HONOR, THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR, AND THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN RURAL TUNISIA—A SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL READING

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Latreille
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Social Organizational ◽  
Status Of Women

Some anthropologists can argue that it is impossible to separate thesocial organizational(the realm of groups or aggregates—e.g., households, lineages, and farms) from thecultural(e.g., norms, rules, values, ideologies, and the like—hereafter, normative mental representations) and that the distinction between social and cultural anthropology is therefore an artificial one. To the contrary, others can argue that the social organizational (or “groupal”) and cultural perspectives refer to two analytically separate albeit intertwined levels of reality, sometimes shed a different light on a single phenomenon, and have different analytical value. This distinction I show through the study of the notion of “honor” and its relation to the gender division of labor and to the status of women in Tunisia.

scholarly journals HONOR, THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR, AND THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN RURAL TUNISIA—A SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONAL READING

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 621a-621a
Author(s):  
Martin Latreille
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Interpersonal Behavior ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
Peasant Household ◽  
The Status ◽  
Levels Of Reality ◽  
Social Organizational ◽  
Feminization Of Agriculture ◽  
Status Of Women

This article is based on the assumption that in anthropology cultural and social organizational perspectives should be distinguished and refer to two analytically separate levels of reality, sometimes shed a different light on a single phenomenon, and have different analytical value. I demonstrate this by studying the notion of “honor” and its relation to the gender division of labor and to the status of women in northwest Tunisia, in the context of the “feminization” of agriculture. After showing the limitations of a cultural perspective that defines honor as a code—that is to say, a set of normative representations aimed at the regulation of (interpersonal) behavior—I propose an alternative, social organizational (or “groupal”) reading of honor, focused on the dynamics of the peasant household. I then test its analytical usefulness on the case at hand.

Constructing Freedom: Institutional Pathways to Changing the Gender Division of Labor

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth K. Markovits ◽  
Susan Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Democratic Freedom ◽  
The Public Sphere

In recent years, there has been renewed public discussion regarding the relationship between women’s equality and their traditional responsibility for carework. In this essay, we analyze the structures of choice and constraint that continue to produce the gender division of family labor and thus women's unequal participation in the public sphere. We conceptualize this as a problem of democratic freedom, one that requires building institutional pathways to sustain women's participation. Drawing on Nancy Hirschmann's arguments about processes of social construction and their relation to freedom, we argue that gender inequality in the public sphere means that women are unfree, in the sense that they are not participating as peers in the material and discursive processes of social construction that then help to shape their own desires and decisions. We use that framework to analyze the current landscape in which different subgroups of women make decisions about paid labor and care work. Our goal is to bring into view the way the social construction of desire interacts with the material context to underwrite inequality between women and men and across different groups of women. Gender equality and the project of democracy require participatory parity between women and men in the public sphere. We therefore turn in our last section to an effort to imagine how public policies could construct pathways that can help interrupt and undo the gender division of labor, and thus better support democratic freedom.

The Status of Women in Athens

1955 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Seltman
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
The Past ◽  
Domestic Servant ◽  
Religious Festivals ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Of Women

It is essential for us to question our own views and those of our predecessors on the status of women in ancient Athens. With few exceptions these views display a kernel of prejudice and a pulp of misunderstanding, skinned over with the bloom of evasiveness. It is, indeed, odd to observe how inquirers into the social framework of Greek society have been misled, and how few classical scholars have attempted to give the lie to the extravagances spread abroad concerning the alleged attitude of Athenians to their womenfolk. Temptation to write up a violent contrast between the daily lives of Spartan and Athenian women was great, and in the last century other half-conscious feelings helped a false presentation. Again and again it has been said or implied that Athenian married women lived in an almost oriental seclusion, and that they were looked on with indifference approaching sometimes to contempt. Quite recently it was alleged in a broadcast that the Athenian social system relegated women to the condition of squaws, the matron being little more than a domestic servant. ‘As wives and mothers’, said the speaker, ‘Athenian women were despised.’ Literary passages have in the past been torn from their context as evidence for this, and the inferior legal status of women has been stressed. There are, however, important exceptions among scholars, of especial value being an essay by Professor A. W. Gomme, and a long section in The Greeks by Professor H. D. F. Kitto, whose remarks on truncated quotations from Aristophanes and Xenophon are very illuminating. Anyone interested in the question is advised to read again pages 219–36 in that little volume, as most of what follows simply strengthens what Kitto has written. In a variety of religious festivals women took conspicuous parts, and with the festivals we may put the theatre, because Athenian women formed a part of the audience, as is admitted in the last edition of Haigh's great work.

scholarly journals Bride-Wealth: Is There Respect for Women in Manggarai, Eastern Indonesia?

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 271
Author(s):  
Yohanes Servatius Lon ◽  
Fransiska Widyawati
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Eastern Indonesia ◽  
Married Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Of Women

This study explores the perspective of women in Manggarai, Flores Island in Indonesia, and the communaltraditional concept of bride-wealth as a symbol of respect for women. This study uses a qualitative approach by interviewing forty women, both married and unmarried. The respondents were asked their opinion regarding their imagination about bride-wealth and its influence on their courtship, engagement, wedding, and married life. The results indicated the presence of a gap between the social imagination of bride-wealth and the women’s true experience. Most respondents stated how bride-wealth had strained their relationship and become a source of worry. The study therefore argues that bride-wealth as a sign of respect for women in Manggarai is merely a social imagination ingrained into the women’s expectations. The study also indicates that education has changed the status of women and enables them to be independent.

scholarly journals REFLECTION ON THE SOCIAL STATUS OF THE ADYGHE WOMAN IN THE RESEARCHES OF THE EUROPEAN AUTHORS OF THE XVII - XIX  ENTURY

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
З.Х. Кумахова
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Women's Status ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Women’S Status ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Of Women

В данной статье анализируются исследования европейских путе- шественников, побывавших на Северном Кавказе в XVII–XIX в., затрагивающие статус женщины в традиционном черкесском обществе. Выявленные источники классифицируются по сюжетам, описывающим формирование статуса женщи- ны с младенчества до достижения положения матери семейства. В настоящей статье предпринята попытка комплексно изучить вышеупомянутые источники, выявив стороны жизни адыгской женщины, привлекавшие внимание иностранных исследователей. This article analyzes the research of European travelers who visited the North Caucasus in the 17th - 19th centuries. affecting the status of women in traditional Circassian society. The sources identifi ed are classifi ed by stories describin This article analyses the researches of European travellers who visited the North Caucasus in the period from 17th to 19th centuries, that covered the issue of the status of women in traditional Circassian society. The identifi ed sources are classifi ed according to the plot describing the development of women’s status from infancy to getting the position of the mother of the family. In this article, an attempt has been made to study comprehensively the abovementioned sources, identifying the Adyghe woman’s aspects of life, which attracted the attention of foreign researchers g the formation of the status of women from infancy to the position of the mother of the family. In this article, an attempt was made to comprehensively study the above sources, identifying the sides of the life of the Adyg woman, which attracted the attention of foreign researchers.

scholarly journals Women in the "Kerangkeng" of Tradition: the Study on the Status of Women in Minangkabau

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-385
Author(s):  
Welhendri Azwar
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Control ◽  
Biological Differences ◽  
Status Of Women

The system of values, norms and some stereotypes attached to women are one of the factors that giving influences on the position and relationships of women with men in the existing social structure. Each person embraces the system of values or norm which is a consensus and constructed by the community itself than from generation to generation. The emergence of social construction on the status and role of women is the result of the perspective of a community towards their biological differences between men and women. The perspective which then results in oppression, exploitation, and subordination of women in social relations are contextually strongly related to socio-cultural conditions at that time. This section will discuss how women are positioned in the social life and the perspective of the culture of its subordination. Next, it is also described how the emergence of patriarchal ideology, a system that accommodates the interests of men to dominate and control women, as a consequence of the understanding of the nature of women which biologically different to men. The hegemony of patriarchal ideology brings the social awareness for women to accept the conditions of subordination as a natural thing, which is wrapped by the products of culture and tradition. It includes how patriarchal ideology is giving the effect on the system and the tradition of marriage.

Is Female Labour Force Participation Really Low and Declining in Pakistan? A look at Alternative Data Sources

1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-709
Author(s):  
M. Afzal ◽  
Zafar Moeen Nasir
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Female Labour ◽  
Female Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Status Of Women

For working out appropriate strategies and action programmes in order to fully utilize human resources for development and to advance the role and the status of women in society, it is essential that the statistical data collected on female participation in economic activity should reflect their position adequately and accurately in all the relevant sectors. In Pakistan, and other developing countries, the rural-agricultural segments, in the overall population have a large number of female workers who, directly and indirectly, contribute to agriculture, household and other unregistered rural activities. Similarly, in the urban organized sector, the work participation rate of women has registered a constant increase as a result of the social, economic and cultural changes which are taking place in these countries due to their development programmes.

Emancipating and Strengthening Indian Women: An Analysis of B. R. Ambedkar’s Contribution

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Runi Datta
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Social Reconstruction ◽  
Rational Thinking ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Of Women

A revolutionary figure, a pioneer of social justice and a true reformer, Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s role is significant in shaping the social, political and civic contours of India and fostering the advancement of the society in general and women in particular. His personal sufferings as a Dalit and his exposure to Western ideas and rational thinking built in him the confidence to challenge the orthodox Hindu social order and reconstruct the society along the ideas of equality, liberty, fraternity and respect for the dignity of all including the womenfolk. He held Manu responsible for all plight and agony of women. He also blamed the Hindu social order for assigning a stereotype role to women. He firmly believed that eradication of the iniquitous gender relations and elevating the status of women were the vital requirements of the process of social reconstruction that he aimed at. Therefore, he tirelessly fought for the inclusion of the rights of women in different spheres of life. He awakened in women the zeal to fight for social justice and their rights through his speeches, thoughts and reforms. His reformative measures came in the form of Hindu Code Bill to modernize the Hindu society which became unparalleled in its importance. Here is an attempt to develop an analytical framework to gauge his contribution as a fighter for women’s rights.

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