The Yanomamo's Expectation of Men and Women
From KstructIB
The Yanomamo's Expectation of Men and Women
Yanomamo society is decidedly masculine.
Female children assume duties and responsibilities in the household long before their brothers are obliged to participate in comparable useful domestic tasks. Little girls are obliged to tend their younger brothers and sisters, and expected to help their mothers in other chores such as cooking, hauling water, and collecting firewood. Most have been promised to marriage by the time they reach puberty.
Girls, and to a lesser extent, boys, have almost no voice in the decisions reached by their elder kin in deciding whom they should marry. In some cases, the husband-elect for a pre-pubescent girl actually raises her for part of her childhood.
Marriage does not automatically enhance the status of the girl or change her life much. There is no ‘marriage’ ceremony. She usually does not begin living with her husband until after she has had her first menstrual period, although she may be married for several years before then. Her duties as a wife require her to continue the difficult and laborious tasks she has already begun doing, such as collecting firewood and fetching water everyday.
Women must respond quickly to the demands of their husbands and even anticipate their needs. When a husband returns home from a hunting trip or a visit, he marches dramatically and proudly across the village and retire silently to their hammocks, especially when they bring home desirable food items. The women, no matter what they are doing, return home and quietly but rapidly prepare a meal. Should a wife be slow at doing this, some irate husbands scold or even beat them. Most physical reprimands meted out take the form of blows with the hand or with a piece of firewood, but many husbands are more severe. Some of them chop their wives with the sharp edge of a machete or axe or shoot them with a barbed arrow in some non-vital area, such as the leg or buttocks.
A woman gains increasing respect as she ages, especially when she is old enough to have adult children who care for her and treat her kindly. Old women also have a unique position in the world of inter-village warfare and politics. They are immune from the incursions of raiders and can go from village to village with complete disregard for personal danger. In this connection, they are sometimes employed as messengers, and, on some occasions, the recoverers of bodies.
Despite the fact that children of both sexes spend much more time with their mothers, the boys are taught a number of sex-specific roles and attitudes by their fathers and are encouraged to learn ‘masculine’ things by watching them. The distinction between male and female status develops early in the socialisation process. Boys are encouraged to be fierce and are rarely punished by their parents for inflicting blows on them or the unlucky girls in the village.
A girl’s childhood ends sooner than a boy’s. By the time a girl is 10 years old or so, she has become an economic asset to the mother and spends a great deal of time working.
Work begins as soon as breakfast is completed. Within an hour of light, the men are in their gardens clearing brush, felling large trees, transplanting plantain cuttings, burning off dead timber, or planting new crops. They work until 10.30 am, retiring because it is too humid and hot by that time to continue with their strenuous work. Whatever the men do in the afternoon, the women invariably search for firewood and haul immense, heavy loads of it to their houses just before dark.
Both sexes participate in the cooking, although the women do the greater share of it.
Coming of age:
A girl’s transition to womanhood is obvious because of its physiological manifestations. At first menses, Yanomamo girls are confined to their houses and hidden behind a screen of leaves. Their old cotton garments are discarded and replaced with new ones manufactured by their mothers of older female friends. During this week of confinement, the girl is sparingly fed by her relatives; her food must be eaten by means of a stick, as she is not allowed to come into contact with it in any other fashion. She speaks in whispers, and then only to close kin. She must also scratch herself with another set of sticks. After her puberty confinement, a girl usually takes up residence with her promised husband and begins life as a married woman.
Males do not usually have their transition into manhood marked by a ceremony. Nevertheless, one can usually tell when a boy is attempting to enter the world of men, The most conspicuous sign is his resentment when others call him by his name. When the adults in the village cease using his personal name, he has achieved some sort of masculine adult status. Young men are usually very touchy about their names.
