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Daisy Dwyer's principal theme is that belief systems concerning sexuality and male-female relations are systematically linked with the distribution of power and authority between the sexes in different cultural situations. The relations between belief systems and authority varies according to whether men and women share essentially the same ideology concerning sex roles and sexuality (e.g., dominant males, subordinate females), as they do in some settings, or whether their ideologies significantly contrast (pp. 165-169). Because of the potential for ideological variation between the sexes in a given culture, Dwyer argues that belief systems concerning sexuality are often more complicated than they have often been assumed to be by theorists who presume that sexual ideologies can be reduced to simplistic formulae such as "woman is to man as nature is to culture" (p. 5). [….] Dwyer's study is based upon Taroudannt, a southern Moroccan town in which she conducted field research around 1970-the exact period of research is unspecified but textual references are made to 1970 events. She argues that the "Taroudannt ideology" provides an instance of men and women sharing a belief in female inferiority and subordination although both acknowledge that the dominant characteristics of the two sexes significantly overlap (p. 51). [….] Dwyer provides normative descriptions of how sex roles are inculcated and come to be accepted, and also of the shared normative expectations of men and women at different stages in their life- cycles. She rightly insists upon dispensing with Western stereotypes concerning "Arab-Muslim" sexuality and upon emphasizing the temporal and historical dimension of sexual ideologies. -- From https://www.jstor.org (Sep. 15, 2015).

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