University:
Tyler Junior College
Course:
ANTH 2301 | Anthropology
Academic year:

2024
Views:

320

Pages:

1
Author:

Dave D.

Gender and Sexuality ANTH 2301 Women and Feminist Theories of Gender Many female anthropologists in the early 1970s, spurred on by the women's movement of the 1960s, started to critically examine conventional American anthropology, noting how the field concentrated nearly entirely on the activities of males, both as subjects and as researchers. Men were portrayed as the main social players in the majority of early and mid20th century ethnographies, and it was considered that men's actions were the most significant. What were the women doing and where were they? Many feminist anthropologists called for a "anthropology of women," seeking to rectify the ethnographic record by emphasising the experiences, viewpoints, and behaviours of women in global cultures. Feminist anthropologists started to notice some trends when they looked at how women were seen in various civilizations. Women appeared to have higher social standing and equality with males in situations where they made significant and direct contributions to sustenance. For example, women maintained positions of equality among gatherer-hunters, where the bulk of calories in the diet came from the activities of gathering. Women were viewed as less equal players in sociocultural activities and as more subservient to males in situations where they were expected to stay at home and take care of the family. Both agricultural and industrial cultures established "private" domains of the home and "public" domains of labour. In these civilizations, women were often allocated to private jobs and occasionally were not allowed to access public spaces at all. The domestic work of women is undervalued and mostly unseen under capitalist market systems. Cultural anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo (1974) claimed that women were marginalised as a result of the separation of sociocultural activity into the public and private domains. Although women were the main focus of this early wave of feminist anthropology, more subsequent studies have questioned the essentialism of this methodology. Is the position of women determined primarily by a woman's gender in every culture? The term "intersectionality" refers to the way that gender interacts with physical ability, age, sexual orientation, race, class, and ethnicity to create a diverse and complicated experience for women. Women of colour in American culture have more frequently been pushed to labour outside the house due to financial need. To be more precise, affluent White women have had the ability to engage domestic workers to help them with home duties; frequently, these workers have been women of colour. For housekeepers, nannies, and chefs, the lady of the home oversees their own domestic realm, which becomes their own public realm of employment. People of color's experiences cast doubt on the notion that women are oppressed because they are confined to the private home.

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