The article “‘Women Are More Indian’”: Ethnicity and Gender in a Community near Cuzco” by Marisol de la Cadena “explores the ways in which gender and ethnic relations have developed and intersected over time in Chitapampa…” [1] A key theme in both texts is that seemingly separate categories of ethnicity, class, masculine, and feminine should not be studied independently, but rather as interconnected elements of identity that are relational to each other. In this text, the author focuses on the distribution of valued labor between urban and rural settings to suggest that women are perceived as more “Indian” because of the ethnic associations with the labor their gender role restricts them to.
The article introduces the idea of valued work being divided along gender lines when discussing how work was divided in an agricultural society. Men were perceived as being more suited to harder physical labor, such as plowing, so “…for Chitapampinos, men’s capacity to work is greater than that of women…” [2] Women’s work, which involved tending to the house or selling the harvests, was seen as less physically strenuous, and therefore was valued less. Therefore, in a rural society, farming (valued more) was associated with men and the author defines this a key source of gender inequality.
However, the author recognizes that there is a historical and ethnic component to this relationship between genders. As rural indigenous workers began to move into the cities, the perception of valued labor shifted to “Urban work is valued more highly than rural work.” [3] This meant that working in the cities was considered more valuable and the author claims that this was divided along gendered lines as well. Men had more opportunity to find work and be based in the cities while women continued to be confined to the home. Therefore, men worked in urban settings and women worked in rural settings (where the home was located). Even though women began to fulfill an agricultural role that was once valued highly and restricted to men, the goal post had shifted, and urban work became what was valued. However, there is an ethnic component to this value system as well. The author writes, “…urban work serves to distinguish mestizos from Indians: ‘Indians don’t know how to work as well as mestizos do…’” [4] Urban work characterized mestizos and rural work characterized what was considered “Indian.” Since urban and rural is also divided along gender lines, the author argues that men are more associated with being mestizo and women are more associated with being Indian. Therefore, ethnicity, labor value, and gender influence each other to create identity and cultural perceptions of identity.
Footnotes
[1] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” in Larson, Brooke, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, eds. Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995, (329).
[2] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (333).
[3] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (334).
[4] De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” (334).
Sources Used:
De la Cadena. “Are Women More Indian?” in Larson, Brooke, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, eds. Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.
Theme: Identity and the intersections of women and ethnicity
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