China is often characterized as strongly patrilineal and patriarchal, with strong preferences for sons and extremely male-biased sex ratios. Yet China is also home to a diverse group of ethnic minorities who vary in kinship and in preferences for daughters or sons. In this talk, I describe the kinship and marital systems of the Mosuo (Na) of Southwest China and how these systems relate to the expression of preferences for daughters versus sons. The Mosuo have been dubbed ‘China’s last matrilineal’ society and as the world’s ‘only society without fathers or husbands’.
Siobhán M. Mattison is an assistant professor in evolutionary anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She earned her degrees from Cornell University (BA) and the University of Washington (MA, PhD) and received postdoctoral training in demographic anthropology at Stanford University. She is interested in how local social and ecological contexts influence decisions made in relation to kinship and reproduction. She explores these issues in China and Vanuatu and any other data she can get her hands on.
