Page 193 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes Secondly, the picture that a male could choose a female and exert control over her and her off-
spring is also false because development of male-female pairing emerged much later. A temporary
relationship between male and female must have been prevalent. There was no permanent bond
that could give rise to a patriarchal family relationship.
Thirdly, the earliest form of family must have been a family of mother and her children. Even
when the hunting became a part of life, the male would not share food with his wife and children
(this is the modern concept of the family) but with his mother and siblings. Thus Sally Slocum
concludes ‘the emphasis on hunting as a prime moving factor in hominid evolution distorts the
data. It is simply too big a jump to go from the primate individual gathering pattern to a hominid
cooperative ‘hunting-sharing’ pattern without some intervening changes.
Man the Culture, Woman the Nature
The natural difference and the opposition between a woman’s nature and a man’s culture has
been central to some feminist attempts to explain the universal subordination of woman.
Arguments focussing on nature/culture fall into two broad categories : (1) the anthropological
and (2) the radical feminist Sherry Ortner’s discussion in ‘Is Female to Male as Nature to Culture’
provides with one of the influential presentation of the anthropological argument. Sherry Ortner
argues that every culture looks upon woman as belonging to the lower level of existence. Woman
symbolizes nature and man symbolizes culture. Every culture devalues ‘nature’ and proudly
believes that the creation of culture consists in having victory over nature. It is believed that the
human beings are not only conscious of nature at large but they are aware of their own existence.
It is human beings who can transcend the ‘nature’ and create different forms of living, thinking
and doing. In other words that could be called as culture is itself superior to nature and it takes for
granted its ability to culturalize, humanise nature.
Women are looked at as the beings closer to nature, performing the function of reproduction so
that species would survive. Sherry Ortner quotes a passage from Simone de Beauvoir’s Second
Sex ‘A female to a greater extent than the male, is the prey of the species, she is more enslaved to
the species than the male, her animality is more manifest’. She further points out that the major
processes of woman’s body serve no function except the organic function and they are the source
of discomfort and painful experience. In the words of Beauvoir, ‘many of the ovarian secretions
function for the benefit of the egg, promoting its maturation and adapting the uterus to its
requirements; in respect to organism as a whole, they make disequilibrium rather than for
regulation—a woman is adapted to the needs of the egg rather than to her own requirement,
Menstruation is uncomfortable, many times painful, childbirth is painful, many times dangerous.

Thus, a woman’s body dooms her to mere reproduction of life, the male on the other
hand because he lacks the natural creative function, has to assert his creativity externally
through technology and symbols. He tries to create eternal, lasting and transcendental
objects but the woman creates only perishable human beings.

Ortner declares that it is not killing that is the valuable aspect of hunting but it is the transcendental
nature of these activities that is more valued. It is not giving the life but risking the life that raises
mankind over the animal world. In this way a male is superior to female.
Woman’s physiological functions also limit her social movement and confine her to certain social
contexts which are again seen as closer to nature. Woman’s body, like that of all female mammals,
generates milk and after pregnancy for the feeding of the newborn baby. The relationship of the
nursing mother and the child is also seen as a natural bond. Mothers and children belong together.

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