AGRICULTURAL MODERNIZATION AND GENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR.

In Greece, as in other Mediterranean countries agriculture still employs a large proportion of the working population; in 1986 it was 28.5%. This is a consequence of the structure of agricultural production, which is characterized by a large number of small farms; in 1981 the average size was 3.6 hectares employing 1.9 working people. Social anthropologists have been interested mainly in kinship relations and in exchange patterns between families such as dowry and inheritance practices. Most studies have traditionally treated sex differences as the consequence of the different roles imposed on men and women related to other sorts of divisions in rural communities such as private-public, inside outside. Sex roles are considered as subject to general social evolution, often according to urban societal patterns and not as reflection of tensions between the sexes produced by the existing power relations. Peasant family production has to be analyzed as a social structure where labor relations are interrelated with family relations, where often means of production are owned and exploited by different persons, where most workers are socially defined as assisting and non-paid family members.