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Social Stratification

Notes are subordinated or not, or the extent to which they are subordinated or the issue of suggesting
practical devices and strategies to put an end to subordination. I am concerned with the
question as to why in every culture woman is looked upon as a subordinate being, why such
an evaluation has been a part of every culture. The answer to this question will lead us to the
reasons or justifications of the subordination of woman.
• The subordination of woman has been one of the important issue for the social sciences and
for feminism. The defenders of women’s subordination and the propounders of woman’s
liberation both have tried to explain the phenomenon of subordination in terms of various
theoretical formulations. These theories refer to the biological, psychological material,
economic and ethical aspects of human life.
• The anthropological illustration of this claim is given by the theory that woman is the gatherer
and man is the hunter. The biological point of view is also explicitly present in the belief that
on the biological level a female has a 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• According to Freud during the early infantile period the child is autocratic, it derives erotic
or sexual satisfaction from the stimulation of his body or from erogenous zones such as lips,
cheeks, nipples or genital organs stimulated by the mother during the activities of feeding,
bathing or otherwise. In the oral stage the stimulation of mouth gives rise to pleasurable
sensation, in the anal stage libidinal pleasure is derived from the activities of the bowl, and
in the early genital stage the erotic pleasure is derived chiefly from the manipulation of the
sexual organs. Freud argues that at the oral stage and the anal stage the experiences of a boy
and a girl are the same. But at the genital stage the experiences are different.
• The girl on the other hand acknowledges the fact of her castration and with it the superiority
of the male and her own inferiority. Freud states that a girl feels greatly at a disadvantage
owing to her lack of visible penis. She envies boys for possessing a penis and wishes to be a
man rather than a woman. That becomes the hope of her life. But the process of becoming a
woman depends on the clitoris passing on the sensitivity to the vaginal orifice in good time
and completely.

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