
households and kin groups, are the formal decisionmakers. Most property is transferred from father to son.
Courtship and Marriage
747
Women own little or no property and rarely control the
fruits of their labor. Nonetheless, within the context of the
home women can be very influential. Many view themselves as household managers and the persons who
uphold family honor by observing the dharma appropriate to their age and gender, family, and jati (Menon &
Shweder, 1994; Seymour, 1999). Daughters continue to
receive less education than their brothers and to have their
marriages arranged at an earlier age in order to protect
their sexuality.
This imbalance in the overall status of men and
women is partially compensated for by beliefs in
women’s reproductive powers, the honor they receive as
mothers, and the recognition they are given as household
managers. At the metaphysical level, beliefs in powerful
female deities, who have control over life and death,
provide significant metaphors for the feminine.
devotional poetry, or seeing contemporary films. Sexual
joking occurs among segregated groups of male and
female adolescents and adults, especially as a wedding
approaches. A new bride may be subjected to sexual
teasing by female in-laws but is allowed to joke sexually
with her youngest brother-in-law.
With aging, men’s and women’s bodies are believed
to cool and close, and sexual desire to decline or cease.
Male and female homosexuality are just beginning
to be recognized in contemporary India, but there is literary evidence in both Oriya and Bengali that homophobia
was once less prevalent in this region (Vanita & Kidwai,
2000). Meanwhile, the sexual segregation of many activities may enable same-sex love to coexist with marriage.
Overt cross-sex identification and cross-dressing are
limited to hijras—groups of castrated, transgendered, and
transvestite men who are entertainers and prostitutes.
SEXUALITY
COURTSHIP
Sex is primarily associated with marriage and reproduction
and should not be an end in itself. Outside of sacred
conjugal love, sex is viewed as antisocial and dangerous
because it challenges the principles of caste and kinship
hierarchies—hence, the negativity with which “love marriages” are viewed. Conjugal love should be prem bhakti
(love and devotion), not just prem (sexual love) (Fruzetti,
1982). Given that women’s bodies are considered more
permeable and hot (sexual) than those of men, and that for
them sex outside of marriage endangers family honor, it is
understandable that once upper-status girls reach menarche
they are subjected to numerous restrictions. Fewer restrictions are imposed upon lower-status girls whose caste status and work outside the home make them already impure.
There are caste and gender-based double standards
with respect to premarital and extramarital sex. Sex
outside marriage is prohibited to upper-status women but
not to upper-status men, who may construe marital sex
for reproductive purposes and seek sexual pleasure elsewhere—often with economically vulnerable low-status
women and widows. Because men’s bodies are considered less easily defiled than women’s, extramarital sex for
men has less impact on their purity and family honor.
Little open expression of sexuality is allowed
children, although their curiosity may be piqued by
sleeping in close proximity with elders, hearing about the
sexual escapades of gods and goddesses, reading erotic
“Courtship” is inapplicable to a region where premarital
sexuality is controlled and marriages arranged. With the
exception of a small educated urban elite, young men and
women do not date. They learn to distrust romantic love
but to trust the parental selection of a spouse. With a slight
change, arranged marriages are still predominant. Instead
of meeting for the first time on their wedding day, today
many young people are allowed to meet, chaperoned,
to approve or disapprove a prospective spouse before
marriage negotiations are finalized (Seymour, 1999).
Negotiations begin when a daughter is considered
eligible for marriage, having reached the right age and/or
completed enough schooling. Her male and female
kin begin seeking a good match through word of mouth,
letters, newspaper matrimonial advertisements, and/or a
professional go-between. A family of the same caste and
socioeconomic status is sought with a suitable son—
someone older and more educated than the bride, with
good employment prospects. Once someone is identified,
horoscopes are checked, negotiations over dowry begun,
and the prospective bride inspected by the boy’s family
for looks, manners, and expressions of modesty. Both
families investigate one another’s social reputation and
that of the prospective bride or groom. If all goes well, an
auspicious date is set for the wedding.
A traditional Hindu wedding requires a priest and a
Vedic ceremony in front of the god fire, the witness to the
AND
MARRIAGE
748
wedding. It takes place in or near the bride’s home, with
all her extended kin in attendance. Preceding the ceremony the bride is ritually bathed, dressed, and tended to
by her female kin. On the day of the wedding, she, her
father, and the groom fast. The groom attends with only
some close friends and cousins. His kinsmen await the
bride and groom at their house following the wedding
ceremony, feasting, and the bride’s formal departure from
her father’s house. The consummation of the marriage
takes place at the groom’s house.
Various phases of the wedding may occur over the
period of a week or be concentrated into one day. There
are also variations by caste and class. Many educated
urban dwellers, for example, no longer maintain the
separation of the two families for the wedding ceremony,
and following the wedding the bride and groom may take
a honeymoon trip before going to the groom’s residence
or establishing their own.
Among high castes, widows are considered inauspicious and do not remarry. Widowers remarry in order to
produce children and/or acquire mothers for already existing children. Lower castes, and members of the educated
elite, do not observe the prohibition on widow remarriage.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
In the context of arranged marriages and joint households, the husband–wife relationship is not initially one
of love, affection, and companionship. A wife should be
devoted to her husband and the husband respectful of the
woman who will bear his children. Love (prem bhakti), it
is assumed, will grow over time, but husband–wife bonds
should be contained and not threaten the well-being of the
joint family.
In more traditional households, husbands and wives
spend little time together. At mealtime a wife first serves
her husband and then her children, and she eats last. Once
there are children, a wife sleeps with them separate from
her husband, or they may share children in separate sleeping spaces. A general orientation to sexually segregated
activities limits the time that husbands and wives spend
together. However, more educated urban husbands and
wives are beginning to seek a more conjugal relationship,
symbolized by dining together, sharing a bed, and socializing together inside and outside the home.
Post-independence law allows divorce on the
grounds of mutual incompatibility, but high-caste
Northeast India: Orissa and West Bengal
marriages are still considered indissoluble. Separations
may occur but rarely divorce. Although children belong
to the father’s patriline, specific circumstances will dictate with whom they reside (Seymour, 1999). There is
less stigma attached to separations and “divorce” among
low-caste groups, where husbands and wives are freer
to leave one another and to remarry without the benefit
of legal procedures.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The most significant cross-sex relationships in this region
are those that maintain alliances between women and
their natal kin. Annually, sisters ceremonially honor their
brothers, who in turn offer their sisters gifts. Following
marriage, it is through her brother that a woman and her
children maintain ties with her natal kin. He is expected
to visit and protect her, bring gifts, and periodically escort
her home. To her children, he is an affectionate uncle and
a participant in all life-cycle rites.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The gender system, characteristic of Orissa and West
Bengal during the past century, is being transformed as
more women receive an education, marry at a later age,
and work outside the home. While significant variations
by caste/class status and rural or urban residence
exist, the patrifocal family is having to adjust to
changed circumstances and beliefs regarding women
and husband–wife relationships. An older, educated, and
employed daughter makes for a more independent and
less subservient daughter-in-law. Such women, and many
of the educated men they marry, want more egalitarian
and companionate marriages and less supervision by
elders. Nonetheless, the extended family continues to be
a highly valued and useful institution, especially for
childcare and the care of elders.
REFERENCES
Agarwal, B. (1994). A field of one’s own: Gender and land rights in
South Asia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Apffel-Marglin, F. (1994). The sacred grove. Manushi: A Journal about
Women and Society, 28, 22–32.
References
Basu, S. (1999). She comes to take her rights: Indian women, property,
and propriety. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Doniger, W. (1999). Splitting the difference: Gender and myth in
Ancient Greece and India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dube, L. (1988). Socialisation of Hindu girls in patrilineal India.
In K. Chanana (Ed.), Socialisation, education, and women:
Explorations in gender identity (pp. 166–192). New Delhi, India:
Orient Longman.
Fruzetti, L. (1982). The gift of a virgin: Women, marriage, and ritual in
Bengal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Fruzetti, L., Ostor, A., & Barnett, S. (1992). The cultural construction of
the person in Bengal and Tamilnadu. In L. Fruzetti, A. Ostor, &
S. Barnett (Eds.), Concepts of person: Kinship, caste, and marriage
in India (pp. 8–30). Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Lamb, S. (2000). White saris and sweet mangoes: Aging, gender, and
body in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
749
Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali’s tongue: cultural psychology and the power of “shame” in Orissa, India. In S. Kitayama &
H. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of
mutual influence (pp. 241–284). Washington, DC: APA Books.
Mukhopadhyay, C. C., & Seymour, S. (1994). Theoretical introduction.
In C. C. Mukhopadhyay & S. Seymour (Eds.), Women, education,
and family structure in India (pp. 1–33). Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Rohner, R. P., & Chaki-Sircar, M. (1988). Women and children in a
Bengali village. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Roy, M. (1972). Bengali women. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Seymour, S. (1999). Women, family, and child care in India: A world in
transition. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Vanita, R., & Kidwai, S. (2000). Same-sex love in India: Readings from
literature and history. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Orang Suku Laut
Lioba Lenhart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Orang Suku Laut (Sea Tribe People) are also referred
to as Orang Laut (Sea People). Subgroups are Orang
(Suku) Mantang, Orang (Suku) Mapor, Orang (Suku)
Barok, and Orang (Suku) Galang.
LOCATION
The Orang Suku Laut are located in the Riau
Archipelago, located at the northwestern frontier of the
Republic of Indonesia (Southeast Asia).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Orang Suku Laut of the Indonesian Riau Archipelago
(Chou, 1997; Lenhart, 1997, 2001, 2002a, 2002b; Sather,
1998, 1999; Sudarman Sembiring, 1993; Wee, 1985)
belong to the boat-dwelling, fishing, and foraging
communities of sea nomads found in the territories of
five Southeast Asian states, namely Myanmar (Burma),
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines
(Sather, 1995; Sopher, 1965/1977; Tauchmann, 1992).
These groups have several features in common, including
relatively egalitarian gender relations.
In the middle of the 1990s, the Orang Suku Laut
were estimated to number about 5,000 people, or about
1% of the total population of the Riau Islands. Since the
close of the 19th century and in fairly large proportions
during the 1990s, most of the Orang Suku Laut gradually
shifted from living entirely as sea nomads to becoming
seminomadic. Today, the majority have settled in
pile-dwellings built over the water on the seafront, while
others have moved to recently built villages on land given
to them by the government. But they still leave their
settlements for seasonal fishing trips that may last for
only a short while or for many months.
The Orang Suku Laut make their living in small
groups of kinsmen by exploiting the natural resources of
the sea, mangrove swamps, and adjacent coastal areas.
Their environmental knowledge is immense, and comprises ocean currents and tides, winds, fishing grounds,
and the position of the sun, moon, and stars by which they
find their way during their journeys through the archipelago. They are also familiar with freshwater sources at the
shore and numerous species of flora and fauna of sea and
coast, including edible species and species for medical
use. Also, their beliefs and convictions refer to their
natural environment which they experience as animated
nature, and are adhered to even by those who have
become converts to Islam or Christianity.
Orang Suku Laut modes of earning a livelihood are
spear fishing, collecting marine and forest products, and
hunting sea mammals and coastal animals for both
subsistence and small-scale trading with Chinese middlemen. Their social organization is based on ties of kinship
and the ideal of endogamy. Nuclear families are the basic
social units. A few nuclear families of close kinsmen join
together into mobile groups that travel on their own, each
led by an elder, or live in corresponding groupings in
settlements ashore. Every family and every group of
kinsmen is socially and economically similar and
independent.
Most Orang Suku Laut are not yet formally
educated, and in many respects follow a way of life apart
from the mainstream society. Until recently, interethnic
contacts have mostly been avoided, because the regional
Muslim Malay majority are prejudiced against the Orang
Suku Laut who are regarded as a primitive people without religion or culture—an assessment made by referring
to their mobile way of life in small boats, under allegedly
poor hygienic conditions, their habit of hunting wild pigs
for meat, drinking alcohol, and keeping dogs, as well as
their extraordinary magical powers. However, since the
1990s, interethnic contact has intensified as a consequence of ambitious government programs for the
region’s economic development and special projects of
directed change which aim at assimilation.
Modernization projects have included the excessive
exploitation of the natural resources of the islands and the
750
Gender over the Life Cycle
751
sea, and the establishment of industrial estates and tourist
resorts run by big Jakarta-based and Singapore-based
business groups. Since then, the local people, mostly
fishermen and horticulturalists, whose livelihood depends
on the natural resources, have had to cope with the pollution of the environment which has already led to a loss of
biodiversity, and have difficulties in finding alternative
jobs because of the enormous influx of migrant workers
from other parts of Indonesia. In the last few years, with
economic recession and political instability, their situation has deteriorated even further (Chou & Wee, 2002;
Lenhart, 1997, 2001; Wee & Chou, 1997). The projects
for the Orang Suku Laut were conducted during the late
1980s and the 1990s under the auspices of the
Department of Social Welfare and associated government
institutions that classified the Orang Suku Laut as
masyarakat suku terasing (“isolated tribal community”),
or a marginal and backward minority whose culture and
way of life prove a hindrance to regional modernization
and nation-building and have thus to be developed.
The main efforts to bring about cultural change were
sedentarization at special resettlement sites, efforts to
change their modes of livelihood, introduction of medical
care, and formal education in schools (including the
teaching of civics and religious instruction). At the beginning of the 1990s, about 20% of the Orang Suku Laut
could be motivated to move to resettlement sites on land.
However, after the fall of Soeharto in 1998 and owing
to a lack of financial resources in times of recession,
the development of resettlement sites and other measures of directed change were stopped (Lenhart, 1994,
1997, 2002a).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Orang Suku Laut differentiate clearly between two
biological sexes, and this distinction is connected with
the two gender categories of “male” and “female.” The
differentiation is argued with reference to primary and
secondary sexual characteristics, genitalia, breasts, body
size, muscular build, etc. Females with a fuller figure are
regarded as attractive and healthy, whereas maleness is
associated with a strong physique and therefore with
stamina. Beauty, health, and stamina can be enhanced by
using spells ( jampi). This differentiation thus implies
conceptualizations of male and female, and also certain
gender-specific behavioral characteristics, and yet it also
reflects gender equality as one basic characteristic of
Orang Suku Laut society. Thus, on the one hand, sex
difference is clearly outlined, but in social reality, on the
other hand, there is great scope for individual performance of those characteristics and behavior patterns that
are ideally regarded as either “male” or “female.” This
can be observed, for instance, with regard to the outward
appearance of Orang Suku Laut.
When Orang Suku Laut males and females are asked
how they typically dress, they answer that they all prefer
brightly colored clothes: females prefer flowered
sarongs and blouses, and men prefer check sarongs or
trousers and shirts. However, in fact, everybody wears
whatever is at hand, partly because of the lack of material
wealth, but also because gender considerations in this
respect are actually only of minor importance. Make-up
is also used by both sexes, albeit more frequently by
young and middle-aged women and female children who
like flashy red lipsticks and white powder, but sometimes
also by young men, usually boat dwellers who, for
instance, use a piece of charcoal as eyebrow pencil and
also powder themselves. Both females and males who
can afford jewellery wear golden necklaces, bracelets,
and earrings.
A “third sex” is not explicitly recognized. Although
the phenomena of transsexuality or transvestism are not
unknown, and can sometimes be observed in the surrounding majority society with its clear-cut conceptions
of male and female role performances, the Orang Suku
Laut comment on this with amusement and irony. For
them, there may be no “need” for it, because the daily
performance of Orang Suku Laut males and females
always implies certain proportions of the opposite gender
role as defined by their neighbors—something that is in
turn commented upon by the latter with amusement and
irony—who, for instance, regard the appearance of Orang
Suku Laut males carrying and cuddling their children in
public as “womanish.”
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The Orang Suku Laut recognize four major distinctions
in the life cycle: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and
old age. However, the genesis of human life starts with
pregnancy.
The Orang Suku Laut are aware that pregnancy
starts with conception but, in their view, one becomes a
752
human person only during the fifth month of the mother’s
pregnancy. At that time, the sex of the child can be ascertained by touching the embryo’s position which, if it is
preponderantly on the left-hand side in the mother’s
abdomen, will become a boy, and otherwise a girl.
However, there is no sexual preference for children.
Determination of the unborn child’s sex is the task
of the midwife (always a female)—an expert in naturopathy as well as in magical knowledge—who has “to
open” the female for birth and then “to lock” her again.
Between the fifth and seventh months of pregnancy, the
expectant mother and her husband will “court” the midwife like a bride (cf. “Courtship and Marriage”), and then
she is obliged to care for mother and child until the sixth
week after birth.
From the seventh month onwards, numerous behavioral taboos must be observed by the woman and her
husband in order not to harm their unborn child; for
instance, during those hours of the day “when the spirits
are walking around” (late afternoon and sunset), they are
not allowed to tie the boat or anything else, as otherwise
the umbilical cord could strangle the child inside the
uterus. Additionally, the future mother has to adhere to
several food taboos.
The genesis of human life culminates in the act of
giving birth, which becomes a social event, because it is
attended by the woman’s closest relatives as well as by
many other members of the social group to which the
woman belongs, and does not end until the 44th day after
delivery. Persons who accompany the entire process, or
parts of it, are the pregnant female and her husband,
the midwife, the mother of the pregnant female and her
mother-in-law (if both live in the same residential group),
middle-aged and elderly women with experience in
the medical and spiritual care of pregnant and childbearing
women, and other female and male relatives and neighbors. All these people are urged to attend the event of
birth, and often the healer and shaman is consulted as
well. Some of these people provide practical assistance;
others are simply present and support the expectant
mother and her assistants psychologically. The husband
holds his wife’s head during contractions, a process that
is assisted by massage, conducted by the midwife or other
experienced women, or in case of complications and need
of greater physical strength, even by males.
Delivery is regarded as dangerous because of the
possibility of physical complications, but also because
blood-sucking and other bad spirits and witches, and also
Orang Suku Laut
the spirits of the ancestors, threaten both mother and
child. Furthermore, a woman who dies in childbirth can
herself transform and become a bad spirit threatening
males.
During the first 3 days after birth, the parturient is
cared for by her husband and her mother. On the third
day, a purification ritual, called “the cleaning of planks,”
is held, which includes washing the newborn, cleaning
the place of birth which had been exposed to blood and
amniotic fluid, and purification of the midwife. Until the
44th day after delivery, the mother has to observe certain
dietary prescriptions and abstain from sexual intercourse
because she is still in a weak condition and further endangered by the bad spirits.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
In Orang Suku Laut society there are only few obvious
differences in gender-specific socialization.
Boys and girls are valued equally. They are reared
and educated by their parents, and also by older siblings,
grandparents, and other members of the jointly travelling
or settling group of close kinsmen to which they belong.
These socializing agents expect them to become good
fishermen and fisherwomen, to have their own families,
to bear numerous descendants, and to look after their parents in their old age and provide them with economic
security. Formal education in public schools has only
recently become part of the way of life of those Orang
Suku Laut who live in resettlement sites.
Orang Suku Laut education can be characterized as
nonauthoritarian (see “Parental and Other Caretaker
Roles”). Children learn by listening, observation, and
experience. They imitate the activities of the adults in
play—for instance by making miniature fish spears to
hunt the little fish—and are meanwhile instructed by the
grown-ups who do not put pressure on them. Irrespective
of their sex, they learn how to handle boats and fish, and
also start to do some housework, for instance, fetching
drinking water, collecting firewood, or cooking. As
they become older, a slight shift can be observed in girls’
tasks as they are gradually obliged to care for their
younger siblings, while their mothers do fisherwomen’s
work. By about age 5 or even earlier, Orang Suku Laut
children are able to obtain as much fish or other kinds of
marine products as necessary for their own nourishment,
and consequently already take some load off their
parents.
Gender over the Life Cycle
Transitions between infancy and childhood are not
the object of any particular attention. Nonetheless, there
are some customs and rituals, most of them for both
sexes—naming, keeping and “drinking” the umbilical
cord, circumcision, piercing earlobes, and shaving
children’s heads.
Naming a male or a female child is done shortly after
birth and often spontaneously by reference to natural
phenomena occuring at the time of birth (e.g., Kilat, “lightning,” or Rih, “storm”). Naming is not an outstanding
event, because often one does not carry the same name
throughout life. Names are changed in case of serious
illnesses, because a name itself might be “too heavy” and
therefore causes illness, or because the change is regarded
as an act of anonymization of sick persons who are
consequently difficult to identify by the bad spirits or by
those humans who caused the evil.
Among some subgroups of the Orang Suku Laut
it is a common practice to dry the umbilical cord of a
newborn and keep it for years. When there are younger
siblings, small pieces of all siblings’ umbilical cords are
watered for some hours. Then, the siblings have to drink
the water; this is said to safeguard them against ever
quarreling with one another.
The circumcision of girls and boys—a common
practice among Malay Muslims—is also practiced by
some subtribal divisions of the Orang Suku Laut, irrespective of whether their members have converted to
Islam or are keeping to Orang Suku Laut traditions.
If girls are circumcized—this involves a small cut in the
vulva and seems to be a symbolic act, rather than genital
mutilation—this is done by the midwife 1 or 2 months
after birth, and is accompanied by a minor ceremony
attended by close relatives only. Circumcision of boys is
conducted at the beginning of adolescence (see “Puberty
and Adolescence”).
Piercing of earlobes is a common practice. During
babyhood and for reasons of beauty, the girls’ earlobes
are pricked and, if there is money, adorned with golden
earrings. Sometimes, during childhood, one of the
earlobes of a boy may be pierced for the following
reasons: to fight illness and also to increase the similarity
between the fathers’ and sons’ faces and voices which
guarantees a good relationship. Older boys also like to
wear earrings.
The shaving of male or female children’s heads is
sometimes practiced in order to protect them against
illness, prevent relapses, and to improve their physique.
753
Puberty and Adolescence
Adolescent boys and girls are fully integrated in domestic
and economic activities, and now a change takes place in
gender relationships. The members of the nuclear family
and the kin group try to ensure that unmarried adolescents
of opposite sex cannot meet on their own. On the other
hand, there are no reservations against young males and
females meeting, if older persons are present, and even
developing flirtatious relationships. These may sometimes result in premarital sexual contacts. Although these
contacts are not appreciated, there are no grave sanctions,
but the couple are often urged to marry soon, especially
if the girl has become pregnant.
Boys are circumcised shortly before the beginning
of puberty, at the age of about 10–12, by an expert, often
a Malay Muslim. Circumcision is accompanied by a
ceremonial feast attended by relatives. This marks the
beginning of adolescence for a boy.
The transition from girlhood to womanhood is
indicated by a girl’s first menstruation, but it is unmarked
by any ritual. A woman’s menstruation is not only called
“the coming of the month” (datang bulan), but also
“becoming dirty” (dapat kotor). However, this term is the
only indication of potential impurity associated with
females. Furthermore, a woman’s menstruation is known
among her immediate neighbors, because females talk
about it. The materials which absorb women’s menstrual
discharges are strictly taboo and are hidden.
Attainment of Adulthood
The stages of adolescence and adulthood are not clear
cut, especially for a boy, but the transition from one to the
other takes place gradually. This applies even to one of
the most important aims of life for the Orang Suku Laut,
namely setting up a separate family as a precondition
for having many children. In former times, close relatives (preferably cousins—see “Gender-Related Social
Groups”) were married during infancy, and today
engagement and marriage take place at approximately the
time of sexual maturation, that is, at the age of about
13–17 (see also “Courtship and Marriage”).
Middle Age and Old Age
Middle and old age in no way imply retirement. Owing
to their accumulated experience and wisdom, elderly
754
Orang Suku Laut
males and females are treated with respect, and their
status and authority in the context of their family and the
jointly traveling or residing group increases continuously.
They are the custodians of historical and religious
knowledge, are important advisors in decision-making
processes, and enjoy the position of experts (e.g., as healers or midwives). The eldest male represents his community vis-à-vis other Orang Suku Laut groups and the
surrounding non-Orang Suku Laut society (cf. “GenderRelated Social Groups” and “Leadership in Public
Arenas”). Furthermore, as long as they are physically and
mentally strong, they continue to work and stay economically independent of their children and grandchildren.
Even widows and widowers try to maintain their own
household for as long as possible.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Social structures of Orang Suku Laut society are neither
male-oriented nor female-oriented.
Descent and kinship are the most important organizing principles of Orang Suku Laut society, and are traced
equally through both parents, females and males.
Furthermore, the groups that share everyday life and
activities are established on the basis of very close
kinship ties. The ideal forms of marriage are between
cross or parallel cousins. In the Orang Suku Laut view,
this preference prevents jointly traveling or settling
groups of close kinsmen from splitting up. At times,
married couples live with the wife’s family and then join
the husband’s family for a while, if they do not live
together in the same group. Particularly during the period
after wedding, they are obliged to stay alternately with
one or the other group.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Males and females participate equally in the process of
production, and carry out more or less the same activities.
Both go to sea and fish, and both collect strand products
and sell the surplus to Chinese traders. The sexual
division of labor at sea is complementary—one of the two
spears fish, while the other rows. In contrast, hunting is
largely a male task, whereas collecting crustaceans, shellfish, and the like is usually done by women and children.
Housework and domestic work is done jointly—repairing
boats or pile-dwellings, gathering firewood, and cooking,
as well as raising and educating children. Hence there is
almost no sex-specific division of labor, except when
biologically necessary (for instance, taking care of babies
by nursing mothers), and men’s and women’s labor is
equally important for family subsistence.
Women’s contribution to daily subsistence equals
that of men. Because women produce a sizeable proportion of food, they are able to provide for the family on
their own in case of divorce, or in case of their husbands’
illness or death. With regard to financial matters, the
women have the main responsibility. They save all the
money and do the shopping. Since property is only
minimal, inheritance is not an issue.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
The parental role is not defined as much by biological
parenthood as by a married couple living together with
one or more children. Adoption is the Orang Suku Laut’s
common way of solving the problem of childlessness.
The adopted child knows who his or her biological
parents are, but the bonds between the child and his or her
social parents are much stronger. Even if the latter have
birth children later, they treat these and their adopted
child with the same affection.
Father and mother are equally responsible for
bringing up their male and female children, supported by
other caretakers, like grandparents, siblings, and members of the jointly traveling or settling kin group. These
socializing agents do not differ very much in education
and disciplining, in physical care and affection, and in
time spent with children (see also “Socialization of Boys
and Girls”).
In Orang Suku Laut society, there is much scope to
develop freely because education is nonauthoritarian.
In quarrels among children or between children and
adults, those involved are not stopped, even if they
indulge in minor physical attacks. Also, little children are
not prevented from climbing dangerously high landing
stages or playing with extremely sharp knives. If they are
defiant and weep, they are simply left standing, while
their behavior is countered with scathing remarks, which
reinforces their fits of anger. Beating children is not
regarded as an adequate means of influencing their
behavior.
Gender and Religion
LEADERSHIP
IN
755
PUBLIC ARENAS
Orang Suku Laut society is characterized by a high
degree of gender equality, only weak hierarchies (elders),
and hardly any domination or subordination. Hence
leadership is, to a large extent, informal.
There is no superordinate leader of society as a
whole, nor of each subdivision, but political leadership
positions today exist only at the level of those kin groups
which actually share everyday life, and only in this realm
is there an obvious gender asymmetry. The eldest of a
jointly traveling/residing group who becomes the group’s
leader and advisor is always a male. His main task is
to represent his community’s interests vis-à-vis other
groups and non-Orang Suku Laut, but he does not possess
the authority to impose sanctions in case of deviant
behavior (primus inter pares type). In former times, there
existed the superordinate position of the batin/penghulu
laut, who represented several such groups in a specific
area. This position was also held by a male.
Although a group’s leader is always a male, this
does not mean that women have no influence in community matters. They give a frank opinion on boat- or housedwellers’ community affairs, and intervene actively in
disputes and quarrels. In this respect, older women
possess much authority.
Some other extraordinary positions of individual
members of residential groups, for instance, healers with
shamanistic experience or boat builders, seem to be dominated by men as well. In contrast, the midwife is always
female. There are also female healers and experts in
naturopathy. However, even in cases of exclusive male or
female positions of power or authority, members of the
opposite sex have a significant influence on the respective
role performance—examples of this are the wife of
the eldest or the wife of the healer who advise their
husbands during community meetings, or in the course of
healing ceremonies; the midwife is sometimes also
assisted by males.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
In principle, members of both sexes can acquire basic
magical knowledge, establish bonds with the supernatural, and carry out ritual functions. Everybody learns
simple techniques for daily use: for instance, the casting
of spells ( jampi) to enhance the effects of herbal
medicine; or honorific words and specific behavior
taboos to propitiate the spirits of the first humans while
sailing, and thereby crossing and disturbing their sacred
sites and areas at sea; or the right way of providing offerings to the spirits of the sea in order to obtain a good
catch; or to call the spirits of the ancestors during the
annual commemoration ceremony, and “feed” them with
incense, rice, cigarettes, and the like. Besides this, there
are elaborate procedures, like divination, which are
mastered by religious experts, who are usually male.
Among the gods and spirits of the sea and the littoral
who have a special relationship with the Orang Suku
Laut, and among those of the land who are dangerous for
the people of the sea, there are some of human appearance or a mixture of human and animals, and of either
male or female sex; these may feel attracted by humans
of the opposite sex whom they sometimes try to kidnap.
However, in the case of other spirits, for instance those
associated with natural phenomena like the rainbow or
thunder and lightning, gender affiliation is not an issue.
Also, in the world of gods and spirits there is no hierarchy, with the exception of the supreme deity of the sea
who is a kind of Neptune, and, like the representatives of
the Orang Suku Laut jointly traveling or settled groups,
is male.
Certain mythical beliefs substantiate the far-reaching
gender equality in Orang Suku Laut society, for instance,
the origin myth; or the narrative that explains how people
once learnt the way of giving birth which is still common
today.
According to the Orang Suku Laut origin myth
(in the version of the Orang Mantang), there is no male
or female creator who made mankind and nature, but
humans are the origin of everything. In the beginning,
there were already the sea, two islands, and an Orang
Suku Laut couple, a male and a female, who had a child
(whose sex is not mentioned). Because of an offense this
child was cut into pieces which were thrown into the sea,
and out of these pieces islands, mountains, trees, and
everything else came into being, and this is why today
there is still wood that will bleed like a human if it is
chopped. At that time, mountains also had human characteristics; for instance, those on the islands of Bintan
and Lingga are brothers who once fought each other and
had a feud. Also, the first animals, which in former times
spoke the human language, are descended from the first
humans; others came into being later as a consequence of
sexual intercourse with humans, males as well as females.
756
Other phenomena of the natural environment are still like
humans, the most striking example being the sun with its
male characteristics, who in the course of solar eclipses
tries to capture and make love with the female-like moon,
which must be freed by humans by beating metal objects
to protect the world from everlasting darkness.
One of the reasons why birth is not an exclusively
female responsibility, but sometimes also involves the
presence and active assistance of men (see section on
pregnancy and birth), is illuminated in the following narrative. In ancient times, males rather than females became
pregnant and gave birth to children. To be able to do this,
a man’s abdomen had to be ripped, and consequently
every man had to die while giving birth for the first time.
Later on, females were asked to bear the children
because, it was argued, women have vaginas. However,
the females, who did not know any other way but the
male way, also had to die in childbirth, up to the time
when they observed the monkeys on the shore giving
birth to their young. From them they learnt how to give
birth in the way that is common these days.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
In Orang Suku Laut life, work and leisure time are not
strictly separated or terminologically distinguished.
However, because men and women normally work
together and carry out more or less the same activities,
they also have the same amount of free time, and this
increases during stormy seasons. Leisure time is always
spent together, and there is absolutely no segregation of
the sexes.
During leisure time, males and females meet
relatives and friends, sit together, report news and gossip,
tell stories, or play cards. A special enjoyment is the
competitive performance of impromptu rhymes, called
pantun, created alternately by males and females. In
recent times, groups of people like to assemble in front of
a black-and-white television set run from an automobile battery. Since on the Riau Islands one receives
Singaporean or Malaysian broadcasting services, the
spectators often understand neither the films’ languages
(e.g., English and various Chinese and Indian languages)
nor the subtitles, since they are illiterate. Therefore
somebody in the audience acts as a storyteller and shares
his or her perception and interpretation of the pictures and
actions with the others.
Orang Suku Laut
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Orang Suku Laut gender relations are highly (though not
absolutely) egalitarian.
Daily social intercourse between males and females
is permissive, and no spheres are reserved exclusively for
either males or females.
In the nuclear family, neither the man nor the woman
have a dominant position. In the intraethnic public
sphere—during daily gatherings or while dealing with
conflicts—both represent their family equally. This contrasts with interethnic contact, when the male appears in
the role of the head of the family. However, widows who
do not remarry can also take on this role.
When paying visits, men and women sit, eat, drink,
smoke, and chat together. Generally, there are no substantial differences in decision-making with regard to family
and kin-group matters, or ritual affairs. The males’ and
females’ scopes for deciding when and whom to marry, as
well as divorce choices, have expanded considerably,
although the parents of both spouses—who formerly had
a major say in these matters—are still influential. As
already stated, both sexes contribute equally to subsistence; Orang Suku Laut couples work together, and in the
course of this they access the same resources and finally
share the fruits of labor. The only striking difference
concerns leadership in the public arena. The position of
the leader is always held by a male, but this should not
hide the fact that women have considerable control in
public decision-making (see “Gender-Related Social
Groups” and “Leadership in the Public Arena”).
SEXUALITY
Orang Suku Laut attitudes towards the body, nakedness,
and physical characteristics are uncomplicated.
Sexual intimacy, genital area, sex-specific physical
characteristics and pecularities (e.g., penis length, breast
size, or abnormal number of testicles) are popular topics,
which are discussed uninhibitedly either jointly among
men and women in the presence of children, or in exclusively male or female circles, in a purely factual manner
or through suggestive jokes. Also, infants are not treated
like asexual beings. Grown-ups tend to pat the babies’
bottoms and to sniff and kiss them everywhere.
Further, in a way, nakedness is no taboo. Children
of both sexes normally walk around naked up to the age
Courtship and Marriage
of about 6. Males often wear short trousers only, and
females are from time to time seen wearing nothing
but brassieres and sarongs, or stripped to the waist.
Sometimes, owing to the crampedness of houseboats and
pile-dwellings and the absence of toilets, one can observe
people while relieving themselves. However, normally
people try to do so in a discreet way, and if not, this is
commented on with disapproval.
In the Orang Laut view, sexual intercourse is natural.
It is healthy and, of course, it is for reproduction. It legitimately takes place within the bounds of marriage and in
the intimate space of the houseboat or pile-dwelling.
Extramarital relations for both males and of females are
regarded as inacceptable, and in fact hardly occur.
Premarital sexual intercourse is the exception. In
former times, children were engaged before sexual
maturity and were married with the beginning of puberty
at the latest, so that the “problem” of premarital intercourse did not arise. Even today, many males and females
are already married at the time of sexual maturation and
therefore can satisfy their sexual desire within the
accepted bounds of marriage.
As already mentioned (see “Cultural Construction
of Gender”), cross-sex identification and cross-dressing
are almost irrelevant in Orang Suku Laut society. If male
or female homosexuality does occur, the couple behave
extremely discreetly.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriage is regarded as a desirable aim in life and hence,
there are relatively few unmarried people. Ideally, the
Orang Suku Laut are monogamous, and marriage should
last for a lifetime.
In former times, boys and girls were often married
during childhood. Today, child marriage has become rare,
but the marrying age is still low. For girls, it is approximately 13 years and boys marry from the age of about 15
upwards. This difference in the age between girls and boys
is connected with marriage ideals, according to which
cousins, either cross or parallel, are preferred spouses;
also, the male partner should be older than the female.
These preferences are explained by the ideal of groups of
close kinsmen living together and not breaking up as a
result of marriage (see “Gender-Related Social Groups”).
However, the scope for choosing one’s own spouse as
well as when to marry has become much greater today.
757
Emotional bonds and love between prospective spouses
have become an argument for marriage choice.
Nonetheless, as in the past, skills and the capacity for hard
work, and deference vis-à-vis the parents of the bride and
groom are still important considerations.
However the choice of partner takes place, it is
always expected that the parents of the boy and the girl
agree, after a discussion with close relatives. If the
parents do not accept their children’s choice, the marriage
either will not happen or the couple decide to flee and
not to return before the girl has become pregnant,
because then marriage is normally accepted. If one of
the spouses dies, the widow or widower normally remarries quite soon, with the exception of very young women
who return to their parents. Widowed persons prefer
to marry siblings of their deceased husband or wife
respectively.
Marriage is preceded by engagement, which can last
for a month or a year. During this period, the husbandto-be is already responsible for his future wife’s needs
regarding food and clothing, but she has no reciprocal
duties to fulfil. Courtship is officially asserted by the
groom’s mother who pays a visit to the bride’s mother
after her son’s request has been discussed and consented
to. A box containing a golden ring, bracelets, a sarong, an
umbrella, a mirror, powder, lipstick, and the like is
handed over to the bride. By accepting the box and
inspecting the presents, the bride expresses her readiness
for marriage. Sometimes the husband-to-be is expected to
give bridewealth in cash and also has to bear some of the
costs of the wedding ceremony. Ideally, the amount to be
paid for a young girl is twice as much as that for a widow.
However, in fact, bridewealth is often paid only partly, or
not at all, because the groom is not able to raise the
money.
The time of the wedding calls for careful consideration. Every Wednesday in the course of the waxing moon
and the eighth month of the year are favourable. Also, the
place where the wedding will be held has to be inspected
carefully to protect the participants from the noxious
influence of evil spirits. All relatives are invited to attend
the ceremony. Bride and groom are decorated with floral
wreathes and golden necklaces. The husband-to-be also
wears a hat and a belt with a keris (Malay knife). First, he
has to ask the bride’s parents if there is a rival, which is
of course negated. Then he expresses his intention. This
is followed by a ceremony in which the spouses feed each
other with chicken eggs and eggs made from rice (pulut).
758
With this act, the marriage is formalized. Then the guests
are entertained with food and songs and dances ( pantun;
see section on leisure), and sometimes also with silat
performances (a kind of Malay martial arts).
Those Orang Suku Laut who have been settled for a
long time have adapted their wedding ceremony to Malay
traditions. This includes engaging a female expert who
leads the bride through the various stages of the ceremony (nikah), which lasts much longer, is more complex,
and is sometimes conducted in the presence of an Islamic
authority.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The aim of marriage is the spouses’ mental, physical, and
economic partnership, and the bearing of numerous
descendants. Only if there is a child, is the “rightness” of
marriage deemed to be confirmed. The husband–wife
relationship is characterized by affection and companionship, especially in the case of nomads who rarely separate.
Husband and wife do nearly everything together—eating,
sleeping, working, making decisions, and spending their
leisure time.
In cases of childlessness, the adoption of a child
of relatives is the alternative to the dissolution of marriage
(see “Parental and Other Caretaker Roles”). Childlessness
as a consequence of infertility or miscarriage is put down
to magical malpractice or imperfect dealings with the
spirits of the ancestors, or it is associated with the incompatibility of the spouses’ personal spirits who shape every
human being’s character (mare). Only if these causes can
be excluded is childlessness traced back to biological
infertility, which is then supposed to affect only the
woman.
Divorce is infrequent, it is impossible during a
woman’s pregnancy and it is mostly granted only if there
are no offspring. However, divorces occur, and do not
reduce the prospects of remarriage. Both partners can ask
for divorce, and their request has to be discussed with the
spouses’ parents. Also, if one side is not willing to separate, he or she can protest. The spouses’ parents normally
try to identify the problems and find a solution. If this
proves impossible, they agree to the divorce and the
partners return to the residential group of their respective
parents. If there are offspring, the younger children
normally stay with the mother, while the older ones can
decide by themselves whom to follow.
Orang Suku Laut
Another form of divorce is simply to escape.
This occurs, for instance, when one of the partners
abandons his/her spouse and children after a severe dispute, leaving all material belongings behind and perhaps
never returning.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Brother–sister and grandparent–grandchild relationships
often last for a lifetime, because adult siblings and their
parents’ parents often live together with their families
in one and the same group of boat-dwellers or housedwellers. This is often also the case with cousins, because
they are preferred marriage partners (see “GenderRelated Social Groups”).
Other significant male–female relationships are
subject to marriage taboos. Marriages between maternal/
paternal uncles or aunts and their nieces/nephews, as well
as between adoptive parents and their adopted children,
are met with disapproval.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Up to now, Orang Suku Laut gender relationships have
not been influenced much by the norms and values of
mainstream Indonesian society, or by the moral boundaries of the surrounding Malay Muslim population.
However, in recent years, things have started to change
among those sections of Orang Suku Laut who have
become sedentary, because of more intense interethnic
contact and the pressures of directed change by the
Indonesian government.
There is increasing male dominance in resettlement
sites. One indicator is that during visits by officials
women either do not attend the gatherings, or sit apart
from the men and no longer give their opinion. This
change in behavior is reinforced by the officials who
normally treat only Orang Suku Laut males as competent
persons to approach, and who, if they summon a meeting,
insist on fixed gender-segregated seating arrangements.
Also, women in resettlement sites tend to lose the
considerable control in economic affairs that they had
earlier. In the course of ongoing sedentarization, a sexual
division of labor gradually develops, and women’s labor
is pulled out of fishery and instead allocated to domestic
References
work. Those Orang Suku Laut women who have settled
some time ago now tend to accompany their husbands
during daily fishing only sporadically; more often they
stay with the children in the settlement. More and more,
the men take on the role of family breadwinners and also
sell the fish, whereas the women look after the money and
take care of the home and the children.
With ongoing sedentarization and the simultaneous
development of the sexual division of labor, role expectations with regard to children are also changing. Now,
sons more often take part in their fathers’ activities, while
daughters help their mothers at home.
The promotion of gender segregation is linked to
other aspects of the moral order of the Malay Muslim
majority and has affected, for instance, the dress habits of
women who now cover the upper parts of their bodies.
The nakedness of children has also become an issue, as
has the demand for “more disciplined” sexual intercourse
and the aim of having fewer children. Officials have tried
to introduce birth-control methods, but these have
received little response.
Finally, the expansion of broadcasting media in
Indonesia, including private stations using the national
language, and the increasing access to radio and television among the Orang Suku Laut have a great influence
on the definitions and redefinitions of male and female
roles. However, the most lasting effect results from formal education in state-run schools—something which is
often emphasized by officials, who state that “for the
elder generation, development is a lost affair, it is the
younger generation that counts.”
Till now, regional modernization and state-directed
change have had rather disruptive effects on the mobile
lifestyle and economy of the Orang Suku Laut, as well as
on their social and cultural orientations, including gender
issues. In this context, only the ideals of the nation-state
and the cultural and moral aspirations of the regional
Malay majority have become the promoted standards,
challenging what the Orang Suku Laut consider to be
appropriate. Rethinking such matters is long overdue in
Indonesia, however. In accordance with democratic
principles and the Indonesian state motto of “National
unity in cultural diversity,” the participatory rights of the
Orang Suku Laut must be acknowledged as a matter of
course in all decision-making processes that impact their
way of life.
759
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Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 153, 605–629.
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Suku Laut and the “growth triangle” in a contested environment.
In G. Benjamin & C. Chou (Eds.), Tribal communities in the Malay
world. Historical, cultural and social perspectives (pp. 318–363).
Singapore: ISEAS.
Lenhart, L. (1994). Ethnic minority policy and national development in
Indonesia. In I. Wessel (Ed.), Nationalism and ethnicity in Southeast
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Germany: Lit.
Lenhart, L. (1997). Orang Suku Laut ethnicity and acculturation.
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 153, 577–604.
Lenhart, L. (2001). Orang Suku Laut communities at risk: Effects of
modernisation on the resource base, livelihood and culture of the
“Sea Tribe People” of the Riau Islands (Indonesia). Nomadic
Peoples, 5(2), 64–85.
Lenhart, L. (2002a). Fließende Grenzen. Konstruktion, Oszillation und
Wandel ethnischer Identität der Orang Suku Laut im Riau-Archipel,
Indonesien. Aachen, Germany: Shaker.
Lenhart, L. (2002b). Orang Suku Laut identity. The construction of ethnic
realities. In G. Benjamin & C. Chou (Eds.), Tribal communities in
the Malay world. Historical, cultural and social perspectives
(pp. 293–317). Singapore: ISEAS.
Sather, C. (1995). Sea nomads and rainforest hunter–gatherers: Foraging
adaptations in the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. In P. Bellwood,
J. Fox, & D. Tryon (Eds.), The Austronesians: Historical and comparative perspectives (pp. 229–268). Research School of Pacific
and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra:
Australian National University Press.
Sather, C. (1998). Sea nomads, ethnicity, and “otherness.” The Orang
Suku Laut and Malay identity in the Straits of Melaka. Suomen
Antropologi, 2, 20–36.
Sather, C. (1999). The Orang Laut (AKASS Heritage Paper Series,
Occasional Paper No. 5). Pulau Pinang, Malaysia: Academy of
Social Sciences in cooperation with Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Sopher, D. E. (1977). The sea nomads. A study of the maritime boat
people of Southeast Asia (Reprint with postscript). Singapore:
National Museum Publication. (Original work published 1965.)
Sudarman Sembiring. (1993). Orang Laut di Wilayah Kepulauan
Riau-Lingga. In Koentjaraningrat (Ed.), Masyarakat Terasing di
Indonesia (pp. 323–343). Jakarta, Indonesia: Gramedia.
Tauchmann, K. (1992). Maritime Kultur in Südostasien. In F. Schultze &
K. Tauchmann (Eds.), Kölner Beiträge aus Malaiologie und
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(Festschrift) (Kölner Südostasien-Studien, Vol. 1, pp. 111–130).
Bonn, Germany: Holos.
Wee, V. (1985). Melayu, hierarchies of being in Riau. Unpublished
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Wee, V., & Chou, C. (1997). Continuity and discontinuity in the multiple
realities of Riau. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde,
153, 527–541.
Puerto Ricans
Marysol Asencio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Puerto Ricans are also known as Puertorriqueños Boricua
or Borinquén.
LOCATION
Puerto Rico is located east of Central America between
North and South America at the entrance of the Caribbean
Sea. It is part of a chain of islands that range from the
southeast coast of North America to the northeast coast of
South America. This chain of islands is divided into the
Greater and Lesser Antilles. Puerto Rico is part of the
Greater Antilles that also includes Cuba, Hispaniola
(Dominican Republic and Haiti), and Jamaica. Puerto
Rico is a relatively small island (100 miles long by
35 miles wide) with a great deal of geographical diversity.
It has flat coastal plains, high mountain regions, lush
fertile areas (e.g., El Yunque rainforest) and deserts.
There are many rural and urban communities throughout
the island as well as the cosmopolitan capital of San Juan.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Each historical group in Puerto Rico has had some
influence on the current culture of Puerto Rico—first the
indigenous populations, the Taínos, then the Spanish
colonizers, then the African slaves, and finally the United
States, which took possession of Puerto Rico as a war
bounty from Spain at the end of the Spanish–American
War in 1898. While the basis of contemporary Puerto
Rican culture is Spanish, there has been significant fusion
with other cultural traditions. Puerto Ricans take pride in
viewing their national identity as the product of the
melding of primarily three cultural groups—Taínos,
African, and Spanish. Puerto Ricans, although part of the
United States, maintain a strong national ethnic identification. However, the United States has exerted a great
deal of control of and influence on Puerto Rican society
in the last 100 years, in particular pushing the large and
rapid movement of Puerto Rico from an agrarian to an
industrial society. Puerto Rico is currently a classstructured complex society, which has been described as
more “traditional” than U.S. mainland society.
Puerto Rico is currently a Commonwealth of the
United States. As such, there are no travel restrictions, no
custom duties, or shipment quotas between Puerto Rico
and the U.S. mainland. The U.S. Congress granted
Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship in 1917. However, the
people residing in Puerto Rico cannot vote in U.S.
national elections. A Resident Commissioner, who has a
voice in the House of Representatives but no vote, represents the Puerto Rican people. The Puerto Rican government is a democracy within the U.S. constitutional
system. The currency is the U.S. dollar. Spanish and
English are the official languages. English is a compulsory second language in school and is widely used in
business, industry, research, and education. Current political debates on the island revolve around whether Puerto
Rico should stay in its current political status as a
Commonwealth or become the 51st state of the United
States of America. Since the 1940s, a large percentage
of Puerto Ricans engage in extensive and circulatory
migration between the island and the U.S. mainland
(in particular the northeast region of the United States).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
One of the major problems with discussing gender among
Puerto Ricans on the island is the limited research on
gender as the central point of analysis across many subject areas. Some gender research areas such as women’s
and men’s experiences and contributions to the labor
force have amassed more attention and empirical research
than other areas of gender scholarship, such as gender
roles within marriage, the family, across the life-span,
leisure, arts, sports, and sexuality. Moreover, there is a
long history of scholarship that has created pathological
models on Puerto Rican families. Although this scholarship is currently being challenged, it provides the basis
760
Gender over the Life Cycle
for much of the readily available information on
Puerto Ricans. Another problem associated with gender
studies among Puerto Ricans is that the limited empirical
research available spans several decades. There is no
critical mass of gender research available on the current
situation for most subjects discussed in this chapter. Thus
this chapter will produce an overview of what has been
described as the “traditional” sex–gender system for
Puerto Ricans in the social science literature with the
caveat that many of the descriptions are not adequately
empirically researched and are out of date.
The Puerto Rican sex–gender system is characterized by dichotomous descriptions and expectations of
male and female behavior. Machismo and marianismo
represent the two major constructs that have been used
by scholars to define male and female behavior in
Puerto Rican society, with males and females usually
being given opposite expectations and characteristics.
Machismo and marianismo in the social science literature
are often poorly defined and empirically tested concepts
that diminish the range of masculinit(ies) and femininit(ies) ascribed to by Puerto Rican men and women.
The concept of machismo involves male domination and
female subordination. A male may exert power and control through physical abuse. Machismo in the extreme is
connected with fighting, bragging, and drinking. In addition, males may refuse to do anything that they perceive
to be feminine. It also involves a sense of invulnerability,
courage, honor, and veneration for the mother as well an
obligation to protect and provide for the family. It may be
linked with concepts of respect and dignity. Marianismo,
on the contrary, involves the expectation for females to be
virgins, asexual, submissive, humble, tolerant, faithful,
and devoted to the male and the backbone of the family.
Motherhood is exalted. It is important to point out that the
patriarchal sex–gender system for contemporary Puerto
Rican society follows the same pattern of gender behavior and dress codes as those of modern industrialized
Western nations. Although the pattern of gender behaviors are described as more conservative or traditional than
those of the U.S. mainland, some researchers have
described Puerto Rican women as somewhat less traditional than other Latin American women (Cuadrado &
Lieberman, 2002). Although machismo and marianismo
are commonly presented as unique phenomena of Puerto
Rican and Latino/Hispanic culture, researchers also
have used these terms to describe gender roles in a variety
of non-Latino/Hispanic cultures. While the literature
761
available consistently describe or refer to machismo and
marianismo as framing most gender issues for Puerto
Ricans, some studies also show that in any given population of Puerto Rican males or females, the elements
described above as machista or marianista may vary in
magnitude or be absent. Age, social economic class, geographical location (rural versus urban environment), and
extent of circulatory migration with the U.S. mainland, to
name but a few variables, influence the construction of
gender among Puerto Ricans.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
According to the social science literature available,
within the Puerto Rican family, girls and boys are taught
different gender and sexual behavior. The family teaches
boys to be strong, independent, and aggressive, while
teaching their daughters to be dependent, obedient,
responsible, and submissive. Puerto Rican girls are taught
that chastity is of utmost importance. Family members
protect females more than males. Females are perceived
to be more vulnerable and weaker than males. Males are
seen as being able and needing to take care of themselves.
A girl, regardless of social class, is expected not to be
unclothed in public while boys are allowed to appear
naked or half-naked. Boys are trained to be respectful and
submissive to adults during childhood years, but are
expected to be active, restless, daring, and to commit
more acts of disobedience as they grow older. They are
then expected to become independent and aggressive as
they emerge into adulthood. Girls are made more responsible but have less social freedom than boys. Although
child rearing patterns differ by socioeconomic class and
region of the country, there are some patterns that seem
to hold constant for most Puerto Ricans on the island
(Vázques-Nuttall & Romero García, 1989). The sexes are
strictly separated, with the female role more narrowly
defined than the male. From early childhood, girls are
restricted in dress, conduct, freedom, language usage, and
social associations.
Scholars have also noted sexism in the socialization
of boys and girls within the Puerto Rican school system.
Research conducted in classrooms in the 1970s and
1980s showed that sexism was supported by teachers
and reinforced in textbooks and instructional materials
762
(Acosta-Belén, 1986). While boys are shown as aggressive and strong, with mechanical ability and engaged in
a variety of activities, girls are portrayed as passive,
dependent, physically and emotionally fragile, and
engaged in activities usually limited to their future role as
mothers and homemakers. In the 1980s, female characters were significantly underrepresented in the textbooks
(Vázquez-Nuttall & Romero-García, 1989). When
shown, they are in traditional roles and occupations. Girls
are presented as mainly involved in passive activities like
playing with dolls, observing the boys at play, or just
waiting for them. Socially valued characteristics among
Puerto Ricans, such as courage, creativity, perseverance,
and adventurousness, were more likely to be attributed to
males than females, while negative social values, such as
weakness, passivity, dependence, and fear, were more
likely to be attributed to girls and women.
Cultural notions on sexual differences also have a bearing on the disciplining of children (Vázquez-Nuttall &
Romero-García, 1989). Although there are more expectations and acceptance of male’s violating parental rules, when
they are punished it tends to be harsher, in particular with the
use of physical punishment. This practice is also related to
sex stereotypes. Boys are considered to be stronger and thus
capable of withstanding, as well as in need of, stronger disciplinary measures (Borrás, 1989, p. 203). The belief that
boys are stronger also leads to the belief that they are more
difficult to discipline than girls. Therefore the father or a
male substitute is more likely to be called upon to exact
punishment on a young male. The mother is more likely to
discipline the female, who is seen as weaker.
Puberty and Adolescence
Many adolescent girls are not provided with information
about their bodies and issues involving sexuality.
Adolescent males are expected to begin sexual relations
during this period of time whereas females are expected to
wait until marriage. Males must find females with whom
to have sex. If a girlfriend agrees to have premarital sex,
she is seen as a failure and her boyfriend will probably not
ask her to marry him (Burgos & Díaz-Pérez, 1986).
Scholars have suggested that traditionally in Puerto Rico
and throughout Latin America males came into their
manhood by engaging in sexual intercourse (sometimes
visiting prostitutes who are paid by male relatives), while
females at age 15 are given parties (quinceaňeras) to
emphasize their virginal qualities. This latter event is still
Puerto Ricans
a part of traditional entry into womanhood in Puerto Rico
as well as in other Latin American countries. While many
young Puerto Rican women celebrate becoming 15 years
old, others, more assimilated to U.S. mainland traditions,
also celebrate their “Sweet 16.”
Attainment of Adulthood
Adulthood in Puerto Rico is defined legally with certain
adult rights and responsibilities beginning in the late
teens. As women enter their adulthood, they are expected
to dress beautifully and to be feminine and attractive to
men while being modest. Sloppiness and being disheveled
is tolerated more among men. Once married and with
children, men and women take on the expectations and
responsibilities of adulthood. When men become widowers they are encouraged to remarry (Burgos & Díaz Pérez,
1986). Widowers are more likely to be perceived as needing women to take care of their homes and sexual needs.
Once past child-bearing, a widow is less likely to be seen
as needing to remarry.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Traditionally, dignity and respect are qualities expected
and admired by both male and female Puerto Ricans.
However, there is a greater expectation of Puerto Rican
men to have some sense of personal dignity (dignidad)
and make sure that proper respect (respecto) is shown to
them. Therefore, a man is called to protect his personal
honor as well as the honor of all other members of his
family. The behavior of family members also reflects on
the honor of the man, in particular the chastity and
fidelity of his daughters and wife. According to some
scholars, Puerto Rican personality constellations are
framed by machismo and marianismo. As noted previously, machismo and marianismo are concepts that are
poorly defined and not sufficiently empirically tested.
Machismo is described as involving personal
bearing by which one faces challenge, danger, and threat
with calmness and self-possession. It is also a quality
of personal magnetism that impresses and prompts
others to follow one as a leader. Aggressiveness, violence,
and assertiveness are also associated with machismo.
Marianismo is described as involving self-sacrifice,
nurturance, passivity, and modesty. Within this framework,
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
femininity is strongly bound to the ideology of sacrifice.
A good woman is defined by her self-abnegation and by
placing family and community needs before her own.
A good woman is one who is selfless and willing to sacrifice in order to ensure the well-being of her family,
including the well-being of her parents as they age.
Puerto Rican women are expected to accept misfortune
with stoicism and silence. The oppressive nature of
the limited gender role, which does not allow women
to demonstrate aggressiveness, has been thought by
some scholars to cause mal de nervios or ataques
de nervios (bad nerves or attacks of nerves) (Cuadrado &
Lieberman, 2002). Researchers have also attributed
nervios as a response to acute stress. The Puerto Rican
culture is said to allow for psychosomatic displays as
self-mediating stress relievers. These attacks are a
culturally acceptable way of expressing uncontrollable
emotions. While these attacks do occur in both genders,
they have been found to be more common among Puerto
Rican women, as has depression. Alcohol use, which is
allowed for male stress reduction as well as celebration,
is usually discouraged in women.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Puerto Rican women have a high level of participation in
the labor force. This high level of female labor participation has been linked to the economic development of
Puerto Rico as a U.S. colony, in particular the growth and
subsequent stagnation of the post-World War II industrialization program in Puerto Rico. The deliberate development of export-oriented industrialization increased the
demand for female labor in the formal economy, contributing to a new division of labor and a feminization of
the labor force. Employers in export-oriented industries
selectively recruit women for their low wages and relative
docility, and the belief that women have the patience
and skills to do repetitive and detail-oriented tasks
(Zsembik & Peek, 1994). Men were displaced from the
extracted industries as Puerto Rico industrialized.
Unemployment rates for men in Puerto Rico have risen
more rapidly than for women. The high rate of the unemployment led to male out-migration leaving many families
without a male income earner. Growing unemployment
has led to increasing reliance on federal financial assistance to sustain the Puerto Rican economy. Females
sought government subsidies to make ends meet.
763
Female employment is an important element to
Puerto Rican working-class family survival. Studies have
found that, within this population, women work as a way
of contributing to the family income rather than as a way
of establishing their own independence. Safa (1986)
found that married women contributed 40–60% of the
total family income. Women’s participation in the labor
force may support the current trends of Puerto Rican
women of marrying at later ages, bearing their first child
at later ages, and more likely to be employed before
child-bearing begins. Some scholars contend that Puerto
Rican women’s increased contribution to the household
economy has increased egalitarian relationships between
husbands and wives as well as support for the feminist
movement in Puerto Rico.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Four main family structures are found among Puerto
Ricans. One is the extended family system, where there
are strong bonds and frequent interactions among a wide
range of natural or ritual kin. Another family structure
associated with Puerto Ricans is the nuclear family,
which is composed of the father, the mother, and children.
A third family structure, female-headed households,
involves the mother as the only parent in the household
with children. Finally, there are individuals who live in
the same residence in various arrangements. In rural and
urban lower socioeconomic class families, it is more
common to see an extended family system. In upper- and
middle-class families, nuclear family arrangements are
more common. A significant percentage of Puerto Rican
families are headed by females. These arrangements,
among other variables, influence issues related to
parental roles and caretaking.
Puerto Rican women still continue to be the center
of the home and family. Within this sphere, they have the
responsibility of caring for the children, the aged, and the
ill. While women’s and men’s roles within the family and
as caretakers vary, scholars tend to describe parental and
caretaking roles with more gender-role rigidity than may
actually be the case. Women’s roles as mothers are highlighted, calling for self-sacrifice in favor of their children.
Males are responsible for providing for and protecting
the family. Males are portrayed as making the major
decisions regarding family economics, behavior, and
764
Puerto Ricans
education of the children, and the duties of each family
member. Men’s responsibilities include chores such as
house and car repairs, but they are not expected to do any
housework (Confresí, 1999).
The father is characterized as having authority in
all family matters, including the discipline of children
(Vázquez-Nuttall & Romero García, 1989). The mother
may also establish rules for the day-to-day regulation of
child behavior, but these rules do not go against the
father’s wishes. The mother’s role as the provider of love
and affection in the family is seen as more significant
than her role as a disciplinarian. The mother is portrayed
as responsible for the raising of the children and
management of the home. She is also responsible for the
religious education of the children and for their attendance at religious services. The parents provide economic
support for their children as long as they live in the home.
If the father dies or is away from home, the oldest son is
expected to assume his responsibilities and duties. The
oldest daughter is expected to do the same for the mother.
It is not uncommon for children to leave school to assist
the family in these moments of crisis. While these are
common descriptions, some scholars question the uniformity of this model, noting economic and other influences
on patterns observed. A single mother has to take on dual
roles assigned for the mother and the father. The availability of providing care in the family is also constrained
by women’s changing roles in social life.
Research has shown that it is primarily women who
are the caretakers for the elderly. It is only when an elderly
couple become unable to take care of themselves or when
one of the partners dies, that children become involved in
daily caregiving (Sánchez-Ayéndez, 1998). The daughter
is usually the one to take responsibility for primary caretaking of the parents. In a study of older Puerto Ricans
(Zsembik & Bonilla, 2000) there was no consensus on
who is the ideal caregiver for older adults. The common
attitude that daughters are more natural caregivers than
sons is supported by the gender construction in Puerto
Rican society. Men thought of daughters as more
emotionally attached to parents. However, older women
saw both daughters and sons as needing to provide care.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Since 1962, women in Puerto Rico have graduated from
college in higher numbers than men and at the same time
have increased their participation in the traditionally male
dominated disciplines (Confresí, 1999). In the last three
decades women have played an important role in Puerto
Rican public and academic life. Women have been steadily
gaining acceptance in leadership roles and have taken on
political power. Through the 20th century, women have
held prominent places in the Commonwealth’s Supreme
Court, as well as being elected as leaders. Felisa Rincón de
Gautier was mayor of San Juan from 1946 to 1968 and
Sila Calderón is San Juan’s current mayor. By the 1980s
17 women had served as elected members of the Senate
and 13 in the House of Representatives in Puerto Rico
(Votaw, 1995).
There have been women in prominent leadership
positions throughout the island in medicine, law, and education, as well as in politics. Ana Roqué de Duprey was
an early feminist who with other Puerto Rican women
suffragettes pressed for women’s right to vote, which
Puerto Rican women exercised for the first time in 1936.
Women also excelled throughout the century in the education field with notable women such as Carmen Gomez
Tejera and Antonia Pantoja. Moreover, the high rates of
education among Puerto Rican women also produced
outstanding literary figures, such as Julia de Burgos who
in her writings challenged other women to question the
social constraints on women. She also was a strong political supporter of independence from the United States.
Although Puerto Rican women are found in leadership
positions across Puerto Rican society, female representation is not proportional to their numbers in the society.
The number of women in leadership positions is significantly less than that of men. Despite the increased educational, professional, and political participation, there is
a paucity of research documenting current gender-role
expectations for professional Puerto Rican women.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
As part of the Spanish colonization of Puerto Rico, the
Catholic faith was brought to the island and enjoyed
a privileged relationship with the dominant powers.
Catholicism is a patriarchal, hierarchical, and gendersegregated religion in terms of its religious organization
and orders. The higher levels of the Church are completely male dominated. Only males can become priests,
and therefore only men can hold the positions of Pope,
archbishops, bishops, and cardinals who make up the
Leisure, Recreation, and the Arts
hierarchy and power structure of the Church and who are
responsible for the interpretation and administration of
Church teachings. While females can serve as nuns, they
do not hold the same status and power as priests.
The Catholic Church position on issues related to
gender favors traditional gender and marital arrangements. All followers are expected to maintain themselves
within the teachings of no premarital sex (to observe the
sacrament of marriage), no masturbation, no condom use
(or other contraceptives), no abortion, no infidelity, and no
homosexuality (McCarthy & Bayer, 1984). Although noncoital sexual expressions are no longer prohibited, they are
only acceptable under certain conditions (in marriage, as
foreplay). Noncoital sex cannot substitute for coital activity between husband and wife. The Church’s exultation of
motherhood and encouragement of large families create
constraints in the present society for women’s economic
contributions and independence outside the home.
The cultural values of sexuality discussed in terms
of Puerto Rican machismo directly oppose almost all religiously based expectations. The cultural expectations of
marianismo clearly resemble those of official religious
dogma. In fact, the term marianismo (or mariolatry)
discussed throughout this chapter is also associated with
devotion to the Virgin Mary. This symbol within
Roman Catholicism represents virginity, motherhood,
and devotion to males (whether father, husband, or first
son). The “cult the Virgin Mary” has influenced the
female ideal for many cultures where Catholicism has
been dominant.
Protestantism significantly increased on the island
after the United States took over in 1898. Pentecostal
sects have been the most vigorous in converting Puerto
Ricans. It is among the urban poor where conversion
seems to be most prominent. While there are Pentecostal
female ministers, males are more likely to be church leaders. Overall, as a fundamentalist religion, Pentecostal
teachings support traditional family arrangements, sexual
behaviors, and gender roles.
For some Puerto Ricans, alternative religions or
belief systems such as Santería and Espiritísmo are practiced alone or in combination with a mainstream religion.
For some Puerto Ricans there has been a blending of
traditions from Santería and Espiritísmo. Santería is a
merging of Catholic and African spiritual traditions (in
particular the Yoruba religion). It has its own priests and
rituals. Espiritísmo was brought to Puerto Rico from
Europe in the mid-19th century. It is basically a belief in
765
a spirit world where good and bad spirits interact with
humans and the spirits of the dead are in communication
with the living. In Puerto Rico, there seems to be a
combination of many different rituals and practices—
Catholic, Santería, and Espiritísmo—where the people
themselves are not certain of the origin of a particular
custom. Santería and Espiritísmo are not centralized
religions as is the case with the Catholic Church.
Therefore sects and particular followers of these traditions may differ in their acceptance of females in certain
roles. In some sects and among some followers, females
play important roles as priests, mediums, and leaders
(Paulino, 1995).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
The mixture of cultural traditions has influenced the cultural arts of Puerto Rico, like many of the other aspects
of Puerto Rican society. The musical traditions of Puerto
Ricans are rich and varied. Bomba y plena, salsa, danza,
Latin jazz, Latin rock, and hip-hop are just a few examples of the music styles found throughout the Island.
Male composers and male musicians and performers
dominate these traditions, but there are notable female
entertainers. Many traditional music types are composed
by males and possess references to females that may be
seen as sexist (Aparicio, 1998). There is more equal
representation of females as actors; however, there needs
to be further research in terms of their representation and
career trajectory compared with males. Television, radio,
cinema, newspapers, and novelas (soap operas) have also
reinforced the attitudes and prejudice as well as stereotypes of women (Acosta-Belén, 1986). There are many
types of artistic tradition in Puerto Rico, including traditional Puerto Rican crafts such as making Santos (carved
wooden saints). As with other areas of the arts, males
have had a more predominant role.
Female participation in sports has increased in
Puerto Rico as it has in other countries. However, males
have a strong predominance in sports, both professionally
and for leisure. Participation in sports by Puerto Rican
women is not as socially supported or as popular as it is
in the United States and other countries. Of course, in
most cases professional sports are segregated, and men
earn more and obtain greater social popularity and
support than women in sports.
766
RELATIVE STATUS
Puerto Ricans
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
According to the Puerto Rican Constitution, men and
women are created equal. Yet, sexism still exists in Puerto
Rico today. The increased demand for women’s labor has
not necessarily improved women’s status, as persistent
patriarchal pressures at the social level continue to favor
policies that promote men as the primary breadwinners.
Some Puerto Rico officials have voiced concerns about
social problems associated with the economic conditions
that prevent men from assuming the principal role as
a provider; accordingly, in an attempt to reduce men’s
unemployment, they have developed policies that are
geared to attracting employment opportunities for males
(Zsembik & Peek, 1994). As a consequence of these
policies, Puerto Rican women may be driven out of the
labor force and potentially lose their emerging autonomy.
Browne’s (2001) comparative study of female entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Barbados found
that Puerto Rican ideologies of gender are the strictest
and occupational segregation is most strongly pronounced. Entrepreneurial women appear more likely to
be social outliers than their counterparts in less genderstratified societies like Barbados. While two-thirds of
working women in Puerto Rico are married and lived in
nuclear households, the majority of female entrepreneurs
are unmarried, living alone, or in nontraditional households. In Puerto Rico it is suggested that economically
ambitious women may choose to avoid the constraints of
family structures dominated by male authority. Other
indicators suggest that entrepreneurial women go against
normative patterns. While 85% of the Puerto Rican
population is Catholic, nearly half of the entrepreneurial
women in the study are not. The large proportion of
non-Catholic unmarried women living in nontraditional
households who own nontraditional businesses suggests
the possibility of a certain social marginality among
female entrepreneurs in Puerto Rico.
SEXUALITY
Traditional descriptions of Puerto Rican women’s sexuality
include virginity until marriage, passivity when having sex,
and the lack of expectation of pleasure from their sexual
activities. In their study of sexual expression among
Puerto Rican women, Burgos and Díaz-Pérez (1986) found
that adherence to this dominant cultural ideology was
related to class. Working-class Puerto Rican women were
found to adhere more to this ideology than middle-class
women. Working-class females also believed that males
are the sexual experts. Females are expected to be simultaneously attractive, seductive, and virginal. Puerto Rican
society has been described as valuing a female for maintaining her physical appearance. Attractiveness is based
on modern Western perspectives. Female attractiveness is
emphasized more than male. Moreover, female cleanliness was believed to reflect genital cleanliness (free of
diseases). Males are given more latitude in terms of
looks, with virility and strong masculine qualities idealized. Given the socialization of females not to want sex,
engaging in sex may produce feelings of guilt.
In Puerto Rican society, there is a tendency to judge
women according to their sexual behavior. The double
standard is still prevalent in expressions such a “la mujer
buena o de su casa” (a good women/of the home) and “la
mujer mala o de la calle” (a bad women/of the street).
The former deserves respect and protection, the latter
scorn and harassment. Moreover, the latter group of
females is seen as a source of sexual release for males.
Puerto Rican women are supposedly solely responsible for fertility control. Males are portrayed as uninvolved or hostile to contraception. In a dated study,
Murrillo (1976) found that their husbands forbade most
Puerto Rican women to use contraceptives, and most
Puerto Rican men refused to use contraceptives. Social
class has been shown to influence contraceptive use.
Borrás (1984) found that working-class Puerto Rican
woman were less knowledgeable about birth control than
middle-class Puerto Rican women. Puerto Rico has
one of the highest sterilization rates in the world, in
particular female sterilization.
In Puerto Rico, as in other societies, the masculine
ideology stresses sexuality. A man should revel in his
sexuality. Women are objects of pleasure, so long as men
abide by the taboo of incest and give the respect expected
toward those women who are considered part of the
family. Men are expected to engage in the conquest of
women. The males’ conquest of females is framed by
differences in class and racial phenotypes. Women of a
higher class are usually reserved for men from the same
class (Ramírez, 1999). The culture is phallocentric with
a great deal of attention and power given to the male
genitals. The Puerto Rican language of sexuality reflects
the importance of the penis and its connection to power
(Ramírez, 1999). The aim of male sexuality is sexual
Husband–Wife Relationship
intercourse. Sexual acts other than penetration are seen as
of lesser value. Gender expectations for males involving
virility and sexual prowess create concerns in males
around sexual dysfunction. The sexual relationships
between men and women involve maintaining the proper
gender and sexual roles.
Homosexuality is considered as unacceptable on the
island, for both women and men. Homosexuals and
lesbians are ridiculed. Their sexual preferences and
behaviors are viewed as “poco verguenza” (lack of
shame). Homosexuality in Puerto Rico is seen variously
as a sinful act, a crime, a sickness, or sexual orientation
depending upon the ideological stance that the individual,
social group, or institution assumes in dealing with it
(Ramírez, 1999). There may be family rejection for those
Puerto Rican men and women who are open about their
sexual preference. Frequently, homosexual males are not
are seen as being “real” men. In Puerto Rico, same-sex
sexual practices cover a wide range of practices that are
articulated and categorized differently, as are those who
participate in these practices.
It has been suggested that same-sex sexuality among
Latin American males is more common than among
Anglos in the United States (Murray, 1995). The
sex–gender system described for Puerto Rican males who
have sex with men only considers the male receivers
( pasivos) in anal intercourse as homosexuals. A male who
penetrates another male (activos) in anal intercourse is
not necessarily perceived as being a homosexual. Activos
and pasivos are located in a sex–gender system where
appropriate gender-sexual behavior rather than the object
of sexual interest is used to determine who is a homosexual. Research on same-sex behaviors by Puerto Rican
females is sparse, both theoretically and empirically.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Traditional descriptions of Puerto Rican courtship note
that a young man interested in a girl had to request a
permission of the girl’s parents to ask her out socially and
was never permitted to be alone with her. They had to be
chaperoned at dances and social events. In order to marry,
the approval of both sets of parents, in particular the
father’s, was necessary. These customs have almost
disappeared from current Puerto Rican courtships. While
curfews and a greater attention to female protection are
present, many Puerto Ricans can go out and date without
767
significant supervision. However, females are more
closely guarded and supervised than males. Males and
females can both choose their partners, but usually families like to be consulted and maintain some form of
approval. Many Puerto Ricans continuously migrate to
and from the U.S. mainland. This has also pushed for
Puerto Rican courtship patterns to resemble many of
those found on the U.S. mainland.
There is a great deal of social expectation for both
men and women to marry or have a committed relationship with the other sex. If they do not, it is assumed that
there is something wrong with them. Marriage and motherhood are seen as essential elements in a Puerto Rican
woman’s life. Marriage is conceptualized as being of
great consequence for Puerto Ricans because of its
connections to both a Catholic religious sacrament and
family formation. However, it is important to point out
that Puerto Ricans have had a long history of informal
unions which are considered a form of marriage and can
be likened to common-law marriages (Landale & Ogena,
1995). This is in particular true of people in the lower
socioeconomic classes.
Sayings such as men “son de la calle” (are of the
streets) basically express the sentiment that men should
come and go as they please. Men are and should be
allowed to socialize outside family settings, and the time
they spend out of the home is not monitored. The male
spends much time outside the home working, in recreational activities, or in political or extramarital affairs.
Men have the privilege and freedom to have an affair
while women are expected to tolerate it (Acosta-Belén,
1986). Infidelity on the wife’s part is seen as an affront to
a man’s dignity and honor. Women are considered to be
morally or spiritually superior to men, which gives them
the capacity to endure all the suffering and abuse inflicted
by men. Moreover, a female’s love for a male is demonstrated through complete trust and martyrdom. Divorce is
seen negatively with the failure of the marriage seen as
failures in the marital pair, in particular the wife (MuňozVázquez, 1980). She is faulted for the personal failing of
being unable to maintain a marriage. Marriage and divorce
among Puerto Ricans have not been adequately studied.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Traditional descriptions of the husband–wife or
heterosexual partnered relationship viewed the female
768
partner as the property of the male. Women’s primary task
was to raise children, manage the household, and serve
their male partners. Warwick and Williamson (1977)
found that marital communication about sexual behavior
and family planning among Puerto Ricans was limited.
They attributed the findings to cultural views on femininity, male fear of loss of dominance, and fear of wife’s
infidelity. The spousal/partner system of the low-income
Puerto Rican family has frequently been described as
strained because of the different expectations imposed by
the culture on men and women. In patriarchal authoritarian families, few activities are shared between spouses.
The limited research available shows that Puerto
Rican women are not passive chattel. Instead, while
males clearly hold a more powerful social position in
families and in relationships, many couples engage in
more egalitarian roles and decision-making. Women’s
educational levels have risen, further prompting employment outside the home and migration away from childhood
homes. Rising divorce rates and nonmarital fertility quickly
vault mothers into the breadwinner role (Zsembik &
Bonilla, 2000). As women have obtained education and
economic independence, they have also obtained greater
authority in the home. Conversely, males are also changing their attitudes about gender as Puerto Rican society
becomes more open to issues of egalitarianism and equality between the sexes. Women have been found to have a
range of expectations about their roles as wife (MuňozVázquez, 1980). In addition, some scholars have found
that a husband’s authority varies by socioeconomic class
and region of the country. In certain rural regions,
husbands’ authority may be very great while in the large
urban capital of San Juan their authority may be greatly
diminished (Vázquez-Nuttall & Romero-García, 1989).
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Descriptions of traditional Puerto Rican gender roles
expect females to have limited relationships with
members of the other sex who are not part of their kinship
network. Since the cultural expectation is on protecting
females from men, there is a strong segregation of males
from females from childhood on. Relationships between
men and women who are not related may be considered
problematic within Puerto Rican society, particularly if
the female is married or cohabitating. However, cross-sex
relationships in Puerto Rican society have not been an
Puerto Ricans
area of much theorizing and research. Yet, contemporary
Puerto Rican society has males and females, who are not
kin, interacting in many ways with each other, both
socially and professionally.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The last three decades have brought considerable social
and economic changes that have touched on fundamental
structures and processes, altering traditions, norms, and
values within Puerto Rican society. Puerto Rican
women’s movement into the work force, lower fertility
rates, and increased awareness of their social political
and economic inequality have redefined women’s roles,
men’s roles, and the relationship between them.
Changing gender roles have raised women’s educational
achievements, spurred employment and migration, transformed family life, and in these ways played a critical
role in women’s availability to provide care to family
members. The emergence of a large middle class in
Puerto Rico and the circulatory migration pattern of a
significant percentage of Puerto Rican men and women
between the island and the U.S. mainland has also exerted
influences that have assisted in redefining gender roles.
Women, especially young unmarried women from rural
areas, have historically constituted a significant share of
internal and international migration streams (Zsembik &
Bonilla, 2000). However, there is still evidence that
women still adhere to traditional Puerto Rican roles to
varying degrees. Sexism and homophobia are still
maintained within Puerto Rican society. Traditional and
modern constructions of gender are found to coexist
among Puerto Rican women. While Puerto Rican women
have accepted and, in some cases, welcomed roles
outside the home, these women are still balancing two
sets of expectations. Little is known about the role that
the cultural orientation towards familism plays within
Puerto Rican society in perpetuating women’s continued
subordination to the needs of others at the expense of the
development of their own separate goals (VázquezNuttall & Romero-García, 1989). More empirical
research on Puerto Ricans’ construction of gender is
needed to develop a more expansive and nuanced understanding of the expectations and roles of gender in
different arenas of Puerto Rican society.
References
769
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Rungus Dusun
George N. Appell and Laura W. R. Appell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Rungus are also known as Rungus Momogun.
LOCATION
The Rungus are found on the island of Borneo just north
of the equator. They inhabit the Kudat Division of the
State of Sabah, Malaysia. They are found on two peninsulas, the Kudat Peninsula and the Melobong Peninsula.
The data in this article refer to the Rungus of the Kudat
Peninsula. A range of hills stretch down the length of the
peninsula, and small, short, and unnavigable streams run
down the hillsides into the ocean on either side of the
peninsula. The primary forest on the peninsula is a monsoon tropical forest, but it has been largely replaced
through cultivation by secondary forest.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The ethnographic present of 1959–63 is used in this
description. At that time the Rungus still carried on their
traditional cultural ecology under the political control of
the British colonial administration. The Rungus village is
the major political unit. It has residual rights over its land
in which only resident members may cultivate swiddens.
The village area encompasses the drainage pattern of one
of the small streams that drain from the spine of the
peninsula of their territory. A village may consist of
one or more longhouse hamlets. It is not a kinship unit.
Membership can be granted to families with no kin
resident in the village. The major social unit in terms of
economy and religion is the domestic family inhabiting a
longhouse apartment which it constructs and owns. The
domestic family ideally, and most frequently, consists of
a husband, his wife, and their children. Parents of the
married couple may join when they are no longer able
to carry on their swidden activities. Marriage requires
a brideprice of brassware, gongs, and jars. After marriage
a husband lives in the apartment of his wife’s family until
the following agricultural year when he builds their own
apartment onto the longhouse. The domestic family cuts
a swidden each year in secondary forest, planting rice,
maize, cassava, and a variety of vegetables and other
economically useful plants. On removing the last of the
produce from the swidden the area reverts to the village
reserve for any other family to use. Animal protein and
fat is provided through the sacrifices of pigs and chickens
to various spirits that cause illness and by hunting and
fishing. The family also plants and owns a number of fruit
trees. Agricultural surplus is invested in gongs, jars,
and various types of brassware. These are inherited
individually by children of the family.
There are three social classes based solely on economics: wealthy, middle class, and poor. Prior to British
colonization, there was a slave class that was primarily
based on debt slavery.
Along the coast of the peninsula are a number of
coastal Muslim villages, with whom the Rungus trade
agricultural surpluses for fish, brassware, gongs, headcloths, and other items of native weaving. Intervillage
disputes that cannot be resolved are taken to the leaders
of these villages for mediation.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Gender categories include only male and female. Women
wear skirts and sarongs. Men wear loose-fitting trousers,
a shirt, and a headcloth. Women working in the fields will
put on shirts over their sarongs. Women wear their hair
knotted on the back of their head and cut out a small
fringe of forehead hair so that it frames it. Boys and
married men without children wear their hair knotted at
the base of the head. Women wear earrings, brasswire coil
from ankle to knee, coiled arm brass, and a girdle of fine
brasswire interspersed with beads under their sarongs;
some wear coiled brass around the neck. Girls start wearing earrings at an early age, and wearing of coiled brass
represents the girl becoming of marriageable age.
770
Gender over the Life Cycle
Rungus institutions that lead up to marriage and
guide behavior after marriage are informed by the major
value premise: all sexual relations, unless occurring in
marriage, are deleterious for those involved, the rest of the
society, and its cultural ecology. The resulting heat from
illicit intercourse causes illness and death that spreads out
from the offenders to the entire community, infertility of
marriages, desiccation of the countryside, failure of swiddens, and reproductive failure of domestic animals.
Gender in the kinship system is not systematically
marked. Husband and wife are referred to by the same
term. Terms for siblings and children are not gender
differentiated, although a descriptive term indicating
gender can be added. Gender is marked in terms for
mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, and aunt.
Gender is not identified in pronouns, verbs, or verbal
clauses either for the actor or the recipient of action, with
one exception. Verbs indicating the initiation of sexual
activity are used only for males. This mirrors the cultural
imperatives that females publicly do not put themselves
forward in matters of sexual relations, although there are
rare instances when females do in fact initiate sexual
behavior.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
The major caregivers and agents of socialization are the
parents. Grandparents and aunts and uncles in the longhouse can also be involved. Socialization for boys and
girls is different, as their roles are different, but the
processes are the same. Girls and boys are thought to be
equally valuable. Girls will bring in a brideprice, which
adds to family property. Boys require a brideprice which
comes from family property, but they also make major
contributions to the accumulation of property by their
work in the swiddens before marriage.
Boys and girls go naked as they are “not yet aware
enough to be ashamed” until about 3 or 4. Then girls start
wearing a skirt; boys a little older start wearing trousers.
At this time, girls begin to participate in the household
economy. Well before puberty a girl takes responsibility
for household tasks and caring for younger siblings while
her mother accompanies her husband to the fields. Boys
begin to participate in the work of the domestic family,
such as helping in the swiddens and gathering firewood,
771
several years later than girls. At the age of only 11 or
12 years a girl is an accomplished housekeeper and can
be considered a suitable wife. A boy at this age is just
beginning to learn how to help in the swiddens. However,
by his mid-teens he will be fully competent in the swiddens and other male tasks such as house-building, etc.,
and is equal to a girl in his ability to manage a household
economy.
There are water games and much play in the river
involving both sexes while they are still young. Well
before pubescence the sexes segregate in bathing and
water play. In general play tends to be gender oriented,
with boys imitating the work of adult males and girls that
of females. Girls play at being priestesses and spirit mediums at sacrifices; boys build the platforms on which a pig
is to be sacrificed.
Puberty and Adolescence
No rites or genital modifications occur. The Rungus
distinguish children from marriageable girls and boys by
the term for “child.” By about the age of 10, before her
breasts begin to enlarge, a girl starts wearing a sarong
over her skirt. When breast development is apparent, a
girl is referred to as a “maiden,” which indicates that she
is of marriageable age. Menarche does not constitute a
labeled stage in a girl’s development. Marriageable
young men are referred to as “past childhood.” Male and
female children under the age of 9 or 10 years sleep with
their parents in the enclosed family sleeping area of the
longhouse apartment. However, boys beyond this age
must sleep in the gallery, the open area of the longhouse,
while unmarried girls continue to sleep with their parents.
Female visitors also sleep inside the enclosed area of the
apartment.
In an effort to make themselves attractive to the
opposite sex, both males and females will have their
teeth filed and blackened at the age of approximately
12–15 years.
Work groups for weeding swiddens are formed of
boys and girls. These also serve as a means to get
acquainted with each other and engage in flirting. During
this period young men and women will also join together
in the preparations for various ceremonies to cure illness
and promote fecundity in their own and nearby longhouses. Young women prepare the food and bring water;
young men catch the pigs and chickens for sacrifice, and
kill and prepare them for cooking.
772
Rungus Dusun
Attainment of Adulthood
The major social and psychological discontinuity that
occurs is for women at marriage. Previously they were
expected to exhibit uninterest in sexual matters.
Following marriage children are expected and wanted.
Marriage and building a separate longhouse apartment is
the beginning of adulthood, but becoming a parent for the
first time is a major social transition. It is marked for both
males and females. With his first child, a man shaves his
head. A new mother no longer covers her breasts while
working in the longhouse, but keeps her sarong around
her waist to facilitate nursing children and work.
Middle Age and Old Age
During middle years, while the children are in their
adolescence and still working in the household, the
domestic family’s economy improves as a result of larger
agricultural surpluses. Wives who are skilled spirit mediums and priestesses are in demand. The payment for their
services adds significantly to the domestic economy.
Women skilled in weaving the elaborate ritual clothing
also bring in considerable income. Husbands’ counsel in
the community moots is taken more seriously.
After the children have married and left, an older
couple will continue with their own economy. When they
can no longer work in the swiddens, they will join the
household of the youngest child.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
The male initiates relations that lead to marriage or sexual
activities. The female is to exhibit no knowledge of
sexual matters before marriage, no matter what her
private knowledge may be. After marriage she must
continue to be uninterested in sexual matters publicly.
Men are leaders in political affairs, trading, and village
moots. A husband is “heavier” than his wife with regard
to legal matters and the trading of agricultural surpluses.
While a wife will bow to the leadership of her husband in
these matters, during village moots she may sit alongside
him and advise and consent on matters concerning their
family. Women control the knowledge of rituals for health
and fertility. A husband will follow his wife’s advice on
these matters.
Men are considered to be physically stronger and
braver than women. Women are more easily frightened
and not able to run as fast. They are more afraid than men
over rumors of headhunters, which no longer occur, and
of the potentially evil spirits. They will not go to the swiddens alone and are afraid to come back after dark when
there are malignant spirits about. As women grow older
their shyness over sexual matters becomes less evident.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Young girls, maidens, and women tend to move about
outside the longhouse in groups of several females or
with husbands. They are afraid of being propositioned by
men and of the malevolent spirits in the forest. They are
also concerned that if they go by themselves they will be
gossiped about as encouraging sexual attentions or
engaging in illicit sexual relations.
The only formal gender-related social group is the
village moot. Any married man may participate in the
discussion if he wishes. Women in the longhouse work
together on household tasks. Other social institutions are
not structured around gender. The organization of Rungus
society is bilateral with no kin descent groups. A woman
depends on her father, or if he is not alive, on an uncle or
a brother to represent her interests in any jural dispute that
might arise, including disputes with her spouse. That, plus
their dependency on their mothers for support in child
rearing and advice, results in uxorilocal residence, that is,
residence in the hamlet of the wife’s family, particularly
during the early years of marriage. (“Uxorilocal” is appropriate rather than “matrilocal” as there are no matrilineal
kin groupings.) If brothers marry within the village, the
constitution of apartments in a longhouse would include
a married brother or two along with the apartments of their
married sisters. There are no nonkin associations for
males or females.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
While the gender roles are not identical, they are
equivalent. Both behaviorally and ideologically they are
of equal importance for societal functioning. Male and
female roles are thus interlinked, forming a whole. It is
difficult for an adult man or woman to operate a household without a spouse. Husband and wife should “balance
Gender and Religion
773
each other.” The symmetry of roles and their balance is
also symbolized in there being only one kin term to
indicate either a husband or a wife.
Men clear and burn the swiddens, and women help
clear debris before planting. Both men and women plant,
weed, and harvest the swiddens. Threshing is done by
men. Men plant fruit trees, weed them, and tend them to
maturity. Such trees are owned by the family of the
person who initially planted them and are devolved on
their offspring. Many of these trees survive for several
generations. Men care for and raise dogs for hunting and
water buffalo. Women care for pigs and chickens. In hunting and gathering, men hunt large game with spears,
catch fish with traps and nets, and gather honey and
orchard fruits. Women gather snails and shellfish, fish
with scoops for small fish and prawns, fish with fish poles
for larger fish, and collect wild roots, nuts, berries, and
vegetables.
The domestic activities of men include collecting
firewood and making knives, rope, fish traps, and
carrying baskets. Women husk the family’s rice supplies,
prepare and cook food, and carry water. They raise
cotton, dye it, and weave it into clothing. They embroider
elaborate strips of decoration on sarongs. Women also
make rice winnowing trays and a variety of baskets for
general household use. Men market agricultural surpluses
and bargain for brassware and gongs. Women sell the
valuable ceremonial clothes that they weave. A woman as
a spirit medium receives payment for curing illness and
righting ritual imbalance.
Women are in charge of the ritual aspects of birth,
while certain men are skilled as birth facilitators. This
facilitator pushes with his foot against the womb of a
woman in labor each time a contraction occurs.
Inheritance tends to be homoparental; that is, female
ornaments such as beads, brasswire neck adornments,
armlets, leg brass, and female clothing usually go to
daughters, while gongs, jars, and brassware tend to go to
sons. But there are no sanctions requiring this form of
inheritance. If the family has sufficient property in gongs
and jars, they may devolve some on female children.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Both parents perform the role of caregivers. The mother
is the primary caregiver. However, if the father is not
needed in the swiddens, he will help when he wants to be
with the child or the mother is otherwise occupied. The
father takes over much of the caregiving of an older child
when he is abruptly weaned at the birth of a subsequent
child. Both male and female older children, up to the age
of 10 or 12, will help with tending a young child when
the mother is busy or working in the fields.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Men are the sole leaders in any public arena. Married
males constitute the village moot that meets to resolve
disputes, levy fines, or deal with divorce. A moot is called
by the village headman, always a male, and attendance
at such is determined individually on the grounds of
whether the individual’s interests are involved and
whether or not one wants to enter into the dispute.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The health, fecundity, and ritual welfare of family and
village lie in the hands of women, particularly those who
have become spirit mediums and priestesses. All females
are potential priestesses and spirit mediums. However,
only about a quarter become proficient at trance behavior
and memorizing the extensive ritual texts that accompany
sacrifices to cure illness and enhance the ritual status of
the family and village. Illness is explained by the capture
of human souls by members of the spirit world who have
become angered. The spirit medium in trance identifies
those spirits causing illness and lack of fecundity, and she
determines the nature of the sacrifice for them. These ceremonies involve the offering of pigs and chickens to these
spirits to recapture the wandering souls and reestablish
relationships of goodwill with such spirits. The priestess/spirit medium also calls the spirit world to offerings
when the village is not prospering. She performs the
rituals and sacrifices that accompany a marriage to make
sure that the couple are not closely related and that the
marriage will not produce ritual heat.
At the age of about 8–9 years, girls begin going to
the swidden houses with their mothers, grandmothers, or
aunts to learn the elaborate ritual hymns and chants
that are recited at ceremonies for illness and the complex
behavioral restrictions involved. It takes years to become
adept at all the critical ceremonies. This process of
774
Rungus Dusun
learning these ritual texts requires a significant ritual payment to the teaching priestess.
Men perform the major ceremonies and sacrifices in
the swiddens for the rice spirits and for any of the various
spirits causing a poor harvest or an inundation of agricultural pests. However, a few women are also skilled in
these ceremonies. Men also call the spirits associated
with accumulating wealth and give them offerings by
putting blood on the family property.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
What leisure time there is, is spent in playing the nose
flute (primarily women), the native guitar (boys and
men), and gongs (men), and in extensive linguistic games
that include riddling, turning phrases backwards, competitive poetry, etc. There is very little leisure time during
daylight hours, and even in the evening many household
tasks such as husking rice, etc. are carried on with only
the light of a very small oil lamp.
During the harvest there are drinking parties for
those involved. After the harvest there are marriages,
death ceremonies, and other sacrifices to which friends
and relatives are invited and where there is drinking, as
well as dancing and gong playing. During this period
young men go visiting to other villages to look for potential wives and to socialize. The major art forms are
linguistic play, including the telling of myths and legends,
dancing and gonging, and the women’s weaving.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Statuses of men and women are primarily equivalent. This
is illustrated by the Rungus concept of balance between
male and female roles. These roles are balanced in all
spheres of life, with the one exception that men are
expected to initiate sexual and marital relationships. The
high status of the female role is indicated by uxorilocal residence, brideprice, and the prohibition against premarital
sexual relations. More details are given in other sections.
SEXUALITY
Traditionally, the Rungus are very reserved about
talking on sexual matters. Discussion of sexual relations
is considered to be morally sanctioned against. If
men talk about sex or make sexual innuendos in the
presence of females, the women ignore the men and talk
among themselves about something else. Women are considered to be particularly reluctant in sexual matters.
Consequently, information on aspects of coitus is almost
impossible to elicit. Children are not instructed in sexual
matters.
Menstruation among the Rungus is an unmarked
category, both socially and culturally. There is no term
specifically to refer to menstruation. A menstruating
woman is neither polluting nor purifying, neither propitious nor dangerous. Thus there are no taboos, restraints,
or other forms of social separation. Prior to menarche,
girls are not informed about menstruation or how to
handle it. At menarche a girl turns to her mother for an
explanation. A female does not observe any special
method of hygiene, except perhaps to bathe more frequently, and she employs no napkins or tampons. During
the time of heaviest flow a woman chooses less strenuous
tasks which can be performed while sitting on the
longhouse gallery.
There is little evidence of sexual antagonism,
aggression, tension, or conflict between the sexes and
their roles behaviorally, linguistically, or in the projective
systems such as are reported in male-dominated societies.
Similarly, there is no evidence of aggression or antagonism between the sexes in mockery, jokes, overt statements, or the play of children. Boys do not tease girls or
belittle female roles, and girls in their play do not tease
boys or ridicule any of the male roles.
Critical to the understanding of gender relations is
determination of the degree to which the drives of sex and
aggression are intertwined or individuated. Among the
Rungus these drives are highly individuated by the sociocultural system so that they do not overlap. The result is
that the expression of sexual behavior has no aggressive
component and aggression in turn has no sexual content.
Instead, these drives are so individuated that sex and
violence seldom, if ever, are part of the same behavioral
environment. Violence and assault are lacking in
instances of induced intercourse. A Rungus woman either
accedes to or refuses the man’s pressures. Women recognize the superior physical power of men. But if she
refuses advances, it is stated, then the man proceeds no
further. Women do not perceive that their volition in
matters of sexual intercourse is ever taken away from
them by force. If a man touches a woman’s breast or if he
Courtship and Marriage
throws his legs across her legs as they sit beside each
other, these are fineable offenses.
The Rungus men do understand that forced intercourse may occur, although we were unable to collect any
clear-cut jural case material on this. But women deny that
it could ever happen, as they always maintain the right to
refuse any attempts at intercourse. Nor is there any association of aggression in coitus in terms of bodily injury in
cases of fornication, adultery, or marital intercourse.
There is no evidence or discussion of marks rendered
on a partner’s body during passionate intercourse.
Aggression in coitus was never a matter of discussion
among the Rungus, and we have no observational data to
suggest that it occurs. Finally, there is no term for rape in
the Rungus language.
If there are no witnesses to illicit sexual intercourse
but the couple are found out, it is expected that the
woman will claim that she was induced to have coitus,
that she was not actively inviting sexual relations, and this
claim will be accepted.
While females present a reserve and reluctance to
engage in discourse or action involving sexual matters,
females are subject to the startle syndrome (latah) during
which time all sorts of sexual exclamations are uttered.
A young girl tripped and exclaimed, “The testicles of my
grandfather are golden!” When a toad jumped on her
forehead, another married woman shouted her son’s
name, saying “[his] testicles are stuck to my forehead.”
Her son was humiliated, as he was sitting beside her.
While these actions can violate rules against referring to
a person’s genitals, these outbursts are not subject to a
dispute case. If uttered in anger, such language would
involve a fine.
Homosexuality is unknown linguistically or
behaviorally.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Young men go visiting longhouses to become acquainted
with marriageable girls. If they find one they are attracted
to, they will bring small gifts of betel chewing supplies.
The choice of a girl is largely in the hands of the man’s
parents as they will have to make up the brideprice. The
parents of a girl also choose what suitor to accept. If
they do not approve of the suitor or his family, they will
put up objections through demands in increased size of
brideprice.
775
Brideprice is an expression of the cultural value of
the female role. Its size is dependent on the wealth of the
girl’s family, the wealth of the suitor’s family, and the
attributes of the girl. These include her virtue, beauty,
comeliness, and skills in household tasks as well as her
diligence in swidden work. A hard-working wife is
especially desirable, and a significantly higher brideprice
will be asked for a maiden who is learning weaving and
the ritual chants to become a spirit medium. The size of
brideprice also depends on the ability of the young man’s
family to pay it and the qualities of the suitor, for if he is
a hard worker with qualities of character, the brideprice
may be adjusted to fit his family’s wealth.
Brideprice also protects the wife from mistreatment
as none, or only a small part, of it will be returned if a
wife leaves her husband before the birth of children.
Nothing is returned if there are children.
On the day of the wedding, a bride is told for the first
time of the forthcoming wedding, which she is not
supposed to have known about. At that point, young
married women grab her and put her in a special sarong
where she cries over and over again that she does not
want to get married. There is concern that the bride-to-be
might run away into the forest. It is expected that she will
object. If she did not it would indicate a desire to have
sexual relations. At the start of the wedding ceremony the
bride is supposed to cry. This passive resistance is
sustained through every phase of the wedding. If a bride
is not comfortable with her groom, she will refuse sexual
advances. She may refuse to feed him, sleep near him, or
go to the fields with him. If the husband makes advances,
she may hit at him with her arm brass. This can last from
a few days up until several weeks. If it persists, it can
result in divorce. The parents of the bride attempt to give
them space, and encourage them to go to the field house
together alone. The explanations given for this behavior
are that the spouse selected by the bride’s parents is not
acceptable, or that the bride is “ashamed” or “embarrassed” at publicly performing the role of wife, which
implies coitus. She may be afraid of engaging in coitus,
particularly if she is very young. Not all women have
begun to menstruate before marriage. Finally, if she does
not show a certain amount of reticence, it would indicate
that she lacked character and wanted to engage in intercourse. This reluctant bride behavioral pattern only
occurs with a first marriage, not when a woman marries
again after being widowed or divorced. And it may occur
publicly while privately engaging in coitus.
776
There are two levels of wedding ceremonies
depending on the wealth and standing of the parents of
the bride. The most elaborate is called a “dry wedding” at
which the bride and groom are dressed in special ceremonial dress, both having up to five or six attendants. The
groom wears neck brass like a female and a girdle of
coiled brass similar to that worn by a woman. The simpler
form is called a “soft wedding.” There are only one or two
attendants and the couple are dressed in the usual clothes
worn at ceremonies. The most significant aspect of the
actual ceremony is when the couple feed each other
cooked rice. This is symbolic of their contract to care for
each other.
The concept of the man taking the initiative in
marrying has its expression in arguments between
spouses in which a wife will say to make her point, “You
chose me for your wife, I did not choose you!”
Children are highly valued and sought after. One
reason for divorce is the failure to produce children.
Abortifacients from the forest are rumored to be known,
but there is no evidence of abortion ever having taken
place.
A widowed person may remarry after all the
required ceremonies have been held to assure that the
souls of the deceased spouse have arrived in the afterworld. It is expected that a widowed person will marry
the sibling or a first cousin of his or her deceased spouse.
If they marry a nonrelative, a gift of a small piece of
brassware or jar is given to the parents of the deceased.
Love magic is claimed to exist, causing a person to
desire another. It can also be used by a third person against
two other people whom he or she wants to get involved in
an affair. It can result in “love sickness.” The term for this
and the behavior are referred to as “grieving.” This
emotional state is equivalent to that felt by someone who
has lost a parent, spouse, or child. The behavior includes
refusing to eat or drink and sometimes running away into
the forest. It can lead to suicide attempts. Both men and
women can experience this. This state can occur over an
unmarried love object, or over a love object who is
marrying someone else. There are no statements that the
love object could be a spouse of someone else.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship is the most important
relationship emotionally and economically. This is
Rungus Dusun
symbolized in ritual actions required even for the young.
If an unmarried person engages in an act that a widowed
person has to perform, such as facing downstream while
bathing, he or she is cautioned not to do that as it will
cause the person destined to be his or her future partner,
his or her “balance,” to die.
Husbands and wives closely depend on each other
for the household economy and for support and affection.
Sexual jealousy is very prevalent and is a major feature
of the relations between men and women. Both sexes
frequently display emotions of jealousy, and accusations
of infidelity arising from ungrounded suspicions or even
just from the fear of infidelity are common. Brides are
known to exhibit these emotions even during the period
when they are publicly rejecting their husbands and
refusing the role of wife.
A husband and a wife are expected to “care for,” “to
be fond” of one another. They are supposed to take care
of each other, particularly when one is ill or indisposed.
A source of arguments between spouses can be whether
one or the other has fulfilled this aspect of the spousal
role satisfactorily. Fulfilling it is a sign of affection.
If they do not argue, sleep together, have no arguments
over raising children, like to be alone in gardens together,
are excited when they see each other, and laugh and talk
together a lot, they are said to have the same feelings for
each other. As the married couple settle down into a
productive marriage, both economically and in terms of
children, and if the wife is close to her husband, uxorilocal residence of intervillage marriages may change, and
the family may move to the village of the husband, or
they may move back and forth every few years.
There appear to be few ambiguities or conflicts over
definitions of roles. Tensions can arise in intervillage
marriages when the husband wishes to spend more time
visiting his relatives, and he may wish to move to his
natal village. Another conflict between men and women
is over the use of the family’s domestic animals.
Men want to use these to exchange for property to build
up the assets of the family. Women may want to retain
them for sacrifice if there is threat of illness in the family. Again, this conflict is not frequent and is only
episodic. It does not constitute a major source of tension
in defining male–female roles. Males may perform
female tasks, except the ritual ones, and females may
perform male tasks except the cutting of swiddens,
hunting, and those involving the village moot or political
activities.
Bibliography
While the vast majority of marriages are monogamous, a wealthy man may take a second or very occasionally a third wife. Attempts at this frequently results in
the first wife divorcing her husband. Any such polygamous marriages require that a separate household be kept
for each wife. Very poor men may also engage in marrying a second wife, but this is extremely rare.
Physical abuse of a wife is rare. If it occurs, or if a
man wants to have intercourse when a wife does not want
to and persists, the wife will return to her father’s household or to the household of an uncle or brother. To retrieve
his wife, the husband has to pay a fine of a jar or a piece
of brassware to the wife’s relative. If a wife or a husband
becomes angry with his or her spouse and cuts up the
other’s clothing, or cuts in anger at a house post, this is a
ritual delict as it implies that the angry person wants to
frighten away the other’s soul, causing sickness and death.
This delict requires a fine and a sacrifice of a chicken to
alleviate this threat. It is expected that women will want to
refrain from intercourse during their menstrual period, if
they are sick, or after giving birth. However, a husband
will become angry if he is frequently refused by his wife,
and this will be the cause of disputes and divorce. One
informant stated that if a man’s wife no longer wants intercourse, the man just gets up and leaves.
Divorce is relatively easy. Males and females have
equal access to divorce. If there is no fault, the assets
accumulated by the family are divided between husband
and wife. If there is fault, the division of assets includes
compensation for the injured spouse.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
Females rely on male relatives for support and jural
protection.
If the behavior of a spouse suggests interest in a
person of the opposite sex, or if insufficient attention is
given to one’s spouse by not carrying on one’s obligations
to the domestic economy or caring for one’s spouse, this
results in disputes and accusations of sexual infidelity.
Adultery does occur, but it is infrequent. This brings
down the same ritual dangers as any illicit intercourse.
It does not always result in divorce. However, pigs
are required from both offenders for a sacrifice to remove
the “ritual heat.” Large payments of gongs and brassware
are made to the offended spouses by those caught in
adultery.
777
CHANGES IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
When schooling started in the early 1960s and
Christianization followed shortly thereafter, relationships
between the sexes began to change. Boys and girls thrown
together in residential schools without the supervision of
parents developed crushes on each other, and if not reciprocated there have been cases of suicide. As individuals
have moved into positions with the government or gone
to the cities to seek wage work, they are exposed to members of the opposite sex from other ethnic groups, which
have resulted in interethnic marriages. Young men with
jobs will now make up the whole brideprice for a fiancée,
rather than expecting their family to do so as in the past,
or they will make major contributions to it. Girls and
women are more confident and unrestrained in their relations with men. A great deal of intercourse now occurs
prior to or outside marriage. This has also resulted in a
growing number of illegitimate pregnancies. Children of
such relationships are frequently raised by the mother of
the woman, and her daughter then goes back to the towns
and cities to work. Rape has now occurred within the
Rungus community, and women have been subjected to
rape by members of other ethnic groups as they go to
work outside their villages.
Men have taken a larger role in the political arena,
leaving their wives to undertake more work in the swiddens and in the development of plantations of coconut
and rubber. Some women have also taken to traveling
around to other villages and ethnic groups on trading
expeditions which traditionally was only done by men.
Women are now wearing trousers, particularly when
working in the plantations and clearing fields. Little of
the original dress is left, with the exception of beads.
Only the older men now wear headcloths.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Appell, G. N. (1976). The Rungus: Social structure in a cognatic society
and its symbolism. In G. N. Appell (Ed.), The societies of Borneo:
Explorations in the theory of cognatic social structure (Special
Publication 6). Washington, DC: American Anthropological
Association.
Appell, G. N. (1978). The Rungus Dusun. In V. T. King (Ed.), Essays
on Borneo societies (Hull Monograph on South-East Asia 7).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
778
Appell, G. N. (1985). Land tenure and development among the Rungus
of Sabah, Malaysia. In G. N. Appell (Ed.), Modernization and the
emergence of a landless peasantry: Essays on the integration of
peripheries to socioeconomic centers (Studies in Third World
Societies Publication No. 33) (pp. 111–115). Williamsburg, VA:
Studies in Third World Societies.
Appell, G. N. (1991). Individuation of the drives of sex and aggression
in the linguistic and behavioral repertoire of the Rungus. In
V. H. Sutlive, Jr (Ed.), Female and male in Borneo: Contributions
and challenges to gender studies (Borneo Research Council
Monograph Series, Vol. 1) (pp. 59–119). Williamsburg, VA:
Borneo Research Council.
Appell, G. N. (2002). Rungus Dusun. In C. R. Ember, M. Ember, &
I. Skoggard (Eds.), Encyclopedia of world cultures supplement
(pp. 288–291). New York: Macmillan Reference.
Rungus Dusun
Appell, G. N., & Appell, L. W. R. (1993). To converse with the gods:
The Rungus bobolizan—spirit medium and priestess. In
R. Winzeler (Ed.), The seen and the unseen: Shamanism, mediumship and possession in Borneo (Borneo Research Council
Monograph Series Vol. 2) (pp. 3–53). Williamsburg, VA: Borneo
Research Council.
Appell, L. W. R. (1988). Menstruation among the Rungus: An
unmarked category. In T. Buckley & A. Gottlieb (Eds.), Blood
magic: New perspectives in the anthropology of menstruation
(pp. 94–112). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Appell, L. W. R. (1991). Sex role symmetry among the Rungus of
Sabah. In V. H. Sutlive (Ed.), Female and male in Borneo:
Contributions and challenges to gender studies (Borneo Research
Council Monograph Series, Vol. 1). Williamsburg, VA: Borneo
Research Council.
Sakha
Susan A. Crate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Sakha are also known as the Yakut.
LOCATION
The majority of Sakha inhabit the Sakha Republic of
northeastern Siberia, Russia. The climate is sharply continental, with temperature variations exceeding 100⬚C,
from ⫹40⬚C (⫹104⬚F) during the summer to ⫺60⬚C
(⫺76⬚F) in winter. The annual change in day length is
also extreme, with the shortest winter day at 4 hr and 14 min
and the longest day in summer at 19 hr and 45 min.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Sakha are a non-Russian indigenous people of Siberia, at
present numbering approximately 350,000. Sakha are
relatively unknown in the academic and popular literature,
yet they have a fascinating cultural heritage and presently
inhabit one of the most progressive areas of the Russian
Federation (Tichotsky, 2000). However, not unlike other
areas of post-Soviet Russia, the Sakha Republic is fraught
with issues ranging from environmental degradation to
local political subterfuge (mafia), survival adaptation,
and the local challenges of economic transformation and
globalization.
Historically, the Turkic ancestors of the Sakha
migrated east from Central Asia to the Lake Baykal
regions of southern Siberia in the 8th century and
then northward to the present day Sakha Republic in the
13th century. Being keepers of horses and cattle, they were
drawn to the lush hay fields of the northern river regions
of the Lena, Viliui, and Aldan, and lived in extended
family units throughout those pasturelands. The climate
was harsher than their previous southern residence, but
they had ample hay lands in the northern regions and an
abundance of hunting and fishing resources at their
disposal. They kept the indigenous breeds of cattle and
horses, which were hardy to the climate and could live
outdoors year round, finding their own fodder under the
snow. The Sakha practice of horse and cattle husbandry
was their main subsistence strategy in the former southern residency and in the new subarctic home.
During the pre-Soviet time period, the dominant
social structures, which Sakha depended on for their
subsistence, were the single-family household and
extended family–clan. Sakha had a highly stratified class
system with wealthy toions (clan heads) owning most of
the local herds and “employing” the local population in
the husbandry of those herds in exchange for their keep.
Russian efforts to colonize the area began in the mid-17th
century and resulted in a demand for fur tribute, a form
of taxation required of all native inhabitants. This made
Sakha subsistence survival all the more challenging due
to the time required to trap and hunt animals.
The policies of the Soviet era (1917–1991) were, in
many ways, a conscious effort to undermine the Sakhas’
extended family–clan kin systems by consolidating single
family units first into collective enterprises and later into
agro-industrial state farms. Soviet jurisdiction replaced
the authority of kin systems as the guiding social influence
in daily life. Soviet policies also worked to alter the Sakha
practice of animal husbandry, in four main ways.
1. The indigenous breeds were replaced by “improved” highproducing European ones, which required foddering cows in
barns for 9 months of the year and the cutting and storing of hay
for that period.
2. The native populations were resettled into compact villages
which resulted in the continual need to move from village to
outlying areas and back again to maintain subsistence.
3. The native populations were alienated from and grew increasingly uninterested in their historically based subsistence practice
owing to the influx of Soviet agricultural practices, exposure to
mass media, centralized living, and higher education.
4. The health of the native floral, fauna, and human populations
was (and continues to be) threatened by the contamination of
local drinking water, air, forage resources, and soils resulting
from Soviet-period industrialization.
In the post-Soviet context, rural Sakha have adapted
to the dissolution of centralized state farm operations by
779
780
developing household-level food production centering on
raising cows, a lifestyle considered as the key to survival
by the majority of rural agropastoralist Sakha inhabitants.
Concomitantly, the dominant social structures have
shifted back to an emphasis on household and family–clan
networks. This move is most clearly documented by the
contemporary cows-and-kin adaptive strategy wherein
55% of all households keep cows but a total of 90% of all
households are supplied with cow products via cow-kin
interhousehold networks (Crate, 2001). A smooth “return”
to household-level food production is greatly impeded by
several major factors including (1) a higher population
pressure than in pre-Soviet times, placing a higher
demand on limited hay and pasture land and wild food
resources, (2) a different settlement pattern with concentrated village centers as opposed to scattered households,
(3) the effects of globalization, which has acted to cut
off local inhabitants from access to consumer goods, and
(4) the Soviet-period shift in public values from subsistence to a consumer life, resulting in a greater desire for
amenities and comforts.
The existing literature on post-Soviet indigenous
peoples of Siberia shows that most are making claims to
their rights for land, subsistence, and, in some cases,
mineral wealth (Anderson, 1995; Balzer & Vinokurova,
1996; Fondahl, 1998; Grant, 1995; Humphrey, 1998;
Kaiser, 1995; Osherenko, 1995; Wiget & Balalaeva,
1997). Today, Sakha are also making such claims and
experimenting with cooperative and collective alternatives to maintain subsistence survival (Crate, 2001). In
common with other native peoples throughout postsocialist Russia, their novel strategies are often jeopardized by issues of inequality and corruption. Additionally,
Sakhas’ ancestral landscape is rich in resource and mineral wealth—diamonds, gold, gas, and oil. In sum, Sakha,
like other post-Soviet Siberian peoples, daily face unique
challenges which are based in their particular historical,
environmental, and adaptive context.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF GENDER
Historically, gender roles were defined by the Sakhas’
agropastoralist subsistence, raising horses and cattle in
the harsh Siberian climate with average winter temperatures of ⫺50⬚F. Women were confined to work in the
inside environment and were dominant in the care and
Sakha
socialization of children. Their work was varied and
consisted of maintaining the living area, preparing and
preserving food, making and repairing the family
clothing, making containers and utensils of hides, hair,
birch bark, and clay, and tending the herds in the barns
throughout the long 9-month winter. Men were responsible for outside tasks. The list was equally long, and
included the daily gathering of firewood, the procuring of
drinking water, the building and repair of all homestead
structures, hunting and fishing, the harvesting of sufficient
hay to overwinter the herds, the tending to all the daily
outside work for the herds, managing the fences for the
hay fields, and the slaughtering of the herds. In the brief
months of summer, both sexes worked and toiled in the
warmth of the long subarctic days. Men cut the hay while
women raked it into small piles or buguls. Only men
hunted and fished while the women foraged for berries,
roots, and herbs.
As mentioned earlier, Soviet-period changes from
household-level subsistence to state-run agriculture
altered the Sakhas’ historically based gender roles to the
extent that women were employed outside the home as
much as men on the collective and state farms. However,
the women continued to be the major worker in the home,
resulting in a double burden of external work and domestic chores during this period (Buckley, 1989). In postSoviet times women, who are now more likely to be
employed than their male counterparts, continue to carry
this double burden.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Table 1 lists the Sakhas’ cultural names for life stages.
These terms do not differ with gender except for the
first stage of Orto Saas (age 21–45) when both sexes
are considered to be in their most productive years. For
men this is Wolan Saas, signifying when a man has the
most physical energy in the life cycle and is most
productive in his work and creative pursuits. For women
this is Kere Saas, when a woman is most beautiful and
creatively productive. There are no publicly marked
passages from one stage to the next. It is interesting to
note that in the Sakha language the word for “spring” and
“age” are one and the same—“Saas.” This is because
Sakha count the years based on their New Year, which
falls toward the end of May at the very time when nature
begins anew.
Gender over the Life Cycle
781
Table 1. Sakhas’ Cultural Names for Life Stages
Age
Name
English equivalent
Literal translation
0–15 years
0–2 months
3–5 months
6 months to 1 yr
1–3 yr
3–9 yr
9–12 yr
12–15 yr
16–20 yr
16–18
18–20 yr
21–55 yr
21–45 yr
21–45 yr
46–55 yr
56–60 yr
61–65 yr
66–70 yr
71–100⫹ yr
71–80 yr
81–90 yr
91–100 yr
101⫹ yr
Ogho Saas
Uu kihil ogho
Kihil ogho
Nirei ogho
Kyra ogho
Kuochugui ogho
Oburgu ogho
Beder ogho
Eder Saas
Sitii Saas
Tusnetier Saas
Orto Saas
Wolan Saas
Kere Saas
Duolan Saas
Agham Saas
Kyrjar Saas
Kyrjaghas Saas
Kyrjaghas Saas
Mungur Saas
Aap Saas
Ytyk Saas
Uhun Uller Saas
Childhood
Newborn
Infant
Infant
Toddler
Juvenile child
Juvenile
Teenager
Youth
Youth
Youth
Middle age
Middle years
Middle years
Prime years
Aging adult
Aging adult
Elder adult
Old age
Elder
Elder
Elder
Elder
Child age
“Water-red” child
“Red” child
“Calf” child
Small child
Large child
Sizable child
Rambunctious Child
Youth
Ready to marry
Gaining wisdom
Middle age
Strongest years (male)
Beauty years (female)
Solid years
Settling down years
Aging years
More aging years
Old age
Older years
Respected years
Sacred years
Long-living years
Ogho Saas (0–15 years) is considered the best time
of life, when a person is more or less free from a daily
work schedule (although they are given a gradually
increasing number of chores in preparation for the
responsibilities of youth and adulthood) and expected
mostly to play and learn from the world around them.
Eder Saas (16–20 years) is the beginning of becoming a
mature man or woman and, historically, when marriages
were consecrated. In contemporary times, this is the time
when dating and courtship begins. Orto Saas (21–55) is
considered the time when a person is most fully alive and
establishes and builds their own household, has offspring,
and pursues and accomplishes significant life work. From
56 to 70 a person progressively slows and settles down
physically but this is considered the wisest of life periods.
Old age is divided into four progressively older segments,
Mungur Saas, Aap Saas, Ytyk Saas, and Uhun Uller Saas.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Historically, Sakha women were always busy preparing
the household meals and stores, working leather, and
making family clothes and utensils. They never rested
or took time for personal care. Sakha elder women
(grandmothers, great aunts, etc.), who were physically
less able to perform the above duties, were responsible
for rearing the children. Sakha girls were raised to mirror
their mothers and other adult female kin by gradually
learning all the inside domestic chores including the care
of the herds in the barns. Girls were expected to learn and
share these household duties. Sakha boys were raised to
mirror their fathers and adult male kin who, historically,
held the role of household head and were responsible for
all outside activities including hunting, fishing, and hay
harvesting. Until they were old enough to accompany
their elder male role models and learn these skill outdoors, they too were taught by residing elder female kin.
In contemporary context little girls and boys are still
taught to take on their respective gender roles described
above. However, today, with less strict gender roles, more
flexibility in lifestyle, and an expectation that children
will gain a higher education outside the home and village,
the socialization of boys and girls also emphasizes
acquiring literacy, mathematical, and science skills from
an early age to gain a competitive edge for careers outside
the home village.
782
Sakha
Puberty and Adolescence
Historically, it was not uncommon for Sakha to be
betrothed and/or married when they went through
puberty and adolescence, with some marriages as early as
13 years old. Today, as in the West, Sakha are in formal
schooling during these life stages. In the past and today
Sakha have no special designations or rites of passage
associated with reaching puberty.
Attainment of Adulthood
Similarly, Sakha have no special rites of passage indicating a transition into adulthood. Sakha are considered
adults at age 21. The main behavioral change when a
person moves into adulthood is sufficient maturity to run
their own household (fulfilling all duties according to
gender) and raise a family.
Middle Age and Old Age
Sakha hold high respect for elders. This is because the
older a person is, the greater their life experience and the
more they know about how to work, how to perform
subsistence tasks most efficiently, how to use tools, and
how to maintain a prosperous household. In general,
elders are listened to and their opinions are highly
regarded and respected.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Sakha men and women are both socialized to control their
emotions and keep their feelings to themselves even
about their most intimate relations. There are also differences between men and women’s Sang or character,
which are based in the differing domestic gender roles.
Men come and go from the household, fulfilling tasks
related to procuring necessary subsistence resources, and
maintain a business-like working character. Men tend to
be hardened to the extent that they must slaughter domestic stock and wild game. Women run the inside household
and maintain a softer, calmer, mediating character in
order to keep the household running smoothly.
Sakha are also taught to value certain character traits
in the opposite sex, summed up in the Sakha saying,
“Er kihi kharakhynan subuluur, jakhtar tylynan oiunan
subuluur,” literally meaning, “Men like women for their
eyes [according to how attractive they are and how
competent they are in domestic duties] and women like
men for their words and intelligence.”
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Historically, Sakha lived according to patrilineal clan
groups with inheritance (land rights and herds) passed to
male progeny only. Because of this brides had to move
to their husbands’ clan household to have the resources to
maintain a separate household. In her husband’s land,
a new bride was expected to participate in the female
work as much as, and sometimes more than, residing
adult females (see later discussion on “Courtship and
Marriage”).
Policies of the Soviet period worked to break down
this system by appropriating clan holdings, dispersing
clan members to different collective and state farms, and
providing ample housing for developing households
based on the nuclear family. In contemporary times,
couples are mostly free to decide their own fate, moving
to either the bride’s or the groom’s region and household
or establishing their own household there. The tendency
is still to live with either the husband’s or wife’s aging
parent(s) to act as partial caretakers in exchange for their
tending of family herds and caring of young children.
Historically, the central gender-related social group
was the patrilineal clan system. Additionally, in both
Soviet and post-Soviet times there were and are established women’s groups (the local branches of the Zhenski
Komitet, or Women’s Committee, and the Iye Ogho Kiine,
or Mother and Child Center, respectively). Both these
institutions work(ed) to bring local issues of women and
children to the attention of politicians and to provide
opportunities for women to gather and share various
projects.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
As explained in detail above, Sakha gender roles were
historically defined by the prevalent household subsistence economic system, in this case focusing on horse
and cattle husbandry in a subarctic climate. During the
Soviet period, household subsistence was replaced first
by collective-farm and later by state-farm production.
Gender Roles in Economics
783
Table 2. Time-Allocation Observations of Food Production and Resource Management Activities
No. of
observations
Age range
(yr)
7/22–9/25
9/6–11/6,
5/12–5/24
36
27
4–68
17–65
72
0
28
100
21
23
Year round
5/31–7/24
4/10–10/12
14
3
131
7–76
12–35
0.1–84
0
67
49
100
33
51
13
2
21
7/19–9/6
6/11–1/7
11/6–4/10
151
11
6
3–73
25–71
24–72
22
0
0
78
100
100
73
7
3
7/19–6/11
7/19–6/11
9/30–6/11
9/6–5/31
10/6–4/29
9/18–5/18
287
208
26
30
4
24
4–84
4–84
6–78
4–75
37–77
35–78
47
46
58
47
0
51
53
54
42
53
100
49
96
83
22
20
4
19
9/30–5/18
7/28–3/4
5/24–9/25
4/29–8/18
7/22–6/11
13
7
45
26
46
35–78
11–68
2–78
10–73
14–88
53
55
55
54
70
47
45
45
46
30
10
6
18
13
33
8/12–10/19
8/12–6/5
8
11
14–65
28–70
100
82
0
18
6
10
42
64
8
9–68
3–78
28–69
0
40
38
100
60
62
25
49
6
16
22–65
0
100
11
49
13
8–85
14–72
41
0
59
100
39
10
Date rangea
Food production
Berry picking
Hunting (duck and
game)
Fishing
Lake and sylyharb
River fish
Sayylykc
Haying
Main haying
Preparation and hauling
Horse tending
Cow tending
Overall
General
To pasture/milking
Feeding
Watering
Khotond and hay
preparation
Manure management
Pig and chicken tending
Gardening: overall
Greenhouse: overall
Food storage: overall
Food preparation:
Duck cleaning
Fish cleaning
Resource management activity
Firewood
Harvesting
7/24–5/31
In home use
8/6–6/11
House building
7/19–11/12
Own
Other’s
6/5–12/1
Water
Overall
8/1–6/11
Away harvestinge
10/30–4/16
a
Female (%)
Male (%)
This “date range” reflects the period of the time-allocation observations, which started July 19, 1999 and ended June 11, 2000.
Sylyhar or burbot (Lota lota) is a bottom-feeding river fish.
Sayylyk is the Sakhas’ summer home.
d
Khoton is a barn for cows.
e
The Sakha use ice for water from November through spring.
b
c
No. of house
holds
784
This resulted in women working on equal footing with
men in a working-class society while retaining their
former duties in the household. In the contemporary
context, women continue to be the main keepers of
the household herds and to perform the majority of
household duties historically carried out by Sakha
females, in addition to being as, and sometimes more,
important as the household bread winner, working
outside the home for salary. Table 2 is an activity calendar charting contemporary food production and resource
management activities, defining their seasonal range, and
the age and gender of those participating in specific tasks.
It is clear from this general table that certain acts
continue to be gender specific. In general, women tend to
perform the activities that are either inside or close to the
household, and men, the acts that require travel into outlying areas. This food production and resource management data can be further analyzed to understand what, if
any, age ranges the activities are specific to. Children are
involved in many of the same activities as women, and
their contributions start from an early age. Around the
home it is not uncommon to see children helping with
cow care, such as general tending, leading the herd to
water or pasture, and feeding; helping with gardening and
greenhouses; and learning from an early age splitting,
stacking, and carrying firewood. Children are also taken
along to participate in berry foraging, haying, and some
forms of fishing.
I further analyzed the time-allocation data to measure the proportion of male and female adult participation
in given activities. Out of the 587 observations of people
at work at a regular job, half were male adults and half
were female adults. This coincides with the reality that
women hold slightly more than half of the available
regular jobs in the village. I next recoded all reported
activities into two groups, either working in a regular job
or not. Of the observations in which inhabitants were not
working a regular job but were away from the household,
males were gone twice as much as females. This supports
the traditional role of men as being responsible for the
duties away from the household—haying, firewood
harvest, hunting, fishing, and horse care. Next I looked at
the frequency of male versus female involvement in
housework and found that women are doing 70% of the
housework with men performing the rest. This is a break
from the traditional gender roles in which women did
all the housework. Similarly, in contemporary times
males and females equally share all activities involved in
Sakha
keeping the household’s herds, which traditionally were
done only by women. Another sign of the blurring of
traditional gender roles is the proportion of males and
females doing outside work, including raking, shoveling,
firewood management, and water hauling; formerly all
male activities in the contemporary context, women
perform 28% of these acts.
Sakha are known for their craftmanship. Sakha
artistry revolves around utilitarian ends and includes
male-dominated blacksmithing, woodworking, and
jewelry-making, and female-dominated leather-working,
clothing manufacturing, embroidery, and making birchbark utensils.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Sakha, historically and today, maintain a broader understanding of family obligations than in the West to include
near and distant kin networks. Children are considered
central to a meaningful and productive life, and most
marriages are initiated with the objective of producing
offspring. This social value remains true today, although
the number of children a couple has is much less in the
present economic climate. As in the West, children are
expensive in the post-Soviet context now that the social
subsidies and institutions that supported large families in
Soviet times are no larger available. Additionally, a new
emphasis on educating and urbanizing children makes it
difficult to raise more than two or three.
Despite the decline in numbers, the roles of caretaking and being taken care of carry on. Parents provide for
their children, all the while training them to assume
household tasks so that the children can provide for their
parents in their old age. Historically, the eldest child
maintains the central responsibility for parental care and
also plays a role similar to a parent to his or her gender
of siblings, by helping them with their education,
employment and even marrying them off to form their
own household. Eldest males watch, tend, and teach their
younger male siblings, and likewise for eldest females.
The upbringing of children is sometimes shared
between kin, most commonly to balance household numbers when a couple cannot conceive themselves and their
kin have too many children. By sharing children, the
childless couple gain immediate household help from
children and long-term care when those children reach
Gender and Religion
785
adulthood, and the kin household is relieved of several
mouths to feed.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Historically and today, Sakha leadership in public arenas
is dominated by men. This began to change in the Soviet
period when women were valued for working side by side
with men. This held true across all sectors of the political
economy, with incentives given, regardless of gender, for
the highest production by state farm workers to the most
diligent observance of Communist Party protocols. In the
contemporary context, women continue to have a presence in the political arena, but only in the areas associated with family economics, women’s issues, healthcare,
and improving the social infrastructure. In rural areas,
women are the mainstay of the household, because they
are employed more outside the home than their male
counterparts and continue to maintain the household.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Historically, the Sakhas religion is shamanism,
carried over from their Turkic ancestral lineage in
Scythian–Siberian cultures who commonly held a worldview ideology including an ancestor cult, a cult of
animals and birds, with prominence given to horses,
deification of the sun, a fertility cult, a dualistic representation of the eternal fight between good and evil, and
the “tree of life” as symbolic of the continuation of all
living things. They shared a world view that included
beliefs that all beings of the earth and all powers of the
sky were possessed by spirit-protectors and they were to
pray and pay homage to these spirits regularly.
Russian Orthodoxy was introduced by Russian
colonizers starting in the mid-17th century, and many
Sakha “converted.” However, most Sakha registered as
converted to Orthodoxy in order to relieve their household
of fur tribute and not because they truly went through a
religious conversion. Their shamanistic belief system and
world view persisted during this time. Shamanism was
outlawed during the Soviet period and most Sakha turned
away from these ancient beliefs. Many shamans were
persecuted and murdered during Stalin’s purges in the late
1930s. In the post-Soviet context many Sakha are relearning and reinstating this ancestral world view.
According to the contemporary interpretation of the
traditional Sakha belief system, the world has an upper,
a middle, and a lower realm. The upper world, Khallaan,
is home to the aiyy (gods), the pantheon of sky deities.
Khallaan is nine-tiered, with each level a home to one or
more deity protectors. The highest place is held by Urung
Aiyy Toion, the “Great Lord Master,” a male deity
considered to be the creator of all the universe. The
deities below him are various manifestations of his essential power. Of the entire pantheon of deities, those most
highly regarded and recognized in ritual are Urung Aiyy
Toion (the highest and creator of all), the male Juhugey
(the horse deity), and the female Aan Alakhchyn
(the deity of spring and fertility).
The middle world, Orto Doidu, is inhabited by
earthly beings and ichchi, the spirit keepers of nature.
Sakha believe that trees, rocks, words, and all things
animate and inanimate have ichchi. Although there is no
clear hierarchy of ichchi (as in the aiyy pantheon), the
fire, the forest, and the earth ichchi are most highly
regarded and commonly recognized in ritual. They are
both male and female.
The most highly respected middle world spirit is wot
ichchite, the spirit protector of the fire and home hearth.
Wot ichchite is personified as a gray-haired male elder.
Traditionally, Sakha “fed” wot ichchite daily with gifts of
food from the table for his continued protection of the
home. Wot ichchite also serves as the conduit through
which sacrifices in the form of libations, gifts of food,
and trinkets find a passage to the upper world aiyy. The
earth ichchi, Jaajay Baraan Khotun, is personified as an
old woman, an image carried over “from the times when
women held a central role in society” (Ergis, 1974,
p. 117). The spirits of plants in the form of tiny children
assist her by cleaning and dusting the leaves and grasses.
Sakha traditionally made offerings to Jaajay Baraan
Khotun when foraging, haying, and moving to their summer home. During hunting, Sakha pay tribute to Baianai,
the spirit keeper of the taiga forest and all wild animals.
Sakha personify him as a jolly red- or black-haired male
elder wearing a coat of reindeer skin and riding a reindeer
or running through the forest.
The lower world, Allaraa Doidu, is an impassable
swamp where steel trees and plants grow. The inhabitants
of the lower world comprise the tribe of abaahy (evil
spirits or devils), representing the source of all existing
and potential evil. These spirits are both male and female.
Their primary task is to battle with secular inhabitants of
786
the middle world. The enactment of Sakha ritual and
sacrifice to the ichi and aiee serve to maintain protection
from the abaahy. Central to this defense are the daily
rituals of feeding the home hearth and the annual seasonal
ceremonies.
The middle-world human inhabitants responsible
for negotiating between the spirit worlds are the oiuun
(male shaman) and the udaghan (female shaman), both
either born with or indoctrinated into possessing supernatural powers. Oiuuns were either white or black.
Udaghan carry no black or white designation, but instead
are known as healers.
The white shaman’s main role was as a benevolent
priest with powers limited to the realms of goodness and
fertility during the yhyakh (Sakha summer fertility festival). The khara, or black, oiuun, could utilize both the
powers of good and evil and enter the lower and upper
worlds and serve as mediator for humans between these
spirit worlds. Sakha summoned the khara oiuun to
combat illness and bad fate. The oiuun’s travel involved
riding the oiuun’s “spirit horse,” whose rhythmic canter
was personified by the oiuun’s beating of the ritual dungur (shaman drum) along with the oiuun’s spoken and
sung prayers (Alekseev, 1974, p. 162). In the upper
world, the khara oiuun appealed to the benevolent deities.
Reaching the lower world, the oiuun chases the particular abaahy away, and thereby heals the ailing person.
According to the historical record, the khara oiuun
traditionally conducted the annual fall blood sacrifice of
horse or cattle to the abaahy, a ritual event no longer
practiced (Troshanski, 1902, p. 130).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Sakha have always maintained a diverse ability in
recreation and the arts. Historically, they competed
amongst their clan groups in a wide variety of ethnic
games, include khapsagai (Sakha wrestling), mas tardihii
(stick-pulling), kyllyy, ystanga, and kuobakh (three forms
of hopping), and myriad games, including khaamiska, a
game of dexterity with small wooden blocks played
something like jax, and oybonton yylahin, a game of individual balance. These games and competitions were a
means of maintaining individual strength and endurance
during the non-labor-intensive time of year so that they
could perform well during the seasonal labor bottlenecks.
Most of these activities were dominated by men, although
Sakha
women began participating in these sports during the
Soviet period.
Sakha are well known as fine artisans (see the
section as economic activities for more on this). Leisure
was essentially unknown to Sakha (except the elite who
did not have to work daily to make their living) until the
Soviet period, when all who were part of the working
class could obtain vouchers to vacation on the Black Sea
or other Soviet resorts. It should be noted that most inhabitants did not enjoy these leisure activities because vouchers were only dispersed to high-ranking members of the
Communist Party. In the contemporary context, the cost
of travel to such places has skyrocketed and vouchers are
a thing of the past. It still holds true that only the elite
sector can afford the cost and the time away from a daily
subsistence regime to enjoy leisure activities.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Historically, men held higher status than women in both
the public and the private spheres. Men had the final word
in the home regarding major decisions. Women took
charge and made decisions on matters related to maintenance of the internal household and care of the herds. In
both urban and rural contemporary contexts women
dominate on the home front due to their central role in
maintaining the household. In the political arena, men
hold leading roles from the village administration level
all the way up to the parliament.
SEXUALITY
Sakha consider sexuality an integral part of the natural
plan to procreate, which is essential to carrying on the
family lineage, maintaining a household, and raising
children who will be major caretakers when parents reach
old age. Sexuality is not considered something to flaunt
but to share with an intimate partner in a private space.
Modesty is expected in the public sphere.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Pre-Russian Sakha society (prior to the middle of the
17th century) was organized on the basis of patrilineal
kinship structures with the nuclear family and extended
Courtship and Marriage
kin as the base unit. In marriage Sakha observed the
principles of lineal exogamy, not unlike many other
Siberian agropastoralist peoples (Humphrey, 1998). As
the late 19th century explorer Seroshevski noted, “Sakha
always take wives originating from foreign clans and
from as far away as possible” (Seroshevski, 1993).
Traditionally, Sakha consider nine generations as their
blood kin with whom they are forbidden to marry. These
blood ties are considered one’s brothers and sisters,
hence the use of the general terms “brother” and “sister”
across the wide range of these relations. Any relations
beyond the ninth generation are considered non-blood
relations and marriage is allowed. Some archival documents show early Sakha society strictly holding to counting 14 levels out of their blood kin before they could
consider marriage (Sleptsov, 1989, p. 11). However, this
seems impossible considering the low population density
of the society at that time.
Polygamy was commonly accepted in pre-Soviet
times. It was most common among the wealthy.
Approximately a third of all Sakha men had more than
one wife up to the late 19th century. Ides and Brandt,
explorers in the late 17th century, concluded that “Sakha
take as many wives as they can feed” (Ides & Brandt,
1967, p. 288). Notes from the expedition of F. I. Langas
listed the following reasons for taking many wives
(Sleptsov, 1989, p. 12).
1. Sakha marry off their children at an early age, so that when they
grow up they fall out of love with each other and take a second
wife.
2. If they live together for many years and do not have children,
then they take a second and a third wife, for the main goal is to
have children.
3. They can scatter their herds in various homesteads and have
each wife as the caretaker of one homestead.
4. If one wife turns out to be a poor herd keeper, they can replace
her with another wife.
5. Having many wives will improve the chances of having many
children who can work and carry on the herd with their respective mothers.
The main reason for having many wives was the women’s
central role in caring for the herds. Thus the wealthier the
Sakha, the greater his herds and hay land areas, and the
more wives he needed. The 20th century historian,
Basharin, strongly criticized this early form of female
exploitation among Sakha toions (1956, pp. 130–131).
According to folklore materials, the wealthiest toions
had between seven and nine wives. The materials do not
787
detail how such “wife–hoarding” balanced out for the
rest of the male population, that is, if this meant that
six to eight men had no wives. The first wife was the
head female in the household, if they all lived together.
She and her children had the first rights over all other
wives and their children. The number of polygamous
households declined sharply in the late 18th and early
19th centuries due to massive conversion to Christianity
(see the discussion of gender and religion for more on
this).
Sakha had several ways to marry. The most common
was betrothal or promising children from a young age by
the partial paying of a brideprice by the groom’s parents,
commonly in the form of a surekh, a ritual heart-shaped
necklace made of silver or gold. Upon marriage the
remaining brideprice was paid, and the bride’s parents
reciprocated with a more or less equivalent dowry consisting of herds. The wealth of a household determined its
ability to pay brideprice and dowry and thus maintained
the class order. It also served to redistribute wealth.
Marriage was a series of rituals involving betrothal,
matchmaking, courting, and the marriage act. Parents
betrothed their children at an early age. An interested
parent would come and solicit approval to have their child
married to another parent’s child once they reached age
14 or 15. This was called uos khongnoruta, literally “lips
opening,” meaning that the solicited parent finally give
approval of the match. This was verified as the future plan
by the two parents symbolically with ilii tutuhuu, the
shaking of the hands. Once these early decisions were
made, the bride’s parents began preparing the clothes and
adornments. Often the father of the groom-to-be gave
the bride’s family a surekh, an ornately engraved heartshaped necklace to be worn by the bride on the future
wedding day. If no such match is made in early life, a
khodoghoi or matchmaker often performed this work,
going to another region or village and telling potential
spouses about this or that young man or woman who was
available for marriage. Social gatherings were also a
central place for men and women to meet and decide to
wed, most notably during the various large and small
yhyakh, or festivals, which were the main place that
Sakha interacted socially in those times.
Once the uruu or wedding was set, both sides
prepared for the ceremony. The groom’s side prepared the
suluu or brideprice which ranged anywhere from one to
nine head of cattle, depending on the family’s wealth. The
bride’s side prepared kyys ennyete or a dowry to be sent
788
with the girl to her husband’s home. On the wedding day
the two families (including extended kin relations and
any matchmakers who were involved in the match) met
by fulfilling kuon korsuhuu, various competitions of
strength and dexterity between the two clans including an
initial horse race by the two fathers. All next took part in
buhurem, the wedding feast. After this, all proceeded to
the male’s home. The bride was not to look back or it was
believed that she would never be happy in her new home
with her new husband and clan group.
Another common tradition which facilitated the
strict rules of lineal exogamy was Agasin Ungyogun
Tunnerii, literally “Return to the Sister’s Bones.” This
involved a husband giving his sister to marry the brother
of his wife. A younger brother would also marry his older
brother’s widow in the event of the latter’s death.
Similarly, a man would marry the younger sister(s) of his
wife if she was infertile (Sleptsov, 1989, p. 15).
Policies of the Soviet period worked against kin
groupings by forming work brigades and collectives
based on the nuclear family. This disrupted these matchmaking, courtship, and marriage rituals, which were
essentially replaced with more conventional ones. Youth
courted by attending dances, movies, and other social
events. The decision of when to marry and to whom
was no longer made by parents in children’s early lives
but taken later by the parents and the young people
themselves.
In contemporary times the institution of marriage is
still considered a stronghold of the Sakha family and
cultural life. For example, Sakha continue to refer to an
age-old word pairing yal-kuus, literally “family strength,”
meaning that a person does not realize their full strength
until they marry. A man is only a half and a woman is
only a half. A whole is realized through the marriage of a
man and a woman. However, the past 10 years have been
a period of rapid change for rural Sakha households,
resulting in a 5% drop in village populations due to
migration to urban areas for employment and both a
decline in marriages and a rise in divorces, all correlated
with the increasingly downward-spiraling economy and
the overall rise in alcoholism, unemployment, and crime.
As a result, it is not uncommon to find that 15% of households in rural Sakha villages are headed by a single
mother with one or more children. Most of these households rely on extended kin in their village to help with
the more male-dominated household chores including
harvesting and hauling firewood, ice, and hay, building
Sakha
and renovating household structures, and supplying
hunting and fishing resources.
In response to these trends, the Sakha government
began a program called “The Development of Family
Economics in the Villages.” This policy effort is mainly a
way of finding ways to fill the void left after the dissolution of Soviet era social service programs. The central idea
is to reinforce the institution of the family and reorient
inhabitants away from dependence on government assistance and towards household-level self-sufficiency in all
arenas. The programs have had varying levels of success
on the local level, depending on local leadership and the
initiative of individual households. One of the tangential
projects is the revival of a former Sakha matchmaking
ritual where available spouses visit adjacent villages for a
social gathering of single adults and play various games to
encourage pairing and eventual wedlock.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Sakha marriages, despite the strong emphasis on their
utilitarian and functional value, are based first and foremost on love between a man and woman. Even in the time
of betrothal both the bride and groom were given the
option to decline the prearranged match if they so
desired. If a husband and wife love each other, they treat
each other well. In the past and today, Sakha husbands
and wives eat, sleep, and consult about important issues
together, although the male has the final word. Similarly,
in the past and today, both parties can decide that
they want to divorce. In the past when Sakha men had
many wives, this was less common. A wife who was
unhappy had no place to go and so usually remained with
her husband so that she and her children would be
supported. Today children tend to stay with their mother
and fathers are expected to pay alimony.
Some Sakha have extramarital affairs and can decide
between themselves whether to separate or forgive. In
contemporary times many (mostly males) argue for
procreation with multiple women because the Sakha
population has been decreasing the last decade and their
efforts would help offset this decline. Historically, children out of wedlock were referred to as oruk oghoto,
referring to the thick branches of the evergreen trees
under which the child was conceived. There are also
many Sakha women today who desire children but not a
husband, owing to the high levels of alcoholism and
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789
unemployment among the male sector of the population.
This is attractive because single mothers can receive
subsidies sufficient to support their children.
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Samburu
Bilinda Straight and Jon Holtzman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Samburu are also known as the Loikop and the
Loiborkineji.
LOCATION
The Samburu are located in northern Kenya (East Africa).
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
The Samburu are pastoralists living in semi-arid lands in
north central Kenya. They subsist mainly on their herds
of cattle, goats, sheep, and occasionally camels. For the
Samburu, livestock are more than a form of wealth and a
source of subsistence. Livestock constitute the cement of
social relations, and a focal point of ritual acts and meanings. In recent decades a variety of factors have greatly
reduced the vitality of the livestock economy, forcing
most Samburu to supplement their subsistence with wage
labor, commercial livestock trading, brewing, and, in
higher-rainfall areas, farming. Nevertheless, almost all
Samburu continue to have livestock, and life remains
oriented around the herds.
Currently there are approximately 150,000 Samburu.
Most live in Samburu District in north central Kenya,
with smaller numbers in neighboring Laikipia, Isiolo, and
Marsabit Districts. Their lands remain somewhat remote
from the more developed agricultural highlands of central
Kenya, which lie to the south. To reach the boundaries of
the district it is several miles on rough, dirty roads once one
has left the pavement, and many parts of the district are
not accessible to vehicles at all. Samburu are Maa speakers, and their dialect is mutually intelligible with that of
the closely related Maasai. However, only small groups
of Maasai still neighbor them, since the Maasai were
pushed south by the British colonial government in
the early 20th century. The Samburu lands are mostly
quite dry, but with considerable variation due primarily to
altitude. The lowlands are predominantly semidesert and
acacia scrub, while the highland areas of the Leroghi
Plateau are open grasslands, going into forest at the
highest elevations.
Samburu political organization is fundamentally
based on their age-set system. Young men are initiated
around the age of 15–18, and stay as unmarried bachelor
warriors (lmurran) for approximately 14 years. Men move
as age sets through the various life stages, and age and
gender together form the central basis for individual and
group identity. Samburu are divided into eight patrilineal,
usually exogomous, sections, each of which is divided
into clans and subclans. These sections are loosely territorial, and much of ritual life is organized on a sectional
basis. Samburu settlements (nkang) usually contain
between 1 and 4 (often polygynous) families, and are
enclosed by thorn fences, with each family having their
own separate gate. While men are the “owners” of the
settlement, women own the houses (nkajijik) that constitute it. Each woman has her own house, which includes
the physical structure, her children, and livestock.
Samburu are bordered to the west by the pastoral
Turkana and Pokot, and to the north and east by the
Rendille, Boran, and Somali. The areas to the south are
ranch areas, leased to white settlers in the early 20th century. Some of these ranches remain, but other groups—
Kikuyu from central Kenya, Tugen, and Pokot, as well as
Samburu—have started to occupy these areas in recent
years. Cattle raiding continues today, and puts Samburu
into violent conflict with many of their neighbors.
However, intermarriage is common even with their bitterest rivals, the pastoral Turkana. In drier areas, Samburu
sometimes cooperate closely with Rendille camel
pastoralists.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Samburu recognize two distinct genders, male and
female. The treatment of infants differs little by gender,
but by the age of 4 or 5 girls’ genital areas are usually
790
Gender over the Life Cycle
covered, while in boys this may come considerably later.
Similarly, older girls and women are very careful not to
expose themselves—men cover their genitals, but can be
lax in the care that they take to do so. With the spread of
Christianity, breasts are also increasingly hidden.
Girls begin to wear an increasing number of beads
(mostly red) around their necks as they approach the age
when they will dance with lmurran. Older girls and young
married women wear an enormous number of beads
strung on wire like a round collar. Lmurran also wear a lot
of beaded ornaments, which differ stylistically from those
of girls and women. Lmurran are the only age-gender category to wear long hair, braiding it into small pigtails that
they cover in red ochre. All others shave their hair short.
Upon marriage, young men shave their heads and
exchange their ostentatious ornaments for a few strands
of beads and a couple of bracelets. Their appearance, like
their behavior, should become temperate. Young married
women on the other hand, continue to wear enormous
quantities of beads, only gradually reducing the number
as their children grow. Women whose sons and daughters
are initiated should wear far fewer beads so as not to
compete with young people or imply that they are
sexually accessible to young men of their son’s age set.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Because Samburu gender is strongly differentiated by
age, it is more accurate to speak of age–gender
categories, rather than gender or age categories. A boy of
any age is layieni—a girl is an ntito, but as she gets older
can be referred to as the more respectful koliontoy. Once
she is initiated and married, a young woman is ntomononi
until she passes menopause, at which time she becomes
an ntasat. A boy is a layieni until initiated as an lmurrani.
At marriage he becomes an lpayiani, a status he will keep
throughout his life. As they move from one status to the
next, both men and women acquire increasing rights as
well as responsibilities. The greatest change in this regard
is marriage. Women’s responsibilities increase tremendously at marriage, but their status increases significantly
once their children become initiated.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
There are few differences in the ways boys and girls are
treated as infants. As they grow, however, boys are
791
encouraged to become tough and aggressive, while
nurturance is encouraged in girls. As Samburu children
are the main herders, much of their early socialization
centers on learning this task. Very young children are
taught to wield a herding stick, and even toddlers can help
put baby goats into their pens. By the age of 6 they can
assist with herding small stock. Boys and girls both
engage in similar herding tasks until puberty. Herding
affords considerable leisure time, and children often play
while the animals in their care graze nearby. The play of
boys and girls becomes sharply differentiated by the time
they are old enough to herd, though some mixed play
continues. Boys enjoy chasing and killing small animals,
while girls often make play houses with nearby stones.
Today, more and more children attend school. While
in the past children who were educated were often those
considered too stupid to be good herders, this is less
the case today. Boys are more likely to be educated, since
the benefits of education will remain with the birth
family, rather than going to a girl’s husband at marriage.
Puberty and Adolescence
The lives of girls and boys diverge dramatically when they
reach puberty, largely because the age-set system delays
male marriage. A new age set is initiated approximately
every 14 years, at which time a new cohort of lmurran
emerges, and the previous cohorts become married elders.
“Boys” sometimes may have to wait until well into their
twenties to become lmurran. Subsequently, because
lmurran-hood is a lengthy period, men are typically in
their thirties when they marry, while girls typically marry
in their mid-teens.
Unmarried girls are girlfriends to lmurran, sometimes
by the age of 10. It is a carefree time for them, and they are
able to combine herding with time spent with boyfriends
and other girls (Spencer, 1965). While lmurran are responsible for long-distance herding and martial activities, they
also have a lot of leisure time to spend eating meat together
in the “bush” or singing and dancing with their girlfriends.
Attainment of Adulthood
Samburu initiate both boys and girls through genital
surgery. These literal cuts are also conceptualized
metaphorically by Samburu within an idiom of cutting to
divide and create categories. Clitoridectomy, usually
performed at marriage, separates females from girlhood.
792
Samburu
This surgery gives a girl full adult status, and it is
expected that she should now be both nurturing and
industrious, caring for her house and family. Initiation
provides a young woman the license to bear children, as
it is considered extremely unpropitious for uninitiated
girls to have children. For a male, circumcision is a cut
that separates him from boys while uniting him with his
fellows. Yet it is not a cut that accords him full adult
status. Lmurran are not allowed to marry, and they are
subjected to harangues from their elders, enumerating
their misdeeds and pushing them to attain the proper
forms of respect (Spencer, 1965). However, it is expected
that only upon marriage will a man abandon the
hotheaded impulsiveness of an lmurran and exhibit the
cool, temperate behavior of a true elder.
menstruation or early pregnancy, women can sometimes
have “hot blood.”
Married men are not hot-tempered. They cultivate
the calm cool respect (nkanyit) which is the most fundamental Samburu value, and should put the needs of others
(their families in particular) above their own. Women can
also develop nkanyit, but more readily display anger and
are considered less likely to behave altruistically outside
of their family. Women attempt to show attentiveness to
the livestock and children in their care and generosity
toward those who request food from them. Young women
tend to be more demure, becoming more assertive as they
get older. These are of course ideals, and there is a broad
range of personalities and temperaments between ideal
and unacceptable extremes.
Middle Age and Old Age
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Samburu men enter middle age at marriage. Through
marriage men become elders (lpayian) and gain increasing control of their own livestock. Men attain additional
respect when their cohort becomes responsible for initiating a new age set and, later, when their own sons are
initiated. Similarly, women’s status increases when sons
are initiated, and their daughters married. Typically, life
also becomes easier by this time, since there are enough
children to assist with herding and household tasks.
Both men and women are increasingly venerated as
they grow old. Nonetheless, old people increasingly withdraw from the management of the community and their
families. Often men disperse their herds to their sons long
before death, leaving their children fully responsible for
their care. The quality of care varies from family to family. Should the care become too lax however, grandmothers and grandfathers might remind their family of their
power to curse them.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Already in boyhood, males cultivate hot-bloodedness and
exhibit their prowess for killing. By the time they become
lmurran, their hot tempers are fully developed. Girls, in
contrast, are charged with cherishing life. By the time
they are married, they will have fully developed their
capacity for creating and sustaining life. However, during
Samburu social groups are highly segregated by gender.
Although small children play together in mixed groups,
gender segregation increases as they move toward
puberty. Samburu coalesce in predominantly single-sex
groups and are reluctant to mix with members of other
age–gender categories. In some cases there are formal
patterns of avoidance. Older girls should not mix with
elders, and may literally shake with fear in their company.
Lmurran have formal prescriptions (lminong) against
eating food that has been seen by women—they should
eat in the bush, and avoid domestic life. However, uncircumcized girls may mix with lmurran, though they
remain separate much of the time.
The age-set system is structured around males, and
organized through patrilineal sections. There are no
corresponding social institutions for women. Samburu
society is largely patrilineal and patrilocal. Brides move
to their husband’s home at marriage, and belong to their
husband’s patrilineal descent group. However, women do
not completely relinquish their ties to their natal homes at
marriage. A woman’s children may seek support from
their mother’s natal kin, and a woman herself will visit
her natal family as often as she can. If her husband
mistreats her severely, her natal family (particularly
brothers) will often come to her rescue.
Patrilineality and patrilocality are not absolute. In a
polygynous household sons sometimes derive their
family name from the name of their mother, rather than
their father. Similarly, with regard to locality, widows
Leadership in Public Arenas
often reside with their brothers rather than their
husband’s kin, and poor married men sometimes live with
their wife’s family.
GENDER ROLES
IN
793
However, since women are responsible for food
provisioning, it is expected that they will direct it to their
children’s needs, while men may be more likely to spend
some of it on themselves (Straight, 1997).
ECONOMICS
Samburu men and women have distinct and interdependent economic roles. Women’s roles are centered on the
home, while men’s work centers on the herds. Some
overlap is possible however. Men and women may both
do some herding—a task which optimally falls upon
children. Men may also perform female tasks—such as
cooking or gathering firewood—should circumstances
dictate on rare occasions.
Women are responsible for building their houses,
collecting water and firewood, milking, and cooking
(Spencer, 1965; Straight, 1997; Talle, 1988). Women’s
tasks are mostly performed around the settlement; they
usually travel for an hour at most to collect water or firewood. Men are responsible for managing the livestock.
They usually make decisions about selling or slaughtering livestock, although ideally in consultation with their
wives and older sons. Men should manage the herds
fairly, and in the interests of all family members. Of
course, this ideal is not always fully adhered to, though a
man risks public condemnation if he misuses family
resources. Men are also responsible for long-distance
herding. Although older boys and lmurran do most longdistance herding, married men also check on the wellbeing of the animals. Men perform the strenuous task of
digging wells for watering animals and are also responsible for fencing the settlement with thorn branches.
Today, both men and women have begun to engage
in new economic activities. Where farming has been
adopted, men and women both participate. Migratory
wage labor has become common among younger men,
usually as watchmen in Nairobi. Money is controlled
more by men, since the largest sources of cash—wage
labor and livestock marketing—are predominantly under
their purview. However, woman also have important
sources of cash, such as brewing alcoholic beverages that
they sell predominantly to men—including their own
husbands (Holtzman, 1996, 2001). Most money from
brewing is used to buy food, though women may also buy
items like beads or cloths. Money—whether held by the
man or the woman—is their property to spend as they see
fit, though ideally in consultation with one another.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Mothers, grandmothers, and older children do most of the
childcare. Men, though, are often affectionate to small
children and seek to convey wisdom, especially to their
sons. Grandfathers may also play a role, though delayed
marriage means that men typically die while their grandchildren are still being born. As children grow, the division of child rearing labor becomes more distinct. Since
fathers strictly avoid their daughters as they approach
puberty, any advice they give them is from a respectful
distance. Thus mothers take primary charge of disciplining and inculcating the necessary skills in their daughters
while, in contrast, men and women may both maintain
close relationships with their sons.
Sons care for their aging parents. The first-born son
is responsible for his father’s care, while a mother’s lastborn son is responsible for her. These roles extend to the
deathbed. The first-born son must hear his father’s last
words, while the last-born son hears his mother’s. Since
daughters often move far away to their husband’s homes,
they cannot provide much care for their elderly parents,
though they are often called to visit them as they near
death.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Traditional public leadership is the purview of men.
Elders (usually from the same locality or patrilineal
descent group) hold meetings under a large shade tree,
adjudicating disputes, discussing community matters,
and hearing appeals from community members. There are
few positions of formal leadership in Samburu society,
and meetings are ideally egalitarian, with all elders
having an equal say. However, Samburu recognize that
wealthy elders and good speakers have a more equal say
than others. Within the age set there are positions of
formal leadership. Most notably, a ritual leader (launoni)
is appointed in each patrilineal section. He is given
794
Samburu
substantial wealth, and has considerable influence over
his fellow lmurran. His role diminishes significantly,
however, as they move into elderhood. Indeed, Samburu
believe that their ritual roles diminish the soundness of
launoni’s minds, and that most end up in poverty.
Elders continue to meet to decide local matters,
though national laws and institutions have limited
their power. However, these developments have also
opened up greater opportunities for women’s leadership.
While traditionally women exercised political influence
only indirectly (e.g., through their husbands), some
women—particularly Christian converts—have begun to
assume leadership roles in churches and development
organizations.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The Samburu “God” (Nkai) is associated with all of the
forces of the world, especially the procreative. The word
is itself feminine, as are many (though not all) of Nkai’s
metaphorical associations. A few people claim to have been
taken to Nkai’s home, and in these cases Nkai is described
as a family with men, women, and children. Men and
women both participate significantly in religious life. Men
and women have interdependent roles in major ceremonies, with women singing prayers and praises, while
men perform most blessings. Both men and women pray
to Nkai daily, asking for protection, human and animal
fertility, and the rain and grass necessary for survival.
In the event of misfortune Samburu may contact
religious specialists (loibonok) who regularly divine
Nkai’s intentions and desires, or wise men and women
(laen’geni) who can make suggestions based on their
deep historical knowledge. Loibonok are men, but Nkai
may choose to communicate with members of any
age–gender category. Some women in particular have
gained a widespread reputation for communicating with
Nkai (Straight, 1997).
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Typically, members of all age–gender categories have a
fair amount of leisure. The more a family is able to subsist
on their livestock, the more gender-balanced leisure tends
to be. Children have the least pure leisure time; herding
and play are often completely intermingled.
Men and women often engage in leisure activities in
same-gender social groups. Women like to engage in
handicrafts together, while men enjoy games of ntotoi
(a variety of the mbao game common in Eastern Africa),
talking, or (since their recent introduction) drinking
locally brewed alcoholic beverages. The gender segregation found in leisure activities is largely voluntary but also
has ritual implications in some areas. For example, women
are barred from playing ntotoi because it is said that men
cursed the game for women. Samburu leisure activities are
often art forms and recreation simultaneously. Singing and
dancing by male and females of all ages accompanies
many rituals, but can also be purely recreational. Women
may also sing while milking their cows, praising and
encouraging the cow as it is being milked.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
On the surface, the Samburu are highly patriarchal.
Central cultural institutions such as marriage are
regulated by men. Men are socially sanctioned to beat
their wives if there is “just” cause, and as long as the
beatings are not too severe. Men also have the last word
on the disposition of the family herds, sometimes
overstepping ideal restrictions on their use.
On the other hand, men are highly dependent on
women for their domestic well-being (Holtzman, 2002).
Women feed men and provide men with children through
their sexuality, which they control to a great extent. It is
not uncommon to encounter very thin men whose wives
have been withholding food partially or utterly from
them. A husband’s recourses are limited, since men who
complain risk being perceived as putting their own
stomachs above the needs of their family. Similarly,
women frequently engage in surreptitious extramarital
affairs, giving birth to children not sired by their
husbands. These children will be raised in the settlement,
except in rare cases, directly affecting men’s happiness,
prestige, and well-being.
There are a number of ways in which women oppose
wrongdoing, or undermine their husband’s authority.
When a couple live with the wife’s family, her brothers
will typically prevent all beatings, and even restrict the
husband from talking to her harshly. Women also
frequently run away from their husbands when they feel
they are treated unjustly. Usually a man must travel to his
wife’s parents’ home and negotiate for her return, which
Courtship and Marriage
can be embarrassing, particularly since the parents or
other relatives will usually support their daughter and
may repeatedly refuse to return her. The wife will fully
air her grievances, the husband must agree to curb his
behavior and sometimes pay a fine. Since a man’s
reputation depends largely on his ability to successfully
manage his family, his power can be significantly limited
by the consequences he will feel among his peers.
As they age, the deference accorded to men and
women increases, and their relative statuses become more
equal. All old people have considerable power to curse
those younger than themselves. Women’s curses are
particularly feared because they bear such stark contrast
to their nurturing role. Neither old men nor old women do
much work, but are cared for by their children. The fact
that women control food distribution can sometimes
mean that old men are in more danger of malnutrition
than old women.
SEXUALITY
The Samburu are sexually permissive toward young people. It is expected that girls and lmurran will be sexually
active, and a mother will sometimes formally sanction a
relationship between her daughter and an lmurran, who
will give the girl a large gift of beads (Spencer, 1965;
Straight, 2002). Lmurran and their beaded girlfriends are
from the same exogomous clan, and thus cannot later
marry. Lmurran and girls avoid pregnancy through the
withdrawal method, as it is considered an abomination
for an uninitiated girl to give birth. However, should a girl
become pregnant, the women in her family will usually
assist her in aborting, or else initiate her quickly. These
days it is a common precaution to initiate girls early if
they are attending boarding school.
Samburu view sex after marriage as oriented
predominantly toward procreation. Sex is considered
pleasurable for both partners, but it is considered a strenuous job for men (who are “bulls”) but little work for
women. These attitudes begin in the relationships
between lmurran and their girlfriends—girls sing mocking songs about other’s boyfriends, saying they are too
unhealthy and weak to perform long enough or with
enough strength. Married women also complain to one
another about sexually inadequate husbands, and this is a
common rationale for engaging in extramarital affairs.
While Samburu elders individually abhor their own
795
wives’ affairs, collectively they accept female infidelity
as a fact of life (and they themselves engage in affairs).
To a great extent Samburu elders encourage turning a
blind eye in order to mitigate the violence and conflict
that can result from discovered affairs (Holtzman, 1996).
Samburu overwhelmingly deny that homosexuality
exists. Cross-gender behavior—including cross-sex
dressing—occurs rarely, and is reluctantly tolerated.
Usually these individuals assume their culturally appropriate role before reaching adulthood, though even when
they do not, they are to some extent accepted in the
gender of their choice.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Samburu practice arranged marriage. Men identify a
suitable partner, and make many trips to the girl’s family
to get permission, to negotiate the bridewealth payment
(approximately eight cattle) and other gifts he will offer
the family. If it is their first marriage, men must get permission from their fathers, but unlike girls—who must
simply accept their family’s choice—they choose their
own wives. Physical attractiveness plays a role in men’s
choices, but Samburu emphasize selecting a girl from a
respected family whose mother has shown herself to be
a good wife. Girls whose mothers are reputed to be lazy
or unpleasant often have difficulty marrying.
Marriage is the beginning of a relationship between
two families, as well as between two individuals. Many
family members share in bridewealth, at least indirectly.
The dual-family relationship forged through the marriage
is also indicated by the fact that a group of elders from
both families bless the couple before they proceed to the
husband’s home. Likewise, any children born to the
couple will belong to and inherit from the husband’s
lineage, not just from their father.
Following the bride’s initiation, the marriage ox
(rikoret) is slaughtered, officially enacting the marriage.
A day of celebration and blessing ensues, and neighbors
come from miles around to partake in the singing and
dancing, and to drink tea. Men and women eat the meat
that is specifically designated for their age and gender,
and men receive tobacco as part of the blessings. At night
elders keep the bride and groom up late, admonishing
them and giving advice. The following morning, the
couple receives more blessings as they proceed by foot to
the husband’s home.
796
Some time after a man’s first marriage he is
promoted to full elderhood, while wives are promoted to
the status of fully married women. In the case of the
woman a new totally clean house (nkaji naibor) is built
in the middle of the cattle pen. In the evening men kindle
her first fire using a wooden base with a depression
(ntoome—a feminine noun) and a kindling stick (lpiroi—
a masculine noun). The wife then is responsible for
nurturing and maintaining this fire. The fire is seen as a
joining of male and female in an act like procreation.
Conversely, if it is his first marriage the man must make
the transition from being an lmurran, who should eat in
the bush, to an elder who can be fed by his wife. This
ceremony, in which he is fed milk and meat by his wife,
is often held together with the nkaji naibor ceremony.
There are occasional exceptions to this pattern of
arranged marriage. In the past men occasionally practiced
marriage by force (kunon) in which they would secretly
bring their own marriage ox and slaughter it before the
rightful groom could do so. Men are still known to abduct
girls, and girls may occasionally acquiesce or act as
accomplices. The groom will usually pay bridewealth
later. If a girl becomes pregnant more than once, women
in the girl’s natal family may conspire to marry her off.
These are also spoken of in the idiom of abduction, since
the father must be (or pretend to be) oblivious to such
arrangements.
It is expected that all Samburu will marry, though
exceptions occur. Girls whose mothers are poorly
regarded, or girls from unpropitious families may have
difficulty marrying. If they remain too long without
marrying, they may be initiated anyway, and even
allowed to have children. Very poor men, or men with
physical or mental handicaps, may have difficulty getting
married, but usually will eventually. Since Samburu men
may marry many wives, widowers typically remarry.
Widows may not remarry, and they have no incentive to
do so. Widows enjoy greater sovereignty, taking lovers of
their choosing while continuing to bear children in their
husband’s name.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Besides being a union of two families, marriage is also a
union of a husband and a wife. Their shaved hair is mixed
during the marriage ceremony, and once married they
share the fortunes of their children and livestock, working
Samburu
together to safeguard the interests of each other and the
family. However, this does not mean that marriage is
characterized by love and affection. Men are usually
anywhere from 10 to 50 years older than their wives, and
a level of respect is expected to exist between them.
Genuine affection may exist, but husbands in particular
are forbidden to display it, lest men take it as a sign of
weakness. When a man comes home from a journey he is
not even supposed to greet his wife. Men who seem to
have excessive love for their wives may explain it away
as a result of bewitchment.
In practice there is a lot of variation from the ideal
of peaceable wedded interdependence. While some wives
dutifully care for their husbands, there are some who
withhold food, who are lax in other responsibilities, or
who generally behave disagreeably. Likewise, there are
husbands who sell animals without regard for the needs
of wives and children, who beat their wives often, and
start needless quarrels. Sometimes in polygynous households a husband may show preferential treatment, selling
or slaughtering one wife’s animals more frequently,
disproportionately allocating resources, or failing to sleep
regularly with all his wives. Women have a right to their
husband’s sexuality, so a man who is neglectful may
subject himself to external criticism. For their part,
cowives often get along well, but (real or perceived)
favoritism leads to jealousy and quarrels.
Separation is common, though divorce is rare.
Before children are born, a woman’s family may return
the bridewealth and negotiate another marriage for her.
However, a woman’s position becomes difficult once she
has children, since they will remain with her husband.
Likewise, it is difficult for a man to divorce. He may
chase his wife away to her natal family, but when the
community perceives that he has acted unjustly, they may
force him either to accept his wife back or to release all
of her livestock and children. Commonly, women who
believe their husbands treat them badly may run away
(kitala). This is a powerful tool for woman, as it will be
incumbent on her husband to locate and negotiate with
her relatives to return her.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The brother–sister bond tends to be close, though its character varies according to the age gap between siblings.
Brothers and sisters who are close in age interact freely,
References
but when there is a larger age gap, the relationship is
characterized by greater respect. For a Samburu man to
swear on his eldest sister is one of the strongest oaths he
can make. In adulthood brothers and sisters will continue
to visit one another when possible. It is expected that the
brother will offer his sisters assistance, while a sister must
always feed her brother whenever he visits.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Christian missionaries discouraged many Samburu
practices such as female genital surgery, polygyny, and
arranged marriage. This has had a major impact on
gender roles of devoted Christians and educated
Samburu, though these remain a fairly small minority.
Development projects have also been directed disproportionately toward Samburu women, which has encouraged
westernized notions about how Samburu women should
behave today. Gender roles have undergone important
transformations as a result of economic changes brought
by the declines in their herds. For men, migratory wage
labor has increasingly become a part of their normal
797
gender role, while the cash for daily sustenance is often
generated through women’s brewing or other small-scale
business activities.
REFERENCES
Holtzman, J. (1996). The transformation of Samburu domestic economy.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.
Holtzman, J. (2001). The food of elders, the “ration” of women:
Brewing, gender, and domestic processes among the Samburu of
northern Kenya. American Anthropologist, 103(4), 1041–1058.
Holtzman, J. (2002). Politics and gastropolitics: Gender and the power
of food in two African pastoralist societies. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, 8(2), 259–278.
Spencer, P. (1965). Samburu: A study of gerontocracy in a nomadic
tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Straight, B. (1997). Altered landscapes, shifting strategies: The politics
of location in the constitution of gender, belief, and identity among
samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Michigan.
Straight, B. (2002). From Samburu heirloom to new age artifact: The
cross-cultural consumption of Mporo marriage beads. American
Anthropologist, 104(1), 1–15.
Talle, A. (1988). Women at a loss: Changes in Maasai pastoralism and
their effects on gender relations (Stockholm Studies in Social
Anthropology). Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Stockholm.
Samoans
Jeannette Marie Mageo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Formerly, the westerly islands were called Western Samoa
and the easterly islands American Samoa. The westerly
islands are now called Samoa.
LOCATION
Samoa is a group of islands in the southern central Pacific,
located at latitude approximately 14⬚S. American Samoa
became an unorganized U.S. territory in 1900 and is the
most southerly territory of the United States. The westerly
islands became an independent country in 1962. The
Samoan islands form the heart of the Polynesian triangle,
extending to Hawai’i in the north, Tahiti in the southeast,
and New Zealand in the southwest.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Samoa’s kinship system is generational (the Hawaiian
kinship system). All aunts and uncles, no matter how
distant, are called by the terms for mother and father. All
cousins are called by the terms for brother and sister.
Younger relatives are often simply called tei. Samoans
trace ancestry back as far as oral traditions and, today,
written records make possible. This genealogical penchant
means that the circle of one’s fathers, mothers, brothers,
sisters, and younger relatives is potentially very large.
Politically, Samoa is organized in a chiefly system.
Chiefs are of two varieties: talking chiefs and high chiefs.
Talking chiefs have oratorical responsibilities and are of
lower rank than high chiefs; however, some talking-chief
titles are more exalted in status than some high-chief titles.
Matai is a general term for chief and the chiefly system is
called the matai system. Every extended family has a
matai. In the village, the various matai meet regularly to
decide village affairs. Both Samoas have universal suffrage. The easterly islands have an elected legislature and
governor. The westerly islands have an elected head of
state and legislature, as well as a prime minister and cabinet appointed by the head of state with approval by the
legislature.
Traditionally, Samoa had a horticultural subsistence
economy. People cultivated taro, as well as breadfruit,
coconuts, papaya, bananas, pineapples, yams, mangos,
and a number of other tropical fruits and vegetables.
They deep-sea fished for bonito and reef fished for shoreline species, as well as octopus, sea cucumber, jelly
fish, and other reef inhabitants. They ate a number of
wild seaweeds. Males did the deep-sea fishing; females
participated in reef fishing. Samoans also raised chickens
and pigs.
Today, many people maintain their roles in the
subsistence economy and may supplement these roles
with income from a job in an urban area (Apia in the
westerly islands and the Pago Pago harbor area in the
easterly islands), income from a village store, surplus
agricultural production, or remittances from overseas
relatives. Men are better represented in high-paying jobs
in government and business, but women constitute a
significance presence in both.
Since colonialization in the 19th century, exported
production of coconuts and other agricultural commodities has become an important source of income. In the
westerly islands, agriculture continues to employ two
thirds of the labor force and is the source of 90% of the
exports. Along with other forms of manufacturing, the
westerly islands produce a good beer, Vailima. The easterly islands have tuna factories supplied by U.S.,
Taiwanese, and South Korean vessels. In the 19th century, Apia and Pago Pago were ports for whalers, traders,
and adventurers. Around the turn of the century, Apia and
Pago Pago became depots for cruise liners. Apia and Pago
Pago were trans-Pacific refueling stations between
California and Australia prior to the use of jumbo jets,
ensuring a supply of tourists. The westerly islands have
again become a popular tourist destination, particularly
for visitors from New Zealand and Australia. Today,
development aid and family remittances are important
sources of income.
798
Gender over the Life Cycle
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
799
OF
GENDER
In Western cultures, identity is believed to reside within
the person in personal experiences such as thinking and
feeling. Similarly, Westerners tend to locate gender
identity within the person in temperamental differences.
In Samoa, identity is located in the persona. The term
persona refers to the social roles one plays. Samoans
conceive of gender identity as a role and have various gender roles: boy (tama), man (tane or tamaloa), girl (teine),
women ( fafine), and male transvestite ( fa’afafine).
Fa’afafine represent a liminal gender, situated
between a number of other gender roles (Mageo, 1992,
pp. 452–453, 1996a, 1998, pp. 202–217). The distinction
between teine and fafine (unlike that between tama and
tane) pertains to sexuality. In Christian Samoa, teine are
putatively virginal; fafine are sexually active. Fa’afafine
are referred to as “teine,” but, at least in more urban areas,
are blatantly active sexually. Fa’afafine also retain aspects
of maleness and may switch to their “male side” if antagonized. There is no comparable sex role for females. Some
little girls are said to be fa’atama (literally, “the way of
boys”), but this means only that they play with boys and
has no implications for their future gender identity or sexuality. A little boy who prefers to play with girls is thought
to be a transvestite in the making. Women do not dress as
men in Samoa. It may be said that a women is fa’afatama,
“acting in a manly way.” When used as a noun, however,
fa’afatama does indicate sexual identity.
In pre-Christian Samoa, there was little visual
difference between girls and boys. They both wore a
sarong (lavalava) of mat, tapa, or leaves tied at the waist.
Names did not typically differentiate children by gender.
Many tasks, such as baby-sitting, could be performed by
girls or boys. At puberty, girls and boys transferred their
sleeping quarters from their extended family’s compound
to the great houses of village-wide gender-based organizations—the aualuma for girls and the ’aumaga for boys.
Visual distinctions between the sexes then became more
pronounced. Although both sexes continued to wear only
a lavalava, girls’ hair was likely to be cut in a tutagita
style, consisting of a shaved head with a tuft hanging
down over the temple from which a tail dangled down the
cheek. Tufts and tails were commonly bleached with lime
to a light reddish-brown. Boys’ hair was worn long.
With Christianization, women gradually began
covering the upper body and the pulatasi evolved. The
pulatasi consists of a short fitted dress worn over a
lavalava. Although some people today wear Western
clothing, on Samoan culture days women consistently
wear pulatasi and men shirts and lavalava. Women also
commonly wear Hawaiian mumu. In less formal situations, women often wear a lavalava tied under the arms
and men wear a lavalava tied at the waist. With young
children, dress gendering is not strict, at least in more
rural areas. If relatives living overseas have sent a number of fancy dresses, some boys may be dressed in these
for Sunday services, the display of wealth being more
important than gender.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Childhood is a time of learning to serve elders. Samoa has
an age-grade status system within the family; children are
at everyone’s beck and call. Throughout the village,
people keep an eye on children and will protect, nurture,
and punish them when necessary. With Christianization,
a desire to ensure the virginity of girls increased the need
to keep them around the family compound. This meant
that girls could be found more easily than their brothers;
caring for babies tended to fall on them. Girls learn
household tasks and some crafts. Boys are encouraged to
cultivate an agricultural plot, learn associated craft skills
such as making baskets to transport produce, and learn
how to make the traditional earth oven. Today, girls may
undertake most boys’ tasks if they have no brothers. Boys
may perform domestic tasks for elders that were considered male in pre-Christian times (such as cooking), but if
boys perform domestic tasks that missionaries imported
and assigned to females (like washing dishes or clothes),
people wonder if they are becoming transvestites. In old
Samoa, children were trained in dance performance from
their earliest years. Both sexes attend primary schools,
and often Bible schools during the summer holidays.
Puberty and Adolescence
In adolescence, along with refining their horticultural and
craft abilities, boys strove to acquire genealogical
knowledge and to learn chiefly language and rhetoric.
Girls practiced a number of crafts, most importantly
weaving fine mats. Both sexes also perfected their dancing and comedic skills. They learned how to decorate
800
themselves and others so as to be attractive to the
opposite sex.
In pre-Christian times, high-status girls remained
virginal and had formal weddings. After missionization,
lower-status girls were also supposed to be virginal prior
to a church wedding. This Christian stricture implied that
all girls were high status in the eyes of God, and girls
came to affect the dance style and other mannerisms associated with the taupou or village virgins. In Samoa, those
with status are served by those without status, so it is
likely that adolescent girls’ workload decreased. Service
requirements for adolescent boys in rural areas probably
increased. Their elders came to rely more extensively on
foreign goods. O’Meara (1990) argues that in order to
secure cash, horticultural production (particularly in the
western islands) has become more intensive and has
depleted soils.
Adolescent girls exercise considerable administrative authority within the household, and boys exercise
authority in the village as members of the ‘aumaga. The
‘aumaga is an organization of the village’s untitled males
(those who are not chiefs) and was the counterpart of the
aualuma, an association of village-born females.
Members of the ‘aumaga function as a village police
force and admonish people who disturb the village during
the evening prayer period. Adolescents of both sexes now
attend high school and many go on to college.
Attainment of Adulthood
To a degree, Samoans marked adulthood by the begetting
and raising of children. The couple usually resided with
the extended family of either the boy or the girl, depending on their land and title prospects in the respective
locales. The tendency was patrilocal. Adulthood was fully
marked by the awarding of a title. Titles rewarded competent and willing service as a youth. Although titled men
and their wives partook in joking and entertainments,
they were expected to comport themselves with a degree
of dignity, warranted by their titles. Titled men and their
wives are members of village governmental organizations
and have responsibilities for maintaining order and
allocating labor within the family and village.
Middle Age and Old Age
In Samoa, older people of both sexes have ultimate
authority in family and village governance, but they have
Samoans
a decreased role in maintaining order and in dispensing
punishments to children and adolescents. Parents are not
supposed to show affection for children; this rule is not as
strict in relation to grandparents. The bonds between
children and grandparents tend to be close. Young people
are generally committed to serving and caring for them.
These commitments can raise conflict in modern life,
where young people of both genders have responsibilities
to succeed in school and may wish to travel abroad to
pursue an education.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
As noted, some cultures construct gender as temperamental—that is, as based in personality differences, for
example, a tendency towards emotionality, detachment,
aggression, compassion, and so forth. Other cultures, like
Samoa, construct gender as a role. Where role-based
gender identity is emphasized, personality differences
between the sexes tend to be downplayed; this is so in
Samoa. People of both sexes are expected to be strong,
dignified, and respectful, and to offer love and generosity
to all. People are thought to have tendencies toward
overwhelming outbursts of emotion, pride in the form of
belligerent self-assertion, and envy. To a limited degree,
in contemporary Samoa outbursts of emotions at funerals
and departures, as well as envy expressed through gossip,
are more readily ascribed to women and belligerent
self-assertion to men. Polite young people of both sexes
are expected to be shy, except with same-age and
same-sex groups and in public performances. Since
Christianization, young women are expected to be
especially shy.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Village social structure was gender dimorphic.
Traditionally, the ‘aumaga served the village council of
chiefs ( fono), cultivating plantations for them, carrying
out their ordinances, and acting as their army. The
aualuma sponsored two major activities: hosting parties
visiting the village and marriages of ceremonial village
virgins (taupou). Hosting guests entailed housing,
feeding, and entertaining them. In many villages today,
the aualuma is assembled to perform only on special
Leadership in Public Arenas
occasions, such as a funeral. In the westerly islands, the
aualuma has largely been replaced by the women’s
komiti. The komiti grew out of church auxiliary groups in
the westerly islands during the 1920s and 1930s. The
komiti is not confined to village-born women, but
includes all village women and has had a vital role in
village health and sanitation.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In old Samoa, wealth derived from land, proprietorship of
which was based in titles. These entitlements were pursued in two primary ways: through ceremonies (largely a
male province) and through hypergamous begetting; that
is, bearing offspring with better genealogies than that of
one’s own family, who might make claims to status and
titles. Genealogical recitations at ceremonies were, in
essence, claims to titled lineages, or bolstered such
claims by representing a family as so distinguished in
ancestry as to have natural claims to the dignity that
titles bestowed. Titled men as orators were responsible
for gathering genealogical knowledge and making
ceremonial speeches that asserted their extended family’s
distinguished genealogy. Ceremonies created alliances
between villages; in wartime, allies supported one
another’s putative rights to titles. So clearly was war a
male task that women from rival camps might picnic
together on the outskirts of the battle.
Women had a significant indirect role in ceremonies.
Women produced fine mats, which were the currency of
ceremonial exchange. Certain mats were linked to certain
titles, so that it was possible to capture a mat and the title
with it. Wealth in fine mats in the maternal line was a
criterion used to select a person for a high title. Females
forwarded family and village entitlements more directly
through hypergamous begetting, which is explained below.
A village’s major resident titles determined its
status. A taupou drew high titles into her communities’
compass by wedding a high title. After becoming pregnant, she returned to her natal village. High-title holders
were selected on the strength of paternal and maternal
lines. Taupou were chosen for their ancestry. Upon that
chief’s death, therefore, the taupou’s son had a weighty
claim and might bring the title back to his village. Like
taupou, all high-status girls were to remain virginal; their
elders furthered family entitlements through arranged
marriages with title-holding males or their sons.
801
Undistinguished families encouraged their girls to
lure scions of ranking families in informal marriages
(avaga) because the children who descended from these
unions had rights in the father’s family estate. A girl who
became pregnant from an elopement qualified for a piece
of land from the boy’s family that she shared with her
group. If she bore a son who was serviceable, bright, and
talented, his father’s family might give him a minor title.
If his sons married well, they had better title prospects.
With missionization, women’s economic role
became increasingly defined as domestic. Mission
schools taught sewing and housekeeping to women. Girls
and women were expected to perform many domestic
tasks, although cooking in the traditional earth oven
remained a male task. Many of women’s subsistence fishing and horticultural responsibilities were unchanged.
Samoans also participate in a modern economy in which
jobs are to a degree gender typed. Secretarial jobs and
jobs in beauty salons, for example, are performed either
by women or by male transvestites. Nonetheless, status
trumps gender in Samoan society: as long as a woman is
perceived to be high status, she can hold posts such as
college president or head of a government agency.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Traditionally, when a woman gave birth she stayed with
her relatives. The maternal grandmother played a major
role in directing early care, although the infant was also
tended, played with, and carried by a large circle of relatives. At the age of 2, care was transferred to a somewhat
older child. Usually the caretaker was a girl, but not necessarily; boys too might become primary caretakers for
one of their extended family’s children. Care of children
by older children freed adult women for participation in
economic and political life.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
The distinction between public and private is based upon
the model of the person as an individual. Public is that
arena in which individuals have professional relations
with others; private is that arena where they have personal
relations. Samoans see people as role players in groups
rather than individuals; prior to missionization, they did
802
Samoans
not make a strong public–private distinction. Village life
was public, but was divided into a formal ceremonial
sphere and an informal entertainment sphere. For the
most part, men were leaders in the ceremonial sphere and
women in the entertainment sphere. The missionaries
who Christianized Samoa came from 19th century British
society, where there was a public–private split corresponding to male and female roles. Men dominated public
life; upper- and middle-class women were confined to
private life. After Christianization, Samoan women
abdicated some entertainment roles, but not their role in
village governance. There is a fono of male chiefs but also
a council of chief’s wives (faletua ma tausi). Today most
politicians and other civic leaders are men, but women
are increasingly prominent as heads of government
agencies and as school principles and presidents.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
While traditionally men were most likely to be title
holders, women as sisters had spiritual power—mana.
Some of the fine mats women wove were considered the
resting place of spirits. When missionaries demanded that
Samoans destroy their idols, Samoans took their most
sacred fine mats to the sea and “drowned” them.
Even today, if a man goes against his sister’s wishes
or offends her, she may curse him. Ill luck, injury, sterility, even death, may then befall him or his descendants.
In old Samoa, if a man fell seriously ill, his sister came to
his bedside and sprayed his body with coconut juice from
her mouth; this was a ritual forgiving offenses against her
and lifted whatever spiritual cause the illness might have.
A change to more sexually restrictive norms for girls
was gradually introduced and differentially enforced
prior to World War II. After that time enforcement seems
to have been more consistent. This change was psychologically problematic, as indicated by the increasingly
prominent role female spirits began to play in spirit lore.
Girls who were believed to have been taupou prior to
having been “taken” by spirits became major figures in
spirit-induced illnesses and possessions. While the
taupou’s virginity was closely guarded prior to a brief
marriage with a highly titled partner, these spirit girls
were notorious for following attractive young men home
at night and seducing them. Remember that in old Samoa,
lower-status girls often married by elopement, which
involved following a boy back to his family compound.
Spirit girls united the figure of the high-status virgin
with the sexual agency that common girls exercised in
pre-Christian times.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
The most salient entertainment in pre-Christian Samoa
was the Poula (Joking Night) and was led by women,
although males also played significant roles. Joking
Nights followed major ceremonies (which were occasions of travel to other villages) such as welcoming ceremonies, investitures, marriages of rank, births of ranking
children, first birthdays of ranking children, deaths of
ranking persons, pigeon-hunting expeditions, and spirits’
feast days. Joking Nights had two parts: a dignified first
segment, concluded by a chiefly dance, and a ruckus
second segment, characterized by ribald joking. Joking
skits were part of the second segment. After missionization, the dignified dancing of the first half became the
model of all dancing. A chiefly dance (the taualuga)
came to be considered the taupou’s special dance, and
later to be the prototype of girls’ dancing generally. By
the mid-20th century, males had taken over young
women’s roles as leading comedians, most importantly in
Ghost House, a comedy theater named after the house in
which Joking Nights had taken place. Older women
remained skilled comics and performed in many contexts.
Women specialized in tapa making and weaving
fine mats. Men might specialize in house building or
tattooing. Samoans have long been the tattooing experts
of the region. When missionaries and cultural erosion had
extinguished tattooing in much of the Pacific, other
Polynesians would journey to get tattooed or to learn this
art from Samoan experts. The male tattoo extends from
midriff down to and covering the knees; early explorers
compared it to silk trousers. Although a matter of choice,
getting a tattoo was an initiation ritual for young men and
was a prerequisite for males to serve chiefs in ceremony.
The tattoo for women was purely decorative and included
lacy designs on the thighs only. Both men and women
still get tattoos today for decorative reasons and to show
their loyalty to traditional Samoan culture.
In old Samoa, the chiefly sport was pigeon catching,
carried out with decoy birds. Pigeons would be caught,
leashed around the leg, and trained. Trained birds,
secured by a long string, were released. They flew around
a pigeon-catching mound as if circling food or water,
Sexuality
803
attracting wild birds to the area, which were captured by
chiefs hidden in blinds below. Today Samoans put on
dances, beauty contests, entertainment competitions, and
culture days in which they perform crafts and dances.
Samoans also participate in a number of sports—from
longboat racing to canoeing to cricket to football.
Longboat racing and football are male sports, although
formerly women rowed a half-longboat called a tulula.
Women as well as men canoe and play cricket. When
women score, they often perform choreographic jokes led
by a male transvestite.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
In Samoa, status is associated with titles and genealogies.
In more stratified Polynesian chiefdoms, genealogy
determines status; in Samoa, titles determine status, but
genealogy legitimates title claims. Males are more likely
to hold titles, but a chief’s sister, in theory, has more
mana and thus status than the chief himself. His wife
holds a status similar to but less than his. Missionaries
believed raising the status of women as wives to be an
instrumental part of instituting a Christian form of marriage. Inadvertently, missionaries also helped to raise the
status of the sister. By stressing the importance of virginity and formal weddings for all girls, missionaries
implied that all girls were high status. This rise in female
status in Christian times was accompanied by a decline in
women’s ability to negotiate/improve their status through
hypergamous begetting; missionaries also imported the
idea that parentage counted only when sanctioned by
church and state. Today, education is an important factor
for improving and negotiating status for both sexes.
SEXUALITY
When missionaries arrived in Samoa, people had no need
to hide their bodies and women appeared to be less
modest than men (Williams, 1830–32/1984, pp. 167,
232). The missionary Williams (p. 82) describes commoners of both sexes as wearing a “small tea leaf apron,”
and high-status people as wearing fine mats. People had
little reluctance to shed this clothing; it was more decorative than moral in nature. As mentioned above, with
Christianization came upper-body clothing for girls and
women.
It is difficult to address the question of whether or
not attitudes toward, and practices of, premarital and
extramarital sex differed for males and females in old
Samoa because sex was not highly differentiated from
marriage; to the degree sex is marriage, there is no premarital or extramarital sex. Marriage customs differed
greatly for men and women of high status and to a lesser
degree for men and women of commoner status (discussed in the next section). Since Christianization, there
has come to be a double standard for young unmarried
women and young men. Young men show their manliness
by having premarital sex; young women disgrace
themselves and their families through premarital sex.
In old Samoa, sexuality, like other bodily functions,
was an area of laughing and jest. We saw that people
often entered into sexual relationships in the context of
Joking Nights. Women did, and married women still do,
take the lead in sexual joking. Sexual joking is facilitated
by the fact that in Samoan the word mea means “thing,”
but also refers to male and female genitals. Fiamea, literally “want to make the thing,” means “want to make sex.”
Therefore any thing is, potentially, a sexual thing and
informal talk is rich in double meanings. This attitude
toward sexuality, while still present, has been complicated by missionization. The idea of girls as leading sexual joking was incompatible with the Christian model of
the premarital virginal girl. In the 1920s, Margaret Mead
says that when the village virgin assumed her office, she
ceased joking in the presence of boys (Mead, 1928/1961).
In contemporary Samoa, any girl who jokes too much
around boys is said to be “looking for a husband.” Yet
sexuality remains a subject of teasing and jest among
young people in informal contexts.
Drozdow-St. Christian (2002, p. 146) reports that
contemporary Samoans distinguish between two kinds of
sexuality. Sexuality in marital relations is looked upon as
sacred and is for the purpose of making large families.
Premarital sexuality is looked upon as “what the boys are
looking for on the roads at night”; it is associated with
play, being young, and obviously with boys rather than
girls. This lack of sexual symmetry creates practical
problems, and fa’afafine, who are as unregulated in their
sexuality as other boys, represent one solution. Boys who
are looking for sex and cannot find a girl often turn to a
fa’afafine. This may be one reason, among a number of
others (see Mageo, 1992, 1996a), why male transvestism
has become a more salient institution in Christian
Samoa.
804
COURTSHIP
Samoans
AND
MARRIAGE
In pre-Christian Samoa there was no hard and fast
distinction between intercourse and marriage. As late as
the 1970s, a boy who had deflowered a girl might appear
at her wedding to another man insisting that she was
already his wife.
Go-betweens (soa) handled courtships between
persons of rank and then contracted their marriages in
light of political considerations. The ordinary boy, like
his ranking counterpart, sometimes employed a companion to speak for him in matters of the heart. For the
commoner, however, sending a soa to a girl’s family was
problematic. Commoner boys could not expect a welcome reception because Samoan parents generally
wanted their daughters to wed a high-status husband.
Therefore their soa often approached the girl herself
rather than her family. While the chief’s soa was elaborately courteous to all parties, the common soa praised
his principal, but joked with the girl he wooed. Samoan
boys and girls may still get a friend to speak for them to
someone in whom they feel a romantic interest.
In old Samoa, ranking marriages consisted in the
girl’s ritual defloration and an elaborate display of her
hymeneal blood, as well as an exchange of speeches and
prestations. The talking chief of the groom or the groom
himself performed the defloration. Old ladies from both
sides might examine the girl prior to the ritual to insure
she would not embarrass both families. A taupou who did
not shed blood at a defloration might be stoned. Joking
Nights were a common venue for the elopements of lesser
folk because they occurred when people visited from
other villages. Given that Samoans calculated kinship so
broadly, people within a village were often related.
Samoans consider marriage with a relative, no matter
how distant, incestuous.
High-status males practiced serial polygamy (technically “polygyny”) and, sometimes, simultaneous
polygyny. Lower-status men could also have more than
one wife. With lower-status girls, marriage was a matter
of the amount of time spent residing with a partner and
was formerly acknowledged by their families when the
couple began having children. The event that was ritualized for lower status people was not the act of intercourse
but the act of childbirth. Females were forbidden to marry
again if their male spouse was of high status, even if the
spouse was residing with another wife or wives. An
exception was made if the wife’s status was equal to or
surpassed that of her husband; then she could take a new
husband after she had ended a marriage.
As noted, World War II was an important turning
point. Many Samoan girls formed relationships with
American servicemen, who appeared to be of high status.
These young men usually deserted their Samoan
girlfriends; the resulting children were an embarrassment
to girls and their families. Christian mores made new
sense in terms of this historical experience. Today there
is an ideal of virginity for unmarried girls, but many
young unmarried people engage in sexual relationships.
Marriages are by elopement, as well as by state- and
church-sanctioned unions.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Christian missionaries valued and fostered the
husband–wife relationship. In Samoa, one’s primary
bond is to one’s extended family. Blood, Samoans
believe, is forever; sexual relationships may not be so.
While the sister, in theory, outranks the brother, the
husband outranks the wife and has authority over her. The
couple will reside with either the husband’s or the wife’s
kin, depending on where their opportunities for land and
titles are greatest. Given how broadly kinship is calculated, this is typically a large number of people, often
residing in different villages. The husband’s authority
over the wife is stronger if the couple resides with the
husband’s family. Even then, however, should he mistreat
her, she can return to her kin. In pre-Christian times,
divorce was simply a matter of the person who was living
with the kin of his/her spouse returning to his/her own
family. Today couples often have their own house on family land, thereby affecting a pattern closer to the nuclear
family model.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The brother–sister relation is the most important
cross-sex relationship in Samoan culture. Remember that
in the Samoan kinship system, all cousins, no matter how
distant, are brothers and sisters. A sister is her brothers’
honor; a brother is his sisters’ mainstay and protector.
While there was no word for marriage in pre-Christian
Samoan, there was a word for the brother–sister relation,
feagaiga. The term refers not only to the brother–sister
Bibliography
bond, but also to a bond that may be established between
their descendants. (It is also applied to the bond between
talking chiefs and high chiefs.) Parties to a feagaiga are
regarded as two complementary sides of a larger whole.
Samoans not only abhor actual incest between categorical brothers and sisters, but any hint of sexuality when
both are present. Crossing this line impugns the name of
a family and is likely to ignite conflict. In old Samoa,
incest between a brother and sister was believed to result
in miscarriage. Miscarriages were called “blood clots”;
many spirits were believed to be born as blood clots.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
For several decades following World War II, there was a
spirit possession epidemic, predominantly among
Samoan girls. During roughly the same period there was
a suicide epidemic among Samoan boys. In both cases
these epidemics were related to the impact of colonialization and modernization on gender roles. These factors
probably also account for the high population of male
transvestites in contemporary Samoa. Although undoubtedly present in small numbers in old Samoa, the historical record suggests that these numbers have significantly
increased in recent decades.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I thank Sanele Mageo for reading and commenting on
this article.
805
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history in Samoa. Man, 29, 407–432.
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Winston.
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the Mead–Freeman controversy. American Anthropologist, 98,
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Press. (Original work published 1830–32.)
Shipibo
Warren M. Hern
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
Shipibo are also known as Conibo or Chama (considered
derogatory).
LOCATION AND LINGUISTIC
AFFILIATIONS
The Shipibo are located in the upper Peruvian Amazon.
Their communities are found principally along the banks
of the Ucayali river and its tributaries from Atalaya to
Requena or on lakes off the main course of the river. The
coordinates of the area are approximately 6⬚S–9⬚S and
75⬚W. Upstream on the Ucayali from the town of
Pucallpa, the Shipibo are known locally as the Conibo,
although the language spoken and the culture shared by
the Shipibo/Conibo are essentially the same. The entire
group will be referred to here as “Shipibo.”
Shipibo is one of the Panoan languages of the
Amazon. Panoan speakers tend to be concentrated around
the upper Ucayali drainage basin in eastern Peru and
western Brazil.
The word “Shipibo” is not generally used by the
Shipibo to describe themselves. They tend to use the
word jonibo, “person (pl.),” in reference to themselves
and the word nahuabo, “foreigner/stranger/not-person
(pl.),” in reference to others who are not Shipibo. The
term “Shipibo” has been used by members of other tribes
to refer to the group under discussion because of their
custom of capturing and maintaining as pets specimens of
the pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea), the smallest
known primate, which is indigenous to the eastern
Peruvian Amazon. In Panoan languages, this animal is
called a shipi. The suffix bo indicates plural.
OVERVIEW
OF THE
CULTURE
The Shipibo are thought to have occupied the upper
Peruvian Amazon area for about 1,000 years. They have
principally and traditionally inhabited small settlements
on the banks of oxbow lakes (cochas) and small
tributaries of the Ucayali.
The Shipibo have long had a highly developed
ceramic tradition, and their contemporary pottery is
internationally known for its beauty and craftsmanship.
Pottery is used for cooking, eating, and ceremonial
purposes, and sometimes for decoration. The Shipibo
women are also accomplished weavers, using a native
cultivated cotton for making yarn and thread. They use a
backstrap loom for large bolts of cloth that may be
10–15 m long and require the weaver to secure the distal
end of the longitudinal threads on a tree. The geometric
and repeating patterns used by the Shipibo are distinctive
and are painted or engraved on pottery, cloth, faces,
oars and clubs, and anything that might retain the figures.
Until the last few decades, the Shipibo economy has
largely been one of subsistence supported by fishing,
hunting, gathering, cultivation of high-carbohydrate
plants such as yucca (at least two varieties of manioc,
Manihot esculenta sp.), plantain, and a large purple sweet
potato (Bergman, 1980). More recently, rice and corn
have been sown and cultivated for market as well as
consumption. Chiclayo (black-eye pea) is sown and
cultivated on the exposed river beaches in the dry season.
Traditional Shipibo family patterns tend to be
matrilocal and matrilineal, although this appears to alternate from generation to generation (Abelove, 1978;
Eakin, Lauriault, & Boonstra, 1980; Hern, 1992b).
Sororal polygyny was widely practiced in the past but is
now much less common. The levirate and sororate are
practiced; the brother of a man who has died accepts his
deceased brother’s wife as a second wife. She is often
the sister of her new husband’s first wife. Cross-cousin
marriages were the preferred marital arrangements in the
past, particularly in polygynous families.
A typical Shipibo village consists of a single
matrilocal extended family containing five or six nuclear
families and representing as many as four generations.
Larger Shipibo communities appear to be the result
principally of missionary activity in the 19th and early
806
Overview of the Culture
20th centuries (Myers, 1990). Catholic and then
Protestant missionaries induced aggregation of various
family groups into small communities that were more
susceptible to proselytization for religious purposes.
Missionaries describe some encounters with the
Shipibo as extremely dangerous (Samanez y Ocampo,
1980). This was particularly true for more isolated groups
such as the Pisquibo, Shipibo who lived along the banks
of the Pisqui river, a tributary of the Ucayali. Shipibo are
depicted in various accounts as ruthless in the treatment
of their enemies, especially the Cacataibo, or Cashibo as
they are called by the Shipibo.
The traditional leader (curaca) of a Shipibo
community is the male head of a large extended family,
with an informal but permanent status until death, old
age, or disability requires him to accede to a younger
man. Currently, the Shipibo choose a village chief on a
rotating basis and elect officials to conform with the
national governmental structure. These leaders generally
consist of an chief, jefe de la comunidad, or curaca
(traditional), a teniente gobernador, official representative to the district government, and an agente municipal.
These are not traditional Shipibo designations, but the
community process by which leaders are currently chosen resonates with traditional Shipibo methods of dealing
with issues that affect the community. Community
assemblies are attended by both men and women, and
while male leadership predominates, women express
their opinions vigorously and often prevail.
Traditional Shipibo religious views and cosmology
are animistic. Spirits reside in various living things,
specifically certain trees and certain animals, and in the
stars. Freshwater dolphins are of particular interest and
are not killed because of their intelligence and capacity to
inflict harm on humans. The Shipibo have survived
culturally and demographically through hundreds of
years of European colonization and missionary activity at
the same time that other tribes such as the Cocama have
lost their identities and languages. The Shipibo have
apparently absorbed other groups such as the Setebo. The
population numbers of the Shipibo during precolonial
times is not known, but there is evidence that they, like all
indigenous Amazonians, experienced catastrophic population losses following European contact owing to the
introduction of exogenous diseases, armed conflict with
European settlers, slavery, and intertribal warfare.
In the mid-1960s, there were approximately
100 Shipibo settlements from Atalaya to Requena,
807
including those found on Ucayali tributaries and interior
lakes, comprising a total population of approximately
15,000. In the mid-1980s, there were 125 identifiable
Shipibo settlements. The present Shipibo population is
estimated to be about 40,000–45,000 in 150 or more
settlements, and many Shipibo have moved permanently
to larger mestizo towns such as Pucallpa, which was
originally a central Shipibo settlement.
In a baseline health study of the Shipibo village of
Paococha in 1969, Hern (1971, 1977) found a rate of population growth of 4.9% per year in a carefully defined
population of 538. This extremely high rate of population
growth means that the population doubles approximately
every 14.3 years. The average woman had an average of
10 live births during her reproductive years. The Shipibo
have the highest fertility ever recorded in a human group.
This means that, following a massive population
crash during the 16th–19th and early 20th century time
span, the Shipibo experienced a rapid recovery with population growth rates that exceeded precontact rates. The
most rapid population growth of the Shipibo population
occurred in the years immediately following World War II.
There has been aggressive immigration of other
Peruvians into the upper Peruvian Amazon. The town of
Pucallpa, which was principally a Shipibo settlement in
the middle to late 19th century, contained a Peruvian
mestizo–criollo population of about 3,500 in 1944. The
Trans-Andean “highway” reached Pucallpa at about that
time, and immigration from the Andes and the Peruvian
coastal cities began, as did increased commercial activities in logging, petroleum exploration, fishing, cattle
ranching, and agriculture. The Shipibo were increasingly
exposed to sources of rapid cultural change, and they also
found themselves competing increasingly with other
groups and immigrant populations for the same resources.
Rapid cultural change in the region was enhanced by
the establishment in the late 1940s of the Summer Institute
of Linguistics, an evangelical Christian group dedicated to
translating the Bible into native languages. Their base was
built on the shore of Lake Yarinacocha and included a
landing strip for the use of the missionary planes as well
as establishing a fleet of floatplanes capable of landing on
the waterways and lakes. The missionaries also provided
excellent medical care to all indigenous groups with
whom they had contact.
Another important influence on both cultural change
and the health of the Shipibo was the establishment in
1960 of the Hospital Amazonico “Albert Schweitzer” by
808
Shipibo
Dr. Theodor Binder, a German physician who was
dedicated to helping the indigenous people of the
Peruvian Amazon. The hospital was several kilometers
upstream from the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Extensive and intensive contact between the Shipibo
and the hospital has been a major source of cultural
change for the Shipibo as well as a major contribution to
their improved health. Shipibo families came from outlying villages to reside at or near the hospital while family
members received prolonged treatment for diseases such
as tuberculosis and leishmaniasis. This contact resulted in
exposure not only to health education but also to
European customs and a Spanish language environment.
These families have then taken some of their adopted
customs, material culture, and language influences back
to the home villages. Yet another source of cultural
change at the village level was the introduction of
Western-style schools. These were primarily elementary
schools sponsored by missionary groups such as the
Seventh-Day Adventists or bilingual schools established
by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Some educational
materials included reading and arithmetic, but the curriculum had a heavy emphasis on religious indoctrination
and marching around the village plaza or soccer field in
a goose-step military fashion. Later, these schools were
replaced in all villages by government-sponsored bilingual schools with education levels through high school in
some villages. The goose step, which seems antithetical
to the languid cultural ethos of the Shipibo, continues to
be the prescribed mode of marching.
Prior to large recent population increases throughout
the upper Peruvian Amazon, the Shipibo lived in the presence of spectacularly abundant food sources (Bergman,
1980). A few hours fishing resulted in more than enough
for a large family. Hunting wild game on high ground
during the seasonally flooded dry season often resulted in
kills of deer, wild boar, tapir, monkeys, large birds, large
rodents, and land turtles that provided excellent sources
of protein. Gathered and cultivated fruit and vegetables
resulted in a highly varied diet rich in vitamins and fiber.
General levels of nutrition were excellent.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
The Shipibo recognize two genders: males (jonibo) and
females (ainbo). When a child is born, it is either a boy
(benbo) or a girl (ainbo). Female homosexuality seems to
be unknown, but male homosexuals, while rare, are simply
regarded as males who are a little strange. Males classically wore a hand-woven and hand-painted cushma or tari
(Shipibo) in the cool evening hours or during ceremonial
occasions, and still do, but they now usually wear Western
trousers and shirts underneath. Most daily wear among
men nowadays consists of plain cotton trousers and shirts.
The classical dress of a Shipibo woman prior to
missionary contact was a hand-woven and hand-painted
cotton tube skirt that was pulled together and rolled at the
top to keep it from falling down. The tube skirt is not only
universally adaptable to the woman’s size, which may
change with pregnancy and delivery, but provides a handy
private cover for the woman who is squatting to urinate
or defecate.
Contemporary Shipibo women continue use of the
extremely practical tube skirt, but they now wear short
blouses that have a design at least inspired by missionaries. The typical Shipibo woman’s blouse is rather tightfitting with long sleeves and open around the bottom, just
long enough to touch the top of the tube skirt at the back.
The front is conveniently short enough to permit easy
nursing of an infant carried at the waist, and sometimes
the front of the blouse is not quite long enough to cover
pendulous breasts. This was not the effect sought by the
missionaries, since breasts are supposed to be covered at
all times, but Shipibo women find it to be practical.
The missionaries’ blouse design was conferred on
the Shipibo because, before missionary contact, Shipibo
women customarily wore nothing from the waist up
except a shoulder shawl loop used for carrying a baby at
the hip. In the evenings, after dark, and when going to the
river to do laundry and bathe the children, this custom
prevails. Having learned that the savage custom of female
upper-body nudity offends outsiders such as Christian
missionaries, women cover themselves when they know
that unfamiliar visitors are present. Women wear their
hair long, usually cut at a little more than shoulder-length,
with bangs just above the eyebrows, giving a classical
Shipibo “look.” Men have worn their hair short with a
Western haircut since they were introduced to this style
in military service beginning with World War II, although
young boys may have long hair.
Both men and women may have face-painting at
times, particularly during feasts, but face-painting, done
with a small roller carved with Shipibo designs to hold the
dye, is usually seen almost exclusively in women. Women,
while dying their already dark hair with huito (Genipa
sp.), also carry the dye down the forehead a little to frame
the face from above. Women also use facial adornments
Gender over the Life Cycle
such as pieces of thin shaped metal (cori) placed in
pierced lips and a cone-shaped metal disk (ruesho) suspended from the nasal septum. Men use such adornments
but less often than women and usually during ceremonial
occasions only. Men do not wear earrings (paroniti).
Shipibo women are attracted to men who are physically strong and muscular, but who are also proven
providers of food such as fish and game. Having an outgoing personality with a smile and sense of humor helps.
Shipibo men are attracted to women who are very young,
who are sexually mature and available, and who bring
them gifts. Young women with pleasant personalities, who
are physically active and laugh a lot, are considered desirable. In addition to underlying Shipibo tradition, stated
normative mate preferences for women now include such
descriptives of men as “clean,” “hardworking,” “welldressed,” “tall,” and “thin.”
In the past, it was considered attractive for either
men or women to have the flattened forehead caused by
skull binding with a headboard at birth. This custom has
been abandoned because the Shipibo feel that it identifies
them as “savages” in the city and brings ridicule.
The idea that a person could be something other than
a heterosexual male or female is puzzling for most
Shipibo, but they accept this as, however uncommon,
within the range of known behavior. Male homosexuality
is known to occur among the Shipibo, and while most
regard homosexuality as an aberration, it is not regarded
as pathological. Some people are just born that way, say
the Shipibo, and some become homosexuals from one
moment to the next. A man who is an aggressive partner
in a homosexual relationship is not regarded as homosexual, merely as engaging in sex with a passive male
who got into his mosquito tent. Female homosexuality
seems to be unknown.
The term for a male homosexual is sinia, and the
term for the activity of homosexuality is poinquinique,
which could be loosely translated as “fucks the asshole”
(poinqui is the common term for anus). Male homosexuals who are Shipibo are accepted in the community and
are not mistreated. Mestizo homosexuals are regarded
with apprehension and hostility.
GENDER
OVER THE
809
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys and girls are both valued as children, but girls
slightly more so because they not only can and will work
to perform household chores, but their presence will attract
suitors, who will become husbands for the girls and will
then contribute as hunters and fishermen to the household
economy. Boys may help with hunting and fishing chores,
but they are expected to leave the household to marry.
Caretakers for the children include all members of
the household and immediate kin group, usually living in
adjacent or nearby houses. Older men in the family will
often teach the young boys how to make hunting and fishing weapons such as spears, arrows, and bows. The boys
watch the tedious process of weapon manufacture and
then go off to try to make a primitive copy. Girls are
taught by the grandmother how to make pottery and how
to weave and paint. Certain kinds of clay have to be collected for making the pot with a coiled-rope method and
for painting before firing, a specific resin must be
obtained for glazing the pots, and certain barks and plants
must be collected for dying the hand-woven cloth. Before
the introduction of Western schools, all children learned
these skills and arts from older members of the family,
usually a grandmother, grandfather, aunt, or uncle.
Young children up to the age of 10–12 are given
great freedom to play with their peers and to explore the
area around the house and village. They frequently
accompany their parents or other adults on excursions,
such as girls going to the garden to cultivate or gather
food, or boys hunting and fishing with their fathers.
Shipibo children begin learning the complex family
relationships including kinship terms and avoidance patterns at a very early age (Abelove, 1978). A Shipibo
child’s social success is highly correlated with its
mother’s pattern of interactions with others.
Child abandonment is almost unknown. It is inconceivable to the Shipibo: “Only mestizos abandon their
children.” Discipline is gentle and consists principally of
quiet talking and persuasion. Once in a while, a parent
will spank a young child. A parent may gently scold or,
rarely, have an angry exchange with an ill-behaved older
child, but it does not appear that the physical abuse of
children occurs among the Shipibo.
LIFE CYCLE
Boys and girls are differentiated at birth by, among other
things, their names. A boy is a benbo and a girl is an
ainbo.
Puberty and Adolescence
At the beginning of adolescence and the onset of menstruation, girls are referred to as shontaco or shontashaco
810
and called by that term instead of by given name (the
suffix -shaco or -shico is an affectionate diminutive
attached to various terms, mainly family members). A
young girl walking down the path will be called or
addressed by an older person as “ShontA!” instead of by
her given (Shipibo or Spanish) name, even though the
girl’s name is known to the caller.
Young boys are called yosito, baqueron, ranon, or
ranonshico. The onset of adolescence, as marked by
menstruation and breast development in girls, has been
marked by ritual genital mutilation in the past, but this
practice has been abandoned for the past 50 years. The
genital operations consisted principally of labiectomy,
perforation or excision of the hymen, and clitoridectomy.
In 1984, I had the occasion to perform a gynecologic
examination on a woman who was about 50 at that time
and who had experienced this procedure at puberty.
For boys, the ritual of the haircut occurs at about age
12 or 13, and this is accompanied by an all-night party
sponsored by the boy’s parents and kinsmen. No other
physical acts such as scarification occur at this time.
Although traditional patterns are changing rapidly
with the introduction of formal schools through the highschool level, Shipibo adolescents still assume many adult
responsibilities that include subsistence activities and
mating. Informal trial marriages occur, with an adolescent couple cohabiting in the girl’s parent’s house, and
these are generally regarded as temporary arrangements.
However, if the girl becomes pregnant a more stable
relationship is likely to emerge.
Attainment of Adulthood
A young girl is considered a woman once she bears a
child, although childless women are accepted as adult
women in late adolescence. For a young man, either
induction into military service or becoming a father are
irrevocable signs of adulthood. A young man who is a
father has a special status as padre de familia, a term
recognized by Spanish-speaking government authorities.
Attempts to obtain census figures are usually met by the
observation that a community has X padres de familia,
with the clear implication that those men are the
only members of the community that really count.
This becomes even more awkward when the head of a
particular household is a woman.
In the absence of formal Western schools, Shipibo
girls entered permanent sexual relationships at the age of
Shipibo
13 or 14 and immediately began having children. They
were considered adults from that point on. Currently,
girls are encouraged to attend school at least through
grade school and beyond if possible. Sexual encounters
occur, but adolescent cohabitation in the traditional patterns occurs much less than it did before the introduction
of schools.
Once a nuclear family is established, the young
husband builds a house for his own family, typically in
the family compound or immediately adjacent to the
home of the woman’s parents. A separate structure containing the hearth and eating area is usually a few meters
from the house. In the case of polygynous marriages,
each woman may have her own house and hearth.
Middle Age and Old Age
As age advances, both men and women stay closer to
home and become involved with more sedentary tasks.
A man becomes a yosi or yosishico (old man) at about the
age of 40 or 45, with the affectionate diminutive being
applied as the man approaches the quite elderly status of
60 years. A woman who is menopausal and no longer
bearing or nursing children is a yosan or yosanshico (“old
lady,” “little old lady”). People at this age are usually
addressed by one of these descriptive titles rather than by
given name. They are usually treated by others with a
combination of gentle humor and veneration. Both sexes
continue to dye their hair black as age advances, although
some men will stop and let the distinguished grey show
through. Older women who no longer dye their hair often
have naturally red hair.
When an adult man dies, his house is burned down
with all his possessions. His widow crops her hair and
dresses in black for a year. The possessions of a woman
who dies are burned, but not the house in which she lived.
At the end of a year, a funeral wake is held and
marks the end of the mourning period.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Men are expected to be calm, strong, quiet, cheerful, and
courteous under most circumstances, but they are
expected to be much more boisterous during special
events such as a large intervillage feast (ani shreati) or
“big drink.” On such an occasion, a real man drinks far
Gender Roles in Economics
too much masato, chicha, huatapo, or mestizo-supplied
aguardiente (raw overproof rum), depending on what is
available. Men may become belligerent and break priceless museum-quality Shipibo pottery for the sheer hell of
it, make speeches, or challenge sexual competitors. The
latter events are potentially deadly. The man who has
been cuckolded sneaks up behind the offender and cuts
the back of his neck with a small concealed curved knife
called a huisate, which is concealed in the hand and
secured by a cord wound around the thumb. The cuckolder then must accept the challenge. The two square off
in a large open space, each carrying a carved flat club 1 m
long called a macana which is double-edged and notched
at the end. Made of the black wood at the heart of the
hardest palm, chonta, the macana is a deadly weapon. It
weighs about 6 or 7 kg, is covered with Shipibo designs,
and is meant to be swung in an oblique falling arc like an
axe. The two men stand a short distance apart, each
wielding his weapon, and take turns hitting each other
glancing blows on the side of the head with the sharp
edge of the macana. The idea is not to kill one’s opponent
but to get him to lose so much blood from head cuts
that he passes out. The effect of this ritual on subsequent
intellectual capacity is unknown.
Men who have many scars on the back of the neck
have serious prestige advantages in getting new women
to become sexual partners and in retaining the previous or
current ones as long as they wish.
Women have a more peaceful existence and are not
expected to be physically aggressive. They are expected
to be independent and competent, but also, for the most
part, to be quiet and non-demanding. At the same time, it
is expected that women will screech at each other or at
their husbands from time to time to express displeasure.
A falsetto voice conveys the height of the anger. The
response to male loutishness, as in the case of egregious
breakage of tediously, proudly, and conscientiously made
ceramics, is to withdraw uncomplainingly in horror.
However, the maker of the broken pottery reserves the right
to berate the potbreaker at full screech volume at a later
time, say during the acutely worst phase of the offender’s
hangover, when death beckons as a compellingly attractive
alternative.
A young woman who is cutipado (bewitched) may
experience a dissociative hysterical episode during which
she is obviously out of control, accompanied by writhing,
mild seizures, screaming, shaking, clenching her teeth,
sweating, moaning, and beyond any social interaction.
811
When this happens, all activity in the surrounding
neighborhood stops as spectators gather. The woman is
reportedly possessed by some spirit, probably wished on
her by a sexual or status competitor. All attention is drawn
to the afflicted, and she is comforted by everyone after the
event is over, usually in about an hour. These episodes,
which are uncommon, do not in any way resemble what is
known in Western medicine as an epileptic seizure. Young
men apparently do not experience this phenomenon.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Shipibo residence is matrilocal and descent is matrilineal.
The only other gender-related social groups apparent
among the Shipibo at the present time are soccer teams.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
There are sharp distinctions in male and female economic
roles, although some individuals do not follow the usual
prescription. Women gather and carry firewood, maintain
the family hearth, cook the food, make pottery, weave and
paint cloth, gather food from the family gardens, provide
care for the children they have borne as well as, at times,
the children of other women, wash the clothes, bathe the
children, carry water from the river or lake to the family
kitchen, make clothes on the sewing machine if there is
one, sweep the floor of the house and the path in front of
it, and cook cane juice squeezed by the men for making
huatapo. When masato (atsashreati) is being prepared
from manioc, the women cut the tuber, cook it, then masticate the detoxified paste in order to give it the bacteria
for fermentation to occur. Similarly, they prepare and
cook the ground corn for chicha de maize (corn liquor).
Women are masters of the Shipibo brewery.
The responsibilities of men were classically to hunt
and fish, to make their own canoes and weapons, and to
defend the village from military enemies. The men still
do many of these things, and they also have the responsibility for bringing building materials from the forest and
building the houses. Men clear the forest for making a
garden plot and manage the burning of the slash. Men
provide the formal political leadership, but they know
better than to ignore their wives and the community of
female opinion. Men negotiate with outside forces
such as the local, regional, and national governments.
812
Shipibo
Men negotiate with river traders in trades concerning
hardware, but women negotiate in the purchase of food
and some manufactured materials (such as cloth). Both
men and women make trade items for sale to tourists, but
women specialize in jewelry while men make such items
as decorated weapons and oars.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND OTHER
CARETAKER
official soccer balls, and referees. However, all teams are
either one sex or another. Soccer is the main form of
recreation and leisure outside of church-related activities.
While men make certain items for tourist sale and
may carve a canoe paddle that is in itself a work of art,
women are the primary authors of artistic expression
in pottery, weaving, and the painting of designs on
any possible object that can be carved or will hold a
vegetable dye.
RELATIVE STATUS
OF
MEN
AND
WOMEN
Both men and women take responsibility for child
rearing, but these tasks mostly fall to women. Shipibo
children are engulfed in love from their first moments and
are highly indulged by both parents. Children are breastfed for at least 6 months, and complete weaning may not
occur for several years. Infants are carried on the hip in a
shawl tied around the mother’s neck as she goes about her
various chores. Very young infants sleep during the day
in a covered hammock that is watched by a grandparent,
sibling, or other relative who may be sitting nearby
performing such tasks as weaving and potting.
All children receive close supervision and attention
from a variety of adults, but particularly the child’s
mother and the mother’s immediate relatives. This is true
for both healthy and sick infants. The child of a woman
who has deficient or no breast milk is nursed by a female
relative who is lactating.
Aside from and before missionary influence, Shipibo
society appears to be highly egalitarian for men and
women. This is changing under the impact of evangelical
Protestant Christianity, which defines the role of women
to be subservient in a way that does not reflect Shipibo
tradition. Although it has not been customary for women
to hold positions of political leadership, some women
form independent households and conduct many of the
economic roles of men such as fishing and gardening.
Their status has not traditionally been diminished in any
way. On the contrary, such women are admired and seen
as self-reliant and commanding the respect of the
community.
GENDER
Sexuality and Reproduction
AND
RELIGION
Whereas the indigenous Shipibo religion appears to have
been thoroughly animistic, and many Shipibo retain
beliefs in this tradition, Christianity in various forms,
especially evangelical Protestantism, has become the predominant nominal religion. Christian missionaries have
inculcated a highly patriarchal religious practice among
the Shipibo, who follow the new precepts even if it means
not eating most kinds of fish from the river. The evangelical Shipibo pastors are all men.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
Both men and women enjoy playing and watching soccer
games which range from a neighborhood pick-up with a
few people to formal championship games with uniforms,
SEXUALITY
It is not particularly difficult for Shipibo children to
obtain knowledge of sex and reproduction. Although adolescent children may have their own mosquito nets, the
whole nuclear family sleeps together in one mosquito net
and older but subadolescent children inevitably become
aware of adult sexual activity.
Watching animals of various kinds mate in the forest
or around the village is a favorite form of entertainment.
A most hilarious episode of this occurred when two
mating dogs could not get unstuck. The yowling dogs
were surrounded by gleeful children.
The Shipibo have a certain working knowledge of
what Europeans would call comparative anatomy and
physiology since they dissect animals of all kinds in the
process of food preparation. They know, for example, that
there are embryos and fetuses in the uteri of various
Sexuality
female animals that they kill, such as tapirs, wild boars,
and monkeys, and that these features are not found in
male animals.
The Shipibo like sex and are sometimes quite open
about it, particularly in joking relationships. At the very
least, they seem to like to think about sex. They love
obscene and intimate sexual humor, especially when
there is a cover of darkness to obscure the speaker (even
though everyone knows from the voice who is speaking).
Whether it is under the influence of Christian missionaries or reflects traditional Shipibo custom, sexuality is not
flaunted or openly recognized during the day and in the
midst of communal activities. Young people court and
disappear into the bush. Although there is no formal marriage ceremony, young couples who are recognized as
“newlyweds” are indulged as they spend long hours
under the mosquito net together, even during the day. The
young man is then likely to be ribbed mercilessly by his
age mates about his consequent alleged weakness and
incapacity for any useful work.
However, most sexual activity seems to occur in a
much more furtive fashion as husbands and wives bathe
together in the river at dusk and meet secretively in a
remote section of the chacra, or garden, distant from the
village. It is customary for whole families to sleep under
one mosquito net. Sexual activity between spouses occurs
during the night under the family mosquito net when the
children are supposedly asleep.
Whether the sexual banter that occurs in darkness as
people speak from their porches is correlated with a
significant level of real interpersonal communication
about intimate matters is doubtful. Some Shipibo women
have told me that they did not enjoy sex very much and
found it an onerous duty, whereas other women convey
an attitude of affectionate intimacy with their partners.
The former are likely to have been given in marriage at a
very young age, whereas the latter are more likely to have
had a voice in the choice of a partner. Yet most arranged
marriages appear to last a lifetime.
Despite a certain openness about sexuality, both men
and women exhibit modesty about genital exposure. It is
perhaps impossible to know how much of this is due to
exposure to Christian doctrine. Younger women, especially, are careful to keep their breasts covered in the presence of adult men, and all sexually mature women are
extremely shy about genital exposure except during
childbirth. A man who is bathing in the nude in the river
will emerge from the water onto the river bank and cover
813
his genitals with a hand while walking to his house,
although most bathing takes place with some kind of
shorts or trunks in place. Given the omnipresence of
voracious carnivorous fish in the Amazon waters, this
precaution may reflect prudence more than modesty.
Shipibo women have a wide variety of herbal remedies that are thought to control reproduction. The general
category of these remedies is to-otirao (from tooti, “pregnancy” and rao or rau, “medicine”). A kind of tootirao is
taken in order to become pregnant. Remedies to prevent
pregnancy are more common. The most commonly
known tootimarao (ma, negative) is tootimahuaste.
Tootimahuaste is a grass-like plant (probably a sedge)
that grows on the shores of a lake (huaste, “herb”). It is
pounded and the juice is squeezed into a cup of hot water.
This tea is taken on the first 3 days of two successive
menstrual periods. This is alleged to result in permanent
sterility. Tootirao works by making the baquenanuti
(uterus) moist, lush, and receptive to the seed of the man.
Tootimarao works in the opposite way by making the
inside of the baquenanuti hard, dry, and unreceptive to
the male’s seed.
Pregnancy and Birth
Young Shipibo women learn about pregnancy and birth
from close observation of their mothers, sisters, aunts,
and cousins. Traditionally, the young woman has her first
menarche at the age of 12 or 13. She has her first sexual
experience and perhaps a permanent partner at 13 or 14,
and has her first baby by age 15.
One type of herbal contraceptive, called
navashuaste, is taken by young women in order to postpone pregnancy instead of causing permanent sterility,
the effect sought by taking tootimahuaste. There is no
evidence that the use of navashuaste for this purpose is
successful.
When a woman is pregnant, she must observe certain dietary laws and taboos that restrict activity and
foods. She must not be subjected to a frightening experience such as encountering a snake or other wild animal.
Birth occurs in the woman’s home, and she is usually
attended by her mother and/or close female relatives in the
same age range as the woman’s mother. A young woman
may be surrounded by all the women neighbors in the case
of a difficult delivery. Freely offered folk advice from this
gathering of interested spectators is accompanied during
labor contractions by a frantic chorus of Canihue
814
Shipibo
(“Push! … Push! …Push!”). After delivery, the placenta is
usually buried under the woman’s house.
In a traditional family, sororal polygyny (in which
all cowives are sisters) is the preferred and prevailing
family structure. In this setting, women are able to
observe postpartum sexual abstinence for longer periods
of time than women who are in monogamous unions.
Births are fewer, with more time between them. This has
a positive effect on the health of both mothers and
children.
Although the Shipibo treat children with a great deal
of gentle affection, they do not express any desire for
more than two or three children. The rare woman who is
infertile or subfecund is regarded as unfortunate, but not
tragically so. Such women and their partners readily
adopt children from other households, and the children
have two homes and families, almost always harmonious.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Notwithstanding Christian disapproval, Shipibo women
make themselves attractive to men by a variety of means
such as the hip-hugging skirt, bead wedding belts
(shakira) that accentuate the hips, woven anklets, and a
seductive athletic walk. Early travelers describe young
Shipibo women as exuberant, openly affectionate, and
comfortable with nudity in the presence of strangers.
Shipibo men sometimes openly cultivate the skills of
seduction, in which personal charm and good humor is
reinforced by the availability of nuihuaste, “love herb,”
a highly aromatic and pleasant-smelling nuirao, “love
medicine.” This is a root also known among flower
children in the United States as patchouli.
Traditionally, a young woman at about 14 is
entegrado (given) to a young man by her mother. The
bride has no say in the arrangement, which may or may
not succeed emotionally. Loyalty and commitment to the
partnership is the expected norm, but neither sexual
pleasure nor emotional satisfaction is expected. By most
accounts, sexual pleasure has not been something often
experienced by very many young Shipibo women. As
the model of the marriage relationship has drifted toward
the companionate marriage in which the partners choose
each other, this has been changing, and sexual pleasure
does occur for women as well as for men.
In a traditional family, sororal polygyny (in which
all cowives are sisters) is the preferred and prevailing
family structure. In this setting, women are able to
observe postpartum sexual abstinence for longer periods
of time than women who are in monogamous unions.
Births are fewer with more time between them. This has
a positive effect on the health of both mothers and
children.
The change from polygyny to monogamy began
with the first contact with Christian missionaries.
Polygyny is still severely criticized by Christian missionaries, and in one well-known instance a disapproving
official Peruvian census taker would not count members
of polygynous families. The extremely high fertility and
high rates of population growth that have been found in
Shipibo communities are at least partly due to cultural
change with a disruption of patterns that dampened
fertility.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
Classically, the husband–wife relationship is marked by
loyalty and a common economic purpose, but it is not
necessarily loving or tender. For women, sex is often
regarded as a duty and economic necessity rather or more
than a source of pleasure and satisfaction. “Divorce” is
not uncommon. The marriage can be ended by either partner at any time. The husband just walks away or goes to
live with another woman. Women can, and sometimes do,
kick their husbands out of the house. A Shipibo woman
feels free to advise another woman that she should “throw
out” her husband if she thinks the woman being advised
has married beneath her status and can do better.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
As noted elsewhere (Abelove, 1978), a woman’s most
important relationship with a male is with her brother. A
man may not look at or talk directly to his mother-in-law,
but may have a joking relationship with his sister-in-law.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
The increasingly intensive and prolonged contact with
people outside the community, the introduction of
Western schools and national government agencies, and
Bibliography
815
various economic activities are related to profound
changes in Shipibo society. This is particularly true for
women, who now begin school at the age of 6 and often
continue through high school. A girl’s traditional role was
to learn all the domestic skills including pottery and
weaving and begin having babies at the age of 13 or 14.
That is now more the exception than the rule. Some
young Shipibo women now have enough literacy and
clerical skills to seek employment in the city of Pucallpa.
The lives of boys have also changed because education through high school is now followed by military
service, technical education in the city, or work as a bilingual teacher. The boys no longer spend their time learning the survival and hunting lore of the tropical forest
from their fathers or the trick of harpooning a 100 kg, 4 m
paiche (Aripaima gigas, the largest freshwater fish in the
southern hemisphere and possibly in the world) from a
2 m dugout canoe in the middle of a lake swarming with
flesh-eating fish such as piranha. The boys now learn
reading and writing, the military history of Peru, and how
to march. Whereas there was no unemployment in the
subsistence economy, the boys must now seek jobs in the
city because they cannot live by farming or fishing and
there are no jobs in the village.
The necessary activities that defined the gender and
identities of both men and women in the old Shipibo
society are slowly disappearing or ceasing to exist
altogether.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abelove, J. M. (1978). Pre-verbal learning of kinship behavior among
Shipibo infants of Eastern Peru. Doctoral dissertation, City
University of New York. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms
International, 7902539.
Arevalo, V. G. (1994). Medicina indigena: Las plantas medicinales y su
beneficio en la salud Shipibo–Conibo. Lima: Ediciones AIDESEP.
Bergman, R. W. (1980). Amazon Economics: The simplicity of Shipibo
Indian Wealth. Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University. Ann
Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, Dell Plain Latin
American Studies, 6, ISSN 0–8357–0533–4.
Eakin, L., Lauriault, E., & Boonstra, H. (1980). Bosquejo etnografico
de los Shipibo-Conibo del Ucayali. Lima: Ignacio Prado Pastor
Editorial.
Foller, M. (1994). Environmental changes and human health: A study of
the Shipibo-Conibo in eastern Peru. Göteborg, Sweden: University
of Göteborg.
Hern, W. M. (1971). Community health, fertility trends, and ecocultural
change in a Peruvian Amazon Indian village, 1964–1969.
Unpublished M.P.H. thesis, Department of Epidemiology,
University of North Carolina School of Public Health,
Durham, NC.
Hern, W. M. (1976). Knowledge and use of herbal contraceptives in a
Peruvian Amazon village. Human Organization, 35, 9–19.
Hern, W. M. (1977). High fertility in a Peruvian Amazon Indian village.
Human Ecology, 5(4), 355–368.
Hern, W. M. (1988). Polygyny and fertility among the Shipibo: An
epidemiologic test of an ethnographic hypothesis. Doctoral
dissertation, Department of Epidemiology, University of North
Carolina. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International,
Order 8823430.
Hern, W. M. (1990). Individual fertility rate: A new individual fertility
measure for small populations. Social Biology, 37, 102–109.
Hern, W. M. (1992a). Polygyny and fertility among the Shipibo of the
Peruvian Amazon. Population Studies, 46, 53–64.
Hern, W. M. (1992b). Shipibo polygyny and patrilocality. American
Ethnologist, 19(3), 501–522.
Hodge, L. G., & Dufour, D. L. (1991). Cross-sectional growth of young
Shipibo Indian children in eastern Peru. American Journal of
Physical Anthropology, 84(1), 35–41.
Myers, T. P. (1988). El efect de las pestes sobre las poblaciones de la
amazonia alta. Amazonia Peruana, 8(15), 61–81.
Myers, T. P. (1990). Sarayacu: Ethnohistorical and archeological investigations of a nineteenth-century Franciscan mission in the
Peruvian Montana. Lincoln: University of Nebraska.
Roe, P. G. (1982). The cosmic zygote: Cosmology in the Amazon Basin.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Samanez y Ocampo, J. B. (1980). Exploracion de los Rios Peruanos
Apurimac, Eni, Tambo, Ucayali y Urubamba Hecho por Jose B.
Samanez y Ocampo en 1883 y 1884: Diario de la expedicion y
anexos. Lima: Consuelo Samanez Ocampo de Samanez e Hijas.
Vita, J. A. (1990). Diccionario de Peruanismos. Lima: Libreria Studium
Ediciones.
Shoshone
Richley H. Crapo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
While “Shoshone” is the spelling preferred by the
Shoshone people themselves, many linguists use
“Shoshoni,” since this spelling makes it clear that the
final vowel is not silent. Anthropologists often distinguish among three major groups of Shoshone who occupied somewhat different natural environments: (1) the
Western Shoshone, who occupied areas of central and
northeastern Nevada and northern Utah, (2) the Northern
Shoshone who occupied much of southern Idaho in the
Snake and Salmon River region that is a transitional zone
between the Great Basin and the northwestern Plains, and
(3) the Eastern Shoshone of western Wyoming that abuts
the northwestern Plains. The Shoshone had numerous
subgroups that bear individual names. The geographically largest of these include the Goshiute, a Western
Shoshone group who occupied the region south of
Wendover in both Nevada and Utah, and the Panamint
Shoshone, another Western Shoshone subgroup who
occupied territory surrounding Death Valley in southern
Nevada and contiguous southern California. There were
also a host of smaller groups.
In the second half of the 19th century, the basic
subsistence economy of the Shoshone was foraging.
Foraging in the arid lands of the Great Basin involved a
division of roles by gender that was not strictly enforced.
Men’s primary subsistence activity was hunting small
game, including water fowl, jack rabbits, antelope, mountain sheep, and mountain goats. Women specialized in
gathering a diversity of wild plant foods, including edible
roots, fruits, and seed-bearing grasses.
On occasion, when conditions made it worthwhile,
the Shoshone engaged in communal hunts that were
participated in by men, women, and children. These collective hunts were organized when several families were
in the same vicinity, when there was a sufficient number
of animals, such as rabbits, antelope, deer, and mud hens,
and when one or more of the families had the necessary
equipment for such a hunt. According to Steward (1955,
p. 109), “the principal collective hunt was the rabbit
drive.” Rabbit drives required the use of several nets that
were about 3 feet high and several hundred feet long. The
nets had a mesh about the same as that of tennis nets.
They were strung out in a large semicircle, and the
women, children, and some men beat the brush over a
large area, driving the rabbits towards the nets. Rabbits
were clubbed or shot during the drive or when they
became entangled in the nets.
The political organization of the Shoshone was what
Steward referred to as a family level of sociopolitical
organization, in which nuclear families were the
autonomous political units. Leadership positions among
the Shoshone were based on personal charisma rather than
the authority of office. Those positions included
(1) rabbit and antelope drive “boss,” who coordinated communal hunts, (2) winter encampment “talker” (tekwani),
who acted as a town crier by passing on information about
social events and game sightings, and (3) shamans, who
specialized in religious healing. After about 1690, when
the horse entered the Great Basin, the Northern Shoshone
LOCATION
The Shoshone occupied the central Great Basin of the
United States. Their territory included the arid lands of
central Nevada, southern Idaho, part of southwestern
Montana, and northern Utah, the high-altitude arid lands
of western Wyoming, and a strip along the western half of
northern Colorado. Today, there are five main reservations
with Shoshone populations: Wind River in Wyoming,
Fort Hall in Idaho, Duck Valley on the Idaho–Nevada
border, Gosiute on the Nevada–Utah border, and
Duckwater in Nevada. There are also more than a dozen
federally sponsored Shoshone “colonies” in or adjacent
to towns in Nevada and two similar Shoshone settlements
in Utah.
816
Cultural Overview
of southern Idaho and the Eastern Shoshone of western
Wyoming adopted the horse for use in bison hunting. This
shift in subsistence base resulted in their developing larger
local groups, warfare, and policing associations with
authority to enforce order within local groups.
Throughout most of the year, each nuclear family
wandered independently over a large territory in search of
food. Toward the end of summer, families moved towards
whichever pinyon pine forest was currently beginning to
bear nuts. Groups of up to 300 people might gather in the
same forest, and families would gather enough pine nuts to
feed themselves during the winter. During these periods in
which large groups were congregated, charismatic leaders
known as tekwani, “talkers,” served as conduits of information for the entire group, letting individuals know such
things as when communal dances were being organized or
where game had been sighted. However, such leaders had
no political authority, although they might rely on their
personal charisma to mediate disputes. The winter gatherings were important times for socializing, gambling, and
courtship. It was also at this time of year that such groups
normally held a communal Round Dance, a sacred dance
which was believed to promote the health and welfare of
those who participated in it.
The basic Shoshone family was a nuclear family, a
group of two to five or six persons consisting of parents
and their children. Children typically left their parents
when they married and began to forage for themselves,
although surviving parents might continue to travel with
one of their later sons when he married. Similarly, a
family might include not just a married man and his
wife and children, but also a younger sibling of the
husband or wife who was not yet capable of caring for
him- or herself.
Shoshone kinship was bilateral, and an individual’s
kindred consisted of any known relative of either parent.
The kinship term for mother was pi’i. In some groups, this
term was extended to mother’s sister. The term for father,
app~, was also applied to the father’s brother in some
groups. Shoshones typically applied the same kin term for
siblings and (both parallel and cross) cousins. In this term,
they distinguished older from younger siblings. Thus, an
older brother was a papi, while a younger brother was a
tami. Similarly, an older sister was a pazi, and a younger
sister was a nammi. These sibling terms were both terms
of reference and address. Cousins were referred to using
sibling terms. The Shoshone used reciprocal kinship terms
for grandparents and grandchildren, but made a distinction
817
based on whether the relationship was paternal or
maternal. Thus, kaku meant both “mother’s mother” and
“a woman’s daughter’s child,” while kynu meant “father’s
father” and “a male’s son’s child.” A third grandparental
term, toko, meant “mother’s father” or “a man’s daughter’s
child.” Any great-grandparent or great-grandchild could
be addressed or referred to as a tsoo.
All the surrounding Great Basin Indian societies
practiced foraging lifestyles similar to that of the
Shoshone. The tribes which surrounded the Shoshone
were the Utes, who occupied the highlands of western
Colorado and southern Utah; the Southern Paiutes of
southwestern Utah and southern Nevada; the Mono, who
occupied territory in western Nevada surrounding Mono
Lake; the Northern Paiute (or Paviotso), whose territory
was north of the Mono in western Nevada; the Bannock,
a branch of the Northern Paiute who settled Idaho lands
north of the Shoshone and shared land in southern
Idaho that the Shoshone also used; the Crow of southern
Montana and northern Wyoming and Colorado; and the
Arapaho of eastern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado.
All of these, except for the Crow and Arapaho, shared
many cultural characteristics due to their foraging adaptation to the arid Great Basin environment and, with the
exception of the Mono, Crow, and Arapaho belonged to a
common language family. The Ute adaptation diverged
the most from the others because of the higher elevations
they occupied, but otherwise had much in common with
the Shoshone. Because of their similarities in lifestyles,
these groups had relatively amicable relations that were
reinforced by nonmarket economic exchanges between
neighboring groups, although occasional feuding
between neighboring groups was not unknown.
The Crow and Arapaho belonged to the Great Plains
culture area, where bison hunting and intertribal raiding
were important traits that distinguished them from the
Great Basin Indians. The Eastern Shoshone traded with
the Crow and Arapaho, and the occasions for conflict
were minimized by the small size of the Shoshone groups
(who lacked the population base to support military associations) and by the fact that the arid Great Basin environment offered little in the way of resources of interest
to the Crow and Arapaho. When the horse entered the
Great Basin, the Eastern Shoshone adopted it for use in
bison hunting and warfare between them and the Crow
and Arapaho became common. The Northern Shoshone
had a similarly hostile relationship with the Blackfeet and
Crows of Montana.
818
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
Shoshone
OF
GENDER
The Shoshone recognized four gender categories—
ordinary males and females and male and female
berdache categories. The egalitarian nature of Shoshone
social organization carried over into gender relations, and
there was no gender stratification. Men were thought of
as more interested in hunting and women as more skilled
in domestic activities, but their relative economic contributions to family survival were equally ranked, and the
typical differences in the gender roles of men and women
were not strictly enforced. Thus, individual personality
traits that led to a violation of the usual gender-role
patterns was tolerated without censure.
The flexibility in Shoshone gender roles is one of the
factors that made for an easy acceptance of the gender
mixing of both male and female berdaches. Berdaches
(called “Two-Spirit People” in contemporary English by
many writers today) were individuals who did not adopt
the usual gender roles of their sex, but who adopted many
of the roles usually practiced by the other sex. Their
distinct gender status was sometimes symbolized by their
adopting of (nonmandatory) gender-mixed dress. The
berdache gender status was adopted either because of
individual inclination or because a visionary experience
called the person to this role. Hultkrantz (1983) reported
that among the Wind River Shoshone, berdaches were
always males and they never married. However, elsewhere
among the Shoshone, berdache individuals could enter
either heterosexual or same-sex marriages or remain
single, according to individual inclination. In same-sex
marriages, the berdache partner adopted the spousal
roles that were usually carried out by the person of
the other sex. Thus, a berdache male might become a
wife to a biological male husband, and a berdache
female could adopt the husband’s roles in a marriage to
another female. Unlike many North American Indian
groups, Shoshone berdache roles had no special religious
significance and no necessary connection to shamanistic
healing roles. Both men and women could become
berdaches.
Dress was least elaborate among the Western
Shoshone where the sparse environment made it difficult
to acquire materials for making clothing. The most common article of clothing for both men and women was a
cape made of woven strips of rabbit skin. These capes
were also used as blankets when sleeping. Among many
families, not every adult had such a cape, and so nudity
was not rare for either sex, particularly in the summer.
Powell (1875, p. 104) reported meeting a couple late in
August in which the man was “dressed in a hat; the
woman in a string of beads only.” Among the Northern
and Eastern Shoshone, clothing was differentiated by sex.
For instance, Lowie (1986a, p. 217) reported that among
the Wind River Shoshone, a Northern Shoshone group
in Wyoming, women wore buckskin dresses decorated
with elk teeth, while men wore shirts, breechclouts, and
leggings.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
Infants were referred to as ohmaa, a gender-neutral term.
Children were distinguished by sex, either as tua,
“boy/son,” or naipin, “girl/daughter.” In the (reduplicative) plural, tutua, the term for boy was also used generically for children of either sex. An adult man was called
a tenkwan, and this term was sometimes modified to
distinguish adult men by age. Thus, tenkwapp~ referred
to a male who was slightly older than a tenkwan and
tenkwacci an old man. A very old man might be called a
tenkwaccicci (by reduplication of the suffix), although
the generic term cukku (or cukkuppy) was more often
applied to very old males. Similarly, terms for women
varied by age: wa’ippy referred to a young adult women,
hypi to a slightly older woman, and hypicoo to an old
woman. The term kuhma indicated a married male, and a
married woman was called a kwyhy.
The verb for marrying differed by sex. Women were
said to kuhattu, while men were said to kwyyttuh. The
suffixes in these verb forms are archaic frozen forms of
the same origin that have the sense of “take a—.”
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Among the Western Shoshone, children of both sexes
were valued. Trenholm and Carley (1964, p. 11) asserted
that “a girl baby was considered a blessing because the
parents knew that some day she would attract a mate who
would help the family in its never-ending quest for food.”
Child rearing was lenient for both sexes, and neither sex
seems to have been preferred over the other. In contrast,
Meriwether Lewis, in his log for August 19, 1805, noted
that among the Northern Shoshone girls might be beaten
for some offense, but boys were never spanked because it
Parental and Other Caretaker Roles
was feared that this would cow them and undermine their
ability to perform as warriors.
Among the Western Shoshone, modesty was not a
major cultural concern. For instance, nudity was common
among children, although girls were somewhat more
likely than boys to be clothed. Nudity was less common
among the Northern and Eastern Shoshone, where larger
game, such as elk, made it easier to clothe all members of
a family.
Among the Shoshone, younger children of both
sexes were either cared for by their older siblings at the
camp site or accompanied their mothers as they foraged
for food plants around the camp. Differences in socialization were minimal until boys were old enough to
accompany their fathers on hunts, at which time boys
learned hunting skills.
Attainment of Adulthood
According to Trenholm and Carley (1964, p. 12), “a
coming of age ceremony was observed throughout the
Basin for the girl as well as the boy.” For girls,
the emphasis seemed to have been an isolation during the “dangerous
period” of the girl’s life and upon giving her tasks to strengthen her for
the hardships she must face. The boy, too, was prepared for his life’s
work of helping to provide for a family. He was not allowed to eat the
first wild game he killed, as a lesson in abstinence.
Among the Western Shoshone, girl’s puberty rituals
were practiced for females but not for males. At first
menstruation, a girl observed several days of relative isolation. During this period, her mother admonished her “to
arise early, work hard, and be restrained in talking and
laughing” (Steward, 1941, p. 316).
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Although gender role differences existed among the
Western Shoshone in the common activities of males and
females, such as hunting by men and gathering by
women, these differences were not rigidly enforced, and
there were no unisex organizations or institutions.
Both men and women could become shamans, although
this was a more common role among men. Among the
Northern and Eastern Shoshone, where elements of the
Plains culture were adopted after the arrival of horses,
local community size was somewhat larger than among
819
the Western Shoshone, and policing associations
developed that were exclusively male.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
Gender and age were the two determinants of the
Shoshone division of labor. Women were the primary contributors of the daily staple foods. They regularly gathered
various edible plants, including roots and bulbs, edible
leafy plants, berries, and grass seeds that could be made
into a kind of porridge. Women also wove baskets for
domestic use and made capes by weaving strips of rabbit
hides together.
Men’s primary subsistence activity was hunting.
Since game was sparse, hunting was a time-consuming
but important activity, since it provided both meat and
resources, such as hides, that were used for manufacturing various items such as clothing.
Both men and women were free to participate in
non-market exchanges with persons outside their own
families. Until the arrival of European immigrants and the
establishment of markets in their settlements, the primary
form of exchange among the Shoshone was reciprocal
gift giving. Among the Shoshone, natural resources
were not owned. Rather, use was allocated on a “first
come, first served” basis. Personal property consisted of
only such things as clothing and the tools one carried
from camp to camp. For the most part, personal property
consisted of those things one had made oneself or
received as a gift. Since individual families wandered
alone for most of each year, there were no regular rules
of inheritance rights. Most personal property was buried
with a deceased person, although individuals of either sex
who were present at the death of a relative might keep
individual mementos for either emotional or utilitarian
reasons.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
Since hunting was a time-consuming activity in the arid
lands of the Great Basin, women spent more time than
men in child rearing activities, but the division of labor in
child rearing was a matter of circumstance rather than
of strict rule, and men also participated in the care of
children when they were not hunting.
820
Shoshone
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Leadership in public arenas was not restricted to one
sex. For instance, dance organizers might be either
women or men, and antelope shamans might be women
as well as men. It was, perhaps, more common for men
to take the role of tekwani during winter encampments,
but this does not appear to have been a hard and fast
rule. However, among the Northern and Eastern
Shoshone, policing authority in communities was a maledominated role.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
Shoshone religion was shamanistic, and both women and
men could become shamans based on their personal inclination. The Shoshone pantheon consisted of numerous
male and female zoomorphic deities. Prayers were
addressed to nia app~, “our father,” although whether this
practice preceded contact with Europeans is uncertain.
The two primary aboriginal deities were the brothers Wolf
and Coyote. Wolf, who was sometimes viewed as the
creator as well as a “master of animals” figure, embodied
the qualities of mature thoughtfulness, while his brother
Coyote was a trickster deity who symbolized the unconstrained sexuality and lack of impulse control of the
unsocialized youth.
Other Shoshone deities included beings with both
male and female characteristics. For instance, tsaippichih,
or Blue Jay, was a grandmother figure in Shoshone
mythology, while taputtsi, or Cottontail, was masculine.
Bear, or wyyta, in the story of the origin of the Bear Dance
was a female supernatural, as were Dove (haaiwi) and
Deerbrush Echo Woman (hynasusukki wa’ippy), while
Bat (honopittsyh) and Rattlesnake (tokoa) were masculine
supernaturals.
In Shoshone mythology, the earliest era of human
existence included a nearly invulnerable monster tympin
tzo’appiccih (Rock Monster), who periodically stole
Shoshone children and carried them home in her burden
basket to feed her children. Since her body was stone, she
was impervious to arrows, and every attempt to kill her
failed until an elderly woman conceived of a plan to build
a bonfire to make hot embers and throw them into tympin
tzo’appiccih’s pitch-covered burden basket. The fire that
this created was so hot that, reaching typin tzo’appich’s
heart, it killed her.
Shoshone mythology includes the vagina dentate
motif in which Coyote removes the teeth from (prehuman) women’s vaginas using a bone, stone, or other
hard material. Variants of this story are typically part of
the myth in which the first humans, usually daughters, are
created as offspring of Coyote and one of the women with
whom he cohabits after the removal of her vaginal teeth.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND
THE ARTS
Games, socializing with friends, storytelling, singing,
and dancing were all prominent activities during the
winter months when large groups of families congregated
in the same pine-nutting areas.
Children were not segregated by sex at any age.
Boys and girls were each more likely to play with toys
that were associated with the work of their own gender—
toy bows and arrows for boys and baskets and dolls for
girls. As boys neared puberty, they might spend time
hunting with their fathers away from camp. Lowie
(1986b, p. 198) reported that Northern Shoshone boys
and girls both played cat’s cradle (p. 199). Girls played
with buckskin dolls (p. 199), and boys particularly
enjoyed four games: a kind of football, arrow shooting,
the hoop game (p. 198), and racing (p. 199).
Some forms of recreation among adults involved
varying degrees of sexual segregation. Madsen (1980)
described the Bear Dance—originally, a hunting dance—
among the Northern Shoshone as a dance in which men
and women arranged themselves in separate parallel lines
that alternately approached and moved away from
one another. According to Lowie (1986b, p. 195), the
handgame, a gambling game that involved guessing
which of two markers an individual was holding, was
played by both sexes among the Northern Shoshone, but
apparently only in groups of the same sex.
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
There were no formal rules regarding the relative value
attached to men and women by Shoshone society. Since
the social organization of the Shoshone included no
positions of official authority, what status differences
Courtship and Marriage
existed by gender were largely a function of individual
personality. Since game was sparse in the Shoshone
environment, no special status advantage was gained by
men from their hunting. The organizers of communal
rabbit hunts were usually, but not necessarily, men, and
the shaman who played the most prominent role (of
magically attracting the antelope into the antelope corral)
during antelope drives might as readily be a woman
as a man.
SEXUALITY
The Shoshone viewed sexuality as a natural part of the
human condition. There were no customary taboos
concerning the discussion of sexuality. For instance, the
Shoshone language contained no obscene or vulgar
words for body parts or processes, although sexual terms
were sometimes used in nicknames with friendly humor.
Thin or absent eyebrows, particularly on males,
were apparently considered attractive among the Wind
River Shoshone. Lowie (1986b, p. 217) reported that,
“formerly, young Shoshoni men who were courting girls
used to pluck out their eyebrows.”
Shoshone rules regarding premarital sex were
lenient. Extramarital sex might be reacted to with jealousy by a spouse, but there were no fixed or customary
punishments for adultery by either men or women. Wifestealing, in which a man and several compatriots might
abduct another man’s wife, occasionally occurred. The
outcomes of the practice were variable. The husband
might attempt to recover his wife, she might later return
of her own accord, or she might remain with the captor,
accepting him as her new husband.
Male and female homosexuality was not tabooed in
aboriginal times, although the Western stigmatization of
homosexuality was adopted during the 20th century. In
precontact times, berdache marriages were sometimes
same-sex marriages.
COURTSHIP
AND
MARRIAGE
Marriages among the Western Shoshone were arranged
informally, either by parental agreement or elopement.
There was no formal ritual of marriage. Instead, the
existence of a marital relationship was recognizable
simply by the fact of a couple’s residing together and
821
referring to one another publicly as “my man” or “my
husband” and “my woman” or “my wife.” For instance,
according to Trenholm and Carley (1964, pp. 12–13),
among the Shoshonis, if a man stayed one night with a girl, in her lodge
or his, the marriage was considered consummated. The couple would
usually live with the girl’s parents for about a year or until the first child
was born. Then they would provide a dwelling of their own.
There was a mild cultural preference for marriages
between a man’s sister and his wife’s brother, since such
marriages could facilitate cooperative hunting between
the two men. Marriages with kindred were generally disapproved, although cases of second-cousin and even firstcousin marriage were not unknown. Polygyny, especially
sororal polygyny, was occasionally practiced. Shoshones
also occasionally practiced a form of polyandry in which
a wife might take her husband’s younger brother as a second husband until he was mature enough to establish his
own family. The Shoshone also practiced the levirate—if
a husband died, his family had an obligation to provide
his widow with another husband. Like marriage, divorce
was a simple process that involved nothing more than
leaving the relationship, and serial monogamy was common. Divorce could be initiated by women as readily as
by men.
Perry (2000, p. 31) reports that among Utah’s
Northwestern Shoshone (a subdivision of the Western
Shoshone whose primary territory was north of the Great
Salt Lake), marriages were typically arranged and that,
Sometimes an older man would go to the home of parents of a newborn
girl and ask permission to marry their newborn daughter at some future
date. If the parents liked the man and knew him to be a good provider,
they were sometimes agreeable.
Alternatively,
a man would send a gift to the desired girl’s parents. It might be a horse
or several horses; it could be skins of all kinds, deer meat, or other food
supplies showing him to be a good provider. If the parents agreed, the
marriage was arranged.
Perry also reports that marriage ceremonies among the
Northwestern Shoshone were conducted under the
auspices of a spiritual leader as well as occasional ritualized mock capture of the bride by the bridegroom and that
there were customs that made divorce relatively difficult.
This greater emphasis on arranged marriage, the role
of a “brideprice” (which was nonexistent or rare among
the Western Shoshone), and the presence of a formal
822
religious ceremony of marriage (that was absent among
the Western Shoshone) may have developed as they
began to form larger permanent communities based on a
sedentary farming lifestyle and on religious influences
from the Mormon settlers in Utah Territory who
introduced them to farming.
Janetski (1987, p. 43) describes marriage among the
eastern Northern Shoshone of the Yellowstone Park
region in terms similar to those that might be applied to
the Western Shoshone when he says that “Marriage was
usually an informal economic union which bound a man
and woman together to insure survival.” Among those
Northern and Eastern Shoshone, where the economic
base included larger game such as elk, moose, and bison
and where the influences of Plains culture were most
notable, marriage arrangements tended to be somewhat
more formally organized and marriages less brittle. For
these groups, some tendency towards cross-cousin
marriage existed.
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
The husband–wife relationship among the Western
Shoshone was characterized by affection and companionship, and marriages that were not mutually acceptable
were readily ended by either partner. There was no fixed
rule concerning the disposition of children upon divorce.
Husbands and wives ate together, slept together, and
made decisions together. The relative dominance of one
spouse or the other was determined by their individual
personalities rather than by cultural rule. Among the
Northern and Eastern Shoshone, the husband–wife
relationship was also characterized by affection and
companionship, but horse-based hunting resulted in
larger local communities and competition among males
for social rank based on their prowess as hunters and warriors. This, in turn, led husband–wife relationships to be
somewhat less egalitarian than among the Western
Shoshone.
Shoshone
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
After the Western Shoshone adopted a sedentary lifestyle,
economically based on paid employment in cities and
towns or on cattle ranching in rural areas, women’s
prominence in the political life of their communities
notably declined. This has recently led to the organization
of women’s groups which have been attempting to
reverse this change by emphasizing the importance of
women in traditional Western Shoshone culture.
REFERENCES
Hultkranz, A. (1983). Comment. Current Anthropology, 24(4), 459.
Janetski, J. C. (1987). Indians of Yellowstone Park. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press.
Lowie, R. (1986a). Notes on Shoshonean ethnography. In D. H. Thomas
(Ed.), A Great Basin Shoshonean source book. New York: Garland.
(Reprinted from Anthropological Papers of the American Museum
of Natural History, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 187–314.)
Lowie, R. (1986b). The Northern Shoshone. In D. H. Thomas (Ed.),
A Great Basin Shoshonean source book. New York: Garland.
(Reprinted from Anthropological Papers of the American Museum
of Natural History, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 165–307.)
Madsen, B. (1980). The Northern Shoshone. Caldwell, ID: Caxton.
Perry, M. (2000). The Northwestern Shoshone. In F. S. Cuch (Ed.),
A History of Utah’s American Indians (pp. 25–72). Salt Lake City:
Utah State Division of Indian Affairs and Utah State Division of
History.
Powell, J. H. (1875). Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and
its tributaries, explored in 1869–1872, under the Direction of the
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution.
Steward, J. W. (1941). Cultural element distributions, XII: Nevada
Shoshone. University of California Anthropological Records, Vol.
4, No. 2 (pp. 209–360). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Steward, J. H. (1955). The Great Basin Shoshonean Indians: An example of a family level of sociocultural integration. In J. H. Steward
(Ed.), Theory of culture change: The methodology of multi-linear
evolution (pp. 101–121). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Trenholm, V. C., & Carley, M. (1964). The Shoshonis: Sentinels of the
Rockies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Spanish
Susan Tax Freeman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
The Spanish are also known as España/los españoles.
LOCATION
Spain is located in Europe. Together with Portugal, on its
west, it occupies the Iberian Peninsula, at Europe’s southwestern extreme, with coastlines on both the Atlantic and
the Mediterranean. Also on the Iberian Peninsula are
Gibraltar, under British sovereignty, which stands at the
entry to the Mediterranean from the open Atlantic, and
the Principality of Andorra, on Spain’s far northeast, in
the Pyrenees mountains. The Pyrenees range separates
Iberia from France and the rest of Europe.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Spain is a geographically diverse country. A mountainous
perimeter separates fairly narrow coastal plains from high
central tablelands, or mesetas, which themselves are
dissected by hills and mountains into climatically diverse
zones. The most humid coasts are on Spain’s Atlantic
north, and these support most of Spain’s cattle and dairy
production, and some of the nation’s significant garden
and orchard crops, but little grain. The meseta lands support sheep and goat herding, dry cereal agriculture, and in
favorable zones irrigated orchards and gardens yielding
diverse crops. Olives, oranges, and almonds are the most
important tree crops of the Mediterranean area, roughly
the southern half of the Peninsula and its east coast. The
humid north where cattle are raised is marked by more
generally dispersed settlements than are found inland.
Meseta populations are usually more nucleated, or clustered, but extensive agricultural estates in the south, in
particular, also see some isolated settlement in the fields
outside of towns.
Historically, Spain’s population has been heavily
rural and agricultural, with commerce important in the
exchange of specialties between diverse localities and
regions. Local economies and traditions of production
have produced different traditional divisions of labor
between the sexes and different status groups. Today
Spain’s agriculture is heavily mechanized, its transport
systems modern, and its industrial, commercial and service sectors enlarged, while the population of rural food
producers has declined. Spain is a member of the
European Economic Community and, with the rest of
Europe, enjoys global markets, but traditions of gendered
activities are often rooted in older modes of local production and community life.
Spain’s diverse geography has not stood in the way
of her national formation. Spain is one of the West’s
oldest nations. Today Spain’s 50 provinces are organized
into 17 Autonomous Regions, each with a complex
regional government, united under a constitutional
monarchy. The current king, Juan Carlos I, has reigned
since 1975. Spain’s center has long been tested by a few
movements for regional independence (especially from
the Basque and Catalan regions), but the nation and its
current form of monarchy have remained strong under a
constitution which has yielded much to regional powers.
The Spanish family is a strong entity with significant
command over its members’ sentiments. Even though
family size has shrunk drastically in recent decades—and
thus also household size, as most of Spain’s households
are nuclear family units—kinship ties that bind family
members in different households are generally strong.
Kinship is everywhere reckoned bilaterally on the familiar European model. Household formation is more variable, however: the stem family household, in which a
single heir and his or her spouse and children coreside
with the heir’s parents, is the most familiar form in the
Pyreneean (Basque, Catalan, and Aragonese) regions.
Spain’s religious culture is Roman Catholic.
Catholicism has been not only the majority religion but
the state religion through most of Spain’s history as a
nation. Although the Spanish state is now secular and
other religions have an increasing presence, the vast
majority of Spaniards still practice or profess Catholicism,
823
824
and Catholic traditions, history, social institutions,
and symbology are part of Spain’s general culture.
Catholicism’s concrete monuments—churches, shrines—
are everywhere stamped on the landscape and more intangible referents form part of Spaniards’ daily experience,
regardless of individuals’ kind or degree of religious
commitment. The Holy Family is the common model for
family virtues, Fathers’ Day and Mothers’ Day are defined
by the Catholic calendar (Fathers’ Day is March 19,
St Joseph’s Day; Mothers’ Day is December 8, the
Immaculate Conception), and much of general social life
is dominated by collective feast days and such personal
and family observances as personal saints’ days or sacramental events (baptisms, first communions). Family
virtues include procreation; nurturant motherhood; supportive fatherhood; and devotion of spouses to one
another, to the family enterprise, and to God. Nurturant
motherhood implies a sexual division of labor which takes
a husband into the public sphere in pursuit of his family’s
livelihood and political interests and places a mother in the
home with their children.
Spain’s Catholicism, energized by a struggle against
the presence of Islam from 711 until 1492, and her resistance to the Protestant Reformation, have given her a conservative image in much of the rest of Europe. However,
Spain’s economic development and state secularization in
the latter half of the 20th century, culminating in her integration into the European Community, have eroded the
stereotype. Spain has long been a tourist destination for
Europe and the Americas—tourism is modern Spain’s
largest and most pervasive industry—and Spain today is
thoroughly connected, both economically and in social
contacts, with the rest of Europe and the world.
Issues of sex and gender in Spanish culture must be
understood in relation not only to regional cultures and
economies but also to the social class structure, to
Spaniards’ sensitivity to behavioral models from beyond
their daily experience, and to the importance given to
collective action.
Spain’s social class structure is generally European in
nature. The population of peasants and petty tradesmen in
countryside and towns was historically large, overlain by a
small bourgeoisie or middle class of townspeople, and this
in turn surmounted by aristocrats, nobles, and royalty. The
clergy, drawn from all levels, had a significant presence.
In contemporary Spain, the countryside is worked
by fewer and now modernized farmers connected to
global markets and the society is dominated by blue- and
Spanish
white-collar employees and middle-class and professional urbanites. Nobles, aristocrats, and the royal family
live, with the rest of the populace, under the constitution,
and the nation’s affairs are determined by the actions
of democratically elected officials and government
appointees. The Roman Catholic church, while the
largest religious presence, is separate from the state and
no longer enjoys the enormous economic power, particularly as a landlord, that it had in the past.
The elite or leisure class presents models to the
general populace that working people might envy and try
to emulate but not fully achieve. Likewise, the elite sometimes look to the popular folk culture of the peasantry for
traditions to make fashionable. These exchanges emerge
from the steady contacts between social strata brought
about by travel, other forms of communications, and the
juxtaposition of people of different levels through the
employer–employee relationship—these are ancient as
well as modern. Modes of gender behavior may differ for
the different social classes as well as in different regions
and traditional economies, but they are not inflexible and
are open to creative manipulation. Spaniards have a deep
and often playful sensitivity to variation in styles of
behavior.
Creative emulation is part of Spanish cultural
dynamics, but so is a deep concern for collective judgments. Collective life is very strong in Spanish communities, both rural and urban. In cities, neighborhoods
(barrios) are important in social consciousness and social
life and are part of people’s local identities, just as villages
and towns are in more rural settings. Thus, while behavioral styles, including gendered behavior, are subject to
dynamic change, this is less a product of individual action
than of group consensus. Changes promoted by individuals are subject to endorsement or censure by their fellows,
so changes may be very tentative until they receive group
approval; a would-be innovator can be ridiculed or ostracized if, for whatever reason, his or her fellows do not find
a particular kind of changed behavior attractive. The adoption of changes can be quite rapid, but its collective aspect
can make changed styles appear much more traditional
than in fact they are. Thus gendered behavior is guided by
deeply rooted traditions and cultural categories, but is also
open to considerable stylistic play as Spaniards pursue
new self-images derived from a variety of sources in a
time-honored dynamic of change.
The changes which have most affected all Spaniards
in the 20th century are those associated with the decline
Gender over the Life Cycle
825
of peasant farming and the growth of a capitalist global
economy. Heirs to farms find alternative occupations;
men and women alike enter the labor market and family
farms are taken over by entrepreneurial farmers, supplying national and global markets rather than household
and local needs. The gender roles associated with traditional farming, fishing, and herding economies and the
family organization that underlay production are altered
as both men and women are freed from obligation principally to their parents’ households and become wageearners on their own, able to forge independent futures in
new kinds of occupations and, increasingly, to live and
raise their families in towns and cities. These shifts are
not unique to Spain—they are common in Western
nations—but their relative recency in Spain illuminates
changes in the lives of men and women that show their
past and future to be sharply different even while their
environment remains distinctively Spanish.
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
Spanish gender categories “male” (varón) and female
(hembra) rest on the biological distinctions of the two
sexes and are familiar to Americans and Europeans.
Spanish usage also distinguishes males and females at
different stages of the life cycle, and these differences
correspond generally to behavior common to or expected
of people at a given stage.
Standards of male and female dress at various ages
are generally Western and familiar to Americans and
Europeans. In past times, as in the rest of Europe, gendered dress styles in Spain varied more systematically
with age than they do today. Styles of dress and grooming have always been subject to the play of fashion and
thus have always been prone to various degrees of
change. Concern for dress and grooming in the styles of
the moment have always been at their height among
young men and women at the age of courtship and among
married adults of the middle and elite classes, for whom
the display of fashion awareness and material wealth are
deeply important.
GENDER
OVER THE
LIFE CYCLE
The first life stage is infancy (infancia) and babies are
críos and crías or criaturas. As children begin to walk
they are children (niños)—boys (niños) and girls (niñas).
At the age of courtship, traditionally at 17, they are mozos
(bachelors) and mozas (maidens). Adults, whether married or single, are men (hombres) and women (mujeres);
if they marry they become casados and casadas, adult
married householders. Old age (vejez) might correspond
to widowhood (viudo, viuda) for either sex and often
signals retirement, especially when married children have
already assumed householder status.
Infancy is the least gendered stage of life. Even
though the sexes of girl and boy babies may be made
evident through the color and/or style of clothing and the
piercing of girls’ ears for earrings, their gender does not
create great differences in their social environments.
Babies and toddlers—críos—play together, may sleep
together, and are cared for together.
The age at which children start school, about 5 or 6,
sees niños and niñas clearly separated by dress and sometimes also in school (though coeducation is increasingly
common at all grade levels). Children at this stage are
increasingly shown different adult role models for behavior and appearance, and are treated as having genderspecific futures (though adult roles in modern Spain are
increasingly less gender specific).
Traditionally in Spain, as in much of Europe, age 17
marks entry into bachelor- and maidenhood and is the age
at which courtship may begin. Marriageable males
(mozos) and females (mozas) have sharply separate social
lives from the groups of niños and niñas of which they
were formerly members. This social life binds each sex in
separate activities, while defining various social contexts
in which they should meet (festivals, dances, weekly or
evening strolls) as marriageable young adults. Even after
marriage, men and women who were mozos and mozas
together usually retain close ties which become part of
their social life as adults.
At marriage, the new couple departs the mozo/moza
groups and joins the groups of casado/casada adults.
Casado means “married” as well as “housed,” reflecting
the fact that in much of Spain a new couple establishes a
new household. Casados become the masters of their own
domestic economy as well as representatives of a household in the local political-economic sphere, responsible
for whatever commitments and duties householders are
assigned in a particular community.
The passage from babyhood to childhood is not
marked by particular ceremony, but the passage of niños
and niñas into mozo status can be marked by special
826
observance of the individual’s 17th birthday along with
(in some local traditions) collective festivities by a group
of mozos (or mozas, but the tradition is more common for
males) receiving their new member. Similarly, at the time
of a marriage, mozo and moza groups may bid formal
good-byes to groom and bride, who are in turn formally
received by the groups of householders (casados) to
which they now belong. These events are more closely
associated with village than with urban social life, but
same-age and same-status associations of males and
females are nonetheless universally important in Spanish
social life.
Active householders do not necessarily retire and
their entry into elder status is subtle and not always
clearly defined, but as children marry, parents may begin
to step aside both publicly and domestically. This
depends, among other variables, upon the degree to
which parents and their married children live in the same
place and depend for their living upon the same resources
or whether their economic lives are independent of each
other, as is common in the middle or upper classes and
outside the agrarian sphere. When parents control the
property on which their children depend, a couple
together or a widow or widower singly might retain control until they die, or they might hand control to the next
generation as part of their own retirement.
A Spanish woman does not change her name at
marriage. She passes her father’s surname on to her children, for whom it becomes the second official apellido
after that of their own father, the woman’s husband.
Women inherit property just as men do and carry it into
marriage. At marriage, a woman historically—but no
longer—relinquished control of her property to her husband. If she were widowed, she regained control over her
own property and at least some of her husband’s and did
not necessarily relinquish this to their heirs until her own
death. Traditionally, then, a woman’s independence was
most compromised by marriage. As property holders,
both spinsters (solteras) and widows can wield considerable economic and political power in their families and
communities. While married women once ceded certain
formal powers to their husbands, their informal power
could be great, and today their formal power is the same
as men’s. The household is the essential unit in the social
structure and men and women manage their households
jointly. Even in the past, to fulfill their household’s
obligations within a community, men or women might
cross the traditional lines of the sexual division of labor
Spanish
in the domestic or public spheres when necessary. Such
necessity—for example, for a woman to pull the plow
when her husband is absent or disabled—burdens the
poor more often than the well-to-do, who can hire helpers
of either sex.
Socialization of Boys and Girls
Boys and girls are doted upon in early childhood and surrounded by adults and other children. Men and women
are affectionate, playful, and permissive with them but
generally do not conceal the pressures on them as adults
and do not create a separate world for children. This
occurs more among some of the bourgeoisie and elite
who adopt models of intergenerational distance and hire
such intermediaries as wet-nurses (in the past) or other
servants, nannies, or tutors to serve their children’s needs.
Boys and girls are dressed differently—in pants or
dresses, respectively—as toddlers. There are complex
class and contextual variations in when or whether small
girls wear shorts or slacks, and in general these choices
are fairly recent.
Small children are usually tended by female family
members or kinswomen from outside the household, if
not by servants. Fathers and other male adult household
members have an affectionate presence but traditionally
spend more time than women at work outside the home.
As more women enter work places away from home,
relatives may lend a hand, and day-care centers become
options in some places. Spanish employers tend to be
sensitive to employees’ childcare problems and provide
them some flexibility of schedule.
Children’s experience of adults is extended by their
parents’ respective groups of friends (perhaps those who
were mozos and mozas at the same time) as well as by
kinsmen. Elderly uncles or grandfathers may be more
present than fathers, and priests (as family members,
friends, or purely in their line of duty) are important presences and counsellors to parents.
Preschool children are taught standards of proper
behavior, dress, and grooming by all the people surrounding them. These also communicate, both directly
and by example, the different male and female qualities.
For example, little boys may be praised as “strong” and
girls as “pretty,” but many praiseworthy qualities are not
gendered: intelligence, quickness to comprehend, humor,
interactive skills, individuality. The cultural stress upon
the individuality of any person’s character paves the way
Personality Differences by Gender
for the changes in sex roles that separate modern Spain
from Spain of times past, particularly where peasant
economies governed the sexual division of labor more
rigidly than is the case in most Spanish economies today,
when more people are salaried and both married and
single women are an important part of the work force.
Children enter school by age 6 if not earlier.
Teachers then enter the ranks of adults socializing children. Coeducation is increasingly common today and
socialization in school focuses on general social behavior. Same-sex groups are nonetheless important at any
grade level, both in and out of school, and teachers of
each sex become guides for gendered socialization. Of
course, this is much intensified in same-sex schools.
Probably the most central stress in general socialization
is that on family values, which include the importance of
reproduction, nurturance, productivity in support of family maintenance, and social position. Of course, these
have gendered dimensions and are taught to children of
both sexes along with general social comportment.
Puberty and Adolescence
Boys or girls approaching age 17 are often referred to as
“almost mozos/mozas.” At 17, the traditional age for
beginning courtship, the associations of males’ and
females’ same-sex groups with each other become explicitly focused on sexual attractiveness and potential reproductive sexuality. In addition, mozos and adult men, and
mozas and adult women, in their families and communities become newly linked in what for the adults are
friendly “tutorial” relationships as confidantes to their
marriageable children, kinsmen, or friends. This involves
close kinsmen of the same sex in particular, and older siblings who might already be married can be important.
Sexuality may or may not be taught and discussed
directly, but it is a subject of general attention. In addition, at this stage of life, same-sex peers are crucially
important confidantes, critics, and sharers of information.
Attainment of Adulthood
Marriage normally creates an independent economic unit.
A wedding is an obvious marker of adult status, but adult
status is more generally defined by the beginning of economic independence and responsibility as well as sexual
maturity and post-teen age. When an unmarried young
adult, probably in his or her late teens or early twenties,
827
finished with whichever level of schooling or professional training was sought, enters the economy as a
worker—whether an artisan, secretary, teacher, farmer,
lawyer, manual laborer, academic, or entertainer—he or
she also usually becomes an independent economic unit.
Such people, with their own domestic economies, are
socially adults regardless of marital status and whether
they coreside with kinsmen. These people’s principal
associations are with other adults. They become adult
examples of life’s variety for the children in their social
circles.
Social and legal adulthood are not necessarily coincident. The age of legal majority—of civil and penal
responsibility—has varied in the 20th century from age
21 for males and 25 for females to age 21 for both sexes
to the current age of 18 for both sexes, which also now
marks voting age for men and women. Men alone were
traditionally subject to the military draft and entered the
draft lottery at age 20 in a local group of same-age youths
called la quinta, whose members might form a social
subgroup of the mozos. Currently, young men are still
subject to the draft but military service is entirely
voluntary and is open to women as well.
Middle Age and Old Age
Men and women enter middle age and retirement in
generally the same way and at the same period. Middle
age can see people at the height of career development,
community activity, and family management. As their
children enter adulthood and they themselves become
grandparents, and as they reach an age where retirement
is financially possible, they may reduce their activity in
many spheres. Within the family, grandparents and other
older adults of both sexes are respected sources of guidance, love, and wisdom. If the elderly become infirm,
their families are their first source of support and care, but
social institutions also exist to shelter rich or poor old
people.
PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES
GENDER
BY
Gender differences in social behavior are those familiar
to Europeans and Americans and are dominated by
familiar notions of masculine or feminine qualities—
strength and certain kinds of dominance for males, and
828
“prettiness,” decorum, and nurturance for females.
However, both strength and affectionate kindness are
valued in both sexes, though styles of expression
can vary.
In the Mediterranean generally, males have been
seen as aggressive protectors of family honor and reputation, and females as requiring protection from the kinds
of sexual aggression (including their own seductiveness)
which would ultimately sully their families’ honor and
destroy reputation. The male’s virtue is actively to protect
the family’s honor and the female’s is to display, through
modesty and decorous social comportment, the virtue of
“shame” (vergüenza, which is a virtue for males also and
is opposed to shamelessness, sin vergüenza). Regions in
which these notions are extreme, and in which crimes of
honor are recognized and condoned in customary law
(e.g., when a man kills his sister and her lover for
besmirching the family’s honor) are very few and have
never characterized universal or even majority behavior
in a country like Spain, where the values governing permissible female sexual behavior and definitions of family
honor itself are truly diverse. However, the values of
“honor and shame” enter heavily into stereotypy in the
Mediterranean, become powerful in literary and mythic
reference, and offer models of behavior which Spaniards
(among others) recognize and can bring into play.
Behavioral styles of aggressive manhood and decorous
modest sheltered womanhood can in fact be displayed
even when or where their underpinnings in customary
law are absent. Gendered behavior focused on honor and
women’s virginity can be a complex many-layered mixture of performances with varied realities. There has been
a sexual revolution in Spain which makes these behaviors
for the most part curiosities of a partly mythical past.
GENDER-RELATED SOCIAL GROUPS
Groups of same-sex women or men of similar age
(niño, mozo, casado, etc.) are important in social life all
over Spain. These associations unite people of different
households, different families in leisure and sometimes
as well in specific tasks outside their households. Postmarital residence in most of Spain is neolocal, though
kinsmen of one or both spouses may live nearby, but
households are generally small and their members’ social
lives are vastly extended by same-sex groups in their own
localities or beyond. The domestic group is crucially
Spanish
important but highly private; groups of mozos, mozas, or
married men or women lead active social lives together in
public non-domestic space. Extrafamilial same-sex social
groups exist for both sexes, but the spaces with which
they are associated and their activities can differ. In
traditional social life, men and women pursue leisure
separately in same-sex groups, both outside and in the
home, with which women are particularly associated.
Public festivals and traditional rituals also can see groups
of like sex organized in parallel activities. However,
particularly in urban areas and among the middle classes
today, families are ever more emerging to pursue leisure
(including travel) as units.
GENDER ROLES
IN
ECONOMICS
In most traditional economies, women are more closely
associated than men with household management,
domestic tasks, gardening, and details of childcare, while
men are more closely associated than women with
manual and heavy labor, including plowing, and with the
professions. However, married people of both sexes perform tasks essential to the domestic economy when necessary. Women pull the plow if necessary and men cook
and sew if necessary (but they almost never launder!).
Both sexes engage in trade and marketing as partners,
co-owners, and co-producers in their households. The
herding of sheep and goats is generally male, but women
may also do it, as well as own herds. In regions with cattle-based economies, tending, milking, and herding cattle
fall to both sexes. In these same regions, where hoe culture and haying are predominant over plow agriculture,
men and women equally garden, cut hay, and engage in
processing and peddling of garden or orchard crops and
dairy products (milk, butter, cheese). Although much of
food production in Spain is currently being modernized
and is subject to commercial intermediaries (such as
wholesale fodder producers, industrial dairy processors,
etc.), the enduring legacy of cattle-raising regions is a
sexual division of labor which is perhaps the weakest in
Spain. In coastal regions where fishing is important,
men tend to man the boats while women manage the
land-based economy, which can involve gardening,
small-scale animal husbandry, and local trade.
The most visible division of labor by sex is seen
among plow farmers and the bourgeoisie and upper
classes, where salaried labor outside the home separates
Gender and Religion
829
men and women in space. The bourgeoisie and upper
classes also provide traditional models for the separate
pursuit of leisure by the two sexes. Rural food producers
and the urban poor are more compelled to break the
norms of the sexual division of labor whenever necessary
and at the same time to enjoy fewer and less ostentatious
forms of leisure.
Throughout Spain, the sexual division of labor or
leisure does not divide the sexes on the basis of their ability to own or manage property. Local traditions may
dictate the disposition of different kinds of property,
especially in stem family farm areas, but women in most
cases can be heirs to estates just as Spanish women hold
noble titles and can inherit the crown.
Many of Spain’s traditional crafts are associated
with one or the other sex. Such handwork as embroidery,
lacemaking, and spinning (all now in decline), as well as
most sewing and dressmaking, are done by women. Men
are the principal tailors of men’s wear, and men dominated the historically important profession of weaving.
Craft pottery is also produced principally by men, as is
most decorated metalwork. The fine arts of painting,
sculpture, and musical composition are historically dominated by men but are open to anyone, particularly today.
The performing arts—drama, song, dance, film—depend
heavily on artists of both sexes. Female writers have long
been an important minority in the literary arts.
Women’s embroidery was traditionally associated
with the establishment of new households at marriage
and, coincidentally in many places, with courtship.
Mothers and daughters, often in groups from different
households, spent their afternoon hours socializing while
they embroidered the linens that would form part of the
daughters’ trousseaux. If they were in public space in
good weather, the mozos might visit the mozas who
worked under their mothers’ chaperonage. These traditions die when women enter the salaried work force, and
traditional handwork is becoming scarce (and has been
replaced by machine embroidery), but it is highly valued
family property and the art of embroidery is still taught
by many older women to younger ones.
PARENTAL
ROLES
AND
OTHER CARETAKER
While mothers and other adult women in a family circle
spend more time than men do in the physical care of
children, both sexes lavish attention and affection on their
children and spend time in their training and their play.
Probably the most attenuated relations between small
children and their fathers are to be found in bourgeois
families whose men work outside the home and affect
greater distance and formality than is common in other
classes. Generally, however, parents are partners in their
children’s discipline and the implantation of proper models of behavior (which themselves focus on adult roles of
the two sexes). In adolescence, growing men and women
seek most specific guidance from their parents and other
kinsmen of the same sex. Spanish families do not normally express preference for children of one or the other
sex and recognize the importance of both sexes in a
domestic economy and the world at large.
LEADERSHIP
IN
PUBLIC ARENAS
Historically, Spanish men have had a more significant
presence than women in public arenas, but there have
always been exceptions, and such of Spain’s noblewomen
and royalty as Queen Isabel I (1451–1504, r. 1474–1504),
sovereign over her own domains, are obvious examples.
Women’s ownership of property has always given them
influence even though it has not always been wielded in
the most public ways. Married women, however great
their informal power, might relegate themselves to the
background for the sake of a desired propriety of appearance. Until the 20th century, public office has generally
been reserved for men. Currently, however, women work
at all levels in all secular professions, exercise authority,
and hold high government and administrative posts
throughout the nation.
GENDER
AND
RELIGION
The religion of the majority, Roman Catholicism, offers
careers to men in the clergy and monastic orders and to
women as nuns. There are also lay groups for one or both
sexes (some celibate, some not) which function widely in
society, for example, in the field of education. However,
only men can rise to the highest offices in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In traditional Catholic practice in some parts of
Spain, women might visit the local church, chapel, or
shrine more frequently than the men of their families.
830
Spanish
Although this pattern varies, some observers have
regarded it as part of a “division of labor” in which families are represented by their women in daily observance
and by their men in the local political sphere. Since the
Church has a significant political presence in Spain, there
are and have long been contexts in which people—often
men especially—feel their own political interests compromised by those of the Church or its local personnel.
However, the sacraments and most solemn holidays
remain important to all believers.
Gendered positions in religions other than the
Roman Catholic are governed by the laws and traditions
of those other churches, but, as minority religions, their
practice does not produce dominant social patterns.
nuances of all these matters. A married man may be the
official head of household, but his wife (who holds property in her own right) has enormous power within the
family and the two are partners in family management.
This includes influence over the formal and informal education of their children and the passage of judgment on
their prospective spouses. Adults of both sexes are generally respected by their children; duty to the family and
respect for its interests are values heavily impressed upon
the young. Outside the household, age and social status
engender deference for men and women alike. Family
reputation and illustrious achievements heighten deference where these are known, and men’s achievements are
often more publicly known than women’s.
LEISURE, RECREATION, AND THE ARTS
SEXUALITY
Leisure is traditionally pursued mostly outside the home
and by groups of like sex and age or marital status. In this
sphere, people from different households interact and
socialize. Local festivals often involve these groups in
separate parallel activities. Mozos and mozas, as groups,
interact explicitly in public (at dances, etc.), as their age
dictates the activity of socializing with potential mates.
Married women and married men, as groups, may play
separate roles in the organization and execution of public
festivities. These same groups socialize together at more
ordinary times as well—early evenings, Sunday afternoons—in public space (in plazas or cafés) or at selected
homes, where they might snack or drink wine or coffee
together, play cards, or simply chat. Working men and
women might take breaks in like-sex groups during their
work day. Traditionally, families reunite in their homes
by 10 p.m. for their evening meal, but families may also
eat together at restaurants at midday or in the evening;
this is an emerging form of nongendered public leisure.
Sexuality is normally regarded as natural and healthy but,
for women especially, is seen to serve the end of reproduction only, in marriage. Men and women cultivate sexual attractiveness, within the norms of modesty and
appropriate behavior, at the age of courtship—when they
are mozos and mozas. Spaniards of both sexes are deeply
concerned with personal appearance. Married people are
supposed to appear presentable and attractive without
being sexually provocative.
Males are traditionally granted more sexual freedom
than women, both before and after marriage. A married
woman’s extramarital sex is generally seen as the greatest blow to family values. Women’s sexuality is stereotypically seen as dangerously powerful, particularly
because it is supposed to be confined to the marriage bed
and can thus be more frustrated than men’s. In reality,
premarital sex is common in many parts of Spain (more
in the north than the south) and is becoming more widespread. However, sexual affection between partners is not
publicly flaunted—that of husband and wife is no exception. The sexual aspect of human relationships is
regarded as best kept private, and so public behavior may
conceal actual realities in many cases. In the late 20th
century, sexual morés in Spain began to conform with
Anglo-American and other European models in which
sexual enjoyment can be separated from both marriage
and reproduction. There has been a spate of heretofore
censored explicit or pornographic publication and a
general defiance of traditionally taught values, though
the sexual revolution is most evident among urban
RELATIVE STATUS
AND WOMEN
OF
MEN
Family interests weigh heavily in the lives of all adults,
and men and women are both influential in arriving at
decisions regarding their domestic economy, their household’s role in their community and in relation to specific
other households, and their public face in religious and
civic activities, as well as in training their children in the
Husband–Wife Relationship
831
professionals and the more cosmopolitan classes for
whom fashionableness dictates ultramodernity.
Because the public advertisement of one’s sexuality
is frowned upon, male and female homosexuals are most
successful in social life if they, too, keep expressions of
their affection private and their public appearances in
accord with the mainstream norms for their respective
sexes. Most do this, and cross-dressing is generally not
approved. The Spanish mainstream is generally demanding of “proper” appearances but also humanely tolerant
of differences of character, and homosexual households
where they exist, especially of women, are treated with
neighborly respect. Male homosexuality seems less well
tolerated. Not surprisingly, homosexuals find better
niches in the many-layered society of urban centers than
in the smaller populations of the countryside.
social strata and aid couples in escaping the expenses of
the traditional public engagement and wedding, but they
are occasionally chosen by others who would flout convention. The convention remains the measure by which
alternative decisions are taken.
Marriage was traditionally seen as having its chief
purpose in establishing a reproductive family; hence
the marriage of anyone beyond the normal age of
reproduction—either widowed people or older unmarried
individuals—was often greeted with derision in their
communities. The association of marriage exclusively
with reproductive sexuality is becoming a thing of the
past, and mature adults’ needs for marital companionship
apart from family building are well recognized.
COURTSHIP
For most of Spain’s history, divorce has been impossible,
and Spaniards are socialized to work at making their
marriages successful; the long courtship which follows
the tentative first approaches of boy and girl to one
another surrounds them with a web of sentimental and
material support for their future as spouses. Divorce is
now permitted and has in some circles become fashionable, but Spanish marriages are generally stable. Spouses
retain friendships and social life outside the household to
a greater degree than is true in American marriages; a
Spanish marital partnership exists in a much less isolating context than most Americans experience, and in many
cases spouses spend fewer hours each day alone or alone
together in their home. Family life, when children are of
school age, engages members principally at mealtimes.
Women who do not hold jobs outside the home might
spend most hours there, but the period following the midday main meal, from 5 or 6 p.m. until the family gathers
for supper at 10 p.m., is often spent socializing, even if
young children are in tow. But women have increasingly
entered the work force and their side of the marital
partnership has come to resemble more closely that of
their husbands; there is less leisure at home, but greater
equality of income.
Husbands and wives together manage their household economy and rear their children; although there can
be a division of the associated tasks, major decisions are
made in partnership. The division of tasks itself is often
manipulated as children grow, as the family enlarges or
shrinks over time, and as demands of parents’ work
AND
MARRIAGE
Men and women are expected to marry unless they
choose careers as priests or nuns. Lifelong bachelors and
spinsters generally remain important within their family
circles, regardless of where they live, especially as aunts
and uncles to their siblings’ children. Concerns for the
preservation of property and social status always affect
families’ attitudes toward their children’s marriage
choices, and in the past many marriages were arranged,
but love is a principal concern today and, in the modern
economy, a couple’s future is usually more closely tied to
their own achievements than it is dependent upon their
respective families’ fortunes.
Spanish courtship is stereotypically long and
marked by distinct formal stages, beginning as two people of courting age choose to be seen together in public
(at dances, in the public paseo or stroll), and successively
the man is received into the woman’s house, their two
families agree on the match, the man formally requests
the woman’s hand, an engagement is announced by both
families, banns are eventually posted in church, and a
wedding takes place, following which a new household is
formed (except in stem family areas) and the couple joins
the ranks of married adults. The length of a courtship and
the ostentation of its associated household and public rituals can vary greatly. At the simplest end of the spectrum,
couples elope. Elopement is not uncommon, nor in many
areas is a couple’s lifelong cohabitation without engagement or wedding. These solutions occur most in poor
HUSBAND–WIFE RELATIONSHIP
832
place(s) dictate. These things are openly discussed in
most families—husbands and wives debate, chide one
another, argue, work out agreements, and often joke their
way through rough spots in their mutual management of
household and family. Husband and wife share a bed,
jointly preside over family meals (daily) and festivals,
and set the rules and tone of life in the household. They
are seen together at public social occasions and in the traditionally patterned leisure activities (the evening stroll)
that are considered part of the social life of a couple
(rather than same-sex groups). As noted earlier, Spanish
families increasingly enjoy leisure away from home as a
unit; restaurants are favored places for their enjoyment.
OTHER CROSS-SEX RELATIONSHIPS
The Spanish family circle is generally large, gregarious,
and affectionate, and ideally its members gather frequently. Grandparents or aunts and uncles serve their
grandchildren or nephews and nieces as models and
guides to the adult world, supplementing the parents’
roles in this respect and often providing special counsel
to youngsters of like or opposite sex, depending on the
matter at hand. Brothers, sisters, and their cousins form
play groups if they are of similar age, and they separate
into groups of like sex as they pass into school age and
mozo status. Though siblings and cousins of opposite sex
are companions within the family circle, they usually
emerge socially in public in groups of like sex.
CHANGE IN ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES REGARDING GENDER
Despite the changes which have occurred in Spain’s modernization, men and women share a deep appreciation of
gender differences and the collaboration needed between
them to accomplish the traditional goals of creating
Spanish
households, nurturing family ties, and raising children to
be Spaniards. Extended kin groups are as important as
ever, or possibly more so, and social ties to groups of like
sex are significant in all lives and in the social structure.
The concerns for personal appearance and the stylistic
differences that make women feminine and men masculine persist, as do concerns for collective judgments, consciousness of local and regional roots of individuals,
families, and traditions, a generally Catholic cultural
heritage, and the insistence on the importance of maintaining marital partnerships in the face of changing
circumstances.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brandes, S. (1980). Metaphors of masculinity: Sex and status in
Andalusian folklore. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Christian, W. A., Jr. (1972). Person and God in a Spanish valley.
New York: Seminar Press.
Collier, J. F. (1997). From duty to desire: Remaking families in a
Spanish village. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dillard, H. (1984). Daughters of the reconquest: Women in Castilian
town society, 1100–1300. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press.
Elias, N. (1978). The civilising process: Vol. 1, The history of manners.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell. (Original work published 1939.)
Freeman, S. T. (1970). Neighbors: The social contract in a Castilian
hamlet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Freeman, S. T. (2001). Spain. In M. Ember & C. R. Ember (Eds.),
Countries and their Cultures (Vol. 4, pp. 2064–2085). New York:
Macmillan Reference USA.
Hooper, J. (1987). The Spaniards: A portrait of the new Spain. London:
Penguin Books.
Hooper, J. (1995). The New Spaniards. London: Penguin Books.
Lisón-Tolosana, C. (1966). Belmonte de los Caballeros: A sociological
study of a Spanish town. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pitt-Rivers, J. A. (1954). The people of the sierra. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson.
Pitt-Rivers, J. A. (1966). Honour and social status. In J. G. Peristiany
(Ed.), Honour and shame: The values of Mediterranean society.
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Veblen, T. (1899). The theory of the leisure class. New York: Macmillan.
Swat Pathan
Charles Lindholm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
People of Swat are sometimes known to outsiders as
Swatis. The dominant majority call themselves Pukhtun
(Pathan is the British term for them). Most belong to the
Yusufzai segment of the larger Pukhtun/Pashtun tribe
who inhabit southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
LOCATION
Swat District consists of a beautiful river valley located
in the mountainous Northwest Frontier Province
(N.W.F.P.) of Pakistan, close to the Afghan border.
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
Swat is a predominantly rural area where local subsistence
farmers raise their own wheat, rice, maize, and some fruit
and seasonal vegetables. Cattle and water buffalo provide
milk, labor, and meat. Chickens and fish in season are the
other sources of protein. Despite the relative fertility of
the valley, overpopulation means that hunger is common.
The money economy of Swat is primarily reliant on remittances from immigrants to Karachi and the Gulf States.
Despite considerable differences of wealth and
power among the Pathans, they are remarkably egalitarian, reflecting the structure of their segmentary lineage
organization which provides them with the framework for
concerted political action without the necessity for any
central authority. It does so by obliging those closer
genealogically to combine against those more distant,
and to join those distant enemies in battles against foes
who are more distant still. As a result, Pathans may battle
violently amongst themselves, but are capable of uniting
against external enemies, a capacity that has long enabled
them to repel invaders from their territory. (For more on
Pathan descent and kinship organization, see “GenderRelated Social Groups”; see also Barth [1959a, 1959b]
and Charles Lindholm [1982].)
Only landed members of a village are considered to
be Pathans. Also resident in the valley are caste-like
groups of landless individuals who serve the dominant
Pathan farmer–warriors as carpenters, millers, barbers,
leatherworkers, and the like. Traditionally, these subaltern occupational groups were linked to Pathan patrons
by close ties of mutual obligation, but these ties have
recently been eroded by the encroachment of capitalism.
The people of Swat prize their independence, and
rely as little as possible on the Pakistani state for order.
Anarchy is avoided by the operation of the segmentary
lineage system and by the tribal code (pukhtunwali),
which demands refuge to supplicants, hospitality to
guests, and the absolute obligation to revenge any slights.
A person who cannot live up to tribal standards is held in
contempt—a fate worse than death in a culture where
one’s very existence depends on the respect of peers,
relatives, and allies. (See Ahmad [1962], Ahmed [1980],
Barth [1959a], and Charles Lindholm [1982, 1996]
for standard ethnographies of Swat, Bellew [1864/1977]
for an early study, and Caroe [1958] and Spain [1962] for
comprehensive overviews of the Pathans.)
The people of Swat consider themselves to be
devout Sunni Muslims, and they explain local practices of
strict female seclusion, veiling, polygamy, denial of
inheritance to women, prohibition on divorce, and so on,
as enjoined by Islam. However, many of these so-called
Islamic practices are actually expressions of a patriarchal
social system (Kandiyoti, 1991).
CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
GENDER
In Swat there are only two categories of gender: male and
female. They are complementary and are ranked hierarchically, with males considered superior while females
are believed to be naturally inferior. Men command
public life; women are relegated to the lesser world of the
compound and children.
Gender is clearly marked in clothing, hairstyle, and
demeanor. While both sexes wear the standard long shirt
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Swat Pathan
and baggy trousers, only women wear bright colors,
contrasting shirt and top, and floral patterns; in contrast,
men wear plain outfits of matching drab colors (though
some bright blues are considered to be masculine). For
special occasions, women wear necklaces, earrings, noserings, and bracelets, while acceptable male jewelry
consists of an austere wristwatch. Men always have short
hair and most wear typical Pathan wool hats, which some
young blades decorate with a flower. Both young men
and young women may wear kohl to accentuate their
eyes. Women also decorate their palms with henna. Men
drape woolen blankets across their shoulders and over
their hats in cool and rainy weather, while women always
wear white shawls, which they use to cover their shoulders and long hair. In the village, poorer wome