Questions about nature (biological predispositions) and nurture (environment) emerge in the discussion of human sex-gender roles and sexuality.
Sexual dimorphism refers to differences in male and female biology besides the contrasts in breasts and genitalia.
Sex differences are biological, but gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and inculcates in males and females; in other words, gender refers to the cultural construction of whether one is female, male, or something else.
Anthropologists have gathered systematic ethnographic data about similarities and differences involving gender in many cultural settings, and have found recurrent themes and patterns involving gender differences.
Gender roles are the tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes.
Gender stereotypes are oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics of males and females.
Gender stratification describes an unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, human rights, and personal freedom) between men and women, reflecting their different positions in a social hierarchy.
Recurrent Gender Patterns
Cross-cultural data indicate that the time and effort spent in subsistence activities by men and women tend to be about equal.
While the subsistence contributions of men and women are roughly equal cross-culturally, female labor predominates in domestic activities and child care.
Adding together their subsistence activities and their domestic work, women tend to work more hours than men do.
Women tend to be the primary child caregivers in most societies, but men often play a role.
There are differences in male and female reproductive strategies.
Women work to ensure their progeny will survive by establishing a close bond with each baby, and by having a reliable mate to ease the child-rearing process and ensure the survival of her children.
Men, who have a longer reproductive period than women do, may choose to enhance their reproductive success by impregnating several women over a longer period of time.
Double standards (e.g., regarding premarital or extramarital sex) that restrict women more than men illustrate gender stratification.
Gender among Foragers
In foraging societies gender stratification is most marked when men contribute much more to the diet than women do (e.g., the Inuit and other northern hunters and fishers).
When gathering—which tends to be women's work—is prominent (e.g., among tropical and semitropical foragers), gender status tends to be more equal.
Gender stratification also is reduced when the domestic and public spheres are not sharply separated.
Strong differentiation between the home and the outside world is called the domestic-public dichotomy, or the private-public contrast.
Cross-culturally, women's activities tend to be closer to home than men's are.
Often when domestic and public spheres are clearly separated, public activities have greater prestige than domestic ones do, and gender stratification is promoted.
Certain roles tend to be more sex-linked than others.
Hunters and warriors are usually men, because they tend to be bigger, stronger, and more mobile than women.
Pregnancy, lactation, and child care generally preclude women from being the primary hunters in foraging societies.
Nevertheless, the activities and spheres of influence of men and women may overlap among foragers (e.g., the Ju/'hoansi San).
In foraging societies, the public and domestic spheres are least separate, hierarchy is least marked, aggression and competition are most discouraged, and the rights, activities, and spheres of influence of men and women overlap the most.
Given that all humans were foragers until 10,000 years ago, relative gender equality is most likely the ancestral pattern of human society.
Gender among Horticulturalists
Martin and Voorhies (1975) studied 515 horticultural societies to investigate how gender roles and stratification varied according to economy and social structure.
Women were found to be the main producers in horticultural societies.
In half of the societies, women did most of the cultivating.
In a third of the societies, men and women made equal contributions to cultivation.
Men did most of the work in only 17 percent of the societies.
Women dominated horticulture in 64 percent of the matrilineal societies and in 50 percent of the patrilineal ones.
Female status tends to be high in horticultural societies that are matrilineal and matrilocal.
Women tend to have high status in matrilineal, matrilocal societies because descent-group membership, succession to political positions, allocation of land, and overall social identity all come through female links.
Matriarchy
Cross-culturally, anthropologists have described tremendous variation in the roles of men and women, and the power differentials between them.
Matriarchies exist, but not as mirror images of patriarchies.
Many societies, including the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia, lack the substantial power differentials that typify patriarchal systems.
Minangkabau women play a central role in social, economic, and ceremonial life and as key symbols.
The primacy of matriliny and matriarchy is evident at the village level, as well as regionally, where seniority of matrilineal descent serves as a way to rank villages.
The Minangkabau view men and women as cooperative partners for the common good rather than competitors ruled by self-interest.
Yet despite the special position of women, the Minangkabau matriarchy is not the equivalent of female rule, given the Minangkabau belief that all decision making should be by consensus.
The spread of the patrilineal-patrilocal complex (consisting of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy) has been linked to pressure on resources.
As resources become scarce, intervillage warfare often increases.
Patrilocality and patrilineality keep related men together in the same village, where they make strong allies in battle.
The patrilineal-patrilocal complex tends to enhance male prestige and, as a result, to increase gender stratification (e.g., societies in highland Papua New Guinea).
Women work hard growing and processing subsistence crops, raising and tending pigs, and doing domestic cooking, but they are isolated from the male-controlled public domain.
Males dominate the public domain—growing and distributing prestige crops, preparing food for feasts, arranging marriages, and trading pigs and controlling their use in ritual.
In densely populated areas of Papua New Guinea where there is strong pressure on resources, male-female avoidance is extreme: men regard contact with females (including sex) as dangerous and polluting, and they segregate themselves in men's houses and hide their precious ritual objects from women.
In contrast, sparsely populated areas of Papua New Guinea lack taboos on male-female contacts.
Gender among Agriculturalists
When the economy is based on agriculture, women typically lose their role as primary cultivators.
Martin and Voorhies (1975) found women were the main workers in 50 percent of the horticultural societies surveyed but in only 15 percent of the agricultural groups.
Male subsistence labor dominated 81 percent of the agricultural societies but only 17 percent of the horticultural ones.
Social changes accompanying the advent of agriculture affected women negatively.
Belief systems started contrasting men's valuable extradomestic (public) labor with women's domestic role, now viewed as inferior.
The decline of descent groups and polygyny, and the increased importance of the nuclear family, isolated women from their kinswomen and cowives.
Female sexuality is carefully supervised in agricultural societies, while men enjoy easier access to divorce and extramarital sex.
Nevertheless, female status is not inevitably low in agricultural societies.
Gender stratification is associated with plow agriculture rather than with intensive cultivation per se.
The Betsileo of Madagascar illustrate that intensive cultivation does not necessarily entail sharp gender stratification.
Betsileo women contribute slightly more than 50 percent of the labor devoted to producing and preparing rice before cooking.
Although postmarital residence is mainly patrilocal, descent rules permit married Betsileo women to keep membership in and a strong allegiance to their own descent groups.
Betsileo women also participate in various public activities—such as holding political office, selling their produce and products in markets, investing in cattle, sponsoring ceremonials, and arranging marriages.
Patriarchy and Violence
Patriarchal Societies
Patriarchy describes a political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.
Domestic Violence
Family violence and domestic abuse of women are worldwide problems.
Abuse of women is more common in societies where women are separated from supportive kin (e.g., patrilineal-patrilocal societies).
Gender and Industrialism
Early American Industrialism
The "traditional" idea that "a woman's place is in the home" actually emerged in the United States as industrialism spread after 1900.
In the 1890s more than 1 million American women held unskilled factory positions.
After 1900, European immigrants willing to work for wages lower than those of American-born workers moved into factory jobs that previously had gone to women.
As machine tools and mass production further reduced the need for female labor, the notion that women were biologically unfit for factory work began to emerge.
During the world wars the notion that women are unfit for hard physical labor faded.
Increased female employment has been spurred by a number of factors—inflation, a culture of consumption, the baby boom, and industrial expansion.
Today, almost half of all Americans who work outside the home are women, and women fill more than half of all professional jobs.
Researchers contend that changes in the economy lead to changes in attitudes toward and about women.
Alongside the economic gains of many American women stands an opposite extreme: the feminization of poverty, or the increasing representation of women (and their children) among America's poorest people.
The number of single-parent, female-headed households in the United States has more than doubled since 1959.
The feminization of poverty (including an increase in female-headed households) is evident worldwide.
The increase in female-headed households stems from a number of factors, including male migration, civil strife (men off fighting), divorce, abandonment, widowhood, unwed adolescent parenthood, and, more generally, the idea that children are women's responsibility.
What Determines Gender Variation?
Gender roles and stratification have varied widely across cultures and through history.
Gender is flexible and varies with cultural, social, political, and economic factors.
The variability of gender in time and space suggests that it will continue to change.
Sexual Orientation
Sexual orientation refers to a person's habitual sexual attractions and activities.
Heterosexuality refers to sexual preference for members of the opposite sex.
Homosexuality refers to sexual preference for members of the same sex.
Bisexuality refers to sexual preference for members of both sexes.
Asexuality refers to indifference toward, or lack of attraction to, either sex.
There is not enough information at this time to determine the exact extent to which sexual orientation is based on biology.
All human activities and preferences, including erotic expression, are at least partially culturally constructed.
In any society, individuals will differ in the nature, range, and intensity of their sexual interests and urges.
Whatever the reason for individual variation, culture always plays a role in molding individual sexual urges toward a collective norm.
Sexual norms vary considerably both cross-culturally and through time.
Attitudes about masturbation, bestiality (sex with animals), and homosexuality vary widely between societies, as well as within a single society.
In many societies (e.g., the Azande, the Etoro), various forms of same-sex sexual activity are considered normal and acceptable.
Homosexual Behavior among the Etoro
Etoro culture illustrates the power of culture in molding human sexuality.
Etoro men believed that semen was necessary to give life force to a fetus.
Men were believed to have a limited supply of semen.
Sexuality was thought to deplete this supply and to sap male virility and vitality. Although heterosexual intercourse was necessary for reproduction, it was deemed unpleasant because it would eventually lead to a man's death.
Heterosexual sex was discouraged and limited to only about 100 days a year.
Although heterosexual sex was discouraged, sex between males was viewed as essential.
The Etoro believed that in order for boys to grow into men and eventually give life force to their children, they had to acquire semen orally from older men.
From the age of 10 until adulthood, boys were inseminated by older men.
Such homosexual acts could take place in the village.
Etoro homosexuality was governed by a code of propriety: although sexual relations between older and younger males were considered culturally essential, those between boys of the same age were discouraged.
Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage, for both masturbation and same-sex sexual activity exist among chimpanzees and other primates.
Like gender roles and attitudes more generally, the sexual component of human personality and identity—how we express our "natural" sexual urges—is a matter that culture and environment determine and limit.
Anthropology Today: Careers Give Indian Women New Independence
This story describes changes in work patterns, gender roles, and marriage choices in contemporary India.
Like women in the United States, although still to a lesser degree, Indian women are entering the workforce after college and deferring marriage.
Although young Indian women are changing their behavior, many still adhere to traditional norms regarding virginity and marriage.
Many of the jobs these women occupy are part of a new global economy based on services and information.
