More on the Association of Women with Nature

It has long been the norm to associate men with culture and women with nature. Sherry Ortner wrote an influential article on this topic titled “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” that was published in Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere’s prominent 1974 book Women, Culture, and Society, a pioneering work in the area of women’s studies and the anthropology of gender. In the times of early humans, it is commonly thought that men made tools and interacted with society at large while women were in charge of household and homemaking duties. The root of this theory is women’s association with reproduction, e.g. birth and raising children, and therefore with biology and nature. It has subsequently led to an understanding of two separate spheres to which people belong: women are meant to stay in the home in the domestic and family sphere while men belong to the outside social sphere. Michelle Rosaldo also recognizes that such an assumption has become so normalized in our society now that we often don’t bother to question it. This normalization of gender role division is a central problem in women’s and gender issues because people will not feel the need to change something they don’t notice in the first place.