Eleanor Burke Leacock
(1922-1987, United States)
Eleanor Burke Leacock is a feminist anthropologist who showed that female inferiority is not a universal condition, but a product of economic conditions. Until the 1960s, anthropologists believed that women were inherently subordinate to men in any society in the world. This inferior status of women was explained as the reflection of gender differences. Leacock argued that this theory was false. She showed that the subordination of women has stemmed from the change in economic system from communal style to capitalistic one. Leacock pointed out that women in egalitarian societies have a great degree of independence over their lives and activities. Although these traditional societies do have different gender roles between men and women, this separation does not mean unequal gender statuses. Leacock argued that anthropologists had confused this gender-based division of labor with female inferiority because of their own class-based social system.
Influenced by Marxist materialism, Leacock claimed that economic development causes women to lose their independence and become subordinate to men. She showed this correlation by three steps. First, kin-based societies tend to be characterized by communal ownership, egalitarian social relations, and nonhierarchical gender relationships. Then, a class system evolves and the development of capitalism breaks the population into two groups: those who have a control over resources or labor and those who do not. This new economic system damages the nonhierarchical gender relationships by denying unquestioned cooperation, reciprocity and respect for individual autonomy. In this capitalistic system, men dominate resources and rely on women for unpaid domestic work. Finally, women are deprived of control over their labor even though women’s domestic labor is essential to the reproduction of the workforce. In this way, the subordination of women is an inevitable outcome of economic development.
Leacock’s historical ethnography among the Montagnais in Canada revealed how the change of economic system leads to the subordination of women. Since the contact with Europeans, the Montagnais had traded furs for manufactured goods from Europe. This trade introduced capitalism, which undermined the basis of egalitarianism in the Montagnais society. A full century later after the European contact, the Jesuit missionaries arrived and enforced economic and social reform to the Montagnais. In addition to a capitalistic economic system, the missionaries imposed Catholic family values, which are based on patriarchy, monogamy, female sexual fidelity and the abolition of divorce. This historical process in the Montagnais society reveals that the subordination of women is not an inherent characteristic of human societies but the product of economic change.
With other feminist anthropologists, Leacock corrected male-centered assumptions within anthropology by providing detailed ethnographic research in various societies. It is almost commonsense in contemporary anthropology that female subordination is not a universal condition or an inherent gender relationship.
Source:
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McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
- Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.