Citation

Burbank VK. Ethos 1995; 23(1): 33-46.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, American Anthropological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12320172

Abstract

Women can bear children; men cannot. The author explores why women fail to realize more power from their ability to procreate. An instance is considered in which the practice and resistance of female Australian Aboriginal adolescents created circumstances in which their sexuality and reproduction were largely uncontrolled. The products of women's reproductive ability, children, are socially appropriated, but not women's reproductive abilities. The author views gender as a system of power relations both generated and changed in the quotidian interactions between human males and females. Adolescent sexuality and reproduction in Mangrove, and culture, power, and reproduction are discussed. The author finds women's sexual and reproductive freedom, as it is currently experienced by adolescent girls in Mangrove, to be supported by the confluence of the following factors: the diminished force of ideologies which may circumscribe women's behavior, the control of male violence, and the appreciation of motherhood and of any child simply by virtue of its being a child. It is unclear how long this arrangement will persist. Changes which may presage diminished freedom for women can already be discerned. Women's sexual and reproductive freedom are clearly human possibilities, but they are possibilities which can easily be denied.

Language: en