Artifact II: Gender and Culture
Reflection: Gender and gender roles has always been an important principle when trying to understand cultures. Whether men or women are in charge often acts as a skeleton fort that culture. Addressing the role of gender and culture allows for humans to work to fix mistakes of other countries that allow gender roles to escalate into abuse of a certain gender.
The relationship between gender and culture has long been an interesting aspect within human culture. Within some, the culture is patrilineal, meaning that the family is traced through the husband and father. Matrilineal cultures trace family through the mother. This is important because whether or not a culture is matrilineal or patrilineal can set the tone for that entire society in regard to basic everyday life.
When most people in the 21st century picture cultures, it is no surprise that many probably assume that most are probably patrilineal. It is unfortunate that this is the case but history typically shows male run villages and towns where the men rule and the women and children are inferior. This is the case for the South American Yanomamo tribe. Though only an estimated ten thousand strong, their culture is infused with the idea that warriors are superior and women are objects to be bartered and used to solidify relationships among men. Though this is an extreme case, this can also be witnessed among matrilineal lines. The Mosuo of China live in a way in which women are in charge and daughters are more desired than sons. The women are not forced to marry but are instead taught about the tradition of “walking marriage”, a tradition in which a women allows a man into her bed with the expectation that he will be gone by morning. Within this culture marriage is often seen as undesirable and as a result the culture works in ways that are much different than in many other cultures where there is the family structure of husband, wife and children.
The United States of American is one of many countries that these days wishes its culture to be bilateral, or for equality between men and women. In these cultures all humans are seen with respect and everyone is equal. However, America was founded on a patrilineal structure and that is still witnessed today. Women have to fight to close gender gaps and be seen as equal. However, since we no longer live in a time period where it benefits the majority to divide up tasks by gender, it is becoming more and more apparent that gender should not be a restricting factor within culture. Society works much better when people are allowed to live their lives as they want.
