Gender Roles in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a mountainous country that shares an island with Indonesia. Very little is known about the country because it hard to travel around and has multiple remote areas. With the areas that have been explored and studied, anthropologists were captivated by how different they lived and how their society was set up.
Gender Roles
Every society has roles that each sex is expected to do. Men are expected to be dominant and assertive while women are expected to be timid and cooperative. In PNG it’s mostly a male dominated society, but there are some “tribes where women are expected to be dominant and males to be submissive” (Mead, 1935). Because they are a male dominated society they view women
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This is an important time frame for a child because this is when they learn the values and skills to understand themselves and what society wants. In PNG, babies are born in almost isolation away from the village. “Most babies are born outside the village in a birth hut or garden house, where the mother and child spend the first few days or weeks after the birth in relative isolation, gathering strength and hiding from malevolent forces” (“Papua New Guinea”, n.d.). This shows that once a baby born it is important for the mother to increase their bond with the child and protect them. Until they reach adolescence, “Little girls follow in their mothers' and older sisters' footsteps, at first doing child minding or running errands, and later helping in the gardens. Boys spend a longer time playing with other boys but eventually collect firewood and carry water and, later, clear bush and hunt or fish with their fathers” (“Papua New Guinea”, n.d.).
Conclusion
All in all, Papua New Guinea is a very unique country when it comes to socialization of their young ones to separating the mother from everyone to ceremonies when boys and girls reach puberty. Everything they do is to benefit the males of the tribes or the societies. They will not accept others who are not a part of the norms when it comes to gender
To begin, I think it is important to analyze the difference between “sex” and “gender”. Up until researching for this paper, I though that the two terms were interchangeable in meaning, rather, they are separate ideas that are connected. According to Mary K. Whelan, a Doctor of Anthropology focusing on gender studies, sex and gender are different. She states, “Western conflation of sex and gender can lead to the impression that biology, and not culture, is responsible for defining gender roles. This is clearly not the case.”. She continues with, “Gender, like kinship, does have a biological referent, but beyond a universal recognition of male and female "packages," different cultures have chosen to associate very different behaviors, interactions, and statuses with men and women. Gender categories are arbitrary constructions of culture, and consequently, gender-appropriate behaviors vary widely from culture to culture.” (23). Gender roles are completely defined by the culture each person lives in. While some may think that another culture is sexist, or dem...
Male dominance has been prevalent ever since the hunter/gatherer social transformation. It continues to be so, in almost every culture, except of the apparent Amazons. Even today, in our post-Industrial era, males are still more dominant than females, especially in third world countries. The male gender were the ones to become leaders and determiners. They define what is acceptable for a woman ranging from one culture to the next. Whether it is the way a woman should dress, be treated, or how she should behave, it is all decided by the males in society. These decisions vary from female circumcision, or female genital mutilation, to anal sex as the initiation into womanhood, to women being whipping for a man to transition into adulthood.
Society in general has a way of assigning men and women with individual roles that need to be complied with. To clarify, in the 1950s and 1960s, American women were required to maintain their homes while raising their children and making sure the husbands were happy. On the other hand, American men had to provide for the family and protect them. Displaying characteristics not parallel to one’s gender is rarely unobserved and almost always has negative consequences because society seeks to maintain order. In reality, the people cannot conform to society’s “norms” because people have the right to be independent of society, yet be a part of it without sacrifice. An example would be how American society views masculinity as a man who is strong,
...socially directed hormonal instructions which specify that females will want to have children and will therefore find themselves relatively helpless and dependent on males for support and protection. The schema claims that males are innately aggressive and competitive and therefore will dominate over females. The social hegemony of this ideology ensures that we are all raised to practice gender roles which will confirm this vision of the nature of the sexes. Fortunately, our training to gender roles is neither complete nor uniform. As a result, it is possible to point to multitudinous exceptions to, and variations on, these themes. Biological evidence is equivocal about the source of gender roles; psychological androgyny is a widely accepted concept. It seems most likely that gender roles are the result of systematic power imbalances based on gender discrimination.9
Gender, roles and status vary and differ throughout the societies and cultures of the world. My own micro, meso and macro world experiences would contrast those of a different societal or cultural background, such as an individual of the Amish culture. The Amish follow a strict set of rules defining their gender roles, their community roles as well as their status within society.
Society places ideas concerning proper behaviors regarding gender roles. Over the years, I noticed that society's rules and expectations for men and women are very different. Men have standards and specific career goals that we must live up to according to how others judge.
Cultural norms and expectations are partially constructed on assumptions of opposition between the sexes and genders. Sex and gender are measured on a binary scale, and culturally accepted behavior and sanctioned activities often reflect the sexual division of labor. The sexual division of labor assigns sex roles based on the differences in biology and anatomy of the two sexes. The sexual division of labor favors masculine over feminine traits. The sex roles created are adopted and reproduced in gender roles that reflect cultural expectations. These cultural expectations and norms reflect a preference for masculinity and legitimize the dominance of men in institutions and
The way individuals discipline their body is analogous to how they act towards the idea of power and status. How bodies are trained to emit gender distinctions is similar to how people tend to clothe their bodies. The way people tend to “sit, stand, gesture, walk, and throw” are different depending on their performance of masculinity or femininity (Martin 297). Women’s bodies tend to be more “confined, their movements restricted (Martin 297).” The term “femininity” defines the idea that the female sex is perceived with specific traits and characteristics. Crossing their legs, sitting up straight, having a softer voice and light footsteps are all ways in which women become naturally embedded to the gender norms. She is ascribed to be more gentle, nurturing, and emotional, and weak. These traits she attains are given by society the moment she is born, creating an idealized sexually more inferior identity than that of a male. By analyzing the socially constructed gender profile of men, it is easy to see how society creates a more dominant and powerful facade. They are stereotyped to being more aggressive, highly sexual, strong, competitive, emotionless, and in control. These socially constructed differences confines males and females to particular character profiles that limit their equality as a whole. The bodies are gendered “as a product of social doing; constituted through interaction (West and Zimmerman 175).” The way male and female establish their gender order in society correlates to their mentality as a whole. Overall masculinity is more valued than femininity in society. Masculinity correlates to gender privilege. An inequality that gives males the access to more power, resources and positions due to the traditional notions of gender roles. Men are given a greater advantage because he is deemed more capable to fend for himself. He is given greater power in the working field and
Gender roles are based on the norms and standards in different societies (Flores 2012). Each societies has their own set of social norms, and the identities that fit those norms. In the United States masculine roles are associated with strength, dominance, and aggression. Women in the US are expected to be more passive, nurturing and subordinate (Flores 2012).
Sugihara, Yoko, and Emiko Katsurada. "Gender Role Development in Japanese Culture: Diminishing Gender Role Differences in a Contemporary Society." Sex Roles 47.9/10 (2002): 443-452. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.
2006 The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA. Thomson Wadworth.
In conclusion, we see that gender roles, as specific as they are in our culture, vary from culture to culture. And the variation of gender roles, in a global perspective, demonstrates that they are learned through socialization as oppose to stemming from nature, instinct and drive.
Such perspective is seen through the eyes of all the men. They are used to being the dominating gender and do not think of the women as highly.
The transition of a boy to a man is very important to the Sambia, of New Guinea. This transition consists of an initiation ritual, which has 6 stages and takes between 13 and 20 years to complete. The first 3 stages are collectively focused, which I will discuss, and stages 4 through 6 are individually focused. This ritual helps to introduce the boys to male society, prepare them for adult responsibilities and is used to transmit culture (Nanda 2002: 132). The beliefs of the Sambia show a “warriors conception of manhood where men should be strong, brave, and unyielding in the pursuit of all tasks” (Herdt 1981: 50).
A gender role attitude is an individual’s interpretation and expectation on how a woman or man should behave. These assumptions create a socially accepted “norm” about each gender. In various lectures, we examined three common gender role ideologies; traditional, egalitarian, and transitional. A traditional gender role would fit into society’s fundamental outlook on a household. An individual holding this view would believe that men should work and earn money for the family, while women stay at home to do house work and take care of the kids. An egalitarian position believes that both women and men should equally distribute responsibility throughout every situation they are faced with. This would include dividing duties up evenly despite what type it is (more strenuous chores vs. easy chores). A transitional approach combines the traditional and egalitarian approaches together. A couple who practices this attitude would split up the tasks equally but in a way that still views men as holding the majority of the “household” power. For example, women would do the dishes and clean the house while men would cut the lawn and fix the car because those jobs are “more difficult”.