Ethnic Differentiation, Gender and Family Life

Abstract

Over the past forty years, ethnic divisions have assumed heightened salience in national and international politics — as conflicts surrounding migration movements in Britain, Europe and the USA, the break up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the growth in Britain, the USA and South Africa of ‘black’ challenges to the hegemony of ‘white’ peoples demonstrate. These divisions involve cultural differences and allegiances, are in general associated with marked inequalities of power and wealth and tend to be at their sharpest wherever they coincide with racial and/or religious distinctions. At their centre lie differences in gender and family structures. Gender and family patterns may reflect longstanding cultural traditions, are frequently governed by deeply held religious beliefs and are integral to a people’s identity. However, they are inevitably challenged, and become the source of intense anxieties, wherever ethnic groups share a common territory and must negotiate a shared way of life.