Feminist anthropology is extremely broad, centered by its concern with the human consequences of gender and illuminated
from various theoretical points of view (for a review, see MasciaLees and Black 2000). Feminist anthropology is a multifaceted
exploration of what Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex referred to as one of the central issues of human existence—the
gendered responses to the natural limits of being human. “One
is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” Beauvoir wrote
(1953:267). The biological facts of gender result in a body that is
“not a thing, it is a situation . . . it is the instrument of our grasp
upon the world, a limiting factor for our projects” (Beauvoir
1953:84). For Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and other existentialists,
“project” was a pivotal concept, connoting a purposeful vision
and active creation of the self. Yet, Beauvoir cautioned, the individual’s project was restricted by gendered differences, which—
while rooted in and often justified by the biology of sex—are
defined and elaborated by social codes:
[A human society’s] ways and customs cannot be deduced
from biology, for the individuals that compose the society are
never abandoned to the dictates of their nature; they are subject to that second nature which is custom and in which are reflected the desires and the fears that express their essential
nature. It is not merely as a body, but rather as a body subject
to taboos, to laws, that the subject is conscious of himself [sic]
and attains fulfillment—it is with reference to certain values
that he evaluates himself. And once again, it is not upon physiology that values can be based; rather, the facts of biology take
on the values that the existent bestows upon them. (Beauvoir
1953:36)
This leads to a cluster of fundamental questions. Sexual differences are universal—all humans are born female or male—but
gender distinctions vary . . . or do they? Are women subordinate
in all societies? Do gender roles vary with social or biological evolution? What is the correlation between gendered relations and
other dimensions of social distinction such as access to property
and power? And what does a feminist anthropology imply (for
an excellent review of these and related issues, see Mascia-Lees
and Black 2000)?
One of Ortner’s first professional papers was also one of her
most controversial and well known, “Is Female to Male as Na-
ture is to Culture?” (1996a). Building on Beauvoir’s ideas (Ortner
1996b:14) and employing a pair of structuralist homologies, Ortner contended that women are universally devalued, in some
degree considered inferior to men in all cultures (Ortner
1996a:23–24). Ortner seemingly contradicted both feminist aspirations and an uneven anthropological literature. Some feminists reacted that universality implied that the devaluation of
women was biologically inevitable, a point that Ortner dismissed. On the other hand, some anthropologists had contended
that women were dominant in non-Western societies. Margaret
Mead had argued that gender-based differences were extremely
varied, for example contending that women held the real power
among the Tchambuli of New Guinea (see p. 112). Even earlier,
Morgan (chapter 2) had argued that matrilineal kinship systems
echoed the existence of matriclans under conditions of savagery,
patterns that changed with the development of agriculture and
property. Friedrich Engels in his 1884 Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State argued that women were supreme in
early communal societies in which property and sexual partners
were shared, but over centuries men instituted monogamy so
property would pass to their heirs, subjugating women in the
first historical example of class domination. Morgan and Engels
contended that female subjugation was a historical development
and not a universal human condition, a contention resurrected
by Eleanor Leacock (for an extended discussion, see pp. 221–24).
Ortner argued that any “evidence” for elevated female status
in societies always faces a universal fact: women are ultimately
subordinated to men. Clearly influenced by Beauvoir, Ortner
contended that universal subordination of women is not due to
nature nor because “biological facts are irrelevant, or that men
and women are not different, but that the facts and differences
only take on significance of superior/inferior within the framework of culturally defined value systems” (1996a:24).
Ortner’s explanation is that every culture attempts to transcend natural existence. Social groups universally distinguish
the human realm from the natural realm and usually, although
not always, accord greater prestige to culture. Women are associated with nature and thus are universally devalued. Women
are seen as closer to nature in reference to three dimensions: (1)
women’s bodies are seen as more natural since they are more involved with the species’ life; (2) a woman’s social roles are
viewed as closer to nature, specifically confining her to the domestic realm; and (3) social perceptions of female psyche or personality portray women as closer to nature. Note, these cultural
constructs place women as closer to nature not as nature. This intermediate role means that women’s position, while always
viewed as subordinate, may be given different sets of meanings
depending on how a society views the culture/nature dichotomy. Women may be seen as intermediate and “lower”
and/or intermediate between culture and nature and thus mediating and ambiguous (Ortner 1996a:38–41). Despite such variations, Ortner argues, women are universally devalued because
“culture (still equated relatively unambiguously with men) recognizes that women are active participants in its special
processes, but at the same time sees them as being more rooted
in, or having more direct affinity with, nature” (1996a:27).
Nothing about this is inevitable. Ortner discusses how
changes in human society require activism directed to both institutional limits and cultural values. In the final analysis—and
this is important—“it must be stressed again that the whole
scheme is a construct of culture rather than a fact of nature” (Ortner 1996a:41). Women are no more or less “natural” than are
men; we are equally mortal, conscious organisms. But starting
with the biological facts of gender differences, human societies
universally create a “(sadly) efficient feedback system: various
aspects of woman’s situations (physical, social, psychological)
contribute to her being seen as closer to nature, while the view
of her as closer to nature is in turn embodied in institutional
forms that reproduce her situation” (Ortner 1996a:41).
In a retrospective essay, Ortner (1996c) assesses her early article in light of subsequent criticism and her own thoughts, and she
suggests several correctives and revisions. First, Ortner admits
that gender equality is more difficult to assess than she originally
thought because cultures are more “disjunctive, contradictory,
and inconsistent” than she had assumed (1996c:175). Second,
Ortner acknowledges, the nature/culture dichotomy is not universally structured with “culture” being superior to “nature,” but
the distinction is very widespread. Nature may be a place of tran-
quility and beauty and culture a realm of anxiety and pollution—
but the dichotomy remains, and it is usually (but not always) the
case that women are more associated with nature than culture. In
essence, Ortner would accept some loosening and revision of her
thesis—but not its complete abandonment.
Finally, Ortner notes that her interests had shifted from a
concern with universals to trying to understand the dynamics of
how such symbolic systems are enacted.
While I do think there are such things as structures . . . , large
existential questions that all human beings everywhere must
cope with, I also think that the linkage between such structures
and any set of social categories—like female/male—is a culturally and politically constructed phenomenon. From early on
after the publication of “Is Female to Male . . . ,” my interests
lay much more in understanding the politics of the construction of such linkages, than in the static parallelism of the categories. (Ortner 1996c:180)