"Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspectives"

Paper Summary:

This paper presents a section-by-section review of the anthropology textbook, "Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspectives," compiled by Caroline B. Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent. The paper provides examples from each chapter of the book. Each section of the book deals with the myriad and diverse studies of gender.

From the Paper:

"One very interesting angle on the study of man and woman in prehistory is provided by Lila Leibowitz ("Perspectives on the Evolution of Sex Differences"), who provided a detailed account of primates? male-female roles. In the end, after writing an intriguing article, Leibowitz concludes that there is currently a "distorted" collection of evidence as to the gender roles in primates. Her hypothesis is very compelling, and she does not seem to be elitist in the least (which sometimes happens with scholars whose knowledge far surpasses the lay person). She explains that her hypothesis is presented in response ?to a spate of evolutionary theories which stress that our sex-role destiny along with our sexual anatomy was settled a long time ago.? Clearly she does not espouse a rigid view of the evolution of physical differences between men and women, and how sex roles came about. She calls for more study of the existing data."

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