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Unit 9: Gender and Stratification

unloading the animals were effected with order and rapidity. It created a war-like spirit, a sense Notes
of discipline and the supreme authority of the tribal chief.
As regards family life the nomads were by no means all alike. Everything dependent on the
wealth of the nomads and the environmental demands of the time. The domestication and care of
animals was essentially the task of men and this gave them all authority and position in the tribe.
It was advantageous to the nomads to have a patriarchal family rule in which the children, the
wife and the servants were strictly subordinate to the head of the family who exerted control over
women and children. But patriarchy was not a rule among the nomads and it did not necessarily
imply subordination in the modem sense of the term. Many a tribes did not brother about the
fatherhood of the child. As mentioned by Gautier the Tuargs were all under matriarchy, they said
that the womb holds the child and the child belongs to its mother. Thus there was no concept of
father because his role in reproduction was not really known.

Self-Assessment
Fill in the blanks
1. Several women’s movement demanded female suffrage in United States and United Kingdom
during the .............
2. The Seneca Fall convention in ............. marked the birth of women’s rights movement which
among other things called for female suffrage.
3. Women were granted the right to vote in the US Constitution in .............
4. The book ‘The Feminine Mystique’ marked the resurgence of liberal feminist thought in the
1960s, composed by
5. The first lesson of patriarchy are learnt in the .............where the head of the family is a man/
father

9.4 Summary
• The sexual division explained by the Marxist thought has less to do with the actual patterns
of social interaction or social relationship. From this perspective arose an important question
of whether or not female domestic has always had difficulties in formulating a coherent
theory of action which could not relate the analysis of objective class position and of system
contradictions of class formation.
• Domestic patriarchy has come with the concept of home and home making. Women’s right
to proper recognition of her work at home has been recognized to a great extent all over the
world. Now women go out for work, have their savings, and a control over what they earn.
Most men are not hostile towards women’s work.
• Gender regimes” refer to inequalities of gender in family, work and state related activities.
Gender is reproduced within such a complex of institutions through “male reason” and the
dichotomy of “maleness” and “femaleness”.
• “Statization” and patronage to provide employment, education and health care for women
is a top-down manner to analyse their problems. Effective property rights may reduce women’s
economic, social and political subordination and bring about more equal gender relations. A
resource theory, rather than the reform theory, is the main concern.
• Patriarchy literally means rule of the father in a male-dominated family. It is a social and
ideological construct which considers men (who are the patriarchs) as superior to women.
• Patriarchy is based on a system of power relations which are hierarchical and unequal where
men control women’s production, reproduction and sexuality. It imposes masculinity and
femininity character stereotypes in society which strengthen the iniquitous power relations
between men and women. Patriarchy is not a constant and gender relations which are dynamic

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