Women's Status in Agricultural Societies

1. Women's Status in Agricultural Societies Text extracted from Our Kind By Marvin Harris http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512HK3QSD3L._SL160_OU01_SS160_.jpg

2. Women’s Status • Women have less status than men in agricultural societies • Social • Political • Economic • Educational • Religious • Two main causes • Men dominate weapons and war • Men dominate plow-based agriculture http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_02/muslimDM1511_468x310.jpg

3. Men are larger, stronger than women • Women 4.6 inches shorter than men • on average • Women have lighter bones • and more fat • Women 2/3 to 3/4 as strong as men http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Factory/1940/wood2.jpg

4. Men specialized in hunting large game • Men were the big game hunters in 95% of band-and-village societies • Male advantage in height, weight, brawn in use of hand-held hunting weapons • Women less mobile when pregnant, lactating • hunt smaller game, gather food (majority of diet) http://www.alaskool.org/LANGUAGE/manytongues/Images/Hunter.jpg

5. Men usually specialists in weapons • Men monopolized lethal weapons since Paleolithic times: • spears • bow and arrows • harpoons • clubs • boomerangs • Men thus more dangerous • and more coercive in conflict • "I'm a man.  I've got my arrows.  I'm not afraid to die“ • !Kung hunter http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/nat_amer/pre/images/dmm_p02_200.jpg

6. Men trained to be warriors • Warriors aggressive and fearless • More capable of hunting and killing other human beings • without pity or remorse • Women warriors only significant in recent times • with firearms, not muscle powered • In Band and village societies, the more warfare there was • the more women suffered from male oppression. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Assyrian_spearman_%C2%B7_HHWI469.svg/300px-Assyrian_spearman_%C2%B7_HHWI469.svg.png

7. Oppression of Women • Amount of war correlates to the oppression of women http://www.rrtraders.com/Shields/kikuyu-tribe.jpg

8. Bands of hunters and gatherers: •  !Kung • Kalahari desert, Africa • Low population density hunters and gatherers • Little warfare • Women have almost equal status as men http://www.der.org/films/images/kung-instrument.jpeg

9. Aborigines (Australia):  • More warfare between bands • Fairly low population density hunters and gatherers • Captives from war cooked, eaten • Mostly women and children • Males get best food • Men beat or kill wives for adultery • Wives cannot do the same to men for adultery • Double standard http://theology1.tripod.com/images/aborigines.jpg

10. Aborigine Women • Aboriginal women do all the hard work • Gather fruits, dig roots • chop larvae out of tree-stems • Carry child on shoulders whole day • Prepare food • beating, roasting, soaking fruits and roots • Makes hut, gathers materials • Provide water and fuel • Women carry all baggage when travel • including children • Men only carry light weapons • out in front when travel

11. Village Societies of Agriculturalists Yanomami (Rainforest of Brazil, Venezuela) • Boys train for war at early age • learn cruelty by practicing on animals • Raids between villages common: • 33% males die from armed combat • competition for resources due to population pressure • Polygynous: • men can have many wives • Wives beat or maimed for disobedience or adultery • burned , ears chopped off

12. Village Societies of Agriculturalists Nama  (Papua New Guinea) • Male initiation cult trains men as warriors • and to dominate women • Warfare between villages rampant: • competition for resources due to population New Guinea warriors http://www.infobrasil.org/fotos/fotos/Corel/images/1218.jpg

13. Nama (Papua New Guinea) • Males given bride at initiation – • shoot her in the thigh with arrow • to demonstrate "unyielding power over her" • Women work in gardens, raise pigs, do all dirty work • Men stand around gossiping New Guinea Warrior http://www.world-traveler.eu/travels-papua-new-guinea-Dateien/papua-new-guinea-highlands-warrior.jpg

14. Nama  (Papua New Guinea) • "Women were severely punished for adultery by having burning sticks thrust into their vagina, or they were killed by their husbands; they were whipped with a cane if they spoke out of turn or presumed to offer their opinions at public gatherings; and were physically abused in marital arguments.  • Men could never be seen to be weak or soft in dealings with women.  Men do not require specific incidents or reasons to abuse or mistreat women: it is part of the normal course of events; indeed, in ritual and myth, it is portrayed as the essential order of things."  --Daryl Feil, University of Sydney

15. Why Intense Warfare in Agricultural Village Societies? • New Guinea: • high population leads to depletion of resources • Forests depleted, burned • replaced by fields • Yams and pork • replace wild animals and plants • Selection for warfare: • take over neighboring resources http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/09/17/18W_PNG_narrowweb__300x334,0.jpg

16. Male Domination in Agricultural Village Societies • Male domination leads to female infanticide: • Females can't become warriors • sex ratios skewed toward males • Female infanticide ultimately lowers population growth rate http://www.infobrasil.org/fotos/fotos/Corel/images/1208.jpg

17. Male Domination of Food • New Guinea: male hunters, warriors • monopolize meat (pork) • Malnutrition: • especially women, children and older men • Women and children • Eat more insects, frogs, mice, placenta, maggots http://www.ebible.org/mpj/gallery/MamaNaPikininiLongBulal.jpg

18. Patrilocality • Patrilocality:  • women leave their family, village • move in with man's family • Allows male raiding parties to be made up of blood relatives:  • trust in combat teams • But who will look after land when men away?  • Women • especially sisters: loyal http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Orma_Village_Kenya.jpg/800px-Orma_Village_Kenya.jpg

19. Matrilocality • Matrilocality: men leave their family, village • move in with woman's family • Occurs in some chiefdoms where men gone on long raiding parties • up to a year • Example: Iroquois • Women were in charge of home and fields: • harvesting and storing crops • Women in longhouse could withhold food for men's raids • if didn't approve Iroquois longhouse http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/northamerica/before1500/history/pictures/tiogapointmuseum.jpg

20. Matrilocality • Women's power not the opposite of mens: • not equally cruel or humiliating.  Why? • Not because women less vicious: • women often participate in torture • Women cannot boss and degrade men • when men have the weapons of war and warrior training. Mohawk Warrior http://dsccrafts.com/ProductImages/_american_indians/51872_Mohawk_Warrior_Pg3_WEB.jpg

21. Large Stratified Societies • Effect of warfare less direct: • most men not trained to be warriors • Most men unarmed peasants • also terrified of professional warriors

22. Type of Agriculture affects women's status • West Africa • Agriculture not dependent on men • Women empowered • North India • Men’s strength required for plowing • Women unempowered • South India • Women control agriculture • Women empowered http://www.thp.org/activist/105/hoe500.jpg

23. West Africa • People: • Yoruba, Igbo, and Dahomey • Women's status strong: • can own fields and crops • Dominate local market • Acquire wealth from trade • No animal-plowed fields • due to tse-tse fly • Short-handled hoe used in farming • Therefore women not dependent on men for agriculture http://www.hobotraveler.com/blogphotos01/207-266-hoe-farming-africa-girl.jpg

24. West Africa • Men must pay bride-price to get married • Women valuable • Male polygyny • only with permission of senior wife • Women participate in village councils • and high state office • Women mobilize as group • to seek redress against mistreatment by men

25. North India • Men have monopoly on ox-drawn plows • Greater body strength: • 15-20% more efficient than women • Advantage may mean difference between survival • and starvation • Even young men not strong enough to plow all day: • short window of weather opportunity for plowing http://www.gonomad.com/tours/0512/images/india-plowing.jpg

26. North India • Female infanticide common • Dowries from women required for marriage • Widows powerless: • sometimes throw themselves on husbands funeral pyre • Increasing incidence of intentional acid spraying Acid Burn Victim, Bangladesh http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/36204000/jpg/_36204440_acidvictimbbc300.jpg

27. South India • Rice paddy agriculture: • doesn't need men's strength • Women in charge of much agriculture • Women have more freedom, • status, social power • True in other rice producing areas • Southeast Asia, Indonesia http://frank.itlab.us/India_2002/dec_25_planting_rice.jpg

28. How did male dominance evolve in large agriculture societies? • Men in charge of large plow animals • From ancient times • Men thus drive animal-drawn carts when wheel invented • In charge of trade http://www.greathall.com/photoalbum/photos/itl_plow.jpg

29. How did male dominance evolve in large agriculture societies? • Men thus in charge of bookkeeping, records • Men thus became the scribes, accountants, literate • Men thus became the philosophers, theologians, and mathematicians

30. How did male dominance evolve in large agriculture societies? • Men also controlled warfare • Men thus gained control over governments • and state religions

31. "At the dawn of modern times men dominated politics, religion, art, science, law, industry, commerce, and the armed forces wherever people depended on animal-drawn plows for their basic food supply" http://www.visitingdc.com/images/george-washington-picture.jpg http://thescroogereport.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/pope.jpg http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/figures/einstein.png http://richmondthenandnow.com/Images/Famous-Visitors/Thomas-Jefferson-big.jpg http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2004/05/25/michelangelodavid,0.jpg http://a.abcnews.com/images/WNT/ap_bill_gates_060921_ssh.jpg http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/2158911/2159086/2159087/070221_CL_HitlerEX.jpg