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    The Body and Gender: Gender in A Comparative Perspective

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    The document discusses gender from an anthropological perspective. It defines gender as the cultural construction of traits assigned to males and females, distinguishing it from biological sex. Gender roles and expectations vary widely across cultures and change over time based on factors like environment, economy and technology. For example, the introduction of machinery reduced the importance of physical strength in determining gender roles. While women universally take on childcare responsibilities, their status and roles in production have varied significantly between cultures and historical periods. Understanding these cultural differences is important for recognizing how gender relations can change.

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    The Body and Gender: Gender in A Comparative Perspective

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    13 views21 pages
    The document discusses gender from an anthropological perspective. It defines gender as the cultural construction of traits assigned to males and females, distinguishing it from biological sex. Gender roles and expectations vary widely across cultures and change over time based on factors like environment, economy and technology. For example, the introduction of machinery reduced the importance of physical strength in determining gender roles. While women universally take on childcare responsibilities, their status and roles in production have varied significantly between cultures and historical periods. Understanding these cultural differences is important for recognizing how gender relations can change.

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    The document discusses gender from an anthropological perspective. It defines gender as the cultural construction of traits assigned to males and females, distinguishing it from biological sex. Gender roles and expectations vary widely across cultures and change over time based on factors like environment, economy and technology. For example, the introduction of machinery reduced the importance of physical strength in determining gender roles. While women universally take on childcare responsibilities, their status and roles in production have varied significantly between cultures and historical periods. Understanding these cultural differences is important for recognizing how gender relations can change.

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    13 views21 pages

    The Body and Gender: Gender in A Comparative Perspective

    Uploaded by

    S
    The document discusses gender from an anthropological perspective. It defines gender as the cultural construction of traits assigned to males and females, distinguishing it from biological sex. Gender roles and expectations vary widely across cultures and change over time based on factors like environment, economy and technology. For example, the introduction of machinery reduced the importance of physical strength in determining gender roles. While women universally take on childcare responsibilities, their status and roles in production have varied significantly between cultures and historical periods. Understanding these cultural differences is important for recognizing how gender relations can change.

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    of 21

    The Body and

    Gender

    Gender in a Comparative
    Perspective

    Peoples and Bailey


    “Everywhere, gender matters: It makes a difference
    for who you are, what you have, how you interact,
    and what you can become, among other things.”

    When was the last time you had to think about


    gender?
    – Possible Situations:

    • Body image/appearance/ dress/ body hair


    • Social roles (behavior, public space)
    • Responsibilities and obligations (financial support)
    • Stereotypes (care takers)
    • Labor expectations/ stereotypes
    • Authority
    • Language (swearing, curse words) public/private
    • Social norms, values, pre-conceived ideas
    • Career aspirations/ employment
    • Education
    • Gendered products
    • Rights and inheritance
    • Safety in general – freedom (to go out late,
    move, learn) social class
    • Sports and hobbies
    • Intelligence
    • Showing emotion
    What is gender?

    – Enculturation? The process of learning what is expected from you


    – What is he difference between sex and gender?
    A person’s sex is determined biologically, by your chromosomes; you genitalia,
    predominant hormones, and secondary sexual characteristics (hair, breasts,
    body size etc.)
    Gender, in contrast, is culturally defined.
    Gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and instills in males
    and females. “Gender,” in other words, refers to the cultural construction of
    whether one is female, male, or something else
    What is gender?

    – Anthropologists often say that gender is “culturally constructed”, not


    biologically determined.
    – A person’s sex is physical, but most elements of maleness and femaleness
    are socially learned during enculturation.
    – To say that gender is culturally constructed is to say that being
    biologically male or female has different implications in different cultures.
    Ex: Hua of New Guinea => cultures use the physical “raw materials” of physical
    difference to construct varying beliefs about the ways in which males and females differ.
    Ex: Disney movies? Euro American culture –and other (women fragile, men tough) =>
    cultural implications?
    What is gender?

    – Anthropologists observe that gender roles vary with environment, economy,


    adaptive strategy, and types of political systems.
    – A couple terms:
     Gender roles are the tasks and activities a culture assigns. Related to gender
    roles are gender stereotypes, which are oversimplified but strongly held
    ideas about the characteristics of males and females.
     Gender stratification: Unequal distribution of social resources between men
    and women.
    – Culture’s ideas about masculinity and femininity – permeate relationships and
    behavior, as well as other important implications
    The Sexual Division of Labor

    – The sexual division of labor refers to the patterned ways in which productive and other
    economic activities are allocated to men and women.
    – There is a sexual division of labor in all cultures
    – Main argument: division of labor and gender roles are rapidly changing, especially in
    North America => demolish the idea that it is only natural for the man to be the
    breadwinner and the woman to be the caretaker of the family.
    – Ethnographic data prove that in many cases this is not true, and thus contradict the
    idea that the widespread domination of men over women is rooted in the “fact” that
    men’s labor is more important to physical survival and material well-being than
    women’s labor.
    The Sexual Division of Labor

    – “Unless we become educated about the cultural diversity of humanity, we consistently


    and usually mistakenly, conclude that the ideas and practices of our own societies are
    universal or inherent in human nature.”
    – But although “man is the breadwinner and woman is the caretaker” might not be
    universal, there exist despite cultural variations some cross-cultural regularities and
    patterns in the sexual division of labor.
    – What are these patterns and what factors influence them?
    Table in text:
    1- All human societies divide some kinds of labor by sex in similar
    ways. (there are patterns). So why is it the case that some tasks
    are either male or female?
    2- There are tasks that are not determined, either males or
    females or both among societies do them. What determines the
    cultural variability in the sexual division of labor?
    1- Hypotheses for Existent Patterns

    1) The Relative Strength of the Sexes


    Physical strength is relevant to the type of activities either males or females
    perform.
    On average, adult males are able to more efficiently perform tasks that require
    great strength, so such work is usually allocated to males.
    However, it is not always the case, such that some forms of labor allocated to
    women require a lot of physical strength.
    Tough character?
    1- Hypotheses for Existent Patterns

    2) Fertility Maintenance
    It has been suggested that productive activities that require a strenuous amount of
    physical exertion can depress a woman’s fertility, such that reproduction would be
    so decreased that the population might not be able to maintain its numbers over
    the course of generations.
    1- Hypotheses for Existent Patterns

    3) Compatibility with Child Care


    Women are the bearers, nursers, and primary caretakers of infants and young
    children.
    So women are allocated tasks that they can perform while caring for children.

     Even if the three hypotheses combined could explain the similar patterns that exist
    around the world in terms of the division of labor, these hypotheses cannot explain
    the differences that exist, the cross-cultural diversity in the division of labor.
     Constants (such as physical differences between males and females) cannot explain
    diversity and variability.
    2-Explaining Diversity and Variability

    – Why is it that the division of labor according to sex in certain times proves to be
    culture-specific?
    – Example: Intensive agriculture and women’s labor => women do remarkable
    amount and quality of work in horticultural societies but when societies
    develop intensive agricultural systems, the women’s contribution diminishes.
    Why?
    – Suggestions:
    1. Men are out hunting and absent from home; women do the work
    2. Men are out fighting in wars or protecting the territory and cannot do
    gardening work themselves
    2-Explaining Diversity and Variability

    – Hypothesis:
    As cultivation becomes more intensive, two changes affect the women’s domestic
    workload:
    1. tasks that women perform in all cultures require more time in intensive systems
    (ex: roots vs. cereals)
    2. in intensive systems, new tasks emerge that are generally done by women
    (planting process of roots vs. cereals)
    Both changes => divert women’s time away from cultivation, so they work relatively less
    than men in providing food.
     Example mainly to show that sexual division of labor is “cultural”. What do you think?
    Sexual Division of Labor in Industrialized Modern Societies
    If it is true that the division of labor in pre-modern populations was mainly
    affected by factors such as male vs. female strength or the fact that only
    women can bear and nurse children, then this matters for modern
    employment patterns, for a number of reasons:
    1- automated machinery has greatly reduced the need for strength to
    perform tasks
    2- economies are service and high-tech oriented
    3- birthrate of industrialized nations is far lower than that of pre-industrialized
    peoples (child care burdens are less for women)
    4- some tasks were allocated to women because they were compatible with
    childcare, but now there are for example child-care specialists or schools that
    perform these duties
    The Status of Women
    – Another main issue in the anthropological study of gender is how and why the status of
    women varies cross-culturally.
    – Women’s status is multidimensional: comprised from a complexity of features that make
    it difficult to categorize the status of women as “high” or “low” even in a single culture.
     An array of economic, political, religious and familial factors determine the status of
    women across societies, and some of these dimensions may seem to contradict each
    other (ex: “autonomy” inside vs. outside of domestic context)
     Also, aspects of the status of women vary according to social context and situation.
     The status of a woman can change over the course of her life (ex: wife in the household)
    The Status of Women
    – Despite its complexity, “the status of women” should still be used as a concept to explain the
    degree to which women are subordinate to me.
    – Universal Subordination? Are women everywhere subordinate to men?
    – First thing first, it has never been recorded that in a society women dominate men. There has
    been powerful women, queens, but there is no matriarchy in history.
    – Common answer to the question: either in politics or in religious/social contexts, powerful
    roles have always been exclusive to men, women always come second in authority.
    – Women as a “social category” are everywhere devalued relative to men as a “social category”
    The Status of Women
    – In answer to the question, important to notice in regards to ethnographic records:
     Sources of androcentric bias: ethnographic data has been biased –fieldworkers
    had little access to women’s point of view which was largely unreported
     Eurocentric bias – inequality and hierarchies of knowledge production (bowing
    to husband in china)
     Regardless of the description that we might agree on referring to the status of
    women, the first step is to acknowledge that differences exist, and they should
    be studies in order to figure out the conditions under which future equality can
    be achieved.
    Influences on Women’s Status

    a) Women’s contribution to material welfare (women’s role in production greatly


    influences their rights, freedom and other dimensions of overall status)
    b) Women’s control over key sources (it’s not only women’s role in production, but
    their control of it: owning land/resources and have control over them => modern
    involvement in the work force)
    c) Descent and post marital residence (matrilineal/matrilocal vs. patrilineal societies
    => who moves after marriage, domestic authority)
    d) Overall social complexity (women’s overall status has decreased as social
    complexity increased; at least until the industrial revolution in the 1700s/ sub-
    Saharan Africa vs. Euroasia)
    – Women’s status in industrial societies
     Anthropological studies show that although the status of
    women decreased as social complexity increased, there has
    been a reverse in this hypothesis after industrialization (for
    reasons discussed before)
     What can be said is that as long as there are differences in
    division of labor and the overall status of women, this shows
    that there is hope that modern societies can move towards
    eliminating barriers to female opportunity and achievement.
     Until now, no key has been discovered to leading to total
    equality between the sexes, achieving equality in one
    domain (workplace) has not insured it in other contexts (the
    family household for example)

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