Culture and the Individual

Culture and the Individual Theories about Gender Roles and Identity

Theories about Gender • Theories about gender come from many disciplines including: Anthropology Biology Feminist and/or Women’s Studies Sociology Political Science Psychology • Theories from these disciplines have been shared and blended over the past 35 years.

Revised Engels’ theory to account for modern anthropological data. Social labor is labor for use or appropriation by someone of another household. Domestic work is labor done for one’s own household. Doing social labor makes people “social adults.” Those who do not do social labor are not considered social adults. Karen Sacks

Sacks . . . Con’t • Property ownership does not, as Engels proposed, constitute a sufficient cause for gender inequity. • The exclusion of women from social adulthood on the basis of their lack of social labor does. • As women increasingly contributed to social labor, their status as adults improved. • Ongoing responsibility for domestic work in addition to social labor results in the maintenance of lower social adulthood status for women.

Maternally-based division of labor leads to gender stratification. Women give birth to and nurse children This leads to a universal division of labor between men and women Women are in charge of activities that keep them close to home and are interruptible – the domestic sphere. Men are in charge of activities that take them away from home for prolonged periods of time and cannot be interrupted – the public sphere. Rosaldo

Rosaldo . . . Con’t • Women’s status is ascribed; Men’s status is achieved. • Women’s domestic roles are uniform and not hierarchically organized • Men’s public roles are socially constructed, and can be hierarchically organized. • The more separate the domestic sphere is from the public sphere, the less gender equality and the more male dominance.

Each culture has a “sex-role plan” that specifies how relationships between the sexes should be structured based on worldview and origin myths There are two general types of sex- role plans: Inner orientation = forces of nature are sacred and associated with women (plant economies) Outer orientation = forces of nature are dangerous and must be controlled by men (animal economies) Sanday

Sanday . . . Con’t • Male dominance is a response to stress from Technological complexity Migration Conflict with other societies Natural threats and dangers • Women will accept male dominance more easily in the context of male dominance in the myths and symbols of the society

Nature vs culture and gender stratification Women are seen as having a closer relationship with nature because they bear children. Men are seen as having a closer relationship with culture, the means by which humans transcend and control nature. Women create naturally; men must create artificially. Women are close to nature, therefore they are part of what must be transcended and controlled Women have less status in a cultural world. Ortner

Culture and the Individual