Kinship and Gender Relationships

Types of Kinship Groups

• Kinship is a relationship between persons by blood and a method of reckoning relationships.
• Group consists of close relatives and these relatives.

Relationship Between Gender and Kinship

• Kinship systems are an important context within which gender relations are located.
• Kinship defines:
  • Social identity
  • Inheritance
  • Resource distribution
  • Socialization
  • Post-marital residence
  • Marriage and conjugal relations
  • Authority and power
  • Rights over children
• Gender disparities and parities are explained in part by kinship systems.

Kinship Systems in Asia

• Asia has patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral kinship systems.

Patrilineal Kinship

• Boys and girls take their social identity from the father.
• They are placed in his lineage, $khandan/kutumb$ and family.
• A son is a permanent member of these units.
• A daughter is viewed as a transient or impermanent member.
• A son continues the patriline.
• Marriage implies loss of membership of her natal home for a daughter.

Matrilineal Kinship

• Children acquire permanent membership in the mother's descent group.
• It consists of relatives connected through female links.
• They share common blood.
• A child derives its social identity from its mother.
• A sister perpetuates the line.
• A brother is also a member.
• Membership of descent groups does not change at marriage under matriliny.
• Examples:
  • The $tharavad$ home among the Nayar of Kerala where brother and sister co-reside as per their mother's blood line.
  • Lakshadweep Muslims.
  • The word $kpoh$ among the Khasi, meaning common womb.

Bilateral Societies

• A child is reckoned to be the child equally of both its parents.
• There is no attempt at underplaying the importance of either parent.
• Prevalent in Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Historical Change: From Matriarchy to Patriarchy

• Before family and marriage, a child was the responsibility of a tribe without a distinguished father's identity.
• The mother is a child's family and hereditary succession happened in the matrilineal line
• With invention of private property, things changed.
• Family and marriage emerged, and sexual labor was controlled.
• The father became the breadwinner, and the mother became the caregiver.
• The mother was also assigned to private and domestic work.
• There was a transformation from matrilineal to patrilineal systems.

Case Study: India, Patrilineal Kinship and Gender

• In much of Hindu South Asia, property is inherited by male heirs.
• In northern, non-peninsular India, land is viewed as a male form of property.
• Daughters traditionally have a right to maintenance and to a marriage.
• This includes gifts and goods for setting up a household, in keeping with the status of the family.
• $Streedhana$ has different implications in different areas and is now being replaced by dowry.
• In the deep south, women have a right over their $streedhana$ and part of their dowries.
• Only sons have coparcenary rights (rights in ancestral property acquired at birth).
• In recent years, laws have been introduced in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra to give rights in ancestral land and property to daughters also, but their execution has been variable.

Dowry and Patrilineal Structures

• The absence of inheritance rights of daughters gives impetus to dowry.
• Patriliny and caste make a deadly combination for women's situation.
• With the telescoping of small endogamous castes into larger marriageable groups, and with greater emphasis on class, dowries have become very large.
• There is competition between young women's parents to find a good match and on the part of young men's parents to get as much profit as possible out of the deal.