As in most societies, men portray the dominant role and are responsible for hunting. Women, perform their tasks based on the “language of work performance.” Their main responsibilities are cleaning and constructing clothing from animal skin and running the household.
The Western Eskimos live in a matrilocal society where the husband resides with the wives family. In some circumstances, “this may limit husbands’ ability to control their wives affairs,” (21). In my opinion, this could be considered a good thing since in most cases women must remain quiet. Most decision making is done by males with little or no input from women. In some cases, women will give their opinion in the presence of their own home when no other male authority is around besides her husband. As the author states, in some instances the husband will listen to his wives opinions and take the information into consideration. However, older women do not fear expressing their opinion and put forth their own vote. This can sometimes signify the overall female vote.
From the beginning, boys and girls are treated differently. Around the age of six, they are separated and start playing apart from the opposite sex. Soon after, boys start participating in men’s work while girls take on the women’s role. However, from birth, Inuit names are gender neutral, so perhaps there is some equality after all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
One thing that comes up for me, is ... although I have deep appreciation and value for the research and critical awareness and scholarly preparation (years and years!!) of anthropologists and ethnographers, I often feel that there is some critical aspect missing. This leads me to wonder, if anthros were visiting my home community, how much would they actually be 'allowed' to understand and to 'see'? How would the women in my own community reveal about how they utilize their spheres of influence and how successful are they at accomplishing what they need from the men? How much are we seeing is actually a remnant of an older culture, and how much is a result of the degrees to which our indigenous societies have been subordinated to patriarchal values and colonialist practices in authorizing men to a higher level than we had previously known in the 19th and 18th centuries...? I have alot of questions, about some of the ways in which the 'gendered' understanding of Inuit women is biased to an academic feminist framework of 'gender' and because there is no equivalent in indigenous societies, then, how do we, as researchers, make that more clear to our readers? Alot of questions!
Did you have questions about this research and the 'results' that they arrived at? I'm curious!
:)
M.Tamez
Post a Comment