ABSTRACT
The last two decades in anthropological research have seen an overwhelming interest in gender and the meaning of gender for the understanding of cultural systems. The seminal edited volumes by Rosaldo and Lamphere (1974), Reiter (1975), Ardener (1975a), MacCormack and Strathern (1980), Ortner and Whitehead (1981), Hirschon (1984), as well as the more recent studies by Collier and Yanagisako (1987a), Strathern (1987, 1988), and Moore (1988) to name but a few, seem to us to have discussed the complexity involved in gender studies from many different angles. Numerous excellent enthnographic studies have been published of male and female roles, of the significance of the sexual division of labour, on the ideology of gender relations and the importance of gender identity for cultural understanding. We have, in many cases, been given alternative interpretations of social institutions, the most wellknown perhaps being the study by Weiner (1976) from the Trobriand Islands, which has given new insight into that famous society. In a different vein, Bell (1983) has shown how aboriginal Australian women have their own versions of the cosmology and ritual which force one to rethink the ‘meaning’ of aboriginal societies.
