"Society and Gender"
Excerpt from Leacock, Eleanor, “Society and Gender.” In Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women Cross-Culturally. New York: Monthly Review Press Classics, 1981. Originally published in Genes and Gender, edited by Ethel Tobach and Betty Rosoff. New York: Guardian Press, 1978 (permission, Monthly Review Press)
Excerpted by Tiffany Kinney
Contributor’s note: Footnotes from the original. I have preserved the style of the original notes.
One can take one’s pick among conflicting generalizations made about women cross-culturally and about the role of women in any specific society; e.g., that “all real authority is vested” in the women of the Iroquois of New York. “The lands, the fields, and their harvest all belong to them. They are the souls of the Councils, the arbiters of peace and of war” (Lafitau 1724). Or another statement made a century later, that the Iroquois men “regarded women as inferior, the dependent, and the servant of men,” and that, “from nurture and habit, she actually considered herself to be so” (Morgan 1954).
Steven Goldberg, author of The Inevitability of Patriarchy (1973), predictably chose the second statement. In fact, he liked it so well that he cited it in three separate places in his books. That it was written in the nineteenth century, when the Iroquois lived in single-family houses, and women were dependent on wage-work done by men, was of no moment to him. The first statement was written when the Iroquois still retained a measure of political and economic autonomy. Then they lived in the “long house,” in multifamily collectives. The women owned the land, farmed together, and controlled the stores of vegetables, meat, and other goods. They nominated the sachems who were responsible for intertribal relations, and had the power to recall those who did not represent their views to their satisfaction.
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And so it goes. A much studied, reported on, and filmed people living today on the borderline between Brazil and Venezuela, the Yanomamö, are characterized in a widely read anthropology textbook (Harris 1975) as having a style of life that “seems to be entirely dominated by incessant quarreling, raiding, dueling, beating, and killing.” The culture is “regarded as among the world’s fiercest and most male-centered cultures,” the account continues, and “Yanomamö men are as tyrannical with Yanomamö women as Oriental monarchs are with their slaves.” In explanation, the author cites increasing population density and struggle over new hunting lands (279).
In a study of another Yanomamö group, however, one reads that these people may have first gained their reputation for fierceness when they fought off a Spanish exploring party in 1758 (Smole 1976). In that period, Spanish and Portuguese adventurers were ranging throughout the Amazon area searching for slaves. The author of the account worked with a relatively peaceful highland group, and he suggested that the exaggerated fierceness of the lowland Yanomamö is not typical, but may have been developed for self-protection. In the village he studied, elder women, like elder men, are highly respected. When collective decisions are made, mature women “often speak up, loudly, to express their views.” Younger men, like younger women, “have little influence” (70). There were two widowed matriarchs in the village where he worked. Each was an “old, highly respected woman whose needs are met fully by her own children, her sons- and daughter-in-law, her grand-children, and her nieces and nephews. Much concern is shown for such a woman’s comfort and well-being” (75).
Skipping to another major area, one can read of “the traditional ideal of male domination characteristic of most African societies” (LeVine 1966). Or one can read that in most of the monarchial systems of traditional Africa, there were “either one or two women of the highest rank who participated in the exercise of power and who occupy a position on a par with that of the king or complementary to it” (Lebeuf 1971). According to Lebeuf, women’s and men’s positions were complementary throughout the various social ranks of African society. Women formed groups for “the purpose of carrying out their various activities,” and these could become “powerful organizations.” An example of how such groups have functioned even in recent times is given in an account of the Anaguta people of Nigeria. When news spread among the women that a new ruling might cut off their income they made from the sale of firewood, they marched down from the hills and assembled before the courthouse in a silent, formidable, and dense mass, unnerving the chief and council, all of whom made speeches pledging sympathy; and similar demonstrations took place when it was rumored that women were going to be taxed in the Northern Region. (Diamond 1970: 476)
A recurrent theme in contemporary anthropological literature is that men’s activities are always in the public and important sphere, while women’s concerns are limited to the private, familiar, and subsidiary sphere. LeVine (1966; 187), who wrote of the traditional male domination in African society, stated that “women contribute very heavily to the basic economy, but male activities are much more prestigeful.” By contrast, Lebeuf (1971: 114) wrote, “neither the division of labour nor the nature of tasks accomplished implies any superiority of the one over the other.”
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The structure and images of contemporary Western society are often projected onto other cultures uncritically when women’s roles are being discussed, and historical changes that took place with the spread of colonialism and imperialism are ignored. The sheer lack of information on the activities of women and decisions made by them has encouraged this ethnocentrism. However, evidence now being gathered indicates that “male dominance” is not a human universal, as is commonly argued; that in egalitarian societies the division of labor by sex has led to complementarity and not female subservience; and that women lost their equal status when they lost control over the products of their work.
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Today, the age-old practical basis for a sex division of labor according to reproductive roles and responsibilities has all but vanished. Assertion of past inferiority for women should therefore be irrelevant to the present and future developments.
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This film, [entitled Sociobiology: Doing What Comes Naturally] like sociobiology itself, skips over the course of human history and ignores the profound transition from egalitarianism to exploitive and hierarchical organization. It treats women purely as child bearers and ignores them as workers. Men do not fare much better. The images flash back and forth between fighting male baboons and discussions of sex relations among college students, emphasizing the theme of innate male aggressiveness and competition over “passive” females...
Here we move into another area in which contradictory statements about sex roles abound, for there is scarcely any limit to the variety of reproductive relations and arrangements that can be found in the animal world. One can pick and choose, and the choices in this film, as in other media material, suggest that the problems of rampant profit-seeking and of war with which we are all beset follow from our animal nature, and are rooted in male competition for females. However, the facts are (1) Baboon societies vary according to environmental conditions and do not offer the clear-cut example of male dominance suggested by the film. (2) The primary behavioral characteristic of monkeys generally is sociality. Aggression (as variously defined) is only one form, and usually a minor form, of social behavior, and females do not necessarily choose “aggressive” or “dominant” males more than others (Kolata 1976). (3) In any case, our closest relatives are not baboons, but apes. Among the well-studied chimpanzees, males do not compete for females (Jolly and Plog 1976). (4) Humans evolved as gatherer-hunters, and from what we know about foraging society, aggression was frowned upon and avoided. The valued attributes were the skills—social, manual, artistic, intellectual—and they were valued in both women and men. Authors who gave a rounded picture of life among gatherer-hunters are Turnbill (1962) and Washburne and Ananta (1940).
Yes, one can take one’s pick among conflicting generalizations. This has been true since the times of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Locke, defender of democratic forms, stressed human cooperativeness, and cited as an example the generosity of the native Americans who were still free, living without rulers apart from centers of colonial conflict; while Hobbes, defender of a strong monarchy, argued that the competitiveness of his times was innate. What we understand about ourselves is crucial. Today the humanistic goal of a peaceful and cooperative world has become an urgent need if we are to survive as a species. Generalizations about women are, in effect, generalizations about men and about human society in general. It is important to pick right.