Anthropology
Author(s): Louise Lamphere
Source: Signs, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Spring, 1977), pp. 612-627
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173269
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REVIEW ESSAY
Anthropology
Louise Tlamphere
Anthropologists have continued to explore the variety in women's roles
in our own and other cultures. As more data are published, the major
theoretical issues are becoming clarified, while the utility of various
frameworks for analysis are undergoing scrutiny.1 Since 1974, there
have been a number of new and important publications, including two
new collections, three general books, and a number of special issues of
journals or collected conference papers. There have been and will be
several collections or special monographs devoted to the role of women
in particular geographic or cultural areas (China, the Middle East, Africa,
Iberia), as well as individual case studies. Finally, special sessions
such as those at the American Anthropological Association, the Middle
Eastern Studies Association, and the Latin American Studies Association
meetings have been devoted to aspects of women's roles.
In these new materials I see four trends: (1) the clarification of
several different positions surrounding the issue of women's universal
subordination versus the existence of sexual equality in some kinds of
societies; (2) the search for an appropriate cross-cultural framework for
1. This review takes a narrower focus on the anthropological literature than the 1974
Signs anthropology review, concentrating on theoretical issues within social-cultural anthropology
and the study of sex roles (i.e., topics dealing with economics, politics, social
organization, and cultural symbolism as they relate to the understanding of women's
roles). In cutting the manuscript, many items had to be eliminated, making the review
much less comprehensive than was originally planned.
[Signs:Journal of Womenin Cultureand Society 1977, vol. 2, no. 3]
? 1977 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
612
Spring 1977 613
the analysis of sex roles and women's status; (3) a focus on regional or
continental studies, often in an interdisciplinary context, in order to
engage in "controlled comparison" of women's roles within an area
under the same kinds of cultural and historical influences; and (4) a
more intense awareness of the need to analyze change, both historical
and contemporary, as evidenced in increasing attention to the effects of
colonialism on women's position, the importance of migration in
changing family and women's situations, and the impact of "modernization"
and "development" (emanating from the capitalist West) and revolution
(often emanating from specifically socialist struggles) on women's
position.
Subordinationor Inequality:How Do WeKnow?
The issue of whether or not there is and always has been universal
sexual asymmetry or the subordination of women is far from resolved.
This issue was clearly set forth in several articles in Women,Cultureand
Societywhich argued that in every known culture women are considered
in some way inferior to men. This inferiority occurs: (1) in terms of
cultural evaluations where women's activities, personalities, and bodily
processes are seen as less important, incomplete, or polluting; and (2) in
terms of political power, where women are denied access to areas of
public decision making open to men. Rosaldo, Chodorow, and Ortner2
all argue that women's domestic role as mother (socially defined and not
simply determined by biology) accounts for this subordination. Rosaldo
suggests that women's role as mother and primary socializer of children
in turn sets up the possibility of a distinction between a domestic and a
public sphere, the former the province of women, the latter of men.
A real problem in clarifying this issue is that of definition. Anthropologists
still tend to use words like "asymmetry," "subordination,"
"equality," "status," and "power" imprecisely. A situation of sexual
equality would be one in which all men and women (regardless of social
group or strata) could and actually did make decisions over the same
range of activities and people, that is, exercise the same kinds of control.
Subordination of women or sexual inequality would be a situation where
this was not the case, where there were some decisions which women
could not and did not make, some activities from which they were excluded,
and some resources which they did not control. In a society
where there is hierarchy, rank, or a system of stratified groups, some
2. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview,"
pp. 17-42; Nancy Chodorow, "Family Structure and Feminine Personality," pp.
43-66; Sherry B. Ortner, "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" pp. 67-89; all in
Woman,Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and L. Lamphere (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974).
Signs
Review:Anthropology
men usually dominate over other men and all women. Generally, the
more complex the society, the more heterosexual subgroups are differentiated
from each other and, in addition, women in each group,
even the dominant ones, are subordinate to their own men.
Debate on the issue of equality versus subordination, which had
begun before the publication of Woman,Cultureand Society,has largely
centered on the interpretation of the hunter-gatherer material. In these
small-scale band societies, many feel, a case can be made for sexual
equality. On the other hand, if these societies are not egalitarian, then
more highly stratified, complex societies are unlikely to be, thus
strengthening the case for universal subordination.
There seem to be several positions now emerging. The first, while
not necessarily arguing that women in every culture are subordinated,
takes the position that inequality where it exists can be explained in part
by biological differences between the sexes. This rejects the
oversimplified statements and uncritical use of biological evidence found
in the writings of Tiger and Goldberg,3 but argues that there are
significant biological differences and that this evidence must be carefully
scrutinized. For example, Draper, in a series of articles about !Kung
women and differential sex-role socialization,4 takes the position that
"the sexes begin life with different repertoires of response potential and
that in reaction to some categories of stimuli, at least, the sexes will
respond differentially."5 Data on newborns in our own society suggest
that females do more spontaneous smiling, have longer attention spans,
are more attentive to human faces, and acquire language more quickly
than males. Draper feels that these differences are biological and may be
related to the importance of fetal hormones in "pre-programming" the
brain to respond differentially to certain kinds of stimuli. Thus females
start out with certain responses making them more sensitive to social
cues. This in turn means that they will experience the socialization techniques
of their mothers in a more intense, consistent, and thorough
manner than will males.6
3. Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups(New York: Random House, 1969); Steven Goldberg,
TheInevitabilityof Patriarchy(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1973).
4. Pat Draper, "!Kung Women: Contrasts in Sexual Egalitarianism in Foraging and
Sedentary Contexts," in Towardan Anthropologyof Women,ed. Rayna Reiter (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1975); "Cultural Pressure on Sex Difference," AmericanEthnologist
2, no. 4 (November 1975): 602-15; "Sex Differences in Cognitive Styles: Socialization and
Constitutional Variables," in Womenin Schoolsand Society,ed. Billye Y. S. Fogleman and
Ann Sigrid Nihlen, Council on Anthropologyand Education Quarterly(special issue) 6, no.
3 (August 1975): 3-6; and "Social and Economic Constraints on Child Life among the
!Kung," in KalahariHunter Gatherers,ed. R. B. Lee and Irven DeVore (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1976).
5. Draper, "Cultural Pressure on Sex Differences," p. 602.
6. Draper, "Sex Differences in Cognitive Styles: Socialization and Constitutional
Variables," p. 3.
614 Lamphere
Spring 1977 615
Draper has used the same kind of analysis in exploring differences
among !Kung in the foraging context and in recently sedentized populations.
In hunting-gathering groups !Kung girls have a more restricted
spatial range, value adult company, and are more sensitive to social cues
from adults, but these sex differences are not exploited, and there is
little sex-role differentiation. As the !Kung have become sedentized,
little girls become "ready targets for heightened pressure for cooperation,
errand running, and child tending."7
Draper argues that the foraging !Kung are a sexually egalitarian
society and that male tendencies for aggression and leadership are
damped down by the ecological and structural arrangements of !Kung
hunting and gathering. In the new sedentary contexts women become
more homebound. Men take over political decision making. There is
more investment in property, increasing differences in wealth, and the
beginning of male ranking. In other words, the !Kung are egalitarian
because they are a special case where the lack of firm leadership roles,
the lack of approved aggressive outlets or dominance behavior, and the
lack of warfare has meant that men do not assume the dominant roles
that would result from their "natural"biological repertoire of behavior.
Although Draper's arguments are the most carefully worked out to
date, I see many difficulties in (1) generalizing from tentative hormonal
evidence and some primate experiments, (2) relying on research on
neonates and young children in our own culture, and (3) utilizing
psychological data produced in experimental settings without regard to
observations of the social context in which these are learned (e.g., at
home, in schools, from parents, and from peers). In part the argument
depends on marshaling evidence from a variety of experimental situations
involving different populations and extremely diverse kinds of
evidence, all of which are pieced together to suggest that there are
hormonally based differences according to sex in our area of behavior.
As an anthropologist, I feel this approach has the liabilities of much of
the sex-role work in psychology: lack of attention to cultural meanings
attached to behaviors and to social situations and structure which may
teach little boys and girls different responses. Draper herself is aware of
these difficulties and advocates additional cross-cultural research in different
behavioral settings as a way of providing better support for her
generalizations. Nevertheless, her data on differences between foraging
!Kung boys and girls can possibly be explained by economic and social
inequalities in !Kung life and by the fact that women are the primary
socializers of children. In other words, the !Kung may not be as
egalitarian as Draper suggests, and these inequalities could be explained
by economic or social factors without resorting to biological explana-
tions.
7. Draper, "Cultural Pressure on Sex Differences," p. 604.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
A second position is that taken by Schlegel, Briggs, Matthiasson, and
others who present what I call the "complementary but equal" argument.
Schlegel suggests, for example, that the Hopi are an egalitarian
society in which male power to control their persons, property, or activities
may extend over a different sphere but is nogreaterthan women's
control over their persons, property and activity.8 Thus, the areas in
which women exert dominance are perceived by the Hopi, according to
Schlegel, as equally important as those areas controlled by men. Similarly,
using data from a hunting-fishing population, the Eskimo,
Briggs characterizes male and female roles as interdependent. Men are
first and foremost hunters, while women are responsible for the preparation
of hides and meat, sewing, child care, and other household tasks.
Women do envy men's ability to travel, hunt, and make political decisions
but are aware that these activities require endurance and strength
in harsh conditions, while political decision making involves making decisions
in a society which values restraint and not imposing one's will on
others.9
Matthiasson, in her introduction to Many Sisters, accepts Briggs's
analysis of the Eskimo and classifies them as a "complementary society"
in which "women are valued for themselves and the contributions they
make to society. In these societies, women are neither inferior nor
superior to men, merely different."10 However, the Matthiasson approach
focuses primarily on the authority and power women have in the
household and skirts the issue of public power and influence. My feeling
is that the category of "complementary society" is no more than a label
for societies where anthropologists, on closer examination, find that
women do and say more than we naively might have expected. A different
interpretation of the evidence would lead one to argue that women
are subordinate in both the Hopi and Eskimo cases.
For the Hopi, male control over male activities may be no greater
than female control over the female sphere, but there is a sense in which
male control is not only public but extends to the entire community. The
Hopi political system is integrated with the religious one, which, despite
the presence of three female sacred societies, is very much dominated by
men. Women may keep the sacred bundles of their brothers and feed
the Kachinas (masked figures representing the supernaturals), but they
may not impersonate the gods themselves. Surely exclusion of the
women from the Kachina cult and from participation in the most
esoteric rites is crucial here. Feeding the supernaturals is one thing, but
becoming sacred through ritual impersonation is another, since these
8. Alice Schlegel, "Women Anthropologists Look at Women," Reviewsin Anthropology
1, no. 6 (November/December 1974): 553-60.
9. Jean Briggs, "Eskimo Women: Makers of Men," in Many Sisters, ed. Carolyn J.
Matthiasson (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 261-304.
10. Matthiasson, p. xviii.
616 Lamphere
Spring 1977 617
acts insure good crops and long life for the entire population. Female
activities are important, but male control of agricultural activities
(though on their wife's clan land) and of the politicoreligious system
seems to add up to more pervasive male decision making over more
areas of Hopi life.
Briggs's statements on Eskimo women and men focus on the complementary
division of labor in the household but do not emphasize that
men control the productive resources, while women process the objects
that men obtain in the hunt. Friedl, for example, sees just these facts as
the basis for finding male dominance and female submissiveness among
the Eskimo.11 Friedl emphasizes male command of meat distributions,
male feuding and patterns of violence, wifely obedience to the husband's
decisions, and male control over female sexuality (male rights to allocate
female sexual favors, wife exchange, sexual assault, male jealousy over
female adulterous exploits).
The "complementary but equal" position as exemplified by these
three authors lacks a consistent treatment of the control of economic
resources and how this translates into political decision making. There is
a tendency to see male and female roles as a problem of value and worth,
to focus on household units, and to downplay decisions made in a wider
arena of activities.
The "complementary but equal" analysis of male-female roles is also
part of the third position held by Leacock, Rohrlich-Leavitt, Nash, Sutton,
Klein, and Sacks. These anthropologists emphasize the ways that
colonialism and contact between Europeans and native peoples have
transformed and undercut many native economies, in turn transforming
the nature of sex roles. They also stress the impact of missionaries
and teachers who imposed European notions of maleness and femaleness
on native cosmologies and beliefs. Anthropologists (mainly male)
have either been unaware of these imposed categories or have unconsciously
used their own version of these European views in analysis and
interpretation. For example, Leacock and Nash argue that LeviStraussian
categories like "Nature" and "Culture" oversimplify and impose
a dichotomous set of relationships on more complex cosmologies
which use both male and female symbolism.12 Rohrlich-Leavitt et al. feel
that the bias of male anthropologists in interpreting women's roles
among the Australian aborigines has been substantial.13 In contrast,
these authors argue that monographs written by sympathetic female
11. Ernestine Friedl, Women and Men: An Anthropologist'sView (New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1975), pp. 39-45.
12. Eleanor Leacock and June Nash, "Ideologies of Sex: Archetypes and Stereotypes"
(unpublished manuscript); available from Leacock, Department of Anthropology, City
College, City University of New York, New York, New York 10031.
13. Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt, Barbara Sykes, and Elizabeth Weatherford, "Aboriginal
Woman: Male and Female Anthropological Perspectives," in Reiter, ed., pp. 110-26.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
anthropologists14 have achieved a more balanced perspective emphasizing
women's economic roles (including the hunting of small animals),
women's control over reproduction (including women's rituals), and
their participation in marriage arrangements. These analysts see
hunting-gathering and some tribal-level societies as possessing communal
economies with no corporate control of economic resources, dispersed
decision making, and interdependence of individuals (both men
and women) and a concomitant emphasis on autonomy. The dichotomy
between a domestic and public sphere does not hold for these groups,
especially those with a foraging adaptation.15 Perhaps the best analysis of
these kinds of societies at the economic level is still Sacks's reinterpretation
of Engels.'6 In these "communal economies" there was a
division of labor by sex, but all production was of the same
kind-"production for use." People worked for the communal household
or clan rather than for individuals. Decision making, both
economic and political, involved the equal participation of all members,
men and women. Both sexes were social producers and equal members
of the group.17 Leacock argues that similar patterns held for the
Montagnais-Naskapi as they existed at contact,'8 and Klein suggests a
similar analysis for the Tlingit.19
There are several difficulties with this version of the "complementary
but equal" position. First, I have difficulty accepting the interpretation
of the ethnographic examples, especially the North American ones,
the Iroquois, the Tlingit, and even the Naskapi. Certainly the European
contact had a profound impact on these societies; even in interpreting
the early sources we are dealing with societies that may have already
been disrupted and transformed. On the one hand, nineteenth-century
trade probably pushed the Tlingit toward a more stratified, maleoriented
society, increasing the cultural emphasis on the potlatch. On
the other hand, the impact of the fur trade on the Iroquois during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries probably strengthened women's
position, their control over agriculture, and their input into political
decision making. Finally, the fur trade may have changed the Naskapi
14. See, e.g., Phyllis Kaberry, AboriginalWoman:Sacredand Profane (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1939); Jane Goodale, Tiwi Wives(Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1971).
15. Constance Sutton, Susan Makieskyl, Daisy Dwyer, and Laura Klein, "Women,
Knowledge, and Power," in WomenCross-culturally:Changeand Challenge,ed. Ruby RohrlichLeavitt
(The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 581-600.
16. Karen Sacks, "Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and
Private Property," in Rosaldo and Lamphere, eds., pp. 207-28.
17. Ibid., pp. 208-9.
18. Eleanor Leacock, "Class, Commodity, and the Status of Women," in RohrlichLeavitt,
ed., pp. 601-16.
19. Laura Klein, "Tlingit Women and Politics" (Ph.D. diss., New York University,
1975).
618 Lamphere
Spring 1977 619
band system from an exogamous, matrilocal, flexible structure to an
endogamous, more patrilocal one with considerable emphasis on the
individual (male-inherited) trap line. However, the fur trade did not
seem to have altered the dispersed nature of decision making, the emphasis
on autonomy, and lack of rank and prestige hierarchies.20 Thus,
colonial contact may increase or decrease women's control over
economic resources to give them greater or lesser access to political
decision-making processes; the problem then becomes one of understanding
how to interpret the data even for these relatively "early"situa-
tions.
This brings me to the second problem, women's role in decisionmaking
systems which have been characterized as "dispersed" and even
egalitarian. I think the qualities of these systems are correctly described
(and are similar to decision-making procedures I have outlined for the
Navajo),21but I would hesitate to say that men and women participate in
decision making in the same or in an equal way. In consensus or dispersed
decision making, it is up to each individual to decide. Rather than
A making a decision over B or a group of B's, A indirectly lets B and C
know his or her feelings on a matter and then indirectly gets a "reading"
on their reactions and whether or not they will "go along." If so, A
articulates a decision reached by group consensus. In hunter-gatherer
societies, it is my impression that women have input into decisions, but
they rarely are the "articulators" of decisions which involve the entire
band, such as a decision to move camp, engage in a communal hunt, etc.
Usually this role falls to a male, though older women are not entirely
excluded. The lack of recognition of this "male bias"in the way decisions
are made, even in these dispersed decision-making systems, is in my
opinion one of the critical deficiencies of this version of the "complementary
but equal" position.
A third point (also applicable to Briggs's analysis) is that these
theorists do not see the divisionof laboras problematic in creating asymmetry
and subordination. They accept the possibility that different productive
and processing roles can be equal as long as they produce "use
values" rather than exchange values. Finally, they do not work out an
analysis of reproduction or what Rubin calls "the sex-gender
system"22 and particularly ignore the role of marriage in creating inequality.
Both the division of labor and marriage between families or kin
20. Eleanor Leacock, "Status among the Montagnais-Naskapi of Labrador,"Ethnohistory
5, no. 3 (Summer 1958): 200-209; and "Matrilocality in a Simple Hunting Economy
(Montagnais-Naskapi)," SouthwesternJournalofAnthropology11, no. 1 (Spring 1955): 31-47.
21. Louise Lamphere, "The Navajo Cultural System: An Analysis of Concepts of
Cooperation and Autonomy and Their Relation to Gossip and Witchcraft," in Apachean
CultureHistoryandEthnology,ed. Keith Basso and M. E. Opler, Anthropological Papers, no.
21 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971).
22. Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women," in Reiter, ed. (n. 4), pp. 157-210.
Signs
Review:Anthropology
groups (regulated by the incest taboo and rules about exogamy) are
cultural universals which are now being explored in terms of their implications
for female subordination. Both, I feel, are at the roots of sexual
inequality, even in foraging societies, and need to be fully explored
before we can accept the "complementary but equal" arguments.
The fourth and final position, which I have already mentioned, is
the one argued by several contributors to Woman, Culture and Society.
This position posits the universal subordination of women, but those
who hold this point of view are beginning to reformulate the parameters
of this subordination and suggest alternative explanations of its roots.
These new approaches, found in a few suggestive articles, go a long way
to clearing up and penetrating beyond the difficulties I find in the communal
economy approach.
One kind of analysis centers on production, distribution, and exchange.
Both Sanday and Friedl23 have pointed to the fact that women
not only need to contribute to production if they are to have power, but
they need to maintain control over these resources and (as Friedl emphasizes)
over the distribution of them outside the household or minimal
family unit. But even these analyses assume that the division of labor
is something natural and universal. Only a paper by Siskind has
taken this division as problematic and as creating differences in access to
resources which in turn necessitates exchange. In describing what she
calls the "bifurcate mode of production" (basically two kinds of productive
activities, one set allocated to men and the other to women), she
points out that "given a division of labor, no one is able to be
self-sustaining."24 This sets up the necessity of exchange of the objectsof
the productive process (the berries, the game, or the fish) as well as the
meansfor their production (i.e., the tools necessary to hunt and collect).
The objects, of course, may be exchanged between men and women
at the point of being taken from their natural state (after the hunt or
right from the basket of roots or berries) or at the end of a process
whereby the animal or plant is transformed into a more edible form (by
cooking, grinding, or drying) or a more usable form for clothing, shelter,
or medicines (by tanning, drying, or curing). Men often enter into
women's productive sphere: they assert a claim on their gathered products
through producing the gathering nets or other tools which women
use, while women, since they usually do not produce men's tools, can
only have claims on men's products through giving men claims on their
children (i.e., claims on their labor once they become productive adults).
The rules and social categories through which these exchanges take
23. Peggy Sanday, "Female Status in the Public Domain," in Rosaldo and Lamphere,
eds. (n. 2), pp. 180-206; Friedl (n. 11), pp. 8-9.
24. Janet Siskind, "Kinship-Relations of Production" (unpublished manuscript);
available from author, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, Newark, New
Jersey 07102.
620 Lamphere
Spring 1977 621
place are what anthropologists usually view as "kinship," a system which
creates marriages and family units. Kinship in band-level societies is
extremely flexible, but it is a system of rules which excludes some people
from exchanges and includes others (e.g., narrows the exchange to the
point that a !Kung woman brings in mangongo nuts for a particular man
who stands in relationship of a "husband"). Kinship in this bifurcate
mode of production also creates a distinction of older and younger as
well as maintaining the distinction between male and female. Categories
like "husband," "wife," "parent," "child," "brother," and "sister"are not
natural categories but are created out of the laboring process and the
resulting claims that individuals make on objects and tools (the means of
production) and on the potential labor of others. Kinship organizes
work and sex, production and reproduction.
Rubin makes several similar points in her paper, "The Traffic in
Women." She sees the economic system even of band-level societies as
analytically distinct from what she calls the "sex-gender system," yet each
has "productive" and "reproductive" aspects. She views Levi-Strauss's
analysis of "the exchange of women" through marriage as a theory of
sexual inequality. The necessity of this exchange is the division of labor
itself; it ensures the union of men and women by making the smallest
viable economic unit contain at least one man and one woman. Like
Siskind, Rubin notes that the division of labor creates a reciprocal state
of dependency between the sexes, but Rubin claims that it also exacerbates
the biological differences between the sexes and thereby creates
gender. The division of labor combined with the incest taboo means that
women and men must minimally coexist in families and that the families
need to exchange some of their members for opposite-sex partners
found in other families. Rubin sees the subordination of women as critically
summarized in marriage exchange. Following Leivi-Strauss, she
feels that men acquire rights over women (e.g., their daughters, their
sisters, their nieces) and give these rights over their labor, their sexuality,
and their children to other men in exchange (often in a very indirect
way) for "wives" for themselves or for valued goods. To the extent that
women do not have control over the decision making involved in marriage
and sexuality, they are subordinate.
These papers suggest new possibilities for assessing the question of
sexual equality in band-level hunting-gathering societies. In the productive
process itself, we need to look for inequities in the exchanges between
men and women. If men can lay claim to female-gathered products
by making tools for women, if men through the social distribution
of meat can create more ties of obligation among men and women, and,
finally, if men can make claims on the labor of sons and daughters which
can in turn be exchanged through their marriages, then perhaps we can
argue that men exercise greater decision-making "range" than do
women. Women, of course, make their own exchanges and, especially in
Signs
Review:Anthropology
hunting-gathering societies, are not "sitting idly by" waiting for men to
gain a monopoly on life. Through foraging activities they bring in 60-80
percent of the diet, distribute it to their families (i.e., husbands and
children), and perhaps to other relatives; they also participate in the
marriage negotiations for their sons and daughters.
Then in what sense is there sexual subordination? I am impressed
with Shostak's analysis of !Kung women's lives;25 her accounts from
informants about their marriages indicate that in the foraging context of
twenty years ago, young girls were betrothed to older boys at a time
when they were still prepubescent and would rather have remained
playing in the bush. Although many of these early marriages break up,
there is considerable pressure on the girl from her parents to accept the
new responsibilities of cooking and gathering for her husband and pressure
(and even aggressiveness) from the new husband to accept his sexual
advances. It is the thirteen- to fourteen-year-old !Kung woman who
is in the most vulnerable and unequal situation, and it is perhaps in the
husband-wife pair bond that domination is a reality.
This brings us to the possibility of life cycles in decision-making
ability. !Kung males achieve adulthood with marriage; the ability to hunt
creates the possibility of gaining a wife. This, in turn, allows men to
participate in meat exchanges, to become part of male hunting groups,
to begin the process of acquiring knowledge, wisdom, and the characteristics
of generosity and sharing. For women marriage means providing
for a particular man, possibly accepting unwanted sexual advances,
and beginning the process of building a network of social ties that may
not range as widely as that of men nor be achieved until a more advanced
age.
The relation of ideology and economy in differentiating men from
women and infusing the cultural categories of "male" and "female" with
differential value has also been discussed in a recent paper by Collier
and Rosaldo.26 They argue that the anthropologist's model of Man the
Hunter, long criticized as inadequately characterizing the economic
realities of foraging and some horticultural societies, does summarize
native conceptions of maleness as propagated by men and accepted by
women. There is no fully elaborated ideology which emphasizes a distinctive
woman's nature or maternal role; instead, there is a celebration
of men's roles as warriors, hunters, and providers, a stress on the male
contribution to reproduction, and an interest in flirtation and sex.27The
25. Marjorie Shostak, "A !Kung Woman's Memories of Childhood," in Lee and De
Vore, eds. (n. 4).
26. Jane Fishburne Collier and Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Marriage, Motherhood,
and Direct Exchange, Expressions of Male Dominance in 'Egalitarian' Societies" (paper
presented at the American Anthropological Association meeting, San Francisco, December
1975).
27. Ibid., p. 2.
622 Lamphere
Spring 1977 623
Man the Hunter ideology, as expressed in these cultures, sees marriage
as necessary but as a process which creates autonomous adult men (those
who can hunt, provide, and join men in "important" decisions or communal
rituals) while it domesticates women (gives them greater responsibilities
in gathering, processing, and child rearing and ties each woman
to providing for one man). But the ideology also "miscasts"the relationships
between the sexes as well as those between older and younger men.
Typically, it sees the relationship between man and wife as an exchange
of meat for sex,28 when in reality women provide vegetable foods (even
when meat is scarce), and both men and women enjoy sex. In addition,
by placing value on hunting, violence, and even competition for women,
this ideology motivates young men to become hunters, but it also "covers
over" the authority of older men, which lies in the ability to articulate
consensus, utilize the knowledge of kinship which comes with age, and
become the repositories of the virtues of autonomy and generosity. In
this view, sex-role ideology helps to summarize and reproduce a set of
social relations based on already unequal tendencies within production,
distribution, and the marital bond.
There are, of course, many unanswered questions in these first
tentative attempts to analyze the division of labor, marriage relationships,
and a supporting male-oriented ideology as fundamental in creating
inequality between the sexes. No one has yet analyzed in sufficient
detail the productive activities and resulting exchanges between men
and women for one ethnographic case, such as the Eskimo or !Kung. No
one has yet done a study of decision making in a hunter-gatherer group
that would help us to relate control over meat and vegetable produce to
the type of consensus decision making mentioned earlier. These kinds of
detailed studies are necessary in order to weigh different kinds of evidence
(economic, political, and ideological) and to put together a solid
and convincing argument either for egalitarianism or the subordination
of women in these small-scale societies. Finally, one would have to ask
some questions about motherhood. Surely, childbearing and child rearing
are important female activities which could be a liability or an asset,
depending on point of view. Could socialization be considered a productive
activity? If women invest so much time in child rearing, and if they
stake out claims to their children's future productive labor, why are they
willing to exchange these claims with men in return for something else?
Why, when they retain some claim, are they willing to exchange their
daughters for a son-in-law, pushing young girls into unequal relationships?
Why, in the end, are they willing to "buy into" an ideology which
elevates Man the Hunter, which values meat as "real food," and which
mystifies the nature of male-female relationships as one of the exchange
of meat for sex?
28. Siskind.
signs
Review:Anthropology
In other words, the issue of subordination versus sexual equality (in
the sense of decision-making ability distributed equally across the sexes)
is still unsettled. In order to pursue the issue, anthropologists need to get
beyond the notion that hunting-gathering societies have "communal
economies," that they are characterized by consensus decision making,
and that they have been transformed by colonialism. All these things are
true, but we still have not verified or tested the possibility that inequality
lies in the division of labor and the marital relationship created through
exchange. We need more data, but we also need a better model of social
structure, one that can put production, reproduction, and sex-role
ideology together in a clear and consistent way.
Cross-culturalFrameworks
Collections of essays now being published, as well as recent textbooks,
illustrate the need for better, more insightful frameworks for
understanding women's roles cross-culturally. In many ways, anthropologists
have brought to the analysis of sex roles the theoretical
perspectives and models of culture and society that they had already
adopted through earlier training. Thus, Friedl writes from a
"materialist"perspective,29 and Martin and Voorhies in their text, Female
of the Species, take a clearly ecological and evolutionary approach.
Kessler's book, Women:An AnthropologicalView, is more eclectic, using
evolutionary categories in some chapters and organizing others around
a functional approach. The major portion of the book includes case
histories of women's lives, simply presented as women speaking for
themselves. Overall the book merely pulls together much of what has
been published elsewhere, using a variety of approaches, but often substituting
categories implied in chapter headings and subtitles for a clear
and penetrating analysis. Matthiasson's collection, Many Sisters, suffers
from much the same difficulty: the use of a typology of societies in order
to abstract comparisons in women's roles, without a framework which
concretely demonstrates just how women's economic, domestic, and reproductive
concerns and the structure of the larger society all fit to-
gether.
Although we have gained a good deal from a quasi-evolutionary
framework, I feel it is time to break beyond these rather naive
categories. We have come to think in terms of women in "gathering
societies" and, for example, to compare their situation with a category
like "peasant women" without even looking for the ways in which both
types of women have been affected by the world market, the spread of
health and educational facilities, and political policies of the nation-state.
29. Friedl (n. 11), p. 7.
624 Lamphere
Signs Spring 1977 625
Regional and Area Studies
In assessing the material on sexual egalitarianism and subordination,
I have outlined where I think new and more interesting models will
be forthcoming. However, we still need studies which deal more fully
with the history of women's roles in other cultures, which provide a
careful analysis of class differences as they affect women, and which
examine the impact of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism on
women's work and home life. Such analyses are emerging from continental
and regional studies.
For instance, in putting together a collection of articles on women in
the Middle East, Beck and Keddi take a perspective which combines
historical and anthropological approaches and focuses attention on the
impact of external forces as these relate to the lives of women.30 For
some countries, we now have several monograph-length analyses, which
in combination help us to assess the importance of history, region, class,
family structure, and religious ideology in creating difference in
women's roles. Maher's monograph on Morocco, for example, contains
detailed information on women's work groups, female networks, marriage
and divorce in a village setting and a semi-urban town, although
the most interesting cases and important generalizations are buried in
the middle of chapters and do not emerge with clarity.31Mernissi's book
focuses on Muslim concepts of female sexuality, contrasting traditional
views with modern urban situations; she finds considerable "sexual
anomie," a gap between the ideology of sexual segregation and the reality
where Moroccan women are using male spaces, going without the
veil, and making their own decisions.32 Finally, Fernea's chronicle of her
family's experiences living on a crowded street in Marrakesh gives a rich
account of women's lives which contextualizes many of the theoretical
points made by other authors.33
The literature on Latin America, like that on the Middle East, has
continued to expand, with additional interest in professional women,
female political figures, and domestic servants,34 as well as new material
30. See Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, eds., BeyondtheVeil:Womenin theMiddleEast. As
the volume is still in press, I have not commented on the articles included in detail.
31. Vanessa Maher, Womenand Propertyin Morocco,Cambridge Studies in Anthropology,
no. 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).
32. Fatima Mernissi, Beyondthe Veil (New York: Wiley, 1975), p. 51.
33. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, A Streetin Marrakech:A PersonalEncounterwiththeLives
of MoroccanWomen(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1975).
34. Nora Scott Kinzer, "Sociocultural Factors Mitigating Role Conflict of Buenos
Aires Professional Women," and Elsa M. Chaney, "The Mobilization of Women: Three
Societies," both in Rohrlich-Leavitt, ed. (n. 15), pp. 181-98 and 471-90, respectively;
Margo L. Smith, "The Female Domestic Servant and Social Change: Lima, Peru," in
Rohrlich-Leavitt, ed., pp. 163-80; Susan E. Brown, "Love Unites Them and Hunger
Separates Them: Poor Women in the Dominican Republic," in Reiter, ed. (n. 4), pp.
Review:Anthropology
on the lives of working-class women, and the effect of capitalist development
on women's status.35 Pescatello's new book, Power and Pawn:
TheFemalein IberianFamilies,Societies,and Cultures,presents an excellent
overview of women in Latin cultures, Indian as well as mestizo, and how
they were affected by Spanish and Portuguese contact.36 She takes the
controversial position that in nonmodern contexts, since the family is at
the center of society and women are at the heart of the family, they hold
important power. Those, like myself, who feel that power is primarily
wielded in the public world will want a more convincing analysis of just
how power within the family should be balanced against the overall
picture of male dominance in a class-stratified society. Pescatello is sensitive
to these issues, and the strength of her book lies in the presentation
of historical material on women at all class levels and the impact of
demographic variables on sex-role relationships. The literature on the
possibilities of transforming sex roles has been enhanced by new material
on Cuba, including Randall's portraits of Cuban WomenNow.37
A third area where studies of women's roles provide rich data, sensitive
to historical period, political context, and social stratification, is the
growing literature on prerevolutionary China, Taiwan, and the People's
Republic. Womenin ChineseSociety,edited by Wolf and Witke,38 gives a
sense of the broad spectrum of women's lives in prerevolutionary China
and Taiwan, while Sidel's books on the family, child care, and women, in
combination with several important articles, emphasize both the great
strides women have made since the Chinese revolution and the
difficulties of transforming a patriarchial society into an egalitarian
one.39
The interdisciplinary efforts of anthropologists, historians, and
others, as illustrated by the area collections and monographs, will, I
hope, allow us to begin to build new frameworks which emphasize
change rather than stasis and complex systems rather than isolated units.
322-31; Heleieth Ira Bongiovani Saffioti, "Female Labor and Capitalism in the United
States and Brazil," in Rohlrich-Leavitt, ed., pp. 59-94; and Anna Rubbo, "The Spread of
Capitalism in Rural Colombia: Effects on Poor Women," in Reiter, ed., pp. 333-57.
35. Virve Piho, "Life and Labor of the Woman Textile Worker in Mexico City," in
Rohrlich-Leavitt, ed., pp. 191-245; and Ximena Bunster-Burotto, "Talking Pictures: Field
Method and Visual Mode" (paper presented at the Wellesley Conference on Women and
Development, Wellesley, Mass., June 2-6, 1976).
36. Ann Pescatello, ed., Female and Male in Latin America(Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1973).
37. Margaret Randall, Cuban WomenNow (Toronto: Women's Press & Dumont Press
Graphix, 1974).
38. Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, eds., Womenin ChineseSociety(Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1975); for a review of this book, see Norma Diamond, Signs 2,
no. 1 (Autumn 1976): 219-21.
39. Ruth Sidel, Women and Child Care in China (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973), and
Familiesof Fengsheng: UrbanLife in China (Baltimore: Penguin, 1974).
626 Lamphere
Spring 1977 627
There are other positive trends as well, including an issue of Anthropological
Quarterlydevoted to "Women in the Migratory Process" and several
contributions to Toward an Anthropology of Women (e.g., those by
Diamond, Rubbo, Remy, and Reiter) which are successful in linking the
larger needs of the economy and political system with particular characteristics
of women. Based on her research in a rural French village,40
Reiter argues that the dominance of men in the public sphere and of
women in the private domain of the family is related to the growth of the
state, which usurps power and control over economic resources from kin
units and relegates them to a private economy whose orientation falls to
women. Diamond, Rubbo, Remy, and Bossen41 show that "development"
undermines women's roles in agriculture and trade, while men are
pulled into capital-intensive occupations, leaving women withjobs in the
low-paid service sector.
In the last few years, the contributions of social and cultural anthropologists
have criticized prevailing theories and clarified some of the
major issues in this growing new field. Nevertheless, with regard to
issues like univeral asymmetry, we need a better model of society in
order to assess the available evidence. In cross-cultural comparisons we
need a better framework for comparing women's situations in what we
now call "hunting-gathering," "tribal," and "peasant" communities to
make clear the impact of colonialism, a world economy, and the nationstate
on these subpopulations and consequently on women in these
groups. Finally, we need more monographs-exhaustive case studies
which put together the details of women's lives with an analysis of their
relation to others in the community and the place of the community in a
larger social and historical context. Both area and continental studies
and the recent focus on social change, migration, urban situations, the
impact of colonialism, capitalism, and development should bring together
the kinds of analysis which can further illuminate our understanding
of women's roles in other societies as well as in our own.
Departmentof Anthropology
Universityof New Mexico
40. Rayna R. Reiter, "Men and Women in the South of France: Public and Private
Domains," in Reiter, ed. (n. 4), pp. 252-82.
41. Laurel Bossen, "Women in Modernizing Societies," AmericanEthnologist2, no. 4
(November 1975): 587-601, see esp. p. 595; Dorothy Remy, "Underdevelopment and the
Experience of Women: A Nigerian Case Study," in Reiter, ed., pp. 370-71. Some of these
issues have also been addressed in papers delivered in a symposium on "The Structure and
Organization of Monopoly Capital" (American Anthropological Association meeting, Mexico
City, November 19-24, 1974), and a symposium on "Sexual Politics in Colonialism and
Culture Change" (American Anthropological Association meeting, San Francisco, December
2-6, 1975), and at the Conference on Women and Development (Wellesley, Mass.,
June 2-6, 1976).
Signs