Sex, Gender, and Society

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Sex, Gender, and Society
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Gender - Intro

• Sex refers to biological differences, while
  gender refers to the cultural construction of
  male and female characteristics.
  
• Sexual dimorphism refers to marked differences in
  male and female biology besides the primary and
  secondary sexual features (for example, the
  average difference in height and weight between
  men and women is an aspect of sexual dimorphism,
  but not the differences in genitalia and
  breasts).
• How and why do males and females differ
  physically, in gender roles, and in personality.
  
• How and why do sexual behavior and attitudes
  about sex vary from culture to culture?

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Gender - More Definitions

• Gender roles are the tasks and activities that a
  culture assigns to the sexes.
  
• Gender stereotypes are oversimplified but
  strongly held ideas of the characteristics of men
  and women.
  
• Gender stratification describes an unequal
  distribution of rewards (socially valued
  resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom)
  between men and women, reflecting their different
  positions in social hierarchy.

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Gender Roles

• Many societies divide work along sex lines.
• Why are there near-universal patterns in these
  divisions?
  
• Strength theory
• Compatibility with childcare theory
• Economy of effort theory
• Expendability theory
• Criticisms of above theories
• Friedl article

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Contributions to Subsistence

• Primary subsistence activities are the
  food-getting activities gathering, hunting,
  fishing, herding, agriculture.
  
• Secondary subsistence activities involve
  preparing or processing food for eating or
  storage.
  
• Womens and mens contributions in varying
  societies
  
• Horticulture
• Intensive agriculture
• Hunting-gathering

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Political Leadership and Warfare

• Men largely participate in politics (in 87 of
  the worlds societies, women never participate in
  politics).
  
• Even in matrilineal societies, men usually have
  substantial political power.
  
• Reasons for male dominance
• mens role in warfare
• strength requirement
• dangerous and not interruptible
• expendable
• greater height advantage
• more gregarious
• patrilocal society

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Relative Status of Women

• Various definitions of status
• how much importance society confers on females
  versus males
  
• how much power and authority men and women have
  relative to each other
  
• what kinds of rights women and men possess
• Why is there variation in degree of gender
  stratification?
  
• contribution to primary subsistence activities
• value and esteem of warfare
• centralized political hierarchies
• place of residence - patrilocal/matrilocal
• Status of women in varying societies
  agricultural, horticultural, hunting/gathering

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Personality Differences

• Mead - No universal personality differences based
  on sex
  
• girls are not more dependent than boys
• girls are not more sociable than boys
• girls are not more passive than boys
• Recent research - Some consistent sex differences
  in behavior
  
• most consistent aggression, nurturance
• however, evidence suggests that women initiate
  aggression about 43 of the time, men 57 of the
  time
  
• possibly the result of differences in chores,
  parental treatment
  

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Sexuality

• All societies have rules governing proper
  conduct sexually.
  
• There is variation in the degree of sexual
  activity permitted or encouraged before, during,
  and after marriage.
  
• premarital sex
• extramarital sex
• sex in marriage
• Societies vary markedly in their tolerance of
  non-heterosexual sexuality.
  
• Reasons for restrictiveness
• population pressure
• social inequality
• control of property

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Marriage

• There is no single definition of marriage that is
  adequate to account for all of the diversity
  found in marriages cross-culturally.
  
• Generally, marriage means a socially approved
  sexual and economic union, usually between a man
  and a woman. It is presumed to be more or less
  permanent and it subsumes reciprocal rights and
  obligations between the two spouses and between
  spouses and their future children.
• Sexual relations can occur without economic
  cooperation, and there can be a division of labor
  between men and women without sex. But marriage
  unites the economic and the sexual. - G.P.
  Murdock

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Why is marriage universal?

• Gender division of labor
• Prolonged infant dependency
• Sexual competition
• Postpartum needs of the woman

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Economic aspects of marriage

• Bride price
• Bride service
• Exchange of females
• Gift exchange
• Dowry
• Indirect dowry

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Whom should you marry?

• Incest taboo is a universal in cultures around
  the world.
  
• Reasons for taboo
• childhood-familiarity theory
• Freuds psychoanalytic theory
• family-disruption theory
• cooperation theory
• inbreeding theory
• Endogamy and exogamy
• Polygamy/monogamy, polygyny/polyandry, group
  marriage
  
• Families - matrifocal, nuclear, extended

p. 355
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Divorce

• Divorce is found in many different societies.
• Marriages that are political alliances between
  groups are harder to break up than marriages that
  are more individual affairs.
  
• Payments of bridewealth also discourage divorce.
• Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies
  as well as societies in which postmarital
  residence is uxorilocal.
  
• Divorce is harder in virilocal societies as the
  woman may be less inclined to leave her children
  who as members of their fathers lineage would
  need to stay with him.

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Divorce in the US

• The US has one of the worlds highest divorce
  rates.
  
• The US has a very large percentage of gainfully
  employed women.
  
• Americans value independence.

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Patterns of Marital Residence

• Patrilocal - Son stays and daughter leaves (67)
• Matrilocal - Daughter stays and son leaves (15)
• Bilocal - Either son or daughter leaves, live
  near parents (7)
  
• Avunculocal - Son and wife settle near mothers
  brother (4)
  
• Neolocal - Son and daughter leave, live apart
  from family (5)

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Variations in Residence Patterns

• Neolocal Residence
• money or commercial economy
• interpersonal tensions (Margaret Mead)
• Matrilocal versus Patrilocal Residence
• patrilocal - males contribute more
• matrilocal - females contribute more
• warfare - external versus internal
• Bilocal Residence
• choice or necessity
• societies that have lost population (disease
  epidemics)

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Kinship Diagrams

• How to read and create kinship diagrams
• Standard in cultural anthropology

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Kinship - Rules of Descent

• Rules of descent are those that connect
  individuals with particular sets of kin because
  of known or presumed common ancestry.
  
• Patrilineal descent
• most frequent
• through men only

Model of patrilineal descent EE p. 368
Triangles are males, circles are females
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Kinship - Rules of Descent

• Matrilineal Descent
• descent through women only
• Ambilineal Descent
• through men or women

Model of ambilineal descent EE p. 369
Triangles are males, circles females
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Kinship - Rules of Descent

• Bilateral Kinship
• kindred - persons bilateral set of relatives who
  may be called upon for some purpose
  
• ego-centered group
• Unilineal Descent
• patrilineal/matrilineal
• definitions (see web page) lineage, clan,
  phratries, moieties
  
• functions of groups marriage, economic,
  political, religious
  
• Ambilineal Systems

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Kinship Terminology

• Consanguineal kin (related by blood) and affinal
  kin (related by marriage)
  
• Differences in nomenclature of relatives.
• Examples from other cultures
• Eskimo/Inuit
• Omaha
• Crow
• Iroquois
• Sudanese
• Hawaiian