The point of this chapter is to identify and make visible some persistent assumptions, active in anthropology as well as in feminism(and elsewhere). I call them ‘male mythologies’, not because they are produced and maintained by men only (this is far from the case) but because they naturalize and legitimizemale power. I believe that a critique of these assumptions will help to clear a space for different concepts and lines of thinking, better suited for grasping realities of men's and women's lives.

I am not alone in this endeavour. Feminist anthropologists and African feminists have at various times in various ways been chasing the same assumptions, struggling to develop new conceptualizations. After an introduction explaining my personal stake in the matter at issue, I'll proceed to section 1, briefly introducing work by feminist anthropologists/sociologists Eleanor Leacock, Pauline Peters, Kate Crehan, Ifi Amadiume, Oyèrónké Oyewúmi and others, who have all made important contributions regarding the matter at issue. In the main body of the paper (section 2) I'll go back into the history of anthropology in an attempt to clarify the genealogy and subsequent configurations of the master mythology of male dominance/female subordination, as it has unfolded in anthropological analysis of matriliny. In the course of this discussion I'll show how Second Wave feminist thinking, through its foremother Simone de Beauvoir, is linked to structural anthropology.