The Organization of Gender Relations within the Algerian Family : A Socio-Anthropological Study in al-Darawish Village, Algeria

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the features of socialization and to explore how gender difference is expressed within the family. These processes serve the social order, beginning with the group’s representations of males and females. Such expressions appear through the persistence of certain rituals that regulate gender relations, such as rituals associated with the birth of a male child and the ritual of circumcision. The patriarchal family uses these rituals to construct masculinity. In this sense, the ritual becomes one of the mechanisms through which distinction between the sexes is produced. It can therefore be concluded that birth rituals constitute basic rules for organizing relations between the sexes. They draw boundaries and establish hierarchies that will later appear through functions, roles, and spaces.
Through our socio-anthropological study in al-Darawish Village, in the city of Mascara, Algeria, we seek to interpret women’s representations in order to understand gender relations.