August 31, 2015 • 41 mins
Anthropology, or the study of past and present humans, was a discipline largely developed by and focused on men. Cristen and Caroline examine how pioneering women anthropologists and the rise of feminist anthropology changed mainstream ideas about gender, sex and women's roles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from House top
Works dot Com, the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen,
and I'm really excited for this week. Kristen, in case
you didn't already know, we're talking about women in anthropology.
Where we are Yeah, oh no, what did you read?
(00:26):
I read Women at Anthropology Store. No, that's my autobiography,
which I really appreciate that you read. Well. I mean,
I love flowy skirts. Yeah, so I'll talk about women
in the social sciences and you just talk about my
killer wardrobe. Let's talk about going straight in the sales
section because I can't pay full price. True story. Um so, right,
(00:48):
today we want to offer you an introduction to my
wardrobe again just kidding, to fabulous women in Anthropology, which
does sound like a broad topic, but we're really going
to zero in on the development of feminist anthropology and
give you sort of a glimpse of some of the
names who have worked in the discipline, all leading up
(01:08):
to a fabulous episode on the fantastic Margaret Mead, which
will be next time. Yeah. So this is sort of
laying the groundwork for the more detailed biography of Mead,
and hopefully it will help make more sense about the
significance of what Margaret Meade was doing as well, and
kind of put her in the context of anthropology at large,
(01:34):
especially when and not to get ahead of ourselves, but
especially when you look at what an important figure Margaret
Mead was and how much she contributed. When you look
at it in the context of women in anthropology, the
big headline topic, you realize what an early pioneer she was.
And so now that we've gotten you all excited for
the next episode, let's do a brief introduction as to
(01:55):
what anthropology is. Because I was originally going to be
an anthropology major. Tell any more. Yes, Well, I feel
like I've made it clear on the podcast before that
I wanted to be Indiana Jones. And if you're going
to be a swindling archaeologist, you have too major an
anthropology because archaeology is a sub type of anthropology. And
(02:15):
I really enjoyed the introduction classes I really opened my eyes.
I was fascinated, and then I started to kind of think, like, um, well,
what jobs besides archaeologists do anthropologists get? And then I
read all this stuff about like well, you can study
populations and see how unhappy people are working in an
office or something, and I was like, I don't know,
(02:35):
I'm going to go to print journalism. That seems much
more stable. And Caroline, I never wanted to be an
archaeologist or an anthropologist, honestly, but I did take an
anthropology course my first semester of college, and we learned
a lot about the Sheiks in the Middle East. And
(02:59):
the thing I remember the most, though, to be completely honest,
is my professor's tiny eyes and very large beard, and
his eyes were so small it was kind of hard
to follow his his eye contact because it was one
of those small classes where we were just around the
table and he was challenging to follow. But good grief,
(03:20):
did he love anthropology. And it was one of those
courses though where I saw it in the course catalog
thought it sounded interesting, really didn't know that much about
it at all, and ended up taking it. And so
it was fun to come back now so long ago,
I mean just kidding, I mean like two years ago
when I graduated to college. I'm so young, um, and
(03:42):
delve deeper into uh anthropology and also see how it
applies to what I'm doing now, because Caroline, I never
would have thought sitting in that class when I was
eighteen years old that I would you know four years
later beat talking about feminist anthropology on a podcast, right,
(04:04):
because podcasts didn't even exist back then. You're colliding. You
would have been predicting the future. It's true. Well, let's
not talk about the future. Let's talk about the past,
because that is a lot of what anthropology is all about. Anthropology,
to get technical about, it is the study of humans
past and present, but draws on the humanities and the social, biological,
(04:28):
and physical sciences. And there are four different flavors anthropologies, right,
four flavors. We've already mentioned archaeology, which of course is
the study of the past through material remains. But you
also have socio cultural which examined social patterns and practices
across cultures, with a special interest in how people live
in particular places and how they organize, govern and create
(04:52):
meaning in their culture. You also have biological anthropology, which
seeks to understand how humans adapt to diverse and ironments
and how biological and cultural processes work together to shape
growth and development and behavior. And finally, you have linguistic anthropology,
which is the study of the ways in which language
reflects and influences social life. And we're gonna talk briefly
(05:15):
about the origin of anthropology because it's important to know
how it formed, because then you start to understand why
people would be interested in focusing on women in anthropology
and this other thing of feminist anthropology. So there are
a couple of anthropology buds named Thomas Hyland Ericsson and
(05:37):
Finn silver Nielsen who got together and they wrote a
book and they talked about how the basis of anthropology
has really been around as long as humans have been
nosy about what their neighbors have been up to. Yeah,
because what is anthropology. I mean, obviously there's more to it, Thannus,
but it is observing the world around you and how
(05:58):
it works together. And so yeah, the first cave woman
to gossip about a cave man, well that was anthropology,
or the first cave mean to gossip about a cave
woman indeed, or in whatever combination you prefer um. But
they point out that the origins really lie with explorers, travelers, historians,
(06:20):
and philosophers. And of course they point to the Greeks
because you really can't talk about any social science or
science in general types of ballads with the health of Greek. Yeah,
that's right, all of so many olives. Um. So they
point to the historian Herodotus, the philosopher Aristotle, and geographer Strabo.
(06:40):
So these are people who by virtue of what they're
interested in writing about, are observing their worlds. And they
also point to figures in the Muslim and Arab world
like historian Ibn Caldoon and explore Iban Btuda. But a
lot of people trace the modern disciplines origins too Eurocentric movements,
(07:00):
including colonization. So in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries you
have the Age of Discovery, so you have these Europeans
discovering all of these quote savages and quote primitive people's who,
and we start to be curious about those kinds of
cultures and then basically erasing them. And then in the
(07:20):
eighteenth century we have the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment,
where everyone else is still kind of considered a savage
or a passive other. But a lot of people say
that when it comes to modern anthropology as we think
of it today, that really didn't start to emerge until
the eighteen fifties, which is when we started to see
(07:42):
the first ethnographic museums established, particularly in German speaking areas,
because they had started to collect data on peasants and traditions.
And of course ethnography is just basically the scientific study
of people and cultures, so the basis of anthropol g Now,
others still say that modern anthropology didn't get jump started
(08:05):
until after World War One, especially with famed anthropologist Franz BoA's.
Regardless of when you pinpoint the beginning of anthropology, these
guys Ericsson and Nielsen point out that the way we
think of modern scientific anthropology today started off in the West,
and that's tends that tends to be what scholars point to. Yeah.
(08:27):
And and as this very white eurocentric view was developing,
women were seen as something off to the side, a
sort of a special interest group. Um. So when it
comes to gender, it is worth noting that British Victorian
social anthropologists did like to examine the relationships between the sexes,
(08:51):
and they were curious about how gender relations played a
role in evolutionary development. But interest in female roles began
to wane, and we're considered less important. Yeah, so the
female sphere, all of that stuff, women are in the home,
How could that possibly be important. We're just going to
keep them there, lock them away, and just focus on
what men do. And this also extends to the development
(09:14):
of the hunter gatherer model, with the idea that men
were doing all the important work going out and hunting,
and women were just just gathering. And I'd like to
do gathering shoes, just gather at all sorts of high
heels and handbags. Um, But we will revisit that and
how that model began to get a little more nuanced
(09:36):
when feminists came marching along in the nineties seventies, like
they do. But so Rebecca l Upton in the journal
Anthropology in January wrote a great source on the development
of feminist anthropology, and so she points out that nevertheless,
despite the fact that there was some Victorian interest in
gender roles and all that stuff, in early anthropology, for
(09:58):
the most part, gender was often synonymous with kinship or family,
and a monograph, she writes, might include just a single
chapter on women or family issues. In other words, the
issue of quote unquote gender wasn't a thing gender like,
she says, It just means like it's another like terms
related to family and what women do on women time. Well,
(10:20):
and this is also pre Margaret Mead, whom as listeners
will learn a lot more about in the next episode,
she was the one who really helped break open this
very concept of gender roles. Yeah. Absolutely, and so therefore
in early anthropology we've got androcentrism, which is just you know,
(10:40):
male focus, because the people who were doing the studying
of other people were dudes. Dudes were doing the dude studying.
Dudes were paying attention to dude And as Upton goes
on to write, even though you do have these critical
contributions from people like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, who
(11:02):
she worked alongside throughout her career, it wasn't until the
nineteen seventies and eighties, with the rise of feminist anthropology,
that gender really starts to come more into focus. So
as this is happening, you start to see research encompassing
different viewpoints, this growing recognition that gender, yeah, is important
(11:24):
and shouldn't be ignored. And also too, this is really
interesting to think about the power difference between the researcher
and the subject and how that can play a role
in their anthropological portrayal. Rather than framing them as expert
and informant, you have to equal those playing fields as
(11:45):
well in a way. Yeah, and there was the realization
that religion, development, and language can all affect how a
culture views and understands gender. So when you leave out
half the population in your research or your analysis, you
don't really understand the full culture, do you. And so
Upton also points out that exclusively using the term man,
(12:07):
which can mean mankind, men or both, is ambiguous, and
you're gonna end up kind of picturing just dudes when
they talk about men and man, I just think of
a pile of ken dolls right there. But yeah, and
so basically who's doing the research matters. What you're researching
obviously matters, but the way that you talk about it
(12:28):
and the way that the subjects talk about themselves is
very important. And it was high time that people took
all of those different variables into account. So what is
feminist anthropology? What really happens when women are a part
of the center of the research rather than being in
this little special interest group off to the side. So,
(12:51):
as we mentioned, this really starts to happen in the seventies, eighties,
and nineties and anthropologists start challenging these notions that a
men's work and creation of goods is the only work
of value. I e. Like, it's important that they were
hunting and gathering. Who cares baskets of shoes be Women
(13:14):
are and always had been innate nurturers who were tied
to nature, which is really interesting to think about. And
then see that all women experience gender similarly. Yeah, and
so they start asking whether women's subordination was a quote
product of male observer bias and privilege and so Upton
(13:36):
rights that feminist anthropologists and those interested in the study
of gender began to challenge the simple AD women and
stir model of ethnography and sought to bring attention to
structural inequalities, the role of economic disparities, global dimensions to
gender politics, the role of language, etcetera, etcetera, how all
of this affects humanity, human rights and whatever. And that
(13:57):
whole note on ad women and stir was is and there.
This may or may not still exist. We need some
anthropologists to write in but a lot of times when
an anthropologist would write a paper or a book or whatever,
there would be a thing tacked onto the end it
says and does this research also apply to women? Yeah? Cool?
All right, keep keep at it, good job, And so
(14:18):
that was not exactly a comprehensive way to incorporate half
of a population um, because, after all, the study of
gender construction is not just the story of women. Women
are not the only gendered items in the world. The
story of gender is the story of both men and women.
And so part of this upswing in feminist anthropology is
(14:40):
the effort to overcome that idea that men are the normal,
the standard, and women are the gendered thing. And of
course this starts happening in tandem with the rise a
second way feminism in the West, because this is when
it becomes increasingly important to recognize differences not only the
between men and women, but also among women. And speaking
(15:04):
of feminism, feminist anthropology can also be broken down into
its own waves, which is a kind of funny side
note that we talked about feminist waves, and then that
makes me think of a period, you know, the Crimson waves.
All just very connected, isn't it, Carol. That's all feminist
anthropology is. That's what we're about to explain. Yes, it's
all about period, and yes menstruation and baskets of shoes.
(15:28):
You have to you have to weave the basket and
then gather the shoes to put in them. That's what
I'm trying to tell you. You would have made a
fabulous anthropologists by that, I like to think so I
would have taken your class. So when it comes to
these Crimson waves of feminists anthropology, we found a fantastic
(15:52):
source from the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology. Um,
the first wave really starts in a fifty and goes
to nineteen twenty and the main goal of the first
wave was to simply include women's voices in ethnography, which
again is just the scientific description of people's customs and
(16:15):
various cultures. Yeah, and so at this time, the info
that was out there about women, whether it was in
our culture or some other culture far across the sea,
was largely gathered, if you will, by male anthropologists talking
to male subjects. So it was men in the culture
talking to male anthropologist about what the women might be doing.
(16:38):
And I have a feeling that a lot of them
were like, uh, I don't know, it's fine. So they
were hunting and gathering, indeed, well gathering information. But that
just means all the more that we should emphasize some
of the names of women who were active during this period,
including the quite impressive L. C. Clues Parsons. She had
gotten a sociology PhD from Colombia eighteen ninety nine mine
(17:00):
when she then turned her attention to anthropology, and she
really got active as a social reformer who used those
ethnography skills to encourage people to think differently about their lives.
She ended up traveling with male anthropologists to the Southwest
and she really thought, because of her own experiences, that
those pesky restrictions on men and women working together were
(17:21):
pretty dumb. She ended up using her privileged position to
establish the Southwest Society, which helped support anthropologists like Ruth Benedict,
who will talk about the next episode, Women supporting Women.
I know she's fantastic. Then we have Alice Fletcher, who
was one of the first professional women anthropologists and also
(17:42):
one of the first women to have a paid professorship
at Harvard, and she really focused on American Indians and
sought to dispel the notion that they were wards of
the state. And this was a theme that I saw
among a lot of the early women anthropologists, at least
in the u US of the time. Not terribly surprising
that their focus, and this was with Roof Benedict as well.
(18:04):
A lot of their focus was among American Indians and
how their tribes worked, and also serving as liaisons between
them and the government to try to make things at
least a little bit more equitable, and paying attention to
the fact that, oh, they do have their own unique
cultures and customs and are not a monolith. Well yeah,
(18:25):
the idea that like, hey, these aren't just like simple
minded children. The way that it was so popular to
think of all of the different types of American Indians
on the continent. I mean, uh, here were women who
were actively working, including Alice Fletcher, to counteract some of
those perceptions that made it so much easier to inflict pain, suffering, racism,
(18:47):
stereotypes on these different cultures. And it's not surprising that
such a smart woman would also be committed to suffrage.
And she helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women.
And then we wanted to mention Phyllis Kberry. She was
a brit who pioneered research on men, women and their
relationships in addition to religion, and you know, she focused
(19:10):
on a bunch of other topics too. And her book
Women of the Grass Fields, which became sort of an
anthropology classic, focuses on women's work and rural development. So, oh,
my god, the concept of like women's work being something
that you would write a book about fascinating. So then
we move into the second way from nineteen twenty to
nineteen eighty, and this is where focus shifts more to
(19:34):
academia and we start to get into these concepts of
sex and gender as two separate, though interacting things, and
how the definition of gender differs from culture to culture.
And we also have some dichotomy busting going on in
this pretty broad period, right uh. Feminist anthropologists rejected the
(19:59):
notion that the male and female and work versus home
dichotomy's were the way of the world. They argued that, hey,
our social systems are dynamic, they're not static. It's not
all nature versus nurture, or public versus domestic, or production
versus reproduction. And part of what influenced these ideas was
(20:19):
Marxism and Marxist feminism. With the rise of this philosophy,
there was more focus on women reproduction and production in
addition to how gender relates to class power and the
modes of production, and they applied Marxist models to trying
to understand the subordination of women, which during this time
(20:42):
they consider to be basically equal across the board, equal opportunity,
subordination for all women, regardless of who you are, which
is not always going to be the case. Yeah, And
of course, by the late seventies and early eighties and beyond,
some of these researchers were beginning to wise up. But
(21:04):
if we go back to Marxism specifically, there were a
lot of Marxist feminists at this time who were challenging
the notion that women's oppression is associated with something innate
or biological. Their point out that while sexual dimorphism is
indeed a biological feature, it doesn't mandate the oppression of women.
That's all a human creation, that women's biology is just
(21:26):
used to facilitate their oppression. And they also rejected the idea,
like we had talked about earlier, that women are somehow
closer to nature, because there's that whole idea of like, oh, well,
men control property and they pass it down along Patrillennial lines,
they overturn the whole matrillineal society. And since men of
control over nature and women are close to nature, then
(21:47):
therefore air goo and yet again menstruation, moon cycles, crimson wave,
it all circles back around and listeners. For the record,
I am being sarcastic. I don't actually think that feminist
anthropology is all based on menstrual cycles. But moving on,
(22:07):
many did take issue around this time with this idea
of cultural feminism, which is really focused on validating traditionally
feminine attributes, saying like, listen, there's nothing wrong with being,
you know, femininity. That doesn't have to be some kind
of secondary status. It's fine, um. But on the other side,
(22:29):
we have these more Marxist feminists, hopefully I'm labeling that correctly, um,
who were arguing that cultural feminism ignores the oppressive powers
under which traditional values were created, so basically saying like, well,
all this femininity is kind of a construct anyway, Burn
(22:50):
it all to the ground. Yeah, sure, burning all to
the ground. But also during this time, which I this
is my own ignorance, I'm admitting it right here. In
the nine twenties, Zora el Hurston trained under Franz Boas
at Barnard, as did famed anthropologist Margaret Mead and Zorneil
Hirston was the only black student there and she was
the first to graduate from the school. And I always
(23:13):
thought of her as a writer, as an author, I
did not realize that she had an anthropological background. She
became the first African American person to chronicle fellow African
Americans folklore and voodoo, and she drew on those observations
to create her fiction, as well as being a pioneer
and developing theories about the African diaspora. And a lot
(23:36):
of this too related to her upbringing in Eatonville, Florida,
which was one of the first all black towns incorporated
in the United States. So just a fascinating tangent throughout this,
you know, this whole discipline. UM. But her, even though
she was a pioneer in developing theories about the African diaspora,
(23:57):
her name ends up being omitted because she didn't finish
her PhD. But also too because she was a black woman, right,
And those are issues that we will see crop back
up UM today all the time constantly. They don't really
crop up there, just there issues of UM. I was
going to say black women, but it's really women of
(24:19):
colors voices being sort of erased and not promoted in
the same way that some other people those voices are
promoted within the discipline. And some of the development of
feminist anthropology also involved almost redoing research, going back and
looking at places and cultures that people had studied in
(24:43):
the past and re examining them through this feminist lens.
So we have this example in the nineties seventies of
anthropologists a net Wiener revisiting the Trobriyan Islanders off the
coast of New Guinea to see if famed anthropologists brought
a saw. Malowski's research checked out because it was this
whole thing about yams. Oh my god, I love this
(25:05):
yams story. So basically, Malanowski had said that a gift
of yams from the men to their sister's husband's uh
meant that that was a consolidation of male power, was
an exchange between men. Here your yams. Thank you for
the yams. They're delicious, all right, a thank you note. Weener, however,
realized that it symbolized more than that. It actually symbolized
(25:27):
the high status of women within the culture. Why it
turns out Malanowski had completely discounted women's role in this
whole transaction and not surprisingly, and he failed to realize
that in return for the yams from his brother in law,
the husband had to reciprocate by giving his wife a
fancy banana leaf skirt, and the husband's potential promotion within
(25:50):
the tribe depended on him honoring his wife. Basically, you
were a deadbeat if you didn't thank your wife for
her brother's gift by giving her a banana skirt. Banana
leaf skirt, And even today husbands can respect their wives
by going to anthropology and buying them an overpriced banana
leaf skirt. Yet again, full circle. So that though, concludes
(26:13):
the second wave, and we're gonna get into the third wave,
which starts in the eighties, and it's still happening today
when we come right back from a quick break. So
the third wave starts in the nineteen eighties. Shoulder pads
(26:33):
are jutting out, more women are entering the workplace, and
anthropology is moving away from focusing solely on gender imbalances
and incorporating issues of class, race, ethnicity, et cetera. It
sounds like, in other words, feminist anthropology, which we're focusing
on in this podcast episode, is getting a little more intersectional,
(26:54):
a little more intersectional for sure, there was also more
focused on the issue of power, and it was really
considered a big deal because power constructs and is constructed
by identity. And just as a side note, f y I,
as we get into the nineties, the average pH d
grad and anthropology was a forty year old woman, as
(27:16):
opposed to a hundred years ago when or a hundred
years before that, when the vast majority, not surprisingly of
doctorates were awarded to men under thirty. So changing face
of a discipline which I find interesting. But you know,
Kristen mentioned, we're getting a little intersectionality in our anthropology,
which is always good, and it really comes about thanks
(27:36):
to African American anthropologists pointing out the failings of early
anthropology beyond just the whole man woman thing, beyond just
omitting women or omitting the importance of gender. They start
asking why white middle class women are focusing so intensely
on gender at the expense of racism and unequal distribution
of wealth that lead to social inequalities. And oh and behold,
(28:01):
not all women experience gender the same. So, for instance,
a pair of anthropologist Nancy Shepherd Huge and Anna Singh
have emphasized that there's no universal definition for man or
woman across cultures and throughout history. And furthermore, anthropologists Leilah
(28:21):
Abu lu God has demonstrated that Bedouin women, for instance,
find advantages in a gender separated society. And oh, here's
a revolutionary concept. Western concepts and constructs don't apply everywhere. Yeah,
I mean so we mentioned at the top of the
podcast that the origins of the scientific discipline of anthropology
(28:45):
lie in Western cultures. Here were basically white men, not
that there's anything wrong with that, going into cultures close
to home or far away and reporting back on them,
and part of being an observer, that's almost an escapable.
You hope to avoid it, but it's projecting your own thoughts, feelings, morals,
(29:08):
ideas onto the people that you're observing. And so it's
you know, people have been raising their hands throughout this
whole time, just going um and excuse me. It might
be worth noting that you your perspective is not the
only one. Uh. And so that's a lot of what
comes out of this third wave of feminist anthropology. They
(29:30):
also emphasize that just like women don't experience gender the same,
they don't experience suffering an oppression the same. And if
we back up just a little, for instance, to nine. Technically,
in the second wave, activist and writer Audrey Lord had
penned an open letter to white feminist philosopher and theologian
Mary Daily, essentially saying like, I feel like you're celebrating
(29:55):
the differences between white women as a creative force words change,
rather than a reason for misunderstanding and separation. But you
fail to recognize that as women, those differences expose all
women to various forms and degrees of patriarchal oppression, some
of which we share, some of which we don't. And
she writes, the oppression of women knows no ethnic nor
(30:18):
racial boundaries. True, but that does not mean it is
identical within those boundaries. So you have a lot of
thinkers at this time, a lot of writers, a lot
of scholars finally being able to have their voices heard about. Listen,
there are different experiences, and we can't research other cultures
from one single perspective. And from this queer theory really
(30:39):
starts to develop, challenging heteronormativity the same way the early
feminist anthropologists challenge Andrew centrism. But of course there have
been concerns past and present about feminist anthropology. There's the
worry that it's tied too closely with feminism and is
(31:01):
therefore politicized or radical when it needs to be impartial. Basically,
you know, it becomes very subjective rather than objective. Um.
And while there might be far more women in the
discipline now than they're used to be, those women are
still largely white. It's still not a terribly diverse group. Yeah.
(31:22):
Lynn Bowles, writing and Transforming Anthropology in argues that quote
these same feminist anthropologists have rendered black feminist and anthropology
almost invisible and on the same kind of token nicole
True Style of Beloit College says that despite studying race,
ethnicity and racism, Hello your anthropologists, she points out that
(31:43):
many and the discipline, male or female, are still reluctant
to have frank discussions about racism. People are very concerned
about like, well, well you look a certain way and
your background is a certain thing, so you should probably
just study this thing over there. She was writing about
how people were so confused when she was studying minority
populations in Britain because they were like, well, wait are
(32:06):
you are you British? She's like I'm an anthropologist. This
is what we do. We study other people, regardless of
where we're from. And there have also been efforts to
differentiate between the anthropology of women and feminist anthropology because
the two aren't necessarily synonymous. Yeah, back in surely, Ardner
(32:28):
wrote an Anthropology Today that she thinks the anthropology of
women denotes a field regardless of the methodology, while the latter,
feminist anthropology, implies a method of analysis or an approach
rather than a field. And it's interesting. You know, Ardner
herself didn't want to be pigeonholed as a feminist anthropologist.
(32:50):
She didn't want to be labeled, congratulated for it or
criticized for it. She just wanted to be an anthropologist.
But she does admit that the feminist movement inspiring feminist
anthropology also then in turn inspires the anthropology of women,
so it's all related. She said that once you get
more women readers and trained scholars, so you get more
(33:13):
women's butts in the seats in the anthropology classes, then
you get more of an audience for women's center research itself,
which makes the research more commercially viable. It makes those
women more likely or men who were studying women more
likely to get funding, and she talks about how this
is also when you get women's studies developing as an
(33:34):
area of actual specialization, not something that's just like a
class you take as a one off. And so why
does she think that both feminist anthropology and the anthropology
women are important? She says, Listen, generalizations don't serve men
well either. She writes that the specific significance of being
a man in society also might get lost among those
(33:55):
loose generalizations about man or persons instead of talking about humans, people,
men and women, children, elderly, all of that stuff that
just as we want to understand more about, well, what's
the woman's experience in this culture, we should also seek
to understand the man's specific experience and not let either
of them get too muddied by just making these generalizations
(34:18):
about a culture. Right, And well, of course, there's absolutely
nothing wrong with men studying women. It's the same thing
that we've talked about that you can apply to any
discipline where women are important in the conversation because they
bring in different perspectives, and diverse perspectives create probably more
(34:39):
accurate and nuanced viewpoint and it's going to help out everybody,
men and women alike. So whereas men might think of
women as other women might not. But again, of course,
othering depends on your culture, and we could go down
the rabbit hole of all the different everybody can other
somebody exactly. So what's going on today, Well, we talked
(35:03):
about the four different flavors of anthropology, capital a anthropology
and feminist anthropology falls under cultural anthropology, and it's not
just about gender today. Yeah, the focus is really broadened
to be beyond just like, well, hey, can we finally
like get some information on women. It's broadened to include
(35:24):
topics including childcare, reproductive rights, control of and access to resources,
and things like that, things that are not only women's interests,
as many people would lead you to believe, but are
actually human interests. And it's definitely helping bring increasingly diverse
voices and perspectives to anthropological research. And they're also organized.
(35:46):
I mean, you can be a member of the Association
for Feminist Anthropology, which is a branch of the American
Anthropological Association, and on their website they say that they
aim to foster the development of feminist analytic perspectives in
all mentions of anthropology, so you can be a fancy
professional anthropologist in a fancy society. And as for women
(36:07):
in anthropology, generally speaking, women receive seventy percent of those
undergrad degrees, which is a pretty significant jump from those
early days when we were just trying to get some
recognition in like basic ethnography. When it comes to PhD, also,
the majority, we're earning fifty five to sixty percent of those.
(36:31):
But this is interesting. It should actually be higher that
percentage if you take into account that fewer men are
enrolling in anthropology grad school, So it turns out that
fewer women proportionately are sticking it out in PhDs. So ladies,
we can dominate even more if we really want to.
Well yeah, and so I I don't think I'm going
(36:54):
to run off and be an anthropologist beyond the type
of shops that ant apology. But I mean, I'm so
fascinated by this development of feminist anthropology. That makes total sense.
Why wouldn't feminist anthropology develop alongside second way feminism when
you have people from all over the world, But in
(37:17):
this case, we're mainly talking about the West in America
raising their hands saying like hey, this whole eurocentric, androcentric
viewpoint you have going on is failing everyone because it's
not doing any justice to the people that were studying
and the cultures that we're trying to understand, and it's
really making for limited research. So we're really curious to
know if there are any anthropologists or anthropology students or
(37:41):
enthusiasts listening. We would love to hear your insights, because
we really just had a broad brush conversation on the
whole thing, and there's so many details within this that
we would love to hear from you about. And you
can do that by emailing us Mom Stuff at how
Stuffworks dot com, or you can mess just on Facebook
(38:01):
or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now.
So I've got a letter here from Pamela about our
Toplessness week. She writes, you asked listeners from outside the
(38:21):
US to respond to your latest episodes. I'm from the UK,
although I'm currently living in Belgium. Did you know that
until this year, the biggest selling daily newspaper, The Sun
in the UK, featured a topless woman on page three
every day, A full page photograph of a woman wearing
only her underpants as soon as you open up the
biggest selling newspaper in the country. The excellent no More
(38:44):
Page three campaign fought really hard to raise awareness of
how sexist and outdated this was, and now there isn't
a nearly naked woman on page three every day. Of course,
The Sun said this was nothing to do with Harry
Bottom feminist whining about it, and they still occasionally featured
topless women and frequently feature those dressed only in underwear.
(39:04):
One of the biggest misconceptions was the people who were
anti page three were anti boob prudes, but it was
and is all about context. Relaxing at the beach or
on top of your stoop topless might help to normalize
women's bodies, but putting them in a quote unquote family
newspaper in an effort to titilate does the opposite. If
you're not aware of the background to the No More
(39:25):
Page three campaign, check it out. It was founded by
Lucy Holmes and taken up by thousands of men and
women all over the country. So thanks for that insight, Pamela.
I have a letter here from Bessie. She says I've
been listening to your nipple episodes today and it maybe
want to share a short anecdote. I grew up in
a rough inner city school system and got more scare
(39:45):
tactics than information in my sex side classes. This mint
that when my older sister set my brother down for
a feminist strong arm talk, topics included male privilege, pregnancy,
scare dues, and don't et cetera. I listened in. When
she got to the biological stuff was super helpful. Everyone
should have a feminist older sister. I totally recommended. But
when it came to what you mentioned in your episode,
(40:06):
the idea that women just simply don't know what other
real breast look like because of all that shaming, self
initiated or otherwise, even my sister's feminist pep talk didn't help.
It wasn't until much later, when I was watching, of
all things, an episode of Scrubs, that I finally found
out a particular aspect of my own breast, which I
had hitherto assumed was some hideous aberration, was totally normal.
(40:27):
The joke was a toss away sort of joke about
how the two male characters are so close, and I
can't remember how it actually went. All I remember is
that the CrOx was that Carlo's breasts had hairs growing
around the nipples that Turk had lovingly depicted as a
sort of breast flesh seal in a cartoon. I too
had hairs around my nipples, and this was the first time,
the absolute first time I had come across proof that
(40:48):
others did too. Thankfully, the tone of the joke was
in Carlo's favor. Turk is lovingly fond of the hairs
around her nipples, which made me feel comfortable with my
nipple hairs too. I'm super grateful for your show taking
on this topic, as I have often found myself to
be You guys tend to take on the topics I
don't quite think of to tackle myself, but proved to
be hugely rewarding once actually faced. Well. Thank you, Bessie.
(41:12):
I love that letter, and thanks to everybody who's written
into us. Mom Stuff at House that Works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with this one with links to all
of our sources so you can learn more about feminist
anthropology and women in anthropology. That you should know. Head
(41:33):
on over the Stuff Mom Never told you dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it How stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from House top
Works dot Com, the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen,
and I'm really excited for this week. Kristen, in case
you didn't already know, we're talking about women in anthropology.
Where we are Yeah, oh no, what did you read?
(00:26):
I read Women at Anthropology Store. No, that's my autobiography,
which I really appreciate that you read. Well. I mean,
I love flowy skirts. Yeah, so I'll talk about women
in the social sciences and you just talk about my
killer wardrobe. Let's talk about going straight in the sales
section because I can't pay full price. True story. Um so, right,
(00:48):
today we want to offer you an introduction to my
wardrobe again just kidding, to fabulous women in Anthropology, which
does sound like a broad topic, but we're really going
to zero in on the development of feminist anthropology and
give you sort of a glimpse of some of the
names who have worked in the discipline, all leading up
(01:08):
to a fabulous episode on the fantastic Margaret Mead, which
will be next time. Yeah. So this is sort of
laying the groundwork for the more detailed biography of Mead,
and hopefully it will help make more sense about the
significance of what Margaret Meade was doing as well, and
kind of put her in the context of anthropology at large,
(01:34):
especially when and not to get ahead of ourselves, but
especially when you look at what an important figure Margaret
Mead was and how much she contributed. When you look
at it in the context of women in anthropology, the
big headline topic, you realize what an early pioneer she was.
And so now that we've gotten you all excited for
the next episode, let's do a brief introduction as to
(01:55):
what anthropology is. Because I was originally going to be
an anthropology major. Tell any more. Yes, Well, I feel
like I've made it clear on the podcast before that
I wanted to be Indiana Jones. And if you're going
to be a swindling archaeologist, you have too major an
anthropology because archaeology is a sub type of anthropology. And
(02:15):
I really enjoyed the introduction classes I really opened my eyes.
I was fascinated, and then I started to kind of think, like, um, well,
what jobs besides archaeologists do anthropologists get? And then I
read all this stuff about like well, you can study
populations and see how unhappy people are working in an
office or something, and I was like, I don't know,
(02:35):
I'm going to go to print journalism. That seems much
more stable. And Caroline, I never wanted to be an
archaeologist or an anthropologist, honestly, but I did take an
anthropology course my first semester of college, and we learned
a lot about the Sheiks in the Middle East. And
(02:59):
the thing I remember the most, though, to be completely honest,
is my professor's tiny eyes and very large beard, and
his eyes were so small it was kind of hard
to follow his his eye contact because it was one
of those small classes where we were just around the
table and he was challenging to follow. But good grief,
(03:20):
did he love anthropology. And it was one of those
courses though where I saw it in the course catalog
thought it sounded interesting, really didn't know that much about
it at all, and ended up taking it. And so
it was fun to come back now so long ago,
I mean just kidding, I mean like two years ago
when I graduated to college. I'm so young, um, and
(03:42):
delve deeper into uh anthropology and also see how it
applies to what I'm doing now, because Caroline, I never
would have thought sitting in that class when I was
eighteen years old that I would you know four years
later beat talking about feminist anthropology on a podcast, right,
(04:04):
because podcasts didn't even exist back then. You're colliding. You
would have been predicting the future. It's true. Well, let's
not talk about the future. Let's talk about the past,
because that is a lot of what anthropology is all about. Anthropology,
to get technical about, it is the study of humans
past and present, but draws on the humanities and the social, biological,
(04:28):
and physical sciences. And there are four different flavors anthropologies, right,
four flavors. We've already mentioned archaeology, which of course is
the study of the past through material remains. But you
also have socio cultural which examined social patterns and practices
across cultures, with a special interest in how people live
in particular places and how they organize, govern and create
(04:52):
meaning in their culture. You also have biological anthropology, which
seeks to understand how humans adapt to diverse and ironments
and how biological and cultural processes work together to shape
growth and development and behavior. And finally, you have linguistic anthropology,
which is the study of the ways in which language
reflects and influences social life. And we're gonna talk briefly
(05:15):
about the origin of anthropology because it's important to know
how it formed, because then you start to understand why
people would be interested in focusing on women in anthropology
and this other thing of feminist anthropology. So there are
a couple of anthropology buds named Thomas Hyland Ericsson and
(05:37):
Finn silver Nielsen who got together and they wrote a
book and they talked about how the basis of anthropology
has really been around as long as humans have been
nosy about what their neighbors have been up to. Yeah,
because what is anthropology. I mean, obviously there's more to it, Thannus,
but it is observing the world around you and how
(05:58):
it works together. And so yeah, the first cave woman
to gossip about a cave man, well that was anthropology,
or the first cave mean to gossip about a cave
woman indeed, or in whatever combination you prefer um. But
they point out that the origins really lie with explorers, travelers, historians,
(06:20):
and philosophers. And of course they point to the Greeks
because you really can't talk about any social science or
science in general types of ballads with the health of Greek. Yeah,
that's right, all of so many olives. Um. So they
point to the historian Herodotus, the philosopher Aristotle, and geographer Strabo.
(06:40):
So these are people who by virtue of what they're
interested in writing about, are observing their worlds. And they
also point to figures in the Muslim and Arab world
like historian Ibn Caldoon and explore Iban Btuda. But a
lot of people trace the modern disciplines origins too Eurocentric movements,
(07:00):
including colonization. So in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries you
have the Age of Discovery, so you have these Europeans
discovering all of these quote savages and quote primitive people's who,
and we start to be curious about those kinds of
cultures and then basically erasing them. And then in the
(07:20):
eighteenth century we have the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment,
where everyone else is still kind of considered a savage
or a passive other. But a lot of people say
that when it comes to modern anthropology as we think
of it today, that really didn't start to emerge until
the eighteen fifties, which is when we started to see
(07:42):
the first ethnographic museums established, particularly in German speaking areas,
because they had started to collect data on peasants and traditions.
And of course ethnography is just basically the scientific study
of people and cultures, so the basis of anthropol g Now,
others still say that modern anthropology didn't get jump started
(08:05):
until after World War One, especially with famed anthropologist Franz BoA's.
Regardless of when you pinpoint the beginning of anthropology, these
guys Ericsson and Nielsen point out that the way we
think of modern scientific anthropology today started off in the West,
and that's tends that tends to be what scholars point to. Yeah.
(08:27):
And and as this very white eurocentric view was developing,
women were seen as something off to the side, a
sort of a special interest group. Um. So when it
comes to gender, it is worth noting that British Victorian
social anthropologists did like to examine the relationships between the sexes,
(08:51):
and they were curious about how gender relations played a
role in evolutionary development. But interest in female roles began
to wane, and we're considered less important. Yeah, so the
female sphere, all of that stuff, women are in the home,
How could that possibly be important. We're just going to
keep them there, lock them away, and just focus on
what men do. And this also extends to the development
(09:14):
of the hunter gatherer model, with the idea that men
were doing all the important work going out and hunting,
and women were just just gathering. And I'd like to
do gathering shoes, just gather at all sorts of high
heels and handbags. Um, But we will revisit that and
how that model began to get a little more nuanced
(09:36):
when feminists came marching along in the nineties seventies, like
they do. But so Rebecca l Upton in the journal
Anthropology in January wrote a great source on the development
of feminist anthropology, and so she points out that nevertheless,
despite the fact that there was some Victorian interest in
gender roles and all that stuff, in early anthropology, for
(09:58):
the most part, gender was often synonymous with kinship or family,
and a monograph, she writes, might include just a single
chapter on women or family issues. In other words, the
issue of quote unquote gender wasn't a thing gender like,
she says, It just means like it's another like terms
related to family and what women do on women time. Well,
(10:20):
and this is also pre Margaret Mead, whom as listeners
will learn a lot more about in the next episode,
she was the one who really helped break open this
very concept of gender roles. Yeah. Absolutely, and so therefore
in early anthropology we've got androcentrism, which is just you know,
(10:40):
male focus, because the people who were doing the studying
of other people were dudes. Dudes were doing the dude studying.
Dudes were paying attention to dude And as Upton goes
on to write, even though you do have these critical
contributions from people like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, who
(11:02):
she worked alongside throughout her career, it wasn't until the
nineteen seventies and eighties, with the rise of feminist anthropology,
that gender really starts to come more into focus. So
as this is happening, you start to see research encompassing
different viewpoints, this growing recognition that gender, yeah, is important
(11:24):
and shouldn't be ignored. And also too, this is really
interesting to think about the power difference between the researcher
and the subject and how that can play a role
in their anthropological portrayal. Rather than framing them as expert
and informant, you have to equal those playing fields as
(11:45):
well in a way. Yeah, and there was the realization
that religion, development, and language can all affect how a
culture views and understands gender. So when you leave out
half the population in your research or your analysis, you
don't really understand the full culture, do you. And so
Upton also points out that exclusively using the term man,
(12:07):
which can mean mankind, men or both, is ambiguous, and
you're gonna end up kind of picturing just dudes when
they talk about men and man, I just think of
a pile of ken dolls right there. But yeah, and
so basically who's doing the research matters. What you're researching
obviously matters, but the way that you talk about it
(12:28):
and the way that the subjects talk about themselves is
very important. And it was high time that people took
all of those different variables into account. So what is
feminist anthropology? What really happens when women are a part
of the center of the research rather than being in
this little special interest group off to the side. So,
(12:51):
as we mentioned, this really starts to happen in the seventies, eighties,
and nineties and anthropologists start challenging these notions that a
men's work and creation of goods is the only work
of value. I e. Like, it's important that they were
hunting and gathering. Who cares baskets of shoes be Women
(13:14):
are and always had been innate nurturers who were tied
to nature, which is really interesting to think about. And
then see that all women experience gender similarly. Yeah, and
so they start asking whether women's subordination was a quote
product of male observer bias and privilege and so Upton
(13:36):
rights that feminist anthropologists and those interested in the study
of gender began to challenge the simple AD women and
stir model of ethnography and sought to bring attention to
structural inequalities, the role of economic disparities, global dimensions to
gender politics, the role of language, etcetera, etcetera, how all
of this affects humanity, human rights and whatever. And that
(13:57):
whole note on ad women and stir was is and there.
This may or may not still exist. We need some
anthropologists to write in but a lot of times when
an anthropologist would write a paper or a book or whatever,
there would be a thing tacked onto the end it
says and does this research also apply to women? Yeah? Cool?
All right, keep keep at it, good job, And so
(14:18):
that was not exactly a comprehensive way to incorporate half
of a population um, because, after all, the study of
gender construction is not just the story of women. Women
are not the only gendered items in the world. The
story of gender is the story of both men and women.
And so part of this upswing in feminist anthropology is
(14:40):
the effort to overcome that idea that men are the normal,
the standard, and women are the gendered thing. And of
course this starts happening in tandem with the rise a
second way feminism in the West, because this is when
it becomes increasingly important to recognize differences not only the
between men and women, but also among women. And speaking
(15:04):
of feminism, feminist anthropology can also be broken down into
its own waves, which is a kind of funny side
note that we talked about feminist waves, and then that
makes me think of a period, you know, the Crimson waves.
All just very connected, isn't it, Carol. That's all feminist
anthropology is. That's what we're about to explain. Yes, it's
all about period, and yes menstruation and baskets of shoes.
(15:28):
You have to you have to weave the basket and
then gather the shoes to put in them. That's what
I'm trying to tell you. You would have made a
fabulous anthropologists by that, I like to think so I
would have taken your class. So when it comes to
these Crimson waves of feminists anthropology, we found a fantastic
(15:52):
source from the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology. Um,
the first wave really starts in a fifty and goes
to nineteen twenty and the main goal of the first
wave was to simply include women's voices in ethnography, which
again is just the scientific description of people's customs and
(16:15):
various cultures. Yeah, and so at this time, the info
that was out there about women, whether it was in
our culture or some other culture far across the sea,
was largely gathered, if you will, by male anthropologists talking
to male subjects. So it was men in the culture
talking to male anthropologist about what the women might be doing.
(16:38):
And I have a feeling that a lot of them
were like, uh, I don't know, it's fine. So they
were hunting and gathering, indeed, well gathering information. But that
just means all the more that we should emphasize some
of the names of women who were active during this period,
including the quite impressive L. C. Clues Parsons. She had
gotten a sociology PhD from Colombia eighteen ninety nine mine
(17:00):
when she then turned her attention to anthropology, and she
really got active as a social reformer who used those
ethnography skills to encourage people to think differently about their lives.
She ended up traveling with male anthropologists to the Southwest
and she really thought, because of her own experiences, that
those pesky restrictions on men and women working together were
(17:21):
pretty dumb. She ended up using her privileged position to
establish the Southwest Society, which helped support anthropologists like Ruth Benedict,
who will talk about the next episode, Women supporting Women.
I know she's fantastic. Then we have Alice Fletcher, who
was one of the first professional women anthropologists and also
(17:42):
one of the first women to have a paid professorship
at Harvard, and she really focused on American Indians and
sought to dispel the notion that they were wards of
the state. And this was a theme that I saw
among a lot of the early women anthropologists, at least
in the u US of the time. Not terribly surprising
that their focus, and this was with Roof Benedict as well.
(18:04):
A lot of their focus was among American Indians and
how their tribes worked, and also serving as liaisons between
them and the government to try to make things at
least a little bit more equitable, and paying attention to
the fact that, oh, they do have their own unique
cultures and customs and are not a monolith. Well yeah,
(18:25):
the idea that like, hey, these aren't just like simple
minded children. The way that it was so popular to
think of all of the different types of American Indians
on the continent. I mean, uh, here were women who
were actively working, including Alice Fletcher, to counteract some of
those perceptions that made it so much easier to inflict pain, suffering, racism,
(18:47):
stereotypes on these different cultures. And it's not surprising that
such a smart woman would also be committed to suffrage.
And she helped found the Association for the Advancement of Women.
And then we wanted to mention Phyllis Kberry. She was
a brit who pioneered research on men, women and their
relationships in addition to religion, and you know, she focused
(19:10):
on a bunch of other topics too. And her book
Women of the Grass Fields, which became sort of an
anthropology classic, focuses on women's work and rural development. So, oh,
my god, the concept of like women's work being something
that you would write a book about fascinating. So then
we move into the second way from nineteen twenty to
nineteen eighty, and this is where focus shifts more to
(19:34):
academia and we start to get into these concepts of
sex and gender as two separate, though interacting things, and
how the definition of gender differs from culture to culture.
And we also have some dichotomy busting going on in
this pretty broad period, right uh. Feminist anthropologists rejected the
(19:59):
notion that the male and female and work versus home
dichotomy's were the way of the world. They argued that, hey,
our social systems are dynamic, they're not static. It's not
all nature versus nurture, or public versus domestic, or production
versus reproduction. And part of what influenced these ideas was
(20:19):
Marxism and Marxist feminism. With the rise of this philosophy,
there was more focus on women reproduction and production in
addition to how gender relates to class power and the
modes of production, and they applied Marxist models to trying
to understand the subordination of women, which during this time
(20:42):
they consider to be basically equal across the board, equal opportunity,
subordination for all women, regardless of who you are, which
is not always going to be the case. Yeah, And
of course, by the late seventies and early eighties and beyond,
some of these researchers were beginning to wise up. But
(21:04):
if we go back to Marxism specifically, there were a
lot of Marxist feminists at this time who were challenging
the notion that women's oppression is associated with something innate
or biological. Their point out that while sexual dimorphism is
indeed a biological feature, it doesn't mandate the oppression of women.
That's all a human creation, that women's biology is just
(21:26):
used to facilitate their oppression. And they also rejected the idea,
like we had talked about earlier, that women are somehow
closer to nature, because there's that whole idea of like, oh, well,
men control property and they pass it down along Patrillennial lines,
they overturn the whole matrillineal society. And since men of
control over nature and women are close to nature, then
(21:47):
therefore air goo and yet again menstruation, moon cycles, crimson wave,
it all circles back around and listeners. For the record,
I am being sarcastic. I don't actually think that feminist
anthropology is all based on menstrual cycles. But moving on,
(22:07):
many did take issue around this time with this idea
of cultural feminism, which is really focused on validating traditionally
feminine attributes, saying like, listen, there's nothing wrong with being,
you know, femininity. That doesn't have to be some kind
of secondary status. It's fine, um. But on the other side,
(22:29):
we have these more Marxist feminists, hopefully I'm labeling that correctly, um,
who were arguing that cultural feminism ignores the oppressive powers
under which traditional values were created, so basically saying like, well,
all this femininity is kind of a construct anyway, Burn
(22:50):
it all to the ground. Yeah, sure, burning all to
the ground. But also during this time, which I this
is my own ignorance, I'm admitting it right here. In
the nine twenties, Zora el Hurston trained under Franz Boas
at Barnard, as did famed anthropologist Margaret Mead and Zorneil
Hirston was the only black student there and she was
the first to graduate from the school. And I always
(23:13):
thought of her as a writer, as an author, I
did not realize that she had an anthropological background. She
became the first African American person to chronicle fellow African
Americans folklore and voodoo, and she drew on those observations
to create her fiction, as well as being a pioneer
and developing theories about the African diaspora. And a lot
(23:36):
of this too related to her upbringing in Eatonville, Florida,
which was one of the first all black towns incorporated
in the United States. So just a fascinating tangent throughout this,
you know, this whole discipline. UM. But her, even though
she was a pioneer in developing theories about the African diaspora,
(23:57):
her name ends up being omitted because she didn't finish
her PhD. But also too because she was a black woman, right,
And those are issues that we will see crop back
up UM today all the time constantly. They don't really
crop up there, just there issues of UM. I was
going to say black women, but it's really women of
(24:19):
colors voices being sort of erased and not promoted in
the same way that some other people those voices are
promoted within the discipline. And some of the development of
feminist anthropology also involved almost redoing research, going back and
looking at places and cultures that people had studied in
(24:43):
the past and re examining them through this feminist lens.
So we have this example in the nineties seventies of
anthropologists a net Wiener revisiting the Trobriyan Islanders off the
coast of New Guinea to see if famed anthropologists brought
a saw. Malowski's research checked out because it was this
whole thing about yams. Oh my god, I love this
(25:05):
yams story. So basically, Malanowski had said that a gift
of yams from the men to their sister's husband's uh
meant that that was a consolidation of male power, was
an exchange between men. Here your yams. Thank you for
the yams. They're delicious, all right, a thank you note. Weener, however,
realized that it symbolized more than that. It actually symbolized
(25:27):
the high status of women within the culture. Why it
turns out Malanowski had completely discounted women's role in this
whole transaction and not surprisingly, and he failed to realize
that in return for the yams from his brother in law,
the husband had to reciprocate by giving his wife a
fancy banana leaf skirt, and the husband's potential promotion within
(25:50):
the tribe depended on him honoring his wife. Basically, you
were a deadbeat if you didn't thank your wife for
her brother's gift by giving her a banana skirt. Banana
leaf skirt, And even today husbands can respect their wives
by going to anthropology and buying them an overpriced banana
leaf skirt. Yet again, full circle. So that though, concludes
(26:13):
the second wave, and we're gonna get into the third wave,
which starts in the eighties, and it's still happening today
when we come right back from a quick break. So
the third wave starts in the nineteen eighties. Shoulder pads
(26:33):
are jutting out, more women are entering the workplace, and
anthropology is moving away from focusing solely on gender imbalances
and incorporating issues of class, race, ethnicity, et cetera. It
sounds like, in other words, feminist anthropology, which we're focusing
on in this podcast episode, is getting a little more intersectional,
(26:54):
a little more intersectional for sure, there was also more
focused on the issue of power, and it was really
considered a big deal because power constructs and is constructed
by identity. And just as a side note, f y I,
as we get into the nineties, the average pH d
grad and anthropology was a forty year old woman, as
(27:16):
opposed to a hundred years ago when or a hundred
years before that, when the vast majority, not surprisingly of
doctorates were awarded to men under thirty. So changing face
of a discipline which I find interesting. But you know,
Kristen mentioned, we're getting a little intersectionality in our anthropology,
which is always good, and it really comes about thanks
(27:36):
to African American anthropologists pointing out the failings of early
anthropology beyond just the whole man woman thing, beyond just
omitting women or omitting the importance of gender. They start
asking why white middle class women are focusing so intensely
on gender at the expense of racism and unequal distribution
of wealth that lead to social inequalities. And oh and behold,
(28:01):
not all women experience gender the same. So, for instance,
a pair of anthropologist Nancy Shepherd Huge and Anna Singh
have emphasized that there's no universal definition for man or
woman across cultures and throughout history. And furthermore, anthropologists Leilah
(28:21):
Abu lu God has demonstrated that Bedouin women, for instance,
find advantages in a gender separated society. And oh, here's
a revolutionary concept. Western concepts and constructs don't apply everywhere. Yeah,
I mean so we mentioned at the top of the
podcast that the origins of the scientific discipline of anthropology
(28:45):
lie in Western cultures. Here were basically white men, not
that there's anything wrong with that, going into cultures close
to home or far away and reporting back on them,
and part of being an observer, that's almost an escapable.
You hope to avoid it, but it's projecting your own thoughts, feelings, morals,
(29:08):
ideas onto the people that you're observing. And so it's
you know, people have been raising their hands throughout this
whole time, just going um and excuse me. It might
be worth noting that you your perspective is not the
only one. Uh. And so that's a lot of what
comes out of this third wave of feminist anthropology. They
(29:30):
also emphasize that just like women don't experience gender the same,
they don't experience suffering an oppression the same. And if
we back up just a little, for instance, to nine. Technically,
in the second wave, activist and writer Audrey Lord had
penned an open letter to white feminist philosopher and theologian
Mary Daily, essentially saying like, I feel like you're celebrating
(29:55):
the differences between white women as a creative force words change,
rather than a reason for misunderstanding and separation. But you
fail to recognize that as women, those differences expose all
women to various forms and degrees of patriarchal oppression, some
of which we share, some of which we don't. And
she writes, the oppression of women knows no ethnic nor
(30:18):
racial boundaries. True, but that does not mean it is
identical within those boundaries. So you have a lot of
thinkers at this time, a lot of writers, a lot
of scholars finally being able to have their voices heard about. Listen,
there are different experiences, and we can't research other cultures
from one single perspective. And from this queer theory really
(30:39):
starts to develop, challenging heteronormativity the same way the early
feminist anthropologists challenge Andrew centrism. But of course there have
been concerns past and present about feminist anthropology. There's the
worry that it's tied too closely with feminism and is
(31:01):
therefore politicized or radical when it needs to be impartial. Basically,
you know, it becomes very subjective rather than objective. Um.
And while there might be far more women in the
discipline now than they're used to be, those women are
still largely white. It's still not a terribly diverse group. Yeah.
(31:22):
Lynn Bowles, writing and Transforming Anthropology in argues that quote
these same feminist anthropologists have rendered black feminist and anthropology
almost invisible and on the same kind of token nicole
True Style of Beloit College says that despite studying race,
ethnicity and racism, Hello your anthropologists, she points out that
(31:43):
many and the discipline, male or female, are still reluctant
to have frank discussions about racism. People are very concerned
about like, well, well you look a certain way and
your background is a certain thing, so you should probably
just study this thing over there. She was writing about
how people were so confused when she was studying minority
populations in Britain because they were like, well, wait are
(32:06):
you are you British? She's like I'm an anthropologist. This
is what we do. We study other people, regardless of
where we're from. And there have also been efforts to
differentiate between the anthropology of women and feminist anthropology because
the two aren't necessarily synonymous. Yeah, back in surely, Ardner
(32:28):
wrote an Anthropology Today that she thinks the anthropology of
women denotes a field regardless of the methodology, while the latter,
feminist anthropology, implies a method of analysis or an approach
rather than a field. And it's interesting. You know, Ardner
herself didn't want to be pigeonholed as a feminist anthropologist.
(32:50):
She didn't want to be labeled, congratulated for it or
criticized for it. She just wanted to be an anthropologist.
But she does admit that the feminist movement inspiring feminist
anthropology also then in turn inspires the anthropology of women,
so it's all related. She said that once you get
more women readers and trained scholars, so you get more
(33:13):
women's butts in the seats in the anthropology classes, then
you get more of an audience for women's center research itself,
which makes the research more commercially viable. It makes those
women more likely or men who were studying women more
likely to get funding, and she talks about how this
is also when you get women's studies developing as an
(33:34):
area of actual specialization, not something that's just like a
class you take as a one off. And so why
does she think that both feminist anthropology and the anthropology
women are important? She says, Listen, generalizations don't serve men
well either. She writes that the specific significance of being
a man in society also might get lost among those
(33:55):
loose generalizations about man or persons instead of talking about humans, people,
men and women, children, elderly, all of that stuff that
just as we want to understand more about, well, what's
the woman's experience in this culture, we should also seek
to understand the man's specific experience and not let either
of them get too muddied by just making these generalizations
(34:18):
about a culture. Right, And well, of course, there's absolutely
nothing wrong with men studying women. It's the same thing
that we've talked about that you can apply to any
discipline where women are important in the conversation because they
bring in different perspectives, and diverse perspectives create probably more
(34:39):
accurate and nuanced viewpoint and it's going to help out everybody,
men and women alike. So whereas men might think of
women as other women might not. But again, of course,
othering depends on your culture, and we could go down
the rabbit hole of all the different everybody can other
somebody exactly. So what's going on today, Well, we talked
(35:03):
about the four different flavors of anthropology, capital a anthropology
and feminist anthropology falls under cultural anthropology, and it's not
just about gender today. Yeah, the focus is really broadened
to be beyond just like, well, hey, can we finally
like get some information on women. It's broadened to include
(35:24):
topics including childcare, reproductive rights, control of and access to resources,
and things like that, things that are not only women's interests,
as many people would lead you to believe, but are
actually human interests. And it's definitely helping bring increasingly diverse
voices and perspectives to anthropological research. And they're also organized.
(35:46):
I mean, you can be a member of the Association
for Feminist Anthropology, which is a branch of the American
Anthropological Association, and on their website they say that they
aim to foster the development of feminist analytic perspectives in
all mentions of anthropology, so you can be a fancy
professional anthropologist in a fancy society. And as for women
(36:07):
in anthropology, generally speaking, women receive seventy percent of those
undergrad degrees, which is a pretty significant jump from those
early days when we were just trying to get some
recognition in like basic ethnography. When it comes to PhD, also,
the majority, we're earning fifty five to sixty percent of those.
(36:31):
But this is interesting. It should actually be higher that
percentage if you take into account that fewer men are
enrolling in anthropology grad school, So it turns out that
fewer women proportionately are sticking it out in PhDs. So ladies,
we can dominate even more if we really want to.
Well yeah, and so I I don't think I'm going
(36:54):
to run off and be an anthropologist beyond the type
of shops that ant apology. But I mean, I'm so
fascinated by this development of feminist anthropology. That makes total sense.
Why wouldn't feminist anthropology develop alongside second way feminism when
you have people from all over the world, But in
(37:17):
this case, we're mainly talking about the West in America
raising their hands saying like hey, this whole eurocentric, androcentric
viewpoint you have going on is failing everyone because it's
not doing any justice to the people that were studying
and the cultures that we're trying to understand, and it's
really making for limited research. So we're really curious to
know if there are any anthropologists or anthropology students or
(37:41):
enthusiasts listening. We would love to hear your insights, because
we really just had a broad brush conversation on the
whole thing, and there's so many details within this that
we would love to hear from you about. And you
can do that by emailing us Mom Stuff at how
Stuffworks dot com, or you can mess just on Facebook
(38:01):
or tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast. And we've got
a couple of messages to share with you right now.
So I've got a letter here from Pamela about our
Toplessness week. She writes, you asked listeners from outside the
(38:21):
US to respond to your latest episodes. I'm from the UK,
although I'm currently living in Belgium. Did you know that
until this year, the biggest selling daily newspaper, The Sun
in the UK, featured a topless woman on page three
every day, A full page photograph of a woman wearing
only her underpants as soon as you open up the
biggest selling newspaper in the country. The excellent no More
(38:44):
Page three campaign fought really hard to raise awareness of
how sexist and outdated this was, and now there isn't
a nearly naked woman on page three every day. Of course,
The Sun said this was nothing to do with Harry
Bottom feminist whining about it, and they still occasionally featured
topless women and frequently feature those dressed only in underwear.
(39:04):
One of the biggest misconceptions was the people who were
anti page three were anti boob prudes, but it was
and is all about context. Relaxing at the beach or
on top of your stoop topless might help to normalize
women's bodies, but putting them in a quote unquote family
newspaper in an effort to titilate does the opposite. If
you're not aware of the background to the No More
(39:25):
Page three campaign, check it out. It was founded by
Lucy Holmes and taken up by thousands of men and
women all over the country. So thanks for that insight, Pamela.
I have a letter here from Bessie. She says I've
been listening to your nipple episodes today and it maybe
want to share a short anecdote. I grew up in
a rough inner city school system and got more scare
(39:45):
tactics than information in my sex side classes. This mint
that when my older sister set my brother down for
a feminist strong arm talk, topics included male privilege, pregnancy,
scare dues, and don't et cetera. I listened in. When
she got to the biological stuff was super helpful. Everyone
should have a feminist older sister. I totally recommended. But
when it came to what you mentioned in your episode,
(40:06):
the idea that women just simply don't know what other
real breast look like because of all that shaming, self
initiated or otherwise, even my sister's feminist pep talk didn't help.
It wasn't until much later, when I was watching, of
all things, an episode of Scrubs, that I finally found
out a particular aspect of my own breast, which I
had hitherto assumed was some hideous aberration, was totally normal.
(40:27):
The joke was a toss away sort of joke about
how the two male characters are so close, and I
can't remember how it actually went. All I remember is
that the CrOx was that Carlo's breasts had hairs growing
around the nipples that Turk had lovingly depicted as a
sort of breast flesh seal in a cartoon. I too
had hairs around my nipples, and this was the first time,
the absolute first time I had come across proof that
(40:48):
others did too. Thankfully, the tone of the joke was
in Carlo's favor. Turk is lovingly fond of the hairs
around her nipples, which made me feel comfortable with my
nipple hairs too. I'm super grateful for your show taking
on this topic, as I have often found myself to
be You guys tend to take on the topics I
don't quite think of to tackle myself, but proved to
be hugely rewarding once actually faced. Well. Thank you, Bessie.
(41:12):
I love that letter, and thanks to everybody who's written
into us. Mom Stuff at House that Works dot com
is our email address and for links to all of
our social media as well as all of our blogs,
videos and podcasts with this one with links to all
of our sources so you can learn more about feminist
anthropology and women in anthropology. That you should know. Head
(41:33):
on over the Stuff Mom Never told you dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
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