Certain statuses are “ascribed” to the individual before knowing her/his potentialities. These “determine and limit the range of statuses” which s/he may subsequently achieve. One of these is an individual’s sex, which is of course, a highly visible physiological fact.
It is wrong to assume that the female-male division of statuses is based on inherent traits alone. Further, the social differences change from one society to the other. For example :-
1. Among the Chambri People – women are the bread-earners whereas men look after household work and spend time in combing hair, wearing different kinds of beads and other kinds of beautification.
2. Among the Mundugumor Tribe – women and men are equally aggressive.
3. Among the Trobriand Islanders – except for breast-feeding, all the other tasks of child nursing are done by the father.
In some tribes, the father gives training to the son in dancing. These differences can not be attributed to biological attributes.
In reality, the assignment of ‘female status’ to women is mainly due to their ‘child-bearing function’. They carry the parasitic embryo in their body for a long time and nurse it when it comes out of the womb. They are thus provided with the tasks that are compatible with this function. For this reason, in most societies, female work is more uniform and localised than that of men. It means for women, their ascribed statuses limit their attainment for achieved statuses.
By means of this blog, I do not intend to justify these limitations on women, but rather to REFUTE them. As Ayn Rand said :
