Chap 9 for Anthro 212 EE
Raymond Hames
Author
08/27/2017
Added
131
Plays
Description
Chapter 9 212 EE
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:01.756]Good afternoon to you all.
- [00:00:03.298]Now we're onto chapter nine,
- [00:00:05.179]Sex, Gender, and Culture.
- [00:00:08.898]And here are the major topics
- [00:00:10.071]that we're going to go through in this chapter,
- [00:00:11.872]are gender concepts and how to separate sex from gender,
- [00:00:17.061]differences in physique and physiology
- [00:00:20.662]between males and females,
- [00:00:22.919]gender roles, assortive activities
- [00:00:25.987]that men and women typically do cross culturally,
- [00:00:29.754]and then relative contributions to work,
- [00:00:31.438]here again, talking about the division of labor.
- [00:00:34.705]Political leadership and warfare,
- [00:00:36.976]where men have historically dominated,
- [00:00:39.729]this is another form of patriarchy,
- [00:00:41.906]which is universal, occurs in all cultures,
- [00:00:45.049]although I would argue in modern day cultures
- [00:00:48.142]patriarchy is
- [00:00:52.614]much less than it has been in most of human history.
- [00:00:56.453]The relative status of women,
- [00:00:58.779]their ability to be political leaders,
- [00:01:01.815]economic agents and things of that nature.
- [00:01:05.044]Some personality differences between men and women,
- [00:01:07.472]and also differences in sexuality.
- [00:01:13.484]Here we talk about gender differences,
- [00:01:15.005]and refer to cultural expectations and experiences
- [00:01:18.473]of males and females.
- [00:01:20.403]And sex differences refer to purely biological differences,
- [00:01:24.158]so here we're talking about size,
- [00:01:27.943]differences in physiology, hormonal profiles
- [00:01:31.298]and clearly, sex and gender differences interact.
- [00:01:36.265]Gender is, you know, basically what one culture
- [00:01:41.189]expects of men and women,
- [00:01:43.287]of course we could also talk about what cultures
- [00:01:45.286]expect of older and younger people as well,
- [00:01:50.353]and so understand, you know, this kind of interaction
- [00:01:52.698]as the textbook goes through differentiating,
- [00:01:56.060]or talking about the interaction
- [00:01:58.072]between sex differences and gender differences,
- [00:02:01.215]And a whole slew of various facets of life.
- [00:02:08.716]Point out you know, humans are sexually dimorphic,
- [00:02:11.767]males and females of our species
- [00:02:13.253]are generally of different sizes and appearance,
- [00:02:16.332]men have, for example, greater muscle mass,
- [00:02:22.035]you know, you compare males and females of identical height,
- [00:02:25.205]males always have more muscle mass,
- [00:02:27.105]females more fat,
- [00:02:29.821]and it's important to note that our dimorphism
- [00:02:31.739]has changed through evolutionary time,
- [00:02:34.836]and the reason why I point this out
- [00:02:35.679]is that if you look at species
- [00:02:37.982]that are heavily sexually dimorphic,
- [00:02:41.071]then you tend to see a certain kind of mating system
- [00:02:45.818]that is polygamist, that is,
- [00:02:46.911]a male controls many females
- [00:02:48.930]and denies access to those females from other males,
- [00:02:52.975]as the differences between the sexes diminish,
- [00:02:57.343]then you find out that monogamy becomes
- [00:03:00.033]much, much more common
- [00:03:02.006]and both males and females are involved
- [00:03:03.995]in the rearing and care of offspring,
- [00:03:08.570]and so this is a kind of major human change
- [00:03:11.530]that has occurred from, for example,
- [00:03:13.783]our closest ancestors, chimpanzee,
- [00:03:17.423]so we kind of moved in this direction
- [00:03:20.875]a kind of family kind of organization
- [00:03:24.402]that is typically monogamous,
- [00:03:25.456]although there's plenty of polygamy
- [00:03:27.857]as you already know, cross culturally,
- [00:03:29.960]and then as you'll learn a bit further on
- [00:03:32.032]in some of the chapters on marriage.
- [00:03:35.984]All or nearly all societies assign certain activities
- [00:03:38.575]to females and other activities to males.
- [00:03:40.755]The classical one, you know,
- [00:03:42.384]man the hunter, woman the gatherers,
- [00:03:43.879]we look at foraging societies,
- [00:03:47.923]we find that men do the hunting,
- [00:03:50.560]women do the gathering,
- [00:03:52.277]they do, they also do a lot of domestic activities,
- [00:03:57.561]and we'll get into kind of the division of labor
- [00:04:00.680]next couple slides, so these gender roles
- [00:04:02.912]are referred to role assignments for males
- [00:04:05.084]and females that are product of a particular culture,
- [00:04:09.419]and they not only refer to economic activities,
- [00:04:13.053]but they talk about political, religious
- [00:04:15.332]and other kinds of activities.
- [00:04:17.295]These are all kind of gender role activities
- [00:04:20.591]that we'll explore in the coming slides.
- [00:04:23.994]Here's a kind of look at, from your textbook,
- [00:04:28.391]this table, or a version of this table,
- [00:04:31.041]it's on page 211 in your text,
- [00:04:33.995]and look at primary, secondary,
- [00:04:37.260]and other economic activities
- [00:04:40.974]and you know, males almost always,
- [00:04:43.090]males usually, then females, or either, both, excuse me,
- [00:04:47.168]females usually and females almost always,
- [00:04:50.005]so these are the columns here,
- [00:04:52.908]and you know, for example, care for infants,
- [00:04:56.423]it is although males do engage in some forms of direct care,
- [00:05:01.510]they do it very little compared to females,
- [00:05:05.421]but what they also do is they bring home food
- [00:05:08.487]that the mother distributes to the children,
- [00:05:11.944]so these are some of the economic activities
- [00:05:14.234]that we can look at and the division of labor
- [00:05:17.492]by gender or sex.
- [00:05:22.780]So why do we have this kind of division of labor?
- [00:05:26.786]The text goes through three different theories.
- [00:05:31.635]I think probably the best theory,
- [00:05:34.438]the theory that best accords with what we see
- [00:05:38.239]is compatibility with childcare activities.
- [00:05:41.353]That means that women are limited
- [00:05:45.036]in terms of what they do economically
- [00:05:47.521]by the requirements of close childcare.
- [00:05:51.315]Given women do nearly all the direct childcare
- [00:05:55.527]and that if you look at human history,
- [00:05:58.433]on average, women would have six to eight live births,
- [00:06:04.517]so most of their reproductive careers,
- [00:06:06.171]you were either pregnant or nursing for children,
- [00:06:09.942]and I think this is a pretty good theory,
- [00:06:12.800]the idea here is that you wouldn't want to do
- [00:06:14.847]any kind of activities, for example like hunting
- [00:06:17.630]that would endanger a child,
- [00:06:18.982]or chopping down large trees, and things of that nature.
- [00:06:21.925]The thing that I think really makes me appreciate
- [00:06:23.787]this model, developed by Judith Brown,
- [00:06:29.557]is that it gives us an explanation
- [00:06:31.672]of what's going on today,
- [00:06:33.174]in that today women are beginning
- [00:06:35.613]to engage in activities that were either monopolized by men
- [00:06:39.685]or dominating by men, and we see that fading away,
- [00:06:43.528]and as that fades away, we see the fact that
- [00:06:48.290]fertility for women, only one to two children
- [00:06:52.135]during their lifetime as opposed to six or eight.
- [00:06:55.176]They've essentially been freed
- [00:06:56.659]from the requirements of childcare activities,
- [00:07:01.096]so in my mind, this is probably the best model
- [00:07:03.930]but learn about the expendability theory
- [00:07:05.764]and the strength theory.
- [00:07:06.764]The strength theory does have some merit to it,
- [00:07:10.369]but I think this is probably the best theory that we have
- [00:07:13.696]to understand either historically
- [00:07:16.929]in terms of what men and women have done
- [00:07:20.076]in the division of labor,
- [00:07:21.037]and the current changes that are going on today.
- [00:07:24.328]Of course laws make a difference,
- [00:07:29.380]but you know, I think that these laws,
- [00:07:30.802]laws became enacted as women began
- [00:07:33.092]to bear fewer and fewer children.
- [00:07:38.014]And if we look at contributions to work,
- [00:07:40.876]we can distinguish between primary subsistence activities
- [00:07:44.124]and secondary subsistence activities
- [00:07:46.723]and here we're talking about, you know, food,
- [00:07:50.185]so gathering, hunting, fishing, herding and farming.
- [00:07:54.648]If you look at the literature,
- [00:07:57.059]women can engage in a lot of gathering,
- [00:07:59.421]they also can engage in a lot of farming.
- [00:08:02.353]Hunting, rarely so, fishing, sometimes,
- [00:08:06.257]herding, hardly ever, you know,
- [00:08:08.964]for example, if you look at pastoral nomads,
- [00:08:12.511]men have to take herds out into distant pastures
- [00:08:17.119]away from their homestead, they're gone for days,
- [00:08:20.810]weeks, even months at a time,
- [00:08:22.852]and again, this is an activity done by men
- [00:08:25.669]much more than women.
- [00:08:28.096]Secondary subsistence activities,
- [00:08:29.818]these are essentially activities
- [00:08:31.312]that we call domestic activities,
- [00:08:32.763]they're done around the house,
- [00:08:34.702]and again, women tend to dominate
- [00:08:37.883]in the secondary subsistence activities,
- [00:08:41.376]fear of economic production.
- [00:08:44.743]We can look at overall work,
- [00:08:46.490]and we can look at subsistence work,
- [00:08:50.593]and here is something that I published
- [00:08:52.420]some time ago, in 1989,
- [00:08:54.935]and looked at different kinds of economic formations,
- [00:08:57.991]and where we have our foragers or hunters and gatherers,
- [00:09:01.089]Amazonians, like the Yanomami described in the text
- [00:09:04.340]and a group that I studied,
- [00:09:05.323]New Guineans, also mentioned in the text,
- [00:09:07.987]and as we're moving up here,
- [00:09:09.689]we're kind of moving from, you know,
- [00:09:11.306]hunting and gathering to early forms
- [00:09:13.071]of agriculture to intensive forms of agriculture,
- [00:09:17.467]to western urban life.
- [00:09:18.542]And if you look at the number of hours per day worked,
- [00:09:22.970]females in every economic formation
- [00:09:26.017]except for hunter/gatherers,
- [00:09:28.990]work more than males, as we move we see the dark bars
- [00:09:32.737]are longer than the
- [00:09:37.044]hash bars,
- [00:09:38.560]and so what this really doesn't indicate
- [00:09:44.498]is the activities of childcare.
- [00:09:46.225]Now for example we would not consider,
- [00:09:48.850]I think most people, changing a dirty diaper
- [00:09:53.150]as a leisure time activity, that's work,
- [00:09:55.581]and much of childcare is work,
- [00:09:57.242]but these figures don't include that kind of activity,
- [00:10:02.184]and so if you were to include those activities
- [00:10:05.860]that revolve around childcare,
- [00:10:08.200]the male/female differences would be even greater,
- [00:10:11.041]with females working much more than all,
- [00:10:14.052]and I would argue, pushes them to work more than men
- [00:10:20.101]in even foraging societies.
- [00:10:22.261]So in general, and you might think about this
- [00:10:24.641]in the modern context.
- [00:10:26.672]If you have a two income family,
- [00:10:29.828]and you have children,
- [00:10:31.393]you find out that even if both of the partners
- [00:10:36.551]work 40 hours a week,
- [00:10:38.470]the bulk of the childcare activities
- [00:10:41.596]fall on the mother, on the female in the partnership,
- [00:10:46.755]and so this is still true today, I would argue.
- [00:10:51.304]Political leadership and warfare,
- [00:10:52.892]and again, here we have, you know,
- [00:10:54.511]patriarchy, where we're talking about sexual inequality
- [00:10:58.278]in relationship to politics.
- [00:11:00.623]In almost every known society, men rather than women
- [00:11:03.332]are the leaders in the political arena.
- [00:11:06.423]And then warfare's almost exclusively a male activity.
- [00:11:10.127]Now there's a highlight in your text
- [00:11:11.338]that talks about women in combat.
- [00:11:13.443]But if you read it closely,
- [00:11:15.458]they, in a number of societies,
- [00:11:17.465]they will go out on raiding parties,
- [00:11:19.485]but they don't raid.
- [00:11:21.571]They'll stay behind ad keep camp,
- [00:11:24.015]repair weapons, retrieve arrows,
- [00:11:26.717]things of that nature,
- [00:11:27.550]so they're essentially support troops, if you will,
- [00:11:30.490]and they typically aren't engaged ever
- [00:11:32.872]in direct hand to hand combat.
- [00:11:34.942]Of course that is changing today,
- [00:11:37.543]as noted in that highlight on women
- [00:11:40.351]in terms of modern armies,
- [00:11:41.418]but by and large, they are in support activities,
- [00:11:46.233]and if you look at a modern army,
- [00:11:49.332]for every person on the front line fighting,
- [00:11:52.016]there's about nine people supporting that individual,
- [00:11:56.811]and the support is really important,
- [00:11:58.701]but again, women tend to be in those support activities,
- [00:12:03.426]although sometimes they're allowed to go out on patrols
- [00:12:05.972]and bring firearms, and things of that nature,
- [00:12:08.704]but still, it's an activity dominated by men.
- [00:12:14.037]The relative status of women,
- [00:12:16.989]there appears to be variation in the degree
- [00:12:19.137]of gender stratification from one society to another.
- [00:12:21.174]That's true.
- [00:12:22.744]They state that less complex societies,
- [00:12:24.154]however, seem to approach more equal status
- [00:12:26.347]for males and females in a variety of areas of life.
- [00:12:31.213]This is really a difficult proposition to test,
- [00:12:35.816]my reading of the literature suggests that
- [00:12:39.122]there's no clear relationship
- [00:12:41.475]between social complexity and the degree to which
- [00:12:45.920]there's equality between men and women,
- [00:12:47.940]however, I will note, and you see this
- [00:12:50.183]in the highlight in your text,
- [00:12:55.104]that in very modern societies,
- [00:12:57.103]I think the differences in inequality
- [00:13:01.221]have been much diminished compared to what went on
- [00:13:05.450]in the past,
- [00:13:07.187]and although there is not equality,
- [00:13:10.307]even in you know, US, North American
- [00:13:15.490]and western European,
- [00:13:16.952]and especially northern European nations,
- [00:13:19.026]there's quite a bit of equality,
- [00:13:20.824]there's still inequality with males at the top.
- [00:13:23.770]And so I would argue that today,
- [00:13:25.756]we see more equality than we've ever had before,
- [00:13:27.877]even when we have some ways to go.
- [00:13:32.002]There's some personality differences.
- [00:13:34.317]Boys tend to be more aggressive,
- [00:13:36.755]this is true, in every society,
- [00:13:39.904]and even if you start measuring aggression
- [00:13:41.812]at say, age two, the boys are more aggressive
- [00:13:45.694]than girls, and these differences begin to accentuate
- [00:13:50.567]as boys become physically mature.
- [00:13:53.547]Girls tend to be more responsible,
- [00:13:55.558]nurturant and helpful, that is,
- [00:13:57.991]they are put to work earlier than boys,
- [00:14:01.045]in helping around the house and nurturant,
- [00:14:03.759]they're much more interested in caring
- [00:14:06.473]for their younger siblings,
- [00:14:11.668]and so these are kind of like
- [00:14:12.501]some basic personality differences,
- [00:14:14.183]there are more, they've been dominated
- [00:14:16.552]by personality psychologies
- [00:14:17.946]that (mumbles) aren't mentioned too much
- [00:14:20.906]in this chapter,
- [00:14:23.507]but in advanced courses that apology we bring in,
- [00:14:26.731]a personality psychology and explore some of the differences
- [00:14:29.466]between males and females
- [00:14:31.194]in terms of their basic personality traits,
- [00:14:35.346]such as introversion versus extroversion,
- [00:14:39.790]and the other four major components of personality.
- [00:14:46.294]Some personality differences,
- [00:14:47.987]misconceptions about differences in behavior.
- [00:14:51.211]The Six Cultures study project
- [00:14:53.763]cast doubt on some beliefs
- [00:14:54.673]about gender differences
- [00:14:55.797]in the area of dependency, sociability,
- [00:14:58.130]and passivity,
- [00:14:59.602]and one of the researchers in this,
- [00:15:02.292]or two of the researchers, actually,
- [00:15:04.038]in this project were Mel and Carol Ember,
- [00:15:06.537]the authors of your textbook,
- [00:15:08.867]and what we have here
- [00:15:11.590]is you know, basic psychological research
- [00:15:13.962]showed kind of major differences
- [00:15:16.644]between males and females, especially children
- [00:15:20.336]in terms of dependency, sociability, and passivity,
- [00:15:23.809]but it's based on our understanding,
- [00:15:25.217]what goes on in western nations.
- [00:15:28.409]But if you look at non-western people,
- [00:15:31.775]then these sorts of things begin to break down,
- [00:15:34.188]and I would argue that an area
- [00:15:36.337]that is really rich with study
- [00:15:37.861]is the area of cross cultural psychology,
- [00:15:42.044]which tries to kind of look at our beliefs
- [00:15:45.038]about psychological differences between men and women,
- [00:15:48.309]our psychological differences overall,
- [00:15:51.944]and compare them to what goes on in the rest of the world,
- [00:15:55.146]and we're finding that what goes in western European nations
- [00:15:59.452]isn't by any means universal.
- [00:16:04.101]Sexuality, cultural regulations of sexuality,
- [00:16:08.052]and then talking about premarital sex,
- [00:16:10.208]sex in marriage, extramarital sex,
- [00:16:12.373]and homosexuality.
- [00:16:15.091]There's a kind of major problem
- [00:16:16.028]in the discussion of homosexuality,
- [00:16:17.922]especially if you look at their discussion
- [00:16:21.098]of so-called homosexuality in New Guinea.
- [00:16:26.471]And what we have to do is separate behavior,
- [00:16:29.011]that is same-sex behavior from sexual orientation.
- [00:16:33.422]So behavior has to do with, you know,
- [00:16:34.726]male/male sexuality, orientation on the other hand,
- [00:16:38.875]has to do with sexuality combined with
- [00:16:40.920]what is your object of sexual desire?
- [00:16:43.708]And we found out although there may in a number of cases
- [00:16:47.973]be male same-sex behavior,
- [00:16:50.230]it really has nothing to do with sexual desire,
- [00:16:52.320]it has to do with all sorts of situations
- [00:16:55.211]where males are forced, for example,
- [00:16:57.300]in initiation ceremonies, two engaged in same-sex behavior
- [00:17:00.448]even though they don't have any motivation
- [00:17:04.205]or desire towards a same sex
- [00:17:09.204]orientation overall,
- [00:17:11.095]in fact, after they get through the initiations,
- [00:17:14.067]they get married and have,
- [00:17:17.880]to females, and sexual relations with them.
- [00:17:21.981]We examined this in a paper called Is Male Androphilia,
- [00:17:25.313]that is male orientation toward other males,
- [00:17:29.226]with an eye toward sexuality,
- [00:17:31.348]as a Context-Dependent Cross-Cultural Universal?
- [00:17:35.102]And if you want to read it, you can go here,
- [00:17:36.917]click on this link, and I think we give a much more
- [00:17:41.449]psychologically accurate understanding
- [00:17:46.031]of the presence of same-sex behavior
- [00:17:48.180]or actually, homosexual orientation or androphilia,
- [00:17:51.463]as it is known, cross-culturally,
- [00:17:53.906]and one of our findings was that it's much more common
- [00:17:57.713]than one would expect, given the previous
- [00:17:59.650]cross-cultural surveys.
- [00:18:02.991]Cultural regulations of sexuality,
- [00:18:04.664]permissiveness versus restrictiveness,
- [00:18:07.406]and basically this research has shown
- [00:18:08.715]that societies that are restrictive
- [00:18:11.059]with one aspect of heterosexual sex,
- [00:18:13.992]such as premarital heterosexual sex,
- [00:18:18.794]can be restrictive with regard to other aspects,
- [00:18:22.133]for example, extramarital sex or sex within marriage,
- [00:18:29.611]so if you know there's no kind of problem
- [00:18:31.502]with premarital sex in a particular society,
- [00:18:34.264]then extramarital sex also was harshly punished,
- [00:18:38.221]although it is a concern universally,
- [00:18:41.570]and so that's what is meant about restrictiveness
- [00:18:46.095]or permissiveness with regulation of sexuality.
- [00:18:51.718]Also the kinds of sexual activities that can go on
- [00:18:53.945]between husband and wife.
- [00:18:56.321]There's some explanations that are very weakly supported,
- [00:19:01.049]population size, social inequality,
- [00:19:05.301]and you know, we still really don't
- [00:19:07.516]have a good, clear picture,
- [00:19:09.673]although these are leading theories,
- [00:19:11.212]I think that, or hypotheses,
- [00:19:13.985]I think they're relatively weak,
- [00:19:16.388]and not really robustly formulated,
- [00:19:18.595]but you know, take a look at that,
- [00:19:19.536]it's a kind of interesting problem
- [00:19:21.779]on you know, this issue of permissiveness
- [00:19:25.301]versus restrictiveness in sexual behavior.
- [00:19:29.411]Here, finally, are some terms and concepts.
- [00:19:31.724]Again, know the difference between sex and gender,
- [00:19:36.418]the various theories of the division of labor,
- [00:19:39.385]regulation of sexuality as it relates
- [00:19:41.970]to premarital, same sex, et cetera,
- [00:19:44.244]we've just gone over.
- [00:19:45.804]And also male and female differences
- [00:19:48.151]in sexuality, personality, aggression, and politics,
- [00:19:51.000]and warfare, and so the kind of whole gamut,
- [00:19:53.490]especially those things that have to do
- [00:19:54.990]with what I would call institutional differences,
- [00:19:58.185]that is, you know, can women become political leaders?
- [00:20:01.747]Can they become religious officials?
- [00:20:05.606]Can they become leaders in combat teams,
- [00:20:09.319]et cetera, et cetera
- [00:20:10.750]and so these are, you know, the kinds of things
- [00:20:14.087]you want to consider along with these sorts
- [00:20:16.167]of other difference that have to do
- [00:20:18.980]with physical differences between men and women,
- [00:20:21.445]and the fact that women,
- [00:20:22.925]they've argued on the division of labor,
- [00:20:26.594]given they have breasts, they nurse,
- [00:20:28.682]they're the primary caretakers of children,
- [00:20:32.280]historically this has really limited what they could do,
- [00:20:35.484]especially in economics here,
- [00:20:36.973]but also perhaps, in other spheres of life as well.
- [00:20:41.711]One other thing I should also point out
- [00:20:44.583]in the area of same-sex behavior, homosexuality.
- [00:20:48.964]We know quite a bit about male homosexuality,
- [00:20:53.069]or androphilia cross-culturally,
- [00:20:55.393]but very little about female same-sex behavior
- [00:21:00.033]cross-culturally, and it's an area
- [00:21:01.538]that should be more intensely studied.
- [00:21:03.952]Okay, that's it for chapter nine.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;"> <iframe style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;" src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/8217?format=iframe&autoplay=0" title="Video Player: Chap 9 for Anthro 212 EE" allowfullscreen ></iframe> </div>
Comments
0 Comments