The Vanatinai and Meratus also share both similarities and differences in their respective constructions of gender. In Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society, as the subtitle suggests, Maria Lepowsky goes to the island of Vanatinai in search of a gender egalitarian society. Rejecting claims of universal male superiority, Lepowsky discovers a rare society where women appear to have equal access to material resources. Supported by a matrilineal kinship system, the Vanatinais exhibit no evidence for misogyny or female inferiority. Instead, she comes across an egalitarian system where sex roles overlap with very little sex segregation. Women are even viewed as morally superior as they are perceived as life-givers while men are viewed as life-takers. Both host the prestigious mortuary feasts and both have the opportunity to be big men or big women. There are no men’s houses, male cults, no initiation ceremonies, and no ascribed positions. Every adult has the opportunity to excel. Women have a respected voice in public debate, can travel, and can even lead expeditions. More men participate in the ceremonial exchange, but more women participate in feasting activities. Both practices are highly valued. Perhaps one of the most salient reasons that Lepowsky views Vanatinai women as being equal to men is that women control the means of production as they control the surplus production of yams. In addition, unlike Abu-Lughod’s Bedouin Awlad ‘Ali, women can inherit land and valuables equally with men.
However, as Lepowsky admits, no society is perfectly egalitarian this is also true of the Vanatinai. With high value placed on woman as life-giver, and a corresponding mother as nurturer ideology, women have the main responsibility of child care. Ironically, this belief also constrains women’s avenues of power. Often times Vanatinai women themselves voice displeasure at being burdened with child-care responsibilities—so much so that they were open to artificial forms of contraception. Other evidence of inequality is evident in the fact that more men than women become prominent in exchange. Although this symbol of prestige is open to women, because of child-care responsibilities, they participate much less than men. As observed in most male-dominated societies across the globe, including our own, asymmetrical child-care responsibilities often thwart women’s access to power, wealth, and prestige. Finally, as the connection of women’s inequality to warring societies was alluded to above, the Vanatinai women are omitted from the highly prestigious act of killing with spears precluding women from becoming the esteemed asiara, an exemplary warrior. So, despite Lepowsky’s claim of a gendered egalitarian society, there are several valid arguments for disputation.
Tsing’s ethnography, on the other hand, does not make the claim that the Meratus Dayak women are equal to men. Instead, she emphasizes their individual claims to power within a seemingly male-dominated sphere. Meratus women, for example, realize their prominence in the practice of the umbun, a communal farm operated equally by one man and one woman who have equal autonomy in managing the operations. Most of Tsing’s assertions of women’s power, however, are revealed within the stories of individual informant women. For instance, she interviews Uma Adang, an exceptional Meratus woman, who commanded her power through her position of shaman, a status typically reserved for men only. Then, she retells the stories of three women who left their families, took foreign lovers and gleaned power because they chose when and how to end the relationships. In addition, although women could not be leaders, they salvaged some power in resistance by “talking back” to men whom they deemed as making unpopular decisions. Women talked back especially when objecting strongly to some arranged marriages as opposed to choosing to marry for love. What Tsing fails to address is that Meratus women nevertheless depend on either lovers or husbands and still marry, the first step in burdening them with future child-rearing obligations. Moreover, the reader is left wondering what happens to the woman who talks back once too often.
So, despite Tsing’s emphasis on women’s power in the mountains of Meratus, there is ample evidence of male domination—much more evident than with Lepowsky’s Vanatinai. First, next to shamans, Meratus soldiers command the power and prestige, especially as headhunters, as they are considered the heroes of Meratus society. Women are automatically eliminated from these roles as they are not allowed to carry spears. Next, leaders are drawn from travelers, who, as mentioned above, are men as traveling with children is next to impossible. As Tsing points out, Meratus politics are politics of traveling because it is in this venue that men forge political connections, claim acts of bravery and experience, and exert their public voice. Perceptions of female inferiority also resonate in Meratus music making. Like American rock ‘n’ roll music of the fifties and sixties, and drawing on Kristeva’s work with the power of language, women’s subordination is reinforced and perpetuated in the Meratus love songs which offer strong asymmetries in their portraits of gender. Like the fifties’ male rebel fetish, these semiotics of female powerlessness worship violent soldiers who roam the cities and the mountains where they “‘fell’, ‘tend’, and buy female intimacy.” (Tsing 70) The love song scenario portrays women who, in the end, must rely on men for their livelihoods.
Ember and Ember point out that there are several theories about why women have relatively high or low status. Women tend to have higher status when there are decentralized political hierarchies; when place of marital residence is organized around the females (133-134); when women contribute substantially to subsistence activities; and when warfare is less significant. Both Vanatinai and Meratus cultural practices adhere to most of the above theories concerning female equality. Both societies have decentralized political governments. Both societies’ women contribute substantially to food getting activities. Vanatinai women are in charge of the gardens, while Meratus women have equal participation in the umbun. Both of these subsistence activities contribute significantly to the food-getting exercises of each society. Each group also adheres to post-marital residence locations that are beneficial towards women. The Vanatinai practice bilocal residence where after marriage the couple shares their place of residence equally between the woman’s parents and the man’s. Similarly, the Meratus practice neolocality where the couple lives away from both sets of parents. These customs avoid the woman being cast in the role of permanent servant to demanding in-laws. Concerning warfare, although the Vanatinai participate in war, women have prominent roles in peacemaking activities. By throwing down their grass skirts, women decide when the fighting ceases. The Meratus, as alluded to above, do seem to partake more in war activities. Although the details of war blur between myth and reality, Tsing does emphasize the importance of the soldier, particularly during skirmishes with Dutch colonizers. Warfare, then, could be a possible explanation for the seemingly increased value of women in the Vanatinai as opposed to the Meratus.
How have cultural changes during the last 150 years affected Vanatinai women’s lives since the pre-colonial period? Unlike Tsing’s Meratus, modernization has had both detrimental and beneficial effects on the Vanatinai. As observed in Bell’s Aboriginal Kaytej women of Australia, colonialism appears to have had detrimental effects on the status of women. This phenomenon is clear with both the Vanatinai and the Meratus Dayak. As political states tend to envision male heads of family, both societies’ regional authorities have had little interest in meeting with the women. Therefore, women are excluded in community political decisions. For example, Meratus district officers attempted to distribute birth control pills through male leaders who decided limiting the number of children was ridiculous. They therefore put the pills on the shelf where they remained never to be used by the women. Had women been consulted, they might have accepted the contraception as they had previously mentioned their displeasure at having too many children. In regards to control over reproduction, Meratus Dayak women’s marginality is even furthered reduced by state intervention. For example, Tsing suggests that allegedly unhealthy children are often left to die. The state began to criminalize what they perceived to be the inappropriate disposal of newborns and thus usurping the previous rights of the mother.
To conclude, various factors in Vanatinai and Meratus Dayak women’s lives seem to either advance or rescind women’s autonomy and authority. Warfare stands out as the one variable that appears to be detrimental to women’s status. This becomes even more significant when one examines issues of colonization and modernization, which, incidently, the Meratus appropriately refer to as terrorism.
References
Ember, C.R. and M. Ember (2002). Cultural anthropology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Lepowsky, M. (1993). Fruit of the motherland; gender in an egalitarian society.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Tsing, A.L. (1993). In the realm of the diamond queen. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
For more on this, see Simon Frith’s Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
