Eleanor Burke Leacock, Myths of Male Dominance, 1981 ✓

my own experience, or the personal/political basis, and my research into the experience of others, or the scientific basis. Despite the constant restatement of the assertion that for various biological or social-psychological reasons women have always been subservient to men, both my direct experience and my cross-cultural studies continue to convince me otherwise.

Lifelong experience had made me well aware of how stereotyped is the notion of femaleness as somehow innately “passive”. As a child I accepted as natural the way my mother took on and handled whatever activity a situation required. And growing up, partly on a former farm and partly in New York City’s Greenwich Village, I learned without knowing it that women made choices about how far they wished to go in accommodating themselves to men and in adopting socially acceptable (i.e., “passive”) ways of getting things done. However, the social importance of playing down one’s “active” self was not made explicit to me, as far as I remember, until I listened to classmates in high school and college discuss the ground rules for “getting” a man. I was not persuaded, but became more aware of myself as a rebel ; in college I educated myself about such matters by joining likeminded mavericks in radical activities and in the extra-curricular study of Marxist literature. Later, when coping with four young children, I might linger with colleagues over a pleasant end-of-the-day drink as long as possible ; then rush to the subway, stop at the market to buy as much as would fit in one bag, dash home, take over from the babysitter, straighten things up a bit, settle the hungry children down to something, and start throwing supper together. (My film-maker husband would help but was often home late or on an out-of-town job.) Thinking of male colleagues easily talking on, some phoning their wives apologetically, then going home to their prepared suppers, I would mutter, “And I suppose I’m being passive, while they’re being active humph!”

I was well aware, of course, that extant arguments about women’s dispositions were supposed to be interpreted more elegantly. I was not easily seduced, however, and knew that stripped down to their bare essentials they reflected wishful thinking on the part of the powers that be.

It took fifteen years after I obtained my Ph.D. before I achieved a full-time academic job that allowed me the freedom to choose my areas of research.

In 1972, after a sabbatical year spent studying rural and urban schools in Zambia…, I was invited to join the anthropology department at the City College of New York as chair. I credit the women’s movement with the fact that I was one of the three candidates for the position chosen by the search committee. At that time there was no way that only men could be interviewed.

During these years political activity continued to be enormously important in helping me keep my feet on the ground both theoretically and personally. My involvement in battles for equal schooling would not let me forget, as academics tend to do (if they ever learned it in the first place), that oppression and exploitation by sex, race, and class are fundamental in the contemporary world, and that theories which ignore this reality are meaningless if not downright destructive. Angered by the attacks on black and working-class children couched in terms of a “culture of poverty” as responsible for poor school achievement and under- or unemployment, I organized a critical symposium at an American Anthropological Association meeting and later pulled the papers together into a book (The Culture of Poverty : A Critique, 1971).

This essay was first published in Women Cross-Culturally : Change and Challenge, Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt, ed. The Hague: Mouton, 1979. It has been slightly cut to avoid repetition.

the fact that Engels’ work has to such an extent been reduced to dogma has probably worked to its disadvantage.

This essay was first published in the Encyclopedia of Mankind, London: Marshall Cavendish Ltd., 1978.

This paper was originally part of a symposium on “Social Stratification and Evolutionary Theory” held at the 1957 meetings of the American Anthropological Association. It was first published in Ethnohistory 5, no. 3 (Summer 1958). It has been slightly cut.

This essay is based in large part on a paper written in collaboration with Jacqueline Goodman (Leacock and Goodman 1976) and was originally published in Women and Colonization : Anthropological Perspectives, Etienne and Leacock, eds. New York: Praeger, 1980.

This essay was fist published as “Matrilocality in a Simple Hunting Economy”, in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology Vol 11, no. 1 ( Spring 1955).

These are the introductions to Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society, Parts I, II, III and IV. Gloucester, Ma.: Peter Smith, 1974. They have been slightly cut.

This paper is based on one originally given at the 1974 meetings of the American Anthropological Association. It was first published with several comments in Current Anthropology 19, no. 2 (June 1978). Only Ronald Cohen’s comment is included here with that part of Leacock’s reply which refers to it. Bruce Cox’s comment and Leacock’s reply were first published in Current Anthropology 20, no. 2 (June 1979). Ruth Landes’ comment and Leacock’s reply were first published in Current Anthropology 20, no. 1 (March 1979).

This essay was first published in Genes and Gender, Tobach and Rosafa, eds. New York: Guardian Press, 1978.

This review was first published in the Daily Worker, June 1952.

This review was first published in Reviews in Anthropology 5, no. 1 (1978).

This essay was first published in Social Research 44, no. 2 (Summer 1977). It has been slightly cut to avoid repetition.

This essay was first published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science 285 (1977). It has been slightly cut.

This review was first published in the American Anthropologist 76, no. 2 (June 1974). Steven Goldberg’s response and Leacock’s reply were first published in the American Anthropologist 77 no. 1 (March 1975).

This essay was first published in Sociobiology : Beyond Nature/Nurture ? Barlow and Silverberg, eds. Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1980.

This is a section of the introduction to Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. New York: International, 1972.

This is a revised version of a paper originally given at the Conference on Women and Development, Wellesley College, Wellesley Ma., June 2-6, 1976. It was first published in Latin American Perspectives 4, nos. 1 and 2 (Winter-Spring 1977). It has been slightly cut.