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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?