Page 192 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 9: Gender and Stratification

point of view is also explicitly present in the belief that on the biological level a female has a Notes
peculiar function to perform—namely the reproductive function and that is her sole function. Her
physiology is such that it is intimately related to the continuation of the species of life. From this
point of view woman is nearer to nature and man is nearer to culture. It is nature which is the
single cause of men’s domination.
The same biological determinism is operative at the psychological level wherein certain specific
tendencies are attributed to woman and certain others to man. It is believed that there are necessary,
unique and exclusive qualities of men and women. Freudian theory has been considered as the
example of this view by the feminists.
The second kind of theories emphasize the social aspect of human life and they explain the
subordination of women in the context of socio-culture environment. Engels holds that woman
became subordinate because of the rise of the institution of private property. Levi Strauss’s theory
too states that woman’s subordination is the result of the social dynamics.
Let us have an overview of the arguments given by these theories.
Man the Hunter and Woman the Gatherer

The concept of ‘Man the Hunter’ has been developed by Sherwood Washburn and C. Lancaster.
Washburn and Lancaster hold that : males who hunt and that hunting is not just an economic
activity but a way of life. They argue that ‘The biology, psychology and customs that separate us
from the apes-all these we owe to the hunters of time past’.
It is said that even though hunting is not economically necessary in modern days many modern
men still hunt and that indicates the importance of the activity of hunting. The data for evidence
includes the assumption that the protonomonid ancesters of Homosapiens developed in a
continuous fashion from a base of characteristics similar to those of living non-human primates.
The human primates are similar in some respects to non-human primates and they also have
points of difference. The living in groups, mother-infant bond, capacity for learning and non-
symbolic capacity for communication and such other characteristics are shared by both. On the
other hand longer gestation period, absence of body-hair, long period of infant dependency, year-
round sexual receptivity of females, ability to create new symbolic systems, languages and cultures
are the distinctive characteristics of humans.
It is suggested that erect bipadalism led to freeing of hands for food carrying and tool use and this
led to the manipulating the activities for hunting and gathering food. The need for more skill in
organization and communication in hunting provided for the increased brain size which made
learning possible and new ways of behaviour evolved.
It is said that women could not follow the hunt because they had to take care of the infants. They
stayed home gathering food they could and males developed new techniques of hunting and
thereby new communicative skills of organization. They brought the meat to the females and the
young ones. Thus the human social and emotional bonds can be traced back to the hunter who
brought food for the female and the young ones who were dependent on him for survival.
This theory has been criticized in many respects. Salley Slocum raises a number of objections
against this claim some of which are as follows.
She points out that even if we hold that the human species has evolved from the non-human
primates, the claim that hunting would explain the shift from the primate individual gathering to
human food-sharing is incorrect. She argues that it is more logical to assume that as soon as the
period of infant’s dependence lengthened the mothers would begin to increase the field of their
gathering so that they would have more food that would be provided for dependent infants. The
mother-infant bond thus would extend over a longer time and that increased the scope of social
relationship and resulted into first sharing of food. It was not hunting but food-gathering that was
a natural form of life.

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