Tag: Women and men all around the world comes from different cultures that not everyone understands. Different cultures have different kinships like matrilineal where it comes from the female side of the family, or patrilineal where it all comes from the men, finally bilateral, which are equal opportunities for both men and women. You will read that India is an unfair society where women are seen as subordinate unlike the other two kinships.
The culture that I was given to identify was the Hindu culture of India. India is an agricultural society that has mainly rural villages, they have little or no formal mode of education, and they are without contact of the national government. The kinship of the Hindu culture is patrilineal, which is tracing descent through the male line, but this only came about in the 19th century. It was not always like this, I do not know the exact reason for the change in kinship.
The gender roles of the Hindu culture in India are weighted heavily toward the males. The men are the head of the households and basically own the family, house, and land. He supplies the family with food from his land that is produced or he goes to town to purchase the food for the family. The men have the right to beat their wives and the right to the marriage. They normally neglect the daughters or beat them or starve them by insufficient feeding. The men have also started to use technology to hurt there daughters instead of help them. This is what frustrates me because why use technology which is suppose to help people and turn it against the daughters. It is frustrating to see innocent children murdered and not given a chance to live. I know this isn’t my culture but I would hope that they would go away from this. But since they are so far out of touch with government and no one is there to enforce the rules they just continue on with what has been in there culture for years.
The women in this society are seen as submissive without much power. The women only achieve status or power if they partake in agriculture and work. The women do house hold duties, take care of the children, and do domestic tasks. Female daughters are treated well in the family only if the mother holds a high status; with this they receive the same opportunities as the boys in education and religion. But on the other hand many female children born go through infanticide, this is when they will purposefully kill the daughters at a young age. It is because the father does not want a daughter in the family because they are seen as weak. Many females who are born and live that get sick or injured will just be left to die and suffer because the family is so individualistic. Most infanticide occurs in the wealthy families, which is interesting because they have more money to care for a daughter unlike the poorer parts of India.
Within the United States the culture is completely different. We have a bilateral culture, which is equality between the men and the women. Women are given equally opportunities as the men unlike in India. It is seen that men and women both take care of the house and bring in a paycheck to support the family not just the male. Yes females aren’t treated as well as men are in the job field but they do have way more opportunities than those in India. The true matrilineal culture of the Mosuo of China has a working society that invites people to be apart of. They are a happy group of people who live away from society in a dynamic environment. The women run everything and have multiple lovers. They choose who they want to love and spend the night with them and if the women wants the man to stay he stays the morning if not she sends him away. They women are allowed to dabble in many relationships to experiment with men. They have to give up their old lives to enter this society, which is a risk but hopefully pays off. It is not like the patrilineal society where men own everything and have all the power. The women have the sole power and use it wisely they do not beat anyone nor take advantage of anyone either. It is a dynamic flowing society that gives women the opportunity to live the way they want and choose who they want to love.