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The Other Fifty Percent

Multicultural Perspectives on Gender Relations

Mari Womack and Judith Marti

What do a Papua New Guinea businesswoman and a Los Angeles policewoman have in common? Why are virgin brides valued in some societies and not in others? And why are the goddesses and folk heroines of India often depicted as angry and even violent? In addressing these and other issues, The Other Fifty Percent challenges traditional anthropological assumptions about the ordering of male and female roles crossculturally. Drawing on current research in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America, the contributors to this volume explore the ordering of gender in such aspects of social life as marriage, economic decision making, allocation of political power, and in the symbolic representation of gods and goddesses. Articles in The Other Fifty Percent present a range of exciting research on gender in a clearly reasoned and concisely written style.
 

$26.95 list, 381 pages

10-digit ISBN: 0-88133-722-6

13-digit ISBN: 978-0-88133-722-8

© 1993

Instructor's Manual available

Table of Contents

Part I. ON THE NATURE OF THINGS

1. Biological Influences on Gender (Jean Stockard and Miriam M. Johnson)

2. Separate People: Speaking of Creek Men and Women (Amelia Rector Bell)

3. Oedipus in the New Guinea Highlands? (L. L. Langness)

4. Woman as Other (Simone de Beauvoir)

Part II. WHY NOT ASK THE WOMEN?

5. Samoa: The Adolescent Girl (Margaret Mead)

6. A Woman Alone in the Field (Hortense Powdermaker)

7. Access to Women’s Knowledge: The Azande Experience (Stephen David Siemens)

8. Adventures in the Field and in the Locker Room (Mari Womack and Joan C. Barker)

Part III. LOVE, MARRIAGE AND POWER

9. Status, Property, and the Value on Virginity (Alice Schlegel)

10. Symbol and Meaning in Nayar Marriage Ritual (Melinda A. Moore)

11. Why Women Take Men to Magistrate’s Court (Mindie Lazarus-Black)

12. In-Law Relationships in the American Kinship System: The Impact of Divorce and Remarriage (Colleen Leahy Johnson)

Part IV. ECONOMICS, POWER AND GENDER RELATIONS

13. Men and Women in Southern Spain: “Domestic Power” Revisited (David D. Gilmore)

14. Contested Order: Gender and Society in the Southern New Guinea Highlands (Rena Lederman)

15. Breadwinners and Decision-Makers: Nineteenth-Century Mexican Women Vendors (Judith E. Marti)

16. Daughters of the Forest (Agnes Estioko-Griffin)

Part V. GENDER ON EARTH AND IN THE COSMOS

17. Power as Violence: Hindu Images of Female Fury (Ann Grodzins Gold)

18. Legendary Heroines: Ideal Womanhood and Ideology in Iran (Erika Friedl)

19. A Healing Ritual: The Life and Words of Nisa, a !Kung Woman (Marjorie Shostak)

20. The Woman Who Didn’t Become a Shaman (Margery Wolf)

Part VI. CHALLENGES TO THE SOCIAL AND COSMIC ORDER

21. Debunking Marianismo: Economic Vulnerability and Survival Strategies among Guatemalan Wives (Tracy Bachrach Ehlers)

22. Poetics and Politics in the Ecuadorean Andes: Women’s Narratives of Death and Devil Possession (Mary M. Crain)

23. A Businesswoman among Middlemen: A Case from Siassi (Alice Pomponio)

24. Shades of Blue: Female and Male Perspectives on Policing (Joan C. Barker)