This paper was originally written in 1974, as part of a qualifying examination presented to the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. I am greatly indebted to Dolores Koenig and Cathleen Weigley Schiller for on-going discussions and bibliographic leads out of which many of the ideas in this paper grew. I am also grateful to Professor Joan Scott for continuing encouragement and help in shaping and directing my thoughts to their present form. Finally, I thank Professors Ethel Albert and Roy Wagner for their stimulating criticism and provocative suggestions, many of which have been incorporated into this paper.

¹ Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘The position of women in primitive societies and our own’, in The Position of Women in Primitive Societies and Other Essays in Social Anthropology (New York, 1963), p. 54.Google ScholarRichards, Cara, Man in Perspective: an Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (New York, 1971), p. 70 (standard textbook);Google ScholarFox, Robin, Kinship and Marriage (Baltimore, 1969), pp. 31–2Google Scholar (basic reference work); Michaelson, Evalyn and Goldschmidt, Walter, ‘Female roles and male dominance among peasants’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 27 (1971), 330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Evans-Pritchard points out in a footnote that his essay on women, delivered as a lecture in 1955, was not published until eight years later because, at the time of delivery, he did not deem it ‘important enough to merit publication’ (op. cit., 37).Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid., 42.

⁵ Ibid., 56.

⁶ This point has been made a number of times elsewhere. See for instance, Slocum, Sally, ‘Woman the gatherer: male bias in anthropology’, in Reiter, Rayna (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York, 1975), pp. 36–50.Google Scholar For a more general discussion of this phenomenon as a characteristic of our culture, see Murray, Jessica, ‘Male perspective in language’, in Women: A Journal of Liberation 3 (1972), 46–50.Google Scholar

⁷ Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit., 39.Google Scholar

⁸ Fee, Elizabeth, ‘The sexual politics of Victorian social anthropology’, Feminist Studies, 1 (1973), 23–4.Google Scholar See also Evans-Pritchard, , op. cit., 39–40.Google Scholar

⁹ For a more detailed description and critique of the work of these scholars, see Fee, , op. cit., passim.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The fieldwork method itself is partly to blame for this. Because most societies are strictly sex-segregated, and most anthropologists are men, access to information about women has largely been limited to what male informants know or are willing to tell. Women anthropologists, unlike their male colleagues, have an ambiguous social gender in many field situations, allowing them access to social domains and informants of either or both sexes. (See Bovin, Mette, ‘The significance of the sex of the field worker for insights into the male and female worlds’, Ethnos 31 suppl. (1966), 24;Google ScholarPapanek, Hannah, ‘The woman fieldworker in a Purdah society’, Human Organization 23 (1964), 162;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMead, Margaret, ‘Fieldwork in the Pacific Islands, 1925–1967’, in Golde, Peggy (ed.), Women in the Field (Chicago, 1966), 322;Google ScholarPowdermaker, Hortense, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist (New York, 1966), 108–9, 113–4.)Google Scholar Women anthropologists, however, are few in absolute numbers, and the pressures upon them to conform to male procedures and standards have been considerable. At least until recently, therefore, they have tended not to take advantage of this role flexibility, preferring to do the same kind of male-oriented research and theory building as their male colleagues. (For example, see Mead, , op. cit., 323;Google ScholarTapper, Nancy, ‘Ethnographic review: Mary Douglas’ The Lele of the Kasai’, unpublished paper read at London Women's Anthropology Workshop, 1973.)Google Scholar

¹¹ Linton, Ralph, The Study of Man (New York, 1936), p. 113.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., 116.

¹³ Ibid., 129–30; Linton, , Cultural Background of Personality (New York, 1945), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Linton, , ‘Age and sex categories’, American Sociological Review 7 (1942), 593;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLinton, , op. cit. (1945), 66–7.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See especially, Mead, Margaret, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York, 1963; original publication, 1935);Google ScholarMead, , Male and Female (New York, 1949).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Murdock, George P., ‘Comparative data on the division of labor by sex’, Social Forces 15 (1937), 553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Murdock, , Social Structure (New York, 1949), p. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Virtually the only anthropological studies of women published between 1950 and the late 1960s are Kaberry, Phyllis, Women of the Grassfields (London, 1952);Google ScholarPaulme, Denise, ed., Women of Tropical Africa (London, 1963; original publication in French, Paris, 1960).Google Scholar

¹⁹ See for example, Chiñas, Beverly, ‘Women as ethnographic subjects’, in Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, compiler, Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Preliminary Sourcebook (Urbana, Ill., 1971), pp. 22–31;Google ScholarJacobs, S., ‘Preface’, in Women in Perspective: A Guide for Cross Cultural Studies (Urbana, 1974), pp. vii–xiii;Google Scholar Ruby Leavitt, Barbara Sykes, and Elizabeth Weatherford, ‘Aboriginal woman: male and female anthropological perspectives’, in Reiter, , op. cit., 110–26;Google ScholarNelson, Cynthia, ‘Public and private politics: women in the Middle Eastern world’, American Ethnologist 1 (1974), 551–3, 560;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPaulme, Denise, ‘Introduction’, in Paulme, (ed.), op. cit.;Google ScholarRosaldo, Michelle and Lamphere, Louise, ‘Introduction’, in Rosaldo, and Lamphere, (eds.), Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, 1974), 1–15;Google ScholarSlocum, , op. cit. (Much of this literature was circulated in unpublished form several years prior to the publication dates listed here.)Google Scholar

²⁰ Ardener, Edwin, ‘Belief and the problem of women’, in LaFontaine, Jean, ed., The Interpretation of Ritual (London, 1972), p. 135.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., 136

²² Ibid., 139.

²³ Ibid., 140–1.

²⁴ Ibid., 141.

²⁵ Ibid., 143–4.

²⁶ Ibid., 154.

²⁷ Ibid., 142.

²⁸ Ibid., 152–3.

²⁹ Ibid., 137–8.

³⁰ Ibid., 139, 142.

³¹ Ibid., 153.

³² Ortner, Sherry, ‘Is female to male as nature is to culture?’, Feminist Studies 1 (1972), 5 (reprinted in Rosaldo and Lamphere, op. cit.).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁴ Brown, , op. cit., 1075.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Ibid., 1077.

³⁷ Ortner, , op. cit., 12.Google Scholar

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³⁹ Ibid., 28.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 28.

⁴¹ In a personal communication (1974), Ethel Albert points out that this idea may be traced through Christian thought at least as far back as c. 1200.

⁴² Cited in Kraditor, Eileen, Up from the Pedestal: Selected Documents from the History of American Feminism (Chicago, 1968), p. 190.Google Scholar

⁴³ Rogers, Susan Carol, ‘Female forms of power and the myth of male dominance: a model of female/male interaction in peasant society’, American Ethnologist 2 (1975), 741, 754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Hufton, Olwen, ‘Women and the family economy in eighteenth century France’,paper read at French Historical Society Meetings(Baltimore,1974),13–14;Google Scholar see also Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (New York, 1962) for the (remarkably short) history of the notion of childhood in Western bourgeois society.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Rogers, S., ‘The acceptance of female roles in rural France’, unpublished honors thesis (Brown University, 1972), p. 39.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Wylie, Laurence, Village in the Vaucluse (New York, 1964), p. 149.Google Scholar Wylie notes that he never discovered what ‘the cork’ is, except that it is not ‘devices secured at the drugstore or from the doctor’ (ibid.).

⁴⁷ Leavitt, et al. , op. cit., 120.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., 120. See also Goodale, Jane C., Tiwi Wives (Seattle, 1971), 145;Google ScholarKaberry, Phyllis, Aboriginal Woman: Sacred and Profane (Philadelphia, 1939), 157–8.Google Scholar

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⁵⁰ Green, M., Ibo Village Affairs (London, 1948), p. 171.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Hoffer, Carol, ‘Mende and Sherbo women in high office’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 6 (1972), 163–4.Google Scholar

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⁵⁵ Many of the ideas in this section were expressed at the Conference on the Role of Women in the Preindustrial Family in Europe (Ann Arbor, 1974). A number of participants represented this point of view and, during the conference, made explicit many of the underlying assumptions in their work. Rayna Reiter, Harriet Rosenberg, and Miriam Cohen were most helpful in elucidating their ideas, and constructively criticizing mine. It is impossible, however, to attribute these ideas to any one individual, and I take responsibility for any distortions I may have inadvertently introduced in my interpretation of their point of view.

⁵⁶ Blumberg, Rae, ‘Toward a cross-society theory of factors determining female status’, paper read at Northwestern University Department of Sociology Colloquium (1974).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Remy, Dorothy, ‘Towards an economic anthropology for women’, paper read a t London Women's Anthropology Workshop (1973), pp. 1, 3.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., 1–2.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 3.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 4.

⁶¹ Ibid., 5.

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⁶⁴ See for example, Rosaldo, Michelle, ‘Women, culture and society: a theoretical overview’, in Rosaldo, and Lamphere, , op. cit., 17–18;Google Scholar Susan Harding, ‘Women and words in a Spanish village’, in Reiter, , op. cit., 306–8.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Stephens, William, The Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York, 1963), p. 289 is one example.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Rosaldo, , op. cit., 21.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid., 23. See also Lamphere, Louise, ‘Strategies, cooperation, and conflict among women in domestic groups’, in Rosaldo, and Lamphere, , op. cit., 97;Google ScholarOrtner, , op. cit., 17–18.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Lamphere, , op. cit., passim.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Rosaldo, , op. cit., 39.Google Scholar

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⁷¹ Ibid., 42. See also Ortner, , op. cit., 28.Google Scholar

⁷² See Michaelson, and Goldschmidt, op. cit., 332–3 for a more general view of sexual segregation as a cause or indication of low female status.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ibid., 335–7.

⁷⁴ Blomberg, op. cit.

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⁸¹ Some of the examples found in the literature include: Green, , op. cit., 176;Google ScholarLeith-Ross, Sylvia, African Women: A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria (London, 1939), p. 46;Google ScholarNetting, Robert, ‘Marital relations in the Jos Plateau of Nigeria’, American Anthropologist 71 (1969), passim.Google Scholar

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⁸⁷ See Nelson, op. cit., for a discussion of the persistence of this assumption in anthropological literature.

⁸⁸ Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (London, 1955), 84 (original publication, 1923).Google Scholar Rattray spent years in Ashanti and wrote voluminously on the precolonial and colonial periods of this monarchy during the first third of the twentieth century. His work is still considered to be the most complete and accurate ethnographic account of traditional Ashanti, and is frequently cited in more recent analyses of the culture. His observations about the status of women, example, despite the fact that the head of state was a female position, having an elaborate female, as well as male, hierarchy under it, even analyses of the traditional political system sometimes fail altogether to mention women (e.g. Basehart, H., ‘Ashanti’, in Gough, and Schneider, (eds.), Matrilineal Kinship (Berkeley, 1962), p. 270–97). More often, the female monarch is mentioned in passing, designated by the misnomer ‘queen mother’, although she was never the king's wife, and was not necessarily his mother. She did not hold her position by virtue of her relationship with him; indeed it was she who appointed him, and was above him in the state hierarchy.Google Scholar

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⁹⁰ Recent events in our society make particularly clear the point that even where power is believed to lie in positions of formal authority, most effective decision-making may actually be done through informal, covert channels. The facts remain, however, that in our society (1) formal authority is generally highly valued by both men and women, and (2) one does not gain access to high-level decision-making, either covert or overt, if one is largely restricted to household activities.

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¹¹⁸ Cf. Hoffer op. cit., in which the formal political roles of Mende women in Sierra Leone are described and analyzed. Hoffer's work is fairly conventional in its approach to formal political structure but, in this context, this does not result in automatic exclusion of women.

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