6.4 Gender, Feminism and Sexuality

The anthropological contribution (the founding demonstration):Margaret Mead's Sexand Temperament (1935) — three New Guinea societies, three temperamental maps (the "masculine" Arapesh, the "feminine" Mundugumor, the reversal among the Tchambuli): genderroles are cultural, not biological destiny — the nature/nurture debate's anthropological proof (Sociology Unit 4.5's twin). Concepts:sex (biological) vs gender (socially constructed roles/ meanings) vs sexuality (desire and its organisation — culturally patterned too: third-gender traditions); Ortner's classic question ("Is female to male as nature is to culture?") and its critique; feminist anthropology (1970s+: the discipline's own androcentrism exposed — the "native's" women invisible in the classic monographs; women's ethnographies; the anthropology of masculinity since). Nepal's record (the exam's content): the gendered division of the agrarian and household economy (the double workday — Sociology Unit 6.2); women's ritual and legal standing (the maiti institution's ambivalence — shelter and exclusion both; the inheritance and citizenship struggles — Sociology Unit 7.3/Jurisprudence Unit 4.2's ledger); and the third-genderrecognition: the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling (the Pant litigation) establishing citizenship's "other" category and the census's enumeration of sexual and gender minorities — a world-cited South Asian milestone — with the metis and other identities' ethnography as the local ground.