大脚女人走天下：）

匪兵甲

Mineke Schipper received her Ph. D. from the Free University of Amsterdam and is currently Professor of Intercultural Literary Studies at the University of Leiden. She has taught at the Free University of Amsterdam and has also held visiting professorships in several universities in Africa. Her major publications include Imagining Insiders: Africa and the Question of Belonging (Cassell, 1999), and Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from around the World (Yale, 2004). She has also published two novels. The present article is an abbreviated version of a lecture the author gave at the Wellcome Institute in London. Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet has been translated into Dutch and will also be published in Spanish, German, and Russian. A Chinese translation has been scheduled to appear in Beijing in spring 2006.  


以下材料转自香港城市大学跨文化研究中心网页

A Womb Makes a Woman
Fertility, Pregnancy and Childbirth in Proverbs from around the World

Mineke Schipper

Women have always visibly (pro-)created with their bodies, whereas, in the remote past, men might not even be sure whether they contributed at all to this miracle of pregnancy and birth. In creation myths, however, women's role is often ignored. Many stories depict a male first god or first ancestor as a potter or sculptor making human beings. He shapes the human race with his own hands from mud or dust, or gives birth to them in one way or another. The Egyptian God Atum, for example, vomits twins or, in a variant, produces them by masturbating. The creation of Eve out of Adam's rib in the Bible is another case in point. The Hebrew Talmud explains the significance of Eve's origin from Adam's body by stating that "God did not create woman from man's head, that he should command her; nor from his feet, that she should be his slave; but from his side, that she should be nearest to his heart." The first woman comes from the first man's body and not the other way round, as has been visually represented in well-known European paintings.


A woman's physique is the subject of numerous assumptions and projections, in all sorts of oral traditions and written texts, and certainly in humanity's smallest literary genre, the proverb, where it provides endless references to what is good, bad, desirable or repugnant in "woman" as such. Most proverbs present the world from a male perspective and for male interests, and they frequently emphasize two basic fears vis-à-vis women: the fear of losing one's privileges in life and the fear of uncertain fatherhood. Because of limited space, I cannot go into this in any detail, but here are a few examples:1

A wife is the best piece of furniture; you can use her in every room. (Dutch)
Lucky the man who marries a bee. (German)
Housewife at home, pancake with honey. (Russian)
Everything comes from his wife, even tying his shoelaces. (Arabic, Tunisia)

The other and most fundamental fear is the uncertainty of physical fatherhood, the frightening idea that the child one's wife is giving birth to might not be one's own. Proverbs frequently deal with the tricky question of who actually fathers the children. A Baule proverb from Ivory Coast conjures the danger by stating that "Her husband away, a woman can bear, but she cannot conceive." There is a strong and fearful awareness that ultimately "The name of the father is the secret of the mother," as it is said in the Caribbean:

Mama's baby, papa's maybe. (Catalan)
Let the baby be born and he will tell who his father is. (Spanish, Mexico)
Only the pregnant one will know who is the father of the child (Twi)
The mother knows best whether the child is like the father. (English, USA)

A multitude of Latin American metaphors reflect the nightmarish scenario of a cuckold man as the one who "preheats the oven for somebody else to bake his bread"; or who "dresses up the altar for others to celebrate mass"; etc. How to prevent this from happening? Proverbs look for answers in multiple measures of control, and in prescriptions and proscriptions for female behaviour.

Having a womb and bringing forth children, proverbs seem to argue, must be balanced by excluding women from developing their other talents and qualities in life. Those other qualities such as intelligence, gaining wealth, political and religious power, and more generally, access to the public space, are to be strictly reserved for men. Large numbers of proverbs warn that men must prevent women from manifesting themselves outside the small world of housekeeping and childbirth. Why? The first and main reason seems to try for some balance, to compensate for the awesome female power of the life-giving womb. Apparently, men's exploits and achievements in life need constant protection from female intruders. In my book on proverbs, I have discussed in detail the ongoing efforts to preserve a precarious balance between humans with a womb and those without, and the striking and widespread message that man must be master. Does this message have to be repeated all the time because in reality the world is full of rebellious women?

In order to deny women reason and intellect, an Italian proverb goes so far as to say that "Women reason with the womb." An Oromo (Ethiopia and Kenya) proverb has this to say: "The breasts that contain milk, cannot contain intelligence." That a man must be master, especially in wedlock, is a "traditional" rule invented, endorsed, and repeated in most cultures. Proverbs strongly advise men to model their wives and daughters into strict submissiveness. A wife should never be allowed independence or superiority and an ideal wife submits on her own behalf. One proverbial tactic is to simply declare that women are "naturally" subservient.

Proverbs give lots of advice to men on how to be the master and how to stay in charge; thus proverbs throw an interesting light on the history of a task division on the basis of sexual differences. Things have only started changing drastically thanks to safe birth control, which became available in the second half of the twentieth century — very recently in the cultural history of humanity. "In virtually all societies men fare better than women. Men exercise more power, have more status and enjoy more freedom," as many scholars have pointed out. "Child-rearing is the only domain where women regularly exert more influence than men."2 And here, oral literature plays an important role in reflecting and confirming "traditional" ideas. Proverbs, in particular, provide us with a rich collection of reflections on the female body and an equally rich mosaic of the social consequences people's sexual differences have brought about. Indeed, proverbs about women throw a fascinating light upon the worldwide existing gendered division of roles in life.

Wombs
The womb preoccupies proverbs intensely: "In woman's womb lies the destination of the home" (German). "A womb makes a woman," a Latin proverb states, and the womb is truly the fundamental organ to distinguish women from men, and it does so in a spectacular way through childbirth. Both men and women seem to attach crucial importance to having children. From a man's perspective, a female's main utility is her fertility. It is posterity in the first place that men need women for — and women, men. Most proverbs about wombs are concerned with what the womb is actually meant for: procreation, the wonders and worries of the mystery of bearing a child.


1. Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, 1510.

Interestingly, the womb is referred to in all kinds of metaphors, and the container metaphor is the image par excellence with which women are associated all over the world, due to the shape and functions of the female body. I found more than a hundred container metaphors referring to women, from utensils such as bags, baskets, bottles, buckets, calabashes, cups, fishnets, gourds, jars, jugs, kettles, mortars, ovens, pitchers, saucepans, vases, to huge vessels, such as beds, dustbins, rice-bins, vats, washtubs, etc. Other container images (to protect women against seduction) are clothes, coats, kitchens, tents, veils, abodes, fences, hedges, walls, and also caves, pools, holes, stables, houses, ships, and so forth. The container metaphor is associated with the various ways in which women are seen as serviceable and needed: the children they conceive, carry in their wombs, and give birth to. Frequently, a container is complemented with a "male" object meant to enter or cover a "female" object, and thus we find: mortar and pestle; shoe and foot; stocking and leg, candlestick and candle; pot and pot lid; bowl and spoon, pan and dipper, and so forth. It is repetitiously stressed that access to the female container has to be barred from undesirable intruders until it is officially unlocked. The defloration exercise had (or has, until this very day) to be performed preferably during the wedding night. As an Uzbek container metaphor has it: "A jug breaks only once," and also a Cuban image: "When a bell breaks, it will never ring again." The most familiar fragile "virginal" containers commonly referred to are glass and crystal. Below are some other container examples referring to virginity, its attractiveness, and its precariousness:

It will never do to be careless with a little girl and a small bag. (Japanese)
The bottle [is only good] with its seal, the girl with her hymen. (Arabic)
Until the age of twelve the girl is a cup, until the age of sixteen a tub, after the age of sixteen, thank him who takes her out of the house. (Czech)
Precious essences are kept in small vessels. (Spanish, Chile/El Salvador/Puerto Rico)


Most container proverbs incessantly insist that a female container needs to be controlled not only before the wedding but for life, or at least until she has reached menopause, because a man wants posterity of his own. This is one of the gravest concerns in container proverbs whether talking about brides, wives, co-wives, or even widows. In order to close the womb off against external threats, it is advised that vulnerable female containers be safely guarded, and preferably put up in a father's or husband's house.

Sterility
"Do not accuse the bed of infertility," a Chinese proverb argues. Rightly so, but in reality, when a couple remains childless, it is often the woman who gets stigmatized. However, "miscarriage is not sterility," as it is said in the Minyanka culture in Mali, where friends and relatives will comfort a woman with this proverb when she suffers a miscarriage. Within the proverbial procreation hierarchy, at the very bottom are sterile women, followed by women who have miscarriages, a little higher up are mothers of stillborn children, and those who have lost their child or children. These last are somewhat "higher up" as they have at least shown to be able to "conceive." For the sterile woman, there is no such comfort. When a woman is childless because her child has died, some African proverbs stress that such women are "better off" than barren women, because they can cherish hope for new pregnancies. Here are more examples:

The woman whose sons have died is richer than a barren woman. (Gikuyu)
The one whose children are buried in her womb will not see their graves. (Rundi)
Rather condolences for dead sons than no hope of giving birth to them. (Ladino)
A woman without children doesn't know what love is. (English/Italian)
What can a sterile woman know about the happiness of having children? (Telegu)

A sterile woman is advised not to make fun of those who have given birth and are more prestigious and experienced, and the same holds for young girls — as a Creole proverb from Jamaica reminds them: "You done no breed, so no laugh after your grannie." And the mother of only one child should not mock a childless woman, according to a Ghanaian Mamprusi advice, as the risk of losing one's only treasure is always high.

Fertility and sterility mark women for life. In proverbs the various disadvantages surrounding female barrenness are considered in detail. Families want to secure heirs; thus in many cultures, men are allowed to divorce a "sterile" wife, one who has not given birth within a few years after marriage, as if this could only be a woman's fault:

A marriage without children does not last long for men. (Arabic, Maghreb)
A bride who bears no child after three years of marriage should be divorced. (Japanese)

Quite some messages are harsh and devastating: "Rather mud than an infertile wife" is an Andrah proverb from India. And what to do with a sterile tree? It is best chopped down and thrown into the fire according to variants of the same message in Hebrew or Romanian. Only one proverb gives women the benefit of the doubt for a longer period of time: "Seven years is not too long for a pumpkin vine to start bearing fruit" (English, Jamaica).

Inevitably, people try to discover the cause of such extremely bad luck, and many natural and supernatural causes and cures have been found or invented. According to the Mapuche in Chile it is believed that the scrapings of a mule's nail transmit infertility. It can also be caused by witchcraft. The idea that you can be rejected (and so lose your livelihood) if you do not get pregnant soon enough is apparently alarming. Of course, women pray, and visit priests or doctors if they do not conceive quickly. They practice customary rituals, and try to cure themselves by means of herbs, potions and magic in order to solve the problem, and it seems to work in a Telegu proverb: "She had but just passed the holy tree and already felt signs of pregnancy." Especially in Africa and to a lesser extent also South Asia, sterility and childlessness are a more frequent issue in proverbs than in Europe and North America, although negative proverbs about female sterility are certainly not lacking in the West. In many societies the fate of a woman who cannot have children is far from enviable.

Fertility
Women's irrefutable birth-giving capacity is notified, for example, in a Minangkabau proverb from Indonesia: "A cock does not lay eggs", or in Igbo (Nigeria): "A cock lays nothing." A clan prospers only as long as there are nubile girls who will bring forth a new generation. This point is especially emphasized in proverbs from African societies where infant mortality is experienced as an imminent threat:

A girl is a peanut seed: she enlarges the clan. (Woyo)
The wealth of a girl is in her frontside. (Rwanda)
Girl, bring forth, that we may see [what you're worth]. (Bembe)
The girl grows up in order to raise a family. (Rundi)
May your daughter fill the house [with boys] and bear fruit, thanks to God. [A marriage wish] (Arabic, Maghreb/West Sahara)


2. An ivory sculpture of the Upper Paleolithic from Lespugue in France conflating breasts and buttocks into a zone of eggs circling the figure's middle — possible metaphor for intensified fertility.

Men are advised to carefully choose their wives with a view to their conceiving capacity, and not their beauty. The problem is that the proof of the pudding is only in the eating, so to speak. There is always a risk, especially in cultures where virginity must be respected until the wedding night. People can be lucky or not, a wife can conceive quickly or not, or even wait in vain for the faintest sign of pregnancy. "If a bride can be bought, a child cannot," as the Bulgarians say. A Fulfulde proverb jokingly tells men who are in a hurry for posterity: "If you are impatient to have a child, you marry a pregnant woman." Several Latin American proverbs compare the purchase of a wife for breeding to another serious matter of concern, the purchase of dogs or cattle for the same purpose:

Rooster, horse and wife should be chosen for their breed. (Spanish, Mexico)
Women and goats: choose them for their breed. (Spanish, Puerto Rico)
Women, horses and hunting-dogs: choose them for their breed. (Portuguese, Brazil)

Children are not only a precious treasure of family happiness, but also a source of practical profit. Thus, from a maternal perspective, even the very young ones will lighten their mother's daily burdens:

Where the mother sends [her children], the childless goes herself. (Ganda)
Who will draw water for the childless old woman? (Gikuyu)
Those who have children arrive first at the water; the childless one fetches muddy water. (Yaka)

Sterility is to fertility, then, as poverty is to wealth. This not only holds for mothers, but also for fathers. Having children is a long term investment in the material sense, in societies where children are the only possible insurance in old age: "Those who fear children's crying will cry in their old age", as the Swahili say. In such a context, the more numerous your offspring is, the more chances you have that some will survive and take care of you in your last phase of life.

Children are the riches of the poor. (Japanese)
If you have sons, what would you need money for? (Chinese)
A house full of sons is like a house full of pearls. (Kurdish)


[ 本帖由 匪兵甲 于 2007-11-29 12:19 最后编辑 ]

匪兵甲

Therefore men are advised to take the necessary measures in due time, instead of complaining when it is too late: "If an elder grows slim, it is his fault," a Yaka proverb stresses. He should have married several wives who would have given him many children in his younger years. There are, however, two sides to immense female fertility. Positively, "getting many children is divine," according to a Sumerian proverb. Having children is often presented in terms of sheer happiness and profit, as in the following Oromo proverb: "When the year is a good year, the women of the house have many children" (Ethiopian). Many proverbs express the good luck and prestige of having numerous offspring:

And the tree keeps on giving. (Spanish, Mexico)
The more children the more luck. (German)
Many children are the riches of Romanians. (Romanian)
Just as the fireplace for cooking never has enough firewood, a woman never has enough children. (Punjabi)

This seems all very well from the perspective of those who don't have to bear with pregnancy and the actual pain of labor, and who don't have to think of how to feed so many hungry mouths. Other proverbs, however, tone down the praise of such overwhelming female wealth, or even blame women for conceiving too easily (or warn against women who do):

Some women will conceive if you but shake a pair of breeches at them. (English, UK)
It happens that by leaping over a hedge you become pregnant. (Estonian)
A woman who gives birth to many children will get pregnant from the slightest wind. (Hebrew)
Every year a child, in nine years twelve. (Bulgarian)
Ill-starred women have two babies a year. (Pashto)

A Spanish Bolivian proverb refers with frank disapproval to such exuberant fertility: "Where she puts her eye, she gets a baby," a parody on the popular hunting proverb "Where he puts the eye, he puts the bullet."

Other proverbs look into the trouble and worries that a large family brings along. A Korean proverb stresses that "A tree with many branches has not a day without wind," in which wind is a metaphor for adversity. The same idea can be found in more direct statements:

To bear many children is to shed many tears. (Shona)
Many children, many debts; many wives, much malicious gossip (Vietnamese)
May God save us from many children and little bread. (Spanish)
The last child kills its mother. (Papiamentu/English/Creole, Caribbean)

Different twists can be given to one and the same proverb referring to this issue, as a widespread Arabic proverb illustrates. An Egyptian version emphasizes the affluence and riches of having many children: "She is with child, and nurses a child, and has four more before her"; two other versions rather look at the situation from an overburdened and exhausted woman's perspective:

She's pregnant and nurses her child, while four others are on her shoulder, and climbs the mountain to obtain a pregnancy remedy. (Arabic)
She is pregnant, she nurses a child, she drives around her other four little ones and she is climbing up the mountain to search for a medicine against pregnancy. (Lebanon)

The variants seem to be referring to a medicine preventing pregnancy (or even provoking an abortion?). One Russian proverb says fatalistically: "Do not swear, womb, that you will not get children," which means that you will get them anyway, even against your will. It is quite obvious that, as far as proverbs are concerned, nothing much seems to be done to regulate pregnancies: "A good-hearted woman is always pregnant" in the words of a Sinhalese proverb from Sri Lanka. It is also argued, sometimes ironically, that the combination of poverty and fertility bodes ill for the future:

Two hungry lovers and a single bed means the birth of a beggar. (Turkish)
A poor woman is pregnant: good news for the graveyard. (Arabic, Lebanon)

Pregnancy
Pregnancy is the inevitable natural consequence of a woman's having intercourse. This simple fact is used in proverbs to express the idea that even though one may do things secretly, the outcome will be public. As the Swahili in East Africa argue: "She who is pregnant is pregnant, even though she wraps herself in a makaja," the cloth women wear after childbirth. Or as such Arabic proverbs have it: "Three things cannot be hidden: love, pregnancy and riding a camel."


3. Jan Van Eyck, The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami, 1434.

However, pregnancies do not always turn out as expected, as many risks threaten both the future mother and the unborn child. No wonder, then, that in many languages the delicate status of a pregnant woman with its uncertain outcome serves as a metaphor, warning against such troubles in store as thinking up names, making clothes, making a cradle, preparing porridge or diapers, and so forth. Much can go wrong before a child is born, especially in situations where healthcare and medical services are lacking, and multiple dangers surround pregnancy:

Pregnant women have one foot in the grave. (German)
A pregnant woman stands at the brink of a graveyard. [literally: in front of the gate of a graveyard.] (Vietnamese)

In a society with high infant mortality, there are numerous warnings against anticipating the child's arrival. I found relatively few such admonitions in Europe but many in Africa where a widespread belief has it that if you appear too happy about a pregnancy, an evil spirit could become so jealous as to destroy the unborn baby. This might well be the reason why the Baule from Ivory Coast — among other people (and not only in Africa) — recommend not addressing the pregnant woman as "mother" yet. This title of honor is not only seen as premature before she has given birth, but it might also prove to conjure up danger for the future mother as well as for the baby yet to be born.

Pregnancy is not yet having a child. (German)
Pregnancy does not yet mean baby. (Baule)
A pregnant woman should not put her unborn child on her list of living children. (Papiamentu, Aruba)

Childbirth and Childbed

Pregnancy and childbirth are killers of women and their babies all over the world. According to a popular Arabic proverb, "Birth is the messenger of death." More than four thousand years ago, the Sumerians already carved on a clay tablet their worries about the uncertain fate of a woman in childbirth: "A sick person is [relatively] well; it is the woman in childbirth who is [really] ill." Another Sumerian proverb stresses the exhaustion brought about by continuous childbirths: "A mother who has given birth to eight youths lies down in weakness." The proverb has been interpreted in different ways: as a boast on the part of a particularly proud father, but also as an expression of sympathy for the aging, though still fertile, mother who lies down passively in fear of another risky pregnancy, when her husband wants to make love again. Among the Haya, the ninth childbirth is considered very risky: "The woman who said: ‘How well and easily do I give birth,' died with the birth of her ninth child," and a Caribbean proverb warns that "The last child kills its mother," meaning that so often goes the pitcher to the well that it comes home broken at last — in which the pitcher could as well serve as a metaphor for the birth-giving womb.


4. A confinement room sceen on the front of a Florentine wooden childbirth tray, a domestic utensil celebrating a child's birth, 15th century.



A Papiamentu proverb from the Caribbean observes that for women "Desire is more powerful than pain." This does not mean, however, that women's birth-giving and aging does not take its toll: "Bearing fruits bends the trunk of the banana tree," — this Gikuyu image expresses the idea that maternity inevitably means pain. Some proverbs observe the glaring contrast between the pleasures of sex and the subsequent stressful pains for women:

Making love is a good thing, giving birth is not. (Creole, Guadeloupe)
Even if a thousand women come together, the one who gives birth has to suffer the pain. (Armenian)
Getting pregnant is easy, giving birth is hard. (Russian)
Laughing she got pregnant, crying she delivered. (Oromo)
No rain without thunder, no childbirth without pain, no girl without lover. (Ladino)

Some proverbs argue that things are more easily done than dreaded beforehand: "More suffering in fear than in child's delivery" (Japanese). When giving birth women are usually assisted by a midwife, although, as a Ganda proverb stresses: "A woman in childbirth trembles [only], if somebody is there to help her." In other words, if nobody were around, she would just help herself without quivering! Several proverbs refer to assistance with delivery. A pregnant woman is warned not to speak contemptuously about a co-wife who has already achieved what she herself still has to do: "A pregnant wife should not scorn a co-wife's child." This Mamprusi proverb recommends not to underrate someone else's achievement. Not only that, but one co-wife needs the other as a midwife when her own time comes: "Women give birth with the assistance of their co-wives" is an Acholi proverb from Uganda warning people to be welcoming and polite, because competitors are sometimes forced to help each other. A rival might feel like taking revenge at the very moment you are helpless. In some East African proverbs, the metaphor of the midwife is explicitly used to express people's interdependence in life:

Insult the midwife, and who will help you next time? (Sena)
Don't insult the midwives while birth is going on. (Hehe)
Do not abuse midwives while childbearing continues. (Swahili)

One of the worst things to happen is to give birth to a dead child, or seeing a child die after birth, and, alas, this happens all the time, to the poor in the first place, but also to the rich, as the Sumerians already knew: "A palace, one day a mother giving birth, the next day a lamenting mother." The Tamil in India say: "A child in the grave is a child in the womb." A mother will never get rid of the pain of such a loss, and no other drama can compare to it: "The grief of the neck lasts six months, the grief of the womb forever" (Telegu), in which the "grief of the neck" signifies the breaking of the marriage cord, i.e. widowhood, while the "grief of the womb" signifies the loss of a child which immerses one's life in sadness. Some African proverbs mention the loss of several children, so that ultimately one loses hope of keeping any alive:

She who keeps losing children doesn't invent names anymore. (Ganda)
I give birth, they die, [a woman says], and she gives none of them names. (Haya, Tanzania)

Both proverbs refer to the custom that, after the death of one of her children, a mother gives an ugly name or no name at all to the next born, hoping and believing that thus no bad spirit will notice the new pregnancy or be interested in taking the newborn baby away. In addition to this problem, there are numerous other maternal worries, as we have seen.

She gives birth to them in pain and buries them in pain. (Ladino, Morocco)
A woman who brings forth takes trouble upon herself. (Ganda, Uganda)
She who brings forth a child brings forth a problem. (Berber, Morocco)

Nonetheless, childbirth is far from being only sorrow and grief. It is motherhood that grants a wife respect, even among her in-laws, as a Persian proverb stresses: "A woman is a stranger until she gives birth to a child." Motherhood and childbirth are praised as the greatest possible asset and benediction:

A marriage is a joy; the birth of a boy, an honour; the birth of a girl, luck. (Tajik)
A child is the flower of a family garden. (Turkish)
To bear children is wealth; to dress is only colours. (Tsonga)

In most cultures, proverbs on giving birth once more confirm the importance of having sons, as in the following Spanish proverb that express disappointment of having a baby girl: "A whole night of labour and then only a daughter." The keen interest in the outcome of a woman's labour mainly reflects the hope that she will bring forth a boy:

Let's pray to the Prophet until the boy comes. (Arabic)
The woman that gives birth to sons has no sorrows. (Spanish)
For her, who has given birth to a son, the sun will rise. (Nogay)

A Jewish expression reflects the fact that a girl's birth does not cause the same emotions of joy as a boy's would: "You are as calm as if you just gave birth to a daughter" (Hebrew). Giving birth to daughters is thus a mere second choice, something better than nothing at all:

It is better to give birth to a girl than to sit idle. [Anything is better than idleness] (Oromo)
Give birth to girls and do not lead a useless life. (Arabic)
Only the house's ghost is happy
with the birth of a daughter.
(Chuwash)

To sum up: birth and death are the two poles between which human life is spent, and procreation is considered crucial across the world. In proverbs, men desire and look for attractive sex partners and for fertile wives who can give them healthy children; while women dream of powerful lovers and well-to-do husbands. Ultimately, proverbial men derive their prestige from their physical, political and economic domination in society, whereas proverbial women derive their prestige from their sexual attractiveness, and their birth-giving capacity. Some proverbs present the complementary roles of men and women concisely and cynically thus:

Battlefield for man, childbirth for woman. (Maori)
What war is to man, childbirth is to woman. (Assam)

What does all this "wisdom" mean today? Proverbs are part of humanity's eventful cultural history, and we have to understand its lessons, before deciding which part of our various "traditions" we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Thanks to globalization, cultures have become more intertwined than ever before, and we have more access to and more information about each other's traditions than ever before. We know more about our respective cultural differences, and we know more about what we have in common. Now that globalization and migration interact with local realities in many ways, positively and negatively, it becomes highly rewarding to re-examine our various traditions together — in mixed (gender and culture) company.

Worldwide there is a growing awareness of the irrationality on which most existing gender dichotomies have been based. Still, the Mecca of equal opportunities looks far away for those who look into the global human rights situation. In the late 1990s the Japanese Soka Gakkai Peace Committee organized a Travelling Gender and Human Rights Exhibition, which traveled all over the world and presented its argument, supported by statistics and photographs, that in virtually all societies women continue to confront discrimination as their labor is rewarded at an average of 40 percent less than that of men. Women do about two-thirds of the world's work and produce, process, and market three-fifth of the world's food; they receive one-tenth of the world's income, and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that everywhere in the world human rights discussions have made a difference. In the majority of countries laws have been or are being created to protect women's rights and to prevent violence against women, and equal opportunities become ever more self-evident globally.

The world imagined in proverbs is changing rapidly in some respects, and slowly but surely in others, thanks to the ongoing integration of male and female roles and domains. The main change has come about in the twentieth century with safe birth control. How far have we progressed along the road towards cosmopolitan citizenship? The outcome of our comparative work might serve as an enlightening beacon for future gender orientation. In order to define where we want to go and where we do not, as men and women today, we first of all need to know where we have come from.

Notes

For more information I refer to my recent book Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet. Women in Proverbs from Around the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), a study based on more than 15000 proverbs from oral and written sources worldwide.
David Levinson and Martin J. Malone, Toward Explaining Human Culture (New Haven, 1980), 267. "The concept of female pollution and the ritual associated with it are often used by men to control women." (279) See also Walter J. Lonner, "The Search for Psychological Individuals," in Harry C. Triandis and William W. Lambert (eds.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (Boston, 1980), Vol. I: 147; John E. Williams and Deborah L. Best, Measuring Sex Stereotypes: A Multinational Study (Newbury Park, 1990).
Picture Acknowledgements:
2. The Language of the Goddess (Thames & Hudson).
4. The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (Yale University Press).