COLONIALISM, CULTURAL

IMPERIALISM AND GENDER

Maryam Arain

History of Culture

Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture

10 April 2015

HOW DID GENDER GET TO BE SO IMPORTANT AS AN ORGANIZING

PRINCIPAL OF SOCIETY?

GENDER IN PRE-COLONIAL SOCIETIES Pre-colonial Yoruba (western Nigeria) societies- people had

multiple identities that were not based on anatomy Seniority (age difference) and blood (kinship networks)

determined one’s position First-born is preferred; ‘outsiders’ marrying into a family

positioned lower than ‘insiders’ Identities were relative and context dependent

Communities built around a central family, with insiders and outsiders

No mark of gender in Yoruba language (while seniority and kinship are linguistically marked) no ‘woman’ or ‘man’, ‘son’ or ‘daughter’, ‘brother’ or ‘sister’,

only ‘ana-female’ and ‘ana-male’ Occupations were not limited by anatomy: ana-female

warriors, diviners, hunters, farmers, traders, etc.

Oyeronke Oyewume, The Invention of Woman

GENDER AND POWER IN PRE-COLONIAL SOCIETIES

Pre-colonial southeast Asia (from 16th through 19th centuries)- present-day Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand (Siam)

Marriage Chams of Southern Vietnamese and Javanese: “A woman may at any

time, when dissatisfied with her husband, demand a dissolution of the marriage contract, by paying him a sum established by custom” (Raffles, 1817, I: 320).

Female autonomy divorce did not markedly reduce a woman’s livelihood, status or network of kin support == high rates of divorce, up to 50%

Economic “In Cambodia, it is the women who take charge of trade.” (Chou Ta Kuan

1297, 20). “It is their [Siamese] custom that all affairs are managed by their

wives…all trading transactions great and small” (Ma Huan 1433: 104). Political

In Java, the most important matters of state were mediated and negotiated by women (Pinto 1614: 375)

Warriors and bodyguardsReid, Anthony, “Female Roles in Precolonial Southeast Asia”, Modern Asian Studies 22.3 (1988), 629-

645.

COLONIAL INTERVENTIONS Western privileging of the visual = European bio-

logic Consider Freud “Anatomy is destiny.” and the mind-

body dualism Europe bases its categories and hierarchies on visual

modes and binary distinctions: male and female, white and black, homosexual and heterosexual, etc.

Colonizer differentiated between male and female bodies and acted accordingly- policies were gendered E.g. British circular in Nigeria: ‘African women should

be paid at 75% of the rates paid to European women’ (cited in Mba 1982: 65)

Exclusion of women from public sphere- did not recognize the existence of female chiefs

GENDERED COLONIAL POLICIES IN INDIA Diverse laws governed the subcontinent; some

gave women property (Dayabhaga, Mitakshara systems), divorce and remarriage rights (Lingayats, Kapus, Jats)

British used their interpretation of religious law to homogenize the population- codified laws

Victorian notions of womanhood (chastity, innocence, self-effacement, and passiveness) pervade laws: age of consent laws, polygamy, prostitution

Joint family versus independent ‘nuclear’ families “Saving brown women from brown men”-

emasculating and demonizing of man

HOW DID COLONIALISM AFFECT GENDER IN THE COLONIZED WORLD?

Created a gender binary Introduced patriarchal domination Formalized, homogenized and

institutionalized patriarchy through legal and administrative systems

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND GENDER TODAY Objectification and hypersexualization of

women

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND GENDER TODAY Beauty

standards Fiji and the impact of

television of eating disorders:

1995: 0 reported incidents

1998: 11.3% bulimia69% dieting74% feel “too big or fat” 83% “wanted to change

their bodies to be more like the images of Western characters on television”

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND GENDER TODAY Hypermasculinity and the role of men in

society

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND GENDER TODAY Global patriarchy & western feminism

COLONIALISM AND GENDER

What role did colonialism play in forming the gender identities that we ascribe to today?

Where and how do the effects of colonialism on gender manifest themselves?