Editing Margaret Mead (section)

==={{Vanchor|Sex and Temperament|text=''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies'' (1935)}}===
Mead's ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies''<ref name="Mead 2003">{{cite book|last=Mead|first=Margaret|title=Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies|year=2003|publisher=Perennial an impr. of HarperCollins Publ.|location=New York|isbn=978-0-06-093495-8|edition= 1st Perennial}}</ref> became influential within the [[feminist movement]] since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled [[Chambri people|Chambri]]) Lake region of the Sepik basin of [[Papua New Guinea]] (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout [[Melanesia]]. Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, especially in the large island of [[New Guinea]]. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in [[Oksapmin]], [[West Sepik Province]], a more sparsely-populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, [[Mount Hagen]]. They were closer to those described by Mead.

Mead stated that the [[Arapesh languages|Arapesh people]], also in the Sepik, were [[pacifist]]s, but she noted that they on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots among the Arapesh, the [[egalitarian]] emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the "big man" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures, such as by [[Andrew Strathern]]. They are a different cultural pattern.

In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:
* "Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
* "Among the [[Mundugumor people|Mundugumor]], the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
* "And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones—the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mead |first1=Margaret |title=Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies |publisher=HarperCollins Publ. |isbn=978-0-06-093495-8|edition= 1st Perennial |url=https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapter/margaret-meads-gender-studies/ |access-date=June 16, 2019|date=May 22, 2001 }}</ref>

[[Deborah Gewertz]] (1981) studied the Chambri (called [[Tchambuli]] by Mead) in 1974–1975 and found no evidence of such gender roles. Gewertz states that as far back in history as there is evidence (1850s), Chambri men dominated the women, controlled their produce, and made all important political decisions. In later years, there has been a diligent search for societies in which women dominate men or for signs of such past societies, but none has been found (Bamberger 1974).<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=vE85zkFdURQC&pg=PA263 Bamberger, Joan, ''The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in primitive society'', in M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere, ''Women, Culture, and Society'' (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974)], p.&nbsp;263.</ref> [[Jessie Bernard]] criticised Mead's interpretations of her findings and argued that Mead's descriptions were subjective. Bernard argues that Mead claimed the Mundugumor women were temperamentally identical to men, but her reports indicate that there were in fact sex differences; Mundugumor women hazed each other less than men hazed each other and made efforts to make themselves physically desirable to others, married women had fewer affairs than married men, women were not taught to use weapons, women were used less as hostages and Mundugumor men engaged in physical fights more often than women. In contrast, the Arapesh were also described as equal in temperament, but Bernard states that Mead's own writings indicate that men physically fought over women, yet women did not fight over men. The Arapesh also seemed to have some conception of sex differences in temperament, as they would sometimes describe a woman as acting like a particularly quarrelsome man. Bernard also questioned if the behaviour of men and women in those societies differed as much from Western behaviour as Mead claimed. Bernard argued that some of her descriptions could be equally descriptive of a Western context.<ref>Kaplan, David, and Robert Alan Manners. Culture theory. Prentice Hall, 1972, pp. 175–180</ref>

Despite its feminist roots, Mead's work on women and men was also criticized by [[Betty Friedan]] on the basis that it contributes to infantilizing women.<ref name="friedan">{{cite book|last=Friedan|first=Betty|author-link=Betty Friedan|title=The Feminine Mystique|year=1963|publisher=W.W.Norton|isbn=978-0-393-32257-6|chapter=The Functional Freeze, The Feminine Protest, and Margaret Mead}}</ref>