Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development

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VISIBILITY A N D POWER Essays o n Women in Society and Development

VISIBILITY A N D POWER Essays o n Women 1n Society

and Development

EDITED BY

LEELA D U B E ELEANOR LEACOCK SHIRLEY A R D E N E R

DELHI

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford O X 2 6 D P New York

Toronto

Delhi B o m b a y C a l c u t t a M a d r a s Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam |

Melbourne

Auckland

a n d associates i n B e r l i n Ibadan

© Oxford University Press 1986

First published 1986

Second impression 1989

P r i n t e d b y Rekha Printers P v t . L t d . , N e w D e l h i 110020

and published by S.K. Mookerjee Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001

Contents

vil

Preface Introduction LEELA

X1

DUBE

Contributors

xlv

VISIBILITY A N D INVISIBILITY O F W O M E N

The Representation o f Women i n Academic Models SHIRLEY ARDENER

The Pregnant Male

15

CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX

Seed and Earth: The Symbolism of Biological Reproduction and Sexual Relations of Production

22

LEELA D U B E

Speech and Silence: Women i n Iran

54

ANNY TUAL

The Childbirth Industry: A Woman’s View

70

M A R G A R E T STEPHENS

Women Whisper, M e n Kill: A Case Study of the Mamasani Pastoral Nomads o f I r a n SOHEIILA

T h e Problem o f D o m i n a n c e EDWIN

85

SHAHSHAHANI

98

ARDENER

W O M E N , P O W E R A N D AUTHORITY W o m e n , Power a n d Authority

107

ELEANOR LEACOCK

W o m e n , Power a n d Authority i n Traditional

Yoruba Society

136

SIMI AFONJA

Sex Roles and Dialectics of Survival and Equality: A Case Study o f Women Workers o n a Tea Plantation in Assam

158

SHOBHITA JAIN

Sasak Attitudes Towards Polygyny and the Changing Position o f Women i n Sasak Peasant Villages RUTH KRULFELD

194

vi

Contents

W o m e n i n Brazilian ‘ A b e r t u r a ’ Politics MARIANNE SCHMINK

209

W o m e n i n Resistance a n d Research: Potential

against Power GERRIT

235

HUIZER

WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors: Implications for Women and Development

255

JOAN MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

Women i n Development: The Case of an All-Women Youth Land Development Scheme i n Malaysia MAZIDAH

F r o m Articulation t o A c c o m m o d a t i o n : W o m e n ’ s Movement in India NEERA

267

ZAKARIAH AND NIK SAFIAH KARIM

287

DESAI

Women, Production and Reproduction i n Industrial Capitalism: a Comparison of Brazilian and U.S. Factory Workers

300

HELEN I . SAFA

A Sudy o f Balmiki Women i n Delhi

324

MALAVIKA KARLEKAR

Changing Economic Roles of Farm Women i n the Socialist Federal Republic o f Yugoslavia

341

RUZA FIRST-DILIC

Index

359

Preface

O n the occasion o f the Tenth International Congress of An-

thropological and Ethnological Sciences, held at New Delhi in 1978, several symposia focused o n a variety o f themes in the broad area o f the anthropology o f women, were organized b y the newly formed

TUAES Commission on Women. The principal themes chosen to be explored were: relationship between symbolism o f biological repro-

duction and patterns of production, origins of sexual division of labour, women’s relationship to power and authority, and effects o f development o n women. These symposia were followed b y a twoday post-Congress symposium o n visibility and invisibility of wo-

men in anthropology. The present volume is largely the outcome of these symposia. Thirteen o f the nineteen contributions contained in the volume were originally presented at the symposia. All of them have been revised, though the extent and the nature o f the revision have

varied. The contributions by Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener are based on the opening statements made by them as chairpersons o f the symposia o n ‘Women, Power and Authority’ and ‘Visibility

and Invisibility of Women in Anthropology’ respectively. These articles, however, are not extensions o r refinements o f the original statements; they have been written afresh for the volume. Edwin Ardener’s short piece incorporates the views he had articulated during the post-Congress symposium, not i n the form o f a paper but to the request of the as extempore observations made in response organizers. The papers b y Afonja, Krulfeld, and Schmink were not presented during the symposia; they have been added to make the volume more representative i n terms o f both regions and concerns. Among the papers presented at the symposia several others also

merited publication, but the decision taken in consultation with the publisher to bring out only one volume limited our choice. The criteria o f selection included reporting and analysis o f an interesting field situation, discussion o f an important theme o r concern in recent feminists’ writings, focus on a region that would otherwise have gone unrepresented i n the volume, and notable conceptual contribution to the field o f the anthropology o f women. Some papers meeting all o r most o f these criteria could not be included

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Preface

either because the authors failed to comply with our requests for

necessary revisions, or because they wished to get their pieces published elsewhere. The organization o f the symposia during and after the Congress

had been a collective endeavour and the volume to emerge from them was to have contributions from distant locations across continents. It was decided to vest editorial judgement and responsibility in a small group, rather than in an individual. Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener warmly agreed to my request for sharing some of the editorial chores connected with this volume. Eleanor Leacock took upon herself the responsibility o f putting together articles o n the section o n Women, Power and Authority. She made a special effort to get additional articles b y Afonja, Krulfeld, and Schmink, and has introduced all the articles which appear i n this section to the readers, placing them within the wider context o f the theme

of the section. Shirley Ardener’s contribution at the formative stage was invaluable. I had extended discussions with her during a brief visit to Oxford. She has also shared the editorial responsibility with

me for the section on Visibility and Invisibility of Women. This international collaboration has enriched the volume; it has also involved some unavoidable delays. The collaboration could not be extended to the remaining stages

of publication of the volume. The book has been printed and published in India, and as the one who was on the spot and in communication with the publisher, preparing prelims and seeing the book through the press became m y responsibility. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to express m y sincere ap-

preciation and gratitude to my co-editors for their invaluable help and advice. Without them the volume could not have taken the shape that i t has done. Grateful thanks are due to our contributors for their willing co-operation i n revising the articles, answering queries and giving clarifications through correspondence, and returning the edited

versions without delay. Some of them have had to explain and elaborate several substantive points and find solutions to problems o f ambiguity o f meaning. I would particularly like to commend the patience shown by the younger authors, for whom the time taken over the publication o f their articles had undoubtedly considerable significance. There were periods o f total silence on m y part which must have exasperated them.

Preface

1X

It was considered impracticable to send the proofs (galleys or pages) o f articles to the contributors. The only exceptions were Edwin and Shirley Ardener and Eleanor Leacock. I am thankful to

the authors for their faith in me and hope that this faith has been vindicated. In a volume which had terms, quotations, and references from a number o f languages o f different origins, checking them for accuracy posed serious problems, particularly because access to the sources was completely ruled out and the authors were

too far to reach. Marianne Schmink’s article first appeared i n Signs, V o l . 7, N o .

11 (Autumn 1981). I t is reprinted here with the permission of the University o f Chicago Press. Most o f the work o n the book was done at home. Conscious or unconscious, the concerned involvement of other members of my family—incidentally all males—was inevitable. They have rendered help and support at different stages of the making of the

book, and i t would be a case of female bias i f I were to leave them unacknowledged. With his understanding o f the art and technology

of publishing Mukul could help me through many difficult situations. The tedious task o f editing m y writing was done by Saurabh, who also chose t o breathe down my neck until the work on the book was finished. Shyam, m y husband, deserves grateful thanks for his sustained interest and help and for going through the Introduction, which was the last t o be written. T w o o f m y students at the Institute o f Rural Management should

be mentioned: Suresh Raghavan, who helped me with editing a couple o f problematic articles; and Suresh Balakrishnan, who made

himself generally useful and felt concerned about the project. D u r i n g the period o f proof-reading I imposed myself upon a number o f people besides M u k u l . The assistance given b y Indira and S. K . Gupta, Nirmal Malhotra, and K . Sujatha i s gratefully acknowledged. For secretarial assistance thanks are due to S. S. Sundaran o f the Institute o f Rural Management, Anand, and A . H . R a o , P. P. Rao, and Harish Bhatia i n N e w Delhi. Alice Joseph attended to the last phase o f secretarial chores with diligence and understanding.

The articles in the volume have been divided into three sections: one on Visibility and Invisibility, another on Power and Authority, and the third on Development. The title of the book emphasizes visibility and power, and advisedly so. These two concerns (or

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Preface

themes) run through the entire volume: some articles directly deal with o r reflect o n both the concerns, some others deal directly with

one and indirectly with the other, while the rest deal indirectly with one o r both. Society and development provide the context for the

analyses of the problems of visibility and power in relation to women. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library New Delhi

LEELA DUBE

Introduction

LEELA D U B E

[

Incomplete and one-sided understanding is distorted understanding. B y ignoring women as social actors who contribute to continuity and change i n society the social sciences have seriously impaired

their understanding of the total social reality. Making ‘man’ stand for humanity and subsuming woman under this generalized term, intellectual activity i n the social sciences put forward inadequate and defective theories and concepts which did not take cognizance o f the existence o f women; o r incorporated women without giving any distinct recognition to gender as a meaningful category for variation, proof, and validity; o r were built on assumptions o f the insignificance and passivity o f women and primacy of men for understanding human behaviour and thought, and structures and processes o f human societies. I n other words, women were absent, ignored, relegated—in some disciplines—to limited areas, and

were commonly misrepresented. Reaction to this situation has produced spectacular results i n anthropology during the last decade and a quarter. There hasbeen a bitter realization o f the ironical and tragic fact that i n its character and content the discipline has approximated to the literal meaning o f its conventional definition as the science o f man, and that i n its conceptualizations and descriptions a distinct male bias has been evident. Anthropology o f women has distinguished itself by critical evaluation o f earlier studies and theories. reinterpretation o f analytical frameworks and perspectives. restudies o f communities and problems earlier covered by anthropologists. and freshly designed studies with a conscious new focus. Anthropological studies claimed t o have been based o n firsthand observation o f the life o f the people have been strongly censured for trivializing women’s

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activities and relying on male informants to know their women (Reiter), denying the significance o f objects labelled as women’s

things (Weiner), and assuming men to be the principal actors and women only passive beings (Bell).! Generalizations about human nature and about the natural propensities o f the sexes, based o n

particularistic ethnographic evidence, which offered direct or indirect justification for the status quo, have been questioned as having their bases in the misinterpretation of data, faulty inferences due to preconceived notions, and wrong conclusions resulting from biased

and inadequate field material. Although commonplace, the point needs to be made that women have been more visible i n anthropology than i n many other social sciences. Consideration o f sex as one o f the important organizing principles o f society, and special emphases on the study of kinship, family and marriage i n ‘other cultures’ explain the presence o f women i n anthropological studies, howsoever misinterpreted o r distorted and understated it might have been, o r is even today. This also explains why anthropology has been i n the forefront i n bringing

forth strong reactions to assumptions, generalizations, and perspectives regarding women which have been developed within its domain. Many who have been engaged i n field-based and comparative studies o n women may not concede a separate identity to anthropology o f women (see B u j r a 1978). Some have expressed, i n unequivocal terms, their concern over the undesirable possibility o f developing a female bias and producing distorted pictures o f a

different kind by an exclusive focus on women and by a reliance on them as the principal o r the only source o f data (see Rosaldo 1980, Strathern 1981). O n the whole, however, there is a strong advocacy for t h e n e e d t o l o o k i n t o women’s l i v e s , attend t o the arenas i n

which women function, and to emphasize women’s perceptions and subjective experiences. I t is clearly realized that while women’s point o f view cannot be made the sole basis for understanding social reality, i t is as necessary to view relationships and activities o f women as i t is o f men and from the point o f view of women as i t is from the point of view of men. Differences i n , as well as convergences between, the two points of view demand explanation. I n the consideration o f issues where women play an important role such as gender-based divisions o f work and articulation between these divisions, an awareness o f the need for treating gender as a central

Introduction

X11

variable can give us paradigms that will help towards a better understanding o f the social reality. I t is argued that since women

form an integral part of the life of a community, explorations in the nature o f male-female relationships and a balanced appraisal o f women’s lives and activities become essential requirements for

understanding the totality of life in a society. 2 There seems to be a broad agreement that while trying to grasp sexual differentiation o n ideological, conceptual, and behavioural

levels, assessing the quality of man-womar relations, and studying women’s situation in specific places, as also while looking for analytical frameworks and building u p propositions o f varying generality, it is necessary to keep in mind the significance o f exploring the broader— economic, social, political, and cultural— contexts o f women’s lives. This is so even though the concerns, approaches, and methods o f individual scholars may be different. Some advo-

cate a historical perspective and the use of ethnohistorical sources for avoiding possible misconceptions regarding the inevitability and changelessness of the situation as it obtains today and to understand the factors and processes that have resulted in the present situation.3 O n e o f the major emphases i n this regard has been o n

developing an understanding of pre-colonial situations (see Etienne and Leacock 1980). When the study of gender is viewed as inherently ‘ a study o f relations o f asymmetrical power and opportunity’

(Ortner and Whitehead 1980:4), the need t o explore the wider context is clearly recognized, although in many cases it may not actively guide the investigations. O f great significance is the fact that the concern for understanding sexual inequities has resulted i n

a critical evaluation of dearly held conceptual frameworks and principles of praxis in the light of their inadequacy to explain the situation o f women. There has been an identification and origina-

tion of concepts and frameworks that can take cognizance of the interplay o f class and sex and locate the bases of gender asymmetry i n wider contexts. I t has been emphasized that the intertwining o f class relations and gender relations does not allow us to look at women’s predicament and situation without taking account of the

economic, social, and political contexts and of specificities of social formations in particular geographical and historical settings.® There is also a clear realization i n some quarters that gender asymmetry has to b e reckoned as a pre-capitalist and pre-class phenomenon, and that often its understanding can be obtained b y focusing o n

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sexual relations of production based on kin group membership and rights resulting from it.> Further, assertions of the possibility of egalitarian relationship between the sexes seek evidence from communities characterized b y egalitarian economy with collective and communal ownership o f resources. These are only some illustra-

tions to show how the consideration of wider contexts for illuminating women’s predicament informs empirical investigations and conceptual developments in the anthropology of women.

Scepticism, raising questions, and posing challenges have been characteristic features of the writings in this field. Besides questioni n g many well-known anthropological concepts and theories and

expressing scepticism about methodologies which were based on faulty assumptions and resulted in biased data and conclusions, the debates within the field have raised fundamental issues regarding the awareness and careful examination of one’s preconceptions, assumptions, and blind spots. They ask for a critical evaluation and sifting of theoretical understanding in the social sciences in general and in anthropology in particular—including anthropology of women— and caution fieldworkers against faultv observations and

selective use of data.® A well-articulated point relates to the socialization of women

with ‘male models of how to perceive the world’ (Nash 1980:2) which is invoked to explain the influence o f theories, models, and

findings containing a clear male bias in many studies focused on women. Another point made in the same context relates to the ethnocentric bias o f Western feminist scholars who tend to interpret

data from other cultures in the perspective of the experiences acquired in their own cultures and their understanding of femalemale relations from them. The unresolved controversies over nature/culture and private/public dichotomies and over the assumption of universal subordination of women, which is inherent in these dichotomies, need a thorough examination in the light o f the

above criticisms.” Their careful ethnographic scrutiny is also necessary. Anthropology n o longer remains the exclusive study o f ‘other cultures’. This brings us to the crucial role of researchers belonging t o Third World countries, the areas which provide important crosscultural data for building theories and analytical frameworks in the field o f anthropology o f women. Informed b y the recent trends and advances in the field, but without being swept off their feet, these

Introduction

XV

researchers should be in a position to collect authentic data on the realities o f women’s lives, identify important categories in the

culture, and discern the subtle aspects of gender relations. What is important is the accessibility to and proper assessment of data— the meanings attributed to them, and the inferences drawn from them—so that generalizations and theoretical formulations developed i n specific regional contexts, but transformed into universal o r near-universal propositions, are properly examined. Contextuality o f meanings makes it imperative for the proper context not to be missed o u t ; native insights and familiarity with the milieu can,

possibly, help in capturing it. Although so far not clearly recognized, the possible role o f indigenous anthropologists in examining

concepts and theories seems to be crucial. Many assumptions— the starting points o f research enquiries—

and conclusions® arrived at in the course of investigations, can be subjected to scrutiny by—or with the help of— anthropologists from within the culture. Some assumptions come to mind: the nature o f gender ideologies is universally hierarchical; the categories o f femaleness are always generated in terms o f women’s relationships with men and i n terms of the relevance o f these relationships to male prestige;” in obviously male-dominated cultures women’s conceptions are merely extensions o r derivations

of reality as defined by the male-centred culture and there is a perfect fit between the male and the female perspectives; social reality is polarized between the world of men and the world of heterosexual relations (obliterating thereby the world o f women); and ‘culture’ is always posited as superior to ‘nature’. A strong case therefore exists to recognize that native categories o f thought and nuances o f behaviour in a culture often have a slippery and elusive quality and the sensitivity and sensibilities o f indigenous researchers can make a critical contribution towards understanding them.!! W e speak o f the possibility o f the very terms o f our description

such as power, authority, politics, and productivity changing their sense (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974:15). It is also necessary, however, to seriously investigate into the ways in which these terms are

used and understood by particular societies under study.!? What often happens in cultural analysis, symbolic analysis, and application o f structural categories is that despite the claims o f using a

people’s linguistic categories and delving into the minutiae of their

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behaviour, the vantage point often remains the anthropologists’ understanding of and reaction to, their own cultures and societies.

This should be avoided in the anthropology of women. Those who are studying their own societies have another responsibility. There are many communities (some of which are on the ethnographic map) that have not been brought under the purview o f anthropological analysis o f gender relations either to make new generalizations o r to question the validity of those already made.13 Some o f these societies seem to be crucial for a better understanding o f gender and require fresh empirical investigations and conceptualizations. For indigenous researchers West-

ern feminist thought should serve as an impetus to thinking about their o w n system i n a critical manner. For example, societies which

tend to underplay gender differences are difficult to grasp. Those who have been brought u p i n such ‘less extreme’ systems may be able to grasp their basic nature and essence better than others. There is one danger, however, against which |lanthropologists studying gender relations i n their own cultures should be cautioned, that o f the influence o f cultural nationalism. Ethnocentrism o f any k i n d and i n any piace has to be avoided i n a proper study o f gender |

relations. Recent anthropological studies of women are very diverse in terms o f concerns and emphases, theoretical frameworks, and com-

mended methodology. Heated debates over a number of formulations continue. For instance, we have b y n o means resolved the

controversies over nature/culture and public/private dichotomies. While these concepts have been reinforced with fresh material and fresh formulations such as that of ‘prestige systems’ there have come up sophisticated arguments—fortified by data and new analyses—to prove the untenability of these dichotomies and, in some cases, seeking to modify the formulations (Ortner and Whitehead 1980, Atkinson 1982). It is neither possible nor even necessary to produce an extensive review of the work in the field.'* The diversities and unresolved controversies notwithstanding, it seems possible to identify some broadly common features that characterize the anthropology of women.

Anthropology of women, or by whatever name it may be called, is characterized by a certain faith and conviction about its impact on the discipline as a whole. Several scholars have expressed the idea, although i n different contexts and in varied ways, that special focus

Introduction

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o n women and study o f gender relations open u p the possibility of altering the nature and character o f the discipline radically and fundamentally. A s Rosaldo and Lamphere (1974: v—vi) say i n de-

fence of their volume on women cross-culturally: . . .the lack of interest in women in conventional anthropology constitutes a genuine deficiency, .. .it has led to distorted theories and impoverished ethnographic accounts. By focusing on women, and by addressing facts that have conventionally been ignored or taken for granted. we hope to

reappraise old theories and pave the way for future thought. I n anthropology, it 1s clear that our conceptions of human social life will be broadened when they address women’s lives and strategies along with those of men.

Rayna Reiter (1975:16) speaks of reorientation of anthropology: Yet the final outcome o f such an approach will be a reorientation o f

anthropology so that it studies humankind. Focusing first on women, we must redefine the important questions, re-examine all previous theories. and be critical in our acceptance of what constitutes factual material. Armed with such a consciousness, we can proceed to new investigations o f

gender i n our own and other cultures. The possibility o f achieving fuller understanding o f social reality and o f men’s predicament b y focusing o n women’s lives and experi-

ences is emphasized by Nash and Safa: B y separating out the differential impact of industrialization on men and women, we can learn about the system as a whole (Nash 1980:11).

Viewing class consciousness from a feminist perspective permits one to

question whether the narrow focus on work roles is even appropriate for men in the Latin American working class (Safa 1980:83). The claim does not appear to be exaggerated. One could argue that it is being vindicated by the new micro studies bringing i n a wealth o f information, insights, and evaluation o f established concepts; comparative perspectives with new concepts and frameworks; investigations into gender relations in the context o f economic and political inequalities; serious attempts to examine historical processes and the diversity o f human experience in space and t i m e ; and b y innovations i n methodology. Under the influence o f the scholarship developed through the anthropology o f women, many notions in the discipline such as those regarding different

spheres of activity and the articulation between them, the importance o f certain activities and roles for a social system, and bases o f

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LEELA DUBE

social and cultural institutions ask for a radical change. There can be

no doubt that anthropology of women is moving the discipline towards what Atkinson calls a bifocal view o f social analysis. According to the same author, the aim of anthropology of women is n o t just to supplement our knowledge but to question the basic assumptions i n the discipline and to realign the disciplinary ap-

proaches (Atkinson 1982). Anthropologists who consider i t useful, even imperative, to focus o n women have an intellectual and often practical commitment to change. Assertions like the subordination o f women being universal

and sexual asymmetry in favour of men being a fact of life in all known societies, often give the impression of the existing situation being inevitable. Equally, detailed accounts of cultural perceptions o f male and female sexuality and o f mechanisms to control female sexuality, o f the ways i n which woman’s role i n biological reproduc-

tion is utilized for developing a particular kind of division of work which builds u p complex systems o f inequality, and of the working o f the phenomenon o f muting with special reference to w o m e n , "

often produce pictures of stability, continuity, and changelessness. There is little doubt, however, that i n terms o f their objectives.

hopes, and convictions, studies in the anthropology of women believe in the desirability of change and visualize its possibility. The study o f the construction o f sexuality and gender in society sees i t as a product o f cultural and historical processes (Ortner and Whitehead 1980). The assertion o f faith that anthropology is a ‘monument to possibilities’ (Rosaldo 1980) indicates, even i f feebly

in particular cases, the dimension of change. The picture is much clearer i n the case o f other studies. Those who explain the changes i n the character of gender relations i n terms o f the changing relations o f production d o look forward to a future where these relations will be egalitarian (Leacock 1981, Sack 1980). A conscious commitment to change can also b e associated with studies that are undertaken to explore the ‘cross-cultural parameters of female solidarity’ (Caplan and Bujra 1978), to examine the interaction between class and sex (Nash and Safa 1980), to find out the impact o f processes o f development o n

women (Rogers 1980, Wellesley Editorial Committee 1977, Signs 1981), and to understand patterns and processes o f discrimination

against women (Rohrlich-Leavitt 1975, Rapp 1975). It would not be wrong t o say then that the new studies o n women in anthropology

Introduction

X1X

are, by and large, informed by a positive perspective on change in terms o f a radical transformation o f gender relationships and fundamental structural changes i n society (see references). Another feature o f the anthropology o f women, i n fact a hall-

mark of the discipline, is its reliance on the comparative method. The exploration of specific problems in the context of particular regions and the examination o f a theme in several cultural and regional contexts demand a comparative approach. Such an approach provides scope for ascertaining the nature o f gender

relations and exploring their dimensions and bases in different societies which lead towards general formulations. Although the reliability and authenticity o f the existing accounts o f particular cultures has been questioned and the theoretical prop-

ositions put forth in the discipline critically evaluated, the basic methodology of anthropology of women has remained comparative. The search for the origins and dynamics o f gender inequality which focuses attention on major moments i n history, the crucial junctures at which gender relations have changed i n qualitative terms (Rapp 1977), necessarily has to make use of the understandi n g and information regarding cultures and societies i n space and time. The use o f a comparative perspective i n looking at different cultures and going back into the past can guard against the ethnocentric tendency to universalize on the basis o f notions regarding gender relationships derived from one’s own cultural experiences. The starting point for women anthropologists looking for explanations o f gender relations i n other cultures were the puzzles and problems which confronted them i n their own societies. This has

influenced the course that anthropology of women has taken in terms o f the choice o f issues considered as seminal and the theoretical frameworks developed to understand and explain the predicament o f women. A s mentioned earlier some o f these formulations have been seriously questioned and explanatory frameworks derivi n g from situations obtaining i n entirely different cultures have been put forth. The importance o f taking a balanced view can hardly be

overemphasized: ‘We need to contextualize the relative power of kinship and class, the interplay of domestic and extra-domestic economy, the flexibility within cosmological systems, and the relative autonomy o r subordination o f women, in light o f the pos-

sibilities open to each society’ (Rapp 1977:13). Whatever may be the direction and point o f view i n these studies, they all depend

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upon the comparative method and cross-cultural verification. Bujra

(1978:13-45), while questioning the validity of treating ‘women’ as an analytical category i n comparative sociological investigation,

looks for a mediating concept to build a bridge between the biological fact o f woman’s existence and the infinitely varied forms of her social existence. She identifies domestic labour (socially reproductive labour expended i n the context o f the domestic unit) as such a concept and argues that i t is the examination o f the articulation o f

domestic labour with differing modes of production which will give us the required understanding o f gender relations and women’s predicament. The comparative approach is implicit i n the rich micro research i n the field o f the anthropology o f women and informs most collections o f essays either addressing themselves to specific issues o r

consolidating information and insights from a region.'® The anthropology o f women, grounded i n cross-cultural understanding, provides a valuable source of information and hope to those troubled b y the complex problems i n the area o f gender relations. This brings us to one more significant feature o f the anthropology o f women. Over the years i t has forged meaningful and productive

links with various disciplines where interest in the study of women has been growing. These disciplines include history, political economy, language, psychology, biology, population and de-

mography, and of course sociology. It could not have been otherwise. The questions and issues raised in the context of gender relations are fundamental: the invocation of biology and of natural differences in the male and female psyche to explain sexual division o f labour and asymmetrical power relations; origins and/or roots o f gender asymmetry; the wider context o f gender relations and women’s predicament; the question o f the social, economic, and tech-

nological conditions necessary for egalitarian relations between the sexes; and innumerable substantive issues related to specific societies demanding an understanding o f particular contexts whose study has been the domain o f other disciplines.!” What I have done

here is to indicate some of the issues that have led to the forging of links between anthropology and other disciplines. Borrowing and incorporating approaches and methods developed in other disciplines have enriched the field.'®

Introduction

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II

The essays i n this volume deal with problems and issues that have been o f considerable significance i n research on women during the

last few vears. They range over a wide spectrum in terms of themes, geographical regions, and cultural and structural specificities. Seven contributors (Jain, Karlekar, Krulfeld, Mencher, Safa, Shahshahani, and Zakaria and Karim) report and analyse first hand field data. These data pertain to a set o f villages, small bounded communities, settlements, o r sample populations i n cities representing specific communities o r groups. They cover women workers o n a tea garden (Jain); sweeper women i n a locality i n Delhi (Karlekar);: women i n two types o f villages—traditional and modern—on the island o f Lombok i n Indonesia (Krulfeld); women agricultural labourers i n a rice cultivating region o f Kerala on the southwest coast o f India (Mencher); women workers i n garment factories i n Brazil and U S (Safa); women of a pastoral community which is a section o f the Mamasani tribe o f Iran (Shahshahani); and a group o f young women who joined the experiment o f developing new land for cultivation introduced b y the government i n a part o f Malaysia (Zakaria and Karim). Anny Tual’s article also uses information she gathered among urban and rural women i n Iran through observation and interviews with informants, but she does not refer

to a specific group nor a limited sample of individuals or households. The second set o f articles discuss issues pertaining to large agglomerates of population, regions, or nation-states. Both historical and anthropological sources have been used by Afonja in her reappraisal of the position of women i n Yoruba society (consisting o f a number o f kingdoms) before the twentieth century. I have discussed the implications for women of a metaphor, common to much o f India, which signifies the process o f biological reproduction. I have made use of ethnographic accounts contained i n a number o f field studies carried out in various regions o f India, along with ancient texts o n religion, medicine, a n d literature. Stephens’

article which focuses o n Western, particularly North American, women’s experience o f childbirth also uses a certain amount of ethnographic material i n presenting a comparison with the Mayan

situation where the midwife plays an important role. Schmink’s analysis o f women’s movements i n Brazil, placed i n their historical

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perspective, draws primarily from the writings relating to women’s groups and movements and political activities i n the country. Desai examines the women’s movement in India. Her material 1s drawn

mainly from the literature on the participation of women in the national movement. She uses quantitative macro-level data as well. The only paper which makes extensive use o f a statistical national

profile is Ruza First-Dili¢’s article which reflects on women’s employment and their role i n the economy i n Yugoslavia. The remaining articles b y S. Ardener, E . Ardener, Huizer, Leacock, and Meillassoux present general propositions. While the material used b y Meillassoux i n the course o f presenting his arguments comes mainly from one region, Leacock draws upon eth-

nographies, travellers’ and missionaries’ accounts, and official reports from widely dispersed geographical regions to develop her propositions. Huizer speaks from his experience o f a few Latin A m e r i c a n c o u n t r i e s ; h i s c o n c e r n , h o w e v e r , i s not with issues

specific to that region but generally with women’s potential for participation i n resistance movements. Edwin Ardener’s piece presents a succinct argument, complete i n itself. In her article dealing w i t h representation o f males and females i n academic models,

Shirley Ardener takes her examples o f non-verbal and verbal communication from the West and the writings o f Western anthropologists. The essays presented i n this volume are divided into three sections: ‘Visibility and Invisibility o f Women’: ‘Women Power and

Authority’: and ‘Women and Development’. Although concerns overlap there is a certain logic i n the placement o f the articles, which w i l l become evident as one proceeds with the book. ITI

The problem o f invisibility o f women is multifaceted and has many dimensions. I t relates as much to the content o f anthropology as a discipline as to social reality as perceived b y fieldworkers. Social structures are characterized by a lack o f realization and recognition o f the quantum and value o f women’s work, i.e. their contribution to the domestic economy and productive and reproductive spheres. Development planners have been blind to women’s actual roles i n productive activities. Norms o f a society often require the physical invisibility o f women and demand an organization o f space neces-

Introduction

XXi111

sitated by such expectations. The problem is also expressed in the ideology o f biological reproduction which renders the actually invisible role o f the father visible b y making i t a condition for legitimization o f the offspring and tries to relegate the woman’s undeniable contribution to a relatively inconsequential position, devoid of any

rights. These aspects and dimensions illuminate the problem only par-

tially. Its subtle manifestations and almost intractable bases pose a challenge to anthropologists. Some o f the invisibility mentioned here 1s specific to the conception and activity of outsiders such as anthropologists, fieldworkers, and development planners, but the other k i n d reflects the perceptions o f the community, behaviour patterns o f the people, and aspects o f their culture and values. The two kinds o f invisibility may overlap but they need to be separated at least notionally. Invisibility i n its multiple aspects and dimensions is inextricably linked with the k i n d o f visibility which is allowed o r accorded to women. I n many descriptions and analyses women have been present, but t h e i r roles have been distorted and misunderstood. Depic-

tion o f women as passive beings o r as playing insignificant roles, an overemphasis o n the management o f their sexuality and on their roles as mothers and wives, and an underestimation o f their contribution as decision-makers and as producers are all aspects of this distorted visibility. I t is not only that male-centred investigations into the life o f a community have ignored the part played by women

i n various spheres; the bias also enters in the degree of significance accorded to various avenues o f activity i n a society and the roles of women i n them. Shirley Ardener’s essay is a powerful advocacy for the need to develop a new sensitivity i n anthropology and cognate disciplines. She lays bare the often unsuspected male bias i n the way females and males are represented i n anthropological writings. I n the final analysis the male bias of anthropologists and their deep-rooted assumption o f the centrality o f the male have to be traced within their own society and culture. This becomes clear from the illustrations drawn b y the author from everyday life and language. I n presenting specimens from the writings of anthropologists Ardener seems to have caught many o f them unawares. The primacy accorded to men, and the subsuming o f women under the generic category man, assume that man occupies the centre of the stage and

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woman has to be viewed and understood essentially with reference to h i m . Such assumptions may not often correspond with the social and cultural reality o f the society being described by the anthropologist. Rather than a complete invisibility o f women it is the

distortions in their visibility and the assumption of their derived identity and status which seem t o occupy the attention of the author. The article is a continuation o f her earlier analysis o f the

phenomenon of muting (see Ardener 1975, 1978). I n three o f t h e essays i n the section, the process o f biological

the fleeting role o f the male and the clearly identifireproduction—

able and sustained role of the female— receives attention for working out paradigms to understand gender relations. The focus, however, varies. Meillassoux’s concise and tightly argued article offers provocative propositions based o n his well-known thesis about women’s reproductive functions being the source o f their subjugation by men. Since women are the ‘sole agents o f genetic reproduction’, wherever t h e fruits o f reproduction, children, are directly coveted

(as labour), women are brought under subjugation i n order to establish control over the progeny. Meillassoux contrasts societies where the cycle o f reproduction is short and does not gear itself to previous generations o r to those that follow (for instance, foodgathering and hunting societies) with those societies where the economic cycle extends over a long period and there is intergenerational dependence. H e asserts that i t is i n the latter situation that women have to be protected, guarded, and subordinated so that men can get control over their progeny. Meillassoux extends the argument further and refers to advanced societies i n which children are not a guarantee for old age and where the family is not a productive unit; h e wonders whether women i n these societies should not i n -

sist on retaining their distinctiveness as biological reproducers. Meillassoux’s main thesis has, o f course, generated extensive debate and has provoked (and continues to provoke) comments challenging his position (see, e.g. Edholm, Harris, and Young 1977, Etienne 1980, Leacock, this volume, Rapp 1977 a,b). His focus on man as the central figure, the decision-maker, as one competing w i t h other men for women has come i n for special criticism. I n his article i n this volume, while tracing the path of subordination o f women through their role i n biological reproduction, Meillassoux uses limited ethnographic material and does not categorically state

Introduction

XXV

that this has happened everywhere and in the same manner. The temper o f his presentation, however, seems to indicate that ing positing a correlation between the structure o f economy and women’s subjugation, and the course the latter takes, the author is, perhaps, claiming quasi-universality for his propositions. A s Meillassoux’s article i n this volume is going to be accessible to a far larger

and widely spread readership than his book (both in French and English) has been, it will be best not t o forestall the reaction of the readers. Suffice it to say that while Meillassoux’s propositions may n o t be accepted as generalizations of universal validity, they would produce echoes o f familiarity i n the minds o f many who have experience o f o r have closely watched and studied patrilineal and patrilocal societies with the organizing principles o f kinship as the bases of production relations. O f particular interest are: his emphasis o n how ideology is utilized for the subordination o f women;

his effective use of myths, beliefs, and practices that reflect and seem to explain man’s sense o f inadequacy and anxiety in the face of the special power o f reproduction which women alone have; his

point about the painful and difficult process of incorporation of women i n the husband’s group; and his recognition o f the possible incompatibility between sex inequality and love. M y emphasis is o n the basic sexual asymmetry rooted i n the patrilineal kinship systems whose organizing principles govern the rules for control, use, and distribution o f resources, including control and use o f labour power and o f the most important resource, land. I have elaborated how the social arrangement is justified as a k i n d o f natural arrangement through the ideology of human repro-

duction expressed in the metaphor of the seed and the earth which symbolizes the respective contributions of the father and the

mother. The more or less invisible contribution of the father contrasts sharply with the clearly identifiable and sustained contribution o f the mother. B u t the ideology achieves almost a reversal of the two i n terms o f their significance and helps the former to overshadow the latter. Though the mother is indispensable, she cannot give social identity to the offspring. The children derive legitimacy from their father. A corollary to this is the control over women’s sexuality. What could be a source o f power for women,

instead becomes something which makes them vulnerable and powerless. I n such a discriminatory system a woman is viewed as an instrument; she is denied rights to material resources, alienated

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from her own labour power, and deprived of rights over her children. In explicating the ideology and laying bare its implications I have made use o f the categories i n which people think and express themselves. A need to situate female-male relations i n the smallest unit o f social organization—the household—within the relations o f

production poses inconvenient problems for class-based analyses. A n interesting dimension o f invisibility/visibility is taken u p b y Edwin Ardener to bring out the basic difference i n the nature o f male and female sexuality in terms o f its link with the process o f

biological reproduction. He develops his argument to trace the roots o f sexual asymmetry and male dominance. The nature o f male contribution to the process of biological reproduction allows the

individual male’s responsibility to remain unascertainable or unidentifiable. B y contrast the clear visibility o f female contribution to the process leaves little scope for escaping identification. Ardener

implies that the choices that could be availed of by adolescent girls and boys differ because of this basic difference in their sexuality and maintains that a slight initial imbalance between the sexes has within i t the potential to lead to a complex structure o f gender inequalities. The argument is subtle, its presentation convincing. I t does seem to capture the essence o f gender inequality i n some societies. Even though Ardener does not say so he seems to imply the universal applicability o f his propositions to human societies (although with a clear vision o f the possibility o f change) and his argument will be questioned from many quarters. ' ® This is an area in which cross-cultural investigations might prove to be extremely

fruitful. Physical invisibility o f women, achieved through an organization

of space as ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ and the use of a cloak when in public places, signifies a clear dichotomy between the two sexes. The practice is indicative o f certain notions regarding female and male sexuality and its proper management. I n the context o f Iran, Tual’s analysis o f speech and silence as aspects o f behaviour is illuminating. Both speech and silence are equally eloquent i f we remain sensitive to their nuances, the status o f the actors, and to the contexts of time and space in which they take place. Together they reveal a great deal about the quality o f gender relations and the underlying assumptions regarding the nature and propensities o f fernale and male sexuality. The conception o f a seductive female and a vulnerable male 1s clearly discernible i n the assumption that

Introduction

XX Vil

the woman’s voice has a capacity t o seduce and in the consequent

imposition of silence on women in certain circumstances. Tual brings out that asymmetry is an important dimension of the com-

munication through speech and silence between the sexes.?? She also notes the cross-cutting o f gender with class and age in structur-

ing social behaviour. Stephens analyses the anxiety, depression, and feeling of isolation that are invisible associates of pregnancy and childbirth. What

she calls ‘childbirth industry’ is an important concern of Western feminist writing. The near-monopolization of obstetrics by male doctors and the way pregnancy and childbirth are handled by the medical profession have been discussed with competence and sensitivity. The major theme which emerges is that of male control, through a grasp over the technology of childbirth, of what is essentially a female experience. Stephens’ emphasis is on the power of the obstetrician over the woman and on the depersonalization of the event o f childbirth. She contrasts the attitude of the North American male doctor with the Mayan midwife. I n the hands o f the male doctor pregnancy and childbirth become pathological phenomena, and invariably evoke i n the woman feelings o f anxiety, depression,

and helplessness. On the other hand, the Mayan midwife acts as a guide and gives emotional support to the woman i n labour; i t is

recognized that though childbirth is a natural process it is full of risk so that the woman is entitled to positive support and special

treatment. 2! The manner o f handling childbirth is culture-specific. I t would be interesting to compare the situation o f depersonalization o f childbirth described b y Stephens with the situation i n many Asian countries, including India. I n these countries the practices o f sex segregation and seclusion and strong notions o f feminine modesty and propriety with respect to the exposure o f the body before men have meant that the monopolization o f obstetrics b y male doctors is

unthinkable. This explains why in many of these countries the study o f Western medicine became popular among women much earlier

than other fields of specialized learning. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there has occurred a certain sex-typing o f gynaecology. O f course there are some male gynaecologists and n o one can complete the requirements for a medical degree without a certain amount o f training in obstetrics and gynaecology. There is little doubt, however, that this specialization is viewed as the domain

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LEELA DUBE

of women doctors. 2? Shahshahani analyses the nature and sources of the power of women i n a Mamasani tribal herding community. She stresses the

importance of the houschold as a unit of production and women’s indispensable share of work in it. The source of a woman’s importance is the key role she plays in the household and the key role the household plays in the socio-economic life of the tribal community. There is close interdependence and overlap between domestic/reproductive and productive activities. The point that among peasant

and herding communities the domestic sphere is often more important economically, politically, and socially than the public

sphere is, perhaps, worth examining in relation to the situation presented by Shahshahani. The author also examines the implications o f clearly separated domains for the two sexes. A well demarcated sphere o f activities o f women, which is more o r less

invisible to men and out of their control, seems to give a special kind o f power to women. Among the Mamasani there is a recognition o f

the closeness of the mother-child bond. The mother’s influence over her children, her role i n shaping their attitudes and inclinations towards paternal and maternal k i n , and the young wife’s influence

over her husband act as counter-balancing forces for patrilineality and patrilocality. They are seen to mitigate the strength o f these

organizing principles of Mamasani society. The proverbs and sayings used by the author suggest that the power of women is largely manipulative; but i t cannot be ignored since, though exerted i n the

private sphere, it is clearly felt and becomes manifest through its effects. This power is also reflected in the articulation of the household with the wider economy. Its potency in determining the relationships between men and between women and men is wellrecognized. I n the context o f current debates two points merit attention. The most significant aspect o f the relationship between w o i n e n is perceived to b e competitive rather than supportive and (as between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law) the focus of such competitive

relationships is the influence over or attention of a man (son/ husband). Second, howsoever indirect, subtle, and difficult to identify b v observers the power exercised by women may be. the Mamasani woman's self-perception is not that of a powerless person. N o r does Mamasani society regard women to be powerless. What differs between the two sexes is the nature o f power and the

Introduction

XX1X

way it is exerted. The differences in the nature of power are at-

tributed to the differences in the nature of men and women. How do we interpret these perceptions o f Mamasani women? H o w far can

self-perceptions of women take us in understanding the objective conditions of women’s lives in a specific context?

IV Explorations to grasp the nature and bases o f gender relations and to acquire an understanding o f women’s lives, their concerns, and

perceptions necessarily entail a consideration of the dimension of power. I n fact, the entire question o f the status o r position o f women i n a society has often been viewed as hinging o n the issue o f how much power women as members of their sex have vis-a-vis men. Power has been interpreted i n a variety o f ways: i t may refer to autonomy, influence, power to decide for others, ability to manipulate, institutionalized positions i n the authority structure o f a community, supernatural power to harm o r bless others, and so on.

Leacock, in her lead article in section I I , defines the dimensions of power and authority and presents her exposition of their bases, arena, and manifestations. She sets out her point of departure: In my

view.

historical changes in production relations underlie the funda-

mental changes i n the structure o f reproduction and in its economic and cultural significance. I find the focus o n production relations particularly useful for defining not only the differing degrees but also the differing forms

of power and authority held by women of different classes. cultures. and nations, and for clarifying consequent differences in the ways women approach struggles against oppression (p. 109). Changes i n production relations bring about changes not only i n degrees o f

female authority and power but also in the forms taken by authority and power and in their relations tc one another (p. 112).

Leacock reiterates her well-known position and attacks what she

calls the myths of male dominance and the idea of universal subordination o f women i n space and time. Referring to the studies o n women in aboriginal societies which point towards a balance i n female and male power, she asserts that we need to keep in mind the effects o f colonial rule with its emphases o n Western male-biased gender structure. Her discussion o f egalitarian gender relations

characterized by gender parity, sharing of responsibility of repro-

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LEELA D U B E

duction o f the group, widely dispersed decision-making powers, role o f both the sexes i n the management o f group affairs, and absence o f dichotomy between public and private sectors o f economy, draws evidence from foraging and horticultural societies. The author traces the path of the increasing subordination of women. Five broad systems of production relations, entailing differing structures of reproduction and decision-making, are defined. After dealing with egalitarian, foraging, and horticultural societies, Leacock moves over to ranking or transitional and stratified societies, and finally discusses women’s predicament under

capitalist relations of production at length. She leaves undiscussed industrial communist or socialist relations of production. The article provides a critique of the position of a number o f anthropologists regarding female-male relations. Leacock emphasizes the use o f ethnohistory and challenges both, the statements about women’s position and the explanations offered for these. The five articles that follow i n this section are integrated by Leacock i n her discussion of women’s power and authority under ranking, stratified, and capitalist relations of production. They do n o t n e e d t o b e introduced h e r e . ”

\Y%

The essays o n development attempt to bring into the open the invisible o r partially visible components of women’s roles i n production and i n decision-making. A n inadequate understanding o f these affects the programmes of development adversely. The essays also analyse the impact o f development processes ( i n the broad sense o f the term) o n women’s lives and situation which has n o t been adequately recognized. They point out that mobility does not always help husband and wife alike, that there can be a divergence o f interests between the sexes within a class o r a community, and that development can have a differential impact o n w o m e n a n d m e n . I n f a c t , i n some situations m e n are a b l e t o

benefit from the opportunities thrown open by the development process at the cost of their women o r by making use of their women. B o t h men and women are victims i n the development of industrial capitalism; women’s predicament as dependent victims, however, demands separate analysis. The essays remind us that

Introduction

XXX1

the needs and interests of women vary with class and therefore efforts towards mobilization of women need to reckon with the reality of divergent class interests. I n the context o f efforts towards the integration o f women i n

development, it is emphasized that a programme devised on the premise o f achieving equality between the sexes need not necessar-

ily preclude taking cognizance of the special requirements of women. Equality does not mean homogeneity, a recognition of differences does n o t automatically imply inequality. Mencher deplores the lack o f development programmes which focus o n women and the inadequate attention o f planners and implementers o f programmes to the roles o f women i n production. She provides data o n women’s participation i n agriculture from four villages in Kerala, the south-western State of the Indian Union. The important supervisory roles o f women and their share in the making

of decisions in the organization of production are not acknowledged even in passing. According to Mencher, it is necessary to build u p a

body of theory that can help us in understanding the reasons for the exclusion o f women from the process o f economic development. She also feels that b y neglecting women in trade union activities, labour unions have ignored what is perhaps a highly motivated

and capable source of organization and leadership. Zakaria and K a r i m describe the experiment o f an all-women

land development scheme introduced by the government of Johore in Malaysia. The scheme for single young women was introduced with the avowed aim of ‘integrating women into the development process’. It has received commendation as an innovative measure to provide an opportunity for young women to participate in land development and to acquire useful training in agriculture. I t is significant that for sixty seats the authorities received more than 1,000 applications from reasonably educated young women: fifty-eight o f the selected sixty continued till the end. They did almost all the work related to preparing and developing the fields. The experiment needs to be viewed in the wider structural and cultural context o f Malay society. One cannot help wondering if certain aspects o f bilateral kinship system—the existence o f a cer-

tain flexibility in marital residence where it is not unusual for men t o go and live in their wives’ houses, women’s rights in land, clear notions o f conjugal property and separate property o f husband and wife (see Note 10) — and the absence of rigidity in the classification

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LEELA DUBE

of work according to sex have not contributed to the conception and execution o f the scheme. I n the all-women land development scheme women were made responsible for the entire process o f cultivation and were given rights i n land parallel to those o f men. Could such a scheme have been conceived o f i n Bangladesh,

Pakistan, or India? I n Bangladesh and Pakistan custom counteracts provisions—

present in law, supported by religion—for the woman getting a share i n parental property. Moreover, seclusion and segregation and a rigid separation between the work of men and women make independent control and management o f land b y women unthinkable. Although women have actively participated i n movements for land to the tiller, the titles to land and house sites, under schemes o f

land reforms, have been given in the name of men. There has been a certain inevitability about this; even women d o not realize that it could b e otherwise. I t is only recently that in some places, as a result o f a concentrated movement t o raise the consciousness o f w o m e n ,

they have felt the need to fight for their nghts not only outside b u t also within the family. A n example is the struggle for surplus

land in Bodhgaya in the State of Bihar in northern India. After years of fighting with the landlord, when the land became available for distribution among the landless, i t was assumed that the land deeds would be i n the names o f men. I t was only because o f an adamant stand o n the part o f women that men could be persuaded to have the land deeds i n the names o f women as well.2* I t is

interesting that the local administrator insisted that he could give the land only to the head ot the household, who had to be a man;

only in those cases where the man was dead could a widow be given the household’s share of land. Zakaria and Karim point towards certain administrative drawbacks and lapses i n the scheme. 25 I n the absence of information regarding the success o r failure o f all-men scheme it is not possible to assess whether most o f these lapses i n the all-women scheme have a special significance. I n any case, a question remains. H o w far can these land development schemes contribute to genuine development given the structure and organization o f the economy o f Malaysia? The problem o f uniting women across divisions o f class has been

addressed by academics and activists. I n her analysis of women’s movement i n India before and after the attainment o f independence

Introduction

XXXiil

in 1947, Neera Desai seeks t o bring out the class contradictions among women and the effect o f these o n the movement. She argues

that the growth of complacency among middle and upper middle class women— the principal recipients of the gains of development in the form of education and increasing opportunities for employment and positions o f leadership— resulted in a lessening o f awareness regarding women’s oppression and the need to identify its roots. I t also dampened the spirit o f resistance against the perva-

sive gender hierarchy and gender inequality i n society. There developed an indifference towards what was happening to the masses o f women due to unequal growth. The period after independence was characterized b y a general apathy towards the need for mobilization o f women. Desai indicates, however, that i n recent years the situation has changed. A few questions come up: What about the different levels and forms o f resistance? Is there one women’s movement i n I n d i a ? I s the complex relationship between class a n d

gender not confounded b y the existence of castes, ethnic groups, ?%° and t h e diversity o f religion and religious experience

I f national independence does not guarantee an improvement i n the situation of women, nor does gender inequality evaporate under a socialist regime. Ruza First-Dili¢’s analysis o f macro-level statist-

ics for Yugoslavia brings out the limitations of a socialist regime. There is a concentration o f women i n certain sectors with limited

chances of growth and promotion for them. Division ef labour within the household puts far greater burden on the women who also work outside the home. Under the influence of classical Marxist theory, housework is treated as non-productive. I t is also doubtful whether home-based activities of production by women are taken as productive work contributing to the national income in Yugoslavia. Important evidence for the conscious or unconscious persistence of traditional patterns is the fact that privately owned plots of family land are mostly in the hands of men. I t is clear that the improvement in the situation of women demands a struggle on the part o f women for the formulation and implementation o f conscious policies. Such a movement would aim at moving closer to

socialist goals, not at opposing them. I n the context o f development Karlekar poses two questions: Does the spread o f mechanization always affect women’s employment opportunities adversely? A n d does cash income o n the part o f women necessarily work towards their economic independence?

LEELA DUBE

XXX1V

She answers both these questions in the negative on the basis of her study of a group of sweeper women in a locality in Delhi. The new opportunities presented b y modern technology, educa-

tion, and urban development are being used by the men in this community. B y contrast the women are getting increasingly en-

trenched in their traditional occupation as sweepers. Scavenging, since i t is considered polluting, has remained an exclusive monopoly o f this caste and now offers increased opportunities for employment because of urban expansion. It is interesting that within this occupation the work in private houses, which is poorly paid and has the lowest status, is left entirely to women. Even here women

are not independent of their men for it is the latter who negotiate with fellow caste people for buying the rights to work in a particular set o f houses and also bargain with employers over the terms and

conditions of work. The author’s findings show that within the household women are overworked and have virtually no decisionmaking power. 2 ’ Safa compares the strategies adopted by working class families, represented b y women factory workers, i n the dependent capitalist economy o f Brazil, which incorporates many pre-capitalist features, and the advanced capitalist economy of USA. The families o f the Brazilian factory workers struggle for a bare survival while the factory workers in U S A work towards upward mobility. Safa relates the different patterns of allocation of labour adopted at the household level to the different recruitment patterns for women in paid productive labour at the two different levels of industrial capitalist development. The emphasis is o n the articulation between the household

and the larger economic structure and processes. While Brazilian working class families survive by having many wage earners in the household—many of whom are young workers—working class families i n N e w Jersey choose to have smaller families—less wage earners, also less consumers—in which both husband and wife work for wages to promote their children’s mobility from blue-collar to

white-collar work. Interviews conducted with women factory workers—mostly young and unmarried in Brazil and married and middle-aged in USA—provide the data for Safa’s comparison between these two sets o f factory workers. One invests in the labour o f

many children while the other invests in the education and training of a few. |

Is it possible to stop here? The questions raised in the context o f development bring us face to face with basic issues. These relate to

Introduction

XXXV

culture and ideology, social structural and institutional arrangements and the relations of production which define the access of women and men to resources for living, a woman’s place in the household, and her rights over her children. We confront conceptions regarding the nature o f female and male sexuality, cultural

perceptions of women’s roles and the reasons behind them, planners’ perceptions o f women’s participation in and contribution to

production, and the primacy of the domestic sphere generally explained in relation to women’s roles in biological reproduction and childbearing. In other words, we confront what is basic to gender relations and women’s predicament. If we agree that gender inequality is connected to and sustained by other kinds of inequality then nothing short of structural transformations can do away with the problems that come up in the context of development. Alternative visions of development need t o think o f such transformation as a pre-condition.

V1 The essays in this volume present many, often divergent, points of view. This has two major justifications: First, i t provides an idea o f the range o f important concerns

relating to women and to ways of thinking about them that have emerged during the last decade and a half. Many fundamental questions relating to women in culture and society have been dealt with here. The essays provide specimens of the modes of thought about the basic issues involved in gender relations, take us to the

sources of these unequal relations, and bring out the cultural and structural mechanisms that exist t o sustain them. Second, while one o f the objectives o f a well-planned international conference is to bring together like-minded people and pro-

vide them an opportunity to move in a specific direction and develop a common perspective, another equally legitimate objective

could be envisioned as bringing together scholars who have been working with different sets o f theoretical propositions and conceptual formulations in a common area o f enquiry. Such a gettogether can provide the rare opportunity to researchers to experience different styles o f scholarship and academic passsions. The Tenth ICAES provided such an opportunity; by design the symposia o n women were aimed at attaining these twin

objectives.

|

XXXVi

LEELA DUBE NOTES

1

Reiter offers this criticism i n pleading for the need to work towards an ‘anthropology o f women’ (Reiter 1975b). Short statements have been taken

from larger arguments based on field material from the Trobriand Islands (Weiner 1976, 1980) and on the Warlapiri aborigines of Australia (Bell 1980).

2

I t is not m y intention to present an exhaustive review of the work that has been done in this field: the references in the introduction are only indicative. Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt et a l . have argued:

Androcentrism and sexism lead to the misinterpretation and distortion of the status and roles of women in non-Western cultures. But if the status and roles of women are misinterpreted and distorted, so inevitably must be those of m e n . Since the relationships o f women and men interlock, the distortion o f the roles o f m e n and women leads t o a distortion o f the total social system

(1975:124). 3

.

For the use of a historical perspective, see Rapp: 1977, 1978, and RohrlichLeavitt: 1977, 1980. Leacock’s Myths o f Male Dominance (1981) contains a number o f her essays in which she advocates and demonstrates the use o f

4

ethnohistory. This trend—which contains many points of view—is fairly widespread and informs field studies as well as conceptualizations and frameworks for comparisons. I give only a few examples: Caplan and Bujra: 1978, Nash: 1980 ab, Nash and Safa: 1980, Omvedt: 1975, 1980, Pala: 1977, Reiter: 1977, Rapp: 1978, Rohrlich-Leavitt: 1980, Saradamoni: mimeo, Sacks: 1976, Stoler: 1978, Young

5

etal.: 1981. Review essays (see Note 14) contain useful references illustrating this trend. Also see Black and Cottrel: 1981, Croll: 1978. Those who see gender asymmetry as a pervasive feature of human societies do not associate it only with class formation and capitalism. However, I refer here to a distinct focus on kinship and sexual relations of production. The controversial thesis of Meillassoux (1975, 1980) falls in this category. For references see

Rapp: 1978 and Atkinson: 1982. Also see Arizpe: 1982. 6

References are too numerous. A n idea o f the temper and variety can be got

from Rosaldo and Lamphere: 1974, Rohrlich-Leavitt: 1975, Ardener: 1975, 1978, Etienne: 1980, and review essays by Lamphere: 1974, Rogers: 1978, Rapp: 1979, and Atkinson: 1982. Also see Maher: 1976, Vance: 1980.

7

See Notes 4, 6 and 14.

8

For these assumptions and conclusions refer to Rosaldo: 1974, 1980, Rosaldo and Lamphere: 1974 ab, Ortner and Whitehead: 1980 ab, and MacCormack

9

Among the matrilineal communities o f the Khasi, the Garo, and Lakshadweep Islanders, woman is not ‘designated’ i n terms o f menfolk but in terms o f the

and Strathern: 1981.

‘house’ or lineage and in terms of her position as the youngest daughter, the appointed daughter, or in relation to the mother (Dube: forthcoming). It becomes necessary t o see h o w a system functions and h o w i t is perceived b y the people themselves. Even in many patrilineal societies it may be a collectivity

whose prestige guides the actions of its members.

Introduct ion 10 11

12

13

XXXVI1

Isfahani (1980) questions this assumption with evidence from women’s ‘dramatic games’ in Iranian culture. I realize, of course, that there may exist cleavages of class, caste, and ethnicity between researchers and the people being studied even when they are from their own countries. These pose problems similar to those in the study of ‘other cultures’. Yet it is not unreasonable to expect that in terms of their cultural milieu, languages of communication, categories of thought, and broader economic and social contexts, communication and understanding between the researcher and the people being studied may be easier because of a certain familiarity. A n example is of the matrilineal Khasi. Among them there is a saying ‘war and politics for men; property and children for women’. The tendency to assume that war and politics carry greater prestige and are more important than rights to, and responsibilities for, property and children does not sit well with the Khasis’ own conceptions. For references see Dube: forthcoming. I shall mention a few such areas: anthropologists’ obsession with the idea of exchange of women; the myth of instability of the matrilineal system (see Colson: 1980, Weiner: 1979) and its explanation in the built-in conflict between devolution of authority and continuity of the group, which does not take into account the diversity i n matrilineal societies, and the cost women have to pay

and the conflicts which have to be resolved for achieving the continuity of a patrilineal system. South and Southeast Asia provide a rich field for examining many anthropological generalizations. 14 Review essays by Quinn (1977), Lamphere (1974), Rogers (1978), Rapp (1979). and Atkinson (1982) provide exhaustive information about and critically look at the work in the field of anthropology of women. 15. ‘The theory of muting...sees the case of women as part of a more general phenomenon, but places emphasis on a society’s multi-faceted system of communication, which it sees as an over-determining instrument of authority...’ (Ardener 1978: 27). Also see E Ardener: 1978, and S Ardener: 1978 b , and

16

1981 ab.. Some of the significant collections are: Rosaldo and Lamphere: 1974, Ardener: 1975, Matthiasson: 1974, Reiter: 1975, Rohrlich-Leavitt: 1975, Schlegel: 1977, Etienne and Leacock: 1980, MacCormack and Strathern: 1981, Ortner and Whitehead: 1981.

17

For interdisciplinary collaboration see, among others, Barker and Allen: 1976 ab, Leacock and Rohrlich-Leavitt in Bridenthal and Koonz: 1977, Ardener: 1978, 1981, Caplan and Bujra: 1978, Rapp: 1978, Ross and Rapp: 1981, Wellesley Editorial Committee: 1977, Nash and Safa: 1980. Papanek and

18

New international platforms for discussions on specific issues have created the

Minnault: 1982. Also see Spender: 1981.

need for individual scholars to represent regions. This has posed a challenge to many anthropologists to asborb the understanding developed in other disci-

plines. The area of development has been responsible for much interdisciplinary collaboration. In the case of developing countries paucity of funds often encourages the merging of various disciplines for women’s studies. In any case, the studyo f a multi-faceted problem and the simultaneous management of action programmes demands contributions from different disciplines.

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LEELA DUBE

19 I can indicate a couple of situations which seem to pose serious problems for Ardener’s argument: one is represented by societies which affiliate or have provision to affiliate children to the mother’s group more o r less without reference to paternal identity and d o not recognize the notion o f illegitimacy. T h e matrilineal Khasi o f north-eastern India and many communities i n South-east Asia illustrate these patterns. I t is doubtful i f they would exercise

the same kinds of constraints that make it imperative for adolescent girls to make the kind o f choice which Ardener hinges his argument on. Again, where the rights over women are conceived mainly i n terms o f rights over the products o f their sexuality rather than over their sexuality per se (Gough 1971), the differences i n the nature o f male and female sexuality may not lead to

similar consequences in regard t o dominance. 20 I n many ways silence and veiling seem to serve the same purpose: the seductivity of the female voice is assumed to represent or equal the sight or the fact of the female body; the imposition of silence on women who can hear men’s voices is similar to the arrangement i n which women are hidden from the sight o f m e n but can observe men. O n e cannot help wondering about the deep cultural assumptions relating to male and female sexuality that form the logic for such arrangements. The protection o f the ‘vulnerable’ male is ensured b y making women silent and invisible; o n the other hand, women are allowed to

see men and hear men’s voices. But what of women’s feelings and passions?

21 During the last decade there have taken place in certain sections of the American population radical changes i n the handling o f the process o f childbirth. There is a n insistence o n the active involvement o f the husband/

male partner i n the whole process of child-bearing and on his sharing the experience o f childbirth b y being present b y the side o f the woman when she is

in labour and during the actual process of birthing. There is also an opposite trend (though only among certain sections o f feminists) to completely negate the role o f the male progenitor and keep him away not only from the event o f

childbirth but also from the process of child rearing. I mention these trends because o f their relevance for examining the assumptions that underlie the feminists’ reactions to male doctors’ handling pregnancy and childbirth. D o supportive relationships among women i n the kinship group, neighbourhood,

and circle of friends in any way conflict with the notion of equal responsibility o f the m a n i n child-bearing and child rearing? What kind o f a balance needs to

be struck between these two directions? 22 Traditional Indian medicine and the indigenous manner o f handling o f childbirth have always emphasized the importance o f the expectant mother’s behaviour during pregnancy and o f her full co-operation i n the process o f

birthing. Allopathic doctors—female and male—and also midwives today do not fail to emphasize the critical importance o f the woman’s co-operation i n the process o f birthing and also seem to realize the need for emotional support. I t is generally felt that a woman doctor has a more sympathetic understanding o f the physical and mental condition o f a woman i n labour. I would like to comment o n Shobhita Jain’s paper. The community o f plantation workers that Jain studied grew out o f an amalgamation of a number o f

caste and tribal groups, in a place far from their onginal home. Intermarriages take place more o r less freely, and there is hardly any mechanism to enforce the

Introduction

XXX1X

group norms of different communities. I n contrast with the practice elsewhere on the subcontinent, these groups appear to be very little concerned with boundary maintenance. The obvious result is considerable freedom of behaviour for women. Within the community of plantation workers there is very little class differentiation. As for the access to resources of the two sexes, there is virtually no privately owned property or productive resources to be governed by the principle of patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence which must have been common to both caste and tribal groups in their original habitat. On the plantation, all workers are dependent on an outside employer. Residential accommodation is allotted to individual employees, men as well as women; i n

the event of a divorce the spouse in whose name the house has been allotted stays put while the other spouse leaves. Jain’s data (personal communication) show that about a third of the houses are in the name of women; generally a daughter steps into the job of the mother and very likely acquires the house allotted in the latter’s name. I n such a situation, there is no significance of the principle of virilocality and its implications. Apparently, the egalitarian relationship described by Jain stands o n very

precarious ground, for it has developed in the face of a challenge for survival and is sustained because of overarching control of the plantation system on the wage workers, its need for both men and women for work, and almost no scope for the workers for social mobility and class differentiation. 24

See Manimala’s account in Manushi, Vol. 3, No. 2, January-February 1983. (To b e reproduced i n I n Search o f Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi, eds., Madhu Kishwar and Ruth Vanita, London: Zed Books L t d . )

25

26

Except for a few specific lapses such as a lack of consideration regarding the size o f the hand-pump to be used by women and the choice of crop for them, all other drawbacks o r lapses appear to have been common to both women’s and men’s schemes in the state of Johore. Some o f these critical issues have received attention i n recent years. See, for example, Patricia Caplan’s analysis of women’s organizations in Madras City (Caplan: 1975), G a i l Omvedt’s discussion o f class and caste i n the context o f

women’s liberation and her description of a number of instances of women’s mobilization at different socio-economic levels (Omvedt: 1975, 1980). See also Saradamoni: 1979. Manushi, a journal devoted to women's concerns, contains

a number of accounts of women’s collective resistance. Many women’s groups

27

are exercising their minds over reconciling the interests o f women at different levels. Women o f this community enjoy a certain freedom o f movement because o f the requirements o f out-of-home employment. They also seem to have some

opportunities for additional earnings in cash or kind—howsoever meagre they may be—on special occasions, from employers, from patients i n hospitals whom they attend, and so on. I t needs to be considered, therefore, whether the picture of abject dependence of women which emerges from Karlekar’s account is not a result o f the women’s responses to the author i n terms o f

normative behaviour rather than in terms of faithful depiction of the degree of flexibility in behaviour, chances for manipulation, and invisible choice making—albeit within a limited range—which are open t o them. Karlekar’s almost complete reliance o n verbal response as a strategy to gain an in-depth

x1

LEELA DUBE understanding of the lives and perceptions of women in their homes and their work-places appears to have had: its limitations. In fact, the author herself admits this when she refers to the paucity of information in some sensitive areas of women’s lives. Hence, the article raises an important issue regarding the appropriate methodology to gain a real understanding of women’s perceptions and the subtle aspects of their behaviour and interaction.

Introduction

xl

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Ardener, London: Dent, New York: John Wiley, 1975. Ardener, S, ed., Perceiving Women, London: Dent, New York: John Wiley, 1975a. , ‘Introduction’, i n Perceiving Women, ed., S. Ardener, London:

Dent, New York: John Wiley, 1975b. , Defining Females, London: Croom Helm, 1978a. . ‘Introduction: The Nature o f Women i n Society’, i n Defining

Females, ed., S. Ardener, London: Croom Helm, 1978b. , Women and Space, London: Croom Helm, 1981.

Arizpe, Lourdes, ‘Women and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean: Lessons from the Seventies and Hopes for the Future’, Development Dialogue, 1 - 2 , 1982, 74-84.

Atkinson, Jane M . , ‘Review Essay: Anthropology’, Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, 8 , 2 , 1982, 236-58. Barker, Diana L . and Sheila Allen, eds., Sexual Divisions and Society: Process and

Change, London: Tavistock, 1976a. ,Dependence andExploitation in Work andMarriage, London andNew York: Longman, 1976b. Bell, Diane, ‘Desert Politics: Choices in the “Marriage Market’, in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, eds., Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, N e w York: J.F. Bergin Publishers I n c . , 1980.

Black, Naomi and Ann Baker Cottrel, eds., Women and World Change: Equity Issues in Development, Sage, 1981. Bridenthal, Renate and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977. Bujra, Janet, ‘Introductory: Female Solidarity and the Sexual Division of Labour’, in Women United, Women Divided: Cross-Cultural Perspecitives o n Female Solidarity, eds., Patricia Caplan and Janet Bujra, London: Tavistock Publications, 1978. Caplan, Patricia and Janet Bujra, eds., Women United, Women Divided: Cross-

Cultural Perspectives on Female Solidarity, London: Tavistock Publications,

1978. Colson, Elizabeth, ‘The Resilience of Matriliny’, in The Versatility o fKinship, eds., Linda Cordell and Stephen Beckerman, New York: Academic Press, 1980. Croll, Elizabeth, Feminism and Socialism in China, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Dube, Leeld, ‘Matrilineal Tribes of India’, in Tribal Heritage o f India, ed., S.C. Dube, Vol. 2 . Forthcoming.

Edholm, Felicity, Olivia Harris and Kate Young, ‘Conceptualizing Women’, Crifique o f Anthropology, 3, 9/10, 1977, 101-30. Etienne, Mona, ‘Introduction’, in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, eds., Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, N e w York: J.F. Bergin Publishers I n c . , 1980.

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Etienne, Mona and Eleanor Leacock, eds., Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, N e w York: J.F. Bergin Publishers I n c . , 1980.

Gough, Kathleen, ‘Nuer Kinship: A Reexamination’, in The Translation o f Culture, ed., T . O . Beidelman, London: Tavistock, 1971. Isfahani, Kaveh-Safa, ‘Female-Centered World Views i n Iranian Culture: Symbolic

Representations of Sexuality in Dramatic Games’, Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, 6, 1980, 33-53. Lamphere, Louise, ‘Review Essay: Anthropology’, Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture andSociety, 2,1977, 612-27.

Leacock, Eleanor, ‘Women in Egalitarian Societies’, in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds., Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz,

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977. Leacock, Eleanor Burke, Myths o f Male Dominance, N e w York: Monthly Review

Press, 1981. MacCormack, Carol P. and Marilyn Strathern, eds., Nature, Culture and Gender,

Cambridge University Press, 1981. Maher, V . , ‘Kin, Clients and Accomplices: Relationships amongst Women in Morocco’, i n Sexual Divisions and Society: Process and Change, eds., D . L . BarkerandS. Allen, London: Tavistock, 1976.

Matthiasson, Carolyn, ed., Many Sisters: Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective, New York: Free Press, 1974. Meillassoux, Claude, Femmes, Greniers et Capitaux, Paris: Maspero, 1975. , Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Economy,

Cambridge University Press, 1981. Nash, June, ‘Aztec Women: the Transition from Status to Class i n Empire and

Colony’, in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, eds., Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, New York: J.F. Bergin Publishers Inc., 1980a. , ‘ A Cntique o f Social Science Roles i n Latin America’, in Sex and Class in Latin America, eds., June Nash and Helen Safa, N e w York: J.F.

Bergin Publishers Inc., 1980b. and Helen Safa, eds., Sex and Class in Latin America, New York: J.F.

Bergin Publishers Inc., Second Printing, 1980. Omvedt, Gail, ‘Caste and Women’s Liberation’, Bulletin of Concerned Scholars, January-March, 1975. We Will Smash this Prison: Indian Women in Struggle, London: Zed —— Press, 1980. Ortner, Sherry B . and Harriet Whitehead, eds., Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction o f Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981a. , ‘Introduction: Accounting for Sexual Meanings’, i n Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction o f Gender and Sexuality, eds., S.B. Ortner

and H . Whitehead, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981b. Pala, Achola, ‘Definitions o f Women and Development: A n African Perspective’, in Women and National Development: The Complexities o f Change, ed., The Wellesley Editorial Committee, Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press. 1977. Papanek, Hanna and Gail Minnault, eds., Separate Worlds, Delhi: Chankaya, 1982.

Introducti on

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Quinn, Naomi, ‘Anthropological Studies o n Women’s Status’, Annual Review o f Anthropology, 6 , 1977, 181-225.

Rapp, Rayna, ‘Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes toward an understanding of Ideology’, Science and Society, 42, 3, 1978, 278-300. , ‘Review Essay: Anthropology’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 4 , 3 , 1979, 497-513. Reiter, Rayna R . , ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975a. , ‘Introduction’, in Towarda n Anthropology o f Women, ed., Rayna R . Reiter, N e w York: Monthly Review Press, 1975b. ‘The Search for Orngins: Unravelling the Threads o f Gender bd

Hierarchy’, Critique o f Anthropology, 3, 9/10, 1977, 5-24. Rogers, Barbara, The Domestication o f Women: Discrimination in Developing Societies, L o n d o n : Tavistock Publications, 1980.

Rogers, Susan Carol, ‘Woman’s Place: A Critical Review of Anthropological Theory’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20, 1, 1978, 123-73. Rohrlich-Leavitt, R u b y , Women Cross-Culturally: Change and Challenge, The Hague: M o u t o n , 1975.

, ‘Women i n Transition: Crete and Sumer’, in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds., Renate Bridenthal and Claudia

Koonz, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977. , ‘State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women’, Feminist Studies, 6, 1980, 76-102. , Barbara Sykes and Elizabeth Weatherford, ‘Aboriginal Woman: Male and Female Anthropological Perspectives’, in Toward a n

Anthropology o f Women, ed., Rayna R. Rieter, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

Rosaldo, M.Z., ‘The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture a n d Society, 5 , 3 , 1980, 389-417.

and Lamphere, L . , eds., Woman, Culture and Society, Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1974a. , ‘Introduction’, in Woman, Culture and Society, eds., M . Z . Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974b.

Ross, Ellen and Rayna Rapp, ‘Sex and Society: a Research Note from Social History and Anthropology’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23, 1,

1981, 51-72. Sacks, K a r e n , ‘State Bias and Women’s Status’, American Anthropologist, 78, 3 ,

1976, 565-9. Saradamoni, K . , ‘Changing Land Relations and Women: Case Study of Palghat’, ICSSR, mimeograph, 1979. Schlegel, Alice, ed., Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View, N e w Y o r k : Columbia University Press, 1977.

Sen, Gita and Lourdes Beneria, ‘Class and Gender Inequalities and Women’s Role in Economic Development’, Feminist Studies, 8, 1982, 157-76.

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Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, Development and the Sexual Division o f Labour, SpecialIssue, 7 , 2 , 1981. Spender, Dale, ed., Men’s Studies Modified: The Impact o f Feminism on the Academic Disciplines’, New York: Pergamon Press, 1981. Stoler, A n n , ‘Class Structure and Female Autonomy i n Rural Java’ in Women and

National Development: The Complexities o f Change, ed., The Wellesley Editorial Committee, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Strathern, Marilyn, ‘Culture in a Netbag: the Manufacture of a subdiscipline in Anthropology’, Man, 16, 4, 1981, 665-88. Weiner, Annette B . , Women o f Value, M e n o f Renown: N e w Perspectives in

—,

Trobriand Exchange, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976. ‘Trobriand Kinship from Another View: the Reproductive Power of Women and Men’, Man, 14, 2, 1979, 328-48. , ‘Stability in Banana Leaves: Colonization and Women in Kiriwina, Trobriand Islands’, in Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, eds., Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, N e w York:

J.F. Bergin Publishers Inc., 1980. Wellesley Editorial Committee, Women and National Development: The Complexities o fChange, Chicago: University Press, 1977. Vance, Carol, ‘Gender Systems, Ideology and Sex Research: an Anthropological Analysis’, Feminist Studies, 6 , 1980, 129-43. Young, Kate, Carol Wolkowitz and Roslyn McCullagh, eds.,

Market, London: CSE Books, 1981.

Of Marriage and the oo

Contributors

Simi Arona, B.Sc. Hons in Sociology (Ibadan) and Ph.D. in Industrial Sociology (Birmingham), is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Her major areas of specialization are industrial sociology and the study of women in development. She has written research papers in journals and chapters in books, based on studies carried out among factory workers in Nigeria, and o n the impact o f change o n sex roles and sex

inequality. Afonja is currently a member of a team o f African researchers working

on objective and subjective assessments of women’s work in Nigeria. Epwin Arpener, B . A . (London), M . A . (Oxford), is Fellow o f St. John’s

College, Oxford. He is Chairman of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth and has been a member, Oxford University Women’s Studies

Committee. H e is the author of Divorce and Fertility: A n African Study, 1962 (Oxford University Press), and editor of and contributor to Social Anthropology and Language, 1971 (Tavistock). His ‘Belief and the Problem of Women’ (first published 1972) and ‘The “Problem” Revisited’ in Perceiving Women, edited by Shirley Ardener, 1975 (Dent; Wiley) have received wide attention. ARrRDeneER, B.Sc. (Econ.) (London), M . A . Status (Oxford), is Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford. She was awarded the Welcome Medal for Anthropology by the Royal Anthropological Institute. She has been Chairperson, Oxford University Wo-

SHirLey

men’s Studies Committee, and is Member, Association o f Social Anthropologists o f the Commonwealth. She is editor o f and contributor to Perceiving Women, 1975

(Dent; Wiley), Defining Females, 1978 (Croom Helm; Wiley), and Women and Space, 1981 (Croom Helm; St. Martin’s). She is also co-editor, with Hilary Callan,

of

and contributor to The Incorporated Wife, 1983 (Croom Helm).

DeBoraH D’amico-Samuers, B . A . (Hunter College), summa cum laude in

Anthropology, M . A . (Hunter College), is presently writing a doctoral dissertation o n W o m e n and Marketing in Jamaica at the Graduate Centre o f the City Uni-

versity of New York, and doing part-time teaching at Hunter College of CUNY. H e r research interests are focused o n anthropology o f women, economic developm e n t , and woman in the Caribbean. Her recent paper ‘Insuring Survival and

Hoping for Success: Women in the Informal Sector in Jamaica’ was presented at the Northeast Anthropology Meetings in Syracuse, November 1983. She has been a n activist, involved in the women’s movement, and has worked o n a women’s magazine collective called U p from Under. NEerA

Desai, Ph.D. in Sociology, is Professor in the Department of Sociology and

Director, Research Unit o r Women’s Studies, at S N D T Women’s University,

Bombay. She is Founding Member, Indian Sociological Society; Joint Secretary, Indian Association for Women’s Studies: Adviser, Forum Against Oppression of Women; and Core Member, JIUAES Commission o n women. H e r research

interests are focused on sociology o f the family, women’s movements, and women

and the media. Her major publications include Women in Modern India, 1977, second edition (Vora and Co.), and Social Change in Gujarat, 1978 (Vora and

Co.).

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LEELA DUBE

Leera Dusg, M . A . in Political Science and Ph.D. in Anthropology (Nagpur), held the Sree Krishnaraja Wodeyar Chair at the University of Mysore. She is Chairperson, I U A E S Commission o n Women, and is Member o f the Executive Committee o f I S A Research Committee 32 o n Women in Society. She has served o n the Committee o n the Status of Women in India and o n the Executive and other Committees o f the International Sociological Association. She has been a consultant t o Unesco, I L O , and W H O . Dube has done fieldwork i n tribal and peasant

communities and among the matrilineal Muslims of a coral island. Her publications include Matriliny and Islam: Religion and Society in Lakshadweep, 1969 (National Publishing House), Sociology of Kinship: Analytical Survey of Literature, 1974 (Popular), ‘Women’s Worlds: Three Encounters’ i n Encounter and Experience: Personal Accounts o f Fieldwork, edited b y A . Beteille and

T . N . Madan, 1975 (Vikas), ‘Caste Analogues in Lakshadweep’ in Caste and Stratification among Muslims, edited by Imtiaz Ahmad, 1973, 1978 (Manohar), and ‘Economic Roles of Children in India: Methodological Issues’ in Childwork, Poverty and Underdevelopment, edited b y Gerry Rodgers and G u y Standing,

1981 ( I L O , Geneva). RuzA FIrsT-DILIC, M.S. i n Sociology and Social Anthropology, is Director o f the Institute for Social Research, University o f Zagreb, and Co-Director o f the post-graduate course, ‘Women and Work’, at the Inter-University Centre for

Post-graduate Studies, Dubrovnik, SFRY. She is a recipient of the Republican Award ‘Kata Pajnovic’ for scientific work in the fields of Sociology of Women and Family Sociology (1982). She is Member, Croatian Sociological Society, Yugoslav Sociological Association, Mediterranean Society for Rural Sociology, European Society for Rural Sociology, and International Rural Sociological Association, and is Core Member of the IUAES Commission on Women. First-Dili¢ has published extensively in journals and edited books. Among her publications are Seoska porodica danas: kontinuitet ili promjene (The Rural Family Today: Continuity or Change), 1981 (Zagreb: Institut za drustvena istrazivanja Sveucilista u Zagrebu), ‘Some Reflections o n Social Organization o f the Contemporary Farm Family i n Yugoslavia’ i n The Yugoslav Village, 1972 (special issue of Sociologija

sela), ‘The Life Cycle of the Yugoslav Peasant Farm Family’ in The Eamily Life Cycle in European Societies, edited b y Jean Cuisenier, 1977 (Mouton), and ‘The

Structure of Family Power’ in The Influence o f Women’s Employment on the Family Characteristics and Functioning, edited b y Miro A . Michovilovic et alii,

1973 (Institute for Social Research, University of Zagreb). Gerrit H u i z e r has been an activist in community and peasant political organizations, as a volunteer and as a U N adviser, mainly in Latin American countries and

Sicily. H e has written many articles and several books about these experiences. Since 1973 he is Professor at the Catholic University of Netherlands and Director, Third World Centre. H e is a Core Member, IUAES Commission o n Women. Huizer’s research interests are focused o n emancipatory movements o f peasants and women, participatory action research, and studies o f power elite. His publications include: The Revolutionary Potential o f Peasants in Latin America, 1972

(Health-Lexington Books), Peasant Rebellion in Latin America, 1973 (Penguin Books), and Peasant Movements and their Counter Forces in Southeast A . ‘a, 1980 (Marwah Publication). H e is, with Bruce Mannheim, editor o f The Politics o f

Anthropology: From Colonialism and Sexism: Towards a View from Below, 1979 (Mouton).

Contribu tors

xlvii

SHOBHITA JAIN, M . L i t t . (Oxon.). Ph.D. ( J N U ) . was Director, Programme for

Women’s Development at the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. As U . G . C. Research Associate she has been working on female-headed households in Garh-

wal in the cis-Himalayan region. She is Life Member of Indian Council of Child Welfare. Her research interests are focused on women and work in low-income groups, people’s movements, and child labour. Her doctoral dissertation on women on a tea plantation in Assam is under publication. Nix Saran KArmM, M . A . (Malaya), Ph.D. (Ohio), is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She is President, Linguistic Society of Malaysia, and Member, Royal Asiatic Society, Malaysian Branch. Karim is Vice-President of PERTIWI (Muslim Women’s Organization, Malaysia), and Member, National Advisory Council for the Integration of Women in Development. Her publications include Bahasa Malaysia Syntax, 1980 (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka), Beberapa Persoalan Sosio-Linguistik Bahasa Melayu (Some Socio-Linguistic Problems of Malay), 1981 (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka), and Wanita Malaysia Masa Kini (Malaysian Women Today), 1982 (Pustaka Ilmu Raya). She is actively involved in the work of voluntary women’s organizations in Malaysia. She has represented Malaysia in many world conferences and was leader of Malaysia’s delegation to the 29th Meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women held in Vienna. MaLavika K A R L E K A R , B . A . (Delhi), B.A. (Oxon.), M.Litt. (Delhi), Ph.D. (Delhi), is Reader in the Department of Foundations of Education, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. She has published Poverty and Women’s Work, 1982 (Vikas) and ‘Education and Inequality’ in Equality and Inequality, edited by Andre Beteille, 1983 (Oxford University Press). Ruth

MARLYN

KRULFELD, B . A . , cum laude (Brandeis), and P h . D . i n Anthro-

pology (Yale), is Professor of Anthropology at the George Washington University, and directs a graduate programme in Anthropology of Development at the University. She has conducted research in Singapore, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama, Indonesia, Virgin Islands, and among Southeast Asian refugees in the Greater Washington area. Her research interests include peasant farming and marketingsystems, land tenure, social networks, religion, and change. Amongher publications are ‘Fatalism in Indonesia: A Comparison of Socio-Religious Types onLombok’ in Fatalism in Asia: OldMyths andNew Realities, 1966 (Anthropological Quarterly, special issue), ‘The Sasak’ in Ethnic Groups o f Insular Southeast Asia, edited b y Frank LeBar, Volume 1 , 1972 (Yale Press), ‘The Influence o f Land

Availability on Market Involvement in Two Sasak Villages: A Problem in Cultural Ecology’ in Cultural Ecological Perspectives on Southeast Asia, edited by William Wood, 1977 (Ohio University Press), and ‘The Sasak of Lombok’ in Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, edited by Richard V . Weekes, 1978 (Greenwood Press). ELEANOR Leacock, P h . D . (Columbia), is Professor o f Anthropology at the

C U N Y Graduate Center. She has served on the executive bodies of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for. Applied Anthropology, and the

Council for Anthropology and Education. Her research interests include native North American society and history, anthropological theory, anthropology and education, and women cross-culturally. Amongher publications are Teaching and

xvii

LEELA DUBE

Learning in City Schools, 1969 (Basic Books), Culture o f Poverty: A Critique (ed.), 1971 (Simon and Schuster), North American Indians in Historical Perspective (co-edited with Nancy Lurie), 1971 (Random House), Myths o f Male Dominance, 1981 (Monthly Review Press), Women and Colonization (co-edited with

Mona Etienne), 1980 (Praeger), and Politics and History in Band Societies (coedited with Richard Lee), 1982 (Cambridge University Press). As an activist in community and academic affairs, Leacock was a founder of the decade-old New York Women’s Anthropology Conference, and of the more recent International Women’s Anthropology Conference, Inc. She is also a Core Member of the I U A E S Commission o n Women, and, until recently, chaired the Department o f Anthropology at the City College, City University o f N e w York. CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX, M . A . in Economics from A n n Arbor, Michigan, and

Docteur em~Sociologie, Paris, is at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. His main research interests are modalities of labour exploitation, and problems o f production and o f social reproduction and their representations. H e is active i n the leftist movement i n France and i n the association o f migrant labourers. His major publications include L’Anthropologie economique des Gouro de cote d’Ivoire, 1964 (Mouton), and Femmes Greniers et capitaux, 1975 (Maspero), which has been published i n English as Maidens,

Meal and Money, 1981 (Cambridge University Press). Joan P . Mencuer, P h . D . (Columbia), is Professor, Lehman College and C U N Y

Graduate Center. She is Fellow of the American Anthropological Association

and Society for Applied Anthropology, and Member, Association for Asian Studies, Indian Sociological Society, and Indian Anthropological Association. She was the first Chairperson of the Committee on Women of the American Anthropological Association in 1969-70, and is Core Member of the JIUAES Commission o n Women. Her current research interests are in the areas o f women ‘and development, food systems, irrigation, appropriate technology,nutrition, and child health. Her publications include Agriculture and Social Structure in Tamil

Nadu: Past Origins, Present Transformations, and Future Prospects, 1978 (Allied), Social Anthropology o f Peasantry (ed.), 1983 (Somaiya), ‘Viewing Hierarchy from the Bottom Up’ in Encounter andExperience: Personal Accounts o f Fieldwork, edited by A . Beteille and T . N . Madan, 1975 (Vikas), ‘Landless Women Agricultural Labourers in India’ in Women in Rice Farming Systems, edited b y L . J. Unnevehr, 1984 (Gower), and, with S. Guhan, ‘Irtuvelipattu Revisited’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XVIII, Nos. 23, 24. HEeLEN

LL.S A F A , Ph.D. in Anthropology (Columbia), is Director, Center for Latin

American Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville. She is President, Latin American Studies Association, U.S. Delegate t o the Permanent Council of TUAES, Fellow, American Anthropological Association, and Core Member, TUAES Commission o n Women. H e r publications include The Urban Poor o f

Peurto Rico: A Study in Development and Inequality, 1974 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), published in Spanish as Familias Del Arrabal, 1980 (Editorial Universitaria), Migration and Development (co-edited with Brian T u Toit), 1975 (Mouton), Sex and Class in Latin America (co-edited with June Nash), 1976 (Praeger) 1980 (J. F. Bergin), and Toward a PoliticalEconomy o f Urbanization in_ Third World Countries (ed.), 1982 (Oxford University Press). Safa is active in the area o f women and development.

|

Contributors

xlix

ScHMmINK received her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1979 from the University of Texas at Austin. Her doctoral research was a study of economic strategies of working class households in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Since 1981 she has worked as co-manager of a Population Council/USAID Project entitled ‘Women, Low-Income Households and Urban Services in Latin America and the Caribbean’. The project supports meetings and applied research by local working

MARIANNE

groups i n Jamaica, Mexico, and Peru. Since 1981 she has also served as Executive

Director of the Amazon Research and Training Program (ARTP) of the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida at Gainesville, Florida 32611,

USA. Her research in the Brazilian Amazon region focuses on migration. Schmink’s publications related to women and development include ‘Dependent

Development and the Division of Labour by Sex: Venezuela’ in Latin American Perspectives, 1977 and ‘Women in the Urban Economy of Latin America’ (New York: The Population Council, Working Paper). She has published ‘Land Conflicts in Amazonia’ in American Ethnologist, 1982, and ‘ A Case Study o f the

Closing Frontier in Brazil’ (ARTP Research Paper No. 1), 1981. S O H E I L A S H A H S H A H A N I obtained her B . A . in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, and M . A . , Ph.D. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her doctoral dissertation ‘The Four Seasons of the Sun’ was based on fieldwork carried out in a settled village of the Mamasani pastoral nomads. Shahshahani is Associate Member o f the Section ‘L’Iran Contemporain’ at the CNRS, Paris, Core Member, [UAES Commission o n Women,

and Member, Association Francaise des Anthropologues. She has been a regular contributor to Abstracta Iranice ever since its first issue in 1978. Besides being interested in issues related to women and development, Shahshahani is turning her

attention towards Third World anthropology and ethnohistory. Her doctoral dissertation and a paper on ‘Mamasani Women, Division of Labour and Development’ are under publication. She has published extensively in Persian. M A R G A R E T STEPHENS, B.Sc. (Hons.), M . S. W., C. S. W. (College of Professional Social Workers), is Program Therapist at the Community Mental Health Centre, Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. Her research and study interests are focused on women and health, with special reference to mental health, reproduction, medical politics, and chemical dependencies. ANNY TuAaL graduated from Sorbonne University, Paris, i n 1965. She has taught Anthropology at the University o f Concepcion (Chile) and conducted fieldwork among the Mapucke. She has lived in Iran for five years and done research o n Iranian women, Iranian food habits, and Franco-Iranian marriages. She has maintained research interest both in Ecuador and Iran. Recently Tual did some

research on food habits in Venezuela and is working on the same topic in Taiwan for the Department of Comparative Technology of the Laboratory of Ethnology of the Museum of Man in Paris. Her publications include ‘Variations et usages du voile dans deux villes d’Iran’ i n Objets et Mondes, t.v.XI, fasc. 1 , 1971, ‘Le statut féminin et 'usage de l a parole, Experiences d'une ethnologue en Iran’ i n Studia Iranica, t . v . fasc. 1 , 1976, and ‘Pour une typologie des bijoux de femmes en Iran’ i n L e Monde Iranien et U'lslam, V , 1978.

holds an M . A . in Malay Studies from Universiti Malaya and ZAKARIA, M . A . in Anthropology Sociology from Cornell University. She is founder

MazipaH

member o f PERTIWI (Muslim Women’s Organization, Malaysia), and Member,

|

LEELA DUBE

Sub-Committee on Research and Publication, National Advisory Council for the Integration of Women in Development (NACWID). She has directed a research project on ‘The Role of Rural Married Women in the Social and Economic Development of Malaysia’, funded by ASEAN/FAO/UNFP, under the ASEAN Population Programme ‘Integration of Population and Rural Development Policies and programmes in A S E A N Countries’ and has been undertaking research

for NACWID on several topics related to women in Malaysia. Zakaria has been an activist since 1962, first in students’ organizations and later in women’s voluntary organizations. She is at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

VISIBILITY A N D INVISIBILITY O F W O M E N

The Representation of Women in Academic Models SHIRLEY ARDENER

The often-discussed problem of ‘the invisibility of women’ has to be

viewed in conjunction with the kind of visibility that they have.? Women are often literally invisible—absent or unseen—on certain

occasions, or in particular places, in many societies (for new discussions and examples, see S. Ardener 1981). But elsewhere, and at

special times, the visibility of women may be very marked. They may b e gorgeously dressed. They may be admired, rather i n the way the beauty o f objects 1s appreciated, as works o f art. They have been seen, i t is averred, as ‘sex objects’. I n the press and o n television in England they often silently display themselves, acting as the dumb handmaidens o f the entertainment world, as ‘hostesses’ on quiz games, for example. Such creative work as they have done has often been played down. Their research o n television has often been presented by a man, their own names flying past, below his, at the bottom o f the list o f credits. Nowadays, these researchers are find-

ing their own voices, and are becoming more visible. They may even become presenters themselves and (what was formerly thought unsuitable) some read the news. The placing o f the ‘invisibility’

problem in the wider context of communication and language seemed to some o f us one particularly helpful approach to the study o f women, because if we could solve the problem o f communicat i o n , i n the widest sense, the problem o f invisibility might be more easily solved, whereas the visibility o f women alone does not neces-

sarily give women a voice. Some o f the ways individuals and groups are controlled by the communication systems available to them have been explored, for convenience, in association with the term ‘muting’. This debate has concerned itself not merely with utterances, but with the more fundamental question o f the generation o f categories of thought, of

4

SHIRLEY ARDENER

conceptualization, and of ideas concerning the social structure itself, and how these are expressed ‘on the ground’. We can ask whether women have participated equally in the generation o f ideas and their encoding into discourse. The idea ofpurdah, for instance, - are we to assume that women equally generated it? O r European

ideas of women’s ‘passivity’? Have women developed separate realities, o r systems o f values which do not get adequate recognition i n the dominant representations o f society? Are there mechanisms for devaluing their contributions, squeezing them out from the

arenas in which rewards are distributed? Speculations o n the process o f muting, and its particular application to women, have been set out i n some recent publications (see E . Ardener 1968, 1975 and 1978 and S. Ardener 1975, 1978). Dale

Spender (1980), for one, has examined the linguistic evidence.? While ‘muting’ may entail the suppression, or repression o f speech,

the theory, in its linguistic aspect, is concerned at least as much with what people say, and when they speak, and in what mode, as with h o w much. The muting o f groups is not, however, manifested merely, o r indeed mainly, i n the field of their own linguistic competence, o r their access to discourse relative to members o f the dominant group. Muting is refracted through and embedded in many different social spaces: i n seating arrangements, economic patterns, status, value and symbolic systems, and so forth. I n this note, however, we shall concentrate o n the field of communication, though i n its substantive aspect rather than one of competence, and, i n particular, o n some of the ways women are represented in anthropological literature, and in dominant modes of discourse among social anthropologists. These representations may seem to resemble ‘folk models more than is sometimes assumed. Attention is drawn here to what might seem, to some, to be the obvious, but i t is often the more commonplace elements in a culture that are omitted from the record and dismissed as trivial. This note puts o n the table what we all know are lying about but which are rarely assembled together for discussion. A s cultural beings we may not be able to escape easily from the linguistic habits o f our society, and the question o f whether change is practical o r morally desirable, I leave to another kind of debate o n another occasion. Nevertheless, although value judgements may be out o f place here, as academics we must note the presence o f

possible biases in our own analyses, and ask whether there are any

The Representation o f Women in Academic Models

5

pervasive tendencies which could influence our interpretations. Let us therefore consider further our own (and allied) academic disciplines. Does muting occur? H o w d o we talk about men and women? D o we snow any biases i n our presentations? I f we d o and’are aware o f them, then n o doubt we take this into account when we think about our material. B u t if we persistently treat men and women i n different ways and are unconscious o f i t , o r so much take i t for granted that i t seems a natural way o f expressing relationships, without requiring thought, then perhaps this may mar our understanding and generate new distortions. I shall maintain that an examination o f the very presentation of so-called ‘scientific’ diagrams, tables, and texts which set out to show differences between the sexes may tell us as much about the unconscious cultural o r ‘folk’ attitudes o f the analysts who drew them u p , as the actual details i n the diagrams do about the sexes. The most important message, in fact, may indeed be i n the mode rather than i n the purported statement, and the message may not be

a random one. Being muted, as I have noted elsewhere, does not necessarily mean being purposefully oppressed. Muting can take place by deliberate policy, but more often than not i t is done unconsciously, b y people who would be the last to wish to discriminate i n , say, an inegalitarian way. A k i n d o f unconscious deafness o r myopia may take place. I n one extreme form, people are not seen or heard. O f course, there 1s n o need for everyone to be seen or heard all the t i m e ; we can be selective. B u t we should not think we are not m a k i n g discriminations when w e are. Thus i t was not adequate, i n

my opinion, for Evans-Pritchard—as he did while publishing a very interesting collection o f texts gathered from a handful o f male informants—to acknowledge the absence o f texts from women i n a meie half-sentence tucked into his Introduction, and then to go o n

to publish under the all embracing title Male and Female Among the Azande. Strictly speaking there should have been at least a sub-title making some such statement as ‘as seen by men’ (or, ideally, certain specified men). As a minimum the implications of the selection o t only male informants should have been discussed. This phenomenon o f men speaking for or representing men-andwomen, without comment, is discussed i n a paper by Kirsten Hastrup (1978) entitled “The Semantics o f Biology’, virginity being h e r special illustrative topic. She shows how i n many societies, as

6

SHIRLEY ARDENER

well as i n social anthropology (not to mention other disciplines)

‘male is generalized, while female is specified’. There is a tacit assumption that men represent both sexes, unless special mention is made. Women are regarded as a special variety, a sub-class of man, as i t were. I recall that, when the Queen was attending a race meeting i n Australia, a television commentator said that this would particularly please Australians because they have only three things o n their minds: drink, horses, and women ( I forget i n which order). H i s was a joke, a triviality, o f course, not, you may say, to be taken seriously. B u t we see here a common k i n d o f assumption. ‘Australians’ unqualified are male—the male is the representative or essential Australian. True the commentator might have said ‘Australians have sponge cake o n their minds’ without the specification women o r female, o r even ‘Australians have men on their minds’, but we

know that this 1s much less likely t o happen. Many other illustrations o f this common phenomenon could be given. I n Oxford i t has been the practice for male undergraduates to be listed by surname

and initial letters of given names; when women undergraduates joined the formerly all male Colleges, they were ‘specified’ by the t i t l e ‘Miss’ before t h e i r names, o r b y full C h r i s t i a n names.4

Jack Goody, i n discussing the effects o f lineality on presentation, asserts that One of the features of the graphic mode is the tendency t o arrange terms in {linear) rows and (hierarchical) columns i n such a way that each item is allocated a single position, where i t stands i n a definite, permanent and

unambiguous relationship t o others. Assign a position, for example, t o ‘black’ and i t then acquires a specific relationship to all other elements in the

‘scheme of symbolic classification’ (Goody 1977:218). I n lists o r tables, where would you expect figures for males to be? Well, first o f course. Thus the male image is implanted, establishing a prior standard against which subsequent information about women can be mapped.” I n reading off these data we will, no doubt, follow procedures advocated by Peter Ramus in the sixteenth century when he tried to introduce a new ‘dialectical order’, ‘method’ o r ‘logic’ resting o n the analytical study of texts. ‘This order was set out in schematic form in which the “general” or inclusive aspects o f the subject came first, descending thence through a series o f dichotomized classifications to the “specials” o r indi-

vidual aspects’ (Yates 1965, quoted in Goody 1977:219).

The Representation of Women in Academic Models

7

Corinne Hutt’s well-known book (1972) on sexual differentiation

is entitled Male and Female, a familiar linguistic usage which presages the bias common i n her diagrams. I t seems a natural English usage, for i f we were to say, instead, ‘women and men’, we would ‘ m a r k ’ the phrase; we would turn i t from a generality into something specific. Socio-linguists have done a considerable amount o f work o n sexual skew i n language, which cannot be adequately covered i n this paper. I would just make a reference i n this context to Dale

Spender (1980), who has included in her approach the work on ‘muting’, and has adopted the appropriate terminology. A t an interdisciplinary meeting in 1976 one well-intentioned historian, with a scholarly reputation, submitted a memorandum giving a

list of possible speakers on women, in relation t o particular topics. No. 8 on his list was: CRIMINOLOGY, perhaps M r . X o r M r . Y to speak o n the strangely

distinctive behaviour of women in this area. Yes, ‘strangely distinctive’. Clearly this ‘specification’ would pre-

judge the theoretical analysis t o follow.© This is n o t a trap which we would expect social anthropologists to fall into. B u t there are other r i t f a l l s which we d o not easily escape. Some time ago I began to notice graphs giving information brok e n down b y sex. I intended to write a comment called ‘Sign on the Dotted Line’. The sign o n the dotted (or broken) line, o f course, seemed more often than not, to be the female sign. O f course

exceptions can be found, and n o t only in so-called ‘feminist’ literature. B u t i t appeared to me that possibly some general tendencies, unconscious preferences, and selections might obtain. Figure 1 (simplifying a diagram i n Reynolds 1976: 117) gives an example; many others can be found, for instance i n Hutt (1972). I n this case the black line represents data which rises higher i n the scale for boys than for girls. There are examples (see. e.g. Hutt 1972: 36, 89, 121) where quantities for girls rise higher, but still a broken l i n e i s used t o express them.’

If i n the preponderance of cases the dotted or broken line expresses the female data, does this matter? Does it make any difference? T o get a clue I tried out some experiments on about a score of people, using spurious information not connected with gender. Each test had two textual variations and two different graphs, to

8

SHIRLEY A R D E N E R

counter such effects as precedence. Respondents were given one or

othe r o f each , for each test. -

Figure |

Example: “The borrowing patterns from two public libraries were compared. They turned out to be different. One o f them was the same as normal

for public libraries and one was deviant (or: one was the deviant and one was normal). Here is a graph. Which of the lines refer to which library?”

Figure 2

Example. Graphs showing first and second events. Example. Sunday behaviour/weekday behaviour. Example. Better than average perforrnance/worse than average per-

formance.

The Representation o f Women in Academic Models

9

M y tests were rough and ready rather than scientific, and were not done o n a large enough scale to be authoritative, but they suggested to m e that, to the majority, the solid line appears as the base o r norm, o r where appropriate, the ideal, while the broken line repre-

sents a deviation from i t . So i t seems likely that, i n graphs where figures for males are indicated by a hard line, these are taken to be the norm, the measure against which the female deviation is comp a r e d . I'he male is generalized, while the female is specified, to use

Hastrup’s phrase. Another method of representing data broken down by sex is i n

histograms. Here we find material on males depicted by columns outlined i n a hard black line, while women are represented b y dotted lines as in figure 3 (derived from Collette and Marsh 1975: 28).

——— males

females

a

mmm

poo

are

o v a n ao» ww a n

o>»

-oad

—_— _ — e-—-=d ’

' [) =

mon

=

-d

AE

-

ap @ ® wo a g

por

Figure 3

Sometimes a hatched or dotted form lies like a half-hidden shadow behind the outlined histogram, as i n figure 4 (which is based o n one i n Hutt, p . 81).

A nice variation appeared in The Observer colour magazine, in a piece entitled ‘The Art o f Body Maintenance’ where the columns representing male deaths according to specified illness are shown i n brilliant colours. The corresponding shapes for females lie as black

shadows throughout, half-obscured behind them. I understand that

10

SHIRLEY ARDENER

Figure 4

i n architectural drawings the explicit convention is that a broken

line represents a dimension to the rear of a solid line, and a plane bounded b y a broken line, by the same convention, lies behind a

plane bounded by a solid outline. T o take a mundane example from everyday life which may indicate the pervasiveness of this style: soles for shoes, as I found from personal experience, may come in bisexual packages. The female purchaser must cut them down to size, ignoring the various solid outlines denoting various male shoe sizes, along one of the broken lines appropriate to women, lying within them.

Figure 5

Turning to kinship diagrams, anthropologists take i t for granted that male names and kinship terms are nearly always shown i n capital letters, o r at least with one initial upper-case letter, i n

11

The Representation of Women in Academic Models

contrast to the female names, symbols, and terms which are usually shown i n lower case. Diagrams can be found i n writings by Edmund Leach, Robin Fox, Hocart, to name some o f the most distinguished

in our profession, but many more authors follow these conventions. A n d we may note that even i n matrilineal diagrams the male E G O is generally writ large (see figure 6). Continuing with kinship we may turn to John Barnes (1967). His first sentence i n a paper o n genealogies reads: ‘ I n many senses the

most distinctive and fundamental human institution is the nuclear

O

A

a

=

A

A

®-A

O

b

O=A EGO

A

O

B

ego

Figure 6

(See Leach 1961, pp. 20, 67). [

|

Tama = t i n a

Vungo

|

|

Tuaka

Co [ Ego = wati

|

|

|

|

Luve

Tuaka

L Tavale Vungo

Tama

tina

Vungo

Ego

Wati

Tavale

Luve

Vungo Figure7

(From Hocart 1937).

12

SHIRLEY ARDENER

A

A

B

Marries [ _

b female

male a

B

V

D

¢

C

d D Figure8 (See Fox 1967, p. 143).

family, founded o n the two concepts o f marriage and parentage and

consisting of man, wife, and children’. Innocuous? No linguistic bias? Well, why did he not say ‘Man, woman and children’ or ‘husband, wife and children’? His remark: ‘ I n kinship there are, as i t were, always two parties to be considered’ looks a little more

hopeful, but he goes on: ‘for a man is never a son or an uncle merely o n his o w n ; he is always some specific person’s son and some other person’s uncle’. Reflect now o n what I term the parenthetical woman, also found i n the same paper by Barnes who writes (p. 102) of ‘any individual and his (or her) mother, father, brother, sister, husband (or

wife)’. Ego seems to have suffered a sex-change at the end of this sentence, which permits ‘or wife’ to be parenthesized! O n his genealogy o n page 110 we find, for a change, that Ego is neutered (that is: represented b y a diamond, not a male triangle or a female circle) but we still see the ‘parenthetical sex’ i n the subscription ‘patrilineal (matrilineal) preference’. Where the female is generalized and the male is specified i n brackets, i t is as a spouse to an informant, tacitly generalized as male: ‘The informant’s spouse may not be available to speak about her (or his) own cognates; or certain affinal l i n k s , e.g. between brothers-in-law, m a y b e known t o b e

socially important’ (p.111). This note is not presented to make political o r moral points but to raise theoretical questions. Social phenomena are merely observed i n order to illustrate some o f the very many ways i n which we

The Representation o f Women in Academic Models

13

express our culture, and in which social anthropologists, who are folk as well as scholars, not only participate, no less than others, but

actually add their mite to the process. I have tried to show how a group can be ‘muted’ b y the way society encodes its data, by the

nature of its discourse, by the medium even contradicting the message. Variants o f what applies to women may also apply to other muted groups defined not b y gender necessarily (for example,

children, ethnic minorities). I n putting forward and giving meaning to their data, social anthropologists must consider the effects on their thinking. In anthropology, as in other subjects, we are often like the dog turning in circles chasing a tail. Should the dog grasp it

in his (or her) teeth he will find he discovers, not the ‘other’ which h e seeks, but himself. Similarly when facing our purportedly objective presentations of new facts, we are likely to find our own old folkimages looking back to us.

NOTES 1

When the theme chosen by Professor Leela Dube for some of the papers pre-

( J IS 8

sented at the Tenth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences emerged as ‘The Visibility and Invisibility of Women in Anthropological Literature’ I was particularly glad that ‘visibility’ was included. For an application in Classical Studies, see J. Gould 1980. This was the topic of the 1980 ASA Conference in Edinburgh. 4 1 was reminded of this by Melinda Babcock. The practice of using female forenames outside College rooms has recently been dropped in St. John’s Col-

5

6

lege, probably o n security grounds, to protect women (just as single women are advised not to have their forenames listed in telephone books). Audrey C h a p m a n informs me that o n theatrical playbills i t was once common in England t o list all the male actors first, even when females had leading roles and their pictures were given prominence o n the bills. Incidentally, o f the 12 topics o n women suggested, 11 were to be dealt with by m e n , one b y a m a n and wife, jointly.

7 Reynolds and Hutt derive their diagrams from other scholars. Hutt’s own practice sometimes reverses the habits noted here (see, e.g. Hutt 1972:124).

REFERENCES Ardener, E W . ‘Some Outstanding Problems in the Analysis o f Events’, in Yearbook o f Symbolic Anthropology, ed. E . Schwimmer, London: Hurst, 1978. ,‘Belief and the Problem o f Women’, in The Interpretation o f Ritual, ed. J. L a Fontaine, London: Tavistock Press, 1972 (reprinted i n Perceiving Women, ed. S. Ardener, 1975).

14

SHIRLEY ARDENER

,The Problem (of Women) Revisited’, in Perceiving Women, ed. S. Ardener, L o n d o n : Dent, N e w York: Halsted/Wiley, 1975. Ardener, S., ‘Introduction’, i b i d . , 1975. , "The Nature o f Women in Society’, in Defining Females, ed. S. Ardener, London: Croom Helm, N e w Y o r k : Halsted, 1978. » Women a n d Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps, London: Croom H e l m , U.S. A . : St. Martin's Press, 1981.

Barnes, J., ‘Genealogies’, in The Craft o f Social Anthropology, ed. A . L . Epstein, L o n d o n : Tavistock, 1967. Collette. P . and P . Marsh, ‘Patterns o f Public Behaviour: Collision Avoidance o n a Pedestrian Crossing’, i n Semiotica, The Hague: Mouton, 1974. Evans-Pritchard, E . E . , M a n and Womar: among the Azande, London: Faber, 1974. *

Fox, R . , Kinship and Marriage, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Goody, J . , ‘Literacy and Classification: O n Turning the Tables’, in Text and Context, ed. R . Jain, Philadelphia: ISHI., 1977. Gould, J . , ‘Law, Custom and Myth: Aspects o f the Social Position o f Women in Classical Athens’, i n Journal o f Hellenic Studies (1980).

Hastrup, K . , ‘The Semantics of Biology: Virginity’, in Defining Females, ed. S. Ardener, London: Croom Helm, N e w York: Halsted, 1978. Hocart, A.M., ‘Kinship Systems’, Anthropos, 32, 1937. , Hutt, C . , Males and Females, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.

Leach, E . , Rethinking Anthropology, London: Athione Press, 1961. ‘The Observer Weekly, London. Reynolds, V., The Biology of Human Action, Reading and San Francisco: Freeman, 1976.

Spender, D . , Man Made Language, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

Yates, F.A., The Art of Memory, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.

The Pregnant Male C L A U D E MEILLAS SOUX

T h e great historical endeavour o f man has been to reconquer the reproductive function over woman and to fight off the incipient

power derived from the latter’s procreative capacities. Violence, war, education, law, and ideology have served this purpose. Several myths in Africa, and perhaps elsewhere, tell o f ancient times when women had power over nature: wild animals

obeyed them and they were the mistresses of the world. Then, one day, they committed some mistake (either they did not watch the game o r forgot to close the door of the kraal) and all the animals fled

away and they lost their power. Men took it over and have wisely kept it since. Every sixty years the Dogon celebrate this victory of the males over women b y wearing false breasts to dance the Sigi.!? Through this myth the present social inferiority o f women is explained and justified: they had their chance, they lost i t . I s the myth echoing a time when women actually exerted a social superiority, o r

does it only express the fear that they may eventually conquer it? The theme of an original period of matriarchate as advanced by Bachofen, and discussed b y Morgan and Engels, is the learned counterpart o f this myth, the intuitive perception o f a situation (the superiority o f women over men) which, even if it may never have happened, is a credible one. Parallel to this mythology runs a legend o f the strong woman, of

warladies, Amazons, women whose strength is formidable, and equal to if not superior to that o f men (Samuel 1975). The warning conveyed b y these legends seems clear: women can eventually beat

men on their own ground (physical strength, war) and overwhelm them—a wise reminder to encourage men to keep u p their guard.

Indeed, the dominance of the male is not absolute. Strength, cleverness, skill, courage, warfare, and cunning d o not amount to a definitive superiority, because if men can d o everything a woman

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CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX

can, they cannot conceive and give birth. Women, whatever men

may do about it, remain the sole agents of genetic reproduction. Truly, men may not have always been concerned to the same extent with the progeny o f women. Whenever, as among some hunters-gatherers, the bands constitute themselves through the free

circulation (flux) of adults of both sexes (eventually but not necessarily with children) the concern for reproduction extends only u p

to the capacity to attract outsiders into the band. The cycle of production is short and does not gear itself to the previous o r following generations. The entry into a band can take place at any moment o f the life o f the producer, if there are n o lasting social

investments, without encroaching upon the wealth of the community. Direct control over the progeny would in itself be an investment for a duration exceeding the dominant economic notion o f time or

the periodicity of the economic cycle related t o daily enterprises. If progeny is not directly coveted, women are comparatively freer. Now, if and when the economic cycle extends over a long period and if the survival and longevity o f the oldest is related to their control over the younger ones, then women and their progeny are at

stake.? Because comparatively small groups only constitute themselves around self-sustaining activities, they cannot maintain a continuous and even sex-ratio. Hence demographic irregularities arise and m u s tbe corrected. If each group tends to keep its own women—and i t

is so as long as peaceful settlements are not reached between large enough ensembles—the only way out is to capture foreign girls. I n such a conjuncture pubescent women are not expendable, men are. Women o f the community must be protected b y the expend-

able men against capture by rival groups. Captured wives must be guarded. Their moves are restricted for fear of exposure; they are bound to the house to which their sex is assimilated. Consequently, the warriors become the providers o f women, the actual social

reproducers. Being the decisive instruments of social reproduction, males become more valorized than women. When it is needed to kill extra-numerous children, girls are chosen in preference to boys (Fabietti 1979): the deficit o f women becomes more acute, and more war necessary to counterbalance i t . The warrior’s role is then enhanced to the detriment o f the female’s. His function as social begetter, and the authority that goes with i t , are overwhelming but sustained at the peril o f his life. Sooner or later, from being objects

The Pregnant Male

17

of war, by their functional qualities, women become in men’s representations, causes o f war.

When men are more valued as producers than as warriors (and therefore considered less expendable) peace is needed. Peace implies the ordered circulation of pubescent women between constitutive socio-economic units still not large enough to reproduce

themselves out of their own membership (Meillassoux 1981). It signals the end o f the war chieftains and the rise o f the ‘wise ones’,

the emergence of an authority able to negotiate betrothal and marriages, promises and engagements; in other words, emergence

of the ability to manage reproduction at a political level. Women are not prey any more, but subjects. Beyond being a genitrix she is a

pledge of alliance or of allegiance, kept available (with prohibition o n incest) t o build u p political networks. Her submission remains

essential in order that she accepts the partner chosen for her, becomes an eventual exile, and above all, surrenders her rights over

her progeny. Although force may not actually be used against her, she is subjected to religious terrorism, superstition, fear and a sense

of guilt. Her sexual life is controlled in the worst cases, pleasure which could lead to infatuation is denied, and those organs which could awaken sexual desire i n contradiction to social constraints are mutilated. The jural link between man and children replaces the natural one between mother and offspring. Father has been invented. Man’s superiority is constructed through education. While boys are induced to go out, run, hunt, fight, train their muscles and eyes, and tame animals, girls are taught weakness, fright o f mice and insects, fear o f the bush o r climatic conditions (Saladin d ’ Anglure 1977; 1978). The proper attitude o f women in relation to reproduction is that o f passivity. Like the earth, she must receive the seed passively, and obediently nurture i t i n her bosom—for i t is not the e a r t h w h i c h i s compared t o t h e woman i n t h i s symbolism, b u t t h e

woman who is invited to behave like the earth. I n the patrilineal domestic community, brothers constitute the social run, not sisters. Brothers remain together in the same village, succeed each other, and sometimes decide together. Sisters are dispersed in their husbands’ villages. They are not a social vector. So, when in a myth sisters are put in view, it means that they have overcome the doom o f dispersion and pooled their strength, and that m e n are i n jeopardy.

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CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX

According to Bamana and Maninka legends,* women are both the safest allies of their sons or brothers, and the potential enemies o f their husbands and lovers. Sunjatta’s sister betrays his enemy

Sumawuro (whom she has seduced) and gives her brother the ingredients she has stolen from her lover, and which will be the cause o f his death. Because she always comes from a foreign family

the spouse is always suspected of treachery. This ‘population’ that the woman breeds within her womb, how is it to b e accepted? What place will it have in the society? The attitude towards birth and fecundity is not always positive. Once pregnant, a woman has two alternatives: to deliver the child o r to abort, accord-

ing to what is awaiting the child and the new mother. Even in the domestic society where the motto is ‘to grow and multiply’, if the child does not fit into the conventional pattern of filiation, the woman will seek abortion; also if the child is an unbearable burden

for the family as happens in serfdom, abortionists and women are usually accomplices. But in the sight o f men o r o f the lord, they are

acting against the ‘natural order of things’: they are witches. Because the abortionist restitutes to women a control over their own reproduction, she is subversive, and therefore harried, persecuted,

burnt, and invested with malefic powers to scare other women away from her (Michelet 1861). This is not enough for men. Although they manage social repro-

duction they do not create human beings. In the kingdom of Bamum,?® the king says o f his slaves that they are his faeces, notin a derogatory spirit, but because they stand as if he had given birth to

them himself. They are his own product, the fruit of his erected arm, the ‘price of one’s life’, as says the Bamana warrior. The resurgence, within a class society, o f neighbourly rapts is slavery. Slavery is the male substitute o f maternity, an exclusively virile mode o f reproduction. The slave catcher gains himself dependants without wives o r affines, in total masculine freedom. The slaves are reborn into the society o f their captors with new ‘kin’ and new names. I n the enslaving kingdom o f Segu,® villages are repopulated with royal

captives tied up into fictitious lineages. Captured women are better mates, they have n o family to interfere with the conjugal life o r a place to go back to in case o f conflict. Their progeny will belong to the master without apportionment. They are as daughter-wives. Slavery is one o f man’s dreams come true: m a n a self-genitor.

The Pregnant Male

19

But the counterpart of this creation of life through the intromission o f the blade into man’s body may lead to the renunciation of a natural descent. The Soninke warrior, i f he wants the philtre which will make a war hero o f h i m , is doomed to die without children.’ The Bamum King’s notion indeed suggests that defecation is

symbolically the male’s desire t o give birth, but in ordinary circumstances, aborted. Among the Senufo® the hyena seems to

symbolize the non-integrated male, the unmarried foreigner who can-do nothing but defecate idly in the village at night (Jamin and Boutin 1977). Slavery brings out hidden features of the domestic society. One is the contradiction between family and marriage. The family is the |

structure needed for the ‘production’ of individuals through breeding and education: girls are the products o f the family and its assets.

Even when married, they remain linked t o their original kin. For m e n t o marry is to have affines o n one’s back, a brother-in-law (the maternal uncle) interfering with one’s children; a mother-in-law, t o avoid and t o propitiate w i t h gifts. A n orphan girl is more appreciated (although her offspring will be socially diminished for belonging to only one lineage—which is not always a disadvantage for the father). Slavery is supplying orphan girls i n abundance.

I n order to keep for themselves the reproduction of the slaves, masters are denying paternity o r maternity to them. The denial o f social reproduction to women is extended a fortiori to slaves not only symbolically but also concretely (and for hard-core economic

reasons) (Meillassoux 1978). The prototype of the slave is the eunuch. Castrationi s a favourite sanction inflicted upon slaves, the physical actualization o f their social condition o f non-fathers. Slaves are neither males nor men, therefore, they are devoid o f descent, if not always biologically, at least legally and socially. If filiation, matrimonial cycles and strategy restrict the choice o f married partners and i f the wife is condemned to be an alien in her

husband’s house, love is hardly compatible with motherhood. Out of the separation of love from procreation, only pleasure is left. Prostitutes, hetaerae, and courtesans dissimulate o r pretend to ignore their reproductive capacity. Relations can be had with them o n strict short individual bilateral bases, without further social implications. They are the warrior’s rest, and a substitute for the

conjugal love that men made impossible. The counterpart of the prostitute is the virgin. She does not beget

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CLAUDE MEILLASSOUX

and also is endowed with privileges. She has access not to the

bounty of men but only to the ears of gods. The fairies are virgins who can change the natural order of things in favour of male domination. The main endeavour o f fairies, it seems, is to encourage hypergamy, to supply the dominant class, the charming princes,

with beautiful wenches and shepherdesses from the lower classes and t o contribute to the reproductive capacity o f the aristocracy. I n

class society, social mobility is easier for pretty girls and operates to the detriment-of the men o f the lower classes. The Catholic Church

has insisted on chastity and virginity when it could recruit by cooptation (a more flexible and efficient mode of reproduction) into the disorderly demography of the Middle Ages. The maternity of Mary evolved into the ‘Virginal Birth’: reconciliation o f morality (chastity) and of natural phenomenon (birth). Through co-optation the Church remains free from the sin of the flesh which is committed to its benefit nevertheless, by the population at large and whose sinful behaviour requires the assistance of the pure ones. A perpetual sense o f guilt rests o n woman since her social function o f

reproducer is linked to copulation, bounded as ‘dirty’; an efficient means of ideological control which creates the evil to impose the remedy, and relying again on the awesome function of reproduction. Today filiation i n advanced societies is not as much of a concern.

The children are not a guarantee for the old days as in former times. The family is not a productive unit in which the ‘successor’ finds his

place. Birth rate is less a familial concern than a national one. Women’s fate as reproducers is defined at the higher political level: by the nation’s policy of natality which will decide if breeding children and the time spent o n children’s care is to be remunerated.

When the emphasis is not on reproduction any more, sex differentiation fades away. Women may gain in the competition with men o n the latter’s ground, but are not they once again lured into positions

that men are preparing to desert? Although their reproductive functions have been the cause o f their submission to men, would not they renounce their actual and decisive superiority b y not standing o n what is their real strength: their hold o n the future of humanity?

The Pregnant Male

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NOTES 1 The Dogon are a segmentary agricultural population who took protection from slave-raiders on the cliffs of Bandiagara (Mali) at an indeterminate date (information from the field).

2 This is clearly the case in agricultural societies, and mostly in seed agriculture (Meillassoux 1981), but it may also happen when the conditions of production require individual association, continuous help and transmission o f knowledge;

although this can be achieved b y co-optaticn and not necessarily by filiation (both

sometimes ideologically associated). 3 The only real human sacrifice (meaning depriving oneself of something valuable) is the immolation o f a virgin, promise o f future birth. Among the Guro (Meillas-

soux 1964) killing of women during a war was the inconceivable crime liable only t o immanent sanctions.

4 Populations from western Mali with a long-standing oral historical tradition (information from the field and Bazin, forthcoming, Meillassoux 1978, and Monteil 1924).

5 Military and enslaving society from Cameroun which developed into a sophisticated kingdom between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries (Tardits 1980). 6 A military and slave-raiding kingdom of the Bamana (Mali), seventeeth t o twentieth century (see Monteil and Bazin, as above). 7 The Soninke are a sparse agricultural and cattle-breeding population living at the edge of the Sahelian desert border in Senegal and Mali. They constitute small chiefdoms of warlords and merchants, in close contact with Moors (information from field work). 8 Matrilocal segmentary population of agriculturists (Ivory Coast and Mali). REFERENCES Amselle, J . L . , L e Sauvage a la Mode, Paris: L e Sycomore, 1979. Bazin, J., ‘Etat guerrier et guerres d’Etat: Processus de formation et de reproduction

d u royaume de segy’, forthcoming. Fabietti, U . , ‘De quoi n e rient pas les Yanomamo’, i n Amselle, 1979. Jamin, J . and P . Boutin, ‘Le sexe accidente, Deux o u trois contes de la savane senoufo, Objets et Mondes, 17, 1, 1977, 21-30. Meillassoux, C . , Anthropologie economique des Gouro de Cote d ’ Ivoire, Paris: Mouton, 1964. »‘Correspondence [on slavery)’, Economy and Society, 7 , 3 , 1978, 321-33. ,Maidens, Meal and Money, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Michelet, J . , L a Sorciere, Paris: Bibliotheque Mondiale, 1861. Monteil, C . , Les Bambara d u Segou et d u Kaarta, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1924.

Saladin D’Anglure, B . , ‘Le rapport homme-femme dans I'organisation sociale inuit’, Anthropologie et societies, 1, 3 , 1978, 79-98.

,‘Igallijuq ou les reminiscences d'une ame-nom Inuit’, Eludes Inuit, 1, 1, 1977, 32-64. Samuel, P . , ed. Amazones, guerrieres et gaillardes, Complexe: Presses Universitaires d e Grenoble, 1975.

Tardits, C., L e Royaume Bamoum, Paris: A Colin, 1980.

Seed and Earth: The Symbolism of Biologica l Reproduc tion and Sexual Relations of Production LEELA D U B E

Almost all over northern and central India, and in some parts o f eastern India, the process o f biological reproduction is expressed b y

the metaphorical use of two terms—the ‘seed’ and the ‘earth’. The word ‘field’ is used synonymously with ‘earth’. Though not well documented this is also true o f large parts o f western and southern India. The seed symbolizes the father’s contribution and the field

represents the part of the mother. Man provides the seed—the essence— f or the creation o f the offspring. The seed determines the kind: the child’s identity is derived, thus, from the father in so far as group placement is concerned. This seed is contained in the semen which is said to bear a relationship with blood. Nutrition creates blood, and semen, it is believed, derives from the blood. The quantum o f semen, according t o traditional belief, bears a proportion to the total volume o f blood in the male body. The child, thus, shares its blood with its father. A

male child has the potential of being the transmitter of the same blood to the next generation; in other words, o f continuing the blood line. Male agnatic kin are known as ‘sharers’—those who share common blood and are co-sharers in property or sources o f livelihood. T h e blood o f a female child, o n the other hand, cannot b e

transmitted. A female has eventually to join a man o f another blood

line and produce children for him by providing the field in which he sows his seed. The role o f the mother is to augment what the womb has received, through her own blood which provides warmth (incubation) and nourishment and helps it to grow. This prolonged ,and sustained activity is not over at birth; later the mother nourishes the

Seed and Earth

23

child with her milk. Her role is that of the nourisher. The close tie between the mother and the child is understood and recognized; it is underscored in a number o f subtle ways. Through such explicit and

implicit understanding an ideology covering the mother’s behaviour unfolds itself. From ancient times the process of human reproduction in India has been conceived of in terms of male seed germinating in the female field. This can be seen in texts used during rituals of mar-

riage and other crises of life many of which are of Vedic origin, and

in the Great Epic of Mahabharata. The law books, the most important among them being Manu Smriti, use it as the basis for determining the status of the offspring of mixed unions and for assessing the propriety of the types of mixed unions. It is interesting t o note that customary law and traditional decision-making opera-

tions in villages provide evidence that principles derived from this theory of conception have been operative for centuries without much change. This conception o f the process o f human reproduction seems to

have formed part of both the literate tradition and people’s consciousness through the ages. Coming to the present times its presence is reported in a number o f anthropological writings based o n

field investigations carried out in different regions of the country. The metaphorical expression is in vogue not only among the Hindu

population; it is also found among the tribal communities following patrilineal descent and practising agriculture. The rural Muslims also share the same ideas. This paper starts with the supposition that the full import and implications o f this symbolism for the situation of women cannot be grasped unless we examine it in the material contexts of the particular society where it is used. B y expressing specific cultural under-

standings regarding the process of biological reproduction, it provides the ideological bases for legitimation of crucial principles of kinship and their operation in respect of property and production. There appears to be some sort of a homology between the sexual asymmetry in biological reproduction as conceived b y the culture and expressed through the use of the two terms to symbolize diffe-

rential contribution of the male and the female and the sexual asymmetry in relations o f production expressed in the structural

rules which govern ownership, control, and use of productive resources and in the structure and functioning o f domestic organiza-

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LEELA DUBE

tion as such. How does this happen? This paper makes an attempt to explore some of the inter-linkages that could provide an explanation ’. ! [ n ancient as well as later

Sanskrit texts? dealing with law, society,

and rites de passage the phenomenon o f conception literally has the

male seed falling into the female field. A verse in the Atharva Veda Says: . . . . I n the male indeed grows the seed. That is poured along into the women; that verily is the obtainment of a son . . . . (quoted in Pandey

1976 : 49).

The main purpose o f marriage was seen as the creation o f offspring, with a distinct emphasis o n male progeny. The quality essen-

tial in a man for this purpose is expressed in the following manner in Narada Smriti: Women are created for offsprings; a woman is the field and a man is the possessor of the seed; the field should be given to him who possesses the seed; a man without the seed does not deserve a girl® (quoted i n Pandey

1976 : 197). I n the Mahabharata there are references to bringing a substitute for

the husband to contribute his seed for the sake of obtaining progeny. The Smritis also contain suggestions regarding arrangement o f

a substitute for the husband (in the event of his being dead, impotent, o r an invalid) from among his brothers, lineage mates, o r clan

(gotra) mates whose seed was considered acceptable in those days (see Pandey 1976 : 55). To quote Irawati Karve: The example which occurs again and again in the epic literature is that of ‘the analogy o f seed and field’ (Bijakshetranyaya). This analogy was used with respect to the ownership of a man over his wife and justified the

practice of begetting sons on one’s own wife from somebody else. The wife is the kshetra or the field. I t was argued that if a man owned a bit of land and if a seed belonging to somebody else happened to fall in that land, the fruit thereof belonged to the owner of the land and not to the owner of the seed*

(1968:358). That a woman is only a vehicle for the offspring o f the man is expressed in n o uncertain words. T o refer to the Mahabharata once again, when King Dushyanta rejects Shakuntala whom he had married secretly and asks her to take her son away, she puts forth the

following argument: ‘The husband entering the womb of the wife

Seed and Earth

25

comes out himself in the form o f the son.” A n d there is a voice o f

blessings coming from the skies, ‘The mother is but the sheath of flesh; the son sprung from the father is the father himself.” The symbolic use o f the seed and the earth o r field to express the process o f human reproduction is also found i n the law books, particularly with reference to the norms and rules regarding mixed marriages (between varnas and between castes) and the status of

offspring of such mixed unions. Without going into the complexity o f the argument we may refer to what Tambiah (1973) says on the

authority of Manu Smriti ( X , 69, 71, 72): A n underlying distinction which acts as an axiom in the explanation of mixed marriage is that between male ‘seed’ and female ‘field’ or ‘soil’ in the theory of conception. I t is declared that between the two, the male seed is more important, but not exclusively so for ‘seed sown o n barren ground

perishes in it’, while ‘good seed springing up in good soil, turns out perfectly well’ (1973 : 198).

Tambiah adds (1973 : 198-9):

Now the implications of the relative statuses of male seed and female field in which it is sown are critical for caste theory; critical but also problematic, for

a male’s superiority cannot automatically lift his progeny from the taint of

an inferior mother. Thus ‘sons begotten by twice born men on wives of the next lower castes, they declare to be similar to their fathers, but blamed o n

account of the fault inherent in their mothers. Such is the eternal law concerning children born of wives one degree lower than their husbands . . . (Manu X , 6).

H e discusses the implications of this evaluation o f seed and field

for deciding the status of offspring born of various kinds of mixed unions, falling under hypergamous and hypogamous types. There appear to be differences o f opinion among law givers in regard to status evaluation o f the offspring o f unions in which the female was only one degree lower in status than the male, some willing to give the offspring the same caste status as the father’s. Broadly, one could say that hypergamy was approved while hypogamy was not. For, superior seed can fall o n the inferior field but inferior seed cannot be allowed to fall o n the superior field (see Tambiah

1973:191-229). The seed and the field are recurrent symbols i n the Hindu marriage rituals. Kshetrasamskara, or the rite of consecration of the field, is aimed at purifying the bride’s womb for receiving the seed.

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LEELA DUBE

A number of rites in the complex of marriage rituals dramatize the value o f firmness, steadfastness, fidelity, and devotion of the wife to

the husband (the seed giver) for the sake of progeny. Thus, while conjugal fidelity and steadfastness are being emphasized for the bride by making her tread on a stone—a symbol of firmness—the bridegroom asks her to stand on the ‘auspicious and firm stone for the sake o f the progeny’. The same message is conveyed when i n the evening the bridegroom asks the bride to see the pole star which is

supposed to be firmly fixed in the sky and thus symbolizes the quality of steadfastness, the opposite of fickleness. Indeed, conjugal fidelity in a woman is a precondition for acquiring progeny for the male. The woman needs to be contained. The man’s wish and concern to contain the woman within himself are clearly indicated i n

the following verse which is to be recited by the bridegroom while he performs the rite of touching the heart of the bride, reaching over

her right shoulder: Let your heart be in my heart, let your mind be in my mind. My words with concentration you hear. Take to your vow, follow me alone. Be a compa-

nion to me (Baudhayana Grihyasutra, 1.4.1 in Saraswati 1977 : 183).

Another version o f the verse is as follows: Into my will I take thy heart, thy mind shall dwell in my mind; in my words thou shall rejoice with all thy heart. May Prajapati (God of Creation) join thee to me (The Parasara Grihyasutra, 1.8.8 in Pandey 1976 : 227).

It is to be noted that the premium and the value placed on the birth o f sons are made more than explicit in the blessings, wishes, and expectations contained i n a number o f verses meant to be used for various occasions in the complex o f marriage rituals. T w o such

verses, to be recited by the bridegroom, may be quoted (Saraswati 1977 : 181-2): For splendour, life (long) and prosperity, for ten sons, blessed auspicious and glorious unhindered does she long for. O Indra, O Savitr, the glory that removes sonlessness, speed ye to her (Vaikhanasa Grihyasutra, 3.4). M a y a male embryo enter your womb, as an arrow the quiver; many a man

be borne here, a son after ten months (Sankhyayana Grihyasutra, 1.19.6).

There are special rites recommended for those who are desirous o f obtaining a male child. The foremost duty o f a man is to become a householder and perpetuate the family or lineage through male

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27

offspring, which cannot be fulfilled in the absence of ason.® With some regional variations and along with what are known as lokachar (people’s practices) and streeachar” (women’s practices), these rites form an important part of the marriage ceremony among

the Hindus today. Saraswati’s detailed study (1977) of the Brahmanic ritual traditions (particularly those relating to marriage) among ten endogamous Brahmin groups from all over India makes i t abundantly clear that although there are certain variations, the marriage among contemporary Brahmins is firmly based o n the textual traditions, and that the contextual activities do not contradict the message o f the texts. Among large sections o f the Hindus, particularly among what are known as the clean castes, the

core of marriage rituals remains broadly the same (see Inden and Nicholas 1977, for marriage rituals among Bengali Hindus). Where Vedic verses are replaced b y Puranic verses, which are o f later

date, they convey the same meaning and the same cultural ideology. There is ample ethnographic evidence that rites such as the gifting o f the bride, the circumambulation of fire b y the couple, the bride’s send-off o r transfer from the natal home, and her incorporation into

the husband’s home are a part of the marriage complex of patrilineal Hindus at all levels and also among many patrilineal

tribal groups. Statements like ‘a daughter is a bird of passage’, ‘something which is to be kept in safe custody until her marriage’, and ‘somebody else’s possession’, etc., are common expressions among the tribal groups along with the Hindu castes.

A s mentioned earlier the use of the metaphor of seed and field to

refer respectively to the male and the female contribution in biological reproduction has been reported in Indian ethnography o f tribal and rural communities. The Kamar, a tribe of hunters, food gatherers, and shifting cultivators living i n the south-eastern part o f Madhya Pradesh and in adjacent parts o f Orissa, studied by S.C. Dube (1951) expressed the causal relationship between sexual intercourse and conception thus: ‘Unless the seed is sown, how will the crop grow?’ Mere sexual intercourse, however, would not be enough for conception. A woman would not conceive unless there was some ancestral spirit longing to be reborn into the family o r Bhagwan (God) had a jiv (soul) to spare (p. 82). I n my detailed ethnographic study focused on Gond women i n almost the same part o f Madhya Pradesh, namely south-eastern Madhya Pradesh,® I

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(Dube 1956) found that the ideology of the seed and the earth was deeply rooted in popular consciousness. References t o it came u p not only in the pointed discussions of the process of procreation, but

also while discussing the issues of bride price, inheritance and distribution of property, and also while talking about extra-marital affairs and mixed unions with the problem o f placement o f the

offspring. I n fact, the ideology seemed t o be widespread in this area where Gonds often lived i n composite villages with several castes and sometimes with other tribal groups.

For the Gond women nature provides the language for articulating themselves about women’s bodily states and functions. Delay o f

menarche in a girl would bring forth the comment, ‘one who does not flower, h o w can she bear fruit?” A woman bearing children is

compared with a hen laying eggs or a creeper giving a yield of pumpkins. According to the Gond conception, pregnancy occurs when man’s seed enters the woman’s womb. This does not happen in each intercourse. The body and limbs o f the baby are made of the blood that gets stored u p because o f the stopping o f the menstrual cycle.

This is coagulated blood, and Bhagwan (God) shapes arms, legs, head, etc., out o f i t . B u t the blood that flows in the child’s veins is

the blood that comes from the father’s seed and gives a child (particularly a male child) its identity as belonging to the father’s lineage and clan. I t may be noted that a distinction is made between the mother’s blood that contributes to the shaping o f the child and

the father’s blood that gives it its name, lineage, and clan. Infertility is explained b y saying that just as there are infertile fields in which seeds d o not germinate so also there are women in whose womb the bij (seed) o f man can never take the shape o f a

baby. Similarly, there are some men who are capable of having coitus with women but in their stomach thereis n o bij (seed).

In his Caste and Kinship in Central India Mayer (1960) noted the use o f the same metaphor among the rural population o f Dewas

District. So did Jacobson who in the 1960s studied a village in Raisen District i n central India. I n her informant’s words, ‘The mother . . . only provides the place for i t to grow. Just as we plant

a seed in a field so the child is formed of the seed planted by the father’ (Jacobson 1977 : 268-9). I n rural Andhra Pradesh,

as the

illustrations that follow would show, people make use o f the same

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metaphor to express a variety o f situations relating to sexual activity and parental identity. Vittanam, the Telugu word for seed, is commonly used to refer to man’s contribution in procreation. If the

physical appearance of a low caste boy and the quality of his intelligence and capacity for leadership, etc. attract attention as being incongruent with his caste status, people try to explain it b y

alluding to the history of his mother’s illicit sexual relations with some powerful high caste man such as a Reddy or a Kamma land-

lord. ‘After all if you sow seeds of lentils (legumes) you will nat get a crop of gram’ is the logic that conveys the message. In a case where the man is known to have been carrying on an extra-marital affair

his wife’s failure to conceive is likely to be defended by her relatives thus: ‘While sowing seeds in the streets you cannot expect to get a crop in your o w n field’. The news o f a young girl conceiving soon

after the consummation of marriage can be commented upon by observations such as ‘the soil is very fertile’. The idea that the soil needs to be prepared before i t can hold the seed is also expressed clearly. Thus, a young girl who does not conceive for a couple o f years may bring forth the comment ‘an uncultivated piece o f land

will not yield good crop immediately. It takes time for the land to become fertile.’ If a child resembles its mother’s paramour, people

may joke, ‘one person ploughed the land, another sowed the seed. T o whom should the child belong?’ Such remarks are generally made in reference to the extra-marital relations between low caste women and high caste men. The children born o f such affairs belong to the caste of the mother and her husband. Besides the fact that i n the rural power structure the low castes cannot do much about the sexual abuse of their women by high caste (economically powerful) men, a tacit acceptance of upper caste ‘seed’ also facilitates such assimilation.” Needless to say, in the case of an unattached woman, either unmarried or divorced/widowed, placement of offspring canriot

be so simple. A s in the rest o f patriline al India, in Andhra Pradesh too the

children rightfully belong to the father, and in situations of conflict

the language o f seed and field is used to assert the paterna l right. After a domesti c quarrel if the wife threatens to leave the husband , the latter would promptly say ‘you may go if you want, but leave m y seedling with me’. Similarly , in the event of a divorce the father

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would claim his sons by saying that they are plants grown out of his

body particles. He may boast later saying ‘In his veins this boy has the same blood as mine; that is why he remained with me and did not go with his mother.” Patriline and blood line appear to be synonymous i n people’s conception.

I n recent studies of patrilineal Hindu kinship in various parts of India, anthropologists have referred to the metaphor of the seed and the earth that is used to symbolize the different roles of man and

woman in procreation. Although differing in detail, the basic no-

tions brought out in these studies on Punjabi, Bengali, and Kashmiri kinship appear broadly to be the same. I n her delineation o f Punjabi kinship Veena Das says:

The Punjabi theory of procreation is that the woman provides the field and the man provides the seed. As in the classical Hindu theory, the quality of the offspring is determined by the quality of the seed. Nevertheless, the field should be able t o bear the seed. I f the seed is very powerful it will ‘burn the field’ . . . . The seed grows into a child in the mother’s womb. The bones of the child are formed by the semen and the blood is formed by the mother’s blood. That is why menstruation is said to cease in a pregnant woman (1976 : 3).

Veena Das, i t appears, has not looked carefully into the people’s conception o f the role o f the mother’s blood as opposed to the role

of the father’s blood in the creation and growth of the child. Later in the same paper, however, she says, ‘though the “pull o f blood” attracts the child to the father (emphasis mine) the fact that it is in the

mother’s womb that the child spent the first nine months and because i t is the mother’s milk that he has sucked, binds the child much more strongly to the mother than the father’ (p.4); and at another place she refers to semen being considered as ‘concentrated blood’ (p.7). I t is clear, thus, that i n Punjabi kinship the symbolism o f the seed and the earth helps to emphasize the strength o f the patrilineal descent principle and the fact that the child derives its

group identity from the father. 1 ° Fruzzetti and Ostor make a specific reference to the seed and the earth in the title o f their paper, which is devoted to a cultural analysis o f kinship i n a Bengali town. They elaborate the ideology as

follows: . . the most common reference to marriage is in terms of a field and. the

seed in the field. Woman is the field (khettro), the cultivator provides the

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seed and ‘cultures’ the field. The husband cultivates the earth (chas kora)

and the earth is female . . . . . I n intercourse, (sangam, ‘union’), the husband's seed (sukra, bij) is received and accepted (grohon kora) by the wife in her womb. She is the vessel, the earth in which the seed grows. Sukra is the specific word for semen, bij may refer t o grain as well—both terms meaning ‘seed’. Seed is the characteristic of the ‘male element’ (purush). . . . . Seed is produced in the bone marrow (majja) of men, and, among other things, builds the bone structure o f the child. I n the womb (garbho) the seed becomes blood and

grows (bara) through the mother’s nourishment and blood. Blood (rokto) creates semen, several drops o f the former to one of the latter. I n giving birth, the mother continues her husband’s line . . . . Thus the child is born

as a result of contributions by both father and mother. The latter accepts the former’s seed and ‘increases’ the ‘blood’ of the child growing in her womb. H e r o w n blood she shares with her father, but the blood o f her children will b e that o f her husband. She contributes to both blood and child through nourishment, . . . . Even after birth, the mother ‘increases’ the child’s

blood and strengthens his bones by her milk (1976: 120-31).

Another widely acknowledged study of Bengali kinship by Inden and Nicholas (1977) also refers t o the seed (semen) and the field (womb): For the Bengalis, the procreating of a child is premised upon certain definitions of the nature of the human body and its functioning. The human being as a male (purusa) is distinguished from the female by the capacity t o produce semen (Sukra), often referred to metaphorically as ‘seed’ (bija).

The distinctive feature of a human being as a female (stripurusa) is her capacity to produce uterine blood (artava) in her womb (garbha)'l, often referred to metaphorically as the ‘field’ (ksetra) (p.52).

Agai n, The object o f the next sariskara in the sequence, the pumsa-vana is to cause the birth o f a male child b y strengthening the semen (sukra) o r seed (bija) that is mixed with the wife’s uterine blood (Grtava) or planted in her field

(ksetra) (p.54).

Referring to the Kashmiri Pandits, Madan says: I t is generally maintained that conception occurs when husband and wife reach orgasm simultaneously. Female orgasm is believed to result in the

discharge of vital fluids into the womb which also receives the male ‘seed’. Not only were my informants uncertain about the nature of the supposed female discharge, some o f them also considered it to be of n o consequence. The male seed is believed to contain in it all the requirements for the making

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of the complete human being: bones, flesh, blood, all internal and external organs, hair, nails, intellect, knowledge, ignorance, health, disease, etc. It has the capacity to provide for the nurture of the foetus and subsequently of the new-born child. The mother’s menstrual blood provides the ‘soil’ or ‘bed’ for the seed to grow in when it ceases to flow out and solidifies into

fleshy ‘sack’ which envelopes and nourishes the foetus. The mother is the feeder and preserver o f the foetus. I t is because o f this fact, some informants

said, that Hindus worship the black stone saligrama, the symbol of Vishnu, the preserver, which resembles the womb in shape. The growth of the child’s body, which is already in the seed, depends upon the mother and her physical and moral condition. The original planting of the seed in the womb sets in process the milk-producing capacity o f the mother who then suckles

the child when it is born. I n short, as one informant put it, the human seed is very much like the walnut which contains in itself the full-grown tree— incidentally the largest fruit—bearing tree in Kashmir (1981: 230-1).

I n biological terms the basis of unilineal group membership is common blood and the idea o f patrikin sharing common blood is effectively conveyed through the idea o f the male seed being formed out o f blood and thus performing the crucial role o f contributing the life giving blood for the offspring. One may contrast the situation i n patrilineal communities with a few illustrations of what obtains i n matrilineal communities. Among the Khasi, a matrilineal tribe of north-eastern India who traditionally lived b y slash and burn cultivation, it is believed that a child gets its life and blood from the mother and its structure and form from the father. A sister’s son and his mother’s brother are considered to be o f comm o n flesh and blood. A father cannot claim commonness of flesh and blood with his children. H e is necessary for procreation, but his role is extremely limited. His limited role i n procreation is conveyed b y the term ‘rooster’ which may be used for him. I t is said that ‘maternal uncle is one’s flesh and blood whereas father is only the pus’ and that ‘mother contributes blood while father contributes only pus’. I t is said that blood is a substance that remains inside one’s body but pus cannot stay i n the body. I t has to come out of the b o d y . T h e t i e between a child a n d father, thus, is not believed t o b e

as strong. I f a father does not care for his child it is understandable. After all he contributes only ‘pus’. I n the event o f a father beating his child the enraged mother may question him, ‘Who are you to beat m y child? D o you think it to be your own flesh and blood? If you cannot tolerate the child’s behaviour you can leave this house asy o u d o not have a right over a single nail here.’'? Matrilineal line—the

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blood line— continues through female links. Among the matrilineal Kanikkar o f south-western India who are forest dwellers, the notion

that the child shares its blood with the mother is expressed thus: ‘The womb dyes the baby.” The notion of matrilineal kin sharing common blood is commonly found among matrilineal groups. A s i n

patrilineal communities this conception forms an important basis for inheritance of property, rights in the sources of living, and formation of kinship groups. Among the Khasi a shallow matrilineage is called Kpoh which means womb. The following saying expresses women’s rights vis-a-vis men: ‘War and politics for men, property and children for women.’ The select references to the symbolic representation o f the process o f human reproduction presented i n the previous sections are drawn from a multiplicity o f sources. They point towards the firm roots the specific cultural conception has taken in a fairly wide

geographical region. Semen is commonly considered as concentrated blood (although there is n o agreement o n the proportion

of semen to the total volume of blood in the human body) and there is a clear notion of common blood line for agnatic kin continuing through male members who serve as links for the passing o f the common blood to the next generation through their semen. I n contrast, ideas about the mother’s contribution i n terms of specific substances and elements are generally hazy and would hardly stand a systematic scrutiny. Invariably the phenomenon o f ceasing o f the menstrual flow at conception gives rise to the question: H o w is this

blood utilized? It is conceived of as providing a protective sack, soil t o grow in, nourishment, stuff out o f which the limbs and organs of the foetus are shaped, and so on. That the foetus derives its sustenance from the mother is an obvious fact and the child’s physical closeness t o and dependence o n the mother during pre-natal and post-natal phases is not only recognized but played up. Expressions

such as ‘a lump produced from my womb’, ‘a lump of my flesh and bones’, ‘a piece of my body’, ‘connected with my insides or intestines’, and ‘nurtured with my blood’ may often be used by the mother t o assert the close physical relationship with the child i n

emotional terms. Breast milk is considered as a substance derived from blood. When it comes to the use of blood as a substance that imparts identity t o the child and determines its group placement,

however, it is firmly believed that the child gets its blood from the

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father and shares it with its agnatic kin. Here it would be necessary to make a note of two important contexts in which the mother’s part in the making of the child is invan-

ably recognized. First, the principle on which caste endogamy is based assumes that the child derives its status from both the parents.

Purity of blood is often quoted in defence of maintenance of caste boundaries and preserving caste purity. In the considerations for placement o f children o f mixed unions, although the notion o f man’s ‘seed’ is o f great significance, mother’s caste status is also an important consideration. Where hypergamy is permitted o r at least

condoned, the child’s placement in the father’s group is possible only if the caste status o f the mother is within the permissible range. Thus, although there is n o clear-cut delineation o f the exact nature o f the mother’s contribution to the making of the child, in specific contexts she is very relevant for ascertaining the status of the child. Second, a mother is as relevant as the father when it comes to the

analysis of physical appearance and physiological and temperamental characteristics of the child. T o what extent, then, can the cultural conception o f the human reproductive process expressed in the metaphorical language o f

seed and earth be viewed as a part of ethno-science? Or is the use of this metaphor selective, serving a specific purpose by using the language suited to biological kinship? O n the basis of ethnographic data at our disposal we can say that the prevailing conception of the process of human reproduction, discussed earlier, does not provide a cogent system o f knowledge regarding human anatomy and physiology and the processes related t o them. A different picture regarding the contribution o f the two

parents to the making of the child emerges in Ayurveda, ‘the

science of life’, which contains the idigenous system of physiology and medicine developed i n I n d i a !.? This system has a long history and there is sufficient evidence to prove that many concepts o f Ayurveda have had an enduring influence on the common people. The majority of home remedies can be traced to Ayurveda and the classification o f various foods o n the basis o f their properties also

has its basis in this system of medicine, specifically in the idea of the balance o f three humours (see Ray, Gupta and Roy 1980, Dube 1957, Joshi 1979). What Ayurveda has to say about the reproductive process therefore assumes special significance. 1 According to Ayurveda the transformation o f blood into sukra

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(semen) takes the following course: food turns into rasa (nutrition),

rasa into rakta (blood), rakta into mamsa (flesh), mamsa into meda (fat), meda into majja (marrow), and majja turns into semen. 5 I t is

difficult to assess how much of this detailed process of transformation is popularly known. However, people do broadly believe that food or nourishment is transformed into blood and blood creates semen and that the semen is proportionate to the volume of blood in the body. I n Ayurvedic texts sukra may be referred to as bij (seed) also, but even in the few places where there occurs a reference to the

metaphor of the seed and the field, it does not appear to convey unevenness in the roles of the two sexes in procreation.” The chapter o n Sharirasthanam (embryology and anatomy) in both Susruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita contains a detailed description o f the specific contribution o f the two parents to the physical

make-up of the child. Charaka Samhita gives the following details in Chapter 3 of Sharirasthanam: The embryo is not born of the mother, nor of the father, nor of the spirit, nor o f the concordance, nor o f the nourishment. Nor is there a mind which is the connecting agent . . . for the embryo arises from all these factors

acting together. I n one sense, the embryo is born o f the mother also . . . . We shall now enumerate the mother-engendered parts o f the embryo, that is, those which pass to the embryo during its formation from the mother. These are—the b l o o d , the flesh, the umbilicus, the heart, the kloman, the liver, the spleen,

kidneys, bladder, pelvic colon and stomach, the colon, the rectum and the anus, the small intestines, the large intestines, the omentus and mesentery.

I n one sense the embryo is born of the father also. . . . We shall now enumerate the father-engendered parts o f the embryo, that is, those that pass to the embryo during its formation from the father. These are the hair of the head and beard, nails, hair of the body, teeth, bones, veins, sinews, arteries and semen (Charaka Samhita) 1949, Vol. III,

1026-8. I n Susruta Samhita (Sharirasthanam Chapter 3 , sutra 3 1 ) also there

is a n enumeration o f what an embryo gets trom the above six sources. It is mentioned that the father contributes hard parts such as, the hair, moustache, beard, and body hair, bones, nails, teeth, veins, ligaments and fibrous tissues, arteries and semen; and the mother contributes soft parts such as, flesh (what produces muscles), blood, fat, marrow, heart, umbilicus, liver, spleen, intestines, and rectum.

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It appears that these details, which specifically mention the mother’s contribution along with the father’s, have been confined to learned theoreticians and practitioners of Ayurveda.® Without

doubt their ideas regarding the growth and development of the human body, the maintenance o f a healthy body, and the diagnosis

and treatment of healthy as well as unhealthy bodies have used heredity as an important basis in which neither of the two parents is

ignored. People too are aware of this basis; in fact, as mentioned earlier, people themselves refer to maternal connections in respect

of physical appearance and physiological traits of children. However, they d o not take any account o f the incongruence between

these ideas and the notion of the dominant and decisive role of the father in procreation as conceived i n the realm o f descent and kinship. Thus, apart from the fact that specialized knowledge contained in treatises o n physiology and medicine cannot be expected to become a part o f popular culture, it is evident that the ideas developed in Ayurveda regarding the process o f biological reproduction and the

role of the two parents in it have been used by cultures only selectively and that they have not come in the way o f giving predominance to one parent in terms o f rights. What is more, some ideas from Ayurveda seem to have contributed substantially to an emphasis o n the obligations of the mother towards the child. Popular conceptions and principles and prescriptions of Ayurvedic texts seem t o converge t o a remarkable extent i n one specific aspect o f human reproduction, namely the close bond between

the child and the mother during the pre-natal as well as the postnatal period and, springing from i t , the complex o f desirable o r

prescriptive behaviour for the mother. I t is axiomatic that the conduct of the mother influences the unborn child. The foetus needs to be protected from evil spirits and its proper and smooth

growth in the womb needs t o be ensured as also its safe delivery. Susruta Samhita discusses in detail the various stages in the process of the growth of the foetus (Sharirasthanam, Chapter 3: sutra 15-30). H e advises that during pregnancy the expectant mother should avoid over-exertion, sleeping in the day, keeping awake in the night, mounting a carriage, fear, sitting like a cock, purgatives, and untimely postponement of natural flow of excretion, urine, etc. The cravings women have during pregnancy receive special atten-

tion. For example, it is emphasized that any wish that the expectant

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mother has with respect to the activities o f any o f the five sense

organs—hearing, seeing, touching, tasting or smelling—must be

fulfilled. This derives its rationale from the belief that if a desire of any o f the sense organs o f the expectant mother remains unfulfilled the same sense organ o f the foetus in the womb will either suffer from pain o r w i l l become defective (Sharirasthanam, Chapter 3 :

16, 17). The psychological state of the mother and her thoughts and feelings, it is held, also affect the foetus. Hence the birth o f a

healthy child requires the expectant mother to be joyous and happy. Moreover, she should regulate her diet (since the foetus derives its

nourishment from the mother) and follow certain restrictions o n movements, sleep, and other activities. Chapter 10 i n Sharirasthan a m (embryology and anatomy) deals with the care o f the expectant

mother and the post-natal measures for the healthy growth of the child. The do’s and don’ts for the expectant mother are reported in the

ethnographic literature of various regions. Folksongs and popular literature also contain innumerable references to them. These do’s and don’ts may differ in details in different regions and com-

munities, but they are based on the common conception of complete dependence of the foetus on the mother and the close bond between the two. Fulfilment o f pregnancy cravings is ritualized through specific ceremonies, particularly during the first pregnancy. There are strong beliefs that unfulfilled cravings of the

mother would affect the healthy and normal growth of the child in the womb and may also hinder smooth delivery. A large number o f such cravings are for specific items o f food. Often a mother-in-law would make her intention clear by saying that she was keen to fulfil a particular craving o f her daughter-in-law lest her grandson, yet to be born, suffer from an ailment or some kind of bodily defect. 1 ? The child’s dependence o n its mother continues during the period o f breastfeeding—although not to the same degree as when the child is i n the womb—and ideally regulates the mother’s behaviour in respect o f movement, exposure and, most importantly, her diet (based, in its turn, o n the prevalent ideas of the properties o f different foods). Ayurveda too has definite ideas about a lactating mother’s food and behaviour. Any ailment of the infant is to be traced t o what the mother ate o r d r a n k , the k i n d o f environment she

exposed herself t o , o r to the strain she underwent. A s mentioned earlier, breast milk is widely believed to derive from blood and thus

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theimother is said to nurture the child with her blood. I t is believed that the mother’s milk, apart from possessing specific physical properties which derive from the kind of food/nourishment she receives and from her temper and behaviour, contains properties

that may contribute to the child’s character and transmit qualities such as cowardice, bravery, honesty, treachery, loyalty, and so on. I t may be noted that the physiological connection between the mother and the child and the latter’s dependence o n the former have been turned into the strongest moral obligation for the woman. A woman going away leaving her young child behind o r

neglecting it negates the essential and natural qualities of a mother. The same basis o f mother-child bond is used for according a very

high value to the maternal role. All that a mother does for her young child is termed as sacrifice. It is said that debt to the mother is one debt which can never be repaid (see Madan 1981:231). Veneration o f the mother is reiterated again and again. I n terms o f social identity and rights, however, the child is closely linked to the father and not to the mother. I n fact we may say that a woman’s right over her child is essentially a moral right. Thus, the natural bond between the mother and the child is utilized for emphasizing her obligations and not for proving her right over the offspring.

I n the end we shall seek to underline the implications o f the

metaphor of conception as the seed sown in the soil, used for biological symbolization of descent, to understand the nature of relations between the sexes and their relative rights and positions. T w o related points emerge clearly. First, an essentially unequal relationship is reflected in and emphasized through the use o f these symbols, and second, the symbolism is utilized b y the culture to underplay the significance o f woman’s contribution to biological reproduction. While tying her down to the supreme duty o f motherhood, this symbolism is instrumental in denying her the natural right over her own children and i n creating and sustaining an ideology i n which strategic resources of both types—material as well as human—remain in the hands o f men. The metaphor and its implications for the position o f women and their rights in strategic resources have to be seen in the context o f a patrilineal kinship structure and an agrarian economy in which land is the principal resource, the other resource being labour.2° I n such

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39

a system rights o f ownership, control, and use of land are governed

by the patrilineal principle. So also is marital residence with operative notions regarding rights i n the house as a physical structure as well as i n the household as a composite group. ? ! These rights include: right to a certain place to live i n , howsoever temporary i t may be;

ownership/possession/control of productive resources and consumption goods; command over others’ labour and power to decide

for others; rights to the fruits of productive/earning capacity of individual members; and possession o f certain family traditions. B o t h , the inmarrying wives and the outmarrying daughters, can be contrasted with their respective counterparts i n this system, viz., w i t h husbands who belong to the family with full rights to its resources and who bring their wives to live with them, and with brothers who remain full members o f their natal family and unlike their sisters are not transferable but retain their rights and are

looked upon as perpetuators of the family line and as the supporters o f parents and other family members b y their earnings. I n India, with the exception o f a few pockets, the principle o f patrilineal descent has been the basis o f group placement, flow o f inheritance, and rights to succession, and the common pattern o f

residence at marriage has been patri-viri-local. Women have had only the right o f maintenance. According to the Mitakshara legal system, which had been prevalent among Hindus in large parts o f

India, a male child acquired at birth an inalienable right in the ancestral property. The concept of coparcenary has governed the working of this law. The Dayabhaga system, prevalent in Bengal and parts o f Bihar and Orissa, also accorded the right of inheritance to a male child i n his agnatic group’s property, although the control o f the father during his lifetime was stronger i n this system (see Altekar 1962, Karve 1968). According to the new legal provisions which came into force i n 1956, daughters are entitled to a share in the ancestral property o f their natal group and also in the selfearned property o f the parents, but there is clear evidence that people have serious misgivings regarding the propriety and justice as also the feasibility o f acknowledging the daughter’s claim to the father’s property, particularly immovable property.2? Ethnographic and literary evidence from different regions o f the country points towards the existence o f what Ursula Sharma (1980: 59) calls an ‘ideology which specifies that land is primarily a male form o f property’ 2 3 I t is significant that even where i t is customary

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t o give a small piece o f land to the daughter at her marriage, it is not

viewed as a share but only as a gift. To illustrate, among some land-owning castes i n Andhra Pradesh, the piece o f land given to

the daughter is called bahumanam which means gift or honour, and never as bhagam which means share.?* Thus it is only the male agnates w h o are recognized as co-sharers o r co-heirs of property or

resources for living; the female agnates are excluded from this category. A n y immovable or movable property o r even small amounts given to a daughter/sister are referred to as a gift for the sake o f her support and maintenance of honour or for helping her to buy auspicious articles o f use, such as bangles, turmeric, and vermilion, which are indicative o f her culturally valued marred state. This

is a recurrent theme i n the folk literature from various regions. A s Ursula Sharma (1980: 56-7) has pointed out women i n India d i d n o t inherit property and most o f them still do not i n spite o f the new legislation which permits them to do so. A sister prefers not to press her claims to her share i n her father’s land since the goodwill o f her brothers is important to her after her parents’ death and a woman would prefer to be i n a position to be able to call o n her brothers for help whenever she needs i t . This is corroborated by evidence from different parts o f the country (see Towards Equality, 1974). A s a wife, a woman has no ownership rights i n the land of her husband. A s a widow, she has limited rights o f inheritance, but they cannot always be exercised. I n tribal groups, where patrilineal clans o r lineages have had a

kind of collective control over certain areas of land, men acquire rights of cultivation by virtue of their membership in the patrilineage. A s wives, women have rights of use i n the land of the husband’s patrilineage and as daughters, they may have a right to maintenance i n their natal lineage i n the event o f divorce or widowhood. What they have as daughters, however, is more o f a privilege than a right. Moreover, their children ordinarily have no right of membership i n the mother’s lineage or any rights i n the land o f the mother’s lineage. Even i n these groups a woman is looked upon as transferable from the natal group t o the husband’s g r o u p23 . Among the agriculturalist tribes like the Gond, the Oraon, and the Munda, the patrilineal principle is strong with respect to land, whether communally controlled o r possessed b y patrilineal descent groups, o r b y families o f two o r three generations of patrikin. Neither as daughters nor as wives do women have independent

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41

access to land. Widows with young children do have some rights over the husband’s land, but they are limited. The notion of original settlers i n a particular territory o r village also operates o n the basis

of patriclans and patrilineages which leave women without rights t o resources. T o get back to our theme, woman is likened to the earth and this is often expressed as an idealized role. Like the earth a woman too

has to bear pain. The earth is ploughed, furrowed, dug into; a woman too is pierced and ploughed. A common metaphorical

expression for sexual intercourse is ploughing. 2 ¢ I t may be used by a m a n to express sexual desire, to insinuate, and also to claim his right over a woman o r over the offspring born o f her. I n referring to coitus as ploughing there is often a suggestion o f a passive role and inertness o n the part o f the woman and o f an active role, dominat i o n , and possession o n the part o f the man. I n common parlance the same term is used for a childless woman

and barren land; sterility in man is referred to as impotence or infertility o f his seed. I n the act of sprouting, the seed ‘bursts open the earth’s belly’ and comes out. This process is believed to cause pain to the earth. Childbirth too is a painful process. Like the earth a woman also produces and nourishes. The mother’s contribution is sustained and prolonged, involving considerable self-denial and sacrifice. Both bear pain quietly and give generously out of their body. However, as mentioned earlier, the kind or variety of crop is determined b y the seed and not by the soil. The kind of grain produced would depend upon the kind of grain sown; the quality of the field can affect the quality of the grain, but i t cannot determine its kind. O n e o f the most significant aspects o f this symbolism is how the two partners are situated i n the process o f reproduction. I n his body m a n has the seed: the woman, on the other hand, is herself the field. Besides the womb, other parts o f her body are also involved i n procreation. H e r whole body is conceived of as contributing towards the growth o f the foetus, while the breasts are getting ready for providing nourishment after the child leaves the womb. The two partners are not at par with one another i n so far as the process of reproduction is concerned. The offspring belongs to one to whom the seed belongs. I n fact, he also owns the field. Both the seed and the field belong to man. B y equating the woman’s body with the field or the earth and the

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semen with the seed, the process of reproduction is equated with the

process of production and rights over the children with the rights over the crop.

Such a conception of rights gets reflected in and provides justification for many o f the patterns o f behaviour and belief and for the institutionalization o f relations. For instance, the language o f the seed and the field is used for stressing man’s rights over the woman’s

sexuality?” and the woman’s lack of rights over her children in the event o f separation o r divorce. I n the villages i n Andhra Pradesh, as mentioned earlier, after a domestic quarrel (or i n the event o f a

divorce) a father claims his children by saying that they are his seedlings o r plants grown out o f his body particles. The Gond and

Hindu women in the villages of south-eastern Madhya Pradesh express their helplessness thus: ‘They are born o f our womb. W e

keep them in our womb for nine months and nourish them with our blood, but the man claims them saying that after all they are born of his seed’. Separation, divorce, and remarriage are not uncommon and, with the exception o f a few upper castes, they are customarily approved. But, i n the normal situation, the practice is that when a woman leaves her husband she has also to leave her children. I t is considered sinful for a mother to leave her small children to go to another man, and such a woman does receive some social censure. This may also be used to poison the mind of her children against her. Among the Gonds there were cases i n which a son refused to talk to

his mother who had left him in childhood saying that she had no consideration for h i m and had left h i m for her own pleasure. I f a woman who leaves her young children and remarries does not bear any more children, her failure to do so is likely to be attributed to her sin o f not fulfilling the obligations o f motherhood. A widow who remarries may also have to leave her children i f her second husband is unrelated to the first husband and does not want

them in his house. One does come across cases, though by no means common, i n which a widow does not leave her children or the house

and has her second husband move over t o live with her. I n general, this is the situation which obtains i n the regions under consideration. Among the poor and landless sections and among the urban migrants from rural areas one may find that often it is women who are the real supporters o f the family. The man may even abandon his wife and children o r may not support them and the woman is left to fend for herself and her children. But these

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cases d o not negate the general understanding that children take their social identity from the father and so belong to the father. Paternal identity is essential for group placement and rights o f access to resources. ‘‘““The seed flows clearing the way for the flow o f property” is how an informant summed up the biological and social significance o f the father-son bond’ ‘Madan 1981: 231).

The father’s rights over his children are another aspect of the same logic, and signify rights over an important human resource. When an unattached woman conceives, the problem o f identifying the father is generally spoken of as identifying the ‘seed’. I n cases o f mixed unions, except those i n which the woman belongs to a much lower caste than the man, the children are generally admitted into the caste o f the father.2® The justification given is the same, that the child gets its status from the seed out of which he has been born. The woman, however, is lost to her own caste.

The ideology of seed and earth explicates the logic of putting restraints o n women’s sexuality and the maintenance o f constraints over them. While repudiation o f maternity is not possible, a woman cannot give social identity and acceptance to her children without paternal identity. I t follows therefore that she needs protection and

control. ?* A s mentioned earlier, the produce should belong to him to whom

the seed belongs. But if this has to happen, as a general rule, the field in which the seed is sown must also belong to him. A n d so i t is. The most common connotation o f the terms used to refer to the

husband is that of lord, master, or owner. H e may also be referred to as protector o r provider. A wife (as also a daughter; is often referred to as a thing o r possession. A t neither place is a woman entitled to own resources. While the natal group emphasizes her

transferability and non-functional nature from the point of view of perpetuation o f the group and continuity of the family, the husband’s group emphasizes her instrumentality, her role of a receptacle, a vehicle, o r a medium for the perpetuation o f the group.

This social arrangement in which men and women have distinctly unequal rights, positions, and roles, both as brother and sister and as husband and wife, is perceived as corresponding to the arrangement o f nature which assigns unequal roles to the two sexes i n procreation. Man’s rights over the woman d o not relate only to her sexuality and reproductive capacity, but encompass her productive capacities

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and labour power also. Just as he is entitled to have control over her sexuality and over the product of her sexuality, he is entitled to have control over her labour and also the proceeds of her labour. The extent o f her actual participation i n the process of production does not decide the worth of her contribution for she is a dependant as far as the productive resources are concerned and works as a family labourer. She is perceived as a dependant in respect of shelter also, for i t is the husband’s right, both by law and custom, to establish a matrimonial home. The notion that man is the provider o f shelter and staple food is firmly rooted i n the minds o f the people.3° I t is not surprising therefore that a woman’s role i n cultivation and other productive activities is considered only as supportive. As the saying goes, ‘ a m a n earns a cartful, a woman earns only a lapful’. Theoretically a woman has n o right over her earnings for she lives i n her man’s house and eats his produce even though all the while she also earns. This logic is applicable even where the woman is earning

through wage labour. The non-recognition o r gross under-recognition o f woman’s con-

tribution to economy is not unconnected with the ideology under consideration. To conclude, the supposed unequal contribution of the two sexes to human reproduction as expressed through the symbolism o f ‘seed and earth’ provides the rationalization for a system i n which woman stands alienated from productive resources, has n o control over her own labour power, and is denied rights over

her own offspring.’

NOTES

1 The basic theme of this paper was developed in the course of extended discussions with Mukul Dube. 2

T h e most ancient text is Rig Veda Samhita, compiled in the early Vedic age a little before 1500 sc. The later Vedic texts were compiled between 1000 and 700 sc. The events which formed the bases for the two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, must have occurred somewhere between 900 and 500 sc; the final compilation o f the epics was wwmpleted probably i n the fourth century a p . The Puranas, which contain myths, legends, chronicles o f events, and sermons, etc., were compiled over centuries, perhaps beginning with the fourth century a p . Besides these religious texts, the Dharmasutras— the early law books—were compiled during 500-300 sc while the principal

"which began

Smritis—the later law books—were codified in the first six centuries after Christ. Some of these dates are, of course, disputed (see Kane 1930-62, Sharma 1977, Winternitz 1927).

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Both religious and secular literature in the regional languages, many of which developed during the medieval period, incorporated and adapted the contents of the epics and the Puranas. Many ideas found in ancient literature thus have had a continuity. The word ‘field’ should have been used i n place o f ‘girl’, since it is the correct

translation of kshetra which occurs in the original. This principle (bijakshetranyaya), and the associated right of lending the wife t o another m a n , referred t o in the Mahabharata, came t o be disapproved o f later.

A woman's chastity was highly valued and the right over her sexuality came to be firmly interpreted as the right of exclusive access to her. This has been the

principle in existence. Needless to say, it cannot be applicable to communities which practise polyandry. This story is given in section 74 of ‘Adiparva’ in Mahabharata (see Roy and Haldar, n . d . ) . The idea that the father is the true parent for he is the seed giver

and that he replicates himself in the son is also found in Greek mythology. In the famous Greek drama Oresteia, Apollo defends Orestes’ act of murdering his o w n mother w h o was guilty o f killing the king, her husband and Orestes’ father, b y denying that the mother is a k i n at all. H e asserts ‘she is only the nurse o f

the new-planted seed that grows. The parent is he who mounts. A stranger, she preserves a stranger’s seed, if no gods interfere’ (see Harris 1973: 154). There are some verses and acts in marriage rituals which express the value of mutual love, companionship, and a common purpose of life for the couple. The incoming bride is described as Lakshmi, meaning goddess of wealth or conserver of wealth. However, even a cursory examination of the complex of rituals of marriage cannot but point towards the strong emphasis on an asymmetrical relationship between man and woman as a couple. ‘Taking the hand of the bride

for becoming a householder’, ‘accepting the gift of the bride from her father’, ‘taking the bride along w i t h h i m for seven steps for prosperity, progeny, and fulfilment o f the duties o f a householder’, ‘transfer o f the bride i n the

bridegroom’s family/lineage’ are a few such rites. Even when the husband and wife are compared to the two wheels o f a cart such a comparison essentially expresses complementarity without parity o r equality.

We find an example of streeachar in the custom practised among the agriculturalist castes i n Andhra Pradesh, until about twenty years ago, when the marriage ceremony lasted at least for three days. O n the first day the bridegroom’s party

sent a handful of ragi (a kind of coarse grain) to the bride’s house. These seeds were sown in a new earthen pot specially prepared with soil and water by some

married women with living husbands and son/s. By the third day the pot was examined to see how well the seeds had germinated. Successful germination and sprouting indicated that the bride would bear many children, including sons; poor germination indicated the opposite. The occasion might b e remembered later generally t o say h o w the future had been projected at the time o f marriage

itself. With the shrinking of the marriage ceremony this practice has been discontinued. All references to the Gonds are from the field data for my doctoral thesis (1956) o n the position o f women among the Gonds o f south-eastern Madhya Pradesh.

The generic term Gond subsumes a large group of tribes spread over a vast area i n central India and parts o f south India (see Furer-Haimendorf 1979:1). The

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Gonds studied by me practised plough cultivation (with paddy as the principal crop) and often lived in composite villages with Hindu castes. The villages in this area were surrounded by forests, hence collection of forest produce also brought them sone earnings. The Amat Gonds were from the group to which the rulers

of the area belonged; some Gond families in the villages were directly related to the ruling lineage through the spread of junior branches which had merged with the commoners. During the last two decades, along with the other groups of the rural population of this region, many Gond families have been compelled to migrate for work to faraway places i n northern and northwestern India. Transport is generally organized b y contractors who supply labour for agricultural and

construction work. M y data were collected in the early fifties but looking to their nature [ have mostly used the ethnographic present.

M y information comes from the part of Andhra Pradesh which was earlier in Madras Presidency. I a m grateful to D r K . Sujatha o f the National Institute o f

Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, for helping me clarify my ideas with valuable information and many insights. 10 Paul Hershman (1981) has argued that in Punjabi culture the ‘biological symbolization of descent’ is markedly absent. He claims never to have encountered the metaphor of conception as ‘the seed sown in the soil’ in the village i n Ludhiana District where he did his fieldwork. This is rather strange, for besides Veena Das (1976) who has reported o n the ideas o f procreation o f the Punjabis,

who were living in Delhi but were migrants from that part of the Punjab which is n o w Pakistan, field evidence from some parts o f the present Punjab also points

towards the use of this metaphor. For example, in Maler-kotla it is in use not only among the Hindu castes of vegetable growers and cultivators but also among the corresponding groups o f Muslim vegetable growers (Rita Brara,

personal communication). 11 Inden and Nicholas (1977:52) have translated garbha as womb and have called garbhotpadana generation in a womb. Garbha actually means embryo or foetus and the term for womb is garbhashaya or container o f garbha. The term

garbhotpadana thus means generation of embryo or foetus. Garbha also conveys the meaning o f ‘ i n t e r i o rof ’ anything. The use o f garbha for womb is not uncommon in everyday language and is also found in literature, but it is necessary to examine the context o f its use in order to ascertain its meaning. Further, the authors’ claim that the theory found i n the Ayurvedic medical

sources regarding the formation of semen and uterine blood is generally held in Bengal (p. 52) needs verification. I am grateful to D r Tiplut Nongbin, Department of Sociology, University of

Delhi, for an extended discussion on some of the subtle aspects of Khasi matrilineal kinship; Tiplut herself is a Khasi. M y paper o n ‘Matrilineal Tribes o f I n d i a ’ (forthcoming) is based o n material from a number o f sources. Burling (1963), Dube (1969 a , b ; 1978), Gough (1952; 1959; 1962 a, b ) , Ittaman (1976), Kutty (1972), and Nakane (1968) are some o f the important sources o f information about the matnlineal groups which are concentrated i n the north-eastern and south-western corners o f the Indian sub-continent. 13 I t is well known that the basic philosophy o f Ayurveda is the preservation o f health and the ensuring o f a long, happy, and useful life to human beings. Its

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purpose thus is not confined to curing illness and afflictions. Susruta Samhita, an authoritative text on Ayurveda, contains a wealth of material relating to

medicine and surgery as developed in ancient India. The other authoritative text is Charaka Samhita. I a m thankful to D r K . D . Sharma, Research Officer, Central Council for Research i n Ayurveda and Siddha, for guiding me to locate the relevant sources

i n the library of the Council and to M r D.K. Jain, Research Assistant in the Council, for his assistance. 14 I acknowledge Professor John Barnes’ help in putting me in touch with Denis McGilvery, w h o kindly made available to m e in draft form his paper ‘Sexual

Power and Fertility in Sri Lanka: Batticaloa Tamils and Moors’ prepared for publication in Carol McCormack, ed., Comparative Studies in Fertility and Childbirth, London: Academic Press. The paper presents information regarding the indigenous understanding of the human reproductive process in a matrilineal Hindu and Muslim region of Sri Lanka. The author’s references to traditional Ayurvedic medicine and the ways of its integration with the cultural beliefs and social organization of the people made me aware of the usefulness of looking at the Ayurvedic system o f medicine i n the context o f the theme o f this paper.

15 This process of transformation is described in both the Susruta Samhita (Sutrasthanam, Chapter 14) and the Charaka Samhita (Chikitsasthanam, Chapter 15). Blood is the first transformation o f the rasa (nutrition) which is then successively converted i n t o one element after another. Thus all the elements i n

the body have their origin in rasa which is created from food and drink. Ayurveda accords great importance to the intake of proper food and drink. 16 The influence of the indigenous system of medicine can be seen clearly in people’s ideas about the weakening effect of frequent sexual intercourse on the male and about the do’s and don’ts to be followed for the maintenance of sexual potency. I t is also visible in the various popular prescriptions for increasing/ restoring virility or making the semen more potent. I n fact, Ayurveda is particularly popular for the treatment of problems relating to the proper functioning of

male sexuality. So also is the Unani system of medicine which is associated with the spread o f Islam i n India. Some o f the objectives o f Ayurvedic treatment relate t o building u p the general health and strength o f the body, purifying the

blood and increasing its volume, improving the quality of the semen, increasing virility and potency, and so on. 17 Chapters 1 and 2 of the Section of Sharirasthanam (embryology and anatomy) in the Susruta Samhita contain details of the processes of impregnation and the coming into being of the embryo. Impregnation is the result of the mixing of man’s sukra (semen) which is derived from blood and woman’s artava which is also derived from blood. Every month the menstrual flow results in the draining of the old artava which is replaced by new artava. ‘Just as a frozen lump of clarified butter melts by contact with the heat of the fire, woman’s newly formed thick artava melts during mating and gets ready t o be mixed with the man’s sukra and thus for the creation of the embryo’ (Chapter 2:39). ‘Verse 35 i n Chapter 2 o f Sharirasthanam contains a direct reference to the

seed and the field while describing the proper conditions for the formation of an

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embryo. I t conveys the following meaning: Just as a proper combination of appropriate season, field, water (i.e. nutrient fluids in the soil and the environment) and seeds results in sprouts, in the same way a proper co-ordination and combination of ritukal (appropriate period during the menstrual cycle of the woman which is ‘from the fourth to the twelveth day, counting from the date of the menstrual flow’, womb, seed, and nutritive fluids from the mother’s body

result in the proper formation of the embryo. It is to be noted that in this verse at least three o f the four factors necessary for the creation o f the embryo have a

reference to the woman’s body (see Ray, Gupta and Roy 1980:10). Different editions o f the Susruta Samhita differ with respect to the exact serial number given to specific verse o r statement (sutra) from the original text. For

giving specific references I have used the following edition: Susruta-Sambhita (with a critical commentary in Hindi by Kaviraj D r Ambikadatta Shastri, Varanasi: Choukhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1966). I n some cases I have

translated the original Sanskrit sources; in others I have adapted existing translations. Interestingly, Jacobson (1977:268-70) mentions ‘another theory of conception’ which is held by a few learned Brahmans in a village in central India. According t o this a child is considered t o be ‘formed o f a mixture o f semen (vir o r bij) and uterine blood (raj). The child’s teeth, hair, and the bones derive from

the semen, and his blood, flesh and skin from the mother’. It is clear that the source of knowledge of these Brahmans was Ayurveda. The Pandits in fact stated that those w h o believed that only the father contributed t o a child’s

substance were ignorant of the facts of biological reproduction. However, as Jacobson reports, most o f the Hindus i n the village believed that ‘ a child is

formed solely of two drops of semen, derived from the father’s blood deposited i n the mother’s womb’. 19 This is based on my own information from parts of Maharashtra and central India. 20 I t may be argued that if notions of the seed and the field govern rights to property they affect only those who possess some property, and that since only a

negligible proportion of people own any property worth the name these ideas do not affect the majority. B u t huts and houses, house sites, trees and plants,

tenancy rights, and command over labour are all relevant here. I n the case of community or village land which is apportioned by elders to individual households, the basis o f membership b y descent is important. Moreover, in a society which accepts the institution of private property, a man does not need to possess any property i n order to consider a woman as property. I n such a system a m a n is authorized to appropriate the gains o f labour o f both, the wife as well as the

children. 21 The significance of this will become clearer if we examine and contrast this with the situation i n the matrilineal communities like the Khasi and the Garo of the north-eastern region and the inhabitants of Lakshadweep Islands in the southwest o f the sub-continent. Among these communities, houses customarily belong t o women; the old houses are expanded o r new houses built generally with

reference to particular women and their children. 22 For a cogent discussion of the exclusion of women from the control of land and o f why women d o not assert their claims to thepatrimonial share they are

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entitled to by the new legislation, see Ursula Sharma (1980). Sharma draws on many studies carried out in north India. 23 It is interesting that the notion o f land being primarily a male form of property is so strongly rooted that the distribution of land to the landless, even under radical programmes of land reforms, by and large ignores women. 24 Similar is the case with pangu, the Tamil word for share. Pangali means co-sharers (in property) and is normally used t o refer t o male patrikin. With the exception of a few groups, Tamil speaking people follow patriliny. However, their conceptions o f blood, its composition i n terms o f male and female elements, and its transmission to the offspring seem to differ substantially from

what obtain in the regions under consideration (see Barnett 1976:133-56; Fruzzetti, Ostor and Barnett 1976: 157-82).

M y own information from Tamilnadu indicates that the mother’s blood is considered to be weaker than the father’s blood. A marriage between crosscousins is justified with the argument that the two d o not share the same blood,

for, even though they are the children of cross-sex siblings, their fathers do not have common blood. 25 T o present a pertinent illustration, the Kamar, a tribe o f hunters, food gatherers, and shifting cultivators studied b y S.C. Dube (1951) lived i n small settlements.

Individual households chose their pieces of land in the forest to clear and cultivate. I n this activity they were guided by the local group and the Baiga or the priest. Women helped in cultivation as wives, daughters, and relatives. They did not cultivate independently. Houses belonged to men. Women could leave one man and marry another, but children belonged t o the father. Ploughing is strictly forbidden to women. Even while accepting that ploughingis not an unusually strenuous task for women, it is argued that i t is the job o f aman,

the seed giver. I n the use of symbols, logical consistency can be expected only upto a point. Thus, where the bar against women to plough is explained with the

analogy of the seed giver and the field, it is only in a few areas in India that sowing is forbidden to women. I t needs to be noted that due to the taboo against ploughing—an esential activity in cultivation—a woman always has t o depend on some man or other for carrying on the process of cultivation. 27 T h e husband’s exclusive right over the wife’s sexuality is unquestioned. The phenomenon of ‘noseless’ women which one comes across in central India is an unmistakable proof of this right, since one of the commonest reactions of an enraged husband to his wife's infidelity is to cut off her nose with a knife and

disgrace her. (The nose is considered a repository of an individual’s shame or honour. A common expression to convey an insult o r disgrace is ‘his nose has been cut off’.) Even if the husband has to undergo some punishment for inflicting

physical injury on his wife, he has the satisfaction of disgracing the woman who violated his sexual right. Fear of cruelty by the husband may often motivate a woman to decide to leave him for good in favour o f the man with whom she might have started only a fleeting affair but happened to be caught red-handed. This occurs among those castes and communities which allow a woman the right

to divorce and remarriage. Among upper castes who traditionally prohibited widow remarriage the right of the husband over his wife's sexuality theoretically extends even after his death. One form of punishment for an unfaithful wife,

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visible mark, is t o stuff chillipowder in her vagina. In the case of unions between men and women from castes of broadly the same status, o r i n cases where the man’s caste status is somewhat higher than the

woman’s, the offspring are admitted into the caste of the father o n the payment o f a fine and expiation o f the offence as decided b y the caste o r community

council. I found this a common practice in the south-eastern part of Madhya Pradesh where three sections of Gonds lived along with a whole contingent of Hindu castes and were rated at par with the agriculturalist, cowherd, and similar castes of the region (Leela Dube 1956). I n northern and central India, in cases of liaison between Rajput men and women belonging to other castes not too low in the caste hierarchy, placement o f children has followed the same

principle of recognizing the father’s seed. The offspring may be considered somewhat lower i n status than those born out o f the unions between Rajput men

and the women of appropriate Rajput clans, but their identity is derived essentially from the father. I n a way hypergamy, which is indicative o f and contributes t o the low status o f

women, receives sanction from the ideology of the seed and the earth. 29 Directness o f women’s contribution, as opposed to the indirectness o f that o f men, i n biological reproduction has to be managed by the patrilineal descent system i n respect o f (1) emphasizing the closeness o f the mother-child tie and at the same time, making i t less important than the father-child tie for

crucial purposes, and (2) the problem of identification of paternity. This is attempted to be managed by the propagation of the ideals of virginity and chastity, and the restrictions that are placed o n the movement o f a woman.

Where female sexuality is difficult to be managed because of the lowly position of the group in an exploitative system (like the caste system) and it is necessary for women o f the group to work outside the home in the midst o f strangers, protection from whom is not easy, often a provision 1s made early for a legitimate ‘seed giver’. Amongst the socio-economically low sections o f the Hindu

society marriage before puberty or just after puberty is very common. 30 T o refer to the Gonds of south-eastern Madhya Pradesh once again. The notion of a man’s ownership of the means of production and the sources of living was firmly rooted amongst them. The house belonged to the husband. M y women

informants were emphatic that they never beat their husbands. ‘How can a woman do that? Would the man keep her i n his house if she beat him?’ was the spontaneous response. I n cultivation the role o f a woman was considered to be secondary and supportive; their contribution was never clearly separated o r measured. Many Gond women were earning cash b y the collection and sale o f

leaves used for rolling country cigarettes. But women’s contribution was always spoken o f as enough only for providing vegetables and salt to the househoid. The staple food came from the land which belonged to the man and on which he

worked with the assistance of the woman. The wages or cash that a woman earned could not be said to belong exclusively to her, for, i t was argued, had she not earned them while living in the man’s house and eating his rice? The refrain which obtained in the formalized lamentations of a woman on her husband’s death clearly brought out the husband’s role as provider: ‘You are gone; who would provide m e with food, clothes and shelter?’

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31 The propositions put forward in this paper need to be examined in a crosscultural perspective. It seems that among the matrilineal groups in India, even those who are rooted in an agricultural economy do not make use of the notions of the seed and the earth to symbolize the process of human reproduction. Nor does the bilateral ethos o f South East Asia admit o f the idea o f underplaying the

mother’s contribution. M y cursory enquiries into the indigenous understanding of human reproduction in the ASEAN countries were focused on finding out whether the metaphor mentioned above was prevalent among the people. I did not find any awareness o f it either i n Thailand o r in the Philippines. There, the bilateral character o f human reproduction, with a fleeting role o f the father and

sustained and more important role of the mother, was emphasized. The Khasis of north-eastern India gave a different interpretation of the metaphor when I specially mentioned it t o them. ‘The father only drops the seed and his roles over. Then begins the active role of the mother. The seed has t o be buried deep into the earth in order t o germinate. I t is the earth which nurtures and nourishes. It is the mother who contributes the blood not the father.” One argument they presented to strengthen the mother’s claim over her children was as

follows: ‘ A child should belong to the mother. Water evaporates and becomes a cloud, but i t again turns into water and comes back to the earth. Thus the child

should belong to the mother.” We have evidence from other matrilineal groups also. While presenting information regarding the indigenous understanding of the human reproductive process among the Batticaloa Tamils and Moors i n Sri

Lanka, Denis McGilveray (see Note 14) reports that in this matrilineal region, out o f a total o f thirty-five informants only one referred to the metaphor o f the

male ‘seed’ implanted in the female ‘field’.

REFERENCES Altekar, A . S., The Position o f Women in Hindu Civilization, D e l h i : Motilal Banarsidass, 1962. Barnett, Steve, ‘Coconuts and G o l d : Relational Identity i n a South Indian Caste’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), 10, 1, 1976, 133-56.

Burling, Robbins, Rengsanggri: Family and Kinship in a Garo Village, Philadelphia: Unjversity of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. Charaka

Samhita,

The

Charaka

Samhita

(with

translations

in

Hindi,

Gujarati and English), Jamnagar: Shree Gulab Kunerba Ayurvedic Society, 1949. Das, Veena, ‘Masks and Faces: A n Essay in Punjabi Kinship’, Contributions t o Indian Sociology (NS), 10, 1, 1976, 1-30.

Department o f Social Welfare, Towards Equality: Report o f the Committee on the Status o f Women in India, New Delhi: Government of India, 1974. Dube, Leela, ‘The Gond Woman’, Unpublished Ph. D . Thesis, Nagpur University,

1956. ‘Diet, Health and Disease in a North Indian Village’, mimeo., Ithaca:

Cornell University India Program, 1957. , Matriliny and Islam: Religion and Society in Laccadives, Delhi: National Publishing House, 1969a. o f Property in a Matrilineal Society’, paper presented at the

» ‘inheritance

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All India Sociological Conference, New Delhi, 1969b. —

,*‘Matrilineal Tribes o f India’, i n Tribal Heritage o f India, ed. S.C. Dube,

Vol. I I , forthcoming. ,.‘Caste Analogues among the Laccadive (Lakshadweep) Muslims’, in Social Stratification among Muslims in India, ed. Imtiaz Ahmad, Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1978. Dube, S.C., The Kamar, Lucknow: The Universal Publishers, 1951. Fruzzetti, L i n a and Akos Ostor, ‘Seed and Earth: A Cultural Analysis o f Kinship in a Bengali Town’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), 10, 1 , 1976,

96-131. _ and Steve Barnett, ‘The Cultural Construction of the Person in Bengal a n d Tamil N a d u ’ , Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), 10, 1 , 1976,

157-82. Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, The Gonds o f Andhra Pradesh, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979. Ghanekar, B . G . , Susruta Samhita: Sharirasthanam, D e l h i : Meherchand

Lachhmandas, 1975. Gough, Kathleen, ‘Changing Kinship Usages in the Setting of Political and Economic Change among the Nayars of Malabar’, Journal o f the Royal Anthropological Institute, 82, 1 , 1952, 71-88. .————>

‘The Nayars and the Definition of Marriage’, Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute, 89, 1, 1959, 23-34. ‘Nayars: Central Kerala’, i n Matrilineal Kinship, eds. D . M . Schneider and Kathleen Gough, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University o f California Press, 1961. Harris, Grace, ‘Furies, Witches and Mothers’, i n The Character of Kinship, ed. Jack —,

Goody, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Hershman, Paul, Punjabi Kinship and Marriage, D e l h i : Hindustan Publishing

Corporation, 1981. Inden, Ronald B. and Ralph Nicholas, Kinship in Bengali Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. I t t a m a n , K . P . , A m i n i Islanders, N e w D e l h i : Abhinav Publications, 1976. Jacobson, Doranne, ‘Flexibility i n Central Indian Kinship’, in The New Wind:

Changing Identities in South Asia, ed. Kenneth David, The Hague: Paris: Mouton, 1977. Joshi, Neela, ‘Cultural Factors i n Health in a Small Town’, Unpublished P h . D .

Thesis, University of Saugar, 1979. K a n e , P . V . , History o f Dharmasastras, Vols 1-5, Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental

Research Institute, 1930-62. Karve, Irawati, Kinship Organization in India, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968. M a d a n , T . N . , ‘The Ideology o f the Householder among the

Kashmiri Pandits’,

Contributions t o Indian Sociology (NS), 15, 1 and 2, 1981, 223-50. Mayer, Adrian, Caste and Kinship in Central India: A Village and its Region, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960. Nakane, Chie, Garo and Khasi: A Comparative Study in Matrilineal Systems, Paris: Mouton, 1968.

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Pandey, Raj Bali, Hindu Samskaras, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1969, 1976.

Ray, P., H . N . Gupta and M . Ray, Susruta Samhita: A Scientific Synopsis, New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1980. Roy, P.C. andH . Haldar, Mahabharata. (translation), Calcutta: Oriental Publishing

Company, n.d. Saraswati, Baidya Nath, Brahmin Ritual Traditions: In the Crucible of Time, Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1977. Schneider, D.M. and Kathleen Gough, ed., Matrilineal Kinship, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961, 1962.

Sharma, R.S., Ancient India, New Delhi: Eurasia Publishing House, 1977. Sharma, Ursula, Women, Work and Property in North-West India, Londen and N e w

York: Tavistock Publications, 1980. Susruta Samhita, (translation and critical commentary in Hindi by Kaviraj Dr. Ambikadatta Shastri), Varanasi: Choukhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1966.

Tambiah, S.J., ‘From Varna t o Caste through Mixed Unions’, in The Character o f Kinship, ed. Jack Goody, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Winternitz, M . , History o f Indian Literature, Calcutta: Calcutta University Press, 1927.

Speech and Silence: Women in Iran ANNY TUAL

I n the West, the evocation of the Persian woman suggests the veil and silence. This image, reductive of reality, is partly due to early stories from travellers and missionaries whose ethnocentric exposi-

tions have been interpreted by their audience through their own ethnocentric grid. I n the past, Persian womefi seen walking in the street were most often o f modest circumstances. They were encountered at a particular moment o f their day, which represented

only a small portion of their total time, primarily spent indoors. Those Western men who had the privilege ot seeing Persian women indoors only succeeded in transmitting either images o f furtive shadows, always silent, o r , for the elite, visions o f motionless beauty, equally silent. I n both cases, we have been given partial

images of the reality. Writings by women who were able to live in the harems, or simply in the company of women, have not yet received their necessary due as reliable sources, and consequently

their diffusion has been very limited. The information used i n this paper was gathered among urban and rural (not nomadic) women during five years’ residence in Iran (1967-9, 1972-4), and later a three-month visit (1977). It does not

therefore take into account changes that have occurred since the fall of the Shah, some of which have reinforced traditional practices. The ‘ethnographic present’ i n which this is written is thus the 1960s and 1970s. The information is the result o f many hours o f observation o f intersexual communication during different types o f fieldwork, sometimes alone with m y informants, sometimes ac-

companied by Iranian friends. I n order to present a new image o f the Iranian woman, it is first necessary to exorcise the old one.2 Not all Iranian women are veiled. When the veil is still used, it is principally worn out o f doors. I t is therefore linked to public space, which, as noted, only repre-

Speech and Silence: Women in [ran

55

sents a portion of the total space used by the woman, and which is occupied for only a limited duration of her time (these two elements still have to be evaluated in the various social and economic contexts). The veil is also, above all, worn principally b y urban women

(see Tual 1971). T o make plain an Iranian woman’s life requires more than simple visual observation; i t is indispensable to know how the woman herself sees her own situation. This implies knowledge, not only o f language as an instrument o f communication, but also o f all the message-systems which the woman has at her disposal for expressing herself as a ‘woman’. Language and its uses must, for example,

be considered i n relation to another very important system of communication: the non-verbal. I t is only with adequate knowledge

of these two systems, the verbal and the non-verbal, plus the possibility o f following their interplay, that we can hope to understand, and eventually to evaluate, the interaction which takes place between people. The study o f the linkages which these two systems maintain with other cultural domains (such as the social, religious, economic, and aesthetic) will give us a better appreciation o f reali t y ; much o f this work remains to be done. I n a previous article (Tual 1976), I explained why the men o f the villages o f the region o f Tehran still say that ‘the their women d o not speak’. This saying indicates to us the difficulties that the men actually face if they wish to abandon the masculine and feminine patterns o f the past. These difficulties are, of course, o f equal importance for t h e w o m e n , w h o have t o take t h e m into account i n

their life with men; they cannot ignore them when composing the image that they are called upon to make o f themselves.

This paper is the beginning of an investigation into the cultural modalities concerning the ‘conditions o f use’ o f speech and silence for the women o f Iran,3 and how these modalities intervene in the

life of women. I n the last part of this paper, I analyse some traits of the language used by women to express themselves. Speech and its uses

I n Iranian culture, the uses o f speech and o f silence are codified in the same way as those rules which refer to the body, and, for example, to clothing, eating, and sexuality. I n Islam, the worldorder rests o n a clear distinction between masculine and feminine; the opposition between the sexes engenders clarity. This very

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ANNY T U A L

strong sexual dichotomy gives to relationships, verbal and others, a character which is either ‘licit’ or ‘illicit’. For all individuals living i n this society, male or female, the act o f

speech (sohbat kardan, harf zadan) has great importance in face-toface (ru-be-ru) relations. I t develops like non-overt confrontation,

where each one, in order to save face (ab-Mira hefzkardan), must know h o w to conduct himself with politeness (adab) and respect for custom (rossum). Direct attack against anyone is not viewed well;

he who openly criticizes another in public does not attract sympathy; a simple, well-placed allusion has much greater effect. N o one should show insolence, nor be without modesty (bi-hayad). N o one should speak o f others badly ( ‘ i t is necessary to cut the head

off without spilling blood on it’). Although honesty is required in the intimacy o f a relationship with sincere friends o f the same sex (in

theory, this type of communication is not possible between man and woman), i t is not always necessary to tell all the truth. ‘Speech being the only arm that can overcome’, i t is necessary to wield it with prudence and dexterity. ‘Speak with intelligence, o h wise man, o r keep silent’; o r again, ‘keep your mouth closed until one asks you to speak; handle the axe delicately, if you do not want to smash the

pearl.’* One should not speak too sharply (xosk)—except sometimes with someone who is of inferior status to your own. Sweet language (sirin) is recommended, except when a man addresses a

woman—when he should use a firmer and harder tone (tondi) By respecting and using all these principles with dexterity, a person maintains himself more easily within the limits of savoir-vivre, savoir-faire, savoir-dire. Economy o f speech is regarded by all as prudent. Both merits and defects remain hidden so long as a person does not speak. I t is wise t o ‘speak little (even) if you know a lot’, because you cannot express

what you believe to be the truth until the moment when the person confronting you permits i t , because o f the respect which he o r she imposes upon you. I n most situations a woman will speak less than her husband because it is not ‘good manners’ for her to express herself a lot in front of him. She will, however, be able to reply to his verbal attacks—as long as the words she uses are not received as reproaches b y h i m ; I was told that he will be able to beat her without her being able to protest. She should also keep her pleasure silent without, however, letting i t be ignored when so required; she

should let her displeasure pass away silently, and she should not

Speech and Silence: Women in Iran

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demand clarification o f anything she does not understand well. She

will thus have, in male presence, few verbal possibilities t o elaborate on the salient points of her thought (and will lack practice in self-expression as a consequence). When a woman speaks too much, in a context where relations are asymmetric (principally, but not only,i n front of men), s h eis considered to be insolent (por-ru), for

she has failed to acknowledge, by her attitude, that the status of those who are in her presence requires of her more discreet behaviour. She should not yell at, nor strongly reprimand a child. Actually, in the presence of superiors or strangers the intonation of the voice should be constantly monitored; a woman must speak in a low voice, sufficiently monotone so as not to provoke. For both men and women, self-control is required of all those w h o are sub-dominant i n a n asymmetrical relationship; a n d also i n

the presence o f those to whom respect is due, such as a guest or a stranger. While this paper concentrates o n women’s behaviour before men, to whom they normally defer, i t should be remembered that many women spend relatively little time in male company or

with strangers. In all-male company certain questions can easily be asked (concerning salary, rent, price of a garment, for example), but one man cannot ask another for news o f his wife. Between women, an enquiry about a husband is not an indiscretion, however, because the evocation o f the husband does not imply sexuality

in the same way as the wife does for the man.> A woman should never speak o f the defects o f her husband, for instance i f he drinks

or if he beats her; the keeping of this kind of secret (rdz) is a question of discretion (rdzdiri). Between themselves men even keep silent about the difficulties and the illnesses o f children, inc-

luding those of young boys but especially those of young girls, while the women can speak freely among themselves about these subjects. Further, all verbal interaction is linked to the context in which it takes place, and this context is spatially limited and socially and sexually invested. Thus the usages o f speech for the woman are determined primarily according to the place where she finds herself (whether i n public o r i n private, o r whether in the presence or in the

absence of man). I n the traditions of the past, she should no more speak o r address a man in public than she should go out without a veil. I n fact, we are not far removed from the time when a woman

with a certain higher degree of status did not travel the street,

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except in some kind of litter carried by horses or mules. I n addition, she was escorted by servants who obliged the men on the path to turn their faces towards the wall, i n order to permit the woman to see without being seen (thus retaining the principle o f the veil). Even today, many men encountered in the street lower their eyes when they are i n front o f a woman. Sometimes i n public

offices, very orthodox men avoid looking directly at the woman who comes to buy stamps or to leave a file, even if they are obliged to listen to what she is saying. I n this way the male senses of vision and o f hearing are not disturbed o r distracted. Thus, the meeting o f the sexes can take place through gaze. I n Islam, the gaze is the object o f

strict religious rules. I t is the same for speaking or keeping silent. As Boudina notes: the frontier between the sexes can be crossed, even i f the visual function is limited or regulated, by the audition of speech, song or even the simple noise of a step or of the hips . . .” The Muslim woman’s voice is awra (a weak point), not only because the sweet phrases which come out of her mouth must be reserved for her unique spouse and master, but because the voice can cause trouble and engage the cycle o f zina (‘adultery’). When one knocks o n the door o f a house and there is neither a man, nor a boy, nor a

very young girl to reply ‘Who is there?’, no woman should ever speak: she must limit herself to clapping her hands (1975:53).

The distinction which attributes space according t o gender (the exterior, biruni, to men and the interior, anderuni, to women), continues to mark the mentality and the instinctive reactions o f

individuals. The force of this attribution of space corresponds t o the difference which exists between the Sufic concepts of ‘appearance’ (zdher) and of ‘interior’ (bdtén). When a woman is in the street o r i n a public place, she is, i n a sense, ‘tolerated’ there, o n condition that she respects the rules that her status enjoins her to follow. Her behaviour (with regard to the dress that she wears, her way o f walking, and her silence) should be such that she should pass unnoticed. Y e t , n o matter what h e r

behaviour is, she is i n a weak strategic position, at the mercy o f the provocation that she risks exerting o n the man (by the mere fact o f being a woman and hence a possible sexual object). M a n is not held responsible, it is the woman who provokes by the attraction that she incites. I t is i n this framework, that one must place the cases o f verbal aggression o r teasing (matalak), o r the physical aggression i n the form o f pinching, that women sometimes endure i n the streets

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Speech and Silence: Women in Iran

o r o n the bus.® N o matter what, the woman cannot protest at that moment, she can only counter with her silence: even in the case o f unwilling sexual intercourse, whether it be illegal rape or legal under cover o f marriage. I t is i n the light o f these norms, which closely l i n k the body and t h e speech o f the w o m a n , that o n e ap-

preciates the strength and courage o f women at the time o f un-

veiling,” which required them to go out bare faced before the public. One can understand, also, why stones were once thrown at the first Baha’i women, who, since the nineteenth century, have not only presented themselves without the veil but also dared to preach

their faith in public. The metaphors which the classical poets used to designate the mouth and lips o f the beloved also indicate the attraction that the voice and speech o f women can exert o n the sensibility and the sexuality o f man. The interplay o f this with the valuation o f man’s speech i n his relations with other males, and i n his superiority over women, has a precise result: one passes from a theoretically high valuation o f the feminine voice (potentially rich in pleasure) to a

devaluation of her speech at the level of reality. For man, this creates a very particular, preparatory, attentiveness for listening, which remains one ot the most important factors in preventing a woman from expressing herself i n front o f him. |

This restriction of speech has often been interpreted as an indication o f the absence o f feminine power at the decision-making level.

I t is said that it is with urbanization that the women have been more and more enclosed and veiled, and their voice more and more muffled. Research done with nomadic women shows that not only d o they lose many o f their former rights to speech i n the process o f sedentarization, but also a large part o f the power of decision which

they enjoyed in the past (Boulding 1977). Restrictions o n the use o f speech exist for both sexes, but it is in her relation with man that the woman sees her right to speech most

often limited, and that most of the time she must ‘observe silence’. These restrictions are added o n to those which concern the exposure o f her body, which she must veil (hejab), and the manifestation of her sexuality, about which she must keep silent and which can only be liberated b y the man. Conversation was one o f the pleasures and one o f the important activities o f harem women. For other women the public bath was a main meeting place, where there was time to converse. There has

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always existed in the feminine world, not only a complete network o f daily activities where relations among women are not constrained b y the presence o f men, but also a series o f meetings where women express themselves in speech in accordance with their personalities: ritual meals related to a vow to a saint (nazr), prayer meetings commemorating events o f Kerbala (rozeh), meetings between close friends (dowreh), and religious plays (e.g. moludi). These occasions have, without doubt, been an effective outlet when women have

had to bear stricter confinement, as well as the presence of co-wives (havu). Since the beginning of the century, the number of feminine associations has been increasing in the towns, but this is mainly an elite phenomenon. For the majority of women, the pilgrimages to holy places, or the visits to the tombs of the Saints (for instance the

tomb of Fatemah at Qom for the women of the region of Tehran)8 are where they can expect to find the best opportunities for listening

and being heard. This freeing of speech among women makes a real therapeutic experience possible. Silence

I n Iran, silence is valued and strongly recommended. ‘Keep quiet o r say something which is better than silence’, says a literary proverb

didactically, or, in a more popular form: ‘rather silence than empty words’. The dialectic of speech and silence completes itself by the fact that o n the one hand ‘silence [literally the language of silence] is more eloquent than the union o f a hundred tongues’ and o n the

other hand, ‘silence is a sign of consent’. 1 ? A s a general rule, just as the veil permits the concealment o f the female body from the gaze o f men, a woman’s silence will prevent her voice from troubling the man who listens to her. Therefore

keeping silent becomes an element of proper behaviour (hejdb). A ‘virtuous’ woman (najib) does not speak, or i n other terms, she does not speak unless it is truly necessary and always in such a way that

her words are not.a means of attraction.!! Her voice, imagined behind her silence (as her body is recreated under the veil) allows

the man to dream instead of being struck by reality. The obligation o f maintaining silence is explained b y the men as a way o f avoiding a situation where the woman is duty-bound to reply. The ambiguity in Persian o f the word ‘reply’ (javdb) comes from the fact that one o f its meanings translates the refusal o f an ‘offer—for instance, o f a marriage. Refusal is always difficult/ to

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express for an Iranian; sometimes it is even impossible, and one finds substitutes, equally indicative, like silence. In theory, a wom a n always finds herself with a status inferior to that of the m a n i n front o f her. However,her degree o f silence varies according to the

effect that her speech might have on him. Thus an infinity of ways of conforming t o the rules exists, i n order that a reaction may b e adapted t o the circumstances and to the elements appropriate to the situation; these obtain as long as their relationship does not deteriorate—because silence, like speech, is bound to the aesthetic code. Marriage practices enable us to give some indication o f these

differences. I n former times the bride had to remain silent o n the subject o f her marriage; her consent was not necessary because she parti-

cipated primarily in a union of families. 1 2 The preparations were the responsibility o f the family, in which the role of older women was very important. I n many cases the young girl knew about her marriage, and could even see her fiance with the help o f one o r more women, but she could not disclose anything about i t . She received a gift so that the ance could see her face, but she had to remain absolutely silent during this time, i n order to prove her chastity. Even i f this custom has practically disappeared today, one can still find its traces, as was revealed in research with students o f the University o f Tehran (Kotobi 1977: 109-24). The male students

who were questioned admitted that after having addressed a girl in the street, they thought that she must have been chaste because she did not respond to their words. Today, engaged couples can speak to each other more freely and the engagement can last several years. I n another research among the nurses o f Tehran (Behnam Moradi 1976), the author found that 80 per cent of the young girls felt that it ‘was indispensable that the couple knew each other prior to marriage,

precisely to avoid the lack of communication which characterized marriages in the past; while 15 per cent felt that the time spent in

becoming acquainted with each other was not necessary, because if the marriage was not celebrated the girl’s status would be damaged, ‘and even if the marriage was celebrated the man could change his mind afterwards. This latter response was given by young girls who

did not go with boys. Even today, at the “ime o f the marriage, it is considered good for a woman not to reply to the first two questions, put i n the presence o f a mullah, asking if she consents to b e married to this man, and

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only to accept the proposal at the third invitation—with a voice which! is scarcely audible. I n the past, during the wedding night, the young

bride said nothing apropos of her virginity; a female member of the family was charged with proving to everyone that it was the groom who

had broken the young woman’s hymen by presenting a linen spottedby blood. The custom is now disappearing; either i t is purely and

simply abandoned, or it continues, as formerly, whenever the wom a n i n charge o f this mission is i n connivance with the young bride, the couple, o r the family, to safeguard their honour. I n towns, and

especially in Tehran, the ideas and attitudes of the would-be husbands oblige certain young women to acquire artificial hymens; i t is talked about, b u t with reluctance, i n a way which underlines its ridiculous aspect but also leaves i t understood that the subject remains more important and more sensitive than the planning o f the

birth of a child. Serious, also, is the silence surrounding the sequels of the trauma o f the first night o f marriage for young girls who have simply ‘lost their tongues’, and who have sometimes fallen into a state of prostration which has lasted from several days to several months. I n principle, the young bride cannot refuse her husband and, some say, must remain silent during the sexual act. I n the past, the woman h a d t o remain silent when repudiated for being sterile, because doubt c o u l d never b e raised as t o the fertility o f the male. She had n o voice against her husband’s taking a second wife. I n 1967, the L a w for the Protection o f the Family started t o remedythese injustices. This required the man to obtain the agreement o f his first wife i n order t o contract a second marriage; further, the woman could demand a divorce. However, i n everyday l i f e , the use o f speech has been, without doubt, more effective than silence as much for the m a n as for the woman; the latter has often even gone to the extent o f threatening to put, o r actually, putting, in doubt the virility o f her husband, in public. A proverb o n this subject says: ‘ I f a woman rises from the bed o f her husband dis-

satisfied, quarrels and discord will arise up with heri n that house’. 1 3 I n Persian, the expression o f pleasurei s linked to that o f speech. I n theory, for the woman, admitting to pleasure is as impossible as is its manifestation. I n loving, she can and should participate without saying anything; she gains her position b y respecting the obligation

of keeping silent. A t meals, she should not show her appetite (even to flatter the lady o f the house during an invitation). She must let

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herself be coaxed several times before serving herself sparingly. Composed behaviour is required of both sexes when eating. This

silence can have special related consequences for women, however. Thus i n Baluchistan, as in many other cultures, the woman cannot show her hunger and she must wait until the men have finished their meal before she may eat the leftovers. The importance o f status in the use o f speech

These interdictions imposed o n woman i n certain circumstances are expressions o f inequality o f power, linked to a given status, i n that the theoretical status o f the woman is inferior to that of the man. This is emphasized at the moment o f the marriage: the almost inaudible character o f the voice o f the bride marks her position with reference t o h e r h u s b a n d ; h e r acceptance m u s t b e h e a r d , but, it is

the word o f the man that really consummates the act and i t is he who

takes her as wife. The function and the role o f certain women permit them to enjoy special access to speech. Previously, the (female) mashateh, whose prime function was to be a hairdresser, circulated freely from house t o house; she served also as an intermediary i n the preliminary

marriage arrangements. 1 * The female singer could also use words in the exercise of her art. Age is an important factor in determining the status in respect of one’s access to speech. A very small girl can express herself as she wishes with her father. I n families which practise veiling of women, as soon as a young girl reaches the age of puberty, she learns to manipulate her veil (which she will have been already wearing for some time). I n particular, when she speaks, she learns to place one of her hands covered b y a segment o f the veil i n front of her mouth, while ‘measuring her words’. I f the little girl does not wear a veil, when s o m e o n e addresses h e r she often t u r n s h e r h e a d , b l u s h i n g w i t h o u t

replying; then the mother explains with some pride that her daughter is timid (kam ru) o r that she is embarrassed (xejalat mikese). The most rigid restrictions bearing o n the usage of speech cover the life span beginning from puberty to the onset of the menopause. Once freed from the tasks o f procreation, the mature woman remains in the family and very often enjoys a privileged status permitting her to express herself more freely. Nevertheless, as long as she is not old enough to b e recognized as having the right to speech, and is still close to the image o f the woman who has to be respectfully silent, expression of

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opinion o n her part would earn for her a reputation of being

aggressive. F o r a l i m i t e d t i m e a n d under certain circumstances, a n educated

woman (such as a doctor, nurse, woman ethnologist, o r nutritionist) who speaks with men may be considered ‘as a man’; men then accord her greater access to speech.” I n a world where the status o f an individual is determined more and more by her professional and economic status, the level of education becomes very important to women i n gaining access to speech. Professional training, knowledge of the reality of the external world, and being able to practise the use of men’s language, now allow young women to enter into verbal discussions on certain subjects even i n front o f men. I n responsible positions, the highest compliment addressed to a woman is that she ‘thinks like a man’, though one seldom hears that she ‘speaks like a man’. I n Tehran, then, when a woman is engaged in work which is well accepted i n the eyes o f the society i n which she lives, she certainly gains a new status which permits her to express herself more freely. B u t the competition i n the work-market is such that, i n

certain social and professional centres the attitude of women provides men with their superficial pessimism (badbini),'® their criticisms, and their dissatisfactions with the evolution o f the relations b e t w e e n m e n and w o m e n . A t the level o f verbal expression, women

are accused o f evil self-liberation and thus become conversational scapegoats. The speech o f the woman is i n danger of being linked to her body as a sexual object, and her freedom o f expression interpreted as sexual liberty. Listening to women

When the veil is not there to hide the body o f the woman, the man reacts internally, according to what he sees; his external behaviour w i l l indicate what he feels, or what he wishes to have one believe that he feels. When the woman speaks, the man must also manifest a certain way of listening, not only i n front o f the woman, but also when there is a third person. Among men, direct verbal attack against someone is not viewed well, but the normal verbal relationship between the sexes (in the sense male — female) should show itself to be aggressive (motejJavez). Really, to avoid all ambiguity, the man must speak to the woman in a manner sufficiently harsh (tondi). The most com-

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m o n cliche to explain the attitude of the man is the following: ‘it is always the husband who commands (hamise dastur mide); he speaks w i t h a firm voice (tondi)’. Faced with the belief i n the constant possibility o f female infidelity (and the thought o f the suffering that this could bring about), firmness must give way to harshness, and

this verbal violence, if required, could become more brutal, even physical (xosunat). On the other hand, intimacy can permit the man to express his tender feelings, his affection, and his love. I n verbal relation with another, an Iranian has the possibility o f manipulating (for pleasure or strategically) the nuances of conventional compliments (faa rof). A man will not, however, choose to do this w i t h his true friends. This practice provides men o r women with a very refined game i n which the protagonists, i n a subtle verbal give and take, play upon the relativity o f their reciprocal social statuses. Like humour, however, faa’rof is difficult between the sexes. Interaction with a person whose status is inferior by the sole fact o f her sex is a problem. Not all men can overcome it, or are able to truly listen to the words o f a woman. The taa’rof that a woman expresses is different from that o f men: the language o f woman risks being poorly received and badly understood, because o f the uneasiness that i t engenders. A s i n all human interaction, the person who finds himself o r herself i n the position o f a listener o f a verbal message should not only be capable o f listening but should

also be willing to listen. The m a n does not prevent the woman from speaking: he merely

makes her remember (at best) the limits of her rights to speech. His interpretation of the linguistic rights of the woman, which he expresses by his attitude, are a function of his ideas about women in general. Conscious or not, he transmits the essentials o f it to his interlocutor. Many women cannot speak to a man when they are without a veil. Very young girls and elderly women d o not feel the same inhibition. Like young girls everywhere, a young Iranian girl learns to read, from the man’s facial expressions, the cues as to whether she must laugh or smile, speak or be silent. Then b y

practice and observation she learns the use of her veil, and the mobility of her face and eyes (esareh), in order to refine her charms. The skilful qualities of a young girl are often praised by pointing out that she knows well how to speak to her father and obtain what she

desires. Very often, in the course of a conversation during which a woman

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speaks, a m a n interrupts; for example, he repeats what she has said i n other terms. (This practice is widespread i n the West also, see Spender 1980.) Not only is she often interrupted but she cannot use t h e same t i m e t o assemble h e r words o r h e r thoughts, since she must listen a t t e n t i v e l y . Listening, l i k e the sexual a c t , i s n o t part o f a n

equal exchange, but is regulated by the relationship superior/inferior, which requires the obedience o f the inferior for the pleasure o f the superior. Under these conditions, i t is easy to feel that i t is preferable for a woman to pay attention to a man and to keep quiet. T o want to continue to transmit her thoughts (if she has not already lost them!) requires her to overcome this situation after every

interruption. I n a verbal interaction between a man and a woman in which the latter does not listen adequately, i t is m y impression that one often notes the existence o f an underlying misogyny i n the man’s reaction. Even when courteous, the inhibiting power of the man’s gaze, the rapidity o f the interruption, and the tone o f the intervention, are effective dissuasive weapons used by m e n . ’ I n order to speak, women possess at least two languages: firstly the official, that which they need to speak with, and i n the presence

of men, and secondly that which is practised among women. ' ® Today i n cities, one also sees and hears women expressing themselves with ease I n a foreign language, even i n the presence of men, i n front o f whom they would not risk speaking so freely i n Persian—as i f this other language does not bind them i n the same way in the social

structure. When m e n go out o f a r o o m and leave veiled women alone among themselves, i t appears as i f a wave passes through the assembly. The body which is suddenly free from censure spreads out and becomes animated, the veil opens and loosens, the mouth appears, the head moves and straightens u p and speech is liberated. I f offered an attentive ear, the speaker immediately realizes that she is regarded as a person endowed with knowledge o f the life that she leads. She perceives an aspect o f herself as having a certain importance and is automatically stimulated b y i t . I contend that, i n an exchange, where what is ‘spoken’ is a function o f that which is ‘listened to’, a woman speaks o f how she sees beings and things, as i n earlier times when women ‘shared the g r a i n s ’ , i.e. gossiped at the bath-house, o r around the table where people warmed themselves (korsi). I n privacy, among her female k i n and friends, the woman brings to the surface and speaks o f feelings which come from immediate

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contact with the world which surrounds her. H e r speech and gaze, which have been censured before men, are unveiled, and the sexu-

ality which has been absent from her speech begins t o flower. Words are liberated and the discourse goes on while carrying out traditional activities such as cooking, weaving, and child care. The veil is an instrument o f distancing which separates the sexes from each other and protects man’s vision; the woman’s silence tulfils the same objective for man’s hearing. These gags (put i n the mouth o f the woman and the figurative gag placed o n the body) are physical and social constraints which maintain the already es-

tablished power of man over woman, under cover of relationships o f protection, seduction, and provocation. I n the emancipation o f women, the difference between the usages o f speech by man and by woman is a practical as well as a theoretical

problem related to access to speech resources. I n a heavily structured society, where i t is thought that the sexes

should be clearly differentiated and where individuals seem riveted in a rather rigid hierarchy, i t can appear ‘normal’ that access to speech—which is capable o f changing the world i n a few seconds—be considered and maintained as a privilege. B u t this culture untiringly encourages the individual to raise himself u p above his materialism through beauty. Notwithstanding the obligations due to respect for an order which maintains relations between the sexes o n the social chess-board, i t may therefore become possible for every person to

gain the right to speech at all times, from the moment when he or she first uses the art o f speaking. When virility and femininity can be demystified, there may be hope that women and men, may for the better ‘speak to each other’. NOTES

1

I a m particularly appreciative o f m y Iranian colleagues o f the Ministry o f Culture and Arts whose efforts permitted me to enjoy very favourable conditions for participant observation and good ‘listening’: Rosanak Moshir and

Shahla Masuminejad, A l i Akbar Hamidi and D r Asghar Askari Khanegah. I wish t o express m y special thanks t o D r M a h m o u d Khalighi, Director o f the

Centre o f Anthropology of the Ministry of Culture and Arts, for his constant comprehension and support for m y research. Jane Khatib-Chahidi and Soraya Tremayne k i n d l y gave some linguistic and other advice. I am very grateful to all m y informants and friends, men and women, who helped me, at different moments and i n various way, for the richness o f what they have made known to

me.

ANNY TUAL See R . Bastide, L a femme de couleur en Amerique Latine, M o u t o n : 1974. See W . Beeman, ‘The Meaning o f Stylistic Variation i n Iranian Verbal Interact i o n ’ , P h . D . Thesis, University o f Chicago, 1976, p . 398. Q u o t e d from H . Rezvanian, 1976: 140.

See Tual (1976: 122) for the concept of namus. See A . Tual, ‘Condition feminine et agression verbale en Iran’, Communication presented au 30 eme Congress International des Sciences Humaines en Asie et en Afrique d u N o r d , Mexico: Aout, 1976. See H . Masse, ‘ L e devoilement des Iraniennes’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques,

1938. See M . Bazin, ‘ E n Islam shiite, le pelerinage de G h o m ’ , i n Iran, Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, collection les Sept Climats, 1972: 37-41. This has been brought out very effectively b y F . Mernissi, 1977. 10 Rezvanian, 1976:171. 11 Compare the avoidance o f attention b y linguistic taboos for Mongolian women, as described by Caroline Humphrey, ‘Women, Taboo and the Suppression o f A t t e n t i o n ’ , i n Defining Females, ed. S. Ardener, 1978, and recommendation t o

be silent to Greek Women explained by R. Hirschon, ‘Open Body/Closed Space’, ibid. See P. Vieille and K o t o b i , ‘Familles et unions de familles en Iran’, Cahiers

Internationaux de sociologie (Oct.) 1966: 93-104. D . Behnam, ‘Familles nucleaires et groupements de parente en I r a n ’ , Diogene, 75, 1971.

13 Rezvanian, 1976:32. 14 Jacqueline Touba, ‘Marriage and the Family in Iran’, University of Tehran: College of Social Sciences and Co-operatives, Institute for Social Studies and Research, 1972. Badr o l M o l u k Bamdad, From Darkness into Light: Women’s Emancipation in Iran, edited and translated b y F . R . C . Bagley, Hicksville, N e w Y o r k : Exposition Press, 1977. 15 See Tual, 1976. 16 M . C . Bateson, J . W . Clinton, J . B . M . Kassarjian, H . Safavi, and M . Soraya,

‘Safa-Yi Batin: a Study of the Interrelations of a Set of Iranian Ideal Character Types’, in Psychology and Middle Eastern Studies, eds. L . Carl Brown and Norman Itzkowits, Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming. For a review o f the literature i n other cultures, including America and England, see D . Spender, M a n Made Language, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1980. For a discussion o f alternative (‘muted’) systems to the dominant mode o f discourse, see S. Ardener, 1975, 1978. I n Farsi toxmeh sekastan means literally ‘break the seeds’ (i.e. ‘eat them’ but the

implication is ‘to gossip’).

REFERENCES Ardener, Shirley, ed. Perceiving Women, London: D e n t , 1975. — Defining Females, London: Croom H e l m , 1978. Bastide, R . , L a femme de coulour en Amerique Latine, The Hague/Paris: Mouton,

1974.

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69

Bazin, M . , ‘ E n Islam shiite, le perlerinage de Ghom’, in Iran, Publications Orientalistes de France, collection les Sept. Climats, 1972.

Behnam Moradi, Shahrbanou, ‘Comparisons between the Attitudes and Behaviour o f Nurses Towards Mate Selection and Marriage: Study inTwo Hospitals i n Tehran’, P h . D . Thesis, University o f Tehran, 1976-7. Boudiha, Addewahab, L a sexualite en Islam, .Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975. Boulding, E . , ‘Nomadisme, mobilite e t statut des femmes’, in Femmes, Sexisme et societes, Paris: PUF, 1977.

Kotobi, M . , ‘Le marriage che les etudients en Iran’, in Etre parent aujourd hui, Toulouse: Private, 1977. Menmissi, F . , ‘Women, Saints and Sanctuaries’, Signs, 3 , 1,1977, 101-12. Rezvanian, H . , Grains d’humour et de sagesse persane, Paris: G . P . Maisonneuve et Larosa, 1976. Tual, Anny, ‘Variations et usages due voile dans deux villes d ’ Iran’, Objets et Mondes, X I , 1 , 1971, 95-116. ‘Le statut feminin et I'usage de la parole, Experiences de terrain d’une ethnologue e n I r a n ’ , Studia Iranica, V , 1, 1976.

The Childbirth Industry: A Woman’s View M A R G A R E T STEPHENS

This paper addresses an issue o f considerable concern to western science: the management o f childbirth.! The thesis o f this paper is that the current management o f childbirth is inadequate. I t is inade-

(i) it falls entirely within medical jurisdiction, a quate because practice controlled by a professional clique o f western male doctors, and as a consequence(ii) deals almost solely with the physical aspects o f child delivery. Although some have already spoken about this inadequacy (for instance Kitzinger 1962) the current situation remains deplorable.? This paper discusses some of the subjective o r psychological considerations which have often been understood

in some societies, but have been largely ignored in western medical practice.

The nearly exclusive concern with the physical aspects of child delivery (Macfarlane 1977) has resulted in two oversights. The first oversight relates to the mother, who is the subject o f the delivery process. The lack o f attention which she receives i n childbirth

preparation and delivery has led t o a t r a u m a unique t o mothers treated i n western medical practice. She undergoes a mechanical experience that serves to obliterate an event crucial to her personal fulfilment as a female being. The second oversight concerns the role o f the midwife i n assisting the delivery. Her situation, i t is argued, is different from that o f the obstetrician. She is, most commonly, female and a suitably compatible guide. H e r interest is less likely to exclude the mother and the child, but rather encompasses the complete birth experience o f both. Her function during this sensitive and personal happening is not so much o f the mechanical sort, b u t is humanistic—she mediates the link between the mother and the child. I n the west, however, her service is valued only minimally. I n this paper I focus o n these two issues, as well as a third, of

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r e l a t e d i n t e r e s t . T h e first, described a b o v e , concerns t h e difference

between a midwife and an obstetrician. The former is trained to a varying degree to guide the experiences o f those women preparing for and giving b i r t h ; the latter is generally out o f touch with this pro-

cess. The second issue concerns the feelings held by expectant mothers about pregnancy and delivery.?® The third issue concerns

the implications of a ‘scientific’, illness-oriented, approach to childb i r t h for contemporary western society. Physical deliverance andpsychological disaster

What then is the difference between an obstetrician and a midwife? I n what way does the intervention o f the former i n child delivery divorce the mother from the childbirth experience, and how does the intervention o f the latter permit such a union to occur? There are two positions from which to view these questions. (1) O n the one hand a considerable body o f literature could be used to support the argument that the difference between an obstetrician and a midwife is so slight that i t requires n o further consideration. I t could be argued that both play the role o f a delivery specialist, with one minor difference being the fact that obstetricians hold medical degrees, and another that the majority o f the latter are, unlike midwives, male. The profession is characteristically male, even though some obstetricians are i n fact female, while midwifery is

female, even though there are some male midwives. I t could even be argued that w i t h professionally recognized skills and degrees, obstetricians help i n the childbirth event more capably than do midwives. (2) However, an alternative view would be that the differences mentioned i n the first case are of far from minor importance, and that the second argument could not be further from the truth. The recent history o f childbirth, i n the so-called ‘developed world’, shows us that during both the latter part o f the nineteenth century and the first half o f the twentieth century, midwives cared for mothers and delivered children at least as safely as the average physician or obstetrician (Devitt 1979, Kobrin 1966, Stephens and Stephens 1978). That history will not be dealt with here. The point t o note is that, i n any case, safe physical care is only one issue: attending t o the mother i n a childbirth experience is another.

CL

The special contribution o f the midwife is, I propose, the w . y she

deals with the mother, and with the mother/child relationship,

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before, during, and after childbirth. The birth experience can be transpersonal in nature; by this I mean that it is an experience which transcends the limitations o f normal bodily awareness. B y way of special midwife training and the use of ritual techniques, the encounter between midwife and mother can enrich the latter’s experience. Aided b y the midwife, the mother’s expanded purview of consciousness enables her to experience the birth process i n a

holistic way. By mediating between mother and child during childb i r t h , the midwives’ role, ideally, develops beyond the technical to the transpersonal. They are groomed for the role o f mediating i n the experience between mother/event/child. Such a role is i n no way performed b y present-day obstetricians, nor was i t observed to have been performed b y those of the past. The case stated most simply is that obstetricians have, to date, misunderstood and badly handled the birth event. They have not dealt with the event i n its wholeness, b u t have instead focused o n one part o f i t (physical delivery) to the exclusion o f the remaining parts (such as the emotional experience)

and the totality. While Leboyer (1975) may be given credit for acknowledging the detached and violent manner i n which delivery i n western hospitals is experienced, he otherwise retains an orientation identical to that traditional to his profession. Leboyer is not exceptional when i t comes to dealing with the childbirth event vis-a-vis t h e experience o f t h e mother; h e e i t h e r ignores i t , o r worse,

does not even recognize it. M y argument, however, is not an exoneration o f midwifery; far from i t . Many midwives neither possess nor practise those perspectives advocated here. Their abilities are unequal and cover a broad range

(Brennan and Heilman 1977, Dougherty 1978, Mead and Newton 1967). T o emphasize m y thesis i n this paper, I shall polarize the

differences between midwife and obstetrician by taking as my model o f an ideal midwife, not a western example, but the Mayan midwife as described b y Paul (1974). I t is possible, with this example, to illustrate m y thesis that some midwives clearly fall properly i n the zone o f what can be labelled ‘transpersonal specialists’. The Mayan example, moreover, is used to identify a specific credential o f all (female) midwives: that their ability has greater potential, which is partly a female attribute, which makes them more suitable handlers o f the birthing experience than professionally trained men (or women trained i n their ethos). B u t there is another, perhaps more subtle, issue here: that whatever this potential ability is, i t is

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rarely realized b y midwives i n the West. Rather, the zenith is more evident in non-western societies, as i n the Mayan example, and i n cases o f other non-western delivery specialists.

A t first sight the role of delivery specialist in both western and non-western societies appears to be similar. I n each case, the delivery specialist 1s regarded as a skilled executor of the physical event. The Mayan midwife, however, is also an ‘experiential guide’ (Paul 1 9 7 8 ; P a u l a n d P a u l 1975). W h e t h e r o r n o t she is recognized b y

expectant mothers for her ability to guide the birth event, the Mayan midwife is ritually empowered to direct and control the experiences o f those travelling through the birth sequence. The precise difference between western professional and Mayan profes-

sional is thus crucial. The distinction, then, rests o n the notion o f the midwife being an ‘experiential guide’. This gives to childbirth a transpersonal nature, enabling the mother—by way o f using suggestion, meditative or otherwise—to move progressively toward a ‘balance o f experience’ (Jung 1968) and an expanded range o f awareness (Maslow 1964). The management o f this technique of suggestion is made possible by a highly ordered system o f understanding—a cosmology—that directs any and all personal experiences through a spectrum o f rituals. These rituals are designed exclusively to restructure the modes of an individual's understanding in terms o f a dominant cosmology. Where there is not a well-articulated cosmological model, implying that an incomplete understanding of the nature o f events impedes a logical treatment of the behaviour o f those events, there would be n o rituals o f ‘ r e s t r u c t u r i n gThus ’ . there would exist n o means b y which the mother could transcend the nature o f conditioned experience. The experience and growth undergone by the Mayan mother, under the guidance o f her midwife, is circumscribed by an interpretative model bound to-a cosmology. The midwife’s cosmology is ritually activated, as well as socially and individually recognized. I n contrast, the road to becoming a professional obstetrician i n the western context is marked with indeterminate, rapidly changi n g and conflicting models o f the doctor’s role when intervening i n pregnancy and childbirth. These models may be socially recognized, but they are divorced from his direct individual experience and are neither bound to nor supported by a cosmology, nor are they ritually delimited. The former nourishes an overview, the latter a

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partial view. M y analysis suggests that the mother benefits most directly from an encounter with a ritually empowered delivery specialist. The reason for this is that through participation i n rituals embodying a highly ordered cosmology, these women have been able to reorganize their knowledge around a special kind o f experience.

This experience is generated from information obtained in alerted states o f consciousness; in which the general flow o f information between experiences and the world moves beyond usual bounds o f

awareness (see Maslow 1964). Subsequently the experiensor may integrate and manipulate the more confined experiences o f others. Such delivery specialists are attuned to moment-to-moment experiences undergone by others. Expectant mothers who undergo successive emotional and physical changes during labour and delivery can have their experiences

satisfactorily directed and controlled solely by those who possess knowledge o f the way their feelings are structured. Since direction and control ( i ) can be exerted only by persons who have arrangea their own knowledge around a cosmology embracing experiences obtained in alternate states of consciousness, and (ii) are the key to converting negative-inducing experiences to positive ones, the in-

tervention of western ‘professionals’ in delivery can be seen simply as an obstacle which blocks adjustments required of the mother during the birth event. I t prevents her from realizing the potential

she has for ‘experiencing’ the birth.

N o w consider the way some of the features of the birth experience are handled; and consider especially the feelings held by expectant mothers towards these features. For centuries the pain of labour and delivery has been acknowledged. There are many ways i n which different cultures deal with this, generally through medicinal and psychological intervention bolstered by a cosmologically derived set o f explanations for childbirth. Occasional references have been made to the easy, natural deliveries of women i n ‘primitive’ cultures. B u t the evidence is sparse (Grimm 1969: 136). Most field anthropologists have been male and probably never had the opportunity to witness a birth. I n a majority of primitive cultures (see The Human Relations Area Files) delivery is a women-only business, and is ‘reguently surrounded by taboos against involving men. Published ethnographies evidence a lack o f material o n nor-

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mal birth and about the behaviour o f mothers during normal labours. Either the anthropological questions were not answered, o r they were not asked i n the first place. A certain sexual egocentricity would not have been unexpected.* The fact that medicinal

remedies are invoked to manage labour, and that other kinds of assistance are also offered (Mead and Newton 1967: 200-7),

indicates that most non-western societies have devised both a biological and a psychological plan for coping with labour pain. I n contrast, western society possesses a long-standing tradition wherein passive suffering and the arch-typical female experience of

childbirth have been seen as identical. I t is ‘a woman’s destiny’. I t is a tradition of our patriarchal society: there exists a dichotomy between mind/body and male/female. Woman, by definition, suffers the repercussions of her own sexuality. I would suggest that men are plagued with a dilemma. O n the one

hand they participate through sexual intercourse in the creation of life; on the other hand they play no role in the bearing and birth of this life. They are excluded from the primordial role of life regeneration. M e n may long for women sexually and need them for the generation o f offspring, but they abhor the consequence whereby

their contribution to the latter is ended. The conflict in the male mind, as it alternates between this longing and abhorrence, has been partially resolved b y transferring whatever guilt i t may feel about its inadequacy to the woman. I n my experience, I find that any aspect o f the bearing o f children and the birth rite in which men d o not partake is experienced b y men as unpleasant o r sickening;

those aspects in which they may participate during the process of delivery, on the other hand, are seen as ennobling. The HebrewChristian tradition, as is well-known, embodies the notion that the

birth event is defiling, and requires ritual purification of women following childbirth. Similarly i n some Asian societies women are

untouchable during and after childbirth for a specific number of days (Mead and Newton 1967:175). Somehow, I suggest, men d o not find i t enough merely to colour the role o f parturient women with discomfort; they also deprive these women o f an alternative tint. Discomfort is presented as an

inevitable result of reproduction. Men thus construct scientific theories—and hold them as infallible. They argue that there 1s a

natural association between normal female development and childbirth. But their theories assume that the role o f women is to produce

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children. And it is implied that producing children is sickening. I t is even inferred that women are abnormal if they do not reproduce

(Grimm 1969: 129-30). Unfortunately the beliefs and expectations o f a large proportion o f women not only do not conform to these theories b u t are also very diverse, having in common only a single

factor: Anxiety, depression, the sense of being sacrificial victims, all familiar components o f female experience, become more than ever the invisible

attendants at pregnancy and labour (Rich 1976:153). Instead o f the much-exalted joy o f childbirth, I find from m y experience, many women encounter alienation. Although advances in obstetrics and programmes to reduce anxiety have the potential to cure women’s fear o f labour, they have been generally unsuccessful. The majority o f western women, I suggest, view childbirth as simply a painful, discrete experience, rather than as an extension of the continuum o f self-discovery. The absence o f a guide for the experience seems painfully clear. Personal satisfaction with the birth can be reduced to the degree that praise and fulfilment are centred around the obstetrician. I n direct contrast, the importance o f ‘personal achievement’ after delivery is so great in some South African societies that the husband

and father may refuse to get medical assistance for a woman in labour o n the grounds that she would be better off dead than unable

to bring forth the child by herself (Mead and Newton 1967:174). This merely turns a woman’s legitimate feeling o f accomplishment into a fatal fanaticism. Pain-killers that dulled the experience were sometimes rejected i n the west (see below). The practice o f childbirth

Western women find themselves i n a double-bind. O n the one hand pregnancy is a reification o f woman’s uniqueness, yet on the other hand labour and delivery are frightening and depersonalized. Many women are ambivalent about their pregnancy but are generally disqualified from taking a decision alone to terminate i t . They are bombarded with the pervasive attitudes of the day. One attitude, of their o w n and o f their society, towards pregnancy and childbirth regards a pregnant woman as proof o f her husband’s sexual adequacy (Rich 1976:162). Interestingly, i t appears that there is n o systematic research concerning women’s motivations for becoming

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pregnant (Grimm 1969: 133). Modern western society makes its own special contribution to the separation o f women from the process of birth. The effect o f en-

vironmental and social factors on childbirth is well known (Fransella and Frost 1977:155). H o w women negotiate delivery rests o n the balance o f these factors, but there has not been a concerted

medical effort to deal with women’s experience of childbirth from either aspect. I n her anticipation o f labour, a woman fears more than just pain and an unknown process. There is also an anticipation and fear of a distinctive loss o f self-autonomy, o f the irrevocable transformation from ‘me’ to ‘mother’. Confronted with stress, and the absence of a cosmologically derived understanding to cope with this stress—a mismatch between her own conception o f what o r who she is and the actual psychological and physical experience—the woman has little resource upon which to draw. A n obstetrician is almost certainly unaware o f her tension; he is not generally present during the crucial period o f labour and does not include ‘sympathetic counsel-

lor’ in his specialized role. The hierarchical separation between (male) professional and (female) patient is minimized when a midwife assists at childbirth. Her experience and encouragement, as well as her sex, are supportive and reassuring. I n certain cases (such as the Mayan midwife), her power is spiritually enlightening. I n contrast, an obstetrician is essentially a technician rather than an

experiential guide (Rich 1976:150). Although women in western societies receive more expert medical attention during childbirth, and mortality rates are slightly low-

er,® emotional support is far lower than that in other cultures. Apart from extreme cases such as t h e M e l p a o f N e w G u i n e a , where a

woman goes away and gives birth alone, i n most societies female kin o r neighbours are present and may help with the birth (Mead and Newton 1967:192). Also, in other societies around the world, the elderly woman rather than the skilled man is the predominant

attendant at birth (Ford 1964: 36). The psychological benefit of women helping women during childbirth is unresearched, and will probably remain so as long as control o f the event remains with men. I t is known, however, that some western women find the loneliness o f the first stage o f labour, during which time many are left alone, worse to endure than the physical pain that follows (Hubert 1974: 45).

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The loneliness, the sense of abandonment, of being imprisoned, powerless and depersonalized is the chief collective memory of women who have given birth in American hospitals (Rich 1976:176).

Traditionally, women who refused to become mothers were emo-

tionally suspect and regarded as (sexually?) abnormal. Both patriarchy and the Church were unsupportive o f women who queried the necessity of suffering the torment of others, the question o f whom to turn t o , keeps the powerful i n control. Thus labour pain is accepted as an integral part of the concept of ‘woman-asmother’. The recent use o t anaesthesia i n delivery rooms only serves to compound the problem. I t usefully contradicts the belief i n the importance o f suffering to childbearing women. Anaesthesia, however, has proved a useful tool for enhancing obstetrical control. Since i t prevents a mother’s active participation during delivery, i t only increases the separation between woman’s consciousness and

the activities occurring internal and external to her body (quite apart from the effect it is recognized now to have on the child). Her confinement under anaesthesia separates her from the experience

of her labour and the birth. Several other aspects of medical obstetrical care function to separate mothers from labour and delivery; these preserve a strict

professional and economic control. Now more than ever before, pregnancy is managed as an illness requiring constant medical care, and delivery as an emergency to be resolved safely only i n a hospital. Western physicians are disease-oriented, not patient-oriented. They are trained to expect accidents. They are prepared inevitably to handle physical crises rather than normal deliveries. Within this context, an uncomplicated childbirth is boring and simply to be hurried along and performed as quickly as possible. During the past few decades, awareness of the physical and psychological effects o f drugged labour has increased. Research has indicated many detrimental effects—before, during and after delivery—to both mother and child. Supported by more recent

proponents of ‘natural childbirth’ (e.g. Dick-Read 1942, Lamaze 1951, Kitzinger 1962, Leboyer 1975) many women have rejected the hospital-favoured approach by preparing and delivering without medication. Initially, a conscious, co-operative. delivery has been beneficial for mothers and infants, yet the drawbacks are

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apparent. These women have been taught the importance o f maintaining a harmonious interaction between mind and body. Unfortu-

nately the busy, ultra-efficient hospital milieu is experienced frequently as unsympathetic to women’s efforts to maintain calm and

self-control. Instead of supporting feelings about the ‘wholeness’ of the birth experience, institutional treatment can shatter them.

Sadly, consciousness during the technological procedure of childbirth can intensify the sensation of mind and body fragmentation and thus exaggerate feelings o f depersonalization. Many hospital procedures, such as ( i ) routinized movement from hospital room to labour room, and labour room to delivery room; (ii) the separation o f mother and infant after delivery; (iii) inflexible feeding schedules; and (iv) the exclusion o f the woman’s partner and family,

all serve t o add t o the discomfort. Delivery in North America is a surgical procedure, as the delivery

position of the woman attests. She lies supine, in the ‘lithotomy’ position:

[h]er body is flat and her neck is straight without a pillow t o support it . . . her arms are tied sideways so they will not stray into the sterile field. Her

legs are mechanically spread apart with leg braces (Mead and Newton 1967: 212).

The rationale for the adoption o f this position illustrates how obstetricians have assumed control o f delivery. They assert i t is vital that they see what is happening all the time—delivery is dangerous—without inconvenience. I t is interesting to draw an analogy between the lithotomy position and the position most primates and higher-order animals assume in defeat. The animals surrender to their aggressor b y indicating complete defencelessness o n their backs. What are the implications of this position for a labouring woman? I t appears to be another double-bind—her training and the doctor encourage her self-control, and yet psychologically, to herself and to all present, her body language

refers to total submission. Other consequences o f supine delivery are equally contradictory. For example, the episiotomy, routinely performed o n many women during delivery, is done to prevent ripping o f the perineum, but tearing is more likely to occur when a woman is delivering o n her back than when she squats o n a birth stool o r is supported by a hammock as in the Yucatan (Rich 1976:178). Among other

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societies, typical birth positions include the advantage of a curved back: sitting, squatting, kneeling. Pushing, pulling and bracing devices are also used to help the woman in delivery (Mead and Newton 1967:211). In the vertical position, gravity works naturally with the contractions, as well as being more comfortable for the woman. Except during operations, the lithotomy position is discouraged in Europe where women are encouraged to move during

iabour until they find a comfortable position in which t o deliver. In England, women standardly deliver lying o n their side, free to shift

weight and balance as they feel most comfortable. The cumulative effects o f an unknown process, o f pain, unfamiliar surroundings, hospital ‘care’ and sex-dominated professional control, are intimidating. When the sensitized emotional aspects o f

childbirth are supplemented with the above, it is understandable that many women find the experience alienating. The entire procedure 1s over-sophisticated. I t can only be considered as an ordeal to

be endured. Itis a situation where patriarchy has assumed control in the names o f ‘safety’ and ‘motherhood’.

Women are rewarded for their hardship with the overwhelming prospect of responsibility for a new life. Conclusion

The recent renewal o f interest i n the practice o f midwifery has led to a re-evaluation o f the differences separating obstetrics and midwif-

ery in modern medicine. The traditional interpretation, whereby the dissolution of midwifery was a step in the advance of science and technology, is presently under criticism. Something appears to have been lost in the transition to a scientific approach to childbirth.

Individual care and emotional support are missing from obstetrics. Protests about modern male-controlled reproductive care are more common. Attitudes o f male obstetricians to their female ‘patients’ can b e interpreted as a reflection o f their fundamental envy o f the vital power o f women. Even more interesting, statistics from North America indicate a high correlation between post-natal defects and technological interference in the process o f birth. This correlation is absent in Holland, for example, where midwives deliver nearly all

infants at home. The medical establishment’s tendency to place rigid and authoritarian control over the patterning of pregnancy, labour and delivery can be similarly analysed. I t has been suggested that this

The Childbirth Industry: A Woman's View

31

effort to control conceals a deeper anxiety over the extent to which women might potentially govern procreation (Torray n.d.: 4). Complaints about hospital delivery all seem to hinge o n women’s reactions to the overall inhumanity o f their treatment: the depersonalization of hospitalized birth, the ritual unnecessary use of such procedures as the shaving of pubic hair and the giving of enemas in the first stage of labour; episiotomies and the use of forceps or caesarean section in the second stage; analgesia and/or anaesthesia throughout (Oakley 1976: 53).

Each of these procedures further reduces their recipient t o a passive object. Without alternatives, a woman i n this situation is powerless. Oakley (1976: 57) puts i t most succinctly: to state that someone is i l l is one o f the easiest ways to divest them o f whatever autonomy or authority they may possess. Childbirth and overall reproductive care are performed i n a patriarchal social context which discriminates against women. The enterprise as a whole is equally sexist. Practitioners o f childbirth management exist within and collude

with this ideology. Some doctors feel there is no real reason why women i n labour should even be consulted about medical interferences during delivery. I t is not surprising therefore that there is such a poor understanding o f the psychological consequences o f medically controlled labour and delivery—for both the woman and those with whom she is associated. Although modern science has removed many uncertainties which threatened childbirth i n ancient times, technology has rendered a truly natural birth lost. A lack o f concern for the female consciousness and experience throughout, under the guise of safety and progressiveness, may be an extension of the ethos that creativity is a special capability o f men. A n aggressiveness, an air o f brisk masculinity, gives birth a curious aura i n a western hospital setting. Women’s achievements are stereotyped, even masked. Accepting the fact that the experience o f delivery is not enriched within a hospital environment is unpleasant for any mother. I t seems that many women would be prepared to give u p their responsibility to hospitals and technology merely for the sake o f assuring physical safety for themselves and their newborns.” Immediate concerns take priority over the long-term consequences o f such attitudes. Historically, as well as currently, most women have been unable to control their ability to reproduce and deliver. Originally women were at the

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mercy of biology, now they are at the mercy of a male-controlled

medical industry. Paralleling the advent of economic profits extorted from the manipulation o f pregnancy and parturition are the psychological, biological and political implications. Without any power over their o w n bodies, women are pawns; they are impotent i n the face o f male authority and technology. The change for which members o f the women’s movement are straining will be only partially achieved as long as women are dependent o n sexist reproductive care. A l l women are oppressed b y the existing system. Many are

challenging it. I t is clear to some of us that women’s management and control o f their own reproductive systems has the potential to cut through social divisions. Women are requesting a ‘rewomanization’ o f pregnancy and childbirth. These experiences comprise only a portion o f the structure of the whole life o f women, yet female control over these experiences is a prerequisite for any other changes which are desirable. NOTES

1 A longer version of this paper, written with Christopher Stephens, was prepared for the session of The Visibility and Invisibility o f Women in Anthropological Literature held during the Xth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, New Delhi, December 1978. I wish to thank Peter Findlay, Carleton School of Social Work, and an anonymous reviewer for Feminist Studies, for critical remarks made on the earlier version of this paper. 2 The clinical contributions that men have made to delivery and reproduction are, i n many cases, revolutionary. I am not belittling this. I t is the attitude and the context i n which these contributions have been made that are deplorable.

3

A handicap is faced at the outset. A striking observation arising from any review of this historical debate about childbirth is that the matter is undocumented to those persons most directly concerned—the mothers. I n some way social factors

have created a psychological distance between women and their birthing experiences. So what can be known about the experience is severely restricted.

4 Occasionally abnormal labours have been witnessed by the anthropologist. Such occurrences have been confined, however, to those times when the anthropologist was accompanied b y another specialist male, i.e. the African doctor, perhaps one who also specialized i n troubles thought t o be caused b y spirits o r

witches. 5 Midwives are outlawed from private practice in Canada and in all but a few American states. Obstetricians are overwhelmingly in disfavour o f their ‘interference’. I n Europe and England, normal births are attended b y midwives. The

difference lies in (i) the full-time attendance of the midwife throughout labour and ( i i ) the routine non-use o f medication o r technological intervention.

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Actually, they are slightly higher in North America than o n the European

continent and in England. 7 Total assurance for both mother and child is and will probably remain beyond human control. Doctors are unwilling to admit their infallibility though, and persist in distorting the picture. A properly prepared normal home birth is statistically safer than a hospital birth i n North America; but then it is illegal i n

nearly all states and provinces.

REFERENCES B r e n n a n , B . and J . R . Heilman, The Complete Book o f Midwifery, N e w York: Dutton, 1977. Devitt, N . , “The Statistical Case for Elimination o f the Midwife: Fact vs. Prejudice, 1890-1935’, Women and Health, 4 , 1, 1979, 81-96. Dick-Read, F . , Childbirth Without Fear (revised edition 1969), London: Pan, 1942.

Dougherty, M.C., ‘Southern Lay Midwives as Ritual Specialists’, in Women in Ritual Symbolic Roles, eds. J. Hoch-Smith and A . Spring, N e w Y o r k : Plenum Press, 1978. Ehrenreich, B . and D . English, Witches Midwives and Nurses, N e w York :Feminist Press, 1973. Ford, C.S., Field Guide to the Study o f Human Reproduction, N e w Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1964.

Fransella, F . and K . Frost, O n Being a Woman: A Review o f Research on How Women See Themselves, London: Tavistock, 1977. Grimm, E . , ‘Women’s Attitudes and Reactions to Childbearing’, i n Modern Wo-

man, eds. G.D. Goldman and D.S. Milman, Springfield: O.C. Thomas, 1969. Hubert, J . , ‘Belief and Reality: Social Factors i n Pregnancy and Childbirth’, i n The

Integration o f a Child into a Social World, ed. M.P.M. Richards,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Jung, C . , ‘Approaching the Unconscious’, i n M a n and His Symbols, ed. C . G . Jung, N e w Y o r k : Dell, 1968.

Kitzinger, S., The Experience o f Childbirth (revised edition), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962. Kobrin, F . E . , ‘The American Midwife Controversy: A Crisis o f Professionalism’, Bulletin o f the History o f Medicine, 40, 1966, 350-63. Lamaze, F . , Painless Childbirth: The Lamaze Method (1972 edition), New York: Pocket Books, 1951. Leboyer, F . , Birth Without Violence, N e w Y o r k : Knopf, 1975. Macfarlane, A . , The Psychology o f Childbirth, London: Fontana, 1977. Maslow, A . , Religions, Values and Peak Experiences, O h i o : Ohio State University Press, 1964.

Mead, M., and N . Newton, ‘Cultural Patterning of Perinatal Behaviour’, in Childbearing: Its Social and Psychological Aspects, eds. S.A. Richardson and A F . Guttmacher, Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1967.

Oakley, A . , ‘Wisewoman and Medicine Man: Changes in the Management of Childbirth’, i n The Rights and Wrongs o f Women, eds. J. Mitchell and A . Oakley, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

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Paul, L . , “The Mastery of Work and the Mystery of Sex in a Guatemalan Village’, in Woman, Culture and Society, eds. M . Z . Rosaldo and L . Lamphere, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.

>’Careers of Midwives in a Mayan Community’, in Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles, eds. J. Hoch-Smith and A . Sprink, New York: Plenum, 1978. and B . Paul, ‘The Mayan Midwife as Sacred Professional’, American Ethnologist, 2, 4 : 1975, 707-26. Rich, A . , O f Woman Born, N e w Y o r k : Norton, 1976. Stephens, M . K . and C . D . Stephens, ‘Women and Childbirth’, Canadian Newsletter

o f Research on Women, VII, 3, 1979. Torray, J . , ‘Psychoanalysis—a Feminist Revolution’, ms.

Women Whisper, M e n Kill A Case Study of the Mamasani Pastoral Nomads of Iran SOHEILA SHAHSH AHANI

Life today i n the Mamasani area, ! as almost anywhere i n Iran, gives a clear indication of a society in a process of rapid change. This change might even seem a rather chaotic form o f modernization.

M y attempt to discover the meaning of tribal symbolism that refers to the process o f human reproduction i n terms o f the conception o f roles o f m a n and woman i n the biological process o f procreation and its correlation with the activities and responsibilities of the two sexes i n social a n d economic life cannot, therefore, b e based o n l y o n

what I know of the present-day situation. The poems, proverbs, and tales which contain such matters are all of the past. I inquired about such things with a woman o f thirty, under the topic o f ‘talk o f the

past’ (‘gap gq?adim’). It is evident that the beliefs such tales imply, and the ideology some proverbs teach, are i n diachrony with today’s life. Changes occurring ever since the application o f land reform and nationalization o f pastures and other measures which form a part o f the so called White Revolution o f the Shah, adopted i n 1962-3, have affected much o f what I shall discuss i n this paper. Yet i t is necessary to understand the past. I shall deal with ‘before’, which refers to approximately fifteen years ago. Exceptions are, references to the education o f children and to whatever might

require personal observation. First, let me say that I will not propose any one term or phrase which might symbolize men or women. This is not simply because I d o not uphold reductive measures which lose touch with.reality and its complexities, but, as I will show i n the economic considerations, i t is also because sex-line crossing has only a few exceptions. I n this paper I deal with a society which has herding, farming, a

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little hunting, gathering, and raiding as its major modes of subsistence. I would not claim this society to be egalitarian, but as many poems and proverbs show, and from what I could see during m y

participation i n everyday life, there are n o rigid dividing lines, with rigid evaluative standards, in production, education of children,

locality of residence and so on. I begin with the story of creation: The children o f Mohammad were playing i n the mud. One day the

Prophet Mohammad made a statue with mud which looked like man. Children asked for i t t o be human. So God put spirit in it and i t came to life. Mohammad said this was good because the man could keep their horses. As he became older, Mohammad was wondering where to get a wife for him when G o d brought a woman for h i m from the sky. They

became man and wife bow adami o nana hava. One day they had a bet on whose liquid would make babies. T o see this they each put their liquid into separate bottles and left them o n a mantel in a room. The woman would go i n the room and shake the bottle of the man so that it would not

gel. They had put talisma i n both, and i t was the gelling of this that would be determinant. But, finally, after a month that of the man gelled. The woman was n o w pregnant, and she had twins, one boy and one girl. From these two all human beings were born. O t h e r related tales are as follows: I n the beginning men had menstruation and not women. B u t blood would go down their pants and i t was very uncomfortable. So they went to G o d and

complained about their situation, asking Him to give menstruation to women who had skirts. A t the time of childbirth, it used to be men who had pains (‘bad migerofteSun’). Again they complained to God, and He gave the pain to women, as He had done with menstruation. i

Thus both man and woman have a ‘liquid’; the essence and capacity o f their reproductive element, i.e. the liquid, becomes evident b y the use o f a cultural entity, i.e. a talisma. Though it is the man’s liquid which gells despite the woman’s effort to the contrary, it is she (without any negative reactions) who gets pregnant. Let us also note that though the man was made from mud, his wife was brought

from the sky. So far as the other natural particularities o f women related to reproduction are concerned, there is a cultural memory ( i f such a

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term can be used) that they belonged to men, and because of c u l t u r a l reasons, were transferred t o women.

I t is significant that when I discuss such matters today, and I go to the uncomfortable curious ends, I am told: ‘But such talks are too shameful to have stories about. A man has seeds, a woman has a little ugly liquid also, but she has to be greedy (‘haris’) to become pregnant’. Thus, a woman’s being active is a necessary condition

towards the actualization of her natural child-bearing capacity. A woman’s role i n procreation is not conceived to be a passive one.

Mother’s milk, it is said, has definite effects on the children. This includes everything from physical features to character and later, personality. A son looks like his mother’s brother, and a daughter looks like her mother’s sister. A n d there is the folk rhyme: vaya ta tavani zan neku gir k e owlad mikeSa az janebe Sir

meaning: Marry a good woman Cause children take from the milk.

Education o f children is the mother’s task to a great extent though

the role of the father is not negligible. The rhyme: ‘asle kar mddare ke pedar rahgozare’, meaning: ‘The mother is the most important, the father is but a wayfarer’, refers t o the briefness o f the time that

the father spends with his children. However, the affectionate and authoritative presence o f the father is a necessary element for the

education of children. Fear of the father is always used t o discipline children, b u t his role cannot be reduced to just this. Personal observations testify to the fact that often a very affectionate relationship exists between fathers and their children. Aftab, whose household I observed very closely, said that her husband shared a great deal i n the upbringing o f their children. N o w that he has left to work as a migrant he is worried about the children and has asked her t o be k i n d to them, especially to the newly-born. The oldest son o f the family, fourteen years old, serves food, prepares the bedding, tends t o a crying baby sibling, and does other typically feminine

tasks. Spending more hours with the mother than with the father has consequences which affect certain principles o f the society. Patrilineality and patrilocality have important implications for a society i n which i t is found; therefore let us consider the distribution o t forty households in terms of residential arrangement:

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M e n from Village M e n not from Village Women not from

15

8

14

3

Village W o m e n from

Village

Besides the fact that a woman often has to live i n an area where she definitely feels a stranger, another important fact to be noted is that during the first years o f marriage i t is very likely that the new couple

live within the household of the groom. A priori the bride—motherin-law relationship is a problem, and here is a poem which illustrates this. “ S i nikoném vaye kore dei dar tombunamo Sera ikone ila sare dar S1 i k o n o m vaye kore bi dei tombunamo carta ikone ila sare t e i ”

meaning: I won’t marry a m a n who has a mother. H e will tear my skirt and put i t on a tree.

I will marry a man who does not have a mother. H e will fold m y skirt and put i t o n the hut. B u t t h i s does n o t often come t r u e , a n d t h e bride lives w i t h h e r

husband’s family. Fatima Mernissi (1975) has dealt intelligently with this topic. I shall not try to analyse i t here; the point I want to make is that the mother’s reflections o n and attitudes towards her in-laws tend to be passed o n to her own children. H e r grievances are felt by

the children, and they are pulled toward the mother’s family. Pressure o f the husband’s immediate family on the woman can have an

adverse effect on the relationship of her children with them. And thus, whereas one o f the organizing principles of the society indicates that children should align themselves automatically with the father’s lineage, i n practice they do not necessarily do so. Out of ten

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marriages between relatives i n the chief's family, there are three with M o Si D a ( M Z D ) , three with M o B r D a (MBD), and four with F a B r D a (FBD). There is a significant rhyme to reflect on this phenomenon: qome mira pasé huna qome zina méné huna meaning: Relatives o f the husband outside thé house Relatives o f the wife inside the house.

Given patrilocality, physical distance prevents close and continuous contact between a woman and her own family. B u t the contact does n o t approach zero as the woman periodically visits her father and

brothers. I t should also be mentioned that the brothers and the father, not t o speak of the mother and sisters, also visit her in order to demonstrate their support to her. This makes for an emotional

closeness of the children towards their mother’s family. I have even noticed patrilineality being challenged by children; I have heard them say they belonged to their mother’s lineage.

In the tabular presentation given before, there are a number of matrilocal marriages, 17, o r more than 42 per cent o f the total marriages. Whether this is the fact behind the following expression o r n o t , the proverbial answer to the question put to an unmarried m a n ‘where are you from?’ is ‘ I ’ m not yet married!’ I n the same manner, a mother comments:

ney koeme heykoeme ta zan nasede kogme zan ke sade pizadame joda ke vabi hamsadame

meaning: O h he is m y son, o h he is m y son.

As long as not married, he is my son. When married, h e is m y stepson. When separated from paternal household, he is m y neighbour.

I t is thus evident that the rigidity of the two principles of patrilocality and lineality is being broken. Over one-third o f the married women live i n their natal villages, the very pressure o f the man’s relatives o n the woman pushes her, among other things, to

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live at a distance from his natal household; her hold on the education o f children gives, i n turn, more emotional support to her.

Influencing men as a subject has aroused a lot of attention in the Middle East and the Mediterranean countries (Sweet 1967, Lamphere 1975, S. Harding 1975, Nelson 1974 and Fernea 1965).

What I have shown above is not the only way in which women influence their men. The title of this paper. kes keSe zanun kostane merdun

Women whisper

Men kill.

takes m e to another area, namely warfare. I t was explained to me

that men were ‘simpler’ than women. They were less involved in intrigues and manoeuvring. They were easily manipulated and excited on sensitive topics such as family (Prestiany 1964, Friedl 1967). Since family honour was critical for their continued existence, therefore i f women gave a signal that the situation was dangerous, men got ready for war. The last important tribal feud

and fighting in the area of my research arose just in this manner. I t resulted in eleven deaths. What is the role o f women i n warfare? We have to consider this

activity in its various forms such as feuds, raids, and sports. Fighting can provide training for real wars. Sometimes i t may be only a form

of sport, or it may be undertaken with the intention of stealing some goats and sheep. I t can involve hundreds of men; i t may be between different tribes or between different lineages. Women do not

participate in offensive warfare but they do participate when on the defensive. They take guns to be shot; they prepare food fot their m e n ; they encourage their men to fight and so on. Since women never become the targets o f shooting o r beating, i t is they who go to the scene o f war to search for their wounded and bring them back. They dress the wounds themselves. Women’s honour is never

violated after a victorious war, nor are they taken as a tribute of any kind. If after a pillage a woman goes and claims her stolen herd or objects, her property is returned to her. This was told to me by a former chief. The only time that women felt there was a threat of falling prisoners (and it is one o f the first such references to the

Mamasani women in history), was in 1836. Their opponents were the government soldiers of the Fars Province. Vali Xan, the chief of

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the tribe, had escaped leaving his wife (wives?) and daughters in the care o f a relative at the Fortress o f G o l near the town o f Behbahan.

Seeing the enemy approach, the women tied their braids and threw themselves off the fortress, preferring death t o dishonour. N o w I discuss briefly the activities o f production and other economic activities mainly from the point o f view o f sexual division o f labour. A s I mentioned earlier, these consist o f hunting, gatheri n g (such as fodder and feed for cattle and goats, herbs, and wood), farming, herding, and warfare. Plundering, which is one form o f warfare, is a commonly pursued economic endeavour. A man who has carried o n successful raids is acknowledged as a capable person, for this ability would ensure h i m subsistence in difficult times, ‘just

as the diplomas do today’, it was explained to me. Poverty was said t o be the cause o f plundering.? Hunting, though rare, is a male activity, and takes place during the summer months when some wild goats and partridges are killed. Coming to the division o f labour between the sexes i n other

activities, gathering wood for burning is done once every few days b y men. I f they are occupied elsewhere, for example with farming, women gather wood, though they do not go as far and do not bring large timber. Gathering herbs used i n everyday cooking is done b y women o r young girls. Gathering weeds for cows is done by any available member o f the family, young boy o r girl, man o r woman. The least involved i n this task, however, are men. Heavy work i n farming is done by men, i n spring and later in summer and fall. Women accompany their fathers and brothers, and after marriage, husbands and sons, for lighter farming activities. The m a j o r economic activity o f women is dairying. A woman o f a household which is o f medium economic capacity according t o

village standards would spend five hours daily on activities connected w i t h dairying. Women are busy with dairying all the year r o u n d , e x c e p t from m i d - f a l l u p t o t h e e n d o f w i n t e r . T h e products o f

this work i n the form o f clarified butter and fiver (dehydrated and salted yoghurt balls) bring considerable yearly income for the family. The work o f shepherding is done by either young girls or boys o r older women o r men. A few male shepherds work for the

richer families. The wool which is spun b y women either brings cash o r is u s e d in the weaving o f tents o r other useful objects. M e n never do n i s work.

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Shopping i n towns is a male task. Seldom would women accompany them to the bazar to buy material for clothing, shoes, pots and pans, tea and sugar. B u t when peddlers pass by the village selling wooden o r metallic objects, herbal medicine, ornaments and so o n , women d o the purchasing. What about the right over goods i n the household including foodstuff ranging from chicken to wheat and other grains, and woollen and other material objects? Here there are two forms o f rights, one is that o f ‘exchange’ and the other is that o f ‘gift’. Exchange occurs among equals i n class and it is effected with exact calculations. Gifts from the lower classes to the chief consist o f kids o r lambs, o r clarified butter at the time o f the New Year. This is more o r less fixed, offered most often by men to the chief. The gift o f the chief’s family to the lower classes was i n the form of excusing them a part of their dues or giving them, wheat, rice, oil, clothing, or gold coins. The bibi or the women o f the chief’s family had access to stocks and could give a written letter or receipt to the person they f o u n din need. The needy person referred to the stock-keeper and

claimed his gift. A s far as inheritance is concerned, women, in general, do not get much property from the father, and what they get is at the time of

their marriage. Part of their dowry is from their father’s property consisting o f woven objects and, depending upon the economic capacity o f the family, herds and jewellery. A woman would not

claim her father’s property. As was explained to me, she does so due to the respect she has for her father and brother. This is also perhaps because o f her life-long dependence o n her own relatives. O f c o u r s e , since a w o m a n marries someone from t h e same r a n k , she

remains i n the same economic position as her brothers. Furtherm o r e , since she w o r k s o n h e r husband’s l a n d , i t is considered

reasonable that she gets the product of that land and not o f that o n w h i c h she does n o t w o r k . I n any event, should she claim some

property, she would face hostility from her natal family, which would i n turn weaken her position in the house of her husband. I n cases o f such demands, the religious dignitary o f the area, the person who administers Islamic law, is the final judge. I n case a brother decides to give the sister a share (this itself depends upon the father’s property, and the sister’s need), if she

lives in another village or tribe, he would either give her a yearly share of wheat or rice, or give her some herds, or buy her share and

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give her cash. The last choice would be the most preferable to him. I n any event, the women o f the chiefly class had personal prop-

erty which, though administered at large by the chiefs and his accountants, was i n their power. They used this for buying clothes

for the whole family and jewellery for themselves and their daughters, buying clothing for the servants o f the household and their

families, spending on marriages or giving gifts to their servants of different levels when they got married, and to village chiefs. Gifts were also given for different reasons and o n different occasions to

different people of the tribe. They also had access to stocks as I discussed before. I f brief, these women were expected to be

generous. I n the lower classes the products of a woman’s labour, be it dairy produce o r woven objects, would be sold by the man. H e would then buy the family its necessities, and would give some money to his wife. The latter would save part of this to gradually provide for her

daughters’ dowries. I have dealt with the participation o f each sex i n the economic domain and have shown how sex-line crossing is a common phenomenon. B u t I have not yet considered the views regarding

different works, and the philosophy of work at large. The most valued work is warfare, more exactly plundering, to which women are not alien, yet i n which men are the active participants. But since the lower class m e n are to much lesser degree involved in warfare, it is not so very important for the population at large. Since it is the m e n w h o d o the heavy work in agriculture and all that is related to water distribution and are in direct contact with the chief’s envoy for

giving a certain percentage to the chief, their position is considered higher 1n agriculture. But in herding and more particularly in dairy activities women hold the more impartant position, and it is the

product of these activities which bring considerable amounts of cash to a household. I n gathering, both men and women are involved, but with different aims. The rare prize o f hunting goes to men. A s for inheritance, m e n are the principal receivers o f property but it should b e mentioned that the shares o f different sons are not equal either. The basic rule is to give most if not all to the eldest and the most capable son. Patrilocality is given as the reason for not giving land to one’s daughter. There is a dual philosophy relating to work. Although there is the dream o f the best situation as being that when one does not have

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anything to d o , and the image o f the upper class person is just this,

yet the practical ideology of the ideal man and woman is the person w h o works a great deal. Not corvee, but smart and dexterous work. S i n c e work relates t o d i f f e r e n t areas o f l i f e , i t increases t h e power o f

the person should he b e very active. For a woman it is working hard both inside and outside the household which is valued. A very

important feature of her work inside the house is being capable of providing food for guests very quickly. There is a proverb: zan ta kar nakone nemixos

meaning: Woman who does not w o r k , we d o not want.

There is another which means: A woman who is only bread baker and love maker is not good. A woman who works a lot, is quick, and is smart, makes herself not a slave but one who is needed. Her briefest absence puts the whole

household in a state of desolate incompletion. I saw this clearly when a woman had given birth to a baby and so was incapable o f work for a couple o f days. O f course, the presence o f other female

hands in the household can decrease the importance of such an absence, but the point here is the importance o f her work and the awareness o f the woman o f her importance. During my fieldwork I

felt that my being dependent upon certain basic services of my landlady was well taken advantage of. She was not thus enslaved, but got power over me, in as much as if I did not please her, she withheld some goods and essential services. I f I say that the woman has heavy economic responsibilities, she works from dawn to dusk, and she is not enslaved, it is because o f the importance o f the household in the whole range o f social activities. I t is not only that the woman is aware o f her roles, but also that the m a n is aware o f his dependence upon his wife. ‘ A woman is

the pillar of a household’ explained an old man to me. Without her a m a n cannot form a household, he cannot participate fully in the activities o f his society, he cannot visit and receive guests. A man is mocked at if after a certain age he does not get married. H e is suspect, and he has not gained the possible support o f another household. Being limited b y social involvement a man is negatively

affected in political and economic participation.

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Finally, I hope I have been able to show a very complicated and

delicate balance between female and male activities and their interdependence with flexible boundaries between the work o f each

sex. This is not to say that there are no rules of behaviour; rather the rules d o not impose segrégation and alienation. The place o f the household within the society signifies the favoured position o f women. I hope that the explanatory material from the everyday productive activities o f the two sexes has supported the proverbs,

poems and tales which could have been otherwise arbitrarily chosen out o f a large number o f ‘talk o f the past’. Although war is the most

important male activity, yet it is the whisper of the woman which can trigger it. NOTES 1

M y data here come from a year o r so of research in the Mamasani area,

beginning in 1976. The place of research was a village of the Bakes Tribe and among the members of the previous chiefly family. 2

Safarname Mamasani (Mamasani Travel Accounts)

bdSarh-e jaraydn-e

hokumat-e tavdyef va Sulestdndt-e mamasani va ildt-e kohgiluye dar silhaye 1260-61 hejri-e qamari, ta’'life-e Mirza Fatah Xan-e Garmrudi, bekuSes-e Fatih edDin Fatahi, Tehran, 1347.

REFERENCES Draper, Patricia, ‘'Kung Women: Contrasts in Sexual Egalitarianism jn Foraging and Sedentary Contexts’, i n Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. R . R . Reiter, N e w Y o r k : Monthly Review Press, 1975. Fasa’i, Haj Mirzd Hasan-e Hoseini, Tdrix-e Fdrsndme Naseri, Tajdid-e édp az entesdrdt-e ketdbxdne-ye sanii, Sirdz (translated b y Heribert Busse into

English), History o f Persia Under the Qdjar Rule, New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. Fernea, Elizabeth, Women o f the Sheikh, N e w Y o r k : Anchor, 1965. Friedl, Ernestine, ‘The Position o f Women, Appearance and Reality’, Anthropological Quarterly, 40, 3 , 1967. Garmrudi, Mirza Fattah X a n , Safarname mamasani basarh-e jarayan-e hokumat-e tavayef va Sulestdn-e mamasani va ildt-e kohgiluye dar salhaye 1260-61 hejri-e gqamari, bekusese Fatah ed-Din Fatahi, Tehran: A . H . 1347.

, “Safarname-ye Mamasani” in Safarndmeye Mirza Fattdh Xan-e Garmrudi be orupa dar zamane Mohammad $ah-e qajar, tapxane-ye banke bazargani-e-Iran, Tehran, 1347 (1968).

Harding, Susan, ‘Women and Words in a Spanish Village’, in Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. R . R . Reiter, N e w York: Monthly Review Press, 1975.

Lamphere, L . , ‘Strategies, Cooperation and Conflict Among Women in Domestic

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Groups’, i n Woman, Culture and Society, eds. M . Z . Rosaldo and L . Lamphere, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. Memissi, Fatima, Beyond the Veil, N e w Y o r k : John Wiley and Sons, 1975.

Nelson, Cynthia, ‘Public and Private Politics: Women in the Middle Eastern World’, American Ethnologist, 1974, 551-63. Prestiany, J.G., Honour and Shame: The Values ofMediterranean Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Reiter, R . R . ed., Toward an Anthropology o f Women, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. Sweet, Louise, ‘ I n Reality, Some Middle Eastern Women’, in Many Sisters: Women

in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. C.J. Mathiasson, New York: Free Press, 1974.

T h e Problem o f Dominance

EDWIN ARDENER

A t the post-plenary meetings o n the ‘Visibility and Invisibility of Women’, Professor Leela Dube and other organizers kindly invited m e to make a few general remarks o n themes in various sessions of the main Congress concerning women. The remarks I made then were informal and intended merely to provide a basis for discussion. I t would not be appropriate now to accord all o f them the permanence o f p r i n t . I was asked, however, t o present a note o n one o f the

general points I raised: the problem of dominance. I n the plenary sessions, there were various accounts of male dominance, some o f which seemed at the time to be rather mechani-

cal. Whatever the nature of dominance is, t o reveal it will require more than the examination o f crude, arbitrary cruelties or exploitations. Dominance when applied to women is also only patchily related t o the economic structure. For example, the difference between Euro-American women and peasant Asian women economically and socially is so striking that nothing would seem, o n the face o f i t , more inappropriate than the view o f apparently privileged women that they are silenced or invisible. Women learn (as do some men) that progress u p a social hierarchy may involve the inevitable acquisition o f a privileged status i n relation to their former fellows which i n itself seems to silence the right of complaint. Professor Srinivas’s excellent paper, ‘The Changing Position o f Indian W o m e n ’ ! refers to the increasing ‘immurement’ o f Indian women as the price o f the rise i n apparent status. W e detect parallels with mid-nineteenth century England. A.J. Munby, a Victorian gentlem a n , made studies of working women i n ‘dirty’ occupations— mine r s , glue-makers, fisherwomen, and others. H e was a n odd-man-

out among the liberals of his day in that he opposed the loss of working women’s independent industrial occupations, arduous as they were. When h e visited a new secretarial school for girls, he asked whether

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the constraining o f girls into artificial and protected ‘lady-like’

ways, and into the straitjacket-like clothing of the period, was a gain o r a decrease in freedom.2 It is indeed a fact that there is a kind of

independence about working women inside the often exploiting work, which is not necessarily preserved as their material position

improves. Nonetheless it is folly to romanticize the lives of such working women: the independence, cheerfulness, and vigour o f individuals w h o are young and have their health and strength show only one

side of the question. Modern middle-class writers often similarly describe the working child of the iast century as sturdy and independent, and some imply that a serious loss resulted later from educa-

tion. O f course, the match-selling boy was frequently happy, master (as he might think) of his fate. A t the age of fifty, perhaps by then a pauper o r broken in health, he would not have thanked you for admiring his independence at eight years o f age. I n judging the ‘happiness’ o f people with their lot, the whole life must be taken into account. The happiness o f the hardworking, ‘independent’,

industrially-employed or peasant woman is likewise precarious and dependent o n forces she may not be aware of. I n a different way, the lot of élite women in the Third World, whose ‘happy independence’ depends o n servants, is also precarious. This lesson was learnt by

western middle-class women in our time. I t is as if we have to work through the outer defences o f the economic and authority systems o f the world before we can even see the underlying structures o f dominance. That is why women so often must become privileged, with a life-style which, perhaps, a peasant woman would gladly settle for, before they perceive its ultimate nature. Dominance then appears like an intricate silver chain that has lain at the bottom o f the sea for so long that it has become encrusted with so many particular exploitations that the

basic shape has been hidden. Chip away these objective encrustations by social reform, and only at the end is the intricate final chainwork revealed—still intact. The problem o f dominance is, then, a problem of humanity, and n o revolution has ever abolished i t . Even the most complete and cruel upheavals, destroying authority structures, amending the channels o f power, replacing élites, and eliminating individuals in every walk o f life, have left the ‘templates’ o f dominance unaffected, able to replicate again in new forms, with new accretions,

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some more superficially attractive but usually strangely the same. It seems then that authority and power, as generally understood, are not dominance. The charisma o f dominance comes from a particu-

lar power—that of ultimately defining the world in which nondominants live. Nothing could be more practical and ‘action-based’

therefore than a theory of dominance. Robert Hertz? showed many years ago how human populations select what may be a very slight,

and perhaps in itself trivial disparity, and build elaborations one upon another, until a complex structure o f asymmetries emerges. H e notes, i n his classic example o f handedness, that “The slight advantages possessed b y the right-hand are merely the occasion o f a

qualitative differentiation, the cause of which lies beyond the individual, in the constitution o f the collective consciousness’.4

I f ‘An almost insignificant bodily asymmetry’ as between the left- and right-hand can be exploited in this way, similarly very slight

imbalances in the relations between individuals have become the basis o f dominance structures. I f these imbalances are persistent

and consistent, they are conceptually polarized and are further built upon until they become ‘over-determined’. A slight imbalance is thus raised to an imparity, an imparity to an inequality, an inequality to an exploitation, and so o n to become the basis for a whole systematization o f power. When a set o f specific imbalances

coincide, the resulting intricate process acquires considerable momentum. The developments become both symbolic and action-

based, both ideological and production-based. The dominance structure always tends to grow as fast and as far as it can. Those o f its

aspects which involve processes of production are normally the specialization of the historical materialists, who have made useful contributions to this field. The theory o f dominance is not therefore a theory concerned with women alone. I t is a theory o f the modes whereby societies create the daily realities that their members experience. It is not a branch o f anthropology: it is one o f anthropology’s general theories. The case o f women is thus highly instructive: it is perhaps the oldest structural dominance, which has now acquired both decorative and

beguiling as well as harsh and occasionally desperate features. Here I go o n to suggest only one pathway o f the structure o f

dominance as it affects women. There is a certain imbalance of a social kind that occurs between boys and girls in the years about puberty—I say ‘social’ because it is a mistake to see the imbalance

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as biological. The ‘biological’ side lies merely in a set of differences in the chronological age at, and in the physical nature of puberty. Such differences could be potentially neutral i n social terms. For example, boys pass through critical adolescent experiences at different ages and rates. Yet, o n the whole, imbalance between youths i n strength, kinds o f experience, or sexuality, does not become permanently embedded i n their later social life. Betw e e n t h e sexes, h o w e v e r , a similar difference does characteristi-

cally develop such consequences. I t seems to stem from an absolute difference i n the socially-derived significance o f choices made by

girls and boys in very young adolescence. I n seeking for the roots of this social difference we may note the degree to which self-identification through identification with the parent o f the same sex assists in prejudging the issue. The identification o f sons with their fathers differs from the identification o f daughters with their mothers i n a minor respect which, however, plays its part here. The importance of identification i n the first few years o f life, when the polarity o f the parents’ roles and occupations m a y b e very marked, should be noted. I n imagining herself as her mother, motherhood becomes the earliest female role that a daughter grasps—so that the onset o f puberty is easily seen by the girl-

child as the entry to motherhood, even if this may conflict with other roles (such as helicopter pilot) which she will later perhaps be more aware of. I n a sense the most demanding human role of all is conceptualized for her first o f all—not last of all o r simply later on.

For the young pubertal male, i n contrast, the ‘male’ roles that impress his imagination are not pre-empted by his merely impregnating role. His hard education i n male competition begins at once. The young, inexperienced, pubertal female can be trapped—even mesmerized—by sexual and procreative life. I t must be emphasized that we are considering very young girls, aged nearer 13 than 18—an age o f choice i n which the sexual fate, as wife, prostitute or unthinki n g follower o f an older male, may be embarked upon with a zest which is literally premature. The ‘free’ pubertal girl is, i f you like, readily distractable from following what the male youth already perceives as a race towards self-fulfilment. I t is an injustice to tell h e r l a t e r , o r a t t h e t i m e , t h a t t h i s , h e r first choice, is h e r self-

fulfilment. The problem o f according o r denying free choice to young pubertal girls is the first problem for women. It is an unfair problem—it is

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life’s first socially derived imbalance between the sexes i n their fully human role. A conscious humanistic feminism therefore is dependent o n a certain structuring of society in advance—that is, o n a willingness to encourage the female to forego a particular freedom o n the very threshold o f adult life. This is like the child which loses its eight-year-old independence as a street-trader by opting for the disciplines and subjections o f education, to avoid paupery i n old age. B u t the harsh dialectic o f dominance begins at once. The requirement o f special assistance for very young girls through the sexuality trap requires the co-operation of males as well as o f older females—neither o f whom necessarily find i t i n their immediate interest to provide i t . The assistance required may be minimal, but the dominance process has begun. Over-elaboration occurs, assistance becomes protection, which becomes over-protection. These

begin to develop their own momentum. The males, potentially equal playmates o f the girls before puberty, proceed over the hill to participate i n the society at large. They can devote energies and time to the sheer excitement o f ‘creating’ society for better or for worse. Girls who were delayed at the trap struggle up later, and try to learn the rules, i n which they are already by now allocated their place. N o wonder that, even i n enlightened days, many generations o f being first into the fray have bequeathed males a world which speaks to them without interpreters, which is their own club.> I t is unlikely that any group difference of strength between males

and females would have affected the issue of dominance between the sexes i f the sexuality trap d i d not tend to introduce an imbalance i n t o the adolescent age-group as a whole, preventing its maintenance as a continuous social entity. The humane ‘protection’ o f girls from a premature sexual choice, leading to ‘over-protection’ generates an equal and opposite image o f female ‘vulnerability’ on the male side. The males become ideologically stronger and stronger, the females weaker and weaker. The idea becomes event, and daily

evidences of its physical manifestation confirm its apparent ‘natural’ reality. I t is quite characteristic o f human social semantics that arabesques and detailed elaborations deveiop from quite simple ‘simultaneities’ o f definition and action. The one chosen here to illustrate this proposition is a minor ‘hiccup’ i n the differentiation o f males and females at puberty: that ‘absolute’ freedom o f choice produces totally different ultimate social results between pubertal females a n d males; r e q u i r i n g , i n order t o restore parity, some

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positive social action. Since this is simply the first of many imbalances in lifetrajectories® introduced b y the reproduction cycle, it would still be likely that structural dominance i n the defining o f society, and o f the cognitive experiences within i t , would tend to favour males. Nevertheless, the puberty trap b y being the first imbalance sets the structure askew from the beginning. I t is suggested that social reform and material betterment, by reducing the ‘encrustation’ or crude elaborations o f dominance, begin to reveal the ultimate

‘silver chain’, and that that is why western women are more concerned than peasant women about the subject. Peasant women may n o t even question that the reproductive choice at puberty is the only life-choice. I n the West it is a paradox that ‘freedom’ has left the ‘puberty trap’ relatively unattended. ‘Reformed’ sexual mores have left choices o f pubertal females highly imbalanced vis-a-vis those of males. Yet the dialectic can work i n other ways. I f the particular effect o f the identification o f daughters with their mothers introduces a slight disparity between males and females with dangerous possibilities, the identification o f fathers with their daughters has its own ambiguous effects. I t is often the unexpected source o f some female emancipation, providing one reason why changes do occur—why, for example, girls’ education becomes permitted. Some fathers treat their daughters as surrogate sons. H u m a n love ( o r ambition) is

thus a great emancipator, although the emancipation o f daughters i n any historical period can expand only as far as the vision o f the most indulgent father. I t may be that when other historical conditions are favourable, these ‘surrogate sons’ are poised to be the first t o take advantage o f them. I t seems that life imposes many kinds o f handicaps and disadvantages upon us all, rather like hands o f cards for a game we did n o t choose. Perhaps taking a l l i n all, as far as peasant societies were

concerned the supreme importance o f progeny and the hard life o f everyone i n subsitence economies made the power-play of men of little interest and even a thing o f fun for women. Perhaps i t was the growth o f literacy and the storage o f information that exaggerated the imparity o f the sexes. When the women woke up, the men’s game had become a serious matter—they had changed the world. There is surely no need, however, for women to be continuously represented as downtrodden ‘invisibles’—a simple mental act of

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confidence i n every situation, as many have discovered, may be all that is required. B y something more powerful than that ‘bloodless decree’ which Engels quaintly imagined to have led to the ‘worldhistorical defeat’ o f women, both sexes may so act as to reduce each inequality to an imparity, each imparity to an imbalance, and then t o dissolve t h e i m b a l a n c e i n t o a simple, u n - m a r k e d , difference. T h e

world would then still contain the empty shells o f dominance, but that particular game would be truly over. The problem o f dominance within human beings as a whole would not disappear, but perhaps i t too would be illuminated. NOTES 1

M . N . Srinivas, ‘The Changing Position o f Indian Women’, M a n (NS), XII, 2 ,

1977, 221-38. 2 See D . Hudson, Munby, Man of Two Worlds: The Life and Diaries o f Arthur J. Munby 1828-1910, London: Murray, 1972, for a biography o f A . J . M u n b y , who

IS

was psychologically obsessed by working women. Nevertheless, his accounts of their way of life are of great value, and very revealing. 3 R . Hertz, ‘The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity’, in Right and Left, ed. R. Needham, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Ibid., p. 21. S

See E . Ardener, ‘Belief and the Problem o f Women’ and ‘The Problem Revisited’, i n Perceiving Women, ed. S. Ardener, London: Dent/New Y o r k : Halsted, 1975, and other papers therein; S. Ardener, ed., Defining Females,

London: Croom Helm/New York: Halsted, 1978. The argument of this paper has special relevance t o the theory of ‘muting’ and the way groups are defined. 6

For work o n life-trajectories see i b i d . , p p . 40-3.

WOMEN,POWER A N D AUTHORITY

Women, Power and Authority E L E A N O R L E Z COCK

Women everywhere hold some measure o f influence, o r informal power. The degree varies with the gender system o f their culture, the status o f the class, caste, race, or religious sect to which they belong, the state laws under which they live, the economic and

political position their nation holds in the international structure of power, and their personal attributes and life histories. Everywhere some women may hold more power, i n the sense of the interpersonal influence they exert, than the men with whom they associate. However, except within rare enclaves o f still semiautonomous egalitarian cultures, women as a category nowhere hold formal power o r publicly recognized authority equivalent to that held b y men. Women’s formal power also varies by class, culture, race, religious sect, and national status, but i t is always less than that o f men i n the same position. There is near consensus among scholars who have engaged in careful cross-cultural research o n women (which is to exclude uninformed generalizations made o n the basis of spotty and secondhand information),! that central to the structure o f women’s decision-making in any society, is the structuring of production and reproduction in that society. Some scholars see women’s role in reproduction as primary, and as universally causing some degree o f female dependence and subordination. Others, including myself, impressed with the enormous variability in the power and authority o f women both i n relation to men as individuals and to their society as a whole, see production relations as primary. I n m y view, historical changes i n production relations underlie fundamental changes in the structure o f reproduction and i n its economic and cultural significance. I find the focus o n production relations particularly useful for defining not only the differing degrees but also the differing forms o f power and authority held b y women o f different

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classes, cultures, and nations, and for clarifying consequent differ-

ences in the ways women approach struggles against oppression. Since the nuclear family supported by a wage-earning man is the ideal norm for Western culture, i t has been common for Western social scientists to assume that women’s widespread lack of publicly recognized authority is caused b y their presumed dependent and non-productive role. I n ethnocentric and sociocentric blind-

ness, Western theorists have commonly ignored the fact that worldwide and in their own countries many working-class women, and in

the United States especially non-white women, are engaged in public production, and that their labour, like that o f men, holds n o more power than they manage to achieve through organized strug-

gle. Recent attention to women’s work has made it clear that the vast majority of women have always been economically productive. I n non-industrial societies they usually furnish half, if not more, of a

society’s food and other basic necessities; while in industrial societies they frequently work in factories and offices, produce goods for the market or for consumption at home, and provide the services necessary for their menfolk to work and their children to

grow. Engels long ago suggested that women held public authority to the degree that a society’s production was for use rather than for exchange.? All individuals, women and men, shared in decisionmaking i n societies where the goods they produced were for their common consumption and where they therefore controlled the

distribution of these goods. The direct producers lost decisionmaking powers over their lives when the specialization o f labour

and production of commodities for exchange led to the formation of slave, aristocratic, and merchant classes. Women in particular lost out because the new economic relations based on exchange were in the hands o f men (the first important commodity exchanged, i n

Engels’ view, was men’s responsibility, cattle); because these relations undercut the communal households women had controlled and transformed women’s domestic work into private service; and because the privatization o f property through individual inheritance in the budding upper class required control of women’s

sexuality. Engels elaborated his thesis in terms o f the sharp contrast between the Iroquois of New York State—as described by Morgan®—

where senior women ran the large collective households that made

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u p the community, and classical Greece and Rome where propertyowning aristocracy, slavery, and the individual family as the basic

economic unit were intimately bound up with the political, economic, and social inferiority of women. He pointed out that women’s ‘domestic slavery’ persisted even when, with the develop-

ment of industry, women again entered public production. He argued that the position of women could not be fundamentally changed until the family as the economic unit of society was abolished. Much o f the present historical and cross-cultural research o n women’s work and their decision-making prerogatives builds o n the framework provided b y Engels, albeit with some modifications. For example, he was unaware o f the extent to which women were food

producers as well as processers in egalitarian societies, and of the extent to which commodity exchange o f products other than cattle had developed in many parts o f the world prior to European colo-

nial expansion. His theoretical formulation stands up well however, and five broad types of production relations which entail differing structures o f reproduction and o f decision-making can be defined. These are: egalitarian o r ‘primitive communist’; ranking o r transitional; stratified pre-industrial (for present purposes I am here lumping the much debated Oriental mode o f production, African mode, slave mode, and feudal mode); capitalist; and industrial

communist or socialist. Needless to say actual cultures often do not fit neatly into one category or another. The very existence o f ethnographic o r ethnohistorical records o f egalitarian and ranking

cultures betokens their involvement to some degree with stratified o r capitalist Oriental, African, or European state societies. Furthermore, societies are always changing, however slowly, and

experiencing some conflict between opposing types of economic and social relations. Before discussing these different types o f production relations, it is necessary to define the dimensions o f power and authority. The distinction has been made between decisions enacted through pub-

licly recognized institutions and influence exerted through informal channels. The first has been called the exercise of authority, the second o f power. I follow this usage here although i t somewhat violates the connotation o f political and economic control the word power holds for me. I n any case, a hard and fast line cannot always b e drawn between the two (for example, where would one put the

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formal but unofficial decision-making o f a Mafia leader?), and most

decisions entail formal and informal considerations. A t least three other dimensions of decision-making are needed in order to differentiate different types of power and authority held b y women in different economic and cultural settings. First is the

distinction between the power achieved by, or authority accorded to individual women, such as monarchs or cult leaders, and that

held by women as members of their sex. Second is the distinction between the ability to make decisions about one’s own actions, usually called independence o r autonomy, and the ability, or responsi-

bility, to make decisions about the actions of others. The third dimension is the distinction between the objective structure o f

decision-making and the ideological or cultural definition, evaluation, and validation o f that structure. From these distinctions flow

distinctions at the psychological level pertaining t o women’s varying definitions, evaluations, and acceptance or rejection of their role in the decision-making process. I n order to assess women’s power and authority in a given society, therefore, i t is essential to survey the gamut o f important decisions to b e made in that society and to ascertain i n so far as possible how they are made. Too often formal ‘chiefly’ roles vis-a-vis outsiders have been mistakenly assumed to reflect the holding o f internal

authority. Since standard colonial practice is generally t o ignore influential women, and to undermine their position, outside observers have commonly underestimated women’s decision-making roles in colonized societies. Furthermore, the fact that what are lumped in stereotyped fashion as ‘domestic’ decisions differ i n significance from one society to another is all too often not taken

into account in interpretations of women’s authority. Hence it is not surprising that attempts to compare women’s position crossculturally are so often inconclusive o r contradictory.3

Changes in production relations bring about changes not only in degrees o f female authority and power but also in the forms taken b y authority and power and i n their relations to one another. The point is illustrated b y contrasting the gender parity and reciprocity

of fully egalitarian gatherer-hunters such as the Mbuti®, the San’ and the Montagnais-Naskapi ,® with the patriarchy o f classical Mediterranean and Oriental societies where laws defining women as dependents o f m e n were first codified. The comparison not only reveals a

dramatic contrast in gender relations but also that: 1) the distinction

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between power and authority as here defined is itself related to the emergence o f social-economic hierarchy; 2) the contrast between

great power held by individual women and very little by women as members of their sex common in patriarchal societies is also the historical concomitant of emerging class differences; and 3) the distance between making decisions about one’s own actions and those of others is governed by the development of a ‘public’ market economy as opposed to a ‘private’ domestic economy.’ I n egalitarian band societies decision-making is widely dispersed

and leaders do not hold formal authority. Two principles govern decision-making in such societies: first, people who carry o u t an activity make the decisions about if, when, and how to d o i t , either

singly as individuals or collectively as groups; and second, those who have not participated in making a decision or who do not agree with it are not bound by it.1° Individual influence, or power, is based on experience, knowledge, and skill in interpersonal relations as well as ties to many kin, and is exercised in the management of group affairs by both women and men. 1 ! Good working relations in a band or camp are maintained by both sexes through serious discussion, sharp personal criticism in the form of teasing and joking, and often elaborate ceremonies that use song and dance to ritualize interdependence and help dissipate conflict.1? As for personal animosities, flexibility in group membership means that people who dislike each other and find it difficult to work together need not live in the same camp. The economic structure that underlies egalitarian forms o f

decision-making is such that individual well-being is directly and immediately dependent on group well-being. All produce is shared and n o one can be well fed while others go hungry. This generalized

sharing is, in turn, based on open access to all basic resources, on universal ability to obtain and process food, and o n the direct participation o f all able people in the production and distribution o f

food and other basic goods.!® Within this structure there is no dichotomy between ‘public’ and ‘private’ sectors of the economy, and the division o f labour according to which each sex has its own

specialities binds women and men in reciprocal exchange relations without leading to female dependence on males in individual families. Wife-husband reciprocity is.cross-cut b y numerous other reciprocal relations so that, in terms o f fundamental structure, each individual is directly dependent o n the multi-family group as a

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whole and not constrained by dyadic lines of dependence. Anthropologists recognize parity in decision-making between women and men in many egalitarian gathering-hunting societies,

but by no means all. For example, it is argued that men’s acquisition of almost all food among the Inuit (or Eskimo), where gathering is minimal, allows them to control women’s marital choices and sexual life and to beat women who d o not comply with their wishes. 4 It is also generally assumed that men’s monopoly o f important ritual knowledge among Australian Aborigines gives them public decision-making authority not held by women, as well as the right to arrange women’s marriages and to beat them for disobedience. B o t h instances, however, can be questioned as accurate characteri-

zations of aboriginal culture. Inuit female/male relations call for a thorough review of the literature and for ethnohistorical research o n Inuit dealings with whalers, fur-traders, and other Arctic entrepreneurs. Among the Montagnais-Naskapi o f Labrador, men also procure most o f the

food, but amongboth the Montagnais-Naskapi and the Inuit women furnish the clothing that is essential for life in the north. Among both peoples women can and d o procure meat if they need or want to. I n the seventeenth century, drunken violence arising from frontier brutality and the traumatic challenge to their autonomy and cultural

integrity occurred among the Montagnais living around French settlements. > However, Jesuit accounts of interpersonal relations in Montagnais camps reveal that women were decision-makers o n a par with m e n and that sanctions against violence in interpersonal relations were strong and the same was probably once true o f the

Inuit. 1 6 As for prevailing assumptions of male dominance in Aboriginal society, they are now being challenged. Studies that focus o n wom e n indicate a balance in female and male domains, complementarity in female and male ritual participation, and age, not gender, as critical in control over marriage arrangements. Aboriginal society has suffered the effects o f genocide and brutalization, and family autonomy has been undermined b y the male-biased gender structure o f the Australian state. However, women’s continuing assertion o f and defence o f their traditional rights indicate that interpretations o f Aboriginal gender structure which suppose women to be the

pawns of men need total revision.’ For reassessing women’s decision-making power and authority in

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egalitarian societies, it is necessary to get beyond the stereotypical assumption that baby bearing and nurturing necessarily ‘tie women

down’ to household chores while men are free to engage in valued social activities. Eldholm, Harris and Young have pointed out the problem of supposing ‘that human reproductive practices will be empirically similar in all modes of production’, and of lumping activties like cooking, washing, and cleaning together with biological reproduction as the ‘process of production’, conceived as ‘a specifically female activity separate from the process o f production’. 1 8 I n contrast with such a view, reproduction o f the group is recognized as the primary focus for both male and female activities in gathering/hunting societies, whether in camp o r away from it, and these activities cannot be defined either empirically or theoretically in terms o f female housekeeping and male provisioning. Draper’s study o f changes for !Kung San women when they ‘settled

down’ on cattle stations shows that initially !Kung women spaced their children widely and moved about freely and that men and women were ‘equally “public”, mobile, and visible’. !Kung women w h o were economically dependent o n wage-earning husbands, however, became home-bound b y large families. Sex roles became rigidly defined, with women’s work seen as ‘unworthy’ o f men, and m e n began to leave home more frequently, to travel more widely than women, and to take responsibility for ‘political

more

affairs’. 1° Among the Montagnais-Naskapi, cooking, cleaning, and washing did not become institutionalized as female ‘housework’ until

women became dependent on individual fur-trapping husbands at the same time as new market products in combination with EuroCanadian models changed the nature o f daily chores and individual family tents replaced collective lodges. Contemporary patterns of female housework contrast sharply with the gender division of labour as revealed b y seventeenth-century Jesuit accounts. I n the past, cooking consisted o f pit roasting, stone boiling, and direct roasting over the fire, tasks in which both men and women

participated; each person had a bark dish which he or she wiped clean after eating; women were leather-workers and tailors but laundering o f leather and fur clothing was unnecessary; and housecleaning consisted o f moving the lodge to a new site, an activity

which was collective.2? Even in 1950, child care in a MontagnaisNaskapi camp was largely a matter o f a casually watchful eye to

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possible dangers, mainly camp-fires, on the part of whatever older child o r aduit was near a toddler, and I observed men to be competent at tending to even very young infants. A s for the assumption that women do the more sedentary and boring work, the most repetitive camp-bound task I noted was canoe-building. M e n devoted interminable hours, day after day, to planning down canoe ribs and planks, a job that must have taken even longer before the

availability of metal tools. The most onerous task I saw performed b y women, the smoking o f leather, was also camp-bound, but b y contrast with wood-working which could be easily interrupted, it

demanded full attention and precluded taking any responsibility for children. Egalitarian horticultural societies are o n the whole more formally organized than are egalitarian foragers, yet the basic economic structure o f gender relations is the same. The sex division of labour binds women and men i n exchange relations as constituents, each o f

which is responsible for and controls the conditions of its own production. Among native North Americans, women as women, often led b y respected seniors, held authority in the making o f

‘public’ decisions. The authority of matrons among the matrilineal, matrilocal Iroquois has been documented in detail, and evidence of gender parity, o r balance i n decision-making, has been brought forth for the neighbouring Algonkians, for the Wyandot Hurons,

for the Cherokee, and for the Hopi.2! The fact that this evidence may contradict flat statements that females lack authority among these peoples indicates the pressing need for ethnohistorical re-

search on women’s position prior to the imposition of Western laws and teaching. However, serious questions have been raised about gender structure among egalitarian horticulturalists by accounts o f peoples living i n the Amazon and Orinoco River basins o f tropical South America. Parity i n decision-making is documented for some societies?2 but most are considered to be examples of otherwise egalitarian cultures i n which women hold neither authority nor power, but instead are dominated by men and physically abused by them. Some o f the cultures concerned are not, in fact, fully egalitarian, o r at least were not before town-life and a degree o f political centralization was destroyed b y Spanish and Portuguese invaders. Others, however, show n o ranking, as best exemplified by the

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Yanomamo, much publicized as the ‘fierce people’. 23 A s i n the instances o f the Inuit and the Australian Aborigines

cited above, the data on the Yanomamo in particular and lowland South America in general need careful reappraisal i n the light o f their historical context. During the last near 500 years a population

of about 1%2 million native peoples of Brazil have been reduced to about 75,000. Many died o f new diseases but disease cannot be held accountable for the genocide rationalized by a view best expressed i n the words o f a Brazilian bishop: ‘Slavery and subordination are

the first steps toward the civilization of nations’.?* To analyse patterns o f ‘primitive warfare’ without reference to the fact that peoples i n this area have been subject for centuries to conquest and

slaving, as well as straight massacres and ‘Indian hunting’, is both unscientific and unethical.?5 Peaceful peoples became extinct,2® and the geographer Smole suggests that the Yanomamo reputation for being fierce, perhaps gained from fighting off an exploring party

in 1758, helped them survive.?” Some peoples who survived did so b y themselves engaging in slaving for the Potuguese and the Spanish. The implications o f this for gender structure must be examined, for women were i n demand as house-slaves and as prostitutes. I n any case, the stance o f fierceness varies greatly among different Yanoama groups, and Smole wrote that

‘Conceivably, certain lowland Yanoama (such as the Orinoco Waika [studied by Chagonon)), far removed from the security of their own cultural and spatial dominance, constantly menaced by aliens and foreign values, respond violently as an exaggerated defense to compensate for their

insecurity’. 2 8 Among the less vulnerable Barafiri Yanoama, Smole found age, not sex, to be relevant for decision-making. Authority is not formalized, but elders, both men and women, are respected, while ‘young m e n have relatively little influence’. Decisions are arrived at through discussion, and ‘mature wives and sisters often speak up, loudly, to express their views’. Matrilocality is common and elder women are often surrounded b y relatives; ‘much concern is shown for such a woman’s comfort and well-being’.?° Similarly, Ramos observed that among the Sanuma Yanoama, ‘women are not dominated b y men and their contribution to economic, social, and political matters is substantial and fully recognized b y the male members o f their society’.’* When disputes arise i n the village,

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women and men both gather and argue noisily, both bearing sticks

and other weapons. When violence erupts women are not cowed but administer their own blows. I n fact, women sometimes win a moot point b y defeating a male opponent in the formal duelling o f

the Yanoama. Elder women are seen as repositories of knowledge

and their advice is sought and heeded by men as well as women. In sum, despite gross exaggerations such as Harris’ assertion that ‘Yanomamo men are as tyrannical with Yanomamd women as Oriental monarchs are with their slaves’31, ethnohistorical and ethnographic data both indicate the need for further study o f the Yanoama and suggest that they do not in fact contradict the expec-

tation for gender parity in economically egalitarian societies. B y contrast with egalitarian economies in which everyone, in accord with age, sex, and personal abilities, participated directly in the production and distribution o f life’s necessities and shared equitably in their consumption, producers and consumers were sharply divided in the early urban societies o f the Orient and Mediterranean. A relatively small class of aristocrats, priests, and civil and military officials, along with their servitors and retainers, were supported b y tribute, rent, taxes, and/or corvée labour exacted from a relatively large class o f producers. This economic structure was based o n the division o f labour and a market system, o r , i n Marxist terms, o n the production o f commodities for exchange alongside the production o f goods for direct use. The specialization o f labour, and the exchange upon which i t was based,

originally had enriched people’s lives. However, it also limited their self-sufficiency b y binding them in interdependent networks and

thereby undermined their control over the distribution and consumption o f the goods they produced. Commodity production meant that people at critical points in the exchange process— religious functionaries who handled gifts to support the temple, civil functionaries who organized corvée labour, or merchants who bought goods for long-distance trade—could benefit from the labour o f others and could gain control over important resources. I n short, an upper class could separate itself from the producers and take control o f the production process. I n stratified societies some lands usually remained available for collective use. However, state, church, or private holders owned o r controlled profitable and more productive lands, either those prepared for intensive farming through terracing, draining, irrigation,

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o r raising, o r those with important mineral and other resources. Therefore large numbers o f people became alienated from the

source of their subsistence as part of the same process whereby a public economy associated with urban centres of exchange and redistribution separated itself from household and village production. The loss of economic control through interpersonal and kinstructured networks meant that political, economic, and military decisions critical to people’s daily lives were no longer made b y the producers themselves, but b y the property owning or controlling

class. The concomitant decline in the position of women relative to that o f m e n is well known. Women’s productive activities became as-

sociated with the private household domain; their legal and social status was redefined in terms o f subservience to and dependence o n

male household heads; and their sexuality was brought under strict control. Following through on the thesis put forth by Engels with respect to women’s subjugation, Rohrlich has used Mesopotamian data t o demonstrate the ‘link between subordination o f women and

the destruction of clan egalitarianism’, both of which were ‘integrally related to the institutionalization of militarism and of political consolidation in a society in which economic stratification became to suggest, hewever, that the subordination o f women, any more than that o f the producing class as a whole, was rapid and direct. Instead it came about slowly and unevenly as

- rigidified’.32 This is not

evidenced by women’s greater rights in the Sumerian codes of the Third Millennium B c by comparison with those defined in the 1750 B C

Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and the still greater restrictions for women stipulated in later Assyrian law.3? Implications are that women actively resisted their subordination; Rohrlich has pointed out that if they had not, there would have been n o need for the extreme severity o f punishments prescribed in the law codes. Well-documented examples o f women’s resistance to

patriarchal authority are so rare, however, that it is worth describing in some detail an event that occurred in Rome in 195 B c . During

the Punic Wars a law had been enacted that restricted women’s right t o o w n more than a half ounce o f gold, to wear varicoloured clothes, o r t o ride in horse-drawn carriages in o r near a city except for

ceremonial occasions. After the war, repeal of the law was suggested, and rural women joined urban women in large numbers to approach consuls and magistrates o n the streets and plead their

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case. Leading the opposition to repeal, Cato the Elder expressed outrage at the women’s behaviour. He complained, ‘if every married m a n had made sure that his own wife looked u p to him and respected his marital authority, we should not have half this trouble with women i n general.’ After a tirade against the women’s actions, Cato concluded, Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the

reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep heron a tight rein. . . Women want total freedom or rather—to call things by their names— license. I f you allow them to achieve complete equality with men,

do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters.

Undaunted, the next day the women blockaded the houses o f those tribunes who opposed the repeal, and by their action won their case.??

Significantly, what m o s t angered Cato about the behaviour of the Roman women was not so much the demands they. put forth as the

fact that these demands were made in public. He was so repelled by their behaviour, he said, that he did not ask them as he would have liked, ‘What d o you mean by coming out i n public i n this unheard of fashion and calling out to other women’s husbands?’3% This denial o f public authority to women stands in marked contrast to behaviour expected o f them among the highly egalitarian Mbuti o f Zaire as described b y Turnbull. Turnbull wrote that when serious disputes arose, senior women were the ones to ‘come out into the open, i n the middle o f the camp, and make explicit criticisms’. H e continued, a female elder ‘has both authority and power. She may be a gentle, loving, and kindly old lady one moment, as many o f the older women are, but i n a flash she becomes pure power and is

heeded by everyone.’3¢ I n classical patriarchies only a female who was a monarch, i n cases where royalty superseded gender, could take an authoritative stance i n public. The contrast between these societies and societies like the M b u t i brings out a point alluded to above, that with the emergence o f class stratification i t is n o longer possible to generalize about the decision-making prerogatives o f women as a single category. Great authority may be held by individual women but little or none 1s held by women as members o f their sex. I n the Roman example aristocratic women had to struggle to preserve some mea-

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sure of economic and personal freedom, yet they could do so without personal danger. Furthermore, in household and estate settings they held a degree of authority over workers and slaves, both women and men. A s for women o f low status, the point is often

made that their behaviour in classical patriarchies was less controlled b y male relatives than was that o f upper status women. H o w ever, this was in the context o f a political structure that denied any authority in public matters to all low status people, and only such power as they might win in the face o f great risk to themselves and

their relatives. I t is necessary to take into account the differential structure o f

power and authority for aristocratic and for low status women not only when dealing with stratification, but also when analysing the changes that take place in ‘transitional’ societies. Gender relations cannot b e separated from the totality o f social relations and i t is a mistake to trace the emergence o f male authority over women without also treating the emergence o f authority by people of high rank over those o f low rank, including the emergence o f dis-

crepancies in rank among women themselves. Much current theorizing about the origins of inequality by sex and by class focuses o n innate masculine dominance drives and/or population pressure

>’ and consequent competition and warfare as primary determinants. However, since ideals o f male dominance are absent or minimal i n egalitarian societies, arid since such societies apparently control

their population growth in accord with their resource base, I find the alternative focus o n exchange and the division o f labour to have far more explanatory power. A s the importance o f inter-group

exchange increases (a slow development but speeded up by sedentarism under certain ecological and historical conditions), growing economic dependence o n products gained from outside groups means that all members o f a village no longer have equal access to

significant resources and that the basis for unequal relations among them is laid: ranking begins to develop. B y definition, ranking o r transitional societies are highly variable. A t the egalitarian end o f the gamut, exchange is interpersonal and binds people together i n co-operative networks, while at the other end, exchange is becoming structured in terms o f market relations that enable a high ranking elite to gain control over the labour o f low ranking people and establish themselves as a ruling class. The line between egalitarian and ranking relations can be

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drawn heuristically at the point when a society has become so committed to obtaining certain foods, raw materials, o r manufactured objects from outside, that strategic positions i n relation to amassing goods to b e exchanged, in effecting the exchange, and i n

distributing the returns, have become institutionalized as important achieved statuses. Considerable interpersonal power is attached to such statuses, and the prestige they bestow is commonly ritualized b y the right to wear special insignia and adornments. However, n o marked economic advantages as yet accrue to the high ranking person. A t the other end o f the continuum, however, high ranking people are surrounded by pomp and circumstance, and, as redistributors o f considerable wealth, they have access to plentiful sup-

plies and luxury goods, and are free from onerous chores. Burdensome work is performed either b y people who attach themselves to ranking people to partake o f their resources, or by pawns and slaves o f various types.

Also by definition, the decision-making prerogatives of women relative to those o f men are highly variable i n ranking societies. They vary not only i n relation to the extent to which inequalities b y rank have become institutionalized, but also according to the part played b y women i n systems o f exchange and distribution. I n New Guinea, for example, Mead long ago documented the assured public stance o f fish trading women among the Tchambuli,*® and Weiner has recently described the ‘arrogance’ and ‘pride’ with which ‘strong women’ negotiate their wealth i n the Trobriands,>? b u t both instances contrast markedly with the restrictions placed o n women in much of the highlands where, for reasons not as yet clear, women d o not directly engage i n public property transactions.

Variations also exist within the highlands; Goldhamer cites the difference between societies like the Mae Enga where women are blocked from direct public decision-making and societies like the Tor o f West I r a n , where women control the distribution o f the sago they produce, and where they take a leading role i n group discus-

sions and in such matters as receiving outsiders.*® Highland societies also differ i n the extent to which men and women clash as women actively resist the subversion o f their freedom, and possible bases for these differences have been the subject o f considerable attention.*! However, why there should be such competition i n the first place is a question that has not been answered. Instead the competition has been treated as i f a drive on the part o f men to

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compete with and assert dominance over women was an independent variable that needed n o explanation. Persuasive as the assumption might seem from the vantage point of a male-dominated society, the ethnographic record indicates otherwise,** and instead highland N e w Guinea is an area that offers clues to the relations between women’s loss of public authority and loss o f

control over the products of their labour on the one hand, and the development o f exchange and o f economic inequalities o n the

other. I n N e w Guinea highlands society (as it functioned before the independent course o f N e w Guinea history was interrupted b y

colonization), both necessary and luxury items are procured through often elaborate trade networks and considerable time is invested, primarily by women, i n the production o f the foods and pigs that are basic to exchange.** A pattern of frequent though ritualized and restricted warfare (i.e. quick raids, short pitched battles, etc.) seems related to insuring access to trade routes and to discouraging competitors who might attempt to bypass a group’s mediating position in a network. Warfare is also said to be conducted to protect and increase prime garden lands, although land shortage would not seem to be an issue in respect to subsistence.** It is, however, with respect to producing the surplus necessary to maintain the pattern of exchange, redistribution, feasting and warfare itself that are focal interests i n New Guinea highland society. M e n are responsible for warfare and trade, and pigs are central i n the economic and political manoeuverings that accompany both. I n effect, then b y their activities men commandeer the productive

activities of women. ‘Display and transaction, the sources of male prestige, involve the products o f their wives’ labour— food, pigs,

children, and goods obtained in exchange for t h e m45 ’. Women i n N e w Guinea highland societies are i n an ambiguous position. They actively encourage exchanges by their husbands and/or male kinfolk, yet at the same time they resist the consequent male control over their activities. Some time ago Fried pointed out that redistribution is at the core o f ranking, which, i n turn, is a first step towards stratification, but that people seeking the benefits of redistribution (and I would add the exchange on which i t depends) clearly are not aware o f the fact that equality is being undermined. * ¢ A missionary working in the M t . Hagen area estimated i n 1945 that one-tenth o f all men were ‘rubbish men’, landless and often

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unmarried men who, due to poverty, misfortunes of war, or some

other mishap, chose t o attach themselves t o ‘big men’ and do their bidding. Certainly i t would be i n the immediate interest o f New

Guinea highlands woman to help her husband become a ‘big man’ rather than let h i m sink towards the position of a ‘rubbish man’. Women have so commonly been treated as an undifferentiated category i n highland N e w Guinec that there is little indication o f the extent to which wives o f ‘big men’ benefit from the labour o f low ranking men. There is even less reference to individual women with public authority (such as women healers among the Dugum Dani)*’

and virtually no indication of whether some women benefit from the labour of other women, as happens with the development of elites in

Polynesia.*® Nonetheless, systematic comparison of such data as are available in highland New Guinea societies on women’s decision-making, their part in production and exchange, and the nature o f socio-economic inequalities would be helpful for throwing light o n relations between gender and economic hierarchies i n an area where both are emerging. The New Guinea highlands contrast sharply with another culture area where the position of women has been the subject of considerable attention and debate, West Africa. West Africa is a n enor-

mously complex region. O n the one hand, different urban kingdoms rose and fell for over a millennium and a half prior to the colonial period, according to the happenstances of the trade upon which they were built. O n the other hand, at any point i n time, urban based hierarchies contrasted with more egalitarian institutions that persisted i n rural areas, and economic hierarchy never subverted kin-based egalitarian institutions to the extent that i t did i n Egypt and other parts o f the urban Middle East.*? For ecological and historical reasons that have yet to be fully defined, women i n West Africa have played important roles as marketers and have thereby retained a considerable measure o f control over the distribution o f what they produce, and o f the returns for it. Although their full equity has been undermined i n much o f the region by the

fact that most long-distance trade has been in male hands, women h a v e traditionally h e l d authority close t o , equal t o , and i n certain

instances perhaps greater than that o f men. Women i n West Africa were, and despite the inroads o f European colonization to varying extents, outside o f Moslem areas, still are expected to participate actively i n all social spheres, ritual, economic, and political, as well as familial.”

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I n her paper o n the Yoruba that follows, Afonja shows how complex the problems are o f dealing with women’s power and authority i n the case of a single people, given the historical changes that have taken place and the regional variations that exist among them. Here and elsewhere,’ she has pointed out that much o f the

existing disagreement over women’s status among the Yoruba, as in West Africa generally, stems from overgeneralization and the failure to 1) specify areas o f decision-making and their contexts; 2)

define specific historical periods being treated; and 3) take differences between elite and commoner women ir:to account. However, despite considerable variations, and despite the absence of full gender equity among the Yoruba, Afonja demonstrates that b y contrast with Mediterranean and Oriental patriarchies, women were expected as women to exert authority at local, regional, and (prior to the colonial period) national levels as chiefs, cult leaders, royal council members, market officials, craft-guild heads, and

occasionally as rulers.3? Furthermore Afonja indicates, as does Obbo for East Africa,>3 that Yoruba women have a clear under-

standing of the relation between their economic independence and their social power and authority. I n defining the historical context of women’s decision-making roles among the Yoruba, Afonja has distinguished between a preurban period, when production relations were based largely o n subsistence agriculture, and a subsequent period, commencing around A Dp 1500, when urbanization and stratification were built on

extended trade and a division of labour.>* Following Meillassoux, she characterizes the earlier period as egalitarian, but I would point out that i t was only egalitarian relative to the later period. A s she describes i t , i t was quite strongly ranked as I have been using the term here. The distinction is most important for the analysis o f women’s roles. Meillassoux and others have too casually subsumed both egalitarian and ranking agricultural societies under a single production mode variously called a ‘lineage’, ‘domestic’, o r ‘communist’ mode. 3 ° Such a categorization renders i t difficult to clarify the linked origins o f economic differentiation and gender hierarchy, both o f which are rooted i n exchange and its effects o n the division

of labour. For Meillassoux, economic and gender hierarchies emerge, though i n mild form, prior to exchange as elder men gain control over the productive labour o f junior men and over the reproductive powers as well as the labour o f women. Meillassoux argues that such

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control follows the development o f agriculture for it places a value o n labour as a social asset that it does not possess in foraging

society. This is not the palce to go into theoretical problems with Meillassoux’s assumption that labour on the land can of itself enable the imposition of interpersonal control. Suffice it to say that his formulation flies i n the face o f ethnohistorical data o n the Iroquois

and other non-ranking and sexually egalitarian matrilineal matrilocal horticulturalists of North America.3” Moreover, trade transactions and slavery are both important in the West African societies with which he largely deals. Indeed, Meillassoux’s account o f the Gouro o f the Ivory Coast itself affords an example o f how people at key points in important exchange relations are in a position to manipulate the labour o f others, for the kola nuts gathered

by women and children are turned over to elders to be exchanged for iron ingots. >® W i t h respect to women’s reproductive abilities, Meillassoux never raises the question as to why their power to produce labour

itself would not enhance their authority rather than rendering them vulnerable to domination. I would argue that the autonomy of women as producers o f labour can only be threatened when economic differentiation based o n the importance o f exchange begins to transform labour itself into a commodity. When high ranking people begin to relate to low ranking people not only as kin and affines but also as embodied labour, as abstract labour in Marxist terms, labour from which extra wealth can be derived, women’s production o f children becomes a resource to be control-

led by a budding elite. However, this elite includes women as well as men. I n its early stages competition for control of women and their children occurs not only between women and men but also among men, among women, and among lineages. I n later stages, as Afonja’s data suggest for the Yoruba and as Sacks has demonstrated for a number o f African societies,>® ranking women (unwittingly) contribute to the subordination o f théir gender when, build-

ing on the originally egalitarian principle that women should take responsibility for their own activities, they begin to organize the labour o f commoner women and benefit from i t , even though, as among the Yoruba, some may themselves come from commoner

ranks. Building on Morgan’s work, Engels related the development of

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patriarchy to the subversion o f kin-based institutions that insured collective rights to land and resources, b y political institutions that protected upper class rights to important properties. I n a comparison o f egalitarian, ranking, and stratified societies i n Africa, Sacks has explored some o f the dynamics involved and has revealed the processes whereby women’s public roles i n kin-based politics, as

sisters, become subverted by privatized roles as wives. She writes of the Buganda state that it apparently ‘all but obliterated both corporate k i n groups and sisterhood i n all save the ruling class’, and that concomitantly new agricultural forces o f production ‘reinforced wifely relations o f production to give women a sole and essential

role: that of wifely ward’. 6° Sacks documents i n ethnographic detail four interrelated developments that were involved in the transformation of women from co-equal sisters to subordinate wives. First, lineage-based selfsufficiency is undercut as exchange among producers gives way to sale to non-producers as a condition of household maintenance, and as the upper class increasingly maintains itself and its administrative apparatus through slave and client production o n privately owned

lands. Second, on the political level there is a concomitant loss of power and scope o f authority b y both kin councils and women’s market associations. Third, women officials reflect women’s associations, but at the same time attempt to contain them by incorporating them into state hierarchies, as i n Nupe, and as a result o f this and the above developments, women’s groups become increasingly transformed from ‘defenders o f sisterly relations i n their sexual, political, and economic aspects’ (as in Onitsha) into ‘mutual aid and marketing associations’ (as in Dahomey).®! Fourth,

competition between m e n and women (in an economically and

politically shrinking arena for decision-making if they are commoners) is accompanied b y attacks o n market women as sexually promiscuous (or prostitutes) o r as witches, and men increasingly gain control over the household and over women’s sexual activity. These developments vary in their particularities from society to society, and in the degree to which they were realized in different African states at the time o f colonization. However, they are in the main

consistent enough so that Sacks suggests comparative studies o f pre-colonial states should be undertaken in Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia where women were often also critical i n internal

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marketing systems. I would add the caveat that i n carrying this important enterprise further, i t is essential to assess the effects of slaving, trading, and/or missionizing b y more powerful Western or Oriental states that usually preceded direct domination or

annexation.¢ ? With industrial capitalism the transformation o f production for use to production for exchange is all but total. Production for exchange— commodity production—t hat i n its earliest stages pro-

duces ranking, and in its more developed stages leads to stratifica®?Production for direct use tion, is at the core of capitalist relations. o r distribution is reduced to a peripheral, indeed something of a recreational, activity. Productive labour itself becomes ‘commoditized’ , something to be sold by labourers to owners of lands, mines, and factories—the means o f production—in return for the wages that the producers then exchange for subsistence goods. The owners, the bourgeoisie, to some extent co-operate as a class to maintain their economically controlling position b y manipulating governmental, educational, communication, and other major in-

stitutions in their home countries and abroad. A t the same time, however, they compete fiercely among themselves as more and more encompassing structures o f ownership and control incorpo-

rate or eradicate independent business houses. I n this competitive process the owners keep wages as low as they can and use all possible means to augment their profits; i n turn the actual producers, the majority o f people, organize themselves to improve their working conditions. The character o f production i n industrial capitalism requires a mobile ‘free’ labour force, by contrast with a labour force that is bound to land o r estate-households and is required to contribute labour and produce to landowners and scate or church enterprises. B o t h workers as a class and women as a gender are able to gain greater formal legal rights than i n pre-capitalist stratified societies. They have wider occupational choices and some slight possibility o f

individual upward mooility. Nonetheless women remain subordinate to m e n with respect to both power and authority and the reasons for this have recently been the subject o f much research and debate. About a decade ago, three major statements laid the foundation

for most subsequent work on the complex relations between capitalist production and female subordination. I n the order o f their

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appearance, these are Saffioti’s Women and Class Society,

Boserup’s Women’s Role in Economic Development, and Dalla Costa and James’ The Power o f Women and the Subversion o f the Community.%*- Though written from differing viewpoints, these studies together reveal the importance o f women’s subordination for capitalist economies i n both imperialist and neo-colonial nations. Although supposedly dependent upon men, women in fact serve as 1 ) underpaid labour i n the public work force— ‘marginalized’ labour to be drawn upon o r cast aside according to economic exigency, and as 2) unpaid labour i n the private household domain, reproducing and servicing themselves and the male labour force. Their marginalization is more extreme i n ‘developing’ nations that are themselves economically marginalized. Moreover, development within a capitalist framework generally undercuts their position further rather than improving it.*®> Women’s formal legal rights to act with near equity in the public domain are not possible to exercise given the constraints o f their economic position, and the fact that patriarchal institutions of pre-capitalist times are reshaped and perpetuated i n order to maintain these constraints. %¢ A s Saffioti outlines, gender, like race, is politically manipulated to mystify the structure o f class exploitation, to divide workers from each other, and to reduce workers’ effectiveness i n organizing to

improve their life situation. Capitalist relations matured i n Europe during the process o f

colonial conquest and expansion.®” Around the world, they intersected with and transformed other types o f relations. Anthropologists have increasingly recognized the need to assess the

relationship between a given society and the emerging ‘world capitalist system’ at different points i n time i n order to interpret that

society,®® and there is particular interest in the impact European colonization has had o n gender structures and o n decisionmaking.®® However, Afonja stresses the importance o f seeing colonization as a two-way process. The European attempt to impose its o w n norms and values o n colonized peoples is enormously important, as the writings o f Cabral and Fanon among others’? have made clear, but i t is not the whole story. I n the case o f the Yoruba, local entreprenurial capitalists, predominantly male, were actively involved i n the commercial enterprises that undermined women’s economic autonomy and their related decision-making prero-

gatives.’!

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The papers below b y Krulfeld (on Sasak peasants in Indonesia) and Jain ( o n Assam tea garden workers) offer differing examples o f incorporation into the world capitalist system and its effects o n gender relations. Krulfeld adds to the considerable body o f literature that now documents ways i n which women’s autonomy can be undercut as subsistence economies give way to ‘modern’ market economies, while Jain treats a contrasting situation in which the relatively egalitarian gender relations o f tribal enclaves’ within a hierarchical state are reinforced as these peoples are drawn into a powerless and underpaid section o f the labour force. Krulfeld’s study offers an interesting example o f how a religious ideology can be used selectively to fit a changing situation. ‘Modern’ Sasak villages, where gender economic reciprocity had yielded to maledominated economic relations adopted Islamic laws limiting rights

o f women, such as to initiate divorce and retain custody o f children, but did not adopt that part of the Islamic code allowing daughters to inherit land. The latter, however, was adopted in the more traditional villages i n place o f the previous system o f land inheritance inclined towards patriliny. Conditions o n the tea garden estate described b y Jain are such that i f families are to survive, the labour of both sexes is essential— that o f women plucking tea leaves and that o f men maintaining the estate, preparing fields, and working in the factory. Indeed, such

tea gardens are able to function on a labour-intensive basis providing marginal housing and rations for their workers, because they can draw o n tribal peoples where not only both sexes but children, in so far as they are able, are expected to engage in production. Although Jain points out that women are less able to put time in o n union activity than men, and her data suggest that women put in a longer workday than do men, women are free to select their spouses and to divorce and remarry; men share in cooking and child care according to practical exigencies; women share in o r take charge o f family finances according to an individual couple’s situation o r disposition; and there seems to be n o strong cultural expectation o f female deference or subservience vis-a-vis males. Krulfeld’s and Jain’s chapters both illustrate the futility o f analysing women’s power and authority relative to that o f their menfolk without defining the limits o f both power and authority for the national, ethnic, o r racial groups and the class to which they belong. This point is critical with respect to the focus o f the last two chapters

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i n this section, organization for change. I n particular, Jain’s description o f workers’ life o n a tea garden provides a dramatic example o f the commonly noted distance between working class women, hard pushed to overcome severe economic exploitation, and often racist discrimination as well,”3 i n order to acquire the minimal necessities and hopefully a few comforts o f life, and elite women whose more obvious problem is institutionalized male superiority. I n the end, however, the restrictions o n the latter women follow from the economic relationships that force hardship o n the former; and conversely, the extremity of economic exploitation that falls most heavily o n working female heads o f households is i n large part made

possible by the institutionalization of ‘macho’ ideologies.” Fortunately, women who are organizing to achieve gender equity increasingly recognize the inseparability o f issues to do with gender and issues to d o with class exploitation and racial discrimination.

Schmink’s chapter details the difficulties confronted by Brazilian women i n forming an inter-class coalition of women’sorganizations, but notes the determination to overcome these difficulties shown by both working class and middle class women. A n d Huizer credits the growing consciousness among academic Western women o f their

need for solidarity with Third World women. Here and elsewhere’> Huizer points out that social scientists, both men and women, have a choice to make. Either they can conform to dominant ideologies o f control and document what seem to an outsider to be passivity on the part o f oppressed peoples (he here refers to peasant women i n particular), o r , academics can join with people’s attempts to gain more authority over their own lives, and thereby begin to understand and appreciate the actual conditions such people confront and the different forms resistance can take. NOTES 1

For example, Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability William Morrow, 1973.

of Patriarchy, N e w

York:

2 Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, edited and introduced b y Eleanor Leacock, N e w Y o r k : International

Publishers, 1972. 3 4

Lewis H e n r y Morgan, Ancient Society, edited and introduced b y Eleanor Leacock, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1974. I a m indebted t o V i n a Mazumdar for her comments i n the session o n Women, Power and Authority at the 1978 meetings o f the International Congress o f the

Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Delhi, although I regret not

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capturing in my notes the full richness of her remarks. For example, Martin King Whyte, The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Colin M . Turnbull, ‘Mbuti Womanhood’, in Woman the Gatherer, ed. Frances Dahlberg, N e w Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, pp. 205-19.

‘The Ritualization of Potential Conflict Between the Sexes Among the Mbutr’, i n Politics and History in Band Society, eds. Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee,

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

|

Richard Lee, ‘Politics, Sexual and Non-Sexual i n an Egalitarian Society’, ibid.

George Silberbauer, ‘Political Process in G/wi Bands’, ibid. Eleanor Burke Leacock, Myths o f Male Dominance, N e w Y o r k : Monthly

Review Press, 1981. R u b y Rohrlich, ‘State Formation i n Sumer and the Subjugation o f Women’, Feminist Studies, 6 , 1980. A l i c e Schlegel, ed. Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View, N e w You... Columbia University Press, 1977. 10 George Silberbauer, ‘Political Process i n G / w i Bands’, i n Band Society, eds. Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee, 1982. ‘Ethnohistorical Investigation o f Egalitarian Politics i n Eastern North America’, Proceedings o f the 1979 Annual

Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, 1982. 11 I n addition to the above references, this is documented in Agnes EstiokoGriffin and P . B i o n Griffin, ‘Woman the Hunter: The Agta’, in Woman the Gatherer, ed. Frances Dahlberg, 1981; and i n Alfred R . Radcliffe-Brown, The

Andaman Islanders, New York: Free Press, 1964. 12 Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee, eds., Band Society, 1982. 13 Morton H . Fried, The Evolution o f Political Society, N e w Y o r k : Random House, 1967. Marshall D . Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Chicago: Aldine,

1972. 14 For example, Ernestine Friedl, Women and Men, A n Anthropologist’s View, N e w Y o r k : H o l t , Rinehart and Winston, 1975.

15 Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures, 1504-1700, Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1969.

16 Eleanor Leacock, Myths of Male Dominance, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981. John S. Matthiasson, ‘Northern Baffin Island Women i n Three

Cultural Periods’, in Occasional Papers in Anthropology, N o . l , eds. Ann McElroy and Carolyn Matthiasson, State University o f N e w Y o r k : Buffalo,

1979, pp. 61-7. 17 F.S. Stevens, Racism: The Australian Experience, Vol. 2, Black Versus White, New York: Taplinger, 1972. Diane Bell and Pam Ditton, Law: The Old and the New, Aboriginal Women in Central Australia Speak Out, Canberra: Aboriginal

History, 1980. 18 Felicity E d h o l m , Olivia Harris and Kate Young, ‘Conceptualizing Women’, Critique o f Anthropology, 3 , 9 and 10, 1977, 101-30. Patricia D r a p e r , ‘ K u n g Women: Contrasts i n Sexual Egalitarianism i n Foraging . and Sedentary Contexts’, i n Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. Rayna R . Reiter, N e w Y o r k : M o n t h l y Review Press, 1 9 7 5 , p p . 77-109.

20 Edward Rogers and Eleanor Leacock, ‘The Montagnais-Naskapi’, in Subarctic,

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Handbook o f North American Indians, V o l . VI, ed. June H e l m , Washington, D C : Smithsonian Institution, 1982. Some authors take at face value statements b y European observers that Montagnais women are slaves and drudges, without considering that 1) hunting, an arduous task indeed as attested to b y m y

husband, coming back exhausted from an unproductive trip four men took in the summer o f 1951, was not considered work but a sport by Europeans; and

that 2) women controlled the products of their labour and could use this control to assert their own interests. For example, Moore cites a reference from the H u m a n Relations Area Files as evidence o f women’s exploitation among the Montagnais-Naskapi. H a d he turned the page i n the actual account, he would have read an incident i n which a woman, angry at her husband, took lodge covering and the man’s clothes— her manufactures— and paddled off i n a canoe,

while he followed naked along the bank. John Moore, ‘The Exploitation of Women i n Evolutionary Perspective’, Critique o f Anthropology 3 , 9 & 10, 1977,

83-100. Lucien Turner, Ethnology o f the Ungava District— Hudson Bay Territory, 11th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, DC: 1894. 21 Judith K . Brown, ‘Iroquois Women: A n Ethnohistoric Note’, in Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter, 1975, pp. 235-51. Robert Steven Grumet, ‘Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen. Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women During the 17th and 18th Centuries’, in Women and Colonization, Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, N e w Y o r k : Praeger, 1980, p p . 43-62. John Wesley Powell,

‘Whyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society’, in Annual Report of the Bureau o f American Ethnology 1 , Washington, D C : Government Printing

Office, 1880, pp. 59-69. John Phillip Reid, A Law ofBlood: The Primitive Law o f the Cherokee Nation, New York: New York University Press, 1970. Alice Schlegel, ‘Male and Female i n H o p i Thought and Action’, i n Sexual Stratification, A Cross-Cultural View, ed. Alice Schlegel, N e w Y o r k : Columbia Uni-

versity Press, 1977, pp. 245-69. 22 For example, the Bari (Elisa Buenaventural-Posso and Susan E . Brown, ‘Forced Transition from Egalitarianism to Male Dominance’, in Women and Colonization, Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Mona Etienne and Eleanor

Leacock, 1980, pp. 109-33); the Siona (E. Jean Langdon, ‘Siona Women and Modernization: Effects o n Their Status and Mobility’, paper presented in the symposium, Women’s Roles i n Traditional and Modernizing Societies, 78th A n n u a l Meeting, American Anthropological Association 1979); and the Waorani ( C . R . Wilson and J . A . Yost, ‘The N e w Amazons: From Equality to Dominance’, i b i d . , 1979). 23 Napoleon Chagnon, Yanomamo: The Fierce People, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

24 Quoted by Migliazza, E. ‘Yanomama Grammar and Intelligibility’, Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana University, University Microfilms 72-30, 432, 1972, p . 356.

25 Shelton H . Davis and Robert O . Matthews, The Geological Imperative, A n thropology and Development in the Amazon Basin of South America, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Anthropology Resource Centre, 1976. Yolanda Murphy and Robert F . Murphy, Women o f the Forest, N e w York: Columbia

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University Press, 1974, pp. 22-5. 26 For example, Nimuendaju writes of the vanished Tacunyape that they ‘were considered the most tractable Indians of the entire (middle Xingu) region. . . .

27

While other tribes were continually at war with one another, the Tacunyape were permanently at peace. . . .” Curt Nimuendaju, ‘Tribes o f the Lower and Middle Xingu R i v e r ’ , i n Handbook o f South American Indians, Vol. 3. The Tropical Forest Tribes, ed. Julian H . Steward, Washington, D C : Government Printing Office, 1948, p p . 213-69. William J. Smole, The Yanomama Indians: A Cultural Geography, Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1976. 28 Ibid., p. 31. 29 Ibid., pp. 70, 75. 30 A l c i d a R . Ramos, ‘ O n Women’s Status i n Yanoama Societies’, Curren’ Anthropology, 20, 1, 1979, 185-7.

31 Marvin Harris, Culture, People, Nature, N e w Y o r k : Crowell, 1975, p . 399. 32 Ruby Rohrlich, ‘State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women’, Feminist Studies, 6 , 1980, 76-102.

33 I b i d . Also Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963, p. 78. 34 James O’Faolain and Iauro Martines, eds. Not in God’s Image, Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians, New York: Harper and Row, 1963, pp. 38-40. Quoted from Livy, The History of Rome. 35 Ibid. 36 Colin M . Turnbull, ‘ M b u t i Womanhood’, i n Woman the Gatherer, ed. Frances Dahlberg, 1981, pp. 205-19. 37 The major statement of this position in anthropology is by Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings, the Origins o f Cultures, N e w Y o r k : Random House, 1977.

38 Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, New York: W i l l i a m Morrow, 1935.

39 Annette B . Weiner, Women of Value, Men of Renown, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976, p p . 118-19.

Goldhamer Florence Kalm, ‘The Misfit of Role and Status for the New Guinea Highlands Woman’, paper presented in the symposium, Sex Roles in the New Guinea Highlands, 72nd Annual Meetings, American Anthropological Association, 1973. Goldhamer is citing G . Oosterwal, People of the Tor, Assen, Netherlands: Royal V a n Gorcum, 1961. I t is interesting that when Oosterwal

was i n New Guinea there was a serious excess of male births which he felt was

41

42

real and not a result o f female infanticide. I n any case the unbalance that Harris (Origins o f Cultures, 1977) cites as related to male supremacy was cited by the T o r as an additional reason for the high status o f women among them. Paula Brown and Georgeda Buchbinder, eds. M a n and Woman in the New Guinea Highlands, Washington, D C : American Anthropological Associat i o n , 1976. M . J . Meggitt, ‘Male-Female Relationships i n the Highlands o f Australian N e w Guinea’, i n New Guinea: the Central Highlands, ed. James B . Watson, American Anthropologist, 66, 4, 2, 1964, pp. 204-24. Ashley Montagu, ed. Learning Non-Aggression, The Experience o f Non-Literate Societies, O x f o r d : Oxford University Press, 1978.

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43 Malinowski’s classic works on the Trobriands have made the exchange systems. of Melanesia well known. Among recent studies of exchange are Ralph Bulmer, ‘Political Aspects of the Moka Ceremonial Exchange System among the Kyaka People o f the Western Highlands o f N e w Guinea’, Oceania, 31, 1960-1, 1 - 1 3 ; and Thomas G . Harding, Voyagers o f the Vitiaz Strait, Study o f a New Guinea

Trade System, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967. The central importance of pigs in New Guinea economies has been well demonstrated by R o y A . Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors, N e w Haven: Yale University Press,

1967. Mervyn Meggitt, Blood is their Argument, Warfare among the Mae Enga

Tribesmen o f the New Guinea Highlands, Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1967, pp. 9, 182-4.

45 Paula Brown and Georgeda Buchbinder, eds. ‘Introduction’, New Guinea Highlands, 1976. For a study o f relations between women’s status and exchange, see Jill Nash, ‘Sex, Money and the Status o f Women i n Aboriginal South Bougainville’, American Ethnologist, 8 , 1, 1981, 107-26.

Morton H . Fried, The Evolution o f Political Society, New York: Random House, 1967, pp. 116-17, 182-4. 47 ‘During a curing ceremony a he phatphaie [women with special curing powers takes charge of the ceremony, entering the men’s house and directing the activities o f even the most important men’. Karl G . Heider, The Dugum Dani, Chicago: Aldine, 1970, p . 97.

Christine Ward Gailey, ‘Authority and Ambiguity: Chiefly Women and Class

49 50

Formation i n Tonga’, in Women and State Formation in Preindustrial Societies, eds. Christine Ward Gailey and M o n a Etienne, South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin, forthcoming. Arthur Tuden and Leonard Plotnicov, eds. Social Stratification in Africa, N e w York: Free Press, 1970. Leith Mullings, ‘Women and Economic Change i n Africa’, in Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, eds. N . J. Hafkin and E . G . Bay, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1976, pp. 239—64. Sudarkasa, Niara,

‘Female Employment and Family Organization in West Africa’, in New Research on Women and Sex Roles, ed. Dorothy G . McGuinan, Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Center for Continuing Education o f Women, 1976, pp. 48-63.

51 Simi Afonja, ‘Changing Modes of Production and the Sex Division of Labour among the Yoruba’, Signs, 7, 2, 1982. 52 ‘Nigerian Women i n Traditional Public Affairs’, i n L a Civilisation de la Femme dans la Tradition Africaine, Présence Africaine, 1975, Balonle A w e ‘The Iyalode in the Traditional Yoruba Political System’, i n Sexual Stratification, A Cross-Cultural View, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, pp. 144-60. Nina E m m a M b a , ‘Women i n Southern Nigerian Political History’, P h . D . Thesis, University o f Ibadan, 1977. Constance Sutton, ‘Female Hierarchies in Yoruba Kingdoms’, i n Women and State Formation in Pre Industrial Societies, eds. Christine Gailey, and Mona Etienne, South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin, forthcoming.

53 Christine Obbo, African Women, Their Struggle for Economic Independence, London: Zed Press, 1981.

54 Simi Afonja, Production and Sex Division, 1982.

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55 Barry Hindess and Paul Q . Hist, Pre-Capitalist Modes o f Production, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. Claude Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, Paris: Francois Maspero, 1975. Emmanuel Terray, Marxism and ‘Primitive’ Societies, N e w Y o r k : Monthly Review Press, 1972. Marshall D . Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Chicago: Aldine, 1972. 56 Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, 1975.

57 See Footnote 21. These and other materials are summarized in Eleanor Leacock, Myths of Male Dominance, 1981. 58 Terray, Marxism and ‘Primitive’ Societies, 1972. 59 Karen Sacks, ‘Women and States in West Africa’, paper presented at the 75th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 1976; Sisters and Wives. The Past and the Future o f Sexual Equality, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979. Sacks, ibid., p . 215.

61 Ibid., p. 217. 62 M o n a Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds. Women and Colonization, A n thropological Perspectives, New York: Bergin, 1980. 63 A s analysed i n the first hundred pages o f Karl Marx’s Das Capital. Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of Women and the Subversion o f Community, Briston: Falling Wall Press, 1972. Ester Boserup, Women’s

Role in Economic Development, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970. Heleieth 1.B. Saffioti, Women in Class Society, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978. (Translated from Portuguese). 65 The gains made b y women when development has been carried out within a socialist framework are well documented, but the fact that they continue to fall short o f holding the authority held b y men is also commonly pointed out. The persistence o f male chauvinist attitudes and institutions is not simply due to the

difficulty of overcoming deeply internalized traditions but is also due t o the very real contradiction between women’s liberation as a goal and the enormous expense that eradicating women’s unpaid services and socializing domestic

labour necessarily must entail. Elizabeth J. Croll, ‘Socialist Development Experiences: Women in Rural Production and Reproduction in the Soviet Union, C h i n a , Cuba, and Tanzania’, Signs, 7 , 2 , 1982.

United Nations Division for Economic and Social Information, Department of Public Information, ‘Worsening Situation o t Women Will be Main Issue Con-

fronting Commission of the Status of Women’, International Women’s Division Bulletin, 22, 1980. 67 Eric Williams. Capitalism and Slavery, N e w Y o r k : Capricorn Books, 1966.

June Nash, ‘Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System’, Annual Review o f Anthropology, 10, 1981, 393-423. 69 Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, eds. Anthropological Perspectives, 1980. Women and Colonization; A n n McElroy and Carolyn Matthiasson , eds. Sex Roles in Changing Cultures, Occasional Papers i n Anthropology 1 , Buffalo,

New York: State University of New York at Buffalo, 1979. 70 Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source, N e w Y o r k : Monthly Review Press, 1973. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, N e w Y o r k : Grove Press, 1967.

71 S i m i Afonja, Production and Sex Division, 1982.

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Biman Kumar Das Gupta, ‘Tribal Women in North-East India’, in Tribal Women in India, Indian Anthropological Society, Calcutta: Troika Press, 1978. 73 Beverly Lindsay, ed. Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women, the Impact o f Race, Sex and Class, N e w York: Praeger, 1980.

74 United Nations Division for Economic and Social Information, Department of

Public Information, 1980. Eleanor Leacock, ‘History, Development, and the Division of Labor by Sex: Implications for Organization’, Signs, 7, 2, 1982. 75 Gerrit Huizer, ‘Anthropology and Politics: From Naivete Toward Liberation?’ in The Politics of Anthropology, eds. Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim, The Hague: Mouton, 1979, pp. 3-41.

Women, Power and Authority in Traditional Yoruba Society SIMI AFONJA

Introduction!

This analysis of the position of women in pre-colonial Yoruba society focuses on how and through what mechanisms women exercised control over their own lives, over issues which affected their lives, and over the lives o f others. This departure from the emphasis o n female institutional participation, which has influenced most previous studies o n Yoruba women, is called for by the weaknesses

of that approach. For example, the theoretical and methodological weaknesses of using indicators such as female labour force participation i n cross-cultural studies are spelt out b y Safilios-Rothchild

(1972), Blumberg (1975), Buvinic (1976) and Giele (1975). Blumberg and Giele in particular point out how culture-bound such measures and the concepts that underlie them are. They recommend that instead o f making crude comparisons, researchers should

probe the degree and nature of control exercised by women within different spheres of activity. I n the case of the Yoruba, earlier studies placed too much emphasis o n positions held by women

without interpreting these positions within the totality of the life experiences and the value structure o f Yoruba society. The concept o f control is being used i n this paper, because it reaches beyond that of institutional participation without completely disregarding i t . The concept not only recognizes the defined roles and activities o f role incumbents, but also emphasizes their

ability to plan their future activities. The concept o f control also allows the observer to deal with the individual's ability to make decisions concerning the lives o f others. Control can be achieved through the exercise o f power o r authority—concepts which define

different types of individual influence and involvement in decision-

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making processes. They are being used here to help define different levels of female involvement i n decision-making processes in precolonial Yoruba society. I am not, however, making a distinction between the domestic and the public domains as do Rosaldo (1974) and Sanday (1974). I am instead interested i n the extent to which decision-making mechanisms are used to gain status across the institutional lines they differentiate as ‘public’ and ‘private’. These institutions are interconnected i n pre-industrial society and the

Yoruba do not separate these two domains. Some important conceptual and methodological issues The concepts o f power and authority which feature prominently in this paper are, according to D a h l (1970), influence terms which

define a relation in which the actor induces other actors t o act in some way they would not otherwise act. The resources of influence o r what Dahl calls ‘the base value o f influence’ can be money, threat o f force, love, information, food, jobs, friendships, social standing, the right to make laws, vote, etc. Influence derived from authority

differs from that based on power in that it requires cultural legitimation. A person who exercises authority has the ‘right’ to do so, and the recipient o f the order has a formally recognized obligation to accept. Authority is therefore defined within this context as ‘the

right to make a particular decision and to command obedience since the act o f command involves at least one such decision’ (Smith

1960). Power is conceptualized as the ability to act effectively on persons o r things, to make o r secure favourable decisions which are not formally recognized as part o f an individual’s role. Hence power

is an ‘illegitimate’ control mechanism that includes coercion, and force, persuasion, manipulations o f various sorts, bargaining, simple suggestion and other forms o f influence (Smith 1960). Power mechanisms can be classified as either those derived from the actor’s superiority, e.g. coercion and force, and those reflecting a weaker position, e.g. persuasion and suggestion. The above conceptions o f control mechanisms are particularly appropriate for this paper because o f their similarity with Yoruba conceptualizations o f decision-making processes. The Yoruba word for power, agbara, also means force. Power is believed to derive from a range o f sources—age, titled office, leadership o f associa-

tions and wealth which, as indicated by Lloyd (1974), enables a person to create relationships o f obligation and indebtedness. The

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Yoruba however distinguish the avenues for exercise of physical

force and other forms of influence from those which derive from positions of authority. The legitimate holder of such a position is the alase, literally the man with the right to make laws and give orders. B u t the flexibility o f decision-making processes among the Yoruba is a sign o f the association between the legitimate and illegitimate forms o f influence. Although Yoruba kingdoms are usually classified as centralized African states, policies are i n reality made through a process o f competition among various segments o f the society. Groups with shared interests and individualswhose power derives from any o f the above named sources seek to influence the centre both through those who have culturally legitimate positions and those who maintain social connections with persons i n positions o f formal authority.

The basic problem with respect to women is one o f charting the position o f women within a flexible decision-making system. D i d women occupy positions o f authority? D i d they have access to the exercise o f power for the control o f their own lives and the lives o f others? These and similar questions need to be looked into i n a reappraisal o f the position o f women i n Yoruba society before the beginning o f the twentieth century. I n making this reappraisal, I take the theoretical position that Yoruba society o f the past was not as egalitarian as generally acclaimed. One can hardly expect a high degree o f egalitarianism between the sexes in a socially stratified society with some degree o f political centralization and an exchange economy based o n the division o f labour. I n spite o f the inequality b e t w e e n t h e sexes, h o w e v e r , w o m e n h a d control o v e r certain as-

pects of their lives and could by virtue of their birth and/or achievement importantly influence the lives o f others. Sex-inequality i n pre-colonial Yoruba states did not have a uniform character. The decision-making power of commoner women in community affairs depended on the kinship structure, the a m o u n t o f c o n t r o l concentrated a t t h e c e n t r e , and the i n t e r n a l

prosperity and stability o f each kingdom. Yoruba societies with cognatic rules of descent allowed more control than those which were strongly patrilineal. The more centralized states allowed commoner women less control than the less centralized and the more prosperous states stressed the norms o f achievement and extended these to women more than the less prosperous states, in which wealth was concentrated i n the hands o f men.

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Social structure o fpre-colonial Yoruba society

The Yoruba are a ‘Kwa’ speaking people who prior to the establishment o f colonial rule i n Nigeria occupied a territory which extended westwards into the present-day Republic of Benin and Togo and eastwards to the o l d kingdom o f Benin. A t the end of the nineteenth century, the language and culture o f the Yoruba were not restricted t o t h e enclave t h a t i s n o w k n o w n as Y o r u b a l a n d , b u t covered a

more extensive geographical area. There 1s divergence o f opinion as to the number o f Yoruba kingdoms. Bascom (1942) records sixteen, while the Yoruba historian Johnson (1921) and others who derived their information from Johnson, record seven founded by the princes o f Oduduwa who had

migrated away from Ile-Ife, the mythical cradle of the Yoruba. More important than the issue o f numbers, however, is the cultural affinity o f these kingdoms—a phenomenon which is explained i n terms o f their common ancestry? and which is apparent i n most aspects o f their social and political organization. I n spite of their common culture, the kingdoms retained some unique features. This was specially so i n their political constitutions, the balance of power between the centre and other political elites, and i n the extent to which men and women could move u p within the hierarchical structure. Imoagene (1976) classified Yoruba kingdoms into three types according to the degree to which hereditary restrictions were imposed o n the individual’s mobility. The first type is the maximum hereditary restriction system of the north and north-west (Oyo and E k i t i Kingdoms) which offered full security to holders o f political office through its highly restricted scope for upward mobility by the general populace. I t is not merely due to chance that the Oyo and E k i t i societies were also strongly patrilineal. The second is the minimum hereditary restriction system of the south and south-east ( I j e b u and Ondo) i n which the status o f the lineage was politically insignificant. Appointments to political offices i n such kingdoms operated through an open system that provided opportunities for upward mobility. B o t h male and female lines o f descent were recognized, thus providing alternative routes for upward mobility. The third type o f kingdom is described as equalitarian because i t provided more mobility channels for its citizens than the first two. T h e t w o kingdoms i n c l u d e d i n this category, I b a d a n and Abeokuta,

are younger than the others. They were military in character and

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were administered b y various grades o f title holders whose positions

were non-hereditary. Pre-colonial Yoruba society can therefore be described as a group of semi-autonomous kingdoms with varying degrees o f political centralization; from what Lloyd (1974) calls the triumvirate o f three chiefs among the Kabba village groups in the east to the dynastic rule o f the powerful princes o f Oyo and Ile-Ife. Access to political office was either through the lineage or through

title associations, and the balance of power between the king and his council depended on the relative emphasis on hereditary as against individual achievement through these title associations.? A corollary o f the Yoruba complex political structure was a tradition o f urbanism based on an exchange economy and a division

of labour that transcended age and sex. Most Yoruba urban centres were the seats o f male and female craft specialists and guilds—the producers of the wares which were exchanged at the periodic markets. The Yoruba did not only have a standard medium of exchange such as cowry shells, but also operated the rudiments of a banking system which was a means o f raising capital. The esusu savings institution is described by the Yoruba historian Johnson (1921) as a custom for the clubbing together o f a number o f persons for mutual monetary aid.* The economy o f pre-colonial Yoruba society was based o n fairly sophisticated internal trade as much as on longdistance trade with northern centres like Timbuctoo and Kano (Skinner 1968). One should not of course underestimate the volume o f trade with Europeans that took place before the end o f the nineteenth century. Trade i n slaves, alcohol, firearms and consumer items had important influences o n traditional economic institutions, o n the political structure o f Yoruba states, and o n the

availability of economic opportunities t o different states.’ The Yoruba were town dwellers. Although the historical process through which Yoruba urbanism emerged is still to be fully com-

prehended, there is no doubt that the large indigenous towns existed before European contact in the sixteenth century. Yoruba towns were initially centres of political administration, although their growth was fostered b y trade and craft production (Mabogunje 1968). Extensive

farming was not allowed within the town. Farmlands and farm settlements were therefore maintained within varying distances from the walled towns and farmers commuted daily o r weekly

between the city and the farm settlements. This pattern of dual

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residence is thus an adaptive mechanism to the complex sociopolitical structure.

Farming was the primary occupation of the Yoruba. Men and women had complementary roles i n farming; men performed the

heavier duties, while women helped in planting, weeding, harvesting, processing and marketing. The last named role brought them out of the home as the chief participants in rural and urban trading. The complex pre-colonial stratification structure was a function

of the differentiated political and economic structure. Birth, wealth, prestige and political power were the criteria for social evaluation. Economic and political inequalities were accepted as part o f the system; slavery and pawning were widespread institutions. The rights and obligations o f the slave and the pawn were well defined and maintained. Power (agbara) derived from age, titled

office and wealth. The powerful, alagbara, were usually political office holders, members o f specific descent groups, rich men and heads o f associations. The rich olowo were usually traders who

could provide the ready cash, but whose fortunes fluctuated and whose affluence was based on credit (Lloyd 1974). They were distinct from the wealthy oloro whose fortunes derived from extensive farmland and house property items which were more permanent than those o f the rich. The term olola was also used for a man o f honour who had high prestige derived from titled office. The

Yoruba appreciated individual achievement, a factor that is often overlooked because o f the strong emphasis o n ascription. I n fact the

rights and privileges attainable through birth could be circumscribed by the lack of individual abilities necessary for success.® Yoruba religious systems cluster around the belief in one God, Olodumare, who was approached through certain lesser deities. The specialization o f functions among the deities shows how they

permeate all aspects of Yoruba life. It is believed that the gods were instituted to enable man to cope with the intransigencies o f their natural environment and its effects o n human activities. The lesser gods were believed to reside in rivers, lagoons, hills and trees, though their worship was localized at altars, temples, and countless

shrines (Parrinder 1960). The gods, 400-600 of them, were of three types; those worshipped throughout Yorubaland, personal deities,

lineage and occupational deities. Ancestor worship was a strong feature of Yoruba religion. It encouraged the solidarity of the

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lineage irrespective of whether descent was agnatic or cognatic. A n extended family structure and polygamy were also widespread among the Yoruba. Female rulers in the pre-colonial era

The foundation of the patrilineal rule of succession to the highest political office, that o f the monarch, was laid when Oduduwa bypassed his two eldest daughters to confer authority over new ter-

ritories on his seven princes. However, the history of the Yoruba since A D 1000 shows that this rule was occasionally broken. Women became rulers i n one o r more o f the following ways: they were picked b y the Ifa oracle o n the prediction that their reign would be more prosperous than that o f direct heirs to the throne; they acted as regents for young heirs to the throne for extended periods o f time; o r in cases where the Ifa oracle was unable to find a suitable heir and having shown immense ability as regents they were

allowed to rule. The monarchy was thus a source o f legitimate authority for women either as direct monarchs o r as regents. The latter role was

written into the political constitution of many kingdoms whereas the former was more exceptional. I n the kingdom of Akure, it was the right of the eldest princess to rule the kingdom for about six months or more until a new ruler was chosen. Her reign usually spanned the period of mourning and final funeral rites (Atandare 1973). A similar institution existed thirty miles away in the kingdom of Ado-Ekiti, where according to the ruling Oba (Aladesanmi 1977) ‘a princess always acts as regent when the Oba dies’. Iyayun in the old kingdom of Oyo, a wife of Oba Aganju, acted as regent until her son K n was of age several years later (Johnson 1921). Available historical records show that there were female rulers in the north and north-eastern kingdoms as well as i n the southern and more egalitarian kingdoms. There were three female rulers in the history of Akure as recorded by Atandare (1973). Eye-Aro was the ruler in Akure between 1393 and 1419. She was picked by the Ifa oracle who predicted a difficult time for the kingdom if any of the heirs was allowed to rule. Eye-Aro was allowed to rule with the full rights and

responsibilities of the kingly office. The second Akure female ruler, E y e m o h i n , reigned between 1705 and 1735. She is remembered for

establishing three important markets to foster trade in her kingdom. The third female ruler, Amaro, reigned for only one year

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between 1850 and 1851. Her reign is described by Atandare (1973) as a short but successful period. She introduced cloth dyeing as an

additional occupation for women who were primarily involved in helping their husbands on the farm. One female ruler, Yeyenirewu, was recorded for the nearby

kingdom of Ado-EXkiti. She ruled between 1511 and 1552. According to Oguntuyi (1952) she was appointed like any male successor, but she was the first and the last female ruler because the institution complicated the patrilineal rules o f succession.” Yeyenirewu is remembered for extending the geographical boundaries o f the kingd o m b y founding new towns and villages. Oral and archival sources show that the kingdom o f Ile-Ife also had a female ruler. According to an informant,® ‘Luwe was a female Ooni (ruler o f Ife) some hundreds o f years ago. She was known to

be a very strict disciplinarian who made the people work very hard and who even punished laziness. During her reign, the city of Ife was considerably improved and made very clean. The streets and open spaces particularly around the shrines and important buildings, were marvellously and solidly paved with broken pieces o f earthen pots, patches of which can still be seen all over the city

today.” Three female rulers are listed by A jisafe (1948) in his genealogy o f Egba rulers. They are Tenidade, Erelu and Latoni. Although the

history of their reigns is absent in A jisafe’s work, there is no reason t o assume that they wielded less control than other rulers. I n fact all these female rulers exercised the same authority as male rulers.

They possessed the royal insignia of office and with the state councils looked after all executive and judicial businesses o f state. Their sex was not an impediment to the exercise o f their authority and their ability to resort to physical power where necessary to the interest o f the state. Women as traditional chiefs

Positions of authority also existed for women lower down in the administrative hierarchy. This is an important political phenomenon which distinguishes the Yoruba from European societies with female monarchs. The monarch (Oba) is the highest i n rank in all Yoruba kingdoms. H e is surrounded b y different ranks o f state officials o r (chiefs) whose positions were hereditary within lineages o r achieved through wealth o r membership of associations. These chiefs were members o f the executive, legislative and judiciary

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councils who with the Oba administered the state. Women were sometimes involved in political administration directly as members o f these councils or as advisers to the Oba and other members. The position o f the Iyalode, a female chief, which is presumed to exist i n most Yoruba kingdoms is the most popular source of wo-

men’s authority widely acknowledged in the literature. Awe (1977), building on the short descriptions of that position by the missionary Hinderer (1854) and the Yoruba historian Johnson (1921) describes the Iyalode o f Ibadan, Abeokuta, Oyo, Ondo and Ijebu. Like most writers o n this subject, A w e assumes that this female institution is one consistent feature o f all Yoruba political systems. However, she argues that the amount o f control exercised by the Iyalode varies

with the degree of political centralization of each kingdom. The more centralized states are believed to obscure the importance o f

the Iyalode while the more egalitarian ones project her role. Relevant as the variation i n centralization may be to the degree o f political control available to women, the tendency to generalize the institution o f Iyalode to all Yoruba states and to equate all female titles with i t has meant ignoring the existence of other importart female titles and the entire process by which women were Incorporated into political life. I t is necessary to examine the range o f female political involvement to understand the amount o f control

they possessed. What is known presently about the position o f the Iyalode in the Yoruba political system centres o n the life and activities o f the Iyalodes o f Ibadan (Iyaola and Efunsetan) and Abeokuta (Tinubu). There were i n fact few holders o f that position prior to the end o f the nineteenth century. The title was first bestowed o n Iyaola in 1850. Madam Tinubu was active in Egba politics until 1867. Informants at Ile-Ife claim that the title was introduced into their kingdom i n 1880, during the reign o f Oba Derin Ologbenla. The first Iyalode was Molomo after whom came three others: Awoyele, Famojure and Warri. There is evidence however, that other female chieftaincy titles existed before the nineteenth century, but i n only three kingdoms were such titles found to have been incorporated into the state council. The Erelu was a member o f the Ogboni— the body that made laws, judged cases and discussed with and advised the king i n all matters affecting the Egba government. She was assisted b y three supporters just like the Apena, secretary to the council. There were other Erelu titles o f lower rank from which women could move

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up (Ajisafe 1948). The Osugbo, a politically important cult in Owu-Ijebu, included a female member who, according to A w e (1977), participated at all levels o f policy making including that o f

the Iwarefa, the chiefs who were respons ble for state policy making. A woman who wielded considerable power in the Oyo kingdom, was the representative o f the Alaafin, the monarch, in the Ogboni cult. According to Morton-Williams (1967), her duty was to listen to

deliberations without speaking. Her major task was to warn the Alaafin of possible trouble and thereby cause the Oyo-mesi— the State Council— to moderate their opinion. Her membership o f the

Ogboni derived from her ritual role as the mother of the cult and of the king’s principal diviner. Outside the Ogboni cult, she wielded considerable authority by representing the king in his executive and military roles. Her authority also extended over economic affairs since she administered the collection o f tolls, fiscal and trade tributes for the Alaafin. She had access to him at all times and she could receive the council o f state—the Oyo-mesi. She saw the Alaafin retire and was the first to see him rise. The existence of such a powerful position i n a highly centralized state like Oyo does not contradict the negative association between the degree o f female

control and of political centralization because membership of the Ogboni in O y o was hereditary; b y contrast in [jebu and Abeokuta,

such membership was by an achieved title. Atandare’s (1973) history of the Akure kingdom shows that female titles were instituted after the founding of the kingdoms,

when the princes of Oduduwa consolidated their reign over the new kingdoms. Women as well as men who had accompanied the princes were rewarded with titles. One o f these titles is that o f Eyerelu, the most senior o f the women who had migrated with the D e j i o f

Akure. The first holder of the title between 1150 and 1180 was the sister o f a high ranking chief. The D e j i made her the owner of the market and an important participant at the celebration of the eating o f the new yam i n the kingdom. The Eyerelu later lost her position

as the most important female title holder t o the Eyelobinrin, the head o f the Apate, the bush meat sellers. The title o f Eyelobinrin was conferred o n a migrant bush meat seller whose brother was given political asylum and a chieftaincy title in Akure. Members o f the Apate operated as a council of female chiefs with special responsibility for the market. The Eyelobinrin hence became the

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head o f all the women i n the town just as the Olisa was the head o f all the men. Members o f the Apate society as bush meat sellers, also participated i n the Ogun yearly festival. Ogun is the god o f iron, one o f the most indispensable deities worshipped throughout Yorubaland. Offerings are given on behalf o f the community by the priests o f Ogun at these annual festivals. The creation o f the position of the Eyelobinrin was an important

step in the history of the incorporation of women into the decisionmaking process i n Akure kingdom. I t was an acknowledgement o f the need for commoner women to participate in the political process. The Apate society had displaced the Ikoju, a lineage-based female society, to become the highest ranking female society, in

Akure. The head of the Ikoju, and ex-wife of Oba Ogunja had started the association i n her lineage after she had left the palace.

The lkoju was officially recognized in 1533. Olukoju was introduced to the council o f chiefs to legitimize her title which derived

from her name. The relegation of the Olukoju to second in rank symbolized the extension of political controi to commoner women. The Esare, another Akure female association was introduced b y

Oba Atakumosa in 1599. Members were his own daughters and other princesses in the kingdom. The first leader, the Elesare, was a princess o f O b a Atakumosa. The fifth association, described b y Atandare (1973), is the more recent Orangun. The first head was

the wife of high chief Olisa. The group was formally instituted in 1940 by Oba Adesida who gave them fourth place in Akure female chieftaincy. Similar royal titles were reported in Ile-Ife. The most disting-

uished princess was given the title of Wabodu. The other titles are Wabokin, Morege, Mosusi, Molugba, Arege, Mereke, Wabayo, and Nolaso. All princesses were assessed b y Ife kingmakers for these titles. The first Wabodu was Depetun, daughter o f Ooni Derin Ologbenla who reigned between 1880 and 1894. Although these title holders were primarily saddled with the responsibilit y o f

maintaining law and order in their circle, the privileges of royalty

allowed them to influence the lives o f women in the town. The Wabodu assisted the female officials o f the market, the Iyaloja and

Iyalaje, in running the affairs of the market. She also represented their interests at the palace. The title o f Arishe in Ijesha kingdom and o f the Lobun in Ondo were also held within royal lineages. The Arishe’s control over

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Ijesha women derived primarily from her position as the king’s first wife, but she was also endowed with ‘a great deal of power, which was given ritual and symbolic recognition’ ( A w e 1976: 154) for

her contributions to the defeat of the Nupe invaders. She became one of the kingmakers and was the most senior female chief in the kingdom. The position o f the Lobun was instituted to reflect the descendence of the incumbent dynasty from female founders of the kingdom. Hers was a position of authority over women i n much the same way as the O b a exercised authority over men. The Lobun and her o w n chiefs generally looked after the interests o f women, but she also contributed to matters o f interest to both men and women, the organization o f festivals, the declaration of war and the imposition o f curfews i n the town. That the control exercised by these

lineage-based female chiefs extended beyond the lineage is also shown i n Ikerre Kingdom. Like the Olukoju in Akure, the

Osemawe, the Ojumu'” and Aro in Ikerre, twenty miles away, were lineage titles, but the incumbents functioned like a state council i n charge o f women’s affairs. The Ogoga o f Ikerre (1972) reports that

the council met regularly to deliberate over women’s affairs with the Osemawe as president. Non-hereditary titles were conferred o n the basis o f individual achievement. Such titles were referred to as the Obirinsogba in Ile-Ife. They are the Ojumu, Yeloja, Ilyamokun, Elewi and Lagora.

The incumbents are women who had distinguished themselves in trade o r who were heads o f craftguilds. The Yeloja was in charge o f the market and the Eyemokun was the head of all the beadmakers in the kingdom. These chiefs were not members o f the state legislative o r executive council, but their advice was sought o n state

affairs. These categories o f titles had existed i n the Yoruba kingdoms

before the beginning of the nineteenth century when the title of Iyalode was introduced as suggested earlier. The institution of this commoner title is an important step in the progressive transfer of political control from royal women and representatives o f specific interest groups to commoner women. The difference between the coastal regions and the hinterland can be attributed to the late entry o f the kingdoms i n the hinterland into the trans-Atlantic trade.

Women as palace officials The women in this category were residents o f the palace; the king’s

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wives, daughter s and slaves. Their responsib ilities ranged from the day-to-da y upkeep o f the royal househol d to political, economic

and ritual functions in support of the king. For example, female

palace officials were used extensively in the Oyo kingdom . Johnson

(1921) and Morton-Williams (1967) classified them into three groups: the mothers o f the palace, the wives o f the palace, and slaves, who were the lowest in the rank o f ordinary slave women. They are referred to as officials b y Johnson and Morton-W illiams to draw attention to their significant contributio ns to the administra-

tion of the palace and the state. The king’s official mother, the Iya’kere ranked higher than the councillors o f state and was present during consultations with the Basorun, the prime minister. She held a more powerful position than the king’s mother although the latter enjoyed more deference. The Iya’kere was i n charge of the king’s treasures, the royal insignia o f office and all the paraphernalia used o n state occasions. She had

the power to withhold the ritual paraphernalia and thus prevent a state occasion when she was offended by the king. Placing the crown o n the king’s head at the coronation was also her responsibil-

ity. As the feudal head of Iseyin and Iwo and the ruler of Ogbomosho, her power reached beyond the palace into tributaries o f

Oyo. The other mothers o f the palace were priestesses i n charge o f the palace. Their control often reached beyond the palace as

mothers of cult organizations in the town. The most important of these priestesses, the I y a Naso, mother of the cult of Shango, and I y a Nkolara, mother o f the Ogboni cult, both had some degree o f control over the king, his council and the people, through their ritual functions. The mother o f the Ogboni cult was also the mother o f the principal diviner, o f the assistant to the Ogboni priest and the supervisor o f the king’s market. The word Iya which prefixes these titles means mother. I t is often extended to individuals who fulfil maternal roles i n the kinship group o r community. The authority o f these priestesses over men as well as women therefore derives from their supernatural power and from their symbolic position as mothers to members o f the community. Leadership roles in women’s associations

Interest groups that cut across kinship groups allowed women to govern themselves and thus to develop effective mechanisms o f

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control over their lives and to defend their own interests. Market governments, craft guilds and age associations are examples o f female avenues to self-government i n pre-colonial Yoruba society. Women who sold the same commodity shared the same location and were grouped under a sub-head who, according to Jordan (1973), was responsible to the Iyaloja, the highest position i n the hierarchy of market officials. The Ivaloja was assisted by an lyalaje who was chosen from among the sub-heads. The officials of the market were responsible for the allocation o f stalls, sanitation o f the market, price fixing, the distribution o f articles from other towns among sellers, the collection o f taxes, and the general maintenance o f law and order among market women. The Apate association o f meat sellers i n Akure is an example o f such an association, although it later developed from a market-based to a town-based association. Female crafts such as dyeing, weaving and pottery making were organized like male guilds i n the interests of producers and buyers, a characteristic which necessitated the creation o f positions o f authority i n predominantly female groups. Some female craft guilds were initially based o n extended family production. O j o (1966) describes h o w the communal organization of the supply o f yarn for cloth weaving grew beyond the confines o f the extended family and operated more o r less like the esusu savings club. Some leaders of women’s craft guilds became influential in public affairs. Iyamokun, one of the distinguished title holders at Ile-Ife was, as indicated by

Eluyemi (1976), the head of all bead manufacturers at Ile-Ife. Female age associations existed i n some kingdoms, such as Ekiti and I j e b u , where they were incorporated into different levels o f government and administration. Female age associations were not as active i n public affairs as male age associations. Women, unlike men, could not participate i n these associations throughout hfe because continuous involvement was hindered by marriage, which required a change o f residence and child bearing which imposed new responsibilities. Active female participation in age associations started after t h e i n i t i a t i o n r i t e s , was dormant d u r i n g t h e child bear-

ing period, after which participation increased. Members of an age grade still maintained contact i n the intermediate period. They met at marriages, funerals o f members and their relations and at religi-

ous festivals. A n example o f a female age grade is the Imeshu, described b y O j o (1979) as the highest grade o f a female age association i n a village i n EKkiti. The leader, the Eyelemeshu had

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ritual functions which extended her influence beyond the age association.

Women's supernatural power

Formal authority and power (force) was believed to lie outside the reach o f the Yoruba women. Most informants however mentioned the exception o f supernatural power exercised by women through witchcraft and through their ritual roles as priestesses and guardians o f r e l i g i o u s cults. T h e Yoruba referred t o witches as ‘ o u r mothers’

(Henderson 1969) but scorned their supernatural power because o f the ills they could inflict on their victims. Women’s power over men and women therefore derived from supernatural sources and could consequently be classified as a negative mechanism which developed i n part from the weaker position of women relative to that o f men i n Yoruba households. Not all Yoruba cult groups were the exclusive preserve of men, as popularly believed. Women were admitted into the priesthood o f Sango, Obatala and Oshun. The most prominent position i n the cult o f Sango i n Ede town was, as documented by Beier (1955), held by the Iya-Sango or mother o f Sango. She was titled the Iya-Naso i n O y o where she was i n charge o f all activities associated with the worship o f Sango. ‘The king's private chapel was i n her apartment and all the emoluments and perquisites arising therefrom are hers’ (Johnson 1921). Her first two lieutenants were also women, lyaMonari and lyafin-Iku. The former had the responsibility of executing Sango worshippers who were condemned to death and the latter was the king’s devotee to Sango mysteries. Johnson (1921) records eight other priesthoods held by women; the most important o f them a r e I y a ’ l e Ori, t h e priestess o f t h e god o f fate a n d I y a ’ l e Mole, the

head o f all Ifa priests i n the city. Each o f the eight priestesses was head o f a small compound within the palace. There were i n addition six other ladies with important religious functions. The Iyamode was i n charge o f the worship o f departed kings, the Iya’le Oduduwa was the head o f Oduduwa worshippers, the Ode was the head o f the god o f Ososi worshippers, the Obagunte represented the king i n the Ogboni house, and the Eni-Oja was the head of all the devil worshippers and also i n charge of the king's market. The Iya’le Agbo was the private attendant o f the king and i n charge o f his private pharmacy.

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O n e should add t o this long list the Iya-Oshun, mother o f Oshun worshippers in Oshogbo. Her role in the cult was as significant as

her political role as the king’s confidante and adviser. These female incumbents o f religious roles were not directly charged with political functions and could not therefore exercise direct authority over the people. However, respect accorded their office as the media between the Yoruba and numerous deities Yoruba worshipped meant they had control over the lives o f both men and women. Women’s control mechanisms and the impact o f colonialism

The involvement o f women i n public affairs progressed through different stages i n Y o r u b a history from the founding o f the king-

doms, through their expansion, to their evolution from semiautonomous kingdoms to interconnected city states. The political economy o f each period and the specific history o f each kingdom

affected the nature and degree of female participation, the type of control mechanisms available t o them and the degree o f egalitaria-

nism. The first period was marked by creation of hereditary titles for members o f the aristocratic class who had migrated with the king from I l e - I f e . Titled women, l i k e titled m e n became chief advisers t o

the ruler whose omnipotence diminished as a council o f state emerged to represent the people i n government. Women were not

members of that council of state and therefore had limited control over the populace as a whole. However, as members of the aristocracy, they influenced decisions made by their class, for they were vested with authority over other high-ranking women. The emergence o f a council o f high-ranking lineage members threatened the king’s control over the kingdom. The conflict and competition which ensued led to differences among the kingdoms. I n some, the k i n g retained his power, while i n others, members o f the descent groups wrested power from him. I n those areas where the O b a retained his power, he tried to consolidate his reign by controlling the sources o f power. These, Lloyd (1973) claims, were mainly titles and landed property which he distributed to loyal and outstanding citizens. The military operations o f the kings during the expansionist programmes o f the second period led to a de-emphasis o n hereditary office as the kings created new titles for their war chiefs and as they further enriched themselves by taking slaves and

confiscating property At this time, royal women still monopolized

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SIMI AFONJA

most female titles, although a few were earned by women from

below. Agriculture as the predominant occupation of women did not offer bright opportunities for achievement. There was an exchange economy, but this was limited i n scope because it was predominantly based o n locally produced goods and on a limited number of items from long-distance trade consumed by the powerful few. The domestic economy was therefore able to reproduce itself but not transform itself (Williams 1974:13). However, the period o f expansion o f most Yoruba kingdoms coincided with the entry o f African states into long distance trade. The participation o f a caucus composed o f both business conscious individuals and members o f

the aristocratic class set off changes in economic relations and in the structure o f social stratification. These changes were products o f two closely related processes: the increasing involvement of commoners i n the political process and the increase i n the channels o f upward mobility for commoners. The entry o f commoners into the trans-Atlantic trade had altered the traditional monopoly o f political and economic resources by the kings (Vidrovitch 1975). B u t they reacted to this b y creating new titles to surround themselves with supporters, the rich and ambitious commoners who could also threaten the political stability. These title holders also functioned as state officials, performing new administrative roles i n the increasingly complex social and political structure. Political office was an avenue for the upward mobility o f commoners, but this was contingent o n the acquisition o f wealth through trade. The slave trade was, at the outset, the sole preserve of the kings and members o f the aristocracy. Their monopoly thrived on their possession o f guns and gun powder. A s the kings i n the coastal regions depended o n the hinterland for the supply o f slaves, they had to rely o n commoners as middlemen i n the slave trade. They were therefore unable to sustain the monopoly. The demand for agricultural products i n Europe stimulated agricultural production and de-emphasized slaves as a commodity . The stimulation o f agricultura l production during a period o f internal stability encouraged the entry of more commoners into the new mode of productio n. M e n dominate d cash crop productio n and acted as middlem en i n the trading relations with European s at the coast. The women i n the rural areas aided their husbands i n the producti on o f cash crops, but concent rated more on the product ion and marketin g

Traditional Yoruba Society

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of food crops. Urban women retailed the consumer products which they purchased from the middlemen, thus expanding urban trade beyond the home-produced craft goods. Yoruba towns developed as centres o f trade and more administrative positions were open to commoners. Rich women who had been involved i n the slave trade and i n the marketing o f imported consumer items were also appointed to such political offices. Madame Tinubu o f Egbaland and Madame Efunsetan were wealthy traders who attained political influence as a result o f their outstanding achievements. Four new administrative positions were created i n Ado-EXkiti in 1949 to serve the interests o f women i n the town. The Onileore, O j u m u Eyelua and Eyegba were introduced because the absence of titled women i n the town was felt for many years (Oguntuyi 1953). Female involvement i n the political process of different kingdoms varied but this variation corresponded with differences in the transAtlantic trade, i n the competition between the aristocracy and the commoners, and i n the distribution o f avenues for the upward

mobility of commoners. The kingdoms in the coastal regions d o m i n a t e d t r a d e w i t h E u r o p e a n s , hence t h e i r s t r u c t u r e o f social

stratification changed much more rapidly than that of the kingdoms i n the hinterland. Internal strife between the aristocracy and the commoners characterized the coastal kingdoms, whereas i n the hinterland the pre-existing mode o f production thrived much longer. The more prosperous coastal kingdoms encouraged upward mobility and more female participation i n trade and i n the political process than the less prosperous kingdoms i n the hinterland. The progressive extension o f political office to women commoners i n the pre-colonial era was halted b y the formal establishment o f colonial rule. I n a discussion o f the changing roles o f traditional elites, Balogun (1976) pointed out that colonization terminated the sovereignty o f the Oba and his council o f state. The powerful Ogboni cult lost its powers and was relegated to the status o f a

religious cult. The female members of the cult concomitantly lost their authority i n state matters. Jordan (1973), quoting the Wabodu o f Ife, said ‘the role o f the Iyaloja has most definitely been ‘whittled’ down considerably in the significant sense that stalls i n the market are now rented out by the District Council clerks, . . . [ a n d ] taxes are no longer handed over directly to the Oba—the traditional ruler o f the market in Yorubaland. The Iyalode’s position became ceremonial. She could not participate effectively in local administra-

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tion as did some of the male chiefs under the colonial government. The wave o f conversions to Christianity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also undermined the traditional position o f priestesses. A t the same time craft guilds lost their significance as they were unable to compete with imported consumer items. Eluyemi (1976) drew attention to the importance of the bead industry i n Ile-Ife where education increasingly attracted would-be apprentices away from this occupation. The reversal o f the egalitarian trend towards increasing women’s political authority was to a large extent aided by the structure o f the extended and polygynous family and the strong value placed by the Yoruba o n the inequality o f the sexes. The Yoruba are socialized to accept the norm o f inequality and this norm permeates all social relationships between the sexes. Differential status is conferred at b i r t h , consequently daughters have a lower status than their brothers, irrespective o f age, and wives have a lower status compared with the husbands. Thesecondary position o f wife to husband is reinforced by patrilocal rules o f residence after marriage, by patrilineal rules o f inheritance and succession to office, and by the husband-wife code which places the woman under the authority o f

her husband and members of his extended family. She gains status primarily through her husband and through her sons. She must therefore endeavour to support them rather than first attempt to

gain status for herself. However, the increasing prosperity o f women i n the pre-colonial era threatened the position of the husband. I t was incumbent on prosperous women to perform special rites to evade pre-existing taboos against women’s economic control through wealth. Ife wom e n recall the songs chanted at such ceremonies which rich women had to perform to remove societal toboos. They did not hesitate to take u p wage employment under the most alienating conditions i n order to secure the funds for divorce. The colonial courts dealt with numerous cases o f women who sued for divorce in order to leave polygynous households and go into the cities i n order to gain some independence. Unfortunately, the trend toward female subordination which started early i n the colonial era has continued with the increased incorporation of the new nationsstate into a highly stratified world economic system.

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NOTES

1 I a m indebted to my friends and colleagues at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University o f Ife, Nigeria who encouraged m e through this pro-

No

ject, particularly D r Ibitola Pearce who acted as the sounding board for my ideas

3

o n women and development. I a m grateful to m y husband, D r Adeniyi Afonja w h o supported m e financially and emotionally during m y fieldwork. See Johnson (1921), Biobaku (1976) and W a r d (1976) for more accounts. Lloyd (1976:30) notes that chieftaincy titles were usually hereditary i n kingdoms

with agnatic rules of descent whereas kingdoms with cognatic descent offered mobility through titled associations. 4

Johnson (1921:119) wrote: ‘ A fixed sum agreed upon is given by each at a fixed time ‘usually every week) and placed under a president: the total amount is paid

over to each member in rotation. This enables a poor man to do something worthwhile where a lump sum is required. There are laws regulating this system’. 5S The Egba and Ijebu people actually served as middlemen i n the trade between

the coastal belt and the interior and therefore had better opportunities t o accumulate wealth for individual mobility (see Imoagene 1976: 32). 6

The degree o f emphasis o n achievement depended o n the rules o f descent and the political constitution o f each state. Heirs to the throne i n the more centralized kingdoms were often turned down i f they were not highly achievement oriented. Oral sources on Ile-Ife point to the importance o f this factor i n

giving titles to Ife princesses. 7 A woman should n o t by tradition produce the heir t o the throne. 8 This informant is Chief L . A . Fabunmi, the Odole of Ife, a distinguished Yoruba historian and philosopher. 9 Excavations of Luwo’s pavements can be found in the Ile-Ife Museum. They were designed to check erosion. 10 Ojumu is a title which also existed in the kingdoms of Akure, Ado-Ekiti and Ijero (see Atandare 1973; Oguntuji 1954 and Alufa 1958). REFERENCES

A j i s a f c . A . K . , History of Abcokuta. Lagos: Kash and Klare Bookshop, 1948. Alufa, F . J. W . , Itan kukuru nipa Ajero ati Orile Ede Ijero-Ekiti, Age o f Realisation, Series 10, Ado-EXkiti: Ilori Printing Press, 1958. Atandare. J. O . . ltan Akure ati Agbegbe Re. A k u r e : Duduyemi Commercial Press, 1973. A w e . Bolanle. “The Iyalode i n the Traditional Yoruba Political System’, i n Sexual Stratification: A Cross-Cultural View. ed. Alice Schlegl. New Y o r k :

Columbia University Press, 1977. Balogun, K o l a , "From Sacred Kinship to Democracy Gerontocracy'. i n Proceedings o f the Conference o n Yoruba Civilization, 1. A . Akinjogbin and G . D . Ekemode. lHe-Ife: University o f I f e , 1976. Bascom. William, The Yoruba o f South Western Nigeria. New Y o r k : H o l t ,

Rinchart and Winston Inc. 1969. B e i e r . H . U . , “The Position o f Yoruba Women’, Presence Africaine. Nos. 1 - 2 , 1955.

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Blumberg, Rac Lesser, Stratification: Socio-Economic and Sexual Inequality, Dubuque, Iowa: William C . Brown, 1974. B u v i n i c , M a y r a . *A Critical Review o f some Research Concepts and Concerns’, i n Women and World Development, eds. Irene T i n k e r , Michele B o B r a m s e n a n d M a y r a B u v i n i c , N e w Y o r k : P r a e g e r , 1976.

D a h l , Robert A . , Modern Political Analysis, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970. Eluyemi,

O . , ‘ T r a d i t i o n a l A r t a n d C r a f t Industries i n I f e ’ , i n Yoruba Civilization,

eds., Akinjogbin and Ekomode, 1976. Forde, Darryl, ‘The Anthropological Approach i n Social Science’, Adv. Sc. 4, 1947,

pp- 213-24. Fortes, M . , ‘The Structure o f Unilineal Descent Groups’, American Anthropologist, 55, 1953, 17-41. G i e l e , Janet and Audrey Smock. Women and Society: A n International a n d Comparative Perspective, New Y o r k : Wiley Inter Science, 1975. Henderson, Helen, ‘Ritual Roles of Women in Onitsha Ibo Society’, Unpublished P h . D . Dissertation, University o f California, Berkeley, 1969. Hinderer, Anna, Seventeen Years in the Yoruba Country, Memoirs o f Anna Hinderer, London: The Religious Tract Society, 1854. Imoagene, Oshamba, Social Mobility in Emergent Society, Canberra: The Australian, National University Press, 1976. Johnson, Samuel, The History o f the Yorubas, Lagos: C.S.S. Bookshops, 1921. Jordan, H o w a r d , ‘ A Research o n Ile-Ife Markets Ancient and Modern’, mimeo, I l e - I f e : University o f I f e , 1973. Lenski, G . E . Power and Privilege, New Y o r k : McGraw-Hill, 1966. L l o y d , P . C . , ‘Craft Organisation i n Yoruba Towns’, Africa 23, 1 , 1953, pp. 30-44. ,*The Political Structure o f African Kingdoms: A n Exploratory M o d e l ’ , i n Political Systems and the Distribution o f Power, ed. M . Banton, London, Tavistock: 1965. , Power a n d Independence: Urban African’s Perception o f Social Inequality, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. ,‘Political and Social Structure’, i n Sources o f Yoruba History, ed. Biobaku, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Morton-Williams, Peter, ‘The O y o Kingdom’, i n West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century, eds. Darryl Forde and M . Kaberry, London: Oxford University

Press, 1967.

O b a , Aladesanmi, M y Early Life, Ado-EKkiti: Omolayo Standard Press, 1977. Ogoga o f I k e r r e , ‘The Administration o f Ikerre’, O d u , 4 October, 1970, p p . 19-24. O g u n t u y i , A . , A Short History o f Ado-Ekiti, A k u r e : Aduralegbe Printing Works, 1952. O j o , J . R . O . , ‘The Position o f Women i n Yoruba Traditional Society’, mimeo, 1979. Parrinder, E . G . S., African Traditional Religion, London: 1954 Rosaldo, Michelle and Louise Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. Safilios-Rothschild, C . , ‘ M e t h o d o l o g i c a l P r o b l e m s I n v o l v e d i n t h e Cross-Cultural

Examination o f Indicators Related t o the Status o f Women’, paper presented to American Population Association Meeting, 1972.

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Sanday, Peggy R . , ‘Female Status in the Public Domain’, in Woman, Culture and Society, eds. Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974. Skinner, E . P . , ‘West African Economic Systems’, i n Economic Transition in Africa, eds. M . J. Herskovits and M . Harwitz, Northwestern University | Press, 1968. Smith, M . G . , Government i n Zazzau, London: 1960. Vidrovitch, C . , ‘ A n African Mode o f Production’, Critique o f Anthropology, 4 and 5 ( A u t u m n ) 1975, 38-71. Williams, Gavin, ‘Nigeria: A Political Economy’, i n Nigeria, Economy and Society, eds. G . Williams and Rex Collins, 1976.

Sex Roles and the Dialectic o f Survival

and Equality: A Case Study of Women Workers o n a T e a Plantation i n Assam

SHOBHITA JAIN

I argue i n the present paper that under circumstances of low subsistence wages and an acute scarcity o f economic alternatives manual workers o n tea plantations, who are paid by the day, are able to survive only because there is a minimum o f class-based difference among them. M e n and women co-operate relatively equally in the growth o f proletarian homogeneity because they must, to survive

and reproduce. The overall structure of Indian society is characterized as

hierarchical with social status judged by one’s ability to avoid manual labour (Gadgil 1965: 7). Following Srinivas’s model (1977:224) one can divide Indians into two groups: (1) those who keep away

from manual work and (2) those who do the manual work. I n terms o f hierarchy, the former stand above the latter just as the employer is superior to the employee (Beteille 1974:80). The man-

ual workers on the tea garden are surrounded by an ideology of hierarchy, which is, however, not dominant in their internal rela-

tions. O n the contrary, egalitarianism prevails in most spheres of activity within the framework o f their sub-culture. T o illustrate this point I present a case study o f women workers in a tea garden i n

Assam, based on social anthropological fieldwork. When there is an absence o f rigidity about male and female roles regarding household organization, and no devaluation o f the manu a l work b y either sex, we are likely tofind a basic equality between m a n and woman in matters o f decision-making concerning day-today life. The absence o f property among manual workers, specially among migrants, removes the root cause o f ascendancy o f one sex

over the other (Engels 1952:131). Further, if there is no scope for

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159

upward mobility through education and technologically boosted development o f national economy, the consequent equal economic

status of men and women encourages a pattern of co-operation on equal terms. Finally, manual workers who are corporately employed, as i n the tea industry, ‘stand i n like relationship toward the source o f their employment and i n their interaction they evolve a pattern o f reciprocal relationship with each other’ (Mintz 1974:299). I shall use the term egalitarianism to refer to equality in reciprocal relationships among the workers themselves. B y postulating the existence o f egalitarian values among workers I do not mean to ignore or underplay the authoritative and hence exploitative nature o f the plantation system. I t comprises two subsystems (Jain 1970:xviii). The former stands i n a relation o f superordination to the latter and interaction between the subsystems reflects their unequal relationship. The industrial subsystem exercises authority i n the form o f an internally organized hierarchy o f command, based o n a rigid system o f stratification. This authority is exercised over the workers in ‘off’ as well as ‘on’ work situations, especially i f they live i n the houses provided by the employers. M y argument is that an egalitarian mode o f reciprocal relationship among workers helps them to cope with and adjust, individually and collectively, to industrial authoritarianism.

The Behula tea estate—industrial subsystem Behula tea estate? is one o f the oldest plantations in Assam with a stable labour force of long standing, including considerable numbers o f female workers.? Situated o n both sides o f a government road, connecting Assam to Nagaland, Behula tea estate was opened up i n the late 1860s by an English joint stock company, registered i n London. Presently, i t is i n the process o f being Indianized with a majority o f its shares transferred to Indians. Behula covers an area o f 1,347 hectares, o f which 782.30 hectares are under tea cultivation while the rest is occupied b y roads, drains, bamboo groves, building sites, small plots o f paddy land cultivated by labourers and the factory. The production and manufacturing o f tea on Behula is organized under a general manager who has three assistants under him. Until 1959 Behula had only European managers and i n pre-independence days even the assistant managers had to be Europeans. A t present

SHOBHITA JAIN

160

the general manager of Behula is an Indian, as are all other members o f the field, factory and office staff. As a matter of policy o f the

management, the estate employs its managers, assistant managers and factory engineer (collectively known as ‘sahab (master) class’) from among the public school educated, upper class and the. rest

(known as ‘Babu class’)* from the middle class, with pre-university education. The diagram below shows the official occupational

hierarchy of Behula. It is based on an organizational chart supplied by the manager of Behula. The vertical location of officials on the diagram depends on the job status and length of service of the position holders. The manager is the fountainhead o f authority o n the estate; the chief medical officer maintains only routine contact with Behula, visiting i t only twice a week. Under the general manager, the estate bureaucracy has four functional branches: The medical branch, the factory, the field, and the office, represented b y numbers 2, 3 , 4 and 5 respectively i n the diagram. All the

branches have administrative functions while the field and the factory branches have supervisory functions as well. Behula estate

bureaucracy has always been exclusively male.

O—0O—=—

(3) (7) (10) (10)

(12) (13)

(10

10

10

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

161

CONAN

EHE W N —

Behula Tea Estate Bureaucracy, 1978 Man4ger General Medical Officer Factory E n g i n e e r

Assistant Manager Office Superintendent Assistant Medical Officer

Head Clerk Resident Medical Officer Head Garden Mohurer (Bara Babu), Factory Staff—Head Foreman,

S

Head Electrician, Head Mechanic, Head Tea House Babu Second T e a House B a b u , S e c o n d C l e r k , Provident F u n d C l e r k , M e n

11

Mohurer, Women Mohurer, Additional Mohurer (Kachcha Babu) Pharmacist

12 Ration Clerk, Third Tea House Babu 13

Mechanics o f Grades A , B and C , Motor Mechanic, Other Electri-

cians, Other Factory Staff, Typist and Despatcher 14 Nursing Staff, Artisans 15

Drivers

16 Peons 17 Sardar— Field and Factory 18 Line and Bagan (Garden) Chokidar (Watchman)

T h e Company (Behula Tea Estate Company) employs a large number o f males and females known as daily-rated manual labourers to work o n the tea garden. Workers’ living quarters are known as labour ‘lines’. Temporary (casual) workers may or may not be residents o f the estate. Those living on the estate belong to the

families of permanent workers. Non-resident temporary workers belong to ex-tea garden workers’ families and live in a nearby bustee.’ Workers o f both categories are divided into three gangs of male, female and minor workers. Anybody above the age o f twelve can start work o n a tea garden. All workers between the ages o f twelve and eighteen are categorized as minor workers. There is no set age of retirement from work o n tea gardens. There are four clusters o f labourers’ houses in Nimari, known as Labour Lines 2, 9 , 13 and 14. Houses in labour lines can be divided into three types, namely, mud walled huts, with thatched roofs, brick walled two room tenement with a roof of corrugated iron sheet and, lastly, brick-walled blocks of semi-detached houses with a roof

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SHOBHITA JAIN

o f asbestos sheets. The management plans to make all its labour houses o f the last type while at present 85 are of the first type, 264 of the second type and 189 of the last type. There is no electricity provided i n labour lines while the houses occupied by the management are fully electrified. After every twenty houses there is one water-point with hand-operated pump provided for labourers. There are no public conveniences provided in the labour lines and workers use the traditional method o f going into open fields for

toilet purposes. Labour is most required i n the field branch and only nominally i n the factory, the office and the medical branches. Workers employed i n the field branch account for 82.90 per cent o f the total labour force i n the permanent category. The field branch is exclusively concerned with operations o f tea-cultivation and harvest. Behula tea estate is divided into three production divisions, each

being under one assistant manager. For our study of women workers o f Behula tea estate we have selected its oldest division known as N i m a r i and from this point onward we will be talking about Nimari division only. Other two divisions follow a similar pattern. Regardi n g the organization o f work i n production o f tea in the field the m a j o r productive tasks comprise plucking, hoeing, sowing i n nurseries, transplanting, weeding, pruning, spraying, tipping, digging and clearing o f drains. O f these tasks, plucking is a completely non-mechanized operation as each set of two leaves and a bud has to b e plucked one b y one by an individual. Plucking is, therefore, the most costly individual operation i n the production of tea. Nearly 44 per cent o f the total cost o f Nimari division is accounted for by the money spent i n giving wages to pluckers. About 55 per cent of the labour employed i n the field is engaged in plucking alone and during the flushing season o f tea bushes this becomes as high as 72 per cent. There is n o training given to workers regarding the operation of plucking, which is normally carried out by females. Female children o f estate workers learn i t naturally from their mothers as a matter of

course. Although the work o f plucking is regarded as an unskilled operation b y the tea industry there is no doubt that the quality of manufactured tea depends upon the care i n plucking by the deft movements o f a plucker’s hands. Women workers by mastering the art o f plucking tea leaves have made themselves indispensable to the tea industry and for this reason alone the tea plantations top

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163

the list o f industries both i n the private and public sector, for providing employment to women (Labour Bureau 1975:154-63). C . A . Bruce (1839:67), a pioneer i n the tea industry i n India, described the operation of plucking i n these terms: The plucking o f leaves may appear to many a very easy and light employment, but there are not a few o f our coolies who would much rather be

employed on any other job; the standing in one position so many hours occasions swelling in the legs, as our plants are not like those o f China, only

three feet high, but double that size, so that one must stand upright to gather the leaves.

Although a tea bush is now kept at a height o f 3 feet only, plucking under the tropical sun for long hours is very hard work all the same.

The remaining tasks listed above are counted as field-work and given mostly to male workers. All tasks requiring heavy manual

labour and more of muscle-power are assigned to adult male workers while tasks o f light pruning, surface weeding, tipping, and carrying tea plants from nursery beds to newly laid beds for transplanting are carried out by minor workers, both male and female. The labourers work from 8.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. during the winter and from 8.00 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. during the summer, with half an hour’s break at 1.00 p.m.® The Sardar (foreman) checks if all workers have reported. Sick labourers visit the estate dispensary for treatment. A person who neither reports for work nor for treatment is

marked as absent without leave. I f a worker persists in remaining absent from work three days continuously, he/she is issued a written

warning from the estate office. The toremen o f estate labourers known as Sardars are selected from among the labourers and appointed by the manager to supervise work in the fields. Each Sardar supervises work of eighty to a hundred labourers each day. Sardars are not specialists in any particular type of garden work and according to work load they are shifted from one duty to another. They are different from other workers in two ways. Firstly, they are paid a monthly salary while workers are paid b y the day, secondly, they only supervise while others actually do the work. Opportunities for occupational mobility within the estate are almost non-existent for workers. A t the most they can expect to become a Sardar. The position o f a Sardar is, however, not irreversible. According to the estate management a worker can be appointed as Sardar and also demoted to becoming an ordinary

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worker again. N o Sardar has ever occupied a position in the estate bureaucracy o f Nimari. Employment at the lower levels (numbers 12 to 16 in the diagram) o f estate bureaucracy has little scope o f expansion and currently the estate management gives preference to persons o f Assamese origin for these jobs. The unemployed youth o f garden labourers’ families, particularly those with some education, resent this policy.

Wages andfringe benefits The Nimari management claimed to pay men and women at equal rate, i.e. R s 4.80 per day.’ I n practice we find that women workers are mostly engaged i n plucking which is paid for o n a different basis from field-work done by men. Nimari pays its pluckers their daily minimum wage for 20 kg. o f tea leaves b y plucking. During the flushing season® o f tea bushes a plucker is able to get more than this

fixed amount. She is paid 12 paise extra for each kilogram over the first 20 kg. The women workers, therefore, earn extra money during at least six months o f the year. O n the other hand, fieldworkers have daily tasks assigned to them and they are expected to finish the job in a day. Fixing o f daily task is done b y taking into consideration many factors like the condition of land, the type of weather and prevalent norms of the area. If able to finish his task sooner a person is allowed to go home, and is paid for the day. For extensive weeding a worker is supposed to complete an area of 16 null (302.5 n u l l = 1 acre); for light weeding 64 null, and for hoeing 40 null per day. For light pruning, 320 tea bushes have to be done i n a day while for heavy pruning only 200 tea bushes are handled. I n planting, sixty plants are carried from nursery beds and transplanted i n newly laid

beds. Besides paying daily wage to its workers, Nimari provides some fiinge benefits to its resident labour force, to both men and women, such as: free housing, firewood, medical amenities, creche, small plots of paddy land, and subsidized rations. As industrial workers, they are also entitled to dearness allowance, annual bonus, sickness leave, maternity benefits (for mothers), and participation in the provident fund scheme. Nimari workers get an annual bonus o f 4 per cent o f their pay o r minimum o f Rs 40, irrespective o f profit o r loss to the garden. Female workers get maternity leave o f 12 weeks

and during this period they get Rs 25 per week as maternity benefit. Since 1955 Nimari has introduced the provident fund scheme; the

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165

rate o f its contribution is 6.25 per cent. Nimari pays wages to its permanent workers every week o n Thursdays and to temporary workers o n Fridays. Every Sunday is a

holiday without pay for workers. The cash wage received by a worker every week does not suffice to provide him with sufficient food for survival. Given the low-level o f wage, other fringe benefits are not a welfare measure; rather these are means o f tying a labour force to this sector of the economy.” The formation of tea garden labour force took place along the lines of family labour by recruiting coolies from

tribes and castes which already had a pattern of pooling family labour for subsistence activities. If we take a family of two workers (husband and wife) with two children, and if we assume that the couple worked for six days o f the week, their earnings would come to R s 57.60 at R s 4.80 per person per day. Basomani, a permanent worker, belongs to one such family. She said that she cooks early in the morning before leaving for work 1 kg. o f rice for her children aged thirteen and nine. They take one meal at 8.00 a.m. and

another one at 1.00 p.m. For her husband’s and her own mid-day meal she makes tikra'® from wheat flour. The children take their rice with dal (pulses) and vegetables, left over from the previous night’s meal. The couple take their tikra with water at lunch break in their respective places of work. In the evening, for the second meal, she cooks 1.50 kg. o f rice, 0.25 kg. o f dal and vegetable only if there is some supply from their kitchen-garden. Meat is cooked only on the pay-day. I n her family nobody likes tikra and all want rice. Their evening meal has, therefore, always got to be rice, dal/meat and

vegetables (if available). Their weekly requirement of 17.50 kg. of rice is not met by the provision o f subsidized rations by the estate.’ A s per rules they get ony 10.18 kg. of rations i n which only 5 kg. 1s

rice and the remaining 5.18 kg. is wheat flour. To make up for the deficit in rice, they have to buy 12.50 kg. of rice at Rs 1.90 per kg., while the estate gives them both rice and wheat flour at Rs 0.455 per kg. Basomani gave the following account of her weekly expenses:

Rice (required 17.50 kg., received from the estate 5 kg. and bought the remaining 12.50 kg. at R s 1.90 per kg.) Dal (pulses, required only 1 kg. bought at R s 4 per kg.)

Rs 23.75

4.00

SHOBHITA JAIN

166

Meat/fish once a week (V2 kg. at Rs 12 per kg.)

6.00

Oil (250 grams at Rs 14 per kg.)

3.50

Kerosene oil '/: litre

1.10

Soap Tobacco, betel leaves, areca nuts, lime and biri

1.50

(native cigarettes)

5.00

Milk/sugar/biscuits, bread

1.00

Coarse variety of paddy for brewing rice-beer and yeast tablet to ferment the beer Matches Spices

4.00 0.50 1.75

Vegetable, eggs

2.00

Tea

1.00

Ration (10.18 kg. at Rs 0.455 per kg.)

from the estate Total expenses Total earnings

Balance (deficit) The above weekly

4.63 59.73 57.60

-2.13 Basomani’s family shows that earn-

ings o f both husband and wife, i f they work daily, are not sufficient to meet their absolutely minimum needs. I t should be noted that

parents take rice only once a day and in this budget there is no scope for purchasing clothes for the family. A n y irregular expense o n the part o f the family is likely to put the workers in a vicious circle of taking ‘advance’ from the estate and then paying i t by deduction from their weekly wages. Obviously, there is no scope for any deductions from the wages i f the family is to survive. I n practice,

workers find it difficult to make two ends meet in normal circumstances and i f one o f them gets sick, or a family has a large number of children o r there are less than two workers i n a family, real difficulties have to be faced. Items forgone are usually tea, vegetables, eggs, meat/fish, milk, sugar, bread and biscuits. After the initial period of recruitment of coolies for newly opened tea gardens, the stage has now been reached to create a fresh labour

force from within. The estate children born and brought u p i n the tea garden environment are the ideal type o f labour required by the

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167

management. N o wonder the tea planters provide subsidized rations to a worker’s dependant, provided the child has made it well for the first two years of life. The cost of subsidized rations and maternity allowance is more than offset by that of recruiting a new labour force. Women are, therefore, indispensable for the tea industry i n more than one way. Not only do they pluck leaves, they also produce a future labour force for tea gardens. The bearing o f children produces the next generation of workers and the socialization o f children i n labour lines provides socio-ideological reproduction i n the sense of preparing the ideal labour-type for tea gardens. I t has emerged from our discussion of the industrial subsystem of Nimari tea garden that women workers make a significant contribution to the development o f the tea industry in India. N o w we turn to their role in the community subsystem.

Community subsystem Tribe, caste, and ethnicity Organization o f work in Nimari is based o n social units, especially recruited for that purpose. This is in sharp contrast to the work i n small-scale, tribal societies, performed by groups of people not usually brought together solely for that purpose. I n that case the family o r even a village may act as a unit in the productive process. Coming from the background o f this k i n d of work, the Nimari working community has displayed a remarkable ability of adjustment

and adaptation to new surroundings and requirements in terms of shifting to an entirely changed concept o f work under the colonial powers o f the British tea planters. The process of acculturation of Nimari workers is complex not only because they lead an enclosed, formally administered, way of life and undergo similar experiences (aspects o f ‘total institution’ as defined by Goffman, 1961), but also because o f the heterogeneity o f tribal and caste Hindu groups. The ‘coolie’ pre-independence days o r the present ‘labour’ identity o f tea garden workers has now reached, through the experience of plantation life o f over a century, a stage o f consolidation i n the eyes o f b o t h workers themselves and others i n Assam. Internal divisions of the Nimari labour community into fifty-one tribal and caste groups mark the unusual nature of heterogeneity.

SHOBHITA JAIN

168

The tribal households are in a majority (49.71 per cent) while the

caste groups are also large in number (45.77 per cent); the remaining 4.50 per cent are of unknown origin. The majority of Nimari workers and their families are second and third generation descendants o f the earliest migrants to Assam, brought from different parts o f the country as indentured coolies to work on the newly opened tea estates during the second half o f the last and early decades o f the present century. Seventy-six per cent o f the population o f labour lines was born and brought u p i n Nimari. There has been almost n o intermixing of migrant labourers with the Assamese population, either rural o r urban, although they have freely mixed with workers of their own region on other tea gardens.

Table 1 shows the area of origin of Nimari tribal and caste groups. !? The majority of workers are from Bihar, followed by Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. I n terms o f the history o f Table 1 Tribal and caste groups o f Nimari by their areas o f origin Number o f Groups

Number o f Households

Area Tribe Caste Total Assam Bihar, including

5

2

9% Tribe Caste Total

%

1.31

2

2

4

7.84

289 54.22

14

22

36

70.58

7

Chotanagpur 184 area Orissa and Andhra Pradesh 76 Tanti West Bengal Unknown -

Total

265

105

20 90

96 90

18.01 16.88

5 -

2 ]

7 1

13.72 1.96

27 -

27 24

5.06 4.50

-

3 -

3 -

5.88 -

30

51

99.98

244

533 99.98 21

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

169

migration, people from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh arrived first, followed by those from Bihar and West Bengal. As a mechanism of integration, it was not the culture, rather the structure, which was o r is strong. The structure o f the plantation economic system, with all its class (Sahab, Babu, Mazdoor (labourer) ) and racial divisions (Europeans, non-Europeans) intact in Nimari in colonial days,

steam-rolled the bewildering variety of cultures of sub-groups of workers. I n due course, there developed a more o r less homogenous sub-culture which has not yet reached a culmination o f processes (as seen in the case o f Canamelar o n the south coast o f Puerto

Rico studied by Mintz 1956). Nimari is still in the stage of transition from old style to new style plantation (cf. the typology used b y

Wolf 1959). Migrants and their descendants from Orissa comprise the following tribals: Saora (65), Porja (4), Kondh (3), Kamar (3) and Kalandi (1) (figures i n brackets refer to the number o f households

each group has i n Nimari). There are only two households of caste, known as ‘Oriya’. Saora of Nimari claim to be the earliest migrants to this garden and form a strongly cohesive group. I n Saora households the woman is the head (mukhia) as she runs the household b y collecting money from every earning member o f the household. Every earning person keeps his o r her income and contributes a

fixed sum in a common pool which is kept and regulated by the senior woman i n the house. I f she runs out of provisions and also the money she asks her husband o r son and they bring home what she has asked for. When she has money o n her she goes to the garden

bazar to buy provisions. This general picture of household economy represents not only Saora households but also most others i n Nimari. B u t only Saora use the word mukhia o r the senior woman in the household, while among other groups the position o f a household head is not recognized. Migrants and their descendants from Andhra Pradesh emigrated from Vishakhapatnam, which was previously in Madras. They are known as the ‘Telenga’ (18). A l l Telenga o f Nimari belong to ‘Madiga’ caste. Compared to Saora, although arriving in Nimari nearly at the same time, Telenga were less numerous and had to go i n for inter-ethnic marriages. Yet, Telenga are a separate and

significant group in Nimari for two reasons. There are more literates i n this group and, compared to the Saora, Telenga are more

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SHOBHITA JAIN

proficient i n the Assamese language. Although all caste and tribal

groups on Nimari are patrilineal and patrilocal, Telenga women, marrying outside their group, have not lost their Telenga identity. A t present, some Telenga have also adopted the surname o f Tanti. Migrants from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh together participate in the community activities (represented b y the election and meetings o f the local branch o f the trade union o f tea garden workers) o n the basis o f either their number o r educational status and have deeper

roots in the plantation system. They have a stable position as older workers o f Nimari i n the eyes o f the management. O n the other hand, they have also managed to assume positions o f importance i n

the Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh, henceforth ACMS (trade union of tea garden workers, affiliated to INTUC) by participating i n the changed, new style o f relationships o f the plantation. Migrants and descendants from Bihar and Chotanagpur area are i n a majority i n Niman. There are fourteen tribal and twenty-two caste groups from this region, represented by 289 households (54.22

per cent) out of a total of 533. The Oraon (89), Munda (39), Bhunya (17), Kharia (13) and Kol (9) are the main tribal groups from Chotanagpur and Bihar. The remaining 9 tribes have less than four households each and d o not play a significant role i n the community. Most Oraon and Munda come from villages i n Chotanagpur area, where they belonged to land-owning patrilineages. Even i f a particular individual did not own land, he was all the same part o f a social organization characterized by the clan system with patrilineal divisions and village and clan exogamy. Unlike caste groups, tribal groups are separate b u t not hierarchically graded. Most tribals marry within their group

and only exceptionally we find a Munda or an Oraon marrying outside his/her tribal group. Caste groups i n Nimari present a fragmented Indian caste system which co-exists with the social class system. I f we take the caste system as defined b y Weber (Gerth and Mills 1970:405-9) in terms o f stratified status groups, we find that caste groups undergo changes when interacting with the plantation social system, which is basically defined i n terms of rigidly stratified class groups. Coresidence i n labour ‘lines’ with people from different regional castes and tribal groups has created indifference toward values associated w i t h particular castes. This indifference i n turn leads to ignoring and i n some cases even rejecting caste-ranking i n predetermined

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

171

grades. The absence of Brahmins or for that matter of any high ranking caste group in the Niman working community has given a free play to lower castes for defining their status according to their own wishes.

According to a vague caste-ranking on the basis of the majority opinion o f the workers, Goala (15) is the highest caste i n Nimari,

followed by Kurmi (4), Khodal (10), Rajwar (7), Turi (8), Ghasi (20), Naik (5), Rally (2) and Nag (2). Kurmi, Khodal, Rajwar and

Turi are treated on a par while Ghasi, Naik, Rally and Nag are said to be the same caste with different titles. Besides these caste groups, there are less than four households each in the group of Bareta, Dhobi, G o r e , Majwar, Baraik, Lohar, Panika, Rabidas, Banidas, Karmakar, Dosad and D o m castes. Most occupational castes do not

follow their traditional occupations in Nimari. They are tea garden workers and do not concern themselves with traditional occupations even marginally as their subsidiary occupations. There is only one ‘Rajput’ family i n Nimari, which is known to belong to the ‘Majwar’ caste.

Migrants and descendants from West Bengal comprise three caste groups of Bauri (14), Manjhi (8) and Bagti (5). All Bauri speak Bengali among themselves and are well conversant with Bagan B a t and Assamese. Some Manjhi are not Bengali speakers as

they came from a village on the border of Bihar and West Bengal in Birbhum district. They follow Bengali while they themselves speak Bagan Bat only. Bagti o f Nimari are in the process o f losing their

identity due to a number of intercaste marriages taking place in this group. There are two tribal and two caste groups o f Assamese origin living in Nimari labour lines, namely, Kachari (3), Bora (2), Kaya ( 1 ) and Madak (1). The first two are tribal while the latter two are caste groups. These groups have formed marital alliances with Tanti o f Nimari and are likely to be subsumed by the Tanti identity.

Numerically speaking Tanti is the largest group on Nimari, but owing to the way this group has developed, we cannot take it to be a caste group with specified locality, functions and origin. A study o f Tanti in Nimari shows that caste labels in the tea gardens d o not necessarily perform the functions o f regulating people’s relations within and outside their community. For Nimari workers, within the estate, the occupational grading of labourers takes n o account o f their caste, while outside the estate there is a different system of castes and sects o f Assamese society in which tea garden labourers ———

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SHOBHITA JAIN

are an undifferentiated group known as ‘labour’. Caste labels are found to be significant in the context of marriage.'’ In the Nimari caste hierarchy, Tanti are placed at the bottom because, according to Niman workers, all kinds call themselves Tanti and one never

knows the actual status of anyone with a Tanti surname. This amorphous group has outnumbered its members just because many

persons feel free to adopt this name. Tanti is not actually a caste, it is a caste title and originally refers to people following the occupation o f weaving hereditarily. There are eleven families (5 Oriya speakers and 6 Telugu speakers) of Tanti from Orissa, claiming to be weavers i n their villages in Sambalpur and Ganjam Districts respectively. Other caste groups

also accept these families as real Tanti. The rest (seventy-nine households) are described as ‘Gara’ or ‘Dom’, two of the menial castes of a

low order in Hindu caste hierarchy. Many Tanti freely accept this charge and say that they are not Oriya Tanti. Most of the Tanti are, however, third generation migrants, unable to give any idea o f the place o f their origin. They speak Bagan B a t ' * and their marriage

customs show a mixture of ceremonies from caste and tribal groups present in Nimari. Many Tanti themselves accept their ‘Gara’ origin, while others do not dispute their diluted social identity. I n the context o f political and economic activities i n Nimari, Tanti hold the place of importance, for some Tanti young men have received education and they are n o w making efforts for their social mobility. I n the local region around Nimari, people with this surname have come to

occupy positions of high office, such as a member of the legislative assembly, a labour minister, and secretary of the ACMS. Egalitarianism between the sexes: the nexus o f reproduction Except five m e n w i t h two wives, a l l other married m e n and women

i n Nimari are monogamous. Secondary marital unions for either sex are common and socially approved. M e n and women do frequently form rajikhushi'> unions i n the event of death/separation/ desertion/divorce. I n bandobast'® marriages there is usually an alliance between two families of the same social group. Children of both types o f marriages are considered legitimate and given affection and the care due to them. Some marriages begin as rajikhushi and after several years of marnage and even after the birth of many children the couple may hold their traditional marriage by giving a feast to

Women Workers o n a Tea Plantation

173

the community and by performing traditional rituals and cere-

monies. I n many cases this remains a pious hope never fulfilled for lack of sufficient money. But this does not change the fact that the couple live and behave like legally married persons and marriages

of their children face no problems. In such a situation it is irrelevant to present a statistical account of the two types o f marriages in Nimari. Table 2, o n the other hand, gives the extent of inter-caste, inter-tribal and inter-ethnic marriage (meaning a marriage between a tribal and a caste person) in the labour lines of Nimari. Table 2

Marriages outside one’s endogamous unit among residents o f

Nimari labour lines

From the woman’s point o f view

1st Marriage

Subsequent marriages

Total

Inter-caste

26

11

37

Inter-tribal

4

2

6

15

8

23

45

21

66

Inter-ethnic Total

Figures in this table d o not. however, mean the actual number of rajikhushi marriages among the labourers. Many such marriages go unrecorded just because the people do not attach much significance to the distinction between the two types. Nonetheless, the very fact that they use two different terms to denote the difference and the younger generation finds it more suitable to enter a common-law marriage as it does not require any outlay, indicates a

certain change in the pattern of marriage in Nimari. The common tribal form for secondary unions is becoming an accepted form o f

the first marriage. The above statistics of marriages outside the endogamous unit is 14.13 per cent o f the total number (467) o f ever-married women, living in the labour lines of Nimar. It is not possible to say that the incidence o f such marriages is o n the increase for we have n o statistical account o f this nature regarding the

174

SHOBHITA JAIN

recent past o f these people. Persons of the older generation still believe in holding a marnage

ceremony with regard to those who initially married according to rajikhushi. I n their eyes, marriage within one’s caste/tribe is most desirable and they say it is always possible to find a mate in one’s own community, if not on your own then in a nearby garden. About the incidence of marriage outside the limits of endogamy (one’s own caste o r tribe), i n some indirect ways they hold the industrial sub-

system responsible, saying that in the past there were no easy means of communication, and due to the prevalence of epidemics unusually large numbers of people died i n tea gardens, and in those circumstances people had to resort to marrying outside their group. They gave instances o f such marriages being suggested and ar-

ranged by the European estate manager.” They also say that in a tea garden it is n o t possible to maintain rules o f marriage because there are n o means o f controlling the behaviour o f deviants as there

are no longer any village elders (gaon-bura) in Nimari. From the point o f view o f the estate management n o objections are raised on such a marriage and i f a worker is eligible for a house, i t is certainly given if one is available as soon as possible after the marriage. I f a house is vacant and a person is planning to marry shortly it is

allotted even before marriage. Marriage within a person’s family o f orientation is clearly prohibited and ‘never heard o f ’ , according to Jogma, an old woman of seventy. Sukmati explained that there can be n o marriage between persons o f the same gotra as they are like sister and brother to each other and sister and brother can never marry. Young unmarried persons d o n o t , however, know their gotra while all married persons

could tell the names of their own and spouse’s gotra. Every individual, nevertheless knows who stands i n the relationship o f sister/ brother t o t h e e g o . Thus, e v e n i f o n e d i d n o t k n o w the n a m e o f one’s

gotra one still knew about the unit of exogamy. Barring the narrow range o f k i n , Nimari girls and boys are not

inhibited in the expression of their feelings and there is no apparent avoidance between them. I n work situations often adolescent workers o f both sexes work side by side and many a romance has been known to develop in tea fields. The other likely places for developing a mutual interest i n each other over a long period are water-points where residents of labour line are seen spending quite a bit of their time. After a boy and a girl become friends, they often meet i n tea

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

175

fields during working hours and just before and after work on the way to and from fields to lines. On holidays, they meet in the garden bazar where they may buy things for each other like eatables o r clothes. During festivals and community feasts they get a chance to drink, dance and sing together. ' ®

Regarding the rule of residence after marriage, we find that in

Nimari the norm is that a woman leaves her family of orientation to live with her spouse. Generally a man lives on the same garden as his father. Soon after marriage a couple would spend about a week with the parents of the boy and then shift to the house allotted to h i m . A s mentioned earlier, if a man marries a woman who has a permanent job o n a tea garden and has the right to a house and i f he has neither, he simply leaves his family o f orientation and joins his

wife. If both have permanent jobs and entitlement to a house the wife leaves her natal family to join her husband. There are 556 women i n Nimari above the age of eighteen and o f these 467 (83.99 per cent) are ever-married. There are 113 (24.19 per cent) women i n this group who got married within the garden. The majority of them found their mates i n Nimari while i n a few cases they were joined by husbands from other tea gardens. I n this situation where neolocal residence is the norm and the leaving o f home b y husband/wife is dependent on who has a permanent j o b , the question of position of either spouse is related to the nature o f the j o b (permanent o r temporary), the number of his/her relatives i n the same garden and the number of children a couple has. These factors and the related question of gender-roles i n the neolocal family set-up are going to be discussed i n terms of household organization. The age at marriage i n N i m a r is for a girl around sixteen to eighteen and for the boy from eighteen to twenty-five for the first marriage. The idea o f indissolubility of marriage does not exist i n Nimari’s working community. I t does not, however, mean that most marriages dissolve. A s a norm, the majority of marital unions remain stable and the taking o n of a second partner by either sex arises i f one spouse is lost by death/desertion/separation/divorce. I f a w o m e n leaves h e r h u s b a n d for a n o t h e r m a n , she i s criticized

b y the community for lacking affection (mamta) for her husband and children.

In almost all cases of separation/divorce in Nimari it is the woman who has taken the initiative. If problems of adjustment arise

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SHOBHITA JAIN

soon after marriage, it is the woman who declares that she has no mamta for her husband and goes back to her parents. I f a bride-price was received for her, i t is returned to the husband, formal divorce

being signified by its return. Everything is almost forgotten as having n o t happened. I f a divorce/separation takes place before a child is born, people do not even mention these marriages just like they do not consider the birth of a still-born child as having occurred. In cases o f separation/divorce after the birth o f a child, a woman generally keeps her children with her. When I asked Nimari women i f a m a n could break relations with his wife just as she did, they said that i f a man was not happy he could take the initiative. They explained that he would normally not do so as he may lose his right to repayment o f the bride-price. I n cases o f rajikhushi marriage, there is no question of repayment of bride-price, which is never paid; i f a m a n is not happy with his wife he simply deserts her and goes away to live o n another estate while the woman lives o n her own w i t h her children until she forms 5 - 2cond union. The reasons for the breaking u p o f a marriage, if before the birth o f a child, are mainly related to the problem of adjustment. Sometimes a married woman may take a fancy to a man other than her husband and decide to break marriage on this ground. I f she has

children from her first marriage she must ask the other man if he would look after them too before deciding to break her present marriage. Generally, the second man agrees to this arrangement. For purposes of provision of rations by the estate they are recegnized as children o f the couple. A woman with children after breaking u p her first marriage does not return to her parents. Either she moves

into the house of her second husband or she lives on her own and is joined b y her second man. Since both variations among the cases o f broken u p marriages exist, we cannot say that one or the other type is the norm. A s there are no localized patrilineages of an extensive nature settled o n tea gardens, we d o not get i n Nimari a social structure clearly emphasized by patriliny. Rather, because of fragmentation o f lineages between villages and tea gardens, much depends o n the particular circumstances o f an individual and his/her network o f support in a particular situation. I n the majority o f cases in Nimari a household is also the family “unit. The criterion o f ‘a common roof’ cannot apply to define family in Nimari. A family splits into several sub-units of separate households and in deciding to call a family complete, nuclear or extended

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

177

we have, according t o the structure o f kinship composition and family relations, divided residents o f Nimari labour lines i n four types (Table 3), namely complete nuclear, incomplete nuclear,

extended, and other type. I n complete nuclear families, except five men with two wives, a man has only one spouse living with him and their children. In some cases children from the previous union of either

partner are also present. Incomplete nuclear families comprise four subtypes—couples without children, father and children without mother, mother and children without father and siblings without parents. Nimari has a fairly large number —115 out of 467—of ever married women above the age o f eighteen—living with their children after husband’s death/separation/desertion/divorce. I t is sufficient for a w o m a n t o h a v e h e r father/mother/brother/sister i n

the garden to feel secure and have a sense o f belonging to a group.

Emphasis on or a preference for ‘matrifocal’ structure (cf. R.T. Smith 1959) o f family is not yet statistically the case in Nimari. Extended families i n Nimari are either paternally or fraternally extended. Some paternally extended families may meet the fate o f immediate fission after the father’s death. When the process of fission takes a number o f years, we get fraternally extended families. I f there is some land (either given by the estate or bought by oneself) one would expect continuation of jointness i n the family. They cannot be called joint families as the criterion o f ‘a common roof’ is missing from the Nimari setting. O n the basis of economic cooperation i n paddy cultivation and the sharing of crop, the running of a business by sharing input and output, the celebration of ancestral worship o n a collective basis and the exchange of services and goods at any time and all times, we have decided to call some families extended. I n our last category of other type come families with no regular pattern. There is no family in Nimar with non-kin. The persistence of extended family i n Nimari is threatened by several factors, of which the allocation of housing to each married couple is, of course, the most important one. Further, inter-group marriages, irregular marital unions and lack of property (land, cattle, savings) with the majority o f workers aid fission i n cohesiveness of paternally and fraternally extended families. The following discussion of household organization shows that even in a nuclear family, when children begin to earn, early signs of fission appear when each earner keeps his/her wages with him/herself.

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SHOBHITA JAIN

Table 3

Family structure in Nimari labour lines Type

Complete Nuclear

Number o f units

Percentage

233

52.12

Incomplete Nuclear

89

19.91

Extended Other

74 51

16.55 11.40

447

99.98

Total

The household I n Nimari all households have members related by kinship. The criteria to define a household i n Nimari are common kitchen and common purse. B y common kitchen we mean that one hearth is used to cook meals for everybody in the household and they have their daily meals i n that house. B y common purse we mean that most o f the earnings of a household’s working members are pooled together i n the hands of one man o r woman. There are no households i n Nimari living i n separate houses but cooking and eating food i n one place. There are also no houses where income is pooled together and cooking and eating takes place at one house while living i n separate houses. T o this extent i t appears that all domestic groups have become adjusted to arrangements provided b y the management whereby each family will live, cook and eat at one place. Under such circumstances i t becomes logical to keep common purse in one household only. Table 4 shows the total size-range o f Nimari households. The average size is three members and the maximum number o f households are found i n the size-range o f three to six persons per household.

179

W o m e n Workers o n a Tea Plantation

Table 4

The size-range o f Nimari households Household size (members)

Number o f households

Percentage

One

60

11.25

Two Three

80 89

15.00 16.69

117 89 48

21.95 16.69 9.00

Four Five Six

Seven

25

4.69

Eight

16

3.00

6 2 1

1.12 0.37 0.18

Nine Ten Eleven

Total

533

A household with a large number of members is not necessarily the one with more earning members i n i t . There are only five households i n Nimarn with four earners. Table 5 shows a classification of

Nimari households by the number of earners in each unit. Households with a single earner are greatest. About 23 per cent of such

households are single member families. I n all such cases where one Table 5

Classification o f Nimari households b y the number o f estate workers Number of

One

Two

Three

Four

Pen-

Total

sioner

workers Labour Line 2

36

36

11

0

1

84

Labour Line 9

85

89

12

3

0

189

Labour Line 13 Labour Line 14

48 80

40 77

4 8

0 2

1 0

93 167

Total

249

242

35

5

2

533

SHOBHITA JAIN

180

spouse is unemployed, the organization of daily activities in the household is slightly different from those where both husband and wife w o r k . The normal pattern is, however, based on the fact that both go out to work as even the unemployed spouse goes out as and

when temporary work becomes available. A classification o f Nimari households by kinship composition gives us ten categories (Table 6). Nimari has a fair number of single member households. Among single men the majority is that of unmarried young men below thirty, waiting to be married, while all the eleven single women are either widows or separated from their husbands. Six out o f these are below thirty, four between thirty-one

and thirty-seven while only one is sixty years old. Younger women are expected sooner or later to form rajikhushi unions. Table 6

Composition o f households in Nimari according to kin relations Type of household

Number o f Percentage households

1 Single member— female 2 Single member—male 3 4 5 6 7 8

Husband and wife Husband, wife and children Husband, two wives and children Husband, wife, children and parent/sibling o f husband/wife Truncated ‘ A ’ —without father Truncated ‘ B ’ —without mother

9 Siblings—without either parent 10

Other type Total

|

11 48

2.06 9.00

57 305 5

10.69 57.22 0.93

28 45 26

5.25 8.44 4.87

3

0.56

5

0.93

533

O f fifty-seven couples without children, forty-two are recently married and i n eighteen cases out of forty-two, the woman is from another garden. This shows that the majority of the marriages i n the + last five years took place within Naman. Out of fifty-seven, twenty-six couples work in the garden as permanent workers, and o f the remain-

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ing thirty-one couples, in twenty-three cases the man works and in eight cases the woman is employed permanently while her husband is only a temporary hand. The large number o f unemp-

loyed females in this category is explained by the fact that eighteen females are from other gardens and have not yet found permanent work in Nimari. The most numerous type o f household in Nimari has a married

couple and their unmarried children living together. Of 305, in as many as 205 households (67.21 per cent) both husband and wife work as permanent workers, in fifty-three units only wives and in forty-seven cases only husbands support the family. I n the last two categories, the husband/wife does take up temporary employment as and when i t becomes available. There are five households i n which a man has two wives. I n three of these cases he and both his wives w o r k , while i n t h e o t h e r two cases h e a n d o n e wife work a n d the

second (junior) wife does the housekeeping.

I n twenty-two households either parent of man/wife lives with a married couple and their unmarried children. I n fourteen units the additional member is the man’s mother and only in one case it is the wife’s mother. I n the remaining seven households, in six cases the husband’s father and in one case only the wife’s father live with the

nuclear family. It is apparent that it is normal practice for the mother/ father of the husband to live with him. A wife’s parent lives with her family only as a matter o f exception. None o f these additional members work o n the estate as permanent labourers.

Besides twenty-two households with either parent there are six households with sibling of either husband or wife living as additional member o f the household. O f these six, only three (two sisters and one brother) work o n the garden permanently while others seex temporary work. Categories 7 , 8 and 9 in Table 6 have one o f the three components missing. The majority of households without a father belong to women b o m in Nimari. It is only a matter of time before most households ]

in categories 7 and 8 would get a father/mother after a secondary union. All three households o f siblings without either parent have

their relatives in Nimari. Lastly, five households show uncommon kin composition. In one unit there is a couple, wife’s sister and man’s father, and i n the second case a couple without children live with the husband’s mother. I n the third case a woman and her deceased son’s son and

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daughter live with her while in the fourth case a couple, husband’s father’s sister and brother, live together. I n the fifth household we

find a couple, husband’s mother and wife’s sister. From kin composition of households we now turn to the organization o f activities i n a household. The setting u p of a household b y a couple takes place at a mature age when both husband and wife are

expected to be earning members of their community. The age at which a household is set up by a woman is usually between eighteen to twenty-five and by a man between twenty to twenty-eight years of age. If both the man and the woman belong to Nimari there are more chances that both will be working o n the estate, though it is not always necessarily so. I f both work and they have been allotted a house, they set up the household by buying jointly the bare minim u m necessities to be found i n every household i n Nimari, such as at least t w o bowls and t w o dishes o f brass, two pans o f aluminium, one

earthen pitcher, one iron bucket, two jute sacks to store paddy, baskets o f various sizes to store wheat flour, rice, and pulses. A kitchen knife, a ladle, a small bag o f cloth to store betel leaf and areca nuts are all essentials in a household. I f they wish and can afford, they may buy a couple of mats to spread on the floor for sleeping, though most people i n Nimari sleep on bare floor or on sacks o f jute. They must buy, over a year, a couple o f sheets o f thick cotton to cover themselves at night during the winter. Pillows are not used

by them. They buy a nylon clothes line or a piece of thick wire, to put across between the two walls for hanging their clothes. The woman must have at least two pairs o f clothes, comprising a blouse, a petticoat (mekhala) and a chadar (40” xX 108" sheet o f coarse cotton). The man purchases a couple o f cotton shorts and

T-shirts. Some young men may buy a pair of trousers to wear on special occasions and women like to have a couple o f saries for special wear. I f a couple gets married b y arrangement (bandobast) most o f these things are given to them as gifts b y relatives and friends but if they decide to form a common-law union, they provide all these things from their earnings over a period o f several months. Since these things are easily available at the estate weekly market, there is n o problem i n obtaining them, provided the couple is able to save sufficient money after providing for food. I f none o f them gets sick o r takes leave from work for any other reason (which does not actually happen) there are fair chances o f their securing all their

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requirements w i t h i n their means as these are small, as are their

means. I n cases o f illness o r either partner’s unemployment, it is very difficult for a couple to set u p a household o n their own. A n y couple before forming a rajikhushi union has, of necessity, to look into these problems. Such a person cannot hope to obtain a loan

and they are sometimes helped by their friends, who expect, in return, to be helped in their time of need. A woman bears her first child at her residence. She may be asked to go to the estate hospital if there is a medical need for a hospital delivery. I f at home her first delivery is either helped by an old midwife, living i n the labour lines, o r b y her relatives. Subsequent

deliveries are often managed by mothers themselves. With the birth o f children and the formation of a complete nuclear family there is more self-reliance on the part of the new household. Bringing up of the children is the responsibility of the couple. Even in those cases where a woman/man has her/his parents and siblings residing in

nearby houses, we find that since both men and women go out to work each household is faced with exactly similar problems of performing similar tasks within the framework of fixed timings for the estate work. All the resident workers and their families are equally constrained b y working and living o n the estate. Scope for manoeuvrability o f doing various tasks o n a collective basis at the community level has not been visualized b y either the management o r the workers. I t is the household front which manages to face the problems from within. Specially when children are young and both parents work, it is assumed that before leaving for work the woman has made proper arrangements for the little ones. Since she returns later than her husband (if she is a plucker and he is fieldworker— which is mostly the case) he makes it a point to return as soon as possible and until a child is old enough to cook, he does the cooking o f the mid-day meal for himself and the children. I f for some reasons his wife cannot take tikra for lunch, he manages to send cooked rice for her through a child at her work-place.

Niman provides a centralized creche for children upto six but Niman mothers criticize the creche matron who is an old woman and is unable to look after so many children. They prefer either to take their little ones with them to tea-fields or leave them home as soon as their eldest child is old enough to mind the younger siblings. A n eight-year-old is considered old enough to look after one’s younger brother o r sister.

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A woman with a female child has less worries about the running of her household as the female child takes to housekeeping as a matter of course and without conscious efforts on the parents’ part. A mother with only male children is, however, always complaining even i f her sons d o everything that a daughter may do i n the house. Boys without a sister in the family learn to cook rice, clean the house and plaster the floor with cowdung. Yet a mother does not receive the same tender care from sons as a daughter offers at her return from work. A daughter has not to be told to give the mother water to wash and d r i n k ; she does i t automatically while a boy has to be

called to do this service. When a woman is so tired that she can hardly speak, she hates calling out for anybody. A s soon as a child is above the age of twelve parents try to get a

job for him/her in the garden. Since there are no openings for estate boys and girls outside the garden, even a temporary job is more than welcome for them. Those children who manage to get permanent jobs in the garden, have special value in the eyes o f their parents. A permanent job means claim to a house and a sustained means of

income to the household. Off and on earnings of temporary workers do not give the family a chance to save and invest money in buying cattle o r land. Only very few families have succeeded in

making good in this way. A household with two permanent workers and two to four dependants can just manage to survive on the wages earned every week. I n a family with grown-up children there is a great deal o f variation in its economic status. I f both parents work, it is possible to receive the co-operation of working children i n pooli n g the family'income and effecting some savings to invest. B u t even i n the few such cases we find that this process is not long enough to give the family an edge over the others i n the community. Only for a short period do such investments give fruit and soon an illness, marriage, death o r family quarrel lead to the diminution of their little fortunes and they become just like the others. I n most cases a son’s marriage is followed by separation, i.e. living i n different houses, accompanied by separate cooking. Since allocation of rations by the estate is calculated strictly on the basis of each worker and his/her dependants, it works out more smoothly if every housewife knows what she has and what she needs to buy to satisfy her household needs of subsistence. Since each person’s right “to get rations is predetermined and ability to buy more food is also

predetermined b y

the number o f days worked, the family can easily

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work out what it needs to survive. This 1s exactly what a married couple does i n Nimari. Instead o f mixing u p calculations in a unit bigger than the one o n which estate management makes its calculations, the Nimari boys separate from their parents as soon as they get married and get a house and the cycle begins from where we

started our discussion. A s unmarried members o f their parent’s household, boys and girls d o not contribute all their earnings to the common pool. A s their ration is already provided for by the estate, for making u p any

deficit in that supply they contribute just enough to enable the mother to buy more rice and other food items. The rest o f their earnings are kept b y them and spent o n themselves for their clothes and other requirements. Thus begins the process o f fission even without any physical separation at an earlier stage of the developmental cycle of a family. The pattern of individual earnings encourages this tendency among the younger people and even parents find it difficult to carry o n this arrangement of living with grown-up

children whereby they contribute only minimally for the household expenses. Parents d o not, therefore, seem to mind when married

children set up their own household and relieve the burden from their shoulders. The case o f a daughter who, though capable o f working o n the estate, does not work because she is asked to do house-keeping of her parents’ household, is different from her other siblings. All workers i n the family buy clothes and nice things (like comb, hair pins o r mirror, etc.) for her and she pays nothing for her food. D a l i m , a mother o f two small boys and a daughter o f eleven,

pointed out that a girl staying at home and cooking rice for the family and cleaning the house, gets her food without having to pay

for it like others have to. I t is clear that in this society everybody has 1 0 pay for the rice he/she eats. Children’s ration is given by the estate and those above fourteen have to sooner or later work to earn their ration. The relation between rice and survival and between rice and work o n the garden makes it essential for everybody to work. I asked women if they work because they have to. Their reaction to this question was that o f not following what I meant b y ‘have to’. For them they simply d o it and they would not know what else to do

if they did not work. Their housekeeping is simple which, in their o w n words, even a child can easily manage and in reality many children d o so. Early socialization o f male and female children in

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their respective spheres of activities as well as a flexible attitude towards role-crossing by both sexes makes it easy for them to take o n the roles they need in their adult life.

Between a husband and a wife there is no hard and fast rule about keeping one’s earnings with oneself o r together. If a husband is a drinker, the wife is sure to keep her earning to herself for running the household. I n such a case she tries to snatch as much as possible from her husband o n his pay-day before he turns all to the bottle. I n some cases the wife keeps the cash o f both with herself and gives some from it to her husband for shopping and uses the rest for shopping herself. I n some cases a man keeps his and his wife’s earnings and gives her money for weekly shopping as some women admit that they are helpless with money, they can’t count and seem to spend more than they have. O n the other hand Dalim, a working wife, claimed that m e n spend recklessly and women manage to save a few rupees even after the weekly shopping. B y and large women keep their hold o n their money and, if possible, o n their husband’s

and children’s money also. I t is possible that the particular arrangement at the time of setting u p a new household may change later as there are children i n the family. I t may change yet again when children grow u p and start

working. I t is, therefore, difficult t o say who holds the money and who holds the power to spend it in absolute terms. I t is a relative matter, depending o n particular individuals and the stage o f developmental cycle o f a household. One thing is, however, clear that there are n o hard and fast rules and it is both male and female who can and d o exercise their control o n the yellow metal. With 254 couples, with children, out o f 533 households, working

in the garden, we have a situation in which both mother and father have to b e away almost daily for at least eight hours and the children have to be left at home. Generally a man comes back home before his wife and takes his lunch at about 2.00 p.m. The older child, if a girl, serves him his meal. I f there is n o such person in the family he serves himself. Sometimes he prefers to cook rice rather than take cold rice, cooked b y his wife i n the morning before leaving for work. The woman comes back home late so she has her lunch at work-place. She returns at about 4.00 p.m. and unloads herself. She sits for a while gazing blankly and saying nothing to anybody. I f she has small children, they hover around her and a very small one goes and sits i n

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her lap. But she does not stir from her place for full ten to fifteen minutes. B y that time her older daughter appears with water, which the mother drinks slowly and sits again for another thirty to forty-five minutes. N o w she also plays with her little one and lets her/him suckle. If the husband is also i n the house at that time, b o t h o f them have a

bowlful of rice beer. After the drink she looks fresher and collects clothes for washing and goes to the common water-point. Women bathe either in their own compounds with the water stored beforehand, o r , when it starts getting darker, they go to the waterpoint and have a hurried bath because there are others waiting for a similar purpose. If there is an old enough, i.e. at least an eleven-year-old, girl i n the family, a working woman exerts herself less in household chores. I f she has small children, or all boys, she gets more help from her husband who lights fire, cuts vegetables for the evening

meal and if i t is pay-day and meat curry is to be cooked, he may do the entire cooking o n that day. I f she is not well, he does all the: cooking and i f there are only boys in a family one o f them is taught

how to light fire and cook rice. I t is clear that an older child, usually a girl, is given the task of

looking after her younger siblings. This kind of responsibility moulds little girls’ behaviour at an early age. She not only looks after her younger siblings but also learns cooking, the cleaning of the house and the washing of clothes. A boy is, o n the other hand, expected to be an assistant to his father by helping h i m i n growing vegetables i n the kitchen garden and rice i n their plot of land i f any is given by the estate. H e also learns to look after the cattle, chicken and pigs if the family has any of them. H e brings firewood from the estate forest. The boys also sell some of their family’s garden produce. Quite often they are seen going for fishing to the nearby nver. If meat is expensive and vegetables monotonous, fish brought b y the boys adds to the family’s meal much-needed nutritional value. Boys are also called b y parents for running errands. A s a tea garden is a big sprawling space, going from one place to another within it means walking over long distances and boys seem to be walking all the time. Still, taking lunch for a working mother to her place o f work is mostly done b y a daughter, who also helps her mother pick extra leaves during the flushing season and at the same time learns the art o f plucking. I n the same way, boys take meals for their fathers to paddy fields where at harvest time one person, usually the father, is

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required to be in the fields all the time. Boys help men in keeping watch over their produce. A t any particular point of time, the activities of a household are, of

course, dependent upon its size, age and sex structure, kinship base and number o f workers and non-workers in i t . The above account o f role performance o f males and females i n a household makes it clear that there is a separation of functions between them but at the same time this is not rigid. Early initiation into specific roles is an important

element in the socialization of male and female children but constant role-crossing b y parents sets the pattern before them and cooperation between mother and father in organizing daily activities in the household prepares the children for easy role-crossing. W e have a parallel o f this situation in tea garden workers’ jobperformance. I t is a standard practice o n tea gardens for a woman to

be a plucker and a man to be a field worker. But according to the needs o f the process o f production over the year, women may be

found working as field workers and men as pluckers. The responsibility of indoor tasks in the household, such as cooking, cleaning and washing are female activities yet we cannot describe female roles as exclusively confined to indoor activities alone as all Nimari women go to the weekly market for shopping food items, clothes and other goods for the household. Going out to work in

itself is an outdoor activity, thereby not confining Nimari women to the four walls of their house. For Nimari women, just as it is for men, life o n a tea garden 1s a perpetual cycle o f work and weekly pay, their horizons d o not go beyond the act o f making survival

possible. The politico-economic forces operative in Assam in the past as well as now have led to the emergence o f a particularistic

mode of social structure in Nimari whereby workers adjust with their environment in a manner which, o n the one hand, makes their survival possible, and also o n the other hand, makes possible the continuation o f the economic system o f the plantation. The relations between the sexes are characterized b y a lack o f one sex’s

exploitation and oppression by the other. It is not at all implied that women i n Nimari tea garden are either superior to men o r in any sense dominate them. What is clearly brought out in this paper is

that they are not oppressed and exploited by them. Conclusion

In the above I have emphasized that women’s position in a society

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has to b e seen i n relation to the basic social rights and powers of everybody in that society. Tea-garden life relates itself to the question of

living from week to week, from one pay-day to next pay-day, and of buying rice and other items from the estate market every Thursday

and Sunday. Setting up households and raising families are practical arrangements to serve economic and survival needs. The division of labour and co-operation between men and women and the care of

children are based on reciprocal relationships rather than on domination o r exploitation. Class domination and exploitation b y the employers vis-a-vis workers is only too apparent as a guiding princi-

ple in defining the nature of trends in the labour force of Assam tea gardens.! ° Since the sexes are equal members of the group and both make crucial contribution to its economic life, it is a matter o f equal concern for both men and women as to what happens to those who are not able to find employment in the tea garden. For both men

and women there is no opportunity of finding any employment outside the garden. A t present the employers are managing to employ them intermittently as temporary workers. I t is anybody’s guess as to how long this situation can continue without creating lumpen-proletarians among already poor workers surviving at a bare subsistence level. I t remains to be seen whether their egalita-

rian values will help them in coping with their future problems. I n examining the pattern o f relationships between the sexes as they organize their day-to-day life in Nimari, it is important to note the complete absence o f higher ranks o f Hindu castes, and their

hierarchical organization. 2 ? This plus the dominance of tribal traditions in tea garden labouring communities, and the equalizing influence o f Vaisnavism in Assam have all contributed to highlighting egalitarian principles o f organization, as delineated above.

NOTES 1 Fieldwork for doctoral research was undertaken in 1978 and 1979. Grateful acknowledgements are made to the Indian Council o f Social Science Research for awarding me a Doctoral Fellowship for this study and to the E . Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund, RAI, London, for supporting fieldwork in

Assam. 2 Tea production in India and Ceylon provides us with a remarkable example of plantation organization. I n north India the tea plantations are called ‘gardens’ and in Ceylon ‘estates’.I n this paper the terms garden, estate andplantation are used interchangeably to denote an agro-industrial unit, producing and manu-

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facturing tea as a saleable commodity, specially produced for international and

home markets. Behula Tea Estate is located in Sibsagar District of Assam. All the places and personal names used in this paper are pseudonyms. According to Annual Returns under the Plantations Labour Act 1951 (as quoted in Labour Bureau 1975:144) a little more than 48 per cent of the total employment in tea plantation was accounted for by women workers in 1972. In

the list of women employees in selected industries by public and private sector for 1973, prepared by Labour Bureau (ibid. :154-63) tea plantations top the list showing the employment of 373.1 thousand women workers, while number two

employer is public service in quasi-government organizations and local bodies with 113.9 thousand women workers. This shows that the tea industry not only

employs a large number of females, but also is singularly placed in doing so. The Babu class on the tea gardens is usually drawn from the educated sections of middle and lower middle classes of West Bengal and Assam. The manager of Behula tea estate thought that Babus on the tea gardens of Assam belong to Bengali bhadralok society. Bustee refers to a cluster of hutments of landowning ex-tea garden workers who procured land o n the periphery of the tea gardens and settled there as farmers after the expiry o f their contracts. The Assamese people call their villages gaon while the ex-tea garden workers’ villages are known as bustee.

In Assam, persons living on tea plantations and those connected with them, keep two clocks. One clock follows the Indian Standard Time (IST) whilé€ the other one keeps the Garden Time which is an hour faster than IST. For the workers the latter is the actual time. Thus when we say that a worker starts his/her work at 8.00 a.m. this means that work begins at 7.00 a.m. b y IST. This practice is followed only in tea gardens o f north India because b y 7.00 a.m. there is plenty of light for pluckers to begin work and they can get quite a bit of it done

before the sun is really harsh on them. The estate management keeps all garden clocks and watches set according to the garden time. R s 8.57 is equal to 1 U S $ (approximately). T o bring the matter up-to-date we

mention that from 1 February 1980, each adult worker got an increase of Rs 0.92 per day for one year and a further increase of similar amount per day for the

subsequent two years. I n north India, hot and cold seasons show a considerable difference in temperature and during cold weather (mid-November to mid-March in Assam) there is

no plucking because at this time growth in tea bushes is minimal. Flushing season of tea bushes continues from mid-March to mid-November, givingnearly seven to eight flushes and the period from mid-April to mid-September gives the maximum growth of leaves in tea bushes and it is the busiest period of the year for tea gardens in Assam. I t will not b e a n exaggeration t o say that the provision o f small plots o f paddy land allotted t o labourers o n annual lease at a nominal rent is really nominal as

the total land set aside for this purpose is only 1.90 per cent of the Nimari land grant and out o f 860 labourers only thirteen have been given such plots. 10 Tikra is the word used b y estate workers to denote a preparation o f wheat flour, commonly known as chapati o r roti i n north India. I t is made from dough o f coarse wheat flour, rolled round and cooked o n a hot iron plate.

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11 Each adult worker gets 3.26 kg. o f rice/wheat flour and a dependant, aged two to twelve, gets 1.22 kg. A minor from twelve to fourteen years o f age is entitled to 2.44 kg. o f ration. Persons above the age of fourteen do not get any ration until

they are permanent workers. b 12 The last category, Tanti, does not refer to.an area of origin. Rather, Tanti are a caste people, originating from Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal and as this group is developing i n a particular way o n Nimari, i t is not possible to assign one region to i t ; hence it is included i n this table as an amorphous group,

as a category by itself. 13 If there is a marriage of bandobast (arranged) type, caste as an endogamous group becomes relevant and matches within the caste are sought first in one’s own garden and, if not available there, then in other gardens of the region. There is, however, a n increasing trend toward rajikhushi (common-law mar-

riage based on free will and pleasure) type of marriage which is not always between persons belonging to the same caste. 14 The tribal and caste groups o n Nimari spoke their separate dialects in early days of their settlement in Assam. Over the years in the tea gardens, which actually became a melting pot o f various dialects, there developed a lingua franca o f tea gardens, known as Bagan B a t . Bagan means a ‘garden’ and bat means ‘dialect’. Bagan B a t is a variant o f Hindustani with liberal borrowing o f terms from

Assamese, Urdu and Bengali. Children learn Bagan Bat a t home and Assamese i n school. Whoever can read and write i n Nimari, does so i n Assamese, which is fairly well understood b y most workers. 15 The term ‘rajikhushi’, means a common-law marriage, contracted o n the basis

of one’s free will and pleasure (literally the word means ‘welfare’, ‘well being’ or ‘agreement’). The term denotes generally, a person’s subsequent marriages but also applies to the first marriage which takes place without the performance of traditional rituals and ceremonies. When a boy and a girl decide to marry, even

if parrents/elders in the family do not give consent, they simply disappear for three to four days in the jungle and return to live as married couple in their own house, i f one is allotted to them, o r with parents/relatives/friends o f one o f them. This is called a rajikhushi marriage.

16 The term bandobast is a Hindustani word meaning ‘arrangement’, ‘settlement’ or ‘management’. I n Bagan Bat it refers to a marriage, arranged by parents or by the partners themselves, involving traditional rituals and ceremonies, which have undergone a process o f standardization o n the tea gardens. Generally, a person’s first marriage is o f this type. A bandobast type o f marriage includes two main ceremonies, namely bhanvar

(seven rounds of sacred fire by the marrying couple) and sindurdan (application o f vermilion powder i n the parting o f the hair o n the head o f the bride b y the

bridegroom and on the forehead of the bridegroom by the bride). The former ceremony is an essential part o f all marriages o f persons belonging to Hindu castes while the latter is essential for a l l tribal groups i n Nimari. N o w , all

arranged (bandobast) marriages include both ceremonies besides several minor ones. Expenses o n a bandobast type o f marriage range from Rs 400 to R s 1,000 i n Nimari. This figure also includes the payment o f bride-price which is the cust o m uniformly followed b y all tribal and caste groups i n Nimari. B r i d e price

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i n Nimari ranges from Rs 5 t o Rs 200 and the milk money is paid t o the bride’s mother from '/2 pice to Rs 12. 17 It would be a digression from the main theme of this paper were we to comment extensively on the employers’ ‘control’ of the processes of reproduction among the labourers. However, our data clearly shows that the factors of up-rooting and heterogeneity in the community subsystem on the one hand and the latent function (or unconscious teleology) of the plantation system as a colonialist and labour-intensive agro-industrial enterprise, on the other, combine to create demographic conditions where an abundant supply of present and potential labour force is assured. The barely disguised hostile attitude of the employers towards family planning programmes for the labourers further indicates that the ‘control’ of the reproductive forces may not be all that unintentional. 18 There is little scolding and beating of children by Nimari parents and the phenomenon of wife-beating is unknown. During a brawl after excessive drinking of rice-beer, a husband and a wife may fight and as Padmabati put it ‘you never know w h o beat whom’ in this kind o f quarrel. I n normal circumstances n o woman would ever b e beaten o r even be scolded b y her husband—this is what everybody claimed when I mentioned this topic.

19 Situations of conflict in the pattern of the egalitarian mode of relationships within the community and interaction with the outside world and higher participation i n the plantation social system with non-egalitarian values lead us to the sexual exploitation o f labouring women. A t an explicit level, i n terms o f the

plantation system this kind of exploitation is not resented though fought against b y the labourers, but at the level o f the family there are tensions and frictions

among the family members. I n official reports, files of court proceedings and fiction we find ample evidence of this kind of conflict within the family. Nimari management stoutly denied any existence of the sexual exploitation of female labour by the estate staff. I t was accepted that white planters and assistants on the garden during pre-independence days did indulge in such practices but presently there is a total Indianization of the garden management and almost all staff live o n the garden with families; therefore, there is n o chance o f such a thing happening. While enquiring with female labourers I got a slightly different picture. Some women denied i t while others said that o n a small scale, young

women living in the labour lines were exploited by the residents of Babu lines and bungalows. A t the same time it was also emphasized that there is no compulsion as such; a woman who goes to the bungalow to sleep at night, does so more o r less o f her o w n accord. Women did not see this as exploitation. W e

may say that this only shows the lack of awareness among them. Just as they accept facts o f poor housing, meagre wages and indifferent physical health, they

also accept sexual exploitation as part of their existence. A t least in one case it was pointed out by some women that a woman was in fact deserted by her husband because she worked in the house of a Babu. Nobody said that she wag

actually exploited sexually by her employer but behind the lines, the message was clear. Thus w e m a y say that conjugal relations are affected b y the presence

of such factors. 20 We could have taken a different line of argument by comparing the social structure of Nimari caste and tribal groups with their counterparts in their native

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lands and shown how these people o n tea gardens differ and how their present context has modified their social structure towards an egalitarian mode o f social organization. I t is however n o t possible t o undertake such a study as there is hardly any systematic material available o n women from these tribes and castes,

pertaining to the period just before their migration to Assam. Because of the nature o f the variety o f sub-groups o f the garden i t would have been difficult to

design this kind of comparative study. I consider that in the usual Indian setting o f gender-roles and their associated statuses, i t is unusual to come across a group

of people with a remarkable degree of equality in several spheres of activities and attitudes and i t is for this reason important to bring such cases out into the

open before the researchers and the public concerned with the status of women i n our society. The Madiga from Andhra Pradesh are traditionally known to b e leather workers. O f the twenty-two caste groups from Bihar, the traditional

occupation of Bareta and Dhobi is washing clothes. Dosad and Dom are traditionally scavengers and Lohar (ironsmiths), Karmakar (potters), and Rabidas (cobblers) are also occupational castes. The rest of them belong to the regional groups o f agriculturists. Some o f these agriculturist castes also engage i n the traditional roles o f a specific nature i n marriages and other life cycle

rituals.

REFERENCES Beteille, A . , Six Essays in Contemporary Sociology, Delhi: O . U . P . , 1974. Bruce, C . A . , ‘Report o n the Manufacture o f Tea and o n the Extent and Produce o f Tea Plantations i n Assam’, Journal o f the Asiatic Society, 1939.

Engels, F . , The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, London: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1952.

Gadgil, D . R . , Women in the Working Force in India, London: Asia Publishing House, 1965. Gerth, H . H . and C . W . Mills, eds., From M a x Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Goffman, E . , Asylums, N e w Y o r k : 1961. Jain, R . K . , South Indians o n the Plantation Frontier in Malaya, N e w Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970. Labour Bureau, Women in Industry, Simla: Ministry o f Labour, Government o f I n d i a , 1975. M i n t z , S. W . , ‘The Rural Proletarian Consciousness’, Journal of Peasant Societies

1(3):291-325, 1974. Smith, R . T . , ‘Family Structure and Plantation System in the New World’, i n Plantation Systems o f the New World, Washington, D . C . : Pan American U n i o n 1959, p p . 148-63.

Srinivas, M . N., ‘The Changing Position of Indian Women’, Man 12(2): 1977, 221-39. Wolf, E . R . , ‘Specific Aspects o f Plantation Systems i n the N e w World’, i n

Plantation Systems in the New World, 1959, pp. 136-48.

Sasak Attitude s Towards Polygyny and the Changing Position of Wome n in Sasak Peasant Village s R U T H KRULFE LD

When I arrived o n the island o f Lombok i n Indonesia to conduct m y research I was prepared to find Sasak women both accepting and approving polygyny, since i t was a practice there. This cultural relativism o n m y part, a result o f my training, was soon challenged by the women o f the society I was to study. Many o f them strongly disapproved o f the custom; many, but not all. I find i n looking at m y data with this in mind that there is a relationship between the attitudes o f Sasak peasant women towards polygyny and their status i n Sasak society, and a relationship between types o f village culture (that is, how traditional or modern the village is) and female autonomy (that is, the rights of women to make decisions o f importance relating to their lives) and their access t o prestige, status, and self-esteem through the socio-cultural system o f the village. Women are not an easily separable group for study, as many o f our colleagues seem to assume, but must be seen as part o f the total social and cultural context which includes men and children. Wom e n are taught how to feel about themselves as women from birth, within the context o f the culture and society i n which they live. I n order to understand something about how Sasak women viewed t h e i r lives, a n d some o f the range o f variation i n this, w e have to

refer to Sasak culture, its range and variation, and how women are differently viewed within it b y members o f both sexes. This paper! attempts to explore the relationship between village culture and the position o f Sasak women, as well as the effects o f increasing modernization o f Sasak village culture o n women’s status and autonomy. A number o f scholars have raised interesting questions regarding woman’s position in general evolutionary terms. Martin and Voo-

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rhies in Female of the Species (1975) indicate that simple nuclear family structures (as found in hunting and gathering societies) tend t o b e more conducive to equal relationships between the sexes than the patrilineal extended family systems usually associated with peasant societies; while Leacock (1978) proposes that the turning

point relating to a more inferior status and less autonomy for women occurred when society changed from production for consumption to production for trade. Leacock further proposes that of Judeo-Christian empirical studies should be done on the effects. and Moslem influences on contemporary societies. The Sasak? societies I studied in 1959-61 were peasant, with involvement i n a market economy, i n Islam, and i n a wider society. However, Sasak villages differed enough i n these regards so that the above hypotheses could be reframed and tested i n terms of how women’s position varied with respect to degrees of village ‘closure’ o r modernization, and the transition from production largely for village consumption to production for a market. The position o f Sasak women, the degree of t h e i r autonomy, and their attitudes

towards polygyny w i l l be examined i n the light o f increasing Islamization, increasing participation i n a market economy, and caste membersh ip. 3 The dimensions that emerge as relevant operational indices for village comparisons are: the feelings women themselves express about polygyny a n d the extent o f polygyny i n the village; women’s rights as compared t o t h o s eof men with respect to selecting mates, divorce, inheritance, and t o the custody o f childrén; women’s access to education, to well paid occupations, to political office, and

to other important and valued village statuses; and women’s selfesteem as the Sasak themselves express it.

I n 1960-1 the Sasak classified their villages as either waktu telu o r waktu lima.* Waktu telu villages were traditional, relatively isolated, small and largely subsistent upon their own production, though producing a small cash crop. While nominally Moslem, the religious focus was upon local beliefs associated with an ancestral cult and a spiritual essence permeating rice and land and restricting their sale. Waktu lima villages were much more strongly Islamized and oriented towards a market economy. Traditional law, o r adat, so important i n waktu telu village life, was considered pagan in waktu lima villages. This study pertains t o five Sasak villages: two waktu telu traditional villages; two waktu lima ‘modernized’ vil-

more

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lages; and one village recently labelled as waktu lima but retaining much traditional culture and here labelled as ‘transitional’. There is some indication of Sasak women enjoying a fairly high status during the Dutch colonial period. Examples o f this were a messianic cult led b y a woman and relating to a female deity w h o was to assume world rule, a female mountain spirit, and the feminine spirit of rice. Although writers o n the early history o f Lombok make few references t o women, Cool (1934: 133) discusses

internal trade as carried on by women as well as men. However, while women went from village to village buying rice, Cool does not mention them as being involved in external trade between islands. Noblewomen were apparently important in forming diplomatic alliances through marriage. According to Sasak oral histories, during both the Balinese and the Dutch colonial periods in Lombok noblewomen were occasionally the cause o f disputes and battles. It seems clear from historical presentations, always by men, that the women remained relatively passive i n such situations. During the period o f m y research aristocratic women still had little to say about their marriages. However, commoner women had more to say about the choice o f their marriage partners, especially i f the marriage was to a commoner. Sasak princes were reported t o be angered by the treatment of

their upper caste women by the Balinese, who were said t o have treated all Sasak women as i f they were lower i n caste. According to m y informants, Balinese men often belonged to castes lower than the Sasak royal women they took as wives o r concubines, thus violating Sasak rules o f hypergamy. Moreover, they did not make marriages legal through the payment of a brideprice. Such violations o f Sasak caste regulations governing Sasak women’s status with regard to marriage were among the major reasons given by Sasak princes for gross dissatisfaction with Balinese rule (Cool 1934: 2). During the period of Balinese and Dutch domination, and that o f nationalism in both traditional and Moslem villages, formal religious and political leaders were always men. I have heard of

powerful and respected Sasak women, but never of one who held office. However, even during the Balinese rule women could have important advisory roles. Cool (1934) mentions the strong influence

of a wife of the Balinese radja and her Arab adviser during the 1860s. Around 1920, a waktu lima woman, Inag Mohammad,

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became the centre o f a traditionalist movement that arose in protest against the settlement o f disputes beyond the village level according t o codified Islamic laws rather than traditional laws, and against the increasingly intolerant attitude towards the traditional waktu lima

religion. The movement centred o n ‘rumours of the coming of the god(dess) o f Rindjani, Dewi Andjani, who is supposed to come to bring a paradise to Lombok and destruction to the waktu lima who still fear her’ (Vogelesang 1922:270). The women, called Inaq Billiq (Mother Superior), it was rumoured, intended to bring a period of darkness after which twelve radjas would descend to the airstrip, and a great day of judgement would herald damnation for the waktu lima

and their religion and make the traditional wakmu telu religion universal. After seven days and nights, Dewi Andjani, the tradi-

tional Sasak mountain goddess, would appear and assume the administration o f Selaparang-Madjapahit (the ancient kingdoms of Lombok and Indonesia) and later of the whole world. Convinced that the movement was anti-Dutch as well as anti-waktu lima, the Dutch arrested the major men associated with i t . Vogelesang makes

no mention of the punishment meted out to the woman. The Dewi Andjani movement evidenced the high symbolic position o f women in waktu lima society. The movement invested the female with powerful symbolic leadership and assumed supernatural powers. Furthermore, as is the case elsewhere i n Southeast

Asia, rice, the staple food and major crop, is symbolized as spiritually female by the Sasak. I n 1960-1 women's role in craft and food production and their access t o occupations that produced relatively high incomes i n village terms, differed according to the village type. I n traditional villages such as Sapit almost every household farmed land owned by its members. The village to a large extent produced its own subsistence, with the production o f necessities carried out b y the household and only a few items gained through trade. I n the division o f labour b y sex and age, one sex seemed t o balance the other

and the work o f both the sexes was valued and considered necessary. There were n o real economic class distinctions, and voluntary and reciprocal labour was called upon for jobs that required manpower more than that of household members. A day of work by a women was considered equivalent to a day of work by a man. I n contrast, the waktu lima villages had marked socio-economic classes, some occupational specialization, and a landowning aris-

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tocracy at the time o f the study, with a large landless population engaged i n wage work, craft production, and trade. I n these villages approximately 75 per cent o f the households owned no land i n 1961, and had little hope o f acquiring enough money to buy any. For example, in Kotaradja, only a sub-caste of ironsmiths seemed able to acquire the necessary capital through work to buy land. Women were excluded from ironsmithing. Some traders were relatively wealthy b y village standards, but these were all men. While large numbers o f commoner women entered the market as traders, they were restricted t o petty trade. Large-scale and export trade was i n the hands o f men. According t o informants i t had not always been so. I was told that men in Kotaradja first entered the market place

around 1930 and before that, trading had been the domain of women. Whatever the case historically, although women i n more commercialized Sasak villages entered the labour force and pro-

duced for a market, they had less economic power than men and owned fewer of the means of production. Moreover, most said that they had to obtain the approval o f their husbands o r fathers to trade o r work outside their home. A s for women o f wealthy, aristocratic, o r strongly Moslem families, their movement was highly restricted,

and they did not participate in trade or work outside their home. With respect t o freedom o f movement, i n traditional villages no one o f either sex went very far and trips out o f the village were infrequent and o f short duration. There was no wage work and no proliferation o f trade or craft production aimed at the market i n these villages; all households were engaged i n farming their own land and there were no large landless populations to engage i n other

occupations. Women in the traditional villages moved about the village freely, and were only slightly less visible to visitors and outsiders than were men. B y contrast, in waktu lima villages, wom e n o f more religious o r aristocratic families were essentially confined to the rear quarters o f their homes and to visiting close kinsmen. When going out they were accompanied by close male relatives, and were prohibited from interacting with men who were n o t close kinsmen. This restricted their choice i n seeking marriage partners for such marriages as were not already arranged by parents. Women o f the commoner castes i n such villages were less restricted and d i d come i n contact with non-kinsmen when selling their crafts to middlemen, trading, or working for others. The greater autonomy o f movement for the poorer women o f the com-

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moner castes related to the economic need o f their male relatives. I t is clear from what has been said earlier that landownership was very important o n the largely agrarian island of Lombok. Women’s access to land was more restricted than that o f men. I t is interesting i n this regard that while customary law, o r adat, was considered pagan i n modernized villages such as Kotaradja, i t was nevertheless retained i n one area to the detriment o f women. There traditional regulations restricting the inheritance o f land to males were retained, while i n Sapit, which otherwise kept traditional regulations, the Moslem and national inheritance rules more favourable to women were adopted i n 1953. These rules allowed daughters to inherit one o f every three shares o f property, including land, while two shares went to sons. Although males had the advantage over females, some land was better than n o land, and in Sapit women were

able to inherit land while they could not under the adat regulations that prevailed i n Kotaradja. I n Kotaradja women could receive land gifts from parents who were still living. Though these were restricted and were rare, they were a source o f wealth for several village noblewomen. Women i n Kotaradja could also use impartible land inheritances until they married, at which time the land reverted to their male kinsmen. Women who were divorced o r not yet married received support from the yields of such lands farmed b y their patrikin, which made them economically dependent. Moreover, since the daughters o f wealthy, strongly Moslem, and noble families were highly restricted i n contacts with non-kinsmen, i n villages such as Kediri where they could inherit property, they had little opportunity to engage i n business deals or to decide what

should be done with their inheritances. Commoner women were considerably more mobile and autonomous but had far fewer

resources. I n traditional villages, b y contrast, both men and women shared

their income in the form of surplus goods or money acquired from the sale o f cash crops through institutionalized redistributive mechanisms such as ritual feasts and presentations to kin. I n modernized villages, women had less wealth than men and were more restricted i n the pattern o f spending which was mostly for prestige

purposes. I n modernized villages the pilgrimage to Mecca represented the major way i n which a person could gain prestige, but this was chiefly a male domain. I n 1961 thirty-two Sasak men, but only nine women.

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went o n the holy pilgrimage. This number was said to represent an unusually high percentage of female relative to male pilgrims. A t the time o f m y research i n Kotaradja, seven villagers were chosen to go o n the had; all of them were men. O f the many hadjis in waktu lima villages only a very few were women. Lenek, the transitional village in m y study, had seven hadjis, but no women who had undertaken the pilgrimage. Women were also excluded from entering mosques. Clearly, these major areas o f prestige and self-esteem i n

Sasak Moslem culture were highly restricted with respect to female participation. The religious pilgrimage was not a goal nor a means to prestige i n the traditional adat-oriented Sasak villages. I n such communities traditional rituals for girls, such as ear-piercing and toothfiling ceremonies, counterbalanced the male circumcision ceremonies.

I n 1960, the modernized villages no longer held these female rites of passage, and male status attainment was stressed, once again. Other traditional beliefs and practices, such as the female rice spirit and rice rituals relating to her, were also considered pagan in the Islamized villages, and another source for feminine esteem was thereby lost. I n traditional villages, while women held no political office, they could function as heads o f adat houses, as pemangku or spirit mediums for particular local holy places, as lontar palm book changers, as toothfilers, as ear-piercing experts, or as weavers of the holy name cloths woven at the birth o f each child. N o such positions

existed in the modernized villages. O n e means o f gaining status and self-esteem i n Sasak villages was through education. I n strongly religious waktu lima villages, female attendance at school dropped off sharply after the initial grades. I n one village, while religion was important and religious knowledge a path t o prestige, the religious education of females was limited almost entirely to informal and infrequent study. Villagers said that it was expected that a woman’s husband would teach her all the religious knowledge she might need. Moreover, the girls o f religious families, secluded and protected from outside contact, were rarely permitted t o be seen i n public, a custom which inhibited

school attendance. One of the major areas of female autonomy i n Sasak culture is the freedom a young woman has i n selecting her husband from among her suitors. Somewhat excluded from this arrangement are women from aristocratic, wealthy families o r those from religious families.

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However, Sasak marriages that are not already limited to close kinsmen (as they often are for those more secluded women) take place by means o f elopement. Although the girl participates i n arranging the time and place for this with her lover, the Sasak maintain the fiction o f bride capture. The payment o f the brideprice

by the kinsmen of the bridegroom is said t o heal the breach caused b y this ritual theft. While the theft occurs to show that symbolically this is the only way a girl’s family can be forced to relinquish her to another family since she is so treasured, i t may also be seen as symbolically negating the real power o f choice exercised by the woman i n selecting her mate. I n the 1960s the restrictions o n marriage were clearly greater for

women than for men. Men could select mates from castes below their own, while noblewomen were still being disowned for marrying men of lower castes in modernized villages such as Kotaradja and Dasan Lekong. |

A woman must have her husband’s consent to a divorce unless she 1s abandoned for a year o r beaten severely. Sasak women declared that they had n o rights t o initiate a divorce, while the man could easily obtain the same. Divorce was frequent, but always at

the man’s option. Women in all the villages who wish t o divorce must use indirect means to get their husbands to divorce them. I n

traditional villages they may do this quite openly by nagging the man, refusing to cook or clean for him, and otherwise making him miserable enough to wish to be free from the union. I n the less traditional villages the generally held ideal o f the man as boss

discourages such behaviour. While some noblewomen o f the courts are not permitted to remarry once their husband (usually their parent’s sibling’s son, or grandparent’s sibling’s grandson) has divorced them, most Sasak are married several times during their lives. Divorce becomes increasingly difficult for women to obtain as the village becomes more

Islamized. In the case of a divorce a woman must wait for three months and ten days, i n order to determine paternity and rights i n any unborn child she may be carrying, before she may remarry. The m a n need not wait to remarry, and may require his wife to return to h i m during this waiting period i f he changes his mind about divorci n g her. I n the more modernized and Islamized villages the custody of the

children goes to the father and his kinsmen, and informants speak of

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rights to children as having been purchased by the man’s patrikin with the payment of brideprice. One aristocratic woman from:

Kotaradja spoke of the pain that she felt upon being forced to leave her small children with the family o f her ex-husband. Some women i n these villages mentioned that the threat of losing their children prevented them from using indirect means at their disposal to

precipitate a divorce. The husband, then, in a sense owns his wife’s reproductive capacity. O n the other hand, in traditional villages

small children usually stay with the mother but may go to live with the father or either set of grandparents; usually children who are old enough decide for themselves where they will live. I n these traditional villages there seems to be a general agreement about the custody o f children not being a problem. Polygyny was the major area o f concern to women i n which many o f them felt unfairly treated or even debased. I t was rare i n traditional Sasak villages, though women i n such villages were overtly negative and very outspoken about i t . There were only one o r two cases o f polygynous unions i n each o f the traditional villages i n my study. Lenek, the transitional village o f the study, had a 5 per cent incidence o f polygyny, while Kotaradja, a more modernized village, had an incidence o f 25 per cent polygynous unions i n a random sample o f households i n 1961, a n d 63 p e r cent o f the household

heads o f the sample said that they had contracted polygynous unions at one time o r another. While Islam permits a man to have four wives simultaneously, in Lombok few do. I n Kediri, a strongly Moslem viilage, only one man had four wives and only two men had three wives; however, many men had two wives. The usual justification given by men for the relatively high incidence o f polygyny i n Kediri was that there were more women than men i n the village population, and that polygyny ensured that more women could have husbands. A look at the actual population figures for the village i n 1961 revealed that there were 3,817 men and 3,469 women, or 348 fewer women than

men. Just as the incidence o f polygyny differed by Sasak village type, so too d i d the attitudes o f women towards polygyny. Kediri women, and other women o f Islamized villages, tended to avoid discussing i t , specially when they might be overheard b y men, and, o n the whole, their attitudes tended to be somewhat helpless and fatalistic. Women o f the aristocratic caste, especially those residing in the

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court, and women from the more religious households i n this strongly religious village, sometimes expressed the view that while polygyny was a difficulty for women it was the only thing a man

could do if he wanted or needed more than one woman. One noblewoman o f the Kediri court questioned me about marriage customs and laws in the U . S . When I said that it was unlawful for a m a n to take more than one wife at a time, she asked what a man did

if he desired another woman. Upon hearing the alternatives of time-consuming divorce, self-denial, o r a n extra-marital affair, she

responded, ‘Wah! That must be difficult for the poor man!’ She felt that polygyny was a better solution. However, aristocratic co-wives are frequently kinswomen as well, as was the case for this woman and her co-wife. Often i n such cases friendly relations exist;between the co-wives; this is rare for women o f the commoner castes, who are less likely to be kinswomen. Commoner women i n Kediri are said to occasionally fight with new co-wives, o r , more rarely, to quarrel with their husbands over the taking of new wives. The latter seems to meet with strong general disapproval. I t may be concluded from this that women do not strongly object t o polygyny if their co-wives are related to them, and from the same caste and village. There seemed to be greater acceptance

or at least a lack of negative expression about it in waktu lima villages. B u t there were some exceptions to this. O n e w o m a n o f t h e court, i n a n o t h e r such village, was m a r r i e d

polygynously to her deceased husband’s brother. She said that she was n o longer able to ‘be calm’—a highly valued state among the Sasak— because o f her husband’s most recent marriage to a young commoner woman. This older woman was an aristocrat o f a highranking lineage o f another village. She was rather exceptional i n having her own independent income as a school teacher and also i n managing the income from her husband’s land. From these two incomes she had managed to support the other three households of her co-wives as well as to save enough money for her husband to take to the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. While she kept him on a strict budget and said that she knew that he did not have enough money to b u y gifts for his wives, she declared that she was constantly concerned about his doing so. Moreover, she said that she almost could not bear to pass the house o f his latest wife, as she feared she

might overhear them together and lose her self-control. I n this particular case the difficulty was over an unrelated woman of a

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lower caste who was from outside the village. However, i t is

noteworthy that in Kotaradja, such negative attitudes toward polygyny were more usually expressed by women who had some economic independence. The younger wife i n this case, a seventeen year old country girl of the lowest caste, said that she married her husband, i n spite o f knowing that he had other wives, because she was pleased at the interest o f a high-ranking nobleman, and because her other suitors soon ceased to court her out o f deference to his rank. She said that she knew that she would not be well-received by his three high caste wives, and that while she was clearly her husband’s favourite, she

suffered at the hands of the woman upon whom she was economically dependent. Women from traditional villages were more outspoken and willing to criticize their husbands directly; they were, i n general, more willing to express their opinions than were the women i n the more m o d e r n i z e d villages, w h o also h a d m o r e t o lose i f t h e i r husbands

divorced them. One woman from an Islamized village confided that she tolerated her polygynous marriage only because she wished to keep her children. One afternoon, as I sat talking to several women from the transitional village of Lenek, the subject turned tc polygyny. This was rarely an open topic o f conversation for women i n the village. Moreover, while expressing strong feeling i n an unrestrained way is strongly disapproved, the topic o f polygyny led to exactly that kind. o f emotional expression by the women. One young woman who had been married for two years related the recurrent nightmares she had about her husband taking another wife, or having another wife and not telling her about i t . She spoke o f the difficulty women had i n accepting polygyny. The older women o f the group agreed with her, but they asked rhetorically, ‘Certainly it’s difficult, but what can one do?’ The wife o f a village official talked o f fighting with her husband’s second wifc, stating that such conflicts between co-wives were frequent i n Lenek. Another woman said that she dreamed o f scratching her co-wife’s eyes out. I t must be noted that violence is strongly disapproved by the Sasak. She further stated that she felt ‘ b e t r a y e d ’ w h e n h e r h u s b a n d t o o k a n o t h e r w i f e , a n d said that she

could tolerate h i m only because she had his child. The woman spoke o f other women who had committed suicide o r become insane as a result o f polygyny. The younger woman said that often the men go

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courting in other places, and pretend to be unmarried. The first that the prior wife hears o f the intended marriage is when her husband

comes to her to ask her pardon and to get her permission. The women then declared that the wife is forced to give her permission to her husband to remarry and that she really has n o alternative, and the husband’s request is an ‘empty honour’ for the women. A t another time in this same village, an ex-official had made several polygynous unions during his eight marriages or, in other words, at several points o f time during this period, had had more than one wife. His second and oldest wife declared that polygyny (and the

jealousy she felt when her husband took another wife) was the ‘greatest illness o f all’. She said of her husband, ‘he thinks only o f himself, never o f me, and he must always be content. A wife cannot ask for separation but must accept whatever the man wants’. She said that sometimes she wished that she could die when her husband married a younger woman, but that as she had aged she had managed to be more accepting. She, too, said that ‘one can never know h o w many women have killed themselves because o f polygyny, but many have become mad because o f i t ’ . I t is clear from just these few examples that i n villages like Lenek, which still retained much

traditional culture but have recently become waktu lima, polygyny, while accounting for a low percentage o f the village marriages, does create great anxiety i n women. Moreover, the feelings they have seem to cieate guilt, and stories of suicides, nightmares, and insanity, o r women dying o f ‘broken hearts’, indicating that some o f the anger is turned inward. I n traditional villages, the few women who experienced polygyny were much more outspoken about their feelings, and more likely to confront their husbands directly. I n one such village the village headman had two wives, one o f whom lived in an adjacent settlement under village administration. The official spent most o f his time with the younger wife, declaring that she would be afraid i f he did not, since she lived i n her own house while his other wife had her parents living with her. Each time the official said he was going to a district meeting he would not return that night. A n d each time t h i s happened the younger wife would become greatly perturbed. She said that she was sure her husband was with his other wife, whom she referred to as ‘that whore’. She also said that he should stay away for a year, which would permit her to initiate divorce proceedings. She would then begin to boast of her own attractiveness (also

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disapproved of in this society), which she declared ‘used t o drive m e n wild’. She would carry on in this way before anyone who happened to be present. She claimed that she had asked her husband for a divorce, but that he was so m u c hi n love with her that he refused to grant one. H e r expressions o f the way she felt about the polygyny did not stop w i t h verbal statements about her husband’s unreasonable actions, her own desirability, or the denegration o f her co-wife. One o f the most basic tasks required o f the Sasak peasant woman is feeding her family; refusal to do so is one of the few means Sasak women in traditional villages have of inducing their husbands to divorce them. I witnessed this younger wife

refusing to give her husband food when he returned from an overnight trip, presumably after visiting his other wife. As the younger woman refused to feed h i m , she also berated h i m and spoke badly o f her co-wife. She confided to me that she wanted t o get everything

she could from her husband, and had no interest in helping him save o r accumulate anything, since he might then spend i t on the other woman. I n this village, polygynous marriage had only occurred i n the few decades prior to the research, according to informants, and the village had only two cases o f polygyny at the time. B y 1975 the waktu telu—waktu lima distinction seemed to have essentially disappeared. The favourable economic climate in Indonesia led to the involvement o f all the Sasak villages in the market economy. B y this time, also, all villages were characterized b y the prevalence o f Moslem institutions. A s the above data suggest, with

the disappearance of traditional waktu telu village culture, the position of women in Lombok generally had not improved. I n 1960-1 women in Lombok had less autonomy than men in all villages, but autonomy, and access to power, prestige, and the

means to self-esteem were clearly less in those peasant villages most involved with the wider society through their market and religious institutions. Other scholars (e.g. Tinker and Bramsen 1976, Mintz

1971) have written that there tends t o be a negative relationship between modernization i n developing nations and women’s position, psychologically, socially and economically. Development triggers institutional and legal changes that adversely atfect women. I n Lombok, with the transformation o f traditional, localized Sasak cultures to that involved with a market economy and a world religion, it appears that women have suffered a relative loss o f autonomy, self-esteem and power.

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NOTES 1

Participation in this Congress (Xth ICAES) was made possible by a travel award

from the American Anthropological Association, Smithsonian Foreign Currency 2

Funds, and b y a subsidiary travel grant from the George Washington University. T h e Sasak lived o n the island o f Lombok, located between B a l i and Sumbawa, in

Indonesia. They (the Sasak) constituted the dominant ethnic group in Lombok, i.e. some 95 per cent of the total population, with a tendency to stress certain groups of kinsmen in the patrilineage in terms of rights and obligations (such as in inheritance and the provision of brideprice). However, in the more strongly Islamized villages the system tended to become patrilineal.

3 There was a ranked hierarchical social system (which the Sasak themselves referred to as ‘caste’), consisting o f two levels o f aristocrats and one o f common-

ers. This system governed marriage, language usage and other etiquette, the

4

acquisition o f political office i n some villages, and, to some extent, occupation. This ‘caste’ system applied to the Sasak peasants and functioned i n a way similar t o that o f Java and Bali. However, not all caste levels occurred i n every village. The traditional belief system, as i t was reflected i n the more isolated waktu telu villages, was ancestor-oriented. I t was characterized b y a belief i n the local spirits

and local holy places. A spiritbroker (pemangku) operated between the spirits of particular holy places (pepaliq) such as the special wells or springs, graveyards, woods, and the local living populations. The pemangku also conducted rituals which had an important bearing upon the continued influence o f ancestors on the

living and included the deceased in life crisis events such as marriage feasts, first hair-cutting, naming, toothfiling rituals, circumcision, and curing ceremonies. Offerings such as food, arecanut and rice wine were brought to the graves, along with a notification o f these events. The waktu telu ritual cycle also included

agricultural rituals (especially for rice— which was believed t o possess a ‘soul’ and which was not a cash crop—but also for dry-season crops and for livestock), as well as those relating to harvest and storage. I t was believed that rice could increase o r decrease after harvest and was for this reason specially bundled. I n

waktu lima villages, inhabited by orthodox Moslems, the position of the pemangku dropped out of use and most of the traditional rituals were considered pagan.

REFERENCES Bousquet, Georges Henri, ‘Recherches sur les deux seats musulmanes (waktou

telous t ’ waktou lime) de L o m b o ’ , Revue des Etudes Islamiones, 13, 1939, 149-77. C o o l , W . , With the Dutch in the East: A n Outline o f the Military Operations in Lombok, 1894. Translated from the Dutch b y E . J . Taylor, London: 1934. d e G r a a f , ‘ L o m b o k i n the Seventeenth Century’, Djawa, 21, 1941, 357-8. Ecklund, Judith, ‘Marriage, Seaworms, and Song: Ritualized Responses t o Cultural

Change in Sasak Life’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 1977. Gorl, R., ‘ Aanteekeningen over oost Lombok’, in Tijdschrift voor de Indishce taal,

208

RUTH KRULFELD land-en volkenkunde, 76, 2 , 1936, 96-248.

Krulfeld, Ruth M., ‘Fatalism in Indonesia: A Comparison of Socio-Religious Types —— ——

o n Lombok’, Anthropological Quarterly, 39, 1966, 180-90. _, ‘The Sasak’, i n Ethnic Groups o f Insular Southeast Asia, ed. Frank Lebar, N e w Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1972, pp. 65-9. ‘The Village Economies o f the Sasak of Lombok’, Ph. D . dissertation, Yale University, 1974.

, ‘The Influence o f Land Availability o n Market Involvement i n T w o Sasak

Villages in Indonesia: A Problem in Cultural Ecology’, in Cultural Ecological Perspectives on Southeast Asia, ed. William Wood, Ohio University, Papers in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, 14, Athens: 1977, pp. 130-47. ——,

‘Sasak’, i n Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey, ed. Richard V . Weekes, Wesport, L o n d o n : Greenwood Press, 1978, pp. 347-50.

Leacock, Eleanor, ‘Women’s Status in Egalitarian Society: Implications for Social Evolution’, Current Anthropology, 19, 2 , 1978, 247-55; 268-75. Martin, M . K a y , and Barbara Voorhies, Female o f the Species, N e w Y o r k: Columbia

University Press, 1975. Mintz, Sidney W . , ‘Men, Women and Trade’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13, 3 , 1971, 247-69. R o o de l a Faille, ‘Studie over Lombok adatrecht’, Adatrechtbundel, X V , 1916, 136-7.

W o m e n i n Brazilian ‘Abertura’ Politics

MARIANNE SCHMINK

Feminist groups and the mobilization o f women are not new to

Brazil. Since the nineteenth century outspoken individuals and groups have raised the question of women’s equality, and by the end

of the 1920s a moderate women’s rights movement became acceptable in Brazil (Hahner 1980:95). The successful fight for women’s suffrage in the 1930s was led by Bertha Lutz and other professional women, and was joined b y many. middle-class women. A series o f women’s organizations were formed i n the post-war period, particularly centred i n the then capital city o f Rio de Janeiro. These were the Brazilian Federation o f Women; Federal District Women’s Associations; Women’s Committee for Amnesty; House-

wives’ Association against the High Cost of Living (Saffioti 1978:215-17. Tabak 1979:11). After the military takeover of 1964, women’s organizations, like other citizens’ groups, disappeared, only to re-emerge i n 1975 following the stimulus of International Women’s Year, and the subsequent ‘opening up’ of political debate

in Brazil. Several common characteristics have remained more or less constant throughout the history o f Brazilian feminist mobilization. The most obvious has been its class basis. A s i n most countries, i t was upper and middle-class women who supported women’s rights organizations, even when their efforts were direeted to questions o f concern to working class women: ‘ A t feminist congresses tackling problems o f concern to the working class, such as salaries, shorter hours, working conditions, a n d maternity leaves—but conferences

held at times and in places difficult of access for most working women—few

lower-class

women

ever

appeared’

(Hahner

1980:102). Secondly, the women’s rights movement has historically been reformist i n character, rather than challenging the more fundamen-

tal bases o f Brazilian social structure. Demands have tended to

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reinforce women’s traditionally-defined role i n the home, as i n protective labour legislation for women workers, and the wage for

housewives (10 per cent family income) which was proposed by Bertha Lutz in the 1930s Women’s Code. Mass mobilization of women has typically been stimulated b y home-related issues such as

the high cost of living, children’s welfare, and basic services. On the other hand, the more radical left-wing women’s organizations, such as the short-lived Women’s Union o f 1934-5, have tended to focus o n general political issues and only secondarily o n specifically women’s rights issues (Saffioti 1978:214). A third common characteristic has been the resistance to a mere imitation o f women’s movements from abroad. Even early feminist newspapers opposed the ‘radical feminism’ found i n other countries, and expressed pride i n a ‘Brazilian feminist movement achieving its goals without the violence and anti-male hostility seen i n the U n i t e d States and Great Britain’ (Hahner 1980:96-7). Leftwing women’s organizations, on the other hand, have disdained the models i n these countries as being too reform-minded and limited to concerns o f the bourgeois class, while agreeing that anti-male sentiment was misguided and divisive. More recent women’s organizations i n Brazil have continued a concern with forging a home-grown women’s movement which would learn from experiences i n other nations but develop a philosophy and strategy appropriate to the current Brazilian context. T o a large extent this approach has meant a departure from earlier experiences i n the attempt to promote a truly interclass feminist movement. A t the same time, feminist demands are seen as irrevocably wedded to the broader political issues in contemporary Brazilian society, so that specifically women’s concerns are rarely articulated without being placed i n the context o f more general and far-reaching social problems. As fundamental structures o f Brazilian society are questioned i n the context o f the women’s movement, so too, for the first time, are the most radically feminist questions regarding women’s role i n the family being brought into focus. The emerging Brazilian women’s movement is now only beginning to grapple with these complex questions and t o find the means t o deal with them effectively under current social conditions. This paper will examine i n more detail the peculiarly Brazilian form being developed by the contemporary women’s movement i n the ‘abertura’ period.

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The emergence o f contemporary feminist groups I n b o t h R i o d e J a n e i r o a n d Sao P a u l o , activities r e l a t e d t o the

United Nations International Women’s Year (IWY) stimulated the creation o f groups oriented to women’s problems i n 1975. Aside from the I W Y meeting i n Mexico, a separate and smaller meeting was also sponsored that year i n R i o de Janeiro by the U . N . and the Brazilian Press Association, on the topic of the ‘Role and Behaviour o f Brazilian Women’.! After that meeting, a group of p r o f e s s i o n a l w o m e n formed t h e Brazilian W o m e n ’ s C e n t r e (CMB),

w i t h the principal objective o f working t o end women’s alienation b y stimulating their collective organization. During the next five years, the C M B was active i n researching issues related to legislation (the Civil Code reform and labour legislation), day-care needs and facilities, women i n Brazilian popular art and culture, reprod u c t i o n a n d sexuality, education a n d o t h e r issues. T h e i r activities

have been publicized i n a series o f public shows and meetings including two encounters o n working women and one national meeting o f organized women’s groups, i n 1979. Also i n 1975 i n Sao Paulo, i t was proposed at a meeting of the

Neighborhoods’ Friends Societies (SAB) that I W Y be commemmorated b y a diagnosis of the condition o f women i n Brazil and Sao Paulo. A group o f thirty to forty professional women came together t o organize an ‘Encounter for the Diagnosis o f the Sao Paulo Woman’ held i n October at the Municipal Council building, sponsored by the U n i t e d Nations and the Paulista Catholic Church, and w i t h participation by representatives o f union, political party, Church, and women’s groups. A document signed by 38 of these entities called for the creation of an organization to ‘unite all those interested i n better knowing, debating and publicizing the situation o f the Brazilian woman, and especially the Sao Paulo woman’ (Singer 1978:10-11, Maria Brasileira, 1979:5). The following month the Centre for the Development o f the Brazilian Woman (CDMB) was formed, and began to research problems o f maternal health, education, day-care, women’s work conditions, and political participation. Other feminist groups were also formed about the same time, and t w o feminist newspapers Nos Mulheres (based i n Sao Paulo) and Brasil Mulher (based i n Londrina) began t o circulate. After p u b l i c debate mobilization became more widely permitted from 1977, and existing women’s groups expanded, splintered, and proliferated,

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nearly all based in either Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. Most were composed o f a small ‘twenty to thirty’ but active core o f members drawn from the ranks of professional and middle-class women. Feminist scholarship also began to expand rapidly during this period, with the stimulus o f the small grants research competition administered by the Carlos Chagas Foundation i n Sao Paulo (funded b y the Ford Foundation). I n December of 1978 an international conference o n ‘Women i n the Labour Force in Latin America’ was held i n R i o , organized by IUPERJ (University Research Institute o f R i o de Janeiro). D u r i n g the 1978 local elections, these new groups pressed to make women’s demands heard b y the candidates and the voters. The C M B issued a ‘Carta as Mulheres’ (‘Letter to Women’) which outlined a platform o f demands they urged women to consider i n voting. They included the general issues o f amnesty, free and direct elections, a Constituent Assembly and the high cost o f living, as well as a series o f ‘specific’ women’s demands: day-care, leisure areas, schools, school feeding programmes, equal pay for equal work, adequate working conditions, female labour legislation and family planning. the suppression o f the use of women as sexual objects in advertising, the end t o educational discrimination, and access to political posts. A similar open letter, ‘Carta dos Direitos da Mulher’ (‘Letter o n Women’s Rights’) was drawn u p for discussion by four women’s groups and thirteen individuals i n S3o Paulo. I t included virtually all the demands o f the R i o de Janeiro letter, and a much more detailed list o f additional issues including the right to abortion, male and societal responsibility for domestic tasks, and other more radically ‘feminist’ issues. Women i n both cities were active i n working within party campaigns t o introduce women’s issues, and were able t o contribute to the election o f some candidates, including I r m a Passoni (Sao Paulo) and Heloneida Studart (Rio). B y 1979 there were at least eight solid women’s groups, including the C M B . the C D M B , the Associagao das Mulheres, the CMB-Sao Paulo, the Colectivo Feminista, the Grupo Nos Mulheres, the Grupo Feminista 8 de Marco, the Movimento pela Participacao da Mulher. and the Sociedade Brasil Mulher. As they evolved. these groups revealed the tensions inherent in women organizing i n the context o f t h e newly-politicized Brazilian society. O n the one hand, most o f those involvedi n women's organizations were active in other political

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movements as well, especially the amnesty movement (Feminine Movement for Amnesty) and the formation of new political parties. The military regime’s recognition of a growing crisis o f legitimation had led t o the ‘abertura’ (‘opening up’) o f political debate which allowed for a widespread and sometimes euphoric mobilization o f groups pushing for the redemocratization o f Brazilian society. Feminist groups, i n this context, were t o be seen as one element o f a unified civilian push for a return to a participative society. For the majority o f women’s organizations with a leftist orientation, this required the careful reconciliation o f women’s demands with those leading more generally to a socialist society. A t the same time, through their several years o f experience women’s organizations had gradually come to take on a more radical and militant feminist stance. I n Brazil, as elsewhere, the feminist movement has consistently been trivialized and ridiculed i n the media. Feminists have been subject to attack from both ends o f the political spectrum: conservative women fear being seen as ‘unteminine’ o r too radical, while on the left feminists are accused

of being divisive or bourgeous reformists (Chaney 1979:79). Thus the increased willingness o f many Brazilian women’s groups to be k n o w n by the ‘feminist’ label marks a new phase o f consciousness and strategy for the movement (Singer 1978). The conviction that there were problems specific to women which would not be resolved b y more general political remedies, including a socialist revolution, alerted these women to the danger of their fledgling pressure groups being co-opted and swallowed u p by the rising wave o f general political mobilization. These considerations led to the splintering o f some groups, and the first appearance o f militantly feminist organizations which stood their ground on the ‘universality’ o f women’s oppression i n capitalist/patriarchal Brazilian society (Colectivo Feminista) and opposed the assumption o f general community issues as being those o f women (Grupo Feminista 8 de|Marco).2 The majority o f women’s organizations continued to seek to harmonize their specific objectives with general political issues. They recognized the diversity of women’s organizations, including those which fight for general demands as well as those formed around specifically women’s issues. I t was emphasized that the women’s movement was an integral part o f the struggle for democracy i n Brazil, and that women’s interests should be defended

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within all o f the more general movements under way. A t the same time, there was a need to promote the unity and autonomy (from partisan politics) o f women’s organizations o f diverse types. Furthermore, most groups were committed to the priority needs o f poor and working class women, as an additional means o f ameliorating the cross-class contradictions o f the diverse women’s movement.> As we

shall see, i t has b e e n possible i n Sao P a u l o t o achieve a n

on-going unity and autonomy o f women’s organizations in recent years which has allowed the diverse groups to continue to pursue this harmony o f interests and work together on specific projects. However, the tensions and contradictions mentioned above have

continued to exist, both between different feminist groups, between these and specifically working class women’s groups, and within the experience o f mobilized w o r k i n g class w o m e n . A s i n o t h e r contexts,

the reconciliation o f Brazilian feminist demands with a more general process o f politicization is not always smooth, and the tensions i t produces are the result o f very real social contradictions which should n o t be ignored i n any process o f social change. I n order to explore these questions more closely, we now turn to a description o f the forms o f organization of working class women i n Sao Paulo, and their relationship to the feminist groups described above.

The growth o f women’s organizations in working class neighbourhoods A s I n many countries, the post-war period in Brazil brought the emergence o f neighbourhood associations and mothers’ and housewives’ clubs whose participants were predominantly women. These groups are unique among ‘political organizations’ i n having a residential basis, and focusing on demands related to daily basic needs (infrastructural facilities, services, and most frequently the high cost o f living) which are not commonly considered to be part o f the political realm. They have been considered important in mobilizing persons who are not reached by other forms o f political mobilization. A t least since 1945 and the formation o f the Associacao das Donas de Casa Contra a Carestia (Association o f Housewives Against the High Cost o f Living), women have been organizing in Brazil around issues related to their role i n managing family consumption needs (Tabak 1979:11). The Brazilian Federation o f Wo-

men, formed during this same-period, and other women’s move-

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215

ment organizations, formed basic neighbourhood groups and em-

phasized this issue as well as children’s problems and the need for basic services. I n Rio de Janeiro, for example, the Federal District Women’s Association ultimately included about a thousahd members from the city’s various neighbourhood organizations, and was oriented t o a similar array o f issues, especially the high cost of living. More recently, i n the early 1960s the Women’s League of the State o f Guanabara carried out a vigorous campaign against the

high cost of living, including the circulation of a petition which gathered 100,000 signatures, proposing ways to combat the problem, which was carried to Brasilia and presented to the thenPresident Goulart (Saffioti 1978:215-17). While these groups virtually disappeared after the military takeover o f 1964, i n recent years numerous groups have emerged i n Brazil’s most industrialized metropoli which appear very similar i n their objectives, orientation, and activities. However, it is important to recognize the characteristics which set off these more recent movements from those in earlier periods. The first is a striking difference i n the class basis o f their membership. Whereas earlier organizations were usually restricted to middle and upper income women, the new neighbourhood groups are concentrated i n the working class neighbourhoods o n the periphery of the industrial satellite cities o f R i o , Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte. Second, the new organizations have emerged alongside a variety o f other new movements and forms o f mobilization during the period o f political ‘abertura’, and have constantly faced the necessity of defining their objectives and activities i n relation to the concerns of other groups,

and of the redemocratization process at large. Probably the oldest existing neighbourhood organization o f working class women is the Housewives’ Association of the Eastern Zone o f the city o f Sao Paulo, which was founded at least sixteen years a g o . Its objectives and evolution, as described by its leaders, are typical o f other Sao Paulo organizations o f more recent date. A t its inception, the organization had two goals: promoting friendship between women i n Sao Paulo’s peripheral neighbourhoods, and providing them with an opportunity to discuss their problems. A s defined b y the group’s members, the highest priority problem to bé tackled was that o f ‘where to leave their children’ when they had to leave the home for work o r other purposes. The demand for a iocal day-care centre was the first concrete organized goal for their

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activities, and they were successful in obtaining help from Sao Paulo’s municipal government to finance the building where it

would be housed. The Association contributed the labour t o make the centre operate, and this commitment was later seen to be a tactical error b y members, whose energy was continually used u p i n allowing the centre to function, which made it difficult to move o n

to other problems. Furthermore, after many years of existence the centre continues to function precariously, and women now recognize the need for greater concern with improvement i n the quality o f the day-care services offered. Recently the centre’s operation has been taken over b y the Lion’s Club. This initial focus on the priority question o f day-care facilities located i n peripheral neighbourhoods has been echoed i n the activities o f more recent groups i n Brazil, as w e will see. Furthermore, the early experience o f the Housewives’

Association has been useful i n formulating the more specific demands o f the later day-care movement i n order to avoid the problems mentioned above. Following the success i n obtaining day-care facilities, the Association went o n to organize around other general neighbourhood concerns: schools, water supplies, health conditions. Furthermore, members have also been concerned with more general educational and political goals. Political education sessions have served to explain what voting means, how the prefecture functions, and to point out that public representatives can sometimes be superficial and untrustworthy. W i t h the increase in labour opposition activity beginning i n 1978, Association women were active i n supporting the opposition slate for the Sao Paulo Metal-workers’ Union, distributing their campaign materials, and supporting the strikers i n the first strikes i n 1978. Members were encouraged to stand behind their husbands i n these activities. D u r i n g the 1980 strikes, Association members raised strike support funds, organized food distribution for families o f strikers, and distributed printed flyers explaining the importance o f women supporting the strike and encouraging their husbands when spirits lagged. One woman was active on the strike support committee, while her own husband worked as a strikebreaker. A t the same time, Association members are encouraged to dev e l o p a consciousness o f t h e i r o w n p r o b l e m s a n d capabilities, as

women. Women are taught to recognize the value o f the work they d o i n the home, the double work-load employed women face, and

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217

to appreciate their contributions and capabilities as wife and mother. The goal is to encourage women to participate in the Association’s activities, to give them much-needed practice at speaking i n a group, acting outside the home, and organizing events. Through the process o f getting involved, women begin t o

‘open up’ and to ‘feel their own value’. It is a slow process of change,

but an effective one: ‘When they change, they really change.’ Problems o f women’s position i n the family and their relations with their husbands inevitably come u p in discussions, although they are not generally a specific topic o f discussion, because o f the potentially explosive nature o f this topic for women in the context o f these working class families. One anecdote can serve to illustrate this problem. Neighbourhood group leaders typically use an illustrated pamphlet o n women’s history, which takes u p the question of women’s oppression within family and society during earlier historical periods, as one way o f inducing women to indirectly recognize and confront

their present situation.’ During one training session in which leaaers were being instructed o n how to use this pamphlet, a psychodrama approach was used i n which women drew pictures o f

their family group. One of the leaders depicted herself and her children kneeling before her husband. This graphic representation o f female oppression i n the family created a marked sensation o f discomfort i n t h e g r o u p , so t h a t t h e session leaders w e r e q u i c k t o

move o n to other topics i n order to avoid an explosion. The woman herself was so shocked by the revelation she had made, that she withdrew from the movement altogether after this experience. Thus

leaders of the working class women’s organizations recognize the importance o f taking o n the most threatening feminist issues i n a very gradual and cautious way. For the majority o f working class women w i t h n o prior participatory experience and no selfconfidence, the first steps continue to be very basic ones which will lay the groundwork for later developments. A s i d e from t h e H o u s e w i v e s ’ A s s o c i a t i o n , there are innumerable

smaller organizations i n Sao Paulo. Many of the existing Mothers’ Clubs began before 1970, but have become much more active i n recent years. ® Nearly every neighbourhood has a group with at least fourteen t o fifteen members who meet weekly, and this participation 1s growing. There is also a general co-ordinating organization i n Sao Paulo’s south zone, and several recently-formed mini-co-

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ordinations which represent four to six Clubs each. These coordinating bodies are formed of volunteers from the smaller clubs, who meet o n a monthly basis and help with the formation o f new clubs in other neighbourhoods. Nearly all the Mothers’ Clubs are linked to the Catholic Church and use its buildings for their meetings, b u t they are also autonomous and carry out fund-raising

projects to support their activities. Like the Housewives’ Association, these are homogeneous groups o f working class women. Their objectives and tactics are also similar to those o f the Association: they circulated a petition demanding construction o f local schools, and five hundred mothers gathered one afternoon i n the Sao Paulo Legislative Assembly to make their demands heard. This demonstration was organized after door-to-door recruiting o f area residents. N o w the clubs are concerned w i t h improving the quality of education in the schools. The clubs also have commissions to study problems o f day-care, cost o f living, water supplies, health, and public transportation, and like the Association they were active during the 1978 campaign year i n political education and i n support for labour opposition campaigns and strikes. The large Cost o f Living Movement which began i n 1975 i n the Sao Paulo Mothers’ Clubs, grew to a national movement which collected more than a million signatures on a petition demanding price freezes o n basic necessities and across-the-board wage increases. The petition was carried to Brasilia, where the then-President Geisel refused to receive the Movement’s representatives. Earlier demonstrations i n Sao Paulo had mobilized

thousands of supporters (Brasil Mulher 1:3:2, 1976; Movimento 146 (17 April}, i978). Although women’s organizations have been by far the most effective and active i n Sao Paulo, they have also emerged i n similar neighbourhoods near the industrial satellite cities of Rio de Janeiro a n d B e l o Horizonte. N o v a I g u a c u , i n R i o , has seen t h e growth o f

Mothers’ Clubs i n which women teach one another their skills, providing training, company and solidarity, as well as incomeearning possibilities.” These groups have also organized to save local schools, and raised money to support the construction costs of school expansion. The Residents’ Associations and Community

Councils representing thirty-four neighbourhoods, which put pressure o n the local authorities regarding more general problems, are also composed mainly o f women. These groups deal with a variety o f both

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219

general and specifically women’s concerns: regularization o f urban lots; public transport; education i n women’s legal rights; discrimination against women in the workplace; salary inequalities; high cost o f living; cost and access to schools for children; pressure of low

salaries on women to supplement family income; isolation of domestic w o r k ; high-pressure sales people who target these neighbourhoods for sale o f superfluous goods; lack of access to accurate

information; obstacle t o broader participation which home responsibilities represent; and lack o f communication with husbands about general social issues. T o a lesser extent, women’s groups i n the neighbourhoods surrounding Belo Horizonte’s industrial satellite city o f Contagem have also begun to organize themselves since 1978 to tackle a

variety of problems, particularly that of day-care. The Community Association o f Inconfidentes, the Mothers’ Club o f the Association o f Bairro Industrial, and the Feminine Association of Vale do Jatobd, for example, managed to open local day-care centres i n 1979, relying principally o n volunteer labour, contributions o f materials, and the support o f the Church.® All o f these organizations emphasized the importance o f stimulating women’s participa-

tion in group activities and in the resolution of their communities’ problems. I n comparison with women’s organization i n neighbourhoodbased groups, attempts to introduce organized pressure for women’s issues into labour unions have been less successful, although some progress has been made. The I Congress of Female Metal-

workers of Sao Bernardo and Diadema (Sao Paulo) was held i n January o f 1978 under great discouragement by employers: o f 800 workers who signed u p to attend, only 300 showed u p after threats from the firms where they worked (Singer 1978:19). A variety o f demands o f women workers were discussed at that meeting: equal pay for equal w o r k ; access to training courses and management posts; retirement at 25 years o f service; day-care facilities; greater union participation b y women; and the creation of ‘feminine departments’ in the unions to use pressure for these demands. However, these issues have not been assumed by union leaders, and the proposal to create a feminine department was not approved either at that t i m e o r since. A n exiled Sao Paulo labour opposition leader

admitted to the author in 1978 that women workers had indeed been given only token representation i n the unions, but that there was

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now an effort to recruit women through the ranks from factory-

level committees to higher union posts. Some women have indeed appeared o n recent opposition slates, but these more active women ‘become men’ and tend not to push for specifically women’s issues,

which are generally seen as divisive. Thus women leaders of the neighbourhood organizations commented ironically that they were forced to struggle with too-radical feminists, as well as not-feminist-

enough female union activists. The proposal for the creation o f union feminine departments has appeared to be more successful i n Rio and Belo Horizonte than in the heart o f union activism, Sao Paulo. Several such departments have b€en created in Rio since 1978 (BrasilMulher (8 March) 1980),

and there is also a Feminine Department of the Metal-workers’ Union o f Belo Horizonte-Contagem. The latter group organized a I Congress o f Women Metal-workers i n that city o n 7-9 March 1980, and helped to rouse interest in the Congress through several preparatory meetings beginning i n January. They also formed a theatre group i n order to present scenes dramatizing the problems o f sexual harassment o n the job, the double burden o f wage work and domestic labour, and discrimination against women i n the

workplace.’ I n general, women involved in the neighbourhood organizations and union groups agree that support for their activities from men is often ambivalent. Many husbands forbid their wives to participate, and some women attend only b y hiding their attendance from their spouses. Even i n the now-famous Housewives’ Committee o f the Bolivian t i n mining area, Siglo X X , leader Domitila reported that nearly 40 per cent o f the men opposed their wives’ participation

(Chungara 1978:76). ‘On the other hand, while some women go hidden from their husbands, others are made to go b y their

husbands’, as one Sao Paulo Mothers’ Club leader pointed out.1? Many women whose husbands are politically active report that they were encouraged to participate i n community organizations. A study o f community organizations i n Chicago similarly found that active women were more likely to be from more militant families (McCourt 1977:121). A s mentioned earlier, however, this support for women’s more active participation does not necessarily mean support for specifically women’s issues, particularly o f the more radical feminist variety which focus o n women’s oppression within the family. Indeed women i n working class organizations are univ-

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ersally resistant to the ‘feminist’ label. The Chicago study suggested that active women may at least verbally adhere even more strongly

tothe traditional female image androle, in order to make up for the ambivalence created by their participatory behaviour (McCourt 1977:149). Co-ordination o f Sao Paulo women’s organizations

Despite the internal tensions within both the feminist groups and the working class women’s organizations, and the potential conflicts in the objectives between the two types of groups, the last three years

have witnessed a successful and enduring experiment in uniting forces in Sao Paulo. Most o f the organizations are too small to have much impact o n their own, and are often frustrated in trying to

make their demands heard through other political channels such as unions and parties. Even the grass-roots Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabal-hadores) has n o women’s representation, and at the

1979 meeting in Belo Horizonte to launch the movement for its creation, women were not mentioned even once by the speakers. I n general, women’s organizations are rarely taken seriously; they are either ignored o r co-opted by more general movements who then abandon their specific demands. Within this context the diverse women’s groups i n Sao Paulo have sought mutual support in an uneasy but effective union o f forces which is perhaps the most encouraging and innovative aspect o f the emergence o f Brazil's

women’s movement in recent years. A s mentioned earlier, virtually all Brazilian feminist groups seek to promote an interclass movement, to harmonize women’s demands with more general concerns, and to give priority to the needs o f poor and working class women. However, these goals are more easily stated than achieved. I n Rio and B e l o Horizonte, unity between feminist-type groups and working class women’s organiza-

tions has not yet been achieved, and antagonism can be felt o n both sides. I n general, working class women are far from assuming most feminist issues, and the ‘feminist’ groups are prone to impose their o w n impressions o f what should be priority concerns for these women. I n Sao Paulo these tensions remain, but the greater strength and experience o f both types o f groups, and a longer

history of trying to work together, has made it possible t o progress towards a co-ordinated effort. The first real step was the 1978 commemoration o f Women’s Day

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(8 March) by a group of nine Sao Paulo entities, including the CDMB, No6s Mulheres, Brasil Mulher, the Feminine Movement for A m nesty, the Housewives’ Association, Mothers’ Clubs and other working class groups. This set of organizations, representing ‘organized women’, was able to agree on a platform i n which women’s struggle was inserted into the general struggle for democracy and equality. The document stated the clearly feminist position that domestic work and the education of children are the responsibility not only o f women but also o f men and of the society as a whole. Finally, the document announced the intention to ‘begin a movement to co-ordinate the diverse groups o f women interested i n the struggle for feminine emancipation and for democracy’ (Singer

1978:27). The following year, representatives of these same nine groups worked together to plan the I Congress o f Sao Paulo Women, held on Women’s Day and attended by 800 women.!! One o f the most important outcomes o f this meeting was the agreement to focus o n the priority issue o f day-care, to coincide with the U . N . Year o f the Child (1979). The Movimento de Luta por Creches (Movement o f Struggle for Day-Care Centres) was formed, and a separate coordinating structure was set up to carry out its activities. Tactics included petitions, public demonstrations, continual pressure on local government agencies to provide day-care facilities i n peripheral low-income neighbourhoods. A s a result o f this pressure, b y 1980 the municipal government was about to announce a project to construct 830 centres over a period o f three years. The movement continued to push its demands, this time for total financi n g b y the government i n order to avoid the requirement of volunteer labour o r financial contributions b y community women, which earlier experiences had shown to be an unsupportable burden. A t the same time, the movement was concerned with ensuring community participatior. i n the centres in order to improve the quality of the service; they wanted a non-sexist education for their children, and one which promoted solidarity and no competition. 1 2 D a y - c a r e movement literature, as a l l t h e literature developed b y

the women’s movement, uses simple language, humour, and a cartoon format to present a well-developed set o f feminist issues accessible even to uneducated women. The cover of one pamphlet shows a group o f children asking indignantly ‘ A r e children only their mother’s? (‘Os filhos sao s6 da maae?’). The answer inside is:

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‘We, c h i l d r e n , aren’t o n l y o u r mother’s. W e are also our father’s, and we are also important to society. After all we are tomorrow’s workers.” The eight-page illustrated pamphlet goes o n to state the need for day-care facilities o f high quality; review the scant and ineffective legislation regarding day-care facilities in the workplace; trace the recent history o f municipal day-care programmes i n Sao Paulo; suggest related questions for women to raise for discussion in meetings o f union and neighbourhood groups; and invite their participation i n the next general meeting of the movement. A second important result o f the I Congress was the maintenance and expansion o f the Co-ordination, which came to be the structure representing organized Sao Paulo women more generally. Approximately fifty entities were now represented i n the Co-ordination, all o f which ‘had o r were beginning to have some work with women’. 1 3 The Co-ordination had a central committee composed o f representatives o f smaller sub-co-ordinating groups, divided by geographical region o f the city and by type (i.e. union, feminist). The philosophical approach to its functioning was democratic: the smallest individual groups could discuss issues, sending recommendations and ideas through their representatives to sub-coo r d i n a t i n g u n i t s , whose emissary w o u l d i n t u r n raise these questions

i n the central committee. Similarly, decisions taken i n the context o f the central committee would not be implemented until they had been discussed and approved i n the ‘base groups’. The Co-ordination now represented a remarkably large and diverse set o f organizations with very different political orientations. Co-ordination members were well aware of these real differences and o f the tensions they sometimes produced. Women from the working class organizations sometimes complained that the Coordination was not as grass-roots oriented as i t might be, and that the feminist group representatives were prone to work in an elitist fashion without consulting o r considering the ‘base’. They also resented the fact that they were obliged to spend long hours travelling to central committee meetings i n a central city neighbourhood. O n the other hand, members o f feminist groups were sometimes exasperated b y the stubborn conservatism they perceived on the part o f the women from the periphery, and found i t difficult to understand their resentment o f the efforts b y feminists to carry out activities in the working class neighbourhoods. Both sides were prone to a sort o f ‘territoriality’ i n working in these working class

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areas. Furthermore, o n any given issue there were liable to be subtle b u t persistent differences in emphasis and priority, which made the approval o f common statements and actions a continual struggle. These difficulties are to be expected i n an inter-class movement. Indeed the strength o f the Co-ordination has been it$ clear recognition that real differences exist and that they must be respected and worked through continually i n the process o f the movement’s development. Despite the often discouraging interactions, members o f the central committee continued to participate, since they recogn i z e d t h e importance o f co-ordinated activities, related t o i m -

portant issues o f shared concern. There was no pretence of complete identity among the diverse groups, but rather a common commitment to certain specific women’s issues and to a democratic movement with a general leftist orientation. The mutual support provided b y the Co-ordination was not readily available to these women’s organizations from more traditional class-based political organizations. For this reason, members recognized the importance o f an independent, non-partisan, unified women’s movement. With the expansion o f the Co-ordination, plans for the I I Congress of the Sao Paulo Woman (held on 8-9 March 1980) became more elaborate. Fund-raising activities included a bazaar in peripher-

al neighbourhoods, which raised Cr$ 3,500, and a sambao (big samba party) which brought in Cr$180,000 (during this period US$1 equalled roughly Cr$50). Working class women commented wryly o n their recognition o f the importance of feminist group members and their middle-class friends, who attended the sambao, in providi n g material resources for the Congress. Pre-Congress publicity emphasized the diversity o f issues facing women i n Sao Paulo,

which would be addressed to at the two-day meeting. Recognizing women’s multifaceted existence, o n e flyer asked: ‘How Many W o men A r e You? One woman who is a mother . . . another who is a wife. One woman works outside . . . another who takes care of the house. O n e who conforms . . . another who rebels. Let’s Put The Pieces Together, Woman!’ Events at the I I Congress demonstrated the complexity and potential for conflict which had come with the movement’s expansion and diversification. The meeting was attended by approximately 4,000 women. There was a functioning day-care centre which looked after participants’ children, reportedly staffed by sympa-

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thetic members o f the male homosexual groups. The Congress united professional women, University students, housewives, and working class women i n small work groups on a wide variety of topics. D u r i n g these sessions, the same divisions which plagued the Coordination also appeared occasionally. Women from the peripheral neighbourhoods complained about the apparent egotism of students who were overly concerned with individualistic issues o f sexuality, pleasure, and abortion. (These complaints deal with relative emphasis and appropriateness for Congress discussions, since working class women are concerned with these problems, and have repeatedly asked feminist groups to help them to become more informed. } B u t the greatest disruptions took place in the Congress’s wider assembly, when some Co-ordination members tried to politicize the Congress or argue for their own partisan positions, displaying banners and monopolizing microphones. The ensuing attempt by the Congress administration to regain control o f the meeting failed and the meeting dissolved at one point into fistfights, forcing them t o close down the Congress before the final debate and

voting on its last day. Needless to say, these events only served to create adverse newspaper reports for the women’s movement, and to demoralize the Co-ordination. Nevertheless, Co-ordination members met immediately following the meeting to analyse what had happened and issue a note o f clarification. I n fact, hints o f what was to come had begun t o appear during the planning stages o f the Congress when some o f the representatives on the Co-ordination argued against the idea o f a Congress, favouring instead a mass I W D demonstration which would provide less opportunity for the discussion o f women’s problems and the creation o f face-to-face solidarity. but would provide a more visible political demonstration. Some individuals worked to create parallel Women’s Day events which would have competed with the Congress. When they failed, they disrupted the proceedings o f the Congress itself. The Co-ordination held an emergency meeting five days after the Congess and singled out five persons whose expulsion from the Co-ordination was decided by vote. These included representatives of the Feminine Department o f political party Partido Movimento Democratico Brasileiro ( P M D B ) : the Sao Paulo Metal-workers U n i o n ; Neighbourhood Friends’ Societies from Sao José and Barro Branco; and the students’ organization o f Sao Paulo University. The groups were not

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removed from the Co-ordination, but asked to send replacement emissaries who would be more representative o f the groups i n question and would co-operate with the independent, non-partisan

philosophy of the Co-ordination. 4 I n the aftermath o f these events the Co-ordination suffered a dispersion o f energy and did not function for several months. However b y M a y they were beginning t o meet again. The problems confronted at the I I Congress had demonstrated the potentially disastrous conflicts internal to the membership, but had also proved the strength o f the Co-ordination to survive them, and capacity to take effective steps to deal with disruptive elements in its midst. Women’s groups’ representatives continued to stress the import-

ance of combating the isolation of individual organizations. A t the same time women from the urban periphery were concerned to strengthen their own organizations, perhaps through the regional structure contained in the Housewives’ Association, and to increase their presence i n the Co-ordination itself. I n fact, of the fifty, some entities nominally part o f the Co-ordination, the large majority were either union o r neighbourhood groups, although most oft h e s e were small, and less effectively organized than the ‘feminist’ groups. Furthermore, many o f these groups were not really engaged in work related to women’s specific problems.

Discussion: tensions and contradictions in working class feminism The recent mobilization of working class women i n Brazil has been built o n residential groupings and based on their role within the family unit. I t is worth considering the reasons and significance of

this particular form of political organization for these women. The more typical workplace-orientation o f mobilizing activities is inappropriate for women i n Latin America (and for many men also) because o f the nature of their work roles. Women workers are heavily concentrated i n isolated, individuated personal service jobs, often carried out i n their own homes o r those of others, which d o not lend themselves to collective organization. Even those women who are employed i n factory work are frequently inactive union members, and rarely take o n union leadership roles. I n fact i t is more accurate to view women’s class position as mediated by their role i n the family residential unit. Their primary identification with wife mother roles is an obstacle to the develop-

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m e n t o f consciousness a s a worker even for employed women

(Saffioti 1978). Work is typically seen as a temporary, secondary activity. Women's domestic work is central both to their selfdefinition and behaviour. A t the same time, i t is important to have a

realistic definition of what this domestic role entails. I t is a complex and multifaceted one which is by no means limited to ‘housework’. I t 1s useful t o compare the roles played by men and women i n providing for all o f their family’s needs. Whereas men tend to ‘specialize’ i n the breadwinning role, and i n peripheral neighbourhoods often spend long hours travelling to and from distant workplaces, women carry out a multiplicity of roles in their absence. These include child care and socialization, unpaid domestic labour, the manipulation o f extra-domestic networks, the general day-today management o f household strategies, the utilization of collective services, and probably some kind of intermittent work for monetary income. Thus the mobilization o f women around their family role is not a question o f focussing o n their role as housewives only, who deserve a wage i n recognition o f their long hours o f work. N o r is women’s community mobilization possible because o f the ‘free time’ left to women after their housework is taken care o f (Singer 1978:1). Rather even women who do not have outside jobs face the problem o f finding time for extra activities. A Sao Paulo Mothers’ Club participant was asked i f the Clubs normally included women who work outside the home: ‘They do. Well, I work, that is, not registered i n any fixed place. B u t , I work at home, I bring work from

the factory and sew. And, still, there is time. Even today, I left a sinkful of work to participate here, with my colleagues. But, we sew a little at night. I n the morning, the husband leaves early and we work straight through, leave a little bit for the children to take care o f and we manage t o have time.’'s Far from having a simply-defined role which leaves them free time which can be filled with organizational activity, women are drawn to participate i n women’s groups. despite the difficulty o f fitting i n such activities along with their other multiple responsibilities, because these neighbourhood groups respond to their real needs and t o the totality o f their role i n social production. Perhaps the neatest way t o sum u p that role is to say that women are ‘shock absorbers’ (Glazer 1980:259). They work i n various ways to adjust family functioning t o changing internal and external conditions, through

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their productive activities inside and outside the home. Women's multifaceted economic role is shaped by an evolving household strategy o f allocation o f labour and resources which varies by class and income characteristics (Schmink 1979: 1980). During stressful periods. which may be nearly constant for families i n the peripheral neighbourhoods o f Latin American cities, women’s paid and unpaid work activity takes on increasing importance (Milkman 1976). Thus women’s mobilization i n Mothers’ Clubs and Housewives’ Associations corresponds accurately to their economic and political role. These organizations are not merely secondary, back-up groups for the ‘real’ political mobilizing which goes on i n union and party organizations. Viezzer (1979:85) said o f the Bolivian miners’ Housewives’ Committee: . . . the committee is more than a support committee t o the union. For the housewife, i t is the instrument o f struggle that corresponds t o her form o f participation i n the production process.” The concern o f women's groups with day-today issues such as basic services and the cost of living recaptures these problems for the political realm where they are too often ignored. ‘The prominence o f working class women i n . . . class struggles o f the marketplace derives precisely from their family roles as the executors o f consumption’ (Humphries 1977a:256). N o t only are neighbourhood associations based on working class women's socio-economic contribution, but they belie the myth of the isolated, non-associative housewife and build on the capacity for solidarity which women’s extra-domestic networks provide. Working class women are typically referred to as homebound, apathetic. and alienated (McCourt 1977:4, Singer 1978:1). I n fact, studies i n many different countries have demonstrated the strength ‘and importance o f extra-domestic networks i n providing a wider base o f resources to answer family needs. From this point o f view, neighbourhood organizations ‘take advantage o f the natural basis o f solidarity that already exists i n the community’ between women (Safa 1976:81). The reciprocal ties and feelings of comradeship engendered by this extra-domestic co-operation may even serve to promote the development o f class consciousness i n working class neighbourhoods: ‘Class solidarity does not materialize out o f the sudden recognition by isolated individuals o f their common situation and individual weakness but aggregate power. I t develops slowly over time as a result o f real life experiences’ (Humphries ©

1977b:37).

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A s several authors have pointed out, the right-wing i n Latin America has often recognized the political potential o f working class women which has been generally ignored by the left. I n Brazil i n 1964, women were mobilized by the right-wing, with the support o f the Church, for mass street demonstrations protesting food shortages and the high cost o f living. This model was more exten-

sively developed by the Chilean right-wing during the Allende period, when existing neighbourhood organizations and mother’s centres were controlled b y the Christian Democrats and the Na-

tional Party in order to mobilize working class women for public demonstrations (Mattelart 1976:284). Relying on traditional images and values regarding women’s roles, the right fostered the idea o f the ‘natural corporativeness o f women’ and the fundamental unity o f interests shared by all women. A t the same time their activities helped t o develop norms o f coexistence between women o f different classes, and appealed to women to participate i n grassroots, democratic mobilizations which really served to contribute t o the fall o f democracy i n Chile (Mattelart 1976:287-9). B y contrast, the Chilean left failed t o recognize the political potential o f women

and neighbourhood groups, and relatively few women were included i n the ‘strong political culture and tradition of working class struggle for which Chile was well-known’ (Chinchilla 1977:88). Women as a group have similarly been excluded from recent w o r k i n g class movements i n Brazil, both union and party-based. Residentially-based urban social movements are commonly interclass i n character, organized around shared daily problems, and can be an important element i n the more general struggle for

democracy (Castells 1978, Downs 1980). The recent growth of neighbourhood movements i n Portugal, for example, has entailed an effort t o solve local problems without party politics, i n order to improve material conditions i n neighbourhoods and also t o increase the participation o f people i n the control o f their daily life. As i n Brazil, while women predominate i n mass membership o f such movements, leadership positions are more commonly held by men in (Downs 1980:272-6). The Cost o f Living Movement which b e g a n the Sao Paulo mother’s clubs increasingly passed into the hands o f male leaders as i t expanded t o national scope. Still, the experience o f participating i n neighbourhood organizations can be an important ‘school for democracy’ which is critical among peoples l o n g subjected t o political repression. I t can be particularly crucial

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for working class women, who have commonly been excluded from virtually all types o f public collective action.

Working class women’s neighbourhood organizations in Brazil have found their strongest support not with other class-based movements, b u t i n the inter-class women’s movement i n Sao Paulo. The identification o f common concrete interests, the leftist orientation

of feminist groups, and their commitment t o working with working class women has permitted a successful co-ordinated movement o f organized women to develop. The co-ordination is far from representing women as a ‘corporate’ group with a harmonious unity o f interests, however. Instead i t represents the articulation o f a diverse set o f small groups, each homogeneous i n its own class representa-

tion and objectives, in which divergences and tensions are recognized and expected, and capable o f being dealt with effectively i n

the interests of the movement as a whole. The very real tensions existing between different class groups within the women’s movement can be illustrated by briefly examining the different material conditions o f low versus middle or high income families, and the implications o f these differences for their stance w i t h respect to the family as an institution and the importance o f remunerated work for women. Women i n a financially secure family have a choice regarding entry into the labour force, w i t h respect to timing as well as the particular occupation they wish t o pursue; higher educational levels allow them t o enter relatively higher status jobs earning a decent ( i f low compared to men’s) salary, from which they can derive some personal satisfaction. They can afford t o hire a domestic servant t o relieve them o f some o f the burden o f their multiple home responsibilities while i n the labour force. I t is little wonder that women under these conditions strongly favour women’s work outside the home, over the usually isolated

role of housewives in middle and upper income households. Whereas middle-income women’s entry into the labour force may be motivated by access t o reasonably good jobs and the means to deal w i t h home responsibilities. at least at particular phases o f the family life cycle, women i n low-income families are much more likely t o have a more permanent, i f irregular, link to the labour force over their lifetime. based on the need to supplement family income (Schmink 1980). As wages o f the primary wage-earner fall, households typically respond by intensifying their inputs o f unpaid labour, and allocating additional household members to income-

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generating activities, i n order t o sustain an acceptable total income. Over the long run, however, this strategy not only has the effect of supporting an economy o f insufficient wage rates, but actually increases the degree o f labour extracted from the working class:

“Thus, the proletarianization of incremental family members could n o t i n the long r u n raise the toral family wage above the historically given subsistence level, instead the intensified competition i n the

labour market and the lowering of rates of wages would simply spread that family wage over more workers. I n this way the degree o f exploitation would be increased’ (Humphries 1977b:33). Working class women’s entry into labour is thus likely to coincide w i t h periods o f extreme financial difficulties, negatively reinforcing this deviation from the traditional image o f the non-working wife ( M i l k m a n 1976:85). Workers who recognize the impact on wage levels o f increased family workers have often defended the tradi-

tional family s t r u c t u r e , combined with demands for the ‘family wage’, as a means of raising their standard of living. Furthermore. there 1s much evidence to suggest that the role o f the housewife itself may be more positive because o f the greater tendency for working class families to be embedded i n k i n and neighbour networks which give domestic work a much more collective nature than that carried out by isolated middle and higher income housew i v e s (Humphries 1977b, Ferree 1980).

T o the extent that these broadly contrasting pictures of the family are accurate, i t is not surprising that higher income feminists may be quick t o attack the family as an institution, whereas for working class women the family may represent a crucial instrument for survival and solidarity, which is intimately linked to important informal support groups i n the community. Women i n Brazil's neighbourhood groups claim they don’t want to work outside the home, and defend the family as the basis for working class stability and solidarity. I n this position they echo the stance o f the Catholic Church, which has historically defended the family institution, often reinforcing the traditional sex hierarchy while offering women one o f their few opportunities for extra-domestic participation

(Duarte 1939: 147-51). Even the highly progressive contemporary Church is still opposed to divorce, abortion and all but natural forms o f birth control, and generally defends the traditional family structure. The working class defence o f the family is certainly not without its

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contradictory elements, as leaders of the neighbourhood organiza-

tions readily acknowledge. In the past the defence of the family and the family wage have been used by labour leaders to keep women from competing with them i n the labour force, even though many women have no choice but t o work. I n particular, among poor urban populations the proportion o f women who head their own households without a male breadwinner present is high and steadily increasing (Merrick and Schmink, forthcoming). Furthermore, this defence masks the very real conflicts which exist within the family u n i t , where women are almost universally subordinated to men, and have less decision-making power and control over resources (Whitehead 1979). These fundamental inequalities are every bit as real and problematic as those faced by families as a whole, and are those t o which more militantly feminist groups have turned their concern. Working class women i n Brazil are only beginning to confront these more radical feminist issues within their own social context, and to attempt to deal with the tensions inherent i n their often contradictory political position. They have made remarkable progress i n beginning t o shape a movement which will permit them t o deal w i t h the complex set o f problems they face, building strong alliances and yet maintaining their own strength and autonomy i n helping t o forge a truly Brazilian women’s movement. The future prospects o f the movement, as o f the many other groups nressuring for a return to democracy i n Brazil, will depend largely o n the continuing conditions for debate and participation i n that country. Similar cross-class coalitions between feminist groups and working class women’s organizations i n the United States were most effective when focusing o n the narrow issue of equal pay for

equal work. They were unable t o survive the intensification of class and ethnic conflicts, and increasing economic stress o f the late

nineteenth century, which brought latent tensions between class interests to the fore (Buhle 1980). I n Brazil pro-democratic groups still have a long road to travel together before the internal conflicts

they have agreed to overlook become serious obstacles to future co-operative action. In the meantime it is possible that the experience of joint mobilization will help to forge broader common goals and forms o f struggle which will permit these conflicts to be

overcome.

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HH WN

=

NOTES ‘Historico d o Centro da Mulher Brasileira,” mimeo., 1978.

Cadernos da Associacao das Mulheres (3 August), 1979. Ibid. Information o n the Housewives’ Association is based o n a public presentation b y its President in December 1978, and interviews with leaders i n July o f 1979 and

June of 1980. 5 “ O trabalho da dona de casa,” A Nossa Historia 1, Co-edicao Associacao das Mulheres/Associacao das Donas de Casa, June 1979. 6 ‘ A luta das maes por u m Brasil melhor,” Cadernos d o CEAS, 58 (Nov./Dec.),

1978, 19-27. 7 Information on Nova Iguacu groups is based on a public presentation by a member o f the diocese there, i n December, 1978.

8 Journal dos Bairros, Nos. 76 (Aug. 25-Sep. 7) and (Sept. 14-27), 1979. 9 Journal dos Bairros, Nos. 85 (Jan. 26-Feb. 8 ) , 1980.

10 ‘ A luta das maes por um Brasil melhor’, pp.19-27. 11 ‘Nota de esclarecimento da Coordenacao d o I I Congresso da Mulher Paulista,’ mimeo, 1980.

12 Brasil Mulher (8 March), 1980. 13 ‘ N o t a de esclarecimento . . . da Coordenacao d o I I Congresso da Mulher

Paulista.” 1980. The following discussion of the Co-ordination is based on documents cited, interviews w i t h Co-ordination members i n 1979 and 1980, and

observation of meeting in 1979. 14 ‘ N o t a de esclarecimento . . . da Coordenacao d o I I Congres da M u l h e r

Paulista.’ 1980. 15 ‘ A luta das mies. por-um Brasil melhor’, pp. 19-27. REFERENCES B u h l e , M a r i Jo, ‘Femimsts H e l p Working Women Bridge Class Lines’, i n These Times, Sept. 10-16, 1980. Castells, Manuel, ‘ U r b a n Social Movements and the Struggle for Democracy: The Citizens’ Movement i n Madrid’, International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research2 ( 1 ) , 1978, 133-46. C h a n e y , E l s a M . , Supermadre, W o m e n i n Politics i n Latin A m e r i c a , A u s t i n :

U n i v e r s i t y o f T e x a s Press, 1979.

Chinchilla, N o r m a Stoltz, ‘Mobilizing Women: Revolution i n the Revolution’, Latin American Perspectives 1V (4), 1977, 83-102. Chungara, Domitila Barrios de, ‘ L e t M e Speak! Testimony o f Domitila’, A Woman o f the Bolivian Mines, N e w Y o r k : Monthly Review Press, 1978. Downs, Charles, ‘Comissaes de Moradores and U r b a n Struggles i n Revolutionary Portugal’, International Journal o f Urban and Regional Research 4 ( 2 ) , 1980, 267-94. Duarte, Nestor, ‘ A O r d e m P r i v a d a e a O r g a n i z a c a o Politica N a c i o n a l ’ , Brasiliana,

Series 5 , 172. Sao Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1939. Ferree, Myra Marx, ‘Satisfaction with Housework: The Social Context’, in Women

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and Household Labour, ed., Sarah Fenstermaker B e r k , Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980. Glazer, N o n a , ‘Everyone Needs Three Hands: D o i n g Unpaid and Paid Work’, i n Women and Household Labour, ed., Sarah Fenstermaker Berk, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980. H a h n e r , June E . , ‘Feminism, Women’s Rights, and the Suffrage Movement i n B r a z i l , 1850-1932’, Latin American Research Review X V (1), 1980, 65-111. Humphries, Jane, ‘Class Struggle and the Persistence o f the Working Class F a m i l y ’ , Cambridge Journal o f Economics, 1:1977a, 241-58. , “The Working Class Family, Women’s Liberation, and Class Struggle: The

Case of NineteenthCentury British History’, The Review ofRadical Political Economics 9 (3), 1977b, 25-41. Mattelart, Michele, ‘Chile: The Feminine Version of the Coup d’etat’, i n Sex and Class in Latin America, eds. June Nash and Heien Safa, N e w York: P r a e g e r , 1976.

McCourt, Kathleen, Working-Class Women and Grass-Roots Politics, Bloomingt o n : Indiana University Press, 1977. M e r r i c k , Thomas W . and Marianne Schmink, ‘Female-Headed Households and U r b a n Poverty i n Brazil’, in New Measures for New Development Goals: Poverty as a Women’s Issue, ed., M y r a B u v i n i c , Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, forthcoming. M i l k m a n , R u t h , ‘Women’s W o r k and Economic Crisis: Some Lessons o f the Great Depression’, The Review o f Radical Political Economics, 8 (1): 1976, 73-97. Safa, H e l e n Icken, ‘Class Consciousness A m o n g Working-Class Women i n Latin America: Puerto Rico’, i n Sex and Class in Latin America, eds., June Nash and H e l e n S a f a , N e w Y o r k : Praeger. 1976. Saffioti, Heleieth 1.B., Women in Class Society, New Y o r k : Moiithly Review Press, 1978. Schmink, Marianne, ‘Community i n Ascendance: U r b a n Industrial Growth and Household Income Strategies i n Belo Horizonte, Brazil’. P h . D . Dissertation, The University o f Texas at Austin, 1979. Schmink, Marianne, ‘The Plight o f Poor Women i n the Latin American Metropolis. A n Exploratory Analysis o f Policy Issues’. Report submitted t o the Population Council, N e w Y o r k : 1980. Singer, Paul, ‘ O feminino e¢ o feminismo’, mimeo, 1978. T a b a k , Fanny, ‘Associacoes femininas como grupos de pressao politica’, presented at the meeting o f the Associacao Nacional de Pos-Graduacao e Pesquisa e m Ciencias Sociais, Belo Horizonte, 17-19, 1979. Viezzer, ‘ M o e m a E l Comité de Amas de Casa de Siglo X X : A n Organizational Experience o f Bolivian Women’, Latin American Perspectives V I (3): 8 0 - 6 , 1979. Whitehead, A n n , ‘Some Preliminary Notes o n the Subordination o f Women’. I D S Bulletin, 10:3, 1979 pp. 10-13, Special Issue o n the Continuing Subordination o f Women i n the Development Process.

W o m e n i n Resistance a n d Research:

Potential against Power? GERRIT HUIZER

Since peasant women do not usually function i n positions o f public ‘authority’, their influence (‘power’) is underestimated as is also t h e i r potential for a c t i o n . T h e r e i s , however, a n increasing t r e n d t o

correct this bias since feminist scholars and activists started to pay attention to women’s roles i n many fields. I t is becoming clear that when women see the possibility or the need to improve their situation (and that o f their families) or to prevent its further deterioration, they become ‘visible’ and active, even to the point of taking up militant leadership roles. The bias about the ‘passivity’, ‘fatalism’ a n d ‘resistance t o change’ o f peasant w o m e n , a n d t o a lesser extent a

similar bias about poor peasant men, has been prevailing among scholars as well as development workers. I t began to be challenged after political scholar-activists such as M a o Tse Tung, H o C h i Minh, Fidel Castro, Amilcar Cabral and others— having n o other base to rely upon for their revolutionary struggle than the peasants— learned through experience about their revolutionary potential. This was i n spite o f their Marxist ‘proletarianist’ bias. I t 1s not accidental that the scholar-activists mentioned above also became aware o f the potential o f women, and took serious steps, not always appreciated by their male combatants and followers, t o help the women realize this potential. Similarly, at present, feminist scholars including a few men, are discovering that a combination o f research with emancipatory action can have a liberating effect for both researchers and researched and—in addition—can

provide new and valuable scientific insights (Schoepf 1979). It is significant that those few who have written about the potential o f peasant women and/or men for participation in liberation struggles were generally not academics but scholars, who became

activists and learned from experience. ‘Experiential knowledge’

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rather than the academic’s ‘spectator knowledge’, a distinction made b y Abraham Maslow (1966), was also the basis of m y own

learning process (Huizer 1979). I n spite o f m y academic training I was lucky enough to become aware o f the potential for radical change among poor peasants through a combination o f action (community organization activities) and research applied i n a rather unorthodox way i n various rural situations in Latin America, Southern Italy, and Southeast Asia in the course o f about 15 years. A s a drop-out from the highly competitive, ‘non-involved’, disciplined and orthodox social science establishment I felt enough o f a ‘failure’ and a ‘misfit’ to be able to identify wholeheartedly with poor peasants and be acceptable to them, once I started to work as a volunteer i n community organization i n a Latin American village i n 1955. M y personal suffering from inferiority feelings towards the ‘big’ academic world facilitated fitting into the ‘small’ world o f oppressed people. I could easily appreciate their distrust and adopt their view from below. This view is a k i n d o f structural and historical consciousness which helps peasants to maintain their self esteem i n spite o f their downtrodden situation. The peasants taught me— without knowing this themselves clearly—how to ‘survive’ mentally in a world dominated by uncontrollable and often ill-intentioned power-holders. This was the beginning of a new non-academic learning process. Through active participation in struggle and defeat I obtained concrete insights into the partly conscious strategies peasants utilize i n resistance at the local level. Later I generalized from such insights by comparing various cases. What I learned about action strategy i n one group, I discussed and tried out i n another group w i t h modifications according to the local situation. I n the course o f this ‘participatory research’ I began to formulate general propositions about the dynamics o f popular mobilization. After carefully analysing the objectives, courses o f action and effects o f a number o f movements o r organizations with the people involved, we started t o ‘discover’—first spontaneously or intuitively and later more consciously—certain trends, strategies which could be generalized and verified through subsequent action (Huizer 1979). A s regards research methodology it is through such concrete practical involvement, ‘taking sides’, and participating in the emancipatory processes o f common people, that one can gain valuable scientific insight, which, in turn, can be useful to those same

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emancipatory processes. Researchers can supply the people they

work with, with information and conceptual tools which help those people t o interpret their o w n situation. The processes o f rapid change i n which communities and societies are everywhere involved at present can probably fruitfully be studied and understood by participating in those change processes

from within and from below. Studying from within implies active participation, including ‘taking sides’ i n those processes. Looking

from below implies that realities are being seen critically, through the eyes o f the powerless who are suffering the effects o f changes or w h o are watching these effects with suspicion and doubt. Objectivity can be maintained i n committed research through self-reflection and the attempt o f the activist researchers to distance themselves

from their personal and cultural biases and from the politicoeconomic context to which they structurally belong. Research from within and from below thus directs itself simultaneously toward the

development of theories and the solution of social problems. The role o f women in action and research The few Western scholars who during the fifties or sixties applied the view from within andfrom below as an action-research approach have unfortunately generally conformed to prevailing bias and have ignored women i n their work. This male bias began to be corrected only after the feminist wave o f the early seventies. During m y first field experience i n community organization i n Latin America i n

1955 I was impressed with the way the women in the village where | was working managed to survive and take care of their children under very adverse conditions and often abandoned temporarily by their men. However, I never drew any conclusions from these observations (Huizer 1963). This was also the case during m y subsequent fieldwork in Sicily, where women were almost literally invisible, kept at home or sitting in front of their houses with their back towards the street. M y neglect continued while organizing work in Chile, al-

though women were ‘visible’ to some extent. During many years of work and research with peasant organizations i t only rarely occurred to m e that women could have an influence o r a role t o play. They were hardly ever present at meetings, only occasionally attended large gatherings and were almost never i n leading positions. A s exceptions women played at times an important role i n the peasant movements in the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands and

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were sometimes used as a vanguard to keep the military from

intervening (Neira 1967). O n such occasions women were more radical and determined than the m e n i n demanding ‘land or death’. Similar actions could be

observed occasionally in Mexico and occurredi n India where wom e n increasingly reacted against being thrown out o f agriculture b y

the Green Revolution (Mies 1976, Omvedt 1976). I did not learn to look more carefully at the action potential o f peasant women until the seventies when women i n academic circles started to act o n their own behalf against discriminatory and oppres-

sive conditions. M y return in the early seventies from practice and action-research in Third World countries to Europe and to academic life had much to d o with m y consciousness-raising. B y contrast with the various forms o f solidarity and common effort I had experienced during many years i n the field I encountered an atmosphere of competitiveness and petty rivalry which was even more solidly entrenched than when I had escaped i t fifteen years earlier. I wholeheartedly agreed with the feminist scholar, Shulamith F i r e s t o n e , w h o n o t e d t h a t i n a l l m a l e - d o m i n a t e d fields t h e r e is—to

the detriment o f the activities concerned, be they scientific or political—a great deal o f ‘ego-tripping’, backbiting, power intrigues and lack of equal participation. As she noted, one way feminists should or could help to cure this situation is by personal politics reconciling the ‘personal’ (always the feminine prerogative) with the ‘political’, the emotions with the intellect (Firestone 1970: 38-9). I also experienced the fact that female scholars were dealing with each other and with their research ‘objects’ in ways that were different, at times, from those I noticed among male colleagues. For

example, I had the honour and pleasure of attending a session of the pre-conference symposium o n ‘Women Cross-culturally’ held at the 1973 ICAES meetings i n Chicago. I was impressed with the unusual solidarity and cultural understanding—cou ld it also be called sisterhood ?— which existed between the women scholars o f the rich countries and those o f the Third World when discussing common problems. I was also impressed by a sensitivity t o the relation of the researcher to the people being studied that I had not found i n usual academic discussions. I n a report o n the Conference o n Feminine Perspectives i n Social Science R e s e a r c h , h e l d i n B u e n o s A i r e s , M a r c h 1974, June Nash

(1974:17) wrote that the discrimination experienced b y women

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scholars ‘seems to sensitize them to an awareness o f subjective factors in analysis and interpretation of data which are not taken into account as often b y men. The woman researcher has, as a consequence, a double consciousness similar to that of black o r other discriminated minority, an awareness of the motives and

strategies of oppressor as well as the inner view of the oppressedwho must respond constantly to the demands made upon them’. A s I had learned from action-research this inner view o f the oppressed also gives a better understanding of what being looked at means to those being subjected to research. Maria Mies has noted that this double consciousness, subjective as it is, 4s not a disadvantage but an asset in understanding the world

from the perspective of changing it, although it may not be appreciated as a ‘scientific’ o r ‘objective’ approach by the academic— and still male-dominated establishment. However, Mies points out

that the growing concern of feminist scholars to use their academic tools for the furtherance of women’s liberation has landed them in a contradiction. This is the basic contradiction between their political goal o f women’s emancipation and the contemplative, positivist and

elitist research concepts and methodology still prevalent in most Western universities. On the other hand, as I have suggested above, there is evidence that a more ‘identifying’ or ‘committed’ type of research leads to more valid scientific insights than supposedly

‘objective’ research generally practised with orthodox methodologies which in fact distort social realities (Huizer 1979, Simposio

Mundial de Cartagena 1978). Thus a sensitive committed methodology, in addition to helping the people being researched, can have a liberating effect o n social scientists themselves. Gail Omvedt (1979) demonstrated that committed research was essential for discovering the attitudes o f the women i n rural India that she studied. She studied a women’s movement and pointed out that participant observation i n a left wing social movement could only take place through ‘real’ participation. She argued that ‘objectivity’ in the sense of a genuine concern for the testing o f hypotheses with evidence has to and can be separated from the issue o f ‘neutrality’ versus ‘commitment’ as subjective moral stances. A ‘neutral’ interviewer would only get traditionally accepted responses that confirmed established norms. I n contrast Omvedt tested, through the ‘methodology o f the leading question’

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and consciousness-raising ‘collective interviews’, the proposition that there was among the Indian lower-class women, contrary to current expectations, a considerable ‘readiness to reject traditional values’. Her research method included: formulating hypothetical questions based o n practical problems she observed; trying to answer these questions through further directed observations; formulating new questions and hypotheses, and finally ‘testing’ these hypotheses through participation as an ‘involved observer’ in or-

ganizational efforts of the women concerned. Omvedt saw the steps women took towards organizing as the main ‘test’ o f their rejection o f traditional norms; as she noted: ‘Practice is the proof o f theory’.

The significance of poor women’s potential for radical change is discussed by Eleanor Leacock: ‘Precisely because women’s oppression 1s so deeply embedded in the entire economic, political and social structure o f capitalist society to the extent that women organize around the problems they face, they can unify diverse struggles for class, race and national liberation. Third World women in both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ nations have a central role to play. The very totality o f their oppression means that when they move to change their situation, they move against the entire

structure of exploitation’ (Leacock 1979: 132). Leacock indicates that women have to bear the heaviest burden particularly i n the Third World. I n addition to having the worst jobs and being more underpaid than men, they have to bear the frustration and anger o f men-folk within the family, who misuse their petty power over the women close to them. The family, rather than being a centre o f preparation for resistance b y both sexes, often becomes a personal battleground. The fact referred to above, that when women did actively participate in peasant movements they could be more militant and firm i n their struggle than m e n , needs explanation. The role o fpassive resistance

I n view o f the fact that in practically all peasant societies women are doubly exploited and oppressed, it seems worthwhile to give attention to those characteristics o f peasant mentality which are particularly attributed to women, but also exist among peasant men, particularly the poor peasant men. Studying those attitudes of poor men and women with negative connotations, such as ‘distrust’, ‘passivity’, ‘servility’, ‘aggressive-

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ness turned inward’, in a committed way enables us to understand

them as a ‘counter culture’ which can be turned into a starting point for resistance (Huizer 1972). Rather than being despised,

these attitudes should be appreciated as modes of survival in an oppressive climate. Poor women appear to have an even greater

arsenal of ways to survive under completely adverse conditions than poor men, and may therefore have a greater potential for resistance. Comparing the apparent passivity o r apathy o f peasants,

which expresses itself in non-participation in projects proposed by government ‘change agents’, with the attitude of the average Dutch citizen towards the impositions made by German occupation authorities in the Netherlands during World War II, shows that not doing things is a subtle form of keeping up a certain resistance and dignity against overwhelmingly strong outside power-holders

(Huizer 1972). It is a mild form of civil disobedience which makes the power-holders feel that they are not in control as absolutely as they wish. If applied systematically, as peasants and women quite consciously know how to d o i t , such resistance upsets powerholders. Social researchers may also have to face this counterpower o f not doing expressed in giving irrelevant information when

they approach people insensitively as ‘objects’ of research (Huizer 1979:405). Peasants who feel humiliated b y outsiders commonly fool or

ignore them through overt or covert passivity and ridicule them as soon as they leave. I saw women participate in such scenes at times

with more wit and sharpness than their men. This was probably due to the fact that their oppression was worse and more humiliating, since it included sexual abuses not infrequently leading to bearing undesired children. I n Bolivia the right o f landlords to their peasants’ daughters o n the day before these girls got married was not

abolished until after the revolution of 1952. Holmberg (1966) observed: .Vicos serfs usually did not complain even when whipped and kicked for fear the patron would have them sent to jail in Carhuaz, which he did in fact

to those who protested. O n an adjacent manor, the operator persuaded several serfs to supply him and his companions with their daughters for sexual exploitation by holding the men in his manorial jail until they yielded, o n at least one occasion.

Peasant men’s and women’s apparent and proverbial lack o f self-

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esteem can be interpreted less negatively than it generally 1s, when seen in terms o f a collectively felt appraisal o f prevailing powerrelations. Peasant withdrawal often indicates a slumbering will to

change. About peasant conformism Holmberg (1966) observed: Serfs, like other subordinated groups, have worked out a feigned be-

haviour to confound authority figures. Although possessed of an earthy sense of humour and great conversational ability, the Vicos serf forgot his picaresque good humour, his conversational sparkle and courtesy when he found himself before his patron or other Mestizos. Serfs presented themselves as the most foolish and incapable o f beings.

The exaggerated but feigned conformity and servility o f peasants

can be interpreted as a counterpoint element in the overall ‘culture of repression’. I n societies where the predominant set of values is more o r less imposed b y those i n power, conflicting sets o f values often function as a ‘counterpoint’ (Wertheim 1964) forming a basis for consensus among repressed groups. They are a potential threat to the stability and legitimacy o f the predominant system, and often

find expression in folktales and legends. Also the apparent passivity and the feigned ‘laziness’ o f peasants can be seen as a form o f protest and resistance since all other forms of protest are blocked b y severe sanctions. Certain characteristics of ‘primitive egalitarianism’ continue to exist i n most o f the peasant communities in which I was lucky enough to get involved. Peasants themselves d o not have a high opinion of their way o f living, having accepted to some

extent the view from the ‘civilized world’ which despises them. However, a certain solidarity remains a part o f their ‘counter-

culture’ and at times transforms itself into a tremendous revolutionary force, as peasants—both men and women—in China, Cuba and Vietnam have demonstrated (Rowbotham 1974). The peasants which bore these revolutions were the same k i n d of downtrodden poor that according to development specialists suffer from ‘resistance to change’ as seen by outsiders. However, the endless capacity t o suffer, t o b e patient, t o withdraw, t o ‘do nothing ’ , should show a

potential for real change, for liberation. Rowbotham (1974:208) noted the potential for revolutionary resistance among peasant women i n Vietnam: ‘Peasant women maintained an undercurrent o f resistance, possibly because they toiled with their men i n the fields and were less enclosed than upper-class women. Folk songs record a common resistance to oppression.’

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Vietnamese peasant women displayed an ‘ingenious underground system o f long-term organizing’, an indication of the slumbering force that can be present in people generally considered to be passive. The same was observed for Vietnam in past centuries (Bergman 1975) and also for China (Wolf 1969: 112). The awaken~ ing o f poor peasants, men and/or women, generally begins with a form o f consciousness-raising which is not uncommon in ‘liberating’ groups o f women in Western countries. People speak u p and express clearly what they feel and suffer; taking the courage to state common worries, they gain self-confidence. Although the participation o f peasant women i n local groups where common problems

are discussed is generally limited by cultural traditions of male dominance, i t does happen (Huizer 1977)." ‘Consciousness-raising’ leading to greater self-confidence and group-confidence is best achieved when local groups with common interests come together at some central point. Recognizing that difficult conditions are shared o n a large scale, can encourage the intent t o d o something about them in an organized way. Religious o r traditional festivities that draw people from a wide area are good occasions to bring critical issues to the fore as rallying points for

action. The power o f egalitarianism

O n e important basis for consistent collective action and solidarity at the base level is a clear view o f a ‘common enemy’ or—as sociologist Lewis Coser (1956) said— ‘negative reference group’. There is evidence that needs to be confirmed by more action-research that peasant women have a clearer position i n this respect than men since they are doubly oppressed and also less liable than men, to get involved i n power games. While working with peasants i n organizi n g and empancipatory efforts i t became increasingly obvious to me that the peasant’s distrust towards outsiders is part of the strength which keeps their societies together under very adverse circumstances. Through preventing individualization and acceptance of ‘modern’ entrepreneurial habits, i t keeps alive the potential for collective resistance against economic changes that are detrimental to the poor peasantry as a whole. B y not aspiring to individual advancement and by blocking the more able community members from taking off o n their own, peasants can develop a collective bargaining power which when directed to fundamental social and

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political changes can in the end benefit the entire community. A t present the collectivist versus the individualist mode of survival and progress causes problems in all emancipatory efforts. A

distinction should be made between formal bargaining organizations, in which men, and the better off among the poor, generally play a major role and the collective power o f movements and demonstrations shown at critical moments o f confrontation with established powers when women may also play a crucial role. There are many types o f organizations and movements. Some organizations of peasants are hierarchical, with strong leadership and authoritarian implications, while in some other movements the leadership is

more inspiring and non-authoritarian, stimulating active participation from below, rather than a ‘following’ (Huizer 1972). Both types, and the intermediate forms, have their advantages and disadvantages. The majority o f the poorest peasants generally form the base and participate— at times women as well as men— particularly

when the struggle becomes acute. Able leaders have a good ear and patience and can verbalize clearly what this majority feels to be its main grievance. Such leaders are thus able to guide—rather than manipulate— the collective potential.

I t happens not infrequently, however, that local peasant leaders, generally men, attracted b y the desire for power and the symbols o f social status, are co-opted b y the rural elite. The temptations o f the middle o r upper class way o f life with its increasing ‘conspicuous consumption’ exerts a heavy drain o n honest and dedicated peasant leadership. This i s n o reason, however, t o see authentic peasant mobilization

as hopeless. Mexican as well as foreign observers have identified the exaggerated urge for status symbols and power with supposed inherent characteristics o f the Latin American mentality which are summarized i n the term ‘machismo’ (cult o f manliness). However, Michael Maccoby, as part of the study directed by Erich Fromm, about ‘class and character’ i n a village i n the state o f Morelos, Mexico, found that only a small minority of the mestizo peasants strongly possessed this trait and that even i n a moderate form it existed among far less than half the male villagers. Maccoby (1967:67) indicated:

When Mexican intellectuals describe their national character, they almost

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invariably see themselves as a nation o f liars, destructive power-seekers,

suffering, resentful women, and boasting predatory men. Yet Mexico is also a land where creative talent abounds, where despite a high prevalence of alcoholism, the majority of men are sober and hard-working, and where despite poverty combined with a history o f exploitation and violence, both

men and women seek liberty and a peaceful life.

This is certainly true for the average poor peasant. There is, however, considerable evidence in Mexico and elsewhere that when peasants become involved i n modernizing institutions such as political groupings, commercial enterprises and the bureaucracy, they become liable to accept the characteristics ascribed to the urban middle-classes, including ‘machismo’ and the exaggerated search for power. Peasant representatives subjected to the influences of politics, commerce and government, slowly or rapidly are transformed i n t o ‘caciques’ o r bosses. They seek re-election insistently and increasingly through processes which do not form part o f a democratic system. I n turn, the effectiveness o f corrupting factors increases the already existing distrust o f underprivileged groups (Lewis 1963). Therefore, villagers, particularly women, frequently distrust their own leaders, even before there is evidence o f corruption. I t should be said that among the numerous peasant leaders at all levels whom I knew i n the course o f many years there were few who had not received offers of money, employment or land—which would have made them less ‘insistent’ and more willing to accept ‘compromises’. A n important question for further action and research is to what extent the role o f women, until now apparently less liable than men to fall into the trap of the political power game, can be a consolidating force within grass-root movements. There is some evidence from India indicating this possibility (Mies 1976). It could well be, but as yet there is not enough evidence to support the hypothesis that women who participate in the peasant struggle are women o f the poorest strata, who out of pure necessity are more ‘visible’ than the w o m e n o f the better-off peasants, w h o for reasons o f status are often

kept at home. Women who are forced by circumstances to work for survival are more inclined to break through their traditionally

passive role.? Once women participate actively they are less inclined to cede i n the bargaining process than leaders (generally males) who are more tempted to b e trapped b y the power game. (For some examples, not

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analysed, see Neira 1964 and Viezzer 1977.)

Although the participation of women in such cases is relatively passive at times their massive solid stand overrules the activities, decisions o r compromises achieved by leaders. Unwillingness to play the game o f the power-holders can at times guarantee a consistent radical stand—the power o f non-participation. Can a similar

reluctance t o participate fully i n the academic power game help prevent feminist participatory research as described above, to become co-opted b y the establishment? Research a n d resistance

Power elites, i n addition to utilizing oppression and terror (which often radicalize people) to defend the political and economic status q u o sometimes use more sophisticated means o f control. Attention should therefore be given to the dangers which successful grass-root movements have t o face: neutralization through encapsulation or co-optation o f leaders into the system. N o t a few radical peasant movements have been neutralized through corruption or cooptation and thus gradually become transformed into supporters o f the establishment (Huizer 1972, 1980). While learning i n the course o f almost fifteen years about strategies for building organizations I became aware that the main obstacles—be they repression o r co-optation—came from national and international ‘power elites’ (Huizer 1980). Peasant movements have i n the last few years met with increasingly ruthless forms o f oppression and encapsulation. Therefore, as a Westerner I was confronted with serious questions concerning the implications o f academic research related to people’s participation in grass-root movements. After noticing a growing stream o f scholarly books and articles o n peasants— including m y own published academic work and the appearance of the Journal o f Peasant Studies—I wondered of what benefit all this would be to poor peasants themselves. Would not such studies, the more sophisticated the better, benefit those w h o want to keep control over the peasantry rather than the ‘ob-

jects’ of study themselves? The same question has been asked by Mies regarding women'’studies. The international power elite appears well aware o f women’s

potential as noted in 1969 by Nelson Rockefeller in The Rockefeller Report o n the Americas. This report pointed towards the need to give more attention to the potentially subversive role o f the Church

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and the military as part of nationalist movements in some Latin American countries and special recommendations were made re-

garding Western Hemisphere security. Rockefeller (1969: 136-7) also noted: one o f the most powerful forces for change and improvement in the quality

of life in the hemisphere countries is the newly emancipated Latin woman. . .

Rockefeller then points out the role o f educated women who get

involved in political life: They are eager to learn more about the techniques o f political organization.

A n d to a substantial degree they identify themselves with the forces of

the middle-of-the-road. Twenty years ago women could vote moderation— in only five countries. Now they have the right to vote in every nation of the hemisphere and they exercise that right. President Balaguer of the Dominican Republic openly credits his election i n 1966 to women voters, who were

enfranchised in 1965. He responded by appointing a woman as governor in every one of the Dominican Republic’s twenty-seven provinces.’

As later was shown in Chile and Argentina such middle-class wom e n can readily be manipulated to destroy or hinder popular

movements. L i t t l e imagination is needed to understand that the rapidly increasing interest o f Rockefeller, Ford and other foundations in peasant and women studies is worth scrutiny as t o its long run

emancipatory impact. A study of corporate power by E . Richard Brown shows w i t h a wealth o f quotations from the Rockefeller Foundation Archives and Rockefeller Family Archives that the

efforts undertaken by the first Rockefeller Foundation, formed in 1902, and its related institutions i n the fields o f education, public health i n Southern U . S . A . and later i n the tropical countries, were inspired b y ‘a broad view o f the needs o f U.S. capitalism’ going at times beyond the immediate interests of the Rockefeller companies from which the huge fortune was derived (Brown 1976). Increasing productivity and cultural and political domination were quite frankly seen as the most important purposes o f the programmes in

which millions were spent. As Richard Brown (1976:901) concluded: Obviously the Rockefeller Foundation programmes were a mixed bag. To the extent they improved the health o f indigenous populations, they were

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beneficial to those peoples. To the extent they fostered greater economic and political control and profit by European and U.S. capitalist nations, they were insidious forces that worked to the detriment of the peoples they were ostensibly helping.

A s some feminists have indicated (Ehrenreich and English n.d.) the

chiefs of the Rockefeller empire, probably the most important power group within the capitalist world, have vast experience in manipulating other interest groups. For example, in the U . S . A . medical practice in the nineteenth century was partly in the hands o f

the Popular Health Movement in which feminist and working class energies were influential. The attack o f the American Medical Association o n this movement, denouncing i t as ‘quackery’, became successful when some female medical leaders started to strive for ‘respectability’ and Florence Nightingale and other upper class women created the ‘lady with the lamp’ image o f serving nurses,

obedient to professional doctors. The further transformation of medicine in U.S.A. into a ‘regular’ profession occurred when training institutions such as Johns Hopkins supported by the newly

created Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations became important. Since advanced training was not made available to the great mass o f lay healers and ‘irregular’ doctors, many o f whom were women, medicine became ‘a white, male, middle class occupation’. Important as such information is, however, fact-finding o n the effects o f power struggle is not enough. Carol Ehrlich (1976:5) who analysed pioneering feminist research o n the oppressed conditions

of women states: They acted as consciousness-raisers, which is very important, and provided factual material t o counter those persons who dismissed the existence o f institutional sexism to this extent, these studies qualify as feminist research.

But, of course, they do n o t provide guidelines for radical action, and for this reason the continual reiteration o f such ‘muckraking research’ over the same ground, dredging u p the same muck and yelling angrily that i t smells just as dreadfully as always, may unintentionally increase apathy. This i n t u r n helps tighten the c o n t r o l o f the elites, a n d is thus anti-feminist.

T h e same holds true for the study o f other oppressed groups. Enough muck-raking research, denouncing the bad conditions, seems to have been done; and quite a bit of what Carol Ehrlich calls corrective research, discovering in history and present happenings the potential for change and inspiration to struggle, has also been

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done. She proposes (Ehrlich 1976:11):

If we are to plan any kind of future, we must begin work in the present. And so, once we have documented the workings o f institutional sexism, and have explored women’s place in history and in other cultures, we have cleared the ground for the third type o f feminist research. This focuses upon the

structures, strategies and goals of the women’s movement itself, and is the most important kind of feminist research we can do. Although such research can be theoretical as well as practical, if it is entirely theoretical it must have some applicability to feminist aims. For this research is generated by the needs of the movement and is explicitly meant to lead to action.

There are hopeful signs. Within a few years female and feminist scholars have collected an impressive amount of material on the many forms o f oppression o f women everywhere. I n a relatively short time a great deal o f this material has been summarized, compared and surprisingly enough for scholars trained i n a positivist ‘value-free’ approach to scientific work, been shared and discussed with activists who are trying to do something about oppressive conditions.” If such efforts are not appreciated by the academic establishment or are scorned, maybe it is for the better. There may be a need to maintain a counterculture in the social sciences, perhaps even a stand o f non-participation in order to give

room for creating new paradigms: paradigms which integrate scientific endeavour with the daily lives of people and with their efforts to overcome oppression by taking their fate into their own hands. NOTES 1.

The way such consciousness-raising is taking place i n the numerous church community ‘base groups’ (CBE) i n rural and urban Brazil is well summarized i n J . B . L i b a n i o , {Una communidade que se redifine’ (SEDOC Octubre), 1976, p . 296 ff. where scarce participation o f women i n base-groups ( C E B ) i n Brazil due to existing ‘machismo’ was noted as a threat to optimal functioning (p. 314).

2

Preliminary research on this topic in tea-producing areas of Assam in India (Shobita Jain, ‘Sex roles and the Dialectic of Survival and Equality’, paper presented at X .ICAES 1978, N e w Delhi, a revised version o f which is included i n

this volume, and Gerrit Huizer, ‘Poor and Rich Peasants in the Tea Cooperatives’ in L a Convencion, Peru, forthcoming paper) points t o the fact that women are accustomed to considerable (relatively speaking) cash earnings in tea-picking, which has a positive influence o n their ‘visibility’. This is visible also

in their participation in trade-union activities. The management be it of the co-operative tea plantations and factories (the case o f Peru) o r the company-

controlled production, is however male dominated and strongly male-biased.

GERRIT HUIZER

250

3

Women remain the lowest economic stratum, and have not organized on their own, although there is some awareness for its need. Anoutstanding happening in this respect was the Conference on the Continuing Subordination o f W o m e n i n the Development Process at I D S , Sussex,

September 1978; Special Issue of Inst. of Development Studies Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3 (April) 1979, Brighton. |

REFERENCES Bergman, Arlene Eisen, Women o f Vietnam, San Fransisco: People’s Press, 1975.

Brown, E . Richard, ‘Public Health in Imperialism: Early Rockefeller Programs at H o m e and Abroad’, American Journal

of Public Health, 66, 9 ,

1976,

897-903. Coser, Lewis, The Functions o f Social Conflict, Glencoe: Free Press, 1956. Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deidre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History

o f Women Healers, Oyster Bay, N.Y.: Glass Mountain Pamphlets, n.d. Ehrlich, Carol, The Conditions o f Feminist Research, Research Group O n e Report, 21, Baltimore: Vacant Lots Press, 1976.

Firestone, Shulamith, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, New York: Bantam Books, 1970. Gedicks, Al, ‘Research from within and from B e l o w : Reversing the Machinery’; i n

The Politics o f Anthropology: from Colonialism and Sexism: Toward a View from Below, eds. Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim, The HagueParis: Mouton, 1979.

Holmberg, Allan R., ‘Some Relationships between Psychobiological Deprivation and Culture Change in the Andes’, mimeo, Comell Latin American Year Conference, (March 21-5), 1966. Huizer, Gerrit, ‘Some Observations i n a Central American Village’, America Indi-

gena, XXIII, 3, 1963. , ‘The Revolutionary Potential of Peasants in Latin America, Lexington: Health-Lexington Books, 1972. , ‘ H o w Peasants Become Revolutionaries’, Development and Change, V1,

(3 July) 1975. -————, ‘The Rural Training Camps o f N L I ’ , National Labour Institute Bulletin, 3 , ( 8 August) 1977, 336-48. ‘Research Through A c t i o n : Some Practical Experiences with Peasant , Organization’, i n Politics o f Anthropology, eds. Huizer and Mannheim,

1979. , ‘Peasant Movements and their Counterforces in South East East Asia, New D e l h i : M a r w a h P u b l i s h e r s , 1980.

Leacock, Eleanor, ‘Women, Development and Anthropological Facts and ‘Fictions’, i n The Politics o f Anthropology, eds. Huizer and Mannheim, 1979.

Lewis, Oscar, Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlan Restudied, University of Illinois Press, 1965. Maccoby, Michael, ‘ O n Mexican National Character,” The Annals o f the American Academy o f Political and Social Science, vol. 370, (March) 1967. M a m a k , Alexander, ‘Nationalism, Race-class Consciousness and Action Research

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on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea’, i n The Politics o f Anthropology, eds. Huizer and Mannheim, 1979.

Mao Tse Tung, ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’ (March 1927) Selected Readings from the Works o f M a o Tse Tung, Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1971, 23-39. Maslow, Abraham H . , The Psychology o f Science, N e w Y o r k : Harper and Row,

1966. M i e s , M a r i a , ‘The Shahada Movement: A Peasants’ Movement i n Maharashtra’, The Journal o f Peasant Studies, 3, (4 July) 1976, 472-82.

Indian Women and Leadership, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 1976. , Towards a Methodology of Women’s Studies’, paper presented at the Tenth International Congress o f Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, N e w D e l h i (December) 10-21, 1978. The Hague: Institute o f Social

Studies, 1979. Nash, June, ‘Report o n the Conference o n Feminine Perspectives,’ i n Social Science Research, Buenos Aires (March 19-20) 1974. (Later published as: ‘ A

Critique of Social Science Roles in Latin America’, in June Nash and Helen Safa, eds. Sex and Class in Latin America,1976. Neira, Hugo, Cuzoo Tierra o Muerte, L i m e : Populibros, 1967. Omvedt, Gail, ‘Rural Origins o f Women’s Liberation in India’, Social Scientist,

1976, 40-1. , ‘ O n the Participant Study o f Women’s Movements: Methodological, Defini-

tional and Action Considerations’, in Politics of Anthropology, eds.Huizer and Mannheim, 1979. Rockefeller, Nelson A . , The Rockefeller Report o n the Americas, The Official Report

of a United States Presidential Mission for the Western Hemisphere, Chicago: Qadrangle Books, 1969. Rohrlich-Leavitt, Ruby, ed. Women Cross-Culturally, Paris-The Hauge: Mouton,

1976. Rowbotham, Sheila, Women, Resistance and Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974.

Schoepf, Brooke, ‘Breaking Through the Looking Glass: The View from Below’, in Politics o f Anthropology, eds. Huizer and Mannheim, 1979. Simposio M u n d i a l ,de Cartagena, Critica y Politica en Ciencias Sociales; E l Debate Sobre Teoria y Practica; Tomo 1 & 11, edition, Bogota: Punta de Lanza,

1978. Viezzer, Moema, Si m e permiten hablar. Testimonio de Domitila, Una Mujer de las Minas de Bolivia, Siglo X X I editores, Mexico, 1977. W e r t h e i m , W.F ‘Society as a Composite o f conflicting value systems’ i n East-West Parallels, T h e H a g u e : W . v a n H o e v e , 1964.

Wolf, Eric, Peasant Wars o f the Twentieth Century, New York, Harper, 1969.

WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors: Implications for Women and Development J O A N P. M E N C H E R and DEBORAH D’AMICO

The recognition that aspects of economic development and change in any one area o f the world must b e seen as part o f a global process is increasing among social scientists, economists, political leaders, and the populations o f Third World countries. Yet, attempts to

design solutions for problems of economic development have often

failed because insufficient attention has been paid t o the particular and local expression which globalpolitical and economic forces take in any given area. Regarding the special relationship of women to economic development, Boserup (1970) documented the broad historical and global trends affecting women’s role in production. The steady increase in the interest in and publications o n women

and development since the appearance of her book have been largely concerned with efforts to describe in detail the local dynamics affecting women’s work. This paper is a contribution to these efforts in that it adds detail to

Boserup’s picture of the role of women in agriculture in South Asia. W e examine the jobs women d o in rice cultivation in Kerala, and

look at the ways in which our information supports and/or questions Boserup’s claims. Finally, we discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. Much o f the literature o n women and development emphasizes

either the negative changes which occurred as a result of colonialism (Bossen 1975, V o n Allen 1972), o r the disruption which follows when there is radical change in the mode o f production, such as the switch from extensive to intensive agriculture, or from subsistence farming to cash cropping, o r from family farms to wage labour

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JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

(Mead 1976, Chaney and Schmink 1976, Chinchilla 1977, Remy 1975, Rubbo 1975). But in India, both intensive rice cultivation and women’s participation in it are quite old, predating colonialism b y centuries. Thisis not to say that the sexual division o f labouri n

rice cultivation is uniform throughout India, or that it has remained exactly the same throughout history. The case o f India represents a

different range of time relative to that in which other studies o f women and development have been placed, and so offers us different insight into the factors which may affect the sexual division o f

labour. Boserup notes the important role of women in intensive rice cultivation, and observes that rice agriculture is labour-intensive,

while other forms of agriculture are more responsive to intensification by mechanization (34-5). Whether it was because tasks such as transplanting o r weeding were so arduous, o r because the paddy harvest required such a large number o f people, it is clear that apart

from ploughing, levelling of land, and bund (dyke) work, the introduction o f animal-drawn ploughs did not lead to the kind o f displacement of women in the rice areas of South India that it did in the . wheat-growing regions o f the North. It is striking that in India, even

when there is a relatively large surplus labour population of underemployed and unemployed males, women have continued to play a fairly large part in rice cultivation. Moreover, women’s jobs have traditionally included the most highly paid operations, those associated with harvesting. Though the prominent role of women in rice agriculture is old, present observations indicate a wide variation in women’s participation in cultivation. A t one extreme is Bangladesh, where today women, in particular Muslim women, d o not often work in the fields. A t the other extreme is north Kerala, where women (both Hindu and Muslim) have traditionally been responsible for practi-

cally all agricultural operations after the fields were ploughed and levelled. A t harvest time, it is rare here to see males near the fields, and there were even traditional ballads, sung during the transplanting season, which were sung only b y women.

What accounts for this kind of variation? The first step in answering this question involves careful documentation of the precise roles o f women in rice-cultivating regions. This means identifying the tasks women d o , as well as calculating the numbers o f women

involved in each task. The under-reporting of women’s work in the

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors

257

Indian census imposes a serious handicap in this effort. (For example, the district census handbook for Chingleput District listed either n o agricultural labourers, o r only a handful, for approximately one-third o f the villages in the District. Yet Mencher, work-

ing in three of these villages, interviewed—and took numerous photographs o f — female agricultural labourers working in the fields (see Mencher 1978a: 223-7 for fuller details)). O n the other hand, most studies which d o mention women as a percentage o f the work force are not concerned with the specific tasks they do, and fail

to mention what they are or how important they are. The overall pattern which our data shows is that women are required for fewer jobs, but in greater numbers, than male labour“ers. The analysis o f material from four Kerala villages—two in the Palghat area (villages 1 and 2) and two in the Kuttanad area (villages 3 a n d 4)—show that women’s work is concentrated i n trans-

planting and harvesting operations (such as pulling, planting, weeding, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, and drying and stacking of straw). Women also were responsible for cowdung transport and

application, whereas men nowadays transport and apply chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Data from village 1 in Palghat indicates a ratio of female to male labour in rice cultivation of 3.5 to 1. The ratio is higher for permanent than for casual labourers. A typical small holding in village 1 (91 cents) required 118 hours and 30 minutes of male labour, distributed among seventeen different tasks, for one crop season, while the requirement for female labour for the same household for the same crop season was 524 hours, divided among

only nine job categories. A large holding (20.60 acres) in village 4 in Kuttanad lists 3648 hours of male labour, spread among twentythree tasks during one crop season, and 8930 female hours, representing work o n only seven operations. When questioned about the sexual division o f labour in their work, the overwhelming majority o f workers in both villages 1 and 4 agreed that women got more work than men during harvest, though they thought that men got more work at other times. The operations mentioned b y workers as

being female jobs were clustered in the transplanting and harvesting operations, and were the same for both villages, with the exception o f preparation o f fields, which was listed b y village 2 workers as a

female task. The reasons given by workers for the concentration of women in particular jobs, however, are not uniform. Most workers in village 1 felt that tradition o r custom explained the sexual division

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JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

Table 1

D a t a from four villages:* Responses o f Agricultural Labourers 1.

Q : D o women get more work than men i n season (during harvest)? A: Yes No It is equal N o answer Village

# 1. 2. 3. 4.* 2.

0 1 0 0

1 0 0 0

56 48 31 48

0 0 8 0

N o answer

0 9 10 0

6 1 1 2

Q : A r e there operations for which women get preference? A: Yes No N o answer Village

#1. 2. 3. 4. 4.

0 9 2 0

Q : A t other times who gets more work? A: Men Women It is equal Village

# 1. 2. 3. 4. 3.

61 48 48 50

58 57 50 50

Q : W h i c h operations?

0 1 0 0

4 0 0 0

1.

2.

3.

4.

Total

Pulling o f seedlings** Transplanting

31 56

57 57

0 47

0 49

88 209

Harvesting

30

0

38

0

68

Village # ( # citing)

Weeding 49 57 48 50 204 Preparation o f fields 0 0 31 34 65 D a t a from four villages (agricultural labourers’ responses): Q : W h y d o women get more work than men i n certain agricultural operations? # citing i n each village: Reasons given: 1. 2. 3. 4. Total T r a d i t i o n o r custom 36 25 2 0 63 Women’s experience/ability 14 12 31 46 103 76 34 28 13 1 Women’s lower wages 24 0 24 0 0 These jobs are easier/lighter T i m i n g ( m e n have other work at this time) 0 6 0 0 6 N o answer/don’t know

0

5

0

1

6

* The bulk of the information in our article comes from data from villages 1 and 4. * * Operations listed here include the most frequently mentioned.

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors

259

o f labour in their work, while village 2 workers mentioned either women’s greater experience and ability in their jobs, or the fact that women get lower wages. The differences i n male and female responses were negligible in village 1, although slightly more women than men cited their greater experience at their job, and too few women responded i n village 4 to assess any differential. Finally, one

traditional source of employment for the poorest women had been hand-processing of paddy. This job has now been usurped by rice mills, which d o the work for less than the wages for hand-pounding.

Stoler notes this same loss of employment for women in Java (1977). It is striking that the times in the year when there is more work for w o m e n are often times when there is little work for m e n , and the

times when there is less work for women are times when there is more male labour available. The implications of this for development planning has often been ignored. The elimination of female earnings at a particular time does not mean that the household can fall back o n the husband’s o r male earnings; it means n o income at all for households already close to the margin of survival. While data on the prominence of women as agricultural labourers bears out Boserup’s finding that i n areas of intensive plough cultivation o f irrigated land both men and women must work to support a family, her assertion that among cultivator families women withTable 2 Households with acknowledged female supervision

Village 1 (Palghat Dt.) Land

0.68 0.91 1.25 1.42 1.80

Size (acres)

Village 4 (Kuttanad)

Caste

L a n d S i z e (acres)

Caste

Muslim

0.30 0.49 1.10 1.91

Nair Nair Christian Nair

Nair Ezhava

Nair Ezhava

1.90

Nair

2.10 2.32 2.41

Ezhava Ezhava Ezhava

3.02

Nair

3.50 3.88 4.12

Nair Ezhava Ezhava

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JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

draw from agricultural work is open to some revision (Boserup 1970: 25-7). Our data reveals three groups o f women; 1) female labourers from poor households who play a major role in rice production as shown above; 2) female supervisors who are acknowledged as such; and 3) an intermediate group o f women who d o a great deal o f work in family fields, which may include unack-

nowledged supervision. O u r data reports females as supervising both male and female

labour in about 20 per cent of the 61 cultivator families interviewed in village 1. The relatively infrequent mention of female supervision in village 4 may reflect under-reporting o f female supervision o r a difference between villages based o n factors o f land size, caste, and

religion (many are Christians [see note]). The presence of female supervision in village 1, a predominantly Hindu area, suggests that women may play an important role in production decisions even in cases where they d o not enter field labour. It will clearly b e worth-

while to investigate just how extensive this role is. The intermediate group o f women in our data provide the strongest argument for further research o n women and rice product i o n , particularly b y interviewers who are sensitive to male bias. Table 3

Village 1. 4.

Total #

Female Supervision

No Supervision

Supervision i n family labour

N o female Supervision o f labour

61 92

13 4

0 17

16 0

32 71

N o t e : The five H i n d u families i n Village 1 , w i t h holdings o f more than 10 acres report n o female supervision. However, we d o know that i n at least two o f the larger landowning households i n this village women d o supervise their labourers. These two households happen to have not been included i n our sample, which was chosen at random from the list o f households i n that landowning category. I n Village 4 , o f the seven smallest Christian holdings (under two acres) o n l y one household acknowledged female supervision; however, three listed participation o f females i n family labour, and said that there was n o supervi-

sion.

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors

261

I t is clear that land size is the most crucial determinant of female supervision, though caste and religion also play a part. A t the present time, the author and a colleague are working o n a study o f women’s involvement in rice cultivation. Village 4 in this paper is

included in the new study and it is hoped that much more detail on Christian women and supervision will emerge from this new piece of work. Our data was collected by males with M . A . degrees in economics, and reflects a confusion b y both these researchers and the male cultivators whom they interviewed. For example, women are listed as housewives who also perform family labour in the fields. I n an

analysis of households i n village 2 which were listed as having no supervision of agricultural labourers, female family labour was recorded for operations in which male family labour was absent and in which hired labourers were also present in the field. This suggests that female family labour may be a gloss used by either the interviewers, male cultivators, o r both to refer to activities in which

female family members do some combination of labour and supervision. Support for this claim may lie in the fact that some village 1 households listed supervising family members with the qualification that the supervision was carried out ‘ i n family labour’,

while village 4 households did not record any supervision in this way. It seems that the category ‘supervision’ in the village 4 data equates supervision with standing and watching, while the village 1 data includes family labour as participatory supervision. Implications The most obvious practical implications o f these findings are those which echo the demand o f virtually all women-and-development studies. When we learn the extent o f the participation o f women in

productive activities, it becomes clear that unless development planners take women into account, attempts at increasing production run the risk o f failure. For example, there has been very little research o n the critical transplanting operations performed b y women, though the way in which these tasks are performed can greatly affect production. Likewise, the efforts o f agricultural extension officers have been directed to male workers and cultivators, because the role o f female workers and supervisors has been ignored. T o the extent that women are involved in production decisions, this neglect can have disastrous results. Our data also suggests that

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JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

labour unions have not given sufficient attention to women, and

may thus be losing a highly motivated and capable source of organization and leadership as a result. The militancy o f female labourers

is, in our opinion, quite striking and appears to have historical precedent (Tharamangalam 1977). Ignoring women may be one of the things holding back the left in India (Mencher and D’Amico 1978). While most would agree o n the need to take women into account in development planning, there are varied opinions as to what kind

of changes this would involve. Both Dixon (1978) and Diamond (1975:387) suggest that where there is an old pattern of sex-typing i n agricultural tasks, change may be more difficult than in areas where women previously did not work in the fields. For Dixon, this is a factor i n seeking a solution in rural-based industries which build

on women’s traditional crafts, rather than in ‘rehabilitating’ women into agricultural labour on different terms. Mazumdar argues that i t

is the structure of the development project which is crucial in effecting real change for the poorest women. She compares two efforts which aimed at increasing women’s incomes i n rural India, and maintains that the greater success of one lies in its uniform class membership and its corresponding identity o f interests, and in its participatory techniques. The failure o f the other project can be attributed to the erroneous belief that a woman’s project which cuts across class hnes would unite women, and to the treatment o f poor women as beneficiaries, rather than participants (Mazumdar n.d.).

Stoler (1977) supports this belief that the needs of women differ by class. Others point out that one o f the class differences among women

in general is the attitude which they and their families have towards work outside the home (Jaquette 1975, Boserup 1970: 31, Barkow 1972). I n many places, the seclusion of women is desired as release from the necessity o f work, and is seen as a rise in family status. Likewise in India, the kind o f work which women do in agriculture is something they would avoid if it were not necessary to increase

household income. As one male labourer commented when asked why women did certain jobs in agriculture: ‘To d o such work with bent backs is not so easy’. Yet, the fact that women d o earn some money may be implicated in the higher proportions o f surviving females in rice regions as opposed to wheat regions (Bardhan 1974), and wage-earning women d o in some ways have more inde-

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors

263

pendence than women who are totally dependent o n their husbands

(Dixon 1978: 113-14). If ways could be found to make female jobs in agriculture easier, it might be possible for women to enjoy the benefits o f income in a less painful way. Yet, as we noted above in the case o f replacing hand-pounding paddy with mechanized processing, the impact o f such improvements may affect the poorest women disastrously. For this stratum of women, labour-intensive techniques, as opposed to those assessed as more mechanically efficient, will at least insure women of necessary work and income i n the short run. I n the search for methods which will both increase production and assure women of work, it is crucial to consider how the needs o f women vary b y class. W e look at women’s role in economic development in order to insure that they d o not continue to be excluded from this process,

and yet our efforts in this direction can also be hampered by our lack o f a broader theoretical understanding o f why this exclusion occurs. When we see the variation in female participation i n agricultural labour and supervision described above, what is it we are looking at? I s it the end o f a long process o f gradual exclusion from produc-

tion, which began perhaps with female invention of rice cultivation and total female domination o f agriculture? What work such as

Boserup’s does is point out the trends in this exclusion process, and suggest identifications o f some o f the factors involved—such as the transfer o f technology from the West (along with western assumptions about women’s place), population increase, colonization, etc. I t remains for us to link these factors, and others which we discover, i n a systematic framework which assigns causality to some over others. What the Indian case makes clear is that intensification per se does not necessarily exclude women, but that capital-intensive innovations d o tend t o convert female tasks into male jobs (as in the case o f manuring, a job done b y women being replaced b y fertilizing done by men) o r elimination o f female jobs entirely (as in the case of rice mills which eliminate the job of hand-pounding).

The linking of the exclusion of women with the introduction of capital-intensive techniques has been noted in other areas—in fact, one could say it is a feature shared b y virtually all women-and-

development studies. The effects o f this exclusion vary; in some cases women become informally employed, as traders and vendors

in the internal market system (Mintz 1971), or domestics (Arizpe 1977), and so on.

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‘JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

I n other cases women and their children become dependent o n

the earnings of a male wage earner (Rubbo 1975); in others they maintain their subsistence production roles by cultivating family plots (Gonzalez 1969). In still other instances, women develop and rely upon a female-centred k i n network (Brown 1975, Stack 1974). The exclusion o f women from capital-intensive sectors reflects not only the demands o f capitalist production, but also the kind o f family structure which is its corollary (Zaretsky n.d.). Women are a special case in development studies for precisely this reason; their additional role in the reproduction and maintenance of the labour force is affected along with their role in production. The varied responses o f women to this double dilemma reflect differences in

the historical development of capitalism in different places. When women belong to a class in which male wage earners cannot finance

household reproduction and maintenance, women must direct their efforts to make u p the difference between the male wage and the

real reproduction costs in whatever ways are available to them. The capacity o f kinship structures and informal employment to support these efforts in turn allows capital to maintain high rates o f profit based o n low wages. Meanwhile, the intimate connection of women

to the home and children serves to define reproduction and maintenance work as women’s ‘real’ work, justifying both their exclusion

from production when they are not needed (as in times of recession), and their lower wages when they are needed (in times of war

when men are away, for example). Meillassoux (1975) has suggested that a key factor in the ability of capital to super-exploit Third World countries is the capacity of the residual indigenous kinship systems to make u p the difference in reproduction costs between the low wages paid to workers and the real costs o f household maintenance. Women, through their work in internal trading, informal employment, and subsistence agriculture, as well as ti.-~ugh the shared help o f the networks they are part of, must be available to make u p this difference at the lowest possible cost to capital investors. The exclusion o f women from

development is thus part of the reproduction of the existing social relations and forces of production. This connection is behind the question raised b y Pala (1977), who asks: ‘integration o f women

into what development?’ When we consider women, we are forced to take into account the wider political, social, and economic implications o f development

Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors

265

(Nash 1977:161), because as child bearers and child rearers women are concerned with precisely those human questions which capitalist development excludes. This greater concern is reflected in the way women’s incomes are spent; women tend to concentrate on food and education for their children to a greater extent than men d o , for example (Nash 1977:162). The reliance of capitalism o n the hidden labour o f women helps explain why there is so much confusion concerning women’s work, as in the case of the female labourers and supervisors mentioned above. I t is poor women for whom the burdens o f production and repro-

duction under capitalist development are greatest, because their options are so limited by class. For female agricultural labourers in India, real change will require, as Mazumdar suggests, projects

which emphasize socio-political development as well as economic growth: Women, and all weaker groups in general have remained virtually inarticu-

late victims of the principle of equality in an unequal social context . . .

(p. 28) ‘ L o o k i n g o n them only as beneficiaries, or groups for whom some roles must

be found, would neither help their involvement, nor their dignity. Participation—on terms of autonomy and dignity, ensuring for them a voice in decisions that are going to affect their and their children’s lives—is the first step (Mazumdar n.d.: 29-30). REFERENCES Bardhan, P . K . , ‘ O n Life and Death Questions’, Economic and Political Weekly, 1X, 1974, 1293-304. Barkow, J. H . , ‘Hausa Women and Islam’, Canadian Journal o f African Studies 6, 1972, 317-93. Boserup, Ester, Women’s Role in Economic Development, N e w Y o r k : St. Martin’s Press, 1970. Bossen, Laurel, ‘ W o m e n i n Modernizing Societies’, American Ethnologist, 2, 4 , 1975, 587-601. Brown, Susan E . , ‘Love Unites Them and Hunger Separates Them: Poor Women i n the Dominican Republic’, Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. R .

Reiter, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975. Chaney, Elsa, and Marianne Schmink, ‘Women and Modernization: Access to Tools’, i n Sex and Class in Latin America, eds. Nash and Safa, New York: Praeger, 1976.

Chinchilla, Norma S., ‘Industrialization, Monopoly Capital, and Women’s Work in Guatemala’, Signs,3, Special Issue, Women and National Development, 1977, 38-56.

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JOAN P. MENCHER A N D DEBORAH D’AMICO

Diamond, Norma, ‘Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status o f Women i n Rural China’, i n Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. R . Reiter, 1975, pp.

372-95. Dixon, Ruth B . , Rural Women at Work, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1978. Jacquette, Jean, ‘Female Political Participation i n Latin America’, i n Sex a n d Class in Latin America, eds. Nash and Safa, 1976, pp. 221-44. Mazumdar, V i n a , ‘Traditional Women and their Integration i n Modern Develop-

ment: A n Inquiry into Two Models in India’, mimeo, Indian Council of Social Science Research, n.d. |

M e a d , M . , ‘ A Comment o n the Role o f Women i n Agriculture’, in Women and

World Development, eds. Tinker and Bramsen, Wasington D.C.: Overseas D e v e l o p m e n t Council,

1976.

Meillassoux, C . , Femmes, Greniers, et Capitaus, Paris: Maspero, 1975. Mencher, J.P., Agiiculture a n d Social Structure in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi: Allied Publishers Private L t d . . 1978.

Mintz, Sidney W., ‘Men, Women and Trade’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 13, 1971, 247-67. Nash, June, ‘Women in Development: Dependency and Exploitation’, Development and Change, 8, 1977, 161-82. Pala, Achola O., ‘Definitions of Women and Development: A n African Perspective’, Signs, 3 , 1977, 9-13. R e m y , D o r o t h y , ‘Underdevelopment a n d the Experience o f Women: A Nigerian Case Study’, in Toward an Anthropology o f Women, ed. Reiter, 1975, pp- 358-71.

Rubbo, Ann, ‘The Spread of Capitalismi n Rural Colombia’, in ibid., pp. 333-57. Safa, H . J., ‘Class Consciousness among Working Class Womeni n Latin America: Puerto Rico’, i n Sex and Class in Latin America, eds. Nash and Safa, 1976

pp. 69-85. Solien-Gonzalez, N . , Black Carib Household Structure Seattle: University o f Washington Press, 1969.

Stack, Carol, ‘Sex Roles and Survival Strategies in an Urban Black Community’, in Woman, Culture, and Society, eds. Rosaldo and Lamphere, Stanford: University Press, 1971. Stoler, A n n , ‘Class Structure and Female Autonomy i n Rural Java’, Signs, 3 , 1977,

74-92. Tharamangalam, J., ‘Rural Class Conflict: Political Mobilization of Agricultural Labourers i n Kuttanad, South India’, unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Toronto: York University, 1977. V o n Allen, J., ‘Sitting o n a Man: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women’, Canadian Journal o f African Studies, 6 , 1972, 165-81. Zaretsky, E . , ‘Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life, Canadian Dimension Pamphlet’, n . d .

Women in Development: The Case of a n

Ail-Women Youth Land Development Scheme in Malaysia M A Z I D A H ZAKARIA and N I K SAFIAH K A R I M

1ntroduction

Writing about Asia and Africa, Chester L . Hunt once made the comment that in most areas o f the world the process o f development

is viewed as a male project in which women are given only tcken participation. H e concluded that, . . development represents an ¢.

effort t o bring the male part o f the world into the twentieth century leaving most o f the women in the restricted culture o f the previous era’ (Hunt 1966: 20). Such observations notwithstanding, attempts have been made b y Third World governments to integrate women

in their development plans. While these attempts should be applauded, studies have shown that time and again such attempts have met with failures due to a lack in understanding the complexities o f

the socio-cultural factors that regulate the lives of men and women as well as due to the short-sightedness in envisioning the long-term effects o f development plans o n society as a whole. Hastily planned programmes, self-consciously offering token participation to women, often end i n their being victims of development. The Malaysian experience in attempting to establish an all-

women land development scheme may be examined in this light. Often the Bukit Mambai Youth Land Development Scheme for young women has been quoted favourably, at national and international levels, as an evidence that women in Malaysia have achieved

equality and have been integrated in the development plans of the nation. However, in our opinion, this is a simplified and an

idealized image, and in such idealization of its achievements many may be led to an unrealistic belief that equality and integration of

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MAZIDAH ZAKARIA A N D N I K SAFIAH KARIM

women in development can be achieved rather easily b y a mere ideological commitment and a few organizational devices. A n attempt will be made in this paper to evaluate the success and failure

of the Bukit Mambai Land Development Scheme for young women in the hope that it may enable us to draw more general conclusions

regarding the factors which would promote and those which would hamper the full participation o f women in various aspects o f developmental activities. W e hope the Malaysian experience may

serve as an important contribution to this aim. Land development in Malaysia

As a developing country Malaysia is faced with the serious problems o f unemployment and underemployment, particularly in the rural sectors o f the economy. I n order to help remedy this situation the Malaysian Government has, since its independence in 1957, undertaken a vast rural development programme. This programme has

been embodied in a series of five-year plans of economic development, whose underlying priority has been to provide the necessary

facilities and opportunities for the rural people to improve their standards of living and social well-being. Since agriculture has a vital role to play in both, the economic and

the social development of the country, it is only natural that in the development programme top priority is given to land development. Land development is seen as one of the means to ease the unemployment problem, and with appropriate planning is expected to lead to

a more balanced distribution of income as aimed at under the New Economic Policy. Thus, in August 1955 a Working Party was set u p to assess the need for land settlement as a means o f overcoming the

problem of land hunger in the Federation of Malaya (later in the whole of Malaysia). The setting up of a Federal Land Development Authority (more popularly known as FELDA) was recommended to ensure a planned and co-ordinated development o f land. F E L DA was established in July 1956. This was later followed b y the establishment o f various Federal Land Development Agencies, such as Federal Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (FELORA) and Rubber Industries Small-holders Development

Authority (RISDA), each with specific task in bringing about a planned and co-ordinated development o f land in the country as a .whole.

In addition to these Federal Land Development Agencies, most

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270

MAZIDAH ZAKARIA A N D NIK SAFIAH KARIM

states in Malaysia have their own agencies to undertake land development and settlement programmes for the landless and the youth, as also for revenue purposes. It is under this arrangement that the State o f Johore, through its State Economic Development Corporation, undertakes land development schemes for its youth. A s is categorically stated, ‘ I n the strictest sense, land development and settlement is a socio-technological development process . . . a development programme which is complex in nature, consisting o f economic, social, cultural and psychological factors and processes’

(Alladin Hashim 1971: 84). However, so far as planners are concerned they take it for granted that all land development schemes to b e undertaken b y the Federal and State Governments in Malaysia

are directly programmed for men with women only ‘indirectly’ involved as ‘wives’ of the settlers. One can infer then that women’s roles in helping to develop these land schemes are regarded as secondary. Hence, the decision o f Johore State Government to start a youth land development scheme solely for single young women has been considered to b e an innovation, ‘ . . . the creation o f an Amazon society in the midst o f male chauvinism!” (Syed Hussain Wafa

1974). The Bukit Mambai all-women youth land development scheme

The Johore land development schemes for youth were started in 1968 with the establishment o f two all-male youth land schemes. I n

1971 a motion was tabled in the Johore State Assembly by Datin Hajjah Hasnah, a Johore Wanita U M N O member,! for the establishment o f a similar youth land scheme for single young women. After further pressure from the Johore Wanita U M N O ,

the motion was passed in 1973 and the all-women youth land development scheme was launched with the following aims: 1. To provide an opportunity for young women t o participate in land development schemes and to provide them useful training in agriculture. This is considered to be an attempt on the part of the Johore State Government to reduce unemployment among the youth in Johore. 2. T o serve as a challenge to young women t o prove that like men they too

can play their part i n land development on a large scale.

Since the Johore State Government was not able to open a new area for the all-women land development scheme (because it was not

Women in Development

271

budgeted for) an area of 500 acres i n Bukit Mambai, originally intended for the third all-male youth land scheme in Johore, was re-assigned for this purpose. I t was developed for cultivating oil palm and later came to be known as ‘Rancangan Tanah Beliawanis B u k i t Mambai Peringkat Satu’ (Bukit Mambai Youth Land Development Scheme for Women, Phase One). Another 500 acres, adjacent to the present scheme, have been earmarked for the second phase o f the scheme i n which land is to be developed by

another group of young women. When the scheme was launched, more than 1000 young women applied for participation. Out o f these, 542 were short-listed for interviews b y a special selection board appointed by the Johore State Government. The criteria for selecting the candidates related

to the following: 1. Candidate’s experience and interest in agriculture. 2. Special abilities such as knowledge of craft and mechanical know-how, e.g. repairing engines, cooking, etc. 3. General health and personality.

4. Educational background and training, including courses that a candidate has attended. 5. Poor family background. O f the 540 young women who were interviewed, sixty were selected but two turned down the offer. A third candidate, not being able to meet the challenge, left after staying only about one week at the land scheme. All the three were later replaced by a second select i o n , restoring the original number of sixty. B u t in 1976, two years after the scheme was started, two participants were asked to leave the scheme because they got married prior to the completion of the three-year schedule. N o attempt was made to replace them since the scheme was very much under way b y then and work was considered to be lighter. Thus, fifty-eight women remained i n the scheme until the completion o f the schedule in 1977. A t the time o f selection, the girls were in the range of eighteen to twenty-three years in age. I n terms o f ethnic background, they were predominantly Javanese and Malay. Most o f them had been exposed to some agricultural experience i n the sense that their families were involved in some kind of agricultural activities as can b e seen from Table 1.

Before joining the land scheme these women were either jobless o r had some kind o f temporary jobs. Table 2 indicates the types o f

272

MAZIDAH ZAKARIA A N D N I K SAFIAH KARIM Table 1 Economic Activities o f Settlers’ Parents

Occupation/Activity o f

No. o f

settlers’ households

households

Rubber small holdings

Percentage

33

5

57.0 8.5

Felda settlers (rubber)

4

7.0

Other types o f agricultural activities

5

8.5

Retired/unemployed

4

7.0

Others (non-agricultural)

7

12.0

58

100.0

Felda settlers ( o i l palm)

Source: Aziz Mohammad, 1977 (adapted)

Table 2 Types o f Jobs o f Settlers Prior to Joining the Land Scheme Types of Jobs

No. of Settlers

Percentage

Helping Parents (mostly in agriculture activities)

Labourer in Oil Palm Estates Labourer in Rubber Estates Trainee at Agricultural Centre Trainee at Community Development Class Factory Worker Domestic Help Laboratory Assistant Village School Teacher Kindergarten Teacher Seamstress

Source: Aziz Mohammad, 1977 (adapted)

34

58.7

7 2 1

12.1 3.4 1.7

1 5 3 2 1 1 1

1.7 8.7 5.2 3.4 1.7 1.7 1.7

58

100.0

Women in Development

273

jobs/activities these women were engaged in prior to joining the land scheme. Thus, out o f the fifty-eight settlers, forty-five had gained actual experience in agriculture either b y helping their parents who were mostly i n rubber cultivation and to a lesser extent i n paddy and oil palm cultivation, o r by themselves being involved directly as

labourers in agriculture (estates, etc.). Of these forty-five settlers one had been a trainee i n an agricultural centre and another a student i n a vocational school which emphasized training i n agriculture. These two women were the only settlers who could be considered to have received some kind o f formal and intensive training in agriculture. O f the seven who were directly involved in oil palm cultivation, two were labourers o n oil palm estates while

the other five were helping their parents in F E L D A oil palm land

development schemes. I n respect o f the types o f jobs/activities these women were involved i n before becoming settlers, only four may be considered as

having some standing from the Malaysian point of view: two laboratory assistants, o n e school teacher, and one teacher i n a

kindergarten. After she had joined the land scheme, one of the w o m e n was offered a j o b as a clerk which is o f some standing too,

but she rejected the offer, prefering to be in the scheme. L o w level o f educational achievement may be the reason why these women were employed i n low-paying jobs. Thirty-two o f them (55.2 per cent) had reached only the primary level, twenty (34.5 per cent) had obtained lower secondary education (up to Lower Certificate o f Education) and only six (10.3 per cent) had managed to reach the

middle secondary level, obtaining the Sijil Persekolahan Malaysia (equivalent to the Malaysian Certificate o f Education, but with

Bhasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction). All the women claimed to have been attending a (Islamic) religious school, which is compulsory i n the Johore State. The settlers gave the following reasons for their interest in participating in the land scheme: thirty-four (58.8 per cent) did so o n their own initiative because they regarded it as an economic venture that would assure them a bright/secure future; they had also received parental encouragement; twelve (20.0 per cent) stated that it was their parents and families who had had similar experiences (being settlers in F E L D A and other land development schemes) that encouraged them to participate; seven (12.1 per cent) had

274

M A Z I D A H Z A K A R I A A N D N I K SAFIAH K A R I M

received encouragement to join the scheme from youth clubs and associations they belonged to. Only five did not specify any reason as to why they had been interested in joining the land scheme. Unlike their counterparts i n all-male youth land development schemes, t h e selected candidates for t h e all-women land develop-

ment scheme were given ‘military training’ for about one month in a military garrison i n Johore. This training was given ostensibly to prepare them for the hard life i n the land scheme. The emphasis in the training was o n discipline. Other objectives were to instil in the settlers a sense o f dedication to the assigned task, and to build u p a sense o f belonging, patriotism, and co-operation among them, as also to make them physically fit. The one month training also included learning first aid methods, group cooking, and modern techniques in agriculture. The settlers claimed that the training proved to be extremely useful to them, especially i n building u p the spirit o f togetherness i n times o f hardship during the earlier stages o f their work. The administration o f the B u k i t Mambai Land Scheme was similar to any youth land scheme i n Johore. It had a full time supervisor with three field assistants (on temporary basis), one staff member from the Johore Agriculture Department to advise the settlers o n all matters pertaining to o i l palm cultivation, and a driver for the only land-rover provided for the scheme for all purposes. The scheme was fully financed by the Johore State Government, all this financial assistance being considered as loan to the settlers, with 6 per cent yearly interest, slightly lower than the F E L D A schemes. The loan was to be repaid i n instalments to the State Government and repaying would start as soon as the government thought the settlers could reasonably be asked to do so. Other facilities that

were provided by the State Government included: (1) A dormitory? to house the settlers, with beds and other necessary furniture; (2) a

generator for electricity supply and a water pump?3; (3) food* at the rate of M$2.00 per settler per day; (4) M$1.005 per day pocket money per settler; (5) one land-rover; (6) tools and equipment for

use in the field; and (7) fertilizers and pesticide. Besides the above the settlers were also given assistance through voluntary organizations and government-run agencies such as Womens’ Organization, Youth Clubs, and various government departments such as Religion, Agriculture, and Information Depart-

ments.

Women in Development

275

The settlers admitted that the first two years at the land scheme were the hardest. The two main problems they had to overcome were (1) the new work scheme, made harder b y the fact that the B u k i t Mambai region is very hilly, and (2) the technique o f a new j o b , that is o i l palm cultivation, as most o f these girls were previously involved with other types of cultivation (e.g. rubber, paddy). The observation made was that those settlers with the ‘oil palm’

background (seven of them) found it much easier t o adapt themselves and seemed to be more knowledgeable in terms o f task requirements o f oil palm cultivation. They eventually proved to be

the better workers according to the scheme supervisor and field assistants. The hardship was further aggravated b y the fact that compared to similar schemes run by F E L D A , i n all-women land development schemes the land was not properly cleared and oil palm seedlings were not properly planted. The land was first cleared b y contractors with the conventional method (using a chain-saw and not tractors), thus leaving a great deal of tree stumps. The ‘burning’ and the ‘prooning’ were poorly done by these contractors, making i t necessary for the settlers to d o extra work i n clearing and burning the stumps. The poor job done i n planting the oil palm seedlings resulted in many o f them being destroyed, and replanting o f the seedlings became necessary, incurring substantial loss to the State Government. All these, plus the hard nature of the terrain, posed additional problems to the settlers i n terms of clearing the ground and keeping the scheme going. The settlers admitted to have felt that they were let down and i n the early stages cases o f ‘hysteria’ among them were not uncommon, undoubtedly a sign of emotional instability. I t also explained the settlers’ frequent visits to their homes and frequent trips to nearby towns. These visits and trips became less frequent later except among those who were married and visited their husbands during the weekends. These women were not able to bring their husbands to the scheme since the individual houses promised to them were still at the stage o f being constructed (the land for houses was being cleared only i n late 1977); i n fact the settlers doubted whether the houses would be ready b y the end of

1978. Work schedule: Work to be carried out i n the land scheme was organized at two places, namely, at the settlement and in the field. A t the settlement, four o f the settlers were put in charge of cooking

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M A Z I D A H Z A K A R I A A N D N I K SAFIAH KARIM

for all the settlers and two were given the task of collecting firewood. Besides these six, the settlers would take turns for daily

cleaning of the dormitory, office building and the surrounding area, and turning on the generator at night for electricity supply. The seven w h o were involved i n these tasks were exempted from work-

ing in the fields for the day. Interestingly enough, the settlers considered ‘cooking’ to be a very boring and monotonous duty and some even considered i t to be ‘heavy’. Most o f the settlers preferred t o work in the fields rather than i n the kitchen. Those who were in

charge of cooking had to get up in the morning earlier than the others in order to prepare breakfast. They were also the last to

finish for the night since it was their duty too to clean up. Because this duty was not popular among the settlers it was agreed upon that

anybody who preferred to do it might keep the job as long as she wanted t o . Most o f the settlers, however, seemed to avoid this and rarely would a settler take u p ‘cooking’ for more than a month. B y some standards cooking may be considered ‘lighter’ than working in the fields. The attitude o f the settlers towards household

duties appears to have been guided by the following facts: there was n o new learning involved i n routine cooking and washing up etc. it mostly amounted to catering to the requirements o f others; and it

also involved working at odd hours, which curbed their freedom. During the early period the settlers had to work in the field for longer hours, starting from 7.00 a.m. until 12.00 noon and again from 2.30 p.m. until 5.00 p.m. in the evening. But working hours were subsequently reduced as the tasks decreased. A t the time o f the study, the settlers worked for about six hours per day in the

fields, starting at eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, after which they were free to involve themselves in other activities such as sports and games, attending cookery classes, needlework, tailoring, handicraft and religious instruction. For working i n the fields, the settlers were divided into four groups and the land was divided into four blocks. Thirteen settlers formed a group responsible for looking after one block of 125 acres. Each block had its own block leader and each settler was given the task to look after 400 o i l palm trees. The work to be done i n the field was divided into (a) that to be done o n individual basis, such as circle weeding® and clearing o f lallang” around each o f the oil palm

tree, and (b) that to be done on group basis: such as applying fertilizer, castration, pollination, and harvesting. Often, the fer-

277

Women in Development

tilizer supplied to the scheme had been i n storage for a very long period o f time, making i t very hard. The settlers complained that extra work was required to dissolve i t before i t could be used. One o f the greatest problems faced by the settlers was the task o f

bringing water up the slopes to dissolve and dilute the fertilizer and the pesticide. I t is remarkable that inspite o f all these hardships and problems fifty-eight o f the settlers stayed o n ; only two left, and that was because they got married, not due to any inability to meet the challenge. The efforts o f the settlers were rewarded when the first harvest o f the o i l palm crop was carried out in May 1977. The first few harvests gave a return o f approximately M$48.00 per acre,

which was not too far from the government estimate of M$50.00 per acre. When all the trees matured, assuming that the price of oil palm did not fluctuate too much, each settler could expect at least

an average income of M$400.00 per month from her share in the land scheme. After three and a half years since the commencement o f the land scheme, the settlers’ age ranged between twenty to over twenty-six years. Sixteen o f them were married and ten were engaged to be

married. Table 3 gives the occupations of the settlers’ husbands/ fiancés. Ownership: I n theory, each settler would be given approximately 8 acres of oil palm land and another quarter of an acre as housing lot. I n practice, however, n o individual title would be given to the Table 3

Occupations of Settlers’ Husbands and Fiancés

Trader

N o . o f Fiancés

|

vo

nO

on

Settlers i n Youth Land Development Scheme Labourers Village odd jobs Police/Armed Forces

NN

N o . o f Husbands

=

Types o f Occupations

278

M A Z I D A H Z A K A R I A A N D NIK SAFIAH K A R I M

settlers o f state youth land development schemes i n Johore. After the loan was repaid to the government, a co-operative body would b e formed to look after the management o f the land schemes and each settler would be given the number o f shares'equivalent i n value t o the land he o r she was entitled to. This is known as the ‘share system’ and was decided to be implemented i n the land schemes for

the following reasons: 1. The land would not be fragmented and would be more economical to operate. I t would also help t o strengthen the bargaining power o f the §)

settlers (as suppliers) in terms of pricing etc. The owners o f the land could sell their shares back to the co-operative

body when they did n o t want t o continue t o be the owner or t o work on the land.

3. Workers on the land would be paid wages and worker-owners could expect to get additional income in the form of dividend for the shares they owned. 4. Settlers could opt not to work on the land and thus obtain returns only in the form ofd i v i d e n d o n the shares they owned.

T h e weakness i n this arrangement was that there was no direct agreement between the government and the settlers as far as ownership o f the land was concerned. The agreement was between the government and the co-operative body. Attempts had been made to form the co-operative body but u p to the end of 1977 these attempts met with failures primarily due to a power struggle among the settlers o f the youth land development schemes i n Johore, o f which the women settlers were not cven aware of. A l l i n all i n 1977-8 it looked as i f the B u k i t Mambai all-women youth land development scheme had been planned only for the period up to when the oil palm crop would be ready for harvesting. What would happen after that was wholly unclear. The analysis

I n their meeting at Mexico City t o celebrate Women’s International Year i n 1975 delegates from all over the world considered the question o f ‘the integration o f women i n the development process as equal partners w i t h men’. Development was defined broadly as the mechanism to bring about ‘sustained improvement i n the well-being o f the individual and o f society and to bestow benefits o n all’.8 One way to analyse the Sungai Mambai project is in the light of this proposition. I f anything else, this is an example o f an attempt o n

Women in Development

279

the part o f the government to integrate women as a group into the development process that was occurring in the country. A s stated earlier, apart from fulfilling the urgert request o f Wanita U M N O for the establishment o f an all-girls land scheme, the two objectives

of this project were: 1. T o provide an opportunity for girls to participate in state land development schemes, and by doing so, t o provide them with training i n agt9

riculture, thus indirectly decreasing unemployment among youth. T o provide a challenge t o the girls to prove themselves capable o f participating i n national development, i n particular i n land

development. The facts that the s c h e m e — the first and the only one o f its kind i n Malaysia—was launched, that i t attracted a considerable number o f participants and that there were relatively few ‘drop-outs’, and that the majority o f them stayed on against great obstacles, are all points i n favour o f the project. T h e p r o j e c t , h o w e v e r , was n o t w i t h o u t i t s drawbacks; i n analys-

i n g i t , we shall view i t i n terms o f both, its successes as well as its failures. One aspect o f success could be the success as reflected in the attitude o f the government, specifically, i n the attitude o f government officials. Hanna Papanek (1977) i n an article on ‘Development Planning for Women’ talks about obstacles in the achievement

of the integration of women in development: one such obstacle is ‘attitudinal’, originating from fears with regard t o changes that are taking place too rapidly i n the society. These fears may often be translated into attempts to prevent changes i n women’s roles, and may get expressed i n the case o f development planners i n the form o f ‘resistance t o women’s greater participation i n economic and political life’ (p.15). Another obstacle discussed by Papanek appears i n the form o f wrong assumptions made by the government about the social responsibilities o f men and women. They may act as i f men supported families, rather than as i f men and women together d i d so. ‘Arguments about the need to provide earning opportunities for women are often brushed aside by planners concerned exclusively w i t h male employment and unemployment’ (p. 16). I n launching this project a progressive attitude o f the State Gove r n m e n t was reflected, as becomes clear w h e n o n e studies t h e

objectives o f the scheme and the manner i n which the selected

280

MAZIDAH ZAKARIA A N D N I K SAFIAH KARIM

individuals were prepared for participation. Ideally, the project hoped to raise a generation of young women equipped with agricultural abilities, co-operative living, a disciplined personality, and qualities o f a ‘new society’. Thus, the aim was to promote

specific skills and qualities among women. There is a Malay proverb, ‘Pemuda harapan bangsa, pemudi tiang negara’ (Young m e n are the hopes o f the nation, young women are its pillars).

Perhaps the project reflected a certain faith in this view of women. I n respect o f the settlers, success can be inferred from the number who stayed o n inspite o f great obstacles. There were over 1,000

applicants, from among whom sixty were selected. Of these, fiftyeight reported, although one chickened out after spending a few

days in the scheme. Since its commencement in March 1974 through 1976 only two other settlers left the scheme, and they did so for reasons o f marriage. The rest stayed on until the completion of the schedule. Thus there was enthusiasm among young women as indicated b y the number o f applications received, and nearly all who

joined sustained themselves through to the completion of the project. When the scheme reached its final stage, the palm oil crop had started to be harvested and the settlers were able to taste the rewards o f their hard labour. I f success can be measured i n terms o f completion o f the schedule, the Bukit Mambai development scheme can be considered successful. Against all odds and obstacles the girls have struggled through and emerged triumphant, dispelling yet again the false assumption that the physical attributes o f women would hinder them from getting directly involved i n development plans which required hard work that could only be done b y men. Also judging from the way the settlers conducted

themselves the success of the Bukit Mambai land scheme clearly illustrates that with some guidance, incentive and aspiration, women can take u p a new kind o f activity, and can work with responsibility, completing the given task successfully. After the completion o f the project not all the settlers were found living o n the scheme. The majority who got married were living with their respective husbands, not iar from the scheme. The scheme itself was being turned into a co-operative system with the settlers holding shares. They may or may not work o n the land, but they were entitled to the earnings. There are several ways of looking at the operation and the ulti-

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mate ending o f this project. One can begin by asking two pertinent

questions: 1. D i d the settlers benefit from the scheme? 2. What are the implications of this type of scheme for the women o f Malaysia? A study conducted in 1977-8 b y Aziz Mohammad reveals that most

of the settlers felt they had gained a lot of experience by participating in the scheme. However, all complained vociferously with regard to the many inadequacies o f the scheme. Not all facilities were available, and even if they were available, many were not in the best form. T o give an example, they had been promised individual houses a year after commencement o f the scheme, but until its completion the promise remained unfulfilled and settlers continued to live i n the dormitory, facing a genuine problem when they got married. A s regards the supply o f fertilizer and pesticide, these were either in bad shape o r insufficient in quantity. All these brought a lot o f unnecessary hardship to the settlers. Basically, these failures can be classified as administrative. While we concede that the government had taken a progressive step i n

establishing an all-women land development scheme, the administration o f the scheme was far from satisfactory. This is not to imply that the scheme should have been given special attention, but evidence showed that there were general inadequacies i n the run-

ning and implementation of the scheme at the planning level. To point out a few o f them, the land was not suitably cleared and prepared for successful oil palm cultivation; necessary facilities were not provided to the settlers as can be seen by the fact that the size o f the pump for the water supply was too heavy for young

women to handle. Another point that comes to mind is the unsuitability of the crop grown in the context o f the settlers’ prior experience in agriculture. Oil palm cultivation was new to most o f the settlers while many of them had some previous exposure to rubber cultivation. I f the cultivation o f rubber had been taken u p perhaps the settlers would have faced fewer problems i n orienting themselves to a new work technique, and consequently would have fared better. T o the question, d i d participants benefit from this scheme, the answer is both, yes and no. Yes, because they acquired some meaningful experience and underwent a life that built within them a

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certain k i n d o f discipline and seriousness o f purpose, learnt the hard way. B u t the ultimate ending o f the scheme into a co-operative and sharesstype o f organization has more or less defeated the main purpose o f the scheme. I n the other states o f Malaysia a participant i n a land development scheme would ultimately own the land which he has developed; and i t has been proved that the prospect o f ownership at the end o f the project has been a strong motivating factor. T h e policy o f the Johore State Government, however, has been t o involve the youth i n land development schemes that would result n o t i n their ownership o f land but only i n the ownership o f shares. L a n d would be managed by a body who would administer the economic activities. As workers on the scheme are paid wages, share-holders may opt to work o r not to work on the land. A s such i t can be seen that the settlers o f the B u k i t Mambai project d i d not really benefit from i t . Since they were given houses o n individual plots of land very late i n the progress of the scheme, settlers who married moved out of the land scheme to settle at the residence of the husbands o r started m a k i n g weekend visits t o their husbands,

staying close by. N o encouragement o r facilities were provided for husbands to move i n and participate actively i n the scheme. I n the final analysis, due t o a lack o f proper organization and facilities and forced b y the shortcomings o f the implementation o f the share system o f the scheme, most o f the settlers who got married ended up leading a k i n d o f life which had little t o do with the one for which

they had been trained for over three years. Another factor responsible for the shortcoming o f the project was the existence o f attitudes regarding the expected roles o f husbands and wives. The tendency is for the wife to follow the husband, which may lead to settlers i n this case preferring to obtain returns from the scheme i n terms o f dividend from the shares they owned rather than earn wages as well by working on the scheme.® Ideally, for the settlers i n such schemes the husbands should be from the adjacent

all-male youth scheme so that a viable work schedule could be arranged that would benefit the couple most without either o f the two having to leave their respective scheme. B u t i n practice this would narrow the choice o f husbands for the girls and would only lead t o unnecessary frustrations. This, i n our opinion, is a failure. The original idea was to provide opportunities for young women to participate i n land development, t o channel unemployment among youth towards agricultural ac-

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t i v i t i e s , a n d t o ensure t h a t e q u a l chances b e g i v e n t o b o t h m e n a n d

women i n the country. What this scheme achieved i n fact was only t o provide experience, some good, some bad, for a group o f young women i n land development, after which they would enter the adult world and lead a life not necessarily related to previous experience. For the amount o f money and heartaches involved, the final

achievement may n o t be that meaningful. The second question posed is, what are the implications o f this type o f scheme for the women o f Malaysia as a whole? Earlier we have already stated that we applaud the stand taken b y the Johore State Government with regard to their recognition o f women’s participation i n development, but we certainly do not agree that a scheme established i n the manner o f the B u k i t Mambai project could help the women o f Malaysia i n any significant way. I n launchi n g an all-girls land development scheme the government did seem t o have i n m i n d that they were helping to raise the position o f women b y providing them with an equal opportunity to prove that they, like men, could contribute equally effectively towards nation building. B u t i n actual fact, the government has proved to be rather shortsighted. While they were positive i n their attitude towards the capability o f women to participate i n land development schemes, they also displayed an ignorance o f the interplay o f social norms and values and the complementary roles o f men and women i n society. L a n d development activities throughout the country have been an all-male affair. Women participate only as members o f the family. The Sungai Mambai project is an attempt to provide an opportunity whereby young women are the main participants and beneficiaries. However, n o proper feasibility studies were carried o u t to determine the best way o t achieving this end. This casual attitude towards implementation o f policies appears t o be a result o f m e n being the policy makers as well as o f the fact that planners on the whole have always regarded problems relating to women as secondary. When the government was urged politically to integrate women into land development schemes, the immediate reaction was to accommodate this idea within the existing structure without further considerations and deliberations. This is a reflection o f the point raised b y Papanek (1977: 15) that there is a tendency for women’s interests being overshadowed by allegiance to political movements. Significantly, i t also lends support to the argument that

i f governments are to be genuinely concerned with women i n de-

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velopment planning, they must have women at the planning level.

I t 1s a matter of consideration whether an all-girls land development scheme is the best way o f integrating women i n national development. I n this scheme women were treated as individuals

vis-a-vis men participants in other land schemes. We may say that since m e n were treated as individuals participating i n land developm e n t schemes, i t was a n understandable decision t o treat women as

individuals i n a similar scheme for them. One must also recognize that women did prove themselves capable of handling the situation. T h e r e w a s , however, a n e e d t o t a k e social a n d cultural factors into

consideration. Perhaps i f housing facilities had been provided at the right time and i f there had been a provision for getting possession o f their shares o f land or i n event o f the formation o f a co-operative it had been made necessary for the participants to stay on the site and work o n the land, the result would have been different. Land for cultivation is a resource which is generally worked upon b y a couple together. The Malay legal system includes both the notion o f conjugal property and the right of women to possess land. The government i n conceiving of all-men’s land development schemes failed to take account o f the indigenous patterns, and rather than ensuring equal rights to the land developed through direct participation o f husband and wife, tended t o treat the husband as the sole beneficiary. O n the other hand, while the all-

women’s scheme was introduced as a corrective to the above mentioned situation, its effectiveness, as we have seen, is open to question. I t also needs to be considered i f i n both types of schemes the government should think o f a provision to ensure the rights of the spouse who was not originally the participant. A n d perhaps one viable alternative would be to have land development schemes

jointly participated in by couples rather than separate schemes for m e n and women. Conclusion

When the government launched its economic development plans, o f which one aspect was land development schemes, i t was felt that m e n as a group benefited more. The Sungai Mambai land development scheme can be seen as an attempt to improve the situation. However, the failure o f this scheme as discussed in this paper is a clear indication that no benefit can really be obtained unless simultaneous steps are taken to remedy the social situation and to

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ensure that women d o not as a group, because o f their traditional roles i n society. and the stereotypes attached to them, become victims o f development. NOTES 1

United Malay National Organization (UMNO), the ruling party. Wanita U M N O is the women’s section of this political party.

2

Since the girls were required to stay together in this dormitory for the first 3 years they were not permitted to marry during this period. It was planned that

individual houses would be built for them by the end of the 3-year period but due to some administrative problems these houses were not built o n time. This

has caused a great deal of frustration among the settlers, especially those who 3

got married after completing the 3-year schedule. The water pump proved to be too big and too heavy for the settlers to operate.

It was abandoned later on. 4 & 5 These payments would be terminated as soon as the settlers started t o repay their loans t o the State Government. 6 Circle Weeding: for unmatured oil palm trees, the area to be cleared around a

plant is 6 to 8 feet in circumference and for matured trees the area is 10 to 12 feet. This is to facilitate the application o f fertilizer and to avoid wastage. Circle weeding is considered the most difficult task at the early stages o f the oil palm

cultivation due to the thorny nature of the plant. Lallang (Imperata Cylindrica) is of the grass family, often considered as one of the most serious problems to control in the agriculture in Malaysia. United Nations, World Conference o f the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, 19 June-2 July, 1975. Provisional Agenda, I t e m 11, para 3.

Had there been provision for the settlers to acquire ownership of the land they worked on in the development scheme, the situation might have been different for moving over to the wife’s house and earning a living there is not something

which is unacceptable in Malaysia. 10

Here it would be useful to mention a few facts about the practices of the Malays

of Malaysia in respect of maritalresidence and women’s rights t o land and other property. The Malay marital residence pattern is rather loose though there is a

tendency towards preference for patrilocality. Traditionally, and to a certain extent even now, among rural Malays it is quite common for m e n t o come and settle with their wives’ families. For the Adat Perpatih communities o f Negeri Sembilan and part o f Malacca where matrilineal system prevails, traditionally

husbands were bound by Adat to settle with their wives. But Adat Perpatih is confined t o a very small population; majority o f the Malays subscribe t o what is

commonly or loosely termed as Adat Temenggung which supports bilaterality. There is, however, a patrilineal bias (possibly due to acceptance of Islamic values). Currently the Malay family system and marital residence are undergoing tremendous change and neolocal residence appears t o b e the most favoured

form. I n respect o f ownership and control o f land, Adat Perpatih recognizes two

kinds of property, namely, ancestral property, especially land which is collec-

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tively owned by women, and self-acquired property. I n the context of the allwomen’s land development scheme, however, it is important to consider Adat Temenggung and the Islamic system o f Faraid which is followed b y those who subscribe to Adat Temenggung. Under this system women have individual rights to own and control their own property including house and land provided

they have acquired it themselves by working for it by purchasing it, by inheritance, or as a gift. Women also have a definite share by inheritance in the parental property though the ratio is 1 : 2 in favour of sons. However, when parents (mother or father) give their property (house, land, jewellery and so o n ) t o their children b y a formal transfer during their o w n life time they tend to make n o distinction between male and female children. A n d this practice has

become rather popular among the Malays in order to avoid feuds over inheri-

tance after the death of parents. Islamic Law o f inheritance as practised by the Malays i n Malaysia recognizes

rights of both husband and wife over each other’s land (and property) but it is still i n favour of men i n as much as a widow is entitled to one eighth of the

deceased husband’s property (including land) if she has children, while a widower is entitled t o one fourth o f the deceased wife's property i f the couple

have children and one half of it if the couple are childless. When a marriage is dissolved, both husband and wife have full nghts over their

own personal properties acquired before their marriage. Any property (includ-

ing land) acquired during marriage is to be divided equally between the two spouses, regardless o f the contribution o f the wife towards its acquisition.

REFERENCES Alladin Hashim, ‘Land Development and the Settlers—Some Social Aspects o f Land

Development’, in Report o f the Sixth International Seminar on Development (26 July t o 1 August), 1971, Kuala Lumpur, sponsored b y the

Malaysian Centre for Development Studies, 1971.

Aziz Mohammad, ‘Penvertaan Wanita di dalam Pembangunan Tanah di Rancangan Tanah Beliawanis Bukit Mumbai Segamat, Johore’, (Women’s Participation in the All-Women Youth Land Development Scheme of Bukit M a m b a i Segamat, Johore), written i n Malay, Final Year Graduation

Exercise 1977-8, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University o f Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 1977.

Hunt, Chester L . , Social Aspects of Economic Development, New York: McGraw Hill, 1966. Hussain Wafa, S., ‘Strategies in Land Development in Malaysia’, in Malaysian

Economic Development and Policies, eds. Stephen Chee and Khoo Siew M u n , Conference Proceedings Series no. 3 , Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian

Economics Association, 1975, pp. 158-93. Papanek, Hanna, ‘Development Planning for Women’, in Women and National Development: The Complexities o f Change, ed. Wellesley Editorial Committee, Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1977.

United Nations, World Conference o f the International Women's Year, Mexico City, June 19-July 2, 1975, Provisional Agenda.

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F r o m Articulation t o Accommodation: W o m e n ’ s Movement in India

NEERA DESAI

Introduct ion

A disturbing aspect o f the contemporary social situation i n India is the slow erosion o f concern for women’s issues. I n the decades preceding the attainment of national independence, prior to 1947, there was an outstanding record o f women’s participation i n political struggle and through i t o f articulating their rights. After independence, particularly until the early seventies, there has practically been n o concerted action towards achieving the goal of equality.

How is this inaction to be explained? Why have the women leaders chosen to accept and acquiesce? Has their prevailing mood any linkages with the nature of development? I n the present paper, my effort w i l l be to analyse the forces leading to the reversal o f women’s movement and also to examine the consequences o f the policy o f adaptation and accommodation on women’s status. Defining movement and development

The dictionary meaning of movement is ‘a series of actions and endeavours o f a body of persons for a special object’ (Wilkinson 1971:11). Heberle (1949:346), while discussing the sociology of social movements, defines a social movement as an attempt by certain groups to bring about fundamental changes i n the social order, especially i n the basic institutions of property and labour relationships. Joseph Gusfield defines social movements, i n International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, as ‘socially shared demands for change in some aspect of social order. I t also has an ideologic a l component, that is, a set o f ideas which specify discontent,

prescribe solutions and justify change’ (1968:445). Gail Omvedt (1979) defines women’s movement i n a more or less similar vein. According to her a women’s movement is the organized effort to

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achieve the goals of equality and/or liberation for women. I t includes some kind of ideological understanding or analysis of how these goals could be achieved and it mobilizes women i n terms of

demands conceived of as steps toward the ultimate goal. The term development has been used in the last quarter century i n various ways. Since the end o f the Second World War, development

has become a slogan of global aspiration and effort. It was thought that if policy actions were taken to speed u p a country’s economic

growth, increased popular participation in the political process and a more equitable distribution o f income would inevitably follow.

Adelman and Morris (1973:1) observe, ‘They assumed, in other words, that increase i n the rate o f growth o f such components of economic development as industrialization, agricultural productivity, physical overhead capital investment, and per capita G N P were closely associated with increase in the extent of political and economic participation’. The newly independent countries began to look at the developed countries as models for development. These countries, i t was argued, achieved their economic prosperity through industrialization and technology which led to high and rapid increases i n G N P . Attempts were made, therefore, to replicate these models without realizing the politico-economic contexts

of their success. The low per capita income became the single index o f poverty i n the Third World countries. Irene Tinker (1976:22) mentions, ‘During much o f the last century, development has been viewed as a panacea for the economic ills of all less developed countries; create a modern infrastructure and economy will take off, providing a better life for every one’. I t was assumed that any distribution problem could be taken care of once the size o f the national cake o f production was significantly increased. However,

the actual experiences and data from various Third World countries highlight the fact that the process of development is neither so simple, nor does i t benefit everybody equally. Many studies have revealed that hundreds o f millions of desperately poor people throughout the world have been hurt rather than helped by

economic development. As Adelman and Morris (1973:188) describe, ‘The process o f modernization shifts the income o f distribution i n favour o f the middle class and upper income groups and against lower income groups’. A s indicated in UNESCO paper o n Indicators o f Social and Economic change and their Applications, ‘The conventional indicators, G N P per capita and related mea-

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sures, only served the purpose as long as development was

identified with economic growth and the latter was above all identified with processing and trading. If development is t o be identified with such components as satisfaction of human needs for all— equality and social justice— level of autonomy or self reliance, with participation o f all and ecological balance, then development indicators will have to reflect exactly this, as directly as possible’ (p. 28). I n short, development policy and planning are being reoriented o n the basis o f social justice and o n the belief that any pattern o f economic growth is unjust if it does not improve the standard o f living o f the mass o f the people.

Relating the phenomenon of development with women, it has been noticed that i n subsistence economies, by the introduction of new methods and technologies, the process of development has tended to restrict the economic independence o f women as their

traditional jobs have been challenged. As Irene Tinker (1976:33) observes further, ‘In the developed “modern” world women continue to experience restricted economic opportunities, while at the same time finding increased family obligations thrust upon them’. Kamla Bhasin (1977:1) adds, ‘ I t is now increasingly recognized that when development does not take place with the aim of achieving social justice, and when the poor continue to be exploited, women are exploited more’. She says further that studies conducted in recent years o n the extent and nature of women’s participation have shown that as long as the economy was largely subsistence based, the productivity o f women was at least equal to,

if not greater, than that of men. The introduction of more intensive agricultural production, market and money economies and commercialization tended to exclude women from productive roles i n the modern sector and phase them out o f traditional productive roles as part o f the process o f developing (p.67). A s observed earlier, the way i n which the development strategy works, i t tends to benefit the middle and upper class women. It is in this context that we shall be looking for a relationship between development and women’s movement.

Women’s movement in pre-independence India I n the movement for equality o f women i n I n d i a , the contributions

o f social reformers and the freedom struggle have very great significance. I n this period the social reformers, many o f whom were also

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political leaders, were deeply concerned with changing the nature and orientations of some of the social institutions. The newly educated class was exposed to the western society and its values. This created awareness of oppressive social customs. They felt that many traditional practices and institutions came i n the way o f progress. They also realized that women, particularly of urban upper castes, suffered from various social and cultural hardships which needed immediate redress. I n fifty years o f the history of demand for social reform, one could identify two different phases. I n the first phase, social reformers like Raja Rammohan Roy identified the gross social evils that thwarted women’s freedom and made a strong plea for legal reform. I n the second phase, great stress was laid o n education o f women. However, the emphasis here was more o n narrowing the mental gap between husband and wife and it was further argued that education would improve their efficiency as wives and mothers and strengthen the hold of traditional values in

society. One would like to agree with Vina Muzumdar’s observat i o n that all these activities touched only the urban middle and upper class women who were less than 10 per cent o f the female population o f the Indian sub-continent at that date (Mazumdar

n.d.: 2). Another factor which contributed towards developing women’s movement was the spontaneous and massive participation o f wom e n i n the struggle for national freedom. The movement as developed b y Mahatma Gandhi encouraged women to actively participate i n i t . This participation helped i n the removal o f social shackles and activized women to press for political equality. Many o f the active participants i n the freedom struggle became the founders o f the emerging women’s organizations. Further, some o f the women’s organizations came into existence precisely with the aim of involving women i n constructive activities during periods o f political lull. A n outstanding women’s organization in Gujarat, Jyoti Sangh, was established i n 1934 for this purpose. I n short, the social reform movement and freedom struggle provided a powerful spurt to starting organizations o f women catering to their special needs. The A l l India Women’s Conference (AIWC), t h e m a j o r u m b r e l l a o r g a n i z a t i o n started i n 1927, c l a i m e d for itself a

non-political character, despite the fact that some o f its founders and frontline cadres were politically active. A I W C took a very active part i n condemning evil social customs and practices which

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denied equal status to women. Further, i t played a significant role i n creating social awareness for equalitarian legislations. Besides A I W C , many state level and local organizations sprang u p . Even the organizations o f different castes and communities started having their women’s wings. These organizations may be divided into two broad categories, viz. awareness-raising organizat i o n s , a n d rescue o r service organizations. O n e o f the most i m -

portant activities o f this period was the creation o f awareness about the social plight o f women and their unequal status. This was done through organizing debates and discussions as well as by articles i n

journals and newspapers.! Thus, during this phase we see women participating i n wider struggles, questioning the traditional values, trying to raise the consciousness o f members, and asserting their political right o f

being recognized as citizens.’ As mentioned earlier, the active participation i n political movements o f some o f the office bearers o f women’s organizations, did help i n creating a model for others to emulate. The political parties, though they encouraged women to participate i n freedom movement, did not focus on women’s question. Consequently, though women came out o f the four walls en masse to assert their political right as citizens, the absence o f focus

on women's issues in the movement did n o t yield dividends in the form o f social and economic equality. Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya, the veteran woman leader, feels that the wider perspective adopted i n those days did not somehow bring out women’s problems as one o f their principal items o f the agenda for social action. Vina

Mazumdar (1976:66) also notes, ‘The greatest failure of the reform movement lay i n its inability to expose the nature o f oppression that affected women i n different layers of our society and consequently to set any goals that would be meaningful to all women and those

who believed in their cause’. O f course, during this period the major enemy was foreign rule and i t was felt that as soon as the enemy was vanquished not only would all the problems be solved but a new era for all, including women, would begin. Women’s movement in post-independence India: accommodation andpassivity The dawn o f independence i n 1947 generated a great deal of hope and optimism i n the people. N o w that the enemy was driven out o f

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the country, the Indian people could dream o f prosperity and

justice. Free India adopted a constitution which recognized equality o f both the sexes. I n the field o f economic development, India opted for a mixed economy, with a great emphasis o n rapid industrialization. I t was also visualized during this period that prosperity i n one sector, or one class, would gradually spread to all others. The early fifties saw the enactment o f several legislations

which established formal equality and removed social disabilities. Some women, who had taken an active part in the freedom struggle, were elected o r nominated to legislative bodies, or occupied other

positions of power and social esteem. I n short, the immediate impact of political freedom was the generation of hope and confidence among women regarding their future. There was n o need, it was felt b y many, o f an active women’s movement to press their

demands. Another important factor which affected the contours of women’s movement was the emergence o f new India as a welfare state. A s a part o f the policy o f establishing a democratic welfare society, i n 1953 the government established a Central Social Welfare Board

with a nation-wide programme for grants-in-aid for certain specific activities. Many of the prominent women social workers were associated with this organization either at the Centre or in the staies. Several voluntary organizations and women’s associations began to rely o n the grants received from the Board. A s a result they lost some o f their spirit and vigour o f the pre-independence phase and the nature o f their activities was shaped by the programmes for which grants were available. Women’s development was thought to be confined to education, social welfare, and health by the Planning Commission. The main thrust was o n the expansion of girls’ education, r u r a l welfare services, a n d condensed courses for adult wo-

men. The Health services for women mainly concentrated on the provision o f services for maternal and child welfare, health education. nutrition, and family planning. Besides in every plan the proportionate allocation for social services was declining, and this was the sector which was subjected to heavy cuts in times of

crisis. As mentioned by the Committee on Status of Women (1974:308), ‘The o r d e r o f priorities u p t o t h e Fourth Plan has been

education, then health, and lastly other aspects o f welfare because i t was generally assumed that all other programmes will benefit women indirectly, i f notdirectly’. The continual absence of concern for

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increasing the earning power of women has given women’s economic needs a low priority value. This approach of the ruling group had its impact o n activities o f women’s organizations. They considered women as beneficiaries of economic development and not as active participants i n i t . Hence women’s organizations during

this period, of nearly a quarter of a century, ran literacy classes, adult education centres, nursery schools, and aided nutrition programmes for pre-school children. A s for the economic improvement o f women, the organizers o f these institutions felt that giving them some sort o f training i n crafts was enough. Hence many of them ran tailoring, embroidery, and other classes. Having sewing machines in a women’s organization was considered a great

achievement. These trends, as well as the nature o f economic development

which took place in India, gave the best pay-off to urban middle and upper class women. Since the leadership o f women’s movement in the pre-independence period was primarily i n the hands of these classes, the implications o f their advantaged position, in terms o f

the development of women’s movement, were very serious. Another factor which had serious implications for the development o f women’s movement was planning based o n mixed economy,

which helped the tertiary sector in the earlier period. The increasing entry o f women i n higher education, and the pressure o f rising standard o f living within the middle class, raised their entry into the employment market. The upper and middle classes were the beneficiaries both o f higher education and new employment opportunities. The academic and medical professions which were most liberal in accommodating an increasing number of qualified women within their ranks, helped to strenthen the illusion of rapid improvement i n women’s conditions and achievement o f equality b y them. M a n y o f these women were happy that they were successfully playing a dual role, unlike their western counterparts. O f course, they had relations and inexpensive domestic help. Several o f them suffered the strains o f the dual role but not always the conflict, because many a time they were getting the best o f both the worlds. O n the one hand they were able to work and feel satisfied that they were ‘using’ their education, and o n the other hand they were able also to accord a high priority to the needs of the family. I n short, operation o f these politico-economic factors after independence generated a complacency in the minds of women o f this

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class and they easily adjusted to the traditional value of accepting a subordinate role i n the family. These were the women who had earlier articulated the demands for equality. When they accepted the path o f aquiescence and complacency, the women’s movement experienced a set back. Being the beneficiaries o f development, these women not only did not lead any movement but, on the contrary, gloried i n the traditional subordinate role under the guise o f ‘India’s Cultural Tradition’. The various findings about the deteriorating condition o f women notwithstanding, even today they are not ready to accept that there is any need for concerted action around women’s issues. They feel that they are better off than their western sisters because their marriage tie is not as fragile as i n the West and family feeling is stronger i n Indian society. Hence some o f these women, who continue to hold high positions i n women’s organizations, do not recognize the need even for consciousness raising. Further, they believe that there is no discrimination i n employment and they also are convinced that most women work not out of necessity but because o f getting extra money. They d o not take any lead i n pressing for a legislation to improve the working conditions o f women o r even for starting day care centres. I n fact, their sensitivity to the injustice suffered by lower class women is so blunted that they are not ready to even raise a mild protest against the atrocities suffered by the latter. Summarizing the activities o f these women’s organizations, Sulabha Brahme (1977:4) says, ‘They have largely focused their attention o n reforms i n personal law— marriage, divorce, dowry, inheritance. Their activities have been organized around problems of education, health, child welfare, village improvement. The basic approach has been to provide relief rather than equip women to shoulder new responsibilities, assume n e w roles i n society, asserting t h e i r basic

human rights.” The elite leadership has its counterpart i n the academic world as well. Many studies undertaken o n middle class working women o r o n the status of women have been blind to the real situation. Commenting o n these studies Manorama Savur (1975:14) says, ‘Their writings i f taken seriously and put into action run against all possibilities of liberation of lower class women who directly participate i n some productive activity which is necessary for their survival . . . yet none o f the middle class writers have learned to argue, as at least the European Women Trade Unionists have, for a more equitable distribution of family responsibility and equal and fair chances for women to work.’

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E n d o f the acquiescence?

The passivity o r accommodatio n to the new situation, referred to above, lasted t i l l the seventies. The stagnation o f economy after the sixties, the growing agrarian unrest i n states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and the rapid rise i n the prices o f necessities led to a growth o f interest i n some o f the left parties to take u p issues centering round a woman. Women's Organizations such as Shramik Mahila Sangathana (The Working Women’s Organization) took u p the issues o f rising prices o f essential goods, adulteration, and empty hearths. The Anti-Price Rise Movement i n 1973 was a united front organization of women bel o n g i n g t o C P I ( M ) , Socialist P a r t y , Congress, a n d e v e n n o n -

political middle class housewives (see Omvedt 1980:160). The economic hardships of the rural masses have also drawn the attention o f some political parties. While pressing for better worki n g conditions for peasant women, issues like wife beating, alchoholism, dowry, and sexual harassment from upper castes were also given attention. The publication of the Report of the Committee o n Status of W o m e n , o n t h e e v e o f t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l W o m e n ’ s Y e a r , drew

attention to some of the alarming facts with regard to employment, political participation, and health status of Indian women. The International Women’s Year and the Decade provided opportunities for analysing Indian women’s real status and the causes for the same. Many o f the studies have shown that the adoption of modern farming methods, new cropping patterns, and new technology have affected female labour adversely. The commercialization of markets and increasing role o f capital and wholesale dealers i n trade have virtually eliminated the traditional role of women i n trade and commerce. The modernization of fishing industry and the large scale organization o f dairying, are instances i n point. The displacement of female labour through the introduction of a new technology as i n the case of the textile industry as against hand weaving, indicates that the ‘Labour market as is operating is not neutral as between

men and women. ’ 3 Besides these set-backs one o f the most depressing phenomena that is i n evidence is that o f more and more women working in the unorganized sector, where they are being forced to accept lower

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NEERA DESAI

wages. Nirmala Banerjee (1978:9) has described succinctly how enterpreneurs, in order to reduce their cost of production, resort to a sort o f ‘putting out’ system, thus making women workers suffer i n terms o f wages, working conditions, and inhuman existence. Similarly, unemployment rate among the educated women is also

very startling. Table 1

Degree holders & Technical Personnel Degree holders

Involuntary unemployment* among women and men degree holders as a percentage o f total men and women degree holders.

MEN

WOMEN

Arts/Humanities Commerce Agriculture Veterinary Science/ Medicine Science Engineering/Technology Medicine Technology/Vocational

10.7 15.3 13.8

19.7 21.8 23.3

11.3 05.4 08.9 03.5 18.28

20.2 13.1 17.4 28.5 38.4

Others

07.32

17.49

* Involuntary unemployment = those seeking work b u t not getting it.

Source: Census G Series, Volume on Degree holders and technical personnel, 1971.

Women are finding it harder to get jobs than men in every

discipline among the higher educated. I n short, during the last decade some currents have been generated which have drawn the attention o f some o f the sensitive sections o f the society to the suffering of women and efforts have started, though not i n a systematic manner, to organize women against their economic, social, and personal oppression. The major shift in the women’s movement which is nascently developing is that the leadership is now being slowly transferred to

F r o m Articulation to Accommodation

297

young college educated women and the problems o f women of lower middle class and weaker sections are becoming the concern o f this group. The increasing number o f cases of wife beating and wife burning over dowry, and atrocities against the untouchable (Harijan) and tribal women have induced some of these groups to organize women for a struggle. A s a consequence various groups with radical perspectives have emerged. Though they are not very stable, many o f them take u p a militant socialist feminist perspective, and d o not restrict their activities to economic and political issues but also take u p social issues like dowry and rape (see Omvedt 1979:1038; 1980:1). Conclusion

I n the post-independence period, the development strategy initially benefitted the middle and upper class women, who being beneficiaries d i d not assume the leadership of a strong women’s movement. I n fact they appeared to have blinkers i n regard to women’s problems. The limited changes that had taken place looked significant, i f not unbelievable. Things, i t appeared, had started to move. The realization that i t was a false start came later. The problem is now viewed i n a new perspective. The development strategy has conferred little benefit on women. The emergence o f women’s liberation movement i n the West has encouraged some sections o f women i n India to fight for equality and justice. M y t h s with regard to the high status o f Indian women are being exploded and protests are being raised against the use o f woman as a sex symbol. O f course, this trend is still not very powerful, but the failures i n the field o f economic development are likely to draw women into the movement i n increasing numbers. Until recently our planners had not been thinking seriously about the declining status o f women. Efforts are being made to draw their attention to the adverse effect o f development o n women. The attitude of political decision-makers will have an important role to play i n changing the status o f women. Kamla Bhasin (1977:9) is right when she observes, ‘ I t is not only the ignorance of planners about suitable plans that hinders the participation of women in development; a major hindrance seems to be a lack of commitment and political will to institute widespread changes i n the social relations of production and power structures that arise thereof’.

298

NEERA DESAI NOTES

1 Some of the debates remind us of present day demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement o f the West. I n 1929, i n a meeting in Ahmedabad it was resolved that n o prefix o f Miss o r Mrs. should be attached to a woman’s name. A similar

decision was taken in Pune. 2

I n 1917, M r . Montagu, the Secretary o f State for India, visited this country to study I n d i a n conditions before deciding upon a new constitutional reform for

India. A deputation of women waiting upon Mr. Montagu demanded that ‘the Indian People’ should include Indian women also and that women should not be put o n a par with children, foreigners, and lunatics i n any scheme of reforms to be

given to the country (Desai, 1977:218). 3 See ‘Report of the Working Group on Employment of Women’, 1978. Also see Bhasin 1977, Sandhu 1976: 19 and Jain 1980.

REFERENCES Adelman, Irma and Cynthia Taft Morris, Economic Growth and Social Equality in Developing Countries, California: Stanford University Press, 1973. Banerjee, Nirmala, ‘Women Workers and Development’, Social Scientist, 6 (8

March) 1978. Bhasin, K a m l a , ‘Participation o f Women i n Development’, mimeo, Consultation

o n Improving Nutrition of the Rural Poor i n Asia and Far East, Bangkok, Thailand: 1977. B r a h m e , Sulabha, ‘Vindication o f Women’s Rights’, mimeo, Gokhale Institute o f Politics and Economics, Poona: 1977. Committee o n Status o f Women i n India, Towards Equality: Report o f the Committee o n Status o f Women in India, N e w D e l h i : Ministry o f Education and Social Welfare, Government o f I n d i a , 1974. D e s a i , N e e r a , Women in Modern India, B o m b a y : Vora and Company, 1977.

Gusfield, Joseph, ‘The Study o f Social Movements’, i n International Encyclopedia o f Social Sciences, 14, 1968. Heberle, Rudolf, ‘Observations o n the Sociology o f Social Movements’, American Sociological Review, 14 (3 June) 1949, 346. Jain, Devaki, Women’s Quest For Power, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980. Mazumdar, Vina, ‘Women’s Development and Public Policy’, mimeo, n.d. , ‘The Social Reform Movement i n India: From Ranade to Nehru’, i n Indian Women from Purdah to Modernity, ed. B . R . Nanda, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976. Omvedt, Gail, ‘The Participant Study o f Women’s Movement’, i n The Politics o f Anthropology, eds. Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim, The Hague: Mouton, 1979. —, We Will Smash This Prison, London: Zed Press, 1980. Sandhu, N . K . , ‘Technological Development versus Economic Contribution o f W o m e n i n R u r a l P u n j a b ’ , Social Change, 6 , 3 a n d 4 , 1976.

F r o m Articulation to Accommodation

299

Savur, Manorama, ‘Women’s Liberation and Productive Activity’, Social Scientist, 1975. T i n k e r , Irene and Michele B o Bramsen, eds. Women and World Development, Washington D . C . : Overseas Development Council, 1976. U N E S C O , Indicators o f Social and Economic Change and their Applications Wilkinson, Paul, Social Movement, London: Macmillan, 1971.

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism: A Comparison of Brazilian and U.S. Factory Workers HELEN 1. SAFA

Women have always constituted a source of cheap labour for indust-

rial capitalism (Saffioti 1971). But the way in which they are incorporated into the paid labour force differs according to different cultures, classes, and stages o f capitalist development. W i t h the development o f industrial capitalism and the movement o f production outside the home into the factory, the family ceased to function as a productive unit and became dependent on wages earned outside the home. While production became increasingly public, reproduction remained within the private sphere of the family, though clearly also affected by the larger economic changes occurring within society. As Bridenthal (1976:5) has pointed out, ‘for women, the experience has become one o f pulls between opposing forces, work and family’ and the constant attempt to recon-

cile the dialectic between the two. I t is through the allocation o f labour at the household level that we can see how larger economic forces impinge o n women’s productive and reproductive role. This paper will examine the way i n which women combine their productive role in paid labour with their reproductive role as wives and mothers i n two societies at very different stages o f development: Brazil and the United States.’ While m o r e industrialized t h a n most Latin American countries,

Brazil is still heavily dependent o n foreign sources of capital and technology for much o f her industrialization and economic growth. Partly as a result o f this dependence and the rapid shift into capitalintensive industrialization, Brazil is also characterized by a labour surplus and high rates o f unemployment and undeiemployment, much greater than what ever existed in the U.S. Under these conditions o f labour surplus, clearly only the most productive mem-

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 301 bers o f the potential labour force can find employment, excluding large numbers o f women, particularly older, married women with

children (cf. Sao Paulo 1978:74). Thus, the percentage of women employed i n Brazil is less than half o f that i n the United States,

while only 9.93 per cent of married women in Brazil are employed compared to 4 1 per cent i n the U.S. (Vasquez Miranda 1977:270). This study focuses on women factory workers i n these two societies since factory work represents entry level jobs into the formal labour market i n both countries for workers with relatively low educational and skill levels. I n Brazil, and most o f the Third World countries, due again to the large labour surplus, there exists an extensive informal labour market, i n which women play a predominant role, working as domestic servants, street vendors and

casual labour (cf. Arizpe 1977). Factory work then often represents the first stable form o f employment open to Third World women, and is generally reserved for young, single women who were born i n the city o r have lived there since childhood and thereby been able to acquire more education than most migrant women, who are largely

confined to the informal I: bour market. T h e data analysed here consists

of

100 interviews w i t h young,

mostly single women employed i n a textile and garment plant i n Sao Paulo, Brazil and eighty interviews with older, mostly married women employed i n a garment plant i n New Jersey.2 Sao Paulo was chosen for comparative purposes because i t is the most highly industrialized city in Brazil, i f not i n Latin America, and the centre

of capital accumulation and economic growth, the showpiece of the ‘Brazilian miracle’. I n Sao Paulo, the percentage o f women employed is 35.3 per cent, almost double the national average o f 18 per cent, b u t the number o f women employed drops off sharply after the age o f twenty-four, when most women marry (Sao Paulo 1978:75). Thus, i n Sao Paulo and Brazil generally, single women still constitute the primary source of cheap female labour, as i n the early stages o f industrialization i n western Europe and the United States (Tilly and Scott 1978). A t a more advanced level o f industrial capitalism as i n the U . S . , however, young women remain i n school longer and are primarily employed i n clerical and other white-collar jobs. Therefore, marginal industries such as the garment industry examined here, are forced to turn to a supplementary labour reserve, namely that o f older, married women for

these

low-paying, unskilled jobs. Thus, it would appear that i n advanced

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HELEN I . SAFA

capitalist countries married women generally constitute a secondary labour reserve, at least in blue-collar jobs and are employed only when the supply o f young, single women is not sufficient. Even

in Sao Paulo, the women employed in the garment plant (who constitute 20 per cent o f the sample) are older and more likely to be married than the women employed in the textile factory. Therefore, the nature o f the industry as well as the nation’s stage of development determine labour recruitment patterns. H o w d o these different recruitment patterns for women i n paid productive labour at different levels o f capitalist development affect the allocation o f labour at the household level? A look at the household composition o f these two samples appears to indicate a very different allocation o f labour i n Brazilian and U.S. working

class families. Whereas the Brazilian women are generally members o f large households with multiple wage-earners, the New Jersey

families are small, with one or two wage-earners. These differences i n household composition and number of wage-earners within Brazilian and U . S . working class families, can be explained I think, b y different survival strategies? of working class families within an industrial capitalist mode o f production at two different stages of development. I n Brazil, where married women are generally denied access to formal paid employment i n factory jobs because o f the abundance o f young, single women for these jobs, other family members are forced to become wage-earners at an early age, since multiple wage-earning is critical for the family’s survival. I n the United States, however, where married women may continue to be employed, i t is not as necessary for other family members, particularly children, to contribute to family income. Both Brazilian and

U.S. working class families often rely on more than one wage earner, b u t i n N e w Jersey it is generally husband and wife who are employed, whereas i n Sao Paulo, with lower wages and higher costs o f living, several members o f the household, including children, are forced to work. Through a study o f the allocation o f labour at the household level we can sce how Brazilian and U.S. working class families employ different strategies to maximize their family’s survival. B o t h groups o f working class families have lost control over the means of product i o n through the process o f proletarianization and have to survive through the sale o f their labour. They have entered what Tilly and Scott (1978: 105), referring to early industrialization i n western

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 303 Europe, term a ‘family wage economy’, in which ‘the composition

of the household no longer was dictated by a need for household labourers, as i n the family economy, but b y a need for cash. The balance between wage earners and consumers in the household determined family fortunes’. I n order to maximize the number o f wage earners per family, Sao Paulo working class families incorporate other adult k i n into the household and send as many members into paid labour as early as

possible. I n contrast, New Jersey working class families are much smaller, with only one or two wage earners per household. Among married couples, the principal breadwinner is usually the man, but women often continue to work after marriage and childbirth to supplement family income and to support their children’s prolonged education. Women may also have fewer children in order to

invest in the upward mobility of a few, rather than in the labour of many. I n short, while i n the Sao Paulo family wage economy, the emphasis is o n the maximization o f the number o f wage earners per household, i n N e w Jersey, the reduction in the number of wage earners is balanced by the reduction i n the number o f consumers, particularly children. I n both Sao Paulo and New Jersey families, however, the household and not the individual remains the basic

unit of decision-making, allocating the labour of household members to paid wage o r domestic responsibilities so as to maximize the

family’s chances for survival or upward mobility. Brazilian factory women

While the U.S. may be characterized as an advanced capitalist economy, where the vast bulk o f the population depends on wages, Brazil is a dependent capitalist society still incorporating many pre-capitalist features. Brazilian industrialization, particularly i n the post-war years, has been largely financed and directed from abroad, particularly i n the Sao Paulo area where this study was conducted. The textile industry was one o f the first industries i n Sao Paulo and has remained technologically quite mixed, with very m o d e r n , capital-intensive plants, especially i n synthetics, and some older, more labour-intensive plants, particularly in natural fibres such as the cotton textile factory studied here. The proportion o f women workers is generally much lower i n capital-intensive, highly automated plants, which favour a reduced number of male workers ‘at higher wage and skill levels (cf. Blay 1978:144-5).

304

HELEN I . SAFA

Economic development and industnalization have apparently not

led to higher labour force participation rates for Brazilian women, at least i n industry. I n the Sao Paulo area, despite very rapid rates o f industrialization since 1940, the percentage of women employed in the secondary sector has increased from only 14 per cent in 1940 to

17 per cent in 1970 (Vasquez Miranda 1977:266). This is due t o the fact that industrialization i n Sao Paulo i n recent decades has been primarily capital-intensive i n such industries as metallurgy, machinery, chemical, pharmaceuticals and electronics. While bureaucratic and clerical activities for women have increased in these larger

establishments, these occupations have been limited predominantly to younger single women who have completed high school and some have even started college (Blay 1978: 213). Thus, while the overall

activity rate for women has not changed much since 1940, there has been a marked shift o f women out o f agriculture and into services with industry remaining fairly stable (Population Council 1978:9,

Blay 1978: 142). The labour force for industrialization i n the Sao Paulo area was drawn largely from foreign immigrants (especially Italians) and rural migrants expelled from their peasant and artisan activities i n the countryside. I n our sample, 57 per cent of the women factory workers are born outside the greater Sao Paulo area, chiefly in the surrounding state o f Sao Paulo and the northeast. However, as was pointed out earlier, factory workers i n Latin America generally are not recent migrants, and our sample is no exception. Over 60 per cent o f the migrants i n our sample have been living i n the city for over ten years, while over half said they came as children with their parents. The educational level is also higher than that found among recent migrants, who are generally employed in the informal economy as domestic servants, petty vendors, etc. Among the factory women interviewed, 65 per cent have completed primary school (signifying four years o f education) while 23 per cent have gone o n to secondary school. I n short, a factory job i n Brazil, and Latin America generally, represents a considerable advancement over jobs i n the informal sector. While wages are very low by U.S. standards (48 per cent earn between 2-3 minimum salary units monthly)#, they are still higher and much more stable than what can be earned i n the informal sector, especially by women. However, most women work in factories only for a short period o f their lives, from the time they finish primary school until they

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 305 marry. Thus, i n our sample 49 per cent have worked i n this factory less than four years and all but three o f these women are under twenty-four. Among these factory women 64 per cent are under twenty-four (24 per cent under eithteen) and only 13 per cent are married and 5 per cent formerly married.> The most apparent reason behind the small number o f married women employed at the factory is the reluctance o f the owners to pay the rather liberal maternity benefits to which permanently employed pregnant wom e n i n Brazil are entitled. Cultural attitudes also work against the employment o f married women (cf. Blay 1978: 273) and 51 per cent o f o u r sample o f single women indicated that they planned to work only until marriage o r pregnancy. However it would appear to be primarily the abundance o f a cheap, unskilled supply o f young, unmarried women which works against the employment o f married

women. Hence Brazilian factory women are forced to make a real choice between their productive and reproductive roles; i f they marry and have children, they will probably be forced to give u p working, at

least i n factory jobs. Undoubtedly, many married women continue to work i n the informal economy, i n self-employed activities which are deemed more compatible with their domestic role. Employed single women living at home are expected to contri-

bute to the family income. Only 23 per cent of our sample (and n o t a single married woman) indicated that they spend their salary only o n themselves, the rest contributing all or most o f their salary to family and household expenses. Asked what would happen i f they were not working, 42 per cent noted that their families could not afford to buy the same things. I t would seem then, that the meagre wages o f these women make a substantial contribution to the family’s welfare. I n fact, Brazilian working class families appear to be surviving by following a policy o f multiple wage-earning, which drives both men and women into the labour force at an early age (Sao Paulo 1978: 65). I n our sample, 89 per cent o f the women started working under the age o f eighteen, mostly i n factory work.® Those currently

living with their parents almost always started working when under eighteen years o f age, suggesting i t was parental pressure which forced them to find a job. Households tend to be large and to include large numbers o f young adults who can work and contribute to the family income. Thus, 28 per cent o f our sample consists of

306

HELEN I . SAFA

households numbering seven o r more members, with 40 per cent of the families having four o r more working members each. ( I n the large families with seven or more members, 85 per cent have four or more working members.) I n most cases our respondents live with

their parents (sometimes only the mother), siblings, and occasionally other related young adults of the same generation such as cousins. Where neither parent is present, the woman may be living with

siblings or other relatives and friends. However, young married couples generally live alone or with their children and seldom with other relatives. Only two women live alone. The point appears to be to maximize the number o f working members o f the household, all o f whom are expected to contribute to the family income. The relationship o f family income to the number o f persons working i n the household is shown b y the fact that the highest

incomes are found in households with the largest number of workers. Thus 52.6 per cent of families in our sample with monthly incomes o f Cr.6000-10,000 o r more have from four to seven working members, compared to 25 per cent o f those with one to three

working members (Table 1). Many of these working members are brothers and sisters o f the respondent. Most o f these siblings are also employed in factory o r service jobs. Among 68 per cent respondents, one to three additional siblings are employed in the household, and in more than three-fourths o f these families, incomes

range between Cr. 4000 to Cr. 6000 monthly. This is still low considering the large size o f these families, but at this stage at least

older children seem to make a substantial contribution to family income. It is difficult to know how these families survive when the older children are small and unable to work, particularly since it is difficult for mothers to make u p for their children’s lack o f earning

capacity. It is significant that in our sample married women have lower family incomes than single women, most of whom live in households with various wage-earners. Married women with children may continue to earn some income through the informal economy, b y doing piece work at home o r petty vending, but this is generally not the equivalent o f a paid factory o r other formal job. ’ This hardship undoubtedly accounts for the high rate o f infant mortality in Sao Paulo today. Infant mortality has increased to 40 per cent in Sao Paulo in the 1960-70 decade with a decline in the

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 307 Table 1 SAO PAULO

Number o f Workers in Household b y Family Income in Cruzieros FAMILY INCOME IN CRUZIEROS

No. of Less than Workers i n 3000 Cr. Household

3001 to 4000 Cr.

4001 to 6000 Cr.

600010,000 Cr. and more

Row Total

1 t o 3 Workers

8 13.3 66.7

14 23.3 77.8

23 38.3 67.6

15 25.0 42.9

60 60.6

4 t o 7 Workers

4 10.5 33.3

4 10.5 22.2

10. 26.3 29.4

20 52.6 57.1

38 38.4

7 t o 10 Workers

0 0.0 0.0

0 0.0 0.0

1 100.0 2.9

0. 0.0 0.0

1 1.0

Column Total

12 12.1

18 18.2

34 34.3

35 35.4

99 100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage, and column percentage respectively.

purchasing power (Wood 1977:57)%. A t the same time, the high infant mortality rate induces families to have large numbers of children i n the hope that some will survive to adulthood (Table 2). Rapid inflation and laggi:g wage rates have accelerated the decline i n the purchasing power o f working class families i n recent years, resulting i n a decrease i n the real minimum wage i n Sao Paulo from 100 i n 1960 to 70 i n 1970 (Ibid. : 58). Minimum wage rates have been tightly controlled to keep labour costs low and have not kept u p with the rapid rise i n prices. A s a result, from 1958 to 1969 the purchasing power o f the wage o f the head o f the average family fell

HELEN I . SAFA

308

Table 2 SAO PAULO

Income in Cruzieros by Marital Status M A R I T A L STATUS Income i n Cruzieros

Married

Single

Formerly Married

Row Total

Less than 3000 Cr.

3 25.0 20.0

9 75.0 11.1

0 0 0.0

12 12.1

3001 t o 4000 Cr.

4 22.2 26.7

14 77.8 17.3

0 0.0 0.0

18 18.2

4001 to 6000 Cr.

5 14.7 33.3

27 79.4 33.3

2 5.9 66.7

34 34.3

More than 6001 Cr.

3 8.6 20.0

31 88.6 38.3

1 2.9 33.3

35 35.4

Column Total

15 15.2

81 81.8

3 3.0

99 100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage, and column percentage respectively.

b y 36.5 per cent and even with more members working, the family’s real income still fell b y 9.4 per cent (Sao Paulo 1978: 64). The value o f m i n i m u m wage fell from 100 i n 1970 to 82 in 1974 (Ibid.: 46). Workers have responded by extending the number of hours worked and b y increasing the number o f workers per family. The number of members employed i n the average working class family in Sao Paulo from 1958 to 1969 increased from 1 to 2 (Ibid. : 63), with many more probably working at non-regulated and unreported jobs in the informal economy. Women also try to stretch an insufficient wage b y substituting domestic labour inputs (such as kitchen gardens and chickens) for market purchases (Schmink 1979: 9). Consumption patterns have also changed, with a decreasing percentage o f income

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 309 spent o n such basic items as food and clothing, and an increase i n

transport, education and recreation (Sao Paulo 1978: 68) The necessity for a multiple wage-earning strategy in Brazil has

therefore been made particularly acute by a government policy which has allowed prices to rise, while keeping wages tightly controlled to keep labour costs low. This was the price the poor of Brazil paid for the ‘economic miracle’ initiated by the military government i n 1964, which has slowed considerably i n the early 1970s i n the wake o f the world-wide recession. During this period, income inequality i n Brazil, already among the highest i n Latin America, grew markedly; a recent study found that from 1960 to

1970 the share of total income among the richest 5 per cent of the population increased 72 per cent, while nearly 75 per cent of the population experienced n o change during this ten year period (Population Council 1978: 11). The top 5 per cent of the population

took home 36.3 per cent of its total income, a share virtually the same as that of the poorest 80 per cent (36.2 per cent) (Sao Paulo 1978: 60). The Population Council (Ibid.: 11) quoting from studies

by Kocher (1973) and Repetto (1974) notes: Studies of the relationship between fertility and economic development indicate that, for countries at similar aggregate income levels, the less skewed the social and economical distribution, the lower the overall fertility level and the more rapid the fertility decline . . . . I n other words, the more the benefits o f economic growth accrue to a small minority of the population, the greater would be the tendency for low-income groups to maintain

high fertility. The data presented here offer one possible explanation for these findings. That is, poor families continue to have large families under conditions o f extreme income inequality because there is n o advantage i n reducing the number o f wage-earners i n the family. High fertility levels o f course mean increased number of workers, which

can itself keep wages down, by increasing competition for jobs, not only between men and women but among men as well. Thus, high fertility levels may be contradictory to the long-range, aggregate

interests of the working class as a whole. but I would argue, it still appears functional from the perspective o f the individual working class family, which has only its labour to sell. As long as men as the principal bread-winners are not being paid the equivalent o f a

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HELEN I . SAFA

family wage, that is enough to support themselves and their dependants, then other members of the family are forced to contribute. I n Brazil today, minimum salaries do not even cover the maintenance o f the worker during his/her working years, n o less the long-term

consumption needs of the household (Schmink 1979: 8). Factory women in New Jersey

I n the early days of industnalization in the U.S. also, the textile industry employed only young, unmarried women. I n New England, where the textile industry began, these women were primarily

the daughters of farm and artisan families who lived in boarding houses furnished b y the factory and under close surveillance of the management. However, as the industry burgeoned, the cost o f these relatively good living conditions for a resident female labour force grew too expensive for textile owners, and they turned in-

creasingly by the middle of the nineteenth century to immigrant labour from abroad (Kessler-Harris 1975: 220-1). Immigration thus proved another fruitful way o f reproducing a cheap labour supply, particularly since immigrant women tended to work all their lives, married or not. Married women often worked at home taking i n boarders and sewing at exploitative piece-work rates o n the putting out system. With the entry of immigrant women into the labour force, working conditions in the textile factories deteriorated rapidly, as did real wages. The cost of labour decreased, since immigrant women were paid less and did not have to be accommodated in relatively expensive boarding houses, which were designed primariiy to protect the chastity and reputation o f native-born American women. The proportion o f gainfully employed immigrant women or their daughters increased steadily until1910, when reform movements designed not only to improve factory conditions but to ‘Americanize’ these wom e n began to take effect (Ibid.: 228). Immigrant women, especially mothers, were encouraged to stay at home to take care of their children and to regard retirement from paid labour rather than job

advancement as a sign of upward mobility (Ibid.: 223). Special concern was voiced over the health of these women, probably reflecting as i n Britian, a concern over the poor quality of future

generations.

.

O n e o f the chief outcomes o f the reform movement was the

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 311

initiation of protective legislation for women.® Nothing so symbolized women’s dual productive and reproductive role as this. A s Kessler-Harris (1975:229) notes, protective legislation recognized that women had two jobs, one of which had to be limited if the other were to be performed adequately. Yet legislation institutionalized the primary role o f social reproduction by denying that women were full-

fledged members of the working class . . . . Protective legislation thus provided a device for dividing workers along gender lines and stratifying the work force in a period when homogeneity in levels of skill threatened t o lead to developing class consciousness and to give rise to class conflict.

As in Brazil, protective legislation for women reduced competition with m e n b y reducing the economic desirability of female emp-

loyees (Ibid.:230). Reduced competition from women and children was accompanied b y , and probably contributed to, rising wages for men, which made i t financially easier for many married women to remain home. Unions also contributed to the establishment of a family wage, though some unions were often antagonistic to women

(Ibid.:224). Humphries (1977: 251-2) has documented the way in which both protective legislation and a family wage were championed b y the English working class as a way of reducing the labour supply, particularly o f married women. As i n the United States, this was also one o f the few issues o n which the working class could seek middle-class support. Despite these obstacles, however, the percentage o t married women i n the U . S . labour force has increased dramatically, especially since the World War I I , and as of March 1974 represented 58 per cent o f all working women (U.S. Dept. of Labour 1975:16). However, ‘ t h e increase has not b e e n uniform i n a l l sectors, o r for all

age and ethnic groups. The tremendous growth i n clerical jobs in the post-war period attracted primarily young and childless white women initially, but the demand gradually absorbed married wom e n with children as well’ (Ibid.: 13-14). Black women shifted out o f the domestic service category into other types of service jobs ( I b i d . : 105). Older married women without clerical skills were relegated to marginal industrial jobs like the garment industry. They face less competition i n these poorly paid, marginal industries from younger women, who prefer cleaner, more well-paid clerical jobs. O l d e r women also possess the sewing skills necessary to compete at the piece-work rates o n which most garment plants operate. Be-

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HELEN I . SAFA

cause of its marginality, the garment industry has always provided a haven for newly arrived immigrants, most recently Hispanics, who d o not possess the language and other educational skills needed i n clerical and other types o f service employment. While the median age of operatives and particularly seamstresses is higher nationally than either clerical o r service workers (1970 Census o f Population, Vol. I , Part I , Table 226), i n the garment plant we studied i n N e w Jersey, certain special factors contributed to the older age o f the female labour force. The most important

factor is that the plant has been basically following a slow process of attrition, not hiring many workers in production since the 1950s. However, many female-workers who were hired in the 1940s and 1950s have stayed on, so that 71 per cent have been working in the same plant twenty years and more. Eighty per cent o f these women are over forty and over half are married. The remainder are almost equally divided between single and formerly married (usually widowed) women, the majority o f whom are over fifty. Most o f these women live i n the local working class neighbourhood o r nearby, the daughters of Italian, Polish, and other east European workers who were attracted to the job possibilities i n manual labour i n this area earlier i n the century. Their husbands are also p r e d o m i n a n t l y factory workers, as are t h e i r brothers a n d

sisters. They live i n a blue-collar world. The reason this plant has not hired many workers since the 1950s is because production has been moving to other areas, first cheaper labour areas within the U.S. (e.g. West Virginia), then to Puerto Rico i n the 1950s, and now to newer foreign areas like the Dominican Republic. This has become a prevalent trend i n the garment industry i n the prortheast, which suffered a 40 per cent decline i n

jobs i n the 1960-70 decade, a loss which continued at the rate o f 12,000 jobs per year through 1973 (Bureau of Labour Statistics

1975:104-5). The decline is brought on primarily by the desire to cut labour costs by moving to areas of lower wages and non-unionized labour, both i n the U.S. and abroad. The ‘runaway shop’ thus represents a new strategy for supplying a cheap labour force i n advanced capitalist societies where unions and other factors have helped to drive u p labour costs, and is particularly attractive to labour-intensive industries such as garment. Rather than importing immigrant labour, the runaway shop ‘exports jobs’. The women at the N e w Jersey plant are aware that jobs are being

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 313

lost and fear for the security of their own employment, even though the plant is unionized. One of the chief complaints is that workers are constantly being switched from one job to another (to replace lost personnel) which slows down their piece-work rate, and hence their wage. One o f the branches o f the factory often closes one day a week for lack o f work, and o f course the women are not paid a full

wage. Wages i n the garment industry are the lowest compared to any m a j o r industrial group i n the U.S., about $3.00 an hour i n 1974 ( N A C L A 1976:8). Though wages can be increased substantially through piece-work, almost 40 per cent o f the women sampled earn between $100 and $139 a week, while the highest weekly salaries r u n to $160 and over. Though much higher than those o f Brazilian women factory workers, wages are still insufficient t o support a family and barely enough for a single person. Over half the families sampled have a total annual income o f less than $10,000. Significantly, the lowest incomes are found among the single and formerly married (mostly widowed) women i n our sample, 40 per cent o f w h o m depend solely on their own wages. I n 68 per cent o f these families with a single wage-earner, annual incomes are under $8000

(Table 3). Single women live alone or with a relative (usually a sister) and often i n a home that they have inherited from their parents and thus their housing costs get considerably reduced. Widows and other formerly married women either live alone (45 per cent) o r with their children (45 per cent), most of whom contribute to the family income. The highest incomes i n this sample are found i n families with two o r more wage earners, most o f whom are husband and wife. All but five o f the forty married women i n our sample have households with two or more wage-earners. However, while both husband and wife may work, there is a clear difference compared t o the Brazilian multiple wage-earning family, particularly where dependence o n their children is concerned. I n N e w Jersey, grown children d o not make a major contribution to the family income because 1) the number o f children per family is quite small and 2) children receive a much higher education, and require longer years of support. Once they leave school, they tend t o marry and have their own families to support. The families of these New Jersey women factory workers are much smaller than i n Sao Paulo. Median household size in New Jersey is approximately 2.5 compared t o 5.06 i n Sao Paulo; 53 per cent of

HELEN I . SAFA

314

Table 3 NEW JERSEY

Number o f Wage-earners in Household b y Total Annual Income N U M B E R O F WAGE-EARNERS I N H H

Total Annual Income

One

Two

Three or More

Row Total

Under $ 5000

3 30.0 12.5

4 40.0 13.8

3 30.0 23.1

10 15.52

$ 5000 t o $ 7999

13 65.0 54.2

4 20.0 13.8

3 15.0 23.1

20 30.3

$ 8000 to $ 9999

5 41.7 20.8

5 41.7 17.2

2 16.7 15.4

12 18.2

$ 10,000 t o $ 15,999

2 14.3 8.3

10 71.4 34.5

2 14.3 15.4

14 21.2

$ 16,000 and over

1 10.0 4.2

6 60.0 20.7

3 30.0 23.1

10 15.2

Column Total

24 36.4

29 43.9

13 19.7

66 100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage and column percentage respectively.

these households consist o f one o r two persons. While i t must be recognized that most o f these families are at a different stage of their life cycle, with most children grown and living outside the household, the total number o f children they have had is also much smaller. Over half o f the New Jersey women had only one o r two children, while i n Sao Paulo, 43.3 per cent o f our respondents had over five siblings.”

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 315 This small number o f children is all the more striking when compared to the families i n which these women were raised, which were much larger: 20 per cent o f these New Jersey women had seven o r more siblings, while another 20 per cent had five to six. I n short, when we compare total number o f siblings among older women factory workers i n N e w Jersey, with the size o f families in the younger generation i n Sao Paulo, they begin to look very

similar. Clearly there has been a sharp decline in family size from their parents to their own generation among our N e w Jersey respondents, although i n both cases, we are dealing with a pre-

dominantly Catholic population: two thirds of the New Jersey women as compared to 80 per cent o f the Sao Paulo women are

Roman Catholic. There appear to be several factors that help to explain this drastic reduction i n family size i n N e w Jersey. First, many o f these women were bearing children during the depression, which induced low fertility levels in the U.S. generally. Secondly, the economic value o f American children during this period was reduced by legislation such as child labour laws and compulsory education. (Such laws exist in Brazil, but are often not implemented.)!! Thirdly, contraceptive

technology might have been more widespread in the U.S. during the period these women were having children (1940-50) than i n Brazil today where income as well as lack o f information serves as a

real barrier (Population Council 1978:16). I n addition, however, changes in labour demand and the consequent cost o f children i n the U . S . may have induced these families to have fewer children. A s increased opportunities for both sexes opened u p i n the U.S. i n white-collar jobs, requiring higher levels of education, working class families may have been induced to reduce their number o f children i n order to give them more education.

There was no longer a need for a large labour pool, as is still prevalent i n Brazil, but for a smaller number of more highly skilled workers prepared to meet the growing demand for administrative as

well as skilled industrial jobs. A t the same time, the cessation of large-scale immigration and the movement of younger women into white-collar jobs opened u p marginal jobs in the garment industry

for older, married women who previously might have been denied employment (cf. W o o l 1976: 24). The additional income provided b y the women’s employment, while small, may have helped these families t o give t h e i r children a highér education. I t is doubtful if

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HELEN 1. SAFA

they could have managed solely with the husband’s salary, since

most men, like their wives, were employed in relatively low-paying factory jobs. The movement out of blue-collar into white-collar jobs among N e w Jersey working class families can be seen by comparing the employment of the father and son. Whereas most fathers

Table 4 N E W JERSEY

Occupation o f First Son by Father's Occupation OCCUPATION OF SON Father's

White

Blue

Unemployed

Row

Occupation

Collar

Collar

Ed.

Total

Blue Collar

4 50.0 36.4

3 37.5 37.5

1 12.5 100.0

8 40.0

White Collar

1 100.0 9.1

0 0.0 0.0

0 0.0 0.0

1 5.0

1 50.0

1 50.0

0 0.0

2 10.0

9.1

12.5

0.0

Service Worker

Not

Working

5

4

55.6 45.5

44.4 50.0

Column

11

Total

55.0

8

40.0

0

0.0 0.0 1

5.0

9

45.0

20

100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage, and column percentage respectively.

(husbands o f our respondents) were o r are employed in blue-collar

jobs, in families with sons, 55 per cent are employed in white-collar jobs compared to 40 per cent i n blue-collar o r service work. While the sample here is very small and therefore should be interpreted

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 317 with a great deal o f caution, the trend toward white-collar employ-

ment is unmistakable. The percentage of daughters in white-collar work is even higher (70 per cent) probably reflecting the surge in clerical employment among women. In addition, the degree to which white-collar employment is dependent o n a higher education is shown b y the fact that most o f the oldest sons and daughters of these N e w Jersey working class families who now hold white-collar jobs have been to college and sometimes graduate school.'? Table 5 N E W JERSEY

Occupation of First Son by Education of First Son OCCUPATION OF FIRST SON Education o f

White

Blue

Unemployed

Row

First Son

Collar

Collar

Ed.

Total

High School or less

3 27.3 23.1

7 63.6 63.6

1 9.1 100.0

11 44.0

College

4 50.0 30.8

4 50.0 36.4

0 0.0 0.0

8 32.8

Graduate Work

Column Total

6 100.0 46.2 13 52.0

0 0.0 0.0 11 44.0

0 0.0 0.0 1 4.0

6 24.0

25 100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage, and column percentage respectively.

While i t is difficult to establish a relationship between the mother’s employment and the children’s education with the data collected here, it is worth noting that i n all b u t a few cases, among

the children who went to college or graduate school, the mothers have been working twenty years and more. Clearly we are dealing with a very different survival strategy from

HELEN I . SAFA

318

Table 6 NEW JERSEY

Occupation o f First Daughter b y Education o f First Daughter DAUGHTER'S OCCUPATION Education o f First Daughter

High School o r less

College

Graduate

Work

Column Total

White Collar

Blue collar

Unemployed Ed.

5

5

50.0

50.0

0.0

31.3

83.3

0.0

9 81.8 56.3

1 9.1 16.7

1 9.1 100.0

11 47.8

2

0

Row Total

10 43.5

0

0

2

100.0 12.5

0.0 0.0

0.0 0.0

8.7

16 69.6

6 26.1

1 4.3

23 100.0

Figures i n cells represent N , row percentage, and column percentage

respectively.

that observed among Brazilian working class women. Families are quite small, but both husband and wife work to promote their children’s mobility from blue-collar into white-collar work. This reflects the decreasing demand for blue-collar workers in the U.S., particularly among women, and the tremendous increase in whitecollar and particularly clerical employment. I t also reflects increasi n g educational opportunities i n the U.S., made possible through mass public education, though not without considerable financial support and sacrifice from their parents. A s Gimenez (1977:19) points out:

Only under exceptional circumstances will the capitalist classes make direct investments to upgrade the quality o f specific sectors o f the labour force . . . . Ordinarily that upgrading is financed b y the workers themselves w h o , b y investing i n their own ‘human capital’ o r b y reproducing labour power o f quality higher than their own, through the training and/or educat i o n o f their offspring, give rise to the phenomenon o f ‘social mobility.’ It is

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 319 through the process of self-upgrading, into which the working classes and salary earners are forced, that differences in reproductive behaviour emerge. Conclusion

Self-upgrading among workers involves a dual burden on the fami l y ; not only must they bear the direct costs o f education (some of which may be absorbed by the state), but they must also suffer the loss o f their children’s earnings which would otherwise have been allocated to the family. Minge-Kalman (1978) documents this very well i n the case o f European peasant families who are i n a transition towards wage labour. A s the children cease to work o n the family farm and require more years o f education for skilled wage labour, their foregone labour is made u p by the parents, and chiefly the mother. She writes (p. 183): Since much of the foregone labour of children is labour that would have been allocated to the family farm— which is continued by mothers when fathers take wage labour—on the average, the mother’s labour hours

increase more than the father’s as children’s education level increases. I think a similar argument for a re-allocation of labour at the household level can be made for urban working class families. Here however, we are dealing with older children and young adults, aged 15-25, whose labour is not appropriated directly by the family but contributed i n the form o f wages to the family income. I f these young people require and have the opportunity to obtain a higher education, and cannot work and contribute to the family income, then the family must compensate for this loss o f wages i n some way. The data from N e w Jersey factory families would seem to suggest that they may compensate by having women continue to work past the age o f marriage and childbearing, which i n turn may induce the woman to have fewer children. This would then help explain why the industrial female labour force i n Sao Paulo (and Brazil generally) consists largely o f young, unmarried women while i n the U.S. there 1s a much higher percentage o f older married women employed i n factory work. The work of married women i n the U.S. helps compensate for the loss o f their children’s wages. The change i n the composition o f the family wage economy also helps explain

why Brazilian urban working class families continue t o have large families while N e w Jersey working class families have only a small number o f children.

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HELEN I . SAFA

The limited growth of the modern industrial sector, in a dependent capitalist society such as Brazil, where growth is heavily dependent o n foreign technology, capital and markets, inhibits the de-

velopment o f a mass, skilled labour market such as in the United States o r western Europe during the height o f industrial growth

(Safa 1977). In 1972-3, for example, of Sao Paulo’s 735,000 employees i n the industrial sector, only 18 per cent were skilled (Sao Paulo 1978:74), despite the fact that the city represents the height of

Brazilian industrial growth. Thus, Sao Paulo workers do not have the incentive to educate their children for a more skilled labour market that our N e w Jersey families had. The continued existence o f a labour surplus also prevents the formal employment o f more marginal sectors o f the labour force, such as married women with

children, who only entered the labour force in large numbers in the post-industrial o r monopoly capitalist phase of most advanced industrial societies. Older, married women were only recruited for and retained i n these marginal jobs when the tremendous surge in clerical employment and prolonged education exhausted the supply of younger, single women.'? Thus, it would appear to be only at a later stage o f industrialization, when there is a sharp reduction in the demand for unskilled workers and an increasing demand for skilled workers ( i n administrative and clerical tasks as well as pro-

duction), and when there are educational opportunities readily available t o working class families to enable them to acquire these skills, that there may be a reduction in family size to enable working class families to invest more i n a few children than in the labour of many. Preparing children for these more skilled jobs requires more family expenditure and a prolonged period o f dependence which in itself may require married women to work. While the problem o f labour power in Brazil may be similar to other dependent capitalist economies, it has undoubtedly been made more acute by the anti-labour policies of the Brazilian military government, which took power i n 1964. Though they did succeed i n promoting growth rates o f nearly 10 per cent between 1968 and 1972, few o f the benefits of this boom went to the working class. O n the contrary, i n Sao Paulo itself, the centre o f the boom, they paid for i t i n terms o f declining real wages, high infant mortality, malnutrition, lowered life expectancy, and other indicators of worsening social conditions (Wood 1978:60—1, Sao Paulo 1978). A s we have shown, despite the increasing number o f household mem-

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 321 bers in the labour force, brought o n by the decline in purchasing power, real family income i n Sao Paulo continued to drop between 1958 and 1969 (Ibid.:59). Though the families studied here are by n o means the worst off i n terms o f income and other indicators of living standards, their ‘success’ appears to depend largely on the maintenance o f a multiple wage-earning strategy (cf. Schmink 1979:9). NOTES

1

This research was sponsored b y a collaborative research grant from the Social

Science Research Council. The Brazilian data in this paper were collected by D r Heleieth Saffioti, sociologist at the University of Araraguara, Brazil. Her assistance i n the preparation and analysis o f this study are gratefully

acknowledged. 2

Because o f the small size, the sample does not pretend to be representative o f factory women i n either locale. W e are more interested i n the relationship

between work and other variables in the t w o cultures. 3 Tilly (1978a: 3) defines the analysis of family strategies as ‘the principles which lead to observable regularities or patterns of behavior among households. I t asks who participates in making decisions, what concerns and constraints impinge on them. I t asks who bears the cost or benefits from strategies i n which individual interests o r needs are often subordinated’; further, Tilly adds that ‘these strategies have different effects on individuals, depending o n their posit i o n and activities i n the family. A l l household members’ imperatives and choices are shaped by their position i n the family, by the economic and social structures i n which the households is [sic] located, and by the processes o f change which these structures are undergoing’. 4 I n 1976-7, the minimum salary in Brazil was equivalent to U.S. $ 71 monthly (Population Council 1978: 15). I t is adjusted annually based o n a complicated formula combining productivity and cost o f living measures. 5 Most o f the married women have been married only a short time (less than five years) and only ten have children. 6 M i n i m u m wages are lower (or non-existent) for minors, which makes them all the more attractive for unskilled factory jobs. I n 1972 i n Sao Paulo 70 per cent o f the boys and 49.5 per cent o f the girls aged 15-19 were i n the labour force (Sao Paulo 1978:75). 7 The percentage of women working at home in Sao Paulo in 1972 increased from 38 p e r cent at ages 25-29, t o 63.4 per cent at ages 30-39, and continues t o increase |

through age 69 (Sao Paulo 1978:75). 8

9

I n Sao Paulo in 1961, 62.9 infants died per 1000 live births compared to 89.5 in 1970 and 95 i n 1973. Much of this is attributed to the decline i n the real minimum wage, lack o f public services such as water and sewers, and malnutrition. Protective legislation i n the U S initially included regulation of hours of work (e.g. n o night shifts, limited number o f hours), minimum wages, and sanitary working conditions. I t is interesting that minimum wages for women were established earlier than for men.

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HELEN I . SAFA

10 Because of the wide age differences in our sample and since so few of our Brazilian respondents were married, we compared the size of the family in which Brazilian factory workers were raised, with the total number o f children

borne by New Jersey factory women. 11 The Population Council (1978: 13) reports that ‘among children aged 7 - 1 0 , the

proportion enrolled i n school in 1970 was 66.3 per cent although the first eight years o f schooling are free and ‘compulsory’.

12 Miriam Cohen (1977) documents the way in which the changing employment structure i n N e w York City during the depression induced Italian working class

families to orient their daughters towards white-collar work because the future looked better than in factory (largely garment) labour, resulting as well in marked increase in educational levels. For example, by 1950, while only 8 per cent o f the first generation o f Italian female workers were employed in clerical labour, 40 per cent o f the second generation were i n those occupations. Cohen

attributes this not to embourgeoisement, but as a shift in working class strategies made necessary by the city’s employment structure (p. 135). 13

Although many of the women in our New Jersey sample were hired at an early age, I would argue they would not have been retained had there been an ample supply o f younger, single women to replace them. I n fact, when production reached its peak in the early 1950s and labour was in scarce supply, the factory

was very lenient with married women, allowing them unpaid maternity leaves, time off during summer vacations or when their children became ill, etc.

REFERENCES Arizpe, Lourdes, ‘Women in the Informal Labor Sector: The Case of Mexico City’, in Women and National Development: The Complexities of Change, Wellesley Editorial Committee, Chicago: University o f Chicago Press,

1977. B l a y , E v a Alterman, Trabalho Demesticado: A Mulher n a Industria Paulista, Sao Paulo: Editora A t i c a , 1978. Bridenthal, Renate, ‘The Dialectics o f Production and Reproduction i n History’, Radical America, 10, 2, 1976, 3-11. Bureau o f Labour Statistics, ‘ A Socio-Economic Profile o f Puerto Rican N e w Yorkers’, U . S . Dept. o f Labour, Middle Atlantic Regional Office, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . Regional Report, 46, 1975.

Cohen, Miriam, ‘Italian-American Women in New York City, 1900-1950: Work and School’, Class, Sex, a n d the Woman Worker, eds. M i l t o n Cantor and Bruce Laurie Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977. Gimenez, Martha, ‘Population and Capitalism’, Latin American Perspectives, 1 V , 4 ,

1977, 5-41. Humphries, Jane, ‘Class Struggle and the Persistence o f the W o r k i n g Class Family’, Cambridge Journal o f Economics, 1, 241-58.

Kessler-Harris, Alice, ‘Stratifying by Sex, Understanding the History of Working Women’, i n Labour Market Segmentation, eds. Richard C . Edwards, Michael Reich, David M . Gordon, Lexington, Mass, D . C . : Health and

Co., 1975.

Women, Production and Reproduction in Industrial Capitalism 323 Minge-Kalman, Wanda, ‘Household Economy during the Peasant-to-Worker Transition i n the Swiss Alps’, Ethnology, 17, 2 , 1978, 183-96. N A C L A , Capital's Flight: The Apparel Industry Moves South, V o l . X I , 3 , New Y o r k : N e w Y o r k , 1975. Population Council, ‘Brazil: Country Profiles’, prepared b y M e l l o Moreira, Lea Melo da Silva and Robert McLaughlin, 1978.

Safa, Helen Icken, ‘The Changing Class Composition of the Female Labour Force i n Latin America’, Latin American Perspectives, Issue 15, V o l . 1 V , 4 ,

1973, 126-36. Saffioti, Heleieth, A Mulher n a Sociedade de Classes, Brazil: Quatro Artes, 1971. Sao Paulo Justice and Peace Commission, Sao Paulo: Growth and Poverty, London: Bowderdean Press, 1978. Schmink, Marianne, ‘Women, M e n and the Brazilian Model o f Development’, paper presented at L a t i n American Studies Association, mimeo, 1979. Tilly, Louise A , and Joan W . Scott, Women, Work and Family. N e w Y o r k : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978. ,Women and Family Strategies in French Proletarian Families. Michigan

Occasional Paper I V . Ann Arbor: Mich., 1978 a. U . S . Department o f Labour, ‘1975 Handbook o n Women Workers’, Women’s Bureau, Bulletin 197, 1975. Vasquez de M i r a n d a , Glaura, ‘Women’s Labour Force Participation i n a Developing Society: The Case o f Brazil’, Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society, V o l . 3 , 1 , 1977. Wood, Charles H , ‘Infant Mortality Trends and Capitalist Development i n Brazil: The Case o f Sao Paulo and B e l o Morizonte’, Latin American Perspec-

tives, Vol. I V , 4, 1977, pp. 56-65. Wool, Harold, ‘Future Labour Supply for Lower Level Occupations’, Monthly Labour Review, V o l . 99, 3 , March 1976, p p . 22-31.

A Study o f Balmiki Women in Delhi MALAVIKA KARLEKAR

I n the 1970s, the study o f women’s employment, education, role i n the home, i n politics and so on gained i n importance in thc West as well as i n T h i r d World countries. O n the basis o f these works, a number o f observations were made by those i n the expanding field o f what became popularly known as ‘women’s studies’. T w o generalizations seemed t o appear with some regularity. They were related t o the spread o f mechanization and the loss o f emplovment o f women. I t was feared that the spread o f mechanization would become a threat to the employment o f poor women and without economic independence, a woman’s position and status would de-

teriorate even futher.! While not wholly without basis, these propositions are considerably constrained by cultural perspectives on what is meant by emplovment, independence and so on. I n 1976, in order to establish the validity o r otherwise o f these two premises, I undertook a small study o f a group o f 80 urban sweeper women of the Balmikis i n D e l h i . The Balmikis, a sub-caste of the north Indian Bhangi untouchable caste o f sweepers. are substantially affected by the urban process.? While men are increasingly involved in leaving this defiling occupation, women, bv and large. have far fewer chances o f mobility. Together with other categories o f the urban poor. the sweepers live dispersed i n the various slum and tenement colonies o f the capital. When I chose t o study Sau Quarters, a West Delhi colony constructed originally by the Delhi Municipal Corporation for its sweepers, I was aware o f some of the problems I was likely to encounter. My-field work came in the wake o f the Congress government’s sterilization drive as well as its slum demolition campaign. Consequently, i t would have been impossible for me to talk to the women before m y bona fides had been established; this was

A Study of Balmiki Women in Delhi

325

achieved through m y introduction to an important sweeper in the area b y a local social worker. After an initial trip to the field with this lady, I subsequently visited Sau Quarters with my two research assistants. I t was not too difficult to allay the women’s suspicions about our motives, and we soon found that our respondents were more than willing to talk to us. A limited sample has its disadvantages but some advantages as well. W e found that with fewer people i t was easier for us to extend o u r conversations beyond the framework o f the formal interview schedule. More than merely filling up a form, my primary aim was t o set u p a dialogue with the women. I was interested i n the perceptions o f the women regarding their own position. This obviously entailed problems o f balance between subjective assessments and objective evaluations. Objectivity i n the social sciences has given rise to heated arguments on both sides—since World War I I . Until the War, field work i n social anthropology was dominated by the study o f primitive peoples. The Western anthropologist documented ‘objective’ data o n styles o f life and customs while maintaining a strict socio-spatial distance between himself or herself and the respondents. I n doing so, it was not uncommon for the researcher to take u p certain superior moral positions. The field work tradition has undergone considerable changes in recent vears. and the stress today is on accepting varying perceptions o f realitv.? One o f the first lessons to be learned is that the respondent has t o be understood within his or her own frame o f reference and not that o f the investigator. A t times it is not easy to accept widely differing views and attitudes. and the field worker is tempted t o intervene. However. i f the danger o f “taking sides” is i n t e r n a l i z e d , i t is possible t o reduce intervention t o a m i n i m u m . I n

order t o overcome some o f these problems. my research assistants and I encouraged the sweeper women to speak at length on a range o f subjects. Wherever relevant. these views were incorporated in the text as examples o f the attitudes o f respondents. Finally, suggestions o n the possible nature o f slum reform were based on extended conversations with the women. I t was significant that several conventional strategies were rejected as being irrelevant t o the lives ‘of us poor women.’ O n the basis o f m y data, primary as well as secondary, I found that, rather than being deprived of employment, poor women i n certain caste and occupation-based jobs remain i n traditional fields

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MALAVIKA KARLEKAR

o f employment, while their men tend to move to new opportunities

brought about by development and mechanization. I shall look at some o f these findings. B e t w e e n 1961 a n d 1971, t h e Census o f I n d i a recorded a rise i n

women agricultural labourers from 24 per cent to 50 per cent o f the total female labour force. Women moved into the category o f low-paid agricultural work either as a result o f displacement from traditional jobs due to mechanization, reduction i n the size of individual land-holdings which created a labour surplus, or total land alienation. Studies? from the rice producing areas have shown that the agricultural system is heavily dependent on female labour. Characteristically, women perform some of the most vital yet strenuous tasks such as weeding and transplanting. A s Joan Mencher reports in her article to this volume, ‘no man can keep

standing bent over all day in the mud and rain’.® I t is accepted that women are born t o bear these hardships as well as many others. Further, neither men nor machines are likely to displace them from certain essential agricultural operations. In addition t o doing some o f the most arduous jobs, women are often paid less than men for exactly the same functions. Very often, outdoor agricultural work is combined with indoor work such as the processing o f grain, winnowing, parboiling o f paddy and the stacking o f straw as well as cooking and caring for the family. Most often, none o f these activities are counted as productive work by the men i n the family o r by professional enumerators. Similar patterns o f

exploitation of cheap female labour have been reported from studies o f certain i n d u s t r i eas s well as from urban surveys. Women are employed both i n the organized as well as the unorganized sectors i n large numbers—the cashew, coir, bidi (indigenous cigarettes) and construction industries.® According to the Census o f 1971, the number o f women i n the construction and bidi industries registered an increase over the 1961 figures. Female labour d i d some o f the hardest jobs such as retting o f the husk in the coir factories, removing the nut from the pod (which often contained a corrosive liquid) i n the cashew industry and pounding and sorting o f tobacco leaves i n ill-ventilated godowns in different parts of the country. Some o f the studies reported that women were paid less than the stipulated wage and men often earned more for identical jobs. Further, due t o their illiteracy and ignorance, women were deprived o f payment for over-time work and legal benefits such as

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maternity leave and other facilities. Thus, despite increasing mechanization, women continue to work i n certain important commodity industries; though they are technically supposed to be protected b y various labour legislations, employers flout rules with impunity. I n urban areas, chances o f job mobility for working class men are greater than i n the villages. When men are trying out new options, women often remain behind i n traditional agricultural occupations i n the rural areas o r migrate t o the cities where they take up low-paid employment. A recent survey’ found that 75 per cent o f all urban working women were concentrated i n nineteen occupational groups: apart from the 20 per cent who were teachers, nurses and clerks the majority were i n occupations which required no education. Most were domestic servants, construction workers and unskilled labourers. O n the other hand, there were twice as many o c c u p a t i o n s available t o m e n . A study? o f h a m a l (coolie) w o m e n i n

Pune showed that only 19 husbands were doing hamal work ; while a few were rickshaw pullers and labourers, a number o f them were

bus drivers, press and factory workers, carpenters and supervisors. I t is clear that while mechanization influences the employment

chances of both men and women, poor women are more affected than are their m e n f o l k . A t t h e same t i m e , there are certain crucial

areas i n both urban as well as rural work which are unlikely to be affected by the machine, o r at any rate, will remain unaffected for quite some time. A s we have seen, these tasks include weeding and transplanting i n the fields, making bidis, and the work of urban sweepers, labourers and construction workers. Due to the mandate o f poverty, women are increasingly offering themselves for a range o f low status jobs. O n the other hand, with greater physical mobili t y , increasing opportunities and limited domestic obligations, men train for new jobs. I n all the studies cited, women contributed between 30 to 60 per cent o f the family income. I n many cases, a woman’s earning was crucial for the family’s survival. Rather than face unemployment due to mechanization o r land alienation, women from poor homes seek any form of employment that is available. Continuing immiseration reduces their bargaining potential, while exploitation i n the organized sector, supposedly governed by certain regulatory laws, is steadily growing. Irrespective o f whether they worked i n the organized o r unorganized sector, women are subjected to all forms of harrassment which include sexual abuse.

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I n Delhi, the Municipal Corporation is one of the biggest emp-

loyers of sweepers. A n official of the Corporation reported that while formally the policy was t o appoint men and women i n the quota o f 75:25, i n actual fact, appointments were 50:50 in favour of women. Male mobility out o f the occupation combined with an increasing number o f women volunteering for work put pressure o n the Corporation to employ women in excess o f the stipulated quota. I n addition to employment i n the Corporation, the New Delhi Municipal Committee schools and hospitals, an increasing number o f B a l m i k i women are becoming private sweepers. Studies have shown that among the working class when there is a likelihood of employment of both sexes, there is usually a near parity i n the sex

migration ratio. The Census of 1971 recorded 1,07,680 Balmikis in D e l h i o f w h o m 59,434 were m e n a n d 48,246 were w o m e n . T h e large

majority were migrants from U t t a r Pradesh and Punjab and lived dispersed i n the city’s many slums and squatter settlements. Sau Quarters is i n many ways typical o f the accommodation

available for the urban poor. A t the time of field work, a colony which was originally meant to house a hundred families accommodated a minimum of a thousand residents. Many of the tenants were illegal residents as they were not employees of the Corporat i o n ; they had either ‘bought’ the tenancy rights from former Corporation employees o r were their relatives and friends. O f the present sample, the majority was above twenty-six years o f age, 6 or 7.5 per cent were below twenty years while another 15 were between twenty-one and twenty-five years o f age. Present data as well as statistics from other studies” indicate that among poor women, where employment has been the pattern o f life for at least three generations, early employment is the general rule. H a l f the present sample had started working between the ages o f ten and fifteen years. Further, 28.75 per cent were employed before they were married, and o f those who had started working before they were fifteen years o f age, 35 per cent specified that they had been employed shortly after their marriage.

While 60 per c e n t of the sample had been between eleven and sixteen years at the time o f marriage, 25 per cent were married before they were ten years. The average number o f children per woman was 5.3 per cent. Nine mothers who had only one child, were all below twenty-two years o f age; 40 per.cent o f women said that at least one o f their children had died. Though a majority o f the

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ramilies were nuclear i n structure, well over half (35) had an adaitional person living with them. Over 10 per cent o f the joint families had distant affines o r other k i n living with them. I n a poverty situation, it is not unusual for families to accommodate new migrants from the village. However, what was o f particular interest

in the present study was that many of the extra persons were affinal relations like sons-in-law. a daughter-in-law’s brother o r a wife’s widower brother-in-law who would not probably live with marriage-related k i n for any length o f time. I n all cases we were assured in answer to our detailed queries that such arrangements were only temporary i n nature. Given the choice, most families would like t o maintain the traditional distance—or proximity— with affinal as well as natal relatives. Many respondents complained at having t o live with those who would be categorized as outsiders. The average size o f the family was o f 7.1 persons and though 26 women said that they lived i n joint families. only 5S specified that their fathers-in-law fulfilled the role of head of the household. Nine widows said that they took all the major decisions i n their families. Cases o f permanent desertion by husbands were rare, and only three women were separated from their spouses. Another said that she was a second wife. While alcoholism was common among husbands, i t rarely threatened the marital relationship. Further, though five women said that they were beaten up by their husbands regularly, when questioned further, none said that physical abuse would be a factor which would cause a woman to leave her marital home. I had n o first-hand information on extra-marital relationships. I t is possible that women were not quite honest i n their responses t o questions i n this sensitive area. There were substantial differences i n the working conditions o f those employed i n the organized sector and women working i n private homes. O f the present sample, 22 women were working i n the Corporation, government schools and hospitals, and their employment was governed by certain regulatory norms. Their work consisted mainly o f brooming and swabbing the floors o f buildings and driveways, and cleaning the lavatories. Women in the Corporation had t o alternate working i n offices with sweeping of public roads. However, all the more difficult jobs such as cleaning o f drains, manholes and loading o f refuse from garbage heaps onto lorries were done by male sweepers. Women i n the organized sector worked a m a x i m u m o f 8 hours i n t h e d a y , while those i n private

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employment worked between 2 t o 7 hours a day. The work o f the private sweepers in Reagharpura consisted mainly o t cleaning a lavatory and disposing o f the garbage. Most o f the housewives did their own cooking and washing of clothes and maintained a strict distance between themselves and the untouchable sweeper women. Only 3 women said that they washed clothes i n addition t o other work. Payments in private employment were low and consequently women had to work i n a number of homes in order t o earn a minimum o f Rs 50 a month. Many women complained that they were exhausted after a day’s job which involved many trips t o the garbage dumps and climbing several flights o f stairs t o their places o f work. I n the more affluent and cosmopolitan south D e l h i colonies sweeper women were paid more, and did other jobs like washing clothes and, sometimes, dishes as well. When we started our field work we found that women were particularly vague about their exact ages and incomes. Therefore we asked them to give us approximate figures. We found that those in the organized scctor earned on an average. a minimum o f Rs 175 a m o n t h ; permanent employees with several vears o f service earned much more. This figure is low because 1t includes those in ad hoc and temporary jobs. However, only 4 respondents i n private jobs said that they earned something close t o this figure, and there were 54 women (77 per cent of the total sample) who earned less than Rs 100 a month. This included nine women who earned Rs 2 a month forcleaning a lavatory and carrying away the garbage. This works out t o a few paise a day for a job which no other caste would perform. These were indeed exploitative rates when the minimum bus fare ( i n 1976) was 30 paise, and a cup o f tea cost 20 paise! Apart from these phenomenal differences i n salaries between the organized and unorganized sectors, those i n the former were entitled t o certain benefits such as maternity leave, paid leave, uniforms ~nd full pre- and post-natal care. I t was usual for those i n private employment to work almost t o the day on which their child was b o r n . D u r i n g t h e i r absence, w o m e n h a d t o p r o v i d e substitutes

to work in their place. These substitutes—normally sisters or female affines—claimed the salary o f the woman who was on leave. Five women complained that they had lost their jobs because they had been unable to find a replacement i n time. I t was significant that n o woman said that a male relative o r husband had stood i n for her during pregnancy.

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While the internal stratification system created hostility among sweepers. i t also served t o defuse a potential onslaught against the system. Women i n private employment were resentful o f those i n the organized sector. A t the same time they hoped to get such jobs

themselves through contacts with relatives and friends in the Corporation, schools and hospitals who were already employed there. B y and large, those i n the organized sector were satisfied with their jobs. The usual response to our questions as to whether women would like a change in occupation was ‘what can we poor Bhangi women expect?’ Dissatisfaction was far greater among those i n private employment. However, n o woman said that she would take

the chance of moving out of the caste occupation. While 6 of the 13 women who owned sewing machines said that with more practice, they might try and combine small orders with their jobs, none

thought of becoming a full-time tailor. I t was clear that women were reluctant to give u p jobs over which they had a monopoly and move to other more competitive multi-caste occupations. A s we shall see, apart from the women’s hesitation, a lack of training facilities and male views o n what their wives could do, were factors i n deterring

female occupational mobility. The situation for Balmiki men was substantially different. Five husbands were unemployed and o f the rest, the majority were sweepers. Significant i n the present context was the mobility of over a third o f the men (36.5 per cent) into non-scavenging occupations. A quarter o f these m e n w e r e d r i v e r s , mechanics, firemen, peons,

and watchmen. Seven respondents who said that their husbands were labourers wanted us to make a special note of the fact that they were not sweepers. T w o husbands were clerks; four women supported

husbands who brought in only a few rupees a month. The responses o f wives to unemployed husbands or those who earned less than themselves were interesting. Though women often complained about the whimsical and irresponsible behaviour o f their husbands, they were nonetheless regarded as their maliks or masters. I n a situation o f poverty, i t was necessary for spouses to work. I f the husband could not provide an adequate income, was unemployed o r perhaps had to train for a skill, the increased financial and other burdens—such as sharing i n some domestic functions—were automatically taken over by wives. Six women said that they had taken o n extra work when their husbands were learning driving or were apprentices i n a motor car garage.

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The eleven husbands who were private sweepers were frustrated with their work, and most of them were looking for alternate jobs. Their female counterparts worked much harder as none o f these m e n were employed i n more than fifteen homes. The average woman i n a similar situation worked i n at least twenty houses. O n the average, women contributed 42.6 per cent o f the family income; 70 per cent o f the sample said that their husbands as well as other earning members handed over the bulk o f their salaries to them on the understanding that wives would be fully responsible for balanci n g the budget. O u r detailed investigations showed that a woman's control over the family finances was no indication of financial independence: men handed over the money merely because it was convenient, and i t was not uncommon for them to ask for accounts every now and then. Two women complained that their adolescent sons w h o had recently started working, often demanded explanations for certain expenses from their mothers. Most wives of those who withheld salaries said that thev often had problems in extracting money from husbands. If the man’s salary was spent on liquor, it was n o t unusual for women t o ask their emplovers o r others for small

loans t o help them i n meeting their monthly expenses. Women rarely kept back any part of their earnings for personal expenses, though i t was accepted that men would withhold money for bidis, liquor and clothes. Though I had not included any direct questions on wife-beating and drunkenness o f men, it was clear that b o t h o f these were fairlv common. Neither. however. had resulted i n a breakdown o f the conjugal relationship. Only one woman complained that constant beatings and abuses had led to her going away temporarily to stay with her parents. Three women said they had been abandoned b y their husbands, and one said that she was a

second wife. I t was not unusual for husbands who were labourers or private sweepers to leave home for several weeks at a time. When questioned further. women were either evasive or said that the menfolk were away looking for better jobs. Half the women interviewed said that they managed the cooking, cleaning, washing o f clothes and looking after young children witho u t any help from others i n the family. This included 12 women who worked 8 hours i n the day i n the organized sector. The rest were helped b y female relatives such as affines or daughters. I f sons helped with indoor jobs, i t was only t i l l about the age of twelve years. I t was not an unusual sight to see pre-adolescent boys playing

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w i t h their friends while their sisters helped mothers with domestic chores. The involvement of husbands in basic household functions was minimal: only three women said that husbands occasionally helped with the cooking, but no husband washed clothes or swept the rooms. I t was more usual for them to do out of the home jobs, such as fetching rations, cooking fuel and vegetables, and perhaps taking children t o school o n their way to work. Other studies!® have corroborated the point o f view that men felt that they would lose status i f they did—or were seen doing—female-oriented jobs within the house. Those men who helped with some domestic function did not spend more than an hour per day on such an activity, while on an average a woman worked a minimum of 4 hours at household chores. Women took minor decisions o n what to cook or when to ask for rations; all major financial and other decisions were taken by the men i n the family. This included the taking of loans, negotiation w i t h regard t o marriages within the family and the purchase o f consumer goods or building a house or buying land in the village.'' Over 60 per cent o f the sample said that their families were in debt at the time o f the study. Indebtedness ranged from under Rs 50 to over R s 3000. While a majority o f those i n debt said that they had taken loans t o meet the shortfall i n daily e x p e n s e sthe — remainder (who were also the larger loan-takers) said that life-cycle rituals within the extended family—were responsible for debts. Apart from six women who had taken small advances against their salaries, most loans were taken from professional money lenders or mahajans. Despite the obvious status differences i n Sau Quarters caused by employment i n the organized sector as well as i n non-traditional jobs. I felt that i t was necessary t o find out what the major budgetary heads were. Irrespective o f whether the family income was above R s 500 o r below Rs 150, food and cooking fuel were the most important items o f expenditure. Debt repayment came second; while the better-off families tended to spend more on clothes, those w i t h a lower family income felt that transport costs for the entire family was a heavy burden. Though more than half the families owned a radio and a bycycle, annual investments i n consumer goods were given low priority by all families. Eight women said that their families owned land i n the conjugal village, and of these, five said that their husbands had taken housebuilding loans and constructed houses o n their plots.

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A s already mentioned, men took all major decisions, some of

which affected the lives of the women substantially. One such area was the system o f ‘buying up’ houses. According to this tradition, private sweepers who were leaving a locality or felt that the time had come for them to retire, ‘sold’ the right to work in a specified number o f houses. I n Sau Quarters, the news of an impending sale was rapidly communicated b y word of mouth. Here again, as with all questions o n money and age, women were vague about the amounts involved i n a sale. However, we gathered that depending o n the number o f houses to be serviced, the rates ranged from Rs 500 to R s 3000. Though witnesses were present at the time o f the actual sale, i t was not usual to have any written agreement. Seven women said that they had ‘bought’ their houses, while 10

others said that members of their family had entered into such a transaction. I t is important to note the role o f the male in the entire process. While a widow might start the negotiations herself, she

would usually ask for the help of a male relative when necessary. A married woman’s intermediary was her husband or a male in-law. When both buyers and sellers were women, men kept out o f negotiations except when there was difficulty over a compromise price. I f

the seller was a man and the buyer a woman or vice versa, men often determined the price and other terms and conditions. While in all-male transactions, women rarely played a role, men frequently intervened i n negotiations between women. Once a transaction was complete, n o other sweeper had the right to seek employment within another’s beat. Similarly, an out-going sweeper introduced his employers to his o r her replacement; subsequently, i t would become next to impossible for householders to dismiss sweepers

and find substitutes. However, despite its innate potential for developing into organized power, the system of ‘buying up’ houses s h o u l d not b e m i s t a k e n for a t r e n d towards u n i o n i z a t i o n o r collec-

tive bargaining among private sweepers. Thirty-five o r 60.3 per cent o f women who were private sweepers said that a male relative had accompanied them when they had first gone to settle their salaries at the beginning o f their careers. While most said that the bibijis (housewives) usually had the final say o n wages, the presence o f the men helped. Male Balmikis had very definite views o n the working future o f the women in their families: employment as sweepers was regarded as convenient and easy to come b y . N o woman in the sample mentioned that a husband had

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suggested that she be trained for any other occupation. While it was expected o f men to move out o f the traditional caste occupation, any attempt o n the part o f the women to do so would be immediately stopped. Apart from controlling the areas o f women’s employment, men also restricted their physical mobility. I t needs to

be pointed out that with a full load of domestic obligations to be combined with a job women had, i n any case, little time to go out, and this was restricted to their natal homes during festivals o r

childbirth. Either husbands or fathers-in-law decided whether wom e n undertook these trips and for h o w l o n g . Husbands rarely took

their families out to the market o r melas (fairs) and the only comm o n family events were visits to temples during festivals. O n the other hand, i t was usual for men to visit kinsmen, go to the cinema

or drink with friends on a minimum of one evening in the week. Over three-quarters o f the sample who said that their families were

in debt complained that i f husbands reduced their expenses on bidis, cigarettes, expensive clothes and outings, their indebtedness could b e reduced. O n l y 13 women said that they smoked bidis,

though we felt many more in fact did so. The inherent fatalism associated with a poverty situation appeared t o b e carried over t o views o n the future o f c h i l d r e n ; h o w -

ever, when we compared actual school enrolments with attitudes towards education we found that in fact a substantial number of

children were in school. Men did n o t appear particularly concerned about the education o f their daughters, though they envinced more interest i n that o f their sons. Five women had n o sons, 3 sons were

not o f school-going age and 15 mothers specified that their sons had

dropped out of school. O f the dropouts, 7 were employed as drivers, peons and sweepers, while 6 were unemployed. Two sons had finished school and 2 were college students. All except one of the 53 women wanted their sons to stay o n in school t i l l the final examination. However, the picture was substantially different as far as the education o f the girls was concerned. O f the present sample, 10 did not have daughters, 5 were not o f the school-going age and 36 out o f 65 mothers specified that their duaghters had not gone beyond the

first three classes of school. Eleven of these girls had been marned ‘before they were fifteen years of age, and another 6 were employed as sweeper girls early in adolescence. O n further questioning, 13 out o f these 36 mothers specified that they did not want their daughters t o g o back to school as ‘their future lay i n marriage and sweeping’. A

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little over a third o f these daughters were in school, most o f whom were enrolled at the primary stage. Families felt that there was little to be gained b y educating daughters. A pre-pubertal girl could look after her younger siblings while her mother went to work, or take to working herself. The attitude towards the education o f boys was substantially different as it was hoped that schooling would help boys to move out o f the traditional caste occupation. I n an increasingly competitive world, a boy who had studied upto Class V I would have a better chance o f getting a job as peon or a sweeper in the organized sector; apart from becoming a labourer o r a private sweeper, there were few options open to a total illiterate. The precedent o f paternal mobility out o f sweeping jobs encouraged families to keep their sons in school for as long as possible. However, while there was general indifference towards the education o f girls, a modicum o f literacy had an important social function: i n a situation where married daughters rarely visited their natal homes, letters became a vital source o f communication

regarding their welfare. Two respondents point out that because their sisters had learned enough to write letters, they were able to convey their unhappiness and ill-treatment to their families. Subsequently, they were brought home and not sent back to the conjugal villages. O n l y 2 mothers were literate and most fathers had picked u p functional literacy at their place o f w o r k ; 15 fathers had studied beyond Class I I I and another 9 had dropped out after Class II. Thus compared to their parents’ generation far many more boys as well as girls from underprivilged homes aré in schools. Other slum studies have also shown that as one proceeds down the age ladder, illiteracy drops quite substantially. 2

Despite the fact that more children were in school than their parents, mothers specified that it would have been o f greater use if functional literacy could be combined with training in some skill. M y question o n what job aspirations women had for their daughters was rejected as irrelevant b y a majority o f respondents: they felt that i t should be amply clear to us that girls could expect to be nothing but sweepers. A t the same time, a little less than a third hoped for a different future for their daughters. While 11 per cent

said they would like their girls to combine housework with earning through sewing and knitting, a number hoped that it would be possible for some to become nurses, typists and teachers. This

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included the wives o f two clerks, and 6 women who had more than two family members earning over Rs 200 a month. The daughters of a l l those with higher aspirations were still studying. Not unsurprisingly, mothers had overall higher expectations for their sons. Apart from 10 women, all the rest wanted their boys to be in nonscavenging jobs. Six of these 10 included those whose sons were already employed as sweepers. A little less than a third hoped for white collar jobs while the rest said that they would be satisfied if sons became drivers, mechanics o r factory hands.

I t is clear then that mothers were somewhat ambivalent towards the role o f school i n the future o f their children. While most were critical about education as an agent of change ‘for poor people like us’, i t was equally significant that over three quarters o f sons and a t h i r d o f daughters were being educated. A t the same time we came to the conclusion that if there was a choice, and courses oriented to employment were organized near Sau Quarters, mothers would prefer to send their sons and perhaps also their daughters to them. School enrolments may well have dropped i f there were more

options. A n important aspect o f urban development throughout the world is slum improvement; authorities feel that more facilities need to be

provided for the cities’ poor, and often start with totally irrelevant schemes. The Indian case is n o exception, and in recent years, the removal o f slum dwellers i n Delhi to better planned colonies across the River Yamuna has been extremely unpopular. I n Sau Quarters, residents dreaded demolition and complained bitterly about the slum clearance drive. T o them, going far away from their places o f work was a far greater disaster than the absence o f sufficient lavatories and potable water. Many such schemes fail because planners d o not take into consideration the actual needs of the people, but think only i n terms o f what they should want. Such a viewpoint

reflects the urban middle class biases of influential officials. For instance, i n the post-independence period, it has been a firm belief o f policy makers that the formal education system has a vital role to play i n the social change. Accordingly, there has been tremendous educational expansion over the last thirty years. While more poor children are enrolled each year, an alarmingly large number drop out o f the system. The need, as we found from our limited investigations i n Sau Quarters, is for occupation-oriented training courses. Parents and children are pessimistic about the long-term impact of a

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few years of book learning. Similarly, women felt that there were many spheres in which their own lives could be improved. Apart from the provision o f sewing classes nearby, they stressed that there was an urgent need for

child-care facilities. The absence of relatives who would care for children whilst mothers went to work was a major source o f tension for more than half the women who had small children. While most had to leave infants at home and hoped that the children o f neighbours would keep an eye on them, 15 per cent took babies to work. During field work, i t was not unusual to see a woman in private employment nursing a baby between working for one house and another. Women had heard o f the scheme run b y Mobile Creches and felt that ‘the sarkar (government) should make some such arrangements for us.’ Several studies o f working class women indicated that child-care was regarded as a major problem, and mothers felt that their genuine grievances were not being looked into. I have already mentioned the extortionately low wages paid to some i n private employment. I t also became clear to us that women o n their o w n would perhaps not be able to bargain for better wages. Moreover, i n a labour surplus situation, bargaining may not have been easy. A t the same time, where the system o f buying u p houses

worked so effectively, it was possible that if the community stipulated minimum wages collectively, employers may have to b e a little more circumspect in what they offered. There are examples

from other parts of the country to indicate that such a move is not impossible. 1 3 These studies have also shown that involvement and a basic conviction that some benefits may accrue to those within the community are essential for any leadership training programmes.

It may not unreasonably be mooted that suggestions of grassroots organizations are based o n many premises such as the willingness o f employees, the availability o f trained personnel, and above all, community approval. I would only conclude b y saying that none o f these can be achieved overnight. T o start with, most poor women are scarcely aware o f their rights and o f the fact that they are being exploited. Before organizing for better wages, women would have to be made aware o f their situation. Awareness is o f little use unless certain facilities can also be provided. Apart from a subsequent mobilization for wage fixation, there'is an urgent need to provide services such as creches and additional nutrition for children. There

is little point in those committed to women’s studies or an improve-

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ment i n the status o f women to ask for action-oriented research: there should also be the provision for implementing the findings of such research. I n short, seminars, demonstrations and newspaper articles o n rape, dowry deaths and child marriage highlight only some aspects o f the woman’s situation. I t is equally important to expose the harsh realities o f the everyday lives of the country’s working-class women. While a substantial proportion of poor families are dependent o n the incomes which the women bring in, they (the women) are at the same time subjected to the worst forms o f exploitation at home and i n their places of work. I t might be difficult to visualize a change in the former for some time to come, b u t i t should not be so very difficult to effect some minimal change

in their conditions of work. NOTES 1 See for instance Ester Boserup’s Woman’s Role in Economic Development, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970 and Irene Tinker and Bo Bramsen (eds.), Women and World Development, Washington: World Development Council, 1976, for a description of the impact of mechanization in developing countries. The role of employment in making a woman economically independent has been dealt w i t h i n the issue o f Signs ( A u t u m n ) 1977 and i n Alice Schlegel e d . , Sexual Stratification, Columbia: Columbia University Press,

1979. 2

The Balmikis are an important sub-caste of the north Indian sweeper caste known as the Bhangis. The sweepers rank at the bottom of the Hindu frame of

reference; they are the lowest among the former untouchable castes— untouchability was made illegal under the Constitution of India when the country gained its independence i n 1947— known now as the Scheduled Castes.

3 See Charles A . Valentine's Culture and Poverty, Chicago University Press,

4

1968, and Peter Lloyd’s Slums o f Hope?, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971 for critical assessments o f the study o f the urban poor. 1 consulted a few recent studies o n the role o f female agricultural labour i n rice

producing areas; these included Kumaresh Chakravarty and G.C. Tiwari’s ‘Regional Variations in Women’s Employment: A Case-Study of Five Villages i n Three Indian States’, New Delhi: ICSSR, mimeo, 1979, Joan Mencher and Deborah D’Amico’s ‘Kerala Women as Labourers and Supervisors— Implications for Women and Development’, 1978, which appears in this volume

and Joan Mencher and K . Saradamoni’s ‘Wages of Inherited Discrimination’, S

m i m e o , 1980. Quoted i n Mencher and Saradamoni, 1980.

6 The following studies were referred to: a) Molly Mathew, Women Workers in the Unorganized Sector of the Coir Industry in Kerala (summary), ICSSR mimeo, 1979. b ) K . A . N a i r , Women Workers in Cashew Industry in Kerala (summary),

ICSSR mimeo.

MALAVIKA KARLEKAR

340

c) G . P. Sinha and S. N . Ranade, Women Construction Workers— Report of T w o Studies, N e w D e l h i : Allied Publishers Pvt. L t d . , 1976.

d) Zarina Bhatty, ‘Economic Role and Status of W o m e n — A Case Study of ‘Women in the Beedi Industry i n Allahabad’ (summary), I L O working paper,

1980. e ) Economic and Political Weekly, ‘Survey—Labour I I — B i d i Workers o f

Nipani’ (22 july), 1978. f) M u r a l i Manohar et al., ‘Women Construction Workers o f Warangal’, Economic and Political Weekly (January 24), 1981.

See O. P. Sharma’s ‘Occupational Structure of Urban Working Women’, The Economic Times (June 15), 1975.

Sulabha Brahme, Economic Plight of Hamal Women in Pune, New Delhi: ICSSR mimeo., 1979. This has been pointed out i n all the studies cited in n. 6 as well as in Brahme’s study. 10 See the above study as well as ‘Working Class Women and Working Class Families’, and Economic and Political Weekly, Survey (July 22), 1978. Andrea M . Singh and Alfred de Souza’s ‘The Position o f Women i n Migrant Bastis i n D e l h i ’ , N e w D e l h i : Indian Social Institute, mimeo, 1976 deals i n detail w i t h many o f the problems faced by women i n slums. 11 I n my sample 10 per cent claimed t o have land in their husband’s villages. On the

face of i t , this appears to be against one’s expectations regarding land distribution among the Scheduled Castes and as an area for further research. However as m y work was i n a separate area, I d i d not pursue this problem any further. 12 See for instance Paul Wiebe’s Social Life in an Indian Slum, New D e l h i : Vikas Publishing House, 1975 and A . R . Desai and S. D . Pillai’s A Profile of an Indian Slum, B o m b a y : Popular Prakashan, 1972 for inter-generational figures o n educational mobility.

13 SEWA or the Self Employed Women’s Association in Ahmedabad is a pioneer i n the field of organization of poor women like street vendors, domestic servants, pappad makers and so on. Apart from arbitration o n wages, the

organization runs a community bank for its members. See Devaki Jain’s Women’s Quest for Power, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979, for a description of SEWA and women’s organization in other parts of India.

Changing Economic Roles of Farm Women in Socialist Development of SFR Yugoslavia RUZA FIRST-DILIC

Introduction

A s the problems o f rural development are gaining i n importance on a worldwide scale, scholars a n d social planners are stressing the

need for the mobilization o f all human resources i n rural development. I t is clear that the participation o f the rural population, both women and men, is necessary for the improvement of food production and o f conditions o f rural life. When adequately educated and trained, both sexes contribute considerably to rural and human development (Presvelou 1973). D u e to their threefold role as producer, housekeeper and socializer (Cernea 1973, First-Dilié 1974). women rather than men play a dominant role i n rural development. This is especially true for countries where women represent a major part o f the agricultural labour force. Nonetheless women are neglected almost everywhere. W o m e n have been, historically, less m o b i l e t h a n m e n , so t h a t t h e

social division o f labour between the village and the city, between agriculture and other branches o f economy, above all affects them. The growth o f the absolute number o f women engaged directly i n farm production and, even more important, the increasing number o f m e n leaving family farms, produces the phenomenon of feminization o f the agricultural labour force. This process is neither epheme r a l n o r socio-economically n e u t r a l , a n d can b e considered o n l y i n

terms o f the national socio-economic development within which it OCCUTS.

The aim o f this paper is to determine the productive role o f farm (and rural) women in Socialist Federative Republic o f Yugoslavia, and t o evaluate the institutional basis for changing the position o f

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R U Z A FIRST-DILIC

farm (and rural) women. The present analysis is based on a comparative statistical data from Population Censuses (1948, 1953, 1961, 1971) and Agricultural Censuses (1960 and 1969). Although exclusively based o n Yugoslavian data, i t is hoped that the trends presented here may be incorporated into the body of knowledge o f

the changing role of farm women in other developing countries. This analysis starts from the general assumption that the basic relationship i n which, and through which, the individual changes the world and her/himself is the economic relationship which determines all other social relationships; economic relations are the foundation o f social life and prevail i n the last instance, but i n any analysis o f an individual situation i t is the social being as a whole that has to be taken into account (i.e. the economic and political relations, together with the existing social ideologies, culture, tradition, and other wide-ranging concrete factors o f social being) (Jacubowski, 1978: 58-65). For example, i n spite of the observable fact that farm women i n Yugoslavia are already fully integrated into agricultural production on private farms, i.e. into productive relations, they still remain marginalized from other social relations. Women’s right to work and to produce food either for family consumption o r for the market, or most commonly for both, doesnot yet include, although i t necessarily presumes, their right to educat i o n and vocational training, t o better work conditions, to political participation and representation, to taking part i n decision-making as regards production and distribution on the family farm, and to

membership of planning and decision-making bodies of farm co-operatives o n an equal basis with men o r with women employed off the agriculture. Thus, for farm women, their ‘social being’ does n o t simply mean their ‘productive and/or economic situation’.

Socialization and upbringing, cultural tradition, religion, value system o f the rural community, and ideological prejudices are the

social factors whose importance is n o t less than that of economic relations. One o f the current problems o f Yugoslavia’s general policy, and i n particular its agrarian policy, is how to change the socioeconomic, self-management, and political position of (rural and farm) women at both macro and micro levels so that they may achieve equality with their farm male and non-farm female partners. Recently, social questions comprehended by the concept of the women’s question have come into the focus o f political interest i n

Farm Women in Yugoslavia

343

general. Besides, the position o f rural women and especially of women producing food in the private agricultural sector is specific to Yugoslavia’s rural and agrarian development. O n the one side, the programme o f food production needs to be more directly related to

the farm women, since often they are the only producers of food for the market in the private sector of agriculture (as in the case o f

part-time family farms). On the other side, the position of rural and farm women is also regarded as specific because of the great variety

of achieved levels of development in particular rural communities, which directly influences the differential position of women in the family and the local community. These issues cannot be solved through only one action programme. Changes in the position o f farm women, as one of the long-term objectives o f developmental policy, can be successfully

realized only through the integrated action of all social factors, i.e. as a part o f a comprehensive programme for the country’s social and

material progress (Rozi¢ 1976). Here will be considered some selected aspects of the position of women i n rural and agrarian development o f SFR Yugoslavia duri n g the past three decades. The specific position of farm women will b e analysed i n the context o f (a) the totality of relations in the development o f the forces o f production i n SFR Yugoslavia, (b) the position o f agricultural production i n total economic production, and (c) the position o f the female agricultural labour force within the total agricultural labour force, first o f all i n private farming. A

brief insight into collective agriculture and the position of women as agricultural workers will also be presented. Structural changes in Yugoslavia’s agriculture The consequences o f industrialization, rapid economic developm e n t , socialization (collectivization) o f private agriculture, and very recent establishment o f links between peasant farmers and a system o f associated labour! represent the deepest macro level social changes i n the post-war development o f the Yugoslav society (Drustvene 1974). Changes i n production relations, i n relations o f o w n e r s h i p , a n d i n t h e m a n a g e m e n t o f society, w e r e foresee-

ably expressed i n the increase o f the number o f active persons i n t h e socialized sector o f the economy, and i n the decrease o f the social importance o f a l l those forms o f employment linked t o

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RUZA FIRST-DILIC

the family or kinship organization of production (WertheimerBaleti¢ 1973). Changes i n the labour process and i n the characteristics o f localities i n which working people live, have been a component part o f the changes i n the way o f life and demographic behaviour o f the people. Economic development has resulted i n a rise i n household income and in a decrease in the proportion of total income spent o n the purchase of agricultural products. O n the other

hand, some functions which were in the agricultural sector (such as, for example, manufacturing o f clothes, footwear, and furniture) have been replaced b y industry. Thus, the role o f agriculture in the country’s economy has gradually narrowed, mainly as a result o f technological progress and rise i n labour productivity. Industnalization has not only brought about a change i n quantitative relations between industry and agriculture, but industrialization o f agriculture itself has resulted i n the disintegration o f the traditional

forms of agricultural production and in the changes in numbers, sex and age composition o f both total and active agricultural

population.? Migration o f the rural population into cities, and the outflow o f population from farm to non-farm activities began o n a large scale. The proportion o f the agricultural population i n the total population decreased steadily, and so did the proportion of the active agricultural population i n the total active population, as well as the

proportion of population supported by the active agricultural population in the total supported population. Thus, in the period 194871, the total number o f agricultural population declined by 26. 1per

cent (see Table 1), while its proportion in the total population by 33.7 per cent. Since the liberation (1945), the number o f persons active i n agriculture has been decreasing at a rate o f about 1 per cent annually for the period 1948-53, and at about 1.5 per cent annually for the period 1953-71. I t is estimated that today only every fifth inhabitant is directly tied to agriculture. Conditions for a relative and absolute decrease i n the agricultural population were not created only b y rapid post-war industrialization of the country, but also b y the situation i n the European labour market which pulled a considerable number o f Yugoslav farmers to get temporary employment

abroad. According to the 1971 Population Census, in that year about 328 thousand farmers (or 4.2 per cent o f the total agricultural

345

Farm Women in Yugoslavia Table 1 Farming Population o f SFR Yugoslavia, According to Sex, Activity, and Censuses (in thousands) 1948

1953

1961

1971

TOTAL Total Men Women % Women

10,606 5,000 5,606 52.9

10,316 4,833 5,483 53.2

9,198 4,232 4,966 54.0

7,844 3,713 4,131 52.7

ACTIVE Total Men Women % Women

5,627 3,357 2,270 40.3

5,360 3,198 2,162 40.3

4,692 2,676 2,016 43.0

4,208 2,434 1,774 42.2

4,979 1,643 3,336 67.0

4,956 1,635 3,321 67.0

4,506 1,556 2,950 65.5

3,636 1,279 2,357 64.8

SUPPORTED Total Men Women

% Women

Source: Statisticki godisnjak 1973 (Statistical Yearbook o f SFRY 1973). Beograd: F S B , 1973.

population) were employed abroad, the majority of them in nonfarm activities.3 Sociologically speaking, the process of ‘deagrarianization’ brought about revolutionary changes i n people’s lives, and in their value system—as indicated b y the abandonment o f the traditional way o f perceiving their own lives, and b y a break with the rural

framework and the present way of living which they had inherited for generations. I t should b e noted, however, that labour productivi t y in agriculture has increased more slowly than i n non-agricultural

activities, since the traditional forms of production and organization in farming have been slower in changing. Because of this, the proportion o f agricultural population i n total population still exceeds the rate o f agricultural production i n total production (Wertheimer-Baleti¢ 1978).

Co-operative farming and women as agricultural workers According to the 1969 Agricultural Census data, i n Yugoslavia there are some 10 million hectares o f cultivated arable land, o f

346

R U Z A FIRST-DILIC

which 1.4 million hectares are socially owned. The production o n

this surface is organized by co-operatives, socialist farm estates, agri-business work organizations, and other more recent forms of production co-operation. Co-operative movement has been, and still is, encouraged. The prevalence o f small private holdings requires different forms o f uniting land and other means o f production, so as to promote a faster and more effective development o f total agricultural production. Consequently, i n the mid-fifties stress was laid on the organization o f agricultural co-operation through which farmers could j o i n the process o f socially organized production, o n the basis of contract with different organizations o f socialist farming.

Simultaneously with the development of co-operative farming in general, and co-operation between the peasant farmer and his neighbouring co-operative, communities made efforts towards supplying the latter and other agricultural organizations (so called Kombinats) with modern means of production both on their own holdings and i n co-operation with private holdings. For example, i n 1964 there were about 38,000 tractors i n the socialist sector, i n

comparison with only 8,000 tractors in the private peasant ownership, while in 1973 the ratio changed substantially with 25,000 in the socialist versus more than 95,000 i n the private sector. ( A separate

issue is how this mechanization process in farming influenced the division of labour on private farms, especially between men and women.) However, such a planned trend did not significantly change the fund o f cultivated arable land i n the socialist versus

private sector of agriculture. The drastic switch-over has been marked only i n the total output o f agricultural products, which is

a result of combination of today inverse to the ratio of ownership— maximum of 10 hectares of arable land in private ownership with an orientation to self-consumption i n peasant farming, and low pro-

ductivity of extensive private farming with a high labour input. The Constitution o f 1974 confirmed a maximum o f 10 hectares o f arable land per one private holding unit. Therefore, i t brought about a radical change i n the so-called way o f socializing the private sector o f agriculture. I n today’s Yugoslav socialist self-managed system, private farmers and members o f their households who really work o n the farm have, o n the basis o f their personal labour i n p u t , i n principle the same rights and obligations regarding their work as d o workers i n associated labour (working with socially’

Farm Women in Yugoslavia

347

owned means o f production). This is expressed i n the Constitution o f SFRY and its Republics/Provinces (1974), and in the Associated Labour Act (1976). The recent reorganization o f co-operatives made the basic cooperative organizations independent economic units. Today socialized co-operation (production) represents a special form

through which the labour and resources of farmers are pooled with socially owned means o f production (at the disposal of the cooperative organization), and with the associated labour of workers in the co-operatives.” Farmers can pool their labour, instruments o f labour, as well as other resources with each other (similar to the French type o f ‘group farming’), and with the labour o f workers w h o work with socially owned means in agricultural co-operatives, basic organizations o f co-operative members, and other forms o f farmers’ association. The act o f association, and the selection o f the form the association is to take, are based o n the goodwill o f the farmers. The fact that private farmers even today own over 80 per cent o f

the total amount of cultivable land shows the importance of personal labour i n agriculture. A long time will pass before a great percentage o f cultivable land is directly included i n large-scale socialized agriculture, so the Yugoslav society must undertake all i t can to increase the private farmers’ work productivity.® This is the essence o f the socialization o f agricultural production, without any forcible destruction o f peasant private property.

Due to increasing requirements of non-agricultural labour force and higher productivity in the socialist sector of agriculture, the indices o f employment i n co-operative farming for the period 195371 does not show outstanding growth (see Table 2). Different rates o f employment for men and women are also evident, but such differences are more obvious i n the less developed Republics and Provinces, where the employment o f women i n the socialist agriculture is greater than that o f men. This reduces the ratio between the total number o f women and the number of active women, and produces a decline i n the reserve female labour force. What kinds o f job on co-operative farms can women hope to get? W i t h improved technology, agricultural production becomes more professionalized and requires trained manpower. Such workers as those being trained (institutionally) for driving agricultural machines are needed. A s a rule, skilled workers are men, and

348

RUZA FIRST-DILIC Table 2

Sex Structure o f Farming Labour in the Socialist Sector, According to Republics and Censuses (in thousands) Republics

Sex

1953

1971

Index 1953 ¢ 100

S F R Yugoslavia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Croatia

Macedonia

Total Women % women Total Women % women Total Women % women Total Women

Montenegro

Serbia

Slovenia

% women Total Women % women Total Women % women Total Women % women

133,0 30,3 22.8 12,2 2,0 16.4 33.3 9,2 27.6 10.8

252,0 48.4 19.2 20,0 3,5 17.5 53,4 12,4 23.3 29.6

2,2

4.1

20.4 1,9 0,2 10.5 59,5 11,5 19.3 15,5 4,9 31.6

13.9 31 0,8 25.8 126,3 21,2 16.8 19,6 6,3 32.1

189.5 159,7 163.9 175.0

160.4 134.8 274.1 186.4

163.2 400.0 212.3 184.3 126.5 128.6

Sources: Statisticki bilten 83 (Statistical Bulletin No. 83). Beograd: FSB, 1957; Statisticki godisnjak SFRJ 1972 (Statistical Yearbook o f SFRY 1972); Beograd: F S B , 1972.

manual labourers are w o m e n . This reveals that o n socialist farms,

men carry out work which requires higher education and greater vocational skills, while women are employed i n jobs needing the least skill and the lowest level of schooling ( i f any at all). Women are thus ‘second line’ agricultural workers, and function i n the social division o f labour on co-operative farms as substitutes for men who are getting employed i n higher prestige posts. There are very rare women who actively o r , even passively, participate in the self-management bodies i n the socialist agricultural organizations. Women delegated to management-

Farm Women in Yugoslavia

349

councils are as a rule only passive members, so that those who do act

as presidents of such bodies, or as directors of agricultural cooperatives, are a real exception.’ Women as labourers on family farms After the liberation of the country, the relationship between men and women working o n family farms was similar to that o f 1921, i.e. 67 per cent o f the total population was active i n agriculture (1948), out o f which 60 per cent were men, and 40 per cent women (Stipeti¢ 1964). Since then, the active population has been declining continuously, but the absolute number o f women working o n family farms decreased more slowly than the number o f active men. The coeffi-

cient of femininity of the agricultural labour force was 67.6 for S F R Y i n 1953; i n 1961 i t was 75.3, while i n 1971 it was 72.9

(Wertheimer-Baleti¢ 1973). That the number of women in the agricultural labour force is increasing can also be concluded trom the data o n the participation o f women i n the total agricultural labour force: 36.9 per cent i n 1931, 40.3 per cent twenty years later

(1953), and 42.3 per cent forty years later (1971) (Stipeti¢ 1964). This growing significance o f the female labour force in agriculture

is also confirmed by the comparative data on rates of activity in agriculture (stated for both sectors together. according to sex and age groups) (see Table 3). Comparing the rates of male and female labour force participation i n agriculture i n 1961 and 1971, one can conclude the following. First, the male agricultural population o f age 10 and over is, as a rule, active i n agriculture: o f the 3,294,000 male agricultural inhabitants in 1961, 81.15 were active in agriculture, and o f the 3,053,000 i n 1971, those active were 79.90. The female agricultural population o f 10 years and over were, however, still mostly dependent, i.e. they were not recorded as active in agriculture. Thus, out o f the total number o f 4,071,000 female

agricultural population in 1961(which is almost one million persons m o r e t h a n m e n ! ) , 49.48 were active i n agriculture, and i n 1971,

50.62 out o f the 3,505,000 were the same. Secondly, the activity o f women in agriculture is increasing, while the rate o f male activity is decreasing. This phenomenon needs to be further investigated. There is, on the one hand, an increase in the number o f farm women who are entering agricultural work after the retirement o f men from i t (in line with the traditional behaviour). O n the other hand, there is a small shift, but nonetheless a shift, i n

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