The Role, Function, and Place of Woman in Culture - Essay Example

The Yanomami in particular observes the tradition of cross-cousin arrangements where a girl, as young as five or six years of age, is set to be handed over to a male relative to become his wife by the time she encounters her first menstrual period. While they are together as a couple, it is a must that the woman proceeds to serve her husband dutifully just as how she manages the chores and responsibilities done for her parents. This typical confinement to a domestic role often subjects women to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by their partners who conventionally possess greater control of the household.

Why is a woman so rarely equal to men in terms of power, status, and role?

            Since women have become accustomed to obeying and not refuting the ways long adhered to in such patriarchal ethnic societies, they have eventually been perceived with limitations on governing capacity by their male counterparts. A woman’s fixed position in a domestic setting naturally narrows her scope of potentials that is why she becomes subservient to man thereby enabling the latter to take her for granted considering the available range of skills or capabilities that define the gender roles in ethnic culture as in Yanomami’s case.

            Physical strength is chiefly the measure of power and in this regard, tribesmen who fight or settle disputes during inter-village warfare have never allowed female concerns or intervention to affect negotiations. Azande people in depths of belief with the power of witchcraft similarly prohibit women from engaging in any related activities that are spiritual by nature.

            Women are further deprived of rights to equality with men once the malevolent conduct of the opposite gender is utilized against them in raiding times between different tribes that cause subsequent rape and beatings of women who could only return to respective home tribes if agreements by the contending men arrive in amicable terms. Exposure to violence and the society’s perception of women have altogether steadied women to be content at their status and of the environment which apparently influences their behavior and limited response over significant matters as they are unable to express unique views or to make wilful personal advancements in such ethnic orientations still attached to the ancient means of living in a profound recognition of corporal strength rather than the strength of reason.

Men have essentially maintained control over the means of production despite the rights given to women in hunter-gatherer groups, knowing that this is a potential source of power. Gaining control of production all the more renders men capable of acquiring advantage with the desired ends since normal living highly depends on quantities of necessities generated. Hence, as much as possible, women may not meddle in such endeavor, and trade for this would most probably entail competitions between the sexes that men could not readily afford to acknowledge.