Jag har fullt upp, så jag hinner inte skriva så mycket om den här rapporten. Den är heller inte rykande färsk precis (den är från 1975), men den är väl så intressant. Den beskriver ’patriarkatet’ som en kuliss framför reell kvinnlig makt.

Female Forms of Power and the Myth of Male Dominance: A Model of Female/Male Interaction in Peasant Society (Susan Carol Rogers)

The purpose of this paper is to show the larger structural dimensions of women’s power, using peasant society as an example. In essence, I will demonstrate that, although peasant males monopolize positions of authority and are shown public deference by women, thus superficially appearing to be dominant, they wield relatively little real power. Theirs is a largely powerless authority, often accompanied by a felt sense of powerlessness, both in the face of the world at large and of the peasant community itself. On the other hand, within the context of the peasant society, women control at least the major portion of important resources and decisions. In other words, if we limit our investigation to the relative power of peasant men and women, eliminating for the moment those sources of power from the outside which are beyond the reach of either peasant men or women, women appear to be generally more powerful.

Det är ett intressant perspektiv. Det som beskrivs är alltså utåt sett ett patriarkat, men där kvinnorna har den verkliga makten, men det som är spännande är just att kvinnorna aktivt underhåller illusionen att det är männen som bestämmer!

I will argue, therefore, that a non-hierarchical power relationship between the categories ”male” and ”female” is maintained in peasant society by the acting out of a ”myth” of male dominance. […] males do not actually dominate, nor do either males or females literally believe them to be dominant.

Det man skulle vänta sig efter en sådan här studie, är att andra forskare försöker se om mönstret upprepar sig i andra samhällen. Rogers har så att säga ”krattat manegen”. Jag känner inte till om det har gjorts, och i så fall vad resultatet blev.

Varför upprätthålls då denna illusion?

The perpetuation of this ”myth” is in the interests of both peasant women and men, because it gives the latter the appearance of power and control over all sectors of village life, while at the same time giving to the former actual power over those sectors of life in the community which may be controlled by villagers. The two sex groups, in effect, operate within partially divergent systems of perceived advantages, values, and prestige, so that the members of each group see themselves as the ”winners” in respect to the other. Neither men nor women believe that the ”myth” is an accurate reflection of the actual situation. However, each sex group believes (or appears to believe, so avoiding confrontation) that the opposite sex perceives the myth as reality, with the result that each is actively engaged in maintaining the illusion that males are, in fact, dominant.

Rätt frän kritik riktas mot andra antropologer och deras syn på bondesamhällen:

In most of the literature in which peasant women are discussed, it is assumed that they are subordinate to men. Men have little power in the community or the world beyond, but they do have power over their women and insist on preserving at least that. Recently, several champions of women’s causes have shown just how much peasant women have been made to suffer at the hands of their men.

Och så vidare, med ett antal exempel på beskrivningar av kvinnors lidande under manligt förtryck. En annan bild träder dock fram när forskare börjar arbeta utifrån hypotesen att kvinnor också är personer med ’agency’ som agerar för att stärka sin position utifrån sina förutsättningar. Man börjar då titta på vilka andra maktcentra och -processer som finns, och hur de fungerar.

Because women often center their activities in the household, much attention has been focused on power processes in the domestic unit. In peasant societies, the domestic unit is a primary economic, political, and social importance, so that a woman’s power in this sphere extends to the village at large.

Sedan följer en noggrann uppräkning av studier som beskrivit denna form av kvinnligt maktutövande i bl.a. Portugal, Grekland, Taiwan och arabiska byar. De går sedan in på hur kvinnor samarbetar kollektivt för att upprätthålla denna makt.

Female solidarity, expressed in informal women’s groups held together by a well-developed interhousehold female communications network, is most often cited as the strongest power base from which women operate in the community. Margery Wold, Aswad and Riegelhaupt all describe how women’s groups, more heterogeneous and less brittle than those of men, act as a kind of information control, heavily influencing community public opinion and mediating between groups of men.
…
More important [in Taiwan], these women’s groups take advantage of the well-developed male sense of preserving the patrilineage honor and manage to influence affairs which theoretically concern only males. […] This kind of feminine power is enhanced, I would suggest, by the fact that women, feeling little identification with the patrilineage, are not loathe to erode the institution by bringing shame to it.

Kvinnornas relativa närhet till varann bidrar också till denna maktutövning:

In the Portuguese village studied by Riegelhaupt, women are virtually in control of information dissemination because of the division of labor: men work individually in the fields, while women come into frequent contact with each other in the course of their village concerns, events, and personalities. […] especially in an authoritarian system, sources of political power lie outside legally constituted institutions; decisions are made through informal structures. It is village women, not men, who are the key actors in those informal structures to which peasants have access.

Alltså, det Rogers beskriver är ett ’patriarkat’, men där kvinnor har all makt som egentligen räknas. Männen drar in pengarna och har statusposterna. Kvinnorna agerar dessutom aktivt för att upprätthålla illusionen av att det är männen som bestämmer.

In their relationships with men, women seem to be subdued and respectful. If, by exceptional circumstances, a woman finds herself in the male domain – in the mayor’s office on election day, for instance – she is visibly ill-at-ease, retiring, and ignored by the men. If a group of men are in her home, she silently serves them food or dring and then retires to a corner to watch and listen. She is unlikely to leave the room, but she is equally unlikely to participate. Even when her own husband is the only man present, she is likely to be quiet. […] This outward deference does not, however, mean that women are necessarily subordinated. Male and female spheres are very clearly defined, and a member of one sex group simply does not belong in the domain of the other. […] One gets a very different impression of women when they are observed in a room of men, on one hand, and with a group of women, on the other. The woman in the corner is a sharp observer; what she sees is later reported to other women amidst clicking tongues, shaking heads, or gales of laughter. Women are not particularly awestruck by men, despite the impression they give when publicly in their presence. If a man happens on a group of women in the street or in a barn, they invariably disperse, fall silent, or change their conversation, losing their female ambiance. Thus, while women are non-participating observers of the male world, men have even less access to the female world.

Rogers för också ett resonemang om hur männens statusramverk brutits ned, och därmed möjligheten att upprätthålla en illusion om manlig makt.

With the demise of the ’domestic mode of production’ […] If a man is working as a wage employee of someone else, it is very difficult for him to continue to support the fiction that he is ”son maitre”; his boss is not likely to be publicly deferential to him. Furthermore, because he is now likely to be working outside the community, he may no longer be perceived as a full community member. He can neither publicly control his family’s standing in an arena in which he no longer fully belongs, nor can he maintain even fictive control over community activities. […] Women may continue to influence family standing in the community through informal means and may also take over village-level activities, so that their activities determine family prestige as well. In this instance, a woman no longer needs to protect her husband’s image in the community by behaving as if he were in control at home.

Det är naturligtvis en rätt specifik värld som beskrivs, men Rogers betonar att mönstret sannolikt går igen i andra samhällen, givet att rätt förutsättningar finns. Det som förstås också är anmärkningsvärt är mönstret att kvinnor upprätthåller makt genom att låtsas att de ingen har, och männen går med på det så länge de kan få upprätthålla status inom vissa sfärer.

Än mer intressant är möjligen hur ovilliga forskare är att beskriva denna dynamik; än idag är den förhärskande bilden av bondesamhällena en av ett starkt patriarkat med förtryckta kvinnor.

Uppdatering: Den härliga bloggerskan JudgyBitch fick ett tips om Rogers artikel och har skrivit en skarp och underhållande kommentar. Tack, Nordboer, som noterade det.