Analyze the gender roles in Moso matrilineal society

The Moso (or the Mosuo), also known as the Na to themselves, are a small ethnic group, with population of around 40000, mainly living in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in China. It is interesting that the most distinct characteristic of the Moso is their unique matrilineal system, compared to other ethnic groups, dominated by patrilineality, in China. When men dominance and women subordination exist in Chinese patrilineal system, it is supposed that there would be an inversed gender inequality in matrilineal Moso culture too, but this is actually not true. This essay will argue that Moso society, in fact, exhibits relative gender equality, rather than inequality, by analyzing the gender roles of Moso on aspects of marriage system, as well as works and roles in the Moso extended family.

Moso people form a special partnership called “walking marriage”, in which there is no the concept of marriage. This kind of “marriage” actually provide large and equal degree of freedom to both genders for pursuing romantic love, when double sexual standard is common in other cultures. As professor Ma explained in lecture 3, apart from controlling sexual access, marriage is also required for alliance between families, villages, or even countries, and for sharing of rights and properties. Marriage is very essential to the families and, in turns, is much more than partnership of two individuals, as many exchanges of benefits between the couples’ families involve in the marriage. Therefore, in ancient patrilineal China and Europe, most marriages were not based on love, and exhibited gender inequality. When the men there who were restricted by class endogamy, exclusively allowed to marry a women from a family with similar social state to his family, the women did not even have a say to her marriage which was decided by her parents. In contrast, when “walking marriage” is considered exclusively as a sexual partnership of the couples in Moso, it allows people to neglect all the