Anglo Gender Relations

      When we were visiting the cultural center, the woman leading us around spoke specifically about current gender relations.  When we read the article “The Tohono O’odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900-1930” by Eric Meeks, it mentioned the ways in which Anglo influence affected gender relations and gender roles in the Tohono O’odham nations, reminding me of the ways in which we discussed feminism and the accomplishments of women during the visit to the cultural center.  She mentioned that women make up about seventy-five percent of the current legislators and that they actively work to remove differences in education by gender.  She identified the fact that there still exists segregation in occupation by gender but that they may contain more fluidity than before.  I founded it interesting that she noted the breakdown of gender roles and androcentrism in terms very Anglican ideals.  The areas of success that are identified are the areas of success as defined by European society (government and occupation).  These ideals have thus been applied to many other cultures and societies around the world based on imperialist acts and colonization.  The definitions of success in the Tohono O’odham nation may just reflect the alignment of Tohono O’odham definitions of success with European definitions of success or the societal Tohono O’odham alignment with Anglican influence, but it could also reflect the Anglo influence on gender roles, gender relations, and gender expectations.  Additionally, it could be that the woman giving the tour was fitting the information to fit her audience, using examples that we, as a predominantly Anglo audience, would be most likely to classify as examples of the breakdown of gender norms and thus allow her to get across her specific point.  I would be interested to know how gender relations exist currently in other aspects of life, including business, religion, art, and agriculture, as well as how the definition of success may differ to the Tohono O’odham and how the Anglo influence has affected that definition.  In addition, I would love to know if feminism and the breakdown of gender norms, in the eyes of the Tohono O’odham, exists as a manifestation of Anglo influence or if it functions to counter the prior Anglo influence that established many of the current gender structures.  I would imagine that a feminist agenda with entirely Anglo values, as she presented to us in the tour, would fall into the former, but a feminist agenda with cultural match that allowed for the alignment of values and definitions of success would potentially provide gender equality without oppressing Tohono O’odham culture.