lecture on social groups and gender roles

8/13/2019 Lecture on Social Groups and Gender Roles

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SOCIAL GROUPS

AND GENDERROLES


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SOCIAL GROUPS AND GENDER

ROLES Not all human groups are equal to one another

in terms of wealth, prestige or power.

Forms of social inequality based on gender,class, caste, ethnicity and nationalism.

Ways societies attempt to justify forms of

inequality by making them appear unchangeable

and eternal, rather than the result of historical

practices


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ROLES Some patterns of

inequality e.g. gender,class, caste reach back

thousands of years intohuman history

Others e.g. race, ethnicityand nationality are morerecent in origin and

closely associated withchanges happening inEurope


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ROLES The spread of capitalism and

colonialism reshaped formsof stratification that predatedtheir arrival

Introduced new forms of

stratification into formerlyindependent egalitariansocieties


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ROLES Prior to the 1970s male dominance was

thought to be a feature of all societies

Feminist anthropologists such as Collier,Rosaldoable to show that the roles of men

and women within families varied enormously,

cross-culturally and historically


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ROLES The nuclear family far from universal


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SOCIAL GROUPS AND

GENDER ROLES

Developed as a historical consequence of

industrial capitalism

Marxist-feminist anthropologists such as

Leacock womens subordination could

be connected to the rise of privateproperty and the emergence of the state


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ROLES Used ethnographic and historical evidence

from North and South America, Melanesia,

Africa to show how Western capitalistcolonization had transformed egalitarian

precolonial indigenous gender relations

into unequal, male dominated genderrelations


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ROLES Recently, a recognition that gender needs to be

discussed beyond the phenotypic male and female

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BwleH5n5eY

There are social roles that are recognized as female

but performed by males

What is Gender?


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SOCIAL GROUPS

AND GENDERROLES

How do we account for the

different status of womenamong these societies?

Previously, a male bias

until 1970s when women

entered the field

Image of man the hunter

became balanced with

woman the gatherer


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ROLES Most people cannot see the forest for the

trees

Anthropology makes us look at the forest

the whole package of economic and

environmental factors that produced a

given culture and its customsAre women exploited?


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ROLES Marxist model preindustrial societies

e.g. hunter-gatherers people kill

or produce just what they need Egalitarian no group exploits

another

Capitalism brought class structure

emergence of an exploiting group

that grew rich on the labours of

others


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ROLES Inevitably, there would arise conflict

between owners and workers

Result would be a classless socialistsystem

Marx not overly concerned with gender

and status differences


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SOCIAL GROUPS AND

GENDER ROLES Friedrich Engelsadded sex to

Marxist economies

He believed wealth increased mans position inthe family causing the woman to be subjugated

Engels believed that a return to classless

societies would reunite the sexes


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WORKING WITHIN

CONSTRAINTS Hausa women Northern

Nigeria

Women live within theseclusion of purdah once

they marry

Yet somehow they remain

active in the marketplace

They cannot move in the

public markets themselves


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WORKING WITHIN

CONSTRAINTS They employ their children buying and selling

goods

E.g. Binta

11 years old

goes to market

sellbean cakes, porridge etc. made by her mother

Also runs errands for raw materials

Money that is collected supplements the family

income

Her mother is able to maintain an income


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WORKING WITHIN

CONSTRAINTS Children also establish a

trade network that will be

used in later years as

adults

http://hausaonline.wordpr

ess.com/2010/08/05/bbc-

hausa-childrens-life-in-niger/


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CONTROL OF

RESOURCES Ernestine Friedlasserts that

control of scarce resources is thekey to power and dominance

Four kinds of hunting/gatheringsocieties:

a) cooperative male and female

labour in foraging

sexual equality b) men and women forage

separately for individual needs.


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CONTROL OF RESOURCES

c) men hunt and control distribution of

meat; women gather only for family needs

d) men provision all the food (meat) e.g.

Inuit

Women are used, abused

and traded


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CONTROL OF RESOURCES

Agricultural based societies men control

most of the food that is exchanged

womens status correspondingly low Industrial societies women limiting

number of children

Gaining control of goods for distributionbeyond the family


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PRODUCTION WHO

CONTROLS IT? Is a woman limited by pregnancy and childbirth?

Maybe societys subsistence needs and its ecology thatset limits on how many children a woman can have

In societies that require considerable female labour, anadaptive strategy would be to generate taboos andsexual customs that would insure a greater spacing ofchildren e.g. !Kung people nurse each child for fouryears and this makes ovulation very irregular


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PRODUCTION WHO

CONTROLS IT? Childbearing perfectly compatible with hunting

small game and fishing near home

Not compatible with long distance hunting Most important consequence male control of

meat, a valuable resource. Will result in a

difference in equality

Males acquired a society-wide network of mutual

exchanges and obligations (trade networks),

while womens influence was limited to the

family


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HORTICULTURALISTS

Nature of subsistence changed need of a warrior class

to defend property

Fighting like long-distance hunting incompatible with

gathering and childcare


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HORTICULTURALISTS

High status requires the

control of scarce resources

Imagine that you controlonly 10% of a Bedouin

tribes resources but that

the 10 percent is their

water

and you will havean inkling of why male

control of protein originally

gave them such power


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GENDER

Refers to the cultural construction of sexual difference.

Gender roles are the activities a culture assigns to each

sex

Gender roles vary with environment, economy, adaptive

strategy and type of political system


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GENDER

Gender stereotypes oversimplified but

strongly held ideas about the

characteristics of males and females

Gender stratification an unequal

distribution of rewards between men andwomen


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GENDER

STRATIFICATION In stateless societies gender

stratification identified as

prestige

E.g. Ilongots of northern Luzon

in the Philippines

Gender differences related to the_____________ cultural value placed onadventure, travel and knowledge of the externalworld


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GENDER STRATIFICATION

Ilongot men as headhunters visited distant places

Acquired knowledge of the external world, amassed

experiences there and returned to talk about it in public

oratory

Received acclaim as a result

Ilongot women had inferior prestige because they lacked

external experiences


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ROLES

http://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofaf

rica.htm
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lecture on social groups and gender roles

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