ABSTRACT
A recurring theme in discussions of the position of women in different societies is the role played by biology. The question is to what extent biology, and notably the difference of sex, can be said to determine sexual behaviour and sexual ideology in any one culture. Often biology has been dismissed altogether, because any universalistic claims for its determining effect have been held to obscure the issue at a point where clarification was badly needed. The aim of this paper is to reinstate biology as an important factor in our comprehension of the position held by women (and men), but as a set of social, rather than ‘natural’, facts. The ‘facts of life’ in themselves only operate at the level of biology: as biological facts they tell people how to reproduce the species. But these facts may take on a particular cultural meaning and a specific social significance in different societies. The task of the social anthropologist and anyone else concerned with a total apprehension of the position of women is to analyse how socially significant distinctions are mapped on to basic biological differences, and vice versa. In any social context we must study ‘what difference the difference makes’, since this will yield information about the social and ideological organisation of the society in question. 1
