Gender Relations in Social

Institutions UNIT 3 RELIGION AND GENDER

Contents
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Building Up Belief
3.3 Building Up from the Household Level
3.4 Women, Kinship and Religion
3.5 Women, Society and the Body
3.6 Growing Up in a Supernatural World
3.7 The Mature Woman as a Repository of Culture
3.8 Social Change, Religion and Women
3.9 Summary
References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives
&
Having gone through this unit, you should be able to:
Ø understand the importance of religion and gender through anthropological
studies;
Ø the importance of social belief in shaping gender relations as well as
theoretical developments in this area of study;
Ø understand how gender relations begin with basic family relations and then
move on to relations between kins;
Ø help in understanding how women grow up learning to be within the believed
reality of the supernatural world, populated by deities, powers and sacred
areas, relations with which are mediated by rituals;
Ø see how the mature woman in society is thus knowledgeable about religion
and this is the basis of transmission of culture from generation to generation,
as well as ideas relating to the environment; and
Ø understand and relate to recent changes in all these issues to show in what
areas women are on their way to achieving equality and in what others they
are not.

Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion.

- Paul Tillich

3.1 INTRODUCTION
Earlier studies on the status of women often focused on the economic component.
Researchers felt that this would adequately reflect the independence of women
and be a true reflection of their status. In 1973, Peggy R. Sanday’s studies showed
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that the understanding of the economic status of women was not enough to Religion and Gender
understand women’s status as a whole. It was her finding that control over
resources was governed by control over religious and/or magical factors.
Thus for Sanday (1973: 1698), “A belief system emphasizing maternity and
fertility as a sacred function can also be seen as the legitimisation of sex status
which develops because of ecological and economic factors. Furthermore, there
is ample evidence in the ethnographic material… that a change in female status
is associated with a change in the productive system. Where this has occurred, as
with the Ibo, it is interesting to note that sex antagonism develops or increases.
Perhaps sex antagonism develops in the absence of a belief system which
legitimises and sanctions the power of women. Sex antagonism might be reduced
in such societies when a belief system develops in which female power is
attributed to the natural functions of women.”
It is because of these reasons that gender would be incomplete if it were not
linked to religion. This is why our understanding of gender would be difficult if
not impossible, since we would not understand the links or importance of religion
in the relationships and differences between men and women.
It seems that anthropologists have taken up two basic approaches with regard to
sex roles in society. One group strongly believes that such sex roles are based on
biological differences between men and women, including the way their minds
develop and are structured. The other group, sometimes called the
‘environmentalists’, strongly believes that though biological differences exist
but social and economic differences account for these differences in roles. Cross-
cultural studies actually show that in societies like those in Southeast Asia, where
physical development between genders is not markedly different, women fill
many different roles in society which were traditionally relegated to men. Thus,
the ‘environmentalists’ seem to have the better of the argument.

3.2 BUILDING UP BELIEF

Belief has always been an important cement or bond that links up the people that
make up society. It provides a philosophy, a rationale or logic for undertaking
tasks in economy, religion, kinship, politics, or any other aspect of society. They
may also form the underlying legitimacy for tribes and religious statehoods. Many
societies discriminate against women, thus inhibiting their activities in various
arenas of the public sphere, an area which involves decisions affecting the
community as a whole.

Initial studies of the relationship between anthropological studies of the relations

of men and women, leading to differences in their participation in religious beliefs
was based on a number of assumptions. These assumptions need to be uncovered
before we can proceed further.

People had begun to think that if women were given economic equality, their
improvement in status in other arenas of social life was automatically granted by
society. This ‘economic’ bias in the status of women was overturned when people
realised that the other arenas in life were also important in giving women a
different status. These other arenas included political power, religion as well as
kinship relations. Often, control over resources was seen to be a part of control
over religious or magical factors. It was also seen to be a matter of kinship.
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Gender Relations in Social Sometimes, in cases where women have achieved some degree of control over
Institutions
economic resources, the ‘sex antagonism’ (a term used by Peggy Sanday in 1973)
among women increases as among the Ibo. Thus, the belief system in any society
substantiates and legitimises the power of a dominant group in society. Wherever
women have achieved economic control along with the support of the religious/
belief system, it has led to a decrease in the ‘sex antagonism’. Sometimes the
religious or magical system underlies the political system also.

Most societies in the world discriminate against women, thus limiting their
participation in public life. Thus, community relations and decisions that affect
the community are more often taken by men rather than women. Often, it has
been stated that in private life, women take the major decisions, but this has also
not been universally true. In many tribal societies, every institution of society
(like social behaviour related to kinship, marriage, family, economy, politics,
religion and law) is interlinked. As a result, the belief system permeates into
every sphere of activity. If women are left out of the belief system, then they are
thus overlooked in other spheres of life also.

Sherry Ortner in 1974 was thus able design a set of propositions for understanding
the factors through which the position of women in society could be measured.
They include:
• Statements of cultural ideology which explicitly devalue women, their
products, and their roles.
• Symbolic devices, such as the concept of defilement, associated with women.
• The exclusion of women from participation in the area believed to be most
powerful in the particular society, whether religious or secular.

In East Africa, the Jie tribe has an age-grade system (after studies conducted by
Gibbs in 1965). This system ensures that people who have been born within a
short span of time are put into one group. Often, this has relevance to males.
People of one age-grade system are given one kind of training and achieve a
similar status in society. As they learn about different institutions within society
and attain maturity, they are initiated into the religious and ritual practices also.
Thus, the eldest of the hierarchy in an age-grade system have the most ritual as
well as political power, from which the women are excluded. Thus the Jie did
not have any chiefs, political functionaries or centralised political institutions.

However, such social institutions are so complex that it is sometimes impossible

to know in which direction social change will occur. Often, if the only organising
principle of society is seen to be religion, then women’s role in the public sphere
related to religion will be limited. When such a society’s public sphere becomes
more complex, discriminatory practices towards women are likely to be a part of
the earlier heritage. Thus, critics of Peggy Sanday claim that the emphasis on
maternity and fertility as a sacred function may be not because of the legitimisation
of sex status developed out of ecological and economic factors but as something
that may be seen as an effect of past events.

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 Religion and Gender
3.3 BUILDING UP FROM THE HOUSEHOLD
LEVEL
Many of the early anthropologists working on the status of women focused on
the household. This was a necessary part, according to them, of the initial
enculturation and socialisation processes that engrained behaviours among
individuals. They believed that the relations within the family (or household)
were a microcosm of such behaviours found in society at large. Hence,
understanding familial behaviour was an important clue towards understanding
social behaviour. For social activists, if this family behaviour could be changed,
then one could change or better the status of women in society.

It was with this in mind that theorisation has advanced in this area of research.
For many feminist anthropologists, the subordination of women was a universal
phenomenon observed cross-culturally. Feminist anthropology contrived to focus
on the role, status and contributions of women to their societies. A variety of
theories were propounded by them to explain this phenomenon. In the 1970s,
the field was just formed and only a few or more unified approaches dealing
with the universal subjugation of women was relevant. Today, this has spread
into a very large number of approaches.

In the 1970s, Marxist theory became popular among them because some of them
felt that the idea of class oppression could explain many of the problems
encountered by women. Using Marxist models, they could show how capitalist
society exploited women as a mode of ‘reproduction of labour’, thus using their
reproductive powers. Engels used the theories of the classical evolutionist Morgan
to write The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, where he
showed that the oppression of women was linked to changes in the mode of
production during the shift of human beings to agriculture (the Neolithic
Revolution). Once men started owning property, whether in terms of land or in
terms of domesticated animals, they wanted to give it to their sons rather than
daughters. They could only do this by overthrowing the earlier matrilineal
inheritance patterns, thus globally defeating women. Of course, our present state
of knowledge shows us that a true matriarchy never existed, though a few societies
still practice matrilineal or double descent systems. This theoretical picture
brought in through Morgan showed why the earlier evolutionists were often
criticised as being “armchair anthropologists”.

Structuralist models also became quite popular at this point of time. The roles of
men and women were seen here as being culturally constructed. Due to women’s
biological function, their arena of activity was restricted to a lower-status role
centered round the household thus keeping them relatively safer. On the other
hand, the same set of reasons led to the association of men with less safe areas.
Even when such environmental conditions no longer existed, these activities
became learned behavioural traits for human beings. However, limiting just this
idea to structuralist approaches would be to belittle and very large body of ideas
that contributed much to the understanding of men and women in different socio-
cultural contexts.

Structuralist and Marxist modes of analysis do not see the subjugation of women
as a biological fact but as a socio-cultural/behavioural tendency caused by
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Gender Relations in Social historical developments in society. Though sexual dimorphism is a fact among
Institutions
human beings, it only allows such discrimination through social norms. It is thus
not ‘programmed’ behaviour. Mead’s researches as well primate behaviour studies
both indicated that such behaviour varied widely.

Rosaldo (public/domestic), Edholm (production/reproduction) and Ortner (nature/

culture) used dichotomies to theorise female subordination. Ortner’s division of
nature/culture is based on Lévi-Strauss, who had argued that women were closer
to the nature end of the dichotomy because of their role in reproduction. By the
1970s the very basis of the idea of such dichotomies and the idea that women
were subjugated everywhere was being questioned. Some anthropologists like
Margaret Mead had already put forth the idea that there were societies where
males and females enacted roles which were more equal, though they may be
doing different things in society. To support this, A. Schlegel and J. Briggs
conducted studies among hunting-gathering societies. K. Sachs used a Marxian
mode of production study to show how, in such societies, sisters, brothers,
husbands and wives had an equal relationship to resources as well as the means.

E. Friedl and Louise Lamphere believe that even under subordination, women
had some degree of personal power. These anthropologists claimed that in the
domestic sphere women often had some degree of power. Though this power
was used individually in negotiating personal relations, they also affected male
interactions in the public sphere.

The use of the term gender has thus tended to separate feminist anthropology
from simplistic models, like dichotomies. The term gender started to replace the
term women in such studies. Thus, inequality was differentiated from purely
biological distinctions. Translating culturally fine-tuned gender distinctions
seemed to be a problem, and it seemed as if such gender diversity was a universal
phenomenon. There was a distinct relationship between the way culture guided
thoughts and the resultant individual action, but there also seemed to be a variety
and range of individual actions that needed much more fine-tuned approaches
that reached deeper into culturally-guided behaviour to understand it. There was
also a relationship between the material conditions within which cultures existed
and the ideologies that were a part of such material conditions of existence. All-
in-all gender opened out a much larger range of human activities to understanding
and for research than had ever been possible before, when biologically created
sex roles was the only theoretical model that was used.

After this period, then, the issue of identity became a very important point of
contact for a variety of feminist anthropologies. Social categories like age,
occupation, religion, occupation, status, among others, became important
variables. Power continued to play an important role in the analysis. This was
because the construction of identity and its enactment by the actors was mediated
through discourses and actions that were structured through the environment
(whether social or otherwise) of power.

Queer theory also became an important reaction after the 1980s and the post-
structuralist reactions against what was considered to be normal. Queer theory
challenged the apparent ‘normalcy’ of heterosexuality (a process which is
sometimes called heteronormativity). So, queer theory takes an idea to its logical
conclusion by not accepting gender as being a personally constructed identity
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but seeing it as something created through a variety of social acts, identities, Religion and Gender
thoughts and components.

This tour through the theories, approaches and methodologies was important
since each theory or approach is like a worldview. Each worldview has its own
set of assumptions which methodologically ignores some information while
giving precedence to others. By understanding this we will begin to understand
how the understanding of women’s roles in ritual and religion are shaped. These
approaches also show how the household has been seen as a mode of theory and
of action in the so-called ‘battle between the sexes’. In fact, most people believe
now that initial enculturation and socialisation processes within the family are
crucial towards the formation of a gender identity and thus a set of behaviours.

3.4 WOMEN, KINSHIP AND RELIGION

Belief forms part of the ideological sub-system. It is one of the most important
arenas of the relations between men and women. A belief system in a culture
operates by linking up with other sub-systems in culture, like family, kinship,
politics, economy, and so on. Women are often crucial to the management of a
belief system, though they may be kept out of many aspects of it. This kind of
behaviour is also reproduced over generations.

For instance, in Jind district of Haryana, one perception among the people is that
religious rituals are maintained by the women of the household. Only household
gods are prayed to by the men. Also, genealogies are maintained and remembered
by some of the men who become the knowledge-repositories for one or more
lineages. Such genealogies are remembered as poetry and may extend from 800
to over 1200 years. However, such genealogies consciously ignored the women
who married into the lineage as well as the women who were born within it.
Thus, in an everyday sense, men did not usually pray and most houses did not
even keep areas where images of gods were kept or prayed to regularly. It was
the women who would go to local temples and pray, not only on a daily basis but
also whenever they passed the area where images of gods and goddesses had
been installed.

One of the most crucial areas which have been targeted by different societies has
been women’s menstruation periods. There have been a range of taboos associated
with women’s menstruation that include no contact with men during the period,
or with food, and especially with religious rituals. Among the Oraon tribe of
Jharkhand, men are not allowed to be with women or even their wives before a
hunt or before important rituals because the woman might be menstruating. A
hunting expedition often requires the sanction of the gods for its success and the
success of the hunt may be forfeited if any of the men come in contact with a
menstruating woman or if they have sexual relations with any woman.

In many traditional Bengali societies, women are often the primary carriers of
religious ritual from generation to generation. However, women are not allowed
to do their daily prayers after a bath when they are menstruating. Usually, at this
time, children or other women of the household who are not menstruating continue
the rituals. This becomes problematic when there is a nuclear family and there is
no one to continue this daily ritual during menstruation. In some cases, the men
conduct the prayers.
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Gender Relations in Social Access to household gods becomes very special in the case of the Maithili
Institutions
Brahmins of Mithila district in northern Bihar, where rural household gods are
often installed in a locked crypt, with the keys being kept only by the eldest son
of the household (or the father, or eldest male), and the prayers are kept secret
from all the women as well as from others outside the household.

Blood, especially menstrual blood, seems to be carrying with it a host of unpleasant

feelings in society. Blood is symbolic of death, murder, live-giving force or
kinship. In many societies women are not allowed to go into the kitchen while
menstruating, since their hands would ‘pollute’ the food served to all others.

In Assam, at the famous religious temple called Kamakhya in Guwahati in June,

is the famous Ambubachi mela or festival. This religious festival celebrates the
fertility of the Kamakhya goddess, by having a three day ritual because at this
time the goddess has her annual menstrual cycle. Here the word Ambu means
‘mother’ and bachi means ‘seed’. Many mendicants, especially those of the occult
or Tantric side, visit the temple and conduct rituals. During these three days the
doors of the main temple are closed.

Among the Dogon tribe of Mali in West Africa, a recent study showed that
menstrual taboos were strictly followed. The women, belonging to Christian,
Islam and a monotheistic indigenous religion were sequestered in menstrual huts.
The community had been studied at one time by the famous anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss. Using this method, women are enjoined to be truthful about the
status of their fertility to their husband’s families. This reduces the risk of illicit
sexual behaviour among women. After the birth of a child, vigilance by family
members increases till the resumption of sexual behaviour after menstruation by
the husband. Y DNA studies showed mismatches in only about 1.8 per cent of
the cases. This refutes the idea that such traditional populations have high rates
of cuckoldry. Thus, religious control of sexual behaviour has been very successful
in evolution. Thus, sexual behaviour is controlled through social control in the
public sphere and the fear of divine or supernatural punishment.

Similar conditions are imposed among the Wogeo in New Guinea, where the
woman who is menstruating is given a bowl of curry by the mother and told to
lie near the fire. To make her condition known to others she has to wear black or
dark brown skirts. She avoids physical contact though she can converse freely.
Other people, looking at the colour of her skirt, avoid physical contact with her.
She will avoid touching objects in the house and will go and come through a
hole in the wall rather than the doorway. She will only visit her own gardens and
will cook her own food. She eats with a fork, drinks water with a straw and uses
a scratcher to itch.

Thus, the body of the women becomes a site which becomes proscribed and
controlled during natural biological events. They are advertised through the
woman’s body and this body has to endure many rituals, purifications and
mortifications during these periods of proscription. The following of these
proscriptions become important not only for her immediate family but also for
her kin group, lineage, clan or even the whole village. Thus, a whole ideological
and mythical background is often overlaid over these controlling practices in
order to enforce them as sanctions on women.

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Among the Mae Enga of New Guinea, the women live in a separate house beside Religion and Gender
their husbands with their unmarried daughters and infant sons. The men live in a
large house near the women’s houses and there is a strong hostility between the
sexes. The men believe that every ejaculation decreases their vitality, and thus
intercourse was only conducted to beget children and that, too, after magical
ceremonies are performed to prevent the men from weakening. After such
intercourse, men do not enter their horticultural gardens in case the contact with
women harms the crops. Women are then secluded during menstruation. Crops
like sweet potato, setaria or crucifer are gendered as being female and these are
harvested by the women at night during this period as food. It is believed that
eating male foods like taro, ginger or sugarcane would kill her. On the other
hand, wives have fewer prohibitions than unmarried women. This could be said
to be a protection, since the wives and mothers come from clans which are
traditional enemies and thus need to be protected from.

3.5 WOMEN, SOCIETY AND THE BODY

As has already been mentioned in the previous section, women’s bodies become
the site of a variety of social issues. One of the most important, if not the most
visible, signs of this kind is the fact of child-bearing and child-birth among women,
which are often taken as marks of legitimacy or otherwise within the society.
The Aztecs honoured this idea by reserving one of their heavens for women who
died in child-birth or for soldiers who died in battle.

The fact of the impregnation of the woman and her fertility are considered to be
of great importance. For the Arapesh, in the Pacific Islands, sexual activity may
be directed towards play or it could be a creative act towards the formation of a
child. Thus, the father’s role is recognised in such societies. After the mother’s
breasts show discolouration and swelling caused by pregnancy, all sexual activity
stops. The mother is then not permitted to eat frogs, bandicoots or coconuts and
sago from a holy place. During the birth, the father is usually not present. The
blood associated with child-birth is usually considered to be impure so birthing
is done outside the village, with the help of other women. After they return to the
village, both parents lie with the child, but both are needed to fast, with having
water or even a smoke. Small rituals are carried out with the help of the father’s
brother’s wives through the day to aid them in caring for the baby. The father in
Arapesh society is endangered by the birth of the first child. Hence, he remains
separated for five days, eating food with a spoon, using a stick for scratching
himself and keeping away from tobacco. A leaf hut is built near a pool, decorated
with red flowers and herbs, and the father lives here. After cleaning his mouth on
a white ring given by his sponsor, he goes on to place it at the bottom of the pool.
After bathing, he retrieves this ring and returns it to his sponsor. This marks his
rite of passage to fatherhood.

These rituals are society’s way of giving importance to natural processes and to
incorporate religious elements and importance to everyday events. Thus religion
mediates the everyday activities of human beings with others as well as with the
rest of the natural world. This mediation brings into focus the existing social
structure and its attendant differences in the way it treats gender relations. Thus,
studying each event in the life cycle underlines an aspect of social relations.

37
Gender Relations in Social However, not all societies give this kind of importance to the males when it
Institutions
comes to begetting a child. Among the Aborigines of Western Australia, a spirit-
child enters the woman to make her pregnant. For the man, the birth of a child is
only a social paternity. Food taboos are maintained for the woman since it is
believed that what she eats will affect the child. The mother spends no time in
confinement at all. Songs are chanted to ease the birth, usually outside the village.
The mother and child pair stays away from the father for five days. Further food
taboos are observed for a year after birth. The child thus becomes a part of the
father’s lineage even though there is no strong belief in the father having any
role in the birth of the child.

So strong is this difference observed cross-culturally, that anthropologists have

devised two different terms to understand the phenomenon. A genitor is the actual
or genetic father of the child. Such a father may or may not be acknowledged
and recognised. In case the actual father is not recognised, a social father may be
appointed which the society recognises as the father (even though the person
may not be the genitor). This social father is termed as the pater. In some tribal
societies in Sikkim, such a pater may not even live with his wife, and might even
have his own family where he is the genitor. Often, in this society, a pater is a
respected member of the society, like a school-teacher.

There seems to be enough societies where there is conflict and doubt regarding
the paternity of a child. For many this doubt is only clarified through religion.
When Azande women become pregnant, their husbands consult oracles to find
out the true paternity of the child. Among the Mundugamur, the oracle is consulted
to find a suitable midwife for delivery and also to decide where the birth should
take place.

Still others believe that children are the reincarnation of the ancestors. This is
why the spirits are called upon to preside over the naming of the child among the
Oraons of Jharkhand. Two rice grains are placed on water in a bowl. One has the
name of an ancestor while the other that of the child. If the two names go well
together, it is believed, they will stick together and play with each other on the
surface tension of the water. If they do not match, they will be indifferent to each
other. If this happens, another ancestral name is selected until the names match.
The naming of a child also ensures protection of the ancestor and the qualities of
the ancestor also become part of the child. Among the Bemba, the midwife names
the ancestor who has returned as the child.

So conflict-ridden is the idea of paternity that different societies have ensured in

different ways to get rid of such issues through elaborate sets of rituals. In South
America, among some of the Amazonian tribes, there is the concept of the
couvade. The father sometimes behaves as if he is also pregnant with the child,
sometimes even simulating belly aches. He lies in his hammock and undergoes
food taboos, refraining from hunting and smoking. The cultural logic claims that
the mother provides the child with the body while the father provides the soul.
This providing of the soul by the father weakens him as much as pregnancy
weakens the mother. If the father does not perform the rituals well, it can affect
the further development of the child, it is believed.

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 Religion and Gender

CHILD BIRTH

SAFEGUARD INCORPORATE THE

CHILD AS A
DELIVERY AND LEGITIMATE MEMBER
HEALTH OF SOCIETY

CULTURAL BELIEF THAT BELIEF THAT

PRACTICEES THAT RITUAL FATHER IS FATHER IS NOT
LEAD TO HEALTH PRACTICES IMPORTANT IN IMPORTANT IN
AND NUTRITION CHILD BIRTH CHILD BIRTH

RITUALS TO
INCORPORATE THE
FATHER AS AN
IMPORTANT PART OF
THE CHILD

Fig. 3.1: Child Birth and Its Cultural Logic

3.6 GROWING UP IN A SUPERNATURAL WORLD

Supernatural assurance that everything is right in one’s behaviour has been a
very important component of culture. This has been assured to people through a
variety and range of religious specialists. In Bengal, Durga Puja has been an
important deity who is prayed to, in order to ensure that women get a good
husband. A similar case is seen with the Gauri Puja among the people of
Karnataka. In both cases, it is ensured that if the rituals are followed correctly,
these wishes would be granted.
The adult woman in culture is definitely supposed to be savvy about everyday
religious rituals that need to be performed. This can only be so if the enculturation
process has been painstaking and without flaws. One way of clearly highlighting
the division of labour in society between the genders is to have a separate house
for the men. Among the Oraons of Jharkhand it was called a dhumkuria. Among
the tribes of Madhya Pradesh in India, many of the villages had a bachelors’
dormitory.
Having this kind of a separate structure for the two genders, it was easy to train
each gender separately in religious matters also, and keep such matters separate.
At such houses, the men met and discussed many things. They were often taught
by the elders about rituals, household gods, hunting, and other male activities.
They were also trained in sexual matters. Folklore and cultural matters were also
picked up through this method of cultural transmission from generation to
generation. In Jharkhand, for some years, the Ramakrishna Mission society used
the dhumkuria to impart cultural knowledge, literacy and training to the youth.
The admission to such a house was a matter of honour and prestige. Women
were strictly not allowed in such houses. The transgression within or out of such
houses was offset by the use of certain religious or supernatural sanctions. Among
the Latmul, men would sleep in the men’s houses before a hunt in order to separate
themselves from contact with women. 39
Gender Relations in Social The women in societies like that of Manipur, in North-East India, consider their
Institutions
kitchen area to be as private as that of the men’s houses. Women meet here in
privacy, away from the eyes of men, and gossip, discuss or talk about a variety of
affairs. In early households in Manipur, the shared deities in the household were
kept in common areas of the house, while others were kept in zones used mostly
by one or the other gender. Thus, spatial areas are also demarcated separately for
men and for women, with some common areas.

Among the tribals of Jharkhand, like the Oraons and the Mundas, these rules are
followed for 15 days to a month of daily fasting by the men of a household
during the manda festival. The women follow strict rules of purity within the
household and while menstruating may not perform their duties during this period.
The men eat food which is boiled or roasted before dawn. They then remain
hungry through the day. The women, wearing clean clothes after a bath, serve
them and then go away to separate quarters. Throughout the event the women
serve their men folk (brothers, sons or husbands). On the appointed day, after
many privations the men undergo a series of rituals and walk over a bed of coals
while their appointed women bathe repeatedly, carry water on their heads to the
place of worship where they pour it over an image of Lord Shiva, the presiding
deity. After this trial by ordeal, the men and women bathe and eat. They can go
on to live normally till the next year. The arena then fills up with the Purulia
Chhau dancers for a night of folklore and entertainment. Of course, today, there
are many more communities who participate in the manda. Many of the features
of the manda are similar to the jitia festivals in the hardcore Oraon tribal areas,
which was eventually banned by the British because of the wounds seen in hook-
swinging. In West Bengal, this same festival becomes the Charak. Some of these
festivals were also played out in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

What is clear today is that these festivals are part of a bhakti movement or
revivalist backdrop in the region which perhaps began after about 1000 AD.
These trials by ordeal were imposed to show the purity of the acolytes and their
belief in these ancient gods. However, the gods here are anti-establishmentarian.
On this day, the official priests or Brahmins may not be called and other people
may pray directly to the gods without an intermediary. The gods are also supposed
to enter into the people, giving them extraordinary powers to bear pain and speed
up healing. These healing powers may also be useful to others who stay in contact
with them.

Some researchers have found that early prehistoric human societies, which are
presumed to have been based on hunting-gathering kind of economy, had female
goddesses. Women were supposed to be the centre of the ritual and religious
arena of life at that point of time. As society moved on to pastoralist economies
involving the husbandry of captive animals for fuel, food and fodder and on to a
more Neolithic and agricultural economy, the society shifted to a more strongly
patriarchal one. As a result, the emphasis shifted from female deities to male
ones. Archaeological sites in the Deccan region seem to show this shift. It has
been argued that men needed to clear plots for cultivation and this brought them
into closer proximity with their neighbours with whom they often fought. Since
only the men fought therefore it made sense to give men such jobs, since they
were more expendable as compared to the women who were more important for
giving birth to and rearing children. The factors are so complex that merely
looking at subsistence issues does not give us the right information regarding
40
the status of women. Many other factors leading from their position in other Religion and Gender
subsystems like politics, health and economy are necessary. It seems clear that
women’s status in a society may be higher when she not only contributes to
subsistence but also retains control over the wealth and its produce.

The education and enculturation of a woman in society, as compared to a man, is

not only quantitatively different but also qualitatively different. Puberty rituals
for men as well as women differ across cultures. Sometimes both are present.
Some cultures only have rituals for men while others have them for women.
These rituals follow Van Gennep’s idea that rites of passage from one stage of
life to another have three stages – isolation, education and re-entry into society.

So, people are first isolated from others while they are being readied. They may
face ordeals during this period. After this, they are educated so that they are able
to enter into the next phase of their lives. There is a feeling of limbo during this
transitional period, when the people have been removed from one stage but have
not yet been able to enter the next stage. Victor Turner calls it a liminal period.
Education regarding the next phase of life as well as the education of the persons
close to the person is key towards re-incorporation into the society. These issues
are markedly seen during childbirth, puberty, marriage and death rituals. After
this period is over, the person is then reincorporated back into society with a new
status and its corresponding role-sets.

Among the Wogeo of New Guinea, described by Ian Hogbin in 1970, initiation
and puberty rites occur over a period of years. At the age of four or five year’s
men enter the room where the young boy is hiding with his mother and he is
grabbed and taken outside. His eyes are blindfolded and loud sounds are made.
He is told that monsters are attacking him. The child then has the lobe and the
top of the ears pierced with a bone. They return to the mothers and the other men
light a fire to cook and eat the offerings. At the age of ten years, parents apply red
ochre on their bodies and they are then taken to the clubhouse. The sponsor
descends the stairs, removes the mother and slaps the boy’s shoulders to remove
the influence of the mother. He is taken in and sleeps there with the men. Some
of the men paint their bodies and make grotesque sounds that send the boys into
a state of fear. The boys are dragged to the beach, to see and hear the flutes
played. The sponsor takes the boy into the sea for a scrubbing. Ankles and wrists
of the boys are pulled while relatives twist spear blades into the hair to make the
boys grow tall. After coming back to the clubhouse, the boys are told that all the
sounds they had heard were made by men, not by monsters and this and other
mysteries taught to them should not be revealed to the women. Once the boy is
ready for sexual intercourse, the third stage begins with the tongue being scarified
to help him to play the flutes. This is symbolically likened to the boy’s first
menstruation, from which Hogbin calls his book, The Island of Menstruating
Men. The tongue is the part where the mother’s influence is most apparent –
through nursing and eating food prepared by her. The tongue is scraped with
rough leaves till it bleeds. Before marriage, the man is bathed in the sea, pulled
to the shore by a spear in his hair and then this hair is confined in a wicker cone.
This cone is replaced with bigger ones till the hair is about ten inches long at
which time it is trimmed to fit the cone. From this time on, the person is considered
fit to be an adult.

41
Gender Relations in Social In some societies, people from a closely similar age group are put together into
Institutions
an age-set or an age-grade (as mentioned earlier). Each age-set group works
together to learn what is required in order to be qualified for the next stage. Each
stage is usually occupied by its own rites of passage rituals. After the eldest age-
group is constituted, the group of elders then becomes the most knowledgeable
with regard to religious and ritual knowledge.

One set of theories about puberty rituals claims that there is no critical biological
marker for the transition of men from childhood to adulthood as exists among
women. This is why men rather than women have more puberty rituals. Also,
men separate rituals, knowledge and religious matters from the women using
this set of behaviour. It has also been noted that female puberty rituals occur in
areas where women do not leave home after marriage, as in matrilocal societies,
or in areas where women have control over economic resources. Thus such rituals
are necessary in areas where the person has been born and is likely to spend all
her life, thus necessitating clear ways to show a change in status.

Most anthropologists have been male and thus such rituals pertaining to women
have been rare. One of these accounts has been by Audrey Richards among the
Bemba of Africa who described the Chisungu rite in 1956. The ritual is performed
for a group and the bridegroom may pay the mistress of ceremonies since without
this performance the marriage cannot take place. Girls learn the tricks of being
an adult like carrying sticks and learning dance forms, making models of hoes
and pots, learning about conduct like not mentioning the husband’s adulterous
liaisons, about taking care of babies, not to gossip, not to be lazy, and so on. On
the seventh day the women are trained to serve a basket of seeds to the older
women. On the tenth day the tree of fertility festooned with white beads is the
centre of activity. The beads are bitten off and given to the mistress of ceremonies.
Clay models made and decorated by the girls are presented to her. After seventeen
days, the bridegroom enters the house. The bridegroom shoots an arrow above
the head of the girl, and then she is presented with a bundle of firewood, meat,
beads and red dye. The latter two are used to dress up the girl as she sits beside
the bridegroom and then she receives gifts of coins and bracelets from their kin.
On the eighteenth day, she kills, plucks and cooks a chicken porridge for a
communal feast.

The dramatic nature of such rituals is important when the solidarity of the group
members is high. There is thus much cooperation between the members. Using
such ritual methods, the boy can be quickly and systematically incorporated into
the group of men. In corporate kin societies, women learn through this ritual to
incorporate their activities with a tightly organised group. This prepares her for
the time when they will move on to another household after marriage. It trains
her to maintain her own autonomy while keeping track of the cooperative group.
Thus, men’s ceremonies prepare them for the public sphere while women’s
ceremonies prepare them for the private sphere. Men’s ceremonies often regularly
exclude women, while women’s ceremonies keep implicit the idea that men are
a part of their world.

42
 Religion and Gender
3.7 THE MATURE WOMAN AS THE REPOSITORY
OF CULTURE
Thus, the woman goes through a series of stages of learning all through her life
that prepares her to become knowledgeable about the religious and ritual aspects
of life. In some societies women can access some degree of control over her
circumstances. This may be true to a large extent in matrilineal societies, like
among the Garos, Jaintias and the Khasis, where the women do a large amount
of economic activities for the household as well as retaining control over much
of it. In polygamous societies, like the Tiv studied by Paul Bohannon, women
may control the bride price to get successive wives or daughters-in-law. In other
matrifocal societies women may improve their status by manipulating kin
relations. In modern urban societies, women can improve their status by choosing
their own mates and affines. Also, ritual and religious rules govern sexuality, so
if the beliefs of the society do not give her a higher status then the other subsystems
of society will also contribute to this effect. The reverse is also true, if the woman’s
work is seen to be insignificant, she will also be given a lower status by the
belief system.

Older women are often more easily allowed to vent their opinions and be present
in the public sphere than their younger counterparts. Such women are often
consulted by others, including men, on a variety of issues.

Religion may also be used as a method for venting out anger, frustration and
other feelings of angst against specific people or the society at large. This may be
done through being in a state of trance caused by extreme excitement and fervor
at a religious event. I.M. Lewis studied such phenomena from around the world
to show that whenever a particular social group was oppressed and had no voice
within the society, such events were likely to be present. Thus, men and women
were particularly prone to such trances. However, his data showed that only a
few cases existed where men were involved whereas a large number of cases
involved women, showing that women were one of the most oppressed groups
in society. Trances involved the woman beginning by shaking her head violently
from side to side and then making sounds or cries, which may be followed by
long tirades or comments on people or society. People often listen carefully to
understand her and see if her words foretell anything since it is believed that
spirits or gods enter the body at this time. The woman may faint after this. At
most religious shrines with a high degree of excitement, such events are common.

This is an important event for the woman since she is given much importance by
society and her family during this period. She is also not censured for her
behaviour during this time since she seems to have no memory of the event later
and the gods seem to have caused this event. Overall, due to this event she becomes
an important person of some standing in society if she has these fits and can
control them sufficiently to use them intelligently. Further, she may do or say
things that people would listen to as being the voice of the gods and their will.
These instructions may then be followed by others, thus creating a better
environment for the woman to live within.

In many households, some older people have also taken the lead in advising
their children about the need for equality, especially with respect to religion. In
43
Gender Relations in Social many areas, change of religion has often been brought about through the action
Institutions
of wives and daughters rather than by the men of the household.

Anthropologists feel that society in the South Asian region has been patrilineal,
matrilineal or bilateral. Each has its own ideas which have led to differing statuses
of women within them. Among the Thais, the spirits of the domestic sphere are
prayed to and cared for by the women. Overall, it may be seen that though people
may follow a major religion or even animism, they still adhere to the customary
laws of the community related to their relations with divinity and with regard to
kin relations, though bilateral relations seem to be more egalitarian than others.

3.8 SOCIAL CHANGE, RELIGION AND WOMEN

Having seen the variety of experiences of a woman with respect to religion over
the life cycle, it will be understood that such religious behaviour permeates into
the rest of society quickly, quietly and without much fanfare. Women-headed
changes of such kind are likely to be quicker and painless than other kinds of
change. However, media thinking regarding the role of women as religious
specialists is yet to change – something which many cult groups understood a
long time ago.
In many cases women have been known to refuse to change, since affecting such
a large amount of change physically as well as psychologically are beyond the
scope of many. In patrilineal societies, the insecurity caused by translocation to
the husband’s house has led women to become singularly wary of creating
permanency in their jobs, living areas, politics, ideologies and sometimes even
belief systems.
Many of the accepted areas of operation for women were in conflict during the
World Wars when women had to take on jobs usually for men because there was
a shortage of men. This has also been true of women-headed households. Many
of the families understand that due to current-day economic pressures, the men
would need to go off to work. This would leave the women, especially in India,
whether married or not, to look after their ageing parents. Such parents are often
also seeing their single girl children as being the only suitable person for imparting
religious or ritual information that used to be traditionally only imparted to the
sons. This practicality has changed the outlook of many people, especially in
urban areas. It has also changed the ideas of some in rural areas. However, in
rural areas, the attendant subsystems of the society do not support such changes
as yet. This can be seen in the violent reaction against any change in early systems
by the traditional political system (for example, the khaps in Haryana).
Changes in the global arena have also necessitated changes in this kind of thinking.
Among the travelled urban population, the switching of male and female roles
has become commonplace. This has also reflected on the practices within the
religious institutions and the religious practitioners. Earlier, shamans and exorcists
in communities were usually male and witchcraft was considered to be evil as
among the Badaga, Kurumba, Oraon and Munda tribes. Today, female priests
are being tentatively accepted. In many households women are managing and
praying to household gods while their men are away. Women in England practice
witchcraft openly, using a variety of rituals and religious paraphernalia. They
have their own closed societies, some of which are very well known. India also
44 has its share of such witches as in the case of Ipsita Roy.
In urban areas as well as in rural ones, a variety of gender roles are now being Religion and Gender
experimented with. Such behaviours are being identified with local names. Some
members of the families are beginning to accept these behaviours as being normal
also. The media has been playing an eventful role by highlighting these issues
and thus sensitising the public to such issues. Though much remains to be done,
the sexual mores and behaviours of this gradually increasing set of genders
(sometimes called LGBT – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite) have been given
a platform through programmes that attempted to deal with the issue of HIV/
AIDS in many areas.

In urban areas the idea of the metrosexual man, among other things, brought in
the element of males having a feminine side to their lives also. This has not been
unusual even in traditional societies. In early American communities, the concept
of the berdache was well-known. In such societies men had a strong patrilineal
and patriarchal ideology, with men going off for hunting while the women stitched
clothes, cooked, sewed and looked after the children. Some men who would
prefer to follow the home-making way of life were called berdache. They were
respected members of society and could remain home, look after the children,
sew and cook without feeling any disrespect.

At present more and more women are entering the public sphere. They are also
entering into the issues that were earlier covered by men. From becoming the
priests of some temple gods to ordained priests at a church, they are now beginning
to take control of the religious sphere. For many years now, women have been
using marginal cults to sustain the memory of the minor female deities in homes
and through networks. Now these deities are coming into their own, gaining
supporters and temples from being just merely sideshows. Perhaps all these show
the background being created to ensure that women have a better status in current
society.

Even as women control their biology to delay childbirth and use new reproductive
technologies, they also become a large majority who take on devoutness and
religiosity through pilgrimages and religious work at a later age, when work
pressures or family commitments are less. While the strong patriarchal areas are
still putting up a fight, there are many who find such changing systems to be
better for them and much less stressful in society. Education and new forms of
cohabitation, compromise and understanding are ensuring that the track to future
changes are being laid in the present for stronger-willed women who have
controlling interests in all of the areas earlier occupied by men. Using traditional
family structures for support in these changes is also another way of gaining
access to egalitarianism. These new areas will require more stresses from the
genders and more demands on their time. While universities are becoming more
flexible to such time limits, jobs are also trying to find ways to adjust by using
methods like flexi-time, where the person uses the time schedules most suited to
them. By cohabiting with a large workforce of women over time, by harnessing
their conjoint minds to the problem, by sharing in their efforts and by empathising
with them, society is likely to find new ways of dealing with these changes and
new challenges to combat together.

However, before all things seem too rosy, it must be understood that the same
attendant dangers that were seen among men are likely to be seen among women
when it comes to control over religious matters. This is the issue of religious
45
Gender Relations in Social intolerance and fundamentalism, for which new modes of rethinking and new
Institutions
ideas are required for coexistence and cohabitation between people with radical
and changing belief systems.

3.9 SUMMARY
To summarise, this unit attempts to view gender roles observed in religion through
anthropological documentation. This is supported by various anthropological
theories, approaches and methods. This presents a comprehensive world view
which helps us to know about women’s behaviour and connection with rituals
and religiosity and how they are shaped. The basic factors for such roles and
norms assigned to women are formed from the household, enculturation and
socialisation processes. These roles, in this case religious activities, originate
within the family, and then are extended to the kins and finally to the entire
society. The unit shows through examples, how women grow up creating and
placing themselves in a fantastical reality made up of the supernatural world
which includes deities, sacred bodies, images and places. Rituals of course play
a big part in all these. The unit further exhibits that elderly women have important
roles to play in the religiousness of a society and their knowledge of the
supernatural, spiritual, mystical and rituals. They are the ones who carry this
forward from one generation to the next. The unit ends with changes occurring
in society and how in it women are also working towards gaining better options,
in terms of religion or otherwise.

References

Desai, Neera and Usha Thakkar. 2007. Women in Indian Society. New Delhi:
National Book Trust.

Dube, Leela. 2001. Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields.

New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications.

Kessler, Evelyn S. 1976. Women: An Anthropological View. New York, etc.: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.

Sanday, Peggy R. 1973. Theory of the Status of Women in American

Anthropologist, Vol. 75, pp. 1682-1700.

Srinivas, M. N. 1977. The Changing Position of Indian Women in Man, New

Series, Vol. 12, No. 2, Aug., pp. 221-238.

Suggested Reading

Friedl, Ernestine. 1975. Women and Men: An Anthropologist’s View. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Hogbin, Ian. 1970. The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New
Guinea. Scranton, Pa.: Chandler Publishing Co.
La Fontaine, J.S. (ed.). 1978. Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation.
ASA Monograph 17. London, New York, San Francisco: Academic Press.
Menon, Ritu (ed.). 2012. Making a Difference: Memoirs from the Women’s
Movement in India. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.
46
Purkayastha, Bandana, Mangala Subramaniam, Manisha Desai and Sunita Bose. Religion and Gender
2003. The Study of Gender in India: A Partial Review in Gender and Society,
Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 503-524.

Richards, Audrey I. 1956. Chisungu. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Sample Questions

1) Discuss the importance of religion in shaping gender relations.

2) Trace the theoretical development in this area (gender and religion) of study.

3) Discuss the positive and the negative role religion play in women’s lives.

47