Gender and Anthropology Lecture 7

Question 1

Anthropology of Women

Answer 1

• Women tend to be invisible in ethnographic accounts. ‘Neur’ do not talk about women, only Neur men.
• Putting women back into ethnography
• Examine society from women’s point of view
• Women often crucial in local division of labour
• More women in academia

Question 2

Feminism

Answer 2

• Women as a sex are universally subjugated and considered to be inferior politically, legally, culturally and biologically.
• Women need to break heremony (leadership or dominance) and fight back
• Women need to understand the nature of their subjugation, regain equality, possibly even superiority
• Occurs in waves

Question 3

Anthropology of Gender

Answer 3

• Dissatisfied with the failures of the other two approaches
• Inspired by post-modernism focus on reflexivity, embodiment and symbolic power.
• Gender as society constructed and performed
• Opens up studies of masculinity and male-male violence.

Question 4

Feminism leaves structuralism for marxism

Answer 4

Structuralism had offered feminism a lot
-A way of explaining female inequality as in-built into the central symbolic dichotomies on which we build the world
Structuralism influenced feminism
-To argue that female inferiority was so universal and powerful because it was bound to the most basic, universal dichotomy.

Question 5

Feminism and Marxism together

Answer 5

Structuralism was old unenergetic and academic, whereas marxism is young. A concrete plan of action:

Question 6

Households

Answer 6

Inequality and exchange between households.
Feminists would look at inequalities and exchanges within the household.
-Power dynamics influenced by explicit marriage contract agreements, social networks, use of space, control over means of production of goods, inheritance patterns.
-Superstructures that exploit particular members eg, housework.

Question 7

Material feminism and development

Answer 7

Development has different effects on both men and women, theoretically and ethnographically placed to critique.
-Development agencies
-Development processes
As recreating and enhancing gender inequality - hinder development in the short/long run.

Question 8

Womens role in economic development (Boserup, 1970)

Answer 8

• Most societies have a sexual division of labour and women often have crucial economic roles
• Development projects falsely assume that farmers, leaders and traders are men.
• Neo-liberal development gives men access to new capital, resources and networkers.
• Male bread winner vs female docile
• Female labour input in development lost.

Question 9

Women in pre-colonial/ pre- capitalism ivory coast

Answer 9

• 2 main products, yams and cloths
• Means and Relations of production= Men in charge of lams
• Women harvest cotton and turn it into thread, husbands weave thread into cloth, but as the cloth is the woman’s she controls the final product.
• Marriage = reciprocal labour, not just reproduction. Result, women and men mobile and autonomous
• There are ways for men to control the final product, if the man is a good weaver, might buy thread from other women. If he is a bad weaver other men might buy his wives thread.

Question 10

Women and Development Anthropology

Answer 10

Very convinced that women and feminist concerns must be included in development policies and project cycles.

• Because ignoring women means you’re getting an odd view of households
• Development agencies mens clubs

Question 11

Responses

Answer 11

• Making men the underdog often produces backlashes
• Women are not passive…reproducing them as weak
• Feminists present themselves as defenders of women