I must apologise as this post is not a blog but a much longer read. Last week, following my blog, Evil, Women and Misogyny (https://timboatswain.wixsite.com/website/post/evil-women-and-misogyny) , I had a couple of conversations which focussed on gender roles. These discussions reminded me of a talk I gave at a conference many moons ago. I sought to find the proccedings but failed. However, amongst the endless papers I keep ( I am a hoarder who hates throwing away anything) I came across a draft. So although rather long in the tooth I thought I would toss it out into the ether. So here goes!
'The Creative Womb': An Anthropological Perspective of Gender Roles and Behaviour
"Throughout my childhood and indeed until after I had gone to university, my mother was a full-time housewife. She spent those years ministering constantly to a selfish and demanding family of husband and three daughters, to say nothing of the numerous pets, stray friends etc. We saw her as a slave who would dance attendance on us, cavilling at any few minutes she might need for herself." i
This letter represents a view of motherhood which seems to perceive
a caring domestic role in terms of servitude and exploitation. The
traditional division of labour in developed societies has assigned
to women the position of provider of services and comforts for the
family. This position has been based upon an unquestioned assumption
of naturalness which definitively separated the tasks of each sex.
The aptitude of the sexes to specific roles was linked to a set of
attributes or qualities fixed upon gender. These qualities are
typically polarised (as is found in the ancient Taoist principle of
Yin and Yang). The masculine is strong, courageous, aggressive,
rational and conscious, and the female is frail, tender, receptive,
emotional and unconscious. ii This idea of assigning specific
attributes to each sex can produce a reaction often of an emotive
quality:
"Incorporated in the concept of sex-class identity are attributes which
assign various emotional, intellectual and behavioural characteristics
to each sex. These have long been shown to be instilled by
socialisation and maintained by social sanctions. They do not have the
limitations imposed by any external objective 'reality' comparable to
those of human anatomy which provides the diacritics of sexual
differentiation. They are cultural, not biological” iii
[Note, pace, the assertive vocabulary]
These qualities, therefore, when assigned to males and females have been often seen
as being, politically, opposed to each other rather than complementary; and reflecting
gender stereotypes rather than genuine sex differences. The gender
stereotype, it is argued, has become the basis for a division of labour which ignores
individual aptitude. The male and masculine gender roles have been
associated with dominance and control, the female and feminine roles as
passive and nurturing. The male has been assigned a public and political
sphere, the female a domestic position. The male and the masculine role
have been assessed, by most societies, as superior to the female and those qualities
labelled as feminine have, consequently, been devalued. This has often
generated, it is claimed, a sense of inferiority in women, and many, as some aspects
of the feminist movement suggest, perceive themselves as exploited by
men in particular and society in general (as the letter above exemplifies).iv
My intention in the remainder of this talk is to examine the importance
the procreative function of women has had in establishing the divisions of
Iabour within society and suggest that sex differences need not establish
gender distinctions that impede human relations or individual potential.
I shall attempt to trace, through a cross-cultural approach a few
general points about how a woman's procreative function has a crucial part
in establishing gender roles which are perceived as limiting, and inhibit
rather than facilitate the interaction and activities of men and
women. v
Any cross-cultural view of sex differences and roles is difficult and
controversial. A problem arises from the relative lack of cross-cultural
data which impedes the possibility of discerning any universal pattern
in how societies perceive sex differences but there is also a political
dimension: speculation and sometimes fulmination about the relationship
between the sexes is rife and old certainties have vanished, but in
searching for an explanation of distinctions it is important to preserve
healthy scepticism towards any proffered theories (from which this
talk claims no immunity).vi
I recognize that the use of anthropology to examine social experience
presents several difficulties with the method. Anthropology is perhaps more
than most areas of study, subject to a proliferation of ideologies. It
is not only that new theories are constantly replacing and making
redundant past approaches but that there is now a wide range of co-existing
and competing methods of analysis. It is difficult even within one
country to find an agreed series of concepts and terminology. (my present
intention is not to answer the question but it is worth asking, 'why this is so?').vii
Anthropology can often be criticised for presenting ethnographic data
from the ethnocentric bias of Europe and North America: the questions asked
of informants, the interpretations and conclusions reached are underpinned
by western perceptions. For example, much of the debate
concerning sex differences has focussed on the relationship of nature to
nurture: are gender distinctions determined by innate biological and
psychological differences between male and female or are perceived
distinctions products of social and cultural conditions? Thus it has
been argued, on the one hand, that division of labour between the
sexes is a consequence of biology which represents a 'natural order'
or, on the other, that roles have been culturally determined through
gender stereotyping. viii
Rejection of biology as a determinant of male and female behaviour
denies the importance of psycho-physiological differentiation in the division
of labour and postulates culture as creating and fixing gender roles.
Sex differences are not characterised as natural and immutable but
judged as controls enforced by society to justify sex discrimination.
Domestic and nurturing roles are devalued by society and, therefore,
perceived as a measure of social inequality: man's subordination and
exploitation of women. ix
Preoccupation with the apparent boundaries between nature and culture
has coloured the analyses of much ethnographic material. Sex differences
have been seen to symbolize or be symbolized by, the relationship
between nature and culture. The categories, however, of nature and
culture are particular perceptions and should not be assumed to be
universal givens. The separation of nature and culture is in itself a
cultural construct and yet these terms are often used in anthropological
studies as if their definition was unproblematic and their application
universal.x
Anthropology has also been accused of androcentric bias: the morphology
of the discipline, its structures and categories bear "the male stamp”,
and it is mainly men who have recorded the ethnographies. In other words,
male bias is demonstrated not only in the theoretical framework upon
which anthropologists based their work but also in the ethnographic
data they analyse. Even women anthropologists cannot escape this male
bias but are bounded by male methodologies and perceptions:
"Such is the prestige of males in our society that a woman, in
anthropology or any other profession, can only gain respect or be
attended to if she deals with questions deemed important by men.
Though there have been women anthropologists for years, it is rare to
be able to discern any difference between their work and that of male
anthropologists. Learning to be an anthropologist has involved
learning to think from a male perspective, so it should not be surprising
that women have asked the same questions as men." xi
Male bias in anthropology is linked with male bias in society and male
bias in society is conceptualised in terms of male dominance. Male bias
is not defined specifically but is assumed to exist in most societies as
illustrated by male dominance. If this dominance is not perceived by the
actors of a particular culture it can be recognised by the outside
observer, i.e. the anthropologist.xii
An assumption has been made here: that women and women's roles are
universally characterised in all cultures as inferior and that, therefore,
there is a general principle of female subordination and male dominance,
which, in turn, creates a male bias in all cultures; but as Kay Milton
has pointed out:
"Not only is the assumption that males are always seen as superior not
borne out, but also the assumption that people conceptualise relations
between the sexes in hierarchical terms would appear to be unfounded." xiii
If the concept of a universal subordination of women is not confirmed by
the cross-cultural evidence, is the concept of male dominance a cultural
tool of a particular type of society rather than being a cultural
universal? Has there been a conflation between observable biological
distinctions and the evaluation some societies give to certain roles?
All societies to some extent categorize labour by sex as well as by
age and status. Caring roles which have been persistently in our
society allocated to females have been perceived as inferior in comparison
to other tasks. Is this because women are considered in themselves less
valuable than men which has led to a devaluation of the tasks associated
with them, or is it the tasks are valued less and this has resulted in
women being considered less worthy because of their association with such
tasks? There is, it seems an asymmetry in the status of men and women:
there are no societies known where women have a publicly recognized power
that surpasses that of men.
Ethnographic data has demonstrated that in contemporary societies both
sexes undertake a wide variety of roles and there are pre-literate
societies which associate women with tasks or functions, which in more
developed societies are thought of as men's. But in these societies
high status is then accorded to the male roles:
"Men may cook or weave or dress dolls or hunt humming birds, but if such
activities are appropriate occupations of men, then the whole society,
men and women alike, votes them important. When the same occupations
are performed by women they are regarded. as less important." xiv
A striking example of this way of thinking has been seen in a modern industrial
society which, was in theory, dedicated to the equality of the sexes in
all occupations. In the profession of medicine in the USSR eighty-five
per cent of practising physicians were female (the theoretical side is
mainly in the hands of male researchers), and according to the Soviet
statistics available, employees in the public health sector, in which
practising doctors are included, were the worst paid section of society.
This was and is hardly the case in Western Europe or America where practical
medicine is still perceived to be dominated by men. xv
Is there a fundamental and universal cause for this asymmetry in the
evaluation of the sexes? At its crudest level sex classification is
founded upon anatomical and physiological differences: it is difficult
to deny sexual dimorphism, that the sexes differ in biological constitution. Men and
women differ in reproductive activity, women bear children and lactate,
and generally, men have a greater potential in physical size and
strength: men are better muscled and have a higher metabolic rate.
Male mammals have been shown to exhibit more aggression than females and
this is often linked to male hormones, androgens. Although it may
not yet be clear to what extent hormones determine or modify human
behaviour, humans do have the capacity to interpret and probably alter
their biological constitutions: for example, there must have been a point
in the prehistory of homo sapiens when it was a statistical fact that
more anthropoid creatures walked on all fours but for cultural reasons -
tool making, food gathering and so on - our ancestors learned to be
bipedal. Whatever the biological constraints upon the behaviour of
each sex the separation of human biology from culture would seem to be
a false dichotomy. Human activities, feelings and value systems are
not solely determined by biology but an interaction between biology and
various culturally determined conceptions, strategies and symbols.
Without culture human behaviour could not be distinguished from that
of animals. Therefore, what it means to be male and female will not
depend entirely upon morphological, hormonal, or possibly neurological
or cognitive differences but will also be a consequence of cultural
interpretations of biology. Therefore, the value attributed to being
a man or a woman and the status given to those roles allotted on the
basis of sex will have elements of social construct. xvi
It has been argued that the asymmetry between the sexes is a
historical development. Some feminist writers have adapted
the theories of nineteenth-century evolutionists in hypothesising that
at an earlier stage in history there was a matriarchy, that is female
dominance of the political, supra-familial hierarchy in society – which
was at some point in prehistory replaced by patriarchy. In the East
Mediterranean this postulated overthrow of matriarchy is equated with
the emergence of the pastoral Indo-Europeans. The evidence cited for
this supposed period of matriarchy is the knowledge of past matriliny,
myths of ancient rule by women, and archaeological survivals, mainly
the remains of female figurines from the Neolithic period. Matrilineality
in itself cannot establish that there was matriarchy, and although among
the ancient authors, from Homer to Plutarch, there are many myths of
matriarchies, there is not a single description, that can be corroborated,
of a real society where women dominated the political hierarchy. The
archaeological evidence depends entirely upon an interpretation which agrees
that the extensive spread and large quantity of female figurines represent the
the dominance of female goddesses which in turn reflects the dominance of
women because of their association with fertility, a vital element of
agrarian life. Although it cannot be proved matriarchies did not
exist, the evidence of their establishment in prehistory is really insubstantial. xvii
From the feminist position, the idea that there was a stage in human history
when women were dominant is advantageous as it challenges the argument
that patriarchy is inevitable as 'a fact of nature'. There are, however, contemporary
societies where myths abound of female dominance in some primordial era:
" ... such myths, rather than reflecting history, are expressions of cultural dreams or fantasies, or validations of political alignments in the societies in which they are told." xviii
The hypothesis does not give an adequate explanation of why one sex
should be valued over the other, or why matriarchy is overthrown by
patriarchy, or why contemporary preliterate societies show no evidence
of such a process.
Another historical or evolutionary theory of sexual asymmetry associates
an adaptation of Palaeolithic society to differentiate the activities of
men and women with a special status given to men. The key activity
responsible for the enhanced status acquired by men was hunting, which,
it is agreed, was a watershed in human evolution, demanding a new level
of social co-operation and tool-making:
"In a very real sense our intellect, interests, emotions and basic social
life - all are evolutionary products of the success of the limiting adaptation." xix
Hunting was man's activity because of the requirements of physical
strength and mobility. However, neither the archaeological evidence nor
comparative ethnographic data demonstrates the evolutionary or economic
pre-eminence of hunting. Food gathering, essentially a female activity
has been shown to be very important in contemporary hunter-gatherer
populations, small-game hunting, requiring tools, is practised by both
sexes, and the socialisation of these activities and child-rearing
require social co-operation.xx
It has been argued that there is an opposition in societies between the
domestic domain and the public sphere. Women are confined to the
domestic domain and they are denied the prestige and authority that
can be gained by the wider variety of relations available in the public
world where men operate. Women's lack of status, it has been argued,
is determined by their poor mobility which in turn is a consequence of
their maternal role.xxi
Murdock and Provost in a study on the division of labour, took
a sample of 185 societies and demonstrated that there was no differential
between the sexes on the basis of strength: in many of the societies
examined, it was the woman who undertook the heaviest task, the
collection of water. The main difference in labour between the sexes
was represented by the amount of mobility required. The tendency was
for women to have the most static tasks. Their interpretation was
that the procreative functions and maternal nurturing were the prime
factors in determining this fact. xxii
A healthy pregnancy and a successful delivery need not impose so severe
a restriction on a mother's work, on the other hand, in most societies
it is a mother who nurses her child and undertakes subsequent childcare.
Sarah Nerlove has argued that the early introduction of solid foods may
be associated with high infant mortality rates, which would increase the
pressure on a mother to maintain suckling over a longer period of time.
Although suckling may in fact inhibit mobility and freedom less than solid foods,
since the latter demands preparation and adequate sterilisation
as opposed to the freely available and naturally appropriate breast
milk. xxiii
The kind of restrictions nursing might impose can be gleaned
from Moni Nag's work. xxiv He used figures from eighty different societies
and calculated that an average woman would have four children which
would survive until the age of two. Reckoning on two years of breastfeeding,
the mother's mobility would be reduced considerably over eight
years. After a child has been weaned care need not necessarily be only
the woman's domain, but nonetheless in most societies the main
supervisory role of childcare until puberty tends to fall on women. It
may be that this later period of child care has been founded on the
pattern established by nursing. The qualities, temperament and
musculature needed to nurse and supervise children can be seen to differ
from those required for other activities, and would, therefore, tend to
reinforce the gender stereotypes.
Even if a woman's procreative functions can be used to explain a lack of
mobility and a restriction to a domestic domain in a preliterate society,
it does not explain why there should be an asymmetry in the evaluation of the
public roles of men and women or domestic tasks, as the latter cannot be shown
to be any less vital to social or economic life. Neither can the biological fact of
reproduction be seen as such a limiting factor in a developed society which
can allow for great flexibility in parturition and nurturing, and where the potential of an individual can be fully recognised and not limited by a gender stereotype based
upon biological function.
Yet, it does seem clear that gender stereotypes in modern society are still maintained and prescribe specific activities for each sex. It hardly seems satisfactory to explain this persistence purely in terms of survival from a previous social context. As one
sociologist has pointed out;
"Clearly both sexes have a fairly high degree of emotional interest in
the current sex role ideology." xxv
It is possible that this emotional investment concerning sex roles is
limited to the psychic identity of an individual. This is an extremely
difficult area as arguments based upon psychoanalysis tend to be circular or tautological.
Nancy Chodorow argued that a woman's maternal role had important implications for the development of children of both sexes. Girls would soon identify with their mother
and their concept of self would quickly form, constellating around the biology and behaviour of their mother. A boy on the other hand would have to reject his mother's behaviour and assert his own 'ego' in order to join the adult male world, which is situated outside the domestic domain. xxvi
According to Anthony Stevens, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of an individual establishing an identity and this process, as Foucault has argued, is intimately bound up with gender. xxvii In many societies both boys and girls are not recognized as members of
the adult community until they have been initiated into manhood or womanhood - as if biology was made by society. In our own society, there are processes of initiation, though they are various and often unconscious, manifesting themselves in sub-cultures. xxviii
Among the people of Papua New Guinea, the initiation into manhood often takes
the form of rebirth through ritual humiliations. It is taboo for
women to be involved or present at an initiation ceremony: it is the
men who make men. The hut where this takes place among Iatmul people
is called 'the womb'. It has been suggested that these initiation
ceremonies are in some way a response to the clearly discernible
creative role that women have - a form of 'womb envy' - but these ceremonies
difficult to interpret at such a basic level as Gilbert Lewis has demonstrated. xxix
There have even been cultures that have denied the creative function of women :
"She who is called the mother is not her offspring's
Parent, but nurse to the newly sown embryo-
The male - who mounts - begat. The female a stranger,
Guards a stranger's child if no god bring it harm
I shall present you evidence that proves my point!"
Says Apollo in Aeschylus' Eumenides.xxx
Insistences on male procreation may be seen as the bravado of males who
recognise their involvement in the creation of life lasts a minimal
time compared with a mother's but is the envy of the creative role of
women in procreation really an adequate explanation of sexual asymmetry in status?
The dyadic relationship between men and women is one of opposition and
complementarity (the reverse of harmony can be conflict) the recognition
of 'the other' depends upon a firm sense of being 'the same'. An
individual from his/her androgynous base cannot easily establish a
concrete notion of self through sex, but relies on society to demarcate
the perimeters of gender. In the end the notion of male superiority or female
subordination is a cultural perception which challenges those perimeters
assigning a scale of values to human activity.
References
i A letter in The Guardian, 22nd. March 1983
ii Human Sexuality, edited by Vern L. Bullough, Bonnie Bullough, Alice M. Stein, 1980
iii La Fontaine, Man, 1981
iv Kate Millet, Sexual Politics, 1981
v Nancy J. Hirschmann, Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom.Political Theory Vol. 24 , No 1 (Feb.,1996), pp. 46-67
vi Leslie R. Brody Gender differences in emotional development: A review of theories and research, Journal of Personality, 1985
vii John Beattie, Other Cultures: Aims, Methods and Achievements in Social Anthropology, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964
viii Ceci, Stephen J.; Williams, Wendy M., eds. The Nature–nurture debate: the essential readings, Blackwell, 1999
ix R. Reiter, Towards an Anthropology of Women, New York & London,1975.
x Reynolds, P. The Evolution of Human Behaviour, Berkeley, California, 1981
xi Anne E Kramer, Science, Sex and Society, 1979 p.338.
xii Sherry Ortner, Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality (co-edited with Harriet Whitehead). Cambridge University Press. 1981
xiii Kay Milton, Man, 14
xiv Mead, Margaret. Male and Female: The Classic Study of the Sexes (1949), Quill (HarperCollins), 1998 edition
xv BMJ, Women doctors believe medicine is male dominated: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7100.75k (Published 12 July 1997)
xvi West, Candace; Zimmerman, Don H. (June 1987). "Doing gender"Gender & Society1 (2): 125–151.
xvii Bamberger, Joan. “The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in Primitive Society.” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 263–280 Stanford University Press, 1974
xviii Rosaldo and Lamphere, Woman, Culture, and Society, Stanford University Press, 1974
xix Sherwood L. Washburn, G. S. Lancaster, The Evolution of Hunting, Routledge, 1968, p293
xx Ralph Linton, The Study of Man, Appleton-Century Co, 1936
xxi Rosaldo and Lamphere, ibid.
xxii George P. Murdock and Caterina Provost Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, Ethnology, Vol.12, No. 2 (1973), pp. 203-225
xxiii Sarah B Nerlove, Women's workload and infant feeding practices: a relationship with demographic implications. Ethnology; Pittsburgh Vol. 13, Iss. 2, 1974, 207
xxiv Moni Nag, Factors Affecting Human Fertility in Non-industrial Societies: A Cross-Cultural Study, Yale University Publications In Anthropology, No. 66., 1968
xxv S .M. Dornbusch , The Sociology of Adolescence, Ann Rev, Soc. 1989, 15, 233-59
xxvi Nancy Chodrow, Family Structure and Feminine Personality in Rosaldo and Lamphere, Woman, Culture, and Society, Stanford University Press, 1974
xxvii Stevens, Anthony (1982). "Attenuation of the mother-child bond and male initiation into adult life". Journal of Adolescence. 4: 131–148 ; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1976
xxviii Stevens, Anthony (1982). Archetype: A Natural History of the Self. New York: William Morrow & Co
xxix Gilbert N Lewis, Day of Shining Red, Cambridge University Press, 1980
xxx Lines 640-=673
Note; those who actually read the references will notice a journal called Man', which in 1995 was 'wisely' renamed, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.