Anthropology of Gender

Early twentieth century anthropologists presumed that the social and political differences or
divisions between men and women were 'natural'. The pioneering anthropologist Phyllis Kaberry,
who did fieldwork among Australian Aborigines in the 1930s, depicted women as 'active agents'.
Although her material reveals women not to be subservient, nonetheless they are generally
subordinate relative to men. Margaret Mead, who also commenced fieldwork in the 1930s, while
not concerned with subordination, demonstrated that ideals of femininity and masculinity vary
enormously between groups. Her ideas continue to be relevant.

Wasfia Nazreen had to train her body and mind to gain the strength. Mabia Khatun SA Games
Gold medalist. Judith Butler-Performative Theory- Body is constructed. Anthropologist try to
find out how the body is constructed through stories, customs, cultures.

Thanks to the Womens' Liberation Movement of the 1970s, a younger generation of women
began to question the masculinist orthodoxies in social anthropology, both in the traditions in
fieldwork and the literature. An important distinction which began to be made was that between
sex as a biological given and gender as culturally variable. In this way, it was argued that
divisions of labour and different roles assigned on the basis of gender were no longer accepted as
biologically inevitable. Whilst sex at birth is relatively fixed, the meanings and behaviour
associated with physical, sexual differences were seen as fluid and varied across cultures. In the
1990s, the dichotomy is held to be less clear, but even in the 1970s it was always recognised that
human biology could also be culturally transformed and manipulated.

From the mid-1970s, a number of important volumes by women anthropologists made women
more visible and also raised key questions about gender and anthropological theory. Contrary to
subsequent caricatures in later literature, this strategy never implied that women should be
studied separate from men and gender. Neither was it suggested that women could be studied
separate from men, nor did the material suggest that women were universally the same. The vast
cross-cultural range of the early volumes already displayed differences among women. Although
masculinity is only recently being studied in detail, gender studies aim to explore the full ranges
of gender categories, including androgyny, in different cultural contexts.
The impact of gender studies is also apparent in relation to field work. Early texts by women
such as Elenore Smith Bowen and Hortense Powdermaker demonstrated the importance of
personal experience, individual identity and social relationships in writing anthropology. Once
marginalised, these texts explored the ideas which are now central to the discipline.

Modern gender theorists point out that how masculinity is more rigid than femininity-

Red shoes- only black, brown, white-

Long hair- and use hair band- deviant-cooking for your family-you cannot cry-
Text written by: Professor Judith Okely (reproduced with author’s permission)