Gender Roles In The Iroquois Confederacy

Gender roles played a huge part in the Iroquois Confederacy, however, their views on the men and women in their tribe were different from the “normal” gender norms. Women have always had an honored place in the Iroquois tribes. In many societies throughout history and around the world, women have not been treated equally and given equal rights to men. However, the Iroquoian woman had a great amount of authority and power in the community. “In the Iroquois community, women were the keepers of the culture. They were responsible for defining the political, social, spiritual, and economic norms of the tribe.” (Iroquois Confederacy.) Warner (1925) states, “In the Iroquoian political system, women possessed an unusual amount of power. All the male

It is considered a privilege because women have a connection to the earth. The reason that the women have a connection to the earth was that of the Iroquois creation story. The creation story says that a woman fell from the sky and landed on earth. While living on earth this woman had two children, these children were not conceived by a male, they were conceived by the earth. That is why the Iroquois woman has such closeness to the earth. “Dualism was applied to labor with each gender taking a clearly defined role that complemented the work of the other. Women did all the work involving the field while men did all the work involving the forest including the manufacture of anything involving wood. The Iroquois men were responsible for hunting, trading, and fighting, while women took care of farming, food gathering, and housekeeping. ( Reference.com) Men built the longhouses so that their family and clan would be able to live and survive throughout the years. They also built the sweat lodges, which are similar to saunas, which were made out of branches from the trees. Sweat lodges were used for ceremonies or the people used them for a sort of healing. If they had troubles in their home, they would go into the sweat lodge with one or two of the same gender, to talk about how they were feeling and maybe resolve some of the problems or situations that they were having. Although men were the main gender to be working with wood, women would also go out into the forest and cut down and carry the wood back to the village so that they may have some sort of heat during the cold winters and also that they were able to cook the food that the men would catch. They would go out and cut the wood while their men were out to war or when they were gone for weeks at a time hunting and