Women

Abstract

Consider that very symbol of emancipation — the French Revolution — bearing the universal message of liberty, equality and fraternity — but not for women. The sophisticated explanation of the time, which is still too much for certain countries, was expressed by that scion of the Enlightenment, the abbé Sieyès, inaugurating the ‘Rights of Man’. For the abbé distinguished between ‘passive’ female rights and the ‘active’ male rights of citizens. Natural and civil rights (passive), he argued, are those for which society is formed; political rights (active) are those by which society forms itself. All the inhabitants should enjoy the rights of passive citizens: protection of the person, property, freedom, and so on. ‘But not all have the right to take part in the formation of public powers: all are not active citizens’, such as women at present, children and foreigners. Those ‘who contribute nothing to sustain the public establishment’, Sieyès logically concluded, ‘should not actively influence public matters’ (Gaspard et al., 1992: 51–3).

The Baruya of New Guinea, among whom I have lived and worked, legitimise masculine domination and the exclusive right of men to rule by a primordial myth. Originally, women not only possessed the right of reproduction of life, but they had also invented weapons, tools and the sacred flute. But they made bad use of all this, which sowed disorder in the cosmos and in society. The first men found themselves obliged to steal their flutes and to expropriate women’s original powers.

(Maurice Godelier, anthropologist)