Gender Confusion:
Views of Gender Roles in Relation to Way of Life
The interpretation of gender roles and gender status in various civilizations changes according to the time period and way of life people live. The further back the timeline of civilization goes the fewer artifacts and evidence the scientific community has to examine in order to determine the gender roles of a society. Ethnologists and anthropologists often use a mixture of historical artifacts and parallels drawn to similar modern societies in order to draw conclusions about these gender roles. Just as important as the roles themselves are the methods and evidence experts use to conclude the gender's role in society.
There are three types of civilizations that scholars most often consider when making distinctions in gender roles. In terms of hunter-gatherer civilizations, gender roles tend to be more egalitarian. The role of the woman in the hunter-gatherer society is seen as the role of the gatherer. The male of the hunter-gatherer civilization is seen most often as a hunter. In the second civilization, Horticulture, women are seen as extremely central components to society in everything from work in the cultivation fields to holding property. Men in horticulture-practicing societies are still seen as hunters and are thought to have rarely been around. Gender roles become rather more complicated concerning the agricultural society. Many scholars view the agricultural society as the origins of patriarchy. Experts believed that men in agricultural society are extremely privileged, favored, and educated while women are oppressed and often excluded from specialization and education.
The women in the hunter-gatherer civilizations have recently begun to be viewed as more accomplished than previously thought. Angier states that recent discoveries in the analysis of the Venus figurines, which are aged at over 20,000 years old, indicate they were more accomplished economically...