Whereas Chodorow draws from the experiences of individuals, Sherry Ortner’s (1974) theory looks at society as a whole. Ortner argues that a universal tendency in cultural thought is to align things male and masculine with “culture” and things female and feminine as closer to “nature.” Men are outwardly oriented, going out from the tribe or group to hunt, make war and the like, whereas women’s concerns with childbirth, breast-feeding, and the like are more biological and inward. Because culture, in the broad sense, sets human beings apart from animals, whereas childbirth and child rearing are traits of all animals, men’s cultural roles are valued over women’s more biological roles.
Other theorists have taken that idea and developed it (Ortner & Whitehead, 1981). For example, both Strathern (1981), who studied the Mt. Hegeners of New Guinea, and Llewelyn-Davies (1981), who studied the Massai in Africa, differentiate between
women’s involvement in “self-interest” and men’s in the “public good.” Women are seen in these two cultures as more involved with local, parochial, and private concerns of the family and children, whereas men are more concerned with the welfare of society as a whole. Another way to put it is that women are concerned with the “domestic domain” and men with the “public domain.” The public domain includes the domestic domain, which means that women’s sphere of influence—the family—is subordinate to men’s. Ortner and Whitehead conclude their discussion of these kinds of oppositions with:
It seems clear to us that all of the suggested oppositions—nature/culture, domestic/ public, self-interest/social good—are derived from the same central sociological insight: that the sphere of social activity predominantly associated with males encompasses the sphere predominantly associated with females and is, for that reason, culturally accorded higher value. (1981, pp. 7-8)
MacKinnon’s Dominance Theory
Catharine MacKinnon (1987), a feminist scholar, believes that the gender hierarchy is the result of men’s attempt to dominate social life. MacKinnon dismisses biological arguments about gender and argues that gender itself is fundamentally a system of dominance rather than a system of biological or social differences. She suggests that back in ancient times men assumed the power to define “difference” in society and especially the “difference gender makes.”
MacKinnon believes that men define what is male, what is female, and what difference that makes, but try to present these ideas as though they were scientifically or objectively true rather than a result of male dominance. “Male” and “female” are therefore not biological categories, MacKinnon suggests, but social and political categories, “a status socially conferred upon a person because of a condition of birth.” MacKinnon can see no end to this fundamental inequality except through wholesale social change.