Pitt Latin American
1 total work
In case studies of five women and their families, the author continually encounters joint decision making and shared household and agricultural responsibilities. In fact, it often seems that women have rile final say in many decisions. There is the belief that a dynamic balance of power between male and female heads provides an impetus toward mutually desired economic and social goals. Despite the strong influence of the patriarchal power of the hacienda system, Andean gender ideology accords women and men equal measures of physical, mental, and emotional fortitude. The belief that maintaining traditional forms of economic collaboration helped them survive on the hacienda was reinforced under the economic and political domination of the patriarchal systems of the landed elite, church, and state.
Today, these people are proud of their strong women, strong families, and community solidarity which they believe distinguishes them from Ecuadorean and American societies. Hamilton suggests that women in developing countries should not be viewed as simply, or even inevitably, victims of gender-biased structural or cultural institutions. They may resist male bias, perhaps even with therapport of local-level institutions. The Two-Headed Household demonstrates that analysis of gender relations should focus on Forms of cooperation among women and men, as well as on forms of conflict, and will be of interest to scholars and students in anthropology, gender and development, and Latin American Studies.