Women in industrial societies still campaign for equality with men. Many of their counterparts in hunter-gatherer societies, however, have long known equal status with men. Mutual dependence on each other’s foods – men hunt, women gather – has encouraged the development of egalitarian societies over generations. For women of the Awá hunter-gatherer tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, an egalitarian society is normal; some Awá women even take several husbands, a practice known as polyandry. The Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe of northern Tanzania similarly value equality highly. Hadza women have a great amount of autonomy and participate equally in decision making with men. And when Roman Catholic missionaries arrived on the shores of the Labrador-Quebec peninsula in north-eastern Canada, many were horrified by Innu Indian women’s level of independence and power. At a time when women in Europe were generally seen as inferior to men, Innu women were far freer within and outside marriage, and often chose where and when to camp on their journeys across their sub-arctic homeland,Nitassinan. survivalinternational.org/galleries/tribalheroines?utm_source=Survival+International&utm_campaign=bb1b73ee97-News_as_it_happens&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_241e47c256-bb1b73ee97-86992165#4
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 23:25:22 +0000
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