Ashley Cox
10688680
Anthro 316
May 21, 2017
1.
Ernestine Friedl’s says that the position of a women is higher the more they are involved
in primary subsistence and the public distribution of the products of subsistence.
Subsistence
may include land or animals.
The public distribution is the selling of goods and services based
on the women’s subsistence, such as goats which may provide goat milk to villagers.
In the !Kung society women who owned such life-sustaining properties were of higher
positions then compared to those women who only gathered for their own family or those
women who were to elderly to gather at all (292).
Nisa, explains that men in the !Kung society
were the occasional hunters while the women gathered to majority of the vegetable food for their
families (11).
The women of the !Kung society were responsible for the well-being and overall
wellness of their families which included housekeeping, carrying water and firewood,
maintaining tools and food preparation and much more (214).
Women who owned their own land, homes, and cattle had higher power then those
women who did not.
Cattle provided a source of income, goods and services for those women
who were privileged enough to have them.
The cattle provided a way for the women to sell milk
and meat.
Those women and families who did not have this option were dependent of others to
provide them with these necessities of life, were the poorest of all and were given lower
community standing.
