Transcript Gender stratification

Anthropology
Appreciating Human Diversity
Fifteenth Edition
Conrad Phillip Kottak
University of Michigan
McGraw-Hill
© 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.
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GENDER
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GENDER
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Sex and Gender
Recurrent Gender Patterns
Gender Roles and Gender Stratification
Gender in Industrial Societies
Beyond Male and Female
Sexual Orientation
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GENDER
• How are biology and culture expressed in
human sex/gender systems?
• How do gender, gender roles, and gender
stratification correlate with other social,
economic, and political variables?
• What is sexual orientation, and how do
sexual practices vary cross-culturally?
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SEX AND GENDER
• Women and men differ genetically
• Sexual dimorphism: marked differences in
male and female biology besides the primary
and secondary sexual features
• Sex differences are biological
• Gender encompasses traits that a culture assigns
to and inculcates in males and females
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SEX AND GENDER
• Gender roles: tasks and activities that a
culture assigns to the sexes
• Gender stereotypes: oversimplified, strongly
held ideas of characteristics of men and women
• Gender stratification: unequal distribution of
rewards between men and women, reflecting
different positions in a social hierarchy
• Ilongots
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Figure 18.1: Location of Ilongots in the Philippines
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RECURRENT GENDER
PATTERNS
• The subsistence contributions of men and
women are roughly equal cross-culturally
• In domestic activities,
female labor dominates
• Women tend to work more
hours than men do
• Women are primary caregivers,
but men often play a role
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RECURRENT GENDER
PATTERNS
• Differences in male and female reproductive
strategies
• Women can have only so many babies
• Men mate, within and outside marriage, more
than women do
• Men less restricted than women are, although
restrictions are equal in about half the societies
studied
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Table 18.1: Generalities in the Division of Labor
by Gender, Based on Data from 185 Societies
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Table 18.2: Time and Effort Expended
on Subsistence Activities by Men and Women
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Table 18.3: Who Does the Domestic Work?
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Table 18.4: Who Has Final Authority over the Care,
Handling, and Discipline of Infant Children
(Under Four Years Old)?
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Table 18.5: Does the Society Allow Multiple Spouses?
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Table 18.6: Is There a Double
Standard with Respect to PREMARITAL Sex?
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Table 18.7: Is There a Double
Standard with Respect to EXTRAMARITAL Sex?
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GENDER ROLES AND GENDER
STRATIFICATION
• Sanday: gender stratification decreased
when men and women made roughly equal
contributions to subsistence
• Domestic-public dichotomy: strong
differentiation between home and the
outside world is called the domestic-public
dichotomy, or the private-public contrast
• Gender stratification is less developed among
foragers
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GENDER ROLES AND GENDER
STRATIFICATION
• Greater size, strength,
and mobility of men led
to exclusive service in roles
of hunters and warriors
• Pregnancy and lactation
keep women from
being primary hunters
in foraging societies
• The Agta
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REDUCED GENDER STRATIFICATION—
MATRILINEAL, MATRILOCAL SOCIETIES
• Cross-cultural variation in gender status
related to rules of descent and postmarital
residence
• Matrilineal descent: people join mother’s group
at birth
• Women tend to have high status in matrilineal,
matrilocal societies
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MATRIARCHY
• Sanday: Minangkabau a
matriarchy because
women are the center,
origin, and foundation
of the social order
• Despite special
position of women,
matriarchy is not the
equivalent of female rule
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INCREASED GENDER STRATIFICATION—
PATRILINEAL-PATRILOCAL SOCIETIES
• Patrilineal-patrilocal complex: male
supremacy is based on patrilineality,
patrilocality, and warfare
• Patrilineal descent: descent traced through men
• Characterizes many societies in highland Papua
New Guinea
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PATRIARCHY AND VIOLENCE
• Patriarchy: political system ruled by men
in which women have inferior social and
political status, including basic human rights
• Societies that feature full-fledged patrilinealpatrilocal complex, replete with warfare
and intervillage raiding, also typify patriarchy
• Gender stratification typically reduced in
societies in which women have prominent
roles in the economy and social life
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GENDER IN INDUSTRIAL
SOCIETIES
• Domestic-public dichotomy influences
gender stratification in industrial societies
• Gender roles changing rapidly in North America
• The “traditional” idea that a “woman’s place
is in the home” developed among middle- and
upper-class Americans as industrialism spread
after 1900
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GENDER IN INDUSTRIAL
SOCIETIES
• Margolis: gendered work, attitudes, and
beliefs have varied in response to U.S.
economic needs
• Changes in economy led to changes in attitudes
toward and about women
• Between 1970 and 2010, female percentage
of American workforce rose from 38% to 47%
• As women increasingly work outside the home,
ideas about gender roles of males and females
changed
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Table 18.8: Cash Employment of
U.S. Mothers, Wives, and Husbands, 1960–2010
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THE FEMINIZATION OF
POVERTY
• Increasing representation of women and their
children among America’s poorest people
• Percentage of single-parent (usually femaleheaded) households increasing worldwide
• Globally, households headed by women poorer
than are those headed by men
• One way to improve situation of poor women
is to encourage them to organize
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Table 18.9: Median Annual
Income of U.S. Households by Household Type, 2009
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Table 18.10: Percentage of Single-Parent
Households, Selected Countries, 1980–81 and 2008
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WORK AND HAPPINESS
• Correlation between rankings of happiness
and of women’s work outside the home
• Of 13 countries with greatest female labor force
participation, 10 ranked among world’s happiest
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Table 18.11: Female Labor Force Participation by Country,
2008
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BEYOND MALE AND FEMALE
• Contemporary U.S. includes individuals who
self-identify using such labels as transgender,
intersex, third gender, and transsexual
• Transgender: social category that includes
individuals who may or may not contrast
biologically with ordinary males and females
• Intersex: conditions involving discrepancy
between external and internal genitals
• Klinefelter’s syndrome
• Turner syndrome
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BEYOND MALE AND FEMALE
• People construct their identities in society
• Many individuals with biological conditions see
themselves as male or female
• Self-identified transgender people tend to be
individuals whose gender identity contradicts their
biological sex at birth and the gender identity that
society assigned to them in infancy
• Fear and ignorance related to diversity in gender
fuels discrimination
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SEXUAL ORIENTATION
• Sexual orientation refers to person’s habitual
sexual attraction to, and sexual activities with,
persons of the opposite sex; heterosexuality,
homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality
• Each holds different meanings for individuals and
groups
• In U.S., tendency to see sexual orientation as
fixed and biologically based
• Sexual norms vary from culture to culture
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SEXUAL ORIENTATION
• Sex acts involving people of the same sex
were absent, rare, or secret in only 37 of 76
societies (Ford and Beach)
• In others, various forms of same-sex sexual
activity considered normal and acceptable
• Sudanese Azande
• Etoro of Papua New Guinea
• Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be
an aspect of our primate heritage
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Figure 18.2: The Location of the
Etoro, Kaluli, and Sambia in Papua New Guinea
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