Women’s Status and War in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Reconsideration // World Cultures. 15/2 (2006): 209

Women’s Status and War in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Reconsideration.

World Cultures

. 15/2(2006): 209–257.

Women’s Status and War in Cross-CulturalPerspective: A Reconsideration

Darya Khalturina

Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 30/1 Spiridonovka, Moscow, 103001,Russia;lihoborka@mail.ru

Andrey Korotayev

Program in Sociocultural Anthropology of the East, State University “Moscow School of Economics”, 3 Kochnovskiy Proezd, Moscow 125319, Russia; korotayev@yahoo.com. Earlier cross-cultural theories, which were proposed to explain determinants of female status, connected it with female contribution to subsistence and control over it, control of female over her sexual behavior, matrilocal residence, matrilineal descent, and (negatively) with cultural complexity as well as emphasis on male strength and aggressiveness. Note that the last mentioned variable correlates positively with warfare intensity. In the meantimeemphasis on male strength and aggressiveness has been shown to correlate positively with warfare. This suggeststhat the warfare intensity should correlate negatively with the female status. However, Martin Whyte's and Stephen K. Sanderson’s testes of the effect of warfare frequency upon female status show no support for this theory. Yet, our own tests have produced such a considerable amount of significant negative correlations between Whyte's female status indicators and the variables measuring warfare intensity that they could not be explained purely by chance.We find a few powerful mechanisms which explain decline of female status with the growth of warfare intensity. Weconsider socialization for aggression (which tends to develop in societies with high warfare intensity) as one of the strongest factors, because it leads to the ideology of male toughness and superiority and higher frequency of wifebeating (the correlation between socialization for aggression and wife beating is characterized by the following parameters: Gamma = 1.0; p = 0.03). A higher level of separation between genders, which is common for societies with higher warfare frequency appears to be another channel of decreasing female power. Polygyny,which usually results from extensive warfare (because of skewed gender balance) also decreases female kin power (Gamma = 0.8; Rho = 0.5; p = 0.0000001 [one tail]). However, we found that this is only the non-sororal polygyny which influences negatively in a particular strong way the female status because of its connection with patrilocal residence. On the other hand, our tests have shown that purely external warfare (in absence of internal warfare) tends to increase the female status (e.g. in these cases frequency of external warfare correlates positivelywith the female gender of leaders of kinship groups or extended families [Rho = 0.5, p = 0.02], negatively withwife to husband institutionalized deference [Rho = – 0.6, p = 0.002], positively with the female property control scale [Rho = 0.4, p = 0.01], etc). This appears to be accounted for (at least partly) by matrilocality and growing female contribution to subsistence which turn out to correlate positively both with high levels of the purelyexternal warfare and with the high status of women. Though these conclusions are mainly valid for statelesscultures, they turn out to be valid for some industrial societies too.

1. INTRODUCTION

Female status has been subject of considerable anthropological research.Thus, Vincenti (1997) claims it to be related to the physical strength of women.Yadava (1999) views a woman’s fertility as an indicator of her status in rural India.Anderson (1997) studies female status in its relation to domestic violence.Simmons, Divale, Schegel, Sanday and Whyte and others worked at defining conceptof "female status" cross-culturally (Simmons 1937; Divale 1976; Schegel 1972;Sanday 1973; Whyte 1978a, 1978b). Munroe and Munroe, Schegel and Whyte andothers explored "male bias problem" in studying of status of women (Munroe &Munroe 1969; Schegel 1972; Whyte 1978a).Engels, D’Andrade, Boserup, Broun, Sacks, Friedl associated female status withwomen’s contribution to economy or/and control over it (Engels 1902; D’Andrade1966; Boserup 1970; Broun 1970; Sacks 1979; Friedl 1975). However, Oliver,

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Sanday, Zelman, Whyte, Hendrix and Hossain questioned this theory (Oliver 1972;Sanday 1973; Zelman 1975; Whyte 1978b; Hendrix & Hossain 1988). A number of researches suggested that trading is an important source of power for women (Rosaldo1974; Lamhere 1974: 108; Sanday 1974; Leis 1974: 230–233; Friedl 1967; Ember &Ember 1999).Stover and Hope (1984) claimed that female status is lower in the societies where belief in high god is present. They also claimed that female status is highest in huntingsocieties; Gray (1987) criticized this theory. Whyte, Schlegel, Johnson & Hendrixstudied connection between high female status, on the one hand, and matrilocalresidence and matrilineal descent, on the other (Schlegel 1972; Whyte 1978b; Johnson& Hendrix 1982). Caroll (1979) explored relation between female status and role of women in religion, and found no correlation between these two factors. Whyte(1978b) connected lower female status with higher levels of cultural complexity.In addition to these, Murdock (1949: 205) and Tiger (1969) proposed the idea thatfemale status is lower in the societies where male strength and aggressiveness areemphasized. Note that variables related to male strength and aggressiveness correlate positively with warfare intensity (see

e.g.

Russell 1972; Eckhardt 1973; Archer &Gartner 1984; Gurr 1989), which implies that it should correlate negatively withfemale status.

Finally, Divale and Harris (1976) connected low female status directlywith warfare intensity.

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However, Martin Whyte tested directly the hypothesis thatfrequency of warfare affects female status, and his tests appear to reject the theory(Whyte 1978b). The most recent cross-cultural tests of militarism theory of maledomination were performed by Sanderson, and they appear to confirm in anunequivocal way Whyte’s results (Sanderson 2001: 206).

2. TESTS

Our first test of the correlation between female status and warfare intensity seemed toconfirm this point. We calculated correlations between the "Overall Frequency of Warfare" (V1648) (C. R. Ember & M. Ember 1992, 1995), on the one hand, and 61 of Whyte’s (1978a, 1978b, 1985) indicators of female status, on the other (V576-636).The results were as follows.Out of 61 correlations tested only 5 were significant at ≤ 0.05 level (one tail), andonly 3 out of 5 significant correlations were in the predicted direction

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(as we testedthe hypothesis according to which the high level of warfare predicted low femalestatus, these were negative correlations which were considered as predicted). Of course, this is just what one would expect to happen by chance only.We further calculated correlations between the "Frequency of External Warfare"(V1650) (C. R. Ember & M. Ember 1992; 1995, file STDS78.DAT; SCCS, 1999, fileSTDS78.SAV), on the one hand, and 61 of Whyte’s (1978a, 1978b, 1985 filesSTDS22–23.DAT; SCCS, 1999, files STDS22–23.SAV) indicators of female status,on the other. The results were as follows.Out of 61 correlations tested 7 turned out to be significant at ≤0.05 level, and only 3out of 7 significant correlations were in the predicted direction.

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Again this is just

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what one would expect to happen by chance only. Hence, external warfare frequencydid not seem to be related significantly to the female status either.Our next step was to calculate correlations between the "Frequency of InternalWarfare" (V1649) (C. R. Ember & M. Ember 1992; 1995, file STDS78.DAT; SCCS,1999, file STDS78.SAV), on the one hand, and 61 of Whyte’s indicators of femalestatus, on the other. The results were as follows.Out of 61 correlations tested 7 turned out to be significant at ≤0.05 level, and 5 out of 7 significant correlations were in the predicted direction.

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Actually, this combinationof significant correlations could hardly be considered as random. Applying the probability multiplication rule we find the probability of it happening by chance only being as low as: 0.04 x 0.01 x 0.04 x 0.05 x 0.04 : 0.01 : 0.007 ≈ 0.0005. Hence, thecorrelation between internal warfare and some aspects of female status should beconsidered significant beyond any doubt.M. Ember and C. R. Ember maintain quite reasonably that “no significant correlationmay be found, even if the hypothesized relation truly exists, when there is so muchrandom measurement errors in the data that the variation attributable to chance swampto the variation attributable to one or more predictors; this is why acceptance of thenull hypothesis does not mean that the theory tested and found unsupported can berejected as certainly false” (Ember & Ember 1983: 30-31).Hence, we were inclined to test the supposition that the absence of significantcorrelation in the test series described above was the result just of randommeasurement error. The most evident way to do this is to leave in the sample the mostreliable cases for which the random measurement error is the least likely.Hence, our next step was to calculate correlations similar to ones mentioned above for the cases having the highest reliability score for “Overall Frequency of Warfare”according to C. Ember and M Ember (1992, 1995). We selected the cases havingscore 1

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. After this the results looked as follows. Out of 61 correlations between the"Overall Frequency of Warfare" (V1648) (C. R. Ember & M. Ember (1992, 1995, fileSTDS78.DAT; SCCS, 1999, file STDS78.SAV), on the one hand, and 61 of Whyte’s(1978a, 1978b, 1985) indicators 8 turned to be significant at ≤0.05 level, and 6 out of 8 significant correlations were in the predicted direction.

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Then we calculated correlation between "Frequency of External Warfare" (V1650)and 61 variables measuring female status according to Whyte with cases havinghighest score of reliability of data collected on "Overall Frequency of Warfare". Outof 61 correlations 7 turned to be significant, and out of them 6 were in predicteddirection.

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After this we calculated correlation between "Frequency of Internal Warfare" (V1650)and 61 variables measuring female status according to Whyte with cases havinghighest reliability score for data collected on "Overall Frequency of Warfare". Out of 61 correlations 6 turned out to be significant at ≤0.05 level, and all of them were in predicted direction

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