Annie Oakley in the 1880s.
Thanks to the Christian sanctification of single-spouse marriage, its insistence that a woman’s consent was required for a valid marriage, and the disappearance (under the pressure of Christianity and manorialism) of kin groups from Europe (apart from the Celtic and Balkan fringes, where manorialism did not reach), women had much higher status in Euro-American society than was the pattern in polygynous societies with kin groups, such as Islam (which permitted multiple wives) and China (which permitted multiple concubines).
In polygynous societies, particularly ones where men controlled the productive assets, and so wives were dependant on the incomes of their husbands, the wives (and concubines) of an elite male competed with each other for the prospects for their children. (Mistresses are concubines within a single-spouse marital system whose children therefore have no inheritance rights.)
In kin-group societies, particularly patrilineal kin-group societies, the fertility of women was an asset of their kin group. So, women tended to be married off early, to maximise the value of their fertility and to minimise the chance of something unfortunate happening. Frequently to significantly older men. Especially as it often took time for men to get together the assets and social standing to make them good (multiple) marriage prospects.
By contrast, in Christian society, an elite man would only have one wife, the joint parent of his heir and other legitimate children. She did not have to share that status of her husband with any other woman. It was thus common for even elite European Christian men to leave their wife in charge when they travelled. (Not something that was sensible for a husband with multiple wives to do.)
A Christian wife, including of an elite male, was typically responsible for managing the household. Women having publicly acknowledged control of significant resources was a normal part of social dynamics. Both the Latin (Catholic) and Greek (Orthodox) Church held that a woman’s consent was required for marriage, with the lack of kin groups giving that consent greater weight.
In the American Wild West in the later part of the C19th, it being a frontier society, there was a shortage of women. This was true among both settlers of European origins and those of Chinese origins. The consequences for the women of this shortage, however, differed dramatically between the two cultures.
In Euro-American society in the West, married women tended to be treated with considerable deference. There was prostitution, but it was run by women. The prostitutes often made good incomes and pioneered social freedoms that contemporary American and Western women take for granted. The madams were often successful businesspeople: frequently, one of the most successful business people in their town. (Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States is a useful source for this social history.)
Western States pioneered votes for women, explicitly in the hope of attracting more women to their State. (The main argument against votes for women was that they would vote for Prohibition: which, of course, turned out to be true.)
In other words, in Euro-American frontier society, the women reaped the benefits of their scarcity premium.
The picture in polygynous-with-kin-groups (i.e. clans) Chinese society in the American West was very different. There, elite Chinese men mate-hoarded, regularly having a wife and concubines. The remaining women were largely forced into prostitution, controlled by the tongs or triads (which are substitute clans). So, in Chinese-American society in the American West, the scarcity premium of women was largely harvested by men.
As the natural experiment of the American Wild West demonstrated, what marriage system a culture had, whether it was polygynous or had a single-spouse marriage system, and whether it was based on kin groups (particularly patrilineal ones) or not, had quite dramatic effects on the status and prospects for women.
In the American Wild West in the later part of the C19th, it being a frontier society, there was a shortage of women. This was true among both settlers of European origins and those of Chinese origins. The consequences for the women of this shortage, however, differed dramatically between the two cultures.
In Euro-American society in the West, married women tended to be treated with considerable deference. There was prostitution, but it was run by women. The prostitutes often made good incomes and pioneered social freedoms that contemporary American and Western women take for granted. The madams were often successful businesspeople: frequently, one of the most successful business people in their town. (Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States is a useful source for this social history.)
Western States pioneered votes for women, explicitly in the hope of attracting more women to their State. (The main argument against votes for women was that they would vote for Prohibition: which, of course, turned out to be true.)
In other words, in Euro-American frontier society, the women reaped the benefits of their scarcity premium.
The picture in polygynous-with-kin-groups (i.e. clans) Chinese society in the American West was very different. There, elite Chinese men mate-hoarded, regularly having a wife and concubines. The remaining women were largely forced into prostitution, controlled by the tongs or triads (which are substitute clans). So, in Chinese-American society in the American West, the scarcity premium of women was largely harvested by men.
As the natural experiment of the American Wild West demonstrated, what marriage system a culture had, whether it was polygynous or had a single-spouse marriage system, and whether it was based on kin groups (particularly patrilineal ones) or not, had quite dramatic effects on the status and prospects for women.
[Cross-posted from Medium.]
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