Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/427

 WOMEN IN EARLY CIVILIZATION 41 1

his family against the aggressor. A similar observation has been made by Dobrizhoffer. He writes :

The luggage being all committed to the women, the Abipones travel armed only with a spear, that they may be disengaged to fight or hunt, if occasion requires.

Moreover, whatever may have been the original reason for allotting a certain occupation exclusively to the one sex, any such restriction has subsequently been emphasized by custom, and in many cases by superstition. It is a common belief that, if a man does a woman's work, he himself will become effeminate ; besides, he will be laughed at and called a woman. Among the Beni Ahsen tribe in Morocco, the women of the village where I was staying were quite horrified when one of my men was going to fetch water; they said that they could not allow him to do so, because the fetching of water was a woman's business. So, also, among the Bakongo, a man would be much ridiculed by the women themselves if he wanted to help them in their work in the field.

It is obvious that this division of labor in savage communi- ties is apt to mislead the traveling stranger. He sees the women hard at work and the men idly looking on; and perhaps it does not occur to him that the latter will have to be busy in their turn, within their own sphere of action. What is largely due to custom is taken to be sheer tyranny on the part of the stronger sex, and the wife is pronounced an abject slave of her husband, destitute of all rights. Yet, as a matter of fact, the strict differentiation of work, however burdensome it be to the woman, is itself a source of rights. It gives her authority within the circle which is exclu- sively hers. In the house she is very commonly an autocrat. Even where she is said to be the slave of the husband, custom may prevent him from parting with a single household article, without first asking the permission of his wife. Nay, in early society women are sometimes the only landowners. As already said, they till the ground, they sow the corn. The soil, therefore, in certain cases is regarded as theirs.

The supreme authority which, among many savage peoples, the husband is said to possess over his wife, appears thus to be