Page 198 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 9: Gender and Stratification

should be married within the caste. A clear example of this process is the Indian caste system Notes
wherein castes are defined by roles and they are interdependent. Thus in all societies women are
not necessarily exchanged outside the group.
It seems that Levi-Strauss assumes that all societies were patriarchal but does not provide an
evidence for his assumption. He does not consider the question as to why men are defined as
superior beings and are given a superior status in society. He also does not state as to what makes
women an exchangeable commodity. He seems to have overlooked the distinction between the
sexual access and marital relationship. Sometimes sexual access is allowed but not marriage.
Engels’ Theory of the Subordination of Woman
Engels’ book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and State” examines issues which are
central to feminism. One such issue is the origin of family and woman’s oppression.
Engels argues that the oppression of woman is historically related to the development of class
society. He says that in primitive societies all work, whether by men or women had the same
social value. Whatever wealth they had, was possessed and shared by the whole community.
Until the lower stage of barbarism, fixed wealth consisted of house, clothing, crude ornaments
and implements for procuring and preparing food. Breeding goats and sheep yielded rich nutriment
in meat and milk. With the increase in the number of cattle pastoral people acquired more and
more wealth. As wealth increased, the concept of private ownership of the wealth emerged giving
rise to family wherein man had power. It gave man a n important status than the woman and on
the other hand created a stimulus to utilize this position in order to overthrow the traditional
order of inheritance in favour of his children. As Engels declared the over-throw of mother-right
was the world-historical defeat of the female sex. Woman was degraded, enthralled, became the
slave of the man’s lust, a mere instrument for breeding children.
According to Engles this ultimately resulted into the patriarchal family, an organisation of a
family where a number of people are under the paternal power of the head of the family. Secondly,
this gave rise to division of work into two types of production-i) production for use and
ii) production for exchange. Whatever was produced by women was consumed in the house and
it did not create any surplus. Men on the other hand produced for exchange and were able to
accumulate surplus wealth and there by gain more social power. The accumulation of surplus
wealth led to the division of people into two classes, those who had surplus wealth and those who
did not have surplus wealth.
Side by side with the creation of classes, the status of woman in the family and society was
lowered resulting thereby into legalized servitude of woman.
As various feminists have pointed out, Engles’ analysis of woman’s subordination has given rise
to various debates within feminism about the determining effects of ideology and of the material
world in the contribution of women’s subordination.
In the recent years feminists have inverted Engels’ thesis in two ways. It is suggested that Engels’
explanation that sex-inequality is determined by class-inequality can be doubted. It is the inequality
with respect to sex that determines the inequality with respect to classes.
Another such view questions Engels’ emphasis on relating production and reproduction. Engels
insisted that an analysis must emphasize the interaction between two aspects of material life, the
changing organisation of production and the changing form of the family. Engels however, could
not keep these two analytically separate and independent because in many pre-capitalistic societies
family was the unit of both production and reproduction. Thus both types of production were
controlled by kinship relations. Meillasoux C shows that Engels’ analysis neglects the importance
of human reproduction as having an autonomous structure and reduces it to human production.
Jane Humphries argues that the sexual divisions in the family and social production can be
explained as an effect not of wealth but of scarcity. She points out “Historically, except from very

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