| List of tables and figures | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xv |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Plans for sex-role behavior | |
| Scripts for female power | p. 15 |
| From "the complete perfect unity": the Balinese | p. 16 |
| The creative grandmother of the primeval sea: the Semang | p. 19 |
| Father, mother, lover, friend: the Mbuti | p. 21 |
| The mother of the earth beings who fell from the sky: the Iroquois | p. 24 |
| One couple from the sky and one couple from the earth: the Ashanti | p. 28 |
| The female creative principle | p. 33 |
| Scripts for male dominance | p. 35 |
| Eve's transgression, God's punishment, and female power: the Hausa | p. 35 |
| The merging and splitting of animals, mothers, and males: the Mundurucu | p. 37 |
| Nullifying female power: the Papagoes | p. 41 |
| The fierce people: the Yanomamo | p. 45 |
| The psychological bedrock | p. 50 |
| Constructing sex-role plans | |
| The environmental context of metaphors for sexual identities | p. 55 |
| Gender symbolism in creation stories: inward females and outward males | p. 57 |
| Male parenting and creation symbolism | p. 60 |
| The role of environment | p. 64 |
| Environment, origin beliefs, and history | p. 68 |
| Reflections of social life and thought in origin stories | p. 73 |
| Plans for the sexual division of labor | p. 76 |
| The kinds of activities that are universally allocated to males | p. 77 |
| The cultural patterning of work | p. 79 |
| A third cultural configuration: the dual-sex orientation | p. 86 |
| Sex-role plans and configurations of culture | p. 89 |
| Blood, sex, and danger | p. 91 |
| The body as symbol | p. 92 |
| The body in society and nature: the Andaman Islanders | p. 97 |
| Fluctuating food, warfare, and fear of fluxing women: the Bellacoola | p. 100 |
| Pollution of menstrual blood and sexual intercourse | p. 104 |
| Male and female worlds | p. 108 |
| The women's world | |
| The bases for female political and economic power and authority | p. 113 |
| The ascribed bases for female economic and political authority | p. 115 |
| The case of the Abipon: female power and the hunter/warrior configuration | p. 120 |
| The achieved bases for female economic and political power | p. 124 |
| The ascribed and achieved bases for female public power and authority and increasing technological complexity | p. 128 |
| The decline of the women's world: the effect of colonialism | p. 135 |
| The Igbo women's war | p. 136 |
| Handsome Lake and the decline of the Iroquois matriarchate | p. 141 |
| Female power and movement onto the Great Plains: the Lords of the Plains and the Sacred Buffalo Hat | p. 143 |
| The movement of foragers into marginal territories | p. 152 |
| The relationship between colonialism, a marginal food base, and female power | p. 156 |
| The dynamics of male dominance and sexual inequality | |
| The bases for male dominance | p. 163 |
| Male dominance: mythical and real | p. 163 |
| The correlates of male dominance and sexual inequality | p. 171 |
| Anthropological explanations for male diminance | p. 172 |
| From the native's point of view | p. 179 |
| Male dominance: part of a cultural configuration or a solution to stress | p. 181 |
| Why women? | p. 184 |
| Defining the oppressor | p. 185 |
| Men, animals, and women: the Mbuti and the Desana | p. 187 |
| External and internal threats to social survival: mythical versus real male dominance in the New Guinea highlands | p. 194 |
| The experience of migration: the Azande versus the Bemba | p. 199 |
| Conclusion | p. 210 |
| Conquerors of the land flowing with milk and honey | |
| Epilogue | p. 215 |
| The goddess and Yahweh cults in Canaan | p. 216 |
| Adam and Eve: migrating men and foreign goddesses | p. 220 |
| In God's image | p. 225 |
| The early Christians | p. 227 |
| Appendixes | |
| Sample | p. 232 |
| Variables | p. 236 |
| Analysis of the relationship between environment, fathers' proximity to infants, and origin symbolism | p. 239 |
| Configurations for the division of labor | p. 248 |
| Construction of the measure for female economic and political power or authority | p. 250 |
| Male aggression scale and male dominance measure | p. 253 |
| Notes | p. 257 |
| Bibliography | p. 275 |
| Index | p. 285 |
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