Gender in Inuit Society (H.O)

This reading was really interesting to me because I have never read much about Eskimos and their society. Assuming that living in the Arctic would be a struggle to survive, the social society was not it great shape either. Men were dominant because they were naturally superior. The gender status remained unequal. As far as labor, the men hunt, gather and haul food, and construct hunting materials. Women's responsibilities were locked into domestic routines that involved cooking, cleaning, processing and sewing skins and other materials, fishing and gathering fuel. Men's work is physically more dangerous and requires more strength but the women's work is equally exhausting overall. The men's reputations are within the community and are linked to their productive capability. Everywhere in the Arctic men and women are socialized to be cooperative, pliable, polite, generous, and acquiescent. In their society the general rule is that younger answers to older and females answer to males. Marriage for Eskimo women is usually arranged by their families however no woman is forced to take a husband she does not want. After marriage does take place the husband might choose to trade or share his wife's sexuality with a friend or trading partner. This act is very similar to what the Native men did with their native wives. I think in the Inuit society men and women are equal as far as status and power.
The Tlingit society was interesting because it differed much from the Inuit society. Women had primarily the same responsibilites as the Inuit women did but the men controlled the economy by trade. The men in the Inuit society were the dominance of the household. The men in the Tlingit society controlled their trade business and made the income for the household but it was the wives who were the banker of the household. They made a majoirty of the decisions and many times the husbands would bring their wives on the long-distance trading journeys to act as negotiators. The role of gender identity was either a nonissue or a secondary one which is much different from the Inuit society.